by Jadyn Chase
“I gotta tend to some business. I’ll be back later. Oh, wait. No, I won’t.”
I climbed into the Jeep and hit the gas. In the three months since Piper went back to Charlotte, I did my best to leave my time with her in the past. I never expected to see or hear from her again.
Now she was texting me from the Watering Hole. Would she be the same? Would the connection between us still be there? Her flippant tone told me not to expect too much. This was nothing but a friendly get-together. She would probably be going home to Charlotte by the end of the day and I would be back to struggling to forget everything I ever knew about her.
I couldn’t keep my hands steady on the wheel burning down to Norton. I never thought I could get so excited about seeing a girl, but all the old emotion came back in a flash. She meant as much to me now as she did when I first met her. Time did nothing to dull my desire or the pain of losing her.
I skidded to a halt in front of the Watering Hole and jumped out. I checked, but no other cars parked in front of the bar. Of course not. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning.
I pushed through the front door. There she sat on a bar stool. She looked up at me, and the same glowing fire sparkled in her eyes. She looked exactly the way I remembered her except with an even more alluring halo of irresistible vibrance around her features. How did I ever manage to let this woman go? How could I stand to watch her walk out of my life again?
She smiled at me when I walked up to her. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right. How are you doing?”
“I’m all right, too. It’s good to see you again.”
I did my best to ignore these inane pleasantries. They meant nothing. “So what brings you to our neck of the woods?”
Her cheeks colored. “As it turns out, the footage I recorded of the Flying Fox caught the vocalizations of another bat. I spent the last three months studying my data, and the calls don’t match any known species. It looks like I discovered an entirely new species of bat. I’m here to gather more evidence and hopefully document its existence.”
I raised my eyebrows, but I still didn’t allow myself to get carried away. “So you’re going to be sticking around for a while. Is that it?”
She fiddled with her paper napkin. “It looks that way.”
I threw all caution to the wind. I didn’t want to small talk with her. I wanted to get down to brass tacks. I wanted to find out once and for all if I ever had a prayer under Heaven of getting with her again.
I nodded at the empty plate on the bar. “It looks like you finished your sandwich. How about you take a ride with me?”
Her eyes widened. “A ride? Where to?”
“Out to the Ridge,” I replied. “Where else?”
She cracked a huge, brilliant grin. “All right. Let’s go.”
In a dream, I got behind the wheel. I drove out of town and headed for the hills. I told myself again and again not to read too much into this. She sat at my side in the passenger seat. We were going on a little outing—nothing more.
My heart wouldn’t keep still, though. It hammered my ribs until I couldn’t see straight. Stay calm. Stay cool. Don’t show anything.
I pulled up in front of the cabin and set the brake. Piper shrank back in the seat. The cheeky grin drained off her face examining the tiny building. “What did you bring me here for?”
“I thought you might like to take a look at it for old time’s sake.” I got out and walked toward the cabin. “We had some good times here, didn’t we?”
I strolled inside and took two bottles of beer out of the fridge. I put them on the table and waited for her to make up her mind. I observed her through the window. When she finally summoned the courage to get out of the Jeep, she paced back and forth in the yard for a while before she ventured to the door. She still didn’t enter, though.
She scanned the tiny room. “We had some good times here, but we also had some bad times. I’ll never forget the night we first came here and I had to sew up your shoulder. That was terrible.”
I cocked my head and cracked the cap off one of the beers. “Was it so terrible? I don’t remember that part.”
“You were out of it from loss of blood.”
“You didn’t show that it was so terrible.” I took a swig of my beer and let the icy liquid slide down my throat. “You were solid as a rock that night.”
She looked away and noticed the fridge. “Does this place have power now?”
“Yeah. I rigged it up from the main supply. I live here now.”
Her head whipped around. “You do?”
I nodded. “It seemed like the thing to do after you left. I didn’t want to think about you, but at the same time, I didn’t want to let go of the memories I had with you. I guess I thought I could hold onto them better if I was here. Anyway, I didn’t want to go back to live at home without you there. It didn’t seem right, so I fixed this place up. I’ve been living here ever since. Do you like it?”
Her eye took in the small details. The cabin definitely looked cleaner and more lived in than the last time she saw it. “It’s nice. It was really hard for me, too. When I went back to Charlotte, I thought I would die.”
I swallowed hard. “Really?”
She threw back her head and looked me straight in the face. “Do you think I was just blowing smoke up your rear end when I said I would never forget you? Do you think that night we spent here meant nothing to me? I never got over that. It cost me everything to leave. I only did it for your Clan.”
My shoulders slumped. “I didn’t know that. I thought maybe you would be glad to get away from…. you know.”
“Well, I wasn’t.” She barged into the room and plunked down on the bed like she belonged there.
Her admission gave me a glimmer of hope. I crossed to sit down next to her. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’m an ass. I guess I just had to protect myself from losing you. I’m doing the same thing now. I have to protect myself in case I ever lose you again. It hurts too much.”
She let out a broken sigh and her chin fell onto her chest. “I need to tell you something, Wyatt.”
I couldn’t stop looking at her sitting so close to me on that bed, the bed where we did it for the first and only time. “What is it?”
She knitted her fingers together, and I noticed her hands were shaking. “I’m…..I’m pregnant.” Her head shot up, and her bright eyes found me. “I’m really sorry to do this to you. Do you hate me?”
My head spun trying to understand what she just said. “I don’t hate you.”
“I didn’t mean to spring this on you. I only found out a few weeks ago and I was in a bind trying to figure out how to tell you. I wanted to tell you in person. I didn’t want to tell you by text or email or anything like that. Then I found out I was coming here, so I decided to wait until I could talk to you about it. I’m really sorry. It just happened, but now….”
I blinked down at her. Was this really happening? “What are you…. what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed. “I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to ask you what you want to do about it.”
For a second, my eyes didn’t work right. I teetered on the bed like I was going to pass out. This couldn’t be real. I couldn’t be sitting here having this conversation with her.
“I can’t stop thinking about that fight,” she blurted out. “I mean, you’re a dragon and everything. Your whole family is dragons. This baby is going to be a dragon, too. That’s what I can’t handle. I don’t know what to do about that. I mean, having a human baby is hard enough. What do I know about raising a dragon baby? Your people know these things. This baby belongs with you—with its own people, people who know how to deal with it. I can’t take care of it.”
Both my hands flew up at once. “Hold it right there, girl. Are you saying you want me to take this baby—I mean, raise it on my own? No way!”
“I can’t do it!” she shrieked. “This baby is a dragon. H
ow could I raise a dragon baby in Charlotte? That would be ridiculous. This baby belongs on Smokey Ridge with the rest of the Kellys. That’s all I know.”
“You’re not walking away from me, Piper!” I bellowed. “You’re not dumping a baby on me and walking away. Don’t even think about it.”
“I’m not talking about walking away,” she fired back. “I’m talking about this baby having a family—a real family of people like itself. Don’t you see? I can’t give it that. I can’t teach it what it means to be a dragon. Only you and your Clan can teach it that. Christ, I can’t give it any Clan. It belongs with you.”
I locked my teeth in pure determination. “Don’t talk about walking away, Piper. I don’t want to hear another word about that.”
She squeaked in a tiny voice. “I’m not.”
I fought to get air into my lungs while my mind whirred over everything she told me. I seethed in my seat trying to grasp the truth of it all. She was pregnant. I was going to be a father to some dragon baby.
She was right. I couldn’t let any child of mine grow up in the human world. This baby needed me. It needed the Clan. It needed the Ridge more than anything else.
Piper extended her hand and clasped my arm. “Help me, Wyatt. For God’s sake, help me. I don’t know what to do about all this.”
I turned my attention to her and recognized the agonizing despair in her face. She needed me. This baby needed me. We might not have planned this, but we were both in this situation. Now it was up to both of us to make this work.
I broke out of my reserve and laid my hand on top of hers. “Don’t worry. We’ll deal with it together.”
Her voice cracked with emotion when she tried to speak. “Oh, thank you! I’ve been going out of my mind.”
“I know you don’t like dragons,” I told her. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to raise one and live with one all the time. I guess it’s a good thing you never saw me in my dragon form after all. You would have been scared out of your wits. You don’t want to go through that again with a little one.”
Her head swung up. Her eyes bored into my soul. “I did see you in your dragon form.”
I frowned. “When? The night the Lynch dragon attacked your camp?”
“Then, and during the fight. You were fighting with them. I woke up and looked around. I saw them all on top of you. You were thrashing and screaming, and then all the Kellys came down and drove them off. I saw it all before I passed out again.”
I blinked down at her beautiful face. “You…. you saw me?”
“Yes, Wyatt,” she breathed. “I saw you, and seeing you like that or seeing your relatives like that or seeing the baby like that doesn’t bother me at all. I just don’t know how I can do this on my own. I can’t give this baby what it needs. I need to know this baby has others of its kind to show it how to grow into a man like you—or a woman, or whatever. I can’t do that on my own. Even if nothing ever happens between us, I need to know this baby has the Kellys in its life. I need to know it can come up to the Ridge and see its relatives….and you. I need to see this baby around others of its kind. That’s all I’m saying.”
I couldn’t stop drinking in her glorious face with all my heart and soul. She saw me. She knew all along I was a dragon. All these torturous months, I told myself she was better off somewhere she didn’t have to see me like that. I convinced myself my dragon self was too terrifying and disgusting for her to tolerate so she might as well be happy in Charlotte.
She knew all along. She saw me and she didn’t care. She saw the whole Kelly Clan and she still wanted her baby to know its relatives. She wanted the baby to know me so it could learn to be a dragon.
Tears stung my eyes gazing at her. I never should have let her go. I should have gotten down on one knee and begged her to stay with me forever. I should have done that just like I was doing it now.
I swiveled off the bed and sank onto my knees in front of her feet. I clasped both her hands and kissed her knuckles with all the devotion in my heart. When I looked up at her, confusion and uncertainty marred her delicate features.
“Stay here, Piper,” I whispered. “Stay here on the Ridge with me. We’ll raise this baby together. You’ll never have to worry about this baby having a home because all my relatives will welcome it into the Clan. Stay here. Live with me. Marry me. Don’t ever leave me.”
I couldn’t contain my emotions anymore. I let my head fall into her lap and I closed my eyes against the overpowering tide of crushing heartache. What the hell was I doing with myself for the last three months? How did I ever live without her?
Her legs shook and I heard her sobbing. Her fingers laced into my hair and she massaged the back of my neck. My arms slithered around her hips and I hugged her against me with all my might. I would never leave her. I would never let her out of my sight again, and this baby would know what it meant to be a dragon. I would make certain of that.
My feelings made me clamp my arms around her so tight I pulled her off the bed. I slid her toward me. I could never get enough of her. I burrowed my face between her legs to catch the slightest scent of her.
In a flash, my need for her transformed to burning passion. I lived without her all these lonely days and nights. I wouldn’t live without her again, starting right now.
Her sobs changed to gasps. The deeper I nuzzled, the more she responded. She leaned back on the bed and her legs parted to invite me in. All the tempestuous craving from our first encounter exploded through me. I needed her like I needed air to breathe. Her presence satiated my starving soul until I came close to weeping.
I lunged to my feet, but only for a second. I catapulted on top of her and landed on her. I flattened her to the bed kissing her with every ounce of my strength. I couldn’t inhale her fast enough, and hot blood rushed to my crotch.
She scratched my back with her fingernails pulling my shirt out of my jeans. In a second, her smooth hands grazed my back and my heart almost stopped from the mind-blowing intensity.
She pushed my shirt up. Her legs wrapped around my hips and drew me in tight. My mind ripped her clothes off, but I couldn’t command my hands to obey. Her kisses occupied my whole attention.
She got the job done first. She peeled my shirt up and popped the fly of my jeans. She inched my pants down to expose my body to her delicious touch. Then she started on her own clothes.
I couldn’t think through the throbbing pulse in my head, in my loins, in every sinew and corpuscle of my being. My blood sizzled in my veins to get at her. This was all real. She was pregnant with my baby, and she would stay here with me always.
At last! I never had to worry about losing her again. She was mine. That’s what this meant. She was part of me and I was part of her, and together we would bring a new dragon being onto Smokey Ridge. We would build Clan Kelly from the inside out and make it great.
She wriggled under me and her jeans disappeared. The next thing I knew, her silken belly touched mine. A tuft of moist hair brushed my burning sex, and her molten wetness swallowed me in a vacuum from which I could never escape.
Hot lava poured all around me. It shimmered up my chest to my face and drove me to distraction. I probed my tongue into her mouth while my shaft bored to her innermost cavity. She howled and convulsed under me, but none of that mattered now. Her screams drifted into my ears from far away. I knew only the endless rapture of joining with her at long last.
She rotated her hips with every corkscrew thrust I delivered into her anatomy. Her spongy muscles gripped me in a devastating fist and wrung pearlescent droplets of my vital essence from my very core. I couldn’t stand the blistering power of it all.
She ducked under my neck and buried her sweet face against my throat. She shrieked into my chest while one rippling wave of tension contracted along my length. Her juices ran down my nuts to christen this bed ours once and for all. She put down her marker there and claimed it as our own.
Every wicked squeeze of her channel around my shaft ble
w my head apart. I sensed myself escalating over a peak from which I could never return, but I couldn’t stop it now if I tried. I needed her. That was the size of it. I couldn’t live without her, but I didn’t have to because she needed me just as badly.
I hovered on the brink. From here, I looked down on the Ridge. The great dragon battle unfolded before my eyes. I saw myself and my brother grow and become men on that mountain. Now another generation would do the same thing.
Gravity caught me in its vortex. It sucked me down into a bottomless pit of black bliss. I submerged in a volcanic torrent of slippery wetness that obliterated everything else but me and her locked together with our arms around each other.
I hid my eyes in her hair and gave myself over to sweat and semen and tears and laughter and saliva and blood. In that mixture of life and death, everything made sense for the first time in living memory.
Epilogue
Wyatt
I kicked back on the porch in front of the cabin and strained my ears to catch the slightest sound. Two groups of rustling leaves disturbed the forest, one to my right and one to my left.
I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable upheaval. I tilted my chair back and rested my skull against the cabin wall. The sun played on my closed eyelids. I could have drifted off to sleep, but at that moment, the disruption I expected came over me in a hurricane of noise and chaos.
Something screamed in my face. My eyes popped open and I almost overturned the chair before I noticed a bright blue dragon the size of a cat hurtle past my nose. It streaked around the cabin and vanished.
My heart pounded in my chest, but I refused to relax again now that he was gone. That was just a warning shot across my bow. Sure enough, the very next instant, the same small dragon came rocketing around the building from the other direction. He shot straight for my face.
I didn’t think twice. This kind of thing happened all too frequently of late. Now I had to nip it in the bud before it turned into a monster—literally. I flung out an arm in front of me and the little creature slammed into my palm. In a fraction of a second, I closed my fingers around its hind legs.
