Allie's War Season One (120 page)

“Terian didn’t do that, Allie.”

“I don’t care! You’re getting too close...”

“I was careful.”

“Not careful enough!” I laid a hand on one of the bruises. “Jesus.” Pain hit me again, worse. “Who kicked you in the face?”

Sliding closer, he rested his belly against mine, studying my eyes.

His light spread through me. Warm...softening my fear.

“You’re different,” he said, soft. “Not only because a virgin.”

I knew he was distracting me. I also knew he was right, that this was the absolute worst time ever for us to talk about Terian or dead children.

Also, his distraction was working.

I forced a smile. “Virgin? You race-centric seers...it’s all about you.”

He smiled back. Pushing me gently so I would roll to my back, he rested his weight on me more fully, propping his jaw on a hand. With his other hand, he ran a finger over my lips, then my cheek.

“Alyson,” he murmured. “...you seduced me.”

I felt my face warm.

His fingers brushed back my hair. He kissed me again, slower that time. When we paused, he rearranged his weight, pinning me under his arms and legs. I felt the deliberateness behind the pose as he looked at me again, as if asking me if it were all right. When I didn’t push back, he smiled. His voice remained soft.

“You almost gave me a heart attack, Allie...” He caressed my arm with his fingertips, making me shiver. “I couldn’t believe it when I woke up...” Pain touched his voice again, and he fell silent, looking at me. I felt him getting hard again. “Gods, Allie...I hope you’re not tired. I’m really, really turned on right now...”

Flushing more, I caressed his chest to avoid his eyes, running my fingers over muscles and skin, the fine coating of dark hairs. I shook my head.

“Not overly tired,” I said.

He was still watching my face. His voice lowered, getting deeper again.

“We’ll need to stay here now,” he said. “You know that, right?”

I looked up at him. “How long?”

“I don’t know.” Caressing my fingers, he looked away, glancing towards the window. “But I’m feeling possessive, Allie...very possessive.” His hand slid back into my hair, clenching there briefly as he kissed my face. “I want to give you a lot more reasons to want to be faithful to me. A lot more...”

I smiled. “Really? What kinds of reasons?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. I felt another flush of that wanting, a sharp intensity in his light. He kissed me again, murmuring, “But I’m going to want to fuck a lot. A
lot,
Allie...I’ll probably drive you crazy, not let you sleep...”

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Who are you? This is like a different Revik...are you drugged from having an orgasm?”

He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes.

“You don’t like it? I’m talking too much? Presuming too much?”

I touched his face. “I do like it.” Thinking, I added, “...A lot, actually. But I don’t want you to feel like you need to.”

“You think I’m insincere?”

I laughed again. “No.”

He pressed into me. When he lifted his head, his eyes grew more serious. “Allie, I never...” He hesitated. “I don’t remember ever being with a virgin before.”

I glanced up, hiding my embarrassment with an effort. I smiled.

“Never? Aren’t you like a hundred?”

He raised an eyebrow, then smiled back. “Yes. But then...I don’t remember being with any seer who wasn’t a pro until I was at least forty.”

I nodded, not looking up as I continued to touch him. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to know about that, at least right then. Or really...ever. He’d had a lot more years to collect notches on his bedpost than I had, and he hadn’t exactly wasted them.

Beyond that, pros would know what they were doing.

I, on the other hand, hadn’t known the basic facts of my own anatomy.

I could tell it had shocked him. Whatever I’d said, whatever Tarsi told him, the reality that I’d never slept with another seer shocked the hell out of him while we were in the middle of it. I thought about what he’d said about never being with a virgin, about me seducing him, his worries about scaring me when we first started...and felt my face warm again.

No, I definitely didn’t want to hear about his past.

“You said I was different,” I said, to change the subject. “Do you mean actually, physically...” I hesitated.
“Different
...different? Like down there?”

Amusement touched his eyes, but I saw something else there, too.

“Humans didn’t notice?”

“Well, yeah. I didn’t think I’d be a weirdo in the seer world, too.”

He slid a hand around my face, but I saw his mouth tighten.

Looking at him, I found myself wondering just how much he’d seen while following me all of those years. His eyes tightened perceptibly...and I decided talking about past lovers wasn’t a good idea for either of us right then.

I felt another shiver of pain off him as he watched me look at him.

“And?” I said, smiling. “Okay different? So-so?”

The tension on his face broke. He laughed. “More like, ‘I’d better get used to this before my wife leaves me,’ different.” He smiled, but I felt his embarrassment again. “It’s not only the physical, Allie. Your light does something...” He sent the rest carefully, trying to show me. It was that folding sensation I’d been fighting. A liquid heat drove down from a structure in my aleimi, starting in my abdomen before it ran into his...until a part of us entwined, like two sinuous tails.

I felt his breath catch, his weight grow heavy again.

“Stop,” he gasped. “I know I started it, but stop, Allie...please...”

I fought with my light, shutting it down with an effort. After a few seconds, his hands relaxed. I swallowed as he caressed my cheek with his.

“Gods,” he murmured. “You’re going to have to go easier on me, wife.”

I felt my face warm again.

“Revik, are you...” I couldn’t find the right words. “...all right? Now, I mean. Do you feel all right?”

“No.” He kissed my face. “Better, I’m embarrassed to admit, but no.” He hesitated, looking at me. “What about you? I know it wasn’t much...”

I tried to think past whatever was going on with me. I clutched his back, too hard I realized, but I couldn’t seem to make myself let go. I felt scars there, too, marring his skin...more than what I saw in front. Remembering how he’d looked in London, after Terian, I clutched him tighter, fighting the emotion that wanted to rise with it, an irrational kind of grief mixed with fear. I couldn’t have explained any of that to him, though, so I didn’t try.

“I feel different,” I said. “Already, I mean. Do you?”

His eyes didn’t waver. “Yes.”

“Do we need to talk? About that?”

He kissed my cheek. “Yes. Do you want to now?”

I hesitated, thinking about whether I did.

“We’re really married now, aren’t we?” I said finally.

His fingers tightened, right before his pain grew sharp.

“Yes.” He pressed against me. His voice grew soft. “But I thought of myself as married before, Allie. I have since the ship.”

Remembering what else he’d done on the ship, I fought another irrational flare of emotion. I was still struggling to control myself when he wrapped his arms around me. He kissed the nape of my neck, just before he melted into me, sending me...god, it felt like love. It came wrapped in a dense wanting, a near-surrender I couldn’t think past. It touched me deeper than anything I’d ever felt on him...deep enough that briefly, it washed out all the rest.

Slowly, as I calmed, that quieter version of him seeped back over his light, the one I’d always known...the one who felt like an infiltrator. Sliding down my body, he took his time, exploring me with his fingers and mouth, reading me. A flicker of that animal feeling returned as his lips and tongue lingered, grew less tentative.

He sent me questions, cautiously at first.

He got more explicit as he felt me react...until pain made it difficult to think, to remember where we were. My eyes started to glow, a pale, iridescent green. They reflected in his...and I felt that do something to him, too.

I didn’t really understand.

It didn’t matter.

Not long after that, I let go of the rest entirely.

17

DEAD

CASS STUDIED THE broad, Asian-featured face, and wondered what it would be like to kill someone. Not at a distance, like most deaths seemed to happen these days, but to really do it, the way Revik had done when he killed Terian in that cave in the Caucasus.

Sticking a knife into someone, having them die right in front of you, the blood flowing on your hands...it had to feel different than firing at gun from behind cover at people you could barely see, praying it hit something before you were struck down yourself.

It had to feel different.

The man’s muscular chest moved with slow, uneven breaths on the thick pallet. His skin was pale under a deep tan, his lips cracked from dehydration. With her eyes, Cass traced the remnants of faded bruises on his high cheekbones, the cut on his scalp under his hairline, another series of marks on his muscular arms, now soft as they lay on wool blankets beside his thick torso.

He wasn’t dead...or even dying.

The seer medical-types said he’d gone into a kind of coma, something seers did to heal themselves when seriously injured.

The bunker-like room, lit with candles, held wisps of mist from the open windows to the jungle outside. Cass glanced out that same set of windows, watching two monkeys climb into the higher foliage of a fern-like tree, chattering at one another. One had a baby clinging desperately to its back. It swung a little from the tawny fur as the mother climbed nimbly up a thick branch.

Cass looked back at the man lying on the pallet. She laid a hand on his chest, feeling him breathe. After another pause, she sat back in her seat, scrutinizing his still form.

Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a book with a black leather cover. Flipping it open to a series of pages filled with painstakingly drawn hieroglyphs, she traced some of the more delicate ones with her fingers before letting her eyes drop to the text itself. She read the first sentence, which had been written in a near calligraphy-styled English.

“
...Feigran is alone now.”

She paused, glancing back at the trees.

“
...I wonder if it will bother him,”
she read next.
“...Terian assures me there is nothing to worry about, that he prefers to live in this way. Yet I am not certain if his word can be trusted in a matter such as this, and not only due to his apparent callousness to any but the more dominant-seeming segments of his personality...”

Cass turned the page, following the neat handwriting to the top of the next.

“
...What remains of him here seems to lack empathy in totality, so much so that I cannot help but be concerned, despite his proven usefulness even now, so early in our experiment. I cannot help but think that he will be unable to do much more than superficial tasks, when his mind is of such limited composition...”