by Jody Wallace
The midday sun bored through Zeke’s hair and made his scalp prickle. His boots scuffed reddish dust. “Where are we going?”
“Not far.” Maggie grabbed his hand and led him around the corner of the cinderblock outbunker. Normal conversation would be out of earshot of the door, but yells would transmit both directions. So would alarms.
Zeke hesitated, staring down the road into the distance. He could see Maggie and Lill’s footprints from lunch. “This seems kind of obvious.”
If Karen—if anyone—caught him and Maggie hiding behind the bunker, they’d get the wrong idea. Lord knows it had been hard to keep his hands to himself during his time with Maggie, and he didn’t want people criticizing them for something they’d resisted.
If Maggie was interested anymore. He’d acted like an asshole during her entire training, so she might hate him now.
She tugged him farther into the shade. The touch of her soft hand on his—a hand that still hadn’t developed calluses after two months of combat training—sent a shiver through him. A good shiver. She leaned against the wall but didn’t let his hand go.
“There’s no easy way to say this.”
“I’m tough. I can take it.” Zeke found himself twining his fingers through hers. Her presence tugged him. Made him want more. Her tangible was so different from Karen’s, like a mental caress. God, he was going to miss her.
How had he let this happen? Was there anything he could have done—anything he could still do?
She licked her soft, kissable lips. “Karen’s been confounding you.”
That shocked Zeke out of his lusty haze. “No way. She doesn’t have that skill.”
“We had sex two days ago, before the second manifestation.”
“You and me?” Zeke asked, shocked. “We?”
“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t me and Karen,” Maggie said acidly. “Have you had sex with Karen recently?”
“Fuck, no. Adi didn’t say I had to be that nice.” Zeke freed his hand from hers and ran his fingers through his hair. He tugged it, trying to conceive of what Maggie was telling him. This wasn’t what he’d expected, but it didn’t feel like jealousy. Maggie wasn’t one for theatrics. “I wouldn’t have slept with her even if Adi had offered me a million dollar bonus.”
Not just because he had feelings for Maggie, but because he had feelings—hateful feelings—for Karen.
“Lill and I put our heads together and realized what’s been happening. Karen confounded Lill to forget certain aspects of the past several days, but because Lill is a confounder, she shook some of it off. We think Karen hit Adi too. Inside the sphere or out of it, we don’t know, but I did see Adi hurt you the time she set the vigil-block. I saw that happen, Zeke, and everyone denied it.”
“I don’t remember that. At all.”
“That doesn’t seem unusual to you? You have an excellent memory.”
“Fuck.” Zeke didn’t want to believe he could have been tricked so easily. Karen had always been slinky and touchy, so her clinging hadn’t been unexpected. But if she could confound, she’d had ample opportunity.
The headaches, the blurry vision, the forgetfulness. He didn’t need any damn bifocals. Horror washed over him as he comprehended the enormity of what Maggie’s information meant.
Why hadn’t he figured out what Karen was doing?
Because she repeatedly confounded him whenever he got suspicious.
“Lill said Karen’s ability explains how she could create so many conduits in Harrisburg,” Maggie continued, watching him with big eyes. “She said you’d understand.”
“I feel like an idiot. Why did nobody make that connection?”
“Because no other confounders use it like she did.”
Zeke stiffened, jerking his hands out of his hair. He still had blanks in his memory, but if the shit was about to hit the fan… “Is that what Adi and the curator wanted to see Karen about? If this is about to blow up in our faces, we need to get the people out of that bunker.”
“No. Not yet, anyway.” Maggie didn’t deny the situation was thorny. “That meeting was sort of fake, so I could get you alone.” She touched his arm. “I had to tell you everything as soon as possible. She’s had the most access to you, and Lill said frequent confounding is unhealthy. I’m—Lill and I are worried about you.”
“All of a sudden, I’m worried about me too,” he joked, though Maggie was being completely serious. The symptoms he’d displayed troubled him. “Why would Karen do this?”
Even as he said it, he knew. If she was willing to confound other alucinators for her own purposes, punished harshly in every echelon of the Somnium, she was willing to do anything.
She wasn’t broken. She wasn’t vulnerable. She was the same crazy, murderous psycho she’d been a year ago. The difference was, she’d found a way to blame other people for her manifestations. She’d found a way to blame Maggie.
A way even a curator believed.
“If Karen’s been confounding people, she’s up to no good. This probably means you’re not responsible for the code ones.” Zeke took Maggie’s hands. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
She shrugged. “You couldn’t help it. She was tinkering with your memories.”
“There is a benefit to this shithole of a situation.” Provided they all survived it. Who knew what Karen’s agenda was this time? “The curator can stick his conduit blindness up his ass.”
“I can’t figure why he’d think I had a disability.” Maggie slid her hands up Zeke’s arms to his neck, catching him in a light embrace. A gust of wind sent a swirl of dust and twigs against the concrete outbunker, and Zeke rotated to the side, protecting Maggie with his body. “He said the wraiths that crowd around me are a sign of conduit blindness.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Karen was behind that somehow too.”
“And hiding my sig,” Maggie added.
Her touch settled him, lent him clarity. Now that he was thinking straight for the first time in far too long, Zeke’s brain zoomed. Conclusions popped inside him like overinflated balloons. “In Harrisburg, she claimed she could control the wraiths. We thought she was deranged, but maybe not.”
“The wraiths displayed a high density around me as soon as we started training. You should have told me it was out of proportion.”
He didn’t bother denying it. “I didn’t want to pressure you or give anyone some trumped up excuse to send you to the curators.”
Maggie kind of smiled, considering there was a curator here who intended to draft her. “Still. Karen was in a coma until three days ago. I don’t see how she could be responsible for crowds of wraiths all the way in Virginia, not to mention the ones that come after me in the terra firma.”
Materialized wraiths weren’t as insistent on hounding Maggie as dreamsphere wraiths, but in the terra firma, wraiths had definitely shown an interest in his student. His favorite student. Of course, some of the wraiths in the recent code one had also shown an interest in eating human remains, so nothing had been all that normal since—
Since he’d met Maggie?
No, since Harrisburg.
His whole life had been fucked since Karen, and now she was trying to incriminate Maggie and send her away, just when he was starting to get his feet beneath him again.
He couldn’t lose Maggie. With her intelligence and vitality, with the way she questioned everything and challenged him, even with the knowledge she was going to be assigned to a castrum across the country once she matriculated, Maggie had brought him back to life.
“You’ve had more time to soak this in than I have,” Zeke said. “What do you and Lill think Karen’s trying to pull? Or is she just jealous that I have a…another student with a tangible?”
Who was apparently his lover, but he’d forgotten the details. Goddammit. He had no reason to believe Maggie was lying about
that and every reason to believe it was true, considering how much he’d wanted it to happen. His body and soul tilted toward her whenever she was in the same room.
“Not sure.” She wiped her jaw on her shoulder with an awkward shrug. “I told Lill about me being a bellatorix, by the way.”
Zeke blinked. “That’s a… You’re a what?”
“I guess you forgot that along with the sex.” Maggie sighed. “The wraith corpses. I killed them in the dreamsphere. You and I discussed the Antipodes scroll and decided I must be a bellatorix.”
“Sounds like Karen erased my memories for…” Zeke didn’t want to hazard a guess. He was fucking pissed Karen had forced him to forget sleeping with Maggie. “The last couple days or more.”
Of course, he knew as well as any trained alucinator that confounded memories could be recovered if you were reminded of the events under the right circumstances.
Despite the gravity of the conversation, Zeke found his body responding to Maggie’s claim that they’d had sex. Her scent, her proximity. The way her hair curled around her face, the ten freckles across her nose that he’d memorized. Her familiarity.
He eased around the edge of the building briefly, saw nobody, and returned to her questioning gaze. “Why don’t you remind me of some of the things I’ve forgotten?”
“Okay. I killed the first wraiths with—”
Zeke leaned down and kissed her.
“Hmm.” Maggie’s hands crept up his chest, fingertips digging in like a cat. “That memory.”
He backed her into the wall. “Do we have time?” He didn’t care if they did. He was going to get her naked in the next three minutes regardless.
She rubbed his shoulders. Her eyes gleamed. “I hope so.”
“Tell me what I missed,” he said in a husky voice. “How many times have I been inside you?”
Her cheeks reddened but she didn’t quail. He pinned her against the weathered cinderblock that emanated warmth like her body. “On the way here, driving in the SUV, do you remember that we kissed?”
He bent his head and feathered his lips across her brow and temple. “No.”
“The first night we stayed here, do you remember we shared a room?”
“And a bed, I’m guessing.” Their sharing a bed, as teacher and student, wasn’t unusual.
“Yes.”
When he pressed his lips against hers again, she opened for him.
He tried to take his time, cupping her face in his hands, learning her preferences. But the way she moaned into his mouth and slid her hands down his back, pulling his hips toward her, heated things up faster than expected.
His body responded to the touch that was familiar yet not, his cock hardening against her softness. His jeans pinched, but he ignored it, reveling in her taste. She massaged his hips, his ass, his lower back. The hands that fumbled on swords and bo sticks caressed him deftly.
He returned the favor, relearning the curves of her body. Her breasts overfilled his hands, lush and firm, her nipples tight through the fabric. He needed more. More skin. The tangible sang in his bloodstream sweetly. He yanked the shirt over her head, tore off her bra and groaned when his hands found her bare flesh.
Dusky nipples on fair skin. Irresistible. He kissed his way to her breasts, never so happy to be several inches less than six feet tall. He didn’t have to bend over double to lick her. Please her. His teeth caught her tender flesh, and she gasped.
She interrupted his sucks and bites to drag his shirt into his face. The neck got stuck on his chin, and he ripped it a little, yanking it off. Their bare torsos melded, and visions flashed inside his head like the tangible flashed through his whole body.
The right circumstances. Maggie gave him clarity.
“I remember.” He’d loved her hard and fast, so fast she hadn’t been able to keep up with him. He’d wanted her too long. “God. I remember.”
The necking in the car. Making love in their room. Chasing her into the bathroom and kissing her until his head spun. Karen had erased everything she could, trying to steal Maggie from him.
“Do you remember what you wouldn’t let me do?” Her hands rested on the button of his jeans. She popped it free.
“Jesus.” He breathed heavily into her hair before kissing her again. “Yes.”
She took her time unzipping his jeans. Her hands stroked every inch of skin they uncovered as his pants and boxers inched down his hips. She caught his cock in one hand and his balls in another. He deepened their kiss. His tongue thrust into her mouth like he hoped his cock would soon be doing.
She pumped her fist on his cock slowly. Pleasure shuddered through him. Her thumb slid in the moisture at his tip, catching the soft underside. Rubbing. She kissed his neck, sucking hard for a moment, before kissing him lower. His nipple. She licked his abs, nibbled his stomach. Zeke couldn’t open his eyes when he felt her soft, wet tongue on his bare hip. Seeing her head there, her mouth so close, he might come on her face.
That wasn’t the plan. Not today.
His cock brushed her cheek. “Maggie.”
She breathed on him, the hot air a caress, before her tongue lapped at the head of his cock. He shuddered. She teased him first before sliding him deep, swallowing and sucking. He hit the back of her throat and felt the vibration of her moan on his hypersensitive flesh.
He braced one hand on the brick wall and the other on the back of her head. She let him slide nearly out of her mouth. Then back in. Then out. Then back in. Working him so good, he knew this wasn’t going to take long.
His fingers fisted in her hair despite his desire to let her lead. She didn’t need lessons in how to please him. But he couldn’t help it. He directed her to take him deeper, gliding his cock in and out of her mouth. Faster. She squeezed his ass and allowed him to fuck her mouth. His balls tightened with growing excitement.
When he came, spurting into her mouth, it was like lightning shooting out of his dick. His whole body shook. Maggie sucked until he was so sensitive he flinched away from her wicked mouth. But he still wanted her.
She didn’t argue when he fumbled her pants off her legs. She lost a shoe in the process. He plunged a finger into her hot core. She was already wet and swollen. Her musk scented the air. He rubbed her clit until she started to squirm and his hard-on returned.
“Put this on.” He pushed her sweatshirt at her. His hands trembled.
“Why?”
“Just do it.” He shoved it over her head.
Grumbling, she yanked it over her beautiful breasts. “Does this mean we’re done?”
“Hell, no. This means I don’t want to destroy your skin on the bricks.” He grabbed her thigh and wrapped it around his hips. His cock bobbed against her stomach. Being in her mouth was wonderful, but being in her pussy was heaven.
She angled her hips. Her warm curls brushed his cock. He braced her against the wall and, after some fumbling, managed to slide home.
“Zeke, yes.” Maggie’s hot breath tickled his check. “I want you so much.”
He cradled her ass and thighs, supporting her weight, and gave her what she needed. He couldn’t slide as deep in this position, but it was enough. His body drove into her, short, fierce strokes that would have left brick burns on her back if he hadn’t had the foresight to dress her.
Maggie moaned and panted. Her soft, enticing cries excited him more. The first time, they’d had to remain silent. He remembered it. If she felt loud, he wanted her loud. Screaming his name. The thought of shattering her hurled him up the ladder of arousal several rungs.
“Touch yourself,” he ordered her. This time he wasn’t going alone.
She wormed a hand between their undulating bodies and pressed her clit. Her eyes practically rolled back in her head when the double sensations of his cock and her finger found their rhythm.
“Faster.” She rubbed
herself and clung to him with her free hand. Her legs quivered where she’d wrapped them around his hips, but not so tightly he couldn’t maneuver. Her heels—one in a sock, one in a shoe—dug into his ass.
Sweat glistened on him, on her. He kissed her salty skin. Mid-fuck seemed like a strained time to confess that he loved her, but he felt it. He felt as many emotions as he did pleasures.
Maggie’s cries sharpened, and her hips ground against him. “Come with me. I want you with me.”
He let himself go. They crested together, the tangible so intense with the orgasm that his vision tunneled. His cock pulsed sheer delight as she convulsed with her own climax. Her cries wrecked him.
It was too good. His ears whined. His knees weakened. Goddammit, he couldn’t pass out. He’d drop her mid orgasm. She’d never let him live that down. Gritting his teeth, he breathed deep and rocked her past the finish line.
Maggie hummed out a satisfied song. Her hands batted at his shoulders. “You can put me down.”
He managed to. She nearly fell. Since he was so unsteady on his own feet, he propped them both up by leaning against her until she hit the wall.
“We’re, um. Naked,” she said weakly. “Probably should get dressed. Do they patrol outside?”
“Not here. We’d never have gotten away with this at the coma station, though.”
She rested her cheek on his jaw. “Or in the unisex bathroom.”
“Nope.” He kissed her ear, then her neck. “I don’t want to go back in there. Let’s run away together.”
She smiled. “If I thought you were half serious…”
“I am,” he told her. “Half serious. The responsible part of me—”
“There’s a responsible part of you?”
He smiled back at her. “The responsible part of me knows we have some massive shit to deal with and running away isn’t going to solve anyone’s problem.”
