The Dragon From Paris_A Sexy Dragon Romance

by JJ Jones

  “Jesus, I guess so. Seems like that threshold gets a little lower all of the time.”

  “Sure does. You’re what, thirty-three now? Thirty-four? It only goes downhill from here, I can tell you that for sure.”

  “Oh good, something to look forward to.”

  “I keep telling you, Chase, you need to find a good woman, settle down. If you want something to keep you grounded that’s the way to go. A woman will do that for you whether you want her to or not.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “No, but I’m serious, son. Don’t you think about it? You’re old enough, you’ve got a well-established job, any woman would be lucky to have you. And then we could finally get a grandkid or two, maybe.”

  “Sure. Sure I think about it, Dad. It’s just not as easy as all of that.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “OK, then you tell me why. Tell me what has changed so drastically since me and your mother got together.”

  “You know this, Dad. We’ve talked about it.”

  That comment was met with silence on the other end. This was a conversation the two of them had been through many, many times and one Eddie Bends didn’t like to have on the phone. He was skeptical about the phone lines and the government’s involvement with them and as he loved to remind Chase, he should know. He had been involved with the military in one capacity or another for more than half of his life. Chase knew his father, knew that he was a man of hard set rules that he had zero intention of breaking.

  Not ever, not for anyone. One of those rules, the one that the whole Bends family knew to be the most important, die-hard rule in their patriarch’s existence, was that they did not discuss the true nature of what they were, over something as far from being secure as a cell phone. But he did know that there was something different about growing up in a community of shifters the way that he and Chase’s mother had compared to the way Chase had grown up.

  It was something they never spoke of, something that Chase hadn’t heard either of his parents speak about since the morning of the pancakes, but Chase and Katie had never been allowed to put down roots for long enough to know what it mean to form a lasting, meaningful relationship.

  They hadn’t even learned how to do it with friends, not even with family members outside of their immediate family nucleus. How the hell were they supposed to make it work in any kind of a romantic capacity? But in every family there were things you simply did not say and in the Bends family this topic was one of them.

  They had tried it before, on more than one occasion, and the result had been disastrous. It opened too many old wounds, brought too much of their history together into question. So instead of pushing the issue, Chase took a deep breath that had a shake to it he sincerely hoped his father could not hear and shut his eyes to keep himself calm.

  He might have even lit one of his emergency cigarettes right there in the apartment if he hadn’t been so sure that his dad would have heard the lighter and started in on a lecture about the stupidity of smoking. Not that he didn’t love a good fight from time to time, but that was not why he had called. He needed to talk to Katie and chances were that bringing her up would conjure up more of a fight than he could handle.

  “Well, OK, suit yourself. It will be what you make it. The grandkids will just have to wait. Not too long, though, unless you want us to die without the privilege.”

  “Jeez, Dad, you really know how to set a guy on edge.”

  “You know, I believe I’ve heard that before. In fact, if I had a dollar for every time I ever heard that, I would be one of the wealthiest men alive.”

  “I bet. I have no problem believing that for a minute.”

  “So what did you call me about, Chase? I can tell you’ve got something on your mind.”

  “That’s true, I do. It’s about Katie, Dad.”

  Silence. Absolute, dead silence. Chase had thought he had been prepared for that but it still felt like a punch to the gut. He felt nauseous and close to tears, just like he had as a little boy. It was amazing how a parent could do that to you no matter how old you got or how far away you thought you had moved from where you came from. That whole idea that you could never go home again was, in Chase’s opinion, utter bullshit. He didn’t even have a childhood home and it seemed like he was never going to be able to get away from home. When he was little, he would never have wanted to, but that was before everything got so complicated.

  “Dad?”

  “I heard you. Why are you calling about her, Son?”

  “She’s my sister. She’s your daughter, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Watch it. You just better watch it now, boy. You may be in your thirties but I’m still your father.”

  “You’re right. I apologize. But still. She’s still Katie, right? At the end of the day, whatever happened, she’s still Katie.”

  “No, that’s where you’re wrong. She made her choice. She made her choice and when she did she chose to leave this family behind. I’ve got one child now, and that’s you. You’re going to have to live with that and if you can’t you’re going to have to talk to someone else about your sorrow. I don’t have a space for her in my heart any longer.”

  Chase opened his mouth to retaliate, feeling a deep, painful rage moving up his body, but before he had a chance to say a word he heard angry words in the background of whatever room his father was in. Then the phone fumbled so that he thought for a minute he was going to get hung up on, and then he heard the soft voice of his mother on the line.

  “I’m sorry, you’ll have to forgive your father’s abrupt exit. He’s clearly not in the appropriate place to be talking to you.”

  “Hi, Mom,” Chase laughed, feeling a pure kind of love washing over him, “it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice. You sound tired, though. Are you taking care of yourself?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to. I guess I don’t always do the best job, but I’m trying.”

  “You’ll get there. I have to believe that and so do you. It’s the only way in the end, isn’t it? Now. Tell me, Chase. Tell me about Katie. That’s why you called, right? Something’s wrong.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know. It’s just this dream I had, you know? Just a dream but it felt so real. I was looking for her and I knew she was out there but there was something else out there too. Something bad.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “No, and I don’t even have her number. I was hoping you could tell me that you have it.”

  “I wish. If your father ever found that here he would light it on fire. But I’ll tell you what, if you’re dreaming a thing like that, you need to be very, very cautious.”

  “For Katie?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, but maybe not. You’ve always had this uncanny way of predicting a thing before it happened, only you didn’t always get to it in the clearest way.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, maybe Katie’s the one in trouble and maybe you are. Maybe she’s trying to warn you. She always did her best to look after you, up until we all fell apart and she took off the way she did. But just because she left doesn’t mean you two aren’t still connected, honey. Maybe she’s trying to keep you safe the only way she can right now.”

  “I miss her, Mom.”

  Chase heard the way his voice broke, felt his body tingling with emotions he made a point of not feeling, and for a minute he wished he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even made the phone call to begin with. But the silence his comment was met with was different from the silence he had experienced with his dad.

  This was a silence that spoke. This was a silence that told him that every bit of pain he carried over his sister’s estrangement from the family and fall from grace was something his mother carried as well. They were allies, comrades in arms in the same uphill battle.

  Not for the first time it occurred to him that maybe it
was his mother, not his father, who had been the real backbone of their family. If not the backbone then certainly the heart. He knew it because he could feel the way it beat for him and Katie both. He could feel it no matter how many miles he put between the two of them.

  “I miss her too, sweetheart. I do, and I think we’ll get her back sometime. I believe that and I need you to, too. We can’t give up on her. Even if your father has.”

  “Never. Not a chance. I’ve been thinking. With the way things are in my job, the kinds of connections I have, I think I could find her. I can’t say that for sure, but I think I can. If I could make that happen, would you want me to?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Even if it meant making Dad angrier than he’s ever been at any of us?”

  “Chase, I love your father very much, but Katie is my daughter. I gave birth to her and there is not a force in this world that would make me give her up. Not even your father.”

  “OK. Then I’ll see what I can do. Just do me a favor, OK?”

  “Anything.”

  “Just be careful, and watch out for Dad, too. As much as he’ll let you. If that dream could mean danger for me, it could just as easily mean danger for you guys.”

  “I will be. We both will be. I love you, son. Don’t you forget it.”

  “Never. Love you too, Mom.”

  It was a good way to end what would otherwise have been a very painful conversation. He could still see the day Katie had left home, the day she had started to leave the family entirely. She had been only seventeen and at that point they had moved three more times after the day when she told the family she hated them. They had never shared a room after that house, had never shared anything the way they had under that tablecloth fort in the banquet hall where their parents were like gods.

  His mother had said it was because they were getting too old for things like that, but he knew the real reason. They didn’t trust her any more. She may have been only twelve, but she had caused a schism that she could not undo. Both Katie and their dad were people with good hearts but also people who were unbelievably stubborn. They had begun a game of chicken that day on the stairs and neither one of them had been willing to back down.

  The day the twenty-one year old boy in the old beat up Camaro and the cigarette hanging out of his mouth pulled up to take Katie away for good, that was when Chase had thought his dad would forfeit the game to save his daughter, but he hadn’t said a word. He had let her go and she had slowly receded from their lives until there was nothing left but the memory of a person.

  It was funny how a thing like that could happen (except not really funny at all), how a person could just stop existing entirely. It was one of those things that happened so slowly you didn’t even notice and then, by the time you saw what had gone on right underneath your nose, it was a problem that seemed impossible to fix. It was one of those things that was all but invisible before it was the thing screaming into your ear so loudly it was difficult to hear anything else.

  At this point, Katie was little more than a ghost. And it would seem that she was Chase’s ghost because even now he could not shake that dream. He laid back on his bed, closed his eyes, and tried to conjure her up, to somehow make her more real.

  “What is it, Katie? What are you trying to tell me?”

  With his dream still so fresh in his mind, half of him expected to have an answer spoken back to him from somewhere in the empty room but there was nothing but silence. Wherever his sister was, it was not in this apartment with him. He got no answer at all except for the faint sound of traffic outside of his window.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Where the hell have you been, brother? What, you decide you’re too good for us now? Moving through the ranks too fast? Shit, pretty soon you’ll be so far above us all that you won’t be able to see us any more. You’ll just be flying high above our heads.”

  Chase smirked to himself, the irony of that particular comment not lost on him, and leaned up against the bar to get the bartender’s attention. She was a pretty little thing, a girl he definitely didn’t mind talking to, but one he had already slept with a time or two without it really going any place.

  Looking at her talk and flirt with the other men in the bar, most of whom were Navy SEALs just like himself, he wondered if it was her or him that had put the brakes on things. It all seemed a little bit blurry now; it had been months and months since the whole dalliance had taken place, and there had been a woman or two since then.

  He was almost positive there had been some other men for her, as well. At least he would have been surprised if there hadn’t. She was a petite little blonde with big green eyes and an easy open smile, one that many men of all walks of life responded to.

  It was a shame, really. He thought she was a girl he could have liked, if things had been a little bit different. Maybe he could have given her a nice life. She could have stopped tending bar (but only if she wanted to) and after a while they would have moved in together, made it official. They could have gotten hitched and had a kid or two, finally given his mom that grandbaby she wanted so badly.

  They could have had a nice life but it was a life that could only have taken place in a parallel universe. Who knew? Maybe in a different universe they had that life. Maybe they were living it right at that very moment. Didn’t make much of a difference in the end. The fact of the matter was, he wasn’t just a normal guy trying to make things work with some girl.

  He was a man who was sometimes a beast, a man who was also a dragon and he knew that would not build a life that would work for most women. Not for any women, if he was being honest with himself, not any women who weren’t also dragon shifters.

  And despite having asked both of his parents separately and together, he could find no evidence of there being any dragon shifters out there who were not in his family. They had both told him to find a trustworthy woman he could tell about himself to and then he wouldn’t need her to be a shifter, but Chase just couldn’t see doing that. He couldn’t see dragging someone who would otherwise have a normal life into his freak show.

  “Well, as I live and breathe. Is that Mr. Chase Bends I see standing there before me? I thought you were a figment of my imagination, like maybe I got so bored one day I just conjured you up to entertain me for a while.”

  “Hey there, Brianne. It’s good to see you. I guess it has been a little while, hasn’t it?”

  “More than a little while. You decide you’re too good to drink with us these days? Out drinking with the high ranking men and women? Sitting at tables with white table cloths?”

  “What kind of bars are you envisioning here?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a pretty little laugh that reminded him of the way she looked when she was naked, “swanky ones? I’m just playing. It’s good to have you back, though. What can I get you? Usual?”

  “That sounds just about perfect. Thanks, sweetheart.”

  She sashayed off to get him a longneck and a shot of bourbon and he turned to survey the room, watching his comrades in their assorted bar room activities. He always loved being here with these people, the men in his team. Having never had a real place to call a home, having these people he could easily trust his life with was the closest thing he had ever found to it, outside of his nuclear family of course.

  It was his own little band of brothers and he would do anything for them, die for them if need be. He had come very close to doing so, actually, on more than one occasion, just as many men in their circumstances did. And yet here they were, drinking a little bit too much and talking a little bit too loudly in their own version of Cheers. It wasn’t everything a man looked for in life but for Chase, at least for now, it was enough.

  He was as happy as he ever expected to be while having to conceal the thing that truly made him who he was. And who the hell knew? Maybe someday he would be able to reveal his shifter nature. Maybe someday he would be able to show these brothers of his that he was both ma
n and dragon without them becoming utterly terrified of him.

  But for now, for now it was enough to drink his shot and sip his beer and listen to the stupid shit his friends thought up to say.

  “Yo! Chase! What’s with that face?”

  “What face? You mean this beautiful mug my mamma gave me? You talking about that face?”

  “Oooh, sure. Just like a supermodel, aren’t ya? Lucky motherfucker right here. We’ve got ourselves a genuine Greek god, that’s what we’ve got. Shit, we should all be bowing down right here and now.”

  “Alright, alright,” Chase laughed, clapping his buddy Mitch on the back good naturedly, “I think you’ve made your point. I’m a pretty guy.”

  “Sure,” Mitch scoffed, “pretty stupid.”