Bridge

by JC Andrijeski

  Looking up at him, I felt my face grow hotter. “Then stop. Don’t do this.”

  He shook his head, once.

  “No,” he said. “I think I want to be pressured right now.”

  Before I could think of how to answer that, he lowered his mouth.

  Pain exploded in my light when he kissed me.

  It started pretty much the instant his mouth met mine, and worsened when he parted his lips. I leaned up towards him as soon as the kiss started, wrapping my arm tightly around his neck, meeting him halfway as I kissed him back. I let out a soft groan against his mouth when he didn’t stop, caressing his tongue with mine, feeling his chest hitch and grow tighter as his weight got heavier over me.

  His fingers clenched in my hair and I lost track of where we were, of anything but his lips and tongue as my hands and fingers started exploring his skin. I gripped his back and arms, letting go of him only to touch him more, to pull at muscles, dig my fingers into his back, feeling the differences in his body. He’d been fighting a lot… a lot. Fuck. Something about what I could feel on his body and woven into his light drove my light completely crazy.

  I could feel everything on him, everything he’d been doing.

  When he finally raised his head, I was struggling to breathe.

  “No wonder I kept seducing you,” I told him. “Jesus Christ, Revik.”

  He didn’t answer, but I felt his body tense.

  He kissed me again, pressing his weight into me, pinning me to the bed, and I wrapped my legs around his. When he came up for air, I pulled him closer, kissing his neck.

  He let out a gasp when I used light in my tongue, then my teeth. My muscles turned to liquid as I wrapped around him tighter, sliding my way deliberately into his light, fighting a near desperation in my own. I tried not to go too far, feeling that caution on him still, a near-wariness, even as I gradually worked my way under his defenses.

  His skin flush hotter as I worked my way down his throat, and then I was using one of the structures I developed under the Lao Hu, using it to unfurl his light, to open him up.

  My skin flushed hotter when he gasped, leaning his face against my neck.

  He let out a heavier sound, almost a groan, when I didn’t stop.

  I looked up at him, still breathless, feeling the pain worsen as I stared at his bare chest, conscious of his erection again, feeling his pulse throbbing against the skin of my thigh. I could feel him fighting it still, the parts of him that were still fighting for control. I tried to decide if I should take off my clothes, or ask him to do it.

  I felt weirdly shy––nervous, even––maybe more than I ever had with him, including our first time, at that cabin.

  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; I felt his confusion around both pulls, even as his weight grew heavier. My 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. 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, making me gasp.

  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, and fought not to take it personally, to try and feel what lay behind it.

  “Revik.” I touched his face. “Talk to me… gods. 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 bit me, hard on the shoulder. I was still gasping from that when he 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 blinded me, turning his limbs and body liquid, sliding in and around my light, until I let out a pleading sound, wrapping my arm around his neck. He had his hand between my legs when I kissed him, his fingers inside me, and I cried out, gripping his hair as I arched against his hand.

  He still hadn’t said anything.

  The fear in my light worsened, turning into a near panic.

  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 to his, biting my lip.

  His gaze searched 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, right before he groaned, lowering his face to mine. He removed his hand, 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 tighten where I held him. He raised his head, looking down at me, studying my face. His eyes held what might have been a challenge, what might have been guilt, or nerves––or maybe all three.

  “I wanted to feel you.” He stripped his words of emotion. 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. I saw his face grow taut.

  “I wanted him to open his light,” he explained. “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.

  “…But he said no, Allie. Jon. 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. His fingers tightened in my hair.

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

  Looking up at him, I saw the challenge there again, and realized it was fear. Fear mixed with guilt stood out in his eyes, a deeper, older-feeling doubt and shame as he stared 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, pulling away from the edges of my awareness.

  “Yes,” I said. “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 shook his head.

  “No.” 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 murmured. “Gods, I want this so fucking badly. Does that make me an asshole, Allie?”

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

  “Is that permission?” he said. “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 said, speaking against my ear. I shivered and he leaned his forehead on my shoulder, leaned his weight, looking down at the rest of me. “Take them off, Allie.”

  His jaw hardened as he continued to stare. 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 in my ear. “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… bullshit you used on me when I couldn’t even feel you with me. I want you to do it to me now, when you’re fucking with me. I want you to teach me how to do it.”

  His pain spiraled out at me again, blanking my mind, even as his hand clenched on my hip.

  “I might not let you come for a while.” His voice grew harder, deeper. “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 a while. 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, 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 inside mine.

  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 thought I’d died… 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 all that, he let me feel the night he’d shown up at Jon’s door.

  He let me see how drunk he’d been, how desperate––how fucking desperately he’d missed me. How Jon felt like the only link to me he had left. He’d been so angry at Jon, too. He’d blamed him, 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, my doubt started 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, 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 finished yanking down the pants I wore. He groaned against my neck 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 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. “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 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.”

  “No separations,” he said, gasping the words. “No more fucking separations, Allie.”

  Feeling my chest tighten, I gripped him harder as I felt my aleimi sna
ke around his, pulling on his, pulling him into me. Something denser rose in my light, right before I answered him.

  Whatever it was made him flinch when it reached my voice.

  “No more separations,” I told him. “Never again, Revik.”

  He raised his head, looking at me.

  He just stared at me for a moment, still breathing hard from where I gripped him around the neck, our faces only a few inches apart. Then he startled me, breaking into a real smile.

  His accented voice came out short the next time he spoke, filled with so much love I felt my skin flush, even through the amusement I heard on the surface.

  “You fucking well better mean it this time, wife,” he said.

  Before I could answer, he lowered his mouth, kissing me again.

  Epilogue

  SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

  BALIDOR SAT AT the table, looking at the row of monitors without really seeing them.

  The third of the four windows into those smaller worlds remained dark, completely cut off from whatever occurred inside the four walls of that segment of the tank.

  Yet somehow, it was to this blank, lifeless screen that the Adhipan seer’s eyes returned more often than the rest.

  The blank screen meant nothing to his mind.

  Meaning, he didn’t think about why he stared there, not consciously.

  Once he’d thought about it, even for a few minutes, he understood why the cameras had been shut off. He’d seen Allie go in; he’d seen her talk to Torek on her way to the door. He even understood why he stared at the blank screen, despite the fact that there was nothing to see. It wasn’t because of what he knew the Sword was likely doing inside that room with his wife.

  The old woman, who sat across from him at the brushed metal table, clicked at him mildly.

  The noise, which she made with soft pats of her tongue on the roof of her mouth, came across as chiding on the surface.

  Even so, Balidor heard the softer grief beneath.