"I don't know," I said, looking down at his bare neck. "I've never done this."
"Just spit a bit of fire at me, so we can get down to business."
"What business?" I asked, thinking he wanted to discuss the magic ring issue again.
"I'm going to sex you up until you can't think straight."
"Oooh. I like the sound of that. All right, brace yourself, one sept mark coming up."
He tensed as I leaned over him, gathered my thoughts, and imagined the ring of fire that frequently appeared at my feet when I was kissing Rowan, translated into a ball. A bright glow the approximate size of a quarter danced before my eyes. I mentally threw it at the back of his neck.
One of his shoulders twitched. "Was that it?"
I peered down at him. "Well … not really. I mean, I see a bit of a mark there. I think it's a sword, and a C shape behind it. Is your mark supposed to be different from mine?"
"I don't believe so. Maybe it's not complete?"
"Oh, good point." I summoned up more fire. This time, it formed a ball the size of a small lemon. I reached out to hold it, feeling that a little more control was in order, and tossed it up in the air a couple of times before splashing it onto the back of Rowan's neck.
"I felt that," he said, arching his neck for me to see.
"Did it hurt?" I asked, worried that I'd messed up.
"No."
"Good. I see more of a circle shape, but it's still not like the one you say is on the back of my neck. It's more a K with a C behind it."
"Try again."
In all, it took three more balls of fire (the largest of which reached the size of an orange) before I managed to get the whole image imprinted on his neck. Two more balls of fire set fire to a nearby book and the pillowcase, but at long last I traced the image of a pair of crossed swords over the outline of a circle. "Okay, this is pretty cool, I have to admit, although it did ding my pride a bit that it took you only one try to do it, and I had to have several goes at it."
Rowan rubbed his neck as he sat up. "That's because I'm a wyvern."
I smiled at him. "You sound so comfortable saying that, like it's a perfectly natural thing."
"It is natural, now," he said, eyeing my sweater. "You look hot in that."
I tugged the miniskirt down. "You don't think it's a bit too short? I don't have long svelte legs like Mrs. P has now, and having a bunch of underwear models running around is making me paranoid that my legs are pudgy and stocky."
"Your legs," he said, rubbing a hand up the back of one of my legs, "are beyond delightful. They are in no way pudgy or stocky, but are instead delightfully satiny, well formed, and arousing beyond human belief."
"Dragon belief," I corrected him breathlessly as he pulled me toward him. He was still sitting, so his face was at the level of my belly, a fact he put to use when he slid his hands upward toward my recently repaired underwear.
"That, too." He pushed my sweater up and kissed my belly. "I actually meant that you looked warm in the sweater, but you are also hot in the arousing sense. Very arousing. So much so that … oh no."
He sighed.
"Oh no what?" I asked, suddenly worried that my stomach had offended him.
He held up an arm. The hand was covered in red scales. As I watched, the scales rippled up his arm to his bicep. "It's you. Every time I think about making love to you, this happens. And that." He slapped out the fire that was burning merrily next to him on the bed.
"Actually, I think that was my doing," I said. "I really liked the way you slid your hands under my undies. Oh, goddess, yes, right there!"
His fingers dipped into my hidden parts, a fact I enjoyed greatly until I looked down and saw his expression. "Rowan? Is everything okay down there?"
"Hush," he said, his face screwed up in concentration. "I'm finding my happy place."
I wiggled my hips. His fingers were still inside me. "You sure as shootin' found my happy place."
He opened one eye to glare at me. "I am attempting to find my inner calm, woman. Stop distracting me with your breasts and belly and all the warm, soft, wet parts of you that are even now beckoning me to explore their depths. With my mouth. And dick. Oh, lord, this isn't helping. All I can think about is burying myself in you."
"Focus," I told him, wanting to help him gain control. "Keep breathing. Think about the summers riding your bike."
"No, I'll think about you on the plane," he said, his eyes closed. He wiggled his fingers inside me. I did a little Kegel to show support. After about a minute, he opened his eyes. "There. Now I have it."
"You do indeed," I said, nodding to where his hand disappeared under my skirt.
He smiled, a wicked, wicked smile, and withdrew his hand to slide my skirt off. In one move too fast for me to follow, he had my sweater and bra off, as well, and had tossed me down onto the bed. "And now I have you exactly where I want you."
"Oooh, are we role playing?" I asked, pleased to note that he had, indeed, regained control, leaving his arm entirely human again.
"Oh, you're going to be ravished," he said, and peeled off his shirt.
I squealed softly and reached for his wonderful chest.
And at that moment, a deep gong sounded from somewhere in the bowels of the ship.
Rowan froze.
I stopped trying to wrap my legs around him and frowned. "Was that-"
"Yes." He swore under his breath and rolled off the bed, jamming his feet in his shoes at the same time he grabbed my Xena sword. "Dammit, what a time for the second challenge."
He was gone out of the room before I could even ask what he was going to do.
"Fire," I said to myself as I snatched up the first garment I could find, which turned out to be his shirt. I slipped it over my head, grabbed the cutlass from my pirate outfit, and ran after Rowan, going down, not up, to where I knew the gangplank would be.
As I suspected, the ship had docked at some point, and Rowan was already standing on shore. I ran down after him, his shirt falling to midway down my thighs. "What's going on? Where's the fire challenge?" I asked, panting a little when I reached him.
The second I stepped off the ship, it disappeared, just blinked out of existence, leaving Rowan and me standing on a yard-wide bit of dirt surrounded by a lake of fire.
"Ask and ye shall receive," Rowan said, surveying the situation. I looked behind us, but evidently, we had been stranded in the middle of a fire lake, with no obvious way to shore.
I squinted into the distance, trying to calculate how far it was. "Can we swim that, do you think?"
"I'm not sure how deep it is. Perhaps we can just walk through it. I see now why Mrs. P insisted that a dragon be the one to deal with the challenges-anyone else would have issues with fire."
I smiled, confidence filling me with a positive outlook despite the situation. "And we are masters of handling it."
Rowan bent to use the sword as a measuring stick, but yelped and jerked his arm out of the fire almost instantly. We both stared in horror at the red welts and blisters that formed on the flesh of his hand and forearm.
"Great Caesar's gob!" I exclaimed, wanting to do something to help him, but unable to think of anything. "That fire burned you."
"I noticed." His voice was gravelly as he took a couple of deep breaths.
"But … but … how? You touched my hand with fire in that restaurant in Germany and it didn't burn me. It just felt warm. Why is this different?"
"I don't know." His face reflected the pain of the burn. I turned around, desperately seeking something or someone to help him. "Perhaps because it's Duat fire and not fire from our reality. It's not deep, probably about waist high, but we definitely won't be able to swim through it."
"What about your arm?" I said, doing a little dance of frustration when a spasm caused his lips to tighten.
"Gabriel said all dragons can heal themselves," he said slowly, taking another couple of deep breaths. "Although the silver dragons are evidently the best at it. He said it's just a matter of focusing on the hurt part."
"Do it," I said, putting my hands on his non-injured arm as if that would help him heal. "Just go to your calm place, and then focus on your arm."
He stared sightlessly into the distance, his breath evening out, and after a few minutes of silence, the blisters began to sink back into his flesh and disappear. I watched in amazement as the redness and welts also faded away. Five minutes after he started, he waggled his fingers and sighed in relief. "Well, that's a handy skill to have. I wish I'd known how to do that before. I once had an insect bite on my calf turn septic, and I spent a week in a Sao Paulo hospital before I could walk again."