Powerless (23 page)

I covered his body with mine, needing to feel the rasp of his chest hair on my cheeks and my lips. I kissed up his torso, biting my way up his slick skin, even as I kept up the relentless movement of my fingers in his ass. Armise clawed at my biceps, driving my fingers deeper inside him, and I took his nipple in my mouth, biting down until he cried out and arched, begging for more.

My cock fell onto his stomach, and I thrust against him to get more friction, more pressure, just more. Both of us needed more.

His skin was fevered, the hottest I’d ever felt it under my touch. Burning me where skin touched skin, setting my nerves alight.

“Inside me,” he gritted out between ragged breaths.

I would give him whatever he wanted.

I licked a swipe down his abs—his stomach contracting in response—then set myself on my knees between his legs. I slipped my fingers out of him then pushed inside him in one hard thrust, sinking into the power of his body, stretching him to the breaking point. I hooked my arms under his thighs and pounded into him, my eyes locked to that silver and blue, his pupils wide, swallowing the fluctuating colour. I traced the line of his scars with my eyes. The violent cut across his temple that brought the furrow of his brow out of line. That slash on his left cheek, given to him by me in Belfast, when I hadn’t known just how deeply I would become entwined with him. There were other marks, some white with age, others red, freshly healed, and I wanted to know the story of each one of them. Needed to hear what he’d seen and experienced that I hadn’t been a part of. I didn’t realise just how ravenously my gaze was picking him apart—how obviously my emotions and thoughts must have skittered across my face—until he spoke.

“I’ll never leave you, Merq.”

I buried myself inside him, stilling, slowing, sweat dripping from my brow, over my cheeks and lips and dropping onto his spread thighs. I couldn’t reply with words, couldn’t find enough coherent thought for the litany of
never again, never
that rattled around my brain.

I leant back, still seated deep inside him, and put my hand to his cock, pulling it back to life, sliding the foreskin over the head and pumping him as I thrust shallowly into his ass.

He wrapped his legs around my waist, lifted himself, and pushed back, making me take him with more force. “Harder, Merq. You can do better,” he goaded me with a wry twist of his lip.

I grinned and slammed into him over and over again until I was desperate for breath, desperate to feel his body tighten around me. To hear him cry out my name.

Sweat slicked his hot skin, easing the slide of my hand on his cock. There wasn’t a warning, no telltale tensing of his massive muscles, he was spilling over my hand, crying out, his hole clenching hotly around my dick, pulling me deeper inside. His eyes slammed closed with the intensity of his release, but I couldn’t look away, even as I buried myself in him and let go, my own body shaking with the effort not to collapse.

I remained inside him as I came back down, moving my hips to slide weakly in and out of him, to feel that tight heat and the slickness of my cum dripping between his legs. I didn’t want to pull out, to sever that connection to him. I could feel those unsaid three words lingering around us, cutting through the haze of abandon. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t have any more answers.

But Armise didn’t push me.

I finally pulled out, sagging onto the sweat-soaked sheets, my right leg draped over his as I fought to maintain the silence in my head.

We lay there for minutes, time dropping past us, continuing on unimpeded, regardless of the fact that my life could have ended at this moment and I would have been okay. Satisfied. At peace.

I was the first to reach out for him, wrapping my arm around his waist and drawing him close as our bodies cooled. I tucked my head into his chest, at that junction of neck and shoulder where his bones jutted out from sculpted muscle. Gone was the bitter scent of metal and ash, replaced with the crispness of cold, the musk of exotic balm, and the wildness of sex. The fingers of his left hand traced a pattern down my ribs, over my arms. Even though my skin was healed, long ago smoothed of the grenade scars that had pockmarked my body and left me without sensation, I could feel the echoes of their presence under the exploration of his fingertips.

We were both externally marked, battle-hardened, on every inch of our skin. But it was the memories we carried with us, the depth of surety in each other—and not those slashes woven with ink—that marked us in an indelible way.

“Sleep, Merq,” he urged me, kissing my damaged shoulder.

And I did.

Without fear of reprisal. Without worry. Without consideration of what tomorrow would bring.

Chapter Fifteen

I awoke to the sounds of the shower, steam billowing out of the en suite door. I listened to the hypnotic patter of water on stone and fought to keep my eyes open as the humid warm air enveloped me. But before I could make the decision to either sleep more or get up and join Armise in the shower, I heard the twist of a knob and the water stopped.

Armise emerged almost immediately, naked, wiping the water out of his hair and off his shoulders with a plush ivory towel. “I was just about to wake you up. Simion stopped by earlier. He said we need to be ready to transport back to the States an hour from now.”

I rubbed at my eyes. How had I been so asleep that I hadn’t even heard Simion come to the door? “How much time does that give me?”

“Enough. Take a shower. I’ll get some food for us.” Armise pulled on a pair of pants and a T-shirt, then thumped onto the couch to lace up his boots. He stood, adjusted his shirt over his biceps, the fabric moulded to his muscles, and he walked over to his side of the bed. He grabbed the stack of bracelets off the surface and put each one on individually. He picked through the pile, placing them around his wrists in a certain order, and if I hadn’t already been curious about their presence, I definitely was now.

I sat up against the headboard and cleared the thickness of sleep from my throat. “Where did those come from?”

“My mother’s sister,” he replied casually as he slipped the last one on, the wood and stone circles clacking together as he shook them into place.

I quirked my pierced eyebrow. “You have family?”

“Her and her daughter. That is it. That I know of.”

“They’re not mentioned in your records.”

“They wouldn’t be. I didn’t know they existed until last year.”

“Does Ahriman know about them?”

Armise features darkened. “Probably.”

“So what do the bracelets mean? What’s the significance?”

“Later, Merq,” he dismissed me. “I need to eat.”

I trudged out of bed the moment the door clicked shut behind him. I walked into the heavily weighted air of the en suite and ran my fingers over the slick tiles of the shower Armise had just got out of. I smelt like him and for one mad second I contemplated not washing that scent off because maybe he really wasn’t going for food. Maybe he was gone again.

But as soon as the thought had passed through my head I scoffed out loud. What the fuck was I worrying about?

I switched on the shower, setting the water temperature to cool, and stepped inside.

The frigid water had enough of a bite to clear the remnants of sleep-fog from my brain. Armise and I were headed back into the capital today. To bury the President. To strategize around a strike on the hybrid assassins. To try to locate Exley so we could figure out what the fuck was happening with the kids of the jacquerie. To dig into Priyessa’s contacts and find out which of the PsychHAgs had turned on us…

And all of it would be under President Simion’s orders this time around.

Fucking Simion.
I laughed out loud.

What the hell had the President been thinking? Simion was unhurried, easy-going, open. Yet he was prone to dark moods that made my darkness appear much more grey. He wasn’t rash like me. He was methodical, contemplative. Much more like Armise in temper and tenor. He didn’t smile often, but that smirk that made him much more approachable than he should have been was rarely absent from his face. He wasn’t as distant or secretive as the President had always been, and he came from the humble, hard-worn life of a refugee in the tent camps. Simion was just… Simion. Real.

And there was my answer.

Wensen Kersch had chosen Simion because he was someone whom citizens could trust.

“Food,” Armise’s rumble came from the other room.

My stomach did a similar rumble in reply. I’d eaten barely anything yesterday and I was starving.

Armise had the food laid out on the desk when I came in. He surveyed my naked form, thick lips pulling into a satisfied smile as he froze with the bread in his hand halfway to his lips. “My marks look good on you.”

I had to go to the mirror to see what he was referring to. I could feel the ache of a good fuck every place in my body where it counted, but until I stood in front of the mirror I had no idea just how branded I was. I craned my neck, taking stock of the purple welts from the draw of skin between lips and teeth. Of the fingertip and palm-sized streaks of bruises lining my shoulders, my biceps, and my hips. “How bad is my back?” I asked, attempting to curve myself around to survey the damage.

Armise chuckled lowly, genuine. “Your DNA is permanently embedded under my fingernails.”

I scowled at the roughness that was uncharacteristic even for him. “Trying to make a point, I see.” I didn’t bother to tell him that Neveed was gone. He probably already knew, but obviously didn’t give a shit.

“Maybe,” he admitted, taking a bite out of the bread.

I slipped on my training uniform, feeling the scratches on my back pull when I shifted the cloth over my shoulders. Every purple-tinged mark he’d left on my neck would be visible in this outfit. I shook my head, the edge of my lips tipping into a smile, then ran my fingers through my hair to keep it from spiking out of control as it dried. I left my boots off for the moment, settling into a seat by the desk, and propping my feet up on the crossbar.

He’d probably cleared out the galley with the sheer amount of food in front of us. I popped delicate pieces of fruit into my mouth, unaware of what they were named, or what they would taste like, but immediately falling for the varieties that came with being on AF soil instead of the States.

“These are fucking fantastic,” I stated, holding up the small red and purple berries.

Armise hummed and sat down across from me, resting his forearm across my outstretched legs. “Luxurious.”

I tipped my head and tried to glean the meaning of the word from how satisfied he looked.

Armise studied me, his eyes crinkling with humour at the corners. “You don’t know what that means.”

But before I could give him shit, there was a knock at the door.

“What?” I called out, my frustration with Armise tingeing my reply.

The door pushed open and Simion’s head appeared around the jamb. “Everyone fully dressed?”

I had to grin at that. This was my fucking president now. “Maybe. Come on in.”

Simion pushed slowly through the door, running his eyes warily over Armise and me before he took a confident step inside the room. Armise didn’t move off me, keeping physical contact with me despite—or more likely because of—Simion’s appearance in our room. Yeah, he was definitely in for making a point.

Simion leaned against the desk and surveyed the food. “May I?”

“Your command is mine to follow, Pres,” I quipped.

“Fucking hell,” Simion ground out, then swiped a handful of bright green seeds. “Stop that.”

“Thought you might come by so I picked up more, sir,” Armise added.

I narrowed my eyes and looked to him. Apparently Simion had told him about his promotion. But Armise wasn’t teasing Simion, not really. The weight of respect in Armise’s use of ‘sir’ was undeniable. And that Armise had not only thought ahead to Simion’s presence here, but anticipated that he would be hungry, too, was a gracious side of Armise that I’d never seen before. Almost welcoming.

Simion pointed at Armise. “You fucking stop that shit, too. I’ll make it an order if I have to.”

“Yes, sir,” Armise and I answered in tandem, this time with a definite air of ridicule.

Simion huffed, but as he exhaled that long breath, a darkness swept over his features—his lips tugging into a frown, brow furrowing and hunching his shoulders forward. “So, I got a message this morning that Exley is back in the capital. We’ll meet with him as soon as we get there.”

Armise’s hand tensed where it rested on my knee. I swept my eyes between the two of them, taking stock of how they each had shifted into battle-ready mode in one heartbeat. Just as I had. All humour was gone from the room. But that meant one thing.

We were ready.

Simion swept another handful of seeds into his pocket and stood. He smoothed his hand over the emblem of the Revolution on his shirt. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

* * * *

Armise and I transported in with the President’s body and Simion, while Isida, Kariabba, and their entourages were transported directly to the guest quarters of the Capitol Building.

It had been years since I was last in this wholly modern structure set in the heart of the downtown. It was a rambling building, built low to the ground in comparison to the polymaterial and metal structures that towered around it. The walls were fortified and a shield surrounded the outskirts of the perimeter, with only dozens of people having the access needed to grant entrance into its protective bubble.

And just as I’d been greeted upon arriving in the bunker after my shot that had killed the Premiere of Singapore, Jegs was standing there when we materialised on the shining white platform, emblazoned with the seal of the Revolution.

But this time, there was no banter. No back and forth of negotiations on Armise’s presence. No bombs crackling in the distance. Silence reigned as all of us fought to get the pain of transport under control so that we could do our duty.

Jegs stepped up to the platform and put one hand on the simple metal box holding Wensen Kersch’s body. All of us joined her, lifting it and carrying it to the room where he would wait for the rites of a state funeral.