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  DRAGON'S CURVY COUNSELOR

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

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  Copyright © 2020 by Annabelle Winters

  All Rights Reserved by Author

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  DRAGON'S CURVY COUNSELOR

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  1

  CALLIE

  The gunshots still echo in my head, and the smoke makes all of this seem like a bad dream. A dream that started with a phone call from the past.

  Addie’s words ring in my head as I press up against the blue walls of my office, gasping for air and blinking at the sight of Crane’s massive body slumped across my metal desk. Blood pours from the bulletholes in his broad back, but to my surprise he groans and moves. Somehow he isn’t dead—which strikes me as strange. It also strikes me that I woulda been dead if the guard hadn’t been quick on the draw when Crane went psycho killer on me after roaring like a deranged animal!

  “You all right, Callie?” says the prison guard, his gun still drawn, eyes wide in shock as he hesitantly approaches the groaning, growling, bleeding Crane. “Still alive,” the guard says. He leans into his walkie and calls for help, but from the noise in the hallway I think it’s safe to say everyone’s already on the way.

  “How is that possible?” I say, still pressed against the cold wall even as I feel a strange certainty that this beast Crane can’t be killed, like he’s invincible or something, like a comic-book villain. But then I get an even stranger feeling that this beast Crane wouldn’t have killed me, might not have even hurt me. It’s totally illogical, given that he’d launched his six-foot-everything, three-hundred-and-something pound body of hard muscle directly at me. But the feeling persists, and I swallow hard as the sensation warms me from the inside, like a silent, reassuring whisper that I’m somehow protected. I let the emotion wash over me, and then I almost gasp out loud when I realize that a part of me is happy that the man who just attacked me isn’t dead!

  I’m about to say something else, but now the medics are here, and so is the prison warden, who takes over the scene and barks orders to everyone and their brother.

  “I suppose we should get the counselor out of here first,” he grunts to the medics. “This animal can wait for treatment. With any luck he’ll bleed out and you guys won’t need to get your hands dirty with this scumbag.”

  “No,” I say quickly, forcing myself not to look at Crane even as a part of me yearns to go to him, to comfort him, tell him he’s going to be fine, that whatever he’s suffering from can be cured with therapy, that once we fix his body we can heal his mind too! “He’ll die if you don’t get him to the infirmary in the next few minutes. I’m fine. Crane didn’t touch me.”

  The warden grunts. He doesn’t like me much—thinks my job is bullshit, that these “animals” don’t need therapy because they’re barely human. But I don’t give a damn what he thinks of me. I’m well-respected in the prison after I proved myself by helping prison-guards as they struggled with depression, anger issues, insomnia, addiction. I treat every man the same—guard or inmate—regardless of the clear-cut line the guards draw between themselves and the “animals.”

  But something inside me doesn’t want to treat this man the same as everyone else, I think as the medics roll in a gurney and then approach the massive body of this beast called Crane. This “animal” who took one look at me and said I was his.

  His what? I wonder as the medics struggle to get Crane’s massive body to even move, let alone roll off the desk onto a gurney that I think will collapse like a flimsy picnic table under his weight.

  His victim?

  His prey?

  His mate, comes the answer from inside me. I frown and tighten, but finally exhale when I realize it’s not a voice. Not that far gone yet, sister. Nah, not a crazy-voice but a memory—a memory that takes me back to that weird-as-hell phone call from my sorority-sister Addie.

  “Fated mates that are drawn to each other,” Addie had said. “Bonnie and I are living proof that it’s real, Callie. It’s real, and it’s coming for you.”

  “Um, sorry, but what exactly is coming for me?” I’d said, wondering if Addie and Bonnie had gotten drunk and decided to prank everyone from the sorority ten years after we graduated. Talk about a fucking midlife crisis. Honey, please don’t pull me into your drama. I got enough to deal with in here.

  “Ohmygod, how do I even start to explain,” Addie had said. Then she’d paused and sighed. “OK. Here goes. Do you know what a Shifter is?”

  And then the conversation had gone downhill to where I just sighed silently, leaned back in my chair, and let Addie get all her crazy out. By the end of it I’d decided that she wasn’t drunk. She’d probably popped some psychotropic pills and had lost herself down some rabbithole of fantasy. Shit, maybe calling me was a cry for help, I’d thought, even though she actually sounded articulate and “all there”—if I ignored the content of what she was saying, of course. My money was still on the pranking scenario, though—Addie and Bonnie were big drinkers back in college, and they did have an edgy sense of humor. That’s fine. I can take a prank, I’d told myself. Just humor her and call her back tomorrow to make sure she’s really OK.

  “Thanks for calling, Addie!” I’d said cheerfully, pleased with myself for actually listening to a grown woman talk about shapeshifting dragon-men whose dragons were somehow “activated” when they saw their fated mates. Give those two some credit, though: You couldn’t make this shit up.

  Actually you can make this shit up, I’d thought after hanging up the phone. Although it had been years since I'd read anything lighter than Psychology Today, back in college I would devour those steamy romance novels that the girls would pass around the sorority house. I read them all: Evil Earls, Dirty Dukes, Broken Bad-boys, even some paranormal.

  No dragons, though.

  I watch as it takes nine strong medics to get Crane’s body onto the gurney. They’re wearing gloves and masks, and I almost can’t look at all the blood. But I also can’t turn away, and when I look closer at Crane’s wounds, I blink in shock.

  Because they’ve stopped bleeding.

  They’ve closed up.

  Somehow, someway, they seem to have . . . healed?!

  “Probably just clotted really fast,” I mutter under my breath. But I know that’s just not possible when you’ve got bullets and shrapnel inside those wounds. Those wounds won’t just close up and heal until the bullets have been extracted and the wound’s been cleaned. “Or maybe they used rubber bullets,” I whisper hopefully.

  But I know what rubber bullets sound like, and besides—my office is still hazy with gunsmoke. Almost too much smoke, I think as I look up at the thick cloud that’s just hanging there above my desk. Slowly I stand and lean my head back, taking a quick sniff even though it probably looks weird. Smells weird too, I think, taking another breath and frowning when I realize it doesn’t smell much like gunpowder. Sure, there’s a faint trace of gunpowder, but the vents have already sucked up most of it. This heavy white smoke is something different. It doesn’t hurt my throat. Doesn’t clog my no
se. Doesn’t smell like anything in the world. Where did it come from? Was something burning in the room?

  They’re wheeling Crane out the door now, and I absentmindedly glance over at him as I replay what happened with him earlier.

  And then I touch my chest when I realize that yes, something was burning in the room. I don’t know if I’m remembering right or if my mind is just adding things to the memory after the fact—like what happens with a lot of witnesses when they’re in court: When a skillful lawyer asks the right questions, witnesses often “remember” things that simply didn’t happen.

  Is that what’s happening to me, I wonder as the medics bump into the door-frame and Crane growls and clenches his fists, straining at the thick leather straps holding his body down flat. Then he turns his head and looks at me, his green eyes focused and intense.

  “I wouldn’t have hurt you,” he whispers across the room like we’re the only two people in the universe. “I can’t hurt you.” Then he winces and closes his eyes, groaning and clenching those massive fists again. “Fuck, my head hurts. Behind my eyes. Seeing shit again. Serpents. Demons. Dragons . . .”

  He’s mumbling and writhing, and I can barely make out the rest of his sentence. But the word “dragon” pops out, and I recoil like I’ve been struck, like I’ve been stung, like I’ve been . . . burned.

  And now that memory roars back in living color, with a vividness that cannot be denied. And now I know what was burning.

  It was him.

  Crane.

  He was burning.

  2

  CRANE

  “That burns,” I mutter, turning my head and glowering at the prison medic who’s cleaning the last of my bulletwounds with a very harsh solvent that’s probably got too much alcohol in it. “It hurt less before you got to work on me.”

  “The pain means you’re healing,” comes a woman’s strong voice from the far side of the room, and immediately the pain is gone and a different sort of burning takes over.

  It’s her, and I yank on my restraints and try to turn over. But I’m on my stomach and the restraints are pulled tight. I can’t turn unless I snap these thick leather straps like ribbons. Of course, these straps are designed to not be snapped like ribbons, but so were those cuffs and chains, weren’t they?

  I blink in disbelief when I remember that yeah, I fucking broke through steel handcuffs and chains like they were nothing! I’ve been in and out of prison my whole life, and I’m very familiar with the weight room. But what happened back in that counselor’s office wasn’t because I can bench-press four hundred pounds or squat almost six hundred. That was fucking crazy—so crazy I’m not sure if it really happened!

  “How’s he doing?” the counselor says from behind me, and I pull at my straps again, feeling them strain in a way they weren’t straining just a few minutes earlier—just before this curvy prison shrink strutted into the room.

  “Why don’t you ask me how I’m doing?” I growl as my energy rises in that fiery way that pushed me over the edge earlier. I swallow hard as my vision blurs and then snaps into focus with deadly precision, like I just got new eyes or some shit. “Oh, fuck, it’s happening again,” I mutter, shaking my head as the visions that plague me return with vividness that takes me back to my lost youth, my lonely childhood, my wastrel teenage years—and the violence and destruction that seemed to follow me every step of the way ever since. I clench my fists and pull at my straps. My arms are tight like sinews, taut like tree-branches, rippling with veins that are pumped full of my hot blood—blood so hot I must be running a fever.

  I could rip these leather straps off me, I realize suddenly. Rise up off this deathbed and kill everyone in this joint before they can pump enough lead into me to slow down my rage. I’m about to do it, but then I feel a shadow fall over me and immediately I calm down again.

  It’s her. I can tell from the pronounced hourglass shape of her curves cast in shadow. I can tell from the feminine scent that’s whispering to me from her flesh. I can tell from the sound her thighs make as they swish together beneath her skirt.

  “Sorry—didn’t realize you were conscious, Mister Crane,” she says, clearing her throat twice as I feel her stiffen and stop. She’s still several feet away from where I’m tied down. She’s still standing in a spot where I can’t see her without turning my head all the way like that demon-child in the Exorcist.

  Fuck, maybe I’m possessed by some kind of demon, I think as I feel those visions threaten to push their way back into my pounding head. Seeing visions of scaly, serpent-like creatures that spew hellfire as they ravage my soul? That’s pretty textbook possession, ain’t it? Maybe I need a priest and not a darned shrink!

  “Oh, I’m conscious,” I drawl, closing my eyes and then snorting. “Sure doesn’t feel like it, though.” I flick my eyelids open like blinds and snort again. “I assume you guys aren’t seeing what I’m seeing, right?”

  “What are you seeing, Mister Crane,” she says, taking a step closer, her scent invading my senses, her energy rolling though my body, making my temperature rise, my muscles stiffen, my cock harden, my balls tighten. It feels like my body’s going haywire, and I wonder if my wounds are sending me into shock.

  “Come closer,” I whisper. “Here where I can see you.”

  I don’t expect her to comply. Fuck, I just launched myself at her like a psycho before they put three bullets in my back. I don’t even know why I just said that. Even I know it probably sounds creepy as hell.

  Just as I figured, the counselor doesn’t move.

  Not at first, at least.

  But then I feel her shadow move a step forward, another step to the left. “Can I trust you, Mister Crane?” she says softly, her voice losing a little of that dispassionate professionalism, like a sliver of emotion broke through.

  “Probably not,” I whisper back, grinning down at the floor as I feel her body draw closer like she can’t help it. I don’t understand it, but it feels natural, real, powerful.

  It feels like fate.

  “That’s close enough, Callie,” says the guard near the door, and I growl in anger, my vision turning blood red as I feel something move behind my eyes, like there’s something in me, something alive. “He’s sedated and tied down good and tight. But he’s an animal. Can’t trust an animal.”

  “I’ve found animals to be far more trustworthy than humans,” Callie responds. There’s a sharpness in her tone that makes me smile again. There’s that emotion breaking through Ms. Counselor again. Shit, she almost snapped that guard’s head off—almost like she was defending me!

  The guard gulps so loudly I can hear him across the room. He shifts uncomfortably, the sound of his boots telling me he’s nervous, twitchy, like he’s feeling the energy in the room—an energy that’s whispering that he needs to get the fuck out of here. This is between me and Ms. Counselor.

  “You can take a break, Henry,” Callie says just then. “I’ll be all right in here.”

  There’s a tense silence in the room, and then I hear the guard unlock the metal door. “Panic button’s up against that wall,” he says, his voice betraying his relief. But there’s a hint of anger in there too—like he’s pissed off that Callie pulled rank on him or ordered him around or whatever. Fucking asshole, I think as my own protective instinct fires up. I’ll be sure to take the time to kill you before I blow this joint.

  “Oh, Henry?” Callie says as the guard heads out. “Cameras off, please.”

  “Can’t do that, Callie,” he says. “Rules and shit.”

  “This is a counseling session and it’s protected by privacy laws,” Callie says. “The sessions are recorded, but I use my own camera. Anything happens, it’ll be on film, don’t worry.”

  The guard grunts and slams the door shut. I hear the metal deadbolts slide into place, and I sense that Callie’s scared. She’s gotta be, right?

>   “You think a camera’s gonna make me behave?” I say. “I’m an animal, remember?” Then I grin. “Oh, right. You trust animals more than you trust people. Looks like we’ll get along just fine then. Now will you please scratch my ears and rub my belly?”

  She laughs, and I feel the tension dissipate. But it’s replaced by a different sort of tension, and when Callie finally circles around to where I can see her, I know what it is. I see it all over her pretty round face. I see it in her big brown eyes. I sense it in the way her bosom moves as she breathes. The way she licks her lips like her mouth is dry.

  It makes no sense, but it’s fucking undeniable.

  She feels something, just like I do.

  Feels it in the air.

  Feels it in her body.

  At first I wonder if she’s one of those crazy chicks who’s turned on by murderers and serial killers or what have you. I’ve seen a few of those types visiting some of the killers in here. You can smell the crazy on them like it’s perfume. I don’t get that vibe from this curvy counselor, though. In fact, the vibe I get is one of controlled conflict, like she’s fighting a psychological battle just to stay in this room with me. Is it some kind of mental exercise she’s doing to free herself from the trauma of almost being assaulted a few hours ago? A get-back-on-the-horse kinda thing? A face-your-nightmare sorta move?

  “Just so you know, I psychoanalyzed you in like three minutes,” I say, leaning my head up and smiling at her. Fuck, she’s so damned beautiful. Curves and contours that make me want to pant like a dog, howl like a wolf, hunt like a lion. Boobs that make me wanna cry for mama’s milk. Thighs that make me weak in the knees. Hips that make me think of how many of my babies she’s gonna be able to carry once I unload into her.

  I close my eyes and swallow hard as I fight back the images of straight-up banging this woman against that metal door. Natural, I guess—been locked up with a bunch of sweaty dudes for almost three years. I’m not a serial killer, so I don’t have any fangirls who send me their panties or sneak in a handjob during a visit. And I don’t pleasure myself. Never have. Never will. I’m a loose cannon when it comes to a fight, but I’m in supreme control when it comes to my cock. I’ve long since recognized the spiritual power a man gains from holding his seed. My outlet’s always been violence, not sex.