With a shove, Rune pushed away from her and to his feet, his cock still tight with need even as his brows snapped down.
“Fuck,” he said. “Dragon.”
Chapter Seven
Zero to fucking sixty with his cock pulsing and his hands on Hadyn’s body only to be slammed back to reality was like being thrown in the arctic sea.
But Rune didn’t hesitate.
He jerked away from her and, sighting the dragon above them, bolted for the console. Within seconds he had the craft zooming across the water. A moving target was better than a dead duck in the water.
“Take the wheel,” he yelled at Hadyn.
She appeared at his side, expression determined, but the fear in her eyes real. She was afraid of water.
“Sorry, love,” he said. “No choice.”
He gave her the five-second explanation of how to work the boat. Then snapped up the life vest she’d refused earlier and shoved it at her. “Whatever you do, don’t come back until I tell you to.”
“What?”
He didn’t have time to explain. “If I don’t call you back, track away from the sun to head east until you get to land.
Then he dove off the back of the speeding boat into the frigid water of the Pacific. Only he didn’t surface, he kicked lower. If that fucker thought they were going to be easy pickings down here on the water, he wasn’t going to live much longer.
The depth of the water quickly blocked out the sun, which sparkled vaguely above his head, when Rune finally stopped swimming. Then, with a flick of his will, he released the beast within him. Dragons might not like oceans, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t swim. Though most of his kind hadn’t figured that out yet. His advantage. As his body changed and shimmered, the beast taking hold, the surface loomed nearer as his size changed his perspective.
The shift took longer than he liked with Hadyn up there alone and unprotected. The last thing he needed right now, though, was to lose control, so Rune reined in the need to hurry and made the change methodically. Deliberately.
Then, tracking the whitewash of water from the path of the boat, Rune stayed under the surface, his lungs screaming, using his wings and tail to sluice through the water after her. Not to catch up—he wasn’t that fast—but to lie in wait.
Sure enough, a flash of shadow crossed the boat trail above him. Close.
With a mighty downstroke of his wings and whip of his tail, Rune burst from the deep into the air, water spilling from his body. He careened into the dragon gliding over the ocean waves after the boat. Clamping his teeth to the underneath of the asshole’s neck, right at the base, Rune held on tight as they somersaulted into the water. Like hitting cement at this speed, the impact jarred his bones.
But he didn’t let go.
“I can’t swim” a terrified voice screamed in his head. Higher pitched than he’d been expecting, breaking on the words. A kid, late teens probably. Damn.
“Shift,” he ordered.
The animal thrashed in his grip, both trying to escape and floundering in the water as it panicked. “If I shift, you’ll kill me.”
“I could kill you now and save us both the trouble.” Rune tried to sound as though he didn’t give a shit either way.
He could definitely logic himself there. One option led to the elimination of a threat. The other to possible answers and maybe an advantage. He hoped the kid didn’t call his bluff.
No response as the other dragon thrashed and struggled to get free. Damn. He was going to have to scare the piss out of this kid. Using his bulk and his wings, Rune took them both under. Air was freedom, but water was…quieter. More oppressive and yet peaceful at the same time.
The second his head breached the water, the kid went frantic, and Rune had to jerk him closer to wrap his tail around them before one of his teeth snapped off in the struggle.
“You crazy asshole,” his captive screeched. He made the mistake of opening his mouth at the same time and started choking. “You’re going to drown us both.”
“Not if you shift.” He’d give him fifteen more seconds.
He held on to the bucking dragon and counted. Five… Four… Three…
The shift started around him. Subtle at first, a sort of stilling and easing. More difficult to detect the shimmer of the change down here where it blended with the sunlight filtering through the surface in rays. Once he was sure the other dragon wouldn’t change his mind and reverse the process, Rune started his own shift, while at the same time, swimming them both topside.
They broke through as their bodies settled fully into human form. The kid gasped and spluttered. “You crazy fuck,” he yelled.
Then arms went wild as he splashed and his head went back under on a gurgled yell. With a growl of frustration—this was why dragon shifters needed to learn how to swim—Rune clamped an arm around the guy, rescue swimmer style, or at least how he’d seen it done in a movie about that. Except, in his panic, the kid tried to use him as a flotation device. Arms everywhere, he was all over Rune, almost trying to bodily climb him out of the water, forcing his head back under.
With a push of his legs, Rune managed to get above water, then landed a solid punch right in the kid’s face, the crack of his nose breaking damn satisfying. It also had the effect of stunning him out of panic and into a sort of stupor. Rune clamped an arm around him again. “Don’t move, or I drown you next time.”
The words were an order. A threat.
At least the boy didn’t seem to realize that, staying passive as Rune started to swim, dragging him along.
Shifting a small part of his body, Rune reached out with his mind to Hadyn. “Circle back around and get us.”
Hard to tell with the sound of the ocean all around him and water in his ears, but he was pretty sure the squeaking sound that carried his way was from the woman who was terrified of water and trying to drive a boat for the first time.
He couldn’t see her. Not from this vantage point as he bobbed up and down on waves that appeared tiny from the boat but were bigger when his eyes were basically at water level.
The skies were huge and limitless, they could be wild and dangerous or peacefully serene. The same with the ocean. But here, he felt…small. As though the power could crush him. In the air, he was king.
She probably couldn’t see him, either.
“Look for the fire,” he told her.
Then stoked the flame in his belly and shot the signal straight upward. He had to do that two more times before he finally caught the sound of the boat’s engine. A second later, he caught a glimpse of her between swells and shot another fireball into the air.