It took all her effort not to moan.
His breath grazed her ear as his lips moved along its edge. “Your seers are rich and beautiful and very distracting.” He didn’t back away.
Like you. Whether the thought came from her nasty or from him, she didn’t know.
She fought her own body as her arms enfolded his waist. The need to tuck her fingers under his shirt and feel his skin blotted out everything else.
A groan rolled from deep inside his chest, more like a low boom than any sound a human should be able to make. “I think they’re affecting me. They did in Minneapolis.” His body felt like a bow about to snap, but he didn’t move. He held her without gliding his touch over her skin. His lips pressed into her hair but he didn’t kiss. Nor did he press his obvious erection against her belly.
She tried to breathe through it but her deep inhales only thrust her breasts harder against his chest.
“I know your seers showed you something about us when we found you. Something physical. Your eyes dilated. Your hips swayed and your cheeks colored. The same responses happened just now.”
Even with the stench of Burner clinging to him, he smelled of sunshine. It mingled with the texture of his skin. She pulled him closer. The metal around her wrists dug into his back, but he didn’t recoil. He continued to hold her thighs.
“When I touched you last night, it made you angry. I’m sorry, Rysa.”
She heard the words but they slipped by, lost in her hyper-focus on a spot on his chest just below his heart. She wanted to kiss it, to lick it. To experience in the what-is what she knew would be a brilliant, bone-melting reaction.
Her hand glided up his torso.
He grabbed her wrist. After a pause, he kissed her knuckles. “Say something.”
Her body didn’t want to talk.
Another groan boomed from his chest but she leaned toward him, holding tight to his waist with the hand he didn’t grasp. His tension rearranged itself, moving from a uniform tightness to a rock in his lower back.
“We can’t do this.” He kissed the bridge of her nose before he pried himself away enough to see her eyes. “You deserve more respect than a jerk like me can give you.”
He wanted her, but he wanted her to want him more.
“You’re not a jerk.”
He almost touched her cheek. His fingers stopped a hair’s breadth from her skin before his hand vanished to his side. She wouldn’t have pulled away this time. She would have concentrated on the feel of his fingertips as he traced the line of her jaw.
He tilted his head. “Maybe someday I’ll be worth that look in your eyes.”
A tentacle whipped. What-is, the real present, sank below her seers’ vision of what-will-be—his palm gliding over her naked breast, his fingers pinching her nipple. Their bodies entwine, as much of their naked skin touching as possible.
Dragon’s colors. Dragon, with them.
Then what-was—Tom, her first love, on top of her, moving faster and harder than he should have her first time. He was completely involved in his own pleasure. Not thinking about her. She could tell. He didn’t look at her.
But Ladon’s eyes will gleam happier than she thought possible.
It all heaved through her and her back arched. A cry tore from her throat.
“Rysa!”
The real world snapped back. She wasn’t on the dresser. She was on the floor straddling Ladon’s hips, and had a knee on each of his wrists. Her arms tightened around her chest and her hands burrowed in her underarms. The damned shackles scraped through Harold’s old t-shirt.
They were still dressed. They hadn’t—
“What did he do to you?” Ladon’s eyes narrowed to slits. His cheek twitched, and his neck muscles tensed so tightly the line of his jaw turned white.
“What?” She’d pinned him, but her actions weren’t the focus of his anger.
“Someone hurt you. I felt it backwash from your seers. Just now. I—” The concern in his eyes worked down his features and loosened his jaw. “I see it on your face.”
She touched her cheek. Tears.
“No one will ever treat you that way again.” He smacked his shoulders against the floor. “Damned normals.” Then he turned his face away and muttered something that sounded vaguely like “snap his neck.”
“What happened?” She didn’t know. Did she black out again? Ladon’s anger caught her off guard. They didn’t know each other. Why did he care about Tom?
Everything reeled. She couldn’t think.
“You don’t remember? You flipped me and started crying.” He nodded toward his hands. “Will you let me up?”
“Oh.” Lifting her knees, she released his wrists.
He sat up and pulled her close in one motion.
“I’m sorry, Ladon. I didn’t mean to come on to you like that. I… I don’t do that. I’m not like that. I—” She babbled but she didn’t want him to let go. She felt safe for the first time since she activated. Safe against his chest. Safe from Tom’s meanness. Safe like maybe she’d find her way through the hell of her fated future.
“I need to learn how to handle this connection we have.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have picked you up. You’re—” He stopped suddenly, holding his breath. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this before. It’s disorienting.”
“Disorienting is one way to describe it.” Most people didn’t get first-hand knowledge of what it meant to greet the day with a head full of attention deficit.
He shook his head. “But by the gods, you are hard to resist.”
She snorted. It snuck out her closed mouth. Sure, she was hard to resist. She was a spaz who clung to him like some pathetic sea creature.
He held her away so she could see his eyes. “You are exquisite, Rysa.”
Her mouth dropped open. Men didn’t say things like that to her and mean them. They said them to soften her up so she wouldn’t pay attention when they did their little mental calculations. And they never used words like “exquisite.” Always “sweet” and “nice” and “doable.”
“Has no one told you so?”
She shook her head.
He hugged her close again. “Modern men do not understand true beauty, even when it sits on their laps wearing nothing more than a t-shirt and lace panties.”
She covered her still open mouth. “Oh!” Her cheeks warmed and she bit her lip, though she knew she shouldn’t be ashamed. They hadn’t done anything.
“You’re adorable when you’re embarrassed.” He lifted her off, but he didn’t revel in her awkwardness. “Dragon’s with Marcus anyway.”
She realized he’d never leave out Dragon. Not with her. She was too important to the beast. Her mouth dropped open again. She hadn’t considered that. “Oh.”
He exhaled hard and scratched the back of his head. “I apologize. Again.”
“How can this be happening?” She’d reacted the same way to Tom. Four days and they were having sex in his dorm room. Like it was inevitable.
Ladon smirked and ran his fingers through his hair. “I think your seers are pushing the future into the present.” He smirked again and looked away.
A buzz vibrated from under the bed, followed by a chirp. When they had dropped to the floor, they kicked her clothes. Now only one leg of her jeans was still on the rug next to the bed. Her phone was in a pocket.
Her phone’s battery had been low yesterday. It must be about to run out of power. And she’d forgotten to check on Gavin. How many times had he texted her since last night? She reached under the bed, happy for the distraction, and pulled out her phone.
Nineteen. He’d texted her nineteen times.
“So the whine was from your phone,” Ladon muttered.
“My friend Gavin.” She cycled through his messages. Where are you? Are you okay? I can’t find you. Rysa, please text me back. Please. I know your phone is on. The cops are looking for you and your mom.
He was okay. The Burners hadn’t eaten him.
Ladon stared at her phone. “Is he the one who hurt you?”
“He’s my friend. The Burners chased him and—”
“You were in danger and he ran away?” Annoyance, anger, and something distinctly male Rysa didn’t understand pulsed off Ladon. He continued to stare at her phone.
“He’s my friend, Ladon. I told him to run.”
He shook and stared at her for another moment. Then he sprang to his feet, not looking at her again. “I’ll go downstairs.” He grabbed his boots so fast his motion blurred.
The door banged against the wall when he stalked out.
She watched him go. Ladon was acting as if her impulsiveness had infected him. The inability to keep their hands off each other. His macho jumping to conclusions about Gavin. All of it.
Were her emotions backwashing to him? They had to be. And Ladon couldn’t tell the difference between Tom and Gavin.
In her hand, the now-dead phone’s screen went dark.
She’d gone to counseling after Tom. The woman had sat on the other side of the room, nodding and saying obvious things like “How do you feel?” and “Write down your thoughts. We’ll go over them next week.” Rysa had. Diligently. She’d learned three things: She was mad. Sad.
And bad.
She never told the therapist. Saying it out loud made it sound even stupider than it did when it rattled around in her head. Even then, before she knew she was a Fate, she knew her Fate’s soul wreaked havoc on the men in her life.
She set down her dead phone. She shouldn’t involve Gavin in any more of her problems anyway.
Involving Ladon and Dragon was bad enough.
Chapter Sixteen
You must not drink. Dragon seized Ladon’s vodka and poured it on the driveway. Rysa will smell the liquor. She will not be happy.
“Give that back.” Ladon snatched at the bottle but Dragon threw it over the garage. The morning sun hit the glass as it sailed through the air and Ladon squinted at the glare. “All the damned phones and wifi in the house are giving me a headache.”
That is not why you drink. The beast snorted flame into the sky. He swiped the van with his tail and waves trailed through the dew clinging to the paint.
“Yes, it is.” Ladon did have a headache. It pounded against his temples and Dragon’s reprimands weren’t helping.
You could shower.
“She’s showering.” Naked with the spray running down the curve of her back and over her breasts. Those damned cuffs sliding along her damp skin.
Ladon tried to force back the image by tapping his knuckles against his forehead. He’d rein in these thoughts and give her the space she needed.
He hadn’t done so upstairs. He’d seen it on her face after her phone buzzed. She’d looked at him the same way she had the night before, when he touched her hair.
Modern women were confusing. Modern life was confusing. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
You will show her respect. You will not drink and make her leave. Dragon dropped his head and set his forelimbs, and wild pulses rebounded across his shoulders. She is not afraid of me and I want her to stay.
The beast hopped around Ladon like a giant glowing dog and made his head hurt more. Behind them, the van’s door stood open and the morning sun flooded the interior. He could get another bottle. He needed clean clothes, anyway. And he’d left out their tools.
You have no right to act this way with me. I am not the one who almost had sex with Rysa.
“I did not!” He yelled louder than he meant to. Three sparrows in the front yard took wing. “I wasn’t going to.” Though he would have, if the circumstances had been right. Were right. Would be right. He grimaced and knocked his knuckles against his forehead again.
He needed to get a handle on the backwash from her seers. He really had acted like a jerk upstairs. He knew better, yet he was confused and impulsive as if he were the one with the attention issues.
Dragon pranced sideways toward the van. She is upset about her mother. The shackles frighten her. She does not understand what it means to be a Fate. You will make her feel less in control if you give in to your base desires.
Yelling “You’re not my sister!” and dropping into the driver’s seat of the van with a bottle in each hand would take some edge off Dragon’s poking, but he sniffed and slapped the beast’s neck instead. “She’s affecting me. I can’t think.”
Do not blame Rysa.
“I’m not blaming her!” We didn’t even kiss, he pushed.
You are acting like the Draki Prime when they were teenagers. Dragon raised his head and blew more flame into the sky. You want her to stay as much as I do. Yet you behave like an idiot.
Ladon whipped a pebble down the driveway. It skipped across the gravel before slamming into the mailbox post next to the road. A crow sitting on the box took flight. The bird cawed what sounded like the avian form of “Idiot!”
Ladon had awoken this morning with a beautiful woman wrapped around him. Beautiful and without the usual disdain heaped on him by Fates and Shifters.
Though disdain wasn’t the correct word. They showed more of a reverent and terrible awe. It manifested as the nervous stare of someone afraid of a beating.
All the wars, all the battles. How did he justify five centuries as a Roman legatus? All the killing. Sooner or later, the disdain would dart through Rysa’s eyes. No matter how he detailed his life, or explained his reasons and the context of his history, it would raise its head and nothing else would matter.
In the eyes of modern women, how could he be anything other than a monster? “She’s a Fate,” he said. “She’s not going to stay with us. You have to understand that.”
She will do as she pleases. I will not drive her away because I am afraid she will leave. Dragon flicked Ladon’s shoulder. His irritation swarmed through their connection like a full hive of bees. We have lived long enough for you to understand this, Human.
Ladon slapped the beast’s neck again. “You’re the idiot! I’m realistic.” The beast might be right, though. Both dragons had a sense of the world as it was. Better sense than his. Better than the Draki Primes’.
His brother-in-law, Derek, would chuckle and say the beasts saw better than any human. If they couldn’t see the world, how could they mimic it?
“She was sleeping right next to me.” Wiggling her thigh against his crotch. Ladon rolled his shoulders to stretch the ligaments. And she smells nice, he pushed.
Dragon snorted. I want a bath.
“Then take one. No one’s stopping you.” Dirty dragons were surly dragons. Perhaps the beast might stop chastising him if his back wasn’t covered with soot. “You look like a giant lint ball when you mimic to invisibility.”
Dragon pushed Ladon toward the porch.
Behind them, Harold walked out of the shed carrying two sawhorses. “There are shammies in the garage. I’ll get the hose when we’re done.” He set the sawhorses next to the van but thought better of it. He tapped his chin and moved them to the side, into better light.
Dragon ducked into the vehicle and reappeared with his jug of baby shampoo. Scrub my ridges.
“Looks like now’s the time. I’ll go get it, then.” Harold pointed over his shoulder.
Ladon slapped the beast’s tail. “Only if you stop complaining.” He’d had enough badgering for the day. He stripped off his t-shirt and boots. No use getting his clothes soaked. “You hold still this time. And don’t douse me.”
I will douse you if I want to. You were going to have sex with Rysa.
“Let it go!” Twenty-three centuries and the beast picked now to drive him insane. “She’s had enough hurt in her life. I won’t add to it.”
Harold walked out of the garage, shammies and hose in hand. He hooked the hose to the water feed by the porch. “You better not. Hell hath no fury like a pissed off Fate.”
Ladon grabbed the hose with more force than he intended. Fates stewed and planned and vengeance ended up pierci
ng his left shoulder above his clavicle with an arrow poisoned with the blood of a Burner. Ladon shuddered, wishing he hadn’t pulled up that memory.
Harold took a step back as he gestured surrender. “I just think you need to talk to her about what it means when the Great Sir takes a shine.” He pointed at Dragon.
Ladon sprayed the beast’s side. Why were women complicated? It used to be that all he had to do was smile and run his finger down an arm and he’d have himself a companion.
Until she got sick of him.
Sooty water splashed off of Dragon’s haunch.
The water is cold. The beast rolled away from Ladon’s shammy.
“I’m going in.” Harold waved in Ladon’s general direction. “She’s Jani. You treat her well. If you don’t, you put all our lives in danger, you son of a bitch.” Harold flipped off Ladon as he walked into the house. The screen door slammed behind him.
Why did Harold care? The Jani had ignored Marcus for a century and a half and weren’t likely to start caring now.
Ladon scrubbed at Dragon’s shoulder harder than he should, and tried to ignore the beast’s complaints about the water’s temperature. “How many rivers have you bathed in? It’s no worse than that.” You’re acting like a baby, he pushed.
I have bathed in many rivers. They were also cold.
The bath would take forever if the beast kept rolling around like a hedgehog. “Why don’t you wash yourself? You can hold the shammy.”
My ridges are dirty. The beast presented the bumps along his back. They ran his entire length, interweaving in an intricate plaited pattern.
Ladon had seen both dragons rub trees bare of bark to clean their backs. He sprayed Dragon and scrubbed between two particularly dirty bumps. Best to wash the grumpy beast and save Marcus’s oak.
Dragon’s coat didn’t wave under the water, and it appeared duller than it should. Ladon rinsed off the shampoo and the beast’s ultra-fine, transparent down rebounded, but not as well as it should have.
Games of Fate (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 1) Page 12
