A Portrait of Pain

by Jane Washington

  “Oh hey, a loofah, haven’t seen one of those in ages.” I held my hand out for it and he narrowed his eyes on me.

  “Stand up and I’ll give it to you,” he challenged.

  “Well played.”

  “What?” Seraph turned her eyes from him to me, and then back to him … and then to the loofah. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a complete idiot. The previous pink stain in her cheeks morphed into a blooming red, and she muttered something.

  “Did you just apologise?” Noah looked horrified.

  “Huh? Me? No.” She shook her head. I knew that expression. She was lying.

  “You totally apologised.” I started laughing.

  “I just meant …” She stumbled over her words.

  “Nope.” Noah was shaking his head. “There’s no coming back from that.” He lowered himself into the bath, tossing the loofah at my head.

  The water was mingling around our hips now, and we all settled against the back of the tub, turning our eyes to the glass as the water continued to stream. The sky was lighter than usual, the full moon spilling a milky glow over the slope of the mountain as the last rays of the sun disappeared. It defeated the need to turn on any lights as night fell.

  “Do you think we’ll be okay, when all of this is over?” she eventually asked.

  We both knew what she was talking about, but I didn’t know how to answer her.

  “We should go shopping again,” Noah blurted.

  “What?” We both asked, simultaneously.

  Seraph had turned to stare at him, forcing me to lean around her so that I could see his face.

  “Girlfriend insurance,” he laughed, keeping his eyes on the window.

  She smacked his chest, causing water to splash into his face. He leaned forward to turn off the taps before grabbing her and hauling her into his lap.

  “I’m serious,” he grunted. “It’s time for a new insurance policy.”

  It’s time for a new insurance policy.

  My heart was thudding against my ribs and my mouth felt suddenly dry. Noah was grinning at me, his ocean-blue eyes bright with humour and something else … determination. Ferocity.

  “What—”

  “Enough.” That had come from Cabe, who had taken my previous spot, his hand cupping the back of my head, bringing my mouth to his. Before I could properly react, he kissed me. I should have been worried about reacting to one of them while the other one was still holding me, but I couldn’t have held back my emotion even if I had tried. I was melting, melting into both of them. One of my hands was against Noah’s chest, the other against Cabe’s shoulder. Noah had his arm wrapped around my waist, his other hand resting on my lap, and Cabe was holding my face, tilting it at the right angle to drop another kiss against my mouth. They were closed-mouth kisses, just a brush of lips followed by another brush of lips. He kissed either side of my mouth and then inched back, his hand slipping around the back of my neck. I made to return the gesture, but as soon as my lips were on his skin, I couldn’t help sliding them over his mouth. I touched my tongue to his bottom lip and he made a rumbling sound, his grip tightening as he forced me to kiss him properly.

  Liquid heat was dripping through me, curling my toes against the base of the bath, and brushing up my spine when he deepened the kiss. His tongue parted my lips, his fingers flexing on the back of my neck, and then we were wrenched apart. I had a moment of disorientation before lips were pressing against mine again, harder than the lips I had just been kissing. Noah.

  “Noah.” His name was a plea, and he answered with a shuddering groan, his grip bruising around my waist.

  He pulled back, the blue in his eyes darkening to the colour of a cloud-heavy sky. “I have no idea why that was so hot, but christ, pretty girl …”

  Before I could register his words, he was pulling my mouth back to his. The bath was suddenly too hot; the water almost seemed to be bubbling, and I could feel the tiny pin-pricks of pain as valcrick skittered out of my body, bouncing off the surface of the water and fissuring harmlessly over Noah and Cabe.

  A pounding started up in my chest, knock knock knock, and Noah reluctantly pulled away from me.

  “The door,” Cabe growled.

  We all turned toward the stairs as the blood stopped rushing to my head, messing with my senses, and the knocking on the door separated itself from the heaving beat of my heart.

  “Dinner.” Noah’s head fell back against the edge of the spa. “You forgot about dinner.”

  “You forgot about dinner!” Cabe shot back, sounding annoyed. Neither of them moved to answer the door.

  “Maybe they’ll just leave it outside,” I said.

  We waited. The knocking ceased … and then it started up again.

  “Ugh.” I pulled myself to my feet, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around my body. “I’ll get it.”

  I walked up to the top level and pulled open the door, meeting the relieved look of the man on the other side. He handed me the bag of food and hurried back to his pickup, jumping in and driving up to the main house. I stood in the doorway, squinting at the pair of dark figures making their way down the hill, until the moonlight finally illuminated their features, and then I stood back, holding the door open for my other pair.

  “Why the hell are you answering the door like that?” Miro asked, and they both stepped into the living room.

  Silas took the bag of food from me, set it on the counter and then grabbed the edge of the towel, pulling it open to see what I was wearing underneath, before stepping toward the stairs.

  I stared after him, shocked. “What if I had been naked?”

  He paused, walked back to me, and fitted a finger beneath one of my bra-straps, snapping it back against my skin, and then he tossed me over his shoulder. Again.

  “Is he going to break something?” I asked Miro, who followed us toward the stairs.

  “Depends what he finds,” Miro replied. “If anyone but Noah and Cabe are down there, he’s not the only one who’ll be breaking shit.”

  I blinked, surprised at the possessive ring to his words. And then surprised simply at his words. “Who else would be down there?”

  “Poison or Clarin.” Miro shrugged. “You’re uncomfortably close to your best friends.”

  “One of whom is female,” I pointed out, feeling odd because I was hanging over Silas’s shoulder as I had this argument. “While the other is gay.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Silas’s voice finally sounded, growling through the chest beneath my thighs.

  “Flawless argument,” I muttered sarcastically. They both ignored me.

  When I stopped bouncing against the broad shoulder beneath me, I knew that we had reached the base level. I twisted around, amused to see Cabe and Noah both out of the bath with towels wrapped around their hips and the water fully drained.

  “That was a good call,” I said, trying to prop myself up on Silas’s shoulder. “There’s no way we would have all fit in there.”

  Cabe and Noah shared an amused look. Silas’s chest vibrated again.

  “Can’t deal with this right now.” Miro was already walking back upstairs. “I’m going to eat and pretend this never happened.”

  Silas started to follow him. I tapped his back. He didn’t let me down. I started to wriggle. He didn’t let me down. I smacked his back as hard as I could. He didn’t let me down. I let myself hang and slipped my arms around him from behind, tunnelling my hands beneath the hem of his t-shirt to rest against the muscles of his lower abdomen. He stopped walking completely, his muscles flexing, and then he swung me down. Any time I interacted with Silas, I was playing with fire … so I wasn’t surprised to see his dark eyes blazing when he turned on me, but I quickly swallowed down my reaction to him and brushed past, running the rest of the way up the stairs.

  Miro spread out the food on the coffee table, since the living area of the cottage wasn’t actually big enough to house a proper dining table, and we all sat down to eat, pretending like it was no
rmal for us to eat in our towels. I kept having to re-tighten mine every few minutes, but I was too scared to go downstairs and change. Every time I glanced up from my food, Silas was watching me. He wasn’t even eating. He was just sitting on the couch, his hands laying relaxed in his lap, his legs spread and his eyes level on my face. I knew, somehow, that if I left the room, he would follow me.

  I wasn’t the only one who had noticed, either. The others kept offering him food, just to see him turn them down. At one point, Cabe offered him the same eggroll five times, until Silas finally snatched it off him and tossed it at the wall.

  After dinner, Cabe and Noah left to change, and I decided that I couldn’t put it off any longer, so I made my way downstairs and slipped into the closet at the back of my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. I was sure that Silas wouldn’t follow me in there.

  I was wrong.

  I’d barely even had time to pull off my wet underwear and change into pyjamas before the door slid open.

  “What if I had been naked?” I asked, turning my back on him as I finished tugging the sweatshirt down my torso.

  “Keep saying it, angel. It definitely isn’t going to teach me any lessons.” He slid the door shut again, making the space seem suddenly much smaller than it really was.

  I tried to edge past him, but he wasn’t budging. I considered pointing out to him that I had a bad history of getting into awkward situations in closets, but decided against it at the last moment. That probably wouldn’t help his temper.

  “Am I in trouble?” I finally asked, giving up on trying to push past and choosing to hug my arms around myself instead.

  His lips twitched. Almost a smile. “You’re not in trouble. I figured I’d give you a chance to come clean about whatever you’re hiding from me.”

  I decided that right then would be a good time to start organising my closet, since it seemed that I wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon. The only problem was that my closet didn’t really need organising. I picked a few shirts off the shelf, shook them out, and refolded them. I set them aside, and then realised that I might as well put a bag together, since I hadn’t had time to do it yet, and now was as good a time as any. Silas watched me quietly, making me hyper-aware of every single movement. I pulled a tennis bag from one of the shelves, stuffed the shirts into it, added a pair of jeans, and shoved my hand into my underwear drawer, not even bothering to open it properly and look around inside. Silas chose that moment to force the issue. He grabbed me by the hips, spinning me around and stepping me back against the row of drawers. I barely managed to pull my hand out before he caught my wrist inside.

  His hands slid up my body, skimming my sides and making me shiver. I couldn’t even look into his face. I knew that I would tell him everything the second I did, so I kept my eyes trained on his chest. He reached my pyjama top and started to undo the buttons, forcing my eyes to dart from his chest to his hands.

  “What are you doing?” I squeaked.

  “They undressed you.” His voice was dark, soft. Dangerous.

  I didn’t fight. There wasn’t any point. My skin was burning, and I ached for him to touch me. I actually missed him, which was a strange feeling, because I saw him all the time. Never alone, though.

  “All you need to do is tell me. Tell me what you’re hiding and I’ll stop.” His eyes were full of darkness, almost as if he was lying, but I nodded anyway.

  I nodded to say that I understood … not that I would stop him.

  As soon as he realised that, the fire in his eyes flared hotter, scorching a trail down my face and lower, to the skin he revealed as he drew my top down my arms and away from my body. He dropped it into the tennis bag and hooked his thumbs through the waistband of my pants, tugging them only a few inches until they fell the rest of the way down on their own. I tried to tell myself to step out of them, but I was frozen. I could barely even breathe.

  Silas’s hands settled into my waist, his fingers fanning down, gripping into the back of my hips, dragging me forward until we were almost touching. I was so dizzy, so focussed on his mouth as it hovered threateningly over mine. I was so focussed that I didn’t even notice one of his hands releasing me, sweeping up to the back of my bra and unhooking it. When it started to slip down my arms, I pulled back an inch.

  “What—”

  “This is your twice over.” His voice was low as he hooked his finger into the garment and pulled it clear away.

  Holy crap. I was getting too used to Noah and Cabe, who liked to push me, but only a little bit. Enough that I was never forced to step too far out of my comfort zone. Not to mention Miro, who never lost control at all. I would never be ‘used’ to Silas, because the man never stopped changing.

  He ducked his head to my neck, his teeth scraping against my skin before I could form another thought, and the heat inside me bubbled into an inferno, the valcrick rushing to the tips of my fingers, vying to escape. My hands were clinging to his shoulders in seconds, my body pressing into his, a bare few sparks escaping to crawl down over his skin. I could see the very faint light that they provided, even with my eyes closed. He grunted as the valcrick crawled over him and there was a small sting of pain around my hips and a much more significant jolt of pain in my neck as his teeth bit down harder. I tried to pull away, to look down and figure out what had happened, but Silas wouldn’t give an inch. And then I felt his hand on my bare hip as he eased back from his bite, swiping his tongue over my skin, and I knew that he had ripped off the only scrap of clothing that I had left.

  He pulled back, a growling sound catching in his throat. “You’re packing.” He swept down, untangling my underwear from my feet and tossing them into the tennis bag before rising again, his hands skimming the backs of my legs, his eyes fixed on my face. “Why?”

  He gripped my thighs, pulling me up, and I wrapped my legs around him on instinct. It made me feel vulnerable. Exposed. So I pushed myself right up against him, trying to hide everything from him. Another sound vibrated out of him. He hoisted me up higher, one arm supporting me while his free hand tangled into my hair, drawing my head back so that he could see my eyes.

  “I had a forecasting,” I groaned, as his eyes held mine.

  He shuddered. “Keep going.”

  “It felt like the whole world was talking about me.” I closed my eyes, trying to shut him out, but that only increased the sensations of having him pressed against me. “They knew everything about me. Everything. And they had videos, pictures, proof. They called me a murderer, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before they came for me. Before they started a war over this. Us. The Zevghéri.”

  “And you’re planning on running away again?” His voice was hard.

  I shook my head. “It’s not what you think.” I blinked my eyes open again, and the hand in my hair tightened. “I told Noah and Cabe to pack a bag, and I was going to pack one for you and Miro. I was going to have us all ready to leave, the second this started breaking out.”

  “It’s already started,” he told me, gently letting me down.

  My feet hit the floor, but I stayed stubbornly pressed to him, trying to cover my nakedness. “Why hasn’t anyone said anything?”

  “It’s a joke right now. A prank with no substance. A bunch of idiots believing in nothing. But there will be a moment. It’ll be the moment something is leaked that can’t possibly be faked. Maybe everything will be leaked at once. You were right, we’ll need to leave the second that happens. Not a moment before, because that’ll tip them off—and not a moment after, because that’ll be too late.”

  “Did you just say that I was right?” I blurted.

  He wasn’t freaking out. He wasn’t getting angry that I had hidden something so big from him. I had clearly underestimated Silas’s ability to change. We all had.

  He smirked, his only confirmation, and then he was pulling away from me. He left the closet without looking back, and I could only blink at the spot where he had stood, my body warring w
ith emotion. He might have changed, but that … walking away after that … I was sure that it was my real punishment, which meant that Silas was still as sadistic as ever. He had left me in a state where I was trying to hold myself back from running after him and forcing him to finish everything he had just started, and that wasn’t a state that I remembered being in before. It took me several minutes of standing there, struggling with my feelings, before I reached out blindly for more clothes. I pulled on a pair of cotton shorts and a baggy sweatshirt with tingling fingers, and then pushed out of the cupboard to find Cabe and Noah already pulling out the mattresses from beneath my bed.

  “Having fun in there?” Cabe asked nonchalantly.

  I couldn’t tell if he knew or not. He probably did, so I chose not to answer him at all. I was just glad that my control over the valcrick had gotten stronger since bonding to the other two, otherwise sparks would have been filling the cottage, making it really obvious. I climbed into the bed, burrowing myself beneath the covers and flopping a pillow over my head. Since they were pulling out the mattresses, all four of them were clearly planning on staying the night.

  Eventually, two big, warm bodies settled on either side of me, but I stayed very still, my head firmly buried beneath the pillow. It was actually kind of hard to breathe, but I wasn’t ready to face either of them yet. I couldn’t focus and my body was buzzing with energy. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said that the valcrick had sparked itself to life without my consent, but wasn’t manifesting outside of my body, instead preferring to bubble beneath my skin.

  After waiting a few minutes with surprising patience, one of them wrestled the pillow off me and flipped me over, so that I was half on my side, half on my back. It had been Cabe, but he had flipped me to face Noah, who had his arms folded behind his head, those bright blue eyes focussed on me with a kind of lazy and sleepy intention. They had switched the light off at some point, but there was still plenty of moonlight to make them out by.