Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  Now, after her display in the basement and his interactions with her when they were alone in the upstairs room afterwards, Revik found himself avoiding the eyes of the other seers. He found himself avoiding Jon’s eyes, especially––and Maygar’s––and not only because he wasn’t sure how much of him they could feel, since their lights were so much more inextricably tied into one another and to her.

  He knew some on his team heard at least part of what had transpired in that upstairs bedroom, even if it had only been Revik’s side of his and Allie’s second argument of the day––the one that at least marginally happened in private.

  Well, it hadn’t really been an argument, not in any true sense.

  The truth was, all he’d felt when he got back to the room yesterday had been anger.

  More than anger.

  He’d been furious with her.

  So furious, he’d barely been able to remember she wasn’t the woman he’d married––or that she might not be able to understand his rage, much less respond to it in a way that his less-than-rational mind would find remotely satisfying.

  Whatever he’d realized, consciously or not, after he’d finished making arrangements to accede to her wishes––including contacting the airport and his pilots to inform them of the delay, which caused a whole host of other security issues that only pissed him off more––Revik had gone upstairs to their bedroom.

  By then, he’d had time to think about the other implications of her decision, including a denser worry that they might lose even the tiny element of surprise they’d retained up until that point, and thus, miss his chance of reaching Cass before she, Shadow and Feigran absconded with their child, yet again.

  So yeah, he’d been pissed.

  He’d also known that Allie would be there, waiting for him.

  He’d known in part because he checked with Chinja and Illeg pretty much every other breath to ensure his wife was still in that fucking room, waiting for him.

  When Revik finally reached the landing at the top of the stairs and approached the closed door, he’d dismissed the guards he’d left there, including Chinja and Illeg, who he’d left in charge. He barely looked at them, truthfully, as he passed them on his way to where he felt Allie’s light in the master bedroom.

  He’d been actively fighting his anger by then, barely able to control it by the time he got through the door and found himself facing her.

  She’d been dressed at least, barely, and probably only because he swore at Chinja on his link, telling the female infiltrator to dress his wife physically if she had to––even if they had to restrain her to do it. Even so, her outfit consisted of one of Revik’s own long-sleeved dress shirts and a pair of black leggings that clung to her legs so tight and sheer, they looked more like stockings, like what women used to wear in the 1950s.

  He’d been shouting before he finished closing the door.

  He barely remembered what he’d said now.

  He knew he’d totally forgotten anyone besides her might be listening to him. Well, that, and he just flat-out stopped fucking caring.

  He remembered accusing her of manipulating him, of pretending to be less conscious of what was going on around her than she actually was. He accused her of undermining him in front of the others, of threatening to break vow, of making him look like a fool––of bullying him. He’d yelled at her for fucking shoving him, using the telekinesis, so essentially hitting him in front of the rest of them. He accused her of knowing he wouldn’t fight back, so taking advantage of him in that, as well.

  He’d been too angry to even be coherent.

  The almost-blank look in her eyes as she calmly listened to him rant only made his anger worse. He had a vague recollection of breaking something.

  He didn’t throw it at her; he didn’t even throw it in her direction, but some part of him just wanted to snap her out of that damned fugue state long enough to acknowledge him––and to acknowledge what she’d just done to him. He’d done it by making as much fucking noise as he possibly could. He’d done it by gesturing at her angrily, by raising his voice.

  None of it did a damned thing.

  He knew it wasn’t rational.

  He knew it, even then, even as he yelled at her, his voice probably carrying down all three flights of stairs to the seers milling on the lower floors of the Victorian house. All of the stress and worry he’d felt about leaving her behind and about her mental state exploded out of him in a kind of snowball-rolling-down-a-hill type of irrationality, one he wasn’t even willing to acknowledge much less reign in, at least not at first.

  Even so, his awareness continued to run its own slow loops in the background.

  He felt the other infiltrators in the construct reacting to his anger, even to some of his words. He felt Balidor shielding the rest of the construct from the two of them, and especially from Revik himself. He felt Wreg trying to do the same.

  Revik hadn’t given a rat’s ass about any of it.

  At some point, he’d run out of steam long enough that he just stood there, staring at her, half-panting with exertion and frustration. Her eyes were glowing, he remembered that much. They shone like thin, sharp rings in the dim light of the room, and when she came closer to him, initially he’d backed away, trying to get away from her.

  She’d backed him right into the wall, but he hadn’t shoved her away, even then.

  He remembered having trouble looking at her.

  He remembered wondering if she’d use the telekinesis on him again, maybe beat him up for real that time, anything to shut him up.

  He didn’t remember, not precisely anyway, when things shifted.

  He remembered realizing suddenly that she was in pain.

  He’d disbelieved his own perceptions at first, then he’d wondered if it was her own display, downstairs, that she was reacting to. He’d wondered if she was going to try and seduce one of the other seers, maybe right in front of him, just to make her point. All of that went through his mind in a heartbeat though, and through it all, she didn’t move from where she stood in front of him.

  She’d been in a lot of pain.

  He had no idea if his anger triggered it, or the things he’d actually been saying to her, or even his own pain, which he could feel by then, too, as soon as he acknowledged it to himself.

  He did remember the rough set of minutes before either of them acted on it.

  He let her back him into the wall by the door, and then she had her hands on him. He had a dimmer memory of pushing her off him the first few times, of maybe even threatening her.

  That part felt less distinct, though, less clear in his mind, than when she caught hold of his hair, pulling him down to her mouth. It felt even further away from when she started kissing him. Maybe it was too similar to how she’d kissed him the very first time, in that loud, smoky club in lower Manhattan. Or maybe he’d simply stopped caring by then.

  Either way, for the first time since she’d come out of that wire coma, he didn’t push her away.

  He went from not pushing her away to kissing her back.

  It had been maddening, he remembered that much––feeling her but not, getting vague pulses of her light without being able to reach her, not enough anyway, not nearly enough.

  It infuriated him and frustrated him and hurt him in places he thought he’d cut himself off from being hurt from by now. Yet those vague hints of her had been enough to enflame the pain he’d been suppressing for days, weeks, months, however fucking long it had been this time, of all the times they’d been separated since he’d known her.

  Feeling her, even that small, vague amount of her, turned him on and filled him with so much grief he’d nearly lost his mind in those first few minutes he let himself go there.

  He remembered it was him who eventually brought both of them to the floor.

  She’d been undressing him somewhere in that headfuck span of minutes where he kissed her against the wall, when he’d been pulling on her, trying to use thei
r kissing to force her light back into being with his. When he finally had her on the floor, he’d already started returning the favor, tearing those nylon-like leggings off her with his bare hands.

  Gods, he’d always loved kissing her.

  She’d had an instinctive use of her light while kissing, even from that very first time, in that nightclub in front of Jaden. Kissing him, she didn’t only tease his light, she pulled and tugged and coaxed him inside of her in slow, gentle increments. He’d always lost his mind, kissing her. It had always frustrated him and turned him on and even filled him with emotion––but this was different.

  This time, it wasn’t her.

  She pulled on him, but there wasn’t enough of her in that light to even come close to fooling him. It couldn’t even fool the parts of him that cared more about fucking her light than about being with her because he loved her apart from it.

  Those overheard whispers between Wreg and Balidor echoed somewhere in his mind, even as he did it, even as he kissed her.

  Even as he took off her clothes.

  …It’d be like necrophilia.

  Gods. Even thinking it made him angry.

  Angry at her, angry at Wreg.

  He’d wanted to kill Wreg, especially when he remembered the look in those black eyes as Wreg stared at his naked wife. Earlier that day, the fucker punched him because of Jon, and then he’s looking at his wife, wanting her, not even trying to hide it.

  Revik didn’t even remember making a decision.

  It didn’t really hit him, what he’d decided––not until he was already inside of her.

  He’d stopped right after he entered her, staring down at her face and eyes. She’d wrapped herself around him by then, her fingers clenched in his hair, the remnants of that damned sensuality of hers in her fingers and body as she slid up against him. He felt the muscle memory, the parts of her that remembered who she had been, who they had been together, but he couldn’t feel her in it.

  He hadn’t pulled out, though, even then.

  Instead he fucked her, crying, trying to reach her, staring at that blank face and feeling like the worst kind of animal for doing it anyway, even without her being there with him. She’d kissed his tears, touching his face, not talking, still lost in that silence that never seemed to break, no matter how often he begged her to speak to him.

  He heard her gasp, even moan against his ear a few times, but she didn’t speak while they had sex, either. Perhaps even more strangely, he stayed as silent as she did, even though he normally wouldn’t have; he normally would have talked to her, more than she did to him.

  They’d always talked to one another during sex, pretty much from the beginning. It was one of those things about her that drove him crazy, especially when she lost control for real and no longer seemed to track what she said to him.

  He brought her to an orgasm and watched it in her face, a distant, nearly lost wave of pleasure, totally disconnected from him.

  For him, it felt like stealing.

  It felt like something she did without any awareness of where she was, something so far removed from her, from who she’d been, who they were to one another, that he might not have been there at all.

  Revik’s own role in her pleasure had been incidental. A footnote.

  He cried again when he realized that, when he saw it in her eyes, but he kept going until he came, too, and he never stopped trying to feel her in any of it. He fought his way inside her, with his body and light, but he might as well have been trying to grip smoke in his hands.

  He’d never felt so hungry, so completely fucking deprived.

  It reminded him of when he’d been Terian’s captive, when he’d fought to feel her, when his body had been slowly starving, when he’d pressed his mouth to damp tile, trying to drink, to quench a thirst that seemed to burn every cell in his body.

  Everything had been out of reach back then, including her––out of reach of his light, his stomach, his mouth, his lungs and heart and fingers.

  He’d been so angry at her––more angry than he thought possible before now, especially since they’d been married in that restaurant in Central Park.

  The rational part of his mind knew how ridiculous it was, to blame her.

  The more emotional part of himself hated himself for blaming her.

  The even more emotional part of him remembered what she’d threatened in that basement room, what she’d thrown in his face, not only showing him images of her fucking Balidor but also images of her with Wreg and Jorag and even random strangers.

  She hadn’t just shown those images to Revik, either.

  She’d shown all of them, the whole fucking room. She’d been seducing them even as she threw Revik’s fears ruthlessly into his face, letting them see the structures the Lao Hu put in her light when Voi Pai made her a consort, letting them see the promise in what those structures really meant.

  She’d let them see her naked.

  She’d encouraged them to fucking imagine it.

  He’d hated her for that.

  He’d really fucking hated her.

  The part that blamed her couldn’t be persuaded to see it any other way. It didn’t care how irrational the other parts of his mind accused that less-rational part of being. It didn’t care about logic, or compassion or understanding. It didn’t care if what had happened to her was part of their fate, part of the Displacement itself, part of history unfolding.

  She’d left him.

  She’d fucking left him here… again.

  And even though she’d left him, enough of her remained behind to know how to hurt him, how to threaten him and make him feel powerless––and used.

  Shoving the thought from his mind now, along with the irrational anger that still rose with it, he clenched his jaw, fighting to regain the pure, abstract ease of linear thought. His light had changed, though, in those few minutes of indulging in memory. He felt reactions in his body, too, another betrayal of his light and the less-conscious areas of his mind.

  He shifted his weight in the airplane seat and forced his eyes off her face, even as he continued stroking her hair. Her pain rose with his, tantalizingly close in her light, pulling on his, sliding through it achingly.

  He knew he’d probably do it again.

  He’d fuck her again, if she asked him for it.

  Hell, he already had. Twice. Once, that same night.

  He’d woken up in bed a few hours after they crawled off to sleep. She’d woken him, to be precise, and she’d done it by putting her mouth on him.

  He hadn’t stopped her that time, either.

  He hadn’t even tried to fight it. He’d lost himself, instead, trying to find her light under the touch of her lips and tongue. He’d been begging her by the end, gripping her hair as tears poured down his face. He hated himself for that, too, but he only kissed her after, wrapping himself around her and caressing her bare skin until eventually, she began to doze in his arms.

  She woke him up a second time, in the hours before dawn, wanting the wires.

  She hadn’t asked him for that outright, of course.

  She never asked him for it, not in so many words, because she never spoke to him at all, not even in his head. She just pulled on him instead, that urgency and panic in her light as she bombarded him with images.

  He’d accommodated her, of course––just like he accommodated her every time she asked for the wires. After all, it wasn’t the first time she’d woken him for that reason. Unlike the impromptu oral sex, waking him to ask to get high was a regular fucking occurrence.

  He’d fought to keep the bitterness away from that thought, even then.

  He’d tried not to think much at all, truthfully. He’d been exhausted, mentally and physically when he slid the wire around her neck, activating the trigger so it would dig into the hole at the base of her spine. Fittingly, wires piggybacked on the same holes as sight-restraint collars, wrapping around and strangling the same nerve-endings, bones and flesh.
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  Revik watched her face as the wire began to take effect.

  He watched her drift off into that less-complicated zone, her eyes glazing for real as she lost herself in white-gold light, likely going back to that same damned ocean where he always found her when he looked for her in the Barrier.

  Glimmers of feeling emanated off her as she left, including a relief stronger and more intense than anything sex with him managed to evoke in her.

  Watching her, he’d felt angry all over again.

  He’d watched her get stoned on the wires, and for the first time, he’d been tempted to join her. He’d considered just going there with her, saying the hell with all of this shit and just checking out.

  Of course, that hadn’t been the only reaction to cross his mind.

  He’d also wanted to rip the wire off her, shake her and yell at her like he had when he first got up to their room. He’d wanted to break the fucking thing, let her panic for not having it. He wanted to break that sense of peace he felt on her as soon as she left him behind––anything to shake her out of her stoned complacency, to make her realize how much it hurt him that she needed that goddamned thing more than she needed him.

  In the end, he didn’t do anything, of course.

  He just watched her leave him.

  Eventually, without warning or preamble, he’d fallen back asleep, too.

  When he woke next, she’d been wrapped around him, the expression on her face still maddeningly content. It remained that way even after he removed the wire. She’d even kissed him, and that time, it had been more affection than pain.

  After she’d kissed him a few more times, though, the pain came back.

  Slowly, achingly that time, she seduced him again, using her hands and mouth and even those structures in her light, until he’d lost control.

  He didn’t want to think about that either, though.

  Whatever they’d done together, Revik still hadn’t felt her in it. Not the woman he wanted. Not his wife. He hadn’t seen her in those pale green eyes.

  Truthfully, he’d felt more of the Allie he remembered when she’d shoved him across that basement workout room with her telekinesis.