Then I had my mouth on him.
He lay there, breathing hard when I didn’t stop.
I paused long enough to look at him, for him to focus on my face, and his eyes had changed, growing harder instead of softer. I felt pain ripple his light, that time accompanied by images, a flood of information he didn’t seem to be trying to control at all.
I bit my lip as I read it off his light, jealous still, but more turned on than jealous at that point.
He continued showing me things, things that turned him on. I couldn’t tell how much was memory versus pure fantasy or some combination. He seemed unable to control it, whatever it was, like I’d unleashed a kind of involuntary confession caused by what I’d said, or maybe whatever had finally broken open between us the night before.
I saw my face there.
I saw memories with me that couldn’t be memories. Maybe they were memories of fantasies, things he’d created in his mind to get himself off.
I slid my light deeper into his, pulling on him, winding into structures I found until he let out a groan, showing me more. I saw Dalejem in one of those and slapped him, hard on the chest, but that only turned him on more. I put more light into my tongue and lips as I went back to working over his cock, and his light spiraled out of control.
He began talking to me, using some language I didn’t know. He broke out in thickly accented English a few seconds later, although he remained barely coherent, even when I could make out his words.
“Allie… gods. Allie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
He couldn’t seem to find more words, although I felt him struggle with it briefly, trying to speak. I kept my mouth on him and he fought to move, reaching for me, even as he spoke to me in what sounded like Russian. He switched back to English.
“Allie… don’t leave me again. Please.” He let out another gasp, still unable to move. “Gods, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll do anything you want… anything. I won’t take my fucking shoes off in front of another person again. I’ll do anything you ask, anything…”
Anger rippled off my light, and he groaned, gripping my hair.
“Gods, Allie. Allie… remember that first time? Remember?”
I felt a flicker of real memory that time, and instantly knew what he meant.
I saw both of us, in front of that fireplace in the Himalayas, and pain caught in my throat. He’d begged me to put my mouth on him, not long after we’d started to get weird from sex––so maybe after the second or third time. He begged me, even though I’d been the one to offer it, but once I started he kept stopping me, too.
He’d been half out of his head, arranging his body and mine so he could watch me, telling me how long he’d fantasized about me doing that to him, stopping me so we could fuck before begging me to do it again.
He lost control somewhere in that, maybe for real, maybe for the first time.
He lost control and it remained lost for hours.
Looking at him now, remembering, I realized he’d gotten off more on watching me than from the actual sensations.
“I remember,” I murmured, kissing him just below his navel.
“I love you.” Pain reached his voice. “Allie… I adore you. Please don’t leave me again.”
“I didn’t leave you, Revik.”
He let out a heavy gasp. “I’m sorry about what I did. I’m sorry––”
“I don’t want you to be sorry, Revik.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “We don’t have to do any of this. No matter what happens with us, I won’t go near anyone else again… I swear to the gods, Allie. I won’t. I’ll never do anything like that again.”
Ignoring his words, I curled my tongue around the hard part of his cock, and he let out another groan, fighting to say more.
I didn’t need him to say more, though.
I didn’t want his goddamned guilt. I wanted him to cut the shit. I wanted us to be honest with one another from now on.
Images of what Ditrini had done to me rose in my mind and I felt Revik react violently. Jealousy snaked through him, grief, anger. His jealousy overpowered me briefly, even as more of those images hit at my aleimi, bringing up more conflict in his light.
I knew the thing with Ditrini pulled at him and repulsed him, turned him on and disgusted him, made him jealous and made him so angry and sad he couldn’t think straight. I could feel the conflict there. I even understood it. Parts of me could relate to it.
I could feel which images he reacted to the most, though.
Pausing, I focused on his face.
“Do you want me to bring someone else in here?” I said.
His pain worsened. I felt him trying to control it, felt the fear woven in, along with a denser jealousy, anger at me for even suggesting it.
“No,” he said.
“You don’t? Don’t bullshit me, Revik.”
“No. No, Allie… I don’t want that. I swear to the gods, I don’t. I don’t fucking want that.”
“What if I told you I wanted it?” I said.
Conflict rippled through his light, paralyzing him.
Fear seemed to drive it that time, but the fear had so much pain in it, I let out an involuntary gasp, sliding my fingers into his hair. After a few more minutes of massaging him, he lay almost still, gasping out each breath, his light pulling on mine, asking me––
“Please,” he groaned. “I’ll do it if you want. I promised you I would… I said I’d do whatever you want, and I meant it. But gaos, Allie, please. No one else. Please.”
Tears came to his eyes.
I felt hurt on him that time, a near despair.
“Please.” He closed his eyes. “Please… don’t do that to me. Please…”
“Okay.” I caressed his face. “Okay, Revik.”
Feeling my acquiescence, he lay back on the bed. Relief expanded off his light, pooling around me in a denser warmth. Love lived there, a pulling, dense affection, a wanting that now felt more open, if still vibrating faintly with fear.
“Please,” he murmured. “Please don’t ask me to watch that. I couldn’t handle it, Allie. I really fucking couldn’t.”
I nodded, swallowing. After a bare pause, I said, “What if I didn’t mean me? What if I wanted to watch you with someone?”
His body tensed. I felt that fear again, sliding through his light. I felt him trying to read me, felt his jealousy flare. He wanted to know what I meant, to see it explicitly. I showed him, and he let out a low groan, his fingers clenching in my hair.
“Is that what you want?” he said. “Do you want me to do that, Allie?”
I felt my chest tighten. I knew we were trying to be honest, but I honestly wasn’t sure if I really wanted that. I think some part of me was turned on by the idea, but the reality of it would be totally different.
“Just oral?” he asked, pressing the point.
He really wanted to know.
I felt my skin heat, even as I looked at him. “Would you?”
His pain worsened. “Fuck.” He closed his eyes.
I felt him fighting it, feeling a trap in either answer he gave, even as his body responded to the idea. Somehow it reassured me that I felt the same conflict on him as I did on me: desire to do it or see it in the abstract but misgivings and wariness around the reality.
After another pause, he gave a low gasp.
“Maybe,” he said. He looked up at me, his eyes dense, but holding a lot of pain. “Maybe,” he repeated. “But not now, Allie. Not yet. I don’t want to do that with you yet.”
I nodded.
That time, it was me who felt relieved.
I felt the pain in him worsen as he felt my reaction to his words. The fact that I’d asked him continued to reverberate somewhere in his light, both threatening him and turning him on. I felt the same push-pull around wanting physical pain and not wanting it, wanting me to control him but fearing the vulnerability––hating the vulnerability almost, since it threw him b
ack into being a child once more, the ward of his uncle.
So we would do it this way first, I thought to myself.
We would evoke the feeling, without fully going there.
I felt him agree, even as his relief grew more intense.
“Allie,” he said.
I felt him wanting to say more, but again, he stopped.
I watched as he fought to pull it back, to control his light. Somehow, it reminded me again of our first night together in that cabin, meaning the first time we’d had sex, when he’d still been unsure about how I saw him. He’d been so afraid of saying the wrong thing, of scaring me.
I’d already felt some of it, though.
Enough to feel some jealousy of my own.
I wasn’t the first girlfriend of his to ask him that question, or who had gotten turned on at the idea of watching Revik with other people. I probably wasn’t even the third, or fourth… or tenth girlfriend with whom he’d had some variation of this conversation.
“Not girlfriend,” he said, fighting my light, even as he fought with his voice. “Wife. You’re my wife, Allie. You’re not my fucking girlfriend…”
I looked down at him, meeting his gaze, but didn’t answer.
I felt his pain worsen as I climbed off him, standing over him on the bed, still watching his face, watching his chest heave in uneven breaths. He closed his eyes as he watched me, longer than a blink, but those eyes looked predatory again, flickering between that and frustration as he watched me look at him. His black hair stood up around his head, even as his narrow mouth hardened as he studied my face.
Shit. He was sexy as hell.
I really got what he meant about loving that and hating it at the same time.
Looking at him, it was easy to imagine how others had seen him––how some of them still saw him. How Dalejem saw him. I realized I wanted to know more about that, too, but I also didn’t want to know at all. Still, I couldn’t help feeling like maybe it was time for us to finally get into all of it, on both sides, if only to finally get over it.
As he looked up at me with those colorless, glass-like eyes, all I felt was pain heating his chest as he fought to control himself. I’d taken his pants most of the way off, and looking at him now, I had a sudden urge to handcuff him to the bed––only to really do it, as in all four limbs.
Maybe start by spending a few hours getting him over his hang-ups around how I gave head since I got back from China… then a few more convincing him he had to be honest with me, or I would make his life really damned miserable until he was.
Maybe he even heard me, because I felt his pain intensify.
He let out another heavy gasp, watching me.
Reading me, too, I was reasonably sure, since so much of my light wrapped into his.
“Alyson,” he said, his pain spiraling out at me. “We should go see Lily now. Please. Please… I want to go do that now.”
Feeling me tense once I made sense of his words, he met my gaze, tears in his eyes.
He looked away long enough to wipe his face with the heel of his hand, and I realized only then that I’d released his light, enough that he could move.
Probably because he’d mentioned our daughter.
Which was a pretty low trick, come to think of it.
I was about to jump off the bed, but he caught hold of my ankle, stopping me. Coiling his fingers around the bone, he made his light submissive.
“It’s not a trick,” he said, his voice deeper, thicker. “I want to go see Lily. And then I want you to come back in here with me.” He laid his head on the pillow, opening his light, his eyes never leaving mine. “Then I want you to stay in here with me for a while.”
Clicking softly, I smiled humorlessly at him.
“A while?” I said. “What is ‘a while,’ exactly, Revik?”
He didn’t return my smile.
“Until we have to leave,” he said.
When I didn’t answer right away, he made a vague motion with his free hand before letting it fall back to the bed. His face remained as expressionless as his eyes.
“I want to make love,” he said. “…I want to fuck. I want to fuck and make love for a really long time, Allie.” His fingers clenched, gripping my ankle tighter when pain coiled off my light. “I’ll let you do anything you want. You can tell me anything you want, ask me anything. But I’m feeling really possessive right now, and paranoid… and threatened. More than I want to talk about, to be honest, at least right now. Not until we do the other for a while.”
Swallowing, he met my gaze.
“I promised Lily. I promised her I’d bring you to her,” he said.
His words hit me in the chest that time, bringing up a different kind of pain. My vision blurred, and I only nodded, looking down at him.
“Okay,” I said.
“So I want to leave here, if we’re going to leave,” he said, still watching my face. “Then I want to come back.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding again.
He still wore the infiltrator’s mask when I met his gaze.
He looked at me directly though, and that time, I could see past it. I could feel things in his light, enough to know he was a lot more open than he was pretending. The submission wasn’t all an act, or even an attempt to appease me. Past the mask, past the parts of himself he was still afraid to show me, past the grief I felt on him, that feeling of deprivation, of fear that I would leave, of relief that I’d come back––I could see him, somehow.
I could see him maybe clearer than I’d ever seen him.
And it wasn’t only him, I realized.
Even with all of the rest of it, I felt… different.
I didn’t know what that difference meant. I didn’t know what he felt off me, either, how I looked to him from the outside.
“Allie,” he said, when I still hadn’t said anything. “I don’t think I can handle you being around anyone else until then. Just Lily… and then just me.” He cleared his throat, still wearing his infiltrator’s mask. “Is that all right?”
I thought about those words, too.
Then I nodded, slowly.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, Revik. That’s all right.”
40
NEW EYES
IT WAS STRANGE leaving the tank that time.
Unlike before, when I could scarcely make sense of who monitored the security station, this time, I was acutely aware of all of them staring at the two of us, and especially at me.
Most of what I felt in those stares felt like concern mixed with curiosity. I watched them look at us, and stare at Revik where he held my hand, inserting himself between me and the rest of them.
No way they wouldn’t have noticed that, given everything.
He shielded my light, too.
It wasn’t a casual shielding, like he might have done out of possessiveness, or simply to put some distance between me and other seers in the immediate vicinity. He’d done that kind of thing before, although I couldn’t remember him doing it recently. Really, I couldn’t remember him doing it since before the whole thing had gone down with Cass.
This felt different from those times, anyway.
This time, he pretty much blocked my aleimi from view of the construct entirely. He didn’t want anyone near my light at all, apart from him.
When Neela got too close, with us standing a few yards away from the security station, Revik used his light to shove her back.
He did it even harder when Declan’s light ventured too near.
I saw the two of them exchange looks. From their expressions, I half-expected them to argue the point, or rattle off security procedure, and the need for them to assess my light, free of interference from my mate, no matter who he was.
Neela, in particular, watched Revik warily.
I saw Declan watching him, too, if more discreetly, and I overheard him tell Jorag via the construct to stay in the back room, which struck me as wise, given Revik’s current mood. I saw Declan mutter under hi
s breath a few times, too, in a way that made me think he was talking to someone else via the comm.
I didn’t really let myself wonder who.
Dimly, I figured Wreg.
Maybe Balidor. Or Jon.
I couldn’t help wondering how many ripple effects I’d be facing from my meltdown, and the fact that I’d more or less taken myself off the grid for almost three full days. I wondered what kinds of stories were circulating to explain all that.
From what I could tell so far, those stories didn’t seem to be looking very favorably on Revik’s part in all of this.
I had no idea how they viewed me.
It seemed to take a ridiculously long time for them to get the door open to Lily’s part of the tank. I only half-listened as they told Revik a few things they’d changed in the protocols, and reminded him we couldn’t stay more than two hours, that we couldn’t sleep in there, or actively try to connect with the higher structures in Lily’s light––
I only listened to about half of that.
The speech irritated me more than usual, though. Especially the part about how I wasn’t supposed to get too close to my daughter’s light.
Revik seemed to be listening even less than me, but I could tell he had other things on his mind, and not all of them were about Lily. He had his own light tightly shielded, in addition to mine. He even seemed to be shielding his light from me to a degree.
I couldn’t feel any pain at all on him anymore.
Eventually, they got the damned door open.
The instant they did, relief flooded my light, even before we were all the way inside the room. I could feel relief on Lily, too, even before she looked up. Once she had, she leapt to her feet from where she’d been sitting on the floor with Kali.
I stared at Kali, at the scattering of toys on the floor in front of her, from where she’d been playing with my child. A hard dart of fury slammed my light, making it difficult to breathe.
How had I missed that she was in here? Had Neela and Declan neglected to mention that detail? Or had I tuned them out when they said that part?
She was here, alone, too––without Uye.
Playing mommy with my fucking daughter.
Revik’s fingers tightened around mine.
Prophet: Bridge & Sword Page 42