by Jadyn Chase
He started to stand up. I shot out my hand and yanked him back down a lot harder than I intended. He slammed into the chair and every muscle tensed to fight.
I held up both hands. “I’m sorry, man. Just don’t do anything rash—not yet. There may be a way to stop her from running the story. Let me deal with her.”
“What makes you think you can sway her?” he demanded. “You’re the one who let her find the place.”
I jabbed my finger into his face. “Hey, fuck you, man. I’ve been running my ass off these two few days trying to cover for us all. I didn’t sleep last night saving you and your sorry Clan from the Lynches, and I spent all day today trying to steer her clear of the site. She found it anyway, so sue me if you want to. That doesn’t change the fact that we have to do something about this.”
He flung himself back in the chair. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”
I blew out a heavy breath. “Go back to Parrot’s Perch and destroy all the evidence. We can’t change the fact that she saw it, but we can stop anyone from corroborating her findings. Get rid of all the skeletons and as much of the ash as you can find.”
He took another long pull of his beer. “I suppose we should have done that last night.”
My shoulders slumped. “It doesn’t matter now. Just get it done and leave her to me.”
“Are you sure, man?” He studied my face closer than I liked. “You don’t look so good. Maybe you’re not thinking this through.”
“I’m all right,” I told him. “I’m just tired after last night. I gotta go home. Just…. tell your Dad I’ll handle her. I’d rather keep any drastic action as a last resort if you catch my drift.”
“I understand, man,” he replied. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”
He studied me, but I could only hang my head and stare down at the tabletop.
“Are you all right, man?” he asked in a much softer voice. “You look like hell.”
I closed my eyes. All of a sudden, the overwhelming pressure of the last thirty-six hours caught up with me. I didn’t know if I could bear it. “I’m really sorry, man. I let it get away from me, and now it’s your Clan under the gun. I should have been on top of this.”
“From what you said, you were on top of it. You did what you could to stop her finding it, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know she was going to Parrot’s Perch,” I told him. “She said she wanted to go to Horseshoe Falls and I knew she wouldn’t find anything there.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and startled me alert. “Listen, man. None of us knew how this was gonna go down. Like I said, we should have cleaned up the mess last night. It’s not your fault. Now go home and get some sleep before you fall over.”
I nodded and hauled my aching carcass to my feet. I dragged my heels out of the bar and back to the Jeep. Now that I got the whole catastrophe off my chest, oppressive exhaustion and alarm hit me like a ton of bricks.
The worst thing about it was that it wasn’t over. I still had to face my Pop with what happened. I had to own up that I blew it. I put not only my own Clan in danger, but the Hodges, too. Hell, the whole dragon race would catch it from this.
I had to come up with a way to stop Louise breaking that story. I had to find out what she did with those pictures, and I had to head her off at the pass.
I started the motor and drove out of town. I headed around the mountain and up the long driveway to the Ridge. The instant I crossed the entrance gate to our home compound, my blood ran cold when I spotted Pop standing in the middle of the yard.
He talked to another man in close conversation. When I pulled the Jeep to a stop, the stranger turned around. My heart plunged into my boots when I recognized Marvin Hodges.
I yanked the parking brake up and peeked up at the two men. “Pop?”
He waved me toward him. “You’re just in the nick of time, son. Marvin here was just telling me about last night.”
I climbed out of the Jeep and prepared myself for the axe to fall. “I’m sorry, Pop. I tried to tell you. I came up here first, but you weren’t here so I had to go to the Gorge on my own.”
“Never mind that.” He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Marvin told me the whole story. You did well. I’m proud of you.”
I glanced at Marvin. “So…. did you come all the way down here just to tell him that?”
“Unfortunately not.” Marvin’s face darkened. “We have a bigger problem.”
“The Lynches are on the Ridge,” Pop told me.
I froze and my eyes bugged out. “They can’t be!”
“Apparently,” Pop went on, “that dragon you killed last night was Weston Lynch. He’s the oldest son of Roman Lynch, their new Clan Chief. They’re out for revenge now, so a bunch of them are parked over on Cursed Crag. It looks like they plan to turn their efforts to us, now that you blew the element of surprise for them going after the Hodges.”
I looked back and forth between him and Marvin, but their faces remained serious. This was all horrifyingly true. One fight wasn’t enough for the Lynches. Now they had to come and piss on my doorstep.
I almost apologized again, but before I had a chance, my Pop gave my shoulder another squeeze. “Come on, son. We’ve got work to do running those halfwits off our land, and I need you in the line. Come with me. We’re bringing out the whole Clan, and we’ll hit them hard as soon as the sun goes down.”
“If you don’t mind,” Marvin interjected, “I’ll bring my boys down here to help out. Luka helped us last night. Now I’d like to return the favor—with your permission, of course.”
“By all means,” Pop replied. “Your people are always welcome here.”
Marvin nodded. The next minute, he launched into the air. He levitated ten feet off the ground and flung his arms out on both sides. In an instant, mighty wings thumped the air and a huge black dragon took off into the sky. His tail undulated with the pulsating rhythm of his flight and he soared away over the Ridge towards the north.
Pop put his arm around my shoulder and walked me to the house. “Marvin says you got injured last night. Why didn’t you come home and get treated?”
“I’ve been…. you know, busy.”
He pushed me through the door. “Go up to your room, son. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I tiptoed through the silent house. All my brothers would be out at work, and my Ma was nowhere around. I climbed the stairs to my own bedroom and sank down on the bed. Much as I ached to sleep, constant tension racked my nerves. I couldn’t close my eyes for an instant. I had to remain on watch against anything that might go wrong.
I had to manage this Louise situation, and kissing her and touching her face like that didn’t help. The whole debacle got mixed up in my mind so I couldn’t tell if I had to protect my Clan from her or her from my Clan.
Pop might know about the raid on Parrot’s Perch, but he still didn’t know about Louise. I had to tell him. I couldn’t rest with this dragging on my conscience.
A moment later, he walked into my room and sat down on the bed next to me. He nodded to me. “Take your shirt off, son.”
I peeled off my t-shirt and flinched. The burn hurt a lot worse than I wanted to admit, but I never had a chance to treat it. I got back to Norton at sunrise, just in time to meet up with Louise.
He swirled his finger in a jar of ointment and rubbed it on the burn. I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists against the pain, but when he finished, it really did feel better.
He scraped the leftover ointment into the jar and screwed on the lid. Then he stood up and pushed me back onto the bed. “Go to sleep, son. I’ll wake you up later when we need you.”
I snatched his wrist to stop him from leaving. “Pop!”
He studied my face and murmured low. “What is it, son?”
The words rushed out of me in a desperate race to escape my tortured soul. “There’s a reporter in town hunting up a story about dragons. She found the skeletons from the fight last night. She g
ot pictures of them. I…. I’m not sure what to do about it.”
“It’s all right, son,” he whispered. “We’ll work it out one way or the other. We always do. Now go to sleep. Just looking at you makes me tired.”
He slipped out of the room without a sound and closed the door. The moment he left, the bed towed me down into the black pit of slumber. I rolled onto my back so the ointment wouldn’t get on the sheets.
Once I laid down, I couldn’t imagine ever moving again. Gravity glued my arms and legs to the bed. My mind drifted into a hazy world of half-ideas. In the middle of it all, the vision of Louise floated into my consciousness.
I saw her the way she looked at the Falls right before she kissed me. Her burnished copper-red hair shone in the sun. Her deep hazel eyes widened ever so slightly in anticipation, and her pupils dilated. Her lips quivered and parted to taste my mouth. A delicate hint of color swept over her cheeks.
The immaculate rapture of her body pressed into mine. My hand followed the gentle curve over her hip to her rounded ass. God, she felt so good under my hands! Then her mouth closed over me and pulled me down into nothing. I fell asleep with her body in my arms and her tongue in my mouth.
11
Louise
I exited the Watering Hole to find Luka sitting in the passenger seat of his Jeep. “Are you ready to go?” I asked.
“Ready when you are.” He took hold of the ignition key and turned the motor. “Where are we going today?”
I slid into the passenger seat. “Actually, I don’t have anywhere to go today.”
He jerked around to stare at me. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t have anywhere to go. I’ve been here a week and I’ve investigated all the sites on my list. I’ve seen them all and documented them all.”
“Are you saying you’re finished?” he asked. “Are you leaving, then?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m still here.”
He glanced down at my handbag. “Did you already write your story?”
“That’s the weird thing. I haven’t written it. My editor is on my tail every day to send him some copy, but I still don’t it. I didn’t send him the pictures, either.”
He sank back in his seat. “Oh.”
“I kept thinking about what you said about the dragon clans protecting their own. I’m not worried about them coming after me, but think about it. If the world finds out, they’ll go after these dragons. They’ll never leave them alone to live in peace. These Clans must have lived in this area for generations and never bothered anybody. They must be normal people except for being dragons.”
He stared through the windshield. “You’re right. They are.”
“Then why should their lives be ruined by a news story? They probably just want to live their lives. My story would destroy them. Wouldn’t it?”
He nodded in silence. How did I know he would understand all this?
I sat back. “Anyway, I don’t have anywhere to go to work on the story. I was thinking we could just go…. somewhere—if you want to, that is. If you don’t, I understand. I know this was always just a job for you.”
He jerked around and glared at me. “This was never just a job to me. As long as you’re here, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“Anywhere but Parrot’s Perch, right?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. I shouldn’t have said that. I should just let it go.
He winced and made a face. “I shouldn’t have done that. I can think of a dozen better ways I could have handled that without lying to you.”
“I understand now why you did it. I don’t blame you. I can see why the world finding out about these dragons wouldn’t necessarily be the best thing for everyone involved.”
He seized the wheel. “You’ve got a job to do. If breaking the story is what you have to do, I won’t try to stop you.”
He kicked down the clutch and backed into the street. In a few seconds, we motored out of town and into the mountains. “Where are we going?” I shouted over the engine.
“To the lookout,” he called back.
I didn’t say anything else. The wind whipped my hair into my face so I had to hold it aside to see anything, but I didn’t mind. Driving like that with the air rushing around my head made me indescribably happy. I couldn’t understand it, but subconsciously, I didn’t need to. I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing.
On any other day, I would have said being a reporter tracking down a story was what I was supposed to be doing. I had no story to track down now, and I found myself happier than I’d ever felt in my life. I didn’t need anything more than to just drive.
I didn’t keep track of where he took me. I didn’t care. All the responsibility of getting the story right and fact-checking every detail fell away. Nothing mattered but this sheer ecstasy of the elements. The wind, the cool woods, the Jeep’s wheels rumbling over bridges and bouncing through ruts—what more was there in the world beyond this?
Luka braked to a halt on the same plateau where he brought me before. He got out and waited for me before we walked to the precipitous overlook. The cliff plunged straight down and vanished among the treetops.
Luka sat down. He took my hand and drew me down next to him. I settled on the bare rock and looked out over the Ridge. It cast a different atmosphere over me now. It no longer scared me. It didn’t strike me as dangerous or foreboding. It wasn’t trying to kill me or even drive me away. It only wanted to protect itself and its people from outsiders who would harm it.
Luka kept hold of my hand, but when I looked up at him, he gazed off into the distance. He didn’t notice me. “Penny for your thoughts,” I ventured.
He shook his head and looked down at his shoes. “It’s nothing to speak of. It’s just some business going on at home.”
“I suppose you can’t tell me about it.”
“I wish I could. I really do. I wish I could talk to someone, but I can’t.” He sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Sounds like it. Is there anything I can do?”
He shot me a sidelong glance. “I could ask you not to run that story, but I won’t do that. I know you couldn’t change your stripes if you tried.”
I stared at the side of his head. Change my stripes? What did that mean? Was I so set in my ways that I would run a story no matter the consequences to anyone but myself? Was I that selfish?
When I first came to Norton, I probably would have said yes. I put my career before everything else. Now I wasn’t so sure. What kind of a tiger was I? What kind of stripes did I wear that wouldn’t change?
I put so much stock in my career. I put in extra hours without pay. Maybe that’s why I never had a serious boyfriend before. My career took priority over everything else. Now here I was without a story and I found myself questioning everything.
I didn’t tell Luka that, though. I wasn’t ready to turn my back on this story. If I did, I would have to turn my back on my whole career. I would probably never work as a reporter again.
This story presented a watershed moment in my life. I had to take a stand, and I would fall on one side or the other depending on my decision. I wasn’t ready to make that choice yet. For now, I just wanted to enjoy the moment.
Luka offered an alluring temptation to forget all the cares of the world. Here we sat, the two of us, our fingers intertwined, miles from anywhere without a house in sight.
Why did I ask for his thoughts if I didn’t really want them? Did I really care about anyone but myself? Every moment with him confronted me with myself. I couldn’t leave this Ridge the same person as I was when he drove me here.
How fitting that I should face this realization with him at my side. Who else should bring me to this turning point? He meant enough to me to expose the cracks in my façade.
What did he mean to me? How could he mean anything to me? I kissed him a few times. In the week since I first came to Norton, we traveled arou
nd to all the sites listed in my reports. Each time he dropped me off, he kissed me goodbye until it became the accepted thing to do.
I never found any other smoking gun the way I did at Parrot’s Perch. The longer this went on and the more times I told him I still didn’t file the story, the more he relaxed. He joked more and seemed to enjoy our time together.
That didn’t make for any significant relationship, did it? It made a nice time with a stunning guy who could kiss like nobody’s business. He electrified me but he never let his guard down, not completely.
Then again, neither did I. I kept waiting for him to make the first move. What did I really expect him to do—fall down on one knee and promise eternal love? Not likely.
He startled me out of my reverie by murmuring into my ear. “Louise?”
I turned toward him. “Yeah?”
“Do you think….?” He broke off and didn’t finish his sentence.
I regarded him and waited, but he didn’t say it. The pregnant silence implied a hundred things he might have said. It whispered hidden possibilities into my mind that planted the seeds of all kinds of ideas.
His angular visage hung inches away from me. His sea-green eyes mesmerized my whole attention and sucked me into that maelstrom of heady confusion where nothing made sense. His body whispered to me to put my arms around him and feel him all the way into his bones.
As if by magic, he put out one hand and cradled my cheek in his broad, protective palm. In a dream, my mouth floated towards him and collapsed into the abyss of kissing him.
Would kissing him always be like this? Would it always blow my mind with Earth-shattering intensity? How could it if I left to return to Savannah?
I never wanted this to end. I wanted to swim in the tide of emotion with pleasure sweeping over me. I wanted his hands on either side of my face seeping their mastery into my brain. I couldn’t think when he held me like that. I didn’t want to think. I wanted to forget everything I was and everything I knew. Nothing mattered more than belonging to him.
The instant he let me go, I crashed back into harsh, unforgiving reality. I became a hard-boiled reporter again with nothing more important in my life than the next story.
