Even so, he didn’t try to get up, not even to stretch his legs.
The reason for that primarily lived with the dark head that currently rested in his lap, as well as the pale arm that coiled around his thigh. That same arm squeezed him tighter as he shifted, then relaxed once Revik relaxed himself.
Sighing, he ran his fingers through his hair, trying not to think about her, at least right at that precise moment. He found it almost impossible not to have some smattering of thoughts in the back of his mind about her, no matter what he was doing, but he at least tried to push it out of the forefront. Well, apart from how she figured into the new plan, anyway.
Out of habit mostly, he sat at the back of the cabin.
He didn’t know why he sat there, other than the fact that he usually walked around more, so the seat’s inability to recline far usually didn’t bother him. He liked having his back to walls in general...old infiltrator’s habit, even apart from the war and some of the identities he’d adopted over the years. Still, Revik knew he could have brought Allie with him to another part of the plane and both of them would have been able to sleep.
Revik didn’t want to sleep, though.
Conversely, he could have headed up to what had been the first class section of the longer cabin, where he knew Wreg, Balidor and Jorag sat, probably talking about the details of the new plan, or even about Revik and Allie themselves, which he knew they did on occasion, too, although they tried to hide it from him.
In any case, he wasn’t feeling particularly social, either, not even in terms of strategy.
He knew he needed to talk to them again before the plane landed. For now, he just wanted the quiet of his own mind...or as quiet as it ever got nowadays, with the connections between himself, Jon, Maygar and Allie. Maybe because of those connections, he found himself craving silence more these days, not less. He found himself wanting to be alone more often, too––or, more accurately, alone with just Allie, even if it meant an artificial physical barrier of one kind or another between the two of them and the rest of their strange quartet.
Whatever the causes and connections, Revik already knew he wouldn’t sleep, even if he’d felt inclined to try.
Allie seemed to be okay where she was, anyway. Revik knew that probably influenced his decision as much as anything. He scarcely bothered to think about that fact consciously anymore, much less find fault with it.
Running his fingers through the dark curls of her hair, he combed through tangles absently, feeling her light and body grow heavier against his when he began to massage her neck and shoulder with light fingers. Without his willing it, his own light reacted sharply to the increased warmth he felt off hers, especially when her fingers tightened on his skin through his pants, one hand curled around his thigh and the other his calf.
He shoved his awareness of that away, as well, but not before it began to affect his body, and not only by tensing his muscles.
Also without his willing it, his mind shifted to the day before.
Emotions still warred with him whenever he let the memories touch the more conscious edges of his light. His chest hurt whenever he thought about her walking into that basement room without clothes, but he felt pain too...especially when he let his mind drift to their interactions when he caught up with her again upstairs.
He couldn’t pretend any of it felt simple to him, not anymore...or that he had some black and white set of answers that made sense to his rational mind. Even less could he pretend to understand the more light-level reactions he had to her, the ones that always seemed to bypass rationality altogether.
His mind toyed with those lines anyway.
Looking down at her now, at her profile where her head rested on one arm that curled into a near triangle in his lap, he felt another pulse of that heat. Guilt accompanied the feeling, along with an uncomfortable shift of his eyes off her body...but the feeling didn’t really dissipate. He knew the others had been speculating as to what he’d been doing with her since she regained consciousness, but he couldn’t let himself think about that, either.
Truthfully, though, it had been easier to ignore those whispered speculations before yesterday. Now, after her display in the basement and his interactions with her when they were alone in the upstairs room afterwards, Revik found himself avoiding the eyes of the other seers, too. He found himself avoiding Jon’s eyes, especially...and Maygar’s...and not only because he wasn’t sure how much of him they could feel, since their lights were so much more inextricably tied into one another and to her. He knew they’d heard at least part of what had transpired in that upstairs bedroom, even if it had only been Revik’s side of his and Allie’s second argument of the day––the one that at least marginally happened in private.
Well, it hadn’t really been an argument, not in any true sense.
The truth was, all he’d felt when he got back to the room yesterday had been anger.
More than anger.
He’d been furious with her.
So furious, he’d barely been able to remember that she wasn’t the woman he’d married... that she might not even be able to understand his rage, given how she was now, much less respond to it in a way that his less-than-rational mind would find remotely satisfying.
Whatever he’d realized, consciously or not, after he’d finished making arrangements to accede to her wishes––including contacting the airport and his pilots to inform them of the delay in their departure, which caused a whole other host of security issues that only pissed him off more––after all of that felt more or less under control and on track, Revik had gone upstairs to their bedroom.
By then, he’d had time to think about the other implications of her decision, too, including a denser worry that they might lose even the tiny element of surprise they’d retained up until that point, and thus, possibly any chance at all of reaching Cass before she and Shadow and Feigran absconded with their child yet again.
So yeah, he’d been pissed.
He’d also known that Allie would be there, waiting for him.
He’d known in part because he checked with Chinja and Illeg pretty much every other breath to ensure that his wife was still in that fucking room, waiting for him.
When Revik finally reached the landing at the top of the stairs and approached the closed door, he’d dismissed the guards he’d left there, including Chinja and Illeg, who he’d left in charge. He’d barely looked at them, truthfully, as he passed them on his way towards where he felt Allie’s light in the master bedroom.
He’d been fighting his anger actively by then, barely able to control it by the time he got through the door and found himself facing her. She’d been dressed at least... barely... and probably only because he swore at Chinja on his link, telling the female infiltrator to dress his wife physically if she had to... even if they had to restrain her to do it. Even so, her outfit consisted of one of Revik’s own long-sleeved dress shirts and a pair of black leggings that clung to her legs so tight and sheer that they looked more like stockings than pants.
He’d been shouting before he’d finished closing the door.
He barely remembered what he’d said now.
He’d totally forgotten that anyone besides her might be listening to him.
Well, that, or he’d stopped caring if they were.
He remembered accusing her of manipulating him, of pretending to be less connected to what was going on around her than she actually was. He accused her of undermining him in front of the others, of threatening to break vow, of making him look like a fool... of deliberately bullying him. He’d yelled at her for fucking shoving him, using the telekinesis, so essentially hitting him in front of the rest of them, and when he couldn’t even fight back.
He’d been too angry to even be coherent.
The almost-blank look in her eyes as she calmly listened to him rant only made his anger worse. He had a vague recollection of breaking something.
He didn’t throw it at her, he didn’t eve
n throw it in her direction, but some part of him just wanted to snap her out of that damned fugue state long enough to acknowledge him... and to acknowledge what she’d just done to him. He’d done it by making as much fucking noise as he possibly could. He’d done it by gesturing at her angrily, by raising his voice.
None of it did a damned thing.
He knew it wasn’t rational. He knew it, even then, even as he yelled at her, his voice probably carrying down all three flights of stairs to the seers milling on the lower floors of the Victorian house. All of the stress and worry he’d felt about leaving her behind and about her mental state exploded out of him in a kind of snowball-rolling-down-a-hill type of irrationality, one he wasn’t even willing to acknowledge much less reign in, at least not at first.
Even so, his awareness continued to run its own slow loops in the background. He felt the other infiltrators in the construct reacting to his anger, and even to some of his words. He felt Balidor shielding the rest of the construct from the two of them, and especially from Revik himself... he felt Wreg trying to do the same.
Revik hadn’t given a rat’s ass about any of it.
At some point, he’d run out of steam long enough that he just stood there, staring at her, half-panting with exertion and frustration. Her eyes had been glowing at that point, he remembered that much. They shone like thin, sharp rings in the dim light of the room, and when she came closer to him, initially he’d backed away, trying to get away from her. She’d backed him right into the wall, but he hadn’t shoved her away, even then.
He remembered having trouble looking at her.
He remembered wondering if she’d use the telekinesis on him again, maybe beat him up for real that time, anything to shut him up.
He didn’t remember, not precisely anyway, when things shifted.
He remembered realizing suddenly that she was in pain. He’d disbelieved his own perceptions at first, then he’d wondered if it had been her own display downstairs that she’d been reacting to. He wondered if she was going to try and seduce one of the other seers again, maybe right in front of him, just to make her point. All of that went through his mind in a heartbeat though, and through it all, she didn’t move from where she stood in front of him.
She’d been in a lot of pain.
He had no idea if his anger had triggered it, or the things he’d actually been saying to her, or even his own pain... which he could feel by then, too, as soon as he acknowledged it to himself. He could remember the rough set of minutes before either of them acted on it. He let her back him into the wall by the door to the room, and then she had her hands on him. He had a dimmer memory of pushing her off him the first few times, of maybe even threatening her.
That part felt less distinct, though, less clear in his mind, than when she caught hold of his hair, pulling him down to her mouth. It felt even further away from when she started kissing him. Maybe it was too similar to how she’d kissed him the very first time, in that loud, smoky club in lower Manhattan. Or maybe he’d simply stopped caring by then. Either way, for the first time since she’d come out of that wire coma, he didn’t push her away.
He went from not pushing her away to kissing her back.
It had been maddening... he remembered that much.
Feeling her but not, glimpsing vague pulses of her light without being able to reach her, not enough anyway... not nearly enough. It had infuriated him and frustrated him and hurt him in places he’d thought he’d cut himself off from being hurt from by now... yet those vague hints of her had been enough to enflame the pain he’d been suppressing for days, weeks, months, however fucking long it had been this time, of all the times they’d been separated since he’d known her. Feeling her, even that small, vague amount of her, turned him on and filled him with so much grief he’d nearly lost his mind in those first few minutes he let himself go there.
He remembered it was him who eventually brought both of them to the floor.
She’d been undressing him somewhere in that headfuck span of minutes where he kissed her against the wall, when he’d been pulling on her, trying to use their kissing to force her light back to being with his. When he finally had her on the floor, he’d already started returning the favor, tearing those nylon-like leggings off her with his bare hands.
Gods, he’d always loved kissing her.
She’d had an instinctive use of her light while kissing, even from that very first time, in that nightclub in front of Jaden. Kissing him, she didn’t only tease his light, she seemed to pull him inside of her in slow, gentle increments. He’d always lost his mind, kissing her. It had always frustrated him and turned him on and even filled him with emotion... but this was different.
It wasn’t her, this time.
She pulled on him, but there wasn’t enough of her in that light to even come close to fooling him. It couldn’t even fool the parts of him that cared more about fucking her light than about being with her because he loved her apart from it.
Those overheard whispers between Wreg and Balidor echoed somewhere in his mind, even as he did it, even as he kissed her.
Even as he took off her clothes.
...It’d be like necrophilia.
Gods. Even thinking it made him angry... angry at her, angry at Wreg.
He’d wanted to kill Wreg, especially when he remembered the look in those black eyes as Wreg stared at his naked wife. Earlier that day, the fucker punched him because of Jon, and then he’s looking at his wife, wanting her...
Revik didn’t even remember making a decision.
He knew it didn’t really hit him, what he’d decided... not until he was already inside of her.
He’d stopped right after he entered her, staring down at her face and eyes. She’d wrapped herself around him by then, her fingers clenched in his hair, the remnants of that damned sensuality of hers in her fingers and body as she slid up against him. He felt the muscle memory, the parts of her that remembered who she had been, who they had been together, but he couldn’t feel her in it.
He hadn’t pulled out, though, not even then.
Instead he’d fucked her, crying, trying to reach her, staring at that blank face and feeling like the worst kind of animal for doing it anyway, even without her being there with him. She’d kissed his tears, touching his face, not talking, still lost in that silence that never seemed to break, no matter how often he begged her to speak to him. He heard her gasp, even moan against his ear a few times, but she didn’t speak while they had sex, either. Perhaps even more strangely, he stayed as silent as she did, even though he normally wouldn’t have... he normally would have talked to her, maybe even more than she did to him.
They’d always talked to one another during sex, pretty much from the beginning. It was one of those things about her that drove him crazy, especially when she lost control for real and no longer seemed to track what she said to him.
He brought her to an orgasm and watched it in her face, a distant, nearly lost wave of pleasure, totally disconnected from him.
For him, it felt like stealing. It felt like something she did without any awareness of where she was, something so far apart from her, from who she’d been, who they were to one another, that he might not have been there at all.
Revik’s own role in her pleasure had been incidental. A footnote.
He’d cried again when he realized that, when he saw it in her eyes, but he’d kept going until he came, too, and he’d never stopped trying to feel her in all of it. He’d fought his way inside her, with his body and light, but he might as well have been trying to grip smoke in his hands. He’d never felt so hungry, so completely fucking deprived... it reminded him of when he’d been Terian’s captive, all of those years ago, when he’d fought to feel her, when his body had been slowly starving, when he’d pressed his mouth to damp tile, trying to drink, to quench a thirst that seemed to burn every cell in his body. Everything had been out of reach back then, including her, out of reach of his light, his stomach, hi
s mouth, his lungs and heart and fingers.
He’d been so angry at her... more angry than he’d thought possible before now, especially since they’d been married in that restaurant in Central Park.
The rational part of his mind knew how ridiculous it was, to blame her.
The more emotional part of himself hated himself for blaming her.
The even more emotional part of him remembered what she’d threatened in that basement room, what she’d thrown in his face, not only showing him images of her fucking Balidor but also images of her with Wreg and Jorag and even random strangers.
She hadn’t just shown those images to Revik, either. She’d shown all of them, the whole fucking room. She’d been seducing them even as she threw Revik’s fears ruthlessly into his face, letting them see the structures the Lao Hu put in her light when Voi Pai made her a consort, letting them see the promise in what those structures really meant.
She’d let them see her naked.
She’d encouraged them to fucking imagine it.
He’d hated her for that.
He’d really fucking hated her.
The part that blamed her couldn’t be persuaded to see it any other way. It didn’t care how irrational the other parts of his mind accused that less-rational part of being. It didn’t care about logic, or compassion or understanding. It didn’t care if what had happened to her was part of their fate, part of the Displacement itself, part of history unfolding.
She’d left him.
She’d fucking left him here... again.
And even though she’d left him, enough of her remained behind to know how to hurt him, how to threaten him and make him feel powerless... and used.
Shoving the thought out of his mind now, along with the irrational anger that still rose with it, he clenched his jaw, fighting to regain the pure, abstract ease of linear thought. His light had changed, though, in those few minutes of indulging in memory... he felt reactions in his body, too, another betrayal of his light and the less-conscious areas of his mind.
He shifted in the airplane seat and forced his eyes off her face, even as he continued stroking her hair. Her pain rose with his, though, tantalizingly close in her light, pulling on his, sliding through it achingly.
Allie's War Season Four Page 21