Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (68 page)

“Are you going to open for me?” he said, caressing my rear gently, rubbing my back. “Your light. Are you going to open your light for me, Allie?”

Clenching my jaw, I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

He didn’t let me off the hook.

“No?” he said. “You need to say it, Alyson.”

I cleared my throat, fighting anger. I knew he could probably feel the emotion in my light. I knew he was probably getting off on me losing control over myself like this. He might even be getting off on the grief.

“No,” I said, my voice cold.

He nodded. I felt that more than saw it, too.

“Because of him?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, glaring up at him.

He nodded, his expression unmoving. “All right,” he said, his voice as empty as his face. “Although you should know, loyalty is a turn-on for seers…even loyalty to someone else.”

I bit my lip, fighting fury.

If he noticed, I didn’t feel any indication on his light.

Still rubbing my back, he shifted backwards slightly, unwrapping the towel from around his waist. I tensed as he slid his body between my legs, using his knees to spread mine even more. He gripped my hips again in his hands––tightly that time, almost painfully. Sex-pain whispered off his light, coiling into mine as I felt him looking at me.

“I don’t think two orgasms was enough,” he muttered.

Before I could make a sarcastic crack back, he leaned down towards me, kissing my back with his tongue and lips. He used a lot of his light that time and I gasped, losing my train of thought. When he started caressing my ribs and hips and the front of my body, I groaned, flattening against the bedspread in spite of myself, arching my back.

Which is maybe what he’d wanted. Either way, he kissed me for awhile longer before he raised his body up, still holding my hips…

…and slid into me up to the hilt.

My heart stopped. Then it jack-knifed.

I felt shock ripple his light.

“Gods…you’re wet.” He let out a heavier groan. “You’re really fucking wet, Allie…I could come right now…”

I fought to move against him, but he held me, firm in his hands.

“Open your light,” he urged. “Please, lover…”

“No,” I snapped.

He pulled out slowly then arched into me equally slow, going so deep I let out a heavier cry, pressing into the mattress. I fought to hold onto the shield when he did it again. Then he was fucking me harder, still slow but almost violently hard at the end, his light opening more with each thrust of his hips. I felt paralyzed there, lost in sensation and his light. Guilt swam over me as I thought of Revik…then frustration when Dalejem wouldn’t extend, or let me come…then more guilt for even wanting those things.

Pain writhed in my light as I thought of Revik again, of the last time I’d let anyone else touch me like this…

“Stop, goddamn it,” Dalejem growled. “Stay here with me…”

He slapped my ass, hard that time, and I groaned, fighting him with my light as he pressed into me harder. He used his light more intently as I fought him, bleeding it out of the end of his cock as he rubbed up against the part of me that wanted him to extend.

I cried out when he kept doing it, then I was sweating again…then swearing, then fighting him for real, pulling back the telekinesis even as I fought to keep my light closed.

“No. Relax…” he murmured. “Relax…love, relax…”

I fought to control myself, realizing only then that I’d been losing my grip on the shield. My light wouldn’t stop pulling on his, fighting to get him to lose control, to extend.

He blew warmth over my aleimi, reassurance, but I fought that, too.

“You want me,” he said, his voice gruff. “You want me...it’s why you get so angry at me, Alyson. You want me...it doesn’t make you disloyal...”

Pain exploded over my light.

He groaned, coming to a stop as his hands gripped me tighter, his fingers painful as he held himself back. Then he slowed his body, fucking me harder, using more of his light. I felt him pulling on me, trying to get me to say it. Pain seethed off him in another hot coil.

“You want me,” he murmured. “Admit it, Alyson...tell me you want me...”

The pain in my light worsened. I felt him deliberately slowing me down again, slowing his body, threading his light into mine and distracting me from where I wanted to come. My frustration worsened, growing desperate as I gripped the bedspread. I let out a pleading sound, but he only gripped me tighter, coming to a near stop.

“Gaos
...tell me you want me,” he gasped. “Fucking tell me...”

“You’re an asshole,” I burst out finally, fighting tears. “Why are you doing this?” I thought about my words, fighting another debilitating wave of pain. My voice grew bitter. “Hoping to feel him in my cunt, brother, since you can’t have him in your bed?”

His fingers tightened painfully on my hips.

For a long moment, he didn’t move.

Then he extended…all the way inside me.

I let out a low-pitched yell, nearly pleading.

He groaned right after I did, letting his weight fall, gasping and sweating against my back and neck. He still wasn’t moving though, and I found myself fighting him again, fighting to get him to start, to do this thing for real. He wouldn’t though. He just held me, his light a blank wall for what felt like an endless stretch of time.

Anger pulsed out of him gradually as his hands tightened, holding me still.

“You think that’s what this is?” he said.

His voice was soft, holding pain on the surface.

When I didn’t answer, he pressed his face against my neck, that pain coiling into me, colliding into mine, intensely enough that I whimpered. I felt his light react violently to the sound, right before he gasped against my neck.

“You think I’m fucking Revik right now?” he murmured. “Is that it?”

I fought to answer him, to even think. “Yes,” I said then, nodding into the mattress. Tears came to my eyes. “Yes.”

He clicked at me, but I felt the pain in his light intensify. The next time he spoke his voice sounded thick, almost gruff.

“You’re wrong,” he said only.

He released my light once he’d said it, pulling his chest off my back. Gripping my hips in his hands, he slid into me with his cock and the sharper hirik with a precision that made me cry out. He did it again, harder, and I moaned, fighting him, and maybe myself by then, too. Then he was building me…slowly, inexorably, relentlessly.

I lost control completely by the end…physically at least.

I held onto my light.

Some part of me held onto it stubbornly, angrily…irrationally, maybe.

Whatever Revik did. Whatever he did and whoever he did it with…I wasn’t going to give my light away just because I knew he was. I wasn’t going to open myself to some other seer just because he did…or because he gave his body to whoever wanted him.

I knew why he was doing that, too. Or I knew what he told himself about why he was doing it, at least. I couldn’t make myself care about his reasons though. Not anymore.

I didn’t care.

Not then, maybe not ever.

I didn’t fucking care.

22

THREE MONTHS

We still can’t find him. You need to get out of there, baby––

We’ve got people on it too.

Silence falls between us, laden with more than I can express.

We?
I send.

Alyson…

His pain worsens. I shake it off, my own light hardening.

You’re not listening to me,
I send, insistent.
You need to get out of there, I mean it. This isn’t going to work. Too much has changed…

We stick to the plan for now. I’m close.

I shake my head.
You said it yourself. It’s not working. There’s only so much I can do on this end. Even if I do what you ask, it’s not going to matter if––

There’s something here. Something they’re hiding from me.

Revik…

I know it’s hard…it’s hard for me, too.
His pain worsens, growing unbearable.
But we can’t stop now. We can’t, or it will all be for nothing.
Sighing, he makes his voice flatter, more matter of fact.
They still think I put you up to it, but it’s at least caused some doubt. You need to convince them, wife. They’ll never trust me, but I don’t think they’ll kill me now. Not if––

No,
I send.
No, damn it…you’re not hearing me. We don’t have time for that now. I can’t stop him. I can’t even slow him down, Revik––

You don’t have to.
He pauses; the silence deepens. More light coils between us, faint tendrils of fire.
Gaos…Allie. Are you all right?

No. No I’m not all right…I want you home. I want you home, goddamn it.
Pain slides through me and that time, I can’t control it at all.
I want you home…

I blinked, hanging over the VR console.

Rubbing my eyes, I fought to breathe, feeling my mind starting to phase.

I was hungry. And overtired. The time changes definitely didn’t help; the two seers we were tracking were now in totally different continents and time zones. We didn’t have enough high-ranked infiltrators to be able to assign people consistent slots, so we’d all had to deal with sleeping at odd hours, catching food where we could, taking turns in shifts.

I’d probably gotten less sleep than a lot of the people here.

The day before we’d been escorted politely but firmly out of the main compound at Langley, including those old training barracks. They’d given us a new building…also politely…and also very clearly outside of their constructs and even their secondary security wall.

Now we had a base of sorts set up on the outskirts, in an old admin office building that used to house more of the spillover and contract workers hired by the CIA and SCARB.

This part of the United States was pretty barren at the moment, but even so, it was a relief that they allowed us to remain inside the outer gates of the wider CIA-run compound at least, if only because I didn’t have to deal with coordinating and assigning heavy physical security in addition to all of the Barrier crap we needed already.