He nodded, kissing her hair. “It’s a deal. Every single time I’m angry—you’ll be the first to know. If I haven’t told you, then I’m not angry.”
Natasha smiled, snuggling closer to his big, strong body. “You’re amazing, you know?”
“I just have good inspiration.”
Looking up at him, Natasha hesitated only for a moment before floating the idea she’d had past him. “You know how you have been trying to talk to your ancestors?”
“I recall that, yes …”
“I was thinking that maybe they’re not the ones you need to be speaking with.”
He looked down at her curiously, one dark eyebrow raised in a question. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe …” Natasha said slowly. “Maybe you’re supposed to talk to your Nana. The way you spoke about her earlier made it more than clear that there’s a connection between you two and that she taught you everything you know. Even though it was your dad who was leading the clan while you were growing up, and I’m sure that you respected him and learned from him, it was your Nana who was most important to you. Maybe she’s the person to reach out to.”
Ronan just stared at her, his expression unreadable, and she found herself getting nervous, again, that he was angry. But she forced herself to trust what he had said, and he wasn’t telling her that he was angry, so he couldn’t be. But she didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling, his face a blank mask.
“Ronan,” she said after a long minute of silence. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat and looking away from her. “I’m fine. I just…I hadn’t thought of that, and I didn’t realize until just now how much I still miss her. I knew that I missed her, of course, but …wow. The thought of talking to her again…”
“Then do it,” Natasha urged, sitting up from him so that she could better look into his face. “What’s to stop you? Reaching back hundreds of years to talk to Patrick O’Donnell is going to be much harder than speaking with your Nana. And maybe …maybe it won’t alert Josiah the same way.”
Ronan reached out, cupping the back of her head and pulling her in for a hard kiss. “She is definitely going to like you.”
~~~
They slept together, both of them more amenable to a few hours of unconsciousness after their passionate lovemaking and their new plan. Natasha curled up beside Ronan, tucking her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes, and feeling safe for the first time since the spirit of Josiah Webb had taken over Charlotte’s body and lashed out so angrily at both of them.
It was well into the morning when she woke, sunlight streaming in through the window and lighting up the white coverlet that was draped over their bodies. It felt like a new, fresh, hopeful day, and there was a smile on her face as she blinked her eyes open and looked up at Ronan, eager to see his handsome face.
Her contentment was brief. The moment that she saw Ronan’s face, Natasha knew that something was terribly wrong with him. He was pale, clammy, and had a faint green color to him, and when she sat up and grabbed his shoulder, he barely flinched, burrowing into the pillow to cling to sleep. His skin was hot under her hand, and she immediately felt his forehead, wincing at the fever she felt there.
“Ronan,” she said, her voice an urgent whisper. “Can you hear me? Ronan, I need you to look at me.”
His eyes flickered, but all he did was moan and shift over onto his other side, his back to her. Natasha knew she had no choice but to act without talking to him first. As a healer, she tried to follow the general principles that doctors followed and avoid, whenever possible, treating someone without their permission. But this was an exception to the rule, just as the night before had been, and she knew that if Ronan were in a better frame of mind, he would want her to act.
Natasha got behind him, wrapping her arms around his body and ignoring him when he made vain attempts to push her away, undoubtedly already suffering from the heat of his own body without her pressing up against him. But he would have to endure the heat for the moment. Closing her eyes, she focused on his body, sensing the darkness that lurked within it and drawing it out of his cells and into her own. Taking what diseased him made her feel heavy and ill and dark herself, but her healing capacity overcame that feeling, pushing it back out of her body and sending it harmlessly back into the air.
His skin cooled as she healed him, but it took Natasha several draws to rid him of the heaviness that had fallen over him sometime in the night. She still sensed that the source of his illness was centered low in his body, and guilt ate away at her because she knew that their wild passion from the night before had further triggered his curse and made him infinitely worse.
Even with repeated healings, Ronan was only marginally better and nowhere close to cured.
“Natasha …” He finally spoke, his voice sounding clearer than she had hoped for, and he turned his head over his shoulder, looking at her. “What’s happening? I feel…”
“You feel sick,” she said, when he failed to finish his sentence. “I’m trying to help. The curse within you—it’s strong, Ronan. I can keep it at bay, but we have to rid you of it.”
He shuddered as she pulled more from him, and his hand covered hers. “Are you all right? I don’t want you feeling what I feel.”
His concern for her always touched her, and she channeled the power of that natural affection she felt for him into her healing power, cleansing him with every deep breath that she took. “It doesn’t hurt me. Remember? Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m always going to worry about you.”
Always. That was such a permanent word, and the day before such thoughts had made her nervous. But today, somehow everything was different. His claim on her made her smile and gave her more purity to push into him so that it would fill up all the crevices that the darkness was leaving when she drew it out of his body.
“How are you?” she asked, when she sensed that he was starting to recover. “Do you feel anywhere close to normal?”
When she let go of him and he turned over to look at her, his face did look better. His skin had lost its flush; there was no sweat on his brow; there was more life in his eyes; and his movements were sure as he settled himself more comfortably in the pillows. But he was still drained. Spent. Worn out. “I’m fine,” he said, that look in his eye that told her just how much he cared for her, even when he wasn’t at his best. “I guess it got bad again.”
Natasha nodded. “When I woke up and looked at you, I could tell. You looked awful.”
“I felt awful,” he said, sighing as he rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. “But I had a dream.”
“A dream?”
Ronan nodded, looking over at her again. “Yeah. Josiah Webb was in it, and he was talking to a woman. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, even though I was standing right there. It was as though I kept thinking I could understand, but then when I tried to piece together the words, they were meaningless.”
Natasha propped herself up on her elbow, looking down into his face, which looked better than when he had woken but still betrayed the curse that was eating away at him. “Did you recognize the woman?”
“Yes.”
She waited, but he didn’t expound, and she had to nudge him, prompting him to continue. “Well?”
Ronan made a face, then rested one arm behind his head, his well-defined triceps on display. “Well…it was the woman I’m supposed to marry and mate with.”
“What?” Natasha was taken completely aback, sitting up further in the bed and, in so doing, putting more space between them. After a night of such intimacy and warmth and comfort, there was suddenly a chill in the air and an awkwardness between them that she knew couldn’t just be because of her.
He looked sad that she had pulled away, but he didn’t try to make her come back. “I told you about how we have to mate with our own clan,” he reminded her. “That’s what I’m trying to change now, so that we don’t all
die out in the next few generations. But as it stands, currently, Dragon Clan members are assigned mates from other branches of the clan, and leaders get their assignments much earlier than anyone else. I’ve known for several years who I’m supposed to mate with, but there was no immediate rush to bring her here from Los Angeles, where she lives. I’m only just thirty. There was plenty of time.”
“But you’re engaged to her.
“No,” Ronan said, sitting up too and sighing as he brushed a hand over his rumpled hair. “No, I’ve never even spoken to her. But my leader—my father—and her leader—her father—arranged that she would, someday, come to Boston and that we would produce the next generation’s leader in the Boston branch.”
He was saying a lot of words and, though he seemed to understand why she was upset, Natasha could also tell that he didn’t think this was a big deal. To her, it was.
She stood up, her nightdress that fell to her mid-thigh now seeming inappropriately sparse. “I need to go down to my room and get showered.”
“Natasha, please,” Ronan said, standing up too and walking toward her. “This doesn’t change anything between you and me. I’m not engaged to her. I’ve never met her. I’m actively working to figure out a way where I can marry the woman of my choice instead of Abigail.”
“Oh, her name is Abigail,” Natasha said, her throat tight. “I see.”
He took her hands in his, trying to tug her toward him even as she resisted. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “Please don’t do this. We didn’t do anything wrong. You have to know that. It’s not as though I’m promised to her and haven’t ever been with anyone else. I’ve been with dozens of women, Natasha.”
“Dozens of women!” Natasha pulled her hands firmly out of his. “That doesn’t make it feel better, you know. You wake up with a man after a night of really incredible sex, you heal him, take away all of his pain, and what you hear next is that he’s dreaming about the woman he’s supposed to marry and that it doesn’t matter that you slept with him because he’s already been with dozens of other women.” Humiliated, tears filled her eyes and threatened to fall. “Please excuse me, Ronan.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said quietly, even as he stepped to the side. “You have to know how I feel about you. How can you not know?”
Natasha didn’t reply. She knew that, in some ways, she was being unfair to him. She didn’t doubt that Ronan was a good man, and she did believe that he cared for her. But trusting a man was difficult for Natasha, and she had trusted him so completely. Finding out that there was a woman in the wings, waiting for the day when he was ready to marry her—after he was done sleeping with more than his fair share of women—was too much for her to handle in her nightdress, before breakfast, with the midmorning sun streaming in to highlight just how wrong this situation was.
“I’ll see you down at breakfast,” Natasha told him, not meeting Ronan’s eyes as she walked past him, opened the door, and hurried out into the hall. She was in her own room within seconds, and she closed that door, leaning up against it and letting the tears fall. Just minutes ago, everything in her world had been so perfect, despite the situation they were in. Because she’d let herself fall completely into Ronan.
She was always doing that with men. Falling into them and letting them consume her, even when it wasn’t healthy.
Ronan was hardly like Matthew, and she knew that. But just because he was a better man than her ex didn’t mean that she should let a two-day whirlwind romance sweep her off her feet so much that she ignored reality. That was only going to break her heart again.
Chapter Seventeen
Ronan
The Skype call with Kean didn’t have the best reception, but it was still good to see his friend’s face as they talked over what each of them had found. For Ronan, it was as good a reason as any to avoid breakfast and having to sit across from Natasha after things had gone so badly for them that morning. He had almost not told her about what he’d seen in his dream, knowing that she wouldn’t like it at all, but he was convinced that his dream was the key to unravelling why Josiah Webb hated him so much.
“So…” Kean was saying. “All that to say that I didn’t find anything in your files that I could link to any Josiah Webb. As far as I can tell, no one by that name has ever worked with us or been a client here. As for Josiah Webbs around the world, well …there are more than you would think. I’m still narrowing that down.”
“I can help you with that,” Ronan said, sitting at the desk in his room, the phone propped up in front of him. “I’m pretty sure that he’s somehow connected to the LA branch of the Dragon Clan.”
Kean’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? What makes you think that?”
“A dream I had. I saw him talking to Abigail …the woman that I was supposed to marry.”
“Woah,” Kean said, immediately understanding the implications in the same way that Ronan had, but in ways that Natasha, given that she hadn’t grown up as part of the clan, couldn’t. “She’s pissed at you. Dang.”
Ronan nodded, his face grim. “It’s an assumption at this point, but a reasonable one. Marrying a leader is prestigious. She had that guaranteed. If she heard about what we’re doing here, she would have taken it as a personal offense and threat to her. I didn’t even think about that before. I should have. I never felt any connection to her because we’ve never met, and I assumed she would feel the same way. I assumed that everyone would be happy if they could choose their own mates rather than being assigned to someone they didn’t know. But …that might have been naïve on my part. Actually, I’m pretty certain that it was, in light of that dream.”
“So she hired Josiah to take you down, or what?”
“Maybe,” Ronan agreed. “Or they have some personal connection and he’s acting on her behalf without her knowledge. That’s possible too. I don’t have enough information yet. But I told Josiah why I needed to talk to my ancestors, and he could potentially have passed that information along. I have only talked to a few of the other branch leaders of the clan about what I’m doing, and none of them have been as open-minded as we have been here. This is controversial, and now it’s coming back to bite me.”
“What are you going to do?”
Ronan rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the tension headache and tiredness he felt. “I’m not sure yet. Josiah is blocking me from talking to Patrick O’Donnell. But Natasha had the idea that maybe I should talk to Nana instead. It’s a good idea.”
“How is Natasha taking all this?” Kean asked, knowing without having to ask that there was something between the two.
“Not well.”
“She’ll come around,” Kean promised him. “It was really, really hard for Dhara at first, learning that there was some woman out there who was destined to be my wife. Even though she knew that I didn’t love or even know this woman, it upset her. I can’t say it would be any different if it were the other way around and I was the one with someone destined to marry someone else. Give her time and give her reassurance. That’s all she needs.”
Ronan appreciated the words of wisdom, coming from a man who had been in his position first. “Thanks. It’s a bit awkward. We’ve only just met, and yet I feel like our relationship has been skyrocketed into this…place that it’s not ready for. I don’t have any doubts that she’s the one, crazy as that sounds. Given everything that’s happened over the past year, I knew she was coming to me soon, and when I saw Natasha, it was just—I knew.”
“Then be patient with her,” Kean said again. “I’m happy for you, Ronan.”
“Thanks.” Ronan worried his bottom lip, considering. “I’m going to go check in with her and see if I can’t smooth things over. Keep looking into Josiah Webb, but focus on California, okay? Let me know what you come up with.”
Kean nodded. “Yeah. I will. It’s early morning here, so I’m going to go back to bed for a few hours, then wake my woman up the way she likes best. Then I’ll get back to work.”
Ronan chuckled, pretending to wince. “Thanks for the visual.”
“Absolutely anytime.”
They hung up, and Ronan leaned back in his chair, his fingers laced behind his head as he tried putting himself in Natasha’s shoes. If he suddenly found out there was someone out there whom she was betrothed to, would it bother him?
The truth was that it would. It wouldn’t be a deal breaker for him, but the idea that she technically belonged to someone else—someone with a face and a name. Someone who wanted her and everything that went with her.
Yes, it would bother him, because he wanted her to be all his. He didn’t want some other man to have some sort of claim over her, however distant that person was.
Then he realized that some man did have a claim over her. She was still married to the man who had abused her, and it more than bothered him—it infuriated him. It made him afraid for her. It made him want to hunt the man down and shake him within an inch of his life to make him swear that he would never touch a hair on her head again or even speak to her again.
He did understand how she felt, but he felt strongly enough about her that he wasn’t going to let it stand in their way. Maybe she didn’t feel as strongly about him as he felt about her.
There was a knock at his door, and he got up, thinking that he would find the bed and breakfast proprietor on the other side, wondering if he was going to eat breakfast before they put it all away. But when he opened the door, Natasha was standing there, looking more than a little nervous.
He looked into her beautiful face, waiting for her to speak, but she didn’t. She did something far better, stepping toward him and sliding her arms around his waist as her head came to rest against his chest. Relieved, Ronan hugged her close to him, kissing her hair. “Hi.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her voice barely audible.
“Don’t be.”
“I was jealous.”
He couldn’t help but smile at that, reaching up to tilt her face upward. “I wouldn’t want you to not be jealous. But you have to know, Natasha, that I don’t even know Abigail. I’ve never met her or spoken to her. I’ve seen her picture, yes, which is why I recognized her. But we’re not engaged or betrothed or whatever we are because I have feelings for her. The arrangement has nothing to do with me—except that I’m trying to get both her and me out of it.”
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