He could, it seemed. The teasing involved hands, mouths, sweetly torturous control that made me bite my lips and beg him for release. When he finally gave in, when he was inside me, instinct and a desperate need took hold of me, and no matter how he tried to slow it down, I wasn’t in the mood for leisurely lovemaking. Not this time. There was too much darkness to dispel, too much desperation, too little time left. He surrendered to me as much as I did to him, both of us lost in the fury and fire and urgency of it, and when he came he shuddered deep, holding me upright and close, and seeing the ecstasy take him triggered something wild in me as well, something that burst up from our joined bodies and spun us both crazily out of control, up into the highest reaches I’d ever climbed on the aetheric, and then drifted us down again like falling leaves to settle once again in our human, mortal, beautiful forms.
Luis collapsed against me, only just managing to hold his weight off at the last minute by resting it on his elbows. We were both covered in sweat, tasting it on each other’s lips, and the glow between us lingered. Neither of us wanted to move, and it wasn’t until the door rattled that he finally stopped kissing me in drowsy, gentle presses of lips, and sighed. The frustrated groan that followed came from the very depths of him, and I felt it resonating in my own body.
“Welcome back,” he said, and laughed a little despairingly. “Now it’s time to go. God, Cass. If I’d lost you…”
I touched my lips to his in wordless reassurance. “You didn’t,” I said. “And you won’t.”
There was another impatient rattle at the door, and then a knock—tentative at first, then growing louder.
“We should probably—”
“Yes,” I agreed, and kissed him again. “We should.” Neither of us was in a hurry to answer the summons—and then, unexpectedly, the lock snapped back.
“Crap,” Luis said.
There was an Earth Warden on the other side of that door; Luis’s forethought in adding the bracing chair had paid off, because that stopped them from barging in—for a moment.
“Hand me my gown,” I said.
He kissed me again, fast, and slid off to grab my gown, drape it over me, and then step into his underwear and jeans in a fast, expert motion. He was just zipping up when the chair clattered away from its locking position at the door, and it banged open.
Luis didn’t pause. He picked up the sheet from the floor and put it back over me, winked, and turned to face the person standing in the doorway.
It was Isabel. Next to her, Esmeralda’s human torso swayed on top of her snaky, muscular body. She crossed her arms over the tight, pink shirt she wore (embellished with the glittering words BITCH QUEEN) and looked down at Isabel, who had frozen, looking taken aback.
“See?” Esmeralda said. “Told you there was nothing wrong. They were just totally doing it.”
Luis got his shirt from where it dangled at the end of the bed and pulled it over his head. “Girls,” he said in a bland voice. “What’s the emergency?”“Um…” Isabel’s cheeks were beet red, and she couldn’t seem to look directly at either of us. “Nothing. It can wait. I just—I just wanted to see how she was doing. When the door was locked, I thought—”
“I told you,” Esmeralda said in a bored voice, and checked the finish on her fingernails. “Doing it.”
“Shut up!” Isabel whispered fiercely. “God!”
“Thank you for coming to see me,” I said, and was very careful about where and how the sheet draped over me. “I’m sorry the timing was… awkward. I’m much better.”
Esmeralda coughed and muttered something under her breath; that earned a solid backhanded smack from Iz, whose blush worsened, if that was possible. “Uh—okay then, I—” Esmeralda was grinning at her now. “I just—shut up!—I’ll come back later.” She turned and left, head high, struggling to hold to her damaged dignity, and Esmeralda broke into outright guffaws of laughter.
“Oh my God, did you see her face? The two of you are so busted,” she said. “Get a room. Somewhere else.”
“Es,” Luis said. “Beat it. I mean it. And lay off the kid. She’s six-going-on-fifteen.”
Esmeralda stuck her tongue out at him—and showed fangs at the same time—but she slithered off down the hallway, petulantly knocking over a cart along the way. Luis shook his head.
“I think we just scarred that kid for life,” he said. “She’ll never look at us the same again.”
“She knew we were lovers.”
“There’s a big difference between knowing and walking in on it,” he said.
“So you regret it?”
He turned toward me, and his slow, intimate smile warmed me from within. “Not for a damn second,” he said. “I wish we had a thousand hours just like it.”
But we didn’t, and hearing it aloud brought it home to both of us. The smiles and warmth faded. Luis cleared his throat, took a step toward the door, and said, “I’m going to go find out where he’s sending us. You okay on your own to get cleaned up?”
“Yes,” I said. As he shut the door, I threw back the sheet and gown and got out of bed. With the recession of all the complicated hormonal cocktails that had given me such a burst of… enthusiasm, I was left feeling weak, shaky, and even more bruised, though still oddly elated. The elation faded as I stood in the shower and scrubbed myself with the crisp-scented soap, and I was left feeling thoughtful instead. Lewis Orwell had seemed almost… resigned, I thought. Resigned to defeat, and willing to compromise at every step to postpone that defeat by another hour, another day. Rejecting Pearl was the right thing to do, but it meant hastening an inevitable death struggle.
And he, as all humans before him, would bargain to remain in play for as long as possible, in search of a miracle.
Pearl counted on that. Feasted on it.
But why hadn’t she killed me? What could she want more than that? I will make you a weapon, she’d said. Always, she’d wanted me to join her—not as an equal, as a tool to be used.
I looked down at myself and saw the fading spots of countless injuries she’d inflicted on me with the cool, emotionless precision of a machine.
Ashan had been right all along. One day soon, it would come down to the two of us, facing each other over the heads of innocents… and I would have to make a choice that I, like Lewis Orwell, had been delaying in the face of the inevitable.
I finished in the bathroom, limped to the closet, and found fresh clothing—all new, still with the tags hanging on them. Either the Wardens had made arrangements, or Luis had gone shopping; either thought made me smile, because they had—whether through luck or skill—chosen soft, pastel colors, the kind that I most preferred. The pale pink leather jacket was buttery to the touch, as were the pants. Dressed, I felt much less fragile and helpless, though I was well aware how long it would take to recover fully.
Luis arrived a few moments later, as I was zipping up the calf-high boots. “Damn,” he said, cocking his head. “You look scarily sexy. Look, are you sure you shouldn’t be—”
“I was healthy enough to go to bed with you,” I pointed out. “I should be well enough to get out of bed; it surely follows.” He started to say something, then thought better of it and just shook his head. “Did you find where we are to meet Warden Baldwin?”
“That’s a little problem. She’s moving fast, and it’s tough to guess where, and why; communication’s been spotty at best. It looks as if she’s heading toward our home base—into the Southwest. If we start in that direction, we’ll be able to course-correct when she does.”
“She must have fared well enough if she’s still alive,” I said. Luis shrugged.
“Well, she’s got her powers back after whatever happened to them out at sea, but she lost one of the Wardens who was with her. Kevin, the kid. He’s dead, killed by Djinn. All she’s got now is one friend traveling with her, not even one with any powers, so she’s totally on her own.”