by Lily Cahill
Mrs. Maxwell was a short, plump woman, and very obviously mortal. She glared at her husband and pointed down at Ramona. “This is your mess, Clarence.”
“Our mess. I may have worked the magic, but you were the one who found that ancient potions book in the first place! You came into the store, raving about how it was the answer to all our problems. It was your idea, and you’ve been with me every step of the way.”
“Please. We both hated her. She turned our daughter into an addict. We were trying to protect Tania, and if we cleaned up the streets of some other PD user, well. Neither of us were going to cry about it.” Mrs. Maxwell scoffed. “Finding that book was a stroke of luck.”
Ramona started to push up on to her hands, but both of them took a step toward her, so she stopped.
She felt almost too confused to be afraid. Her head throbbed, and it made it difficult to keep her thoughts in order. She’d been talking to Billy Lasseter, and then there’d been a voice and the word had gone dark.
The Maxwells were involved in all this, but it was hard to think past her raging headache to figure out how. Mr. Maxwell—Clarence, apparently—had sworn that his son didn’t sell drugs, but he must have been lying. He had to have known. But how had he tampered with the drugs Joy had been given without his son realizing?
“Please,” Ramona said. “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone.”
Lies. She would tell everyone, but she had to get away first.
Mrs. Maxwell tapped her foot impatiently. She was a few inches taller than her pixie husband, and she was frowning at Ramona like she had done something terribly wrong. Which was ridiculous, because Mrs. Maxwell was apparently a party to kidnapping.
“You couldn’t have let well enough alone, could you? You had to keep poking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted, had to keep asking questions.” Mrs. Maxwell huffed angrily. “The girl didn’t die, anyway, so who cares about it?”
“Maybe we should stop talking,” Mr. Maxwell said, an edge in his voice.
His wife didn’t seem to notice. Or if she did, she didn’t seem to care. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like we can let her leave.”
Ramona’s stomach flipped, and that combined with what she was beginning to suspect was a pretty terrible concussion made her lean over and vomit on the floor.
She wiped at her mouth weakly. Unconsciousness was beckoning her, but she railed hard against it. She needed to stay awake, she needed to escape. She needed to figure out what had happened.
Joy had hung out at the store with Tania, picked up some potions ingredients for her sister, bought her drugs, gone back to Tania’s ….
The ingredients. They’d smelled funny, hadn’t they? And gone bad quickly … and they were the only things that Tania and Zeke hadn’t touched that Joy had.
It had never been the drugs. The timing of Joy’s passing out after taking PD was probably just coincidence. She’d been infected hours earlier, when she’d made that purchase.
Her eyes flew wide as it all came together. The Maxwells had to have had the potion ready, just waiting for a chance to slip it to Joy. They had wanted Joy dead for getting their daughter hooked on Pixie Dust ….
And now they wanted her dead, too.
Mr. Maxwell was holding a silver knife. His petite features were screwed up in sympathy.
“Sorry about this,” he said, raising the knife above him.
Chapter Nine
Blayze
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER WAKEUP CALL that involved Arryn accosting Blayze with his foot.
“Fuck off,” Blayze murmured into his pillow. He was so tired. He’d barely slept at all the night before. He kept thinking of the things he and Ramona had said to each other, the way they had treated each other.
He’d sworn to never hurt her, and then he’d said the things he’d known would hurt her the most. She’d done the same to him, sure, but two wrongs did not make a right.
His instinct was to seek her out and make things right, but the memory of her slamming the door as she left, her face twisted with rage and pain, kept him from moving. She didn’t want him to go after her.
She didn’t want him.
The pain of it was unbearable. Blayze had never loved someone like this before; he hadn’t known it was possible. And now he’d found her, the girl he hadn’t known he’d been waiting for, and he’d—alienated her, called her names, pushed her away…
Arryn kicked at him again. “You’re on my couch, asshole. You don’t get to tell me to fuck off.”
With a sigh, Blayze sat up. The dining room was still set up the way it had been last night, food and all. It was all cold and congealed now. Another wasted effort for La Mignonette. If they ever found out about it, all of the Dragomir brothers would be banned from that place.
“Good news for you,” he said, trying not to sound like the sad sack he was and failing miserably. “I’ll be heading back to the city tonight.”
Arryn sighed. “Operation Grand Romantic Gesture was a failure?”
“A resounding one, actually.” Blayze dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You could stop acting like such a baby, for one.”
Blayze looked up, glaring at Arryn. “Hey, pal, I just got my heart broken, and—“
“I didn’t say it!” Arryn shook his head and pointed behind Blayze.
Blayze turned. There was a witch sitting at Arryn’s kitchen table. The feast, which had looked so horrible a moment before, was freshly restored to its peak form. The witch, with a mess of wild gray hair and a crazed expression, was working on sawing at a piece of meat.
“What the—“
She held up a hand, and suddenly Blayze realized he knew her.
Weeks ago, when Damien had convinced them all to trust Felicity, he’d done so in front of a strange witch who spoke in riddles and claimed to have written the prophecy that had dictated the Dragomir brothers’ lives.
She’d disappeared as soon as she’d helped them, and no one had heard from her since. It had been strange, of course, but Blayze had figured worrying after a witch who didn’t want to be found was pointless.
And now here she was, glaring at him as she primly ate a bite of coq au vin.
“I don’t know what you’re looking at me for,” she said, sounding cross. “I’m not the one acting like an idiot, so I shouldn’t have to be gawked at.”
“Where the hell did she come from?” Arryn whispered.
She trned to look at him, her gaze sharp. “You’ll find out later. It’s not your turn. When love brings a young heart age, and a hurt soul comfort. That’s not you. That’s him.” She pointed at Blayze. “Although he’s not acting like it right now, moping like a thirteen year old with his first crush—“
Blayze got to his feet. “Now, listen—“
“No, you listen. She is in grave danger. She has solved two mysteries today, one about how to live, and one that will bring only death. You must save her.”
Everything inside of Blayze went cold. “What?”
“She went back to the beginning of the second mystery. You will find her there. Only then can you rewrite your story and become the man you ought to be.”
“I…” His mind was flying in a hundred directions. What did all of this mean? The beginning? “I need to know more.”
Arryn’s voice cut through the flurry of his thoughts. “Blayze, she’s gone. Do you know what she was taking about?”
Blayze looked up, but Arryn was right. The table was empty, the food once against cold. The only difference was that one of the place settings had been disturbed, and a dirty fork lay on a plate.
She’d solved two mysteries—life and death? Had she rethought what he said, about not being really alive without love and trust and connections?
And death—Joy’s case? The second mystery. He’d contracted her at her office, but—the beginning of the case, of the real investigation, that had been at the general store.
It was a gamble, but h
e was fairly certain he knew what he needed to do.
He ran, and the moment he was out in the street, he changed.
It had been too long since he was a dragon, but there was no time to enjoy it. Running to Ramona would have taken ten minutes—ten precious minutes, when she was in danger! Flight, however, got him to the Maxwell General Store in a minute flat.
He could hear the screams of people below him, cars slamming on their breaks to get a glimpse of him as he flew by, but his mind barely processed any of it. He didn’t care about the attention. All he cared about was getting to Ramona.
He landed on the roof of the store and heard the building shake beneath his bulk. His Firestarter clicked in his chest, but fire was messy and dangerous—if Ramona was inside (and she was, he knew she was—he didn’t know how he knew, but he trusted that instinct), she could get hurt.
Instead, he scrabbled across the sloped roof to the edge, where he hooked his powerful jaws around the overhand and pulled as hard as he could.
There was cracking, splintering, and then the roof came free.
It felt to pieces in his mouth, crashing in around him, and he beat his wings once to hover above the destruction.
Below him, three tiny figures peered up.
There was a knife in one of their hands, and Ramona was half-conscious on the floor. Debris was scattered everywhere, their faces tiny and awed at the powerful beast that was him.
Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell. He would kill them for this.
His firestarter clicked again, unbidden, and the knife slipped from Mr. Maxwell’s hand and fell to the floor with a clatter.
His eyes were on Ramona as she looked up at him, and then passed out.
“Mr. Dragomir,” said a nurse, her scrubs swishing as she approached him. He’d been waiting for what felt like forever, but what really only a couple of hours.
The police had shown up only moments after he’d taken apart the general sore with his teeth, and they’d quickly stopped pointing their guns at him once they’d found the Maxwells, cowering and surrounded by weapons, next to an unconscious girl whose feet were chained to an exposed pipe.
As soon as the Maxwells had been in handcuffs, he’d shifted back into his human form. He’d tried to join Ramona in the ambulance but had been barred from coming along. He’d nearly changed again so he could fly to the hospital, but from the group gathering outside what remained of the general store, he thought it best not to attract any more attention to himself.
The only thing that mattered was Ramona.
“Is she all right?” he asked. No one had given him any news yet. He had no idea how she was, other than ‘not dead,’ and it was driving him mad.
“She’s awake, and she’s asking for you.”
Blayze practically pushed the woman out of the way in his desire to get down the hallway.
She called out a number to his back as he ran, and he glanced above doorways as he went. 31, 32, 33 … there it was, room 34.
The door was propped open. Blayze hovered outside it for a moment before crossing the threshold.
Ramona smiled weakly. “Wasn’t sure you’d come.”
She looked beautiful, even hooked up to tubes and in obvious pain. Her bed was adjusted so that she could sit up.
“Of course I came,” he said. How could she think otherwise? Didn’t she know that he …?
“I’m glad you did.” She rolled her shoulders and then winced, and Blayze took a step forward. She held out a hand, keeping him back. “I’m fine. Just a bad concussion. Moving kind of hurts. They told me I need to be awake for a while, which is awful because all I really want to do is sleep.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He wasn’t sure if he was talking about what had happened to her, or what he’d said, or how he’d acted, or everything all at once. There was too much he needed to tell her, and he didn’t know where to begin.
She shook her head. He could see the exact moment when she realized that was a terrible idea. “No, I’m sorry. I never should have said those things about you.”
“I shouldn’t have pushed you to move on if you don’t want to. I shouldn’t have tried to contact someone about your future without consulting you.” Blayze looked down for a moment, and when he caught her gaze again, his face was resolved. “I’ve never been into forethought, much. I’ve never put someone before myself. I thought that what I had was enough, and then there you were, and I realized that I’d been missing something my whole life without knowing it …,” He stopped and shook his head, laughing to himself. “I sound like an idiot.”
“Well, that’s true enough.” She tried to smile at him, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He couldn’t stop himself. He reached out and, barely holding himself in check, patted her hand before trying to withdraw.
Her hand chased his. She wove her fingers in between his own.
Blayze looked up to catch her eyes.
“I wanted to show you that I cared. I wanted to give you something no one else could.”
She squeezed his hand. “You do. You did. Just by—just by being yourself, you made me remember what it was like to be alive again. I was scared of letting you in, and then when I was locked in with the Maxwells, I kept thinking—God, he’ll never know how sorry I am, or how right he was.”
Their entwined hands seemed like a miracle. He leaned forward and kissed her, so softly. He tried to pour all his emotion into the tender touch of their lips.
“Ramona, I love you.”
She smiled wide, dropping her gaze bashfully. “I love you, too.”
She leaned back into her pillow and heaved a sigh. He watched the motion of her chest. That could have stopped. She could have been gone. If he’d been a minute later—
“The Maxwells confessed to trying to poison Joy and kill you. They were angry that Joy had introduced their daughter to drugs, and Mrs. Maxwell apparently found some book on their front porch that was bookmarked to what she thought was the perfect ironic punishment. They’re never going to see outside of a prison for the rest of their lives.”
“Good ….” Ramona sounded sleepy. “Do they know who gave them the book?”
“One mystery at a time, Jones. We can solve that one later.” He rubbed her arm, brought her hand to his lips. “I’m going to watch over you, make sure you don’t sleep. Keep you safe.”
“Thank you,” she said, but it felt like forgiveness.
Chapter Ten
Ramona
TWO WEEKS LATER
GOD, DRAGONS were insatiable.
They’d been up half the night with each other, and now, in the morning, she could feel his hard cock pressed up against the soft curve of her ass. Blayze was obviously still asleep, but parts of him were very much awake and at attention.
And—okay, so maybe she was kind of insatiable, too, because the thought of sneaking under the covers and giving him a very nice wake up seemed kind of fun ….
“Jones,” Blayze complained, voice hoarse with sleep. “You woke me up with your loud thinking again.”
She laughed, the smile on her face so big she felt like she might split in two. Why had she spent so many years avoiding this, when this was the most wonderful thing in the world?
Although, maybe she’d known, subconsciously, that she needed to wait for the right person.
“I’ve told you before that it is actually impossible to think loudly.”
“A damnable lie that I’ve already disproven this very morning.” He rolled on top of her and placed his lips against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. His body was warm and hard against hers, and her toes curled.
“I suppose I could make it up to you ….” she trailed off.
His lips migrated back to her own and his kissed her hard. “That’s not a bad idea.”
Ramona shifted her legs so Blayze’s weight fell between them. They’d fallen asleep naked, and now that seemed like it had been a very smart, convenient idea. She could feel his hot skin pressed against her, his hardenin
g cock rubbing at her hip.
“But I have a better one.”
She frowned. If he got out of this bed, she was going to kill him.
Blayze smirked at her—his I know what you’re thinking smirk—and then started to move down her body, pressing light kisses as he went.
Oh. Oh. Well. That was a better idea. Good job, Blayze.
“Don’t you dare tease me,” she said, a hand going to his hair.
He glanced up, grinning. “I wouldn’t dare.”
He tongued at the slit of her pussy, taking his time to linger at her clit. He brought it between his lips and sucked, making her hips jump up.
His head dipped further down, and she felt his tongue thrust deeper inside her as his thumb flicked lazily over her nub again and again and again. He didn’t seem rushed or hurried in the least, content to drive her mad as slowly as possible.
Ramona threw her head back. “What did I tell you about teasing?”
A hand went up to her breast, pinching at her nipple, and Blayze raised his head. “That it’s fun?”
“Blayze, oh God, please, I need it. I need it so bad…” Her words were reduced to inarticulate babbles. He was driving her to madness with his tongue and his fingers.
He lifted his mouth away from her and then he was covering her body with his own. He thrust into her, hard and deep, and it was perfect. She broke over him, the wonderful shooting pleasure hitting so hard she nearly went hoarse from screaming his name.
Blayze built to a quick rhythm, and she had no time to catch her breath before she could feel it all happening again. It was too quick. She couldn’t possibly come, not when she’d just lost her mind over the last one.
Her body had other ideas.
Blayze’s hand was on her clit, rubbing it in time with his thrusts, and she was rocked by another orgasm. She felt it in every part of her body, the sweet clench and release that faded into aftershocks.
“One more?” he asked.
She couldn’t possibly—it was too much. His hand hadn’t let up its quick on her nub, and she wanted to grab it and pull it away. There was an overabundance of sensation; she couldn’t possibly survive this.
