Chapter 26
Alexander
I woke. Every time, it was that simple. However, instead of my last memory being the cold gray stone under my coliseum, it was her. Dull green eyes flecked with gold. A face crusted in dirt. And a dying body so thin I couldn’t believe she still walked.
My eyes were closed, and I was in no rush to open them. Rain pattered against my window while a few brave birds chirped in the steady drizzle.
A second heartbeat in my chest, connecting me to someone I didn’t know, the woman with whom I’d twinned my future, my very being. I could feel her laughing in my castle. She was happy and excited, everything I wanted her to be.
It would be simple to sink into her mind and read her thoughts to know exactly what she was thinking. If I didn’t like what I saw, I could fill her with my hopes and wishes. She could rise from her bed and walk to mine without me lifting a finger.
It would be so easy.
But I didn’t want that.
I loved people. I loved what made them unique, and using my mental powers on them took that away.
Mentalists survived by establishing firm boundaries and adhering to them; my family survived because I limited my powers to fit the mold expected of me by the other families running Edinburgh.
The mere concept of mind control destroyed trust. Actually, digging into a person's thoughts revealed half-formed ideas and emotional wishes, which often never materialized into reality.
We’re all allowed our secrets, even from ourselves.
I would have to, no, I wanted to, discover who she was the old-fashioned way: talking.
I released my focus on her, and my thoughts immediately exploded with activity as if my subconscious had spent my time sleeping, waiting for this exact moment.
Lists of tasks drew themselves up. My to-do list expanded again, reminding me of endless tiny details for my Yearly Mixer, Until the final piece fit into place, expanding my territory.
I took a deep breath and then another, refusing to be overwhelmed by something I had created for myself. I had help, I had time, and I was doing the right thing.
My mind spun, and I forced my eyes open. Squares of gold and black cloth hung from my ceiling. I focused on them to keep myself in the present. Three new patterns caught my attention. Ezra must have put them up for me, knowing I’d need the distraction at this exact moment. My heart swelled.
The door to my room opened with a thud and slammed shut. Ezra didn’t attempt to muffle his sprint. He hit the bed, hardly slowing. Despite my dense musculature, he lifted me into his arms and pressed our lips together.
My unnaturally minty breath mixed with his coffee.
It took me a moment to remember how to kiss back and use my hands to feel my lover’s hard muscles. The planes of his chest, his neck, and his chiseled face were so familiar they were a part of me. He put me down and pressed our foreheads together.
“Xan, I hate this so much,” Ezra said. He kissed me again, his lips smooth against what I would guess was well over a week of growth on my chin.
I ran my hands down his hips. Only to have them jar against his sword belt. I kissed him harder, badly wishing we lived in a world where steel wasn’t necessary. “I missed you, too.”
I locked our lips this time. His tongue slipped into my mouth, and I curled mine with it.
It wasn’t the lust of our youth, but the passion of time rolling through me, warming my skin, and hardening my dick.
Ezra kissed down my flesh and licked my stomach, only to pull back and blow cold air on the wet spot.
I shivered. Each sensation helped my body wake, destroying the last of the medic’s spells to return control of the container that housed my soul.
My lover had no mercy in him. He hadn’t when I first met him, and he didn’t now.
In one swift pull, he jerked the covers off my mostly naked body and freed my cock.
He sucked my hard, solid length down his throat, surrounding me with heat and pressure.
I arched up, his tongue sliding up and down the backside while his cheeks sucked everything else.
I lost myself in lust. I didn’t know how he breathed; I couldn’t.
Air moved in and out in shallow pants and guttural grunts.
I tried to move my hips, but he held me down.
My climax rose in a tidal wave and crashed before I could warn him, blurring my vision.
The sounds of the world became a dull ring.
Every muscle I had seized before releasing.
As I came, I pumped into his mouth a few more times, searching, wanting, but knowing it was over too soon.
“Ez.” I tried to pull away, but his fingers bit into my hips, keeping me still as he drank me down, sucking until I trembled from overstimulation.
“Ez,” I said again. This time, I pulled on his topknot, forcing him to crawl up my body.
He cradled his head on my chest, listening to my heart beating.
“I hate this,” he said again, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.
“I know,” I acknowledged. “But no one else can do what I can. And I heal, I recover. This is the only way.”
Ezra’s sizable hard-on stabbed into my hip. I reached down to return the favor, but he batted my hand away, awkwardly rolling, still covered in weapons, so he straddled my hips. His straining erection stabbed just above my own spent one.
“Not yet.” He grunted. “Not until you’re recovered and you can properly apologize.”
A shiver of pleasure ran up my body. The waiting, living on the edge of need, control. It wasn’t the results that made my lover happy, but the work that went into it.
He kissed me once more before sitting up, his usual expressionless mask back in place. “Her name is Quinn.”
He held out his hand, and I let him help me out of bed. The loose pants someone had put me in fell to the floor from Ezra’s interference, and I wobbled like a baby bird. Probably because of my time asleep, but the knee-melting orgasm didn’t help, though that had cleared my mind.
“And her family?” I asked.
Ezra helped me to the washroom. I wasn’t desperate for a shower; the magic keeping my body healthy while I slept also kept me clean. However, it wasn’t the same.
“She claims her family name is Question,” Ezra reported. “But we don’t have any record of that name in our book.”
I twisted the old round knob I’d restored from before the tremors and heated the pipe, making my shower warm enough to soothe but cold enough to keep my mind sharp.
“Did you ask her?” I stepped under the water.
Ezra crossed his arms and leaned on the door, watching my every move.
He didn’t have to say a word for me to know he hadn’t.
The clench of his jaw, his deceptively casual posture, ready to use the wall as a spring if anything came at him, told me one thing.
While I’d been unconscious, events hadn’t unfolded as he wanted.
I lathered myself up with the bar of soap. “Ez, you might as well get it off your chest now.”
Ezra cocked his head to the side while I rinsed.
“I wanted to hate her.” Ezra uncrossed his arms, resting a palm on his sword hilt. “So, I left everything up to Morgen. She and Hope decided it was best if she pretended to be a man. We set ‘him’ up in Grady Hall. It was the only place left with a room.”
I slowed in my scrubbing, processing, trying to place Ezra’s unease. “Did someone hurt her?”
“No,” Ezra said quickly, too quickly. “She made friends.”
As I scrubbed, brushed my teeth, and shaved, the final steps to feeling like myself again, I listened.
Each word from my lover's mouth became harder to hear than the last. She stayed with the family most opposed to my views. Her best friend, or maybe more, was the son of a cult leader whose goals here I didn’t understand.
“Rowan is still in your five?” I confirmed.
Ezra grunted. “He claims his tether formed against his will.”
I took a deep breath. I was also drawn to her, but my tether hadn’t come alive; I had created it and sunk it into her. It's too late to change it now.
“Does she know? Is she drawn to him?” I asked.
“No.” Ezra finally uncrossed his arms, handing me a towel. “Quinn is…” He trailed off, and my jaw dropped. My lover was never at a loss for words. He might use them sparingly most of the time. But once he opened his mouth, a complete thought always came out.
He looked at me and, for the first time in our lives, uncertainty showed behind his glowing purple gems. My world tilted. He said he wanted to hate her, but didn’t say how he actually felt. She’s clearly impressed him, but you could be impressed by a person without actually liking them.
I opened my mouth and closed it.
I brought a third person into our lives and bound her to me. A complete stranger. I’d valued her life over my own. Over Ezra. Over everything we’d built. I’d been so impulsive and thoughtless. Guilt burned a hole in my stomach, and acid ate at the base of my esophagus.
I forced myself to smile. “I guess I’ll have to go meet Quinn to fill in your sentence.”
My lover nodded sharply. “I’ll set it up.”
Ezra stepped back so I could dress. If my uniforms were good enough for my trainees, they were good enough for me. I slid a gold chain with my family crest, a sleeping cat, around my neck and finished the look with a matching pair of small gold hoops in my left ear.
“You won’t set it up.” I picked up my TB, which buzzed with a constant stream of notifications, as everything I missed came to me at once.
I didn’t look at any of them as I clipped my device to my hip.
“I’ll find her. If, for some reason, we are unable to bump into each other, we can set up something more formal.
But I’d like to meet her as an equal, as a friend. ”
I let my gaze rest on my partner, the love of my life, my foundation since I was sixteen, waiting for him to suggest the three of us train together.
Silence stretched between us.
What had I done?