Picking up his feet, he moves quickly to the door before they can decide he is not friendly, or perhaps before he loses his nerve.
He reaches the covered porch, and is standing in front of the blue door, about to knock, when it opens, and he finds himself looking at a pair of bright blue eyes, nearly opaque they are so filled with color, and brighter than the deepest blue of the sky...brighter than the painted door. He has never seen eyes of such a color, and can only stare at first, watching them glint in the light from inside the dwelling. She smiles then, and he notices only then that she is wearing an exotic-looking robe that leaves her legs and knees bare, and that her hair is coal black. She looks foreign, like Wreg...as if she comes from the place on the other side of the mountains.
He finds his eyes riveted to her bare legs, which he’s never seen before, not on a woman he hasn’t undressed himself.
Her eyes swivel to someone behind her, even as she laughs.
“You’ve got one, all right, Nina. He looks ready to burst, this one...”
Stepping back, she lets the door swing open, gesturing in seer for him to enter.
His eyes are still on hers as he crosses the threshold, knowing he is blushing from her words, but lost once more in the color of her irises. It occurs to him he hasn’t seen a seer female since he was a child, and pain slides through his light, strong enough that he has to fight to control it as he follows her past the foyer and into a low-ceilinged hallway beyond.
The woman walks in front of him, her strides casual, athletic, and he notices her feet are bare. She turns left at a lit doorway, the first he sees, and he follows her warily, only to stop at the entrance to the room, watching her as she walks directly to a couch upholstered in dark blue, and sits beside another female, this one with hair that is a honey-blond. Her eyes are not human either, but they are closer; a pale brown, they are almost the same color as her hair, but for gold flecks that shine from them, visible even where he stands.
“And what do you want, young sir?” A voice asks, to his left.
He turns his head, and finds himself looking at a small female, much shorter than the others. She looks Asian, as well, and her eyes burn a dark violet color that seems to turn crimson, depending on how they catch the light.
He clears his throat, glancing around. He realizes there are eight of them, and that he is the only one standing. Fighting his expression still, he holds out his hands, a peace gesture in seer, following it with a more polite gesture of greeting.
The smallish female smiles, her eyes following his hands with a faint amusement.
“Yes,” she says. “We will not attack you, brother. What is it you want?”
“One of you is Nina?” he says finally.
“I am Nina,” the small one says, her eyes turning slightly more appraising. “But I do not know you,” she adds, her voice not unfriendly.
“You don’t,” he affirms. “I am Nenzi...of Outer Reach. I asked a brother for directions here, and he gave me your name...”
“And what is his name? This brother of yours?”
“Wreg.” Nenzi hesitates, realizes he has no other name for Wreg, nor a clan affiliation. He speaks over his own pause. “...He said to tell you that he remembers he owes you...that his gratitude remains, and that he has not forgotten his debt.”
“I know brother Wreg is good for his debts,” she says, smiling below the appraising look in her eyes. “Did you come all this way, in the night and the rain, to tell me that? If so, I think brother Wreg owes you something, as well...”
Nenzi feels his face tighten, even as he remembers not to clench his jaw. It hasn’t occurred to him he would have to explain why he had come. He is about to try and speak again, when the female who answered the door laughs.
“Nina, you will give this youngster a heart attack...”
A quiet coil of laughter whispers around the room. Most of it is in his light, not audible to his ears, but it is good-natured, not derisive. He feels himself relax slightly, even as his eyes return to Nina, who he assumes is in charge.
“You have money?” she asks politely.
“Yes, sister.”
“Well,” she smiles, gesturing around the room. “Then choose. Unless you have enough for all of us...?”
He feels his skin warm again, but his eyes follow the direction of her hand. He finds himself looking at faces, feeling less comfortable letting his eyes stray much lower than that, given that none of them are dressed the way he is used to human females dressing. He pauses on a few of those faces, golden eyes and deep black irises. Then he sees one of them sitting off by herself, in a corner by the window. She is wrapped in an Asian-looking robe like the first one, but her face is less Asian, despite the high cheekbones and faint slant to her eyes. Her skin is a tawny brown, darker than he is used to in the humans, and her hair is nearly black. Her eyes are hazel in color, green with gold and brown flecks. But it is her stillness he finds himself drawn to, the faint tinges of gold and white he sees in her light. She is looking at him, too, but not smiling like the others. She looks at him as if trying to figure him out, her large eyes serious.
“I think we have our answer,” the seer with the blue eyes says, her voice a hard smile.
Nina is smiling too when Nenzi turns his eyes back to the rest of the room, but on her it seems more genuine. Instead of him, she looks at the female in the corner.
“Will you have him, Laren?” she says.
“I will,” the other says easily.
She stands up when Nenzi turns, moving almost like a cat coiling out of a repose, and his eyes drift down involuntarily. She is tall, as tall as him, with legs that are muscular, as if she does mulei daily, like the seers in his unit. He watches her walk towards him, and doesn’t move as she takes his arm. With scarcely a pause, she tugs him with her towards the darkened hallway, and his feet move before he’s let himself think about it too clearly, distracted when he feels her light already exploring his.
As they reach the door, she glances back at the room a last time.
“I will take the blue room,” she says. “Let me know if one of you would like him, as well.”
He feels his face flush hot at this. He glances at the other seers before he can stop himself. A few of them are looking at him as well, their eyes also appraising.
“Let us know if he is worth it, first,” the blue-eyed one says.
“Elan,” Nina says softly. “...Manners.”
But he barely hears this. Turning his eyes from the others in the room, he follows the one they called Laren down the hall. She takes him past four more closed doors before her hand falls on the handle of the fifth, and he realizes the building is longer than it appeared from the outside. She glances back at him as he thinks it, and from her eyes, he can see that she has heard him.
“Yes,” is all she says. “There is an underground component as well. It is a seer building, brother...only built to appear human.”
He nods, swallowing a little when her light is in him again, pulling on his.
They don’t speak again until after she has led him to a low couch. Sitting beside him, she starts to take off his shirt and he just sits there, half-leaning on velvet cushions. He is uncertain for the first time he can remember...maybe the first time in years...but doesn’t know how to tell her that, or even ask her.
He feels her notice, but she doesn’t laugh at him. Instead her eyes study his as she finishes with the shirt, sliding it and the suspenders off his shoulders. Looking at his body, she touches one of the bruises on the side of his ribs, lightly with one hand.
“Humans?” she asks only.
“Yes.”
Sliding closer to him, she coils a hand into his hair before he’s finished reacting to how close she is. He is still looking at her face when she pulls him down to kiss her mouth. He does as her fingers and light ask, tensely at first, then gradually he begins to relax. It hurts a little in those first moments, but he forgets that after awhile, too. Her light helps
this along, until his breath begins to clutch in his chest, until he is tense for a different reason. Once she feels his shoulders unclench, she is touching him more intimately, caressing his neck and chest, sliding a bare leg between his, until he gasps against her mouth. Her light is in his now, pulling on it gently, coaxing it open, and when he notices he has to fight to maintain control.
He remembers his uncle’s warning, his caution to leave his sisters alone...
But she has her hand in his pants and he groans, pushing the warning from his mind. He doesn’t move as she touches him, following her light as it asks him to be still, letting her push him back on the couch. She uses her light and her hand until he is fully extended, half out of his head when she starts caressing the end of him.
“Stop,” he manages after a moment of this. “Sister...stop...”
His fingers are gripping her hair, and he gasps when she complies, laying her hand back on his chest. She sits astride him, and now she is looking down at his face, her own eyes glazed slightly with light. Looking at her, he feels desire in her, a dense wanting that coils into him, pulling at him.
Pain floods his light, enough that he sees her expression change.
Her face tightens as her own pain meets his. He has his hand under the robe then. He slides his fingers inside her, watches her face as she gives a surprised gasp, and the pain worsens, nearly blinding him.
But he can’t...not fully extended. He knows he can’t, but he can’t do anything about it. He doesn’t know how to even begin pulling it back.
He can feel her waiting. She is wet, ready for him. After another moment, he groans again, removing his fingers from her, gripping her hair in his hand.
“Please,” he says. “I haven’t done this...”
Her eyes flicker with surprise.
“You haven’t had sex? Intercourse?”
He shakes his head. “Only with humans.”
Her eyes change. At first, he can’t read the difference in her expression or her light. When her lips purse, pain sliding through his light in another pulse, he realizes he has startled her...and turned her on. His hand clenches her hip, hard enough that she arches against him, her hand on him once more. He grips her wrist, crying out as he tries to stop her.
“Please,” he says. “Please...I won’t last...”
She smiles, and again, he sees empathy in her look. He realizes it bothers her, too, that he hasn’t been with one of his own. She doesn’t voice it, though.
“A little faith, brother,” she says only. “I can hold you off.”
“I doubt that,” he says, looking at her.
She smiles, and her eyes light up when she does, making him hurt again.
Then she is kissing him, and her hand is still on him, her light flooding his, coaxing out his pain, pulling at him.
He groans, louder when she doesn’t stop, half-pleading with her as she explores him with her fingers, undressing him as she goes. She avoids the bandages, and her fingers are light on the bruises and cuts that still litter his body. When his hands begin to explore her skin in return, sliding up under the embroidered robe, she lets him at first. A few minutes later, she pulls them off her though, pinning his wrists to the couch. Then she is tugging the pants off his legs, and he is under her once more, only naked this time, and half out of his head again.
He can’t look at her anymore. It feels like he won’t last beyond another touch, another sensual pull of her light, but her light is doing something else to him, and somehow, even with the other, it is holding him back.
He groans louder when she has ahold of him once more. She uses her light to calm him down. He can barely move when she presses at the base of the head, her voice and fingers firm.
“Retract, brother,” she says. It is soft, but a command nonetheless.
“I can’t...” he groans. He can feel what she’s doing, but his light and body refuse to obey, are having none of it. His fingers wind into her hair, trying to pull her mouth to his, but she resists, her other hand firm on his chest.
“You can. Do you want me?”
“Yes.” Pain overwhelms his light. “Yes. Gods, please...”
“Then retract...or you’ll hurt me, too.”
“I can’t...”
“Retract, brother, or you’ll have to be content with my hand...or my mouth. You could get either from a human, so I suspect it’s not why you’re here...”
He is fighting to concentrate then, gripping her arms.
Her light slides through his, showing him, coaxing him into a thinly contained calm, showing him what to do with his light. It takes another endless stretch of minutes, then he feels that part of him pulling back. It doesn’t lessen his erection any; it almost hurts as the harder end pulls back into softer flesh. He is panting then, sweating as she moves further up on his body, still holding him with her light, her hand on his chest.
“Don’t move, brother,” she cautions him.
He fights to hold his light, to keep from losing it again...and then she has maneuvered him inside her. He cries out, his voice weak as she grips his hair.
She is talking to him though, coaxing him calm once more with her light.
“Not yet,” she says, caressing his face and chest. “Not yet, brother...”
He realizes there are others in the room, that they are not alone. He feels their light in his, their eyes on his face, and he holds Laren over him, his arm clamped around her waist, pulling himself deeper inside of her. He is fighting her then, fighting for control, when she begins sending to him more sensually once more, using her light to control his.
He has his face against her shoulder, half sitting up, when she is showing him what to do, where to angle his body inside hers. He groans when she helps him arch his way into the correct slot. He is panting again then, closing his eyes against her skin, sick with pain.
He grows conscious of the others once more, but he doesn’t look at them.
“They wanted to see,” Laren says. “...I told them it was your first...it is all right?”
“Yes,” he manages.
“Are you all right, brother?”
“Yes,” he manages again, his face against her neck.
He sinks his teeth into her shoulder when she angles him further against her, pressing down on the end of him deliberately. She still won’t let him go all the way in. She holds his light, controlling his body through his aleimi, and he is sweating, half-lost in her. Currents of pain spark through every vein in his light, and he is groaning almost without realizing it, half-begging her again. When he looks up, her fingers clench in his hair.
For an instant, he sees her eyes, sees his own reflected in hers. His back is to the others, but he sees the rings of jade in her hazel, and it confuses him.
Shock filters rapidly over her expression...and it takes him another beat to recognize what it is from. Fear glides through his light, the realization that it is him.
His eyes are glowing.
Before he can move away, or even think, she lowers her face to his, speaking softly into his ear, lower than a whisper.
“Close your eyes, Illustrious brother,” she says softly. “Close your eyes, or they will see, too. I won’t tell them...I promise I won’t...”
He lets out another groan, but does what she tells him.
He barely has time to think about this, even to fear what he’s done, before she wraps her legs around him, and slides down hard on him, pressing against the end of him again, and releasing her stranglehold on his light.
He is fully extended before he knows what she’s done.
He lets out a thick groan.
The hard end slides out of him and into her, and then he is clutching at her, crying out as his arm clamps roughly around her back. He arches deeper into her involuntarily, but she is still teaching him, still trying to show him. He cries out again, half-fighting her even as he tries to do as she says, gripping her tightly as she starts to move over him, sliding her body differently for ho
w they are connected. Within moments, he is sweating again, and he feels the other seers watching him, their light coiling into his.
“Don’t let him come,” says another voice.
He didn’t feel her approach. When he looks up, he sees the blue-eyed seer looking at him, her arm around Laren’s waist. Another seer stands next to her, with dark auburn hair. They are both looking at him, and he clutches the woman on top of him tighter.
“I want him, sister,” Elan says. “Let me have him before he finishes...”
Nenzi feels another low pull of pain. He looks at Laren.
“I want to come inside you,” he says. “...Only you.”
Laren’s eyes react to his words; a softer emotion reaches her expression. They kiss until he is sweating, holding her tightly again, fighting to get deeper inside her. When they part, though, she looks at him then, her eyes a question.
She says, “My sister Elan wants you, brother...there are others here who want you, too...”
He looks at the blue-eyed woman, feels pain on her, sees desire in her face.
“Yes.” He gestures with one hand, feeling another surge of pain as he looks back at Laren, fighting a different pain in his chest. “Yes...but...”
“I heard you, brother. We all did...” Elan smiles, but he sees her give the other woman a faintly irritated look. “I won’t let him finish,” she assures Laren. “Do not worry.”
She kisses Laren, using her tongue. As she does, she starts pulling her up off of him gently, just enough that he groans. When Elan looks back at him, her eyes are predatory once more, assessing his face.
“I think he has a crush, Laren,” she says.
Laren acquiesces to the other’s hands, sliding off him completely and he cries out, clutching at her as she goes. When she is gone, the other one, Elan, is in his light, forcing him to retract again. Her light is stronger, more insistent, and he finds himself doing as she says. When he tries to touch her, she forces his wrist back to the couch, until he lets his body go soft under hers. He lies back, and she massages him, her eyes on his face.
Allie's War Season Two Page 93