Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (23 page)

One thing was for sure, I’d definitely overdressed.

He wore military work pants, black and form-fitting with clean lines…but yeah, work pants. Over that he wore a white shirt. It was a button down, not a T-shirt, but also firmly in the casual camp, especially since he hadn’t bothered to tuck it in and he’d rolled up the sleeves. Revik tended to dress on the formal side compared to humans I’d known in the United States, so yeah, for him, these clothes definitely fell in the comfortable-casual camp.

Letting my eyes drift down to my own choice in clothes, I felt my face warm.

I glanced around at the other seers as surreptitiously as I could, but what I saw didn’t reassure me. The vast majority of the seers I saw, male and female, wore infiltrator-wear. Others wore even more casual work clothes, or stuff they might have worn into the mulei ring or out running in the park. I saw only one other dress and it was floor-length and worn by Sita, one of the ex-Rebels. Her dress was Indian in cut and looked to be made of cotton. It also concealed significantly more than it showed. Definitely not sexy funtimes wear.

More like lounging around the house wear.

Not quite a muumuu, but close.

Fuck.

Grimacing, I realized I needed a drink after all, shielding be damned. Maybe a lot more than one. That, or I needed to go change. Or maybe both.

I’d gone back to facing the sunset while I thought all of that.

Now, mulling the clothes thing again and realizing I’d violated another of those seer “cultural norm” things without realizing it, it occurred to me I really should go change. It would be embarrassing either way, yeah, but changing would be less so.

When in Rome, and all that.

If I did it now, quietly, a lot of them might not even notice.

When I got back, I would copy what Revik had done. Get a drink. Blend into one of the clusters where I knew most of the seers. Be passively social. Ignore the fact that I’d changed my clothes and hope like hell they would all do the same.

At the same time, yeah, I was kind of pissed.

Why hadn’t Wreg told me? Why hadn’t Yumi? Why didn’t
anyone
tell me anything around here unless I explicitly asked the question?

I was already bracing myself to climb the stairs back up to the higher platform by the bar so that I could make my way back into the building, when I turned, gritting my teeth…

And basically ran right into Revik.

He’d approached me and stood directly behind me, moving so quietly I hadn’t felt or heard him. Or maybe I’d just been too lost in my clothing
faux pas
to pay attention.

Either way, I hadn’t known he was there at all.

I nearly knocked his drink into him as a result. He managed to pull his hand away, surfing the amber liquid to safety. He used his free hand to catch hold of my arm in the same motion, which is good because I probably would have lost my balance entirely if he hadn’t, and maybe crashed into him for real.

When I glanced up, feeling my face warm, his eyes locked on mine.

“Are you okay?” he said. He didn’t let go of my arm.

I let him hold me until I regained my balance. Then I stepped back a little, forcing him to let go. Exhaling, I nodded.

“Yeah.” I let out a humorless snort. “Yeah. I’m good.”

When I glanced up that time, he was staring at my body in the short black dress and sheer stockings. His eyes lingered on the high-heeled black shoes.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” he said, his voice holding no inflection that time.

I felt my face go from warm to hot.

Biting my lip, and the retort that wanted to come out, I shook my head.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’ll change, all right?” I started to move past him, not looking at him at all that time. “…Forget it. I’ll change.”

He caught hold of my arm again, though.

When I looked up that time, his eyes looked puzzled, but also embarrassed. “That’s not…Allie.” He struggled for words. “I didn’t mean that, Allie. I just…”

He trailed. His eyes slid down me again as he did and I fought to extricate my arm.

“I’ll change, Revik,” I said, closing my light. “It was a mistake. Forget it.”

He shook his head, still not letting me go. He gripped me tighter when I tried to writhe away, fighting my attempts to flee. That time when he spoke he sounded frustrated.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Allie, please. Stop taking this the way you are. Please! Please stay…just for a few seconds!”

I forced myself to stop struggling, to just stand there.

Still gripping my arm, he glanced around the deck, at the seers on the different levels of the roof. I felt his embarrassment worsen, but I didn’t follow his gaze. I didn’t want to know how many of them might be staring at us now, truthfully, or what I might feel on their lights as they watched the two of us. For some reason emotion nearly overwhelmed me in those few seconds. I felt like an asshole, sure, for overreacting, for overdressing in the first place then acting like a jerk when Revik barely asked me about why I’d done it.

I knew seers didn’t ask appearance questions for the same reasons humans did. He hadn’t asked me to chew me out, or even to tease me; it had been an honest question. I’d obviously violated some unwritten seer rule about these kinds of gatherings and he was trying to figure out why no one had told me.

I kind of wondered why no one had told me, too.

Regardless of any of that, though, I knew none of those things were what was bothering me. I knew the clothes were nothing, just one more thing I’d fucked up in regards to seer culture. I knew Revik probably didn’t give a shit about my clothes, either, but I couldn’t seem to open my light enough to reassure either of us.

“Allie.” His voice dropped to a murmur. Hesitating a bare breath, he pulled me closer to where he stood. He put down the drink on a low table without letting go of me, then wrapped his arms around me, lowering his mouth to my neck and ear.

“Allie…listen to me,” he murmured. “I’m fucking jealous. I’m jealous…”

I felt something in my chest clench.

He kissed my neck, wrapping his light and arms tighter around me.

“I’m jealous,” he repeated, softer. “Every seer in here…
gaos,
Allie. They’re all staring at you. I’m picking up thoughts on some of them. Some of those thoughts are pretty damned explicit. I’m having trouble…” He fought for words. “…Dealing with it. I’m having trouble dealing with it, Allie. That’s all.”

I let out a humorless sound, but didn’t look up.

I wiped my eyes a few seconds later. I hadn’t noticed when my vision blurred, but now I was embarrassed from that, too.

His words made that harder resistance in my light collapse, though.

Forcing a sigh, I leaned my head into his chest. Then I clicked softly, still looking down at the deck rather than at his face.

“Who the hell do you think I wore it for?” I said. Pressing deeper into him, maybe in part so I could continue avoiding looking at his face, I slid my arm around his waist. “It was stupid. And clearly it’s not…” I let out a choked laugh. “…Not the dress code for group sex. I just thought…I don’t know. I thought you’d like it.”

I felt a reaction plume off his light, a mixture of things that swam through my aleimi too fast, confused and conflicted for me to make out most of the individual emotions.

I felt grief on him the strongest though.

It was more than I could handle right then, truthfully.

“Revik.” I stepped back, removing myself from the embrace. “I’ll just go change. Really. It’s not a big deal. Why don’t I just do that?”

He was already shaking his head though, stepping towards me before I’d finished speaking. I felt a flush of anger on him. It felt mostly aimed at himself that time.

He stopped when he stood directly in front of me again.

“I’m sorry I grabbed you,” he said, blunt. “I panicked.”

Clicking softly, I smiled at that, snorting a soft laugh in spite of myself. I didn’t look up though, putting my hands on my hips as I glanced back at the bar instead.

Too many seers were staring at the two of us.

“They’re watching to make sure I’m not being an asshole,” he grunted.

When I still didn’t look over, he caught a hold of my chin with his fingers, gently that time. Softening his light, he guided me to gradually look up at him.

When I met his gaze, his jaw hardened.

He shook his head. Once. Adamant.

“And no,” he said. “No, Alyson…I don’t want you to change. Not unless you really want to. Thank you, but no. And thank you for wearing it. I should have done the same.” Releasing my face after caressing my cheek with his fingers, he caught hold of my hand, gripping it tightly in his. “Do you want a drink?”

I exhaled, feeling my shoulders relax for real.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I told him.

A few others teased me about the clothes, maybe just to make light of my blunder.

As we all sat cross-legged around the low table they set on the upper floor of the deck, Yumi even explained the custom to me. She said the casual clothes were symbolic, meant to convey that the light-sharing was being done not from lust or an attempt to manipulate one another, but from our relationship as people. So more like friends. Comrades. Brothers and sisters.

Versus, I guess, a group orgy designed to get into one another’s pants.

It made a lot of sense, once I thought about it.

Yumi informed me further that the custom originated in the Adhipan…which immediately caused a heated debate between Adhipan seers and ex-rebel seers, most of the latter of whom thought the First Race started the custom,
not
the Adhipan. The whole idea of arguing about the origins of culturally-dictated clothing choices for group sex was funny to me, but seers take their traditions as seriously as humans, I suppose.

To me, the other bonus would have been to be able to sit cross-legged with the rest of them, since they’d gone more Japanese-style on the tables. Instead I had to kneel with my legs curled under me because of the dumb short dress.

Revik didn’t participate in the debate, although he laughed at some of the more outrageous claims. He continued to hold my hand on the cushion under the low table, not speaking much.

Once we sat down for dinner he switched from bourbon to water, I noticed.

He didn’t eat much.

The food was mostly from local ingredients, a mish-mash of rice, curry, vegetables and fish that tasted better than anything I could remember us eating since New York. Revik still didn’t eat much of it, which was unusual for him, especially with seer food. I couldn’t quite tell if the current spread was completely seer food or a mix of seer and human, but given how happy my light felt as I ate it, I guessed it had to be more seer than not.

Even after we finished eating, we all just sat there for awhile, talking and laughing about nothing, essentially. It wasn’t quite small talk, at least not in the stilted, awkward or even purely superficial chit-chatty sense, but it wasn’t too heavy either. People talked philosophy and even a little about the Myths but not about operations or what we’d be facing when we left Thailand.

I don’t know when or how that changed, exactly.

I’m pretty sure it was Revik’s fault.