He didn’t move, didn’t try to stop me as I yanked both down over his hips, half-lying on him so that I was between him and the featureless ceiling of the organic cell.
“Allie, why?” he said. “Why? Don’t you want to do this the right way?”
“We have been doing it the right way,” I said. “But we’ve also been focused almost entirely on me. You’re mad at me,” I added, as he gripped my thighs through the combat pants. “You’ve been mad at me since China.”
“No.” Pain slid through his light, even as he gripped me tighter. “No. That’s not true.”
“It is true,” I said. “It might not be all that you’ve felt, but it’s the part you won’t show me. It’s the part you’ve been hiding, while you play the perfect husband.”
His pain spiked, hitting at me hard enough to catch my breath.
It didn’t feel like separation pain that time.
He felt hurt.
Not even just hurt. As he lay there, he felt discouraged, depressed. Devastated, really. It was as if I’d just told him everything we’d been doing was a lie, or that it was all for nothing, a waste of our time.
“Revik.” I made my voice softer, lulling. “Revik, baby, I’m not insulting you. I’m not accusing you of anything. That’s not what I meant. And it’s working. It’s working for me. I promise you it is. But it can’t all be about me.”
I was still massaging his cock. I felt his body grow softer under my hand, even as he fought me with his mind and light.
I made my voice lower, pulling on him gently with my light.
“Husband, you’ve been amazing. Absolutely amazing. I mean that. But you can’t hold this all on your own. You can’t take the blame for all of it, either. We decided this together. We made the plan together. You leaving, you giving yourself to Menlim, the thing with Dalejem… we did it together.”
He was shaking his head though, his light closing more.
“No.” He shook his head again, his fingers wrapped around my hips. “No, it’s not the same. It’s not the same, Allie. I had to be the one to come to you––”
“Why?” I said, frustrated. “Why did it have to be all you, Revik? Why is it your job to fix everything between us? To deal with me being the crazy one all the time? Is it because I’m pregnant?”
He shook his head, more pain leaving his light.
“No.”
“Then what?” I said. “What is it?”
“I wasn’t going to leave you, Allie,” he said, breathing harder. “I wasn’t the one thinking about leaving. I don’t want anyone else. I don’t love anyone else.” His voice grew heavier, gruffer. “I have to fix it. I have to fix it, Allie. Don’t you see that?”
Pain closed my throat, cutting off my breath, briefly rendering me unable to answer.
Still looking down at him, blind in the dark, I shook my head.
“No,” was all I could say.
Tears filled my eyes.
For a long moment, I just sat on him in the dark, feeling emotion spark off his light, and off mine. I could feel where he was coming from, and while on some level I’d known this, I’d known how he felt, that he held himself responsible for all of it, including fixing it, it was different to feel that in his light. It was different to feel his fear, that part of him that believed it was too late, that he wouldn’t be able to save things for me, for his family.
My mind turned it over, all the things I could say.
I thought about arguing with him.
I thought about talking to him about Dalejem, who I knew he’d been keeping me from, without ever really admitting that to me, or even to himself. I felt his guilt around that, the knowledge somewhere in the back of his mind that he thought he had to keep Dalejem away from me, or he’d lose me for real.
In the end, I didn’t say anything.
Sliding down his body, I held him down, resting my hand on his chest, the other wrapped around his cock. I didn’t wait for him to react, but put my mouth on him. I didn’t let myself think about why, what my motive was or even whether he’d be okay with it, given everything we’d talked about over the last few weeks.
I didn’t think about our agreement to wait on doing anything overtly sexual until after we’d gotten through all of our memories together.
I didn’t think about his claustrophobia, or why I’d originally started this.
Pain shuddered through him, blanking out my mind.
It hit my light in waves, growing more intense right before his fingers wound into my hair. I felt doubt on him briefly, even briefer glimpses of his previous fear, of the box and the dark where we were being held, of what I’d asked him, of agreements we’d made that I was breaking.
I felt his grief over the two of us, his anger at himself for risking us.
I felt his anger at himself for choosing Dalejem as the one to be with me.
I felt his hurt at Dalejem for turning on him.
In the end, it all became a vague, unnamed uneasiness in his light, first hurting him, then confusing him, then distracting him vaguely… until the last of it faded.
By then, I doubted he remembered where he was at all.
The pain was worse than it had been when we woke up on Atwar’s boat. It was worse than it was before Dubai, when Feigran was messing with our light. It was worse than it had been while he’d been gone, while he’d been with Menlim in China.
Even with the memory of our initial bonding fresh in both of our lights, this was worse.
I didn’t let him come.
Maybe that was a good thing. Despite how hard his light was pulling on mine, I wasn’t sure if he wanted that. At the same time, I couldn’t say the decision was wholly rational on my part, or based on any clear thought around what my conscious mind told me he wanted.
It was more of an instinctive thing.
He’d get close. I’d feel his light melting, merging into mine. I felt my own light reacting, wanting to go there with him, wanting to go there so badly…
And I’d ease him off.
Some of it may have been the Dalejem thing.
I felt him struggling with imprints even as he gripped me tighter. He groaned when I pulled on him, asking him to be rough. He groaned again when I opened my light, when I let him feel me. I felt him wanting to come, but it was an animal want, not rational, not based on anything he was thinking or feeling, much less anything he’d wanted before.
Even so, his light and body pulled on me so hard I nearly blacked out.
Somewhere in the midst of that, he physically pulled me off him, yanking up on my arm, on my hair, asking for my mouth, asking for a kiss. I slid up his body and his hands were under my shirt, caressing my front, my back, seemingly every inch of my skin.
His mouth found mine.
I lay on him, kissing him while he continued to explore me with his hands.
His pain seemed to seep through the skin and muscles of his chest and stomach as he pressed up against me. I felt every breath, every beat of his heart, every brush of his lips and tongue. His fingers tightened once more in my hair and I felt his fingers on my scalp, his light pulling on mine as he deepened our kiss.
Feeling that grief still in his light, a rush of frustration left me.
When his emotions grew harder, more acute, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Pulling us apart, I looked down at him in the dark.
Both of us were panting, our hands on each other’s bare skin.
I couldn’t see him again.
I could only feel him, see him through my light.
Somehow, that only frustrated me more.
“You want me to trust you,” I said, still fighting for breath. “You want me to trust you, Revik. You keep asking that of me. You keep wanting that.”
He wrapped his arm around me tighter. “Yes.”
“Then you have to trust me. You have to trust me.”
There was a silence while my words sank in.
Feeling his doubt, I gripped his hair
in my fist.
“Revik. I chose you.” A near anger leaked into my voice. “You. Not him. I chose you before you ever walked through that door in the wall of the Forbidden City. I did it before you talked to Uye, before you sent Dalejem away, before you started this thing with our memories. I never didn’t choose you. It was always you. Jem knew that. He even understood it, when he wasn’t reacting to our light… or to my being pregnant. How is it that he could know that so utterly and completely and you can’t?”
He was still breathing hard. His arm squeezed me tighter.
He didn’t speak though, and that doubt didn’t dissipate.
“Revik,” I said. “You need to hear me on this. Can you? Can you hear me on it?”
Pain left his light, but his fingers gripped my back.
“I fucked everything up,” he said, that pain in his voice. “From the beginning, I’ve done nothing but fuck everything up with us, Allie.”
I stared down at him, biting my tongue until it hurt.
“You’ve fucked up a lot,” I said finally. “So have I.” Still gripping his long hair, I stared down at him, even though I couldn’t see him. “I’m still here. So are you.”
Pain slid through his light.
His hand gripped my back, holding me flush with him.
I felt him fighting with my words. I felt him agreeing with them, too.
I felt him trying to let go of the Dalejem thing, trying to decide if he realistically could, if he could do what Uye advised and just let me have that, the fact that I loved them both. I felt him thinking about sex with me, wanting it, and knowing he’d feel Jem there. I felt him thinking about Lily, about me being pregnant––
“Revik, you love Jem, too,” I said, shaking him a little in frustration. “That’s why you asked him. That’s why you brought him into this. It’s why you chose him. You love him, too.”
I felt him wince at my words.
I felt him hate that I’d said them, and not only because it was the first time I’d said it out loud. I also felt him agree with them.
“I don’t want to do this yet,” he said. “Not yet, Allie.”
Pain writhed through his light, even as he gripped me tighter.
“I want to,” he said. “Gaos. I really fucking want to, Allie––”
I shook my head.
“I don’t care about that. I mean… I care. I care about it a lot. But when it comes to you and me, I don’t care if we do it now. I get it. It’s all right.”
“I heard you,” he said. “On the rest of it, Allie. I hear you on all of it. But I don’t see myself getting past that until we get through the rest of this.”
Thinking about his words, I frowned. “You mean you want to see it?”
“No. I don’t want to see it.” His jaw hardened under my fingers. “I don’t want to see any of it. But I think I need to. I need to see it through you. Then I can let it go.”
Still resting on his chest and abdomen, I nodded.
I understood. Like he’d said, I didn’t want to, but I did.
I realized the same was true for me.
I don’t just mean when it came to the consorts at the City where he’d been for the last ten or so months. I meant the things he’d shown me already. Just having seen him with Raven helped me let go of something I’d been holding onto with her, with Revik having a child with her. It lifted that niggling doubt, as much as I’d hated watching them together.
Seeing him with Jem, with Torek and those women he’d slept with while I’d been dating Jaden––even seeing him with Kat, in Seattle––it demystified something about him I’d been holding on to, without ever realizing I’d been holding onto it.
I caressed his face in the dark, my hand on his jaw and neck, sliding up his angular cheekbones into his hair, which I wanted to pull on like he did with mine. It hit me again that the longer hair drove me crazy for some reason.
I didn’t even know why––not consciously, at least.
I’d liked him in short hair. Before, I would have said before I preferred it short, even––but I didn’t now. Now, I definitely liked him like this. It suited him somehow, this more seer look. Maybe he’d just stopped being an infiltrator in that way.
He’d stopped trying to blend in.
He’d stopped trying to look human.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” I asked him.
Pain wound through him as he thought about my words.
He didn’t want that, but he couldn’t decide how far to push it, either.
He wanted me to finish the blow job.
He wanted me to slide back down his body and suck him off until he came.
Some part of his light and mind couldn’t quite let go of that. He toyed with it in the background, even as he tried to tell himself what a terrible idea it was, how little willpower he had with me when it came to oral sex.
He knew if he asked me, I might do it.
He knew if I did, he’d likely end up fucking me in the box, and he’d just told me we shouldn’t do that. He’d meant it––he didn’t think we should do it––but he knew he might not give a shit after he came in my mouth.
Realizing just how much of him I could hear and feel again, I fought to close a little, if only to give him some privacy, but not before a sharp pain stabbed through my light. I managed to force it back, but my weight grew heavier on his, almost without me realizing I’d done it.
“We could talk about the op,” I offered, my fingers still clenched in his hair. “If the shop talk starts stressing one of us out, or the claustrophobia comes back, the blow job could be our backup plan. You know. In case of emergencies.”
For a moment, he only stared up at me in the dark.
Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he burst out in a laugh.
29
MISGIVING
THE SHOCK COMPENSATION of the organic crate was pretty unbelievable, but it wasn’t all to our advantage.
We didn’t feel it when they moved the box onto the barge. That meant we also didn’t feel the motion of the waves or water of the river when the barge left the shipping bay. We didn’t feel when it stopped to go through security at the gate leading into the city, either.
We had no idea of the timetable for any of those things, since Atwar said it would depend heavily on how many others were lined up to access the waterway gate at the same time.
He further warned us the barge wouldn’t be assigned a docking berth until we’d been cleared by city border security personnel––another precaution to make it harder for infiltrators to coordinate on both sides of the wall.
According to Atwar, our dock assignment would impact arrival times, as well.
All of that assumed we made it through border security at all.
Therefore, when the box started to open, Revik and I didn’t know if we’d be seeing friendly faces, or if we were about to find ourselves in the middle of a combat situation.
Revik had his pants back on, his belt buckled.
We both had our telekinesis structures flooded with light.
He’d mostly adjusted to being in the box, so the claustrophobia was less distracting. That being said, I never took my hands off him really, not until the hatch started to open. I only rolled away from him entirely when we heard the seal break, a few seconds before that.
Wherever the crate was, it was dark.
A flashlight came on once the cover was open, and I blinked into the sudden shock of light, holding up my hand and winding my light through Revik’s, in the hopes I could see who it was through him.
“It’s all right,” he told me. “Balidor.”
He was already sitting up.
He climbed out of the crate even as I was still getting to my feet. Balancing outside the crate on a small, barge-like boat, I took Revik’s hand when he offered it from the dock. He pulled me up beside him, glancing around the dim, torch-lit space where we stood.
I saw Balidor looking between the two of us, frowning fain
tly as he seemed to be checking out our light.
“Do I even want to know how the two of you were entertaining yourselves in there?” he muttered. “We are on a military op, you know.”
Rolling my eyes, I gave Cass a pointed look, then aimed a flatter gaze back at Balidor.
“I wouldn’t go there if I were you, ‘Dor,” I said.
He grunted, but not really in humor.
Still, I could feel he was relieved I was speaking to him again.
Pushing that from my mind, I looked around at our small-looking team, and frowned.
“Where’s Atwar?”
“He’ll meet us later. They ran into someone they knew at the docks. He said it would be less suspicious if he and his people went with them now, met with a few of their contacts here, ascertained the political situation. He suggested that it made sense to treat it as a business trip, in terms of cover. It explains his coming personally. He intends to put out feelers under the auspices of expanding his people’s trade with Rome.”
I nodded, fighting an unexpected pulse of relief.
Revik felt it and turned, looking at me.
He didn’t speak, but I felt the question there.
I didn’t answer it.
Truthfully, it was more of a gut feeling than anything. I liked Atwar well enough, but I didn’t want us distracted by whatever his agenda was. I wasn’t wholly convinced he’d given us the full gist of that agenda, even now.
Anyway, people on revenge kicks weren’t always the most reliable in an op-type situation.
“Agreed,” Balidor muttered from next to me.
Cass frowned, looking between us before she folded her arms, pushing up her breasts.
“Agreed? You agree with what?” she said.
He gave her a brief look, then coiled an arm around her, kissing her on the cheek. It was the first time he’d done it that blatantly in front of me.
I couldn’t help but grimace, looking away.
I glanced around at the stone tunnels where they’d brought us, instead.
The heavy organic crate rested on another barge-like boat, not dissimilar to what Atwar’s people used to bring us to the shipping barge. Apparently Balidor and the others paddled us out of whatever dock they’d landed at inside Rome, bringing us into this underground waterway.
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