Page 70 of Kenna's Dragon

Sex probably isn’t the best idea right now, and Ewan must have a better grip on his self-control than I do, because he pinches my chin between his forefinger and thumb and laughs again.

“Come on. We drove up here to enjoy the sunshine. Would be a shame to spend the entire weekend inside.”

He’s got a point. Damn dragon. And as much as I want to keep protesting, I can’t remember the last time I actually spent time in the great outdoors.

Well, besides the night he kidnapped me.

We leave our stuff in a guest bedroom before changing into hiking clothes and heading out on the trail that starts just up the road from the cabin.

The day is beautiful. Perfect, even. The sun is shining through big, white, puffy clouds, and there are towering trees and vibrant green ferns lining the path. It’s everything I could have imagined if I had to pick a perfect day to be outside.

Despite the lingering tension from our conversation earlier, we both attempt to just enjoy this gift of a day. We talk about everything and nothing as we walk. Places we like to eat in Seattle. TV and movies we enjoy. We argue about music and whether it’s appropriate to wear socks to bed. Laughing and talking, trading small touches and brief kisses, it’s all too easy to pretend this is any normal day with any normal—albeit extremely handsome—guy I’m dating.

The feeling only grows when we make it back to the cabin late in the afternoon and Ewan grabs my hand and tugs me toward the dock at the edge of the lake.

“Swimsuit?” I protest. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not wearing one.”

He grins at me. “Neither am I.”

I don’t even have time to react to that before he’s stripping off his clothes. Fully naked, he half-shifts before running and diving off the edge of the dock, giving me a good long look at his taut, scale-accented ass as he does. His body makes a graceful arc as he dives, disappearing beneath the water for a few moments before he resurfaces and shakes droplets from his dark hair.

Sun-kissed and dripping wet, grinning at me with a bit of wicked teasing in the curve of his lips, I’ve never seen him like this. His shoulders are loose, and all the tension has disappeared from his face, like he has nothing to worry about but being here in the sunshine with me.

He seems… younger, somehow. Lighter and brighter than he’s been since I met him.

It’s enough to tempt me into taking a few tentative steps out onto the dock.

“Going to join me, ember?”

That teasing in his eyes turns into something else, something dark and hungry as he runs his gaze along the length of my body, still covered in a tank top and shorts.

I glance up and down the shore. There are only a handful of other cabins on the lake, and there don’t seem to be any other people around or anyone out boating… but skinny dipping? In the middle of the day?

When I look back at Ewan, he’s still got that challenging smile on his lips, amber eyes glinting in the summer sun.

Fuck it.

Not feeling bold enough to do any kind of sexy strip tease, I tug off my clothes, leaving everything in a haphazard pile on the dock.

My cannonball is much less graceful than his dive, and before I can break the surface again, Ewan is there. He reaches for me in the water, pulling me into the solid wall of his body.

“Very nice, ember,” he says, brushing his lips over mine. “Ten out of ten on form.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble, kissing him right back. “We can’t all be graceful dragons with aerodynamic wings.”

“They do come in handy.”

To prove it, he spreads them wide and leans back in the water, letting them keep us afloat as he settles me into his chest and closes his eyes to bask in the sun. I do the same, savoring the warmth and the cool kiss of the water, the peace of birds calling in the distance and the knowledge that I have nothing else to do today and nothing else to worry about, not right this second.

No, right now it’s just… us. Bared to each other. Alone under a bright summer sky, tucked away from the world for however long this reprieve from reality might last.

The sun is setting over the lake after dinner as we step out onto the cabin’s wrap-around porch. We choose a spot with some comfortable, padded patio furniture and a beautiful view of the water. There’s a fire pit built right into the deck, and I sit down while Ewan gathers some logs and a torch from an outdoor storage shed.

“Damn,” I murmur as he gets to work lighting it up.

Ewan, currently in his fully human form, looks back over his shoulder. “What?”

“I was hoping I’d get to see you light it with dragon fire. You do have dragon fire, don’t you?”

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