Allie's War Season Four (142 page)

“What?” she said. “What are you looking at?”

“Your hair,” he told her truthfully. He continued to look at it, noting how different it looked on her face, how it framed her cheekbones. “...I think your daughter must have cut hers to resemble yours because she missed you greatly.” At the pain that came to her eyes, he cleared his throat again, then looked at the table. He didn’t release her fingers, but nodded towards the container of water he could see there.

“I’m thirsty, cousin,” he said. “Would you mind...?”

“No.”

He felt her startle, as if pulled out of a deeper set of thoughts. He fought to keep his light away from hers, to give her some privacy, but wasn’t succeeding very well. Even so, he only really saw images of her daughter’s face. He felt the love that burned there, for her human daughter, and that touched him, too.

“...No, of course not,” she added, a little belatedly. Her cheeks warmed, and that time, he felt himself getting hard. “Sorry.”

She released his hand.

Finding his fingers clutching cold air, he regretted having spoken, at least until he’d had longer to touch her. He only lay there, though, watching as she leaned over to the table, grabbing the container of water and arranging the straw with her small fingers before she brought it closer to him. She sat on the mattress next to him then, and set the container on the pillow near his chest, angling the straw so it would meet his lips. He found himself trying to sit up once more, but her hand found his shoulder firmly, as Mika’s had earlier.

“No,” she said, her voice as firm as her fingers. “Stay where you are.”

He reacted to her touch a lot differently than he had to Mika’s.

Reaching up, he clasped her hair in his hand, letting out a low sound, before he knew he intended to do either. He started to pull her mouth down to his, lost in her light where it wrapped into his, pretty much the second she sat next to him.

She stopped him though, clasping his wrist with her free hand.

“Drink first,” she told him.

Loki looked up at her face, focusing briefly on her mouth before he forced his eyes closed. He could feel her light winding into his even more now, could practically hear the heart beating in her chest. Still, he didn’t miss the import of her words. Nor did his mind stop reading as much into that word “first” as he possibly could. He knew he’d already more or less lost control of himself, at least to a degree.

“I am not...” He struggled for words. “This is not usual for me, either, cousin,” he told her, knowing how lame it probably sounded, and perhaps insincere.

He got a smile for that.

It made his erection worse...a lot worse.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, her New York accent growing audible in her voice. “I bet you’re just a saint, normally, right?”

He didn’t answer that, but felt his own face warm.

She held the straw to his mouth, and he took it between his lips, glad of the distraction, the excuse to look away from her again. Sucking the liquid through the straw, he couldn’t help feeling the relief that flooded his system at the coolness of the water on his tongue. He drank probably for a full minute, if not longer. He felt her eyes on his face as he did it, although he refused to look at her now, at least until he drank his fill.

“Who are you?” she said again, as he came up for breath. “Do we know each other?”

He paused before answering, taking another short drink before another few breaths.

Fighting to think, he focused on the shape of his own feet under the thin blanket. Then, giving himself more time to think about her question, he drank more, feeling his body relax deeper into the mattress the longer he did. He found himself wondering if Mika had put vitamins in the water, or some other form of sustenance, and found himself thinking that she or one of the other seers probably had.

Eventually, though, he ran out of room in his body.

By then, the large, wide-necked container was already more than half-empty. Realizing his stomach was full, he released the straw with his mouth, letting out a slow exhale as he rested his head back on the pillow.

When he looked up at her that time, her dark eyes were on his chest.

For the first time, he noticed that his chest was bare, or close to it, with the sheets covering him only to the upper part of his abdomen. Somehow, he hadn’t noticed that when it had been Mika who was touching him. He waited for her to finish her appraisal, reacting to her stare even when he refused to let himself stare back, either at her body or her face.

He knew he was muscular, both from extensive mulei training, including with the Sword, and from the training he had been doing with Wreg and the others for the past few weeks, readying himself for full-time field work. Even so, her stare caught him off guard, as did the flickers of appreciation he felt off her light. He hadn’t really thought about how his body looked in anything but a practical sense for years.

He felt her liking his body...he felt her liking it a lot.

He forced that out of his mind, too.

“You don’t know me,” he blurted, answering her question finally, but still without looking at her. “I assuredly don’t know you. Meeting you is not something I would have forgotten...” he added, again speaking through nerves.

His feeble attempt to flirt nearly made him wince, pretty much the instant he said it, but she glanced up at his words, smiling at him again.

Something about that sideways smile, the knowing, almost cynical look that came to her eyes, turned him on, too. She looked like a fighter to him. She might not call herself such, or think of herself as such, but he could feel it, in her light. Her life had not been easy. She was a human who had known hardships, and had overcome them without losing herself.

He admired that. He admired it a lot.

But gods...he was staring at her again. Almost without noticing it, this time.

“So what now?” she said, resettling her rear and legs on the bed next to him. “Do you want to know more about me? Or do you think you know it all already?”

Her words came out teasing, but he could hear the real question there.

He shook his head. “I know very little. Nothing, really.”

His fingers found hers once more, cautiously, when she rested her hands in her lap. She looked down at where he wound his hand around one of hers. He felt heat in her light once more, and his pain came back stronger, especially now that his body felt less weak. A rush of feeling and desire clenched in a hard ball in his chest, making it briefly difficult to breathe. He knew if he’d been in better shape physically, he probably would be trying to do a lot more than hold her hand. As it was, he forced himself to just lay there, watching her look at their entwined fingers.

After another long-feeling pause, she let out a sigh.

He felt enough surrender in that exhale that his pain sharpened briefly.

“So what now?” she said. As if still thinking somewhere in the background, she let out a low chuckle. “I’m thinking about sex. I’m pretty sure you’re thinking about sex...” She glanced down
 
at his body again, reddening a little, even as his pain spiked abruptly. “Is this a seer thing? To want to get down and dirty with a complete stranger?”

He felt his face heat more.

She didn’t let him off the hook when he remained silent.

“So what is this thing?” she said, a little sharper. “Is this a crush? The seer version?”

Thinking about her words, he nodded, conceding her meaning reluctantly.

Some part of him didn’t want it reduced to a “thing” of any kind, but he couldn’t deny the more general truth to what she’d said.

He was still trying to decide what to say to her, when she released his hand again. He was about to protest, or maybe try to explain this to her in some way, at least how he saw it, when she leaned over him on the bed. Propping her hands on the pillow, just above his shoulders and to either side of his head, she looked down into his eyes. With their faces only a few inches apart, she frowned, studying his expression.

“Tell me something about you,” she said.

It sounded more like a command than a request.

“I was born in Afghanistan,” he said. Feeling his own face warm at the ridiculousness of his response, he forced a seer’s shrug, not quite meeting her eyes. “I am an infiltrator...a soldier. I work for the Sword...and through him, the Bridge.”

“That is not what I meant,” she said, blowing at her rough cut bangs a little in impatience. “Are you married?”

“No.”

“Have you been married?”

“No, cousin.”

“Why do you call me cousin?”

“Because you are human...and I am seer.”

That thoughtful look still in her eyes, she nodded.

He could feel she’d half-expected that answer, but wanted it confirmed. Adjusting her weight on her hands, she focused back on his face. Her cheeks turned pinker again, but he felt her resolve underneath, her wanting to know. Hoping it might help her, he made his light more submissive, more open to hers...but it worsened his pain almost at once, causing him to shift under her on the bed.

“Do seers actually date?” she said. “Or do you just screw around, like all the feeds say?”

At his silence, she hesitated, biting her lip. Loki found himself staring at that lip and the white teeth that teased it, feeling his pain worsen, coursing through his body like liquid.

“...Because I’ve heard you mostly just fuck like rabbits,” she added, maybe to break the silence. “But you knew that already, right? What humans think?”

“We...date,” he said. “We are mostly monogamous, truthfully.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him, pursing her lips. “Really? So why does everyone say the exact opposite about seers? Because I’ve been hearing that since I was a kid. From everyone,” she repeated, still watching his face.

He looked up at her, lost briefly in those dark eyes.

“You’ve heard wrong,” he told her, his voice suddenly denser. “You’ve likely met people who’ve only experienced seers as slaves. It is not...” He fought for words, then shook his head, clicking softly. “...Those seers are not allowed to be in relationships.”

His words didn’t offend her. She seemed to think about them instead, still watching his face.

“But you have casual sex, too?” she pressed.

“Of course.”

“So what is this, Loki?” she said, pronouncing his name carefully. “What are we doing here? Is this some kind of come on to get laid? Or something else?”

“That is what you are asking me?”

She rolled her eyes, giving a half-laugh. “Well, yeah. D’uh.”

Loki reached up a hand, once more sliding it into her dark hair.

He felt her flinch, but she didn’t pull away.

When he tugged her carefully closer, raising his other hand to touch her face, he felt her body grow soft. He fought with words as he looked at her, some way to describe what was happening to their lights. He would need to teach her a lot more, first...about seers, about the Barrier, about her own light, about why such things happened between seers, and, even more rarely, between seers and humans.

He looked up at her and thought all of this.

Then he decided it could wait.

He pulled her down to him, caressing her cheek with his hand, sliding it around her jaw, then down her neck. His pain worsened as he explored her skin. He felt her light open to his, her fingers wrap around his shoulder, her other hand gripping his forearm where he held her. He felt her breathing quicken...in nerves, in anticipation, in desire. His pain worsened as he watched emotions flicker across her face, as he watched her try to control them.

“You’re hurt,” she said, her voice catching. “...And probably doped to the gills.” She closed her eyes, longer than a blink. He heard the tremor in her voice and his cock hardened more, causing him to shift under her. “We should wait on this side of things, Loki...”

He nodded, still caressing her skin, moving his fingers under the collar of her shirt to her shoulder and the back of her neck, which he massaged slowly, feeling her body and light react, growing even softer over his. His other hand tightened in her hair, and he felt her fingers tighten, too, where they held his bicep, clutching at him when she felt his muscle tense.