I stared up at him, still trying to piece my mind back together, to deal with the reality of what was happening.
“About what?” I said.
He caressed my face. “Please, honey...tell me.” His jaw hardened. “Have you been with a seer before? I won’t be mad.” His pain worsened. “I need to know. I need to know the truth, Allie. Please tell me the truth...”
Confused, I watched him look at me. Why wouldn’t I tell him the truth?
“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”
His face tightened. It took me another second to realize my answer turned him on, enough that he was fighting to hide it from me. He shook his head.
“We shouldn’t,” he said, his accent thick. “I should show you first...show you...it could hurt a lot, I don’t know...”
Reaching down, I curled my fingers around him. He fell silent.
He was right; he didn’t feel quite like a human.
Before I could say anything, his pain blinded me...he let out a kind of startled cry as he leaned into my hand. His back arched as I continued to stroke him, exploring until he was fighting to breathe, his fingers clenched in my hair. I didn’t feel anything on him that would hurt me, not physically anyway. I wanted to tell him that, too...but I felt the silence in him again, the unwillingness to talk, to do anything that might make me stop.
When I tried to read him, he groaned against my neck.
“Alyson...gods. Please...” Pain spiraled off him. I felt his restraint slip as his muscles clenched. “Let me. Let me...please. Please...I’ll be careful.”
My hand clutched in his hair. He groaned again when I caressed the end of him. I was still trying to understand, to know what he was afraid of doing to me.
“I could do it like you were human...” he said.
I looked up at him. “Like I was human...? What does that mean?”
“I don’t want to hurt you...” His pain hit at me again. “...I can do it so it won’t hurt. Baby, gods, stop...stop...”
I let go of him. I waited until his breathing gradually slowed.
“Do it like I’m a seer,” I said.
The pain coming off him worsened. “Are you sure?”
“It has to hurt eventually, right?”
After a pause, he nodded. “Yes.” His fingers tightened on me, his weight growing heavy again. “Allie...do you love me?”
I closed my eyes, caught off guard by the vulnerability behind the question. His other hand was on my hip, but he didn’t take his eyes off my face.
“Tell me,” he murmured. “Tell me...please, Allie...tell me...I adore you...”
I felt him against me. I realized what he was doing.
“Yes,” I said. My voice softened. “Yes, Revik...I love you...”
He let out a low groan.
...Then he was inside me.
Everything stopped.
It wasn’t pain. Disbelief hit both of us; I saw his face change, just before he clenched his jaw. He felt different. Not a lot different, but enough. The angle was different. Having him inside me did something to my light, almost that folding sensation. After days of feeling that with Syrimne, I was terrified I’d trigger the telekinetic thing...hurt him on accident. I fought to hold it back, to control it in some way, but his light only pulled on mine harder...
Then he arched into me for real.
I cried out. I struggled to hold back my light, but only managed halfway. He slid into me again, slower, and I whimpered, hearing him groan as he went deeper. When he did it a third time, I found myself saying his name, my fingers clutching his back. It felt good, so damned good, good enough to forget about—
He stopped dead, gasping.
“Allie...gods...” He was sweating. “What are you doing to me...” For a split second, he seemed to be fighting something again. His fingers clenched in my hair. “Relax,” he said, kissing me. He groaned softly. “Relax, love...please. I’m going to try...I’ll hurt you if I don’t try now...I’m barely holding it as it is...”
“Try?” I fought to breathe. “Try what?”
“Look at me. Please...Allie...please...look at me...”
I did.
He arched deeper, until the end of his cock seemed to fit into a part of me, almost like a puzzle piece. I let out a low gasp of surprise, still staring at his eyes, then gripped his back tighter, more turned on than I knew what to do with. I let out a whimper when he didn’t move.
“Are you ready?” he said, soft.
I fought pain, an almost uncontrollable urge to pull on him with my light, to make him do something, anything but press against me there.
“Please,” I managed. “Please. Whatever you’re going to do...do it, please...”
After the slightest pause, his shoulders visibly unclenched.
...and pure, physical pain stopped my heart.
It threw me out of my mind, out of any rational part of myself. Some part of him glided up into me like a thin blade, through an opening I hadn’t known existed. Nothing could have prepared me for it. Nothing.
He let out a heavy cry, clasping my back.
I felt so much pleasure on him it nearly blacked me out...even as pain forced a low moan from my lips. Whatever it was slid deeper, until I could only lie there, panting, fighting panic as he held me, trying to calm me with his light. I felt disbelief on him again, a near-animal feeling as he held himself back...but I felt love there too, a tenderness that made my heart hurt...relief, fear, and that hot, liquid pleasure that was more like a drug than any drug I’d ever taken.
He shared it with me, even as he fought to control it, sending a dense warmth through my light, stroking my hair and face until slowly...slowly...my muscles started to unlock.
His desire nearly blinded me then. His hands started to hurt.
“Allie...” he groaned. “Allie...gods, you have no idea how good this feels...” Desire spiraled off him again, enough to blank out my mind. He let out another low groan. “Are you all right? Baby...tell me. Tell me now, before I—”
“No.” I gripped his arms. Thinking, I fought to breathe. “Yes. Yes, I’m all right. Revik, I’m okay—”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t stop.” I kissed him. “Don’t stop...”
He went deeper. The folding sensation came back. I yelled for real, unable to hold it back...and then he was all the way inside, and I wasn’t even trying. It felt better than anything I’d ever felt, better than I could stand. I wrapped my legs around him and heard him cry out, gasping, saying my name.
I opened my light...
...and he came, all at once.
It shocked me. Hot and liquid, almost painful, it seemed to go on for a long time. His hands gripped my hips, holding me against him, his light completely entwined in mine. He let out a low cry as it peaked, pinning me to the floor, his whole weight on me as he tried to go deeper. His light flooded mine with that mind-numbing pleasure, and relief...more relief than I could process...
I watched his face as the wave crested.
Then...as it slowly began to roll back.
After a few more beats, that other part of him retracted. It left in a single, smooth pull...and I gasped.
Then we were just lying there, panting.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what we’d just done.
It took him longer to pull back, to slow his heart rate. He lay his face against mine, and he was sweating, fighting to calm down. Gradually, I felt him pull his light back into himself. He tried to withdraw his aleimi slightly from mine...then stopped, relaxing into me again when the pain worsened. He closed his eyes.
Embarrassment shimmered off him.
It grew into something closer to guilt as he retraced our steps. He wasn’t shielding from me at all. The vulnerability grew more pronounced as his fingers caressed my face, but relief still spiraled off him in waves, and he didn’t seem to be trying to hide that, either. That non-human thing rose to the forefro
nt of his light...but before I could get a bead on the difference, he kissed me. Merging his light into mine, he deepened the kiss, caressing my face.
“Gods, Allie…” he murmured.
“Revik, wait—”
“Allie...I’m sorry...”
I shook my head. My mind seemed to be coming back, slowly, like crawling through mud. “No...can we just...” He kissed me again, pulling on me achingly with his light. “Please. Wait...what was that? What happened...”
“Seers are built different.”
“Yeah.” I gave a gasping kind of laugh. “Yeah, okay. I got that part...”
Raising his head, he closed his eyes, longer than a blink. His light slid further into mine, growing more cautious as he felt me react, until I clutched at him. His voice lowered.
“I thought about what I would say,” he murmured. “...The whole way here. I was going to show you, ask you to shower with me, but we got here and...” He gave a short laugh, kissing me again. “Then all I could feel was you wanting to leave, wishing you’d slept with other men...telling me I was being ‘nice’...” He leaned his forehead against mine. “D’ gaos. Alyson...I just came in you like an adolescent...”
Pain wafted off him again as I stroked his sides, feeling his ribs.
I was still wound up...still halfway inside him with my light, but I felt shy touching him. He leaned his body into my hands, which helped. So did the fact that he was still inside me. A part of me couldn’t get past that much reality. When I kept exploring him with my hands, his fingers slid into mine. He separated us seconds later, and I had to fight to keep from protesting, biting my lip as he shifted to his side.
“Give me a minute, honey. One minute...” he murmured. Kissing me, he rubbed his face, blinking to clear his vision. “I want to do this better for you,” he said, gesturing vaguely. He sounded calmer though. “Can we forget that one?”
“No,” I said.
Looking at his body distracted me. Fascination with his physicality mixed with a growing unease as I realized the condition it was in. Scars that hadn’t fully healed stood out to my eyes and fingers on his chest and sides. I knew some were from Terian, but older ones stood alongside injuries that looked more recent. A thumb-thick line circled his throat above a stretched, white scar that wound up from under his arm, ending in a pale question mark on his neck. I traced his ribs, noticing dark areas that must be newer bruises.
Pain hit me, a different pain.
“Revik, where were you the last few weeks?”
“With Balidor.” He met my gaze. “In Sikkim.”
I felt myself pale. So he knew about the kids. But that’s not what bothered me. “Revik,” I said. “Please. You said you’d let the other infiltrators handle him...”
“Terian didn’t do that, Allie.”
“I don’t care! You’re getting too close...”
“I was careful.”
“Not careful enough!” I laid a hand on one of the bruises. “Jesus.” Pain hit me again, worse. “Who kicked you in the face?”
Sliding closer, he rested his belly against mine, studying my eyes.
His light spread through me. Warm...softening my fear.
“You’re different,” he said, soft. “Not only because a virgin.”
I knew he was distracting me. I also knew he was right, that this was the absolute worst time ever for us to talk about Terian or dead children.
Also, his distraction was working.
I forced a smile. “Virgin? You race-centric seers...it’s all about you.”
He smiled back. Pushing me gently so I would roll to my back, he rested his weight on me more fully, propping his jaw on a hand. With his other hand, he ran a finger over my lips, then my cheek.
“Alyson,” he murmured. “...you seduced me.”
I felt my face warm.
His fingers brushed back my hair. He kissed me again, slower that time. When we paused, he rearranged his weight, pinning me under his arms and legs. I felt the deliberateness behind the pose as he looked at me again, as if asking me if it were all right. When I didn’t push back, he smiled. His voice remained soft.
“You almost gave me a heart attack, Allie...” He caressed my arm with his fingertips, making me shiver. “I couldn’t believe it when I woke up...” Pain touched his voice again, and he fell silent, looking at me. I felt him getting hard again. “Gods, Allie...I hope you’re not tired. I’m really, really turned on right now...”
Flushing more, I caressed his chest to avoid his eyes, running my fingers over muscles and skin, the fine coating of dark hairs. I shook my head.
“Not overly tired,” I said.
He was still watching my face. His voice lowered, getting deeper again.
“We’ll need to stay here now,” he said. “You know that, right?”
I looked up at him. “How long?”
“I don’t know.” Caressing my fingers, he looked away, glancing towards the window. “But I’m feeling possessive, Allie...very possessive.” His hand slid back into my hair, clenching there briefly as he kissed my face. “I want to give you a lot more reasons to want to be faithful to me. A lot more...”
I smiled. “Really? What kinds of reasons?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. I felt another flush of that wanting, a sharp intensity in his light. He kissed me again, murmuring, “But I’m going to want to fuck a lot. A lot, Allie...I’ll probably drive you crazy, not let you sleep...”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Who are you? This is like a different Revik...are you drugged from having an orgasm?”
He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes.
“You don’t like it? I’m talking too much? Presuming too much?”
I touched his face. “I do like it.” Thinking, I added, “...A lot, actually. But I don’t want you to feel like you need to.”
“You think I’m insincere?”
I laughed again. “No.”
He pressed into me. When he lifted his head, his eyes grew more serious. “Allie, I never...” He hesitated. “I don’t remember ever being with a virgin before.”
I glanced up, hiding my embarrassment with an effort. I smiled.
“Never? Aren’t you like a hundred?”
He raised an eyebrow, then smiled back. “Yes. But then...I don’t remember being with any seer who wasn’t a pro until I was at least forty.”
I nodded, not looking up as I continued to touch him. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to know about that, at least right then. Or really...ever. He’d had a lot more years to collect notches on his bedpost than I had, and he hadn’t exactly wasted them.
Beyond that, pros would know what they were doing.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t known the basic facts of my own anatomy.
I could tell it had shocked him. Whatever I’d said, whatever Tarsi told him, the reality that I’d never slept with another seer shocked the hell out of him while we were in the middle of it. I thought about what he’d said about never being with a virgin, about me seducing him, his worries about scaring me when we first started...and felt my face warm again.
No, I definitely didn’t want to hear about his past.
“You said I was different,” I said, to change the subject. “Do you mean actually, physically...” I hesitated. “Different...different? Like down there?”
Amusement touched his eyes, but I saw something else there, too.
“Humans didn’t notice?”
“Well, yeah. I didn’t think I’d be a weirdo in the seer world, too.”
He slid a hand around my face, but I saw his mouth tighten.
Looking at him, I found myself wondering just how much he’d seen while following me all of those years. His eyes tightened perceptibly...and I decided talking about past lovers wasn’t a good idea for either of us right then.
I felt another shiver of pain off him as he watched me look at him.
“And?” I said, smiling. “Okay different? So-so?”
The tension on his face broke. He laughed. “More like, ‘I’d better get used to this before my wife leaves me,’ different.” He smiled, but I felt his embarrassment again. “It’s not only the physical, Allie. Your light does something...” He sent the rest carefully, trying to show me. It was that folding sensation I’d been fighting. A liquid heat drove down from a structure in my aleimi, starting in my abdomen before it ran into his...until a part of us entwined, like two sinuous tails.
I felt his breath catch, his weight grow heavy again.
“Stop,” he gasped. “I know I started it, but stop, Allie...please...”
I fought with my light, shutting it down with an effort. After a few seconds, his hands relaxed. I swallowed as he caressed my cheek with his.
“Gods,” he murmured. “You’re going to have to go easier on me, wife.”
I felt my face warm again.
“Revik, are you...” I couldn’t find the right words. “...all right? Now, I mean. Do you feel all right?”
“No.” He kissed my face. “Better, I’m embarrassed to admit, but no.” He hesitated, looking at me. “What about you? I know it wasn’t much...”
I tried to think past whatever was going on with me. I clutched his back, too hard I realized, but I couldn’t seem to make myself let go. I felt scars there, too, marring his skin...more than what I saw in front. Remembering how he’d looked in London, after Terian, I clutched him tighter, fighting the emotion that wanted to rise with it, an irrational kind of grief mixed with fear. I couldn’t have explained any of that to him, though, so I didn’t try.
“I feel different,” I said. “Already, I mean. Do you?”
His eyes didn’t waver. “Yes.”
“Do we need to talk? About that?”
He kissed my cheek. “Yes. Do you want to now?”
I hesitated, thinking about whether I did.
“We’re really married now, aren’t we?” I said finally.
His fingers tightened, right before his pain grew sharp.
“Yes.” He pressed against me. His voice grew soft. “But I thought of myself as married before, Allie. I have since the ship.”
Remembering what else he’d done on the ship, I fought another irrational flare of emotion. I was still struggling to control myself when he wrapped his arms around me. He kissed the nape of my neck, just before he melted into me, sending me...god, it felt like love. It came wrapped in a dense wanting, a near-surrender I couldn’t think past. It touched me deeper than anything I’d ever felt on him...deep enough that briefly, it washed out all the rest.
Allie's War Season One Page 73