Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (18 page)

I felt the hurt in his light. So much so it closed my throat.

I forced myself to take in his words, too. Not only the ones about me being an insensitive ass. The ones about why he’d been avoiding me.

Maybe he was right. We’d both practically been in a fugue state before the Dubai thing, even after we found out Terian had been screwing with our light. Knowing the cause of the problem hadn’t done jack shit in terms of helping us control the symptoms.

We wouldn’t be any different now.

In fact, he was right…we’d probably be worse.

Revik knew it. Why was I pretending I didn’t?

He struggled briefly, as if trying to stop himself, but his voice only grew harsher.

“How can you be so fucking cavalier about this?” he said. “It’s our daughter’s
life,
Alyson…not just yours. I know you don’t give a
shit
about your own life, but did you forget about Lily? Do you really want to get off that bad that you’d risk Lily?”

At the last thing he said, something in my light stuttered.

It stuttered…then it closed.

Like, really closed.

Maybe for the first time since all of this crap started after Dubai. All the fights over this shit. All of the endless discussions. For the first time, all of my sympathy and good intentions dropped from my light.

Like a fucking stone.

I knew he was upset. I knew he was jealous about Chan. I knew he was hurting, a lot more than he’d been letting me see or feel. I knew this was one of those things he’d feel bad about saying later. I didn’t care. Right then, I really didn’t care.

I had to be the one to walk away.

I had to get away from him. Now.

I made it most of the way to the door when suddenly he was between it and me.

“Alyson…stop…”

I started to push past him, but he caught hold of my arms.

“Allie…gods. Stop. Stop…please…”

He shocked me then, yanking me towards him. His arms were around me before I’d even looked up. He crushed me to his chest before I could take a breath.

“Allie,” he murmured. “Allie…I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it.”

He held me tighter. He held me until I bit my lip, fighting to remain silent, to at least try and control my light. Mostly I just wanted to cry against his chest, tell him everything I’d been thinking and trying to do that day, tell him I was done with playacting these damned roles, no matter what the reason. It took me another few seconds to pull all of that back, and then mostly because I couldn’t help but feel him again, with his body and light so close.

His light coiled around and through mine, almost like he couldn’t help himself.

I felt pain on him, enough to take my breath, but more than that, I felt grief, a kind of crushing, dense grief I didn’t know what to do with.

It made it almost impossible to hold on to my anger, especially when I felt the love woven into that grief, and the fear that nearly choked that pain in my light.

I understood. I really did.

He was coping with it by staying away from me.

I was coping with it by obsessing on being with him while I still could.

All of the things we’d been talking about for the past few weeks washed over me, forcing me to remember even as my resentment of the whole mess worsened. Then my throat closed for real, bringing tears to my eyes so quickly I could barely keep from choking them out. I closed my eyes, maybe to block it out…or at least push it back, so it wouldn’t be in the forefront of my light. I couldn’t lose control of my light, either.

Even now, in the midst of everything else, I didn’t forget that.

I couldn’t lose control. Not even for this.

For a long moment, we only stood there.

Revik held me tighter the longer the silence stretched, but I could feel him struggling over what to say, too. I could feel him hating that he couldn’t trust his own light, that he couldn’t even talk to me about any of it without us risking we’d be overheard. I felt his fury about Chan, the fact that he could taste remnants of her light in mine.

I understood. I understood all of it…but I hated it.

I really fucking hated it.

When I spoke, my voice was gruff, almost too quiet for me to hear.

“What if I can’t?” I asked him. I cleared my throat, fighting the tightness there again. “What if I can’t do it?”

“You can,” he said, his voice equally quiet.

I shook my head, but I didn’t try to argue with him.

There was no point.

“It’s not about the sex,” I told him.

“I know,” he said, softer. “Allie…I know it’s not.” His voice hardened. “Even when I want to kick you out of our room for kissing other seers.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice close to a whisper. “I’m so sorry, Revik. I had my reasons for going there to talk to her. I wish I could just tell you––”

“You can’t.”

I nodded, feeling the warning in his light sharpen.

He sent more warmth into me then and I closed my eyes. A few seconds later, I looked up at him, trying to think, to see past both of our shields, knowing even now that either Tarsi or Balidor might be monitoring Revik’s light.

“I want you to trust me,” I said. Biting my lip, I shook him a little, gripping his back. “Trust me, damn it. Please.
Please
trust me…”

He nodded. I saw tears in his eyes again, but he only nodded.

“Okay.”

“Do you mean it?”

He clicked at me softly. I saw emotions flicker behind his eyes, indecision, but that warmth coming from his chest strengthened.

“I do,” he said. He exhaled as he said it, almost in defeat. “I do mean it, Allie.”

Relief flooded out of my light, even as I gripped him tighter.

“I love you,” I said, my voice fierce. “I love you and Lily more than anything. No one will get in the way of that. Not for me. Not ever.”

I felt him relax still more.

That time, he met my gaze. “I know.”

I swallowed, closing my eyes as I pressed against him. Feeling him stiffen, starting to close his light again, I looked up.

“I’m sorry I’ve been pressuring you,” I said. I swallowed again, watching his eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been selfish. I mean it when I say it’s not about sex…not in that way. It’s just…we all have to leave here soon. All of us. We have to…”

I trailed, realizing I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say without saying too much.

I shook my head, fighting tears again. Looking down, I pressed my face against his chest, closing my eyes.

“Are you really not going to be with me at all?” I asked him, softer still.

I didn’t say the rest of it. I didn’t add that we both knew we might not have the chance for much longer.

I didn’t have to add that part. He knew what I meant.

I felt it on his light as soon as I spoke the words…right before his body tensed. His fingers tensed, his hands. Even his legs tensed against mine, his shoulders, his chest. I felt that grief worsen briefly, but I could also feel the fear there, the holding back, all of the things he wasn’t saying, that he wouldn’t say to me right then.

Something in that must have gotten me to open more too, because suddenly his light was all around me, practically suffocating mine. I could feel the conflict on him, the decisions wavering in all different directions…that fear that wanted to choke my throat.

I felt the love there, too.

Love for me. Love for Lily. I felt the intensity behind that.

I also felt the determination. That will he’d already hardened towards protecting the two of us, no matter what that ended up meaning.

Something in that resolve, maybe just the sheer amount of him I could feel behind it, scared the shit out of me.

I hated this. I really did.

I felt another warning pulse off Revik’s light, even as he caressed my hair with his hand and fingers. He stopped long enough to grip me harder, holding my head against his chest. Again, I felt so much love off him I thought my heart would break.

“I hate this,” I mumbled into his shirt.

He held me tighter.

I felt another pulse of that warning, but softer that time. I felt misgiving too, and what might have been…I don’t know. Indecision? The longer I felt it, the more I realized that in addition to everything else, he wanted to talk to me about something. Maybe ask me something. Something that definitely made him nervous.

Even so, it was something smaller than what was bothering me.

When I felt another plume of nerves off his light, I looked up.

“What?” I said.

His light eyes studied mine. Glass-like. Or really, more like lightly-tinted crystal.

He’d told me once that some people found his eye color unnerving, even off-putting. Lovers of his had found them difficult to focus on. He’d been told they were cold, lifeless…dead-looking. Machine-like.

I thought they were absolutely beautiful. I always had.

He closed them after I thought it, longer than a blink. A plume of heat came off his light, along with more pain than he’d let me feel since he woke up from Dubai. It was enough to stop my breath, and maybe my heart, for a few beats at least.

“I want to have sex,” he said, gruff. “I want to so badly I know I should let you go right now…I should leave, Allie. Now…before you start trying to seduce me for real.”

He said the last thing almost like a joke. Trailing, he looked away from me again, staring at the far wall. Then he exhaled in a longer sigh.

I saw his jaw harden, right before he looked back at me.

Whatever the decision had been, he’d just made it.

I could feel it.

“I might have…a solution,” he said, his voice cautious.

His accent was stronger again. I felt my light open. As if he’d heard me, or felt the change in my light, he added,

“…You might not like it. My solution.”

Taking a breath, I nodded, letting him feel I’d suspected that.

He hesitated again. I could feel him toying with words…then wrestling with them in his head, trying to decide how to ask. I kept my thoughts in the background while he did it, although some part of me already suspected where this might be going.

In the end, he didn’t say anything at all.

He showed me pictures, instead.

Even those pictures came at me with caution. And jealousy. I felt his jealousy, and his anger at me for making this harder on him with the thing with Chandre.

Some of what I saw and felt were memories…not just his memories, but memories I shared with him. I saw the rebel fortress in China, what happened in the common room after that disastrous mission in São Paulo. I saw us in New York, a conversation we’d had in the Third Jewel after we got back from South America the second time.

After he finished sending me memories, he sent a stream of additional information, flooding my light with words, emotions and more pictures. His worries about my reaction to him asking, the fact that Balidor had suggested it, that Revik would talk to Jon for me but that he really wanted Wreg and Jon involved if we did it, along with Balidor and Yumi and most of the infiltration team.

Except Chandre. Her name had been excised from the fucking list.

Revik made that really damned clear, too.

He told me there was no way in hell he’d let Kat or Ullysa anywhere near it either, or anyone else I didn’t want involved…with the exception of Jon and maybe he’d even bend on that but he felt pretty strongly Jon and Wreg should be there. He definitely wanted Wreg there. He couldn’t expect Jon to be okay with Wreg being involved without him since they were married, and anyway, Revik wanted Jon there, too.

And so on. It went on for awhile.

And yeah, there was more, but those were the highlights.