Fire The Blood: Dragon Mage Series Book III Read Free

creep back, only worse; as she
huddled on the ground, her hair gave off sparks and pooled around her as if lit
from within.  Her eyes were a flickering flame, until they settled to the mage
green that would fade back to her usual blue in a few minutes.  She could keep
her clothes intact when she used her flames consciously, but with an
uncontrolled burn out everything was gone.  She lay draped in her loose,
burnished amber hair and nothing else.  Asha was unsure how long she would have
to huddle on the slowly cooling stone, shivering and crying until she found the
strength to pick herself up and go on, as she had so many times before.
    She felt his presence
before she was lifted high into hot arms and pressed against a hard chest.  Asha
blinked up at Braedon with no real surprise.  At that moment, she was deep into
protective numbness after her outburst.  Finding herself curled against all the
heat of a fire mage, she could not find the will to complain.  She did have the
presence of mind to note that he was naked and clearly had been bathing when
she attempted to incinerate him.  It was something of a shock that he did not
immediately yell at her for her carelessness, and with good reason.  Anyone
else might have been seriously injured or killed.  Instead of berating her, as
he should, he stepped down into the hot springs and sat on a ledge with her in
his arms so that she was immediately surrounded by hot water and hotter mage. 
Despite being only a few inches shorter than his six-foot height, she felt
dwarfed by his maleness, cocooned and safe when she should have felt
threatened.
    Feeling the heat
penetrate almost deep enough to warm her through, she sighed and relaxed back
into the huntsman’s arms.  Closing her eyes, she drifted, letting this near
stranger keep her afloat while the room around them cooled to its normal sultry
heat.
    "Does that happen
often?"  His voice was mellow; his heart beat under her hand, peaceful. 
In the dark beneath the glowing stalagmites, everything felt intimate.  So Asha
did something she would normally not do.
    She answered. 
"Rarely.  The last time was when I walked the vision of my mother’s death
the first time."
    He stilled beneath her,
and only then did she realize he had been rubbing soothing circles across her
bare back under the water.  Since she could not remember a time when someone
had held her or touched her in any way but to inflict pain, she did not want
him to stop.  He shifted her closer and took hold of her chin to lift her eyes
to meet his gaze.  "You walked your mother’s death?  More than once?"
    His eyes were topaz, with
the heart of a flame kindling in their depths.  She recognized the signs of
rising anger better than anyone.  The needing to soothe another was new to her,
but with Braedon it felt natural, the need too strong to ignore.  Asha ran her
hands up his chest to his neck and wrapped it around the pulse there.  She
closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his chin, sending him calming vibes
as best she could.  "I wanted to stop it.  I kept going back to look for a
way to change it." She shuddered out a breath at her own helplessness.  If
she had not spent so much of her own power, she knew it would be building
again.  Instead, the cold tried to return.   Even neck deep in a hot springs
and against the heat of a naked fire mage, she shivered from the cold.  Braedon
shifted her again, and she felt his hands on her back start to pulse with
warmth under the water.  In a moment, the heat sank deep enough to stop the
shivers.  She noted absently that the water around them was boiling he had
heated it to such a degree, but it did not feel scalding to her.  It was more a
soothing caress of power when so much of her own had been squandered.
    "I do not suppose
you want to tell me how you can be both dragon seer and fire mage?"
    At the question, Asha
froze utterly and tried to move away, but he held her close.  "Shh, you so
not