Allie's War Season Four (93 page)

I wasn’t sure how much of the Lao Hu stuff I should use on him, either. I could feel him wanting it but not wanting it, even as my own nervousness worsened at the different currents I felt flickering through his light. Some of those might even have been memory, but memory too far removed for me to be able to understand or even read any of the specifics.

I wasn’t jealous exactly, or even threatened exactly, but I found myself thinking about him, about all the months he’d spent alone, and that pain in my light worsened.

He’d mentioned Jon...and Wreg...but I wasn’t sure I was ready to handle probing those cryptic comments, either. Was he trying to tell me he’d been sleeping with other people while I’d been out? That Jon and Wreg gave him shit for it? If so, I really, really didn’t want to know. Not now, anyway. Maybe not ever.

He was still being quiet. Really damned quiet.

Quieter than I’d ever heard him in bed.

“...Are you sure you’re really okay with this?” I said, fighting to pull back my light. “It’s okay if you’re not, Revik. I mean it.”

He gripped my hair harder. I felt his pain worsen, resonating with and fighting with mine, but still he didn’t speak. I felt his reluctance to look at me again, too, and fought not to take it personally, to try and feel what lay behind it.

“Revik.” I touched his face, gripping his hair. “Talk to me...jesus. Tell me to stop, if that’s what you want. We have all the time in the world for this...it doesn’t have to be now.”

He shook his head. I didn’t know what that meant, either.

I was still trying to read the expression on his face when he lowered his mouth back to mine. That time, when I gripped him harder with my hands, he let out a half-cry, then started taking off my clothes...more like ripping them off me, yanking my shirt up to my shoulders, my pants down past my hips. His pain was blinding me now, turning his limbs and body liquid, sliding in and around my light, until I let out another pleading sound, wrapping my arm back around his neck as I kissed him back. He had his hand between my legs then, his fingers inside me, and I cried out, gripping his hair as I arched against him. He still hadn’t said anything, and I could feel that fear in my light, somehow only worsening as his pain grew more intense.

Jesus, had he really been fucking other people? Was that what this guilt was really about?

Before I could push it from my mind, he spoke, gripping my hair in his hand.

“Look at me, Allie,” he said.

I realized only then that I hadn’t been.

I’d looked away from his face, but now I returned my eyes there, reluctant that time.

I saw his gaze searching mine, my features, my eyes and mouth, even through the fog of pain and whatever else that nearly blinded me. He put light into his fingers and slid them deeper into me, holding my hair with his other hand so I would stare up at his face. After I let out another cry, losing control over my light, I saw his eyes close, longer than a blink. His whole body seemed to break out in a sweat then, right before he groaned, lowering his face to mine. He removed his hand then, wrapping it around my hip as he pressed his cheek to mine.

“I didn’t fuck anyone else,” he told me, soft.

I nodded, feeling my body start to relax.

“...I propositioned Jon,” he said then, his voice lower still.

I stared up at the ceiling, feeling my heart stop in my chest, my fingers tightening where I held him. He raised his head, looking down at me, studying my face. His eyes held what might have been a challenge, or might have been guilt, or nerves... or maybe all three.

“I wanted to feel you,” he said. He stripped his words of emotion, so that his voice came out empty, bordering on cold. “Jon was in pain. I wanted to give him head...”

I winced, and Revik felt it.

He stopped, looking down at me, and I saw his face grow more taut.

“I wanted him to open his light,” he explained, his voice still empty. “I wanted him to let me far into his light, so I could read his memories of you. Read the things I missed, any part of your life I missed... every fucking second of it, Allie. I was out of my head. I was so drunk I probably couldn’t have done it anyway, even if he hadn’t said no.” Shaking his head, he avoided my eyes that time. “...But he said no, Allie. Not me.”

I swallowed, but I couldn’t bring myself to nod. My chest still hadn’t unclenched as I looked up at his face. I was still looking at him when his eyes hardened more, even as his fingers tightened in my hair.

“Do you still want me, Allie?” he said, blunt.

Looking up at him, I saw that challenge there again, and realized it was fear. Fear mixed with guilt, a deeper, older-feeling doubt and guilt and shame as he stared down at me. I could scarcely see past that fear, and the self-hate that went with it, even as my mind turned over his actual words. When I didn’t answer right away, I felt his light retreating from mine, slowly pulling away at the edges of my awareness.

“Yes,” I said, quiet. “I still want you.”

There was a silence. That fear I could feel on him didn’t dissipate.

“Are you going to forgive me for this?” he said finally.

I fought to think about his words, about what he’d told me. I couldn’t feel it, not even part of what he’d described with Jon. He wasn’t letting me anywhere near that memory, and while I couldn’t exactly blame him, it hurt, too, just from feeling pushed out. But I couldn’t say I didn’t understand. I got enough off his words to understand, even without the memory itself. I wasn’t even sure I needed to understand more than that.

“I will,” I said. “I do forgive you, Revik. You might need to give me a few days...”

He’d already started to pull away from me physically. Fighting a flush of anger, I grabbed his arm, wrapping my other arm around his back.

“Gods,” I said. “Are you really going to punish me for this?”

He stopped what he’d been doing, staring down at me. I saw his eyes study mine, even as he thought about my words. I felt him turn them over, right before he slowly shook his head.

“No,” he said. Hesitating, he looked down at my body. “Now?” he said, as if to clarify.

Exhaling, I found myself speaking again, my voice sounding more sure. “Look. It doesn’t change anything with us. I’m not angry... and honestly, I don’t think you did anything wrong, not under the circumstances. I get it, Revik... at least, I think I do. I just...” I shook my head, biting my lip. “I understand, okay? I’m not mad. Just, you know...”

“You don’t need to explain, Allie,” he said.

He stared down at me, his light sparking through mine.

Despite what he’d said, I could still feel him thinking about my words, or maybe about what he might say to me, or where that left us. I felt him continue to pull back from me, lost in that other space. Then he seemed to shove it away a second time. He pressed his body against mine, even as heat flushed his skin, right before he lowered his mouth to my face and neck.

“I want to do this,” he said, soft. “Gods, I want to do this so badly. Does that make me an asshole, Allie?”

I shook my head, smiling and clicking at him in spite of myself. “No.”

“Is that permission?” he murmured. “Are you giving me permission, Allie?”

Laughing, I clutched his hair. “Yes,” I said. “I thought I was seducing you?”

“Then take off your fucking clothes,” he murmured, speaking against my ear. I shivered and his fingers caressed my hip. He leaned his forehead on my shoulder, leaned his weight, looking down at the rest of me. “Take them off, Allie.” His jaw hardened, right before he lowered his voice. His words turned cajoling, nearly demanding in my light, even as his pain abruptly worsened. “Then you’re going to talk to me,” he murmured. “You’re going to talk to me the whole time we’re fucking, Allie...and we’re going to fuck a lot. A lot...”

I nodded, closing my eyes as another coil of his pain blinded me.

“I want you to show me some things, first,” he murmured, his mouth still by my ear. “I want you to teach me more, Allie. I have very specific requests in mind...” His pain spiraled out at me again, blanking out my mind, even as his hand clenched on my hip. “I might not let you come for awhile.” His voice grew harder, but lower, too. “...I might not last very long, either, wife. Not the first few times. If you do what I say, I might not last very long at all... but I really want you to do what I say. I might insist on it. I might insist on a lot of things for awhile. Don’t expect me to be rational about this, wife...”

My pain worsened, even before I felt more flickers off his mind, images along with his thoughts, cautious still, but with enough there, enough behind them, that I clenched my hand in his hair, letting out an involuntary cry as I writhed under his weight.

I had my light in him then.

I almost didn’t admit to myself what I was doing until he cried out, pinning me to the bed when I found what I wanted, when I finished winding that part of my light into his. I pulled on him, hard, losing control of my light...coiling into him until I nearly blacked out. I felt that part of us twine together, like two sinuous tails, and he was groaning then, saying my name, even as his fingers slid back inside me.

His mind opened to mine a few seconds later, and I started reading him, feeling all the things he wanted from me, all the emotions he’d been holding in, all of the thoughts and frustrations and confusion he’d felt, pretty much from the instant he saw me alive. I felt him before that, too, when he’d thought I was dead...and before that, when I’d been alive but not me, and even before that, when I’d still been unconscious in San Francisco. Somewhere in that whole mess, he let me feel that night when he’d shown up at Jon’s door, too. He let me see how drunk he’d been, how desperate...how desperately he’d missed me, and how Jon felt like the only link to me he had left. He’d been so angry at Jon, too. He’d blamed him, and hated himself for blaming him, and I could feel the part of him that didn’t care about anything, that just wanted it all to stop.

The more he showed me, the more my light wanted to open him up, needing to know, needing to feel him in it, to see it almost in real time. I saw him kiss Jon, saw Jon waver between fighting him and kissing him back, right before he pushed him away. I felt Revik trying to talk him into it, a near-compulsion, a wanting of...something...anything to change that deadened feeling, anything to avoid facing going back to our room alone. I felt Jon’s confusion, too, his self-loathing, and all I ended up with was two men who were grieving. Grieving and drunk and in pain, and unable to handle any one of those things.

Once I felt that much, I felt that lingering doubt start to dissipate. Pain came with it, but the relief I felt washed that away, too.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him, kissing him. “It really doesn’t matter, Revik.”

Somewhere in that, I felt him start to believe it.

I felt him start to believe I was really alive.

I didn’t realize he was crying until I looked up next, right after I finished peeling the shirt off my head and arms. Leaning up, I gripped his hair in my fingers, holding him tighter when he kissed my mouth, when his hands started yanking down the pants I wore. He groaned against my neck again once he had them off, his pain slamming into me, shocking my light, making it difficult to breathe.

Images hit me again, but that time I felt love in them, a kind of compulsion to share with me, to want me to feel every minute I’d missed with him, everything he’d wanted to share and couldn’t while I’d been gone. I felt heat in some of those memories, heat and pain and worry, but something younger lived there, too, a loneliness that he’d been holding back, keeping separate from my light. I felt him missing me, more than missing me, how alone he’d felt without me, how tightly he’d had to hold himself to keep it from the others. He’d lost me, but he’d lost all of his friends, too, if only in his inability to cope with his own grief. I felt his loneliness like a physical force, even as he caressed my skin. I was crying then, too, but I was already murmuring to him when the kiss broke off.

“I love you,” I told him. “I love you... so much. I’m so sorry...”

His voice grew so soft I barely heard it. “I’m sorry about Jon. Gods, Allie... I’m so sorry about what I did. I missed you so goddamned much...” His eyes grew brighter again. “...I thought I’d lost my mind when you wouldn’t wake up. If it wasn’t for our child...”

I heard the fear in his voice again, the guilt, and I shook my head, shoving it out of my head, even as tears blinded me.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. I realized I meant it that time, even as my fingers tightened on his neck. “It doesn’t matter, Revik... it’s over. It’s really over this time.”