A Fate Forbidden (Great Plains Dragon Feud Book 3)

by Emilia Hartley

  Jensen laughed. “You read me so easily. You’re right. I flunked out of most classes. I’m more of a hands-on man.”

  Cheeks immediately flaring with heat, she faced forward and scurried toward the next location in the stacks. Jensen, completely ignoring the innuendo he’d just dropped, trailed along behind her. She heard him muttering under his breath and caught a few possible questions that he quickly dismissed.

  “Huh, turns out that I don’t really have a whole lot of questions,” Jensen said.

  “Maybe if you greased those gears in your brain, then you could have more than two thoughts at a time,” River teased.

  When Jensen fell silent, River worried she’d crossed a line. She stopped and cautiously turned toward him only to find him with his brows furrowed and silent questions still on his lips. He was so caught up in his mission to stump her that he’d missed her quip altogether. She almost laughed at his inability to do more than one thing at a time.

  “Aha!” He held up a finger, his eyes wide like he’d seen the light. She imagined a cracked lightbulb flickering over his head and almost laughed again.

  “What would you like to know?” She felt a bit like an information genie, a role that tickled her.

  “Where do things go when they’re eaten by a black hole? I bet you can’t answer that one.”

  Chuckling, she said, “I don’t think anyone has that figured out yet. But if the scientists make a new discovery, then I’ll let you know.”

  “You’d really do that for me? You’d keep an eye on scientific articles just to update me? Damn, you really know how to make a man feel special.”

  River didn’t get even a hint of sarcasm from his tone. Jensen was being completely honest. The offer had been endearing to him. It made her wonder how many people offered their time and energy up to him. He seemed like the kind of guy who gave too much and never got anything back.

  She wouldn’t let him do that with her. Jensen deserved better. He gave too much for her to allow him to be empty.

  An offer reached her lips, but movement caught her eye. A flash of red made her heart leap into her throat. She grabbed Jensen by the front of his shirt and pulled him into the nearest doorway. The automatic lights flickered on overhead, illuminating the small study room.

  Afraid her mother would catch them through the windows into the room, River shoved Jensen against the closed door to keep him out of sight. He blinked down at her, stunned. Beneath her hand, his heart hammered an unexpectedly frantic beat.

  Did his heartrate skyrocket because of her sudden escape? Or was it their closeness now that made him nervous? She lifted her chin even though her breath trembled between her lips. Her beast howled as if it knew what would happen next and happily invited it.

  Jensen was silent for a moment that seemed to stretch. His hand moved from the one she had over his chest and down her arm. It continued down her back. She felt him tense and wondered if he would pull her into him. She wanted it, wanted to melt into him and feel her body become one with him so she could feel whole again.

  Whole for the first time.

  Because there had always been a hole in her life. She’d blamed the hollowness on her mother, but the truth of the matter had been that she needed someone else. She needed a light in the dusk that was her boring life.

  Jensen was that light. She’d never felt more alive.

  Red hair caught her attention through the nearby window. River cursed and pressed herself flat against Jensen. He, in turn, held her tight. When he bent his head to whisper in her ear, he asked:

  “What are we hiding from?”

  His lips tickled her ear. She realized that all she would have to do was turn her head, and she would be able to kiss him. The thought bounced around her mind, growing louder and louder.

  She swallowed and tried to calm herself even though his scent and his warmth made her feel untamed. “I saw my mother again.”

  “I swear she has River is happy, and I must ruin it senses.” He let his head fall to rest on her shoulder.

  His embrace warmed her until she thought she might turn to ash and flutter away on a blissful wind. She buried her face in his shirt and breathed deep. They were just friends, but she craved so much more.

  River had to remember that a relationship wasn’t feasible. She couldn’t hide him from her mother forever, and she couldn’t keep running from the woman, either. River couldn’t fall for this silly and impossibly sexy man, because it would make their lives a nightmare.

  She wasn’t Baylee, who got permission from her loving and understanding mother. She wasn’t Gale, who could stand up to his mate’s overbearing father. River was small and weak and bound to fail.

  Jensen deserved better.

  Damn it, Jensen had never known need quite as intense as this before, sharp as a knife twisting in his gut. He had to use every ounce of willpower to keep from picking River up and laying her flat on the table behind her. He imagined her skirt rising to reveal milky thighs that he could run his hands along. He wanted to reach beneath her sweater and discover the curve of her waist for the first time.

  If his thoughts strayed any further, River would feel the exact extent of his need in his pants. He did his best to divert his thoughts. Thinking about Alice Montoya helped more than necessary. No other woman in this world frightened him quite like her.

  Alice was the Montoya clan’s crimson wrath. She could easily give Callum a run for his money in a fight. Jensen didn’t want to see how much stronger she would get with her daughter involved.

  His own mother had been fierce when they discovered that his little sister had been seeing a Montoya man. Though Marjorie had come to terms with a mate bond, Jensen didn’t share such a bond with River. Besides, he doubted even a mate bond would sway Alice’s opinion of him.

  Jensen had to keep his hands to himself. River was off limits. She could be his friend and nothing else. Trying to make their relationship into anything else would cause more strife than she needed. His whole plan had been to brighten her life, not make it harder.

  “When do you get off work?” he whispered.

  She tilted her head and gave him a stern look, as if to say that now was not the time. She was right, of course. Still, he needed to think about something else. He might as well figure out plans for the evening.

  Plans that didn’t include that table and River’s legs spread wide for him.

  Jensen shook his head. He had to stop. The beast argued otherwise. It savored her scent and how it would stick to his clothes hours after she’d gone. His beast moved impatiently. It begged him to show her just how he felt.

  Stop, he begged. Don’t turn this into something it can’t be.

  But the beast didn’t understand. This was how it was. But Jensen didn’t know what that meant. How it was? The idea seemed vaguely ominous. His beast was hiding something from him.

  “I’m off at six tonight,” River whispered.

  Jensen nodded. This was the part where he was supposed to ask her if she wanted to do an activity with him, but the only activity he could think of involved River naked and on her back. He couldn’t clear his mind long enough to form a single thought that didn’t include something dirty.

  This little librarian had him undone in the worst of ways. The feel of her body along his brought his beast to the surface. A growl began in his throat. He wanted to pull her hair free of its bun and thread his fingers through it. With his hand in her hair, he’d be able to hold her while he explored her pretty mouth.

  But River blinked up at him, clearly confused. Her expression cleansed his mind for a moment. He sucked in a ragged breath and let it out in a husky laugh.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing,” he whispered. “I’ll swing around at six to pick you up. We can figure out what we want to do from there. How does that sound?”

  She bit her lower lip. He wanted to pull it free and taste it for himself. But he restrained himself. River didn’t want a boy
friend, let alone one who would cause as many problems as he would. He had to remember that the feud hadn’t ended. River’s mother upheld it with her iron grip.

  He wasn’t going to make River’s life any harder. His whole mission was to make her life easier by being a friend. Anything more would only make things worse.

  “Alright,” she said, though he heard the reluctance in her voice.

  “I promise it will be fun.” He reached for the door handle behind him and twisted.

  As he stumbled back out of the room, she stood in the doorway with an unreadable expression. He wanted to make her happy even if it was the last thing he did. When he came to visit her, he wanted to see her face light up with true joy. That wasn’t going to happen today or even tomorrow, but he knew he could manage it by the end of the year.

  He spun and made his way toward the front door. He had an evening to plan. Would it be okay if he got her flowers? Or was that a gesture that crossed the line into romantic?

  8

  River’s scalp ached as she stepped outside. She plucked all the pins from her bun and let her hair fall loose about her shoulders. As she finger-combed the red waves, she peered around for any sign of Jensen.

  He seemed to pop in and out of her life so unexpectedly that she wasn’t completely sure they’d made plans at all. She could have dreamed the entire encounter. His truck loitered in the back corner of the parking lot, though. He flashed the lights to get her attention.

  With an unexpected spring in her step, she almost ran to the passenger side of the truck. He moved things out of the seat for her then paused. He stared, slack-jawed at her.

  She pulled back, nervous. “What? Is there something on my face?”

  “What?” He shook himself. “No. There’s nothing wrong with your face. It’s just that…your hair. You never let it down.”

  Her chest flared with joy. She smiled but couldn’t hold his gaze and had to look away. Though she wanted to argue that she let her hair down often, that wouldn’t have been true. She kept it neatly pinned back more often than not.

  “I’ve had it up all day,” she said instead.

  “I know that. I saw you earlier. Remember?”

  She cringed, knowing that she was quickly forgetting how to articulate herself in front of him. His reaction to her hair being down had scrambled her brain. So, she changed the subject.

  “Do you have any plans, or are we going to drive around town for an hour before you park somewhere and try to reach under my skirt?”

  “From the tone in your voice, it sounds like someone else has tried that move on you before. It also sounds like it didn’t work.” He put the truck into drive and got them onto the road.

  River had gone on a handful of dates in her lifetime. Most of them had started like this. Her suitor would tell her that they could make plans along the way—all in the name of spontaneity, of course. Then the promise of plans would dissolve into an attempt to get laid. Those dates always made her feel like a vagina and not a whole person.

  “Don’t worry,” Jensen said, throwing a wink her way. “You’re safe with me tonight. I have plans all laid out. You’ll see when we get there.”

  Excitement danced down her spine. She sat up straighter in her seat and looked out the window and took stock of what direction they were heading in, hoping that she could figure out what he had planned. Though she told herself this wasn’t a date, she thought she could feel a kind of romantic tension in the air.

  Maybe that was all in her head. She liked Jensen and wanted him to see her as more than a friend, even if a relationship with him would end badly. Even dragon shifters could hear the call of the void from time to time. She saw the potential for disaster and craved it.

  Her feelings for him were nothing more than a girlish crush, though. Jensen was reckless and impulsive. She could never settle down with someone like that. She wanted security and reliability.

  She wanted…

  River let her head fall back against the seat. The answer that her beast pushed to the forefront of her mind was the one she’d been trying to avoid.

  The truck came to a stop. She lifted her head, but the landscape outside the windshield was barren. No, not barren. It was a field that had been harvested and left bare for the rest of the year. He had dragged several pallets out and pushed them together into a platform that now held a futon mattress and a pile of pillows.

  Jensen reached into the space behind the seats and grabbed several things. The first, a blanket, he handed to her. The second, a cooler, he carried as he opened his door and jumped out.

  She clutched the blanket to her chest and followed suit. The earth beneath her feet was soft. She sank into it as she walked. Jensen caught her struggling and came over. With one arm, he pulled her into him and lifted her from the ground. He carried her over to the bed beneath the stars and set her down beside it.

  “You might want to take off your shoes before getting comfortable,” he suggested.

  “As long as that’s all you ask me to take off,” she said without thinking.

  Her face immediately flushed. She plopped down onto the edge of the bed and fumbled with the laces of her shoes, so he wouldn’t immediately notice her red cheeks. Jensen didn’t say anything, but she heard a soft growl emanating from him. It made her pause and steal a glance in his direction.

  He sat at the edge of the bed, his back to her. She couldn’t see his face from this angle. If she wanted a better look at him, she would have to move closer, but her body refused. They were friends, and that was it. The joke shouldn’t have felt so double-edged.

  River finished kicking off her shoes, unfolded the blanket, and laid it over herself as she tumbled back into the pillows. Jensen checked over his shoulder. At the sight of her, he grinned.

  “What?” she asked, nervous.

  He set his boots aside and crawled across the bed to lay beside her. With one arm folded beneath his head, he used his free hand to gesture to the sky.

  “The stars are a lot brighter out this way,” he said.

  She couldn’t pull her gaze away from him, though. Even in the dark, she could see a small scar underneath his eye. She noticed the slight bump in his nose, telling her it had been broken and never reset. The longer she stared, the more she discovered. It became a fun game of memorization until he caught her staring.

  She directed her gaze upward, toward the stars. He’d been right. There were so many more stars in the sky now that they were away from all artificial light in town. With no one else around for miles, she relaxed into the pillows and tried to find the constellations.

  This wasn’t the kind of evening she’d expected. Guilt slithered through her thoughts. The fact that she’d anticipated a less than stellar evening from Jensen made her feel bad. She had no reason to think so lowly of him. Perhaps her attempts to distance herself romantically had affected her view of him.

  River wasn’t sure how to bridge that gap, though. If she allowed herself to be wooed by him, then she would fall head over heels and find herself in a situation she might not be able to handle. She didn’t want to turn this into a relationship because she had no faith in herself. River wasn’t a strong person. She couldn’t stand up to her mother.

  His knuckles brushed hers. She moved, bending her knees so that they touched his leg. The autumn chill couldn’t reach them in their bubble of warmth. Her dragon burned hot with him so close. He seemed to throw off heat, too.

  Eventually, she became aware of someone watching her. The first time she felt her skin prickle, she found Jensen staring the same way she had been earlier. She bit her lower lip to hide her smile, but doubted it worked.

  The third time, the hair on the back of her neck rose. Jensen’s attention was on the sky. Unsettled, River sat up and searched for someone else. Jensen immediately followed suit.

  “What? What is it?”

  River tried to speak, but her voice failed her. She scanned their surroundings, but it was too dark, even for dragon
eyes. Her skin itched. The beast begged to be let out. It promised to protect her.

  Jensen scented the air. He went completely still, his gaze off in the distance. River’s fight or flight response kicked in. Hers always manifested in a third reaction.

  Freeze.

  She pressed her eyes shut and waited for the feeling to go away. She tried to convince herself that no one was there. Jensen would put a hand on her back to soothe her any moment now. But he didn’t. He remained tense beside her. She heard a growl, an aggressive sound, rising out of him.

  “It seems like our night is going to be cut short,” he whispered just for her to hear. “Shift. Fly out of here. I’ll distract my uncle.”

  Callum Barnes was here? Why? How had he found them? What did he want?

  River scrambled to her feet. Her hands trembled. Her fear gripped her so tight, she could barely breathe. Any other time, she would have been embarrassed to pull her shirt off in front of Jensen. Right now, it felt like a fight for her life.

  She spared one last glance back. Jensen gave her a reassuring smile, even though his shoulders had been cinched tight. The gesture wasn’t enough to convince her that this would end well. Disaster had been hot on their heels this whole time.

  She never should have expected anything different.

  Undressed, River let her beast out. She spread her wings and galloped through the muddy field. Just as her feet lifted from the ground, a massive dragon leapt into her path. She fumbled and fell, sliding along the field.

  Fear filled her with ice. The urge to seize up nearly overcame her. River managed to get back on her feet just as a blur shot past her. Jensen had shifted. He tackled the giant black and red dragon into the dirt, giving River another chance to flee.

  She hesitated. Should she run and leave him on his own? Jensen had told her to run. She should heed his advice and go.