He thought about this.
He fought to make sense of this.
“How do you know?” he managed, staring back at that rippling light on the ceiling. “About me? How can you tell? Can you read my mind?”
She smiled.
He heard her smile.
“No,” she said, amused. “No, I can’t read your mind.”
She paused.
He could still hear her smiling.
“I can see it,” she clarified. “That light gets brighter. It starts sparking around you like an electrical fire. I don’t know what you’re telling yourself, but it’s wrong. You’re not in danger. You’re okay. I’m here, and you’re okay. No one will hurt you here.”
Relief suffused him.
He believed her.
He was okay.
He closed his eyes.
He forced himself to breathe.
He forced himself to breathe.
He wasn’t sure when he began to relax for real.
He wasn’t sure when the blue-green charge began to dim and grow softer, when his muscles unclenched, when he began to relax.
He didn’t know when it changed, when he grew genuinely calm.
He didn’t know…
His eyes opened.
That time, there was no fear.
His body felt utterly relaxed. He felt so comfortable, so safe, so soft, an inexplicable rush of emotion hit him; it grew so intense, it briefly nearly tipped into tears.
His legs and arms stretched out on a large, soft surface.
He gazed up at a pure white ceiling, and again saw the ripple of watery shadows and light, mesmerizing and silent. Dags watched the patterns move. He didn’t feel the need to sit up, to identify where he was.
Part of that was, he wasn’t alone.
Her cheek rested on his chest, her leg looped around his, her arm around his waist. He stared down at her dark head, fighting to blank his mind, to not react to how much of her skin pressed and rubbed against his skin, to how good she smelled.
He couldn’t go there.
She’d more or less saved his life.
He couldn’t fucking go there.
He knew who it was, of course. Some part of him had known all along.
Despite his attempts to calm down, he felt his body waking up to that fact faster than his mind could slow it down, faster than his ability to process what he was reacting to, much less to pull it back. He felt a part of himself that was thrilled with everything about lying in her bed in that moment, and wanting to act on it right now, the hell with whether it made any sense.
Unfortunately, that part seemed to be primarily steering the good ship Dags as he fought to wake up. Heat warmed his skin, thickening his tongue. The part of Dags that was a little too happy about his current situation kept trying to pull his mind places that mortified him, even before the images started to coalesce behind his eyes.
He tried not to wake her.
The least he could do is not fucking wake her up.
The little flashes and glimpses he got from his memories of the night before told him she probably hadn’t gotten much sleep. Between his showing up here covered in blood, his glowing thing, and his panic attacks about people trying to kill him, she probably hadn’t slept much at all.
Unlike the last time he remembered being awake, he wasn’t panicking about needing to get out of there. He didn’t feel like he was in imminent danger, or about to be murdered, or about to crash through the glass wall with his wings. He was okay with the silence. He might have been okay with the stillness, too, if another part of him wasn’t completely fucking obsessed with the sensation of her bare foot curled around his inner thigh.
He gazed up at the ceiling, fighting to clear his mind.
One of his arms cushioned his head, muscles tense.
His other arm remained around her back, his hand resting tautly on her waist. His arm and hand were borderline clenched, like the rest of his body, but he didn’t dare move them, mostly because he was positive he would wake her.
Dags was positive if he moved any part of his body, he would definitely wake her.
He had no memory of coming here.
He wouldn’t freak out about that end of things. Not yet.
He knew he must have flown here, to her house in Malibu.
That meant they weren’t alone.
Other people lived here. She had security people. She had a roommate. By now, she likely had a new housekeeper. Others would have seen Dags come here. They must have seen him arrive at her front door, in whatever messed-up state he’d been in, his clothes half in tatters. They would have seen what he looked like, all the things wrong with him.
All the not-human things wrong with him.
They probably saw his wings.
They likely saw at least some hint of that glowy, angel light.
He couldn’t freak out about that, though. Not yet.
Not until he could be absolutely sure how much of his memory of the previous night was a dream, and how much actually happened.
For now, he just wouldn’t go there.
For now, he’d just lie here, pretend not to think anything at all.
He would focus on her foot, which was rubbing his inner thigh now.
She stirred.
He held his breath, watching her wake up.
He felt it as much as saw it, felt her breathing change, something about the way she lay on him grew less heavy, more active.
Slowly, she began to stretch individual muscles.
Every shift and rub against his body was another thing to focus every ounce of his being, another thing to obsess on, another thing to want to meet halfway.
Lifting her head slowly from his chest, she blinked, rubbing her eyes, and he found himself watching her face, staring at every micro-expression that flitted across her skin and through her facial muscles. He stared at all of it, watching each emotion, thought, and ripple in her consciousness, watching in a kind of bewildered confusion at the sheer detail of it.
It wasn’t just that her face looked different, although that caught him first.
It struck him that everything looked different.
He still couldn’t see her aura, but light sparked around her in a different way, more like it shone out from her skin, her eyes, even her hair. The gold flecks in her green irises stood out jarringly, filled with a myriad of subtle, even more shocking colors. Light hovered around her lips, a faint gold and green like her eyes, wisps coiling and dissipating like a scent.
He blinked, fighting to clear his vision, sure it was a trick of the light.
It wasn’t, though.
She looked just as strange as before.
He still saw that faint glow of light on her skin.
It was brighter within her eyes, filling her irises.
God, whatever it was, it was turning him on even more.
He felt his cock harden just from looking at it.
She was noticing his stare now.
Her lips frowned a tiny bit, quirking at the edges. He found himself lost in the delicate changes on her face, barely perceptible, but serving as a near-map of emotion and thought. He wanted to touch her now, explore her skin with his fingertips, see if he could feel those tiny changes the way his eyes could see them.
“What?” she said, her frown growing more visible. “What does that look mean?”
He shook his head, without stopping his stare.
Staring back at him, she frowned.
When that didn’t stop him from staring at her, she burst out in a laugh, like she couldn’t help herself.
“Your face,” she said, smiling.
That smile made his cock ache more.
“…I’ve never met such a loud quiet person,” she said. “I just wish I knew what the hell you were saying.”
“I’m sorry,” he managed. “I don’t mean to stare.”
“What are you seeing, that’s got you looking at me like I’m an alien?”
�
�You’re… different,” he admitted.
“Different?” Her frown returned. “Different, how? I mean, I know I’m not wearing make-up, but I wouldn’t have thought you, of all people⏤”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, no. Not that.”
There was a silence.
He reached out, moving before he knew he intended to.
His fingers softly caressed her cheek, brushing her skin cautiously, even as his eyes followed how the light around her skin reacted to his fingers. He watched it spark and glow brighter where he touched her, like phosphorous in the ocean, like some amphibian’s skin that changed color depending on its stress levels or its background.
His gaze narrowed as he let his fingers trail down her neck, watching the light ripple under his forefinger.
He felt his skin grow inexplicably hot, just from watching that much.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
When he returned his eyes to hers, she was searching his face. Her pale green and gold irises contained a confused mixture of worry, bemusement, and a tauter look he couldn’t interpret at all.
Looking at her, it crossed his mind that he’d been touching her, more or less without her permission. Of course, he’d woken up with her half-wrapped around him, so maybe they were past that point, but it struck him suddenly as invasive, and maybe unwelcome.
“Sorry.” He pulled his hand away, his voice gruff. “My eyes… I mean. I don’t know if it’s my eyes. Everything looks different right now.”
“You mean me?” Her eyebrow lifted. “I look different?”
“Not only you.” He glanced around the room, at the particles of sunlight that seemed to be made of flecks of gold, like her eyes. “But yeah.” He looked back at her. “You, definitely. You look different.”
“How?”
He frowned. Opening his mouth, he closed it again.
She waited, her eyes expectant.
When he didn’t say anything more, she laughed.
“You don’t want to tell me?”
Hesitating, he shook his head. “No.”
She nodded, but that faint frown was back to quirking her full lips.
Rearranging herself, she sat up more on the bed, leaning her back against the wall behind several layers of snow-white pillows. Closing her eyes, she used her fingers to comb her long, black hair out of her eyes, facing the sunlight coming through the enormous bay window.
Dags sat up next to her, looking out the window that more or less filled his vision beyond the pony wall on one side of the room.
They were on the second floor, which was effectively a loft, at least on this side of the building. The window disappeared at the line the pony-wall made, which provided the only divider between this floor and the floor below.
Dags sat up straighter, getting his eyes and head higher.
When he looked down from the vantage of the elevated bed and pillows, he could see the window stretch down to the ground floor. The door to the outside deck on that level must live almost directly below them, along with the sitting room he remembered.
The reflection of the water didn’t come from there, though.
That came from this floor.
Almost eye-level from where he sat, across a narrow walkway, there lived a second-floor deck with a lap pool and a second jacuzzi.
Dags had been out there once before, what felt like a million years ago now.
“That’s where you landed,” she informed him.
Dags flinched.
He turned, looking at her.
Realizing she’d been watching him look around, he nodded.
He glanced around the room, noting the round, roughly king-sized bed, a rounded wall of bookshelves filled with books, a curved corridor that presumably led to a bathroom, or closets maybe. Glancing up, he saw dividers that could be lowered from the high ceiling, presumably in the event Phoenix wanted privacy from the deck and that narrow catwalk.
Remembering the odd architecture he’d noted the first few times he’d been here, he tried to gauge where the main stairs were, then wondered if there was another way down on this side. He glanced to his left, but saw only a long, white wall with a high window that showed ocean and sky, along with a thin stretch of beach.
Such a strange place to put a bedroom. It definitely gave a feeling of openness, of space, of light, but anyone could hear anything you did from downstairs. This couldn’t be the master bedroom, could it? It was so hard to tell in here.
It wasn’t a great bedroom for fucking. Not loud fucking. Not for fucking when anyone else was home, or awake.
The thought made his throat close, his cock hurt. He’d almost managed to calm himself down, and now every muscle on his body was clenched.
“Do you approve?” Her voice was back to amused.
“It’s a little… confusing.” He avoided her eyes, but found himself staring down at the bed, then at the open space past the window. “This is your room?”
She leaned back into the pile of pillows, sighing.
“Yes,” she said, shifting sideways to look at him. “This is my room. There’s a sitting area on the other side of that wall and hallway that’s more or less ‘mine,’ too. Asia and I divvied things up by the two wings. But there are guest bedrooms in the middle. Karver’s been staying in one of those.”
Dags tensed, like a wolf whose fur stood on edge. “Karver’s here?”
“Yeah. He lives here right now.” Seeming to see something on Dags’ face, she added, “Just for now. We didn’t want to deal with the media fallout, so it was easier for him just to stay here. It makes things… simpler.”
Another silence.
Dags found himself staring in the direction she’d indicated. He folded his arms in front of his chest, maybe just to have something to do with them after his muscles clenched. His hands curled into fists somewhere in the vicinity of his elbows.
Karver was here.
Karver was living in her house.
She must have been watching him react.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said, her voice wavering between annoyed and amused. “He already has a new girlfriend. She’s staying here, too. That’s part of the reason we came up with this.”
Dags turned, staring at her for real that time.
Phoenix shrugged, blowing a few strands of dark hair out of her face.
“She’s actually pretty cool,” she admitted, pushing her hair out of her face with a hand when the blowing didn’t do the trick. “They’re keeping a low profile for now, which is why Karver’s living here with her. I mean, it’s probably weird for her, but the story to the press is that she’s a friend of Asia’s, staying in one of our guest rooms.”
“Is she?” Dags said, still confused. “A friend of Asia’s?”
Phoenix turned her head, looking up at him.
“You know Asia. She is now. Like I said, we all get along pretty well.” Gauging his face, Phoenix added, “Karver’s okay, you know. You really brought out the dick in him for some reason. He’s not that bad. Honestly.”
Dags nodded, noncommittal.
As if noticing his avoidance of conceding that point, at least not yet, Phoenix grunted, toying with a few strands of her hair again, now braiding them together in a tiny braid.
“Again,” she said. “For a quiet guy, you get extreme reactions from people.”
Dags frowned, fighting to relax his shoulders and arms.
She wasn’t wrong.
He did get weird reactions from people.
“It didn’t used to be like that,” he told her. “Before.”
When he glanced at her, she was watching his face.
Seeing the curiosity there, he looked away, feeling suddenly uneasy.
Here he was, acting like a possessive asshole with someone he barely knew. He had no right. He knew he had no right. That wasn’t his bigger problem, anyway. Really, Karver was the last thing he should be worrying about right now.
He was starting to remember the ni
ght before.
That party in Brentwood.
Again, Phoenix seemed to see something on his face.
“What happened to you?” she said. “Do you remember?”
He grimaced, starting to sit up for real. “Part of it,” he admitted.
“Which part?” she said. “What happened to your face?”
“My face?” He frowned, raising a hand cautiously to his cheek and jaw. Feeling a swelling there, especially on the right side, he swung his legs over to the side of the bed, glancing over his shoulder at her.
“Bathroom?” he said.
She snorted another faint laugh, nodding towards the narrow corridor.
“First opening on the right… then the second door.”
He nodded, pulling himself carefully to his feet.
Chapter 17
Missing Time
He stared at himself in the mirror for far too long.
He was a little shocked at how he looked.
In some ways, it was better than he expected. On the other hand, that was part of the problem. Part of the strangeness, at least.
His jaw appeared bruised and swollen, but it was already more than halfway healed. A cut over his eye had closed. He found more cuts and bruises decorating his chest, some of them green and yellow and covering inches of his skin.
Those cuts and bruises were all mostly healed, too.
His tattooed arms were decorated with more nicks and cuts.
He stared at himself in the mirror, shirtless, wearing sweat pants he didn’t recognize, while the pants he’d been wearing that night sat crumpled on the bathroom floor, stiff with his blood. His jacket, which was even more destroyed than the pants, lay next to them, along with a shirt that was just as shredded as the jacket.
He’d scarcely noticed he was shirtless while he was in bed with Phoenix.
Then again, that was probably a good thing.
Damn it.
He’d liked that shirt.
He turned his back on the mirror, trying to see the other half of his body.
More bruises covered his back, especially at the base of his spine, and just below his neck. Dark brown and yellow, those bruises also looked more than halfway healed.
He stared at the odd scars that formed reverse-facing crescents on either side of his spine, reaching down half the length of his back.
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