Gone With the Witch (19 page)

Aiden or Triton—it was hard to tell which—roared and took up the challenge in a very big way.

It was a full three hours before Aiden drove the coach
away from the campground, because after all, dragons
who'd
been deprived of tune-ups for so long deserved a
lube job once in a while.

"You don't think that Elektra's jealous because Triton
fell in love with your sea horse, do you?" Aiden asked.

"Nah, Elektra and Ceres have different purposes. Ceres is a goddess of fertility, which doesn't apply to us. She knows that Triton belongs to Elektra. She was just warming him up a bit."

"Triton thinks he's gone to heaven," Aiden said. "But
he's
probably gonna get hard every time 'I see a tool belt from now on."

Storm raised a skeptical brow. "I can't imagine what King's construction crew is going to think about that."

"I'll have to stay out of range, and Elektra will have to visit Triton regularly until the castle is finished."

"That could be arranged. Do you feel mellow enough to
hear my confession?"

"Uh-oh," Aiden said. "Was that tune-up a ploy so 'I wouldn't want to beat you again?"

"No, the tune-up was pure fun, which doesn't change
the fact that I have something to confess." Storm took a
breath, but the crying in her head was confusing her. "Wait.
Take a left.
Now a right.
Left again.
No, turn around."

Aiden pulled into a restaurant parking lot. "Would you like to drive?"

"Yes, please, since our mapping system is in my head."
Before they set off, they got takeout and ate at a picnic
table behind the motor coach. The way she parked, Storm had blocked a corner table closed in by bramble bushes on
two sides. And for dessert, their dragons got naughty on
the picnic table in broad daylight.

Back in the motor coach, Storm got into the driver's
seat.
"Confession time.
I now hear several babies crying."

Chapter Twenty-Five

"HOW
many, in your book, is several?" Aiden asked a little too loudly. "Sorry, I'm overreacting." Hell, he didn't
want to hurt the love of his dragon's life. She was ...
Elektra
was ... something ... special.

He took a calming breath.
"How many babies?"

"I don't know," Storm said, biting her lip, as she took random lefts and rights.

"Two, three, four?" he asked. "Don't try to tell me that you think I have t
ri
plets?"

"No, but you sound like you believe you might have at
least one baby." Storm looked hopeful, which ticked Aiden
off, probably because he was afraid she could be right, and
that a baby of his—one baby—might exist somewhere.

She'd already pulled two child rescues out of her magick hat, and he didn't know what else she had in store. "Where the hell are you going?"

"Beats
me."
That was when they heard the siren. Aiden
looked into the rearview mirror. "Storm, the officers in the
police car behind us
want
us to pull over."

"I wasn't speeding!" She pulled into the first mall parking

lot
she came to. "Oh, do you think somebody saw us on
that picnic table?"

By the time the officer got to the driver's side window,
the rag-reading dragon tail brigade was starting to circle
like buzzards.

"Tell the officer to come inside," Aiden told her.

Great,
Storm thought, and then she turned to the officer and invited him in.

He brought his partner. They stood in the doorway and took off their hats.

"Was I doing something wrong?" Storm asked.

"No," the macho officer said. "We saw the dragon
camper, and after that sex slave story the other day, we called it in, because we wanted to be sure nobody was being held against their will."

Storm raised her chin, her breasts rising with it, and
crossed her arms to give herself some mighty fine
boobage—on purpose, Aiden thought. "Do I look like somebody who could abduct a man?" she asked them.
"Seriously?"

"If you hire paid sex slaves, miss," the rookie officer
said, "can 'I have an application?"

Macho gave Rookie a look with
Shut
the of
up
written
all over it.

Rookie elbowed Macho. "You're just jealous that you didn't ask first."

Macho turned to Storm. "Mind if we take a look
around?"

Storm looked surprised, and Aiden worried about what she'd do or say next.

"Don't you need a search warrant for that?" she asked.

"Storm, stop making matters worse," Aiden said. "We
have nothing to hide. Take a look." When the rookie flirted
with Storm, Aiden indicated that the officers should precede them, and he took Storm by the hand.

"Jealous?" she mouthed.

He showed the officers every room, watching them open
closets and cupboards, and in the bedroom, Rookie found

Storm's cuffs in the nightstand with an array of confetti col
ored condoms. "It
was
you, then," Rookie said, all smiles.

Aiden thought the macho officer was going to deck his partner.

"We're consenting adults," Aiden said. "Snapdragon thought she'd get funny and leave me stewing while she went in for coffee, but she attracted the wrong kind of attention."

"May the Goddess forgive me," Storm said, and Aiden squeezed her hand to shut her up.

"Snapdragon's not your real name, is it?" the rookie
said.

"She didn't commit a moving violation, but you know
who 'I am because you ran my license plate. You know this
is my coach and that I'm squeaky clean."

"Hell," the rookie said. "We even know how much you donate to the police retirement fund."

"Stan, will you shut the hell up!" the macho officer said.

Storm went back into the living area and opened the fridge. "Can 'I offer you a glass of lemonade before you leave?"

While Rookie nodded, Macho said an emphatic, "No thanks." With an apology, they left, and did some crowd control so Storm could drive the camper from the parking lot.

"The things you get me into," Aiden said. "Now I'm a sex-slave
icon."

"Don't blame me. Why did you have dragons painted on
the sides of the motor coach, given the fact that you were keeping such a ... ginormous ... secret?"

"It made sense at the time." Aiden sighed. "Sort of
. '
I knew when I had the coach painted that my motives and
emotions were bumping up against each other. Part of it was getting the dragon out in the open ... so to
speak ..
.
an
honest statement about who I really am, even though no
one would understand but me."

"That makes a weird sort of sense." Storm took a quick left.

"Will you slow down? I can't believe they didn't ticket
you."

Storm raised her chin, a sign she was ignoring him on purpose. "So having a dragon camper was a bid for self-
respect, despite Triton," she said, giving him something
else to think about.

Aiden nodded tentatively. "Or a warning ..."

"Or all of the above," she said.

"Probably.
Dragons are highly respected, so maybe driving around in a dragon coach had to do with making
peace with myself. Kind of like telling myself to get over it already, though if I'd known I'd have you and your sarcasm to look forward to, I never would have produced any of my
own."

Storm glanced his way. "Glad to be of se
rv
ice. Has it helped?"

"No, but the way you accepted Triton did."

"I understand your motive for wanting the tattoo, if not
the fact that you actually stayed until the dragon was
done."

"Thanks, but 'I could have stayed days longer if I wanted
it detailed. The spikes were supposed to be detailed in scar
let and black."

"See, you're smarter than we both thought"

He gave her a dirty look. "Do you still hear several babies crying?"

"'Fraid so"

Aiden sighed. "Mind if I just sleep through the next nightmare?"

"Suit
yourself
," she said, taking a right. "Dragon Boy
has had a
hard
day."

Aiden looked over at her, absurdly glad that she'd
cuffed him into taking this
tr
ip to wonderland, and he fell asleep.

Sometime later, he woke up to an ocean view out one window and
Atlantic City's famed boardwalk out another.
Here? She was going to find babies here? Aiden went look
ing and found Storm asleep in his bed. He crawled in beside

her
and took her in his arms to coax her awake with kisses.
"Rough day?" he asked.

"Um-hmm," she said, pressing her breasts against him while slipping her arms around his neck. "First, I gave my favorite dragon a tune-up, and then he got a splinter in his paw and growled at
me."

"Triton was a jerk," Aiden said.

"Yes, he was"

"He apologizes profusely."

"
And 'I got stopped by the cops." She curled a finger in
the hair at his nape. "Thank you for protecting my identity,
though yours was blown to bits."

"Yeah, I'm a regular dragon in tarnished armor."

Storm sat up. "Does that mean you'll take orders
from

me
? Throw your coat over the elephant poop in my path?”

“
My coat, but not my coach."

Storm patted his sleepy dragon. "How do you feel about
taking a walk toward the casinos?" she asked.

Ten minutes later, she led the way down the boardwalk.
"How many babies do you hear?" Aiden asked.
"A nurse
ry
full."

Aiden missed a step. "Are you sure we're not going to rescue a set of triplets?"

She took as random a turn into a casino as she took into
the campground. Random like the mall they'd
chosen,
and
the roads they'd taken, except that his random was her real.
Two lost children back with their families proved that.

They wandered inside the casino for a while, lefts and rights, and straight ahead, among blackjack tables and slot machines of every conceivable type, where eager hopefuls hit buttons or pulled cranks and rubbed screens for luck,
while the machines themselves devoured their money with
cunning avarice.

Aiden almost lost her, but he caught up. "Are you still listening to the babies in your head? Though 'I don't know
how you can hear anything with this racket." Upbeat music
and gripping tunes battled with coins hitting metal trays,
flashing lights, and spinning drums with attention-grabbing
graphics.
"Storm?"
Damn, she was concentrating, and not on the chaos around her, but on the chaos in her head.

Storm, with her hard outer shell and large, hidden heart,
had a huge psychic ability that was either a gift or a curse.

She stopped, and when Aiden saw why, he stopped, too.
Talk about surreal.

Facing them stood a casino hostess in the establish
ment's signature red halter top, miniskirt, black stockings,
and spikes. Balancing a raised tray of drinks on the palm of
one hand, the hostess could be Storm's double, except that Storm was already part of a triple.