All but Human

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  She snagged the bar. Ladon quickly flipped one arm under her legs, taking the weight of her hips on his forearm and shoulders, then flipped his other arm under as well, and kissed her bellybutton. She glanced down her body, her arms and chest tight from holding the bar, and grinned.

  He lifted her legs to his shoulders and licked her folds once, tasting the same jasmine and mist under the moon of her scent, but stronger and blazing with desire. He could hold her up like this all night. Lick her into a frenzy then lay her down on their bed and love her in slow, deep pulses. Watch the glimmer in her eyes shine bright just for him.

  A stuttered inhale accompanied her heels digging into his upper back. He licked again—but she released her legs and swung away. She hung for a moment, her arms tight and her chest high, her naked legs bent and her knees brushing against the weave of the hammock in soft swishes. The intensity of her effort showed on her face, across her forehead, along her cheeks. She stared at his chest, then his erection, her gaze hot.

  She pulled herself up. The bar rocked and groaned, but she leaned her belly against it and smirked down at him. “Can we put one of these in?” She pointed at the two rings hanging not far from his head. “Those, too?”

  By all the old gods, she was beautiful. He nodded, unable to speak.

  “In our olive tree?”

  “I will install an entire circus in the commons if you promise to hang naked from it the way you are right now.” The vibrant woman teasing him made him feel both young and old—young because for so long, he’d felt like stone, and old because he couldn’t shake the granite from his bones. She didn’t care about the threats of the world. She’d looked both with seers and with her eyes, but her young self didn’t have the experience to understand what lurked in the tiny cracks and crevasses of their existence.

  “Come up here with me,” she said, her voice husky.

  “Why?” Maybe she’d vocalize whatever fantasy drove the climb toward the ceiling. He could make it come true.

  Rysa only grinned and nodded toward the rings.

  Ladon grasped the closest ring with his left hand, palm out, which gave him a better, straight-on grip to his woman. Slowly, he pulled himself up by flexing his bicep. He kept his body straight and fought his rotation with his abs. At the top of the flex, he pressed down with his palm.

  Ladon straightened his arm. He thrust upward, his gripping hand now at his hip, and balanced his weight by tipping slightly toward the ring.

  The hook in the ceiling creaked. Rysa, her eyes wide, looked up, then back at his chest, his abs, and then his rock-hard erection. “Ohhhh…” she moaned and leaned forward on the bar.

  She kissed the tip of his cock.

  He almost lost his balance. Almost dropped into the hammock like a flopping fish. “You are an evil woman,” he growled as he swung his right arm around and straight-armed the other ring. His back to her, he now held his body like a cross. He couldn’t see her anymore, but he felt delicate kisses along the middle of his back.

  “I’m a Fate,” she snickered. “We’re all evil. Comes with the territory.” She kissed between his shoulder blades again.

  Ladon flipped into a handstand on the rings, facing his woman with his mouth now level with hers, but upside down. “When will your teasing end?” Not that he wasn’t enjoying himself, because he was. He’d have her soon enough. Playing did feel good, and she was more than a good playmate.

  Delicately, Rysa kissed his upside down mouth, her top lip on his bottom and her bottom on his top. “I think I had a little orgasm when you pulled up on the ring with one arm.” She kissed him again. “And another when you flipped into the hand stand.” Another kiss traveled to his chin. “You are so… stimulating.”

  Ladon chuckled.

  Her face took on a seriousness he hadn’t seen yet tonight. “Into the hammock. Facing me.”

  “Hmm?” All he wanted was another kiss.

  Her present-seer flickered over the surface of his mind. “You’ll get your kiss.” She nodded toward the mesh cording of their knotted hammock.

  Ladon lowered his legs first and flipped upright on the rings. Blood rushed away from his head but he breathed through it as he settled into the long, knotted drape.

  Rysa, her belly still pressed against the bar, watched his descent with searing focus. Her seers chimed, and a tiny scowl pulled her lips downward. “You’re going to do as I say.”

  This was new. She must not have liked something she saw. Ladon laid back and laced his fingers behind his head, doing his best not to scowl back at her.

  “You’re going to stay in this moment, with me.” Carefully, she lowered herself onto his legs. “Because I like you like this. I like you happy and content and it’s okay for you to be this way.”

  The hammock swayed. Rysa leaned forward, her hands dropping onto his chest, and she gently pressed. “I want you to trust that I have my life under control. We both need a break.”

  He trusted her more than he trusted any other human. Ladon gripped her waist and pressed her hips down. She responded by rubbing her warmth against his erection.

  “It’s cold now,” she whispered, her breasts pressed against his chest and her hands roaming over his arms. “When you go out, take walks with Dragon. Clean the van and the tools.” She waved her hand at the parts-littered table under the window. “Train Gavin and know that I’m going to marry you in a month. But…”

  Ladon lifted his head high enough to run the tip of his tongue over her lips. They’d had this conversation before. He’d rather play than go over his transgressions again.

  She sighed when he kissed her bottom lip, her hips wiggling, and she ceased fighting the pressure of his fingers. Her warmth slid down his erection, tight and intense, and a deep, wonderful wave of bliss rolled through his body.

  She could distract him like this every day for the rest of his life.

  Rysa sat up and cupped her breasts. Her present-seer filled the space around them, a lovely background music she used to guide her body as she rode him. The hammock swayed; she moaned and countered by circling her hips in the other direction. The hooks creaked and she leaned forward, balancing their weight more evenly.

  If he freed himself into the moment, he’d see her energy as much as feel it. She curled around him, through him, stroking his skin and firing his passions by wanting him as much as he wanted her. He gave; she received. She offered; he accepted.

  “…please stay with me like this…” she breathed between thrusts, “…please….”

  He used his arms to help her movements, doing his best to ignore what he knew she saw with her seer. What he knew bothered her. But life wasn’t as simple as staying in the moment.

  “I love you, Ladon.” An orgasm fired through her body. She quaked, moaning, and fell onto his chest. Even with her worry, her arms encircled and she quaked again, her body responding wholeheartedly to his attentions.

  “Please stay off the roof,” she whispered.

  But she voiced an anxiety he’d long known was there. Her fatigue. Her worry. His bliss fell away.

  His need did not. He pressed on her hips to keep her on him as he shifted and dropped his legs off the side of the hammock. One arm circled under her backside and he stood, Rysa holding tight to his front, and walked the short distance to their bed.

  He wasn’t gentle when he dropped her onto the mattress. He wasn’t gentle either, when he plunged into her again. She groaned, taking the pounding, and gripped the bedding to keep from sliding upward.

  His release came with a low growl but no moans. No sighs. Just the explosive mind-wiping of an intense orgasm.

  When he fell on top of her, she humphed as if his weight had pushed out all her air and she couldn’t breathe.

  The moment snapped. The night’s chill crawled onto the skin of his back like frost on the window. He’d let her down.

  Rysa pulled him back to her chest, her hands on his head and her lips pressed against his hair. The heat of a healing flowed
from her fingers to the skin of his face and contradicted the cold of the air. Suddenly, Ladon felt as if he was about to crack.

  But the healing did its work. His mind settled.

  Under him, Rysa breathed too shallow, too uneven. She should be swimming in an even ecstasy, one calming and surefooted. But she was not.

  She only closed her eyes. A small, unsure smile touched her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said, and pulled him higher on the bed, to cuddle.

  “Love…” he whispered.

  “I didn’t mean to ruin….” She turned her face away as she trailed off without finishing. “I just miss you like that. Happy.”

  Ladon held her close to his chest, their legs entwined, and kissed her forehead. He was more to blame for this moment than was she. His love worried.

  He didn’t argue or comment. He knew he would need to do as she asked—he would try to stay off the roof and stand guard in less obvious ways. He had to do something.

  Because for the first time in their six months together, in their bonded love and their commitment, the world got between them.

  It harassed. It interfered.

  And tonight, it stole his rumbles.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mid-December came. Snow fell and the healer of dragons, the seer of futures, carried a parasite across the border between her dreams and the winter’s night. It wiggled its way under her skin, through her muscles, to her bones. It gnawed and it squirmed and when her eyes opened wide, when she looked up at the dark shadows flitting through the nooks and the crannies of the attic ceiling above her head, she swore it giggled.

  She rubbed her face and her sense of the parasite wavered. It might have flickered with a fire opposite the December chill and glimmering, faerie-land snowflakes swirling in the pre-dawn pink outside the attic’s window, but it didn’t want to be seen. So it dug in again.

  She needed to get through her last final and get Ladon and Dragon home, to the cave. The lack of rumbling over the past two weeks bothered her a lot.

  She didn’t want to drop out. Coming back next year to finish her final semester felt like a feat more difficult than climbing Mount Rushmore—and a much harder task than it looked on the surface. Sure, it was technically feasible. But deep inside, her seers chattered. Once you let this go, it’s gone forever.

  Taken from you by your new life. Stripped away and replaced by a talon, a Legion Insignia, and a wedding ring.

  She didn’t blame Ladon. She didn’t know who to blame. Was this her fault? Was it theirs, together? Why couldn’t she just see what needed to be done—how to fix him properly and how to get through Spring Semester intact?

  At this point, maybe she should just future-see all her tests and cheat her way through her final courses.

  Which was stupid and obnoxious and just so Parcae it made her sick.

  Her future-seer wiggled and obfuscated anyway, making cheating increasingly difficult. The fog rolled in more, she suspected, because of the massive sinkhole of indecision in the house than because of bad things. Nothing terrible seemed to loom; just a lot of fretting. Too much anxiety about “taking it slow” wormed up from the bedroom below them. Too much cognitive attention went toward the wedding and transportation and celebrations and distracted everyone. Classes overwhelmed. Everyone was cranky. And honestly, having four adorable fluffy bundles of purring and demanding kitten and their snotty mommy in the house made things worse. Radar and Ragnar were distracted, for sure.

  Rysa blinked slowly, allowing her eyes to adjust to the clean light filtering through the gauzy curtains over the window and to the soft and gentle, if muted, patterns reflecting from her dragon onto the walls of the grand attic space.

  The beast glimmered as if fireflies danced along his ridges and hide, a wide mound of six-taloned protection. He rested at the foot of the broad mattress she shared with her soon-to-be husband.

  Ladon-Human, to the beast’s Ladon-Dragon. Brother, to AnnaBelinda’s Sister. Brother-Human. The Homo sapiens sapiens half of the Dracos.

  And quite the pigheaded man.

  He hadn’t stayed off the roof.

  Dragon lifted his head. His lights intensified as well, ramping slightly from the low shimmer he kept his hide at during the night to the warming golds and greens he preferred during the day. But they stayed muted and the little patterns and shapes that floated over his skin while he rested continued their slow meandering from his crest toward the tip of his tail.

  The scents of sunshine and warm spices rolled out on the beast’s breath. The floorboards creaked when his hands appeared, the house’s joists groaning under his massive bulk.

  The hide of his hands brightened, to allow her to see his signing better in the low light of the attic’s space.

  You are distraught? Dragon signed.

  Of course he felt her dream. He felt every knot of her anxiety and every low ebb of Ladon’s melancholy.

  Rysa rolled slightly, careful not to wake Ladon, and pulled her arms out from under the blankets. Cold wafted over her naked skin, even with Ladon’s brilliantly hot body inches from hers, and she lifted her hands so the beast could see.

  A dream, she signed.

  Next to her, Ladon sighed.

  Dragon arched his massive back and stretched his long, thick neck. He rolled his dragon shoulders and shinked his talons out one at a time, then back into his dexterous fingers, as was his post-resting routine.

  He did not respond. Like her, the beast suspected her dreams sprung from the ground around the tombs of Ladon’s ghosts. Those pits in his millennia-old mind from which phantoms lurched, uncalled and unwelcomed, surprising everyone and no one at the same time.

  They did what they could, she and her Dragon, to help.

  Gavin leaves for his early class, Dragon signed. Daisy is in the kitchen.

  Two floors below, the front door closed. Farther back in the house, a cupboard door slammed. German shepherd barks echoed through the house. Radar and Ragnar must be looking for their morning meal.

  Dragon stood. His tail arched out, stretching, and he leaned forward much like a giant cat before leaning back again, so he could lift his front limbs high enough to sign. You have a test today.

  Her final. Yes, she signed. Her fingers wanted to fidget, now that thoughts of her test flickered into the front of her mind. Absently, she twirled the dragon-talon tip talisman she wore on a leather cord around her neck.

  She fought the desire to run her fingers over the twists on top of Ladon’s head. The man sleeping next to her with his gold-flecked eyes and his big heart might fight his demons each day, but he’d always be her anchor against the ADHD-fueled gales of Storm Rysa.

  Leaving his side each morning took considerable willpower.

  He sighed again in his sleep and rolled a little away. His hand dropped off her hip and the heat of his fingers vanished from her skin. Indistinct words mumbled from his lips as he shifted, his stubble whiffing along the soft fabric of the white sheets under his chin.

  He’d stopped shaving again, though Rysa suspected he’d take the roughness off his cheeks and the sides of his head in the next few days.

  She wiggled, feeling the familiar Ohhhh… touch touch touch! that vibrated her bones and breasts and lower belly every time she stared at Ladon’s shoulders for too long. Or at the lines, cuts, and connections of his strong muscles underneath. Or the rippling across his middle that happened when he rolled off his belly and onto his back, usually with a big, knowing smile on his face and a happy-to-see-her salute bouncing hard and ready against his lower abs. Ladon, her gorgeous barbarian sun god, would lace his fingers behind his head and grin, and wait for her attentions.

  Dragon dropped his head low, but not his front limbs. Concern poked across their connection, a tiny pinprick of emotional structure Rysa did not think the beast meant for her to pick up.

  Human dreams, he signed.

  She’d become more sensitive to their energy flow over the past six months, even if she hadn’t yet
figured out how to be a good Fate. The beast’s three-dimensional cathedrals of thought looked and felt exquisitely real to her now. They appeared in her mind as faceted constructs of meaning, some jewel-like, some architectural. Often, they matched the patterns gliding over his hide.

  When he pushed images to her, gleaning an entire story from his thoughts took time, but the information was always there, and she was beginning to understand.

  But sometimes his small thoughts would get through even when he didn’t push them out, like the concern.

  Ladon still slept on his belly, his face turned toward her, no pillow under his head and his cheek against the mattress. The white blankets bunched up around his body, pooling next to his side.

  His skin held its own lights and looking at his warm, naked body and his ebony-dark hair raised her spirit high.

  Slowly, carefully, Rysa moved closer. Ladon’s heat flowed under the blankets, carrying with it a touch of his brilliant scent. He smelled of well-kept fields and well-fed peoples. Of warm summer days and fresh citrus trees and the masculinity of muscles worked hard. He carried the weight of the world with him wherever he went—it flowed from and around his body—but not all of it crushed his soul.

  But often, in his dreams, his mind replayed opposite times. Moments filled with dead wives and dying friends. Ghosts.

  No more hauntings. No more threats or agitations. He had his Prime and his healer, and she’d catch him, too.

  Rysa slid on her back toward Ladon. Slowly, she molded her body against his side. And just as slowly, her face only inches from his, she parted her lips.

  A dose of calling scents meant to trigger ‘confidence’ and ‘creative resourcefulness’ wafted from her throat. With her now-truncated enthraller abilities, the brew was the closest thing she could make to ‘solve the problem.’

  His handsome nose twitched. A low human rumble vibrated from his chest, through the mattress, to Rysa’s back. The soft hairs along his naked legs tickled her calves and the tops of her feet. His heat warmed her chilled fingers and toes.