A Portrait of Pain

by Jane Washington

“Don’t need it. We’re already soaked.” I shrugged, moving to the counter. “Do you have cash with you? We’ll need to leave enough to fix the window. Should I write an apology note?”

  He rolled his eyes at that, slipping over the counter to the other side and pulling his wallet out of his pocket to extract a bunch of bills. He tucked them into the cash register and then turned on the computer. It took him another ten minutes to locate and erase the security footage of us arriving, before disabling the cameras completely. After that, we stepped outside again.

  “Wait,” I called out to him as he started off into the rain.

  He came back, turning his back on the rain and crowding in close to my front, obviously attempting to shield me from the water. I smiled at him, digging my hand into the bag that he was holding. When I felt the cloth of the watch band, I pulled it out and shoved it into his other hand.

  “Here,” I muttered. “Give it to me.”

  “What?” He glanced down at it, and then back at me, before the understanding passed over his face. He froze, setting the bag on the ground. “Why?” He bunched the watch up into his fist, his eyes darkening, drilling into mine.

  “It’s my new insurance policy,” I told him, smiling.

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, his mouth was on mine. He wasn’t going to draw out my confession. He wasn’t going to force me to say the words, to solidify what was already solid. He had said that he was waiting for me, and this was him recognising that I had come to him. His kiss wasn’t soft, but it wasn’t rough either. He didn’t touch me anywhere else—our only point of contact were his lips brushing against mine.

  “It’s not going to be easy.” His words held all of the roughness that he was keeping out of his kiss as he pulled away an inch, his eyes seeking mine again.

  “I’m ready,” I insisted quietly. “I don’t want easy.” You don’t have to feel guilty anymore.

  For so long I had assumed that his reluctance with me had been about his ex-girlfriend, the girl who died—either that, or else I assumed it had something to do with his role as my teacher. Maybe it was a little of both, but that was before. Things had been different for a while and I just hadn’t noticed. His reluctance had transformed into hesitance. He was holding himself back because he thought it was what I wanted. Because he didn’t know what I wanted.

  I shouldn’t have waited so long to tell him.

  He tugged on the zipper of my jacket, pulling it open and settling his hands low against my spine, pulling me into his chest. I could barely feel him beneath the thick leather that cloaked his torso, but it didn’t seem to matter. His hands were like branding irons burning through the material of my top, his eyes dripping heat through me, everything settling in a low ball in my stomach that made me push closer to him.

  “Are you ready for all of us?” he asked, and the feeling of premonition returned to me.

  The feeling of importance.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  He ducked, his mouth taking mine again, and this time, the kiss was rough. It held anger and frustration, adoration and hope. A violence of emotion that shook me to the core. I shrugged my jacket off the rest of the way and clung to his shoulders, hanging on with all of my strength, trying not to slip away in the sensations. Trying not to lose myself. He dragged his hands up, cupping my face, tilting it to deepen the kiss, a groan rumbling through him. I wasn’t sure how my hands ended up inside his shirt, but his jacket was suddenly hanging off his arms, and my fingers were pressing against the bare skin of his chest. I could feel his heart hammering through me, and it drew me, fascinated me. I expected him to break the kiss again, to pull away and say something responsible. He would swear, but tell me that we needed to get back to the motel room.

  Instead, he sucked in a shuddering breath and drove his lips harder into mine. There was an urgency building in me, the same feeling that had taken control of me when Silas had stripped my clothes off in the closet back at home. I wanted to be naked again, to have as much of my skin against his as possible. When his hands pulled up the hem of my shirt, I shuddered, my legs going weak—but he didn’t touch me the way I had expected. He hooked two fingers into the lace that bridged between the two cups of my bra.

  He broke the kiss, whispering roughly against my ear. “This is going to hurt.”

  That was the only warning I got before he pulled down on my bra. He did it quickly, viciously, and something snapped. One of the straps, I thought, and possibly the bit of lace that he had hooked. I didn’t even feel the pain, although I definitely should have. There was no way he would have been able to snap one of those straps without causing me pain. And yet … I felt amazing, my body humming with energy. I had never taken drugs before, but I assumed this was what it would feel like to be high. Flying above the sensations of pain and swimming in the heavy pleasure of touch.

  The bra ended up tangled around my midsection and he reached around to snap the clasp before tugging it away from my body. The strap that remained intact caught against my arm, preventing him from pulling it away any further. He dug into his pocket and a small switchblade appeared in his hand. I blinked at it, more shocked than I should have been considering he was wearing his ‘agent’ clothes. He sawed through the final strap and then shoved the mangled garment into his jacket pocket. He flicked the knife away and then his mouth was back and his hands were beneath my shirt again. My breasts filled his palms and I lost all sense of time and place. The pounding of rain was only white noise against the ragged sound of my own breath. His tongue tasted cool, like the rain, and I could feel the heavy rush of his feelings, the rapid pace of his heart battering against my chest.

  “Your skin is so hot,” he growled. “You’re burning up.” He dragged his hands down my stomach and suddenly he was cupping my ass, his grip so tight that I was drawn up onto my toes. He pulled me into his hips, and I could feel his arousal pressing back.

  He pressed forward, my back tight against the window. I could feel the give in the glass, the slight cracking sound. We were too close to the smashed section, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I pulled my hips up, pressing against him, our kiss gaining an edge.

  “Not here.” He pulled back, his breath ragged.

  “Not here,” I agreed, but my body wasn’t getting the message. I was rubbing against him, chasing the feeling. I didn’t really care anymore. There wasn’t any point in waiting, or holding back. Not when the future seemed so murky and Miro’s eyes burned so darkly.

  I ducked my head to his neck, breathing in the scent of him while he held me there. He was trying to stop, but he couldn’t seem to let me go, so we stayed merged together while he battled inside himself, the evidence of his losing battle wedged hard between us. I kissed his neck softly, my hands slipping down the ridges of his chest, drawing a shudder from both of us.

  “I don’t want to stop,” I finally whispered.

  His head fell back, and I glanced up the column of his throat to his tense jaw. Before I could catch his eyes, he was setting me back on my feet.

  “Mir—”

  “Turn around,” he interrupted.

  His voice forced me to act before I could even consider the request, but when my hands landed against the damp window, I attempted to question him again. Before I could even get a word out, his body was surrounding mine, dragging heat up my spine. The roughness of his jaw scraped over the back of my neck as he drew my hair into one hand, twisting it around to make a ponytail.

  “Tell me what you want,” he ordered quietly, his words raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck.

  For just a moment, my mind grew clouded, the lines between brothers blurring. Miro and Silas could both be commanding, but Miro asserted his dominance in a gentle way. He must have felt the shift in my body because the hand in my hair tightened, and he released a strained laugh.

  “This is about feeling good, Seph.” His mouth dropped to my neck, the drag of his lips making me temporarily lose my mind. “This isn’t
about pain. That’s the difference between me and him.”

  Almost immediately, I relaxed. He understood.

  “I want to see you.” I sounded like I was pleading, but he didn’t turn me around again.

  “That’s not what you want.” He chuckled. “You start grinding on me like that again and this is going to turn out differently. Tell me what you really want.”

  I closed my eyes, the desperation inside me growing to the point where it was impossible to ignore. I needed him to touch me again, but I couldn’t say the words. Instead, I grabbed his free hand, pulling it around to my stomach. His fingers fanned out, flexing against my front, spanning from one side to another. I pulled his hand up, over one of my breasts.

  He didn’t seem to mind that I hadn’t said the words out loud, because he grunted, “Good girl.”

  Liquid heat pooled inside me at the words, surprising me a little, but not enough for me to stop what he was doing. He didn’t release my hair, holding my head back against his shoulder while his hand palmed me, teasing me until I was squirming back against him, and then I was pulling his hand away, pushing it down toward my jeans. He didn’t need to be encouraged any further. One of his legs was between my thighs, pushing them apart, and then his hand was inside my jeans, his fingers driving a quick gasp from my throat. I made sounds that I didn’t even recognise as he drove me closer to release, the valcrick prickling at my skin with every breath that I desperately sucked in. Miro’s soft curse against the back of my head was his only reaction when I clamped around him, my hands gripping his wrist, my whole body arching back.

  Valcrick shot down the length of my body, sharp and heavy, ruining the bliss that was slowly soaking into my body. Miro pulled back a little, our heavy breaths misting the air, his hand pulling out of my jeans. He spun me around, and we both looked down. The spidery web of sparks was almost entirely covering my skin, but this wasn’t the normal kind of valcrick. The only thing pleasant about this valcrick had been the fact that Miro had been distracting me from it.

  You’re burning up, he had said.

  I had been literally burning up.

  “What the fuck?” Miro’s voice was rough, his hands quickly jerking away from me. The valcrick must have been hurting him to.

  “This is probably a good time to mention that my powers have been … acting up a little,” I croaked, holding my arms out and wincing as the wriggling web reached my wrists and started to pinch my skin.

  “What?” He took two steps toward me but didn’t reach out again.

  He pulled at the jacket that was half hanging off his arms, zipping it up. His eyes were wild. “Let’s get you back to the room.” He bent down and scooped up the shopping bag, but paused, plucking something else from the ground. “Wait,” he said, grabbing my wrist.

  I looked down as he strapped on the Star Wars watch, my lips finding a smile even though the frown on his face told me that it was paining him to touch me at all. When the watch was secure, I pulled my jacket back on, smothering some of the valcrick, and we took off at a run through the rain. The sky was still an inky black, and I found that strange, somehow. I had expected it to be morning. I had expected days to have passed while Miro tore down every barrier between us.

  When we burst into the room, the television wasn’t on mute anymore, and the other three were all standing directly in front of it.

  “We have bad news,” Cabe muttered, as soon as the door slammed shut behind us.

  “So do we.” Miro reached around me to unzip my jacket, before pulling it away from me in one clean swipe, revealing to everyone the thin web of light that was encasing my torso.

  I glanced down and noticed two things: the first being that the light wasn’t actually above the surface of my skin. It was beneath my skin, so close to the surface that I had mistaken it for normal valcrick at first. The second was that my shirt was soaked through and sticking to my chest.

  “She was wearing a bra when she left the room,” Silas stated. He had moved to sit on the end of the bed, his arms folded, a single dark brow raised.

  He didn’t look angry. He looked like he was taking some kind of sick satisfaction in dropping that bomb on the room.

  Noah reached me first, his hand gripping my arm. He had been staring at my chest, but that had drawn his eyes up to my neck, and now he was noticing that the valcrick was acting strangely. As soon as his hand touched my skin, he hissed and drew it back again.

  “What the hell?” he asked me, flicking his eyes up to Miro to include him in the question.

  “Cabe.” Silas spoke up when Miro didn’t answer, a dark look replacing the amusement that had briefly held his features. “You try.”

  Cabe reached out to me, his palm facing up. I touched a finger to the middle of his palm, but he didn’t react. Thinking that I hadn’t hurt him, I quickly grasped his whole hand, but after a second he gently extracted himself.

  “Yeah,” he announced. “That hurt.”

  I walked over to Silas next, not even needing anyone to tell me what to do. I touched his shoulder and he shrugged a little.

  “Hurts,” he confirmed. “Is it hurting you, too?”

  I nodded, pulling my hand away from him. “It has painful moments, but it mostly just pinches. It’s uncomfortable.”

  “Try to rein it in,” Miro instructed. “Don’t look at the TV until you’re under control again. We don’t need to explain a ruined motel room.”

  I nodded, keeping my head turned toward Silas. Someone must have muted the television again because I couldn’t hear whatever they were watching anymore. Not that I really needed to hear it to know what it was saying. I already knew. Danny’s plan had been initiated, and now the whole world knew about me.

  Just in time for me to implode with painful valcrick.

  I closed my eyes, feeling around for the thread of energy that would link me to my power. When I finally located it, I tugged, attempting to draw the valcrick back into my body. It didn’t budge. I frowned, pulling it again, my mind snapping back to the way I had been trapped inside of my last forecasting.

  The more I tugged, the angrier the valcrick seemed to get.

  I whimpered as pain sluiced across my skin, bringing me to my knees before the foot of the bed. Silas must have moved at some point, because when I leaned forward, I could feel the edge of the mattress against my forehead. They were talking behind me: faint, angry voices.

  I blocked them out, needing to concentrate on my power.

  “What’s happening?” I muttered into the mattress. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  I hadn’t been expecting an answer, but it came anyway.

  “Seraph Black,” a voice reverberated, ringing all around me. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  As soon as I focussed on the voice, the valcrick snapped back into me, filling me with excruciating pain for just a moment before fizzling out into nothing. I tried to open my eyes, but I was met with only darkness. I could no longer feel the mattress against my cheek, or the carpet beneath my sodden jeans.

  “Where am I?” I whispered, trying to fight through the darkness of this seemingly non-existent location; to put a face to the voice.

  “Seraph …” the voice continued, as I took a shaky step forward. “Angel. Being of light. Purity.” The voice laughed. “Black angel. Angel of darkness. Your name is a contradiction.”

  It was a man. He laughed again, and I waited as the sound tapered off before taking another step forward. Did he expect an answer?

  “Where am I?” I repeated, a little louder.

  “In the same place you were just a minute ago,” the voice replied.

  Some of the darkness faded away, seeping out of the space like smoke, leaving me standing in the center of the motel room, staring down at an image of myself. The other me was passed out on the floor, and my pairs were crowded around me, attempting to wake me up. I could see them moving, could read the panic on their features, but I couldn’t hear a sound that they made.
I couldn’t hear a single thing other than my own laboured breathing. It was a brand of quiet that I had never heard before, a quiet that came with absolute stillness, as though the entire world had momentarily been put on pause.

  “What’s going on?” I spun around, my hair whipping around with me.

  There was no one else there.

  “You tell me,” the voice asked. “You brought yourself here.”

  “Who are you?” I was trembling now, fear coiling tightly inside me. Was I hallucinating? Was I dead?

  “Calm …” the voice soothed. “Lela, calm yourself.”

  “Lela?” My panic swelled. Danny was the only one who ever called me that.

  “When you reached out to the power, you were Lela. Forgive me.”

  The room rippled again, the image of my slumped form fading away; the four faces that I loved flickering out. I backed up several steps, but there was nowhere to go because the darkness had surrounded me again. I immediately sat down, just as I had the last time I had been trapped inside a vision, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around myself.

  “Take me back,” I whispered desperately. “I want to go back.”

  “No, you don’t,” the voice answered. “If you hadn’t wanted to be here, you wouldn’t have brought yourself here.”

  I could tell that there was something with me now. A physical form shrouded in dark smoke. It was some distance in front of me, even though it hadn’t been there before. I shot to my feet and moved forward, through the nothingness, until the figure began to take shape. He was tall, his entire body cloaked in a hooded white gown. As I watched, he raised his hands from the dangling sleeves and a pure, white orb materialised between his palms, glowing softly along the papery texture of his fingers.

  He was showing it to me, wanting me to understand something about it.

  That feeling of importance returned to me, the same feeling that had shot through me outside the gas station with Miro. It was back, but it was doubly as strong. It forced me forward one last step. It widened my eyes. It halted my breathing.