Dehgoies closed his eyes as he angled all the way in, letting himself extend again once he’d found the right spot. Heat flushed his skin, bringing a low gasp, and he opened his eyes, studying her face, and her light.
He was faintly puzzled to see a hurt look there again.
“Ray,” he said, short. “Get over it. Now. Or tell me to stop.”
“What was it about her?” Raven said, her eyes still angry. “Why do you still want her?”
He gave her an exasperated look.
Even so, embarrassment flickered through his light.
He had been thinking about the other female seer.
He’d been thinking about her as she’d looked by that pool, with her stunning green eyes and that near-black hair and unusual face. He’d been thinking about her as he extended, remembering her light, almost without noticing he’d done it.
Or without admitting it to himself, maybe.
He didn’t pull out of Raven now, but propped his upper body up on his hands, staring down at her face.
“Really?” he said. “You want to talk about this now?”
“Show me,” she demanded. “Show me, or you’ll wake up with a knife on your throat, Dags. For real this time.”
He felt his jaw harden.
Glancing over, he saw another of Terian’s suits tongue-kissing the one who was still getting a blow job from the girl.
From behind the human woman, Terian let out a low gasp.
He’d taken Dehgoies’ advice and was fucking her now, angling into her deeper even as he motioned over another of the suit guys from the pool. Dehgoies could feel where this was going. He could also feel wanting off the girl. She was getting off on having all of these men.
She wanted more of them on her, and he knew Terian felt that, too.
Revik also knew Terian was about to oblige her, maybe more than she would have wanted.
Terian could be a sick fuck at times, yeah, but Dehgoies knew he didn’t get off on rape… at least, not for its own sake. Consensual sex, especially if it had an element of degradation or submission, got him off just as well.
Better, maybe.
Dehgoies knew Terry’s real fun would come from the males, anyway.
He’d brought the woman for him, Revik.
One of Terian’s favorite games was to obtain a number of relatively “straight” humans, meaning predominantly heterosexual ones, especially males, and push them into fucking one another in front of him. He would push them into letting him fuck them, too.
Generally, he would get them to beg for it, and he wouldn’t erase them afterwards, so they’d remember all of it later. They just wouldn’t have any idea they’d been coerced into doing what they’d done, by a seer’s light or anything else.
Dehgoies had no idea why it amused the other seer so much, but it did.
Terian would follow them for weeks afterwards sometimes, watch them anguish about whether or not they were homosexuals. Sometimes Terian would push them again, a few weeks later, get them to hire male prostitutes, or suck them off himself… amuse himself by pushing them into asking him for sex acts they never would have even thought up on their own, much less asked another man to perform on them.
Those were the ones Terry liked, the ones he developed mini-crushes on.
Since most seers were more or less “bi-sexual” according to the human parlance, the idea of being homophobic was somewhat foreign to them. Their issue with mates or lovers taking same-sex partners (or opposite sex partners, for that matter) tended to manifest more as jealousy or insecurity, rather than what the humans experienced across most cultures when it came to same-sex pairings.
Most seers found human preoccupations with sexual orientation bewildering.
For similar reasons, Terian’s obsession with tormenting humans on the psychology around same-sex couplings struck Dehgoies as pretty bizarre.
He felt Raven’s light slide deeper into his, and looked down at her again.
“Why?” he said to her, answering her question belatedly. “Why would you want to see that? You already know why I wanted her.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, exasperated. “It’s not that complicated, Ray.”
Raven shook her head, though, her lips tight with anger.
Dehgoies sighed, then opened his light.
He did it carefully, keeping the content of his conversation with the female seer locked away in the background, out of reach of his girlfriend’s light.
He let Raven scan him, though, at least in terms of his reactions to the other female.
When Raven finally clicked out, a few minutes later, he was harder than he had been, fully extended in fact, and his heart was thudding in his chest. Pain caught him off guard as he once more tasted the female’s light, as Raven pulled it back around him, examining it.
He felt Raven’s anger intensify again when he glanced down at her.
She lay there, frowning at him, her black hair in a fan around her oval face.
“Satisfied?” he growled at her.
“You liked how open she was?” She folded her arms, staring up at him, her voice short. “Is that it? You liked feeling her light?”
Dehgoies shook his head, but not in a no. “I’m getting bored of this, Ray.”
“Your cock says different,” she said, looking down pointedly.
Despite her words, her questions, the tone of her voice, he heard what might have been understanding there now, too. He felt her turning over what he’d shown her, making sense of it as she watched the ripples cascade through his light.
“Just admit it, Dags,” she said. “You wanted her light. You like the open light, that vulnerability she showed you.”
“So what?” he said, annoyed.
“So why not ask me for that?” she said.
He gave a low laugh, almost without meaning to.
She smacked him in the chest, hard, and he chuckled again.
“You have a lot of talents, Ray,” he told her. “Vulnerability isn’t one of them.”
“You think I can’t be vulnerable?” she said, a hurt note touching her voice.
He heard the hurt there, but he could feel the manipulation behind her words, and wasn’t particularly moved. As if feeling as much on him, she sharpened her voice, and that time he heard anger in her, real anger, along with a more subtle emotion he couldn’t quite identify.
“I told you what I wanted from you,” she said. “Why don’t we try now? Since you’re clearly in the mood for that kind of thing?”
He gave another disbelieving laugh. “You want me to try and impregnate you while Terian is raping humans in front of us?”
“Why not?” she countered. “It’s not like you care what he does. He’d probably be pissed off if you left him out of it anyway. Right?” She blew up her bangs angrily, muttering, “It’s not like the two of you do anything without your little cock-buddy in tow.”
Terian glanced over his shoulder, sweating from exertion.
He had the girl sucking a different cock now, but she looked wholly relaxed, her body moving liquidly with Terian’s.
“Don’t mind me,” Terian told him, winking. “Consider it a sociological experiment.”
Dehgoies felt his jaw harden again.
Fucking Terry.
Both of them, really. They were both out of their gaos d’ jurekil’a heads. He doubted the drugs even had much to do with it.
He was about to respond, when Raven’s light opened more, enough to catch him off-guard. The pain he’d been feeling from talking to the woman by the pool abruptly worsened, to the point where it nearly confused him, confusing the seer he’d met earlier that day with the one lying under him now.
It occurred to him that Raven was confusing that still more, deliberately infusing her light with that of the female seer with the green eyes.
He let out a low groan when she opened further, when she bled in more of the other seer’s light, and then she was ho
lding him back, fighting to keep him from losing control altogether.
When he could focus on her again, he saw a smile touch Raven’s lips.
“Ah,” she said, softer. “Yes. I understand now. I understand a lot of things now, Dehgoies, my love.”
“Fuck you,” he said, short. “This isn’t a good idea, Ray––”
“Why?” she said. “You don’t want a kid with me? I thought you wanted children. I seem to remember the thought of being a father getting you off on more than one occasion, too.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that.”
“Then what? I thought Galaith approved of us reproducing?”
“He did. He does.”
Dehgoies fought to clear his mind, confused suddenly.
He couldn’t think of a good reason not to do it, apart from the ludicrousness of doing it in front of Terian and his newest fuck toys while both of them were higher than hell on imported cocaine and Thai heroin.
He couldn’t find a logical reason, though, given everything.
It’s not like they hadn’t indulged in these types of sessions a few dozen times before. Still, something in him recoiled at the thought of doing something so intimate with Raven now, regardless of whether Terian was in the room with them or not.
Dehgoies found himself remembering what the green-eyed seer had said to him by the pool, trying to make sense of it, of how it even fit with what he was doing at the moment. It seemed like such a long time since he’d really given his actions in this area much thought.
He’d known for a long time he didn’t want a mate.
He didn’t mind having children, though.
Like Raven said, sometimes he even thought he would like that, to be a father.
Galaith made it sound meaningful, especially given what they could do for a seer child under the extensive resources and reach of the Org.
Galaith never pressured him about finding a life partner of any kind, even though Galaith himself had chosen to marry, and to remain exclusive with his human wife… or wives, really, as two of them had already aged and died over the years.
Galaith had, on the other hand, made it clear that he wanted his senior officers to have children, preferably more than one.
Dehgoies had already decided he would try to do his duty in that regard, at least when the time was right. For years, he’d assumed he was simply too young to be fertile yet, but a few months ago Galaith assured him that the Org could likely counter the effects of his youth, that he could have a child sooner with them than he could on his own.
After that talk, Dehgoies had decided he would do it.
He thought he might even do it with Raven, even before she asked him. He thought he might even do it soon, but––
“Revi’.” Raven caressed his face, opening her light more, wrapping her legs around him. “Come on, baby,” she coaxed, sliding her light into his, kissing his face. “You want this. I can feel it. You want this.”
He did. He did want it.
He could tell himself he was being manipulated, that this was Raven, that she was playing him, playing his desire for that other seer, taking the opportunity to pressure him into having children with her.
He could know all that, but he couldn’t make himself care.
He could feel Raven’s light opening to his, and that softer, more vulnerable core of her aleimi, intensely enough that his reaction to it was only pain, even apart from the whispers he felt off that other seer.
He wanted to let it in. He wanted to let both of them in, in a way he hadn’t let himself want anything in years.
Decades, even.
“Fuck.” He gave a low gasp, even as he felt his control over his light slipping. Raven slid deeper into him, opening him up more, and he let out a thick cry. “Ray… please.”
“Let go, lover.” She spoke softly to him now, her words infused with light. He felt her pulling on him, gently prising open his light. “Let go. Trust me, Dags. Trust me, please. I understand now. I know what you want.”
He was already pinning her to the bed.
She let him. She let her body grow soft under his, knowing he would react to that, as much as the softness of her light. She knew how to pull on his light; it was the main reason he hadn’t kicked her out of his bed before now, and why he put up with her crazy shit like car bombs and threatening to shoot him when he didn’t do what she wanted.
She tugged at his light now, more subtly than usual, pulling at his walls and defenses.
The silver light of the Rooks got out of the way, helping him open more.
He let go of all of everything, even of who he was, who he thought he was.
Throwing caution to the wind, he opened his light more, enough that he felt dizzy, half-sick with wanting. He didn’t even know what he wanted anymore.
He knew it wasn’t Raven per se.
He didn’t even know if it was children.
As he lost himself in sensation and light, the two of them began moving together. After another handful of minutes, he lost hold of the room, too. By then, he no longer saw the sharp turquoise eyes of Raven gazing up at him.
The eyes he saw under him, glowing faintly in the dim light of the hotel room, looked green, instead. Not the green of the eyes of the woman by the pool, but a softer jade that seemed to hit at him somewhere in the middle of his chest.
He let out a low cry when he opened to what he felt there.
He wondered if Raven was fucking with him––with this light, with his head.
He wondered if that other female seer was fucking with him, the woman he’d met earlier that day. Fear hit him at the thought, a brief panic that he might be revealing too much of himself to her, that she might be an assassin or some kind of spy––but none of that felt right, either.
He doubted she’d approached him only for intel, although she could have been gathering intel on him, sure. She could have been lying to him about the rest of it, feigning interest in him, feigning compassion. The whole thing could be a fucking trap, with her as bait. She had no infiltrator marks on her light, but maybe that’s why they’d used her.
Maybe they’d studied him, studied his light, known what he would react to, just like Terry knew with that married human, or Raven know about having his kid.
Maybe he wasn’t the target at all.
Maybe they wanted Galaith.
Or, more likely, maybe they were after the trafficking networks in Asia, just like the Org. Maybe they were trying to draw him out, draw his people out, pull all of them into some kind of trap, maybe for the Seven or the Adhipan or both.
He almost didn’t care anymore.
He couldn’t make sense of who she was, or even who he was, not in the wash of light. Everything on the ground felt trivial to him, incidental, like a brief wink of time. Everything he’d told himself that he was doing, the importance of it, the gravity of his life, all of it felt strangely small and petty suddenly, almost like he was treading water, biding time until his real life could finally begin.
He didn’t understand any of those feelings, but they colored how he viewed the green-eyed seer, how he viewed himself, how he viewed his job.
He couldn’t make himself feel afraid of her.
He couldn’t even be certain it was her he felt at all.
He still saw those green irises when he let go entirely.
By then he was sweating, gripping Raven’s narrow hips in his hands as he lost himself in liquid motion and light, groaning at every thrust, half-blind with pain as he fought to open more of himself. He’d never felt so much wanting before.
The wanting was bigger than him somehow, just like that impulse he got from her light.
It was more than he could handle, more than he could think past.
He’d forgotten Terian by then, and the woman in the blood-red bikini, and the roaches from the poolside bar who were probably sodomizing one another only a few feet away.
He’d even forgotten Raven herself.
&nbs
p; Seconds later, he felt himself let go of the green-eyed woman by the pool.
In the end, when he finally opened himself for real, he heard Raven calling his name. He heard real emotion in her voice, but somehow, he couldn’t feel that either, nor her fingers and nails where she gouged his back, trying to pull him further inside of her.
All of it felt far away, distant almost.
None of it felt close to him, not next to the certainty of those green eyes, staring up from him from an alien face.
It wasn’t the woman by the pool.
It wasn’t anyone he’d seen before, but that face cut his breath, stabbing at his heart.
Somehow, although he’d never seen it before, he knew it.
He knew it better than his own.
Eight
Hangover
HE WOKE TO a splitting headache, and a beeping sound he recognized.
Reaching over to the bedside table to deal with the latter, he jerked open the top drawer of the dresser with a clumsy hand, rooting around inside once he had it separated from the wooden frame. Within a few very long-seeming seconds, he snatched up a flat, stone-like device, looking for the finger grooves to trigger the organic back into silence.
He got them, eventually, but not before he was fully awake.
Raven, who sprawled out next to him, barely stirred.
Raising his head, Dehgoies saw a shaft of sunlight wafting through a break in the curtains. The light didn’t manage to penetrate much of the overall darkness of the room, but between that and his sight, he was able to make out the lay of the land.
They were alone again.
Raven lay on her stomach beside him, her hands and arms cushioning her head and the tangle of black hair that fell down her back. Her naked body stood outlined under the single, off-white sheet she’d used to cover herself, and her small feet poked out the bottom on the other end.
He didn’t see any trace of Terian’s playmates from the night before, or of Terian himself.
The only clues that they had existed at all resided in a few tokens left by the men from the poolside bar––a black tie here, a sock there, a pair of boxer shorts in a crumpled heap in the corner, a shirt folded almost neatly over the back of a crushed velvet chair.
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