Atonement Sky, page 34
part #9 of Psy-Changeling Trinity Series
“Oh.” They began to descend the path lined with scrubby grass on either side where it wasn’t bordered by large pieces of broken stone. “So, you’ve been with other women? No, forget I asked that. We’re both grown people and it’s none of my business.”
“Five women,” he said. “Per non-Psy media, sexual contact was meant to be incredibly pleasurable and I wanted to feel pleasure. I chose an accredited professional for the first time, with the view that one of us should know what we were doing. The other four, I walked into a bar and found a woman who wanted to participate in sex.”
Dahlia snorted. “Not that you’re bragging,” she said, but he could hear a smile in her voice.
“I’m not. It’s just what happened.” He thought back. “The women all had a pleasing appearance per the norms of society, and seemed enthusiastic, but I felt…mechanical. There was release but no pleasure. I could find release myself should I have the need. I decided five was enough for the experiment.”
Dahlia laughed. “Ah, oh to be me, lucky number six.”
“You pleasure me simply by existing.” Turning his face, he nuzzled her neck just because she was there and didn’t seem to mind his touch. “I was drunk on you the first time we met. The sex…it was beyond pleasure.”
“Skin privileges,” she corrected huskily. “Not sex. Intimate skin privileges.”
“Yes, touching you was the greatest privilege of my life.”
Dahlia’s breath caught. “You’re one hell of a charmer, I’ll give you that.”
Bram had never been called charming in his life, but he’d take it from her. As he’d take this strange walk in the night, the stars a carpet out in front of them that vanished beneath the edge of the Canyon the lower they got.
He heard the sound of the jet-chopper before he saw it as a shadow against the night, its lights the only thing that delineated it against the black. The pilot brought it to a perfect landing down on a flat section Bram could just see. Someone got out, reached inside…emerged with another person in their arms.
Eleri.
His brain finally processed what Dahlia had said about the entrance to the cave system. “Dahlia, you promised me the desert.”
She looked up, her eyes shining with what he could almost think were tears. “I’ll take you. I had a clanmate park a vehicle next to where that chopper just landed. But please let us try this first. One last tinfoil hat?”
Bram realized then and there that he’d do anything for her. “If I get to spend my last minutes with you, then it’s a fair bargain.”
Rising on tiptoe, she pulled down his head and kissed him until he couldn’t breathe. “Oh and, big guy—there are going to be bats. They’re friendly.”
Bram had never known how to laugh, but that moment, he felt his lips curve, the laugh form in his chest. And as the stars spun overhead, the Milky Way vivid against the desert sky, he laughed with the most beautiful woman in all the universe.
Chapter 45
The quiet places in the world are the rarest gems, to be treasured and well guarded. I have been most fortunate to have stumbled upon not one but two such gems in my lifetime—but alas, their direction I will not share here, for to do so would be to extinguish the quiet.
—Fragment from Memoirs of a Life by Arici Carvalli (1894) (out of print and unavailable online)
Eleri’s breathing was getting shallower with each step Adam took, the blood bond feeling as if it was cutting in and out. He fought the urge to run. He was sure-footed, but a single stumble and he could send Eleri plummeting to the earth, wounding her already fragile body.
Instead, he tucked her even closer to his chest and walked with intent.
He saw Dahlia long before he reached her and saw, too, how Bram was leaning his body against hers. The man’s eyes were bloodshot as fine blood vessels broke under the pressure on his brain. “Follow me,” he said, and ducked into the entrance.
Then he let his instincts lead him, and though he could’ve outpaced Bram, he didn’t. The other man had fought his need to die in peace to help Eleri, and Eleri wouldn’t forgive Adam if he left her brother behind. But his jawbones were grinding together from the strain of it as they walked through passageway after passageway.
Bram’s breathing was becoming labored, Dahlia’s murmurs of encouragement holding an edge of panic. “Adam, how much longer?”
“Less than five minutes.”
They somehow managed to get down the final slope, with Adam having to place Eleri down at the other end, then come back up to help Dahlia navigate it with Bram. Picking Eleri up again the instant they were in the wider passageway, he rapidly counted off fifty steps…. and there it was, the breathtaking cave with a bioluminescent glow he’d named Mirage.
Walking inside with Eleri, he ignored the sound of the underground river, ignored the stirring of the bats who were annoyed by the intrusion, and watched Bram’s face with agonizing focus as the other man walked in.
The J-Psy was murmuring to Dahlia as they came in and didn’t stop, his expression unchanging as he walked further inside.
Adam’s stomach dropped.
Just as Bram’s head jerked up and he said, “Fuck, it’s so quiet here.”
• • •
Eleri woke to the awareness that she was in Adam’s arms. There was no question about it. She knew these arms, knew the body that cradled hers against it…and knew the triangle of stone she could see with its moss that glowed a luminous unearthly green.
Stirring, she spread her hand over the beat of Adam’s heart. “Adam.” It came out husky, almost a non-sound, but he heard.
He crushed her close, buried his face in her hair, and cried. Silent sobs that shook his big frame and made her desperate to hold him. But she could barely move in his embrace, so she just kept murmuring his name, telling him she was all right, and stroking his chest where she could reach.
It hurt her to feel him cry.
No more numbness. No more walls. Every emotion as searing as lightning.
“Please, Adam.” She managed to turn her head enough to brush her lips against his jaw.
And tasted salt.
“I thought I lost you.” He pressed a kiss to her lips, his fingers gripping her jaw in that way he had that made her feel so anchored, so wanted. “You were almost gone.”
This time when he buried his face in her hair, she was able to twist around and wrap her arms around him, and the two of them stayed that way for a long time before she became aware of deep breathing elsewhere in the cave. “Who’s here with us?”
“Bram and Dahlia. He crashed soon after he got in here.” Stroking her hair, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “Dahlia’s tucked against him. He asked her not to go, and she just lay down on the mattress I had the clan bring down here. Never thought I’d see our Dahlia do anything for a lover again.”
That was when Eleri became aware that they weren’t on the ground, either. And she couldn’t see much of the cave, just that small triangle…that was the opening of a tent, she realized.
They were inside it.
Adam was seated against a couple of large pillows braced against the canvas back wall of the tent—which seemed to have stone beyond it, their bodies on a thick mattress complete with a sheet. A plush blanket lay over her as another did no doubt over Bram and Dahlia.
Bram and Dahlia?
“When did that happen?” she whispered. “How did that happen?”
“She blames us,” Adam said, a smile in his voice for the first time. “Says it’s our fault she ended up meeting the big Psy lunk and now she has to act as his teddy bear so he can sleep.”
Eleri couldn’t imagine Bram needing anyone, but fascinated as she was at this most unexpected turn in her friend’s life, she was more interested in why they were in a cave…that was home to bats.
Her brain came back online in full glory. “Are we in a tent in the cave with the bats?”
“Yep. I know how much you love bats.”
“Adam, why—” Her eyes widened, her breath rushing out of her. “It’s quiet here.” So, so quiet. Not a single mind pressing down against her own. She couldn’t even feel Adam’s or Dahlia’s psychic presence, as if the quietness had given her back her ability to ignore the shielded minds of changelings.
Adam shuddered as he exhaled. “I almost forgot what you said that day. I was almost too late.”
Eleri shook her head even as she luxuriated in the quiet, in the absolute absence of mental pressure. “I didn’t even really process it that day, not with how the bats chased us out right as I felt it—and I was focused on how I just wanted to be with you again.”
She took a deep breath…and wrinkled her nose. “I’m glad neither of us has an intense sense of smell.”
A chuckle. “Poor Dahlia does. Yet she’s tucked up with Bram.”
“And he’s sleeping? Without medical assistance?”
“Far as I know. Out like a light—Naia confirmed he’s asleep, not unconscious.”
Heart beginning to kick as she realized what this could mean, she said, “Why is it quiet?”
“I don’t know, but Saoirse and her crew, along with Naia, are running every test under the sun there is to run.” Lifting his hand, he brushed his knuckles over her cheek.
Sensation rolled through her in an intoxicating wave.
She wanted to close her eyes, sink into the feeling, but the way Adam was looking at her, she knew he needed her to be present. “You’ve bought us endless time.” While she didn’t want to live like a mole, she could manage it for a period if it was the only option. “With me and Bram as test subjects, your sister has a real chance to figure out an answer.”
Furrows between his eyebrows. “She’s feeling out of her depth.” Then, as she listened, he told her about a scientist named Ashaya Aleine and her failed quest to build an artificial shield for humans. “Humans and Psy aren’t the same in psychic terms, but I figure the energy is the same—Psy emit it, humans are vulnerable to it.”
No one had ever talked to Eleri of psychic energy in such terms, but she saw his logic. “Any shield technology should be cross-compatible.”
“That’s what I think,” Adam said. “While Naia was checking you were okay physically, I stepped out to get a signal, made some calls. Friend of mine in SnowDancer says Kaleb Krychek’s also sponsored a group of scientists to find a solution to the problem of human shields.”
“Krychek?” Of all the people in the world who she might think of as choosing to do good for the sake of it, the former Councilor and current member of the Ruling Coalition wasn’t one. Though…“He’s stopped breach after breach in the PsyNet, literally kept it from collapsing. He doesn’t have to do that, is powerful enough to protect his own section and leave the rest to rot.”
“Judd—my SnowDancer contact—calls Krychek a friend, and Judd’s got a moral compass I trust. And wasn’t it Krychek who dismantled Silence?”
“Not on his own, but yes,” Eleri acknowledged.
Adam ran his hand down her arm, over the top of the blanket, and the weight and warmth of it made her entire body glow. “I’m sure the Human Alliance is probably working on a shield project of their own.”
Safe and content, her mind more at peace than it had been in years, Eleri struggled to follow the thread of the conversation instead of just cuddling up to Adam and sinking into him. “Are you considering whether to invite others in to help Saoirse?”
“Saoirse thinks we need a Psy medical specialist, but the general consensus seems to be that it’s better if the various parties work alone, to stop them all ending up at the same dead end. But we have a unique starting point now, one to which no one else has access.”
Eleri put her hand on his raised knee, frowned. “How about parallel tracks? Bring in an M you trust, give them access, then they work on a possible solution while Saoirse continues on her own path?”
“It has to be Ashaya. We have an alliance with DarkRiver, a friendship beyond that. She won’t breathe a word of this discovery to anyone else.” He squeezed her close. “I’ll step out to make the call soon. I just need to hold you awhile longer.”
Eleri snuggled in. “Adam, I can feel everything.” Just like at the hospital, but without the anguish of a crushing mental pressure that made contact a grasping, rushed thing.
She pressed a kiss to his throat, shivered.
His nostrils flared, his pupils huge against his irises when their gazes met. “First,” he said, “we need to get some energy into you.”
Able to sense her own weakness, Eleri drank the concentrated nutrient drink he handed her, then washed it down with a few gulps of water. “No.” She waved off the other items he was picking out from the cooler to one side of the tent. “I’m really full.”
He put the food back without argument. “Naia told me to allow you to control your food intake, that it’ll take you a while to get back to normal.”
Eleri didn’t want to tell him this was her normal, but she couldn’t lie to him anymore, not even by omission. So she admitted how food had stopped holding any significance for her long ago, that she’d eaten only to function.
Adam pressed a kiss to her palm. “That just means I get to play bear with you and bring you treat after treat to see what you like best. Or I could drop them into your hands from the sky—that’s more the falcon way.”
That single kiss made her shiver.
Tugging her closer, then manhandling her—with her enthusiastic consent—until she sat on his thighs, her legs on either side of his body while he held her hips, he leaned in to press a kiss directly over the pulse in her neck.
Eleri sucked in a sharp breath, her thighs clenching around him.
“Shh.” A nuzzle of her neck. “Dahlia and Bram are sleeping.”
Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, Eleri whispered, “Can I touch you first? I don’t know if I can manage silence if you touch me.” The sensations were amplified a hundred times beyond anything she’d felt even when he’d been inside her, and her inner muscles spasmed with needy greed when she dared imagine what it might be like now.
Adam’s lips curved, a laziness to it that was somehow sexual in a way she didn’t understand. “I can’t wait to make you scream.” A rough whisper.
Lifting her hand to his chest, he placed it against a button in silent permission.
“I saw a woman screaming in orgasm in a memory once,” she told him as she slipped the small disk out of its hole to reveal the barest sliver of skin. “It wasn’t a bad read, that one. One of my starter reads—a case of a regular threesome where one of the two males got jealous and punched the other one in the testicles right after he brought the woman partner to orgasm.”
Adam winced. “I didn’t think Justice did reads for penny-ante stuff.”
“It’s just luck if your case hits when an apprentice-level J is doing reads as part of their studies.” She hadn’t known it then, but those had been the best days of her life when it came to her work as a J. “Because the supposed assault took place during sex, the read included the section with the orgasm.”
Still young at the time, with her emotions locked down well enough to pass for Silent, she’d just filed it away. “After the numbness, I found myself wondering how she could feel such pleasure as to scream.”
She ran her finger down the strip of skin she’d bared on Adam’s chest. The contact made her stomach tumble, her thighs clench again. Pushing the sides of his shirt apart as her pulse speeded up, she said, “I don’t wonder anymore.”
Adam groaned and leaned up to speak against her ear. “How wet are you?”
Breath short and jagged, she squeezed inner muscles that quivered with need. “Drenched.”
His hands clenched on her lower curves, his mouth at her throat again.
Barely holding back the whimpers that escaped her, she pushed him back. But he paused before his back met the canvas against the wall. “I want inside you.” A raw statement. “It’s fucking primitive, this need I have to claim you, mark you, but I don’t care.”
Eleri’s mind hazed. “Adam, I won’t be able to be quiet,” she said, moving her body on his thighs because she couldn’t stop herself.
“Scream into my mouth,” he said, before tilting her gently onto her back on the mattress.
Coming over her in a prowl that made her feel deliciously overwhelmed, his hair falling around his face and those wild falcon eyes glinting at her, he said, “Can I put my cock inside you, Eleri?”
Eleri’s entire body clenched. She hadn’t known that words could pump pleasure through her. Reaching down between them, she began to push down the elasticized pants she was wearing.
She pushed her underwear down with the pants.
“I can’t go further,” she whispered when she reached the limit of how far her arms would reach.
That feral smile. “Let me help you.” He moved with lazy grace to tug her pants and underwear off and put them to one side, then pushed her thighs apart and just looked at her.
She was already on the verge when he said, “My mouth is watering.”
Whimpering, she shoved a fist into her mouth to stifle the sound as her body arched up. She shook her head violently at him when he glanced at her. If he did what he was craving, she’d scream down this entire cave. She was barely able to bear the level of sensation now, from the soft rasp of the cotton of her sweatshirt against her nipples to the heat of his body lapping against her.
“I’ll save that treat for later,” Adam said, and began to undo his jeans.
Eleri couldn’t look, stared up at the canvas. But she heard it when he put his jeans aside. Glancing at him, she said, “Not the shirt,” when he would’ve shrugged that off, too. “I can’t handle that much contact all at once.”
She wasn’t even sure she was going to survive the intimacy of his body sheathed in hers. She’d felt it when she was numb. How much more would she feel now?
A whimper threatened to escape.
“We’ll work up to it,” Adam said with a slow smile as he came over her again and leaned down to brush his lips across hers. It was the merest hint of a kiss, yet it made her breasts ache and liquid pool in her core as need clawed at her.
