Allie's War Season Four (160 page)

Then I felt him testing that control over my light as I lay there, panting.

I felt what might have been an apology that time, too.

Then his light was all business again.

I felt his mind flicker over how I fought against him with my light...even my body. Once he seemed satisfied that he had me there, pretty much unable to move, he started unwrapping the towel from around my body.

Fear darted through my light, but his fingers only tightened in my hair.

“Revik...” I began. “No...no. Please...”

“Don’t move,” he said, gruff.

“Revik...please...”

“Allie. Trust me. Please...trust me.”

Pain slid through his light again, worsening until I closed my eyes.

I found myself thinking he was going to fuck me, that this was going to be some rape fantasy of his, but as soon as I thought it, I felt that anger in his light worsen, along with a hurt that nearly blinded me when I felt what lay behind it.

I was naked now, though, lying across his lap on the towel he still wore.

I could feel that he was hard, but most of his light was still wrapped into mine, focused on holding me still...and the emotions I felt there weren’t about sex.

Well, not really.

I felt pain on him still, but that felt less and less like sex pain, too.

“I’m tired,” I told him. “Revik. I’m really fucking tired. I haven’t slept...”

“I know,” he said.

His fingers and hands tightened on me again, even as I felt fear on him, what might have been guilt, or maybe nerves and guilt and fear wrapped into one. He caressed my hair, blowing warmth on me with his light. I felt the tiredness in him, too, what felt almost like exhaustion now, enough to leak into his voice.

“I know you’re tired, wife...I know,” he said, softer. “But that’s why this can’t wait. I want to do this while you’re tired. I want to do it when you’re too tired to fight me, Allie.”

I didn’t really understand his words.

I felt his fear again, though. Something about that feeling caused my own fear to return, until I was fighting him again with my light, and where I could, with my body. He was right, though. I was too tired to fight him, and the longer he held me down, the more that tiredness turned to something that felt a lot closer to despair.

I couldn’t fight him. I could never fucking fight him.

I couldn’t fight any of them.

Tears were running down my face by the time that much sank in, but I couldn’t make sense of that, either.

The first time he hit me, I sucked in a breath, more in disbelief than pain.

He held me down, testing my light.

Then he hit me again, right on the ass, using his bare hand, and I cried out, groaning that time, trying again to fight my way free of his hands and his light. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t move. I felt his pain worsen as he hit me again...then again.

The pain got worse, not better.

It got harder to endure, not easier.

At some point, I started yelling at him.

I couldn’t make sense of my words. When he didn’t stop, no matter what I said, I didn’t try to censor those words, either...or even track them.

A few things stood out more than others, though.

I called him an asshole, like Angeline had done.

I told him he didn’t give a fuck about me...that he didn’t want me, that he’d never wanted me. I told him I didn’t care what he did anymore, that I knew I’d never be enough for him, no matter what I did or how much of a whore I made myself for him. I told him he could fuck whoever he wanted, that he could fuck Ullysa or Dalejem or my mother...that I wouldn’t try to stop him. I told him I didn’t want to be married to him anymore. I yelled at him for lying to me, for breaking vow...for being nothing but a coward who never told me the truth, who was incapable of telling the truth to anyone. I accused him of fucking other people on the ship. I accused him of wanting Dalejem, of wanting Ullysa, of fucking her after she beat on him, of lying to me and to himself about why he went to her.

I told him he didn’t love Lily.

I said other things, too...about Kat. About him being just like Ditrini...about him wanting to hurt me, to break me, like Ditrini wanted.

I felt some of my words hurt him, but he didn’t let me go.

He didn’t stop, either.

The pain worsened, too, even after I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

I felt him in my light. He was deeper in my light by then, pulling on it, pulling and tugging on me and coaxing me open...even if it meant me hating him more. I felt him sliding into the cracks that were forming around my shield...and that pain that had been throbbing in my chest for the past few days, the one that started on the beach before I’d gone on that walk with Kali, that same pain I’d forced down, deeper and deeper, until it smoldered, not quite going out but filling my whole chest and light with smoke.

That same pain and light flared hotter again.

That pain started to hurt more than his hand.

It started taking over my light, hurting me, hurting my chest and belly and throat, blindingly hot, until I couldn’t speak past it, couldn’t breathe.

I found myself remembering Kali on the beach. Pain twisted through my insides, what must have been memory. I remembered them, both of them...and I remembered...

Gods. I remembered Dalejem.

I remembered him leaving me under that overpass. They’d left me there, and I remembered screaming, crying into the dark. And then I was in the dark again, after Cass cut me open and left me. I remembered her face, her smiling face. She’d been so happy about hurting me. It made her
happy
to cut me open, to leave me like that.

I remembered Revik reading to me, trying to reach me through that dark...

Revik let out a gasp over me. I realized it was a sob.

But I was lost. I almost couldn’t hear him...I was lost there again, lost in that place, that darkness and pain with no end. I remembered being lost, of being so far away, from everything and everyone. No one came. There was no light. I screamed for Lily, screamed for Revik...for my parents, for the light.

No one came.

And then there’s that crossover again, confusion in light and shadow.

Gray metal struts overhead, the sound of the cars on the overpass, their flickering shadows as they fly overhead, echoing by the heap of trash where he left me. I smell human piss and vomit and fetid breath on my face. Someone is touching me, even as insects bite my skin...

Jon was there. He yelled at me, blamed me.

I felt them all looking at me, staring at me, asking me to save them. And I was supposed to just pick myself up now, to do it all alone, to be cut out and pushed out and have to fight for every damned step. I couldn’t trust anyone. I couldn’t trust any of them.

They all left me. Sooner or later, they all left.

Kali wanted to take Lily from me again.

They wanted to take my baby.

I let out another choked sob. That one was closer to a scream.

Revik hit me again, harder. I felt pain on him and I gasped, fighting him, fighting his hands and his light, but he held me down, and I felt his light twist out of control, wrapped so tightly into mine that I could barely breathe. I felt him there, alone, and for the briefest instant, I really
did
feel him. I felt him trying to reach me, fighting to get to me, too.

Somewhere in that, that heated, hard rock in my chest broke.

Blackness filled me...filled my eyes. Liquid heat swam out in flames through my chest. For a long moment time stopped, I wasn’t in the room at all...

Then I cried out, half in pain and half in relief.

I cried until I was exhausted, until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

I cried until I was gasping, fighting to speak.

I felt that thing break more, smashing somewhere in the middle of my chest. Heat pooled out of me again as it broke, like liquid light...and I remembered everything again, even the things I’d forgotten so intensely that I didn’t realize there was anything to remember. I felt that sick feeling in my belly worsen as I realized I’d seen Revik aligned with all of them against me: with Kali, with Dalejem and Terian, even with Cass. They wanted to take my child from me. They wanted to do to her what had been done to me.

I couldn’t let it happen again. Not to her. I couldn’t...

Revik’s light coiled deeper into mine, blotting out all the rest.

I felt fierceness there, a protectiveness and love filled with so much intensity and heat I couldn’t feel anything else. I’d never felt anything like it before...not on anyone. Somewhere in that, he yanked me off his lap. I moved with his hands, and he rolled over with me, laying me on my back.

That hurt, too, but I didn’t care anymore.

I yanked at the towel around his waist, pulling it off him even as he pinned one of my arms to the mattress. I got most of it off...and then he was inside me, and his light flooded into mine, wrapping so deep into me I lost touch with the room.

Everything went away for awhile in that...everything but his skin and breath and eyes.

I saw him crying, even as he called out my name, and that harder feeling in my chest broke more, even as his fingers clenched in my hair and around my back, holding me against him as he arched into me deeper, trying to break me open in a different way that time. That feeling in his light strengthened, until it was almost frightening in its intensity...or it might have been, if it didn’t feel so much like him, in spite of everything.

Somewhere in that, I remembered him.

I remembered myself, but I also remembered him.

Everything from the past year seemed to break over us in those few seconds.

I realized how much we’d both been holding back, circling one another, like he said. I felt the wanting in him, the near-longing to break through that, to smash whatever it was that stood between us, to crack it open, even if it hurt us both in the process.

I remembered feeling that, too. In the tank with him, all of those months.

Even after, when I was in Beijing, and could scarcely feel him at all.

Pain wafted off him, a memory of things I’d said to him while he’d been hitting me, and I felt him in that, too, even as the heat in his light burned hotter.

I found myself drawing deeper inside of him, the more of that light I could feel...using that intensity to pull him closer instead of pulling away. That heat in me continued to spread, too, until some part of me was almost laughing, if only because I knew no other way to express it. I kissed his face as he pressed his against mine, laughing through tears as I felt that thing in me break, leaving nothing but dust. Or heat, maybe...but a different kind of heat than before.

Whatever remained of me, I suppose.

Revik’s pain worsened as I opened my light, but I felt relief there, too.

Relief, but it was so much more than that.

Whatever that thing was, whatever had finally broken in me, Revik seemed to know it better than I did. I felt his heart open as the last shards of it burned away inside my light, like a meteor arcing across the stars. I felt a kind of satisfaction in him as it went, and realized that’s what he’d wanted. He’d been trying to break me open, in any way he could.

In those same few seconds, I felt anger in him, too.

Not at me, but at pretty much everyone else.

At Cass. At Terian. At Jaden. At Jon and Wreg. At Angeline.

At Ditrini.

At himself. Maybe especially himself.

I felt a part of him that hated Kali, too, and Dalejem...and Uye...even as his light promised mine, in a heated vow that took my breath, that he’d never let any of them, any of them...even himself...ever hurt me again.

I knew he meant it, in those few seconds.

I knew how badly he meant it.

And I also knew just how futile it was, too.