In Bonds of the Earth (Book of the Watchers 2)

by Janine Ashbless

  “Didn’t bang my arm,” he said weakly.

  “Oh, Egan!” I checked his head for bumps and, finding none, took a moment to turn off the water so I could think more clearly. “Can you get up if I help you?”

  “I’m grand,” he said, which was blatantly untrue. I discovered when I wrestled him to his feet just how incredibly bloody heavy a man is; his legs didn’t seem to be capable of taking his weight and he leaned so hard on me as we staggered to the bed that I was afraid he was going to go down on top of me.

  I let him drop on my own untouched bed, and then pulled the sheet from his to cover him to the waist, just to afford him some dignity. He was still running hot under the slick of shower-water, and wouldn’t let me cover him any further, thrusting the sheet down with a groan of protest. His pupils were alarmingly dilated.

  “I’m going to get you some ice,” I told him, once I’d held a bottle of water to his lips and made him drink.

  “Ice nice,” he said, and snickered at his own rhyme.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” I warned him. “You have to be a good boy.”

  “Very good,” he sighed, his eyes drifting shut. “Do I get a kiss?”

  “Ice will do you more good.”

  I pulled on his way-too-big-for-me cargo pants and cinched them as tight as I could about my hips before running out barefoot to the hotel bar to demand an ice-bucket. By the time I got back, our room felt pleasantly chilled by the air-con. Egan hadn’t moved. I wrapped ice in a hand towel, soaked the corner of a second in the cold melt-water, and went to tend him. He started a little when I blotted the cool cloth over his forehead, and tried to focus on my face. “Milja. Can you open the window? It’s a bit warm in here.”

  “Just relax,” I said, sitting beside him on the bed and using the icepack on his chest. He was badly bruised over his ribs and I was as gentle as I could be, wiping a swathe through the slick of sweat and shower water. There was a gash on his right bicep that had been closed with butterfly stitches. Jeez, you’re a mess, I added—but not out loud—appalled and moved and secretly impressed by the damaged he’d soaked up.

  It was strange, touching him like that with such intimate care. His body wasn’t darkly bronze all over like Azazel’s; it was pale gold where it had seen the sun and just pale elsewhere. His torso and legs seemed almost hairless in contrast to what I was used to, and he didn’t have Azazel’s lean muscularity or exaggerated definition. Egan was more squarely built, his muscles hard but not showy. Solid and human and touchingly vulnerable. I could feel a pulse at his diaphragm when my fingertips lingered there.

  I could feel the heat in my cheeks, too. Egan was massively guarded and private in his self. It was hard to imagine him strutting about naked in public; he had no fierce angelic pride in his own beauty. Touching him felt like being admitted to a mystery, and treading on holy ground. I owed him respect and humility in my care for him. Gentle, unhurried strokes, tender over the blue-black blooms of his bruises. Concentration, seeking out the feverish heat in order to sooth it. Patience, taking my time, returning again and again in my attempts to comfort him and sooth the fire in his flesh.

  While a slow burn kindled in mine.

  He’s lovely. He smells good too, sort of like toast. Azazel is all pepper and smoke. God, my mouth’s watering… I wonder what he tastes like. Not that I would, of course. Ever. He’d freak out. Like on the Grlica. I touched him then, but it was a dream. I sucked his… I shouldn’t be thinking this. I shouldn’t even be looking at him this way. He’s ill. He’d hate it.

  “I love you, Milja,” he said, shocking me out of my reverie.

  “That’s the fever talking,” I said with a hoarse little laugh. “Shush.”

  “No.” He stretched his throat, perspiration shimmering in the golden hollow beneath his Adam’s apple. “I see you being put through ten types of shite, pushed places no one should have to go, and in the middle of it all you shine. A rose in a storm. That’s what I thought when I met you…a rose in a storm, whipped around by wind and rain. Strong and beautiful, and loyal. Too loyal. Does he even know how hard this is, what he’s asking of you? Does he care?”

  “Don’t.” My cheeks were burning now. “Don’t talk about him, please.”

  “Okay. I don’t want to talk about him.” He shifted his spine on the mattress, and I could feel the strong, beautiful machinery of his body moving beneath my hand. “Let me talk about you. You don’t have to do this, Milja. You don’t have to carry this burden. The end of the world is not your responsibility, one way or the other. Walk away. Be happy.”

  Oh, he would break my heart.

  “Egan…please…”

  “I want you to be happy. Ah, I want things I’ve no right to want. When I hold you, oh Christ. The temptation. I can’t… It’s so hard not to want those things.”

  He lifted his good hand and grabbed mine, his grip shockingly strong. I’d imagined him weak. Startled, I met his gaze. It was wider than natural, almost glassy. My heart was banging against my breastbone. I tried to form words but couldn’t bring them to mind.

  “Your lips now. I think of your lips under mine. I think of your body under my lips. I want to fuck you, Milja, that’s the truth, because I’m a piece-of-shite sinner and that’s how my love feels, all wrapped up in my lust and what I need—and I’m sorry, I can’t stop thinking about you. About how much I want you.”

  “Oh God.” My pulse thudded all the way to my sex.

  “Do you think about me?”

  I’d never realized before that blue is the color of pain. I thought I might be trapped by those terrible blue eyes forever, drowning in his anguish—and mine. “Yes,” I breathed, the admission nearly breaking me.

  “This?” He pulled my hand down lower, over the sheet, pressed it down firmly against the cotton. Every muscle in my arm contracted in shock—but he did not let me pull away. He held me there, and so I looked. The thin sheet was soaked and plastered against his body, hiding nothing. Not the thick ridge of his erection trapped between my hand and his hard stomach, not even the subtle twin plum-shaped swells of his balls.

  Oh. Oh oh oh. My nipples were so hard that the drag of the soft cotton shirt was almost painful. He burned against my palm, a feverish wedge of need trying to push open the doors of possibility.

  “Please,” he groaned, tightening his fingers around mine to squeeze his shaft and rub up and down.

  “Egan…”

  “Please, Milja.” His hips twisted. “Oh God, please.” Sweat speckled his upper lip anew. The ache in my core rose like a heat plume to meet the ache in my heart.

  He’s gorgeous, I thought, and simultaneously; This is so wrong. I reached in with my left hand, grabbing his little finger and pushing it back to break his grip and peel it away from me. I pushed his good hand back up onto the pillow, leaning on his palm to pin it with my weight. He didn’t have any leverage to resist me.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  Poor poor Egan. Aching and desperate and helpless. Pinned on his back while his swollen cock raged and wept for release. Just like Azazel had been before I freed him.

  After all these years, the darkness beneath the mountain was still there inside me. I had him at my mercy, and that mercy ran slick and hot through me until it escaped down the inside of my thighs.

  My right hand hadn’t moved from his cock. I squeezed him again.

  “Ah Jesus, yes,” he cried. Egan never blasphemed.

  You need this? You need this? I wanted to bite his parted lips until they broke again and bled, and if I’d had the reach I might have. I can make no excuses for what I felt, or what I did. There was a dark tide of lust rising in me—and even though yes, I could try to explain, it makes no difference to my guilt. I felt bad for him, yes. He was handsome and sweet and he loved me, yes. No difference.

  I loved him, in a way I couldn’t even bring myself to think about.

  No difference.

  The fact is, he was hurt and he was helpless and th
at made me want to fuck him right now.

  And that’s why I didn’t let go of his thick cock. I kept hold of it through the cotton sheet.

  “Oh. Yes—Milja!”

  I kept hold of it and I rubbed it even harder and thicker, until his heels dug into the mattress and his hips danced. I worked him slow and hard and pitilessly, until his head was thrown back and his throat distended with strain and the blood ran down his chin from his split lip, until he was gasping and rigid and begging incoherently.

  Until he came in a long drawn out series of bucks, under the sheet, calling on his saints and his God.

  I drank in every cry, every detail. I kissed his bloody lips and lay beside him, cradling his head to my pounding heart. He burrowed his face in the V of my shirt and kissed my breasts.

  And only then did I come out of my trance.

  I think Egan fell asleep almost immediately. I slipped out from the bed and sat on the edge of the other one, my knuckles pressed to my mouth, watching his chest rise and fall as his bruises faded slowly away like invisible ink.

  14

  FROM OUT OF THE STRONG CAME FORTH SWEETNESS

  Milja, wake up.”

  I wasn’t asleep. I hadn’t been asleep since I heard Egan rise from his bed and go into the bathroom. I’d lain there as still as a stone, listening to the tap running, watching the dawn light creep across the brown wallpaper. He’s scrubbing himself off, I’d told myself—and that bit of my mind that never listened to my conscience had wished that I’d seen it last night, that I’d pulled the sheet down and witnessed the gush of his exaltation. That I’d touched him, skin on skin.

  It wished that I’d tasted him. It wanted to know.

  Now I sat up, pulling the covers around me because I’d dumped his trousers and was half-naked again, and I rumpled my hand through my wild hair.

  “Look at me, Milja. What do you see?”

  I lifted my gaze slowly. Egan stood there with a hotel towel knotted about his waist. The bandages that had swathed his upper arm were gone and the skin revealed was cross-hatched with scars, but they looked pale and shiny, weeks or months old. He bunched both hands into fists, then spread them wide, his fingers moving freely.

  He looked well, and better than well. I liked every inch of what I could see, and the precarious towel only served to direct my attention to what lurked beneath. I bit the inside of my lip, unable to bring myself to appear surprised. “You’re feeling better?” I asked huskily.

  In answer he tore open the Velcro strips of his cast and threw the whole thing across the room to smack against the wall, making me flinch. His face, unblemished now, perfectly healed, was marred only by the blaze of his eyes.

  “What happened last night, Milja?” He was whole again. No trace of fever, or infection, and barely a trace of any injury. And he was rigid with alarm.

  “I healed you,” I whispered.

  “How?”

  “It’s a bit like a miracle.” You’re down with miracles, aren’t you?

  “Oh I really doubt that. Milja, what the hell did you do?” His rage held something close to panic, I realized. “I can’t remember anything.”

  Horror made my limbs quiver. “Nothing?”

  “Only…” He batted at his forehead with one palm, his voice strained. “Flashes. I thought it was a dream. Was it one of your dreams again?”

  I couldn’t lie to him. “No.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “We had sex.” When he just stared at me, I added nervously, “It turns out I can heal with sex. I thought it was just Azazel, but…apparently not.”

  Witch.

  The blood had drained out of his face. “Why? Why would we do that? I was ill. I was hurt.”

  His visceral, instantaneous rejection felt like a punch in the guts.

  “You wanted it.” You said you loved me, I thought, but I couldn’t throw that at him. Not if he didn’t remember.

  “Milja, for feck’s sake, I was out of my head. You know what they call that, don’t you?”

  Guilt made me snarl, “You were perfectly lucid! Insistent, in fact.” Because what else was I supposed to say—other than admit straight up, Yes, I’m some sort of sadist and I raped you?

  Egan sat down suddenly on the bed facing me. I think he’d forgotten how to blink. “Ah God, no.” His voice was clotted with horror. “Tell me I didn’t…”

  “No!” I shook my head vehemently, the pendulum of my fear swinging wildly back from self-preservation to guilt. Dear God, there was no way on earth or in hell I was going to inflict that sort of recrimination on him. I’d rather take it all on myself. “No, it wasn’t like that! You weren’t even…It was up to me too. I wanted it. It was…lovely.” The lie of that last word sat like ash on my tongue.

  “I…I thought you said you loved him.”

  My heart was thumping so loudly I was sure he could hear it, forcing the blood up my arteries and into my blazing cheeks. “I do love him.”

  “Then why?”

  My mouth twisted. “Turns out I am the Whore of Babylon after all, I guess.”

  He just didn’t understand, that was clear from his expression. How could he, when I didn’t understand myself? I’d acted purely on instinct. Some toxic combination of pity and lust and loneliness, I suppose. A perfect storm of weakness. But I had mastered myself again now.

  “Pretend it didn’t happen, if that’s what you want,” I told him. If that’s how you feel about me. “It was just sex. No big deal, hey.” But my voice shook, betraying me.

  Egan put his head in his hands. “It’s not your fault,” he said in a low mutter. “You weren’t to know.”

  Well, I might have been able to master myself if he hadn’t been sitting with his knees open so that the V of the towel showed a pale teasing slash of skin right up the inside of his thigh. I caught myself staring and wanted to poke my eyes out for shame. What is wrong with you, girl?

  My brain caught up slowly. “What do you mean? What didn’t I know?”

  Egan’s face, as he lifted it, was gray. He looked like he wanted the earth to swallow him up. “I didn’t tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Milja… When I joined Vidimus, one of the things I had to do was take holy orders.”

  For a moment it was my turn to look uncomprehending. “You mean…like a priest?”

  He nodded.

  I seemed to be having terrible difficulty dredging up what I knew about Catholics. “You’re a priest?”

  “Yes. You understand? I’ve taken a vow of celibacy.”

  I sat back in my nest of blankets. If I could have got up and left the room with any decency I would have walked out. “Shit, Egan,” was all I could say.

  “I’m sorry, Milja. I’m really sorry.”

  We barely spoke over the next couple of days, or on the flight out of Djibouti. Egan had withdrawn deep into his shell, no doubt preoccupied with his need for repentance. When we did have to interact he spoke softly and didn’t meet my eyes, his sideways glances radiating muted despair. I didn’t know enough about Catholic practices to guess whether he needed to do penance of some sort or just get it all off his chest in a confessional, but he needed something. And it wasn’t to talk to me, it seemed.

  I’d fouled him with my nasty dirty sex.

  As for me, I felt…betrayed. Yes, that was the right word. I knew that that wasn’t fair, but somewhere at the back of my mind I think I’d always imagined that my White Knight was contesting with the Demon King for my hand in marriage. Well, if not exactly in marriage…in bed, anyway. And that had turned out simply not to be true. Whatever desires he’d entertained, he’d never had the faintest intention of making good on the growing intimacy between us—all those comforting and tender embraces, all those thoughtful kindnesses. It had only ever been about his mission, to save the world from Azazel. And his rash declaration of love had been nothing more than the dregs of his emotions churned to the surface by fever.

  As far as h
e was concerned it had never happened.

  His stifled lust, or whatever he did feel for me, clearly didn’t count for anything when weighed against his devotion and loyalty to the Church. Loss left a great hollow under my ribs, and emptied my head of any desire to talk, or think, or plan ahead.

  We departed Africa on a troop carrier, afterthoughts lumped in amongst uniformed personnel who looked straight through us. No one asked for my passport, or frisked the new-bought clothing I wore, or quizzed me about the purpose of my trip. Not even when we touched down at USAF Minot in North Dakota. Whatever strings Egan was pulling, they were attached to some long levers.

  But while we were crossing the Atlantic, I dreamed.

  I’m in a white room. Clinically white, like a hospital, but round as an apple, and the core of that room is another round room with a wall of glass. Azazel and Penemuel are both inside that central chamber; Penemuel lies upon on her back so that the spill of her vast, darkly bronze wings fills the floor, and Azazel stoops over her, his raven plumage mantling them both like a thundercloud.

  I slap my hands against the glass, but the sound is dead. My first thought is that he’s kissing her, you see; his hands are on her breast and his mouth hovers over hers. I slap the glass and then hurry around the circle, looking in vain for a door. But the change of angle allows me to see more clearly.

  He isn’t kissing her, not exactly. Their eyes are open, locked in a mutual gaze, and between her parted lips and his a golden light is streaming. His hands aren’t on her breasts, they are cupped in the center of her breastbone, with more of that light leaking from between his fingers and spilling downward over her bare skin, her beautiful body. They are absolutely motionless, like statues. I can’t see even the rise and fall of a ribcage. It is as if they are frozen in a moment of absolute concentration. Only the air between them quivers, in a heat-haze of power.

  And that look in Azazel’s eyes—oh how well I know that look of hungry intent.

  “Azazel!” I shout, banging a fist on the barrier between us. It doesn’t even reverberate. And if Azazel hears me, he does not react.