Men And Beasts (Fate - Fire - Shifter - Dragon Book 6)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  He did make her feel centered. All the constraints she used to lock down the whipping what-ifs of her life weren’t necessary when she snuggled with her boyfriend. He had her back, because they fit together.

  What would she do without him? Seven months, they’d known each other. The same amount of time as Ladon and Rysa. Seven months of smiles and talks and… fitting together.

  That cop was right—sometimes it wasn’t about finding the fit. Sometimes, it was about admitting the fit had found you, no matter how much danger that fit put your loved ones in.

  She looked down at the sandwiches. The bread smelled astringent enough to suggest that the sandwiches would be just fine sitting on top of the dresser for a few extra minutes.

  Daisy kicked off her shoes and stripped off her t-shirt as she walked toward the bathroom. She wiggled out of her jeans and pushed open the door.

  She stopped just inside the small hotel bathroom, in the steam and between the walls with their standard-issue vinyl hotel wallpaper, scratchy tissues, and the small-but-soft white towels.

  With her soaking wet man.

  Gavin watched her through the clear plastic shower liner, his brilliantly blue eyes shimmering under the room’s bright light. The water had plastered his wavy, chocolate brown hair to his head. It cascaded down his shoulders and over his wiry chest and arms, and across his wonderful abs and groin. He might not be Shifter, but his lean body looked—and moved—as well as any paranormal she’d ever met.

  He liked to tell her that she was beautiful. That, when he looked at her, he saw her brilliant smile, her intelligence, and her “hottiness,” and that it always stunned him. Every. Single. Time.

  What she never told him was that she felt the same way. That when she looked at him, she saw his wonderful smile, his wits, and the perfect lines and planes of his body. He knew he was good-looking and he used it to his advantage, but she didn’t think he understood that he was, in truth, the beautiful one of their pairing.

  The one with the less damaged soul. The one with the strength. The one who’d put up with her waffling for seven months.

  Daisy unhooked her bra and dropped it to the floor. Her panties and socks followed. She stood in the bathroom of a chain hotel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, naked as the day she was born, with only a thin plastic curtain between her and the man who was most definitely her true love.

  The warm water flowed down Gavin’s arm to his hand. He reached out, his palms up.

  Daisy mirrored his movements. And when he pulled back his hand and closed his fist, she grinned.

  Want, he signed. It had become a shorthand for them, a nod to their more primitive sides.

  When she patted her chest with her open palm twice, he grinned.

  Mine, she signed.

  Gavin’s grin turned into a full smile.

  Daisy tapped her chest with her pointer finger. Then she crossed her arms over her heart. When she pointed at Gavin, his mouth opened and he flung the curtain to the side. Water droplets splashed onto the floor and Daisy’s skin, but it didn’t matter.

  Gavin stepped out of the shower. One foot came down on the towel on the floor, then his other, and he pressed his entire warm, slick body against hers. He wrapped his wet hands around her cheeks and slanted his mouth over her lips. Gavin kissed her with all the intensity, all the need and the connection he’d been kissing her with these past four months of their official relationship.

  “I love you, too,” he whispered between kisses.

  He’d been telling her every day for the past seven months how much he loved her. Each small touch said he cared. Each word spoken about sacrifice and every one of his kisses and cuddles. His unwavering strength and his stubbornness.

  Gavin wanted to be here, with her. He wanted to help. She should trust him to be the good man he was.

  His hand slapped at the door handle and he swung her around at the same time he pulled open the door into the main room. Cold air rushed in, swirling around them, and goosebumps rose under her roaming fingers.

  He didn’t let go when she leaned toward the rack and swiped a towel to dry his shoulders. He didn’t let go, either, when she swatted the shower knob and turned off the water.

  “From now on, I want all my showers to end this way,” he said, his face buried against her neck. “Every single one. No arguing.”

  Daisy laughed as she rubbed the towel over his wet hair. “Some days I’ll need to go to work.”

  “Can’t hear you,” he said, “so I’m assuming you agree to my terms.”

  She laughed again as he swung her around so she had her back to the bed. He pulled away enough to see her eyes before he kissed her again.

  “It’s your penalty for taking so goddamned long to tell me how you feel.” He swiped his arm under her backside and dropped her onto the bed.

  Daisy slapped his shoulder, but all he did was chuckle and pout at her stern look.

  “I want reparations, woman,” he said. “You’ve been driving me crazy for seven months.”

  She hadn’t expected the anger she saw dancing in his eyes. Or the hurt.

  He’d been open and honest about his feelings from the beginning. He’d been willing to be just friends for a lot longer than most men would have tolerated, considering all the mixed signals she knew she’d been giving him. The touches because she didn’t want him to leave. The cuddles during movie nights. The dinners and the sharing.

  Their fit happened almost immediately, even if she hadn’t admitted to it. And not admitting had hurt him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He watched her lips, not her eyes. But then he kissed her again, this time with more force than he’d kissed her when she first admitted how she felt.

  His eyes said that he wanted to say something like “I hope so,” or “It’s about time,” but no words passed his lips. He held on instead. Held tight to her body as the water dripped off his skin and onto hers.

  Daisy rubbed the inside of her thigh against his hip. He groaned into her neck as his hand found her breast. The pad of his thumb rubbed across her nipple and he flicked one direction, then the other.

  She moaned, her back arching, as they slipped against each other. The water both heated and cooled his touch, and she wanted more. She wanted to calm his anger and to make it up to him.

  His granite hard erection rubbed against her mound, its tip pressing into spots so sensitive she shuddered.

  Gavin shuddered, too. He pumped against her groin, and his tongue darted between her lips to touch hers. Every nerve fired. Every hair on her skin stood up. He dipped his hand between them, his fingers exploring. She shuddered under his touch.

  An orgasm ripped free out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time. It flung itself through her body and her soul and her fingers dug into the strong muscles of his shoulders. She pulled him as close as she could get him.

  When he moved into her, when he slid in deep, every part of her body screamed yes!

  Feeling Gavin this way was so, so much better. With him, everything was so, so much better. “I love you,” she said against his mouth.

  He stopped moving. Stopped gliding in and out of her, his blue eyes happy and angry still and, now, confused. “Condom,” he groaned.

  He lifted off her so fast the rush of air made her shiver, and immediately started yanking clothes out of his duffle. “Damn it,” he grumbled. “I bought a box in Denver.”

  They both knew they needed to be careful. Shifters are fertile, often very fertile. With finishing her rotation and everything else, she hadn’t gotten in to talk to her doctor about alternative methods. So they were still using condoms. And now—

  Gavin dropped back onto the bed, condom and lube in hand. He kissed her hard and made quick work of rolling it on.

  He was on top of her again, one hand on her thigh as he pulled her legs up to get a better angle. He slid in with a deep thrust, one that sent more shivers through her body. Gavin’s next thrust wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t pos
sessive or angry anymore, either. It was, like him, intense and wonderful and satisfying all the way to her bones.

  I love you, she signed.

  “That’s right,” he said. “You love me.” He wrapped his fingers through hers and lifted himself up enough he could slam her clitoris.

  “Mine,” Gavin growled.

  His animal parts were surfacing. The parts that she’d inadvertently called up when she needed to circumvent his humanity in order to heal him of his Burner allergy and his head trauma. The parts that rose now only when his emotions overwhelmed his control.

  “Yes,” she said, holding his gaze and speaking clearly, so he could read her lips.

  Every part of the man with her right now was good—his body, his soul, his mind. He might be young—they were both young—but it didn’t matter. Not to him. Not to her.

  There would be no more flashbacks to what Aiden did to her, or what he threatened to do to the people she loved—because Aiden lied. Aiden did not have the power he claimed.

  Daisy pushed away the fear. She slapped it to the side and let her body experience this moment with the man she loved.

  Gavin nipped at her neck. His speed and power increased. He drowned her worries in pleasure.

  “You are the best man I know,” she whispered, knowing that he couldn’t hear her. He could, though, feel her intent in her touches. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  She couldn’t.

  They fit so well together. They had no cracks between them, no crevices for the fear to seep into and flourish like a slime mold. She had to believe that. If she didn’t, she’d break into a million little shards.

  A billion little pieces.

  Gavin understood. And Gavin would never let go. So Daisy held on.

  Chapter Ten

  “Please Nathaniel. We can’t—” Rysa stepped away, her fingers splayed between them as if they were a wall. Why she’d come to the base, he didn’t know. His clearance didn’t include such information. But she made a point of finding him, even if she backed away as if he wasn’t the man she wanted him to be….

  Damned memories that weren’t memories. The name his beloved Rysa called him in the not-memories wasn’t his name. Or was it his name? The Burner called him “Boyfriend” to his face, but he didn’t think that’s what he called him when he wasn’t being a smartass.

  He remembered the base. He remembered mountains and clean air and Rysa’s hair piled on top of her head in a graceful, beautiful swoop, in a style that didn’t look modern. It looked old, or a new interpretation of what he’d seen on Roman statues.

  She wore a jacket like his and a Guard insignia and all he remembered was that no one—no one—was supposed to know his real name. They had safeguards. For their own protection, the manuals said. He just wanted privacy.

  But she’d known his name because she knew everything, and for some stupid reason, he thought that made him special.

  The entire inside of Ladon’s brain turned blister hot. No color swept through, no light, only a searing blast so intense he jerked and spasmed and banged his head against the headrest of the passenger seat of the SUV he shared with a Burner. At least for this moment, the sense of other, the weird feeling that he was remembering things he wasn’t supposed to remember, backed off.

  “Hey!” the Burner yelled.

  He’d let the fiend drive, which was probably good, considering that his head was on fire.

  “Open your eyes, mate!” The Burner’s equally hot fingers slapped across his face.

  “What?” How was he supposed to open his eyes? He didn’t remember any instructions in the manuals about how to open eyes. There had to be a regulation, though. There were always regulations.

  The heat behind his eyes stopped as suddenly as it started.

  He was in the SUV, in the passenger seat with a seatbelt pulled tight across his chest and lap, hot air blasting his face from the vents, and cold air slamming his ear from the tiny gap between the car frame and the slightly rolled down window.

  He hit the button to roll up the window and the cast on his arm smacked the door’s fabric and plastic upholstery.

  Nothing hurt. No pain reverberated up into his elbow. He held his arm and the cast, and stared at the shadow-dark tape the Burner had used to attach the odd piece of metal to his body.

  “I don’t think it’s broken anymore,” he said.

  The Burner only stared. They were parked in some sort of truck stop parking lot. The country here was flat and open, the way it was supposed to be. The mountains had been to their left the entire drive, which was also how it was supposed to be.

  The weather in Texas had started as post-rain sunshine. Then they’d hit another wave of rain during their brief trip through the northeast corner of New Mexico, which had quickly turned into freezing rain in Colorado, then a wall of whipping snow by the time they turned onto I-25.

  “Why are you helping me?” he asked. The Burner had a reason yet Ladon did not remember it.

  The Burner pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because I’m hungry and I don’t want to hunt this close to your home. Your sister might get mad and snap my neck so I’m keeping you around just in case. You’re my emergency rations, mate.”

  Emergency Rations…

  Sister? What sister? Why did he think “Emergency Rations” was a pet’s name? And why wasn’t he afraid of a ghoul who just threatened to eat him?

  He pointed at the Burner. “You’re lying.”

  The Burner frowned. “We’re in Wyoming, you idiotic brute.” He looked up at the SUV’s roof. “You need to pull your shit together before we find the princess, you got it? She won’t be happy if you’re stupid.” He sniffed. “She doesn’t like stupid.”

  No, Rysa did not like stupid. “How far are we from the base?” Ladon asked.

  The Burner rubbed his face. He didn’t smell all that bad. Not as bad as the other two Burners who he’d sent away after they found Ladon strapped to that damned table, after Billy asked about a wedding.

  Rysa’s wedding. It didn’t make sense then, and it sure as hell didn’t now, so Ladon tried not to think about it. Billy glowered and tapped his finger against the steering wheel. He wore fingerless gloves all the time, even when they were out in the cold and snow. Fingerless gloves, an obnoxiously bright, safety-cone-colored t-shirt, and shoes the color of blood.

  At least he didn’t drive with that sword on his back. He’d managed to stuff it and its scabbard into the map cubby on the driver’s side door; Ladon saw the hilt poke up over the Burner’s thigh.

  Poke, he thought. The two swords were Poke and Stab; the two daggers were George and Ringo. Why Ladon knew there were two swords and two daggers, he didn’t remember, or why every magic sword needed a magic sword name.

  The Burner sniffed at Ladon’s face. “I don’t like how you smell, Boyfriend,” he said, his Manchester accent popping and quipping through the words. “You smell like an electrical fire.”

  “How far are we from the base?” Ladon asked again. He needed to get to the base.

  “We are a few miles from the I-80 interchange, but Rock Springs needs to wait, mate. I am hungry.” The Burner clicked his teeth.

  “We go east, not west.” To the base. He’d driven in worse storms than what raged outside. He was a good driver. “Get out. I’ll drive.”

  “The hell you will.” The Burner named Billy placed a hand on Ladon’s chest and pushed him against the seat. “You, my beefy friend, just had a seizure.” He sniffed again. “No driving for you.”

  “Seizure?” He’d been dreaming. About Rysa. Because he always dreamed about Rysa.

  “What do you think the princess will do if we skid under a tractor trailer and you lose your head, huh?” Billy made a slicing motion across his neck with his finger.

  For some reason, this Burner felt he needed to get Ladon “to the wedding,” which worked well enough, because it looked like “the wedding” was to take place close to the base. So Ladon played along.


  “Or you freeze to death out there?” He pointed at the storm again. “Me, I’ll be fine, mate. Make my own heat, I do.”

  He snapped his fingers and little sparks lit the air. “But you’re meat, my friend. Meat gets stiff in the freezer.”

  The wind howled and the SUV rocked. The parking lot and the truck stop buildings vanished behind the whipping snow and from Ladon’s view.

  “So what do we do?” It all seemed like a puzzle. Nothing had context and Ladon needed to fit together his memories before he could pour in meaning.

  He rubbed his face again, wondering why his confusion didn’t hurt. Why was it that he knew he was confused but he didn’t know his confusion? It felt as if someone had gutted the house that was the meaning of “confusion.” They’d ripped it down to the studs, taken out all the fixtures and the plumbing and the wiring, pulled the stone from around the fireplace, stolen all the charm and familiarity. His world lacked context.

  It lacked architecture.

  Cathedrals of meaning, he thought, though it didn’t make any more sense than “the wedding” did. He lacked something fundamentally important and he didn’t know what it was.

  The Burner sat back in the driver’s seat. “I sure hope the princess knows how to fix you.”

  So did Ladon. He obviously needed fixing.

  And she needed him. Why, he couldn’t remember, but she did. When I hurt you, please forgive me, she’d said. Please come for me.

  Ladon rubbed the top of his head. The odd mohawk haircut bunched up and pulled under his palm but he didn’t think shaving it was a good idea.

  “Hey, mate, listen. I know you want to get to this base of yours, but I think we need to go west.” Billy pointed. “You and the princess live that way. At least you did the last time I was in the mountains.”