Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [27]
It was the place. It was the land around us that called to me, not Magoth. I pushed him away just as Gabriel burst from a dense clump of ash trees, Savian hot on his heels. Kostya and Cyrene pulled up behind them, all four watching with startled expressions as my tail whipped out, catching Magoth in the midsection, flinging him a good thirty yards backwards until he smacked into a large tree.
“Wow, nice one. That’s gotta be at least a bronze medal for demon lord flinging,” Jim said, watching with interest as Magoth fell out of the tree to the ground.
“Thanks, but no, thanks,” I yelled to Magoth before turning my attention on Gabriel. The dragon shard hummed happily inside me at the sight of him, and I thought seriously for a moment of pouncing on him. I knew he would like that—it was a dragon mating game, and something told me that he would respond to it.
“Yes, I would, but that’s not what you want,” he said, reading my mind again.
I made a little pouty dragon face.
“My darling!” Magoth staggered into view, still naked, but now covered with dirt and lichen, with bits of tree clinging to his hair. “My sweet, powerful May! Your idea of foreplay is most pleasing to me. Do it again?”
I flicked my tail again, and he went flying, squealing with delight that was stopped only by the sound of his body smashing into yet another tree. He cooed gently to himself as he slid down the trunk.
“Silver medal. I think you should go for the gold,” Jim said.
“May, why have you shifted?” Gabriel asked, stroking his hand down the elongated curve of my neck.
I shivered at his touch and leaned my head into his chest, bathing him in a light sheen of fire. “I don’t know. Chase me?”
“What is going on?” Kostya asked, pushing between Savian and Gabriel to look at me.
I licked Gabriel’s neck.
“Oh, that’s what’s going on. Er . . .” Kostya glanced at Gabriel.
“No, this is not normal. May does not embrace the dragon within,” he answered the unasked question. “May?”
“I just felt like it,” I said, twining my tail around his leg. “It’s this place. It feels right here, like I’ve come home after a long, long journey. It feels like a place we should play.”
“Play?” Gabriel looked around us.
“What does she mean, play?” Cyrene asked, frowning at me. “May, honestly! Should you be sucking his ear like that in front of Magoth?”
“I’m fine! Don’t worry about me!” Magoth called from the distance. The only part of him visible was one hand waving out of a dense bank of ferns. “I think I’m in love.”
“Dragons use play as part of their mating,” Kostya explained as he, too, started examining the area around us.
“Really?” Cyrene transferred her frown to him. “You never play with me when we make love.”
“That’s different. You’re human.”
“I am not! I’m a naiad!”
“You look human,” he pointed out.
“Well, so does May. Most of the time.”
Magoth tottered toward us, dirt speckling the front of him, twigs now added to the leaves and lichen and moss that clung to his head, a small leafy shrub evidently stuck to his foot. His hands waved in the air as he approached. “Once more, my sweet—”
The whipcrack of my tail as it hit him was followed almost immediately by the sound of Jim whistling. “That’s got to be an Olympic record right there. Nice going, May. I think you knocked him out.”
Magoth’s unresponsive body tumbled from the tree to the ground, hitting with a muffled thud.
“I’ll go rescue lover boy, shall I?” Savian said, giving me a long look as he headed off to where Magoth had fallen into a thick patch of what looked to be poison ivy.
“Mayling, tell me what you feel,” Gabriel said, his hand on my neck again.
I looked deep into his eyes and let my emotions show.
“No, not that.” His dimples threatened to burst to life. “I know that. What do you feel about this place?”
I sighed and tried to clear my mind of the lustful images of me twined around Gabriel in an erotic dragon dance. “It’s . . . right. It’s a good place. I feel happy here.”
“Do you feel happy,