Cowboy Dragon

by Terry Bolryder

  “Thank you,” she replied, and Clancy nodded amicably.

  “Steaks’ll be a minute longer,” Beck said gruffly. But even he seemed to be less gruff than normal, maybe because of the good weather or just the fact things had been running smoothly.

  Her mind wandered as Harrison started to get things together for her on a plate, and she thought of the silver coin that had brought her to Dragonclaw in the first place. How the legend of the dragon’s talon had ended up being a real thing, along with the part about dragons living deep in the heart of Texas.

  In reality, the fact was much more interesting than the fiction. This crew of men, working the land, masters of their own destiny, and yet all very real and down to earth in their own individual ways.

  “What happened to that silver dollar?” she asked Harrison. Not that she’d been missing it much. She’d been far too busy and in love to worry, but she’d had it a long time.

  Harrison reached into the pocket of his jeans and placed it on the table. It gleamed beneath the sun, the scratched silver bright and polished in some places, dark and tarnished in the deepest parts of the gash down the center. A curiosity unto itself.

  “I keep it on me at all times,” he said with a grin down at her.

  Beck huffed. “What, in case your ass needs saving a second time?”

  “Actually, I already got saved. Saved from a life of loneliness without my mate here.” He leaned down to kiss her cheek, and Marian flushed while Beck rolled his eyes. “That’s why I keep this coin. So I can remember the day that you came into my life.”

  “That’s too sweet,” she replied.

  “That’s gross. Keep that shit to your damn selves.” Beck flipped a steak, ignoring them, though it made Marian wonder why he was such a nice person at times while being so against the notion of romance.

  Maybe he just had his own things to figure out.

  “I’ll kiss my mate—now also my fiancée—whenever I damn well feel like it,” Harrison said sternly at Beck.

  “So what’s the story behind these coins?” Marian diverted. “Do each of you have one?”

  Beck seemed pleased with himself as he pulled a silver lump from his back pocket and tossed it onto the table where it clanged. “Heh, still got mine. I don’t owe a single person a damn thing. And I intend to keep it that way.”

  His coin had a slash down the center like Harrison’s, but it was so beat up, so bent around the edges it almost had a lumpy appearance to it, like it had seen a century of being roughed up wherever Beck had kept it.

  “He’s awful proud of that fact, if you couldn’t tell.” Clancy chimed in.

  “What about yours, Clancy?” she asked, and Clancy went oddly silent, suddenly very interested in meticulously cleaning each chamber of his revolver.

  “He…” Harrison looked over at Clancy, who shot him an intense look. “Misplaced it. We’ll leave it at that.”

  “What were they for in the first place?”

  Harrison scratched the back of his head, eyes creased as he thought. “Way back, when it was just the three of us and all this land, before there were settlers and automobiles, we sort of came up with the idea ourselves. A sort of calling card we could use that each of us would recognize in case any of us went missing.

  “More like dog tags,” Beck said with a shrug. Harrison had mentioned something about him having been in the military several times over the years. “Dog tags that you can use to bargain for supplies.”

  Harrison nodded. “Something like that. It bears the mark of our dragon, and we knew that if someone ever did us right, then we were going to do right by them. Our coin would serve as an IOU in case of that.”

  “That’s kind of cool, actually,” she said.

  “Damn foolish idea, if you think about it now,” Beck said, piling the finished steaks onto a plate and bringing them to the table. “Someone comes across me barely alive and bleeding, you can bet your ass I’ll just tell them to leave me to die, favor or not.” He swiped his beat-up coin in his palm, and it disappeared into his pocket again.

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Clancy said, and when she looked over his shoulder, he was holstering his now-immaculate revolver (though they always looked immaculate) and pulling his chair up to the table.

  “I don’t know. Can’t say I have any regrets at all, knowing it brought Marian to me,” Harrison said proudly as he stabbed a steak with a fork and set it on Marian’s plate. It smelled delicious, fresher than anything she’d ever had from the store and cooked to perfection by the surliest of grillers.

  “Me too. Fate works in mysterious ways,” she replied.

  Even Beck’s frown softened a bit as he sat across from the two of them. “Well, to the newest member of our crew.” He grabbed a cold beer that was dripping with condensation and popped it with his front teeth.

  Harrison took two and opened both on the edge of the table, handing her one while the others got their own.

  “To the happy couple,” Clancy said, raising his beer.

  “To a good summer,” Reno said with a cheery smile.

  “To my mate,” Harrison said as his hand took Marian’s again.

  “To my cowboy,” Marian replied, then raised her beer too. “And to the best crew in the state of Texas.”

  Then there was a pause as everyone looked at Dallas, whose amber-orange eyes went a little wide at suddenly being put on the spot. He looked at his drink, then at the rest of them. “To love. And friendship,” he muttered tentatively.

  “To love and friendship,” everyone said in unison as bottles clinked and they drank in the cool, refreshing liquid. A moment later, everyone was eating and talking as new conversations started amongst them.

  “By the way, has anyone seen Gary around?” Reno asked as he took a big bite of steak.

  “Oh, he’s been around,” Clancy said. “Caught him runnin’ across the yard a few nights ago.” It was then that Marian noticed Dallas was holding a single potato chip down at the side of his leg, near the overhang of the porch of the main house.

  Dallas just put a finger to his lips in a shushing motion as she watched while Gary peeped his head out from beneath a bent plank of wood under the stairs. Gary waited, looked up, then grabbed the chip and began munching, holding it with his tiny hands.

  He was halfway through the chip when Beck looked over and saw what was happening.

  “Gary,” Beck said with amusement. “So you didn’t run off, did you?” He grabbed a chip in his fingers and walked over to where Dallas was sitting. Dallas just raised an eyebrow at Beck but didn’t say anything. “Here, let me try.”

  Gary ducked into the black hole he’d appeared from while Beck poked his chip downward. Then a moment later, while Beck still held the chip out, Gary appeared with a loud hiss, small hand batting the chip away and scratching Beck in the process before disappearing again with a shuffling sound.

  Beck just laughed as Dallas wore a satisfied grin while cutting up his steak from his spot on the log. “Same shit as always. I’ll never know what makes raccoons tick, I guess.”

  “Gary’s just… Gary,” Reno said to Beck as Beck took his seat again. “A misfit like the rest of us, I guess.”

  Beck and Reno started arguing about who was calling who a misfit, but Marian ignored it, just leaning into Harrison’s shoulder while she ate lunch and downed the rest of her beer.

  The ring on her finger glinted up at her, making her warm inside at how Harrison continued to impress her every day with his thoughtfulness and goodness. How each day had only started with her heart more full of love, more full of excitement for life to go on with Harrison at her side, having her back, holding her in his arms, or making love to her like it was their first and last time together, every time.

  And as the Texas sky smiled down on them, Marian’s heart swelled to bursting as she considered where she would sneak off to with Harrison next so she could show him exactly how ready she was to get her hands on him again.

  Life w
as perfect out here. Serene and dangerous and wonderful and wild.

  Nothing could be better.

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  Zach, Isaac Morningstar III, touched the chunky iron chain around his neck as he caught his reflection in one of the dingy shop windows he passed. Anger contorted his expression as he withdrew his fingers and started again down the street of the bad neighborhood he’d been dropped in.

  He was still getting used to the modern world since he’d been woken up some months ago, but even he knew this wasn’t the type of place he would ever have chosen to go back to when he had full access to his dragon powers and a massive treasure trove that allowed him to live in comfort whenever he felt like being in human form.

  And yet here he was, leveled, humbled, shackled by this collar until the oracle who watched over shifters was sure he could be “trusted”, barely able to partially shift, with no money and nothing but the clothes on his back.

  Despicable state of events.

  Not that he blamed the oracle. In his day, hundreds of years ago, dragons had been more akin to powerful, despotic demigods who terrorized humans when it pleased them and roamed the countryside freely. In human form, they were often dukes or lords with power to match, able to hide in the countryside in a massive estate if they so chose. To hell with caves.

  Here, dragons had been remodeled to become something much more civilized. Now they worked in pairs, enforcing the laws of the shifter community and protecting shifters and humans in their area.

  Protecting them.

  The thought was ludicrous. Zach had never in his life met someone he wanted to protect, and he doubted anyone here in the selfish, petty human world was going to change that for him.

  Thunder cracked overhead and he looked up with an annoyed scowl to see dark clouds overhead. A few more steps and he felt the patter of rain on his shoulders and shook his head in disgust. He looked around him to gain his bearings and saw a shop across the street that seemed friendly.

  A human woman stood in the front window, smiling as she chatted with a man in front of her in a low chair. She had long hair, a mix of dark brown and red that shimmered over her shoulders. Soft, pale skin with rosy cheeks. A sweet mouth.

  She was touching her male client’s hair, and Zach felt an odd rumble of jealousy at the sight of it.

  She was providing some kind of service. Zach would go over and see what, and get out of the rain at the same time.

  When he pulled open the heavy glass door, all eyes turned to him. Various men and women with striking colors of hair looked up at him in shock. Their clients, all arrayed in black cloaks, stared as well.

  He saw seats to the side of the door and sat in one, glaring at the humans to try and deter the stares he was receiving.

  He was a dragon, a powerful one. The world could rise or fall on the whims of him and his friends. They should show him respect, not this mixture of shock and disgust.

  The girl he’d seen from the window turned to him with soft blue eyes. Kindness. That was unexpected. “Did you want to make an appointment?”

  He pursed his lips and leaned back in the chair. “For what?”

  “A haircut, of course,” she said, a smile touching her full lips.

  Zach sat up a little straighter as a little bolt of warmth coursed through him. Most unexpected. He touched his shoulder length mop, tangled from the trip here and damp from the rain. “No. I do not need one.”

  She smiled and shrugged. “Okay.”

  Other customers sent nervous glances around and Zach ignored them. He picked up a magazine from beside him and pretended to hold it in front of him while he studied the people.

  He wasn’t wholly ignorant of the modern world. He’d been living on a shifter-only island, but they had all of the technology. Just none of the humans.

  As he assessed the people around him, he realized when this place closed, it would be evening, and time to find lodgings. He’d been walking all day, and would need somewhere to stay at night. If he could still take his full dragon form, he could go out into the woods and sleep there. His dragon form was impervious to cold. But his human form would probably freeze.

  Drat.

  He stared at the human again, narrowing his eyes. The man in the chair in front of her stood as she removed his cloak and took him to the counter where payment was taken. On the way there, he turned to Zach with a scowl.

  “You could stop staring, hobo,” he said, before turning his back on Zach.

  Zach gaped. Hobo? As in, a homeless beggar? For a moment he was speechless at the audacity of it. He was the furthest thing from that. Or was he? After all, he had incredible wealth but none of it was accessible. Incredible power but no way to use it.

  He was kind of a hobo, wasn’t he?

  “What is he smiling about, anyway?” the man muttered.

  “Shush, Gerry,” the woman said. “You know I welcome anyone here.”

  Negative one point for humanity for Gerry, Zach thought. Plus one for the girl with the kind eyes. He glanced around the shop. Probably not going to be any more positive points around here.

  The oracle had said she’d remove the collar when she felt she could trust him with humans. He had no idea what that meant, but probably it meant hating them a little less. Being less aghast at the thought of protecting them.

  When the man had left, the girl with kind eyes removed her black apron, revealing a soft, curvy body in a short pink dress with black leggings underneath. She sat next to him, just a chair away, and gave him a kind smile. It made him tingle slightly.

  Dragons did not tingle.

  He shifted uncomfortably.

  “My name is Erin,” she said, leaning forward with a smile.

  “Okay,” he said curtly. For some reason, this little human set him off balance. He was still considering what that meant.

  “Can I help you with something?” she asked. “I can call a shelter or maybe someone you know…”

  He pursed his lips. “How about you just let me stay here and continue my observation? Or is that too much trouble for you?” His tone was slightly sarcastic and she raised an eyebrow in amusement.

  “No, it’s no trouble at all,” she said sweetly. “You’re welcome to just stay in out of the rain as long as you like.” She looked at the clock. “Well, until we close. I was just making sure you didn’t need help.”

  “I don’t,” he said flatly. He was frankly a little offended that she thought he was some kind of invalid seeking help. What about him was giving her that impression?

  He flinched back when she reached for a lock of his hair that was falling over his face. “At least let me give you a wash and a shave,” she said. “On
the house.”

  He frowned. He didn’t want to accept this human’s pity, as in his other form he could eat her in one bite. But he’d seen her hands in the other man’s hair, and he wanted that. Wanted her touching him. Looking at him.

  “All right, human.” He bit his lip and ignored the way he’d referred to her as she let out a light, tinkling laugh and led him over to her chair.

  He sat down, sinking into the soft cushion with a sigh. She had to put the chair all the way down to work on him because he was extraordinarily tall compared to most humans. And good-looking, and muscled, if he said so himself.

  As he faced the mirror, he admitted he was a little the worse for wear after his travels. He had an overgrowth of black beard, but that was manly. And his hair was tangled from wind and the slight rain.

  He’d worn a long black trench over his clothing because it would provide shelter from the rain and elements and he didn’t know how long it would take to find lodgings.

  But he didn’t see anything wrong in the mirror. If anything, he just looked masculine. Strong.

  She leaned him back and helped rest his head on the sink. “I bet you’ll be a whole new person after this,” she said with a wink.

  His eyes skimmed her curvy body, so close and warm, and then came back to her eyes, a beautiful clear blue like wildflowers.

  Her hands worked through his hair, soaping and kneading, and he relaxed into her touch, her scent, the soft sound of her voice. The look of her kind face. The press of her body as she leaned over him. Even being a dragon, and very impervious to heat, he was on fire.

  He stared at her, feeling shock unlike anything he’d felt as she finished washing and wrung his hair dry. Then she reached for a razor and foam to start the shaving.

  As she carefully glided over his face, dipping in and out of a bowl, rinsing and wiping the razor so as not to cut him, he found there was a great deal of eye contact to be found in a shave.

  What was she doing to him, the minx? His body felt warm. His throat tight and dry. Every touch was hot agony.