Bonds Broken & Silent (Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Book 4)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  He sat up. He’d wiggled between her legs, spreading them so the insides of her thighs rubbed his hips, and looked down at her breasts.

  She couldn’t see his face, but she felt his hands.

  He squeezed her breasts again. “I need to love you. I have to love you.” He was on top of her again and his mouth worked across her jaw. “Let me love you. Please, Daisy.”

  “Now?” In the dark? In the middle of nowhere? “Aiden, my first time wasn’t good. I wanted our first time to be special. With…”

  She didn’t know with what. Being sick put a big, giant, icky stop to most of her thoughts about sex. Even sex with her hot new boyfriend.

  “What, Daisy?” He sounded annoyed now. “Lobster dinner and rose-scented candles?”

  “Yes.” Anything other than groping like this in the back of a pitch-black camper on a lumpy mattress perched on a tabletop in the middle of nowhere.

  “Where are we?” she asked again. She remembered leaving. Remembered him taking care of her. Remembered him driving. “Are we almost to my mom?”

  Aiden flattened himself on top of her again, but this time he held himself up enough his weight didn’t bother her stomach.

  “We’re not far.” His mouth covered hers again. “I had a bad dream, Daisy. I need you.”

  “I don’t feel well.” She pushed against his chest again.

  He sat up faster than he had before. His hand patted around the head of the mattress and the next thing she knew the top of a water bottle pressed against her lips. “Drink. It’ll settle your stomach.”

  She gulped down, not really thinking about it.

  “Better?” The bottle landed with a thump behind her head.

  The whole moment felt strange, surreal. As if she was the one who dreamed badly, not him.

  Aiden rolled off but cuddled close, his hands still on her breasts. He massaged gently, his face against her neck again and his erection hard and long and rubbing against the cleft of her buttocks. “You are the center of my world. You are the center of everything, Daisy.”

  The blackness hid all the world from her eyes. The illness, everything from her nose. But even feeling as if the bed on which they lay together rode an open sea, her body was acutely aware of the strong arms and the strong male body pressed against it.

  But a part of her mind started wondering again. Wondering why it had to be here. Why it had to be now.

  He whispered words no man had ever spoken to her. Words the deep parts of her mind didn’t believe she ever would hear. Why would a man want to be with her? She was too tall. Too odd-looking. Too tomboyish.

  But Aiden rubbed against her back and whispered that his future-seer told him the truth and that she was his world. He’d take care of everything. He’d make sure she didn’t have to hide and that she could get her education.

  He’d had a bad dream. He needed her comfort.

  He needed her touch so he knew the world hadn’t abandoned him. That he’d be okay. That the past would stop stalking the future because he’d found her. Her job was to make sure he felt better.

  Daisy blinked, trying to see in the weak starlight. It rode in on the waves of whatever made her feel woozy.

  “Did you buy condoms?” she whispered. He’d bought everything else they needed.

  “Don’t worry.” Aiden pulled her t-shirt over her head. His fingers roamed until he unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans. “I saw what-will-be.”

  He was on top of her again, moving faster and harder than she expected.

  At least he wouldn’t have more bad dreams.

  But Daisy’s wondering part wondered. When she felt whole again, would the bad dreams stalk her instead?

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sun beat down on the roof of the camper and made the inside muggy and uncomfortable. Aiden must have opened the windows because a breeze moved over Daisy’s naked body, but the fog of her illness still wrapped around her head. Cotton filled her sinuses. She wondered if bad hangovers felt this horrible.

  Aiden rubbed another erection against her side. A couple hours of sleep and he wanted more pumping. More grunting and grinding.

  “Shouldn’t we go?” Last night’s sex blurred into the blackness of the night. It shouldn’t be a blur. She’d wanted her first time with him to be good. It should have made a wonderful and brilliant memory, one she’d cherish for the rest of her life. A special memory.

  “Hmmm.” Aiden rubbed himself on her hip. “I can’t drive like this.”

  His gray-blue eyes looked hungry and completely serious. And intense. Predator wafted off him, not as a scent but as a vibe.

  But then he smiled and it vanished.

  “Why?” she asked. She shouldn’t think of him as predatory. She knew he was old enough to have learned a long time ago how to keep his libido under control, anyway.

  He sucked on her shoulder. “Because you make me want you. I don’t think you understand how incredible and wonderful you are. How happy you make me. How good you feel. I won’t be able to concentrate on driving if I have to look at you sitting in the passenger seat all luscious and sexy.”

  His next thrust against her hip rubbed enough to hurt.

  “Aiden, I still don’t feel good.” She didn’t. Which was probably why last night hadn’t been all that satisfying.

  He rolled over onto his back. Glorious, gorgeous Aiden laced his fingers behind his head and grinned all lopsided like a perfect picture of a perfect bad boy. Daisy hadn’t seen last night how cut he was under his clothes. How smooth and lean. He was a skinny god with a big cock and an insatiable sex drive.

  “I’ll make you feel better.” His grin hardened.

  She didn’t quite understand what she saw, or thought she saw, but for the smallest flash of the briefest second, predatory returned. Like he meant his words when he said he had no control over how horny she made him feel.

  He unlaced his hands as he sat forward. His fingers glided around her wrists.

  She knew what he wanted. So she took up the grip he desired.

  He sat back, his eyes closed and his fingers laced behind his head again. “Mouth too,” he groaned.

  Mouth, too.

  And Daisy told herself, once again, that at least he wouldn’t have more bad dreams.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Aiden plucked her water bottle from the cup holder and waved it at her face. “Take a drink. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Daisy doubted it would do anything other than make her stomach lurch more. The camper had shitty shock absorbers. The passenger seat made her butt sweat and the AC wasn’t up to fighting the Texas air. Too many blazing currents of hot dust.

  “I don’t want the water, Aiden.” She pushed away the bottle.

  He scowled and continued to point the bottle at her nose. When she pushed it away again, he returned it to the cup holder.

  He’d put on his gray knit cap. He drove now, taking them down some dusty back road, toward some random dry hills in what looked to be a randomly dry part of Texas.

  After the morning sex, he’d held her for about fifteen minutes, whispering sweet things: Beautiful One. My beloved. My mate. And the one that made her cringe, even though it shouldn’t have: Mine.

  Now they drove, mostly in silence.

  “Are we close?” They hadn’t seen a building in about an hour. Just low scrub bushes after low scrub bushes and a lot of dirt. “How far can we be from Abilene?” There should at least be small towns on the outskirts.

  Every city had small towns in its orbit.

  But so far, just dirt and a too-bright, too-hot sun. It reminded Daisy of the time her mom took her into the Outback for a holiday.

  “Not far.” Aiden smiled the most disarming smile she’d ever seen. A sweet, wonderful, “I love you” smile brimming with a world full of happiness because he was going to spend his life with the woman he loved.

  Daisy shivered.

  “Aiden, please tell me where we are.” They couldn’t be anywhere
near Abilene. She hadn’t even seen a fence indicating that there was at least a ranch nearby.

  He pointed at the glove compartment. “There’s a map in there.”

  She flipped open the latch and pulled out the wadded-up, weirdly-folded map. She fiddled with its folds and it crinkled under her fingers. It smelled like dust. At least some of her senses were coming back, even if she still felt woozy and didn’t want to eat.

  And the sun really was too bright. She squinted and pushed her sunglasses up her sweaty nose. Heat had been dancing over her skin and doing nothing to lessen the grossness she’d been feeling since they left Branson.

  A shower would help. A nice, long, tepid shower with unscented handmade soap, in a clean, wide stall, ending with a thick towel wrapped around her hair and a fluffy white robe around her body. A shower taken by herself.

  “Do you think my mom will come with us? Did she seem scared in your vision?” Daisy unfolded and refolded the map.

  Aiden sniffed like he smelled the dust, too. “You’re full of questions.”

  The map dropped onto Daisy’s lap. Yeah, she was full of questions. Her mind brimmed with all sorts of thoughts that hadn’t been getting through these past few days. She must be getting better. The cold wasn’t making her muddled anymore.

  Aiden sighed. “I didn’t get a lot of info. Just that we’ll find her out here.”

  “Oh.” She fussed with the map again. He’d used a yellow highlighter to mark a path from Branson to Abilene, but it looked like a freeway, not the two-lane county road they bumped down.

  “I don’t think we’re on the route you marked.” She held out the map for him to see.

  Aiden kept his face forward and his gaze on the road. “Short cut.”

  “How is this a short cut?” How could any slow little road be a short cut? “What if the camper breaks down out here? There’s nothing and no one around.”

  “We’re fine.” His hands gripped the steering wheel.

  “Did your seer tell you to come this way?” Maybe his seer was more on the fritz than he let on.

  “Yes. My seer said to come this way.” Aiden pointed at the water bottle again. “Are you sure you’re not thirsty? With your cold and everything, you might not be able to tell.” His hand returned to the steering wheel. “You need to drink.”

  Daisy’s nose crinkled. “It tastes weird. Same as the water in Branson.” Why did the water still taste weird?

  Aiden shrugged. “I bought the case before we left. It was the only water I could find.” He followed his shrug with one of his sweet and adorable pouts.

  “Can we buy some more when we get to Abilene?” No more drinking mud.

  The camper bounced along and Aiden shrugged again. “Anything for my most beautiful love.”

  He shrugged a lot. And smiled a lot. And pouted.

  Aiden lifted his hand off the steering wheel and reached for her fingers. Reached across the middle of the camper’s seats, over the shift, and offered his hand for comfort and contact.

  Daisy stared at his palm. He’d been super sweet since they had sex this morning. Kissing and hugging and smiling. He’d be heartbroken if she didn’t offer comfort and contact. She squeezed his fingers.

  “I love you,” Aiden said. He stared at the bumpy road and didn’t look at her. “I know it’s technically early for me to tell you. And I know you haven’t gotten there with me yet.” He squeezed her hand and glanced over. “But you will. I saw it.”

  He loved her? The Fate with the broken future-seer loved her, the not-a-Shifter girl with no future?

  “You look shocked.” Aiden pulled back his hand. “Don’t be shocked.” He stared out at the too-bright dirt ahead of them. “Please don’t be shocked. You’re the center of my world, Daisy. You’re the center of everything and I love you.”

  “You love me?” It was all she could say. All she could think. Her still slightly woozy brain might be asking questions again but this overrode everything.

  A Fate loved her? He looked between her and the dust ahead of them as he turned off onto an unpaved road, hard-packed and kicking up so much grit the heat from the blazing Texas sun vanished, if only for a moment.

  Their ugly, worn camper hit a pothole and Daisy swayed in her seat. Aiden leaned forward, riding it out, before he settled against his seat again.

  He really was gorgeous. Any woman other than her would see him as tall, but every woman who saw his iron-gray eyes would sigh and bite her lip, the same as Daisy did. His strong jaw screamed male. His hands said he knew what to do. And his soft and supple skin felt like a dream against her body.

  Except when it didn’t.

  Daisy glanced at the water bottle. Why did the bottled water taste like mud? Bottled water should all taste the same—filtered and bland and faintly like the plastic it came in. Every bottle of water she’d ever had in San Diego tasted like it had been stripped of every particle of difference that gave it terroir, that sense of the land from which it was drawn. She only knew about terroir because one night her mom went into a semi-drunken monologue about why Australian wines were better than every other wine from any other place on the planet.

  Bottled water shouldn’t have terroir. It should have blandness and plastic. All the bottled water on her trip from San Diego to Branson tasted right. Yet once she got to The Land, it changed. The water Aiden had handed her on the bus tasted a little too organic.

  She couldn’t describe it any other way. Just organic. Not of a land and not filtered. Mud, but not a mud that tasted like the mud the tornado had tossed into the air around Branson. Just boggy and slightly bitter.

  She hadn’t had anything to drink since last night. She’d stopped, not wanting to have to pull over and pee in the desert out under the hot sun because it seemed uncivilized.

  And, she suspected, a part of her brain associated the wooziness with the water.

  A part that had been whispering and wondering and screaming that the water wasn’t right but she hadn’t listened because Aiden was gorgeous. And he loved her. He’d loved her from the moment he saw her. He said so.

  Outside the camper, dust billowed. The wheels pitched and they both swayed in their seats. And for the first time, Daisy’s conscious mind wondered.

  “How is this a short cut?” she asked again. Because she was beginning to wonder what she’d gotten herself into.

  The camper slowed. “We’re here.” Aiden waved at the wide-open desert.

  Daisy glanced outside, but she kept him in her peripheral vision. A small derelict building came into view. It looked like an old hunting cabin, or maybe some type of well-pumping station. She didn’t know. But it looked old and unused.

  The back end of another vehicle poked out from behind the building. It looked newly minted. Dust-covered, but clean. And expensive.

  No way would her mom drive a car like that. “That’s my mom?” Daisy asked. She wiggled in her seat more because she couldn’t stop herself than for any other reason. She prayed he thought it was because she believed him. Not because she felt like her body had turned into a pit. Not because part of her believed he’d be so sad when he found out she didn’t completely believe every word he uttered.

  Not because the little voice that had been screaming Run away! had finally broken through the mud he’d been feeding her in the water.

  “I think so.” Aiden swung the camper around and parked in front of the derelict building, not next to the other vehicle.

  Sunlight filtered through cracks in the cabin’s walls. The entire structure looked like it would fall over if she breathed on it.

  Someone moved inside.

  “Why is she out here alone?” Daisy asked. Maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe she didn’t get herself into the stupidest fucking situation a woman could get herself into. Maybe Aiden wasn’t lying about loving her.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.” He scratched at his cap. “Does seem strange, doesn’t it?”

  When he turned toward her, when he moved to lo
ok in her direction, he moved his entire torso. He didn’t glance. He squared his shoulders as if daring her to disagree with him.

  “Why don’t you go ask her,” Aiden said.

  Run! screamed inside Daisy’s head. Running into the desert would be safer than where you are now.

  Run!

  “Come with me.” Daisy undid her seatbelt. “You get out first.”

  If he was out of the camper, she could lock the door. Maybe get away.

  “She’s your mom. Not mine.” Aiden nodded toward the shack. “Though mine did the same thing with my father as yours did with that Russian bastard.”

  He crossed his arms and stared at her, his gray eyes unblinking. They looked colorless now, almost the same bland dusty flatness of the desert outside.

  “What do you know about my dad?” Adrenaline surged. The lines and angles of the camper popped in high detail. Whatever Aiden dosed the water with seemed to be ebbing.

  Daisy finally smelled the disdain rising off him.

  “That ring on the chain around your neck doesn’t belong to him.” He waved his hand at her chest. “It belonged to Tsar Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia. Your father’s cousin. It’s priceless, and here you have it dangling on some cheap cord because you’re too stupid to do your research.”

  Daisy inched toward the door. Could she make it back to the road on foot? She’d have to.

  “Your family isn’t going to ruin your gifts.” Aiden tapped his temple. “Your daddy will see you as proof of the superiority of his accidents.” He snorted. “Because it’s always about him. With Shifters, it’s always about you.”

  Aiden rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Can’t see the forest, so to speak.”

  She’d come out of this alive. He let slip that he wasn’t going to kill her. Her daddy becomes aware of her, so she had to live. She had to.

  Aiden’s hand shot out to grab her but she pulled the door latch. The door swung wide, pressed open by her weight, and squealed out a high-pitched groan just as she tumbled onto her ass in the dirt.

  Run! screamed through her brain again. Just Run! Not look around. Just Run right now!