Natasha nodded. “I know. I do. I shouldn’t have overreacted that way. I think it scares me a little…how much I like you.”
How could he be upset with her when that was the response he got? Leaning down, he took her mouth tenderly with his, kissing her long and slow and sweet. “Sweet girl,” he whispered. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my entire life. You didn’t just heal my body, you know. You touched my soul.”
She melted into him, her arms wrapping around his neck as she returned his tender kiss in equal measure, both of them tasting and sampling to their heart’s content. Ronan stroked his hand up and down her back, sliding his fingers through her hair and weaving his fingers in the long, silken strands.
“When we get back home, I want you to get a lawyer,” he said, after they had broken apart, still holding each other as their foreheads rested together.
“What?” she frowned at him, not understanding. “Why?”
“Your husband…”
She blinked at him in surprise, then understanding dawned over her expression. “Oh. I suppose that was hypocritical of me, getting upset about your betrothed when I have …Matthew.”
It wasn’t Ronan’s intention to make her feel badly, and he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, stroking his thumb along her earlobe and shaking his head. “It’s not hypocritical. But maybe it’s time, Natasha. You know I’ll protect you from anything. I’ll kill him myself if I have to.”
“I don’t want him dead. I just want him to leave me alone.”
“I can make that happen too,” he promised her. “Will you think about it? I know that it’s scary to consider, but …I don’t want him to have any hold over you.”
She nodded, although she still looked nervous, and Ronan kissed her gratefully. “Thank you. Was Charlotte at breakfast?”
“Yes,” Natasha said. “She said she’s ready to work with you again whenever you’re ready. She woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep, so she’s been doing some cleansing rituals to try to protect her channel to the other side next time she opens it up. I told her that you want to speak to your Nana.”
Stepping back from her, he took her hand. “Why don’t we go find her and give that a shot?”
They held hands as they walked down toward Charlotte’s room, and Ronan knocked lightly on the door, entering when the medium called out to him and finding the woman sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed.
“Come in,” Charlotte said, not opening her eyes. “I’m trying to repair the damage that Josiah Webb did last night. His spirit is very …rough. Jagged.”
“Jagged?” Ronan asked, bringing the chair over from the desk that sat at the far side of the small room and positioning it in front of the bed. Natasha sat down on the edge of the bed, near Charlotte, but Ronan kept his distance, wary of what might be about to happen, however much he wanted to chance to speak to his grandmother. Last night, Josiah Webb had taken all three of them to a dark place, and if he attacked again, Ronan wanted some distance between him and the women. It might not help, but it was the least he could do.
“Jagged,” Charlotte was saying, trying to find the words to explain to someone who had no experience with channeling the other side. “If the channel was like fabric, it would have been ripped. Torn. It would be less effective now, until it was patched. That’s not the right way to explain it, but it’s all I can think of to explain what I see. My bridge to the other side is intact, but it’s worn and weary.”
Ronan nodded. “I understand. Do we need to wait on this?” He didn’t want to, but Charlotte had flown all the way here and was helping him so willingly. The last thing he wanted to do was take advantage of her generosity or put her at risk.
“No,” Charlotte said firmly. “I can do it. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” Ronan said, although the truth was that the prospect of talking to his grandmother again was so overwhelming that he could hardly comprehend it. He already knew that if he wasn’t able to it would be crushingly disappointing.
Charlotte re-crossed her legs beneath her and closed her eyes, laying her hands out and open on her knees, her palms held upward. Ronan watched her carefully, analyzing her face for any hint of change, and he knew the instant that his nana took over the small woman’s body.
It was that faint arch of her eyebrow. The sardonic but sweet twist of her lips. The straightening of her shoulders. They were subtle signs, but Ronan recognized his Nana immediately, and he stood up, walking to the edge of the bed and kneeling there, taking Charlotte’s hand in his. “Nana?”
“My strong boy, all grown up,” Charlotte murmured in his grandmother’s old, worn voice. “Oh my Ronan. To talk to you after all these years. I have waited and waited for you to call for me, and now you finally have.”
His fingers tightened around her hand, his heart pounding in his chest. “Nana. God, it’s really you. I would have called for you so many years ago if I had known. You know I would have. What have you been waiting to tell me?”
“To get on with it,” Charlotte said, passing along his grandmother’s words. “You’ve known for so long that change was to come. Get on with it, my boy. What are you waiting for?”
“It wasn’t the right time.”
“There is never a right time,” Gabrielle Connolly told him, speaking sternly. “I warned you and your father that the clan needed change, and you are the one—the only one—who can bring it about. You are meant to do great things, Ronan. Why do you wait?”
He was confused, and he looked up into Charlotte’s face, concentrating even harder to find the hints of his grandmother there. “I’m trying, Nana. I’m working toward change. I know you can see that. What is it that you want me to do?”
“Believe,” she said simply. “You don’t yet. You’re not sure. You don’t know if what you need to do is possible, and it holds you back. You’re looking for some spell or some event that will change the DNA that makes up your generation of the Dragon Clan, but that’s only because you don’t understand how our ancestors brought about change. They did it through determination. Not through magic.”
Frowning, Ronan squeezed Charlotte’s fingers, trying as hard as he could to keep his Nana there with him, where she could explain. “Nana, I do believe. Of course I do. And you know as well as I do that our ancestors consulted with witches from all over Ireland to learn how to control the curse.”
“Yes,” Gabrielle said quietly, through Charlotte’s lips. “They did. And you will need help as well. But first you must help yourself. If you want to have children—Dragon children—with humans whom you love …then just love them. Love them and take them with your intention to mate. Once you do that, all you need is someone who can put that intention into reality. You want it to be hard, because it will be significant, but it is not hard, my boy. It is not hard.”
Ronan could feel her slipping away from him, and he grabbed harder onto Charlotte’s hand, desperate to keep her with him. “Nana, I love you. I miss you. You and Mom and Dad. Are you all right there? Are you happy, wherever you are?”
Charlotte smiled slightly. “Your father is still a workaholic. He paces, watching you. He is proud, and so am I. But do not waste any more time looking to the past for who you are. Create your intention within yourself and then give that intention power. That’s all you have to do. That’s all it will take.”
He didn’t know what she meant, but he would search to the ends of the earth to figure it out. “I will,” he promised her. “Nana, can you see Natasha?”
“Your beautiful beloved?” Charlotte smiled more widely this time. “She is perfect, Ronan. She is for you. I love you, my boy.”
And then she was gone, and Charlotte returned. Ronan let the woman’s hand slip from his and bowed his head, emotion washing over him. He had spoken to his grandmother, and she had told him that she loved him. It had been many years since he had gotten to hear those words. Her instructions, he didn’t fully understand—not yet. But her words
of connection and comfort and love, those would always stay with him.
After a moment of silence, granted to him by the two women in the room to allow him to regain control of himself, he looked up at Natasha and smiled tenderly.
“I told you that she would like you.”
Natasha flushed, biting her lip to hide her own smile. “She seems incredible. I…want her to be right about us. Is that crazy?”
“Yes,” Ronan said. “But I have every intention of setting my intention on you.” Getting up, he walked over to her and pulled her into his arms. “After all, you’ve walked into my life and saved me over and over. Body and soul. If that’s not confirming my intent …I don’t know what is.”
Natasha lifted onto her toes and kissed him softly, and he cupped her cheek.
“Thank you for giving me the idea to call for her,” Ronan said quietly. “You will never know how much that meant to me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Natasha
It was sixty-two degrees outside, and the wind that came in off the seas forced Natasha to pull her wrap closer around her to ward off the chill. She was standing on the cliffs of Donegal with Ronan beside her, gentle Irish sun peeking through the cloud cover to highlight the gray-blue sky above. The water shimmered in front of them, and the black rock and rugged face of the cliffs made the sight all that much more impressive. It was like nothing that Natasha had seen before, and she was content to stand there next to Ronan, soaking up the beauty and the experience.
His hand reached for hers, their fingers lacing together. “I’ve always felt that if I came back to Ireland, I would understand everything about who my ancestors were and what they went through.”
“And do you?”
Ronan shook his head. “No. I feel connected to the land. To the sea. To the air. But Patrick O’Donnell is as much a mystery to me as he ever was. I want to be him, but in this generation. How can I, if I don’t understand him? If I can’t talk to him.”
He was struggling with so much more than the curse that lived in his body. Ronan was searching for his inner leader, for his identity, for his grounding, guiding light. Natasha didn’t understand why, because she saw all of those things in him already. “Ronan, maybe your Nana was right. Maybe you have everything you need already. It’s good to be connected to your roots, but you don’t need to be the next Patrick O’Donnell. You just need to be …you.”
Ronan looked at her, his thumb stroking over hers. “Maybe I’m not the leader that everyone thinks I am, Natasha. Back in the days of our ancestors, there were people who had so much determination and drive that they changed the world. What have I done? How am I supposed to do this unless I learn from them directly?”
Turning toward Ronan, Natasha took both of his hands in her own. “You have learned from them. You’ve grown up hearing about them, haven’t you? They’ve inspired you. But that’s all they are, Ronan. An inspiration. You—” she took one hand and tapped his chest. “You have what you need to make this happen for your people. It’s in you already. Your Nana sees it and so do I. Even if I’m new on the scene.”
“Do you think we shouldn’t have come here?”
Natasha looked around them at the incredible beauty and shook her head. “No, I think you needed to. You needed to see it for yourself. To walk on this ground. To exchange those few words with Patrick O’Donnell. To find the part of you that lives here and always will. And now, now it’s time to leave it behind and go back home, knowing that this will always be in you and knowing that Josiah Webb, Abigail, and anyone else in the world can’t stand in your way.”
Turning her face back toward his, Ronan slid his hand into her hair and bent his head, kissing her with warm, supple, soft lips that sent tremors of feeling through her. “I love you,” he whispered into the kiss, one hand sliding down her back to rest just above the curve of her backside.
The words made her shiver as much as his touch did, but he didn’t give her a chance to reply, intensifying his kiss as he picked her up and lay her down in the damp, cool grass.
“We can’t,” she managed to gasp, as he slid his hands beneath her shirt. “You’ll be sick.”
“I don’t care.”
There was no way to argue with the certainty in his voice, and she didn’t want to anyway. They undressed each other, hardly breaking the kiss the entire time, and they made slow, shuddering love in the open Irish air, their eyes, hands, and bodies locked as they moved together. If Natasha had doubted his words at all, the look in his eyes would have eradicated that doubt and left her equally as sure that she felt the same way. They hadn’t known each other long, but they didn’t have to.
Ronan was the other piece of her soul that she had been walking around without. He brought so much with him—a whole new world that she would have to get used to. But he was more than worth it. She would happily spend a lifetime fighting off enemies from all sides as long as she was the one who got to fly away, safely perched on the back of her strong black dragon.
“I love you too,” she gasped as her climax hit her, making her insides quiver and her body clench around him. “I love you …”
They lay there together, catching their breath after their lovemaking, and Natasha ran her fingers through Ronan’s thick waves, reveling in the feeling of his skin against hers. They didn’t have to speak as they lay there, both of them understanding without words that this moment was the beginning of the rest of their lives together. There were so many obstacles they would have to overcome—his curse, Josiah Webb and his connection to the woman Ronan was supposed to marry, and even her ties to Matthew, which it was time to sever, however much that scared her.
There was so much to overcome, but she had no doubt that she and Ronan could handle it.
“Look,” he whispered, and she opened her eyes. “Do you see that too?”
Natasha looked over in the direction he was pointing, and over on the edge of the cliff, shimmering intangibly, were the sleek, powerful forms of a whole herd of dragons. There were so many that she couldn’t count them all, and they ranged in color from brown to red to gold to silver to black to blue. They were majestic, their strong tails rising into the air, their long, powerful necks extended, and their wise faces turned up toward the sky.
The one in front turned to look at them, and Natasha looked right into his eyes. It was Patrick O’Donnell, though she had no idea how she could have possibly known that. He looked all the way into her soul, it seemed, and then he turned away from her, stretched out his wings and led the herd right off of the cliff, all of them soaring into the air and flying in perfect formation.
It was impossible to look away as the dragons glistened in the soft sunlight and flew through the air as if they owned it. Natasha watched them as they got further and further away, her hand reaching for Ronan’s and pressing hard. It was only the look on Ronan’s face that finally drew her gaze away from the distant dragons, and she felt her heart swell within her as she saw the total awe in his eyes and the resolution in his expression.
When the dragons had finally disappeared, he turned to her, and with his voice thick with emotion, he said, “Let’s go home. I’ve seen what I needed to see here.”
~~~
“Mom?” Natasha walked into her mother’s room with caution, knocking loudly on the door even as she called for her. There was no telling what one could find in Rosemary’s room, particularly before noon, and it was a dangerous proposition to even attempt to enter. But Natasha needed her mother, and she was done waiting for the right time to talk to her about what she needed to talk to her about. She might have only returned from Ireland hours ago, but she knew what she needed to do. “Mom?” Natasha called, trying again as her eyes cut back and forth across the rather messy room. She could easily have been walking into her teenage daughter’s room, instead of her mother’s.
“I’m here!” Rosemary called, poking her head out of the walk-in closet adjoined to the bedroom. “I was answering you the whole time, s
weetie. Welcome home!” Rosemary hurried over to Natasha and wrapped her up in a big bear hug. “Oh my! I can tell you had quite the adventure!”
Natasha flushed slightly, hugging her mother back, but then easing away. She had always suspected that her gifts had somehow come from her mother’s family line. Rosemary seemed to have some sort of intuition that she had never really explored or capitalized on but that always let her know when something was different. And from the tone of her mother’s voice, Natasha knew that Rosemary could sense that she and Ronan had been together.
It wasn’t something she was going to talk to her free-love, free-everything mother.
“Mom, I need to talk to you,” Natasha said, guiding her mother to the bed and sitting her down. “And I don’t know if you’re going to like everything I have to say.”
“Oh, I’m in trouble again.”
“No,” Natasha said, shaking her head. “It’s not that. Mom, we need to talk about Matthew.”
Instantly, Rosemary’s sunny, fresh, innocent demeanor vanished, replaced by a dark fury that rarely reared its head but that definitely did live within the woman. “What has he done now?”
“Nothing,” Natasha told her, already nervous, outside of her concern over her mother’s potential reaction. Rosemary despised Matthew, with obviously good reason, and she was not the kind of woman who believed in censoring her emotions or reactions just to remain socially appropriate …or in good legal standing. It was a miracle that Rosemary had not already hunted the man down and destroyed him.
“Then why are we talking about him?”
“Because I’m ready,” Natasha said quietly. “I’m ready to divorce him. And I’m scared, Mom. I’m scared about his reaction …just about talking to him again. I’m scared of reliving that terrible time. I need you to help me, and I need you to understand that doing something crazy to him is not helpful. I just want to divorce him and be done with it so that I can move on with my life.”
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