A Fate Forbidden (Great Plains Dragon Feud Book 3)

by Emilia Hartley

  There was nothing else in the world that she needed more than for him inside her. She arched into him, trying to get him to enter her. He pulled back, teasing. When she stopped trying, Jensen took his cock in his hand and drew lazy circles around her opening.

  It was too much. It wasn’t enough. She writhed, aching to be unified with him.

  Was this the beginning of a mate bond? River tried to shove the idea away, but it wouldn’t leave her. It buzzed around her mind until Jensen finally plunged inside her.

  One would have thought that climax would happen quickly, almost instantly, after what they had done together. Yet, Jensen took his time with slow strokes. It seemed that he wanted to make this night last forever, too. She enjoyed the slow and steady pace, the finish line far on the horizon.

  But as they went on, her need sharpened. She gripped the blankets beneath her so tightly that she heard them tear. Jensen’s speed increased. He slammed into her over and over, hitting just the right spot every time. How could he do that? How could he touch her in all the right ways?

  It was as if their bodies had been made for one another.

  Perhaps, River had found her fated mate after all.

  River cried out, suddenly tipping into another climax. It took her by surprise and dragged her like a strong current. Jensen pulled out. A shudder rippled over him. Though waves of cold washed through her body, she felt a warmth spill across her lower stomach.

  Jensen hung his head, spent. River basked in the small aftershocks still making her fingers and toes tingle. Her beast slithered through her. It reveled in the sensations, in the scents, and all that this could mean.

  “There’s a box of paper towels under the desk,” she said, voice low.

  Jensen slowly got to his feet and wobbled over to the desk. He came back with the box of pre-ripped paper towels—because she’d needed to rip something while her mother ranted to her at work one day. Jensen cleaned her up and tossed the towel into the trash.

  She waited for him to come cuddle her, but a chill swept over her instead. She peered up and found Jensen staring at the front door. A thought occurred to her. She knew who he was looking at. She considered pulling him back down and ignoring the intrusion, as if there was a chance in hell that her mother would walk away from what she’d likely witnessed.

  There she went again, trying to avoid every difficult situation.

  “River,” Jensen said slowly.

  She sighed, but it didn’t make her feel any stronger. If anything, it was as if she blew out the last of her strength. Hollow and afraid, she said:

  “That woman has impeccable timing.”

  River stood and faced her mother, fuming at the front door.

  Jensen held his shirt over his cock while Alice Montoya glared daggers at him. Oddly enough, he wasn’t afraid. She couldn’t do anything to him here. They were in a public space. If the woman attacked him, the library would crumble around their heads. Alice was more tactical than that.

  She would wait for him to let his guard down. She would find him when he was least expecting it. He laughed, imagining Alice trying to attack him while he was in the shower or on the toilet.

  “What’s so funny?” she snarled.

  He swallowed. Once again, his lack of common sense had struck. He had a metaphorical shovel in one hand and kept digging his own grave. Worse, Jensen didn’t know when to stop.

  “I mean, I’m standing here with my dick in my hand,” he said. “That’s pretty funny.”

  River almost giggled beside him. Alice’s sharp gaze snapped to her daughter. River fell silent, lowered her head, and trudged to her mother’s side. Though River’s attention stayed on the floor, Jensen could see that her shoulders were shaking.

  Once again, their plans had been foiled. He couldn’t blame her for being furious. She deserved better. He didn’t know how to offer it to her. If Alice had her way, Jensen would be dead by morning. Not that he thought she could follow through on it.

  Alice Montoya would, however, relieve him of his manhood if he kept pushing his luck. So, he said:

  “I don’t get your anger. You act like my family and I are the ultimate villains. The Barnes family is known for growing over-sized pumpkins and not much else. We’re pretty harmless, if you ask me.”

  Alice’s lip curled back from her teeth. “Your family cost us the mines. Every Montoya lost their livelihood because of that woman.”

  Jensen tilted his head to the side. “I’m not so sure about that. I think the person responsible for that is Logan. But I know you don’t like him, either. Is there anyone in this world that you like?”

  River gave him an exasperated look, but so long as Alice was mad at him, then perhaps River’s punishment wouldn’t be so severe later. He didn’t know what Alice would do when they were home, but it wouldn’t be good.

  “I love my children.” Alice put a hand on River’s back and tried to steer her away.

  River dug in her heels. Alice paused, stunned.

  “River Montoya,” Alice said sharply. The threat of retribution serrated her tongue. “You and I are going to go home and have a talk about this.”

  River threw her hands in the air. “Why? Why do we need to talk about anything?”

  Alice stared at her daughter as if she’d grown an extra head right before her very eyes. Jensen wasn’t so thrown off by this display, though. He noticed River’s shoulders were trembling even more violently. All the color had washed from her face. Smoke poured from her lips.

  He took a step forward, and Alice hissed at him. He gestured to River with the hopes that Alice would see what was happening to her daughter. That turned out to be a waste of time. River weakly mumbled his name before collapsing.

  Jensen rushed forward to catch her. Alice intervened and threw him off her. River hit the floor with an ominous thud. His beast snarled at Alice’s behavior. River would have been safe with him. She was safest when she was with him.

  “You have done enough,” Alice said. “River is frail, but you chose to ignore that. You used her and left her weak.”

  Heat seared across Jensen’s skin. Flames licked the back of his throat. He couldn’t let them out or else the whole place would burn around him. This was River’s favorite place. He wouldn’t do that to her favorite place.

  Jensen swallowed his fire. River has said his name right before she passed out. He watched Alice awkwardly lift River into her arms. Though Alice was inhumanly strong, she was still a dainty woman. That made carrying a person difficult. He would have stepped forward to help, but he dropped the shirt he’d been covering himself with and moved to hold the door open for Alice.

  She sneered at him, but he didn’t care. He opened the passenger side door of Alice’s sedan and stepped back. Realizing that the library would be left unlocked and that River could get into a lot of trouble, he ran back inside. He gathered everything River had brought for the evening and his discarded clothing before searching for her keys. They sat atop her purse, which Alice had forgotten.

  Absolutely unashamed of his nakedness, Jensen locked the door behind him and jogged up to the driver’s side of Alice’s car. At first, he doubted she would roll the window down for him. After several too-long heartbeats, the tinted glass descended. Jensen didn’t say a word. He just passed the bag and the keys through the window.

  Alice looked as though the words thank and you had left a bitter taste on her tongue just by thinking about them. He didn’t expect her to say anything of the sort.

  As he watched Alice drive off with River unconscious in the passenger seat, he wondered if fate had cruelly teased him. The dragon woman lived in his heart. He adored River and wished that he could have taken her home with him. His beast thrashed, angrily protesting what he’d done.

  Or, rather, what he hadn’t done.

  12

  River never meant to lock her knees. She’d given in to the tension in the room, let it twist her until her body trembled. Blood flow cut off, she’d collapsed.<
br />
  But Alice Montoya saw it as a personal failure on her part. She’d gone on and on about how she wished she could have been stronger for her children. She apologized for making them frail, as if she could have forced her immeasurable willpower into her uterus and kept Reece from starving his sisters.

  By the time they got home, the conversation took a turn. River clutched her sweater to her naked chest while her mother warned her off all the ways a Barnes man could break someone as frail as River.

  “He has no good intentions,” Alice said. “He will use you and hurt you. What happened tonight should be proof enough. Whatever he did to you made you pass out. And when you fell, he didn’t move a muscle to help you.”

  “That’s a lie,” River said weakly.

  Alice paused her rant and glared at her daughter. “Excuse me?”

  River swallowed and found the last little nugget of strength left in her. She met her mother’s dark gaze. “That is a bold-faced lie, and you know it.”

  Alice pressed her lips into a grim line.

  “I called out for him. He tried to catch me.” River remembered it so clearly, an image that had been burned into her mind right before everything went dark. “I called Jensen’s name, and you stopped him from helping me.”

  Absolutely livid, River went on. “I wouldn’t have passed out had my mother not interrupted us while we were both naked. I locked my knees. That’s all. You know I have a bad habit of doing that when I’m nervous. You remember the choir concert in my junior year. I collapsed on the risers.”

  And Alice had called River frail that night, too. Anytime something happened to any of the twins, Alice acted as though it were an affront to her. Over and over, Alice treated them like they were her only failure.

  She didn’t want to protect her children. She wanted to hide them from the world, so no one could see her weak offspring. Except, they weren’t weak. They were coddled and scared.

  “What the fuck is going on out here?” Reece asked when he rounded the corner.

  He took in his sister and her sweater pressed against her chest. His attention quickly flicked to their mother and the anger pouring off her in waves. Reece quickly abandoned his question and started to back away, leaving River alone with her mother again.

  “Do you find it fun, being the Barnes Whore?”

  River’s jaw dropped.

  Her beast gnashed its teeth. It wanted out. River could feel her dragon’s claws trying to reach Alice. She sucked in a breath and tried to hold the dragon back, but her anger gave it power.

  “Are you mad that I like a Barnes man more than I’ve ever liked you?” Flames licked the roof of River’s mouth. Her words startled even herself.

  Alice’s eyes went wide, but River wasn’t ready to back down. River had gotten a taste of the future she wanted for herself, and she wasn’t going to let anyone demean her for her happiness. If Alice thought that she could belittle her daughter and push her back into a corner, then she was wrong.

  River was done with her mother’s underhanded words. She used them like a leash, keeping her daughters under her control by making them think they were weak. River wasn’t weak, but she had been afraid to anger her mother. It had forced her to tread carefully.

  “I was happy for once in my life,” River said, her voice level. Her fire still burned low in her gut.

  “Happiness makes you dumb,” Alice snapped. “It tricks you into making stupid decisions that will get you hurt. Is that what you want? Do you want the Barnes family to use you and leave you hurting? I have been trying to prote—”

  “You aren’t protecting me! You aren’t protecting anyone!” River flung her hand.

  She reminded herself not to lock her knees this time. She wouldn’t give her mother another excuse to call her weak. Fear couldn’t control River if she didn’t let it.

  But that lesson was harder to hold onto than River anticipated. Her conviction wavered for a moment. She sucked in a shaky breath, and the fire in her gut sputtered. She was just so tired of this old argument, no matter how far she had pushed it this time.

  River wished she could be the person she was when Jensen was around. The moment she left his side, she turned back into the weak-willed girl that her mother had raised.

  Alice put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. A gesture that should have been kind and endearing turned sour when Alice’s fingers dug in. Alice leaned in and said:

  “I would let you learn this lesson on your own, but it is one that could kill you. Stay away from that man and his family, River. Stay away or else I will force you to keep your distance.”

  River swallowed, unsure of the ways her mother would enforce her threat. Would she lock River in her room as if she were a petulant teenager? Or would she clip River’s wings? That had never happened before, but it was a consequence that had been hanging over her head for years. No one had pushed Alice far enough before now.

  The question was: did River care if her wings were clipped? It would result in a temporary grounding while her wings healed. She turned her gaze to the sky and wondered if she could withstand the punishment. She’d endured a lot over the years.

  River decided it was a risk she was willing to take. Her mother could not stop her from living the life that she wanted for herself. River didn’t say that to her mother’s face, but the decision gave her the power to look her mother in the eye without flinching.

  It was clear from Alice’s face that she knew something was up, but River stayed quiet.

  “Clean yourself up,” her mother sneered. “You smell awful.”

  River kept her chin up until she closed the bathroom door behind her. She didn’t cry until the hot water of the shower hit her face. She wasn’t sure how to be strong, but she hoped it was something she could learn.

  13

  Jensen wanted to find River, but if he set one foot on Montoya territory, then Alice would rain fire down upon his head. He wasn’t afraid for his own safety. Alice was a force to be reckoned with, but not one that he was particularly afraid of. He didn’t want to cause more trouble for River.

  If he had it his way, he would have stormed that manor in the woods and rescued River. He wanted to take her back to his place, where she would be surrounded by love.

  Instead, Jensen had to run errands for his mother. He drove to the airport to pick up the woman who might marry his cousin. She was pretty, in a conventional kind of way. Jensen entertained the idea of romancing her and living out a quiet life, but revulsion hit him quickly.

  The beast snarled at this betrayal. How dare he think of anyone other than River? River with her red hair. River with the smile she saved just for him. River was the only woman for him.

  He flashed an empty smile at the stranger from across the airport, and she jogged to catch up to him. Breathless, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and pretended to struggle with her luggage. She was a dragon shifter. He could smell it on her. Nothing she could have fit into that bag would be too heavy for her.

  While he led her outside, he wondered what River was doing. Was she miserable in her solitude? Or had she gone back to work? He debated heading back to Logan’s later that night but set the idea aside. There had been too many fights there recently.

  If Jensen waited for her there, he would get drawn into this clan war.

  Had he not already been drawn into it, though? His thoughts wandered, driven by his beast’s hunger for a particular woman. River was always on his mind. He couldn’t escape her or her lingering scent on his skin. He’d tried to scrub himself free of it, but it was as if she’d become a part of him.

  He’d never meant for that to happen, but it seemed inescapable now. And it wasn’t like he hated it, either. He didn’t resent her for how she had enthralled him. If anything, Jensen was happier than ever.

  The dragon woman beside him yawned and stretched her arms over her head. “I flew overnight to get here. Can we stop for coffee in town?”

  “Mom would love to make you coffe
e,” he suggested, knowing that his mother’s warmth was part of her charm.

  The woman wrinkled her nose. “But I want a fancy coffee. Your mom doesn’t strike me as the type to own an espresso machine.”

  Jensen cast a sidelong glance at the woman. Her petulant expression made his stomach turn. He sighed, knowing that she would pout for the rest of the day if he didn’t oblige her. He doubted his mother knew that this girl would act like a petty princess. She must have donned a mask while talking to his mother.

  Adrien was in for a treat once Jensen could finally hand her off. He turned into town and found a parking spot down the street from the café. There was parking at the café, of course, but Jensen wanted a chance to walk past the library.

  The woman in the passenger seat frowned and asked if he couldn’t have gotten them closer. He shrugged, unwilling to answer her. His beast snarled aggressively. If she noticed his frustration, she didn’t say anything. He thought about leaving her at the café, but his mother would lose her mind if he arrived home by himself.

  Jensen was willing to endure too much for the people he loved.

  He slowed his pace as he walked past the library. There wasn’t much he could see through the two glass doors. The check-out desk stood alone, unmanned. The beast caught River’s scent in the air. She was in there, somewhere. He’d been hoping to catch a glimpse of her but got nothing.

  The dragon woman he’d picked up from the airport noticed that he’d fallen back. He turned in a huff and grabbed him by the front of his shirt to drag him forward. Jensen caught a flash of red hair right as he was tugged out of view.

  River stopped what she was doing. Her heart lifted at the sight of Jensen. It fell and splattered across the ground when a blonde grabbed him and yanked him away. River’s brow folded. Tears gathered in her eyes.