Naked Dragon

by Annette Blair

  “Unfortunately,” he said, “any kind of bed must wait.” He set her down beneath a cover of trees. “There.”

  “The house looks deserted,” she whispered.

  “It is dark, but it might not be empty. Follow me so I can protect you.”

  She didn’t need anyone to protect her, but she sure wanted Bastian beside her.

  They avoided getting caught in moonlight by creeping from shadow to shadow, her behind the great wall of Bastian. “Cue the crescendo of danger,” she said softly. “Set the drums to beating in sync with our hearts, the wolves to howling, the earth to trembling . . .”

  Bastian turned to face her. “Are you out of your mind?”

  McKenna straightened. “I’m setting the scene. Music. Sound effects. You know?”

  “I do not. You are a nutcase.”

  “Did you learn that from Wyatt?”

  “McKenna, shh.”

  “So you use McKenna when you’re annoyed with me, and Kenna when you’re horny. Good to know.” She’d failed to make him smile. “Okay, so I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m shivering in my pink lace panties.”

  “This is exciting,” Bastian said. “As is the thought of your panties.”

  She was pleased to distract him, especially now.

  “Let me look in the garage window to see if there is a car.”

  McKenna caught his arm. “Why don’t we knock on the door and ask if we can check their roof?”

  “Because this way, if we are caught, we can pretend to be lost. If we ask and they say no, we will be boldly trespassing.”

  “We are trespassing.”

  “But they will know it, if we introduce ourselves. Another thing, suppose the owner knows what happened to Steve and has been paid to be quiet.”

  “You’re into this intrigue, aren’t you? Did somebody do you wrong?”

  “Only if you count being turned into a dragon and banished from earth.”

  “Right. You don’t have a reason to trust, either. You really think Steve was ambushed? Why? Who’d want to hurt Steve?”

  “Whoever wanted to stop him.”

  “From doing what?”

  “Helping you succeed.”

  “Bastian, that’s—I can be so naive.”

  “That is why we strike such a good balance between us,” Bastian said. “The garage is empty. We should make our move now.”

  He took her into his arms and with barely a spring to his step, he carried her up to the roof in one leap, but as he did, the house and yard lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “Motion detectors,” McKenna said. And they were in motion. Bastian slipped the minute he stepped on the roof, but he held her tighter. He also tried to get a handhold as they slid, caught at a shingle, but tore it, and took the piece with them. As they fell, he twisted to take the brunt of the fall, giving her an idea of the control he might have wielded as a winged creature.

  They landed behind the backyard shrubs, her on top of him. “You make a great mattress,” she said. “Lumpy, but comfy.”

  He stiffened beneath her. Had his inner dragon been awakened by the impact? “Bastian, look at me,” she said. “Concentrate on my face. Let me be your shield.”

  He opened his eyes, caught her gaze, and within seconds, his shoulders relaxed, his expression became less feral and more like a man in pain. “My back,” he said, as the sirens in the distance registered.

  Not an ambulance, she presumed.

  FORTY-THREE

  “Are you all right? ”Bastian asked.

  “You hurt your back and you’re asking me?”

  “I am putting off the inevitable. I know how it will feel when you stretch my arm to reach my back.”

  “Give me your hand,” McKenna said. “I have an idea.”

  He gave her his hand. “And you think I am a lunatic.”

  “I’ve been in the water with you. Maybe I can conduct your magick through my body. You hold my right hand, and I’ll slip my left hand beneath you against your back.”

  His inner dragon raised its head again when she jostled him to reach his back, but it calmed quickly because he refused to take his gaze from her.

  The motion lights went out at about the same time the police cars arrived. “Shh,” McKenna whispered near his ear, and he gave her a nod. While they remained hidden behind the shrubs, the glow of flashlights danced around them. The investigating policemen set off the motion detectors, and before they left, they checked the grounds and made sure the doors to the house were locked, but nobody checked behind the bushes, probably because it was so obvious a place to hide.

  It took a bit longer for his back to heal with McKenna as a conduit, but it worked, and with much less pain.

  She reacted to his sigh. “Better?” she asked.

  “Better.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me to do this the first time you fell? It would have been so much less painful for you.”

  “You have to believe to be a conduit of magick. You weren’t ready then.” He flexed his back, sat up, then stood and took her hand.

  “I healed you,” she crowed, as he pulled her along.

  As they crossed the street, what looked like heat lightning lit the sky and illuminated them.

  At nearly the same time, a siren startled them.

  They ran.

  The police car that had been parked in front of the shut-in’s house pulled into traffic.

  “Maybe we should split up,” Bastian said, as the siren came closer and they scooted into the woods.

  “You’ll get lost if we do,” she pointed out, and rightly so, the bossy thing. “You can’t travel as the crow flies in these woods.”

  “As the dragon flies,” he said, correcting her. “That is how I traveled the direct route, with my own wings.”

  “Don’t you wish you could work up some wing power now?”

  “I got close when you crushed my man globes on landing.”

  “Man globes?” She giggled and tripped over a branch.

  He stood her up and managed to get himself a handful of breast, lucky him. “The rough translation from man globes in dragon speak is brains,” he said.

  She stopped running. “Goodness, that explains so much.”

  He grabbed her hand and kept running.

  She pulled him up short when she fell against a tree. “I can’t go as fast as you. I’m sorry, but I’m cramping here.”

  More lightning, then hail, just to make this easier, he thought.

  He threw McKenna over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Bouncing on my belly makes the cramps so much better. So does the hail. Cold, wet, crampy, and upside down. Nice.”

  “Glad I can help.”

  “Such a man,” she muttered, but every other turn, she made him change direction. “You could tell me ahead of time,” he snapped.

  “I’m seeing where we went, dragon boy, not where we’re going. Try not to slip on the ice, will you? The only thing I’m missing is a concussion.”

  “You can be a bit twitchy, you know.”

  McKenna gasped. “Are you saying I annoy you? That I’m bitchy?”

  “If the snark fits.”

  “You learned a new word. Snark. Good little dragon.”

  “I rest my point. We are running from the law and you are being prickly about what route we take.”

  “Your case. You rest your misdirected case? Do you know your way back to my house?”

  “I think we should hide,” Bastian said.

  “We could go to Lizzie and Steve’s old house, since they haven’t moved to our place yet.”

  “We should not involve them. That was the house where Steve fell. They might think to ask him questions and would find us more easily. If that evil contractor has friends in high places, as you said, you might be a suspect.”

  “Boy, you lap up the details, don’t you?”

  “Where can we hide?” Bastian asked.

  “The caves on
my property?”

  “Seems obvious. Are they deep enough for us to lose ourselves inside?”

  “Huge and shaped like a pitchfork. The prongs are well charted but no one will step foot in the whispering cave, which begins the handle of the pitchfork. Even if they did, they’d come up against what looks like a stone wall. We’ll be hiding behind that wall.”

  “The lights through the trees are police cars,” Bastian said. “How long until we get there?”

  “These are the woods where we started. You really do have a bad sense of direction, don’t you? The police are like the wolves I imagine nipping at our heels,” she said. “This is the far entrance to the caves. We can only be seen from the old harbor here, which is unlikely. Follow me.”

  He stood her on her feet, followed her into the caves, and felt homesick for the island. “They’re big, your caves. I hear someone or something nearby.”

  “It’s the whispering cave. Some say it’s the wind; others say it’s the spirit of Ciarra warning her enemies away. Who knows? The opening to the handle is here and it’s small. Do you think you can get through?”

  “As a dragon, I had the ability to fit through small spaces that often seemed impossible.”

  “Like a cat.” The tunnel became pitch-black. Bastian pulled McKenna to his side to protect her, and though he could see, he sent a fire stream to illuminate her way. The wall, which he thought closed the cave, was an overlapping wall with a narrow entry, behind and between.

  He watched McKenna slip easily through, but he took a minute. It opened to a large furnished room. As broken and bug-ridden as it appeared, someone had once lived here.

  “This,” McKenna said with reverence, “was Ciarra’s home during the hanging times.”

  Ciarra appeared in spirit form as if out of the ether. “Welcome.” As she spoke, the fire in the old hearth came to life, as did the flames on candles in wall sconces. Their combined light revealed a wood-plank table, several chairs, some broken, and an ancient wall tapestry of many colors.

  “You are safe here,” Ciarra said. “And dry now, too.”

  She was right. Their clothes had dried on the instant, thanks to her magick.

  McKenna stepped her ancestor’s way, but not too close. “You knew we would come, didn’t you?”

  “For centuries, I have waited.” Ciarra smiled a secret smile. “Bastian, I gathered sweetgrass, your favorite, and made with it a bed for you and McKenna. Tonight I will keep watch up above.”

  “We thank you,” Bastian said with a bow.

  “Before you rest, look behind the tapestry. I believe you will find what you seek, in addition to our McKenna, that is.” Ciarra vanished, leaving them with a fire to warm them, a place to rest, an oil lamp beside a sweetgrass bed, and a wooden bowl of apples and pears.

  After running so far, they drank with cupped hands from the spring pool in a corner of the room.

  “This is the spring that feeds my lake,” McKenna said, using the water to wash her face.

  Bastian went to examine the tapestry.

  “You have pasty white lines on your jeans,” McKenna said.

  He tried to see them. “It could be streaks of whatever is stuck to the downside of this shingle I tore off. I felt something on it when I slipped it in my pocket.” He took the shingle out.

  “Evidence?” she asked, touching it. “It’s hard and waxy.”

  Bastian shook his head. “What now? How do we do the most good with this?”

  “We can always turn the evidence over to Vivica,” McKenna suggested, “if it is evidence. My cousin knows everyone in town. Surely some chemist can tell us what that shingle is caked with. Whatever it is or was, it does retain a bit of a greasy quality that could have made Steve slip and fall. Before we can make any accusations, we need to know, without a doubt, what this is and where it came from.”

  “Vivica, the perfect solution.” For Steve’s sake, Bastian was ashamed that he hardly heard McKenna’s detailed response beyond Vivica’s name, falling as he was into the wonder of his love’s bright eyes, stirred by the knowledge that they would be spending the night together on a pallet of fresh sweetgrass in a warm, dry cave. Yes, perhaps he had been a dragon for too long, but this was like a dream come true for him. Except that the woman was more desirable than he could have imagined.

  He reached for her hand to lead her to his bed.

  “The tapestry.” She stopped to remind him. “You should look beneath the tapestry.”

  Examining furnishings was not primary in his mind, or his zipper brain, as McKenna often called it, and rightly, he now understood. But since Ciarra had been so generous as to prepare for their comfort, he would do as she suggested. Taking McKenna to the best of dragon beds could wait a minute longer. Complying with his hostess’s suggestion could not.

  He expected nothing as he lifted the tapestry aside, but absorbing the sight behind it felt rather like being clawed, slap-winged, and tale-spaded—all three at the same time.

  Though he reeled from the sight, Bastian had man sense enough to understand that the amazing sight before him put period to any doubt he might have harbored about the choices he had made since breaching the veil and arriving here on earth.

  A simple cave drawing. Antiquated. Crude. A treasure to an archaeological team, perhaps, but nothing to the average man. Except to him. And, hopefully, to Kenna. Because the sight could change her life as well.

  Bastian’s heart raced, and his hand trembled as he raised it toward the magickal prize. His emotions shivered, too. Dreams more lasting than a bed of sweetgrass, more powerful, life-altering, impossible dreams, seemed suddenly possible.

  “Is that a cave drawing of a dragon?” McKenna asked.

  He pulled her against his side. “Not just any dragon. A crowned dragon. Andra, the sorceress who transformed me, said that my heart mate would lead me to the sign of the crowned dragon. You, Kenna, are, without doubt, my heart mate. This is the final proof. Call it destiny or karma, but you are meant to be mine.”

  “Unless I don’t want to be yours.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  “What nonsense is this? You are my heart mate, my contrary Kenna. You cannot deny that.”

  No, she couldn’t deny it, damn him. “You think some old cave drawing can decide for me? I don’t think so. I’d like to be wanted for myself, thank you very much. Love, I believe it’s called. I don’t like your assumption, as if I’m some kind of magickal prize. A done deal. Decided on a parallel plane by some goddess I never met? I’m so easy, you just have to announce that I’m yours and I’m supposed to do what, say thank you? Fall at your feet, or into your bed?”

  Bastian scratched his nose but he failed to hide his amusement. And why that should make him look so damned charming, she didn’t know, but it ticked her off even more.

  “My heart wants yours, my Kenna,” he whispered against her neck. “You know that. Where you are, I am home. I wanted you, loved you, before I found the sign of the crowned dragon.”

  “You mean that your body wants my body,” she said. Let him get out of that one.

  “As you can plainly see, but I never tried to hide my sexual interest, not from the first day, did I? I have also said I loved you, a sentiment at which you scoffed. But I did not wait for the sign of the crowned dragon to declare myself. Please take that into consideration.”

  “I’m not easy.”

  “No, you are not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That I enjoy a challenge, especially when you are the woman presenting it, whether it involves words, emotions, sex, or home repair. Did I cover everything?”

  McKenna sighed. She wanted to pout but more than that, she wanted to lie beside him and sleep, and so much more. She ached . . . in so many ways. “Well,” she said. “That’s better, but you have to work on that attitude, buster. I won’t be taken for granted.”

  His eyes smiled, sexy as hell, and damn it, she wanted to be his heart mate more than she wan
ted her next breath. So why was she fighting him?

  “Come to bed?” he coaxed.

  Could he read her emotions now? Had he torn down her walls already? That wasn’t a possibility to entertain tonight. But tomorrow. Now she was just too tired to panic. “Just for sleep,” she said. “Out of respect for Ciarra’s hospitality.”

  “I will hold you in sleep. Yes. Keep you safe.”

  She was Bastian’s for the night, at least, McKenna granted, though any further sexual exploration would have to wait until they got home. Out of respect for their hostess? Or out of fear for the turn they’d just taken? That sign of proof, that crowned dragon, made her feel like his heart mate. Like she belonged to him suddenly, no turning back. “Cold feet,” she said, diagnosing her problem.

  Bastian pulled her toward the sweetgrass. “Come, then, and I will warm them while I protect you.”

  “Leave it to you to come up with the right answer.”

  Serenity she found in Bastian’s arms, in Ciarra’s warm, cozy home, amid the fresh scent of sweetgrass, her quick-to-sleep dragon beside her, the beat of his heart beneath her ear, her leg over his, her knee nearly teasing his lance but not quite, his hand cupping a breast. Who was protecting whom, here?

  For her to let down her guard enough to climb into bed with a man, without the aid of too much wine, to feel safe in his embrace, close her eyes and relax enough to sleep, meant that she had learned to trust . . . one man.

  For Bastian Dragonelli, she had fallen, and hard.

  He would leave someday—everybody did—but right now, she trusted him.

  During the night, they changed positions in tandem and slept like spoons in a kitchen drawer. Bastian spoke her name in his sleep—wonder of wonders—as he pulled her close. She kissed him and drifted, wondering if she’d gone off the deep end, putting her trust in a family ghost, a dragon, his sorceress. In magick and love. Destiny.

  She woke to find Ciarra standing beside their bed, looking down at them, her hands raised in a blessing. Love for her ancestor welled up in her, their kinship deep and abiding. “Thank you,” McKenna whispered.