Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  It was strange for her to feel that way, because she had always treated sex fairly casually, enjoying the physical pleasures of life without getting too tied down on a personal level. But something told her that, with Julian, it would be different.

  “You’re having doubts,” Julian said quietly, as she stood there in front of him, thinking too much, not knowing what to say, and not knowing how to just walk away. His expression was sad, but accepting. “Okay. I’m sorry. I won’t push it.”

  “Don’t look like that,” Siobhan said, shifting uncomfortably. “I just…I need to take a shower. That’s all I’m saying right now.”

  He nodded, offering her a smile. “I get it. Go on then. I’ll rifle through your drawers. I mean, the kitchen drawers. Not your…” He gestured toward her waist.

  Siobhan laughed, grateful that he wasn’t going to get bent out of shape about some perceived rejection that she wasn’t giving him. A few days ago, he definitely would have. “I’ll be back.”

  She slipped away to her bedroom, stripping off the overalls and tank top that now needed to be washed and walking naked into her bathroom. She turned on the water as hot as it would go and stepped under the spray, letting it work out the lingering soreness in her back and wash the city’s summer grime off her skin. Shampooing her hair, she massaged her scalp at the same time, and then took extra care with moisturizing her skin and making herself as smooth and sweet smelling as possible.

  It was just for self-care, she reasoned, refusing to admit that it could have anything to do with the possibility that she still might spend the night with Julian. He was a hard man to resist, and she wasn’t entirely sure why she was trying to fight against what had been so natural just a few hours ago.

  If she kept standing in the shower, she was not only going to use up all the hot water but continue to have the same loop of thoughts in her brain, again and again and again. She turned off the water and stepped out, wrapping a towel around her as she shook out her long hair and finger combed the waves back into place.

  Letting her hair airdry, she walked into her bedroom and pulled on a pair of blue cotton shorts and a matching tank top, leaving the bra and the panties out of the equation. It was a risky move, given his mood and her own temptations, but it was what she always wore around her house, and she once again excused her actions as making herself comfortable and happy rather than admitting that there was a seduction factor as well.

  When she walked back out to join him in the living room, damp hair hanging down her back, face freshly scrubbed, and long, tanned limbs on display, his reaction was more than satisfactory.

  He looked up from her fireplace mantle, where she kept her few, minimalist decorations and pictures, took one look at her, and swallowed hard, averting his eyes almost immediately. “All better?”

  There was a catch in his voice that put a skip in her heartbeat, but Siobhan didn’t show it. “Yeah, feels good. If you want a shower too, you can use it now. I just don’t have any clean clothes for you.”

  “Maybe later,” he said, still not looking at her. Instead, he remained intent on her pictures of her and her friends and her parents. “These are your mom and dad?”

  “Yeah,” she said, walking a little closer and looking at the picture of the three of them on Georges Island one afternoon. “They’re great. They live about twenty minutes from here. Retired.”

  “They look young to be retired.”

  “Yeah, we retire young,” she said. “Dying early is a genetic thing in my family.”

  He looked at her in surprise, and she supposed she could understand why. It was so natural to talk to him at this point, that she wasn’t being as careful. All members of the Dragon Clan tended to die young, somewhere around their early sixties, because of the toll that a lifetime of transitioning took on their bodies. They had full lives, but shorter lives, and some of the older generation died as early as their late fifties. Some younger, although health problems like cancer and heart attacks really didn’t affect the Dragon Clan members’ bodies the same way.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Morbid. How are you feeling by the way? Are you hungry?”

  “I’m a lot better than I was,” Julian said, setting the picture down and walking back to the couch to take a seat. “And I’m starving, actually. If you have food on hand, I can cook.”

  She laughed out loud, grateful for the joke to break through the unspoken sexual tension that lingered. “That’s funny.”

  “What? What’s wrong with my cooking?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “You’re great. But I don’t keep food here. I can’t remember the last time I went grocery shopping actually. I pick up a few things here and there, like milk and cereal to keep on hand. Ice cream. Chips and salsa. Those are MacFaddan household staples. And some frozen meals sometimes, or deli sandwiches. But that’s about it.”

  He laughed too, shaking his head. “Okay, maybe I should have known that. We can order in then. What are you in the mood for?”

  You.

  The one-word answer to his question, thankfully, stayed in her head. Most of her thoughts came right out of her mouth, but that was one she managed to edit. Instead, she suggested, “Pizza?”

  “Works for me.”

  They ordered pizza, one half with pepperoni and sausage and one half with extra cheese, and Siobhan opened both of them a beer as they settled in on opposite sides of the couch, facing each other.

  “So,” Siobhan said, after a moment or two of silent sipping. “Tell me how you felt about today. How everything went down. This is your first time with something like this, so it must have been…different.”

  He chuckled. “Uh, yeah. It was different. Let’s say…it brought up a lot of…stuff.”

  “Stuff.”

  “Stuff.”

  Siobhan rolled her eyes, taking another sip of her beer. “Okay, don’t go typical man on me. Explain. Stuff meaning…what?”

  Sighing, Julian got more comfortable on the couch, stretching his long legs out, his socked feet almost, but not quite, touching her leg. “Well, for instance, when we were chasing the Kia, and you were driving like a bat out of hell. I kept flashing back to those moments just before I fell into the canyon, when I was so sure that I was going to die right then and there. Those are memories I’ve largely refused to think about, ever since I got out of the hospital.”

  She wanted to make a joke about him being dramatic for thinking that her driving could have killed him, but she decided not to, nodding instead. “Yeah, I can see that. I know what it’s like to think you’re going to die, and it’s terrifying.”

  He seemed as surprised by her genuine response as she was internally, but pleasantly surprised. “It was. And yet…at the same time, I felt very removed from it all. There was fear, but there was also this sensation of watching myself from a distance. Almost as though that, too, was a vision. Except it was real, and it happened, and it could have ended my life. I don’t know why I was lucky enough to live through it, especially given why I was in the situation in the first place.”

  “Why were you in the situation in the first place?”

  Julian glanced at her, and Siobhan was sure that he had heard her, but he didn’t answer her question, continuing instead with his train of thought. “It just hit me all over again today, even though I didn’t think that you were going to kill us—mostly. And I realized that I do have my life, even if the results from the accident changed it forever. The accident gave me visions, but it didn’t take my physical health from me.” He paused, taking a long swing of his beer. “It might take my mental health.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked, frowning. “Your visions don’t make you crazy.”

  “No. But tapping so strongly into the emotions of other people who are crazy might.”

  Siobhan set her beer down on the floor beside her and leaned her arm along the back of the couch, propping her head on her hand. “Well, that’s a concern, yes. You scared me today, for sure. You
weren’t you. You have to learn to control that.”

  “Well, no kidding,” he said, throwing a hand out in a frustrated gesture. “But easier said than done. What I felt in that moment was as real to me as what I feel in this moment.”

  She knew better than to ask him what he felt in this moment, and she sidestepped the opportunity. “I know that, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to try to separate the two. Otherwise, you will go crazy.”

  “Always the comforter,” he said dryly.

  “I don’t believe in false comfort,” she told him, lifting a shoulder. “And if you don’t figure it out, then it’ll be bad. So just…figure it out. I’ll find you help for it. Ophelia, for instance.”

  He nodded, staring down into his beer bottle, then taking another thoughtful swallow. “Do you think that this case will just go away now?”

  “Yes,” she said honestly. “I think that Grayson will find that Xander is mentally ill, and they’ll keep them there until he gets better …or at least until he can be trusted not to be a danger to anyone. It worked out.”

  “And Melanie is safe.”

  “Melanie is safe,” she agreed, raising her bottle in long-distance cheers gesture. “Mission accomplished.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  The question had been hanging there between them ever since they had left the parking lot of the mental hospital, and now it was finally out in the open for them to discuss. Siobhan knew that it was a discussion that would be considered, by most people, to be way too intense for the level that they were supposedly at. They had only known each other for a few days, and the most natural thing to do would be to just see what happened. They could hang out tonight, say goodbye, and wait for one person to call the other to get together sometime.

  It shouldn’t have to be hard.

  But it was, because things had never been just lowkey between them. From their combustible first day together to the passion that had erupted earlier that afternoon, they were both intense in the highs and lows.

  “I don’t know,” Siobhan said, looking over at him as they faced each other from opposite ends of the couch. “You still have visions. I’m still an investigator. It seems to me like we might find our way to working together again. If you work with Ophelia, then I can be involved with that.”

  “None of that is very personal,” he pointed out, looking down into his beer. “But maybe that’s on purpose.”

  She sighed, letting her head fall back on the arm of the couch and staring up at her ceiling. “Personal isn’t really my strong suit. I like you a lot more than I thought I would, based on when we first met. I can tell you that much.”

  “Well, I have something to tell you too.”

  That sounded ominous, and Siobhan picked her head back up, raising an eyebrow at him. “I swear to God, if you get emotionally complicated on me right now…”

  He cut her off with a look. “No, come on. I’m being serious. I want to tell you about the vision that I had earlier today. The one that I couldn’t talk about at the time. I think it means something—I just don’t know what.”

  Interested, Siobhan sat up, drawing her legs up to her chest and nodding. “I’m listening.”

  Julian blew out a breath before he spoke, as though he was bracing himself to tell her something deeply intimate. “It was the dragon,” he said quietly, and Siobhan’s heart stopped in her chest. “The golden one from the other vision—the one watching Xander from the window of the warehouse. But this time, it was just me and the dragon, and it came toward me, nuzzling me with its face and using its wing to lift me up onto its back.”

  She felt like she couldn’t breathe as she watched the peaceful look settle over Julian’s face. The golden dragon from his vision—her. He was having visions of her, and he wasn’t afraid. He looked blissful, and in the moments after his vision that morning, he had been so moved that he couldn’t talk about it.

  “It flew with me and settled at the top of a tree, overlooking the edge of the forest and out over the ocean. I think we were only there for a few minutes before the vision faded, but it felt like an eternity,” Julian murmured. “It was like I was lost in her…” He blinked in surprise at himself. “I don’t know why I just said that it was a her. Maybe it was just…too intimate for it to be a man. Is that bad?”

  Licking her dry lips, Siobhan shook her head. She had to say something—anything—to avoid looking like a total fool and arousing his suspicions that she knew more about these dragons than she was letting on. But she was speechless, unable to comprehend how he was having these visions and not knowing what they meant. Were they visions of the future? Was he experiencing their future life together before they’d known each other so much as a week?

  The doorbell rang, saving her from an immediate response. She leapt up off the couch, almost knocking over her beer in the process, and hurried to the door where she took as long as possible to check the pizza, sign the receipt, and talk with the pizza delivery girl standing there.

  “It must get hot out there, delivering pizzas in August,” Siobhan said, as the girl started to walk away, ready to get on to her next delivery.

  “Uh, sure is,” the teenager said, giving a polite smile over her shoulder and continuing down the hall.

  “Not our hottest August ever this year,” Siobhan called after her. “I’m sure that’s a nice break, isn’t it?”

  This time, the girl just looked over her shoulder and then hurried out the door that would lead her back to the apartment parking lot. Siobhan was left standing in her doorway, steaming hot pizza in hand and an impossible situation waiting behind her. She bit her lip and, still carrying the pizza, went into the kitchen and began rustling around for plates and napkins and forks, stacking them all up on the pizza box she was still holding with one hand.

  “You’re freaked out.”

  Siobhan whirled, almost dropping her armload of dinner supplies. She had been so intent and her thoughts so muddled that she hadn’t heard Julian move into the kitchen behind her, but there he was, a sad look in his eyes, and a distance in the way he was holding himself.

  “No,” she lied. “No, of course not. The pizza came.”

  “And you quizzed the girl on her weather experiences,” Julian pointed out dryly. “Come on, Siobhan. You’re the queen of blunt honesty. Yeah, it’ll crush me if you don’t believe me or if you think it’s stupid that I’m seeing dragons, but since when do you care about that?”

  She frowned, wondering if she liked the implication of his words. Yes, she was blunt, but she wasn’t that callous, was she? “Let’s sit down,” she said, balancing too many things in her arms. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Julian. Just give me a minute.”

  He reached out and took the plates from her, turning around and walking the short distance back to the couch. Siobhan followed him, sitting on the far side of the couch and putting the pizza box between them. Not meeting his eyes, she opened the box and picked one of the pepperoni and sausage pieces for herself, cheese melting and dripping off the crust as she slid it onto her plate. Her stomach growled, and she took a large bite, the grease and cheese flooding her senses for a moment and allowing her physical needs to overcome her emotional turmoil.

  Siobhan finished half the piece of pizza before she spoke. “I don’t think you’re stupid,” she reiterated. “And I don’t disbelieve you. It just surprised me. That’s all. It was a surprise.”

  “A surprise?” Julian said skeptically. “How surprising could it have been after I already saw a dragon once?”

  “Well, don’t you think that it means dragons are real?” she asked, covering for her personal connection to the situation by distracting him with the fact that he had to come to terms with the possibility that these large, magical creatures really did exist.

  And she really, really needed to see his reaction to the possibility that these large, magical creatures did exist.

  “Part of me thinks so,” he said quietly. “I guess
that it’s possible that the dragon is symbolic of something else. But that doesn’t really match with what I’ve seen so far. And I don’t know if it’s predictive.” His eyes went wide. “Holy crap, it could be predictive. I could really do that someday.”

  “How would you feel about that?”

  “Amazing,” he said, shaking his head as he set his pizza down on the plate, seemingly mesmerized by the thought. “To really experience that? God. I wasn’t afraid at all, Siobhan. It was so…peaceful. I went back to in my mind, later, when I needed help sectioning off Xander’s emotions from my own, and when I thought about that golden dragon again, I just felt so…safe.”

  Siobhan set the crust of her first piece of pizza down on her plate and stared at it, her mind racing. He wasn’t afraid. He thought it was amazing. He was having visions of her without even knowing it.

  How many more signs did she need to tell her that she had been so, so, so wrong when she wrote him off as the last man that she could ever possibly be with. He was the one. He had to be her one. There was no other explanation—was there?

  She looked up at him, his eyes full of questions that she wasn’t ready to answer yet until she’d had more time to think. He might be her fated partner, but she wasn’t ready to tell him all of that or even process it for herself yet. The knowledge was too big, the pressure too intense, and the timing far too fast.

  So Siobhan did the only thing that would press pause on the questions on the tip of his tongue.

  She set her plate on the ground, stood up, then lowered herself into his lap, taking him by surprise as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Julian

  Siobhan was a confusing woman, and her reaction to his decision to tell her about the dragon he was coming to think of as his own guardian angel had not been what he’d hoped for. But she was also a woman that he was mesmerized by, and now she was in his arms on the couch, her body beneath his and the pizza box on the floor as they kissed again and again, hardly coming up for air.