by Tasha Black
Being Johnny Lazarus had been the focus of his adult life.
It was the reward for the years he’d spent honing his craft, locked up learning the guitar, writing the songs, finding his voice. It was the release in a life spent caging the dragon in his chest.
But being Johnny Lazarus wasn’t worth anything in a world without Neve Whittaker. Whether she ever spoke to him again or not.
All these thoughts moved through his head faster than the fire licked the ceiling.
He was ready to give way to the dragon now. It had been so long, he didn’t know what to do.
Neve coughed behind him.
The demon sailed out of its coiled shape right at her mouth.
“Johnny,” she cried.
Help us, please, he begged the dragon.
He half expected the disdainful voice to call him boy.
Instead, he felt the urge to stretch. Something wrenched and gave way in his shoulders and then something ripped out of his back.
The leathery wings buffeted the hot air in the room, as he felt the top of his head hit the vaulted ceiling above.
He cried out in surprise but the sound turned to a bellow. His face elongated until he could see the silvery scales of his own snout sparkling in the firelight.
Neve screamed, reminding him of his purpose.
He managed to hurl another fireball at the thing before his hands turned to claws.
The demon blew apart again. It was vulnerable now.
Johnny opened his mouth, appreciating the heavy feel of the long, sharp teeth inside.
Then he breathed a jet of intense red flame.
Pushing his powers a bit he turned the flame blue, then white as he sang out a deep bellowing song.
The demon’s scream echoed in his head - and then a moment of silence before walls of the room exploded outward from the force of the blast.
It was gone.
27
Neve went numb with terror.
The smoke didn’t burn her lungs anymore and she couldn’t feel the floor under her knees.
Her heart beat so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything else and for that she was glad.
She had just watched Johnny Lazarus turn into a dragon, and she was pretty sure she was screaming loud enough to shatter glass.
The dragon towered above her, his enormous mouth yawning open to display a mouthful of arm-sized teeth.
He was both more beautiful and more terrible than any dragon in a children’s fairy tale book. His scales shimmered madly, seeming one moment silver and the next red. Was it the fire reflected in him? She looked more closely and saw a thousand tiny frightened versions of herself staring back with wide eyes.
She cringed away, wondering how any of this could be real. First the smoke creature, and now this.
Maybe she had died in the fire already, and this was hell.
Problem was, her heart shouldn’t be soaring with pleasure at the beauty of the dragon. Even as she cowered before him, her chest was filled with pride at his cold beauty.
Why should she feel proud of him?
He was going to eat her.
As Neve looped her conflicting thoughts back and forth in her mind, the Johnny-dragon moved swiftly and decisively forward - shooting fire at the strange smoky thing.
Impossibly, the dragon grew larger still, his head smacking the vaulted ceiling. He was big enough to smash through the roof of the building if he wanted to.
He opened that big mouth again.
A river of fire shot from it.
The smoky thing disappeared completely.
The walls exploded.
Suddenly, there was no room around them. Instead, she was in a tent.
No.
The dragon had sheltered her beneath its wings.
His wings.
Johnny’s wings.
She could still see the rosy pink of the fire through the translucent leathery skin.
In here she was safe.
No. No, he was probably about to eat her.
She felt faint and put out a hand to steady herself.
Under her hand the impossibly silky scales of his chest were cool to the touch. Muscle rolled slightly beneath, molding the scales against her hand.
She looked up in surprise and he lowered his snout to her.
She cringed lower.
Then she saw his eyes.
Oh.
Once again, she felt as she had the day his music had called her to him and for a moment she’d seen into his soul.
There were no barriers between them.
Neve gazed into the creature’s enormous amber eyes and knew that this was her Johnny.
He lowered his head further and rolled his eyes backward.
“What?” she asked him, half expecting him to answer.
Instead he nudged her gently with his snout.
Did he want her to…?
He snuffled impatiently, and settled his head even flatter on the floor before her, nudging her feet.
Very carefully, she walked around his head and approached his neck. It was about the size of a pony - she could probably sit on his neck and wrap her hands around him somehow.
Gingerly, simultaneously hoping she didn’t hurt him while realizing how ridiculous that was, Neve climbed astride the dragon.
His cool scales felt good between her legs.
As soon as she locked her arms around him she felt his muscles contracting as he gathered himself.
Then he let go.
She expected him to soar through the roof, but instead he headed toward the wall of glass.
“No, Johnny, you’ll hurt yourself,” she cried. The glass was an inch thick.
He smashed himself against the glass with all his might.
It gave way instantly.
A rush of cool air embraced them both.
Then they were falling.
Down, down, off the cliff.
For all that she had survived the fire and the weird smoky thing and the dragon, Neve was going to die like the coyote in the roadrunner cartoons.
Then she felt a roller coaster sensation in her belly as they reversed directions.
She clung to Johnny’s neck as they soared. Up and up they went, back past the plumes of flame and smoke of the sanctuary.
The building was lost - there would be no saving it.
Some part of her mind wondered fleetingly how quickly McGrath could rebuild.
But the reality of the scales beneath her and the beating of wings that smelled like sun-kissed leather pulled her back into the present.
She expected him to carry her around the building and deposit her back on the lawn.
Instead, his wings began to beat harder.
They were flying higher into the air, away from the building, and toward the water.
She was scared, they were at a dizzying height and she clung onto him with all her strength.
But she also tried to enjoy every instant. Neve planned to live a long life and this would probably be the most exciting moment of it.
The night air cleaned her lungs and cleared her head. The sky was a velvet black here, above the street lights and spot lights. The stars seemed so bright against it.
At first she didn’t dare look down, but after a few minutes of the steady beat of wings and muscles, she felt steady enough and brave enough to risk a glance.
It was as if a twin universe were below them. Stars danced and the moon glowed in the waves.
She brought her attention back to the dragon.
She lowered her face to rest her cheek on the smooth scales.
She felt his muscles roll slightly to mold his scales to fit her in an oddly human gesture.
The world was not what Neve had thought it was.
It was larger, a layered thing, filled with magic, filled with potential when you looked beneath the surface.
As Neve considered the possibilities, a mountain appeared before them.
The rhythm of Johnny�
��s wings slowed.
The puffy green surface below got closer, then became individual trees, then Neve saw the green triangle of meadow.
She closed her eyes when he landed, but she barely felt it when it happened. He’d been hurling through the sky, then landed as smoothly as a cat hopping off a chair.
She opened her eyes to see the long grass of the meadow shimmer in the light of the moon.
Johnny lowered his head and she clambered off his neck and onto the ground.
She turned to see if she could spot a house nearby, but there was nothing but grass and trees for miles in every direction.
When she turned back, Johnny was Johnny again.
He stood before her naked, his tall, muscular frame looking oddly small for once.
The breeze brushed his dark hair against his cheek. Otherwise his face was perfectly still. He studied her, his golden eyes as bare as his body.
28
Johnny stood as still as a statue as the breeze blew his hair across his face. He waited. He would wait here an eternity if he had to.
She had come back for him.
Knowing her own life was on the line, angry at him, and confused about the mixed signals he had been giving her, she had come back into the burning building for him anyway.
Until this point, so many of the kindnesses she had shown him could have been ascribed to wishful thinking. After all, she was a nurse and duty-bound to help him.
But what she did tonight went well beyond any sense of duty.
She loved him. Even if she hadn’t realized it yet.
At least she had loved him.
Now that she had seen what he was…
Anyone would be repulsed by that, and there was no way she would ever love him now.
But for Johnny, it was enough that she had loved him once.
He gazed in wonder at the beauty before him, her dark hair shining in the moonlight. Most women would have been running or cowering. Even now, she stood before him, studying him with those large brown eyes.
To have been loved by such a woman, even for a short time, would be enough.
Though even now, he couldn’t help but hope.
After all, even a mouse being fed to a python was allowed to hope.
He ventured a smile, cheating a little and giving her the crooked one that drove the crowds wild.
She smiled back at him, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
And then she was walking toward him, her eyes luminous, her face softened by relief and he hoped by happiness too.
“Johnny,” she sighed, calling him by his nickname for the first time, though he doubted that she realized it.
He folded his arms around her in reply.
She went on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck. When he pulled her closer, she shivered a little in satisfaction, snuggling into his chest.
“I’ve got you,” he assured her, struggling with the lump in his throat.
“I thought,” she wept into his chest. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’ve never been more alive,” he murmured into her hair. With her in his arms at last, his heart soared higher than his wings could ever take him.
“But, you… You…” she interrupted herself to accuse him, letting go of him and stepping back.
He let go of her, though he missed her sweet warmth immediately.
“You turned into a dragon,” she said, angrily wiping the tears from her face as she stared at him incredulously.
“Yes,” he agreed, trying to keep up.
“That’s what you were hiding,” she continued.
He nodded.
“Is that the real reason you were in rehab?” she asked.
“Yes, I thought I could… stop being a dragon,” he replied, knowing how stupid it sounded, but not wanting to make her angrier by taking too much time to explain.
“You lied,” she added.
He nodded again, slowly.
“Why would you want that?” she asked.
“I never wanted to lie to you,” he said immediately.
“No, not that,” she said impatiently. “Why wouldn’t you want to turn into a dragon?”
“Because I want to be a man, a human,” he tried to explain. “I want to have a human life.”
“Well, great thinking. If you hadn’t turned into a dragon we’d both be dead.”
“If it weren’t for the dragon, there wouldn’t have been a fire in the first place.” He looked away, unable to meet her eyes. “What happened tonight was all my fault. I destroy things. I could’ve hurt a lot of people.”
“But the fire wasn’t your fault,” she insisted. “You were fighting with that…thing. I saw you.”
She might be right, but Johnny had a feeling it would be a long time before he convinced himself of that.
“And you didn’t hurt anyone,” she insisted.
That was true. Even when the dragon was fully in control, he had never felt the urge to harm anyone - only to protect.
“You saved me,” Neve said, realization dawning on her beautiful face. “Again.”
She was beginning to understand everything, and so was Johnny.
“You turned into a dragon that day at the island.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway.
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you do that to save me from the shark?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah,” he admitted again. “I did.”
“But you don’t want to be a dragon, you want to be a man, huh?” she asked.
“Well, not right then,” he admitted. “Right then I only wanted to protect you. And so did he.”
“Who?” she asked, looking around in confusion.
“Uh, the dragon,” Johnny said sheepishly. He’d never really talked like this outside of his family. “We almost never agree. Well, except about one thing.”
“What thing?” Neve asked.
The dragon laughed in his head.
Go on then, boy, tell her.
“About you,” he admitted, staring boldly into her eyes instead of looking away as he was tempted to do.
She stared at him for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity.
Then she laughed.
Her laughter rang out and echoed in the empty hills, and Johnny thought again of church bells, as he had that day on the water. He’d thought that wonderful sound might have been lost to him forever. And in that instant, he knew he would give his life to hear it again.
Well, go on, boy, she’s yours, that’s your sign. Take her before she gets mad again.
The dragon sounded as if he might like it if she got mad again.
But Johnny wasn’t going to waste time asking.
He stepped through the grass to take his love into his arms. He was laughing too now, and smiling so hard he could feel the tears in the corners of his eyes.
He had been alone with this secret all his life, alone in a crowd, alone in success, alone in defeat. Only his siblings shared his burden. Now his lonely watch was over. And though he hadn’t defeated the dragon, he had found a reason to respect it. Whatever obstacles faced him, he would face them with Neve, the bravest most capable person he had ever met, by his side.
She was pressed against him again now, so small and warm. She smelled like herself, amplified by sweat and tears and laughter, and seasoned with fire.
Johnny breathed her in, intoxicated. He needed to get her someplace warm and comfortable. Every instinct told him to carry her away to a safe place, and claim her right away. The drive was so strong he could hardly think.
Neve’s arms snaked around Johnny’s neck again and she lifted her face to brush his lips lightly with her own.
His body surged with violent desire in response to her gentle kiss.
He slid one hand behind her head, and kissed her savagely, his other hand curving around her ass and pulling her closer, so that she could feel the press of his throbbing cock against her belly.
She moa
ned lightly, enflaming him further.
There was no way he could wait. He needed to shelter her, pleasure her, and then fill her with himself. The demand was irresistible.
He lifted her in his arms, noticing how her legs wrapped around him automatically, how perfectly her curves assimilated his lean muscles.
He began to carry her across the meadow, in search of a safe place.
“Please,” she murmured into his neck.
“What is it, babe?” he asked her distractedly.
“Please, I need, I need to hold you,” she said.
But he knew what she really meant.
29
Neve floated in a haze of desire.
Johnny held her close, his eyes almost unfocused with his own need.
He was carrying her someplace, where she had no idea, since there seemed to be nothing for miles.
“Please,” she said again, burying her face in his neck.
He froze in place, and then she felt him sink to the ground with her in his arms.
Gently as if she were a newborn, Johnny laid her down in the tall grass.
The sky was black behind him, and he seemed to glow with the same luminescence as the stars. Her mind told her it was an illusion, probably the result of the tears in her eyes.
But in her heart, Neve knew that wasn’t true. The glow was there to tell her he was the one - that he was hers and she was his.
He lowered himself to her, curling one hand over her forehead in a protective gesture, the other caressing her cheek.
“Neve,” he said, as if her name were praise.
Her heart ached and his touch soothed her soul, but she needed more, needed him.
She reached for him, and he lowered his head to kiss her slowly, gently.
Frustrated, she took his lower lip between her teeth and licked it.
He growled in response. His hand disappeared from her cheek and pushed her top up over her breasts. She sat up a little so he could pull it over her head.
He pushed her down again and released the front clasp on her bra.
She could hear his intake of breath when he saw her breasts. Hoping to hurry him along, she arched her back, offering them to him.
He fell on her with a growl, nuzzling and licking at her taut nipples.
