Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Look where we are.”

  He felt her shift beneath him as she looked around, and then she laughed slightly too. “Oh, what difference does it make?”

  As she spoke, the sky above them opened up and rain began to fall from the heavy clouds that had offered Ryan shelter as he’d soared through the air, looking for Angela. Or rather, looking for Leanna.

  The rain brought him back to his senses, and he forced himself to sit up off her, shoving his hair off his forehead and looking around for some kind of shelter. There was little to be found except for the cover of trees. But bayou trees offered little shelter with their long, sweeping bodies and their sparse branches.

  “It’s all right,” Angela said, sitting up as well and lifting her face up towards the rain. “I don’t mind the rain. It doesn’t matter.”

  He watched as he let the raindrops slide over her bare body, and he felt his desire stir again. Leaning over, he brought her face towards his and kissed her softly. “Are you all right?” he said, drawing her to him to keep her somewhat protected and to keep her close.

  “I’m great,” she said, tilting her face up for more kisses. “Life is beautiful when you just accept that you’ve lost your mind.”

  Ryan winced slightly. “Angela, you haven’t lost your mind.”

  “That is exactly what one of my hallucinations would say.”

  He pulled back from her, disturbed by her response. “Do you think I’m a hallucination?”

  “You must be,” she said, sounding wistful. “I saw you as a dragon. Or rather, there was a dragon, and then there was you. I’m broken, Ryan. There’s no getting around it. Something is wrong with my mind, but if it means that I can have nights like this, then maybe I don’t really mind.”

  It was very important that she understand that he was not a hallucination, but proving that to her meant revealing a lot of things he’d never meant to reveal. “Angela, honey,” he said, taking her hands in his. “I need you to keep trusting me, okay? You’re not hallucinating. That dragon you saw—that really was me. I never meant to tell you, because I didn’t want you to be burdened with that knowledge.” He hesitated, then decided to be honest with her. “Actually, it wasn’t really that. The truth is, I’m not supposed to reveal my identity. Not if I can help it. Dragon shifters have lived in Louisiana for a long time. There are plenty of legends about us—that’s inevitable. But we never confirm our existence.”

  She was staring at him, smiling softly, as though she wasn’t really paying much attention to what he was saying.

  “Angela,” Ryan said, more insistent now as he pressed her fingers. “I’m telling you the truth. There are spirits in the world. We can contact them. You know those things are true. There are dragon shifters, too, and I’m one of them. You saw me as a dragon, because Leanna took you over again, and the only way I could get to you in time was to fly to you, swoop down, and pick you up. I put Leanna on my back, and I was flying with her, and then she disappeared and you woke up with me. I know it was a shock. I know it’s too much to take in. But I promise—this is real.”

  Chapter 29

  Angela

  “Yes,” Angela said, nodding along with Ryan as he explained things to her. “Of course. You’re a dragon.”

  She was pacifying him, because it seemed so important to him that she believe that he was real, that he was a dragon, and that all of these things about the spirit world were true. Angela was happy enough to let him believe that she believed, because she had decided to accept that all of her plans, and her logic, and her understanding of the world were pointless and wrong. It was freeing, honestly, to accept that, and she found that she genuinely did not care if Ryan was really a dragon or if she was seeing things.

  He was holding her, touching her, looking at her. She could feel those things and see them with her own eyes. That was all she could count on at the moment, and she was enjoying herself, being so close to him.

  But Ryan wasn’t buying what she was selling, and he took her face in his hands. “Angela,” he said firmly, his tone deadly serious. “I need you to listen to me.”

  “I am,” she said, her fingers curling around his wrist as he stared down into her eyes. “I hear you. And that’s fine, Ryan. Really. If that’s what is real, then that’s fine.”

  “You’re in shock,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “God—I knew that I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you.”

  Angela frowned, perturbed now. “Pardon me. You did not take advantage of me.”

  “You’re in shock.”

  “I’m not in shock,” Angela said, pulling back from him. Maybe she was in shock—it wouldn’t be inconceivable. But she certainly didn’t appreciate him pointing it out. “I just have come to a decision, and that decision is that I can’t fix whatever it is that’s wrong with me. So I’m going to stop worrying about it. I’m just going to …exist,” she said, shrugging a shoulder. “In whatever state I’m in and whatever state the world is in.”

  Ryan shook his head again. “Honey, it isn’t that simple. We have to fix this.”

  “How do you fix something when you don’t even trust your own eyes?” she asked genuinely. “There’s only one thing I trust, and that’s that I wanted what just happened between us. So you didn’t take advantage of me.”

  “I wanted it, too,” Ryan said, tucking her hair behind her ear and drawing her to him again. “I really, really wanted it. Trust me. But I need you to come back to me, Angela. I need you to start fighting again. You’re frozen, and that’s fine, because you’ve experienced a lot in the last few hours. But give me some sign that you’re with me.”

  Leaning in, Angela kissed him. “How about that?”

  He returned her kiss, his lips soft and firm against hers at the same time. But he sighed into the kiss. “Angela …”

  She didn’t know what he wanted from her. Was she supposed to panic? She was tired of panicking. Was she supposed to try to understand? Every time she did that, some new shock appeared. What was it that he wanted her to do?

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” Angela said, taking his hand in hers. “Tell me what to do, Ryan. Tell me how to feel about all of this. Tell me what to say when you tell me again that you’re a dragon.”

  Ryan stood up, drawing her with him. They were both still naked, but the rain had washed much of the marshy mud from their skin. He pulled her to the center of the clearing, both of her hands in his. “What do you see around you right now?”

  Glancing around, Angela saw mainly trees, and she said so. “Trees. Marshy land. Dark sky. You. At least, the shadowy outline of you.”

  “Do you think that’s all real?”

  It was a more difficult question than it should be, but she eventually nodded. “It feels real, yes. It all seems reasonable.”

  “But dragons are not reasonable.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think they are. And spirits …maybe they’re not reasonable either. Which only leaves the possibility that my brain is broken.”

  “You’re missing one key thing.”

  “I am?”

  Ryan nodded, pulling her a step closer. “Maybe your definition of reasonable isn’t the only one.”

  Before she could respond, he had released her again, taking several long strides backward. His skin caught the moonlight that was shining down through the trees, and he looked like a sculpted statute, every muscle in his body perfected and fully on display. Angela felt her instinctive response to him, and her center tightened as her heart rate picked up.

  “Trust me,” said. Then he crouched down and jumped up into the air. For the briefest of moments, he hung there in the air, and then Ryan was gone, and the black dragon whose back she had ridden on returned, its wings unfurling, its head rearing back, and its tail swooping through the air as it steadied itself.

  Angela almost fell backward in shock, blinking her eyes again and again to try to wake herself from the impossible dream or the dangerous hallucination that
she was in.

  The dragon—Ryan, if that was possible—opened its mouth, and a pillar of fire emerged, floating in the air and illuminating the entire clearing. In the light of the fire, the dragon swooped down and around the area, showing off as it did barrel rolls, then surged upward only to plunge down again and pull up only when it was seconds from hitting the ground.

  Breathlessly, Angela watched the dragon’s antics, and when it landed in front of her, she took a step back, more out of caution than true fear. The dragon came closer to her, and she let it, closing her eyes as the dragon’s head nudged carefully against hers. Lifting one hand, she reached her fingers up to skim along the scales on the dragon’s face, and then she looked up into its eyes, staring into the huge yellow beams.

  It looked nothing like Ryan, but she still saw him there. She saw him in the warmth that was emanating from this massive, powerful creature in front of her.

  It was the most incredible experience she’d ever had, and it did feel very, very real.

  “How?” she whispered, asking the impossible question as she stood there, face to face with a creature she would have bet on her life didn’t exist. “How …?”

  The dragon disappeared again, and Ryan stood before her, his gaze wary but hopeful. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Angela said, somewhat dazedly. “Wow.”

  “That’s a very American expression.”

  “The English don’t have an appropriate word for dragons.”

  “Really,” Ryan said, pretending to consider that as he pursed his lips together. “Strange. I thought it was the English who had castles and moats. Seems like the perfect place for dragons.”

  Angela shook her head, laughing slightly. “I can’t believe this.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Oh God.”

  Ryan took a step back from her and lifted one hand. As he did, the jeans he had discarded flew into the air. When he moved his hand to the right, the jeans followed, and when he moved his hand to the left, they followed again. Then he lowered his hand and the jeans dropped.

  “When you came into my office on Saturday, I was rearranging things. What you didn’t see is that I was doing it largely without touching anything,” Ryan said. “I’m a dragon shifter, Angela. I can shift into a dragon, I can move things with just my whims, and my senses and strength are supernatural. My friends—they’re dragon shifters, too. We’re real, we exist, and I need you—need you—to trust me. Can you do that?”

  To her surprise, Angela didn’t have to give it much thought. When she had first realized she was flying on a dragon, of course, she had thought she was imagining things. But there was no way that she could have imagined what he had just shown her. Every part of her was trembling with the impact of what she had seen, and she knew, without a doubt, that it was real.

  “All right,” Angela said, pressing her hands together in front of her in an attempt to steady herself. “Yes. All right. Dragons are real, and you are one.”

  “Yes,” Ryan said, walking back toward her and taking her hands again. “I am a dragon, and you are possessed. Neither of us is crazy, although …I might be a little bit crazy about you. That was a very cheesy thing to say, and I apologize, but it’s true, and I want to kiss you again.”

  Angela smiled slightly, caught in the surrealism but also still swept away by him. “Then kiss me again.”

  Chapter 30

  Ryan

  They had lost valuable time.

  Having to deal with Angela finding out that he was a dragon shifter was not part of the plan, and they spent valuable hours dealing with her shock and her questions.

  Of course, they had mind-blowing sex, too, which was not something he was going to complain about—not at all.

  But taking the time to answer every question about dragon shifters that she could think of had the dual impact of making her more comfortable but also delaying them from finding a solution. It took her a long time to finally circle back to waking up, flying through the air on Ryan’s back. But when she did finally get back there, as the first light of dawn broke through the heavy cloud cover, her face fell.

  “I can’t believe that I haven’t thought about Leanna in hours,” Angela said. She paused, thinking about that for a moment. Then her eyes widened. “God—there was so much blood on my clothes.”

  She stood up, searching through the marsh for the remnants of her clothing. They had remained naked while they talked, even though rain occasionally fell down around them. It was still warm out, and there was no need for cover. Lying together, skin against skin, and talking about anything and everything had been intimate and wonderful.

  At least, they had talked about anything and everything except the two things they needed to talk about most—Leanna and James. They were both haunted by bayou ghosts, and they wouldn’t be able to keep ignoring it for much longer.

  “Blood?” Ryan asked as he watched Angela pull her shirt out of the muddy water. “What do you mean? I didn’t notice any blood on you.”

  She turned the fabric over and over in her hands. “Yes—there was. It was on my skin, too. It wasn’t my blood. There’s not a scratch on me. God, what did I do this time, Ryan?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” he said, firmly. “But if you’re right, we definitely do need to find out what Leanna did because I wouldn’t put anything past her. I think it’s time to leave this little clearing and get back in touch with the world.” He got up, looking down at his naked body. There was still mud on him, where he had been sitting, but there was little time to worry about that now.

  They gathered their things. Angela put on what clothes she had that were salvageable, then added his t-shirt for extra coverage. The rest went into the bag he had brought, which Angela clutched as he stepped back and shifted into his dragon form. She carefully climbed onto his back with his help, and he lifted up into the air to fly them both back to his house to shower, dress, and regroup. There wasn’t enough coverage, with the sun coming up, and he flew as high and as fast as he could, making it home in record speed.

  In his house, they both showered. It only made sense to shower together—to save time of course. Except it didn’t save time, because watching Angela run her soapy hands over her body was irresistible. Ryan made love to her again, pressing her up against the shower wall as she moved ardently against him. He had only had her hours before, but he felt like a desperate teenager again as he took her for a second time, knowing that he could easily take her a third and fourth time.

  With all of the distractions, it was almost 9:00 in the morning before Ryan walked into his bedroom, alone, and checked his phone for the first time in hours. There had been no service out in the middle of the bayou, and he hadn’t fished the phone out of the pocket of his pants since he’d been back at home.

  The thirty-seven missed calls and forty-two waiting text messages gave him a sick feeling in his stomach, and he sat down on the bed heavily, his towel wrapped loosely around his waist.

  He scrolled through his notifications, seeing that most of them were from Barrett, and then, as the hours wore on, messages from the others had come in. Jordan, then Hannah, and then Quentin. All of them were urging him to get in contact with the office.

  The blood that Angela had told him about haunted his thoughts. Her discovery that he was a dragon shifter, and their lovemaking, and long night of talking had completely distracted them both from the reality of the situation they were in, and now it was about to hit them both hard again.

  With a heavy heart, Ryan cleared his notifications, then called Barrett. There was no answer, so he called Jordan. It was a risk, given Jordan’s rather abrupt delivery, but he wanted someone to tell it to him straight.

  And she did.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Jordan said, not bothering with any conventional greetings. “I’m driving to your house right now because nobody can get a hold of you. What were you thinking?”

  “I had to deal with an unexpected situation.”


  “Yeah, well join the crowd,” Jordan said. “Did you know that there was a dead body found two miles from your house, over by the highway?”

  Ryan closed his eyes, that dread in his stomach growing almost unbearable. “No. I didn’t.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “At the house.”

  “And you didn’t see the police all over the highway? I’m driving down the road, about ten minutes from your house, and the road is crawling with cops. I’ll be lucky to get through.”

  Ryan flopped back on the bed, staring blankly at his ceiling. “I flew in from the other side. Got to the house from the back end.”

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “With me.”

  There was a pause on the phone. “And you flew in?”

  “That was the unforeseen circumstance.”

  “Well, your life is going to hell in a handbasket,” Jordan said succinctly. “This girl actually knows you’re a dragon shifter?”

  “Yes. It was unexpected, and it has taken all night to work through it.”

  “You know that she killed this guy, right? I’m passing by the scene right now.”

  Ryan’s jaw clenched slightly. “She didn’t kill him, Jordan. But her spirit probably did. Definitely did, actually.”

  “Right, that’s what I meant,” Jordan said. “Look, you need to act fast. They’re going to find her DNA and her fingerprints, no doubt. And I don’t think being possessed by a spirit is an affirmative defense to murder.”

  “No, it is not,” Ryan said. “I’ve got to go. Are you still coming here?”

  “I’m two minutes away.”

  “See you then,” Ryan said, hanging up the phone. In his frustration, he threw it across the room, and it thudded against the wall. This was all his fault. He hadn’t been there when Leanna took over. He hadn’t been able to stop her fast enough. He’d been caught up in his own issues. In James, who after all these years, was making his presence known.

  And Leanna had killed someone.