This Sin Called Hope (New Reality Series, Book Seven) by Anna Mayle

by Anna Mayle

  Jacobi slipped up and down his hard need once, twice and pulled back to sit up and grin triumphantly. “Of course.”

  The hacker straddled him and Enoch felt the absence of his weight painfully even as his body supplied phantom sensations.

  Enoch looked down at where their forms connected, saw the barest shadow of his cock through the hacker’s image. He watched himself inside of that open and needy body. Jacobi threw his head back and began to move and Enoch balled his fists up in the hot rock and sand he sat on. When the mewling gasps began to climb in intensity until they became full, throaty groans, Enoch found his hips pumping up into nothing, the orgasm built inside him and he frantically searched for the touch that would take him to the height he could just barely feel.

  Jacobi shuddered and kicked his hips forward and down with a broken scream, “Enoch! Oh, oh fuck! Just a little more…”

  He was lost. Enoch jerked and spasmed, came in thick spurts of hot white, and tried to wrap his arms around the hacker to cradle him closer.

  Jacobi literally slipped through his fingers and the image of the other man sobbed out his own orgasm. He fell forward, leaning against Enoch, against the bot of Enoch he’d made himself in the Network. In the waking world, his image rested weightless against him and all Enoch could do was watch the dimples on his ass deepen and shallow as he rode the aftershocks of his release.

  Jacobi looked up into his eyes through a mess of sweat dampened curls and smiled in sated bliss. “Do you love me, Beauty?”

  He couldn’t respond right away, Jacobi had stolen his breath.

  “Just answer yes or no,” Jacobi whispered against his neck and Enoch desperately wished he could feel the movement of lips, the exhalation that should have come with the words.

  “An argument,” he finally responded, “could be made for deeply in lust.”

  The hacker cocked his head to the side in thought for a moment. “I’ll take it. For now,” he announced and leaned back in.

  “You do know I have ever been the aggressor in sexual situations, barring the occasional undesired liaison.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re usually on top?” Jacobi teased.

  He glared, but it was likely lost on the little hacker buried against him. In the mirror, they looked fitting. The scene would have screamed sated lovers to an outside observer. Enoch imagined in some ways that would be correct.

  “I was trying to say that though it isn’t my usual experience, the drastic shift in control we have shared in our sexual dealings is not…unpleasant.”

  “You get all proper speaking when you’re flustered,” Jacobi smiled up at him fondly.

  Enoch’s answer caught in his throat. A sharp burn slammed into his side and he curled in tightly upon himself.

  “Enoch!” Jacobi crawled to him, clothed again, worry lining his beautiful face.

  “Just…Just need to focus. My syringe…I’m fine.”

  The image glanced the fifteen feet down the tunnel to where the cyc and supplies rested. “It’s so far…”

  “What do you think I’ve dealt with each other time I’ve come to the hub? I come alone. I’m always alone. I’m fine alone!” Enoch’s whole body seized and he clenched his teeth, felt them crack under the force, felt the fissures close themselves the moment the pressure let up.

  Jacobi’s face was open and sad.

  Enoch’s heart broke. “Jacobi, I am fine. I just need to lie still until this wave passes. I’ve done this for hundreds of years. This time is no different.”

  “Why don’t you carry your syringe on you?” he asked in concern.

  Enoch blushed and averted his eyes. “I usually do. I became…distracted.”

  * * * *

  The bot of Enoch he’d programed lay against the wall upright and motionless. Jacobi looked between the two of them in sorrow. “It was my fault. I distracted you,” he noted.

  Enoch smiled tremulously, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. It looked half there while his brow was creased in concentration and his eyes fluttered in a vain attempt to hold back the tears spilling into a puddle on the ground beneath him. He hadn’t cried out, sobbed, hadn’t even gasped in pain. He opened his mouth soundlessly, his face a rictus of agony. Enoch’s arms and legs stiffened, almost bent him in half. Coming out of it though, moved him a little closer to the supplies.

  Jacobi knew logically that he wouldn’t have survived Nomans, not even long enough to reach the hub, let alone long enough to help, but that didn’t matter. At that moment, Jacobi wanted nothing more than to be at Enoch’s side.

  “Maybe on your way to the Northeast Wall, you should stop by Virginia, Richmond.”

  Enoch panted in an effort to keep his head even remotely clear. “Not the time…for conversation,” he said breathlessly.

  Jacobi understood that, but if he didn’t say it now, make the vow, he might lose him nerve. “I want to go with you. I…I’ll be okay. How scary can the world be with a massive Angel at my side?”

  “Pr…Pretty fucking scary,” Enoch promised.

  Jacobi nodded in acceptance. “Then I’ll just have to be more brave.” The idea of stepping full-bodied into the waking world terrified him. It always had. But the thought of leaving Enoch alone in it was worse. This moment, standing insubstantial over an image of what was happening, unable to even step to the side and pick up the syringe that had the power to alleviate his Angel’s pain. He never wanted to have this moment again.

  A quick motion of his hand and soothing music filled the Network office and Enoch’s ears. Jacobi knelt beside the prone man, watching him carefully, trailing trembling and insubstantial fingers over his body in an attempt to do any little thing he was able to, to make it better.

  Slowly, Enoch crawled to the cyc. Jacobi stayed always beside him, even from so far away he couldn’t stand it. He watched his Angel struggle alone, watched him push himself until he ended up curled again, in a fetal ball of pain. I should be here, with him.

  When shaky fingers found the small syringe case, fumbled it from the pack, Jacobi almost wept. It took a good ten minutes more for Enoch to position the needle and insert it correctly. Multiple times he had to draw the sharp tip back and start over again.

  By the time it slid smoothly into the vein he needed, fine rivulets of blood streamed through the tight creases of muscle and down Enoch’s neck and back. He ignored the wet streams and depressed the plunger slowly. As the precious liquid entered his tired body at last, Enoch finally began to relax. It took some time. His muscles would twitch and tense just as they seemed to have unknotted, in anticipation of another jolt of pain.

  In the end though, they did finally ease, the Angel breathed deeply and stood. The motion finally carried his reflection out of the mirror. This meant he was also out of Jacobi’s sight.

  “I can’t see you,” Jacobi cursed the edge of panic in his voice.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You need to reevaluate your definition of that word.”

  Enoch sighed at him. “The serum works quickly and I have a high tolerance for pain. My body is already healing the damage done to it. What isn’t fine about that?”

  His logic was infuriating. “Okay, I’m not fine. Just, please, go back to the mirror. Let me see you.”

  “I can’t spend my life before a mirror,” Enoch noted, not unkindly, and moved back to face the mirror.

  Jacobi watched the scrapes and bruises Enoch had acquired during his spasms fade, change color, and disappear altogether. “What’s my name?”

  “My mind is also intact, Jacobi.”

  “What’s that stuff out in that pit?” Jacobi insisted.

  Enoch closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s a solar collection hub utilizing certain colors of the prismatic scale to form a quaternary light spectrum transmission through prismatic encapsulation and decapsulation to boost power intake.”

  “Oh my skies!”

  Enoch’s eyes shot wide and he dropped to a defensive position,
half turned to take in the empty tunnel. “What?”

  “You’re talking gibberish! I knew there was a problem.” Jacobi grinned, relieved.

  Enoch’s smile was almost invisible but it was there. Jacobi was becoming an expert smile hunter.

  The Angel stooped and lifted his coveralls, clasped them to the waist, leaving his chest bared to the cooling air of dusk. Even though Nomans’ cool was the same as dead noon anywhere else. “I’ll be done here quickly. Go play with Cora, I will see you soon.”

  Jacobi didn’t want to leave Enoch alone again.

  “She’ll want to hear that damn story before bed,” Enoch insisted. “Go.”

  The Angel was right, Cora would want to have a bedtime story.

  Jacobi forced himself to go. Knowing that soon he would be more than a Network shade, he would be able to hug them both in his solid arms.

  Knowing that, he could go, for now.

  * * * *

  Enoch made quick work of the repairs once the serum had taken full effect. Most trips he would linger over the changes and enjoy the silence where there was not a single chance of interruption. Tonight though, he wasn’t running away from company but toward it. Cora would be asleep, Jacobi would be frantic. It had been nice to know someone worried about him.

  Even though the undertone of something like a cheering squad in Jacobi’s actions had worn a bit at his pride, Enoch was discovering he had very little pride when it came to the hacker. In or out of sexual situations, Jacobi seemed intent on keeping Enoch guessing at every aspect of their time together. The only solid knowledge he could count on was that Jacobi wanted him, and Jacobi wanted love, and Jacobi saw only the shining goodness of possibilities in humanity, rather than dwelling in the filthy facts.

  What did it mean to Enoch’s conviction that he found he didn’t mind that optimism as much as he had upon their first meeting? Probably that he was letting his dick lead instead of his head.

  He hadn’t thought to even feel such stirrings again, after Sora, the last of his loves, he’d purposely avoided making any new connections close enough to result in…but Jacobi hadn’t given him a choice. The hacker had barged into his life with little regard to angst or reason, and filled it up with the shining hope that exuded even from his avatar.

  I am well and truly undone in him, Enoch realized uneasily. And I’ve welcomed it.

  Repairs done and tools replaced on the cyc, he decided that these thoughts would flow just as well on the go as they would standing still.

  And Enoch wanted to go home.

  * * * *

  Cora’s hammock drooped under her weight by the time he wrestled the thick metal door shut behind him, and Enoch strode to it just long enough to check on her. The little girl’s face still held scraps, scars, and thick healing scabs from her run in with the Angel pack, but she slept peacefully, sure of her safety. It was…humbling.

  “She asked for you,” a familiar voice told him from the monitor behind him. “She wanted to know if you could bring the colors home with you.”

  “The light?” Enoch guessed.

  “She’s never seen a rainbow. Without a port, she’s never seen the Network, and it’s the only place that has rainbows anymore.”

  Enoch nodded. “I’ll bring a small prism on the journey with us. Maybe I can turn one into a necklace for her.”

  “Cora wearing rainbows,” Jacobi’s avatar smiled at him from beyond the glass. “It sounds like a song.”

  A chuckle escaped him unbidden.

  “You should sleep now.” Jacobi looked back to the empty hammock. “Give yourself a chance to heal.”

  Enoch shook his head and pulled his plug and breathing mask free. “My circadian rhythms are always thrown by Nomans. I might be out for an hour or multiple days if I sleep now. If you want to go north, I can port into the Network and stay alert there while my body rests.”

  “That doesn’t sound very restful. Your mind can’t rest like that.”

  “I’ve never needed much sleep, mental or physical,” Enoch promised. He kept talking while he approached the lake, “Besides, I’ve yet to access the Network and not find you there. When do you sleep?”

  “Point.” Jacobi nodded, still concerned but wary of pushing too hard.

  Enoch caught his hesitation, though, of course he did. He disappeared under the water and very soon after, his avatar materialized in the Network office. The moment it was finished he asked. “What is it?”

  Jacobi had been half over the desk to meet him when he asked the question. He slid to a stop on the smooth desk top and forced himself not to fold his arms or adopt similar defensive postures.

  “Well?” the Angel pushed.

  “Are you alright?” Jacobi asked quietly, eyes scanning Enoch’s avatar as if it might give a clue to his physical body’s state of being.

  Enoch stepped closer but didn’t reach out. “Yes. I have told you, it isn’t an isolated occurrence, simply an unpleasant fact of my existence.”

  “I shouldn’t have distracted you.” Guilt oozed from his voice and Jacobi looked away, head down. “I knew Nomans was hurting you.”

  “I went farther than a single comment warranted,” Enoch pointed out in his matter-of-fact manner. “This was not your fault.”

  Jacobi didn’t believe that. “You needed me.”

  “I needed peace, you can own up to that annoyance,” he supplied helpfully.

  Bristling at the comment, Jacobi looked up again to find Enoch’s eyes firmly on him. They were laughing at him. “I was trying to help.”

  “I am a grown man—beyond a grown man, really. I don’t need to be cheered on for the motivation to succeed in something as simple as crawling across the ground.”

  “It didn’t look simple.”

  Enoch smirked. “Neither do you. Apparently looks can be deceiving.”

  Jacobi blinked. “Did you just call me simple?”

  Enoch nodded, “In an overly complex way.”

  They stood face to face, neither sure how to carry the conversation or their feelings further. Jacobi was the first to give, he could admit to himself a problem with being still or quiet for extended lengths of time. “Can I get a hug?”

  Enoch cocked his head to one side questioningly, but opened his arms.

  Diving into their warm circle, Jacobi nuzzled there happily. I must be simple, he decided. I’ve fallen for the least approachable creature on the planet.

  Those arms tightened around him and Enoch laid his head on Jacobi’s shoulder, slipping perfectly into the crook of his neck. The Angel’s chest rose and fell against Jacobi’s, one of his thickly muscled legs pressed between Jacobi’s own. It felt like Enoch was trying to get as close as possible without slipping into Jacobi’s skin.

  Maybe not so unapproachable after all, he thought happily and tightened his own hold, one hand splayed over the small of Enoch’s back, the other cupping the back of his head, Jacobi closed his eyes in contentment and murmured, “Welcome home.”

  Chapter Ten

  Home was far behind them by midway through the next morning, and all of the peace of that night had quickly been erased by the waking world. Man’s road wasn’t an option for getting them to the remains of Richmond. Humans didn’t travel far outside of the span of the Walls, not unless they were Wastrels.

  Wastrels could be almost as dangerous as Angels. People born and raised fighting to survive, to live off of a land that wanted them dead, they hardened quickly. Cora was an example of that, even though Enoch wanted to say otherwise. The child had lost her parents, her whole people, nearly been raped, and after what had likely been a single day of mourning, she was up and ready to face the world again. The sorrow was still there, but for survival’s sake, children of the Waste knew that sorrow had a place, buried deep.

  Just because in this case it had made life easier for him, didn’t mean he had to like it.

  The child in question was sitting in the side car of his cyc, her new riding clothes flapping with the f
orce of the wind. He’d given her an ear bud and mic, to enable them to talk to each other and Jacobi, but as their journey brought them closer and closer to the place her settlement had been, she’d gotten very quiet. With nothing left to scavenge, the place wouldn’t be a danger to them…unless someone had moved in after the killing.

  Enoch glanced sidelong at Cora. Goggles, mask and helmet beneath a weighted hood and the large knives he’d given her for protection sheathed on thighs and back made her look older than her…how old was the child? Having spent so little time interacting with humanity, and most especially children, Enoch found that he was having difficulty distinguishing her age. His best guess was around seven, maybe eight years.

  “How old are you?” he finally gave up and asked.

  “Five Hundred,” Cora replied helpfully. “That’s how old Angels are, right?”

  “You’ve aged well,” he deadpanned, ignoring Jacobi’s laugher in his ear. In any case, the clothing certainly aged her, and the shaved head added an extra hint of danger to the usually unthreatening child. Enoch himself had donned tighter gear than his usual coveralls, making his muscles more obvious, he’d traded the machine shop greys for the dark browns more prominent in the Waste. His cyc was large and armed and he himself wore his own weapons, two solid batons, the handles jutting out to the side, across his back. If needed, there were blades inside of each, waiting to be extended. He could only hope the sight of them would discourage individual assailants from picking them out as targets, but in desperate times….

  “How long?” Cora asked.

  Enoch wasn’t sure which destination she was referring to.

  Jacobi saved him from the awkward situation. “It’s half an hour at most from your old settlement, another 15 or so from there to me if you go at top speed.”

  “And if nothing delays us.” Enoch added.

  Cora stared ahead for a while before asking, “Do you think they buried everyone?”

  Frankly, Enoch was pretty sure they’d eaten everyone. A force as large as the one that had attacked them likely had a large population of non-combatants, the old but wise who could many times heal and deliver children, the very young, pregnant women, and the guards to those people. They would have gone to fetch that group after the killing, to feed.