Mark of Betrayal

by A. M. Hudson

  “Good,” I said in a business-like tone. “Now, I have question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The mind-links?”

  “Mm?”

  “Did…” I tried not to smile. “Did you visit me—in our dreams—while you were supposedly dead?”

  His smile grew. “Maybe. Once or twice.”

  “I knew it.” I slapped my covers then looked back at him. “So…the yellow dress.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, I…figured I owed you a new dress—since I ruined the blue one.”

  “Ha! I can't believe you just said that.”

  He shrugged timidly.

  “And, what about the memories? Did you leave mind-blocks in place, or were you actually in those dreams with me, showing me all those things yourself?”

  “Many of those were memories—things we did before…” His voice trailed off. “I never placed mind-blocks. I erased those things, but only enough to hide them from a human mind. As you grew stronger, your brain lifted the sheet.”

  “Sheet? But you said you erased them.”

  “Nothing can ever truly be erased from a mind. It’s like a hard drive—unless you have some pretty high-tech equipment, there’s always an imprint left behind.”

  “Right. So, all those things you showed me about your childhood—”

  “You asked. I answered.”

  I nodded. “Did you want me to hate David?”

  He laughed. “It’d be nice if you did. But, no. I did and do want you to know what he’s like, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked at my cheek and wiped his thumb over it. “You have such a forgiving heart that, well, now I'm sure you’d forgive David if he struck you in anger—and his strike would not be a tiny slap.”

  “You only say that because you think I'm going to let Mike get away with it.”

  “No, I say that because my brother can seem to do no wrong. I’ve seen him raise his voice at you, and you only blame yourself—tell yourself not to push him. Ara, that’s a recipe for a submissive nineteen-fifties abused housewife. I just don't want to see you crying on a kitchen floor, punished because the Pavlova sunk, and, sweet girl, I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “You don't think very highly of him, do you?”

  “I love my brother. I do. But I know him—inside and out, and he’s old fashioned. He doesn't see anything wrong with disciplining his wife. It’s not a personality fault; it’s a time corruption.”

  “He’d never hit me, Jase.”

  He softened, stroking his thumb gently down my cheek again. “Neither would Mike.”

  I pushed his hand away. “And David would never even do that much.”

  “I hope not. And I hope, if he ever does, you would come to me—you would see it as an error on his part, and not just think yourself the problem.”

  “I wouldn’t. Okay? I know it might seem like I let him get away with being all controlling and forceful, but if he ever did anything to me that I didn't like, I’d leave. I have a no-strike policy with men, Jase. If he hits me, even once, he’s gone, because that’s not love.”

  “I hit you.”

  My heart sunk. “Jase. Don't. Okay? Just stop feeling guilty. Look—” I sighed. “Okay, you hit me, you’re a bastard. I hate you.” I grinned.

  He rocked his jaw, swiping his thumb across a tear on his cheek. “You were just so small and precious. Every strike felt as if you’d snap, shatter, like porcelain. I—” He cleared his throat, his voice breaking. “I hit as softly as I possibly could, but I—”

  I placed my hand over his, bringing him back from the world he’d slipped away to. “Don't go there anymore. Just, when you think about it, go to a place where we were happy, instead.”

  He flipped his hand over under mine and wound our fingers together. “Only if I can take you there with me.”

  I nodded, tightening my hold. “I will go anywhere, do anything to make you okay again. It kills me that you’re stuck in that torture without me, Jase. I'm okay. I'm here. I'm alive, and I…” I knew what I wanted to say, but couldn't let myself say it. Not ever. “I care about you. A lot. So, please, just…just don’t go back there anymore. Move on. Leave it behind where it belongs—in the past.”

  “See—” He moved forward and sat closer, tucking my hair behind my ear. “This is why I love you. Look how easily you can heal my heart. See how effortless it is for you to take my terrors away.” He shook his head looking down at his hand. “I just…I don't know where I’d be if I’d not found you.”

  I laughed. “What do you mean?”

  He looked up from our hands. “No one has ever cared so much before—to want to take my pain away and see that I dream of things that don't leave scars when I wake.”

  I stroked his dimple with my thumb. “I'm sorry you never found a girl who would see you the way I do.”

  His hand tightened even more on mine. “But I did find one.”

  I smiled softly at him, attempting to hide the sympathy. “Yes, but, I want you to have love—like David and I do. I want you to find your eternal person.”

  He chuckled. “Eternal person?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I found her. I'm just waiting for her to realise we were made for each other, then I get my happy ending.”

  I pulled my hand free. “That won't happen.”

  “I know.” He cupped his hands in his lap, nodding. “But eternity is a very long time. I can hope that, one day, you’ll feel the way I do.”

  “If you really do care for me, then you won't think like that. Because, for all the confusion I have in my heart, I only want David.”

  His head bounced in a kind of nod—to himself, I think. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Then I hope you never love me. I hope you and David live eternally happy lives together.”

  “Liar.”

  We both laughed.

  “I'm trying, Ara. I do want what's best for you. And if that's my brother, then, in my heart, he's who I want you to be with.”

  “Then you should stop touching me like your girlfriend. If he saw that, he’d be really pissed.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He moved his hands off my body. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Hey, can I ask you something?” He sat back on the chair beside my bed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn't you demand I give your ring back?”

  I frowned. “I didn't know that was an option.”

  “Ara, you never sit by and let things happen if you don't approve. If you wanted that ring, you’d have stomped your foot until I gave it to you. So, why didn't you?”

  I stared at him for a second. “You're reading into it too much.”

  “Am I?” With a boyish grin, he reached for my hand, pressed my wedding band into my palm and folded my fingers around it. “Or are you just not telling me what you really think?”

  I rolled over again, slipping the ring back in place. “Go away, Jason. You don't know anything about me.”

  “Oh, don't know anything about you, huh?” He pulled the blanket away, his voice light with humour. “I know your ticklish spot.”

  “No!” I squealed, jerking around as he dug his fingers into my ribs. “Stop!”

  He laughed, his voice deep and gentle, while his strong fingers forced my body to thrash about in a very unladylike manner, wriggling and screaming. But he seemed so young and so human when he played this way that I really didn't want him to stop—and he knew that, so he didn't.

  “See?” Breathless, a little puffed-out, he pinned both my hands beside my face and leaned right down. “I know more about you than anyone else in this world, Ara-Rose. And I know you didn’t ask me for that ring because you liked the fact that I had it. You liked knowing how it made me feel to carry it—as if I owned a part of you my brother never would.”

  “What part?”

  “The truth.”

  I stiffened; he smiled, and his eyes
slowly travelled from my face to where his legs rested between mine, Arthur’s button-down shirt rising up to reveal I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

  He released my hands and pulled the shirt to cover me. “What happened down there tonight, Ara?”

  “Where?”

  “In the training hall. Why were you down there—practically naked?”

  I swallowed, and the pictures of everything that happened flashed across my thoughts before I could stop them.

  He swept my hair off my brow, frowning. “Whoa. Ara, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “What?” I looked up, half panicked.

  “That’s what you were doing down there tonight? Arthur? Really?”

  “I…” I blinked a few extra times. “You saw that?”

  “Sweet girl, I saw everything.” He backed off me a little, resting on his knees, his hand on my open leg. “So that's what the dagger’s for—that’s what David wants it for?”

  “And that’s why he hasn't been coming to see me.” I grabbed my locket. “He can't bear it. He’s wanted to tell me so badly, but he knows I’ll fight him on it. He’s planning to just disappear.”

  Jason moved forward quickly, dropping his hands beside my shoulders, and looked down into my eyes, an intense stare swallowing all the animation from his face. “No.”

  “No, what?”

  He bit his lip, shaking his head. “No. I won't let this happen.”

  “What?”

  “I'm not letting you do this to yourself.” He reached down and started undoing my buttons. “I won't see you suffer my uncle’s touch then hate yourself for the rest of eternity.”

  “I have to.” I cupped my hand over his. “I can't lose David.”

  “But you can lose me,” he said, and rolled the shirt off my shoulder, opening my bare skin to the night.

  “Jase—” My hand slowly came up to rest along his face. “If you father the heir, you’ll be going to your death.”

  “Precisely.” He laughed.

  “Why would you want that?”

  “You don't know?”

  I shook my head.

  “You really have no idea what you are to me, Ara, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I…it would take a lifetime for me to show you how I feel. There are no words I could find to say it in one breath, and I love you just doesn’t hold enough weight for the feeling I have in my soul that you are everything. You are my life, my breath, my reason to get up, to smile, to live each day. I will never let you go.” He wiped his soft, long fingers down my cheek. “Don't you see? One day my brother will come back here, and I won't get to be with you anymore, and, eventually, that will kill me anyway.”

  “But, Jase,” I said, trying not to cry. “How can I live in a world without you?”

  He shook his head, taking in my half naked body as he peeled the shirt completely away. “Better than you can live in a world without David.”

  My whole heart tightened with sadness, because I knew it was true, and I knew I could love Jason for one night without hating myself as much as if it was Arthur.

  “Wait.” I pressed my hand to his abs as he lifted his shirt over his head. “Will David really hate me if I have a baby to stop him from dying?”

  “He’ll get over it.” He ditched the shirt and fell on his hands, his body over mine. “Think of the agony he's been going through these past few months, probably worrying whose hands he’d be leaving you in once he’s dead.” He looked down at my hips and cupped them both firmly, sliding me down the bed. “He knows this will happen, he just believes it’ll be when he's gone—cold in the ground. But it doesn't have to be that way.”

  I was surprised at that, really. I kind of thought he’d jump at the chance to have me for eternity.

  “No,” he said, having read my mind. “Not sad—not eternally grieving him, Ara. If you really do love him more than me, then you will not ever be happy again if he dies.” He reached down and unzipped his jeans. “We’re doing this. I'm giving you my child, and I will die happy, knowing that I at least left a part of myself behind—in you.”

  I closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths while he fussed about between my legs, taking off his clothes. And when his bare skin fell smoothly and warmly against mine as he came back down on top of me, I felt myself only more drawn to him. Ready for him. Wanting him.

  “I'm sorry, but…while I have you completely naked, I'm gonna do something I've wanted to do for a long time,” he said behind that mischievous grin.

  “What’s that?” I asked shyly, my cheek to my shoulder.

  “Kiss you somewhere naughty.”

  As if my body belonged to his every touch, my spine curved, making my ribs press against his, my chin tilting upward by command of his lips; his mouth opened, warm breath over soft skin, and traced lovely wet little kisses from my collarbones to my ribs, then over the line of promise.

  “This,” he said through the kisses, running a finger over my Mark, “looks incredibly sexy on you.”

  “I'm not sure I fit in a sentence with the word sexy,” I scoffed.

  “Tell that to my body.” He smiled against my flesh, taking his lips down my belly in a curve, finding the join of my hip and sneaking off to that patch of forbidden hair. I gasped, a rush of heat moistening between my thighs as his tongue entered me where no man had ever kissed before.

  I grabbed the edge of my pillow, opening my legs wider, trying not to moan loudly, but the glorious ability of this mind reader meant that he knew exactly where to put his fingers and exactly how soft his touch needed to be. He slid one finger slowly out and back in again, kissing me each time it entered.

  The electricity in my hands snapped, making me hotter all through my core; I drove them under my pillow and bit my lip, giggling inside.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “That kind of tickles.”

  He laughed, running his wet hands up my hips and to my breast, his lips following, his hair touching my chin, the faint smell of myself all over his mouth as he kissed my nipple, moving up my neck to my jaw.

  I wanted to reach down and grab him, slide him inside me, but he kept his hips away, reaching up to grab my hand as soon as the idea entered my mind.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Argh! You’re killing me!”

  His breath left his chest, tinted with a low tone of his beautiful deep voice, and I felt so close to him, hearing him that way, hearing his voice against my skin. I opened my mouth as he came to it, and let my tongue touch his—felt his lips perfectly shape to mine, his hands reaching around to cradle my spine, as if he couldn't possibly hold me close enough to drive the desire away. And as I wrapped my legs around his hips, felt the driving force of his love so solidly, so clearly in that first thrust, that I let out a little cry, scrunching my fingers into the flesh between his shoulder blades.

  “You okay?” he asked, laughing into the curve of my neck.

  “I just…” David was never that passionate. “I'm okay.”

  His hips moved away from mine, coming closer again, the muscles in his butt tightening each time. I never imagined it could feel this way—all of it; skin on skin, chest to chest, his thin body, so toned and so firm, pressing my breasts flat between us, while the sharp bone of his jaw rested against my head, his throat just above my nose and lips—just close enough to bite. There was a kind of energy between us, surrounding us, that felt solid, like we were grounded by a force outside our awareness.

  I leaned down and kissed the Mark on his arm softly, closing my eyes as I remembered the first time I saw it—how much I loved him even then.

  “Jase?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  He stopped for a second, and his soft hair tickled my nose as he drew back, then looked down at me. “I love you, too, Ara. For forever.” He leaned in and kissed my lips once. “And I will die loving you.”

  I rolled my head back and tilted my hips
up to meet his, inviting him to move in me once more; he obliged, keeping his chest and belly off mine, looking down between my legs, watching himself go inside me. And it was about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

  Hot liquid flooded my insides, making Jason grin as he reached down to press his thumb against a really sensitive spot.

  “Holy shi…!” I said, as if I’d just plunged down the dip of a roller-coaster. “What the hell is that?”

  “Clitoral stimulation.”

  “Oh.”

  He laughed, and I looked up—saw the amusement in his eyes, the tongue of concentration sitting in the corner of his smile. His thumb made my body do things it’d never done before—make noises my throat didn't know it could make, and I felt myself tighten around him, from the inside out, pulsing in little twitches as he acted on my every thought.

  At the point my body could no longer take it, he shoved himself hard inside of me again, hitting a spot way up that sent everything flooding back down. Moisture swam between us, his thighs wet against mine—the night air sweeping between us, cooling what was so hot I could hardly breathe.

  Jason moaned loudly then, his chest above my lips, his arms so tight the veins bulged around his elbow as he gripped the bed, holding himself at the deepest point within me. And I felt it—felt him release, felt his life force rush through me. We were One. There was no going back. A threshold had been crossed and the door closed. And I was nothing but content, even though I knew he would pull away at any second, because right now, he was mine and I was his—just the way I wanted it to be.

  As my gasps died down to soft breaths, he pressed his body to mine again, moving slowly, teasing that overexcited spot. I let out a long sigh, feeling so tight in all my limbs, but most deliciously, where he and I connected.

  “Ara.” He slid his hand behind my back, cradling my spine as he rolled me up, gently tucking my face against his chest. “I wish I could hold onto you like this forever.”

  And I felt so loved, so safe in his arms that I wished it, too.

  I angled my chin to his chest and kissed him where his heart should be beating, breathing deep his spicy cologne and the delicious orange-chocolate of warm blood through his veins, then wrapped both my arms and legs around him, squeezing his body tightly. I never wanted to let go. He was a part of me now, and always would be. I wasn't sure it meant I had come to terms with how I felt, but I was certainly face to face with it, unable to deny it any longer.