Chapter 10 - Kaius

The smell of coffee pulls me from my sleep. I open my eyes and squint across the room to see Julie in the small kitchen, perched on a small chair with her feet in big fuzzy socks pulled up to rest on the chair so that her knees are tucked up under her chin. She's got a small tin cup in one hand and a book in the other.

"How is it that stranded in a cabin you still have your nose stuck in a book?"

She drops the spine of the book a little to glare at me over the top of it, scrunching her eyebrows together while taking a long sip of her coffee.

"You know, that reminds me. You seem to be awfully familiar with my romance novels to be so ready with these lovely jabs about the characters and tropes. Is that your secret, Kaius? You hide behind your jokes because you secretly want to read them yourself?"

I push myself up and find another comically small blanket covering at least part of me. Julie nods in my direction and takes another sip of her mug.

"There's a sheet there next to you. You're welcome to use that to cover up a little better. I'm afraid that may be the biggest one we have." My eyes fall to the neatly folded frilly fabric sitting next to me. She's enjoying this far too much. I stand, letting the laughable excuse for a blanket fall from me, and turn slowly to put my back to her. I bend to pick the sheet up and shake it out as I stand back up.

My shoulder is still aching, which doesn't bode well for the idea of getting out of here, unless we go on foot. I fold the sheet in half and wrap it around myself like a towel after the shower. Lacy frills are strategically arranged to be on the bottom edge. May as well embrace it.

"Don't know what you're talking about with those books," I reply as I turn and stride to join her in the kitchen, desperately hoping there's another cup of coffee to be had and food of some kind. I would rather die than tell her I've spent more than enough time reading them. Another gift from Kelsie that keeps on giving.

"Mmhmm, sure," Julie comments as she sets her book down. She leans back in the chair a little and points to a shelf where there's more of the metal mugs with light, speckled paint coating them. "There are some granola bars in the cabinet to the left of the mugs in the airtight container. We don't keep much up here because of mice and critters."

"Adult-size blankets are too much to ask?"

"Not everyone looks like a roid-fueled linebacker around here. We're small people—what can I say?"

I pour some coffee from the small pot that's sitting on top of a little gas single burner into one mug and start my search for the granola bars. I'm ravenous. A night like last night usually needs to be followed up by a massive amount of calories for me. Shifting for that long, that many times, the injury, the fight, the fucking. No wonder I'm starving.

"Can I have some of this jerky in here?" I ask as my eyes catch on some beef jerky stashed behind the granola.

"Help yourself, it's probably old."

I shovel jerky into my mouth, chewing and groaning at the taste of meat.

"I don't even care," I mumble around another bite of jerky. I sit down in the other chair at the small table and kick my legs out as I lean back, chasing the jerky down with a swallow of coffee. It may be cardboard-level dry, but at least it's something with protein.

Her eyes peering over the edge of her coffee cup have a distinct look to them today, and there's a small smile turning one corner of her lip up. I hope that she's not catching any sort of ideas over what last night may mean.

My mind flashes back to the night before, and I think about the shudder that had raced through me as the mating bond snapped into place between us as soon as I'd sunk into her. I don't know what it feels like for a human, but I'm still drawn to her right now. I want to lay her on this table and do unspeakable things to her body until she's panting my name, begging. But she's a human. There's no way this can work.

"Hey, so, about last night," I rush the words out as soon as I swallow the mouthful of jerky, "You know this can't be a thing. At all. Right?"

The smile slips from her face, and some of the shine in her eyes seems to fade a little. Julie tilts her head to the side and pushes her glasses up her nose as they slide down. Her eyebrows pull up into a frown, and I want to squirm under the intensity of that stare.

"Don't worry. You're the last person, or dragon, for that matter, I'd ever want to be with. I don't date narcissistic bullies," Julie snaps before taking another sip of her coffee.

Ouch. Am I really a narcissist? I don't even know what makes someone a narcissist. I'm going to have to look it up. Damn.

"No, just fuck them. Good, that makes this easy then," I comment as I shove another chunk of dried meat in my mouth, tearing at it with my teeth.

"Why are you always so quick with the snarky comments? I certainly haven't done anything to deserve it. I assume you're hiding behind them because you're scared of something. Seems about right."

I pause. Meeting her eyes for a moment before swallowing my mouthful of jerky. Her assumption hits far too close to home.

"Can you fly us out of here? On foot isn't really going to work. More snow fell overnight, and there's a lot of places it'll be up over my chest, and we're a solid ten miles out from anyone's house," she demands with a raised eyebrow.

I turn my head to survey the room. I don't know if I can shift in here to even test it. With how sore my shoulder blade is, I am pretty sure my wing will still be too sore to fully extend, but maybe not. My mind still struggles with her prior question about being scared.

I shrug and push up from the chair and shift some things around to clear a space in the middle of the room. I sit down and cross my legs in front of me. I shift but try to keep my wings pulled as close to me as possible. The sheet falls from around my waist as the rush of energy flutters the curtains covering the small windows.

Julie sets her coffee and the book down and crosses the room. Her eyes are wide, but I don't smell any fear on her. I think it's genuine curiosity on her part. I try to flex the wing slowly, and it makes it about halfway to fully extended before the tightness in my wing joint is screaming again.

"Fuck," I grumble, trying to massage the muscle above and below it to see if that helps.

Julie steps closer, eyes level with mine while I'm seated like this. She reaches her hand up and gently touches the ridge of my jaw, sliding featherlight fingers across the small ridges and horns that jut out from the bone. I huff a breath out of my nostrils as she steps even closer, raising her other hand to touch the ridge that runs up from my temple to the curled horn that twists from the back of my head.

"This is nuts," Julie whispers inches away from my reptilian eyes, and she chews lightly on her bottom lip.

"Stop that."

"Oh, sorry," she says as she drops her hands, but goes back to biting the damn lip.

"Not that, the lip. I can't promise I can control myself if you keep that up," I grumble and see something darken in her expression.

The look on her face shifts even more as some idea strikes her, but the lip pops out of her teeth, thankfully. I can smell the arousal on her again, and it's taking every ounce of my control to stay sitting here, still. She takes a slow, steadying breath and steps around to my side, leaning over to inspect my wing.

"Which part hurts?"

"It's the muscles there, kind of above where the shoulder blade would be. Look at the other side and I think you should be able to see it," I explain as I slowly flex my non-injured wing in and out, "See how the wing joint splits from my arm, and then the wing is controlled by the back muscles? When I hit that tree, the wing pulled back, and I think it just pulled that muscle on top. With it like this, I can't seem to get it to extend fully."

She moves from the functional wing and positions herself directly behind me. Her light touch causes me to flinch when she tentatively pushes on the muscles in my shoulders. I am not sure what she's doing, or if she has experience with anything healing-related, but I'm not going to stop her or argue that her massaging at the muscles doesn't feel good.

Julie's hands slide carefully above and below the wing joint and massage the muscles underneath. She's using steady pressure, and it's definitely sore, but her touch feels better than I would ever dare admit. I want so badly to give in to this feeling, this peace that her hands on me brings, but it would be a bad idea.

"Maybe a massage will help. We can also pack it with some ice or heat to see if that helps?"

A shiver runs through me as her hand slides smoothly against a sensitive spot between my wing joint and my shoulder. My breath catches, and I tense up. She pauses but doesn't move the fingers, intensifying the feeling of electricity coursing through my body.

"Does it hurt there?"

"No, no, just kind of a sensitive spot."

I let a small breath out as her fingers slowly slide in and out of the small dip in the muscles. She steps closer, and I can feel the nearness of her body heat and the overwhelming smell of her own arousal flooding my senses. My cock is hard, and my breath is coming in quick puffs out of my nostrils. The overwhelming urge to fuck her, shifted and all, is raging at every ounce of my self-control.

"Julie, stop."

"Why?" she breathes with a tone that tells me she knows exactly why.

"Because there won't be a roof or walls left on this place if I fuck you like this, and you're going to make that absolutely impossible to avoid if you don't stop."