The dragon carrying her, Spider, dropped her a few feet down onto the ledge. She landed on her hands and knees, hard. It took her a few minutes to catch her breath. The dragon shifter landed behind her and shifted. He walked toward her and she had to evade looking at his swinging dick. It was hard to do since he squatted right in front of her. She finally found her voice.
“Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
“It’s time I took a mate. My dragon is demanding, and you’re it.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I admit, usually I like more curvy females, you’re not my usual type. I would go to one of the big cities, but I stopped in that small town of yours and saw you walking down the street. Something about you appealed to me, and my dragon seemed interested. I followed you to the library. I kept to myself and just watched you for hours. That has never happened to me before. So I knew you had to be my mate.”
“That’s it? You just watched me for hours and kidnapped me?”
“Obey me and we’ll get along just fine.” He reached to touch her face, but she jerked away. He growled, “You’ll get used to me in time.” Then he grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. He dragged her toward the cave. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t break free of his hold.
Inside the cave, the other male lay on his side, still naked. He had built a fire. The cave was small, they wouldn’t be able to shift in dragon form, but there were no other exits from what she could see.
“We need to hunt for food.”
“You go, I’ll stay with the female.”
“I don’t trust you to stay alone with her.”
“We’re sharing her, right?”
“Not right now. I need to see if my dragon will allow me to claim her. Once I can claim her properly, I’ll help you find your own female.”
“She could escape.”
“Then we’ll tie her up. She’s one small human, and she’s on the top of a mountain. Where the hell will she go?”
“You swear that if your dragon denies the claim, I get a chance at her?”
“Yeah, man. And if neither of our dragons claim her, we’ll use her then get rid of her.”
Callie gulped at hearing all that. Things were looking worse and worse. She would rather jump off the mountain than to let these two guys touch her.
Spider took a piece of rope from his partner and tied her wrists behind her back. “We’ll bring food and water back. You behave, mate.” She kept her lips shut as he tried to kiss her.
He growled and slapped her face. “We’ll work on your responses to me when I get back.”
Callie was stunned. No one, not even her parents or aunt and uncle, had ever laid a hand on her. It stung, but it pissed her off. Once they were out of the cave, she looked around for something she could use to get the rope off.
She slumped her shoulders to sit on her tied up hands, then scooted to slide her wrists under her legs until they were in front of her. Crawling around the cold cave only showed piles of dirty clothes, many, many wallets which she assumed they stole from others, more wrappers from junk food, and empty beer cans. She shivered and moved closer to the fire. The fire! That was her only chance.
Carefully, she placed her wrists closer to the fire. Callie gritted her teeth as the flames caught on the rope. Damn it! She burned herself, but she didn’t stop. Never give up, never surrender. Was that from a book she read, or was it from the movie Galaxy Quest? Didn’t matter.
“Yes!” Finally the fire burned through the rope enough that she could pull her wrists apart. “Now, all I have to do is get off this mountain.”
Chapter 15
Viper’s dragon was pushing hard to find Callie. He felt that he was maybe thirty minutes behind the rogues and if they stopped to rest, he would be on them soon. A mountain range was coming into view. He approached, trying to get a scent or to spot something that would tell him if he was in the right place or not.
The closer he came to the group of mountains, the stronger Callie’s scent grew. He knew she was here somewhere. He just needed a break. And there it was.
A small moving figure on the side of a rocky ledge caught his attention. At first, he thought someone lost a piece of clothing and it clung there, blowing in the wind. Then the piece of clothing drifted down the mountain at a slow but directed pathway. What the fuck?
He flew down circling the area and realized it was a person, not just any person, but it was Callie. What was she doing? She could lose her grip and plunge to her death. His dragon let out a growl of displeasure.
“Save mate now!”
That female would be the death of him. Swooping lower, he looked for a way to snatch her safely. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any place close he could land. That left only one thing for him to do.
*****
Callie was already sweating, and she had barely cleared ten feet from the top of the ledge. “Please, God. If you help me get down this mountain without breaking something, I promise to exercise two or three times a week.”
She had to stop to wipe the sweat from her palms. This was taking too long. It would take hours or even days to reach the bottom. Panic rose inside.
