All but Human

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Ladon felt so good she squirmed and rubbed against his side, wanting his touch, and his lips, and the erection she knew he pressed into the mattress, all pressed into her instead. Pressed in with firm, solid, slow strokes. The kind he did so well.

  His big arm flipped over her hip. Another vibrating growl, just as deep and sleepy as the first, rolled from his chest. His lips parted, sleep words mumbling out, and his hand moved from her hip to the center of her back.

  His eyes still closed, his body still asleep, Ladon rolled onto his side at the same time he pulled Rysa tight against his chest.

  A hot jolt of arousal shot outward from her belly, through her chest, and out to the tips of her fingers. And her toes. And across the tip of her nose. It danced on the upper curves of her ears. It flitted into her vision and every cell of her body woke up happy and alert. Her nipples tightened. Her belly fluttered. Her attention might wander, but her focus on the hard, male body pressed against her did not falter.

  Rysa nuzzled against his neck and rubbed her thigh over his hip. “Sleepy man-cuddles are the best.”

  An amused chuckle filled the air between them, one as warm as his now-absent rumbles. Ladon opened his gold-flecked eyes, and smiled a beautiful, generous smile.

  “Oh…” She couldn’t pull back from kissing him, or cut it off, or cool its strength any more than she could pull back from, cut off, or cool her emotions.

  “Umm…” Ladon flipped her completely onto her back but held himself off her body, denying her his weight. And his brilliant erection. But not his kisses or more of his teasing grin. “Did you enthrall me, woman?”

  “Hmmm….” Rysa nibbled the stubble on his jaw. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” He dropped down on top of her. His kisses moved down her neck, each more solid and demanding than the one before it.

  She responded by wrapping her legs around his waist. “You enthralled me first.”

  A new laugh vibrated her breastbone. Her breasts responded, her nipples tightening to hard nibs, and she wiggled under her gorgeous man.

  The hand under her shirt moved around her side to her front. Ladon palmed her breast, his fingers moving in slow, teasing circles. “When did I enthrall you, beautiful?”

  She’d stop breathing if he continued with his gentle-yet-demanding touches. “The first moment I saw you.” She trailed new kisses across his neck. “And then again the first time I touched you.” God, he was delicious. “And again the first time I tasted you.”

  The low sounds echoing from his throat turned voracious. “You will be the end of me.”

  “Not the plan, handsome.” Losing him was the exact opposite of the plan. “You’re marrying me in less than two weeks, remember? You promised five centuries and I want sleepy man-cuddles every morning.”

  A new chuckle rumbled against her left nipple, but his entire body hummed. “I remember.”

  A sense of ghosts played through Rysa’s mind again, another tiny pinprick of knowledge gleaned from the beast. Five centuries with her meant five more centuries of his uncompromising diligence. He would not allow her to become another phantom haunting his dreams.

  “Hey.” Rysa stroked the side of Ladon’s head and the stubble pricked against her fingers in much the same way Dragon’s thoughts pricked against her mind.

  Ladon pulled his face out from between her breasts. He blinked slowly, more resigned than anything else, but smiled again. “Hmm?”

  He felt better this morning, yet he didn’t. The slowness gave it away.

  “No threats. No issues.” She stroked his hair again, doing her best to reassure. “Do you want a healing?” Grinning, she ran her hands over his chest. “We’re safe for focused cuddling.”

  His next smile came slower than the one before it. “So that’s why you enthralled me.”

  “What?” What the hell did he mean by that? She didn’t enthrall enthrall him. She wouldn’t do that.

  He nibbled along her ear. “So I wouldn’t worry.”

  “What?” Rysa pushed on his shoulders, suddenly much less interested in sex. “That’s not what I did.”

  Ladon’s eyes narrowed. “You did enthrall me.” Quickly, he glanced up at Dragon. “You did.”

  The beast must have tattled.

  “Just ‘solve the problem.’ I thought it might help you with the bad dreams.” It’s not like they hadn’t talked about it. “You know whatever calling scents I can make for you, I will.”

  Ladon rolled off. He sat up, his face colder than she liked, and he glanced at Dragon again. “Next time, wake me first.”

  “Ladon…” Why was he doing this now?

  When she leaned her head against his shoulder, he didn’t pull away. But he didn’t pull her close, either. “You know I don’t like being enthralled without knowing.”

  “I’m sorry.” What else could she say? She felt like biting her lip, but that wouldn’t help.

  Ladon didn’t respond. He just looked over her shoulder at Dragon, and slow, low energy passed between the man and the beast.

  Ladon looked away, toward the window. “It’s snowing.”

  He was changing the subject.

  “Yes.” She sat on their bed in the center of a pool of Ladon warmth, yet she felt bitterly cold.

  Ladon looked as if he’d rub his face if he had the energy to move his hand. “You are safe from a miscarriage?” The words flowed out flat and pale on a voice that sounded more machine-like than like those of the man she loved.

  “I am.” He’d been adamant about no baby-making sex if there was even a slight chance she might lose a pregnancy.

  He reached for her. Reached out his hand and pulled her into his arms. She crawled into his lap and crunched against his chest, pressing as much of her body against his as she could.

  He encircled her with his strong arms, and kissed her forehead. “I love you,” he whispered. “More than I know how to describe.”

  Rysa hiccupped. Behind Ladon, Dragon stretched like a giant cat. His hide came up to his day brightness and he shook as if loosening dirt from his coat.

  We love you, Rysa, the beast signed.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered. Loved them, cared about them, cared for them. Worked and rarely slept because she was the Draki Prime and she should have known he would have been upset about her enthralling. Even one so small and innocuous.

  Ladon kissed her forehead again, seemingly unaware of her guilt, though his fingers swept up and down her backbone in the unconscious soothing way he did when she was upset. “You have a test today, do you not?”

  “At eleven. My Chemistry final. Then my Systems final on Thursday and I’m all done for the semester.” Done and ready to focus on the wedding, she thought, though she wondered if he cared anymore.

  A new kiss danced over her ear. “Then perhaps I should keep to my duties, huh?” Before she could respond, he flipped her on her back and rubbed his erection against her belly. “Or would you prefer against Dragon’s side?”

  His melancholy hung cold and limp over the entire attic but it did nothing to soften his cock. It did subdue her desire, though. She stroked his shoulders anyway.

  “It’s not your duty, Ladon.” But damn it, she needed him this morning. Needed his kisses and what portion of his love she could get.

  Ladon’s lower lip jutted out just enough to make Rysa want to pull him down and kiss away his upset. “I take pride in being a good husband,” he said.

  Every time he pouted the way he did right now, or doted because he’d decided he wanted to practice being a “good husband,” she didn’t know what to do.

  But action pulled him from his thoughts, or the lack of them. Movement made him happy, and small touches along her skin made him happiest of all. So now was not the time to contemplate the dichotomies of the Dracos. Now was the time to act.

  “You are the most excellent husband-to-be, good sir.” Rysa nibbled on his shoulder. “Warm and tall and good at killing bugs.”

  Ladon chuckled aga
in and some of the shroud blanketing the morning lifted.

  When he cupped her thigh, drawing her leg higher, she sighed. Slowly, he rubbed against all her sensitive spots, kissing some, suckling others. His lips tasted as warm as the rest of his skin. His fingers stroked her cheeks, his hard erection pressed against her opening.

  Something about feeling the full pressure of his weight pressing into her anxious muscles made her feel better. She wanted, more than anything, for all her nerves to understand that he was here, with her. That he wasn’t going invisible only to vanish into a burning world.

  When he finally moved into her, he kept his pace slow and deliberate. His brilliant scent of sunshine wrapped her senses, as did the earthy spiced breath of the beast.

  Ladon lifted her gently, one arm under her bottom, and leaned her against Dragon’s side. The beast’s colors filled her eyes. His soft, ultra-fine coat tickled her skin. Ladon curled against her body, his face against her neck, and a low, human moan vibrated across her skin.

  Her nails dug into the firm musculature below his shoulder blades. He responded by increasing his pace, some strokes deep, some shallow.

  Their bodies glided, then pounded. Love you, flowed from both the man and the beast, sometimes spoken, but mostly not. It danced along Dragon’s hide, loud and sparking as her first orgasm and her next. And when Ladon came, Dragon flopped over on his side, his patterns indistinct but bright anyway.

  And, once again, no love-rumble vibrated the attic, only moans.

  Rysa didn’t know what to do. What sort of healing to offer, or if Ladon understood what had gone missing. The sound seemed to be an autonomous response neither Ladon nor Dragon controlled or comprehended. It just was.

  Ladon rolled them onto their mattress at the same time he pulled the blankets over their bodies. Slowly, he tucked her against his chest and abdomen, maneuvering her hips until she lay flush against his side with her head on his shoulder and her legs woven between his.

  They had a moment. She needed to look over her notes and take a shower and walk through the snow to her class, but they could have this time to themselves.

  “I miss your rumbles,” she whispered.

  He stroked her back and kissed her forehead. “They’ll come back. They ebb and flow.”

  He seemed so sure, but…

  She wouldn’t think about it right now. He was here and he was alive, even if he didn’t feel well enough to rumble for her.

  A burst moved through the energy connecting the man and the beast. She couldn’t sense what they said to each other, but she got a hint of the meaning: Ask.

  Ladon’s muscles stiffened, then loosened. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded toward Dragon.

  His hand lifted off her back. Slowly, his fingers traced her forearm to her hand. And just as slowly, he lifted her palm to his cheek.

  Rysa didn’t speak. She cupped his temples. A map overlay appeared in her mind’s eye, but unlike the ones that Dragon shared detailing muscle pulls and blood flow, this looked and felt like a map of heat. Or maybe energy. Perhaps the beast showed her where Ladon processed information. Perhaps he showed her connectivity.

  He’d never tried mapping Ladon’s melancholy before. Maybe his work with Gavin gave him new knowledge he wished to offer, but mostly, like Rysa, he ran more on gut instinct than anything resembling scientific knowledge. Even the people who knew what they were doing really didn’t know what they were doing when it came to the physicality of psychological traumas. But she and Dragon tried. They had to try.

  Her skin warmed as it always did when she healed. Ladon closed his eyes. She called her seers—the past to remind her what previously worked the best. The present to refine where she touched and how much she healed. And the future to show her the best path to the best healing.

  And, once again, Rysa did the best she could to help the man she loved, even if her best wasn’t good enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Gavin stood in the cold on the front walk of his now-ex-residence, his breath curling around his face and his ears freezing. His aids channeled the winter chill into his head and he’d stupidly left his hat at Daisy’s—and now his—house.

  She waited until one month before she left for Missouri to ask him to officially move in, even though most of his clothes and books were already in the house, along with his computer and all his food.

  But progress was progress, even if she didn’t want to admit that it was progress. Now if he could get her to come to Christmas with his family, he’d have real progress to smile about.

  He glanced up and down the street, watching for his ex-roommates. Ladon and Dragon brought the van down, and having his annoying neighbor and his equally annoying girlfriend come bursting into the house while Dragon stuffed Gavin’s bookcase into the back of the van would not go over well with anyone.

  On the street in front of the house, the back door of the van hung open and the vehicle rocked side to side as Dragon maneuvered Gavin’s mattress and bedframe. At this point, he didn’t think the beast would fit inside with all his furniture, but somehow Dragon managed to pack it all in.

  Behind him, Ladon whistled. Gavin’s Praesagio-built aids worked remarkably well—they translated many of the frequencies affected by his hearing loss into ones he understood—but Ladon managed to carry his furniture out of his room and down the steps without making noise.

  Ladon had been on the phone moments before, talking to Daisy’s father. When Gavin asked about the call, he’d scowled and gone up to get the last of the furniture.

  “Last piece.” Ladon swung Gavin’s dresser out the door and hoisted it down the walk like he carried a box of air and not a one-hundred-fifty pound, solid oak hand-me-down.

  “Look like lifting that takes effort. Someone’s coming down the street.” Gavin nodded toward the thin figure walking the sidewalk with her head down and her hands in her pockets.

  Ladon huffed and hoisted the dresser into the back of the van. He leaned against the door just as the girl passed, his attention more on sliding in the furniture than on her.

  She looked away from Ladon, twisting her head in a way that to Gavin, seemed as if she didn’t want Ladon to see her face.

  She glanced at Gavin.

  He recognized her blank, iron-gray eyes and her willowy face, and when she grinned, a twitch shook his spine.

  She moved by and when Ladon turned toward the sidewalk, he watched her backpack bob away into the shadows between the streetlights.

  Snow started, dusting them with glimmering flakes. Gavin’s aids picked up the sheeting sound ice crystals make while rubbing against each other and translated it into a buzz that would be terrifying if he hadn’t understood its cause.

  The sound did, though, fit the weird, creepy girl who’d been staring at him in the Student Union and who had just walked by his old house.

  Ladon dusted his gloves together as he walked toward the house. “Dragon wants to return to the house. He’s tired and wishes to sleep.” Ladon had at least put a black stocking cap over his hair so he didn’t look like a scary biker. But the black clothes did make him look as if he’d robbed the house instead of helping Gavin move out.

  “Did you see her?” Gavin nodded up the sidewalk, but the creepy girl had vanished around a corner.

  “The student?” Ladon peered through the thickening snow. “We did not sense a problem.”

  So she was just creepy. Gavin frowned. “I’ll check my room.” He pointed at the van. “Is Dragon okay?” A squished, sleepy dragon wasn’t a lot of fun.

  Now Ladon frowned. “We wish to leave.”

  Gavin nodded and jogged into the house to check his now-empty room and to leave his key in the lock. When he returned to the front, Ladon had already started the van and was waiting impatiently for him to climb into the passenger seat.

  “Thanks, by the way.” Gavin pulled the door shut before glancing into the back. Dragon had somehow stacked his stuff in an intricate, interlocking manner that took
up a lot less room than Gavin thought possible. “Wow.”

  Ladon shrugged. “He’s good at spatial organization.”

  Gavin pulled his seatbelt across his lap. “I think he learns that way. I wish we could get you a holographic display. I think you’d learn faster.”

  Behind him, Dragon snorted.

  “He says he believes you are correct.” Ladon checked the mirrors and pulled the van out onto the street.

  “Do you need a special license to drive this thing? Like a class B or something?” He’d never driven anything bigger than his dad’s truck, but he did tow the boat up to the lake once.

  Ladon shrugged again. “Don’t know.” They slowed and Ladon turned the van into the alley behind the house. “Dmitri gets me my papers.”

  Gavin blinked. “So you don’t have a license for this thing?”

  Ladon grinned, obviously enjoying Gavin’s discomfort. “We have been driving vehicles this size since the twenties.”

  Sometimes Gavin forgot how old Ladon was, even though he did act more like an old man than the young person his face and skin told the world he was. He moved like a police officer on patrol. Or a man who had just returned from combat.

  Not that Gavin knew what combat meant. Or what it meant to have multiple lifetimes’ worth of memories. But he did know that right now, right here, off-campus and outside his girlfriend’s house, Ladon was a fish out of his ocean.

  Gavin’s phone beeped. He pulled it out as Ladon pressed the garage door opener and backed the van toward the garage.

  “I will back halfway in to allow room to unload.” Ladon pointed up and down the alley. “Watch for neighbors.”

  Gavin held up his phone. “Rysa is on her way out. She says she unlocked the door to the upper level and that she and Daisy moved stuff out of the way.” Another text came in. “We’re supposed to stack my furniture against the wall to the left of the door.”

  Ladon frowned. “She texted you first?”

  The desire to roll his eyes almost overcame Gavin’s composure. “She’s a Fate. She knows what kind of help we need before we do.”