Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  That predatory thing wove in there somewhere as well, and I realized it was the more practical, military side of him I was seeing. He wanted me incorporated into the group more tightly. He wanted me a permanent part of his team. He also wanted me bonded more closely to him. It came out in various ways, with both of us, but I’d never caught him thinking about it so overtly before, or so strategically.

  I could feel him thinking about it tactically, too, wondering what effect it might have, to have his leadership team of seers bonded to me more specifically. I watched his eyes slide around the room, taking in faces, thinking. I could tell the idea made him nervous, in addition to the rest, partly because he worried it was manipulative on his part.

  I could feel the part of him that didn’t care about that either, though.

  Torn between the two, he watched the monitor without seeing it, trying to think about something else.

  It scared me how easy he was to read these days. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was that transparent to him.

  He looked at me. I held my breath as his eyes studied mine.

  “Do you want to go in the other room?” he said.

  I studied his face, and realized he’d made up his mind––or at least reached his tipping point. His eyes were glassed, almost opaque. When I touched him, his skin was hot.

  “You want to stay,” I said.

  Pain flickered through his eyes. He gripped my hair in his hand, even as he pulled me tighter against him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, softer.

  I just looked at him though, thinking.

  “Are you sure?” I said. “You won’t freak out about it later?”

  He shook his head, pulling on my light. “I want you to stay,” he murmured, pulling harder. “I don’t care, Allie. I want you to stay here with me.”

  I heard the second meaning in that, too.

  I kissed his face. “I’m not going anywhere, Revik. You don’t need to do this to get me to stay here with you.”

  When I looked at his eyes, they remained unconvinced.

  “I won’t touch any of them,” he said, low. “I won’t let them touch you.”

  Still studying his eyes, I swallowed. Then I nodded, almost to myself.

  Glancing around the room, I forced myself to relax. I found myself replaying his words, then I nodded again, looking at him.

  “Okay,” I said. “I haven’t done this before.” I put my hand on him again. “Is there etiquette, husband? Are you talking sex under the blanket? Or do you want me to give you head?”

  His eyes reacted to my blunt question. He stared up at me, not hiding his disbelief.

  “Were you kidding?” I bit my lip. “Was that some kind of test?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want them to see me naked?”

  “No,” he said, after a pause. “No, Allie.”

  He sounded like he meant it.

  I felt a whisper off his mind and realized I’d shocked the hell out of him, just from being open to this. He was still trying to decide if I was serious. He was trying to decide if he was.

  “Allie,” he said. “Don’t let me push you into this.”

  “I’m not.” I hesitated, studying his face again. “Do you want me to talk you out of it?”

  He looked at me, and I saw indecision in his eyes.

  “No.”

  I unhooked his belt, unfastening his pants even as he pulled the blanket back around us. His hands tightened on my shoulders when I started massaging him for real. After a moment, I felt him melting against the back of the couch. He was fighting not to cry out then.

  I felt every eye in the room on us now.

  I put my mouth on him and he groaned aloud. When I didn’t stop, he gripped the back of the couch, gasping, his other hand in my hair.

  I felt light flicker around mine as I brought him to the edge of orgasm. Slowing him down, I brought him closer again and the lights pulling at mine grew more urgent, asking to be let in. After another few minutes, I slid up his body again, meeting his gaze.

  “Tell me what to do,” I murmured. “They want to feel this.”

  “Don’t let any of them touch you,” he said. “Please, Allie.”

  I kissed his mouth, and he kissed me back, hard. He let out another groan when I opened to the lights I felt around us in the room. For a long moment we just kissed. He was fighting to undress me then, holding the blanket around me even as he yanked down my pants.

  I felt him wanting to look at the others.

  “Revik, it’s all right… you can look at them.”

  He bit my neck, hard enough that I gasped.

  He had his light inside me then. When he went deeper, I turned my head, saw eyes on us. They didn’t look away that time, watching as he read me, using the telekinesis until I groaned, letting out a softer sound when he went deeper. I felt them in my light as he opened me further, his eyes on the others, watching them react as he let them in.

  He was sweating then, but wouldn’t let me touch him.

  He pinned me to the couch instead, talking to me, getting me to answer, until I felt every seer in the room reacting to both of our voices. He wanted them to want me, I realized, but it was driving him crazy too, hitting at all of his fears, turning him aggressive. He took it out on me, not letting me climax, forcing me to ask him again and again.

  I glanced at Wreg, half out of my mind.

  The young seer sat in his lap now, a hand in his shirt, the other between his legs. I saw Wreg’s eyes half-lidded as he sent me a flicker of heat, strong enough that it arched my back. His desire grew harder, more specific.

  Tell your mate he’s asking for a fight…

  Revik raised his head. For an instant he froze, staring at Wreg.

  I saw the predator in his eyes, but before I could really interpret the look, he turned me over with his hands, and had me half-pinned before I could think straight enough to be embarrassed. Somewhere in that, we lost the blanket. I felt Revik react to me being naked in front of the others, but he didn’t try to pull it around us again. He cried out as he entered me, but made love to me slowly, deliberately, coaxing me and holding me back until I completely lost control. That time his light wound so far into mine, I blacked out completely for a few minutes, so far in him and the Barrier I didn’t know where I was.

  He didn’t let any of them near me.

  In truth, no one even tried.

  I felt every eye in the room on us when I came back, even as he held them off my light. I felt the possessiveness on both of us worsen. Every flush of desire towards him from any of them, male or female, made me cry out––until I realized he wanted that, too.

  I felt the other happening in the background, in spite of us almost.

  My light wove gradually into theirs.

  I could feel them all clearly––as individuals and as a unit, the young ones on the couch as much as the ones I’d gone with into Black Arrow. I felt Wreg, even glimpsed pieces of his life, stretching the timeline between us, making him feel like more of a friend than he did already. Nikka also became so real to me somehow. I saw things in her that made me flinch, even as a flush of compassion found me, bringing up a protective feeling.

  I felt Holo that way, Jax, Ike, Qualen, Neela.

  Revik was right. These were the strays. He was protecting the ones who had been bent and mashed and dented by the world the way it was now.

  I felt how connected he was to them. I felt him weaving my light in with theirs, and there was a desperation to that, as well. He’d never let them this close to him, either. I felt them pulling at him, trying to feel more of his light.

  By the end I was crying, and he had the blanket wrapped around us. He caressed my face and body as he shielded my light from everyone else’s in the room. I forgot them again as he asked me if I loved him, if I wanted anyone else, if I was happy just with him.

  I felt the Balidor thing on him at the question, for the first time in months––and the pain in his heart
when I answered. I found myself making promises to him again, meaning them as much that time as I had in that cabin in the Himalayas. I wanted so badly for it to be like that with us again. I wanted so badly for both of us to forget everything bad that had happened.

  We ended up curled around each other, oblivious to the seers around us. Not long after, we left the room, but not before I found myself understanding something else.

  Balidor had been right.

  Revik was tying me to him, in any way that he could.

  For the first time, however––in all of my back and forth around him and what I felt and what I told myself about us––I realized I was doing the exact same thing to him.

  42

  SUSPICION

  PICKING UP THE headset on the wooden table by the bed, Revik glanced at the time through the virtual link and cursed softly. For once, his mental alarm clock hadn’t woken him; it usually got him out of bed pretty much to the minute, if not before he intended to rise.

  Instead, he’d woken up over an hour late.

  He wouldn’t have time to check in on the ground floor. He would have to go straight to the debriefing he’d scheduled.

  As he thought it, her arm tightened around his waist, as if sensing he’d been about to get up. Her fingers clenched on his skin and he glanced down, studying her face in sleep.

  Remembering the night before, a flush of heat caught him off-guard.

  Gods.

  He focused on her face, fighting back his reaction, trying to view her objectively. She looked so different now. Her face had matured a lot since he’d first pulled her out of that diner in San Francisco. Those changes didn’t erase the features of the person he’d fallen in love with, but they’d transitioned from a young seer’s to an adult woman’s seemingly overnight.

  Her youth had unnerved him a little when they were first married.

  It also made him feel slightly guilty.

  The latter had been irrational, he knew. Her soul was older than his. Physically, she’d been well within age, by half a decade according to seer law.

  Over a decade, according to the law of humans.

  Even so, he wanted her more now. Some of this wrapped into feelings, their history together, having lost any sense of taking her for granted after Delhi––and knowing himself more since he’d reintegrated his light after D.C. Some came from her, and the changes she’d gone through since those early days in the United States, when she still thought she was human.

  Some of it he couldn’t explain at all.

  And some, as much as he hated to admit it, came from pure male reaction to stimuli.

  Her body had grown more curves in the past two years.

  She was taller––leaner, too, and her hair fell nearly to her waist. She had a natural curiosity about sex, and about seer bodies, including his body, and an interest in learning, down to gradations in subtlety that drove him fucking crazy.

  More than anything though, her light did things to him.

  Her aleimi pulled reactions from him that no one else had even come close to. He felt constantly starved to be in her light, even with her living here with him, and sharing a bed with him every night. That probably had more to do with her being Elaerian, but it felt so personal he couldn’t quite make himself reduce it all to racial compatibility, either.

  Menlim had been right.

  It hadn’t felt like it back then, but it was worth the wait.

  As he thought it, he remembered her face from the night before. He was sore, but at a base level, his body didn’t care about that, either. His groin reacted as he looked at her, even as he fought back another wave of possessiveness that bordered on paranoia.

  He hadn’t really intended to go there with her in the common room.

  He definitely hadn’t intended to do it the way he had, letting them see her naked, or taking things so far in terms of pulling them into her light. Despite a faint whisper of anger as he remembered Wreg’s reaction to watching her climax, he couldn’t say he regretted it, though.

  He trusted Wreg. As much as he trusted anyone, really.

  He’d always been a little paranoid about older, more experienced seers, however, especially those who’d earned enough control with their light that females sought them out. That had been true even before Balidor seduced her.

  At the thought, pain crippled him.

  Cutting his breath, it transformed into emotion before he could roll it back. Hatred broke somewhere inside his chest, forcing out air in short pants. His fingers curled protectively over his own heart, as if holding something in that might have forced its way out otherwise.

  He hadn’t let a thought like that catch him off-guard in a while.

  He waited for it to pass.

  He couldn’t look at her until it dissipated. He still got flashes of anger so intense he could barely admit them to himself. The only thing that helped at all was to remember that he’d done worse to her.

  Truthfully, though, he couldn’t make himself believe that, either.

  His transgressions had hurt her. He wasn’t denying that. But in context, he couldn’t see them as remotely the same.

  He’d let Kat give him head a few times after he and Allie had first been married. He’d also kissed her on that motorcycle, right in front of Allie, and let her put her hands on him. He’d only done any of it because he thought Allie had rejected him as a mate––he could hardly put that in the same category as an overt infidelity.

  They’d both been so confused back then. They hadn’t consummated. They hadn’t talked about anything. Hell, he hadn’t even been sure he was married back then.

  For similar reasons, he’d slept with that human on the ship.

  That time, he’d definitely been trying to distract himself from Allie. Not very successfully either; he’d spent most of his time with that human trying to fuck his wife from the Barrier, half out of his mind when she kept pushing him away.

  It had been the thing to make him realize he was married though.

  It also very nearly earned him a divorce.

  Then there was the op, in D.C.

  Whatever she’d thought, then or now, he’d done that for her. She’d walked in, seeing him with Kat, and he could understand why she couldn’t let it go, especially given their history together and how Kat treated her in Seattle. But a part of his mind rebelled at that, too.

  He couldn’t equate the two things, or put what he’d done in the same category as what she’d done to him. For the gods’ sakes. He hadn’t gone there to get laid. It had been a damned military operation. He’d used Kat and Ullysa because it was the only way to get her out.

  It wasn’t the same thing, his mind repeated. It wasn’t the same at all.

  She’d wanted Balidor.

  She didn’t even hint about that part. She told him outright she’d wanted the Adhipan leader. She said she’d wanted him even before, presumably meaning when things had still been good with them, before D.C. That likely meant she’d been interested in him in the period before they’d consummated.

  Maybe she’d even considered severing things with him, marrying the Adhipan leader instead. Maybe they’d delayed him in Cairo on purpose, long enough to give Balidor time to persuade her. That Adhipan prick could have been courting her the whole time Terian had him in that fucking cell.

  The pain in his heart worsened, forcing him to shield so it wouldn’t wake her.

  She hadn’t said anything to him. She hadn’t even hinted that someone else was in the picture. He’d been worried about Maygar, for fuck’s sake.

  The anger wouldn’t dissipate; it seethed in his chest, a hot coil of hatred against the other seer. Maybe a little towards his wife, too.

  She’d slept with him, knowing all that. She had sex with a 400-year-old male seer she had a crush on, even after they’d consummated. She didn’t come out and say it, but she’d enjoyed it, too. A lot, from what little he’d been able to pick up from the imprints left in her light.

 
; Worse, it had been intimate––intimate enough to scare her, to make her back off.

  And Revik hadn’t felt it.

  The reality of that hit him again, making every inch of skin on his body hurt.

  Why hadn’t he felt it? How was that even possible?

  Balidor must have figured out some way, just like he figured out a way to fake her death. He couldn’t have had sex with her in that same sensory deprivation chamber Allie told him about, though. He would have felt that, for sure––the complete absence of her light would have been enough to send him over the edge, especially so soon after Delhi.

  There was no way the sex happened after Balidor shot her, not right away, at least. By the time Balidor took her out of that thing, she’d been half-dead.

  Revik continued to stare up at the ceiling, trying to wrap his head around it.

  He had to get up. He was going to be late.

  Fighting to blank his mind, he started to slide out from under her arm. Her grip on him tightened, though, just before she jerked… and raised her head.

  “Hey.”

  He watched her face as she woke up.

  Blinking against the sun coming through the windows, she squinted up at him, rubbing her eyes and one cheek. The sheet fell off her as she did, and he found himself staring at her bare shoulder and back, down to where it met a round curve of her buttocks…right before she shifted to her side, and he found himself looking at her breasts and belly instead.

  His light reacted ahead of his cock––but not by much.

  “Hey,” she said again. When he started to move away, she caught hold of his arm. “Where are you going?”

  “Salinse.” He avoided looking at her, but tried to keep his light neutral. “I still haven’t debriefed with him about the Registry job, and—”

  “Hey!” Alarm pitched her voice upwards. She grabbed his arm tighter, forcing him to turn. “Hey. Come on… what’s going on? What’s wrong, baby?”

  He hesitated, looking at her face. The endearment disarmed him, in spite of himself. Feeling her light slide around his in fearful eddies, he leaned down, kissing her.