The Irreversible Reckoning

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  “Alright!”

  Jason clapped his hands and rubbed them together as we pushed our way into the already rowdy crowd. Packed from wall to wall with people who were shrieking with laughter, shouting at each other in excitement, or jockeying for a better view of what lay in the center of the open space, the room was positively writhing with life. Jason, Rohanna, Yumi, Rael, and I were side-stepping the people, and in the process, we passed two huge guys who had been laughing together as we approached, but by the time we were level with them, they were pushing each other single-handedly because their other hands held cups of some copper-colored liquid. When one of the guys, the smaller of the two, weirdly enough, pushed the bigger one hard, he stumbled into Rohanna and splashed that copper liquid right into her face.

  “Get out of the way, bitch!” He shouted at her, like it was her fault that he had fallen into her, and as though she had not been the only thing stopping him from crashing into the wooden railing and possibly falling into the pit twenty feet below. Rael reached out, grasped his throat, and slammed him down hard onto one of the wooden benches with so much ease that it was easy to forget the man was a six foot four behemoth of muscle and rage. Under Rael’s hands, he looked like a rag doll.

  “Whoa, man! Whoa, man!” He held up his hands in surrender, “Meant no offense.” He looked back at Rohanna, “Sorry, ma’am.”

  All Rael said in reply was, “Yup,” which was hilarious, because he was Pangaean, and with his accent, that slang term for “yes” sounded so much more badass than it did in our Earthean American accents.

  “I taught him that,” Jason told me, “But anyway, back to the fun! So, they knew people would go crazy without a little entertainment, which is how they devised this. The Lord of War’s Coliseum. That’s where he sits, the Lord over us all.”

  “Amen!” Rohanna and Yumi replied sarcastically.

  The room was huge and perfectly spherical, with levels of benches rising up all the way to the barred windows, like bleachers, as my mother called the ones we had at home, which were outside of the Shaming Stage.

  “Like we’re at a damn football game.” She had muttered furiously to my dad, who had gently shushed her and squeezed her hand.

  To our left, around the bend, was a literal throne, built from what looked to be pure black iron, something my dad had told me was almost impossible to come by and exorbitantly expensive when one did come by it. Behind his seat, the aisle in between the two rows of bleachers led up to a huge iron door, which more than likely led to the guard’s quarters, because it was from that door that the guards were coming in groups and taking their seats. I saw Commander Maxwell, walking with a small cluster of guards, and while they were all laughing and joking, he looked stoic, as usual. Mary Bachum walked in with none other than Rich Bachum, fresh from Shadow Village, it seemed. I watched them come in, her walking with her arm linked with his, and him walking with his typical look on his face of utter, unshakeable rage. The dark circles under his eyes were still almost black, giving him a countenance that was both sickly and yet sinister. Those black eyes were scanning the crowd, looking for someone in particular, it seemed, and Mary, talking quietly to him, with a slight smile on her face, seemed to be reassuring him, or trying to calm him.

  In Shadow Village, I had only seen him a few times, because, as my mom had told me, he was ashamed of his graphic injury, which had been very well deserved. Turns out, Rich had committed some atrocity against Tyre that had resulted in Tyre decreeing that both of his hands should be severed. As if that were not bad enough, he then allowed a doctor who had been on her feet for almost seventy-two hours straight to perform the surgery that would close the wounds. She had botched it, so his skin was grossly discolored, a purplish black, on the ends of his stumps, and the skin was tucked in, looking, and I do apologize for the gross simile, like the tied end of a sausage’s casing. My mom had told me all of this after I had seen him and his injury for the first time, when I was about ten or eleven. He had always been the ruler of our village, but when he made public appearances, he always remained a shadowy figure behind his Lieutenant. Somehow, just being that shadowy presence made him frightening enough that no one stepped out of line. But when I had seen his injury, which had happened as Mom and I had been leaving the market, and we had run into him and his crew as they returned to City Hall, instead of turning my head away, I had begun to cry, which had prompted Mom to rush me in the opposite direction before Rich could notice, thank the One God.

  As he took his seat beside his wife, he continued to scan the crowd, and I followed the trajectory of his gaze until my eyes fell on Brynna. I looked back at Rich, somehow knowing that it was her for whom he was searching, and sure enough, his gaze had stopped, the corners of his mouth had turned downwards, his eyes had begun to blaze, and though they were not red, the look was not diminished in intensity or in intimidation. She was talking and laughing with Illa and Janna, the three of them giggling like a clique of high school girls. I, for one, had never seen Illa laugh, and when she did, it made the harsher features of her face—her high cheekbones, her scarily piercing gaze, her lips that were always either smirking or pursed in a look of judgment or irritation—ease themselves just a little; though her features were still harsh, they were complimented by her huge smile and the lightness in her eyes. It sounds crazy, but the change was incapable of being ignored. My head turned on the side as I watched her, and my mind told me angrily that my heart was distracting me, which was crazy, because why would my heart play any role in this random observation of Illa? But still, I took my mind’s prodding to return to the observation at hand while scolding it on its ability to become so easily distracted by other musings.

  Rich was watching Brynna, and all the while, he was ignoring Mary, who was clearly trying to get his attention by continuing to speak to him. Brynna became aware of his glare, or perhaps she was aware all along and simply continued her conversation with Illa and Janna to annoy him with how happy the three of them were, because when she looked, she did not have to scan the crowd to find him. To my horror, she waved, first with one hand, and then with both. After that, she gasped, looked at both hands, theatrically “realizing” her own offense, and then, she blew two kisses at him, one hand at a time. My eyes were wide, and my mouth had fallen open, and I was too afraid to look back at him, but I heard Rohanna and Yumi murmuring about it, because they had seen, and I heard Rael’s deep chuckle.

  “She’s so bad!” Yumi whispered through her hysterical giggles.

  “She is the absolute worst.” Rael replied, still grinning.

  “I swear,” I muttered, “I don’t know how she has stayed alive this long.”

  “She kills anyone who steps to her. She’s been down there a million times.” Jason explained, and I looked where he was pointing, down into the pit. All around the walls, stuck up high, there were weapons. At the bottom were the smallest ones, like little daggers no bigger than an arrowhead and no thicker than a fishhook, and at the top were the most impressive ones, like massive swords almost as tall as me, some with curved blades, some looking like candelabras, with one thick center blade and several smaller, sharper blades jutting out from the center. There were several doors built into the circumference of the pit, and the ground of it looked to be hard concrete covered in sand.

  “She’s won every time.” Jason said, “That’s how she’s become such a legend. She gets challenged, she wins. She’s fought guys from the Lord of War’s ranks who wiped out whole armies and collected heads for fun. She’s destroyed guys double her height and triple her weight. She’s fought Unallied women who trained their whole lives to fight and kill.”

  “You are such a fanboy.” Yumi told him with a roll of her eyes, “But he isn’t lying. In the beginning, everyone placed their bets against her, including us.” She gestured to Rohanna, “Well, Rael didn’t, but he knew her outside of this place, so he knew what she was capable of.”

  “Even if I had no
t known her before this place, I would have known of what she is capable.” Rael replied, “It is in her heart. Fire, light, and shadow. So much hatred, so much rage. There is no stopping her. She is a force of nature all her own. My friendship with her before this place only affirmed what I saw in her the moment she stepped into my sight.”

  I looked at him, shocked at his admiration of her. He seemed like the kindest man, a gentle giant. To have such high feelings of her seemed out of place for him, but then, I didn’t know him that well.

  “We never bet again after that first time.” Rohanna continued, “In that very first fight, we thought it would be over in seconds for her, but it was not her for whom it was over in seconds. It was him. The boy they threw at her. Some Old Spirit boy who was in for rape. Don’t ask me how one gets arrested for rape in their world, but he was in for rape, and oh, he said such nasty things to her. The crowd was almost silent, because they wanted to hear the terrible things he said before the fight began. So then, when the Lord of War rung the bell, and he charged her…”

  Jason cut her off enthusiastically.

  “She dodged him, ran past him, scurried up the wall to the absolute highest tier of weapons, dropped back down onto her feet just as he ran back to her, and stabbed him clean through the front, straight out his back. She pulled the knife up… and up… and up…” Jason was acting out the scene, his hand outstretched, holding an imaginary blade, shaking in the effort of pulling up through imaginary skin and bone, “Through his stomach, through his chest cavity, breaking out of his neck,” He pulled his hand back, but immediately thrust it forward again, “and she stabbed him right in…”

  “The mouth,” Rohanna said, reclaiming the telling of the story, “Right in that terrible mouth that had wanted to yap and yap and yap his insults and disgusting taunts. The whole crowd was silent, and it was not because we had all just lost some of our stores of cigarettes and soap and condoms and playing cards and whatever else we had bet just so we could bet. It was because she was standing there, covered in the blood of a boy twice her size, clutching this huge dagger in her steady hand, and she was laughing. It was not this hysterical, nervous laughter, mind you. It was this very quiet, very bemused laughter, almost like she was surprised at what she had just done, but also like she found the whole ordeal entertaining. Adam had been brought to watch, he was beside the Lord of War, who was utterly dumbfounded, just…” Rohanna mimicked his expression by opening her mouth slightly but widening her eyes all the way, “But Adam? Oh, he was laughing right along with her, in exactly the same way. ‘That is my queen,’ He said, loudly enough so we all could hear, ‘That is my wife.’ Not to inform the few of us who didn’t already know that they were married. Not even to proclaim his pride, though that was obviously a part of it, and certainly not to state his ownership. He was saying it to tell anyone who still doubted her that it was not luck that had allowed her to win so easily; it was her. She is a fighter. She is a killer. She fights with no holds barred, as they say, and she kills with no moral hesitation and with the greatest ease. It is her.”

  “They go in most frequently.” Jason continued, “We make do when other people announce that they are challenging other people to the Coliseum, because we’re all sick and awful and morally depraved, and we just like seeing the bloodshed, but… Nothing gets this crowd of sick and awful and morally depraved people going like watching the King and Queen. They run these specialty trials sometimes, because we used to have these fights twice a month, regardless of whether someone gets challenged or not. They’ve been on hold since before you got here, because Tyre said too many people were dying, and they had not been given adequate time to redeem themselves. Because he’s a party-pooper. But anyway, people are chosen by the Lord of War, and they fight until one of them dies, and sometimes, he changes up the rules. One time, with Brynna, he said no weapons, and she was fighting a former Old Spirit dude who was still noble to the cause and who wanted to kill her to impress the Warden and Paul, who was in the audience.”

  “Oh, my God!” Yumi exclaimed, throwing her head back and closing her eyes, “That was one of the greatest ones ever!”

  “It took her a little while longer than the first, and she took one or two hits, which made the people who were still dumb enough to bet against her think they were going to win, but then, she stops dodging him and leading him all around the ring, and just pulls this epic assassin combo shit that went on for like, three minutes straight of her just like, gracefully hopping around him,” He was acting it out again, and I could not help but be very amused by how into it he was getting. I was fighting the smile and my urge to laugh, but my will to do both was stronger than my will to suppress them. “She was just kicking him and punching him and slamming his face into her knees, or head-butting him, and dodging these blind hits he was throwing, until BAM!” He froze, his arm outstretched, “She hits him in the solar plexus, and down he goes. Well, only one person walks out of that Coliseum. It’s not ‘fight until someone falls down or gets K.O.’d,’ it’s ‘fight to the death.’ So she stomped his neck.”

  “Remember the time Adam was in, and the Warden closed off the top and started filling it up with sand?”

  “Oh, my God, yes!” Jason replied, “It was a Time Trial. They put this big glass dome over the top so we could all still see in, and they had these acoustic things so we could hear what was going on, and Adam had… How much time would you say it was, Ro?”

  “I’d say about fifteen minutes.”

  “He had about fifteen minutes before this sand they were pumping in would fill the place and kill them all. Now, obviously, with sand, it’s going to get harder to move the more there is, so Adam had two guys that time, because there isn’t a single guy in this place that is matched to him strength-wise, so he always fights multiple, to keep it fair. And they didn’t even let them start fighting until there were at least ten inches of sand covering the floor. Brynna was really vocal during that one. There are little holes drilled into the top of the dome so that the guys inside could hear us out here, and she was shouting louder than any of us, and believe me, people were crazy during that one, because it was the first Time Trial ever, and man, every time that dome comes down, people go ape, because those are the most intense ones. I’ve got nerves of steel, and I walked out of here shaking like a leaf after that one.”

  “Yeah, because it got precarious. Adam took out the one guy before even a foot of sand had accumulated.” Yumi replied, “But the other guy gave him a run for his money. By the end, they were barely even fighting because they were clawing their way up, and Adam won because he was able to reach the top of the dome while the other guy got submerged.”

  “And he got to the top right in front of Brynna, and he had his hand on the dome, and she had her hand over his, and she was talking to him, assuring him that he was going to be okay. So when it was over, everyone was swooning over how ridiculously adorable they are.” Jason said. “Including me.”

  I giggled at that so hard, I had to cover my mouth.

  “Remember the time with Brynna and the water?” Rohanna asked, “That one made me envy her thigh muscles.”

  “Hey, man, from what I hear, she and the King are doing it on the daily, so no wonder she has thighs of steel, because I heard he’s got a fucking tank down there.” Jason replied, and Rohanna slapped him on the arm.

  “Don’t be so vulgar in front of Grace! And why are you even speculating on what he’s got down there?”

  “Because I’m awful and morally depraved.” He replied matter-of-factly, “Nothing more or less than that.”

  “Let’s move away from that conversation,” I said, neglecting to finish my sentence with “because he’s my father, unfortunately, and I’d really rather not speculate as to what he’s got down there.”

  Instead, I finished with:

  “And let’s talk about why you envy her thigh muscles.”

  “Because in that round, they were pumping water in, and again, Brynna wa
s not able to dispatch right away the woman they pitted her against, so it ended up with Brynna swimming up to the top, grabbing the holes in the dome ceiling, shoving the woman under the water, and holding her down there by wrapping her legs around her, and holding her there with her thighs.”

  “Whoa.” I said, almost against my will, because I did not want to voice any signs that I was impressed, even though I was, mildly. Their resourcefulness was plain, and their ability to survive being thrown into the ring multiple times was impressive.

  “Have any of you ever been in?” I asked, and they all grinned at what seemed to be a private joke.

  “Rael has,” Rohanna replied, “But the rest of us have been lucky never to get challenged, or to be in a position where we have to challenge someone else. Hopefully, we never will be, because though I can fight when I have to, the people who volunteer themselves or the people who challenge other people know they can fight whenever, wherever they are, and they like the fighting and killing. I do not.”

  Finally, someone who didn’t relish in taking lives and hurting others. It was so refreshing, and her stance on the matter seemed to be mirrored in her girlfriend, which was good.

  “I would love to fight.” Jason said, “But I’m a nerd. I’m good at taking stuff apart and figuring out how it works and then putting it back together in such a way that it works better than it ever did before. On Earth, I built robots, for God’s sake. And yeah, they were fighting robots, but their fighting prowess was in no way a reflection of my own. I was on the Dean’s List every semester of my first three years of college, up until the world ended, and I was a virgin until I came here, until a nice Pangaean girl named Willa found me cute and exotic, and I will love her until the day I die. I wish I could also say that I am an ace fighter, but I am a nerd, through and through, and even with my evolution, I suck at it. So I’d be dead in five seconds, and then I’d look like an idiot.”

  “Not to mention you’d be dead.” I replied, “And by the way, I happen to think all of that is roundly impressive, and…”

  “Shh!” He exclaimed, and everyone in the room rose, including Rohanna and Jason, who grasped me by either elbow and pulled me to my feet. The Lord of War had entered the room, and he was joined by none other than Tyre himself. Apparently, Rich Bachum was not the only member of the Highest Order who had chosen to come watch the festivities. Behind Tyre was Paul, whom I had only met once or twice when he told my parents about me possibly joining some kid academy in his hometown, which they had not wanted to hear, even though he had made it sound like it would be a lot of fun. The Warden gave up his black throne to Tyre, and there was not any hint that he was angry about having to sit on one of the cushioned benches. But he was not sitting yet, because he was obviously about to give some speech.

  “Thank you all for coming, and thank you all for your respectful silence.” He said, “As you can see, we are joined tonight by none other than the One Sanctum and his two right-hand men, Rich Bachum, husband of Mary, whom you all know…” There was a scattering of applause. The Schemer Snitch people that Brynna had talked about, no doubt. Mary beamed in response to the noise and even waved. Rich scowled. “And Governor Paul Valz of Blancstizia is here as well. Can we show them our gratitude for them joining us this evening?”

  Everyone clapped, and a few people whistled or cheered quietly. I watched Brynna, Illa, and Janna as they clapped slowly, grandiosely, all three beaming hugely and waving, clearly mocking everyone around them and not caring if the Warden, Paul, Rich, or even Tyre saw them do it.

  “Tonight, we have one of our Specialty Trials, so if you have placed preliminary bets, you may want to rethink them.”

  “Too late,” Jason muttered to me, “Once you throw in your betting items, you’re in. That’s why I don’t bet until he’s done talking.”

  I nodded.

  “First and foremost, may we bring out the former King?”

  I gasped softly, because I had not known that Adam was going to be in the ring. When he walked out, there was rather hysterical applause, far more intense and passionate than all of the earlier scatterings of applause combined. Brynna cheered loudest, screaming out, “Yeah, baby!” to get his attention. He was waving to the crowd just as sardonically as she had been pretending to do, and when his eyes found her, she blew him a kiss, to which he grinned.

  “The former Rexprimus of Purissimus, Adam Elohimson.” The Warden said with a note of distaste in his voice that was not necessarily towards Adam but towards the reception he had had with the crowd. The cheering died down because the Warden was obviously waiting for quiet so he could introduce Adam’s opponent.

  “Now, like I said, this is a Specialty Trial, so Adam will not be facing his usual two opponents. Tonight, he will be facing four, and a surprise fifth.”

  The chattering began immediately, whispers of how it was not fair, it could not be done, not even Adam could fight off five men singlehandedly, especially not if they all grabbed weapons right off the bat and charged him.

  “Just five?” Adam asked, and the crowd laughed in genuine amusement and began to cheer again.

  “But to make it fair,” The Warden continued, “Adam will be allowed to choose one member of the audience to fight beside him. Adam?”

  “Is that really a question? There is only one being on this Orb whom I would want by my side in a fight, and luckily, she is also the one being you lot would most want to see fighting by my side.” He turned around to face Brynna, “My love, will you join me?”

  Brynna grinned, and then jumped down into the ring, landing with perfect grace on her feet.

  “Is that even a question?” She asked, and she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. For a moment, I thought that the crowd would melt into a puddle of admiring “awwww’s!” Instead, they clapped and cheered, and some people whistled. Adam murmured something to Brynna while his forehead was pressed to hers, and she nodded, before pressing her lips to his again. Even after seeing them together in the intimate setting of his bedroom, away from the prying eyes of their admirers and haters, it was still strange to see them there: him, six and a half feet tall, still so muscular despite his imprisonment, his hair that distinguished gray, the lines in his face etched in almost gracefully, despite all he had endured over his long life. His stature and his face were almost at odds with one another, because they were of a super soldier and a scholar, respectively, and yet together, they worked for him. She was a whole foot and a half shorter than he was, and she was femininely muscular; the shirt of her prison uniform was cut to show her toned stomach and arms. When she was away from the prison populace, her eyes were the same blue as mine—the blue that many described as “electric” or as “blue as ice,”—but in their presence, one of her eyes was black and one was white. Those eyes, coupled with her pin-straight auburn hair, long, thin nose, high cheekbones, and permanently red lips, she looked not so much like a beauty queen as she did a vixen. Hers was not a traditional beauty, like Janna’s, and yet it was unsurprising that men would fight and die for her. It was unsurprising that the King of all Purissimus would want her, even though he had already had a woman who was considered to be the most beautiful of all. The two of them standing together just made sense, the same way that she and James standing together made sense. James was the vision of a handsome knight, full to the brim with cunning and courage, able to fight to the death as well as woo a new woman into his bed every night. Whether it was beside her royal soldier-scholar hybrid, or her knight, her strange beauty was complimented by and complimented theirs.

  “Let’s bring out their challengers now, shall we?”

  The doors across from Brynna and Adam opened, and her hand reached down to grasp his as the challengers presented themselves.

  “They have to fight them all at once!?” I exclaimed in horror, because everyone was muttering in anticipation and trepidation as they watched the three men and one woman make their way into the ring. One was at least a foot taller than Adam and twice hi
s weight in muscle. One was a few inches taller than Brynna but was covered in the tribal tattoos of the most brutal Unallied tribes, the ones who killed Old Spirits and Red Anarchies indiscriminately in the worst ways possible, who were rumored to eat their victims… The third was medium height and build, but I was watching as he eyed the huge blades high up, and figured that he must have known that he would be able to get them, and the last was a woman the same height as Brynna but even more muscular.

  “Yup! All at once.” Jason replied excitedly, “Isn’t it awesome?!”

  “Anyone want to rethink the bets they have placed?” Tyre asked after the crowd had quieted down, and the Old Spirits who were somehow still loyal to him laughed heartily while everyone else either ignored him or whispered that perhaps they had placed their bets too early. Most, though, ignored him, because they believed they had placed their bets in the right place.

  “On my count.” Tyre said, and my eyes found James in the crowd of guards seated behind him to see that though he was masking it well, there was still a hint of worry in his eyes. Perhaps it was visible to me because I knew of his love for her, and to everyone else, it was invisible, but I saw it, and I wished that I could tell him that I was worried about them, too.

  “Three…” Tyre said, and Brynna looked up at Adam as Adam looked down at her.

  “Two…”

  They were communicating silently, using her power. They were planning.

  “Now!” Tyre pronounced, and simultaneously, the four charged Brynna and Adam, and I feared that it would be over before it had even begun. All four of those formidable opponents charging them at once would surely be impossible for them to overcome. But it was not over that quickly. Adam wrapped his arms around Brynna’s middle, lifted her high into the air over his head, and threw her with all his might towards the wall before they could strike him. As she flew through the air, he wrapped two of the men in a headlock with each of his arms, but by the time she had reached the top tier of the weapons stores, the huge man had tackled Adam around the middle, and his grip on the other two men was forced to release. The woman grabbed one of the arrowhead-like daggers from the bottom store and ran over, slashing at him wildly. Twice, she cut his face, getting dangerously close to his eyes, but each time, he turned away, dodging just barely. My eyes were fixed on him, filling with tears against my will, even though I had no attachment to him, or at least I did not think I did. But I was ready to cry, watching as he took hits in the stomach from the strong man’s boot, as his face was cut by the knife, as the Unallied man stood back, laughing… Everyone was watching him, everyone was worried that soon, he would be gone, or, if they were loyal to Tyre, they were anxiously awaiting the moment that he was gone. He flipped them off of him twice, got a few punches in, but then the huge man would kick him back to the ground, and the woman would come flying at him with her arrowhead, even more enraged than before.

  When Brynna dropped to the ground, holding with ease a knife as tall and heavy as she was, the crowd roared with cheers. In both hands, she raised that knife, making it look as light as a baseball bat, and swung with all her might. She did not grunt or grimace, she merely scowled as the blade found her target, the huge man, and cut halfway through his thick, muscled torso. The man tried to turn to her, not thinking about which direction he was turning, and the blade cut into him even more deeply; it was burrowed at least a foot inside of his abdomen now. The other three opponents were in such a state of shock at her strength and brutality, and at the spray of blood from the large man, and at the way she ripped the sword from inside of him with no mercy. They were so shocked that they were paying Adam no mind. The large man dropped to his knees, his blood splattering all over her, staining every inch of her red, and she held the monstrous blade at her side for a moment, watching him as he tried to staunch the bleeding, as he began to realize the futility of it, and then, as the crowd began to stomp in unison, and the chant of “Reine, Reine, Reine,” began as a quiet murmur but began to rise to a hungry shout, she spun gracefully in a circle, bringing the blade up as she completed the turn and then, with the force gathered from that quickened spin, she brought that blade down perfectly through his throat, severing his head from his neck in one whack and sending it flying through the air up into the crowd, who caught it eagerly and threw it back to her.

  Once she had caught it in one hand, she held it by the top of the man’s hair and raised it up for all of us to see.

  They roared. Applause, cheers, whistles, and actual animal roars sounded, and the stomping seemed to get louder as the crowd ate up the violence and brutality of it, as they marveled at how epically powerful they presumed her to be. All around me, fangs were exposed, even Jason’s, even Rohanna’s, and to my absolute horror, when I saw them all, my own fangs emerged for the very time, and I felt my eyes as they flickered over to the bright white of the hunting gaze. The energy of the room flowed into me, filling me up with the desire to watch them win, to watch them destroy these evil pawns of Tyre, the man who had taken my parents from me, whose laws would have bound me by marriage to Caspar, who had placed me there in that prison, who had shot me while I was still within my birth mother’s belly… I had seen the scar on Brynna’s lower abdomen; I knew what he had done, and I wanted to watch Brynna and Adam kill the men Tyre had put his faith in.

  Because that was who they were. That was why they were so loved. They were the faces of opposition to Tyre’s reign. They were the most prolific figures standing against him. They were rebellion, and insolence, and loyalty to the ways of freedom that they had enjoyed before the Fall. They were anarchy.

  “Come on!” I screamed, over the roar of the crowd. “Kill them!”

  The woman over top of Adam was still distracted. He snatched the small dagger from her hand and without hesitation, thrust the blade up beneath her chin, into her mouth from below. The chanting changed from “Reine!” to “Rex!” immediately, as he pushed her off of him, ripped the knife out, and slashed her throat with it. By then, the Unallied man had regained his senses and tackled Brynna around the middle. She crashed onto the ground with a thud and a crack, and though everyone gasped or exclaimed in horror, she still did not grimace in pain or cry out. My suddenly enhanced hearing homed in on them, drowning out the shouts of “Rex! Rex! Rex!” from the crowd, and as the Unallied man’s hands ran hungrily up and down her body as she tried to get back up, as she fought him, Adam charged across that arena with a roar that shook the room. The Unallied man was against the wall, his hands were ripped from his wrists, and his head was crushed in before he had even realized that he was no longer on top of her. Then, Adam was back beside Brynna, ushering her onto her feet carefully, steadying her once she was upright again.

  “Where is the fourth?” I heard her ask somewhat breathlessly, and they looked up to see the man climbing the walls with such a lack of agility that it was actually hilarious.

  “I have this.” She told him, but he grasped her hand to stop her from walking forward.

  “You are injured.” He said.

  “I am fine. Watch.” She reached down to take the small dagger from his hand, and then, she walked over to the cabinet and grabbed two more.

  “Brain, spine, heart.” She told him, and he chuckled softly to himself and stood back. The man had reached the cabinet he had been searching for, the one that held gigantic two-pronged claw-like objects. But he had not reached it or scurried back down fast enough. In a blink, Brynna had thrown the three daggers, perfectly hitting him in the back of the head, in the heart, and through the middle of his spine. He crashed to the ground, dead before he hit.

  The crowd that I thought could not become more ravenous became so. They were screeching, roaring, stomping, banging their fists against the wooden railings that surrounded the viewing area platforms, their voices shouting, “Reine! Rex!” interchangeably. He wrapped his arms around her middle from behind, and I thought that she was shaking slightly, but I was so drunk on the sight of them, on the sigh
t of the dead men and the dead woman on the ground, utterly destroyed, that I did not worry myself over whether she was shaking or not.

  “May we have the grand finale now, Warden?!” Brynna shouted up at him, and the crowd went silent just like that, though the palpable rabid energy was still felt by all of us throughout the room.

  “Oh, yes.” He replied, “Tyre, you will love this. These creatures are yours, after all.”

  The last door, the thickest one, rose, revealing a hulking shape, eight and a half feet tall, long, scraggly black hair, black eyes, clad in fur and armor. A Dark Giant. I had never seen one, and apparently, neither had the rest of the crowd, or perhaps they were just shocked to see one standing down below them, staring down their two heroes. They were even more terrifying than I ever could have imagined. Truly, just the sight of it standing there chilled my blood to the last drop, and yet I could not look away. The room was silent as every eye stayed fixed upon it, but then, when it charged, it was as though some invisible hand had turned the volume of the room immediately back up to the highest level. The screaming, roaring, and chanting began anew, just as loud as before, if not louder.

  The Dark Giant was surprisingly agile. With one huge arm, it scooped Brynna out of Adam’s grasp, lifted her above his head, and slammed her hard onto the ground before Adam had even realized that she was no longer in his arms. Her head slammed against the ground, and when the beast ripped into her with its short black claws, she did let out a soft grunt, but not a moan. Her hands came up, and with all of her strength, she punched him twice but only broke more bones, this time her fingers. She managed to scoot her way out from under him, and after flipping onto her stomach gracefully, she kicked her foot back twice into the ugly thing’s face, breaking its nose but doing little other damage. Scrambling up the wall, she found a slightly larger dagger as the Dark Giant threw a charging Adam back into one of the other walls with almost a snort of laughter. To him, even the great Rexprimus was nothing. Brynna turned, swaying on her feet but still keeping her back straight, her eyes hard, her expression set in stone as she threw the knife directly at the creature’s forehead. It swung its hand, again with surprisingly responsive reflexes, and knocked the knife out of the air where it clattered to the ground. As it continued to charge towards her, she threw another knife, and then another, and each was dodged by the creature with ease. Finally, the last knife in the cabinet was thrown and found its target’s forehead, but even a knife straight through the brain did not slow the creature down. It merely snorted and shook its head back and forth until the knife fell out and clanged onto the floor with the rest. Then, it resumed its charge, and Brynna, seemingly resigning herself to die with dignity (or at least that’s what her thoughts said), stood up straighter, preparing to be crushed against the wall.

  But while the Dark Giant was agile, Adam was more so. He had grabbed the huge sword that Brynna had used on the large man, and with so much force that the muscles and veins and tendons in his huge arms flexed, he swung the blade into the beast’s side, throwing it off of its path. It stumbled away, turned easily mid-stumble, and began to charge again, but Adam had already dove back in front of Brynna. With one hand, he held up that monstrous blade, because his other arm was draped back, across her, keeping her pressed gently to the wall, protecting her. The monster ran towards them, but Adam raised the blade, held it out, and just like that, the fight was over. The Dark Giant was impaled, it dropped to its knees, Adam ripped the knife from its middle, and hacked off its head with one chop. The crowd screamed even louder. I screamed even louder, cheering with everything, with tears running down my cheeks, while my whole body shook with laughter and sobs, and Jason, Rohanna, Yumi, Rael, and I were standing with our arms around each other, cheering and crying and chanting along with the crowd, as Adam and Brynna moved into the center of the ring, standing up tall, their hands clasped and raised to the sky, both beaming. When the door opened to let them out of the ring, they walked out, hand-in-hand, waving to us all. I swear, if any of us had had roses, they would have been thrown with gusto at their feet.

  As we filed out of the arena, everyone was either talking loudly about how epic the fight had been or still chanting. But as I walked out of the room, my eyes found Tyre, Rich, Mary, Paul, and the Warden. As the Guards filed out, looking sour, the Big Five stood in a loose circle, speaking quietly. Tyre’s face was red, and so were his eyes. He was not shouting. From the relaxation of his face, I could see that he was mainly calm, but as we passed, I once again homed in using my advanced hearing.

  “Do not let another man run his hands over her like that.” Tyre was saying to his brother, and I was shocked, because I had thought that his anger was the result of Adam and Brynna winning the fight, and not the result of the way that either of them had been treated during it.

  “I cannot control what happens in the Coliseum, as you very well know, brother.” The Warden replied, sounding bored.

  “You can. You should have had your guards shoot him the moment he touched her that way.”

  “Well, it is over now, and your precious girl has lived.”

  “Lived?” Paul asked with a sound that was half a derisive snicker, half snort, “It seems to me that she has thrived. As many of these fights that she has won, she has gathered herself quite the following, hasn’t she? It is very dangerous, Warden. Very dangerous, indeed.”

  “As long as they are locked away, they are not dangerous, Paul.” Tyre hissed, “Send the Elohimsons some Slumber Root and a bottle of the best drink in your stores, and brother?”

  The Warden’s unarming gaze turned to him, and he looked especially menacing even when he looked like the typical petulant younger sibling.

  “Though you said it with such derision, I will tell you that she is my precious girl. You will do well not to forget that.”

  Brynna

  My body was begging to give in, but my stubborn mind would not allow it. The guards walking us back to Adam’s room were not friends of James, and therefore, they were loyal to the Warden and to Tyre. My broken ribs throbbed excruciatingly with each step, and even in Adam’s very gentle grip, my broken fingers were aching. I knew that he would heal me as soon as we were inside, but there were worse injuries inflicted upon me that night besides the broken bones and the bruises. Fighting for my life, though I had made it appear like I found the whole ordeal to be hugely thrilling, was traumatic, to say the least, and killing even those who deserved it brought me only small joy. More than anything, it brought me relief, and I was certainly relieved that Adam and I had survived once again, but my body was wrought with pain, and my skin prickled disgustingly where the Unallied man’s hands had groped me, and all I wanted was to fall into my husband and feel him holding me, and to hear his voice comforting me. Over our twenty-three years together, I had moved further and further away from the idea of self-soothing, though I was certainly still capable of doing so. But being married to Adam, and having him as the one constant presence in my life, and as my undefeatable support system, had made me reliant upon him and his comfort. He knew when I needed his comfort, and he knew when I needed my space. He knew that over the years, I had moved away from needing my space into needing his comfort more and more, and that was fine by him, and fine by me.

  My mind was swimming in dark thoughts and darker memories as we walked. Steeling my mind to the entry of Adam’s mind was easy enough, considering how overwhelmed I suddenly felt by the flickering images in my head. They were spinning like a roulette wheel, those images. I could almost hear the clicking of the wheel’s stopper as each memory passed by. Finally, the wheel stopped spinning, landing on the memory I least wished to remember in that moment.

  After a particularly brutal fight, in which I had spent almost half an hour fighting in water that was gushing in from the domed ceiling of the Arena, I killed my opponent by holding her under the water with just my legs. Now, this was after we had already fought physically, so I was bruised, bleeding, and exhausted once
the fight ended, but most importantly, I was in desperate need of Adam. The Warden had never failed to send me to my husband’s room after a fight, perhaps as a reward for giving the prison populace such an exciting viewing experience. But that night, I was brought to his room instead.

  The door closed after the Warden had waved his hand to tell the guards to leave. Immediately, he rushed to me, wrapped me in his arms, and crushed his mouth against mine. I gasped as his tongue attacked my tongue, and as his hands held my body to his so tightly that I could barely breathe. He had never kissed me, and after that night, he never would again. As strange as it sounds, the kiss felt like more of a betrayal to James and Adam than sex with him did.

  “I worried for you this round.” He told me, as his lips moved down to my neck and began to kiss and suck feverishly, with no skill or precision at all. The kisses were forceful, the sucks even more so, and I shuddered terribly when I thought of how the purple marks he sometimes left on me would be darkened almost to black if he continued to suck on my neck so hard.

  I suppose I should clarify that the Warden was not a bad lover so much as he was too focused on his own power. He was too subconsciously (or perhaps consciously, I do not know) focused on making it known that I was the subordinate and he was the master. He held the power, and I did not, so when he kissed me, he did so more to feel the touch of his lips on my skin than for me to feel them there, and when he had sex with me, he did so quickly, almost as though he wanted to finish before I could even come close to finishing, not that I ever could. That night, though, there was something different about him; he was trying to arouse me, to make me want him, though I had told him before that nothing he could ever do would make me want him, and he had said that he did not care. But that night, he lifted me and carried me over to his desk, where he laid me down and began to remove my pants.

  “I worried for you,” He said, in between the feverish kisses, “I almost called it off, but that would have given us away, and we cannot have that. But it is not just my relief that you are alive that drove me to bring you here. It is that I have never seen a fight so brutal, nor have I ever seen a warrior so skilled. And you are a woman. A bloody woman has brought me to my knees this night. I needed to have you. But…” His lips began to creep down my stomach, “But only this way. This way they tell me you love. My guards. They say they have heard how you moan so loudly that you practically scream when Adam’s tongue is buried between your legs. I have never done it before, because we are forbidden, for it is unclean to do so…”

  But how many women’s mouths had been around his cock, to put it bluntly? Our womanly parts were “unclean” and therefore unfit to sully their pure and holy mouths, but their manly parts were as clean and holy as the rest of them, and therefore, we ladies should have been more than happy to wrap our mouths around them.

  I do apologize. This all still makes me angry.

  He had looked at me, his eyes alight in the glow of the torches.

  “We are not meant to give up our power to any of you in this way, but I will tonight. I will because I worship you, Brynna Elohimson.” He had whispered breathlessly, “This night, I lay myself at your feet. I lay myself before the altar of you, and I am yours to command.” He began to work my underwear down my legs, but my knees pulled into my chest to stop him from burrowing his face between my legs.

  “I want to go to Adam.” I had said, though I knew that I was risking angering him greatly.

  He had looked up at me, surprised, because he had thought that his appeal to me was somehow erotic, that it was making me want him as much as he wanted me. I knew that if I did not want to suffer any of the ill effects of his rage, I had better explain.

  “I am so used to being with him after a fight, and I was afraid that I would not see him again, because I was worried during this fight, as well. Just like you were. There were a few times when I really thought that I was going to lose. Let me go back to him. Please, Warden.”

  He had stood up, smoothed his hair back into place, and looked away from me, his face very slightly contorted into an expression of confusion. But beneath it, I had seen, for a moment, a flash of hurt. He had taken me to Adam, and once I had been behind the barred doors of my husband’s room, Adam had rushed to me, and I had rushed to him, and holding him with my arms was not even enough that night; I had to scurry up his strong torso and latch myself onto him with my legs, as well.

  Obviously, I had not told him what the Warden had done because that would have given us away. But the consequences of spurning him after he had laid himself before me so eagerly would make themselves known, I knew, and that scared me. Adam whispered to me so many times that I was safe, but I knew that neither he nor I were truly safe. After a while of hearing it, though, I began to believe it, just a little, and that was enough to calm me. That and him had been enough to calm me.

  So when we were finally locked inside of his cell after our fight with the Unallied man, the large man, the woman, and the Reaper, my body gave itself up to him. The night was meant to be filled with sex made even sweeter by our triumphant victory (or at least that is what our rabid fans imagined in their beds), and it would be, but not until I was calmed and healed.

  With ease, he scooped my legs out from under me and carried me in his arms to the bed.

  “No, I am bloody, don’t mess up the blanket.”

  “I do not care one bit about the blanket, my beauty, and you know it.”

  He laid me down, and very gently maneuvered me out of my clothes. His eyes ran down my naked body, assessing the damage done, and I laid still, wanting to sleep, as he began to heal me. His healing power filled me up with the most potent feeling of peace, because it was his love that enabled him to heal me with just a touch of his hands or his lips. That night, he healed me with his lips, first by pressing them to my broken fingers.

  “Not yet, my love.” He whispered softly, “You cannot sleep until I heal your head.”

  “So tired.” I whispered, as his lips moved up to my forehead. “But I want to take a bath.”

  “I know, and you will.” He kissed me down my chest, finding each bruise and healing it, and then, he kissed each broken rib, holding his lips there for a long second each time. Then, he kissed me slowly up my chest, stopping to gently enclose his mouth over each of my breasts, because though I was tired, I had never been tired enough after a fight to not want him. When his lips pulled my nipples back, sucking gently, my breaths came in a little more deeply and a little more slowly. My legs fell open, and I took his hand and slid two of his fingers into me as my breasts heaved further into his mouth.

  “Are you in pain, my love?” He whispered after his lips had found their way to my ear. His fingers were gently moving in and out of me, curling up slightly to find my spot so easily. A sigh left me, and my hips rose as his fingers slid in and fell as his fingers slid out. I shook my head, and when his finger ran along my jawline and turned my head, I returned his soft kiss.

  “No pain.” I whispered when our lips broke apart for just a second, “Not anymore.”

  My head tilted back further against the pillows, and my breasts pushed further into the air, as he positioned himself in front of me and spread my legs as wide as they could go. His fingers were no longer working on me, and the heaviness of my desire for him and my need to come were almost painful, in the best way possible. I reached out between my open legs and undid his belt buckle and zipper in a blur, and with both hands, I grasped hold of him, finding him already hard, as I always did. The sight of me was enough for him. The feeling of my smooth skin and my soft breasts under his hands, of my erect nipples between his lips, or of my lips beneath his lips was enough for him.

  I was so ready for him, because after a fight I was always ready. As I watched the men and women I killed die before me, at my hands, or as I watched him crush the life out of men and women, I began to picture my body entwined with his, my legs wrapped around his strong torso, his tongue between my thighs…
It was where I felt safest. He was the calm, cool center of my chaotic world, and I was his. In our bed, with our naked bodies clutched together, we were safe. Our bed was our oasis.

  But that night, a beast found its way into our safe haven. I remembered the man’s hands on me for just one second, and that one second was enough to break apart the warmth inside of me and fill me up with cold.

  “No,” Adam whispered gently, and his strong, warm body came down to press against mine, “I know, my love. Look at me. Look at me now.”

  I did. My eyes met his stunning green ones, and my rapidly throbbing heart slowed back down to a normal beat.

  “It is just you and me, sweetheart.” He told me, “I would kill him again and again for you.”

  “I know. I want you, Adam. Don’t stop. Please. I want you.”

  “Shh…” He kissed me, “I know. Your heart is calming. It was just a slight shock.”

  “I’m sorry.” I whispered, because how many times did the poor man have to deal with my emotional breakdowns? How many times over our twenty-three year marriage had I remembered Michael, or my father, or that man, Ray, in the woods, and how many times had Adam held me and rocked me back and forth, and told me that I was safe? How much could one man take?

  “Stop that.” He told me, and his voice was a strange mix of firmness and gentleness that only he could master, “I love you more than my own life, and I would do anything for you. You know this. I would die for you, my love. Truly. With not a second thought. Nothing could ever drive me away from you. You are the love of my eternal life. Do not think that comforting you is a chore for me, or that it is somehow inconveniencing me. I love you, and I do not care about anything but ensuring that you are happy and safe. Alright?”

  I nodded, and a tear fell from my eyes, because I knew that all he had said was true.

  “I know. I love you so much, Adam Elohimson. Even now, after all these years, I love you.”

  “I know you do. I know it every day, my love.”

  “Good. Now make sweet love to me.”

  He laughed softly and kissed me hard.

  “As you command, my queen.”

  Despite the brief hiccup in which my mind had become muddled by what had happened with the Unallied man, Adam was able to make me come twice in a row, first while my legs were up on his shoulders and he was thrusting into me from the front, and the second time after he had flipped me over, pulled me so my back was against his chest, and let me get myself off by bouncing on him until I came. Both times, I rose, climaxed, and descended quickly, because now that my body was healed, my mind was focused only on him. After the second orgasm had left me almost in tears from the sheer intensity of it, he laid me down.

  “You were quick tonight.” I told him as he laid down beside me.

  “I would apologize, but I made sure to hold off until you were ready.”

  “I know you did, you sweet, selfless, perfect man.” I told him with a grin, and he chuckled and kissed me. “I try to hold off, but you know me: I see your strong, manly face and your chiseled abs, and your gray hair, and your beautiful eyes, and that is all it takes. Impossibly handsome older men like yourself just get my loins stirring, as they say.”

  “Do we?” He asked, “Well, I am glad your loins are stirred, and it is strange, because as it turns out, impossibly beautiful younger women like yourself stir my loins.”

  “Oh, you are so sweet.” I told him, and I pulled him down to me so I could kiss him, “I would live such a passionless life if I did not have my two older men and my one older woman living between my legs.”

  “Would it be passionless? I do not like to think of you in such a state. Would a young man truly leave you feeling passionless?”

  I looked at him, my brows furrowed and my lips pursed in a look of judgment that was only partly jocular.

  “May I be very vulgar with you?” I asked.

  “Oh, by all means. You are so rarely vulgar, and when you are, it never fails to entertain me.”

  “Good. Alright, are you ready?”

  “I am.”

  “How do I put this eloquently, and yet with the vulgarity I just promised you? Alright, I have it: The sight of boys my age makes my vagina dryer than the Mojave, sweetheart.”

  He snorted through his nose, and then, he was laughing harder than he had in a while. He had been lying on his side as I talked to him, but he rolled over onto his back and clutched his stomach as he laughed.

  “Oh, Brynna…” He said when he began to calm down, “By the One God, you keep me on my toes, as they say.”

  “I try, darling.” I said, “She…” I framed my aforementioned vagina with both hands, “does this when she sees young men,” I held my hand up to the side, and then turned my head abruptly in the opposite direction, “She is very particular. Unless one is almost totally perfect, a firestorm combination of intelligence, good humor, protectiveness, kindness, and devilish good looks, she is utterly uninterested. In fact, she is repulsed.”

  “Poor girl.” He said, “But surely young men courted you on Earth.”

  “No one ‘courted’ me, my beautiful old geezer, because it was the twenty-first century.”

  He laughed again, a little harder.

  “You will pardon me, my dear, but one hazard of dating ‘old geezers’ is that we use turns of phrase that were popular in the past but are no longer in use.”

  “Yes, and though that is a hazard, it is also a benefit. I find it charming.”

  “Well, I am glad. Tell me about these young men.”

  “There is not much to tell.” I said through a sigh, “Eli’s friends, mostly, because he and I went to school together. I could not even pretend that I was attracted or interested. The few guys I deigned to ‘date’ for all of five minutes I tolerated. I did not have sex with any of them, because I could not, Adam. Literally. I could not even fathom it.”

  “Never?”

  I shook my head.

  “Is that strange?” I asked, somewhat self-consciously, which was strange, because I was rarely self-conscious. But my complete lack of sex drive before I had met James had always worried me. Of course, I had just assumed that I was a lesbian, but then there was that pesky desire for older men that made me think I was somehow, sickeningly, made attracted to them by my past, or because I was lacking a father figure.

  “Of course not, my love.” He assured me, “Every human-like creature on any planet anywhere in this universe has their attractions and desires. They are instilled in us from birth, or they are fostered throughout our lives. Regardless of how they come to be, they are there, and they are alright, in most cases.”

  “It was so adamant, though. These boys were good-looking. Girls would go gaga over them. They were football players like Eli, or they were these cute intellectual boys who were super arrogant but super sensitive, too. The sensitive part made me particularly ill, not because I require men to behave in a stereotypically manly way, but because I did not want to carry my own emotional baggage as well as the emotional baggage of these young men. It was hardly emotional baggage, anyway. Most of them were raised with silver spoons in their mouths, as they say, and…” I stopped, took a breath, and shook my head, “I am off the point.”

  “Yes, and I do so love watching as your mind diverges and then converges once again. It is truly fascinating, watching that tremendous mind of yours work.”

  “Well, thank you.” I said, “I am glad one of us is entertained. What was I even saying? Oh, right: physical attraction, or lack thereof. Physically, I felt not even the slightest stirring. For women, I felt stirrings. Plenty of them. Rachel had me from the moment I saw her smile. But those boys… Though we never had sex, I let a few of them kiss me, and if you knew how it felt, Adam. Well, maybe you do. I don’t know.”

  “Tell me how it felt, sweetheart.”

  “I just hated it. I would dread it. And I thought, ‘Okay, it’s because Michael used to kiss me. It’s all psychologically linked back to t
he abuse I suffered as a child,’ which, in its own way, is normal. It is normal for the situation. We would be driving back to my house, and they would walk me to the door like perfect gentlemen, and instead of saying ‘no’ and going inside, I would force myself to kiss them, and they would hold me and kiss me hard or softly, with tongue, without, and I just hated it. Some of these guys, I really liked. But when they kissed me, it felt so wrong. It felt so disgusting. And after the third or fourth or fifth guy, I realized that it had nothing to do with Michael. It had to do with me. I could not look at these young, attractive, intelligent guys and feel anything but tolerance or distaste, depending on the guys. It would not be strange if it had not been so emphatic, if it had not felt like the absolute antithesis of any rational idea I had ever had about how I would feel with a guy, with the right guy. Without all of that, it would not have been so strange.”

  “It is not strange, Brynna.” He told me gently, “You cannot fight for whom you feel that spark. And why should you? As long as there are no unsavory circumstances—and you know to which I am referring—then why should anyone fight for whom they feel that spark?”

  “I agree with you wholeheartedly.” I told him, “And none of those old-world issues matter anymore. I met James, I fell in love with him, and he got my loins a-stirring. Then I met you, you got my loins a-stirring, and I fell in love with you.”

  “In that order with both of us?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am shocked that the Prancing Pony did not get your loins a-stirring first.”

  “Oh, stop!” I said, but I was smiling, “You two have been doing so well. And believe me, I was physically attracted to him. I thought he was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. But I was afraid of him, too. I did not want him to get close to me, for his sake, certainly, but more for my own. But he did, and before I could even imagine acting on my a-stirring loins, I had to love him, and that happened very quickly, and twenty-five years later, I still love him, so obviously it was not a flash in the pan, despite the fact that it happened within the space of a month. With you, I saw you, and I wanted you. I thought I hated you, but I did not. When we were in the woods together, I wanted you so badly that it hurt, Adam. Over our time in Shadow Village, I only wanted you more. With both you and James, I experienced this wild attraction that was just insatiable. It still is insatiable. I never thought I would feel that for anyone. I was afraid that I would live my whole life without ever feeling that for someone. I was so afraid of a passionless life.”

  “But you are unafraid of that now.”

  “Yes.” I said with a smile as I leaned in to kiss him, “I have passion in abundance.”

  He sat up, pressed his forehead to mine, and rested one of his hands on one side of my neck, the way he always did. Even after so many years, it still sent a surge of warmth through me, a rush of absolute, perfect calm. His lips very gently brushed over mine, and when his tongue dipped into my mouth, mine found it eagerly.

  “See?” I told him, as he came down to kiss my neck, “I don’t want to run away. I was not dreading you doing that; I was waiting for it.”

  As he kissed my neck, he gently pushed me backwards so I was lying with my back propped up on the pillow. He rose up over top of me, kissing and sucking my neck so gently that I felt a soft, gentle prickling, first around my ears, and then cascading slowly down my back, through my arms and legs, but pulling most sensuously right where his fingers had just slipped in slowly.

  My breaths were slowing and getting deeper, but still, I kept talking, because he was still listening.

  “I love… how you know when I’m ready. How you know when I want you. I love… how you know when I want you to tease me… when I want it hard and fast… or when I want it slowly… I love that you take your time… How…” My words dissolved into a long moan when his face burrowed deeply between my legs and his tongue began to work its magic.

  “Tell me, my love.” He whispered, and the feeling of his breath against my hot and wet lower anatomy made my moans intensify.

  “How every time… you… can… make… me…”

  A half-moan, half-sob escaped me when I came. My upper body thrust forward, my breasts pulling up towards the ceiling, pulling the rest of me with it. He held his tongue even harder to the spot that had made me come, and a tear fell from each of my eyes as the orgasm intensified. Just as it had acted by its own will when I had risen, my body collapsed after the orgasm tapered off.

  That magic tongue ran up my stomach and around both of my nipples, flicking over them slowly.

  “I love…” He said, “That you are insatiable. I love how each time we have made love over the past twenty-three years has somehow been better than the time before.” His lips enclosed over my left breast gently, “I love how you breathe out my name, how you moan and sigh while you come for me.” He came up and kissed my lips, and for the last declaration, he looked into my eyes. “I love that I have been so fortunate as to be one for whom you feel that passion. I love that most of all.”

  “I love you most of all.” I told him, and he smiled and kissed me. “I love you so much that I do not want to be away from you, so come get in the bath with me.”

  Very gently, he kissed my lips, and then, he lifted me into his arms.

  “As you wish, my love.”