by C. V. Larkin
"You don't know that. Healing is an energy exchange, not something physical that can be mended."
"No," Sio croaked. His voice had conviction, but no weight behind it. Tian and Virgil ignored him, if they'd heard him at all.
"Tian," Virgil said. His voice turned pleading. "He wouldn't want it this way. Goddess turned, I met him for thirty seconds and even I could see that he loves you. That male would endure anything to spare your suffering. Do. Not. Ask me for this."
There was a note of desperation in Virgil's voice that screamed of painful personal experience. Sio gritted his teeth and pried dry eyelids open to catch sight of the speaker in his periphery. He hadn't liked the hard-assed Mexican in the hallway, but the guy's words gave him serious incentive to rethink the initial impression.
"And I would endure anything to spare his life," Tian's voice was raw, and low, and as vulnerable as Sio had ever heard it. "Please, Virgil, for once, let me do something kind with this curse of mine." She swallowed hard, sounding as if she were on the verge of tears. "Let me have one death in the bitter thousands that holds meaning."
Virgil let out a tortured curse and punched the wall behind him. The hit was hard enough to splinter the multi-hued strips of weather-worn barn board, leaving an unsightly dent. He grabbed Tian around the neck, spinning her around, and shoving her into the wall. The cords strained under the skin of the bastard's neck, his tanned face was distorted by the effects of an astonishing level of self-loathing. Virgil's mouth dropped down onto Tian's and Sio fought in a cold fury to sit up.
Tian's skin had paled to the color of old newspaper by the time he'd managed to right himself. Vengeance and fear sent a searing deluge of adrenaline through his blood stream. Every breath he took kicked off an unbearable pain in his chest and only served to fuel the black rage as he staggered forward. Sio watched, unable to get to her in time as Tian went limp in Virgil's arms.
The other male collected her lifeless form gently, catching sight of Sio as he turned. Sio dropped to his knees, unable to support himself as his soul spiraled out into the abyss. He watched, mute, as Virgil walked across the room and laid Tian out on the chaise in the corner. Her hand slipped off the edge of the chair, dropping to the floor with a boneless thud. Sio dragged in a ragged breath and railed against the urge to start screaming by telling himself that she'd survive. If she didn't he'd go mad. Stark raving Ophelia all over the place. He closed his eyes and felt Virgil settle in front of him.
"If I survive and she doesn't I swear that I will tear you limb from limb before I beat you to death." Sio was surprised at how steady his voice sounded. It was clearer that it had been at any point since he'd been shot.
"If she doesn't survive I won't try to stop you." Virgil grabbed the back of Sio's skull and unceremoniously pushed Tian's life force past his lips.
Chapter 27
The Ties that Bind
She was adrift in frozen delirium, adrift and surfacing in the darkness for an eternity. It occurred to her that she was tied to her own flesh about the same time she realized she was shaking so hard that her teeth were rattling around in her jaw like dice. The inundating cold was in her bones, radiating blistering subzero tendrils to all of the major nerve bundles in her body. Tian's first instinct was to expect pain. She waited for the onslaught of brilliant agony to accompany the resurrection, but there was nothing save for a tightly spooled thread of panic.
Sio.
The desperate tide of his heartbreak spilled through her skin, battering against the already raw nerve it found there making it impossible not to crack wide open. His arms were around her. His touch seared her flesh, thawing her from the hypothermic daze from the outside in. He was still alive. Tian choked, fighting down the strangled mewling sounds escaping through her traitorous throat. She burrowed against Sio's body in an attempt to smother herself, biting her lips, hoping he wouldn't hear. Of course he did.
Sio brushed her hair back and pressed his lips against her clammy forehead on a shaken exhalation. His entire being flowed through that kiss and what she found there made her bawl in earnest. Tian was overcome by him, by the unexpected surge of gratitude that came on the heels of her own resurrection. Gratitude. Sweet Mother. She felt swollen with it.
Thank you. A prayer. It was the first she'd ever made, silent or otherwise.
The resonant hum of the Goddess sung steadily in response, echoing against the rafters of her ribcage. Sio hadn't said a word since she'd come to. He'd sat there mute, still the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, arms wrapped around her as if he'd been in mourning, unable to let her go. His fear was still a tangible thing, receding yes, but the bitter aftertaste of it lingered on the back of her tongue.
Tian's vision flickered and dimmed in time with her heartbeat. She began to comprehend detail in sluggish bursts of clarity. Sio's face was drawn. He looked haggard for the first time since she'd laid eyes on him. Then there was Virgil, huddled over by the door, caught in the fractured web of her peripheral vision. The Mayan had a split lip which he continually worried at while staring at her with a devastated expression. His nose was ruined. An emotion that might have been guilt churned like battery acid in her gut. Just because you wouldn't change your choices didn't mean that they felt good when surveying the aftermath.
"Sio," she said through the shrapnel coating her throat.
"Yeah."
"I..."
He shook his head cutting her off. "Don't."
Tian struggled to sit up. That her body obeyed on the first attempt was a surprise.
Sio continued after clearing his throat twice. "Swear to me that you won't do it again."
Her chest hurt. "No." The expression on his face was devastating. "I can't," she said. "I'm sorry."
He wouldn't look at her as she struggled to her feet. She wished she knew how someone less ruined would handle this shit, but the irony was she didn't feel broken. No, she felt awake. Heartsick and terrified and wide fucking awake. Tian took a couple of loose staggering steps backward before working up the courage to speak.
"I can't promise what you're asking, Sio. I'd do it again." Another step back.
He raised those pale fire eyes up to her face and nearly put her back on the ground under the weight of that heartbroken gaze.
"Why?"
The itch for the kind of absolution that only physical pain would bring was suffocating. And didn't it figure that the resurrection would choose this once to cheat her. She almost laughed, even though there was nothing to find funny.
Why? What a stupid gods damned question.
Goddess turned; she didn't want to look at him right now, but she couldn't seem to focus anywhere else. All of the tidy compartments and safe barriers in her skull were rubble.
"Because I love you."
He was on his feet before the phrase had fully escaped. Tian fought the rising urge to be sick. The magnitude of what had come out of her mouth pressed in on her, stealing the air from the room. She couldn't stand it, nearly gave in to the desperate inclination to escape because it was too much. She backed up another step, looking for the space to think straight.
"Then stop running... Please."
The words came out softly, without a trace of accusation or anger. The naked vulnerability in his tone broke through the wall of panic. It cut straight to the core. She might have been willing to punish herself indefinitely, but not him. The thought was unbearable.
Claim him.
The desire to do so was too visceral for comfort. Hard to tell if the sentiment came from the Goddess or from her. Tian snuck a glance at Sio's face and the corresponding surge in her chest gave her all the answer she could handle. He was the only peace she would ever know, in this life or any other. Once he touched her she wouldn't unplug. Once he touched her he'd own her. She'd own him. The Goddess's will would be assuaged and there would be no going back. It was all way too damn intense for a Thursday afternoon. The Mayan coughed pointedly against the wall
. She'd forgotten anyone else was in the room. Tian's mouth was dry as she opened it to speak.
"Get out, Virgil." Her voice was unrecognizable.
Virgil swore under his breath, too distraught to translate, and hauled ass out the door as if the room were on fire. The damage was done though. The erotic pressure had built to suffocating levels. Sio hadn't moved from where he stood bare chested in front of the chaise. A pair of black nylon track pants were slung low on his hips. The thin material made it impossible not to notice how the chemistry was affecting him. The Goddess spilled through Tian, testing the limits of their skin while the possession rode unchecked through her body. The honeyed whispers of cold fire fluttering were making it difficult to focus. The need nearly doubled her over.
"Tell me what it means, Sio," the voice that slipped her lips had a metallic resonance that overlaid her own.
A smile ghosted across his bedroom pout, incongruent with the amount of heat in his eyes. He looked at her as if he had no doubt she was still in her own body, like he could see straight into her and was unfazed by the fact a deity was riding shotgun. Tian could feel the demented inhuman energy radiating from his body in waves all the way across the room.
"It means that I'm yours, Tian."
Danu. The distinction buzzed around her brain like an electric current and the Goddess receded. He'd enunciated every syllable without hesitation. Her organs contorted in her ribcage.
"I'm terrified of my heart," she answered. "It wants so much."
Even to her own ears the sentence was practically inaudible. Sio must have heard her though, because his pupils contracted; the shock on his face was unmistakable.
"I'll do whatever you need," he told her.
He meant it.
Tian bridged the gap between them and Sio let out a violent exhalation. He watched her without moving, all coiled tension and otherworldly focus. She padded barefoot through the grass while the long blades whispered against her ankles, trying to cool the fluttering blaze that had set up residence in her flesh. She got close and stopped moving. Sio's nostrils flared as if he knew the effect he had on her, but he didn't reach out.
"Forever is a long time," Tian said.
"I believe you."
Sweet mother, was she really going to do this?
Yeah. Fuck.
Yeah she was.
She placed a hand on his chest and was rewarded with a groan that spilled from his mouth around clenched teeth. The contact exploded with an insane level of voltage. The velvet rasp of masculine skin against the pads of her fingertips was white hot, dizzying. The touch held a terrible significance. She traced the blackened scar on the muscular plane of his left pectoral. It was raised, shaped like a jagged snowflake and radiated with elegant crystalline symmetry from a small area where the iron bullet had hit. Iron...Queens tits.
"Tell me what it means again then," she said, laying a gentle kiss over the scar.
Her lips tingled where they'd come in contact with his chest as if he 'd done something to them. Sio looked at her, eyes blazing, half swallowed by the darkness of dilation. He was strung out like a high tension wire, pulse racing under her palms. The steam he was spilling rolled off of him in waves, sliding in the aphrodisiac caress of a thousand miniature lightning strikes against her skin.
"It means I'm yours. Forever."
His voice was hoarse as if it were taking the heaviest toll under his warring desire for restraint. The words hummed along her spine, causing the moisture of her own arousal to burn its way down her thighs. The steam drifting off her skin took on a golden sheen.
"Then I want all of you, not just the Waltons version you use to keep yourself safe."
Pot, meet kettle. Sio pulled back, exhaling as if she'd punched him in the solar plexus. He settled into an obscenely tight reigned stillness and looked at her. The loss of physical contact was jarring.
"You asked me what I needed," she said. The admission was almost as terrifying as he was. A strange ripple distorted the air around him. She balled her hands into fists to keep from reaching out. He had her in knots waiting for a response.
"I need you to know that I'm in love with you," Sio said.
"I know."
Sio's pupils were fully dilated. The pale rings of color that remained were glowing, blazing outward like the white hot embers of some lunatic beacon, dying stars wreathed in black flame. The binding was slipping. It had to be, or else he'd earned all of the deranged lust, and devotion, and the love that kept tripping over one another in her head. He slid his hands up the sides of her neck. The sudden connection caused her to sag against him.
"If I'm not careful you could get hurt," he said.
Careful is coupon clipping and chronic masturbation.
"Your soul isn't a cruel one. Let it go."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do."
Sio didn't move as the minutes ticked by. Then he leaned in, dragging her in flush with the front of his body.
****
The press of her mouth was shocking. The kiss that followed was molten hot, an orchestra of searing pleasure pain that jolted through him in near orgasmic waves, running in electric blue lines of flame through his arteries. He devoured her, working himself deeper past her lips as if he could consume the breath in her lungs.
Your soul isn't a cruel one.
To be able to believe that was too much to hope for.
Tian's mouth on his own was demanding. Her tongue plundered him around the sharp groans of pleasure that welled up in his chest. Her touch battered at the cracks in his emotional dam. A hot sweet ache bloomed in his skin as if they were already fucking and it was too tempting to give her exactly what she'd asked for.
Careful, Jesus. How was he supposed to pull that off? He didn't trust himself. And still, he wanted what she was offering more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, which made him a selfish prick. He broke the kiss on a ragged inhalation. He wanted to bend her backward and crawl down her throat, see himself from the inside as he made love to her. The crush of her breasts against the wall of his chest was making him psychotic. He felt too much when he was with her.
Sio let go of her in the futile hope of gaining some lost perspective. Not only did that squeamish impulse fail spectacularly, he lost ground when she slid the ruined fragments of her blood-soaked shirt over her head. She discarded it behind her, but damned if he knew where it went. His palms itched so badly to reestablish contact he had to glance down at the bastards to ensure the skin was still attached.
"Sio."
His cock jerked in a sick Pavlovian response to the sound of her voice. His eyes shot back to her where she stood ankle deep in a sea of emerald green grass. The golden coils of steam spilled up around her taut curves, gliding over her skin until it glistened as if she'd been coated in diamond dust. Her hair was wild and her eyes burned in all sorts of cliched ways that he was too hard up to make allusion to. The whole scenario was beautifully evocative. Tian's fingers slid under the waistband of her jeans as she popped open the top button closure of her fly.
"Get me naked," she said.
Christ.
He shook his head trying to clear it. "I think you should ask nicely."
What the hell was he doing? Stalling? He'd asked for this. Fuck, he'd practically begged for it. If he got any hotter he'd be nuclear.
A wry smile played itself over her lips. "Stake your claim, Changeling."
He was frozen for the space of a heartbeat. When the lust enraged organ reset, the contraction pulverized his lungs. He shucked her out of the jeans, tearing them to pieces in the process.
Sio kissed her slowly, savoring her taste, savoring every nuance and sensation, until he was dumb with desire and couldn't stand the mounting tension in his cells. He broke himself on it, grabbing her with both hands around the waist and hoisting her above his shoulders. He tried not to throw them both against the nearest wall, but they hit audibly anyway
and left a dent in the wall. Tian let out a soft moan that slid down his spine and made his joints melt.
He was dimly aware of adjusting his grip, of Tian spilling her legs over his shoulders so she was spread open in front of him. He couldn't think straight. The storm clean incense of her arousal permeated everything. It was maddening, so goddamned hot it was unbearable. He left a trail of slow, hard, wet kisses up the inside of her thigh. Tian's breath caught in a hundred little places as her hands roamed, outstretched, over the walls desperately seeking an anchor.
Bits and pieces of words and images that didn't feel like his own clattered around his skull like objects caught in a tornado. Those fragments whispered all sorts of things involving need and passion. They showed him dark deeds done with the sort of savior-faire that he'd been built for. They whispered of love and absolution.
Absolution, Jesus. He wanted it more that he was willing to admit, had given up hope that the stain in his skin would ever come clean. He sure as shit never thought it would come in physical form. He looked up and caught Tian staring at him. The expression on her face turned him inside out. He stared back at her, trying to find a way around the tightness in his chest. Desire was a chronic ache in the marrow of his bones.
Absolution, fuck me.
He gave into it. Sio dipped his tongue into the smooth folds of her core without breaking eye contact. The sparks under his skin reacted, ricocheting through his body in an erotic chaos of motion. The amber hue of her irises flared as she choked on a word that was hard to distinguish between a prayer and a curse.
Sio pressed his mouth into her, sucking her, working her open with his tongue, and delving deeper. Tian's head lolled back, landing hard against the wall as she gave herself up to him. The submission cut loose something rabid in the dark recesses of his psyche. He pushed her harder, faster, until he was utterly saturated in her, as if they were both in a fever dream. He couldn't have stopped now even if he'd wanted to. His whole body was vibrating, every molecule so hard he thought he'd explode, the pressure just shy of intolerable.