“Okay,” Mika said, sighing. “I’m probably verging on mean now.”
She glanced at the woman who stood next to the bench, then back at Loki.
“Listen up, brother.” She looked again at the woman, still speaking English, only louder now. “...You too, cousin.”
Her eyes swiveled back to Loki’s as she continued in her accented but precise voice.
“Your shoulder wound, brother...it is mostly superficial,” she said. “A clean shot, not even any shrapnel. So it might hurt, but do not worry so much about this one. It’s been cleaned thoroughly, stitched and bandaged.” Mika gave the woman another warning look, before aiming the same at Loki. “...Your leg is more serious, brother. Illeg says it’s not broken to feel, but our hand-holds got hit in the field, so we can’t confirm that for certain...there may be a fracture there, something Illeg and Holo didn’t catch...so whatever you do, don’t put any pressure on the thing until we can look at it on the carrier, okay?”
Reaching towards him with a hand, Mika pressed on his forehead again, pushing him back to the pillow. She’d done it to stop him raising his head again...which Loki had barely noticed himself doing.
When he obeyed her, she rubbed his chest again, feeding him light through her fingers, and again, Loki felt the human woman’s irritation.
“You got hit pretty hard in the head, brother,” Mika said, still in English for the human’s benefit. Her voice grew a little sharper that time, and a little louder. “Definitely a concussion...we don’t know how serious. Jax’s pack got shot while you and Rex were bringing him in. Those stinking armor-piercing bullets managed to raze off part of his rifle, and it hit you in the back of the head, my brother...pretty damned hard, we think. It knocked you out, and the others tell me that’s no small feat with your thick skull.”
Loki grunted. He didn’t know if something showed on his face at that, but Mika sighed, giving him a few reassuring clicks and purrs as her fingers fed him more light.
“Still. It is probably nothing serious, brother,” she assured him. “...We do not think so, anyway. No head injury can be treated as safe until we get it checked out, though...and like I told you, no hand-helds to do that thoroughly out here. We’ve got your leg splinted, cleaned and stitched up. Your head is bandaged in back, too, and we gave you a few shots, which is probably the only reason you’re not whining like a baby right now...”
Loki frowned at that, and Mika laughed.
“A reaction! Finally.”
She rose smoothly to her feet, then indicated towards something next to her, a little lower than where Loki’s head rested on the pillow. Whatever she pointed at, it lived somewhere not far from where the light source came, too, so Loki guessed it as a table.
“See if you can get him to eat something,” Mika said then, addressing her words to the woman. “...At least make him drink some of this water. All of it, if you can.”
The human looked nervous again, maybe at the idea of being left alone with him. She only nodded, though, her dark, sharp eyes glancing at whatever Mika waved a hand towards.
“Okay,” Mika said. She gave a single nod of her head, seer-fashion, then gestured a sign of respect and affection to Loki. “I’ll be back in an hour, brother. Longer if I hear anything obscene going on here.”
She gave him another wink and a grin. As she walked away from the bed, Mika shook a finger teasingly at the woman, too.
“Don’t hurt him, cousin!” she scolded. “Not too much funny business, okay?”
“Okay,” the woman said.
Loki felt a faint tremor in his light from hearing her voice. It sounded husky and low in the dead air of the room, and he realized she’d remained on her feet, hovering over the bench but looking like she’d rather be hovering over him by now. Loki watched as she shoved her ring-clad hands into the front pockets of her form-fitting jeans, shifting her weight between slim hips. She didn’t look at him, though, in spite of his stare, but continued to watch Mika as the smaller, shorter female fussed over the table for a moment and then walked out the room.
The human avoided looking at him, Loki noticed, until a few seconds after he heard the door shut behind Mika’s retreating footsteps.
When she did finally turn, Loki could only stare. Her dark eyes looked almost liquid to him now, and the pain in his gut and chest grew unbearable.
He wanted her to come nearer.
Gods, he wanted it so badly.
He could feel a faint throbbing in his shoulder now, distant still but moving ever closer to the requisite nerve endings. He could feel other things, too, a sharper pain in his leg, a duller, throbbing, more debilitating pain coming from the back of his head. He tried to focus on these things, to distract himself, but he could tell they’d pumped drugs into his system, like Mika said, enough that his inhibitions were lowered past where they should be.
Or maybe that was just another excuse.
Either way, he couldn’t maintain the silence as long as she could.
“Come here,” he said in English. “Please, cousin.”
She jerked as if she’d been stung. He didn’t know at first if it came from him breaking the silence, or from what he’d said. He felt her surprise at the sound of his voice, too.
She liked his accent, though. She thought it was sexy.
His pain worsened. He closed his eyes that time, shifting his head so that his eyes aimed at the ceiling instead of at her. He thought maybe it would help if he stopped looking at her. He could still feel her light, but maybe it would help if he didn’t keep looking at her body, watching the way she moved her hands and arms, the micro-expressions on her face. Maybe he would fall back asleep...go back to dreaming of her by that golden ocean...
But didn’t Mika just tell her that he couldn’t sleep?
The next time, it was the woman who spoke.
“What is your name?” she said.
He flinched, opening his eyes, then regretted it when his head started to throb louder in the background. Despite what he’d just been telling himself, he turned his head, looking at her again. She’d moved closer to him, and now stood almost directly over where he lay.
He looked more or less up now to see her, instead of to the side.
He could feel her thinking that he couldn’t fall asleep, either.
She felt nervous, conscious that she had to keep him awake. He felt the bare edge of panic in her light at the thought, a worry that touched him when he realized it was for him. She was afraid she would fuck up and he would die on her watch. She was terrified of that happening, actually. He wanted to reach a hand out to reassure her, but he didn’t.
“It’s Loki, isn’t it?” she said, her voice slightly louder.
He felt her thinking that maybe she needed to call one of the seers back in here after all, to help keep him awake. He felt her thinking that his eyes looked unfocused, that his color looked better, but that he really looked pretty out of it, too.
He heard her thinking that she really wanted to touch him.
What the hell is wrong with me? she thought. Why am I acting like this?
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice coming out thick, almost dense.
He fought to clear his throat, then reached for her, for her fingers, in spite of himself. He clasped them almost nervously, still watching her face. She didn’t move away from him though, and he felt her fingers squeeze his back as she took another step closer to his bed.
“Sorry?” she said, quirking an eyebrow at him. “What for?”
He didn’t know how to answer that, either.
When her cheeks turned pinkish, his tongue thickened in his mouth. He slid his fingers deeper into hers, reaching his hand out farther, not letting himself think about whether that was a good idea, either. She moved closer a second time when he did it, and that time, she clasped his hand with both of hers.
Once she had, she seemed at a loss again, as if unsure what she should do.
Is he doing this to me? he felt he
r wonder.
“No, cousin,” he told her, unthinking.
She started, blinking in surprise as she stared down at him. He watched her eyes widen slightly as she thought over the ramifications of what he’d just said.
He just read my mind. He just read my fucking mind...he must have. What the hell am I doing? He’s obviously one of them. Isn’t this what they do? Bewitch people?
He felt her struggle to make her thoughts harder, more cynical, and felt his pain worsen when she didn’t quite succeed. She didn’t want to believe she couldn’t trust him. She didn’t want to believe he would harm her, either. More than anything, she didn’t want to believe that how she felt was just some form of seer manipulation. He felt her trying to force herself to believe it, that this was an illusion, but she couldn’t quite do it.
His pain worsened as he felt the conflict on her, as her fingers tightened around his.
Her mind grew almost panicked.
What does he want from me? A shiver of fear coursed through her light, leaking into her body. Is this because he saw me as a whore? Because he saw me in that place?
He shook his head, adamant.
“No,” he said. “No, cousin...do not think such a thing. Please.”
When she looked down, her cheeks and neck darkening with blush, he closed his eyes briefly, fighting to control his light. She seemed to have accepted that he could read her mind, which turned him on, too, maybe because she still didn’t feel overly afraid of him.
When he continued to watch her, her jaw hardened, her dark eyes growing defiant.
“Because I’m not like that,” she told him. She gripped his fingers more tightly in hers. “I’m not like that...you know that, right? I was just trying to survive. For Dani...and for me.”
“I understand,” he assured her, gripping both of her hands with the one of his. “Cousin, do not concern yourself with this.”
“I know how it looked...” she began, but Loki already shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You do not. Not to me.” Making a seer’s shrug with one hand, he added, “Many of my people are forced into such circumstances. You will find that there is little judgment on such things from seers...that I am not unusual in this. We never assume one would ever do this thing, given a better choice. It is not a matter of morality for us.”
His words seemed to stump her briefly. He saw intelligence spark in her eyes, though. He could also feel that she’d understood him the way he intended.
While she thought about his words, Loki’s eyes took in the rough cut of her black hair, realizing he recognized the basic style.
“What?” she said. “What are you looking at?”
“Your hair,” he told her truthfully. He continued to look at it, noting how different it looked on her face, how it framed her cheekbones. “...I think your daughter must have cut hers to resemble yours because she missed you greatly.” At the pain that came to her eyes, he cleared his throat again, then looked at the table. He didn’t release her fingers, but nodded towards the container of water he could see there.
“I’m thirsty, cousin,” he said. “Would you mind...?”
“No.”
He felt her startle, as if pulled out of a deeper set of thoughts. He fought to keep his light away from hers, to give her some privacy, but wasn’t succeeding very well. Even so, he only really saw images of her daughter’s face. He felt the love that burned there, for her human daughter, and that touched him, too.
“...No, of course not,” she added, a little belatedly. Her cheeks warmed, and that time, he felt himself getting hard. “Sorry.”
She released his hand.
Finding his fingers clutching cold air, he regretted having spoken, at least until he’d had longer to touch her. He only lay there, though, watching as she leaned over to the table, grabbing the container of water and arranging the straw with her small fingers before she brought it closer to him. She sat on the mattress next to him then, and set the container on the pillow near his chest, angling the straw so it would meet his lips. He found himself trying to sit up once more, but her hand found his shoulder firmly, as Mika’s had earlier.
“No,” she said, her voice as firm as her fingers. “Stay where you are.”
He reacted to her touch a lot differently than he had to Mika’s.
Reaching up, he clasped her hair in his hand, letting out a low sound, before he knew he intended to do either. He started to pull her mouth down to his, lost in her light where it wrapped into his, pretty much the second she sat next to him.
She stopped him though, clasping his wrist with her free hand.
“Drink first,” she told him.
Loki looked up at her face, focusing briefly on her mouth before he forced his eyes closed. He could feel her light winding into his even more now, could practically hear the heart beating in her chest. Still, he didn’t miss the import of her words. Nor did his mind stop reading as much into that word “first” as he possibly could. He knew he’d already more or less lost control of himself, at least to a degree.
“I am not...” He struggled for words. “This is not usual for me, either, cousin,” he told her, knowing how lame it probably sounded, and perhaps insincere.
He got a smile for that.
It made his erection worse...a lot worse.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, her New York accent growing audible in her voice. “I bet you’re just a saint, normally, right?”
He didn’t answer that, but felt his own face warm.
She held the straw to his mouth, and he took it between his lips, glad of the distraction, the excuse to look away from her again. Sucking the liquid through the straw, he couldn’t help feeling the relief that flooded his system at the coolness of the water on his tongue. He drank probably for a full minute, if not longer. He felt her eyes on his face as he did it, although he refused to look at her now, at least until he drank his fill.
“Who are you?” she said again, as he came up for breath. “Do we know each other?”
He paused before answering, taking another short drink before another few breaths.
Fighting to think, he focused on the shape of his own feet under the thin blanket. Then, giving himself more time to think about her question, he drank more, feeling his body relax deeper into the mattress the longer he did. He found himself wondering if Mika had put vitamins in the water, or some other form of sustenance, and found himself thinking that she or one of the other seers probably had.
Eventually, though, he ran out of room in his body.
By then, the large, wide-necked container was already more than half-empty. Realizing his stomach was full, he released the straw with his mouth, letting out a slow exhale as he rested his head back on the pillow.
When he looked up at her that time, her dark eyes were on his chest.
For the first time, he noticed that his chest was bare, or close to it, with the sheets covering him only to the upper part of his abdomen. Somehow, he hadn’t noticed that when it had been Mika who was touching him. He waited for her to finish her appraisal, reacting to her stare even when he refused to let himself stare back, either at her body or her face.
He knew he was muscular, both from extensive mulei training, including with the Sword, and from the training he had been doing with Wreg and the others for the past few weeks, readying himself for full-time field work. Even so, her stare caught him off guard, as did the flickers of appreciation he felt off her light. He hadn’t really thought about how his body looked in anything but a practical sense for years.
He felt her liking his body...he felt her liking it a lot.
He forced that out of his mind, too.
“You don’t know me,” he blurted, answering her question finally, but still without looking at her. “I assuredly don’t know you. Meeting you is not something I would have forgotten...” he added, again speaking through nerves.
His feeble attempt to flirt nearly made him wince, pretty much the instant he sa
id it, but she glanced up at his words, smiling at him again.
Something about that sideways smile, the knowing, almost cynical look that came to her eyes, turned him on, too. She looked like a fighter to him. She might not call herself such, or think of herself as such, but he could feel it, in her light. Her life had not been easy. She was a human who had known hardships, and had overcome them without losing herself.
He admired that. He admired it a lot.
But gods...he was staring at her again. Almost without noticing it, this time.
“So what now?” she said, resettling her rear and legs on the bed next to him. “Do you want to know more about me? Or do you think you know it all already?”
Her words came out teasing, but he could hear the real question there.
He shook his head. “I know very little. Nothing, really.”
His fingers found hers once more, cautiously, when she rested her hands in her lap. She looked down at where he wound his hand around one of hers. He felt heat in her light once more, and his pain came back stronger, especially now that his body felt less weak. A rush of feeling and desire clenched in a hard ball in his chest, making it briefly difficult to breathe. He knew if he’d been in better shape physically, he probably would be trying to do a lot more than hold her hand. As it was, he forced himself to just lay there, watching her look at their entwined fingers.
After another long-feeling pause, she let out a sigh.
He felt enough surrender in that exhale that his pain sharpened briefly.
“So what now?” she said. As if still thinking somewhere in the background, she let out a low chuckle. “I’m thinking about sex. I’m pretty sure you’re thinking about sex...” She glanced down at his body again, reddening a little, even as his pain spiked abruptly. “Is this a seer thing? To want to get down and dirty with a complete stranger?”
He felt his face heat more.
She didn’t let him off the hook when he remained silent.
“So what is this thing?” she said, a little sharper. “Is this a crush? The seer version?”
Thinking about her words, he nodded, conceding her meaning reluctantly.
Allie's War Season Four Page 92