Desire Me

by Skye Malone

  My body reassembles itself, coming back to the sensation of my sensitive breasts slipping against him, to my skin wet with the sweat that’s broken out over my body. I feel Amar grasp me tight, clutching my head, my back, and drawing me against him like he’s hanging onto me for dear life too. Huffs of desperation leave him. His thrusting accelerates. I rock onto him as hard as I can, giving him whatever I have and hoping this is good for him too.

  A quiet groan leaves him, choked like it would be so much louder if not for where we are.

  “Cait,” he breathes. “Oh god, Cait…”

  Joy bubbles up in me at the sound of my name, at the sound of his desire. His fingers dig into my skin. His thrusting becomes more deliberate, like he’s driving the last of himself into me and he’s breathing so hard, it’s like he ran a marathon.

  With a final gasp, his thrusts begin to slow. His body relaxes, as does mine. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, my throat, and I don’t have a hope of slowing it down. Beneath me, his breaths are ragged and for a moment, he simply lies there like he’s getting his bearings.

  My fingers release their death grip on the sheets. My body shakes when I push up from the bed to support myself on one elbow.

  Amar looks up at me. A smile teases at his lips.

  I smile too. “Whoa,” I whisper.

  His smile widens. “Whoa,” he agrees softly.

  A blush burns up my already flushed cheeks. I drop my gaze. My god, and I thought last time was good…

  Biting my lip, I ease away from him, feeling him slip from inside me. I scoot down on the sheets, the fabric clinging to my sweaty skin, while he removes the condom and drops it into the small trash can that’s crammed in the corner between my desk and my nightstand.

  He returns to my side. I nestle into his arms. He adjusts around me, pulling me close.

  “Whoa,” he breathes again, a contented tone in his voice.

  I don’t think I’m going to stop smiling all night.

  Time creeps by, but I don’t want to sleep. Exhaustion weighs heavy on my body and my mind is swathed in a downy blanket of bliss, but none of it matters. I don’t want to let go of this moment. I’m going to savor it for as long as I can.

  My gaze slips toward Amar. I don’t know if he’s asleep. He hasn’t moved since we curled up here, his head on my pillows and mine on his chest. His breathing is slow; every time his lungs fill, his skin brushes lightly against my breast.

  And like everything else right now, it’s wonderful. The simple, soft contact makes me so happy.

  I don’t even know why.

  “Cait?” Amar whispers so softly, I can barely hear him.

  I glance up again. “Yeah?”

  “You’re still awake?” He sounds surprised.

  My shoulder shrugs.

  “You okay?”

  I can hear the concern in his voice. I move a bit so I can see him more easily. “Yeah. You?”

  He nods, but the question in his eyes doesn’t fade.

  “It’s nothing. Just…” A breath of a chuckle escapes me. “Happy, I guess.”

  He pauses like he’s heard something in my voice. “Okay.”

  I hesitate too before resting my cheek back against his chest. His hand begins gently stroking my hair.

  And I don’t know what to say. I am happy. Maybe a bit desperately so. I know I should be concerned with all the questions about my mother, about the Touched, about these talents succubi and incubi supposedly have. And I am, somewhere inside. But right now…

  Right now I want to lose myself in the feeling that we’re normal. Human. That I’m lying in bed with a guy I met in class. That we could go out for a dinner date, or go see a movie, or do damn near anything like regular people do.

  That we could be ordinary.

  “What do you want to do after you graduate?” I ask him.

  His hand pauses on my hair. “What?”

  I shift around on the bed so I can see his face. “After we graduate,” I repeat. “Assuming all of this… I don’t know, gets sorted out… What do you want to do?”

  He stares at me for a moment like I’ve taken him aback. And then his lip twitches, his expression pleased and amused at the same time. “Grad school.”

  “After that.”

  He hesitates again, and then draws a breath like he’s prepping himself for my reaction to his answer. “I want to go work in space exploration—or, you know, the research that gets people out there.”

  My eyebrows climb. I remember he’d said he was taking quantum physics, back when he half-saved me from getting caught for nearly killing a guy in the men’s room. But I hadn’t expected that answer. “Seriously?”

  He doesn’t respond. I worry I’ve offended him. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I just—”

  “It’s alright.”

  “No, it’s—” I struggle to explain. “I just… I love that stuff. Like, Carl Sagan. Arthur C. Clarke. All that. I mean, fantasy was my favorite as a kid. You can’t beat Tolkien. And Charles de Lint is amazing. But the idea of space travel—”

  I realize I’m babbling and I cut off. Amar is watching me, though, this funny little smile growing on his lips like he’s holding back a laugh. But not at me. Not cruelly, anyway.

  “Sorry,” I flounder, blushing. “I just—”

  “Don’t apologize. It’s great.”

  The blush grows and I duck my face away. He catches my chin with his fingertips, pulling my face back toward him gently. “It’s great,” he insists.

  I nod, but I can’t help the way my cheeks are still burning. “So how’d you, um… how’d you get into that?”

  He hesitates. “My mom.”

  I freeze, worried that we’ve stepped onto a landmine of bad memories from his past. He doesn’t stop, though.

  “When I was little, she gave me a telescope for Christmas. Every night we’d go up to the roof of our apartment building and try to see the stars past the city lights. But even if we couldn’t, she’d still tell me stories about all the worlds that might be out there. Gas giants and diamond planets and places so remote, their sun is just another tiny star. And now, I’d like to be a part of finding them. Maybe even contribute to the research that helps us reach them someday.” He pauses. “Worlds entirely different than this one.”

  The implication clicks and I’m not sure what to say. His words steal my breath and make my heart ache, because I can just picture him. A little boy on a city rooftop, staring at the sky with his mother, dreaming of other worlds.

  And I can see the beautiful man who still does, for darker and sadder reasons of his own.

  He reaches up, his hand brushing a strand of my hair from my cheek. “Why’d you choose computer science?”

  I hesitate. “Computers make sense. People don’t.”

  His smile returns. “I get that.”

  “I guess I find programming soothing, you know? I mean, when it’s working.” I chuckle. He echoes the sound softly. “And creative too. Like… painting with code. Creating something that sort of doesn’t exist, but does at the same time. It’s like—” I cut off when I realize what I’d been about to say.

  “What?” He leans his head to the side, a curious expression on his face while he tries to catch my eye.

  “Magic,” I finish in a soft voice.

  Understanding takes the place of his confusion. He’s silent for a moment. “You know the first thing I ever did, back when magic showed up for me? I broke my little sister’s arm.”

  My eyebrows climb.

  “She was barely past being a toddler at the time. We were playing at this park near our apartment building. Just this little scrap of grass and concrete, really, but we had fun. She was chasing me and I was running—you know, half letting her catch up and then slipping away before she had the chance to reach me. But at some point, I got distracted by these older girls walking past, and she did almost grab me. I scrambled to get away, frantic because there was no way I was going to let my kid sis
ter actually catch me in front of some pretty girls, right?” His smile lasts only a heartbeat. “But magic came out instead. Rushed from me and shoved her back, making her fall hard. For a second, I was just frozen. I’d felt it leave me, but I didn’t have a clue what had happened, what I’d done. And then she started screaming.”

  I struggle not to fidget with discomfort. That must have been horrible, for him and her alike. But he’s sharing more with me tonight than he ever has about his past—about him, before his biological father came along.

  I don’t want to stop him even for a moment.

  Amar draws a breath. “I got her home. My mom and stepdad got her to the hospital. My sister kept yelling that I’d pushed her, that I was horrible and mean and all of that. And I was just dumbstruck. Terrified. I didn’t know what to tell them, except that it’d been an accident.

  “But my stepdad, he took me aside while we were at the hospital. Now, he had no idea what I was—none of them did. But he just had one question for me: had I meant to hurt her? I sputtered a defense, how of course I hadn’t and all that, and then he stopped me. Asked what was I going to do about it now? And I didn’t really have an answer. I told him I’d tell her I was sorry and try to help her get better. Take care of her. Be more careful in the future.”

  Amar chuckles. “I remember he smiled. Told me that was the crucial part. That what I did mattered, but what I did about my actions was even more important. People make mistakes and those have consequences, but if I’d told him the truth, then that said more about who I was inside than anything else.”

  He’s silent for a moment. “That stayed with me after… after I had to leave. It’s not the magic that’s evil. Whatever we can do, whatever abilities we might have… it doesn’t mean anything about us. It’s not who we are. Who we are is what we do with it, and what we do about anything that happens as a result.”

  I nod. I feel like there’s something else in the words, though. Like he’s trying to tell me something, maybe about himself as much as me.

  I just can’t quite figure out what it is.

  He traces his fingers along my jaw, his eyes tracking the motion. “Can I ask you a question?” he says quietly.

  I try not to tense, wary. “Yeah.”

  His eyes lift to mine again. “This weekend, would you like to come back to my place?”

  I blink, surprised by the shift of topic. “Of course.”

  He smiles. “I thought we might have dinner—and, you know, whatever else we feel like. Maybe just be ordinary for a while, you know?”

  A breath leaves me, bordering on a laugh. It’s like he read my mind. “I’d love that.”

  His smile doesn’t fade. “Me too.”

  I watch him for a moment, grinning, and I don’t know what to say. I lay my head back down against his chest.

  His hand returns to stroking my hair.

  Sleep begins tugging on me again. My eyes drift closed. Next weekend… I can’t wait. No matter what else is going on, now I have something to look forward to.

  It’s marvelous.

  But I still wonder what he was trying to tell me with his story.

  She’s asleep beside him, her head resting on his chest and her breasts rising and falling slowly. The night is peaceful, perfect, and fragile like glass. He’d stay in this moment forever if he could.

  And he wishes it was that simple.

  His eyes close. Of all the demons in the world, for her to be Josephine’s daughter. It’s unthinkable. Horrible.

  But he knows what he has to do.

  His brow furrows tightly. He’s aware that his plan resembles insanity, but he’s out of options and has no choice. And he wishes he could explain it to her, but there’s too much he doesn’t know how to put into words. More than that, though, he knows Cait. She’d never agree, regardless.

  She’d insist on coming too.

  He looks down at her, lightly running his fingertip across her cheek. Her skin is soft beneath his touch, delicate and beautiful. She stirs against him at the small contact, murmuring contentedly and nestling closer to his side.

  Pain moves through him, like an ache burrowing deep into his chest that somehow brings joy too. It’s so foreign to him, that feeling. He doesn’t want to name it. Doesn’t want to admit what it means. And that knowledge doesn’t make the pain go away.

  Love.

  He pulls his hand away with effort. Four little letters. One little word that all of his kind view as a joke, and it’s taken him whole. Stolen his heart before he could save himself and claimed him utterly, till he doesn’t want an escape.

  If he’s honest with himself, he never did. Not from her.

  Slowly, he lets out a breath. There’s a way to keep her out of this. A way to keep her safe. The only one that’s left, really. That vampire and troll can’t do it. Their plans are madness, and their conspiracy theories of magical Touched are too. But in spite of that, he knows they’ll tangle her up in their stories of saving the real Touched and ending the Houses’ meat-grinder of human lives. They’ll make her believe she can stop a system that’s existed for centuries.

  They’ll get her killed.

  But the Houses will do worse. Cait doesn’t realize the danger she’s in, not really. Alistair, Lucretia, any of the leaders of any House and all the neutrals out there besides… they’ll never let her go. They’ll never stop hunting her, not until she’s as dead as her mother. He didn’t tell Cait the whole story earlier. What they found. What was left of Josephine when her murderers were done with her.

  He forces himself to keep breathing. He can’t let that happen to Cait. He won’t.

  And he knows what he has to do.

  He only hopes she’ll understand.

  The bed doesn’t feel right.

  My brow furrows against the sensation. I shift around, only to find the other side empty.

  I open my eyes, but the rest of the room is empty too. Amar is gone.

  Again.

  I sigh. Yeah, okay, I admit to myself. I’d hoped he’d be here, since this is my place and Bianca won’t find out about us. I’d been sort of looking forward to waking up next to him, seeing as how I’d never done that before. Ever. With anyone. Especially him.

  I attempt to brush the thought aside. It’s fine. Maybe he’s just in the living room.

  Pushing the blanket away, I sit up only to pause when my eyes catch on a scrap of paper on the nightstand.

  Nervousness thrums through me, owing to the last time I found a note on a tiny piece of paper and all the hell that followed. Eyeing the thing like it might bite, I reach over and pick it up.

  Neat handwriting in black ink meets my gaze.

  Back soon. Stay safe. -Amar

  I bite my lip. I wonder where he’s gone.

  Setting the note back on my nightstand, I climb out of bed. Yesterday’s redecorating has left my room feeling as strange as the rest of the apartment, and I half expect to see entirely new, yet familiar clothes when I open the closet door. Most of my limited wardrobe remains, however. I pull out a shirt and then dig some underwear and a fresh pair of jeans from a drawer. Tossing them all on the bed, I head for the bathroom, only to freeze when I see myself in the mirror.

  Holy shit, I look like hell.

  A grimace twists my face. I pull my gaze from my scratched, tousled self. It’s nothing a shower won’t fix. Well, besides the bruises on my neck and the cuts on my arms, anyhow.

  Shivers pebble my skin. I dart into the shower.

  Several minutes later finds me dressed, with a scarf added to my outfit to disguise my neck and a long-sleeve shirt covering my arms. Leaving my damp hair down to help conceal my bruises, I brace myself for facing Ruby and walk into the living room.

  And then freeze.

  Two of the mercenaries are sitting on the couch. The third is in the kitchen. I think he’s making coffee.

  “Good morning,” says one of the pair on the couch. I don’t recognize him. Rough-skinned with a long ponytail and a
leather vest spiked through with metal studs, he looks like he belongs in a biker bar. Likewise, the auburn-haired woman with him is unfamiliar, as is the dark-haired guy currently sniffing the light roast he found in the kitchen cupboard.

  “Hey,” I manage, but I can’t keep the discomfort from my voice. I haven’t actually been alone with them before, I realize. Amar or Brett have always been with me. And yeah, I’d told Ruby she’d be fine with them here and I’m sure that’s probably right, but—

  “What time is your first class?” the guy on the couch asks.

  I blink. What?

  Oh my god, it’s Monday.

  My gaze snaps to the clock. Eight forty. My heart slows back toward normal. I’m fine. Class doesn’t start till ten.

  Are these people going to follow me?

  “Um—” I flounder.

  “Your friend requested we stay with you.” The first guy nods to the man in the kitchen. “He’ll watch the other girl.”

  That answers that question.

  “Yeah, alright,” I agree for lack of anything else to say. “Uh… my first class is at ten.”

  He nods. I retreat to my room.

  A breath rushes from me after I shut the door. Class. I have to go to class. Listen to a lecture. Take notes.

  Pretend I didn’t narrowly escape death last night after saving my best friend from the same only a day before.

  Easy.

  My hand presses to my face like I’m trying to remind myself what’s real. Maybe that’s why Amar left, though. I never found out his class schedule. It wasn’t exactly an important topic, in between rescuing Ruby and running for our lives. But that’s probably where he is.

  God, that man does normal too well.

  Struggling to focus, I start away from the door. I don’t remember what homework I had. What studying I was supposed to have done. It feels like someone else’s life, that world of classes and quizzes and papers from only a few days ago. It’s like remembering a foggy dream.