Novak Raven (Harper's Mountains Book 4)

by T. S. Joyce

  “Oh, sex with me is funny?” Weston teased.

  Avery ran the back of her hand across the roughness of his jaw. “I’m relieved.”

  “That it’s done?”

  “No. That you’re my first. It always felt like I was waiting on something, and now I know what. I was waiting on you. On this moment, so it could be this special.”

  Weston grinned and looked around the woods. “Woman, this ain’t exactly a bed and breakfast and a warm bed. We just fucked in the dirt.”

  Avery shrugged and followed his glance to the greenery around them. “Yeah, but it’s soooo…you. And it’ll be memorable.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Mmm hmm. I have moss in my crack.”

  Weston dropped his forehead to her chest and laughed so hard his shoulders shook. “I swear I’ll make it more special next time.”

  “Oh, next time? You’re already planning on round two?”

  “Uh, yeah. That was awesome. My dick is your biggest fan. Plus,” he murmured, giving two hard sucks to her nipples. “I’ve been thinking about your tits all week.”

  She gasped teasingly. “Weston Novak, did you jack off to me?”

  He snorted. “Did I jack off to you? I didn’t want to because I was still pissed at you, but yeah, I anger-banged my fist a few times thinking about you in that little tank top and short-shorts number you keep wearing at the shop.”

  “I read romance books,” she admitted. “The dirty ones. I’m practically a pro at sex.”

  “I believe it,” he murmured, but his glazed-over attention was back on her boobs, and he was jiggling one rhythmically.

  Avery swatted his hand. “Don’t make them look weird.”

  “They’re so big. I thought raven shifters were flat-chested, mousey little things, but you have these big ol’ bouncy titties and a round ass.” He squeezed her behind for emphasis and ground his hips against her. “I fucking love you naked.”

  I fucking love you, period. She wished she could say it, but Weston wouldn’t be ready. He’d only just found out she wasn’t the bad guy, and she wanted to cling onto moments like these before he decided to run.

  “Well, I like your tattoos and piercings and muscles. And your smile.”

  The smile dipped from his face. “And what else?”

  “And the way you know how to do everything, fix everything. And the way you’re quiet unless you have something important to say. And the way you make up your own mind on things.” She ran her fingertip across his full bottom lip. “And the way you taste when you kiss me, and the way you smile when I tease you.”

  “I see things,” he said suddenly.

  Avery frowned at the seriousness of his tone. “What kinds of things?”

  Weston looked like he regretted saying anything at all and pulled out of her. When he rolled them both to the side and cradled her against his chest, he stared off into the woods and murmured, “I see future things. Things that haven’t happened yet. Awful things.”

  Avery propped up on her elbow to better see his face, but he didn’t seem to be joking. “Like you are a psychic?”

  “No, I don’t read people’s minds or anything like that. I see people’s future.”

  “Whose? Mine?”

  “No,” he said too fast and too sternly. “Not yours. Don’t say that anymore.”

  “Okay.” Troubled, Avery brushed his short, dark hair to the side. “Whose then?”

  “Harper’s first. Alana and Lexi, too, but mostly I see strangers now. I see them dying or getting hurt. Sometimes the visions are good, but most of the time they aren’t.”

  “How often do you have them?”

  Weston rolled his head and locked his dark gaze on hers when he said, “Every day.”

  Gooseflesh blasted across her skin. “That’s awful.”

  “I hate sleeping now. I put it off so I won’t have dreams, but sometimes I even have them during the day now while I’m awake. The world goes away, and I get dumped into this scene. Faraway places with strangers hurting. I tried to stop a couple. I drove to meet a woman in Woodfin and saved her from a car accident. But two days later, she stepped into a busy street and was hit by a car. And it was so much worse than what I’d saved her from. Her kid witnessed it. I thought I could change her fate, but I couldn’t. And now that kid will always have that awful memory, that awful scar, because of me.” Weston pulled her against his side and stared up at the thick branches of the forest canopy. “My dad had the sight, so did his mom, and I used to pray that I wouldn’t get it. I saw how the crews depended on my dad to tell their futures. To reassure them, and sometimes he didn’t have good news. And I saw the toll it took on him. I heard the conversations he had with my mom late at night after bad visions and saw that hollow look in his eyes the morning after. I didn’t want that to be me, but when I came to Harper’s Mountains, something shifted. The visions started, and now I already feel like I’m losing my mind. You said you were a broken raven, but you aren’t.” Weston swallowed hard. “I am.”

  “This doesn’t scare me away.”

  “It should. You haven’t seen the bad parts yet. I can’t spend the night or fall asleep beside you. It’s getting worse and worse, and you’ll be hurt by it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You will. I watched my mom fuss over my dad my whole life. I want better for you.”

  But Weston was wrong. There was no one better for her. “I don’t think you’re broken,” she whispered, hugging him so tightly her arms shook. “I think you’re perfect.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You are for me! I get to decide what I want and don’t want, Weston. Me. My choices were taken away my whole life, but my eyes are wide open on this. I care for you. Always have. Before the sight, after the sight, doesn’t matter to me. You’re telling me this thinking you’ll scare me away, but it won’t work. You letting me in only makes me care for you more.” Avery scrambled on top of him and straddled his hips. Then she leaned toward his left pec, her mouth open. He was too sad and too serious right now and she wanted to distract him.

  “Whoa, what are you doing?” Weston asked, sitting up and nearly dumping her on her ass.

  When he held her wrists, she stretched her neck forward and chomped her teeth, missing his pec by an inch. “I’m biting you. What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Biting me for what?”

  “To claim you. The bears do it.”

  “Good God, we aren’t bears, Ave. Stop!”

  She stretched forward again and barely missed his shoulder when she snapped her teeth this time. Good grief, he was annoyingly strong.

  “Ave, quit!”

  “Okay, fine, you’re right. You bite me first.”

  Weston’s eyebrows were nearly to his hairline now. “Have you lost your mind, woman? That shit’s permanent. You really want my mark on you after one night with me?”

  “No. I want your mark on me after being friends for…” She counted quickly in her head. “Fourteen years.” Chomp. “And now official diddle buddies. You wanted to fuck my titties, Novak. We’re committed.”

  Weston was trying and failing to hide a smile now as he struggled to keep her teeth away from his skin. “We weren’t friends for most of those fourteen years.”

  “That’s just a technicality, Novak.” Chomp. Whoo, that one was close.

  “God, you would make a relentless and terrifying zombie.”

  Avery peeled into a fit of giggles and fell over, clutching her stomach. “You should see your face right now.” She kicked her legs and cackled. “You’re freaking out.”

  “Joking about claiming marks isn’t funny.” But she could see his pursed-lip smile from here, and this was definitely funny.

  She spread out like a star on the mossy blanket and heaved a sigh. “Weston?” she asked, staring up at the sky.

  “What?”

  “Someday you’re going to want to bite me like the bears do.”

  “Oh, yeah? You have the
sight now, too?”

  “No, I just know in my bones that you will. I’m gonna make you fall in love with me.”

  You already have. He didn’t say that last part, but she could see it there, in his dancing eyes. He liked her in the way she liked him, and someday, someway, he was going to choose her completely.

  “I was made for you, Weston, remember? I was supposed to betray you, but I failed. I adored you instead. Before I even laid eyes on you, before I knew the man you would become, I started growing a bond just from words you wrote on a paper. We’re fated, you and I, and you said it yourself.”

  Weston cocked his head in a very raven-like gesture and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Said what?”

  She leaned her cheek into his palm and whispered, “You can’t stop someone’s destiny.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  You can’t stop someone’s destiny. Weston had replayed her words over and over in his head. Was that what this feeling was? Was destiny to credit for the heat in his chest that pulled him toward Avery just to get relief? Was fate the reason she felt so right in his life now?

  He’d never given a single thought to destiny before the visions, but how could he see the future and not believe? He’d tried to stop events from happening, but they always found a way. Fate was a stubborn bitch, but maybe she was finally working in his favor with Avery.

  The chair creaked under him as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Thank God for good night vision. He could see every beautiful angle of Avery’s face as she slept in the bed of 1010.

  She’d asked him to stay the night and sleep beside her, but he was too smart for that. He woke up from visions violently sometimes, and he wouldn’t risk hurting her. He wouldn’t risk showing her the dark side of his life. Telling her about it was one thing, but if she saw how fucked up he was, she would change her mind. She would break her promise to make him fall in love with her, and he didn’t want her to do that. He wanted her to try. He wanted her to come into her own and break him apart. He wanted her to force his heart open and claim him. It had already been tempting to let her bite him tonight, even if she was just teasing. So tempting to bind her to him like the bears did. So tempting to secure a mate and make sure he didn’t wander through his life alone. But Avery had just found out her life was full of lies, and she was on the tail end of hard times.

  She needed to become stronger before she took on a bond with him.

  The sound of a truck engine rattled the house, and headlights flashed through the window. Four in the morning and Ryder was finally home from whatever vandalism he’d done in the name of anger. Weston’s best friend, his blood brother, would lose his shit if he admitted how much Avery already meant to him. He was already going to have hell to pay for keeping her a secret so long.

  Avery hugged her pillow closer and made the cutest fucking sleep sound Weston had ever heard in his life. He wouldn’t tell her he’d come back after he left so he could watch her sleep. He didn’t want to scare her, but he’d gone back to his cabin, avoided the hell out of sleep—or more specifically, visions—and snuck back into 1010 just to be close to her again.

  He felt less volatile around her, which made no damn sense. He’d spent so many years angry at her, just pissed that she’d betrayed him. She’d been his first and only great betrayal, but finding out she hadn’t been a part of her peoples’ treachery had nuked the walls he’d put up. And now, instead of that slow build-up, he was completely overwhelmed with his feelings for her. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Not for flight shifters. Their bond wasn’t like the bears, right? But thinking back on Ma and Da’s relationship, he began to see things in a different light. His dad had bitten his mom, claimed her, and even though her raven didn’t necessarily need that, Beaston and Aviana Novak’s love story had always been one for the books. So many in Damon’s Mountains had looked up to them, or gone mushy in the face when they saw them hugging, kissing, or talking low, as if they were the only ones in the world.

  Was that because Da was a bear shifter and capable of giving that bond?

  Or was there some slim chance Weston could have that with Avery, despite them both being flight shifters?

  He’d thought it was silly when Ryder had fallen so hard for Lexi. He’d thought his best friend was just falling head-over-heels again, and the bond was just some mythical thing for shifters like him and Ryder. But now he watched Ryder and Lexi, who was utterly human, and he could almost see the bond between them. He could sense it. He could tell when Ryder went too long without seeing Lexi, or touching her, because he went dimmer somehow.

  In her sleep, Avery sighed a contented sound and smiled. “Save me,” she whispered.

  Weston frowned and leaned closer. He waited, thinking he’d imagined it, but she parted her soft lips and said it again. “Save me, Weston.”

  The walls of the cabin melted like burning metal, fading and exposing sterile, white walls behind them.

  “No.” Weston pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes and then looked up again.

  The floor melted into dingy, cracked white tiles, and the bed disappeared under Avery. She slammed to the ground but didn’t flinch at any pain. She lay in the middle of the empty room in a threadbare nightgown, her knees pulled up to her chest as she shivered uncontrollably. Her bare feet were dirty, and gooseflesh covered her body. She was frail and thin, her collar bones sticking out harshly under the neck of her gown. Mascara was smudged on her cheeks, and her eyes stared at him blankly. Her lips moved constantly.

  “Avery?”

  She gasped and began reciting words again.

  Weston looked at the door. Maybe he could open it for her. Maybe he could let her out. There was no handle on this side, but there was something else. Something that chilled his blood to ice. Long claw marks were slashed deeply into the sheetrock on either side of the door. Some of them were bloody, and when he looked back at her hands, her nails were nothing but stubs.

  He bolted for her, tried to cover her with his body, tried to keep her warm, tried to comfort her, but he couldn’t feel her. “Avery,” he repeated more frantically. “It’s okay, I’m right here.”

  It was so fucking cold in here. He’d never felt cold in his visions before, but it was uncomfortable in this one. Her lips were still moving, and her words were louder now, audible.

  “I played shortstop in the baseball game on Thursday, and we won. It was our first win of the season, which is sad since most of the team is shifters and we were playing mostly human kids. Mason and Clinton took us out for pizza afterward. We all got suicides. Do you know what a suicide is? It’s a mix of all the different soft drinks in one cup. Clinton put whiskey in his when Mason wasn’t looking.”

  Oh, God. He remembered this. He’d written this letter to her when he was twelve, maybe thirteen. She was reciting his words.

  “Ryder ran away from home on Monday. He said he was tired of being grounded, but he only made it to the gas station right outside of Damon’s Mountains before he ran out of beef jerky. He didn’t even pack any underwear, and Mason was so mad he grounded him for another month. It’s really hard not to laugh at Ryder when he complains about it. So dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb,” she said, hiccupping on the word. A tear slid out of the corner of her eye and made a shallow splat on the tile under her cheek. “I can’t wait to get to meet you someday. I can’t wait to give you a hug and finally get to hear your voice in person. Avery, I think you are my second best friend. Friend, friend.” Her voice hitched. “Best friend.”

  The floor shook, and the walls began to crack and crumble. No, he wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready for the vision to end. He wanted to stay here and be near her. He didn’t want her to be alone. The bloody claw marks split open on the wall, and deep cracks blasted down to the floor and through the tiles toward him.

  “Avery, it’s going to be okay,” he said. Desperately, he tried to hug her to his body, but his hands went right through her.

  And just as th
e bedroom of 1010 showed from behind the clawed, bloody walls, Avery lifted her hollow gaze to him with a heartbroken sadness etched into her beautiful face. “I miss you.”

  He blinked back the emotion in his eyes, and the room was gone. He was back in 1010, and Avery was sleeping peacefully, her face completely relaxed and happy looking.

  What the fuck?

  Gripping the back of his hair, Weston stood and paced the room. That hadn’t been the future. She’d kept the darkness of her past to herself. Cut him out of that pain. He wasn’t supposed to see the past, right? He was a future-teller.

  God, he could still feel the chill of the white room, could still here the soft echo of her whispered words, but it wasn’t real. Not anymore. How was she okay? If that’s how it had been for her, how was she still upright, still fighting? How was she still kind to people? No wonder she would rather be homeless than go back to Raven’s Hollow. He wanted to kill them all. He wanted to annihilate the entire fucking flock for what they’d done to Avery. His Avery. He hadn’t been there to protect her, and still, she’d clung to him. To his letters. To his words. In the vision, she hadn’t looked that much younger than she did now. That had to be recent, and she was still holding his letters in her heart to get through the bad stuff. Shit.

  He had to get out of here before he woke her. He was shaking with his need for violence and vengeance, and it would scare her. And goddammit, she’d been scared enough in her life.

  He bolted from 1010, strode up the winding dirt road to his house. He couldn’t sleep or risk another vision. For fuck’s sake, they even came to him while he was awake now!

  “You look like two-week-old shit,” Ryder said grumpily from the front porch of their attached cabin.