From up here, she couldn’t reach anything. Nothing and no one could get near her. A part of her was irritated. The other was charmed by it.
Until he banked hard to the left. She grasped the saddle to see what had caused it.
Artemis had come out of her temple and was firing fierce and fast at the demons with her bow and arrows.
The Malachai laughed at her fury. “I think someone’s a little upset they dared to threaten her granddaughter.”
Max nodded. “But it gives me a thought.”
“What?” Sera asked as he flew away from the Malachai, toward the main temple on the hill.
He skimmed over the demonic horde. “Look at the number of demons here.”
“There are a lot of them. Your point?”
Max hovered just out of the battle frenzy. “Want to do some recon?”
“Depends. If we have to fight, are you going to let me touch the ground?”
He turned his massive dragon’s head around to look at her over his shoulder. “You caught that, did you?”
She lifted her legs that were a mile or so above the ground. “Hard to miss.”
He flashed her an unrepentant grin. “Fine. If there’s fighting, I’ll put you down for it.”
“Very well, then. Lead the way, my dragon lord. Obviously I will go wherever you take me.”
Maxis pulled out of the fighting and attempted to leave Olympus. At first, he couldn’t. Something had him blocked. But his mother’s heritage allowed him to bypass the gallu magick and find a back way through it in spite of whatever they’d put over the place to keep the others from coming in or leaving.
Determined to get to his brother’s Tablet, he carried her down to Irkalla. While he hadn’t seen Kessar among the attackers on Olympus, he knew that the majority of the gallu demons had to be there and not in their hidden realm where they’d been earlier.
Which meant he had a shot at getting the Tablet while the gallu fought against the Greek gods and others.
He hated to back out of the fighting, but this was much more important. The Emerald Tablet was as much a threat to their safety, if not more so, than the demons they were battling. This was their best chance to get it back.
At the entrance to the ancient nether realm, Max stopped and allowed Sera to dismount. He manifested his own armor and weapons. He paused as he caught the curious frown on her face while she watched him. “Hard to sneak about in caverns in a dragon’s body.”
“True. You do take up a lot of room.” There was an impish light in her hazel eyes that was so incredibly beguiling. He remembered now why it’d been so hard to leave her. Why he’d carried her to a private room that night they’d first met, instead of sending her on her way.
He’d always been so discriminating about the swans in his life. Never had he taken a human lover. Humans had never appealed to him in any way. He’d been so selective and sparse in his lovers that his brothers had often mocked him for it.
But the night Seraphina had come into that ancient drinking den with her sister tribeswomen, he hadn’t cared what she was. Her bold touch had electrified him and her lips had awakened a part of him that he hadn’t known existed. That alone should have warned him that they were destined to be together.
That the Fates had decreed her as his.
Now…
He dipped his head beneath the crest of her helm so that he could capture her plump lips and drink her in. As always, she answered his passion with enough heat that it made him curse this mission and the fact that they didn’t have a single minute for him to strip that armor from her lush body and savor her the way he wanted to.
But later, he would make damn sure that she knew exactly how much he still craved her. Deepening his kiss for one last taste, he pulled back with an irritated groan and forced himself to attend to the most pressing matter.
Which unfortunately wasn’t the aching need in his swollen groin.
Seraphina felt the absence of his body heat like a physical blow. Her senses were still reeling and unfocused from that incredible kiss. And as she watched him walk in front of her, she had a hard time staying focused on anything other than how undeniably sexy he was. It was much easier to fight with him as a dragon.
No man should look that fine in the flesh.
Biting her lip, she used the pain to focus her thoughts on something other than the way his armor clung to his muscles. The way he moved like a lethal warrior.
Stop it!
She shook her head to clear it. Have you any idea where we’re going? She sent her thoughts to him.
Yes and no. I’m tracking the Tablet. But no, I don’t know the layout here.
You fake it well.
He laughed silently.