Calliope's Wings

by Guin Archer

  “Been a long day, Sweetcheeks,” he groaned as he nuzzled into the messy bun at the back of my scalp. I could hear him inhaling me like I was the world’s greatest aphrodisiac. Like the cinnamon coating our hands had nothing to my own aroma. To him, though, there wasn’t anything better than me.

  He was going to give me a big head one of these days.

  “Figured as much,” I whispered back, playfully slipping my legging-encased ass against his dick. He went full chub after the first pass. “You don’t usually have to switch to the scrubs unless it was a bad one. Was it the crash on the highway?”

  I felt his face nod against my skull and shivered in remembered fear. We’d heard about the pileup at the shop where I was currently apprenticing. It was awful. The tally of dead was already at sixteen by the time reporters got to the scene. I knew there was a good chance Mac was going to be one of the EMTs sent in.

  “I’m good, baby. Stop worrying.” He pulled away, then slapped my ass. I scowled at him over my shoulder. He might not have minded crap on his scrubs, but I paid good money for my leggings! His greasy handprint belonged either on my bare ass or panties. Not my leggings.

  His still-boyish smirk winked at me along with one of his stunning, royal blue eyes. He knew he was treading on thin ice.

  When his hands went behind his head to lace his fingers together, he didn’t so much as wince at getting the coating into his mop of light blonde hair. His pale freckles on sun-tanned skin were adorable. One-hundred percent. I wilted everywhere just looking at him for even a second of time.

  He took a deep breath in, only just stretching out the material of his shirt. He wasn’t a meathead, but he kept decently fit. The beginning of his ‘dad-bod’ in the teeny-tiny pooch of his tummy had my cleft throbbing with want.

  Fucking husky men. Men like my Mackenzie Whitmore did it for me every time. He did it for me every time.

  “Smells good in here. Whatcha making besides that pie?” I watched his gaze flicker to the crockpot on the counter.

  “Roast beef. Got hash in the oven and hamburg gravy, too. Knew we both needed some serious carbs.”

  His expression shuttered from jovial to worried in a heartbeat. He rushed to me, whipping me around without thought to my messy self and hauled me into his chest. I inhaled deep of his spritz of cologne that he could only wear once he was off-duty.

  He smelled like home. He felt like home.

  “What’s wrong, Io? Tell me. Can I make it better?” His body tensed and I felt his peaking ire. “That old douchewaffle isn’t harassing you again, is he?”

  My lip-nibbling and silence was answer enough. Mac let me go with a snarl, his hands balling up into tight fists, and set about with his frustrated pacing. He paced when he was agitated and felt cornered. A perfect four-by-two stretch. He never set a toe out of line of his ‘cage’.

  “Baby, baby, stop.” I rushed over to him and snuggled up into his front. I wrapped myself around him like a barnacle to the underside of a boat. Only, I wasn’t going to be pulled off by anything. The only thing that’d ever be able to move me from my man was his own hands.

  Automatically, Mac brought his arms back around me. When he looked down at me, I could see that even the handful of seconds he’d had to fall into old patterns had distanced his mind from me.

  I pressed a kiss to his throat. Nice and wet and loud.

  “Just a couple more months, baby. That’s all I have to stand and then we’re out of there.” I squeezed him tighter. “I told you I pulled in Spike, right? He’s geared up to work for me. Isn’t that great?”

  “Still don’t know why you’re sticking around that fucking hole so long. Just ditch.”

  I kissed him again, though not as noisy now that he was refocusing on me. “‘Cuz he’s one of the best realist tattoo artists in the country. I’ve learned a lot there even if he is a douchecanoe.”

  “Waffle,” he corrected me mildly, bowing his head to press languid smooches to my crown.

  We were both a sloppy, gooky mess now. I summoned a smirk and peered up at him through my lashes. My tongue swept over my lips unconsciously and I watched his pupils expand with desire as he tracked the movement.

  “How ‘bout I just toss the slices in the fridge real quick and we sneak off to the bathroom to get clean?” Bold now that we were already wrecked, I dropped my hands down his broad back to squeeze his ass cheeks in my palms. His hips reflexively jerked into me, pressing his dick against my tummy. I snickered. “We need to get clean, baby.”

  “Gonna get you a whole lot dirtier before we get clean, Sweetcheeks,” he promised me darkly even as he hoisted me up so my legs could lock around his waist, his erection caught between us, and carried me to the bathroom.

  Some hours later, our bellies full of dinner and each other, we lay in bed with the television muted. Its blueish glow stretched across the sheets and us. I was mostly over Mac, tracing my fingers across the puckered scars of his past. One hand of his stroked from one side to another across my bare shoulders while the other gripped the back of my knee hooked high over his abdomen.

  Out of nowhere, I asked him, “how are you so strong?”

  Mackenzie’s muscles tightened under me for a brief second before the breath I hadn’t been aware of him holding came out in a rush. It ruffled my sex-matted hair.

  “I ain’t strong, Io. Ain’t strong at all.” His short nails scratched the skin of my back slowly. “You just either learn to keep on steppin’ when life gets its knocks in against you or you lie down and die. I don’t feel like dying today.”

  “But you…” I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t feel like I had any right to. Me and Mac had been together for six years; since I was a wide-eyed sophy on campus. We knew everything about each other.

  Like always, my man read me and my mind like he had an insider view to my most private thoughts. It felt like he did most of the time.

  “My mother was a sick, sick woman. Sick in her body and sick in her head.” He clenched my hand a little. “What she did to me was something no kid should have to face, but especially not from his mother.”

  “But that’s what I mean, Mac. You’re so fucking strong. Stronger and braver than I could ever be.” I brushed my nose against the nearest scar to me, the one I knew came from a letter opener his mother stabbed into him when he tried fighting back before he became big enough to subdue her. “I could never…I don’t know how I could ever be with anyone intimately again if I went through what you did.”

  “Look at me, Calliope.”

  Full name. Ooh boy.

  I turned my chin up to rest on his pectoral over his heart and matched his burning stare with my own. His jaw was tight and his hands on me were verging on rough.

  “I pray to God, baby, that you never have to understand what happened to me. Not truly.” He huffed out a breath. “I hate myself some days. I think about her a lot, too. Think about how fucked up it was that she could make me like it.

  “Thing is, babe, the body sometimes works outside our control. You can’t help what it does. The only thing you can do sometimes is deal with shit where it matters most. On the inside.”

  Mac moved me, drawing me up further and around so that I was straddling his lap. He used a fisted hand around his cock to shove it up into my still-sore hole, but our combined releases still lingered to lube his way. We both groaned happily at being brought back together.

  His next statements were made through clenched teeth and in hissing syllables.

  “Took me a long time to come to terms with it. Took me even longer to not feel like my mother was fucking me whenever I even looked at a woman. That shit’ll stay with me til my dying day, Io, but I’ll never let it consume me. Never. You know why?”

  “Wha-wha-whyyy?” I was panting hard and trying to keep my vision steady on his pinched face beneath me.

  “Because if I let it, I’d never be able to have you.” He clamped onto my hips and rammed me down onto his shaft like he thought he cou
ld brand himself into my womb. “You’re my match, baby. The other part of me. She still gets to me sometimes, but even when you’re not right here with me, you always pull me through. ‘Cuz I gotta come back to you. No matter what, I always gotta come back to my girl.”

  “Oh, Mac,” I cried, grinding myself against him whenever possible. His hands kept their steady lift-drop on my waist, propelling me towards rapture.

  “Love you, Io. Love you so fucking much.”

  “Love you, too, Mac. So fucking much.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  God, I missed that man.

  Without thinking much about it, tears built behind my clenched eyelids and I folded my hands tight in prayer-position to my lips. I felt the curious sensation I was all too familiar with since his death of heartbreak and simultaneous warmth for the man that still owned my heart. Even gone and worlds away, he was always with me.

  “Who is ‘my Mac’?”

  Jolting, I rolled under my blankets to peer over them and the lip of my omma to see Ruune leaned against the rim. He was looking down at me with a sorrowful tilt to his lips and his aura wiltingly sad. His claws kneaded the frond weave anxiously.

  I swallowed thickly.

  “Mac was my Dorai.” The Xerbai jerked up and back in shock, the force of his movements so strong you’d think I’d punched him. My smile was sad and hard to summon. “He died a long time ago.”

  “Uum Taytani,” he husked out, a wretched sound that hurt me down to my core. His hands opened, not quite reaching for me but asking for permission. “I beg, allow me to hold You?”

  In the early light of day, and I could see it peaking out low on the horizon and tinting the night sky to light blue, I felt like even more of a shit for freaking out like I did on the two males who thought themselves mine. Ruune looked like absolute hell, like he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep last night, and was so desperately wanting just to hold me. I could feel it radiating off him. He didn’t want sex – not right now. He just wanted to hold me and be held in return.

  A heel. I felt like a fucking heel.

  So, knowing I couldn’t resist him or myself – because I wanted to be cuddled, too – I kicked away my bedding and held open my own arms. I was still wearing my romper from the night before along with all my chains and bells. They sounded a little unhappy when they chimed as I moved around.

  Ruune was quick in picking me up out of the omma. He hiked me high into him so he could nuzzle his flat nose against my cheek and temple. He groaned lowly against my skin, a sound of desolation.

  My stomach knotted up with guilt.

  “Ruune,” I whispered into his torn ear. The tip flicked cutely in my direction to hear me better. “Is there somewhere we can go that is…private? There are things I must say that I want only you to hear.”

  “Yes, Innintani.” He turned us so that we were faced to where Sekhmet was lying amongst some of her males. I noticed immediately the absence of Roprah and his chipped mouthplates. A sour gurgle touched the back of my throat while I absently stroked and petted Ruune’s bound chest.

  “Kor is gone?” Don’t know why I asked since I already knew the answer to it.

  “Aichi, Innintani.”

  Shit. Fucking goddamn shit.

  “It was me,” I admitted meekly. I chewed on my lower lip in punishment and to keep from making an embarrassing sound of upset. Like a sob. “If I had not acted as I did, he would not have left so soon. I did not have the chance to apologize. Ruune, my Ruune, you must know I…”

  “Seshani, Calliope,” the Xerbai whispered back down to me. He nudged my cheek with his nose again comfortingly. “It is as it is. The Tohtahk would leave with his Zikta before all woke even had we been gifted with Your blessed body. It is the way of it. The Tohtahk leads the raids, always, after Leishai.”

  Still didn’t make me feel any better with him saying it out loud like that. I knew Ruune would never lie to me. It wasn’t in his nature. Kor didn’t leave because of me, but he didn’t stay, either. My heart, the traitorous deviant it was, told me I’d upset the warlord. He didn’t want to see me and face my turncoat personality, otherwise he would’ve at least tried to say goodbye. And if he had, I’d have been able to choke out a sincere apology for freaking out on him like I did…again.

  Ruune bowed his head low to Big Mama as she yawned and respectfully asked for her aide.

  My girl stretched herself out long, stroked my visible cheek with the back of a claw, then rose up above us. She wasn’t wearing her saddle, but my Xerbai didn’t seem daunted. He just lifted me onto her back, then hopped up to bracket me in snuggly to her upper back. He spoke to her in the same two-toned way Kor did, but much more polite and subdued.

  Sekhmet trilled at him, clearly liking his respect better than the Tohtahk’s lack-of.

  My girl carried us away, a small contingent of male Mahzri our only company. We descended the cliff again, bypassing the fields and the lake altogether. I lost track of our path quickly and had to wonder both where we were going and how Ruune could possibly know wherever it was existed.

  While I was distracted, he reached out to snatch at the stalk of one of the mammoth flowers. The stem was apparently brittle, snapping loudly in his fearsome hands. He kept going along the stalk and stem until he reached the bloom, breaking it away from the rest. He set the shorn bloom into my lap.

  “When we return to the Udonak, Shree and Orla will roast the seeds for You. They are a treat as these flowers can only be eaten for a short time in this season. You will see many kut gathering them over the next several sol.”

  “How do you know they can be eaten?”

  He pointed to the navy coloring at the ends of the petals furthest from the seeded centers. “So long as this color shows, the seeds are not poisonous. As soon as it is gone, the seed can be boiled and the water it seeps in is very dangerous. Dipped arrows or blades can send a Tauren to the One for judgement in moments.”

  “Lo,” I found myself gasping in horrified denial. Ruune winced at my expression.

  “We use it in small amounts to make the sick sleep and heal. It can be used for good, but there are those that would not.” He patted Sekhmet’s shoulder briefly. “The Mahzri protect these lands. None but the Udon may pass through. All other Tauren and tribes must traverse around.”

  It occurred to me that the shit they’d knocked me out with before was probably the same toxin that he described. It was a little unnerving to think that a larger dose could off me in seconds and I hadn’t known it.

  I just figured they’d roofied me with some kinda marijuana-meets-melatonin. Maritonin? Melajuana?

  Okay, no. That last one sounded like a spoof on Disney. Didn’t need Walt knocking down my door for copyright infringement. He’d send Mickey in like the KoolAid man, probably, before sicking his lawyers on me.

  You’ve gone off the deep end, honey. They’ll come to take you away, tee-hee, ho-ho, ha-ha, to the funny farm…

  “Calliope,” Ruune rasped while I was distracted by my spiraling insanity. I turned my gaze up to see his face staring unblinkingly down at me. He swallowed thickly, much like I did not too long ago. “Will You tell me of Your time as a…”

  “Lo,” I snapped. I instantly regretted my curt tone when the male went preternaturally still and ducked his head shamefully. I made myself take on a gentler tone. “Lo, Ruune. I will not. I cannot go through them again. Not even to for you.”

  To lessen the blow, I stroked my hands across his sharp jawline and cheeks, caressing him in a way I knew he’d enjoy. Hell, I liked it a smidgen more than a lot myself. His velveteen skin around his face was so very pettable.

  “Do not be hurt. It is…I have been through much. My seasons on Intau have been the worst of my life. I wish to speak of what I have suffered, yes, but I cannot.”

  I arched up to press a kiss to his stiff lips. He shuddered in a good way.

  “It would hurt you almost as much as it would hurt me to hear my sorrows put to Tongue. I would n
ot be able to forgive myself if I made it so that you could no longer look into my eyes and see me as you do now.”

  “You are uum Biis’a, Innintani. Uum Calliope. I need Your pain to be mine so I may help to heal You. I beg of You…”

  I sighed. Deeply.

  “Perhaps one sol, Ruune.” I was lying to him. I couldn’t not. He was already so visibly choked up, I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had no hope of me ever coming out with my story. Sharing wasn’t always caring. Sometimes tight lips spoke sweeter nothings than whispered admissions.

  Ruune wrapped snug around my back, his arms holding me close to him. He breathed me in raggedly and I knew my rejection hurt him.

  We were quiet the rest of the way to wherever it was Sekhmet was taking us.

  Turned out, we were going to a bioluminescent cavern.

  The already-thick copse of fronds, reeds, and stalks became so packed it was a wonder we could even breathe through the masses. The only reason we were able to plow through was because of the Xxyx’s staggering strength and thick hide. She shouldered through like it was tissue paper. The stalks broke with audible cracks and snaps and I had to reel my feet in to keep any of the splintered ends from scraping through my romper to cut my skin. Even Ruune tucked himself in tight around me, protecting his face in the crown of my hair.

  Or maybe he was just enjoying sniffing me?

  The cave, when we finally reached it, had a narrowed entrance that was tall, but awkward for my big girl to maneuver into from the pinched walls. The outer reaches of the cave were as creepy and uninviting as any other cave I’d ever seen since coming to Intau or from National Geographic magazines back on Earth. That was, of course, until we delved much further in.

  Once beyond the threshold, we were inundated with glowing algae moving across the spectrum from green to blue to purple to pink. It was outrageously beautiful, a natural phenomenon like the aurora-borealis, and I felt a little lightheaded with delight and whimsy to get to see something so…well, pretty.

  “Opari,” I whispered worshipfully.

  “Aichi,” he agreed as his nose kissed my temple. He wasn’t even looking. “Opari.”