One of the worst things about being a future-seer was the damned déjà vu.
Ladon chuckled against her hair. “Do I need to carry you upstairs?”
The gold in his eyes sparkled. Hypervigilance might have kept him on the roof all day but at least now her distractibility distracted him from his moods.
Out of sight of Daisy and Gavin, Rysa used her finger to draw a little circle where the V of his abs crested over the waistband of his black jeans.
“Dragon’s sleepy,” she said, and pulled Ladon toward the kitchen door.
Behind them, neither Daisy nor Gavin seemed to notice.
Chapter Twenty
Dragon circled in his corner of the attic, a shadowed alcove behind the stairs and lined with boxes, old furniture, and rugs. He stretched his big neck and shuffled a couple of boxes to the side before laying his head down on the large, Persian carpet.
“He’ll sleep about twenty hours this time,” Ladon said. He leaned against the beast’s side, his palms flat on Dragon’s ultra-fine coat, and swayed with his dragon’s settling motions.
Rysa would never tire of watching their pre-sleep ritual. She might be a little worked up right now, a little extra bouncy and kinetic, but she’d always notice the low rumbles from Dragon as he cooled to match the background temperature, or how his coat wiggled as it settled into mimicking the texture of the boxes and the rugs, or how Ladon shifted from one foot to the other as if hypnotized…
They hypnotized her. Their energy shifted low as well, taking on the feel of a trickle across her skin, or maybe the breezy pull of an unending silk scarf.
She wanted to roll inside it. To feel the tactile smoothness of the energy of her resting dragon. She wanted to breathe and not worry about the end of the term or the new kitties or the excruciatingly slow blossoming of her friends’ relationship.
Dragon smoothed his mental cathedrals into rolling hills bright with warm sunshine and wildflowers. All Rysa wanted to do now was to lie in the grass and fuck her man into bliss.
She wasn’t always this horny when Dragon slept. Often, though, Ladon responded to his decreased closeness to his dragon with an increased closeness to his woman. After about half an hour of him touching and snuggling and following her around like a puppy, a couple hours of epic lovemaking was inevitable.
She enjoyed it. How could she not? All through high school and her freshman and sophomore years at the U, she’d figured if she did find someone, he’d tolerate her hyperactivity. That, like her ex, a man wouldn’t really want her. That he’d settle for her. And if she did get sex, it would be the settled-for kind.
Yet here she was in an attic with a godling who might legitimately be the sexiest man alive and it was okay to be horny while watching him do his godling thing.
Rysa stroked his arm and leaned against his back, her arms around his waist and her cheek planted between his shoulder blades. She took up his sway and his synchronization to his beast. Their flow, their touch, rippled and stabilized, and once again, Rysa felt blessed to be part of their lives.
Dragon all but vanished into the corner, his body now a mound of boxes and rolled-up designer rugs.
Ladon turned in her embrace, his big arm lifting over her head and across her shoulders. He slowly rubbed his soulful fingers up and down her spine, his breathing matching his movements, and leaned his wonderful facial hair against her forehead.
The goatee sometimes poked and pricked but he kept it trimmed and tidy and she kind of liked the contrast to when he went clean-shaven. He’d scrape it off soon enough anyway, so she might as well enjoy it now.
His diamond of chest hair, though, he left alone. She tugged on his t-shirt, pulling it out of his jeans, and wiggled her fingers under the fabric so she could run her fingers through the soft hairs over his heart.
He had the most sensual body. It wasn’t just his incredible strength or the chiseled lines of his muscles. He might look hard and taut but his stomach and his arms felt loose and ready to run, punch, and lift, like an Olympic athlete at his peak. He was, really, a big, limber cat with barbarian fur and gorgeous gold-flecked eyes.
He tipped his face toward the ceiling. “Dragon’s asleep.”
“Umm…” Rysa pulled his t-shirt up over his pecs and rubbed her entire face against his chest, first her right ear, then her cheek and forehead and then her left cheek, to her left ear.
A low, approving growl flowed from Ladon. His t-shirt landed on the floor.
Rysa ran her fingers over his biceps.
He yanked off her shirt and tossed it across the room, toward the small fridge and the pantry against the opposite wall. His hands danced over her breasts, his fingers curling into the cups of her bra. The pad of one thumb found its way across a nipple.
Rysa gasped.
A louder, throatier growl rose from Ladon, one as deep and reverberating as his touches. “Swear to me you will be this interested the entire five hundred of our promised years.”
Rysa pushed him off and stepped back, throwing him an exaggerated leer. “Who the hell wouldn’t be interested in you?” She wiggled her hips and ran her hands over her chest, to accentuate her point.
Ladon frowned. “You’d be surprised.” He swiped to grab ahold of her hips but she skipped into the open area of the attic.
The evening’s glow filtered through the curtains and spread sweet, honey tones over the white and black linens of their bed. It wrapped around Rysa and danced on her skin. The air might be chilled and the coming night cold, but here, now, her man warmed her body and soul.
“I won’t past-see your exes.” She held out her arms to him. “I don’t want to know. I like the present the way it is, with you.”
He moved so fast she didn’t have time to suck in her breath. “I know the present could be better, Rysa.” But he drew her into a tight embrace and enveloped her body, his arms curling over hers and his shoulders and torso blocking from her the harshness of the world.
She pressed her face against the base of his neck. His stubble rubbed her forehead but it reminded her more that he walked the world alive than it scratched her skin.
Her seers buzzed but she didn’t need them. She understood moments like this. The points in time when a person admits to fully understanding a behavior isn’t good for them or the people around them. That moment when you avert your eyes and clench your fists because admitting you know takes away the final excuse for continuing to do it: Oh, I didn’t realize.
She’d spent twenty-one years pretending that she didn’t understand how her ADHD affected the people around her. It gave her a shade of cover, something everyone could point to and use as a reason to both disapprove and to semi-forgive at the same time.
It wasn’t until Ladon and Dragon helped her get her issues under control that she realized the intoxicating effect of the semi-forgiveness. She had no control. No mechanism to stop her hyperactivity or her anxiety or the fidgeting or the jumping from topic to topic to topic. Her ADHD was as much a part of how her brain worked as her ability to move her arms and legs.
But it made everyone frown and scowl and sigh. So she pretended to be unaware of the frowning and the scowling and the long, deeply drawn sighs because at least people assumed naiveté. And with naiveté came a pass and a “try harder next time, okay?”
She never trusted anyone enough to admit that she knew exactly what emotions she pulled up in other people. Exasperation squinted eyes and tapped feet. Annoyance crinkled foreheads and caused fingers to pinch the bridges of noses. Anger about disruptions and lost concentration caused all manner of snapping from fellow students and teachers and, though not as often, from her mom as well.
Other people’s tiny movements piled their annoyance and frustration on top her own.
Admitting her own distress—and the distress of others—felt like admitting she had a problem she could control. And admitting to a problem was the first step on a forced journey toward changing something about herself that fundamentally could not
be changed.
But it could be managed. And it had. She only needed to feel the energy flowing between the correct man and the correct beast to find her way.
Rysa kissed Ladon’s neck. Could it be that his melancholy was as much a part of his brain as her ADHD was a part of hers? That, like her spazziness, it needed forever-managing? That when he said “I’m fixed” he was saying exactly the same thing she was when she touched her lips and said “I didn’t realize”?
The only two people in her life she’d talked to about the spiral of admission were with her right now, one fast asleep and camouflaged as a pile of old rugs and the other holding her so tightly she knew exactly what emotion motivated his embrace.
He wanted forgiveness for being who he was.
She cupped his face. “Do you want a healing?” she whispered.
His eyes narrowed for a split second before he shook his head no. “I’m fine.” The gruffness of his voice caught her off guard.
A wall went up. A thin one, more like a paper barrier, but it was there, between them, and she didn’t like it.
Anxiety blossomed because of it. Was he pulling away from her? Don’t withhold from me! screamed through her head. What would she do without him?
But he needed to hold on and, honestly, also give her space so she could finish school. So she could move beyond her degree and find a balance where she didn’t feel overwhelmed all the time.
Ladon blinked and his mouth opened and closed. “Beloved.” He swept her up in his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll get through this,” she whispered. “I have one more semester and I’m done. We’ll go home and whatever you need, I’ll get for you. I’ll make the right calling scents. I’ll learn how to heal you.” Gently, she kissed his bottom lip. “These past six months with you have been the best of my life and I’m not giving you up.”
The stress of living here had a visible end-date, and they all needed to buckle down and get to the end of the race. This term was almost over. They’d go home. Get married. Come back refreshed. And hold it together until June.
He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against hers. His fingers danced over her cheeks and down her neck, and he cupped her shoulders. “You are a patient woman.”
Rysa chuckled as most of her sudden burst of anxiety evaporated. They’d be okay. “And you, gentle sir, have more patience in your little finger than the entire rest of the world combined.”
Her words elicited a wide, bright smile. He looked up at the ceiling, still smiling, and shook his head. “You better marry me. The beast and I would be lost without you.”
She bit her lip and traced the edge of his chest hair, doing her best to accentuate her horniness. “Hell, I’d marry you just for the sex.” Grinning, she moved her finger in a small circle directly over his heart. “And the food. You cook a mean steak.”
Ladon swung her up into his arms and carried her across the room toward the beds. “I excel at the duties afforded a husband.” He sniffed, playing up the lightheartedness they’d managed to find in the moment. “I shall endeavor to cook and clean for my most beautiful love, as well as delight all her senses.” He drawled his last few words in his low, sexy voice.
She’d found playful Ladon under all his worry and, she hoped, coaxed him out.
Now to get him to stay.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ladon dropped Rysa’s feet to the floor. Her lovely eyes sparkled in the evening’s remaining warm glow. She jumped a little as she stood up straight, her spine erect and her head held high.
Six months together and he was beginning to see her confidence more often than not. She stood up for herself more, and faced the vexing challenges of classes and life in a crowded house. She’d gained considerable control of her abilities and had, somehow, found a way to wrap her healer around his head and make the pit at the back of his mind stop sucking in the world, at least for this moment in time.
He loved her new confidence as much as he loved her, but in a different way. He felt no intimacy with her abilities, just the wonderful awe of new terrain open for exploration. When they climbed with the beast up their combined, new mountain, Ladon felt the calcifications of his lonely, old life fall away.
This, with her, made the world correct. When the beast walked at his side, their shared intimacy took on a new dimension, one springing perpendicular to the three his senses understood, and Ladon loved his dragon and his woman all the more because of it. But now, when the beast slept, that world contracted to a closeness with another human that he’d never experienced before.
Which was why he ventured to the roof while she slept. Why he kept vigil not only over her, but over their village. This time, he’d protect his family and his people and when they finished their time here, they’d move on to their next life phase wholly intact and happy the way Rysa was right now, with eyes bright and mind agile and happy.
She danced out of his grip, and ran her hands over her breasts. “Before I met you, I never enjoyed sex.” She glanced over her shoulder at the hammock he’d strung under the trapeze bar and rings hanging from the ceiling.
He’d put up the hammock as much for naps as to help keep from having to think too much about where he walked. Not that he would smack his head on the bar, but avoiding a headache became a lot easier with the hammock there.
Now her teeth worked across her lip as she watched it sway.
After a few weeks of keen observation, he’d figured out the exact pitch at which to speak to set off a frenzy of sexual desire in his love. Add in a few well-timed looks and he often had her begging for kisses. “I’m happy to help.”
She looked up at the trapeze bar, and then at the two rings hanging over the other end of the hammock. Her face betrayed contemplation and a hint of fear. Dare she ask? What if she wasn’t strong enough? He saw it all play across her cheeks and in the set of her shoulders.
He’d been with daring women who liked danger. Some craved the heightened senses that came with semi-public, athletic sex. One liked to fuck with her head out the window of his castle.
Such behaviors were fun for a short time, but they often did not satisfy him as much as they satisfied the women, so he quickly grew bored.
But Rysa’s stare at the trapeze bar seemed different.
“I want to learn to rock climb with you.” She bounced once and turned toward him. “In the cave. You are so sexy when you come back.” Her past-seer flipped outward. “Ohhh… even more so when you reach a summit and are all sweaty and strong. I’d like to be there with you.”
The deep, wordless sense of mine flooded his perception. Not mine as in claim you but mine as in you are my context. She was as much a part of his life as his limbs and his senses and his dragon.
“I love you, Draki Prime.” His declaration flowed from his throat as easily as his breath.
Rysa laughed and bounced again, but this time she made a show of accentuating the wonderful twin mounds of her breasts by dropping her bra to the floor.
Ladon groaned but did not grab for her again. He waited, watching, wondering what other marvels his brilliant love had in store for him.
Slowly, she wiggled off her jeans and left them as a pile on the floor. The last rays of the sun curved around her hips, backlighting her glorious shape. Her desire floated in the air between them both as a slight hint of musk he tasted, but also as the wonderful, soft sighs, whiffs, and pops her body made as she slipped off her panties.
Rysa stood before him in a halo of sunset, his healing angel of the past, present, and most definitely his future. The only woman in over two millennia with whom he could imagine spending not just her lifetime, but his, as well.
She stepped close again, her gaze on his face at the same time she yanked on his belt to loosen the buckle. He slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her slow but hard, gentle but deep. Fractional hints of her peppermint toothpaste brightened her breath. Her honey-based balm smoothed her skin but his kisses bruised and pulled blood
to her mouth, plumping her lips.
His zipper released. Her hands found their way into his boxer-briefs. The sudden pull of his attention away from sensitizing her mouth to her fingers on his erection made him groan and rock his hips.
Rysa glanced over her shoulder again at the trapeze. “I wonder if my healer fixed the balance issues I had as a kid.”
At that moment, all Ladon wanted was to drop her onto her back and love her into orgasmic bliss. But she wanted to play.
He picked her up by the waist and set her far enough away she couldn’t reach his body, then stripped off his jeans and boxer-briefs in one long motion, along with his socks. Now both naked, her warmly backlit and him in the full final glow of the evening, they stood too far apart to touch. But they looked.
Oh, the exquisite wonder of the young. To see her body move in new desire, not jaded by relationship after relationship. To see in her eyes the certainty of loving him—and to read it from the touches of her seers. And to know from her dancing fingers and her demanding lips that she thought him as exquisite as he thought her.
“Lift me up,” she said, her voice strong and confident. She had the moment under control. He could ride it to its end, his mind free and without worry.
Ladon hoisted her high, his hands gripping her waist and his arms straight, like a dancer. Rysa laughed and extended her arms, her beautiful breasts thrust forward and her back arched perfectly. He spun her up, holding her over his head, and listened to the joy tumbling from her lips.
“I’m flying!” More laughter burst from deep in her chest.
In all his long life, no one had ever been as amazed by his attentions, as grateful for his love… and so needed by both him and the beast.
She laughed again as she pulled in her arms. “I’m going to lean back. I want to grab the bar.”
Her lovely, naked body extended away from him, her breasts flattening. The very last rays of the sun spiked through the window and along her midline, across her chin, between her nipples, down the slight indent to her navel, and lower, across her smooth belly, to the trimmed hair of her mound.
All But Human (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 5) Page 12
