Then, without warning, Darin drove my legs apart and thrust himself into me. I gasped, half surprised, half writhing as my body gave itself over to the orgasm. I felt myself pulse and squirm as Darin drove in and in and in, keeping his hand firmly on the nub and pinching it with every thrust in a way I’d never even thought to teach him.
He was getting good at this.
Time doesn’t pass when you’re having sex. Each second is an hour and the concept of an hour seems so silly, so small. Definitely not enough time to feel what you’re feeling. An hour would burst if it had to contain all this ecstasy, surely – if it had to cap the endless explosion of its realization, the throbbing that sang through the body when the deed was finally done.
He rolled away, coming to lie on his back beside me. He reached under me with one hand and sliced through ribbon around my wrists with a single black claw. It fell away into the sand, and I brought my hands to his chest and kissed him.
He pulled back a second later. “Like that?” he said.
I laughed, so giddy I could barely speak. “Yes,” I said. “Exactly like that.”
He smiled, and I smiled, and then we were both laughing like idiots.
He held me close and smiled at the stars, looking fiendishly pleased with himself. We laid there in the dark for a long time, until the stars were all we had to see by – which meant I could barely see anything at all. Sarchan night-vision was something close to Terran cats, so Darin wouldn’t have any trouble getting us back.
“Do you see that star there?” he said. “The red one just above us.”
I spent a moment looking and nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“The cluster of stars around it is the Miridia. It is the plane where the souls of a Bound pair wait for the death of the one they left behind.”
“Bound?” I said.
“Soul to soul,” Darin said, almost wistfully. “Such couplings cannot pass to the next life alone. They must wait, and travel there together.”
And he looked at me. He didn’t say anything more, he just looked. His red eye did glow a bit – not enough for me to see by, but enough to tell he was staring, and had no intention of looking away.
“Tell me of your gods,” he said suddenly.
“Which ones?” I said.
“Any of them,” he said. “All of them.”
I propped myself up with one arm, elbow in the sand, head in my hand. “There are lots of them,” I said. “Lots of religions, lots of gods. The Greeks have a pantheon, and the Egyptians, the Celts. I don’t remember who the Norse gods belong to. The Romans, everybody says their pantheons were lifted straight from the Greek’s, but that isn’t completely true. There’s the Abrahamic religions, they don’t get along with each other. Or anybody, really.”
“What is yours?” he said. “If you have one.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. My family is mostly Buddhist. My mom was Catholic.”
“Was?”
“She died when I was little,” I said, and paused.
Usually when I said that, people nodded and moved on. It was blessing, some said, not being able to remember her, and it made them feel better, because it meant I wasn’t really mourning – but I remembered every piece of her, and I mourned her every day.
Darin didn’t pass it by, though. “I’m sorry. I wish it was not so.”
It was a curious thing to say, but it felt right. I smiled appreciatively. “Thank you,” I said. “I wish that too.”
We stared at each other, blinking in the dark world. God, but he was handsome. I reached forward, but I didn’t realize I was even moving until he moved too and took my hand. His skin was soft and warm.
“I knew my father only briefly,” he said. “He was good and kind, and very brave.” Darin looked down and his cheeks darkened, turning almost purple, and I realized with a start that he was blushing. Not embarrassment, not even shame. Just the rush of blood that happens when you bare your soul. “He is not dead, but he is gone.”
I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back. “Do you wish is was not so?” I asked.
His mouth twitched briefly up into a smile. “I do.”
Looking doesn’t really capture what we spent the next hour doing. Our eyes met and parted and met again as we drank each other in, savoring the taste of the air and the sound of the sea, the color of my skin and the sheen of his hair. I inhaled, he exhaled, and we stayed like that awhile, existing in the absence.
***
“I think we should bring Brittany to the gala,” said Sol-dam.
They were in the living room, that vast expanse of white plush furniture and dark metal framed by that enormous window. I leaned against the door, half-hidden by stormy shadows. Sol-dam was leaning against the fireplace, a smaller, less ornate variation on the one in the library. Darin was on the couch, a glass of amber in his hand. He looked ready to spit fire. I wondered if he could.
“I beg your pardon?” said Darin.
Sol-dam shrugged. “I think we should bring Brittany to the gala.”
“I heard you the first time.” Darin set aside his drink and sat up, pulling his feet off the coffee table.
“Then why did you ask?”
“Because I assumed you’d had a stroke. Why in Dorada’s hell would we bring her?”
“To get people talking.”
“About…?”
“Brittany.” Sol-dam sat down in the white chair across from Darin. “Her grand reveal will be easier on us if we’re vilifying existing rumors than introducing the concept cold.”
“We’re not introducing it cold.”
“Functionally, we are. We need to change the atmosphere if we want to make any real change. We need more than activist white noise. We need real questions, we need to, to plant the seed of a real mystery here, something people will want to know.”
“They’ll have their mystery when Tany speaks.”
“Darin, there is an important distinction between ‘holy shit, it’s real’ and ‘what the fuck is that’. Right now, we’re in ‘what the fuck is that’ territory. They’ve seen talking creatures before. We need them to think something about Brittany is different, something that will give them a reason to believe us.”
“Her speech will not be enough?”
“It wasn’t enough for you at first.”
Darin growled in the back of his throat and looked away.
“If we feed the backwater talk with semi-secret knowledge of a pseudo-sentient alien, when we find a misra to vouch for us, it won’t be coming out of nowhere. You’ll have people who think it’s real before they ever see her.”
“I don’t like it.”
“It’s a good idea, Darin.”
“It’s three fifths of a good idea. The last two fifths involves putting Brittany in a dress and parading her about to a host of people who have been trolling for personal weak points since I took over.”
“Oh, so Brittany’s a weak point now?” Sol-dam said, wearing the quirking smile of a patronizing older sibling.
Darin glared at him. “She is. And I’d really appreciate it if you could find some other way to plant this seed of yours in the public mind that didn’t involve putting her in a very big, very crowded room full of people with an unhealthy fondness for guns.”
Sol-dam was silent for three seconds. “It’s a good idea.”
“I may actually throw you out the window.”
Sol-dam chuckled. “I’m as worried about her as you are, but we can’t pull any punches here. Anything we can do to ingratiate ourselves and our cause to the public, even and perhaps especially in the less reputable circles, we have to. For Brittany’s sake, and her friends.”
Darin tensed. If the glass had been in his hand, it would have shattered, spilling amber liquid all over the pristine white carpet. He inhaled, the air carving deep lines into his throat.
“You promised you’d get her home,” Sol-dam chided.
“I know,” Darin snapped. He seemed to feel the edge of his own v
oice and tried again. “I know.” He picked up his drink and tossed the whole thing back in one fell swallow. There was a long, straining pause, the seconds stretching like tar, seeping into the walls.
“I still don’t like it,” Darin said at last.
“You don’t have to,” said Sol-dam, apparently taking that for a yes. He clasped Darin by the shoulder, nodded once, and left the room, breezing past me – lost in thought. He didn’t seem to notice I was there.
I walked in. Darin looked up and forced a smile to his face.
“What did you hear?”
“Everything,” I said.
“You were eavesdropping.”
“I mean, yeah.” I sat next to him on the couch, legs pulled up. He took my hand in his, the one with claws and talons and burning bright scales. His touch was gentle.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I think he has a point.” I shrugged. “It’s dangerous, but is it any more dangerous than going public totally cold?”
“It will not matter. Rumors of the kind exist already,” Darin said, though he didn’t sound wholly convinced of himself.
“If they were the kind of rumors that would help us, this whole thing wouldn’t even be necessary,” I insisted, “but it is, and it will help, especially if the rumors are coming from…uh, the kind of people you work with.”
“The kind of people?” He laughed lightly. “And why is that?”
I shrugged. “A rumor coming straight from a government somebody might seem like a power play, trying to undermine somebody else who doesn’t believe in alien sentience. Anybody that trades in creatures will surge forward and claim they’re trying to undermine their businesses. But if it comes from people who work in those circles…I don’t know. I think it would mean more.”
Darin ran his hands over his face and muttered a Sarchan curse. “It will be dangerous,” he said eventually.
“Isn’t everything?”
Darin chuckled. “Not like this. No one that will be there has any obvious reason to hurt you, but this is a fragile game we play. Like lawyers in a broken elevator, we are only civil as long as it serves us.”
“Sounds like a fun group of people.”
“Oh, they are, make no mistake,” he said. “The Dasyls play a mean game of kilam.”
“What’s kilam?”
“A betting game,” said Darin. “Played with cards.”
I nodded, and hesitated before speaking again. “Darin—”
“I am not comfortable with this, Tany. I…” He sighed, the sound carrying his eyes all the way to the floor. He forced himself to look up again. He always had such trouble looking me in the eye when he was worried, maybe afraid I’d see weakness there. “There is nothing I would love more than to dance with you before every ignorant nolas I’ve ever met, but I…I am not prepared to put you in such a position.”
“I am.”
“You are not afraid?”
“I’m usually afraid,” I said. “You get used to it.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek for a while, thinking. “Very well,” said Darin, sounding resigned and irritated. “Lenada.”
Lenada was at the little bar in the corner, cleaning Darin’s empty glass. Her eyes flitted to me before she addressed him. “Yes, Luras?”
“See that Tany has a dress or something for the gala,” he said. “Please.”
Lenada swallowed hard. “Yes, Luras.”
Darin nodded once to her, once to me, stood, and left in a confused huff. I’d have to talk to him later. It was sweet of him to worry, but I couldn’t stay in his box forever…as much as he might want me to.
“So,” I said to Lenada, draping my arm over the back of the white couch. “Wanna play dress-up?”
It was an admittedly pathetic attempt at conversation, but I was still surprised when Lenada glowered at me. “Later,” she said. The word slipped through her teeth like oil on snow, cold and conspicuous and uncomfortable.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
Lenada returned to cleaning the glass. It was already spotless, but she carved away at it with the washcloth, pouring soap over her fingers and scratching at invisible stains. There were dark circles under her eyes and thin lines in her cheeks, and her movements were jerky, unstable like a broken puppet.
I hadn’t seen her around the house much, but ever since Darin had thrown Orin out the window, she’d been on edge – the way you might expect anyone to be after being assaulted like that in the middle of the goddamn night. She was tired and cagey, and every time she saw me she looked like she wanted to scream. She’d liked me well enough before, treating me with the same tangential respect you might offer to a parakeet in your rich uncle’s house,. Not especially friendly, but polite, intrigued. I couldn’t imagine why she’d be angry with me now.
Which meant she probably wasn’t angry with me. God, I am so stupid.
“We should talk,” I said. It wasn’t what I meant to say – the plan was to ask her how her day was going, or to compliment her hair or the thin black lines painted around her eyes in the cosmetic fashion of every Sarchan woman I’d had the curious misfortune to see – but what I was thinking was, I should really talk to Lenada, see how she’s doing. So that’s what came out instead.
I didn’t have time to correct myself.
“Why?” said Lenada. The word was course and thin as an arctic wind. There was a color behind her eyes I could almost see, the porcelain blue of a conversation she wasn’t willing to have.
“We live together,” I said. “And you seem…” I searched for a word that wouldn’t make her sound like a wounded animal. “…distracted.” Better than jumpy, at least.
“I have work to do, miss,” she said curtly. “If you will excuse me.”
“You need to talk to me,” I said, then realized how awful that sounded. “Or somebody. Anybody, honestly.”
She flinched like she’d been punched, her whole body going rigid. “Why?”
I took a breath. “Because I don’t think you’ve left what happened behind and you’re projecting your remaining discomfort onto me because I remind you of what almost happened.” I didn’t need to tell her what “happening” was referring to.
I expected her to be angry – yes, Brittany, brilliant plan, call out the traumatized housemaid and see what happens, I’m sure it’ll be fine – but she just stared at me. Lenada held the empty glass and made a rather confused face. She looked at me, face twisting.
“Ask me something,” I said suddenly.
Lenada frowned at me, a barely perceptible downward twitch in her mouth. “What?”
“Ask me something. Anything. Have a conversation with me.”
She blinked at me, uncomprehending. “A conversation.”
“Yes, a conversation,” I said. “We should be friends. I want to help you again.”
“You have not helped me,” she snapped, though she didn’t seem to mean it.
I sighed. “Lenada…I didn’t speak your language then, but I know a rapist when I see one.” I crossed my arms on the back of the couch and rested my head on my forearms. “Are you feeling okay?”
She seemed startled by the question. Her brows knit together, and her mouth popped open in disgust, but she said nothing, and she didn’t really commit to the expression, even in Sarchan terms.
“I know it’s been a while, but a thing like that can tail you for a long time. It doesn’t always, but it can,” I said.
She held the empty glass to her heart and shook her head softly, more an expression of confusion than a denial. “I do not want to talk about this with you.”
“You don’t have to,” I said, shrugging. “But you can. If I’m just an animal it won’t matter what you say, and if I’m not, I’m another woman you can talk to in a house full of men.”
She glowered down her nose at me.
“If you don’t want to, you don’t want to,” I said. “I can leave, if you’d rather.”
“You couldn’t possibl
y understand,” she snapped.
Not what I said, but it was a sign she did, in fact, want to talk. Even if it meant she just wanted to scream and hate me to exorcise something Orin left behind, that was fine by me. I spent a long moment searching for a decent response and found none.
Dammit, Naomi, I thought miserably. Where’s a behavioral scientist when you need one?
“I’m just here to listen,” I said at last. Nonconfrontational, nothing assumed. Just setting myself up as a vessel for whatever she needed to get out.
She didn’t say anything for a while. Her thumb ran up and down the side of the glass. She scratched the rim with her nail and swayed slightly. I thought she was considering her words, but I blinked and then I saw her phase out of this reality into someplace unknown. Her eyes bored through the carpet to the dark places under the earth where people like Orin came to rest – thinking about his fall, maybe. Or more likely about his touch, trapped in the memory of it.
“Are you breathing?” I said.
She shook her head, barely hearing me.
I stood, walked over, and took her by the elbow and shoulder, gently. “Will you sit down?”
She nodded.
We sat slowly. She stayed at the edge of the couch, back perfectly straight, her hand still curled around the glass. Her gaze was unfocused. She blinked hard every few seconds, swaying as she breathed.
I waited. Saying nothing, asking nothing. Listening to the rain as it came down and down and down.
“It is like…a phantom,” she said hesitantly, her voice quivering. Tears danced down her face, but her expression did not change. “The hands of a ghost.”
I didn’t nod, I didn’t motion for her to go on. I waited.
She chewed her tongue, as though force-assembling every word in her mouth before she spoke, letter by letter. “I can feel him in the night. Like his hands never left my skin.” She swallowed audibly, her whole body contorting with it. “I…I think of…” She trailed off.
“Yita?” I ventured.
A Pet For Lord Darin Page 12
