by May Peterson
My gaze dropped to him, losing its will to take in anything else. Some strength seemed returned to him, but I was struck again with that impression of his breathtaking fragility, youth. Tenderness. I still didn’t know exactly how old he was. Or how old I was, which was something it occurred to me he’d know. He’d know many things of the Ari that had been, the hidden territories within me. I longed for him to teach me the map of myself, show me the paths and rivers I had once lived.
Maybe I didn’t need to remember. Maybe all I needed was for someone to walk the track with me, let me learn it all again.
Hei couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen when I had died, then. And even with the miracle of my rebirth, a rush of blood had taken it all away. His story snaked back through my thoughts—he had been like I was now. Ari had been the only person who was there for him, who knew who he really was. Who wanted to remember his name.
And he hadn’t been allowed to keep it. Only Kaiwan could give that back to him.
A ghastly fear fluttered through me—maybe he didn’t want the new me. The empty me. Maybe this all hinged on him regaining the Ari that truly loved him, had been his only family and his only hope. This Ari may not be enough.
I turned that around in my head, watched him lift his gaze, meet mine. Maybe. Endless maybes. I settled next to him, drawing nearer as he made room. I stole a square of meat from his bowl. “Do you want to sleep?”
He produced a blurry, non-committal sound and slumped against my shoulder. Mm. That was a satisfactory response, anyway. “A thousand times yes. But I can’t. If I sleep now, I’ll never get up again, and then I can just be another ghost here. Opening and closing the gates forever.”
The idea was too close to my own worries to be funny. But I petted his hair and nuzzled my nose against his temple.
He may not want me as I was now. But that might change. In time.
“I have to admit—” He sniffed, took another bite of cabbage, and put his chopsticks down. “I was picturing something...neater than this. That I’d be able to defeat Umber, if I really believed, tried my hardest, caught him in the right moment. That there’d be chaos to escape through, a race to Kaiwan’s, and everything would happen too fast for me to feel it all taking its toll. But in retrospect, I’m not sure being stuck in that building with Umber would have changed all that much.” He covered his face with a hand. “I think there comes a point when you’re so used to diving into risks, jumping or dying, you start to feel like each jump is a guarantee. Because it’s not like you have a choice anyway.”
I grinned in spite of myself. Truer words. But it made me ache to imagine him, back in Vermagna, deciding between seeking me out or dying. It might have come to that.
A smear of sauce had streaked across his cheek from his thumb, and I leaned in to lick it off. He started with a chuckle.
Our eyes met again. It was too much, and not enough. I put his bowl on the floor, coiled an arm around him. His throat quivered gently, but he didn’t break eye contact. All we needed was time, and we could probably rebuild it all, create something together. But the hours seemed to scrape me raw as they passed. This might be all we had.
I smoothed my palm over his arm. “You’re so thin. It’s hard to believe you can handle a sword that heavy so well. Or, well. Fight a moon-soul.”
His laughter shook his chest, and he slipped the weapon free under my arm so he could slide it next to him on the bed. “I’m stronger than I look, but desperation also counts for a lot.”
That it did. “How did you learn to fight like that? Another gift from your lord of bears?”
The corners of his mouth quirked up. It felt strange, looking at him so intimately, touching him. I had so little idea of what to say to him, what to think of his long journey around my life and death. I was a bigger person in his head than he was in mine. Considering that he seemed to dwarf my thoughts—casually striding in and knocking them all over, redefining my existence—that was a frightening concept. It was still like meeting someone new. Someone I was only just learning. My hands on him felt presumptuous, awkward. Had I used to touch him this way? Had I kissed him whenever I’d felt the urge, the way I did now?
Who was he expecting, underneath my skin?
“Not really.” His voice held an intimation of laughter. “I’m sorry, I keep having to remind myself that you wouldn’t remember. We’ve practiced this technique for years. It started as a dancing style, I think. A lot of girls and women in Vermagna formed these patrol gangs. I think they were sick of the homeless, the sisters, the little ones, constantly being in danger. They teach fighting to the children in the orphanages. We learned it from them.” He tilted his head up, our lips a mere breath apart. “We ran through drills, exercising, all the time. After you died... I kept practicing.”
And I pictured him in some dust-ridden street, a new night falling over him and everything he had lost. Going through those motions, a dance with a partner who was no longer there.
Fuck it. I closed the gap, touched my lips to his. My tongue probed his edges, tasting him.
With a groan, he opened to me, letting my tongue part his lips wider, the heat of his mouth burning through me like silvered spirits. The thought congealed that with all the holy water he drank, his saliva might sting a little—that maybe this was why kissing him was so intense. I didn’t care. My fingers combed through his hair, cupping his nape. In a moment, I had my wings arched around us, curving down like a dome.
And the tips knicked the sword behind him. I pulled away by instinct. “Ouch. Forgot about that.”
Hei winced. “Sorry.” He shoved the sword to the floor, its weight sliding under the opposite bed. “Better?”
I wanted to lick the expression off his face, savor his sweet features. “It’ll do.”
Diving back in felt like letting go. We may not make it out of this city. But here, years after my death, after ruin had stricken his life, we were here. He had found me.
Hei seemed hungrier this time, more urgent in his touch. His hands quickly tucked under my shirt, began rolling it off me. I leaned back and let him work, let him strip me. Uncover all the places that he’d known longer than I had. His lips took over, placing the kiss under his control, and they moved down my neck. Soon, I had wings stretched over the sides of the bed, and he was straddling me, our groins rubbing unctuously together. And the furnace of his mouth took my nipples, one at a time, leaving them damp and trembling with his blessed saliva. I kept stroking his hair, feeling him. He was so good.
But I couldn’t escape the question—had he wanted to see if my body was like he remembered? If I still reacted to the same things, the same touches? With immortality woven through me, coloring and scenting the planes of my being, was it the same?
Was I still me?
Hei’s teeth dug into the flesh over my collarbone, mild pain spiraling from the contact. It wasn’t enough to break skin, and it wouldn’t bother me if he did. Because fuck. That was surprisingly yes. His mouth passed up and down my neck like a swath of flame, laying wasting to the same sensitive nerves over and over, repeating the pattern of gentle bites.
“You want to taste my blood?” I asked half-jokingly, then heard how unfortunate the context would be.
But Hei didn’t seem to mind. He sucked a bruise into my skin, then leaned up on his arms, enclosing me. “Only if I could reverse the godhood. Take the empty blood and put the rest of you back.”
The rest of me. My remains. I sighed. Whatever they were.
I pushed up on my elbows, pressing me to him. One palm slicked over the small of his back, removing his clothing slowly. Groping below the waistline to the soft, round curve of that backside. I returned my own volley of rough kisses, watching redness and hints of quickly fading purple dot his skin in my wake. The sounds that were rising from him, mixing with the wet harmony of our mouths, were frustrated, ravenous, delicate.<
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The next few moments seemed to strip him by their own power, his clothes rolling under my fingers easily. Then he was completely naked, poised above me with one hand clenched by my ear. I gripped one supple calf, his legs remaining spread, the entire expanse of his sweet body exposed. He trembled, breath coming fast, and I watched with a feverish pulse as his cock gradually hardened while I held him still. It was like magic, how the sight of him dragged my hungers into view, made him an avatar of them. The dark patch of hair above his base, the paler surrounding regions in contrast to his tanned abdomen and legs. And his thighs were so, so smooth.
It wasn’t just that Hei was beautiful, though he was devastatingly so. He was like an orgasm had been patted out, given shape and heat, molded into human dimensions. Like every aborted echo of dreams I had once had, come back to life on top of me.
His breath hitched audibly, and I gently eased him down, let him settle on my groin. Fuck. This was exquisite. I was still mostly clothed, though the sensation of his hallowed saliva stinging my nipples made me feel delightfully sullied, owned. But with him, bare-ass nude, rubbing against the thin layer of my pants... I considered, for a moment, letting him frot me like that, seeing if the contrast and the silver-tang, his skin and friction, could bring me off in my pants. But that would be such a waste of what might be our last night like this.
His nostrils flared. “How do you want me?”
I swallowed. Hard. “Didn’t bring anything to lubricate. Just have spit, really.”
He shrugged shakily without quite looking into my eyes. “I can take it. You don’t have to go easy on me.”
With that, he ground the base of his perineum over the arc of my cock through the fabric. A gasp shot through me. Only the bandages were left covering any of his skin—and absently, I skimmed my hand over them, eager to feel him. The touch was like a burn, and I pulled back.
“Shit.” He panted. “I don’t want to hurt you. Here.”
When his hand moved to unwind them, I stopped him. “Wait. You’ll need that nearby. We don’t know how soon we’ll have to move, and it’s better you have more than the sword to rely on. Keep it on.”
His nod was jerky. “Ari. I... I think I want to try something. The timing is terrible, but I’m afraid we may not...?”
I inclined my head to indicate understanding. More desperation. May as well go for it now. “It’s fine. You can tell me.”
A smile flickered over his features. “All right. I... I want you to taste me. My blood.”
I could practically feel my pupils dilating. Why did that hit me so hard? I’d never been much of a blood-drinker. Maybe it was the unexpectedness of it, the sudden glint of taboo. “I don’t need that, Hei.” My voice might have betrayed my ambivalence, though. “Don’t think you have to do that for me.”
I hadn’t exactly said no—and he seemed to catch that, grinning softly. “I think it would be more for me. It...seems symbolic somehow. Maybe I can’t give the pieces of you back. But you can have part of me.”
Part of him. The significance of him here, with me, his softness, heat, woundedness, was all at once too much.
I ran my hand up his side, allowing the sacred bite to sear my fingertips. Tilting upward, I claimed his mouth again.
Maybe this was enough of an answer for him, because then we were moving, shifting positions. He squirmed to one side while I flipped my wings around, poised so my pants could be kicked to the floor. They pooled in a black puddle over the sheen of the sword’s hilt. Hei spread his arms for me, mouth damp and needy, a cascade of filigree moans filling the air.
Moments of pain spotted my senses, each flick of his bandages against me, the faint tease of virtue in his saliva. I balanced on my knees, creating space between us. “I’ll do it,” I said, panting.
“It will hurt you.” Hei bit his lip, which itself would have been enough to convince me. “Like I said, awful timing, but—”
“I don’t care.” My tongue ghosted over his throat again, tasting the shudders it caused. “Life is pain. Afterlife is pain. Let my pain be a piece of you.”
I had caused him plenty myself, just by dying alone. I would drink down this burn from him, let it claim the whole world inside me. Let it set fire to the shadows I had left.
Grunting, I pushed him down into the bed. He arched his back, his groin and hips rippling against me like a purr. The skin of his member was like satin, catching and stretching as I stroked it with my own. We had a few moments of awkward thrusting as we found positions. Hei’s eyes looked blown wide, unfocused, and his lips were darkened, swollen and glistening. How he could look so ruined, so completely taken apart, and yet so overwhelmingly important was beyond me. He was like the city, like Kaiwan and her microcosm of hopes, like the tundra and its stories written in fire.
“Stay with me,” I breathed into his ear. “I have an idea.”
He didn’t resist as I maneuvered his legs together so his thighs were touching. Carefully, I licked my fingers, getting them dripping wet, and began slipping them in between his loins. His gasp was miniscule and perfect. In moments, I had those stretches of skin gleaming, just like he’d done for my nipples. He straightened, held still as I straddled his lap. Good—I didn’t need to explain.
Slowly, I began working my cock between his clenched thighs, sliding into damp heat. Fuck. I’d forgotten how good this could feel. Supporting myself with one hand, I used the other to seize his cock and knead it in time with my rhythm. My hips were entirely on board, pushing my full weight into each pulse. In, slick, hot, out.
“I-I want you closer.” His voice shook. Fumbling, he pulled free a corner of blanket and folded it over his abdomen, covering the bandaged stripe. “Here, try this?”
Mmm. I pressed down, tested the position, and felt no sting at the contact. The dried bandages had less force, anyway, and there was nothing to seep through. This was perfect. I spread a hand over his brow, aggressively holding his head down. His breaths seemed to become flame and wind under me, unbearably hot and urgent. I licked up and down his collarbone, across the region where throat met shoulder, and set myself to fucking his smooth thighs.
Everything about Hei sung with tension—his mewls, his grasping fingers, the way he flowed into me with each thrust. My spit was drying, intensifying the friction, making it rougher—but sweat and pre-come joined, so his loins felt like a mouth sucking my cock in.
I kept sucking on that spot, the aching vulnerability of his veins. This would be so easy. All I needed to do was take a taste, watch his skin part for me like his lips had. Slipping a hand between us so I could keep fisting his cock, I picked up speed.
The hand in his hair came loose, sweeping over his neck, face, fingering his mouth, all of its own volition. I could take him any way I wanted, because he would want it too. He was here, with me.
Poised there between passion and pain, I raised my fingers. And willed two fine talons to emerge.
Hei gasped slightly at the sight of them. I ran the edges gently over his skin, his collarbone. I could just make out the phantoms of where Kadzuhikhan had cut him, healed too quickly to scar.
“Are you sure?” I gulped. “We don’t have to.”
His tongue flashed out, glossing his lips. “Do it.”
Hard to argue with that. With care, I ran the edge of one talon against that tender space—and pushed.
Hei’s breath took on weight, as if it were anchoring him to the bed. A stripe of vibrant red burgeoned from the line I cut. It made me brutally, erotically aware of what was happening—Hei, stripped completely, restrained under my body, gasping as I just barely opened his skin. The mental picture was abruptly breathtaking, dizzying.
I began my rhythm again, thrusting, jostling him against the blankets. And that furious crimson stripe gathered a shine, beaded bright as I watched. And I dove in, closed my mouth over it.
The first se
cond of taste blanked my other senses. The heated richness of blood was good, but this was annihilating. Before my tongue could identify the intensity, pain crashed down with it. This wasn’t like the chemical bite of silvered booze, or the lightning-bolt shock of touching Hei’s cloth. It was like biting into a piece of fire, and it refusing to extinguish in my mouth. It turned white, blinding, inside me, filling my head with diamonds.
And then it passed, striping sensations down my throat. The pain was diluted, as delicious as anguish. I pulled off, panting and trembling with a blood drop falling from my lip. My senses rushed back to me, and the way my cock was making love to the damp of Hei’s loins took on the same burning force. I thrust into him, feeling my belly rub his knuckles around his own heat.
I burst like a dam, pain and need and feeling destroying all my borders. Hei’s knuckles moved, and a wet shout rose from his mouth. My orgasm tore a blistering path through me, tossing me down on top of Hei, surrounded by his sweat, his scent, slashes of hallowed pain, as the waves of euphoria swept me away.
A few seconds later, I was grappling with each breath, face buried in Hei’s neck. A vague soreness permeated my mouth, and a chill was descending on my sweat-slicked skin. It took a surprising effort to tilt my head up, find Hei’s gaze.
He looked at me with eyes as black as jewels. Beads of moisture decorated his brow. “Timing’s pretty good after all.” He nodded downward, indicating the sticky warmth I felt on my belly.
I grinned. Laid my head down next to him, let my hair fall over us both. And tucked his head against my shoulder, allowing my virtue to spin out, heal the place from which I had taken.