by Anne Schlea
After the food had been eaten and the wine had been drunk, after the fireworks and the band’s last song, Riley and Anna walk along their corridor back to their homes. His arm is tight around her waist to support some of her weight and keep her walking in a straight line.
“I think I over did it.” She contemplates the headache she’s probably going to have in the morning. “You didn’t need to keep filling my glass.”
“You didn’t need to keep drinking what I was pouring.” Riley stops in front of his door. Anna’s is two more down. “Besides, when was the last time you let yourself let go like that? One night isn’t going to kill you.”
“Marissa probably thinks it’s going to kill her.” Anna leans back against the wall and runs her hand down the front of Riley’s chest. “This isn’t my house.”
“I know. It’s mine.” He body closes in around her as he leans in for a kiss. “Come inside?”
“You kept pouring so you could take advantage of me.” She doesn’t move away despite her accusation. It won’t take much to convince her to go inside. “It would only humiliate my daughter more if I didn’t come home, you know.”
“You have a very unpredictable job,” Riley reminds her as his lips find a sensitive spot behind her ear. “Maybe you were called down to the training facility for an emergency.”
“Maybe.” Anna’s hands drop down to rest on Riley’s waist about the same time they hear more people returning from the roof. It’s the catalyst Anna needs to relent and go inside. He knows it so he reaches behind her to unlock the door where they can disappear before anyone else sees them.
God forbid it be Marissa on her way home.
“Let me have your phone.” Riley takes Anna’s phone and sends off a text. She looks down and reads Had to go to Command Center. Will be home soon. “Now she won’t worry.”
He tosses the phone onto the end table by the sofa. His hands return to her face. When he kisses her now it isn’t gentle or sweet, this is hungry and hard and desperate. His breathing is fast and ragged; his body tense; and his energy screams at her to come closer.
Anna knows, kissing him back with equal intensity, that she’s in no shape to make the kind of life decision they’re heading for. It’s more than too many glasses of wine. It’s the years of want and longing that culminate in this moment. She needs to touch him, feel him, to be a part of him as badly as he needs her.
Riley pulls back so he can look at her. His hands still frame her face. “How far do you want to take this?”
She bites her lip. Of course he would put her feelings and needs first. Anna reaches up and runs her fingers across his lips, thinking. She knows there isn’t going to be anyone else in her life like this. Riley is now and has always been the only one, but it’s still not the right time to take that final step. “I don’t want to do anything we can’t take back.”
He gives her a wry smile. “I think we’re already past that point.”
He has a point. She leans in to kiss him. “I’m not ready to finish this yet.”
“I understand.” Riley’s eyes focus on her mouth before he pulls her back toward him, his lips hard against hers. This time Anna lets him sweep her up and off her feet. She doesn’t feel any fear when he passes the sofa by and carries her back into his room. “Then just lay with me a while.”
He breaks away from her long enough to settle her gently down on his bed and then brings his body down next to hers. Riley’s hands mold her as tightly to him as she can be but Anna has different ideas. Hers is a gift of touch and she can’t stand this kind of closeness without feeling him. She finds the bottom of his shirt and allows her left hand to slide against the bare skin of his back.
Riley decides he needs to help out with Anna’s idea and quickly tosses his shirt across the room. She sighs happily, her hands roaming across his body, chasing the goosebumps that rise up. Muscles tighten and jump as her fingers pass over them, the heat from his body warming Anna through her own clothes. He groans in her ear before his lips continue to track a path along the column of her neck and down to her shoulder.
A shiver runs down Anna’s spine making goose bumps jump up her arms, too; when she feels Riley’s right hand slide until the soft fabric of her sweater, she almost comes to pieces right there. In a moment of bliss, she considers tossing her fears to the wind, but then she clamps down the thought. She uses the weight of her own body to roll forward with him so that she can pull her own sweater off to reveal a cream-colored tank and more of her skin. “I need to feel your skin against mine.”
His hand runs along her sides and then shifts her body, she now straddles his hips. She can feel him pressing against her in the most intimate way, hungry to join with her, but not willing until she’s ready. “You must be the most beautiful creature to walk this world.”
“You’re biased.” Anna leans down to kiss him, her hands taking in every emotion he had to offer despite the gloves she still wears. He’s so open, dropping every shield he’s ever learned to live with, giving her such access to his emotions that she’s almost overwhelmed.
His arms lock around her and he rolls her onto her back so that he’s perched above her.
His lips come back down on hers; gentle and sweet again like all the aggression has bled out of him. Against her lips he smiles, “Is this enough?”
“For now.” She nips at his lower lip. “Just hold me and love me and one day, when I’m ready and the time is right, give me every last bit of you: the parts of you no one has ever seen or ever been a part of.”
Riley smiles. The words are ancient vows and the vow of a Fallen is binding until death. He kisses her again as his hand runs down her side to push at her tank and expose the soft skin of her stomach to be skin against skin. “I give you all of me until death choses to part us.”
∞∞∞
The alarm on Riley’s cell phone wakes him with a start. He’s curled around Anna, her back pressed against his chest, in the position they’d slept most of the night. She groans as he reaches over her to hit the snooze button. It’s five in the morning.
“Oh!” Anna holds a hand to her head. He doesn’t know why she insisted on being up so early. Surely Marissa doesn’t get up before sunrise on a Sunday.
“Stay here.” Riley kisses her shoulder and settles back down, pulling her tightly against his body. They don’t need to be downstairs for today’s staff meeting for hours, the last thing he wants to do is get out of bed.
“I need to be home before Marissa gets up.” She tries to slide out from under the blanket, but Riley’s strong arm holds her down.
“Please, stay.”
“If you want to snuggle in the morning you need to date someone who doesn’t have a teenager.” She rolls over and kisses him firmly on the mouth. The warmth of her skin against his stirs his body awake, but not the way that makes him want to get up for work. “I have to get home now.”
Riley sighs, resigned to keep his promise to not push her, and lifts his arm. A rush of cool air replaces Anna’s warmth under the covers. He feels hollow at the loss of her body next to his and clamps the emotion down as quickly as it forms, no need to burden her with that. “I don’t want to date anyone else.”
“Then live with it.” Anna slips her clothes on quickly and then leans down to kiss Riley again. Her lips linger against his longer than necessary, then she stands and grabs her shoes. “I’ll see you at eleven.”
Riley rolls on his back, completely awake, and watches her walk toward the door. “Fine. Go home. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
When he hears the front door close and lock behind her, he closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. The sheets and pillow smell like Anna’s shampoo, the residue of her energy clinging to him and his bed like a ghost. He’d lain awake for a long time after she fell asleep to listen to her breathe and to feel the warmth of her body against his. The fierce feelings of possession warring against logic: protect her.
He smiles and opens his eyes. Anna would kill him if she knew h
e thought that way. She’d always been independent and too quick to point out she doesn’t need anyone’s protection. It’s that independence that kept her alive – and probably what drove her out of Orasul in the first place.
Riley pushes that thought out of his mind. He can’t dwell on that, to live in that place.
Tossing the blankets aside, he gets out of bed. There’s no way he’s getting back to sleep now. He might as well shower and head to the office early. Today, everything is about to change.
∞∞∞
The biggest problem with living in an underground city is the light – the lack of it in the morning. With no windows to let in the morning sun, it’s very difficult to wake up without an alarm. Since Anna forgot to set hers when she snuck in early that morning, she’s very late when she wakes up.
She isn’t too surprised to look at her cell phone and realize it’s after nine in the morning. She overslept, has a hangover, and is very happy no one was around to see her sneak in only four hours earlier.
The sounds coming from her living room, however, do surprise her. Marissa should have been at school by now.
Anna slides out of bed, pulls her robe on over her nightgown, and glances in the mirror, just in case. She can’t see any visual evidence of where she’d been the night before, so she opens her door and walks the few steps into the main part of her home, her stomach churning.
She’s immediately hit by the smell of baking chocolate chip cookies, a scent that oddly soothes her near sickness. Marissa’s doing some kind of Pilates-looking stretches in the center of the living room and cookies are sitting all over the kitchen table, counter, and there are even a few piles cooling on wax paper laid neatly on the floor.
“Marissa, what are you doing at home?” Anna looks from the cookies to Marissa.
“It’s Sunday, Mom, no school.” She straightens up from her position and looks at the clock. “I was starting to wonder if you were going to get up today. Don’t you have some kind of really important meeting this morning?”
“I came in pretty late.” Anna thinks about the text Riley had sent Marissa. “We had a situation.”
“Sure.” Cue to stop stretches and eat a cookie. When they lived out in the world, Marissa baked when something was on her mind. Guessing by the several dozen cookies spread throughout their home, she must have a lot on her mind. Anna wonders where she got so much flour this early in the morning on a Sunday. Are the shops even open this early?
“Is there something you want to talk about?” Anna’s stomach does a somersault to remind her it wants attention. She crosses the room to the table and picks up one of the cookies. It’s still warm. She takes a bite and starts her morning tea.
“Yeah, you’re old.” Marissa doesn’t notice when Anna winces at the word old. “I’m happy you and Riley finally got together. But, seriously, do you have to behave like…that…in public?”
“I’m not that old.” Anna’s voice sounds more defensive than she means for it to be. Thirty-three isn’t old. “I’m barely old enough to actually be your mother.”
“You’re missing the point.” She puts her hands on her hips and looks at Anna like she would if she were scolding a child. “Public. You were in public. Where my friends could see you. No one wants to think about their parents that way. I mean, do you have any idea how close together you were standing? It’s gross.”
Anna opens her mouth to defend herself and then realizes she’s about to start an argument with a teenager who’s lecturing her on the decorum of dating. And she is right about one thing. No one wants to think about their parents that way. Riley may not be Marissa’s parent, but she is, and heaven forbid she ever finds out what kind of things happened after they left the roof.
She goes with a safe reply. “I’ll do my best to be thoughtful of your feelings.”
“Are you working all day today?” Marissa smoothly lets the subject change and goes back to her Pilates. Anna can see there’s more than one thing on her mind. “Or are you going to be home?”
“I have a meeting at eleven and I don’t know when I’ll get out.” Anna feels a pang of guilt. She hasn’t spent enough time with her lately. Between her own intense training schedule and Marissa’s school there just aren’t enough hours in the day. “We can do something later tonight when I get home if you want. Do you need anything? We can go shopping down in the market if you’d like.”
“No,” Marissa’s face becomes really focused on the next stretch. “Actually, I wanted to know if it would okay if I spent the afternoon with some friends. We want to get some lunch and then we have permission to borrow one of the cars to go into that small town not far from here. There’s a coffee shop and then maybe a little bit of shopping. You know Christmas is in a few days and I haven’t had a chance to get you anything.”
“Oh.” Talk about not being needed. Anna centers herself to push away the sting. “Who’s driving and who are you going to be with?”
“We asked Mia to drive.” Marissa keeps her focus on anywhere but Anna’s face. “No offense, but she’s not anyone’s mom. Nick and Amy are going. Oh, and another boy from school, too.”
Anna does the mental math. Two boys, two girls. Potentially two couples. Scratch that thought. Let’s pretend it’s four girls. Anna can’t deal with couples right now.
Mia’s a responsible adult, she can be trusted with four teenagers and keep them reasonably out of trouble. As an added bonus, she’s deadly. It seems safe enough – especially if they promise to be on their way home by dark. Most demons don’t venture out in the daylight.
Math says this trip is safe.
“Okay.” Anna goes to her wallet and pulls out her ATM card. She shuffles money from her account at Orasul into a normal human bank for trips into the world. “Take this and don’t be crazy with it. I don’t have that much in that account.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Marissa takes the card and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You know I’d get a job if I could.”
“School is your job,” Anna tells her. Students in Orasul do not work. They’re expected to study and train. “You better text me when you leave the city, when you arrive at the coffee shop, and when you’re on the way home.”
“I promise.” She tucks the card into her purse and kisses Anna on the cheek again. “No big spending, text every ten minutes, no demons, in the car before dark, and stay out of trouble. I got this.”
Anna looks at the clock above the stove. It’s half past nine. She feels her nerves start to kick in. “I have to get a shower and get ready for this meeting. When are you going to leave?”
“We’re supposed to meet in the dining room at noon for lunch.” Marissa starts packing the cookies into small colorful boxes stacked on a chair. Anna looks at them and wonders where they came from. Christmas. Marissa must have been planning this bake session to give away as gifts for her friends for Christmas. “I’m going to take these and give them away, too. Is that okay?”
“I think that’s fantastic.” Anna gratefully watches the empty calories being prepared to walk out the door. “I won’t see you after I leave the house. Be careful and do what Mia tells you.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom.” Marissa smiles brightly.
∞∞∞
Anna arrives in Riley’s office much more prepared than she was the first time she was invited to a strategy meeting. Due to the nature of the meeting, she’s dressed in black pants and a black polo and remembers to bring a black three ring binder filled with note paper, ideas, and memos about the most recent string of demon sightings even though she knows this meeting isn’t going to be about any of that.
This meeting is to bring Kurt and the other officers up to speed on the second city and the Committee’s decision to keep Orasul in the dark.
She knocks on Riley’s door. He looks up from his desk and waves her in. “We’re going to meet in the main auditorium.”
“Not the conference room?” She’s surprised. Why would they need so much room?
&n
bsp; “I’ve asked all standing officers to attend this meeting.” He closes the file in front of him and stands up. “It’s time we’re all on the same page.”
“Wow. How does Committee Member Putere feel about this?” Anna falls in step beside Riley. He’s wearing a casual dress uniform: black dress pants, black polo shirt with his name, rank, and stars embroidered on it, and black shoes. She looks down at her own clothing, basic, casual black. She doesn’t have any official dress uniforms. “I didn’t realize this was going to be so formal.”
“Don’t worry about it; we haven’t issued you any uniforms yet. Putere’s not happy about it but he doesn’t have much choice. The whole city will know soon enough.” He opens the door to the auditorium and motions to the back left side. “Kurt’s back there. You’re officially under his command and should head back to his section.”
“See you later.” Anna nods at Riley and makes her way through the crowded room to where Kurt’s sitting with his arms crossed.
He motions to the empty seat beside him. “Have a seat, archer.”
“I really shouldn’t be here.” She slides into the seat beside him. “I’m not an officer.”
“You are now. Take this.” He drops an envelope into her lap. “I’ve been waiting for the paperwork to clear but I’ve run out of time. You can’t run a line when most of your own men outrank you.”
Anna folds open the letter and sees it’s a promotion. A big promotion. “Kurt, I haven’t done anything to deserve this.”
“Sure you have.” He looks over at her, the corner of his mouth turning up into a gin. “You stayed alive.”
“Roll call.” Riley steps up to the front of the room. The army secretary takes his place beside him and reads through roll-call. Sixty names, no one missing. Anna proudly responds when her name is called under the rank of Second Lieutenant.
“What I’m about to tell you is classified.” Riley addresses the full room. “You are authorized to share this information with enlisted when absolutely necessary. No information should be shared with the general public.”