He stopped her, kissing her softly. “You’re right. You’re always right. You’re my angel. Do you know that?”
“I’m no angel,” she murmured, kissing him back.
But Ronan disagreed. She was, and she had been since he met her, his healing, guiding inspiration for everything that he did. And he was grateful that he was out here in the dark with her, in the peaceful quiet of the woods, instead of back at the gymnasium, where the others were, cleaning up the mess that their misguided feud had caused.
In fact, he was very glad. Tugging her closer, Ronan wrapped his arms around her waist. “We’re not close to Michael yet, are we?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I think he’s still a good mile up ahead of us. Why?”
Picking her up, Ronan laid her down on the forest floor, covering her body with his. “Because I think my curse went away with Josiah, and I want to make love to the woman whom I adore more than anyone in the entire world. The woman who saved my life. My friends’ lives. The woman who means everything to me and who promised to marry me. Do you know where I can find her? And do you know if she wants to make love to me …?”
Natasha smiled, her legs gliding around his waist as she held him close to her. “She says she does.”
“Is she sure?”
“Oh yes,” Natasha murmured. “She thinks you’re incredible. Strong and powerful and fair and so incredibly sexy…”
“She thinks I’m all that?” Ronan asked, kissing down her neck. “What a lucky man I am.”
Natasha slid her hands down his back, which was still bare, and traced along the ridges of his muscles, making Ronan shiver above her. He needed her so much that it was almost unbearable.
Quickly, he slid his hands between them, undoing her clothing and beginning to kiss over her bare skin. She was supple and sweet and warm beneath his lips and he couldn’t help himself from going lower and lower, until he had his face buried between her legs at her sweetest spot, his tongue sliding between her damp folds as he drank her up. She wriggled beneath him, her breaths coming in short, fast gasps as she strained to get closer to his eager mouth. Her hands fisted in his hair, and her moans were so loud that had there been civilization anywhere around them, people would have come running to see what the commotion was.
He lingered even after she reached her first climax, her pleasure so heady to him that he wanted more for himself as much as for her. His tongue teased at her sensitive clit as his fingers explored her center, and it was only minutes before she was falling apart beneath him, calling out his name as she shuddered into her orgasm.
Still, Ronan wasn’t done with her, but this time she pulled at him, tugging him up toward her and kissing him fiercely. Their tongues dueled for control of the kiss, and she seemed to enjoy that taste of her body on his lips. The thought only made him need her more, and they were both pushing at his jeans, shoving them down his hips just enough to expose his hard length.
He drove it into her wet, waiting body, his hips pulsing against hers as he took her again and again. Out in the woods, in the dead of night, their lovemaking felt almost animalistic, and he ravaged her neck as he took her, his teeth nipping and tugging at the sensitive skin and making her cry out with pleasure each time. His hands gripped her thighs, pulling her up against him over and over, and each time he sank into her warm heat, he felt like he was on the verge of losing control.
“I love you,” he said in her ear, panting there as he thrust inside of her again. “I love you. I need you. I’ll never, ever hurt you, Natasha.”
She moaned, her body beginning to vibrate.
“I’m going to marry you, and every night we’ll be just like this,” he told her. “I’ll make love to you, day and night. I’ll hold you while you sleep. I’ll wake you up every morning with my tongue …my fingers …my cock. I’ll make you mine over and over again. You and only you, for the rest of my life, Natasha.
“Ronan…”she moaned, her body tightening around him. “Ronan…”
He thrust inside her once more, hitting her deep within her pleasure center, and she came a third time, this time her center convulsing around him and bringing him to his own climax. Spilling inside of her with each wild thrust, he moaned her name again and again, then collapsed on top of her when the intense pleasure he’d felt ended, leaving him in a state of peaceful bliss.
Her arms moved around him, and she kissed his shoulder, her body limp and well used beneath him. “I love you,” she whispered. “God, I love you.”
It was all he needed to hear from her, every day, for the rest of his life. He kissed the soft spot behind her ear, smiling despite the horror they had both gone through earlier that day. “Can you walk?” he teased, chuckling softly against her skin. “I’m not sure I can.”
She groaned, laughing too. “After what you just did to me? Hardly.”
He got up off of her, with just one more kiss first, and stood up. Getting dressed, he tossed her own clothes to her, and when she was dressed too, he picked her up. “I’ll carry you then,” he told her, settling her easily in the cradle of his arms. “No more curse. See?” He tossed her lightly up, then caught her again. “It’s been months since I’ve felt this strong, Natasha. Even after you healed me, I wasn’t as strong as I am right now. Josiah gave me back my life along with yours.”
“Our firstborn son,” Natasha murmured, resting her head on his shoulder. “It’s a fitting tribute to him.”
“Or Josie,” he agreed. “If we have a little girl.”
“Ronan…”
He began to walk them through the forest again, her body weightless in his protective hold. “Yes, baby?”
“Are we going to be able to have children?”
“Sort of.”
She looked up at him curiously. “Sort of?”
“We’re going to be able to have one child, at least,” Ronan told her. “Dragon Clan couples have only ever been able to produce one child each, though not for lack of trying for more, I’m sure. I don’t know why that is. Perhaps it’s just nature’s way of preventing the world from becoming too overrun with dragon shifters. But, yes, we will be able to have at least one child, my love. Our little baby girl or boy.”
“How?”
“I didn’t realize what Nana meant at first,” he told her. “She said to set my intention on it. To set it on you. On us. I didn’t put two and two together. But there’s a ceremony that takes place, whenever two Dragon Clan members marry. The two take each other as their one and only mates, and they pledge to produce a child to carry on the name and the heritage.”
“A wedding ceremony.”
He stepped carefully over a fallen branch, then ducked her lower so that she wouldn’t hit her head on a low-hanging branch to their left. “It’s more than a wedding ceremony. They’re pledging to more than just each other. They’re pledging to create a child—the next generation of the Dragon Clan.”
She looked up at him through the darkness, her legs dangling over his arm. “And that’s what your Nana meant by intention? That’s the intention part?”
“I think so,” he said. “No Dragon Clan member has ever conducted that ceremony with a human. They’ve slept with plenty of humans before.”
“Clearly.”
He winced good-naturedly. “Fair enough. I’ll cop to that. But I think that what gives a Dragon Clan member the ability to procreate with someone is taking them for eternity. Inducting them into the Dragon Clan, so that it’s not a marriage of two people, one who is part of the clan and one who is not. But two people who are equally part of the clan.”
“But there’s no magic to that.”
Ronan smiled at her. “No magic…except love and commitment. In this world, that’s magical enough, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But if it was that simple…all of this…”
“I think that all of this was part of a test,” he told her, setting her down as they reached the edge of the woods, very close to where
she thought they would find Michael’s body. “I like to think it was a test, anyway, and not just me fundamentally misunderstanding how our ancestors accomplished what they did. I think that the path to understanding was fraught with difficulty, but once we had passed all of the tests, the answer itself was simple. Each of us went through hell and back to find and keep our partner. We’ve put our time in, and now …now we get to promise our lives to each other.”
Natasha took his hand, pulling him closer to the road. “This way. She killed him just at the tree line. What if his body has been found already?”
“There would be people out here,” he reminded her. “Crime scene tape. Information on the news. We haven’t heard anything, which means that he should still be here somewhere.”
Nodding, she led him further down, but it was clear that she was still processing everything he was saying. “Will our baby be like you then?”
“I don’t know,” Ronan said honestly. “I hope so. I want him or her to be. How do you feel about that?”
“I want the same thing,” she said, looking back at him. “But what if it’s not? What if now there are some babies who are and others who aren’t?”
“Then we’ll deal with that,” he told her, lifting a shoulder. “One way or another. We won’t let it divide us or cause us to create classes or treat anyone differently than anyone else. We can’t. But my gut says …our babies will be dragon shifters. All of them.”
“What if I want more than one?”
Ronan laid his hand on the small of her back, guiding her carefully over the ground as the darkness grew deeper. “Then we’ll deal with that too. Maybe we can look at the ceremony and the wording. Change it to better suit our needs. Now that we’re not going to be matching people from generation to generation, it doesn’t matter how many children we have. And you know what? If we need to, we’ll adopt. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give you, Natasha. Nothing you could ask of me that I wouldn’t find for you.”
She stopped, turning back to him and smiling. “There’s nothing that I really need except you.”
“Then we’re on the same page,” he murmured, touching her cheek gently and leaning down to kiss her.
They kept walking, and after a moment, Natasha’s hand tightened on his. “We’re close—I recognize this place. He should be …God. There he is.”
Natasha turned away, and Ronan looked ahead of them, walking slowly toward the dead body of his LA counterpart. It affected him more deeply than he could have imagined to see the man there, lying abandoned and broken in the grass with nobody to care for him and give him shelter.
Ronan knelt and touched Michael’s shoulder, closing his eyes in a moment of respect for the man. Michael had come here at odds with Ronan, but he trusted that, had he and Michael ever had the chance to sit down and talk out the misunderstanding that had led them all to this place, they would have come to an agreement and so much of what had happened could have been avoided. “Rest in peace, brother,” Ronan said quietly.
Then he stood, pulled out the phone that he had borrowed, and Skyped Moira. She answered almost immediately, and Fischer was there beside her, his pinched face large on the screen.
“He’s there?”
Ronan said nothing, just turning the camera around so that Fischer could see the man lying there. He kept the camera turned away when he heard Fischer’s ragged sob, and he somehow found sympathy in his heart for Fischer as well, despite the fact that the man was still so antagonistic. If it had been any one of Ronan’s people lying there, he would have been destroyed. Fischer was so affected by it that he hadn’t wanted to actually go out and see Michael’s body for himself. He hadn’t thought he could handle it. He had just needed the proof.
And now he had it.
After giving the man a moment, Ronan turned the camera back around and looked into it. “His neck is broken cleanly. I’m sorry.”
Fischer swallowed hard, nodding tightly without saying anything.
“Are you satisfied with Natasha’s recollection?”
Again, Fischer nodded tightly.
“Good,” Ronan said. “I would never have wished this on any of you, you know. I’m sorry for the loss you’re feeling, and I hope that the problems between us …we can put them all in the past. We don’t want conflict, Fischer. We never did.”
“I have no issue with you,” Fischer managed, though there was strain in his voice. “It’s my own who betrayed me.”
“Abigail,” Ronan agreed. “I’m sorry.”
Fischer disappeared, and Moira’s face reappeared on screen, her expression grim. “He’s not taking it well. Sean and Benjamin have accepted things as they are. Fischer is different. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to accept it.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that,” Ronan told her. “How is the cleanup going?”
“We’ve done what we can,” Moira told him, turning the screen around so he could see the gymnasium. “The blood is gone. The debris picked up. But we’ll need to donate money to the school to fix it. Anonymously, obviously.”
“I’ll handle it on Monday,” he promised her. “How are you doing?”
She just shrugged, and he nodded. They didn’t need any further words. Behind all of this was still the looming awareness that Liam had begun it all. Ronan would never punish Moira for that—ever. But she was punishing herself enough for it anyway.
“I’m coming back there,” Ronan told her. “I want to make sure that the two branches leave on good terms. This kind of thing can never happen again.”
“We’ll be here,” Moira told him. Then she hung up.
Ronan sighed, feeling her pain deeply. Then he walked back over to Natasha and tilted her chin up, looking into her eyes. “I know you’re mourning Michael. I wish I could take your pain away the way you’ve taken mine so many times.”
“You make the pain better,” she murmured, and he kissed her gently.
Then he stripped off his jeans again, transitioned into his dragon form, and lifted Michael’s body onto his back. Natasha climbed up as well, his clothing in hand, and he flew them back through the night, soaring over the clouds until the school gymnasium was in sight. He landed in the football field, and together, he and Natasha brought their natural friends and temporary enemies’ fallen leader back to them.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Natasha
“You look beautiful,” Natasha said, tears in her eyes as she watched Autumn, Eamon’s fiancée, place the veil on Dhara’s head. It was Dhara and Kean’s wedding day, and the woman, who was a new but amazing friend to Natasha, was absolutely radiant. After the dust had settled from the feud with their LA counterparts and the Boston Dragon Clan had recovered from their injuries, their grief, and the brief but intense media attention on the supposed dragon sightings around town, they had all decided that it was only right that Kean and Dhara marry first. After all, they had been the ones who had started the entire clan down the road they were now on. They had been the ones waiting the longest to make their union official.
Dhara stood in front of the mirror, looking at the reflection of herself in her flowing, lacy white dress that hugged her narrow waist and highlighted the voluptuousness of her breasts and hips. She was glowing with happiness and teary-eyed at the same time, and when Moira handed her flowers to her, the picture became complete. Dhara was ready to walk down the aisle and meet the love of her life at the other end, take the vow that would make her part of the Dragon Clan, and join the man she loved on their own special journey.
Natasha had never been part of something so beautiful, and she was excited for both Dhara and herself in equal parts. Because it wouldn’t be long before it would be her turn to go through this same ceremony with Ronan, who she had grown to love more and more each day. They had only known each other for a month, and yet she couldn’t remember a time without him. Before he had come into her life, she had been coasting. Drifting. Now she was soaring in every way—literally, at night, when he
took her flying on his back, and figuratively every moment of every day. Her divorce from Matthew would be finalized in just a matter of weeks, and her soon-to-be-ex-husband had taken one look at Ronan when they had all met to sign paperwork and decided to cooperate.
Ronan was her godsend. Her answered prayer. Her better half. Her everything.
And from the look on Dhara’s face, she felt the same way about Kean. In fact, from the look on Autumn’s face, she felt the same way about Eamon. And Moira and Siobhan were both crazy about their men.
They had all gotten so lucky—so lucky that Natasha agreed with Ronan. This wasn’t accidental. This was fate. They had all met and suffered through so much to end up with each other, and that was the journey they’d had to persevere through in order to get to where they were now.
And it was all so worth it.
“Hurry, hurry,” Siobhan said, smoothing her bridesmaid’s dress and picking up her own bouquet. Fierce fighter Siobhan looked slightly out of place in the flowing pink dress that Dhara had chosen for the bridesmaids to wear, but Natasha thought the blonde goddess still looked incredible. She felt rather beautiful, herself, in the dress.
She hurried out with the other bridesmaids and the small ceremony began. It was a strange ceremony, with everyone present actually in the wedding party. There was no audience, and Ronan was the minister who would be joining them. But that was because this was no traditional wedding ceremony.
It was an induction as well.
As Natasha began to walk down the aisle, her eyes locked with Ronan’s, and in that moment, it was as though she herself was walking to her groom. He looked so dashing and gorgeous in his silver suit, and she immediately wanted to tear it off him. But for Dhara’s sake, she would wait until after the ceremony.
Kean was there too, a bundle of nerves as he watched each woman walk down the aisle, waiting for the one who mattered to him. Natasha gave him a reassuring smile, and he returned it. Then his eyes moved over her head and she knew that he was seeing Dhara for the first time in her dress.
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