New York_A Bridge & Sword Prequel

by JC Andrijeski

  “Some of them,” he said, giving me another irritated look. His eyes shifted away, his voice turning gruff. “And you kissed me. I just kissed you back.”

  I watched him stare back at the fire, his face blank.

  Studying his profile, I couldn't help remembering that kiss in the bar.

  I knew he was right. By the end of that kiss, I’d barely remembered Jaden at all. It stopped being a revenge kiss about halfway through the first one, much less whatever was going on during those that followed. Remembering what Jon said, and what Revik just told me about who and what he was, that feeling of unreality worsened.

  I felt my cheeks warm when he glanced over.

  It occurred to me that whatever else he’d said that night, I believed he was a seer. He’d answered enough questions I hadn’t voiced aloud to convince me of that. And if he really was a seer, he’d probably heard all or part of what just went through my head.

  When I looked up that time, I saw his jaw had hardened.

  “That erasing, mind-meld thing,” I said, clearing my throat. “Didn’t you say you wanted to start?”

  There was a silence. Then he nodded, once.

  “Yes,” he said. “We should start.”

  He hesitated then, looking at me.

  When he didn’t move, or say anything for a few seconds, I felt my cheeks warm more.

  “What?” I said.

  He seemed about to speak. Then his eyes changed abruptly, as if he’d made up his mind about something.

  Before I could ask, he got up, moving over to my end of the couch. He sat down right next to me. He did it silently, quickly enough that all I could do was stiffen, receding into the couch a little. He leaned into the cushions, looking at me directly. He slung an arm onto the back of the couch next to my shoulder.

  I let out a nervous laugh.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” I heard my nerves reach my voice. “You’re not exactly the subtle type, are you?”

  “A kiss,” he said. His eyes met mine. “Well. Maybe more than one actual kiss. One more period of time, with us kissing. We stop before it goes too far. Then I erase all of it.”

  I blinked, staring at him.

  “You just want us to make out for a while?” I said. “Why?”

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  “Because I really fucking liked it last time,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

  I felt my cheeks warm as I gazed up at him.

  “You want to do it, too.” He didn’t voice it like a question. Shivering a little, he wrapped his arm further around the back of the couch near me. “You’re pulling on me like crazy. We can’t fuck, but we can make out for a while, like you said. I won’t let it go too far.”

  “How is this a good idea?” I said, still bewildered.

  He shook his head, shifting his body closer to me still. “Does it have to be a rational decision? Or can we just kiss for a while? You wanted to take a nap with me earlier, and that felt more than a little sexual. How is this different?” He smiled faintly. “Anyway. We don’t have time for a nap. Not a good nap, anyway. And I’d probably try to kiss you if we did that, too.”

  I let out a disbelieving noise, my face growing hotter.

  “You’re serious,” I said. “You’re really serious about this?”

  He nodded, shifting closer. His fingers on my arm made me flinch, then shiver when he turned it into a caress. Sliding his fingers over mine, he stroked my wrist, being careful with the cuts I got earlier that night.

  When I looked up, he nodded again.

  “Yes,” he said, gruff. “I’m really serious, Allie.”

  I hesitated another handful of seconds, but it was getting harder to pretend what he was doing wasn’t affecting me. I thought of Jaden briefly, and frowned. I’d never cheated on him before. The closest I’d come was that revenge kiss earlier, and that hadn’t really been cool, either, even if I did think things were over with us.

  But if this guy was telling the truth, I wouldn’t remember what Jaden did.

  Which meant we’d be together tomorrow, just like nothing happened. It also meant Jaden was getting a free pass on what he’d done.

  Jaden would remember kissing that groupie, Tina, though.

  Maybe he’d break up with me.

  Or, more likely, he just wouldn’t tell me. He’d remember the stolen kiss, and carry on as if nothing happened. I’d either hear about it from Tina herself, or I’d never hear about it at all. Hell, for all I knew, he’d been getting blow jobs from her all night, after I took off.

  For all I knew, Jaden had been cheating on me for years.

  The thought brought a sharp pain to my chest.

  It also made my jaw clench, tight enough to hurt.

  When I glanced up at the black-haired seer, he was frowning at me slightly. Watching him study my face, I made up my mind.

  “All right.” Exhaling, I nodded. “Okay. Yes. You saved my life.” Feeling him grimace before I saw it touch his lips, I added, “And you’re right. I want to.”

  “Are you going to be thinking about him?” he said, blunt.

  I flushed. “You don’t get to police my thoughts, okay? I don’t care who you are.”

  “I’m not policing anything. I asked a question.” His fingers tugged gently on my hair. “Are you going to be thinking about him while you’re kissing me? Tell me the truth. I deserve a head’s up, at least… since I won’t be able to block out your thoughts entirely.”

  I pressed my lips together. Then I shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But if it helps, I wasn’t last time.”

  He looked like he was about to say something else, then changed his mind about that, too. Lowering his mouth, he brought it to mine before I could second-guess any of it. It hadn’t fully occurred to me yet, just how insane this was, us spending an unspecified amount of time making out on his fancy hotel room couch, given everything else that had happened that night.

  Maybe it never would, I thought a second later. Not if he was telling the truth.

  By then his mouth reached mine.

  Once it had, I found it difficult to concentrate on much of anything else.

  He kissed me cautiously the first time.

  In fact, after he’d kissed my mouth softly a few times, I wondered if he even intended to use his tongue. Whatever he’d said before about us being short on time, he didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry now. He lowered his head to kiss my throat, working his way down to the base of my neck before I could get that thought through my mind entirely.

  Then he was kissing my jaw and face, moving closer to me on the couch when I unfolded my arms.

  Everything about it was deliberate, slow, more sensual than I’d really been prepared for. I found myself kissing him back the same way, caressing his face with mine, my fingers in his hair. He stroked my arm while I kissed his neck, pausing to kiss my fingers, then my palm. When I opened my mouth against his throat, running my tongue in a light circle over his skin, he let out a low groan.

  The sound made me jump.

  When I pulled away though, he leaned into me, bringing his face back down to mine. He wrapped an arm cautiously around my back, tugging me against him as I caressed his face, kissing the side of his mouth. I heard him gasping lightly when I paused, and when I looked up, his hand caught in my hair.

  He kissed my mouth harder that time, and more like he had in the bar, using his tongue. He leaned his weight when I kissed him back, tightening his hold. After a few seconds I felt that pain thing in my chest, like I had before.

  When it worsened, he let out another groan, startling me.

  We kissed harder.

  He started pulling on me again, controlling things between us, like he had in the bar.

  Something about the deliberateness behind that, the intensity of whatever the hell it was I felt on him, made it so I could barely breathe. He groaned softly the few times we paused, kissing my face, the sides of my mouth, stroking my
sides and belly.

  Each time he stopped, I found myself gripping his hair tightly, pulling him back down to me, and we were kissing again, exploring each other’s mouths even as I felt him hold himself back. I did my best to follow his lead, but I found myself touching him more, the longer we kissed, noting where and how he wanted to be touched, where he wanted my hands, whether he wanted it to hurt. I noted all of it, without thinking about that consciously, either.

  I was going back into that mindless space, like I had in the bar.

  I forgot Jaden, where we were, what I was even doing with this guy, the crazy story he’d told me about who he was, the expensive-looking gun sitting on the dining room table. I found myself trying to slide my hands under his shirt, but he caught hold of my wrists, pinning me to the armrest and the back of the couch.

  He kissed me again, harder, pressing his weight into me deliberately.

  When he paused that time, looking down at me, his eyes were glazed.

  “Fuck,” he said. “I want to take off my shirt.” He looked down at me, and I realized he was staring at my bare stomach. “What the hell are you wearing, anyway?”

  I frowned up at him. “Excuse me?”

  “I like it,” he said, closing his eyes briefly. “Gaos. I like it a lot. You just… you don’t normally dress like this.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Before I could wrap my head around trying, he kissed me again, coiling his fingers into my hair and kissing me harder.

  I could feel it then. I have no idea how. I didn’t hear him speak.

  Yet somehow, meaning started passing between us, more than the usual in moments shared like this. It wasn’t just him pulling on me to kiss him harder, to do something I’d done again, to grip him tighter, put my hand under his clothes––although I felt pulls like that, too.

  It wasn’t even just a desire for sex, although that was definitely present.

  I was still trying to understand when I felt it on him again, right before his hands tightened until they nearly hurt. He pressed his weight into mine, gasping, and I found myself undoing the front of his shirt.

  That time, he didn’t stop me.

  As soon as I’d finished, he brought my hand down to his belt. He didn't let me touch him, but I realized he was hard, that he wanted me to touch him there, too, badly enough that his hand tightened painfully around mine, holding me off him.

  After a few more seconds of that, I found myself gasping with him, trying to get free of his hold. He groaned louder when I pressed up against him. We were lying prone on the couch by then, and he kissed me again, arching his body into mine, and it crossed my mind that he'd been lying before, that we were really going to have sex––

  He raised his head.

  “No.” His voice was a gasp. “No. No… we’re not.”

  His face tightened as he looked at me. I watched his eyes close, longer than a blink. When he opened them again, his expression looked pained. I felt it in my chest somehow, deepening into that nausea as he continued to stare down at me.

  “No.” He met my gaze, shaking his head. “No, Allie,” he said, adamant.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “We can’t,” he said.

  “You said that.”

  “I meant it. I wasn't lying.”

  “Okay.” I paused, then added, “You’re a really good kisser. A little too good.”

  That pain coming off him briefly worsened.

  It got bad enough that time, I bit my lip, closing my eyes. “God.” I blurted it out, before I knew I meant to say anything. “What is that? What are you doing?”

  He’d been lowering his face to mine. He paused, then lowered it the rest of the way, pressing his cheek to mine, leaning into me.

  “What is what?” he said, gruff.

  “That pain. What is that?”

  There was a silence.

  He let out a humorless grunt. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Heat flooded into my chest without warning, and that pain worsened, forcing a half-groan from my lips. I writhed under him, and felt another shock of heat hit at me. I realized some of it was coming from him, some of it from me. It felt like it was amplifying back and forth, like echoes in a pond, hitting one another and getting louder.

  “Echoes.” He pressed his cheek to mine, right before he raised his head. Lowering his weight, he wrapped his arms around me, pressing his bare upper body against mine. “That’s right, echoes.”

  He kissed my neck near my ear, murmuring to me.

  “…Gaos. You’re a good kisser, too, Allie. Where the fuck did you learn to kiss like this? It’s driving me out of my damned mind.” He pressed against me, closing his eyes. His voice got lower, gruffer. “My whole body hurts, Allie.”

  I wrapped my arms around him under his shirt, and felt the pain on him worsen, sliding into me like liquid heat, cutting my breath.

  “That pain,” I said, realizing suddenly I understood. “That’s you turned on?”

  A sharper stab of it hit into me, along with more of that liquid heat. When he met my gaze, his cheeks had colored.

  “Yes,” he said. “You really didn’t know that?”

  My hands were massaging him now, pulling on him, exploring his back. I felt scars there, enough that I wanted him to turn over, to show me. I felt that pain on him worsen. When it did, a hotter stab caught me off guard in my chest, making me bite my lip.

  “That’s you,” he said, softer, kissing my jaw. “That’s you turned on.”

  Nodding, I looked up at him, feeling my cheeks warm. “I see.”

  He returned my stare, his crystal-like eyes glazed. He closed them again, longer than a blink, then looked away altogether. “Can we stop talking about this?”

  “About that pain thing?”

  “About any of it. About the kissing, the pain thing…”

  “Why?”

  Looking down at me, he winced when I stroked his spine, right before he let out a grunt. “Why? Why do you think? I have to be the responsible one right now. You’re not exactly helping. In any sense of the word. If I didn’t know better, I’d think…”

  He trailed.

  Looking down, he stared at my mouth again, conflict in his eyes.

  My fingers were wrapped around his shoulder, massaging the muscle there. My other hand clutched the front of his shirt. He still held me down with his weight, his hand caught in my hair as he looked at me.

  His eyes fell even more out of focus, the longer I touched him, the longer he looked at me. I massaged the base of his spine, and he winced, right before he leaned his weight deeper into me.

  I found myself caressing his bare chest inside the shirt, feeling him want that, too.

  Another, harder thread of his pain hit out at me.

  His eyes fell to my hands on him and he closed them again. He opened them a few beats later, and I saw that pain make his expression hard.

  “Gaos. We should stop.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  His jaw clenched.

  Bending down, he kissed me again, lingeringly that time.

  I felt that heat in my chest intensify, and that time, I tried to copy what he was doing, to do it back. A few seconds later, he let out another, heavier groan. Gripping my hair in his hand, he clenched his fingers into a fist. He shocked me then, sinking his teeth into my neck. Somehow, that only made that pain in my chest worse––bad enough that I didn’t give a damn anymore.

  When my hand fell to his belt, he caught hold of my wrist.

  He stopped me so fast I jumped.

  “Fuck.” He let out a low gasp. “Fuck. Okay. We have to stop.”

  “Okay.”

  “Gaos. You’re not helping. You’re really not helping, Allie.”

  I shrugged, unapologetic.

  “I’m okay with it,” I said. “You’re the one who said we can’t.”

  He let out a disbelieving laugh. “Jesus.” For a moment he only lay there. Then he cursed in some other language, ending
the string with, “…have to be out of my mind.”

  He raised his head, still holding my wrist. I saw him stare at my eyes again.

  The conflict there worsened, until I wondered if he was actually wavering.

  I started to think he might be, that he really might be changing his mind… when he started pulling himself off me.

  I watched him go, biting my lip to keep from protesting.

  I couldn’t help looking at him as he got up, noting the muscular chest, the fine, dark hair, a white scar in the shape of a question mark curling over one shoulder. He saw me staring down at his erection and gasped, his voice turning almost harsh.

  “Jesus, Alyson. Don’t look at me like that.”

  I felt my own jaw harden.

  “This was your idea,” I reminded him.

  “I know.”

  “You wanted to do this. You asked me.”

  “I know.”

  He retracted his body and hands from around me, moving fluidly to the opposite end of the couch. He dropped his weight back into the cushions pretty much as far away from me as he could get without changing furniture. I watched him wince as he sat, running his fingers through his hair. He faced his body towards the fire and away from me.

  He just sat there for a moment, looking into the flames, his forearms resting on his thighs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said a moment later. His voice sounded more normal again. Taking a breath, he exhaled. “I wasn’t trying to blame anything on you. I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t normally…” He hesitated, looking at me. “I’m sorry, Allie. For the timing. And I’m sorry for the cracks I made. About Jaden.”

  A little startled, I only looked at him a moment.

  Then I frowned, shaking my head.

  “Jaden’s not your fault,” I said.

  There was a silence where I watched him look into the fire.

  “Are you all right?” I said finally.

  I heard him make that low clicking sound before he answered, his voice humorous.

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  He grunted another laugh, clicking louder. I heard humor in it that time, too.