Chapter 18 Zane #2
Yet, she doesn’t seem fazed. Her mask hides most of her face, but her stance is open, relaxed.
She notices me watching her, and she tips her head at me, those delicious lips curving into a slight smirk.
God, if she only knew what that does to me.
Then Fulton snags her attention again, Jaspar joining in to tease her.
“Come on.” Milo tugs at my arm. “We only have a few minutes and she’s in good hands.”
Her laughter rings out like a siren’s song behind us. Is it possible to be jealous of an entire group of people? People who have no trace of the toxic feud we share, who can ease her troubles with something as simple as a joke.
I follow Milo through the crowd to a kind of tent made from some off-white material folded over a cord strung close to the ceiling.
The enclosure provides a small amount of privacy but does nothing to veil the noises of life around us.
It’s a kind of makeshift bedroom, I realize, with a thin cot lining one wall and a few possessions and a change of clothes laid out on the other.
“When’s the last time you got some fresh air? Or spent a night in your own bed?” I ask.
Milo waves my concerns away.
“Not another person trying to save me from my hero complex.” He takes a swig of water from a tall jug sitting on the floor. “I’m fine. Better than fine! I can’t believe I met Checkmate today.”
I ignore the tightness in my chest and focus on my friend.
Not even the harshness of the artificial bulbs above us can dampen the golden glow emanating from Milo’s dark skin.
There’s something heavenly about it, the kind of warmth you notice without really thinking about it in a conscious way.
Maybe it’s a side effect of his healing abilities or maybe he’s just genetically blessed.
He’s beautiful in an unconventional way.
It makes him way more interesting to look at than most models I’ve seen.
I wonder where he’d be if things were different.
Milan? New York? And yet, when he looks at the people reaching out to him from their cots or stopping him to speak, I can tell there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than here.
“So are you finally going to show me what you’re hiding?” he asks.
“Why do you think I’m hiding anything?”
“When are you not?” He returns, but the threads of humor are nowhere to be found in his tone or on his face.
His lips are a grim line, his eyes are deep wells of concern.
He lays a hand over my shoulder, the fabric of my suit a barrier between us, but the warmth is already soothing.
His fingers seek out the wounded flesh as though they can sense it.
And even though he’s never said it, the power humming between us makes me think he can.
Touch-based powers are varied as wildflowers and just as numerous.
I’d love to do a study of them and find out why so many of New Malcolm’s extra-gifted community have abilities rooted in touch.
It would be impossible, of course. Too dangerous for any involved.
Maybe the simple truth is that humans are beings who crave touch.
Need it. Place value on it. Wouldn’t it make sense then that as powers evolved within us, they attached to those places that benefitted us most?
I’d love to know, but I never will. I’ll never be a scholar or scientist again. If I live past tomorrow, or a week, or a year, that is all the miracle I can ask. People like Kaye and I—even Milo and the other members of Angelis—we fight for normal, but we’ll never truly see it.
The membrane of fabric sticks as he peels it back, and I wince despite myself. The wound is mottled and purple around the edges, the core of it turning an angry crimson, though no blood comes from it yet. Just this morning it was nothing more than a pale knitted scar.
“When were you shot?”
I guess I should have expected that question.
“A few years ago,” I answer. “I know how it looks.”
It was a gamble experimenting on myself like a human guinea pig. I couldn’t go to the hospital. C knew who I was, knew there were still people I loved in New Malcolm. I couldn’t put their lives at risk for something I had decided to do.
I was dead. So why not leave myself that way?
I took what I knew of the formula we created and tweaked it. Every second that passed brought weakness and infection. Days were all I had, if I didn’t bleed out first. I didn’t have time for tests and safety.
My body reacted with every injection. Changed. My blood became acidic in my veins. But this was what I was good at. Observation. Notation. Hypothesis. Alter. Test again.
Until I was… this.
“I can’t fix this.” He doesn’t look at me. His touch almost tingles now. Minty and medicinal, like menthol. “I don’t know what’s in that concoction of yours, but my power’s having no effect.”
I shrug and the arrow of pain through my shoulder pierces my mouth into a grimace, too quick to hide.
“Thanks for trying,” I say when it passes. I offer my hand to shake, and he takes it without hesitation.
It’s amazing the effect a little moment like that has when it becomes an act of trust.
“You have an untapped well of possibility at your side now. So many rumors circulate about Checkmate, it’s hard to know what to believe. But when the very nature of your ability is power.”
He’s asking without asking. I’ve always been greedy with my knowledge and history of my nemesis, loathe to give something away that would make her vulnerable to someone else. I called it respect, but maybe in my own twisted way it was always protection.
“They say she heals herself.” He looks at me from under a fan of dark lashes. “Cuts. Bruises. Even broken bones, all disappear in a matter of hours.”
I wonder who they are to be so well-informed. “They say a lot of things. That I’m a demon, and I got my powers through an underhanded deal with the devil. That doesn’t make it true.”
“All I’m saying is power like that could be put to good use.
” He rubs his palm across his cheeks, scratching along the dotted lines of stubble growing in across his jaw line.
“I’ve got to get back. Just think about it, okay?
There are a lot of people here who could use help like that, if self-preservation isn’t enough to inspire you. ”
This truce between us too new to bend without breaking. I can’t risk the endgame for this. I won’t. But the ache is a persistent gnawing of my bones and I know I’ll have to give in soon. Tonight. In the back of my mind, alarm bells ring. Am I becoming unstable?
What if I lose control?
“Are you going to tell me what all that was about?”
Kaye looks haunting walking next to me under the glow of moonlight as we make our way toward the house.
It kisses her skin, lighting her in stark contrasts like so many nights before.
I don’t need to close my eyes to picture Checkmate next to me, beautiful and stubborn.
She is a dream I never wish to wake from.
My scarred and puckered skin pricks, ever insistent, and I’d love nothing more than to lose myself in her, if only to feel human again.
“What part, exactly?” I want to run my tongue from her clavicle to her ear if only to hear the whimper she’ll release when I nip the skin there.
Kaye knows nothing of the danger brewing beneath my skin.
Her hands rest on the curve of her hips, her stance wide as she turns to face me, and the sight of it alone makes my traitorous heart thud.
My dick twitches as I imagine placing my hands over hers and pulling those delicious curves against me.
“Kaye’s not a hugger?” She imitates.
“You’re not.”
“That’s not the point.” God, she looks cute when she’s irritated, her cheeks flush that’s visible even in this dim light. “You’ve been acting weird all day, but I didn’t expect you to go all alpha-hole on me.”
Oh, if she wants an alpha-hole, I’ll give her one.
I turn to her fully, my gaze trailing down her body and back up, cataloging every place I want to mark her.
She can’t see my eyes with my mask on, but I’d be willing to bet she can feel it with how the flush spreads down her neck, quickly covering her chest.
The triumphant look falls from her face, her arms dropping to her sides as I stalk into her space.
To her credit, she doesn’t budge an inch and fuck that does something to me.
I love that I don’t intimidate her anymore, even with my mask on, but hell if I don’t want to rile her up again.
To see how much I can push before she falters.
I slip behind her and her scent, her warmth, envelopes me.
My fingers trail up her arms and goose bumps rise in their wake.
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘protective,’” I rasp in her ear.
“Jealous.”
She gasps as I pull her back and the soft curve of her backside hits the hard wall of muscle on my torso and legs.
I wrap around her, the fingers of my left hand splaying across her stomach while my right claims her neck and I use two fingers to guide her face to the side, her mouth inches from mine.
“Yes.” The word is half a prayer, half a groan as I feel her softness in my arms. Her heart beats a steady, if elevated tempo, the pulse in her throat jumping against my palm.
“You’re mine, Kaye. I’m a greedy—and yes—jealous bastard.
After all these years, I don’t want to share.
I want to kiss you until your lips are bruised, until the taste of any other man is washed from your skin. ”
I ghost my mouth so lightly against hers that we barely touch and it’s such a sharp contrast that she follows me hungrily until I tighten my grip and hold her in place once more.
“I want to devour your sweet pussy until your juices cover my face and my sins are washed clean. Until all I taste is your pleasure.”
She moans as the hand on her stomach slowly dips lower.
I cup her sex, but it’s not where she wants me.
Not enough friction, not by half, even as her hips rock against me, her pert ass rubbing down the length of my cock.
I growl and use my leverage to drag her back against me, with me, until I hit something solid, then pivot us and pin her front to the bark of a maple tree.
I grind myself against her, deliriously and torturously slow. Fuck.
“I want to possess you in every way I’ve imagined after every fight we’ve had. To bring you to the brink over and over, speared on my cock until you beg for release.”
Both our chests are heaving as she trembles below me. The outline of her pebbled nipples is visible under her shirt, her perfect body responding to me so quickly, wound up like my favorite toy. She whimpers as I nip the shell of her ear.
“I want your voice to be hoarse from screaming my name.” It hangs in the air between us, a secret and a promise. “I want to bring you tea in bed and soothe your aches the following morning, then ruin you all over again.”
“Fuck, Zane. Yes,” she begs. It might be the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. “Please, yes.”
I bury my face in her hair and inhale her sweet, floral scent.
I’m rock hard for her, my erection straining against my zipper painfully.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the outline of the teeth weren’t imprinted in my skin.
Being with her, holding her like this, is intoxicating.
If I don’t get ahold of myself, I’m going to blow before she even touches me and that just won’t do.
There are far too many things I want to do with her before then.
Kaye’s hips rock against my palm again. At least I’m not the only one affected, but as I think of all the nights I lay panting in the dark, fisting and stroking myself for the woman I thought I could never have, a different emotion fills me.
“Are you wet for me, Kaye?” Her whole body jolts as I finally touch her, stroking my thumb down the center of her core. Moisture collects on my skin just from that brief contact, her desire already seeping through her clothes. “Should I find out?”
“Fuck,” she moans. “If you don’t touch me, I think I’ll explode.”
“Will you, little martyr?” I toy with the silky skin at her waistband, caressing then retreating, dipping just a little further below the fabric each time. “Like this?”
“Don’t tease me, Charade,” she huffs.
My fingers still, my grin stretching, becoming manic. “Oh good, you do remember who I am.”
“What the fuck, Zane?”
I plunge to her core and I’m almost undone by the heaven I find there.
Warm and soft. So fucking wet that it would be nothing to sink into her.
My balls tighten at the thought. Kaye cries out and I release my hold on her neck to muffle it.
The last thing I need is George or Angela watching what I want to do to her.
I strum my thumb across her clit and she shudders. “New Malcolm’s hero: soaking wet for her foe. A villain. What would people think?”
She bites the meat of my palm, hard but not enough to draw blood.
“Don’t scream. We’ll have to stop if an audience appears.
We wouldn’t want that, would we?” I gather some liquid on my thumb and swirl it in a circle around that succulent bundle of nerves.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Checkmate. I should punish you.
Leave you all worked up like this, tease you and leave just like you did to me countless times before. ”
“Please,” Kaye sobs. “I wanted you too, okay? I thought you wanted to kill me and I still wanted you.”
My dick jumps at that. I’m sure she can feel it happening where it’s nestled into the seam of her ass.
She grinds against me and God does that feel amazing.
I slip my middle finger inside her, her walls clamping like a vice on me as I flick her clit again.
“What about my influence? Aren’t you worried? ”
She shakes her head. I pump in and out of her slowly, testing her. She’s so tight. So fucking tight. “I’m already yours.”
I claim her lips, giving her that passionate kiss I denied before.
She whimpers again when I insert another finger, stretching her, and I swallow the sound.
I give her a moment to adjust before pumping into her again.
Her core quivers around me and I know she won’t last long, not like this.
I can’t wait to see her undone for me, with my touch alone.
“Show me then, little martyr.” Her hips buck as I trail a line of kisses up the column of her throat. “Show me how much you crave me. Ride my hand.”