Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes (13 page)

Dammit. I
was
jealous at the thought. A little. But the Athanate needed them to be happy more than it needed me to be.

My kin’s desires are sacred to me.

“Tell me you don’t think about it,” I whispered. “She’s the most beautiful woman you know. We’re all bound together. You’d have to be made of stone, not to want her.”

I had him backed up against the wall now. I reached down and got a solid grip on the bulge in his pants.

He gasped and the eyes went
all
wolf gold.

“You know, honey,” I said, deliberately drawling and using Jen’s pet name for me, “I’m tired of other alphas waving their dominance in my face. And the only alpha I really want to do it…he hasn’t tried.”

Alphas poured out dominance. I guessed it was like the Were version of eukori, but one way and with one message—
I’m the boss
. I’d had buckets of it from Felix, from Zane, from Cameron. They used it when they were riled about something, when they wanted their way, or when they met another alpha. But Alex had never deliberately used it with me.

I was the alpha on two legs. He was the alpha on four. But it was more complex than that: as an Alpha couple, our joint dominance increased; we gave each other more. We’d submitted to Felix and that’d boosted
his
dominance.

So what would happen
, whispered a little Athanate devil in my ear,
if I submitted to Alex? Just for a while…

Would it reinforce what I’d told him about Jen? Overcome his hesitation?

Screw that
, whispered my little wolf devil.
What will the sex feel like?

I let go my grip on his bulge and undid the buttons on his jeans. Buttons are way sexier than a zipper; each button a little battle, a little loosening, a little step closer. All the time, our hearts beat faster and faster and my insides were turning to hot mush.

I sank to my knees slowly, planting kisses on every inch of his hard, tanned belly as I tugged his jeans and pants down, freeing him.

Oh, yes.

The smell of wolf and man flowing off him felt as if it was caressing me.

Alex and I had enjoyed playing and provoking each other before, starting and stopping, pretending to hesitate. I didn’t think of that now. I didn’t seem to have time.

However I’d done it…
just by thinking about it? By kneeling?
I’d submitted to him and he couldn’t restrain his increased dominance. It was like a dam bursting above me, the water pounding down on me, stealing my breath, hammering against my head, pushing me down.

I couldn’t resist. I’d do anything to give him pleasure. I showed him how, pulling him to me.

He groaned, gripping my head fiercely. His body seemed to vibrate with urgency, like there was a deep humming in his muscles. It all sang of his need.

I had the first flicker of self-doubt. I couldn’t manage it, but it wasn’t the time to have second thoughts, with my eyes streaming and throat beginning to rebel.

Sudden and irrational fear spiked through me.

Alex sensed it.

He yelled; a wordless sound of desire. Of love.

He snatched me up and threw me onto the bed, and suddenly I had two hundred pounds of hot alpha male on top of me, pressing me into the mattress and smothering me in kisses, biting me, licking me, probing me; fingers, hands, tongue, lips and teeth, all over me, completely claiming my body.

I could feel his lust boiling out from him. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in me right then, and he would have come a moment later. But he didn’t, the frustration driving his caresses to the point of pain, until he held back everything except his relentless tongue.

I’d been still quivering inside from the shapeless fears of my memories, and he somehow caught that and used it to excite me quicker than he’d ever done before. I felt the first pre-shocks of a powerful orgasm and then,
then
he was inside me, thrusting ferociously while I hung on like a shipwrecked sailor in a typhoon, screaming into the heart of the storm.

Oh, my God.

That was an answer for the Were: the sex was mind-blowing.

Afterwards, I lay in utter contentment. I hadn’t been completely ready for the little dominance game I’d tried, but it hadn’t mattered. With this man, it wouldn’t matter. We were bound. We were secure in each other.

And if I hadn’t completely lost the message in the medium, maybe I’d even moved a step forward to making peace between him and Jen too.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Desert. Night.

Two huge leathery wings fall from the sky and fold me into an embrace.

Real or dreaming?

The border between?

But I’m in bed, being held. Not by Alex or Jen. By Diana. I know it’s her. I know her marque—the scent, the feel of her presence.

And her voice: “What were you dreaming of?”

She’s speaking quietly. It’s like the brush of desert wind against the walls of a tent.

“The desert,” I whisper. “The Sahara at night, then something else. Wings? Kaothos?”

“The desert is the dream of a song that a long-dead sea used to sing,” she says. “Tell me about the Sahara of your dream.”

“A memory. Ops 4-10 mission. Sandstorm overtook us from the south. Had to pitch tents and wait it out. Took forever.”

“Ah, the khamsin wind,” she says, her words no more than her breath against my ear. “Hot and dusty. The Tuareg say the khamsin brings dreams and fevers. That spirits talk across the veil of death when the khamsin sings.”

If you were inside a tent listening to it for a couple of days, you’d believe that too.

I don’t say that aloud, but she seems to know. I can feel her smile.

I’m lying in her arms with my head tilted back. My neck is bare to her. It feels loose and I’m tingling with expectation. I want her to bite me. I want the gift of Blood between us.

But the touch against my throat is lips and not fangs.

“No one will bite you until you’re sure of yourself, and sure that you aren’t being compelled.” She’s speaking Athanate now.

I am sure. And I thought I broke the compulsions earlier today. Or was that a dream?

But I can feel her brushing the remains of them away.

Does that mean I am done with therapy?

She still doesn’t bite me.

“So many problems,” she says. “So little time. Skylur can trip Ibarre and turn that attack to his advantage. Huang is different. While he looks for Tullah and me to track down Kaothos, he will not be looking for you, but eventually, you will have to deal with him. Like a game of Dominion, he will not trust the first move, but he may believe the second. You need to prepare for that. Just once more, Amber, you need to be the blind player in the great contest of Dominion, and to release me from my oath which I cannot keep.”

I don’t understand.

She speaks and I’m still not sure I understand, but I will do this for her.

There is a moment of clarity when I see it all, then I seem to doze because then she’s talking about my therapy, and Bian, and what I need to do next for myself. I must decide what to do about Forsythe. Whatever I do, Skylur will support me. My therapy, my resolution.

Resolution. I could simply kill him. Or pass the case to human justice. Or walk away. But I must decide how I will be free of this thing. No one else can.

“Then Skylur and Tarez will speak to you tomorrow,” she says, “but you must be the syndesmon and listen to your heart.”

“I will have no guides but myself,” I whisper.

“Yes.” Her voice catches.

“The desert is in all of us,” she says, in English again. “A place of faith and truth that lives on when the song has become the sound of sand in the night. Beloved, you are the flower in my desert and the promise of rain, long looked for.”

She rocks me gently; her lips kiss my eyes closed.

“I cannot stay with you,” she says. “These are difficult times and I am afraid, for you as much as for me. I will go on, and wait for you, however long you may be.”

I don’t understand, but I say, “I will come.”

“Trust thyself…” she starts.

This one I know. She told me this before. “…and another will not betray thee,” I whisper.

The room gets darker and fainter.

I’m in the desert.

The khamsin sighs with the song of a forgotten sea and I feel the desert rain fall on my face. It’s warm and salty.

I woke late in the day to a bed as empty as the desert and a scribbled note on the table.

Some emergency. Possible surge of Basilikos agents down in East LA. Alex would be out until they had been nailed.

I had to have been deeply asleep to have missed him getting up. I could vaguely remember half waking…something about the sound of the pen scratching against the paper. No, not quite scratching…hissing? Weird. Maybe that had slipped into my dreams. Like Diana.

No.

I’d dreamed of the desert, but Diana had been here last night. That
wasn’t
a dream. She said Bian would be here today and Skylur would need to talk to me later.

I’m good to go? Or a session with Bian first?

No compulsions. That wasn’t a dream either.

I probed where they’d been. Mom. Tullah. Felix. Ingram.

Oh, my God!

I had to sit back down on the bed, with my heart pounding. There was no mental swerving away from all the outside pressures that Diana’s compulsions had been protecting me from. The compulsions were gone all right.

Calm. Calm.

I’d need briefings. Jen and Alex and Bian and Skylur. What had been said, how everything had been left, what was expected of me now.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing.

The bed smelled of hot, wolfy sex and at least that took my mind away from everything I needed to be doing.

Nothing to be done until after some food, or Bian’s visit, or whatever.

I pulled on sweats, tied my hair back, splashed water on my face and went downstairs.

Yelena’s eyes took it all in.

“Much better,” she said, deadpan. “Well done to Alex. My grandmother always said a good night of hard—”

I clamped a hand over her mouth.

Yes, the concept of privacy in an Athanate House was weak at best.

Dominé and Dante were up early and about to go back down to the club. I gave them each a hug, burying my face against their necks. The trace of my marque weaving around their individual scents reassured my Athanate.

To my amusement, Vera offered to go with them. She’d taken it on herself to make them welcome here yesterday, and I suspected this was more of the same. I had to wonder whether Vera realized what she was setting herself up for, visiting Club Vasana.

There were still a couple of Altau guards down at the club, but I asked Yelena to drive the three of them down there. I wasn’t going out, and there needed to be someone protecting them on the commute.

No sign of Bian, so after snacking, I went down to the gym we’d set up on the floor below and attacked the punching bag.

I could almost hear Master Liu—
this is not the way
.

But it depended what you were trying to do. Speaks-to-Wolves had told me that anger was my tool. It stood to reason I should practice controlling it, shaping it, focusing it.

The punching bag became Tanner Forsythe, or any one of his sick friends.

Focus. Strike. Strike. Strike.

But somehow, there was no form, no purpose to it.

Redemption.

That word fed the anger. I punched until sweat poured down my face and stung my eyes. Why did that word keep coming back?

Resolution
. That was what Diana had said I needed. Just decide what to do and move on. Deal with Forsythe and put the whole thing behind me forever.

I’m ready
. If I kept saying it enough, it would be true.

The sounds of my attack on the punching bag almost masked the fact I had a visitor. I wasn’t concerned: I still had an Altau team on guard duty.

And as she came closer I picked up her marque—my eukori might be misfiring, but I could receive that okay.

Bian strode in, dressed in her combat silks and carrying a long bag.

“Good. You’re ready. We don’t have much time,” she said.

“There’s no one else here,” I said.

Diana said therapy sessions needed
xenagia
, the guide, and
stirythes
, the helpers.

“This is just you and me, Round-eye.” She unzipped her bag and pulled out kendo training gear. Practice armor, masks, and bokken—the two-handed wooden swords. The bokken were made from tightly bound rattan sticks. The kind that hurt like hell when they hit. And the armor was shit—no more than padded vests. The masks were different; instead of the usual mesh bowls, she had light wooden masks carved and painted to represent Japanese Shinto demons, one blood red and the other deathly white.

I groaned. I hated bokken. I knew the basics, but blade fighting was not my scene. Bian was faster and stronger than me, and her expertise with bladed weapons was downright scary. This was going to be painful.

And how the hell is this going to be therapy, anyway?

She tossed me my gear and warmed up with a blur of strikes and turns, her wooden sword weaving an impenetrable cage around her.

So, so painful.

“Ready?” she said when I had the padded vest on.

I slipped the white mask down over my face and grunted ungracefully as I tried to center my stance around the unfamiliar weight in my hands.

She glided in like an oiled cobra and our bokken kissed lightly in a flurry of blows.

“Stop
holding
the sword,” she said. “It’s part of you.”

Rap. Rap. Rap.

I kept her out, but I wasn’t fooled. She was still just warming up.

There was an angry glow in the eyes behind her red fanged mask.

What was it Dominé had said about masks? They allow our true selves to come out. Was this red demon some aspect of Bian I hadn’t seen before?

Rap. Rap. Thump.

She bounced her blade off mine and she used the position to whip it in and whack me across the ribs.

Yeah, it hurt like I remembered. I also remembered you were supposed to take the blows and use the fact that your opponent overextended to hit back.

My bokken swept down and I managed to catch her on the side of the thigh as she danced back.

“Better, Round-eye,” she growled, and leaped in for a complex overhand attack that had me stumbling backwards as I defended desperately.

Sweat started to sting my eyes again.

“You’re holding out on me,” she said.

“Huh?”

Rap. Rap. Rap.

“We’ve taken you apart and put you back together again.”

She lunged and I danced to one side, my blade sweeping down into the empty space where her arms had been.

Damn. Thought I had her.

“Cleared the damage that Petersen and his Obs team did to you. But there’s still something you’re holding back. There’s poison you won’t let go.”

Her blade flickered up at my face. I parried and moved in, trying to surprise her by using the handle of my bokken to hit her in the ribs.

“Sneaky!” She twisted out of the way and shoved me off. “I like it when you try and catch me out.”

Her bokken drooped temptingly as if her guard had fallen. I wasn’t fooled, but I was going to try anything to stop her questions.

I leaped and thrust, but she wasn’t there.

Her blade poked me in the ribs and I had to spin away.

She chased me with a complex flurry of blows, alternating high and low.

“Something missing,” she said, as calmly as if we were talking recipes.

Words and blades. As if she was backing me into a corner.

“Shut up,” I said and made a low sweep to catch her knees.

She jumped over my blade.

“Sometimes when you hold poison inside, it becomes part of you,” she said. Her wooden blade whipped past my face as I stumbled out of the way. “No one likes to lose something that’s a part of themselves.”

I doubled my attack to shut her up. It didn’t work.

“With some people, it’s grief,” she said.

Rap. Rap. She slipped past my bokken. Hers dipped, lifted and stabbed. The point thumped me in the gut, making me grunt.

“With some, it’s hate.”

My attack was dissolving in the face of hers. She’d become a blur of movement. My parries came later and later. I stopped her blade closer and closer to my aching flesh.

“Or shame. Or fear,” she said. “And with some, it’s a mixture, all bottled up, just waiting to explode.”

She split her attack, brushed my bokken aside and kicked me in the stomach.

I used it to roll clear, put some distance between us.

“There’s nothing left,” I managed to gasp, retreating in a circle as she stalked me.

“No?” She casually threaded my defense and hit me across the mask. “Tell me about how you escaped from Forsythe’s house.”

“I’ve told you.” I swung tiredly. I was amazed that I grazed her chest. “You’ve seen it in my head. Dozens of times.”

She rapped my ribs again while I was out of position, and stepped backwards.

“Take me through it again,” she said, barely breathing heavily despite the onslaught she’d unleashed on me. “You’ve gotten dressed. You’re leaving the basement. How many steps up to the hallway?”

“Fifteen,” I said without thinking. I hadn’t realized I knew that. Maybe I counted them at the time.

“So now you’re in the hall,” she prompted.

“Yes.” It slipped out. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to go back there. I couldn’t.

“No one’s there. Where are they?”

When I hesitated, her bokken swept across my ribs, a stinging blow.

“Upstairs!” I yelled. “I told you. You
saw
it.”

“Why? Why are they upstairs?”

“I don’t know!”

“Lie.” Her bokken shot through my defenses and glanced off my mask, leaving my head ringing.

“Shit. Damn you.” I swung wildly at her, trying to get her to back away. She deflected every blow and came on. “Damn you. Leave me alone.”

“Why are they upstairs?”

“I don’t know!” Tears and sweat. My eyes were stinging. I could barely see her as she slipped around my ineffectual guard. Suddenly she was right in my face. She broke my grip on the blade. Her arm trapped mine and she hurled me over her hip in a judo move.

She landed with a knee in my belly. The breath exploded out of me, and her bokken came down across my throat.

“How do you know they’re upstairs?” she shouted.

I can’t tell her. I can’t. I can’t. The same way I couldn’t tell Top and never did.

“How?”

She was relentless. Her bokken pressed harder on my throat.

“I can hear them,” I gasped before she crushed my larynx.

The pressure on my throat eased. She tore both our masks off and loomed over me, face inches from mine, eyes hard as knives.

She let me go and I covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t meet those eyes.

This is my shame. She’s right. This is the poison in my heart.

“You can hear them,” she whispered.

“Yes,” I shouted. I wanted this to be over, but I couldn’t go on. I would lose everything. I’d be too ashamed to look anyone in the face ever again.

She wouldn’t stop. “What can you hear, Amber? You have to tell me.”

Something broke inside me. Something ugly, something vile and corrosive that I’d locked away. The last of the last in my strongbox. The thing I could never let go.

“They’re raping Fay,” I screamed at Bian. I was blinded with tears. “They’re all up there. Every sick bastard in the whole house and they’re taking turns with her. I can hear them. I can hear them laughing and joking like it’s funny. I can’t do anything.” The pressure came off me and I lashed out blindly, but Bian wasn’t there. “I can’t do anything. I can’t feel anything. If I feel anything I’ll have to try to stop them and they’ll rape me again. Or kill me. Or kill both of us. So I can’t feel anything. If I can’t feel anything, I can run away and save myself.”

The anger went out of me and I collapsed back, sobbing.

“So I run. I stop feeling anything so I can leave her there and I run. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I left her there.”

Bian slipped in behind me. She made a pillow of her lap and lifted my head into it.

“Shhh.” Her fingers stroked my hair. “Because of your shame at running away, you couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t even bear to see them afterwards. Because they’d know. They’d know you abandoned her. Even if she was a bitch you owed nothing to.”

She slipped an arm beneath me, cradled me and began rocking gently.

“And from this comes what you are today. Oh, my sister,” she whispered. “My wonderful, crazy sister.”