Flux of Skin (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 2)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “Learning your abilities isn’t going to happen overnight.” Though he should have made more of an effort to teach her the basics when they’d found her. Not that he knew the basics. “Your seers saw what we needed to do to keep him alive, and we did it.” He stroked her cheek. “You said they won’t hurt him and that we need to be careful, so we will. You need to rest so you can give us the careful consideration we need.”

  “I know.” She peeled the material off his back and shoulder. “I’m going to uncover the shot.” She peered at his side. “It doesn’t look like you’ve bled more.”

  He hadn’t. She’d stopped the bleeding, both from the wound and into his insides, in the hospital parking lot. She cut away the last few strips and made him turn so she could see his side clearly under the canister lights.

  The bite on his shoulder had almost completely healed. It still showed some swelling, and the skin hadn’t faded to his normal tone, but it wouldn’t open again. He lifted his arm, testing his range of motion. The muscle Ismene had torn into halted as he moved, not responding the way he liked, but it felt better than it did before her attack.

  The bruises over his ribcage had also faded. His insides ached instead of screaming in agony, and the rib and his organs knitted. He carefully twisted side-to-side, again testing his range of motion.

  “My cuts and scrapes are healing nicely.” He grinned again, and brushed his lips against her forehead. “Thank you.”

  She pulled back. Not far, but enough so he noticed. More of her wild mix of emotions crossed her face and she glanced toward the tub. “Off with the rest of it. We need to get you cleaned up.” Again, wool covered her voice.

  “Rysa.” And again, the thickness of annoyance dropped into his.

  She turned her back to him and looked out the big window in the tub room. “Is there a shade? What if campers come by?” Her arms tightened around her chest.

  Why wouldn’t she talk to him? He didn’t understand. She’d said “mine” and this shouldn’t be happening. She should feel supported. Not alone.

  Because from the way she held her shoulders, alone seemed the most likely reason she acted this way.

  “I’ll shower when you’re done.” She tugged on her t-shirt. “I doubt Andreas brought in underwear for me. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who likes lady things that aren’t part of a lady.”

  Andreas had raised more daughters—and sons—than any other human being walking the earth. He’d helped birth countless babes, his own and those of other men. “Lady things” were nothing more than things to him. Tea parties were common events in his life. And he’d lifted every single one of his little girls to his shoulder, carried them out into their settlement’s open areas, and taught them how to shoot an arrow straight and bring a bad man to his knees.

  Women, for Andreas, were not a mystery, as they were for Ladon. Women were the best of the world, the greatest wonder of life. Women made living worthwhile. Their love, their strength, their differences. Women balanced Andreas.

  And Ladon. One woman, always, whose smile made rising in the morning worthwhile. One whose looks said I believe in you. One for whom Ladon knew he could be what she needed.

  But Rysa stepped away from him again. She closed herself off and he didn’t know why.

  “Come shower with me.” He’d rub her muscles and heal her.

  The look she gave him screamed No sex for you!

  This wasn’t about sex. “We need to get the blood off you.” He stroked her shoulder. “And you’re in pain. I can tell. Your hip hurts.”

  “I’m okay. It’s just a bruise.” But she rubbed at her side. “I’ll fix it in the morning, after we sleep. I don’t want to use my healer right now.” She paused. “Andreas’s enthralling will only last so long. Getting a fever again because I fixed myself would be stupid.”

  And there it was, right there, her self-doubt. She wouldn’t use her healer on herself because it would be stupid.

  How many people over her life had told her what she did was stupid? How many times had she heard you can’t control yourself, so you must be stupid or, most likely from that boy who’d hurt her, no one will want you because you can’t even fix yourself.

  Not anymore. The woman in front of him was more powerful than any other Fate he’d ever met. As powerful as any class-one healer. And she was learning to use her abilities with astonishing speed.

  Stupid, she was not.

  “That’s it.” He wrapped his good arm around her waist and lifted her up.

  “Put me down!” She slapped his shoulder.

  “I will not.” The sliding door was too narrow to carry her through with her against his side so he pulled her around to his front. “It’s my turn to take care of you.”

  “Take care of me? Damn it, Ladon! I’m not the one who got shot taking care of me!” A sniffle popped from her nose and she bit her lip, refusing to look at him. “You almost died.”

  “No, I did not.” He set her down. “I’m fine.” Was she blaming herself for all of Vivicus’s psychoses? “He’d come after us sooner or later, with or without you. He’s crazy.”

  “I’m a target! A big, untrained target who needs you to look after her.” She slapped her chest and her breasts bounced.

  “So?” He needed her to look after him. He’d be sitting in The Land of Milk and Honey right now, nursing his eighth vodka tonic and watching the new crop of Shifters who’d come to Dmitri for work, wondering which one of them would try to enthrall him into a night’s worth of good times.

  Dragon would be sitting next to Dmitri watching the octopuses in The Land’s exotic fish tank change colors and patterns, wondering why they all had to be prisoners in a world none of them liked.

  She inhaled sharply. “But I got you hurt. More than once.”

  “Rysa!” He wouldn’t yell. Not with her. His sister only heard his words when he forced them into her perception, but Rysa saw every little detail. Heard every nuance, spoken and unspoken.

  She knew him better than he knew himself.

  “What does the rumbling mean?” she whispered.

  The rumbling? Why did she ask that?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “AnnaBelinda said…” His love clamped her mouth shut. “In the elevator. On the way down to the tunnel. She…”

  Rysa crunched in on herself. She pulled her arms tighter and tighter, her hands and face becoming pale.

  “What did she say?” His sister had said something terrible, and now Rysa pulled away from him.

  She pushed by, rolling her injured hip so she didn’t hit it on the doorframe. Out into the front room of the bathroom, she didn’t stop. She kept walking.

  “Rysa!” Ladon had no choice but to follow her out into the main area, next to the bed.

  “I can’t wear this.” She twirled around, plucking at the t-shirt. “I can’t wear your blood.” Up and over her head, the shirt pulled and puckered around her face. Seams ripped. It dropped onto the braided rug under her feet.

  She stood bare-chested in the shadows of the main room staring at her feet. Naked, exposed, she didn’t move, didn’t turn toward him. Didn’t look at or touch herself.

  “What did she say?” He’d have words with Sister. Both his sister and her dragon were going to apologize for what they did.

  Rysa yanked a new t-shirt out of the bag and pulled it over her head. It flopped over her shoulders and draped over her breasts, falling far enough to cover all but the bottom curve of her backside.

  She’d put on his clothes. Accidently or not, his woman wore his clothes.

  She sniffed at the shirt. “It smells like you. Like sunshine.” Then her hand dropped away and she stared at the door.

  Most women didn’t understand what it meant when they put on a man’s clothes. When they accepted his scent.

  Mine roared through Ladon’s mind, more concept than word. His mate. His life. His center. His wife. And Sister caused tears to roll down her cheeks? Caused her breath to hitch an
d hiccup in her chest?

  “Tell me what she said to you.” His fists clenched. Family or not, his sister would understand what she did. He’d yell until they were both deaf if he needed to.

  Rysa looked down at his hands, then back up to his face. He saw her sigh more than heard it, felt it in his bones more than perceived her breath leave her body. “I don’t know how to talk to you about any of this. Are there even words for the life you two lead? Ways of describing what flows between you and Dragon? What it means to be an immortal?”

  She breathed out again, and her hands clenched around her elbows. “I’ve been trying, for myself. Trying to think of ways to describe how my seers feel. How they communicate with me. Or how it feels when they change from tentacles snatching at the world to a chorus camped out in the back of my brain.”

  Her weight shifted between her feet the way it did just before she’d try to run away. “And my healer, it’s beyond foreign. Sometimes it barks. Sometimes it’s like an alien’s parking a flying saucer in my head.”

  “Love, please. Sit down. Don’t—”

  “Run away again? That’s what you were going to say. ‘Don’t run away from me!’ I don’t need my seers to hear those words loud and clear.” She threw her hands into the air. “Maybe I need some air. Did you think of that? Maybe I need to run around the cabins a couple of times. Work off some of my hyperactivity. Because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Exercise! Keep moving. Stay active. ‘It’ll help control your ADHD.’” She air-quoted her last words.

  “Then we’ll go outside. But—”

  “‘Don’t have another spaz, Rysa!’ Right? Don’t panic yet again. It’s not all ADHD, Ladon. It’s never been simple attention problems. Do you have any idea how terrifying large groups of people are? Everyone’s moving and everyone’s got an opinion and I can’t keep track of what I’m doing much less all these people and now all of a sudden I have new voices in my head whispering about what-was-is-will-be or whipping around like some goddamned squid and this other thing that acts like a guard dog and they’re all attacking each other and I meet this huge guy who’s my grandfather—great, great or something grandfather—and bam! He’s feeding me a new drug that will keep it all in balance.”

  She bounced toward the door. “Because I can’t do anything by myself. Never have been able to, and God knows I never will. Someone’s always cleaning up my messes not because they want to, but because they have to.”

  The door slammed against the wall. She ran outside.

  Ladon ran after her.

  The sun sat right at the horizon, a low globe of heat casting long shadows over the circle. The SUV was gone—Andreas must have taken it to purchase food. But the lights were on in his sister’s cabin.

  Rysa pointed across at the other door. “She said, ‘I am not compelled by rumbling to love my husband.’”

  The words slammed into Ladon as if his sister had driven over him with his van. And then compelled took the wheel and backed over him again and again and again.

  “That is not what the rumbling means!” This time he yelled. This time, he wanted his sister to hear. “The rumbling is special!”

  A coarse laugh coughed out of Rysa. She sounded more like a cat throwing up a hairball than a woman standing in the center of a gravel circle, between three cabins, in the wilds of Wyoming.

  “Special? What does that mean, Ladon? Is it special because it’s unique? How many women have you made that sound for? Huh?”

  “You are the fourth.” Four loves. Four of the many women he thought he couldn’t live without.

  She nodded. “Charlotte was one, wasn’t she?”

  For a sharp moment, the pain of Charlotte’s death skewered his world. Charlotte, who’d died giving birth to his dead son. Charlotte, whom he couldn’t save.

  “Yes.”

  Rysa’s seers rang through the circle, clear and beautiful, but bitter. “And one named… Abigail? I can’t see. It’s too long ago. But Andreas has been thinking about her.”

  Abigail, who had been very much like Rysa—young, strong, but with an issue that made her life difficult. Abigail couldn’t read, no matter how she tried. And she’d died, murdered by a mad priest, their unborn child burned in her womb with her.

  Abigail, whom he couldn’t save.

  “Who was the other one?” Rysa paced back and forth. “I can’t see her at all.”

  “Her name was Senephreti. She hated me.” Then she disappeared into the night with a trader, along with a significant amount of his gold.

  Rysa stopped and his t-shirt swirled around her hips. It draped smoothly over her front, showing in great detail the curves of her femininity. Then it dropped into a curtain concealing the truth of her body. “I will never hate you.”

  You love me, he thought. He saw it shine from her face. He tasted it on her lips. It moved from her fingers to his skin and he’d never give it up. Never.

  “Marry me.” He’d meant to say I love you. He’d meant those other three words, the ones she needed to hear more than a plea to not go. But they weren’t what burst from his mouth.

  He stepped closer. Slowly, but he’d close the distance between them. “I know you will say ‘yes.’ You called me your husband at the hospital. Me, Rysa. I know that’s what your seers are showing you! It’s what the future holds.”

  He walked toward her, moving gently, offering his hands.

  Rysa backed away and her voice dropped low. When she spoke, it came out almost a whisper. “Maybe… maybe I don’t see anything different because you’re the only man I want to see. I don’t want to see us breaking up! I’ve given you everything, Ladon. Everything I have in here.” She tapped her chest. “You’re… you’re…”

  She sighed but it caught. She’d wrapped her arms so tight around her chest it couldn’t get out.

  She’d done the same thing when she thought she would hurt them, after their first lovemaking. She’d pulled away and done the same curling in on herself. Pain cinched her body into a constricted knot and she backed away like a terrified animal.

  “Rysa…” His entire body reached for her. All of him—his arms, his chest, his lungs, his soul. But she backed away again.

  “We’ve had sex four times,” she whispered.

  The counting again. She’d also counted the number of times they’d been intimate in the RV. Each time they’d made love. Each time they’d curled around each other, loving more deeply than he’d ever loved anyone.

  But why did she count? “I don’t understand. I don’t—”

  When she turned, when she looked him in the eye, he knew. It showed on her face. She counted because every time he touched her, when he pulled her close or smiled or rumbled, it filled a hole. She fixed the moment into her consciousness and worked hard to remember every detail of when he demonstrated the depth of his caring because it meant more to her than he could possibly understand. Maybe more than she understood.

  When he kissed her temple, the action took away some of the hurt caused by her father’s abandonment. When he touched her arm, it stopped the doubt caused by her classmates. And when they lay entwined, it filled the wounds caused by that boy who hurt her.

  “What if…” She pinched her lips. “What if when you get to know me… know all my annoying habits and see me when I’m sick and puking or picking my nose or leaving my towels on the bathroom floor and not washing the dishes and you realize these few days we’ve been together you fell in love with an idea of me and… and not me, Ladon.”

  Her pinched lips turned into a gulp. “I’m the Fate who loves you with all her heart! Oh God, all of it. I didn’t realize. Or understand. It’s not supposed to happen this fast. We’re supposed to get to know each other. Go on dates. I’m not supposed to tell you I love you until what, date five? I don’t even know. But two days and we’re having incredible, wonderful, love sex. Love sex, Ladon, because I love you and I was in love with you the first moment I saw you and I didn’t understand and then you told me you loved m
e and I felt whole.”

  Another big gulp of air rushed into her throat. “I shouldn’t feel whole. But I did. Like I could face all this.” She twirled around, but her arms stayed tight around her chest.

  “And then your sister tells me you’re compelled and… and what if it’s not real? What if you buy that house in Minneapolis and I live with you and one day I wake up and you’re gone. What if you get to that point when you can’t stand me bouncing and babbling and you leave.”

  “Rysa.” He picked her up. Picked her up off the gravel and wrapped his arms around her so tightly she released her own. “Rysa.” He picked her up even though it strained his wounds and he buried his face in her collarbone even though it made it hard to breathe. “I won’t. Beautiful, I won’t.”

  She whispered admonishments and demands that he set her down, but he ignored them.

  “Rysa, I won’t.”

  And when she curled against his chest, when she wrapped her arms around his neck instead of herself, he carried her into their cabin.

  Chapter Thirty

  No words countered compelled. “I won’t” did nothing to counter her sense of forced. But Ladon didn’t know what else to say.

  “Beloved, we won’t.” What else could he say?

  He sat on the edge of the bed holding her against his body. The cool night air, full of desert dust and chirping of crickets, drifted in through the cabin’s open door and over her neck. Rysa shivered in his arms.

  Light streamed from the bathroom, and streaked the shadows with brightness.

  The bed creaked and the blankets bunched up as he pulled himself and Rysa toward the center of the mattress. She moved with him, pushing along with her legs and rocking back and forth.

  He held her closer, and smoothed his hand along her spine, his lips on her forehead.

  This close, he smelled her calling scent brew. ‘Fear’ and ‘longing’ rolled as clearly from her as if she’d painted him a picture.