Chapter 20
Amara
None of the events of that horrific evening shocked me more than Dylan’s tears. She clung to me like a creeping vine, trembling in my arms. A monster. My wife. A woman who wouldn’t kneel for anyone, but she had for me. I stroked her hair, staring over her shoulder, and tried to make sense of the muddled emotions that swarmed in my chest.
A crippling fear gnawed at the edges of my mind, clouded by the stench of rust and ammonia – blood. Mine, hers, that scaled creature’s. It clung to my pores, crowded my thoughts. Her hands fisted in the fabric of my sweater and I pictured claws, poised to raze me down.
Dylan was cold, inhumanly so. I should have noticed that before.
I felt her breath on my neck, the way her shoulders shook when she sobbed. She felt broken and jagged under my fingers, shattered porcelain sharp enough to cut. My wife, once riddled with hairline fractures, now lay in pieces in my arms.
There was so much I should have noticed.
After a long while, I detangled myself from Dylan, tentatively removing her hands and cupping her face in my own. She stared back at me, her features marred by smeared makeup and dried blood. Tear streaks cut through the grime and sliced down her cheeks. She looked deflated, spent. That unbreachable wall she had erected between us crumbled into dust.
Nose to nose, she was less intimidating, less incomprehensible. When her violet eyes were all I could see, she looked like someone I could love.
My fingers brushed a slight cut on her cheek and she winced, automatically recoiling from the touch. The scrape was small, but it had that same greenish hue as the injury on her leg when she’d burst into the apartment in the middle of the night. Upon closer inspection, I realized she was littered with cuts and bruises. A few of the deeper slashes were haphazardly stitched closed like she’d gone at them with her eyes shut.
Dylan had said those scaled creatures’ claws carried poison, or something like that. Her flurried hands had been difficult to read. But she had tried to sign an explanation anyway. For my sake.
The bubbling terror in my chest simmered down for a moment.
Releasing her face I sat back, gesturing at her patched injuries.
“You look terrible,” I signed, fingers splayed as my hands moved in circles. “We should clean those.”
Dylan’s brow furrowed and she glanced down at herself. I ignored her quizzical stare, already digging through her backpack for disinfectant. This was something familiar, some semblance of normalcy to cling to. I glazed over the fact that our “normal” involved tending to egregious wounds with questionably labeled concoctions.
“There’s a shower in there,” I signed, directing a thumb over my shoulder at the bathroom. “I’ll help you.”
Dylan looked dumbstruck, but she let me haul her to her feet and lead her into the cramped bathroom. At my request she perched on the sink, toes grazing the tiled floor, and watched me warily as I doused a hand towel in water and disinfectant.
I started on her arms, working my way down from the shoulder, and gently wiped away the dirt and grime. Each stroke revealed more pale, almost translucent skin. Thin blue veins snaked up her wrist like sewing thread.
Dylan sat still as I lifted her hand and traced the lines of her long, slender fingers. I inspected each one, searching for any sign of the claws she had wielded earlier. But her fingers were the same as always, tipped a pale blue as if tainted by frostbite.
I felt a small measure of relief at the sight and allowed myself to relax into the work. Dylan’s eyes never left my face, watching me with a faint curiosity like she couldn’t decipher exactly how I had gotten so close. There was an odd intimacy to the act, inspecting her inch by inch, clearing off the cover of dirt, and finding her underneath.
I noticed a particularly deep slash on Dylan's stomach where the fabric of her shirt was torn and dark with dried blood. I reached for the frayed hem and lifted it for a closer look, but as soon as I tugged at it, Dylan stiffened and jerked away. Her hand came up to ward me off, but my mind leapt to that monstrous form, slashing at the scaled shifter. My heart leapt into my throat and I staggered backward.
For a moment we were both frozen, and my heart pounded like a war drum in my chest. Dylan’s eyes were wide, an aching vulnerability plainly written in her features. She took in my stiff posture. Her eyes flickered from my stricken face to her raised hand and she dropped it.
Her arms hung at her sides and we stared at each other. A crushing sense of hopelessness crashed over me in waves. The both of us were made of so many broken pieces. How could we hold any of them without getting hurt?
I pushed those thoughts aside and signed a small apology. After a breathless moment, Dylan’s tormented expression softened and she shook her head. She mimicked my message, circling a fist against her chest.
Slowly, tentatively, I edged back over to her and Dylan dropped her gaze to my hands. I hesitated, fingers trembling slightly, before carefully tugging her shirt over her head. Dylan allowed it, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers tapped a frantic dance against the edge of the sink.
My breath caught in my throat when I saw the extent of the damage. But the artist in me traced the balanced scale of her collarbone, the pale valley of her breasts. Her ribs were lined with sleek defined muscle, Iliac furrows housed between protruding hip bones.
I swallowed the surge of something electric in my chest, and lifted the hand towel, wiping away the dirt and blood with tender strokes. Dylan was stiff under my fingers and cool to the touch, but she let me continue, watching me with wide eyes while I ran light fingers over her shoddy stitching. I worked methodically, cleaning each jagged gash and trying to inflict as little pain as possible.
When I was done, I reached up to cup Dylan’s face, tilting her head to inspect the cut on her cheek. I tended to it quickly but kept my hands in place, cradling her face in my palms. Her dark makeup was smudged, mascara circling her eyes like dark bruises. Dylan sat stiffly, her eyes locked on mine. I could almost see that suspicious mind working to decipher my intentions. I didn’t entirely understand them myself. A part of me simply wanted to see her.
I lifted the hand towel and gently cleared the makeup off her face. Dylan stilled as I wiped at her eyeshadow and ran a thumb over her lip, removing the last of her smudged lipstick. Revealing the woman beneath the armor.
Without the heavy makeup, her features were much softer – high cheekbones, a slight curve to her nose, the faintest scattering of freckles. Full lips slightly parted. My gaze lingered on those lips, and I bit down on my own. My mind wandered back to the first night she’d kissed me, nipping my bottom lip in a moment of passion.
With that frantic collision in mind, I wanted to see more of her. I hesitated for a moment, grappling with the gnawing anxiety that reared up in my chest, and then coaxed Dylan to open her mouth. Inconceivably, she obliged, parting her lips further and holding still while my fingers explored those pointed fangs. A jolt of fear spiked through me at the sharpness of them.
But those fangs didn’t snap shut on my fingers or close on my throat. Dylan was deathly still like any slight movement would send me bolting for the door. I tempered the knot of anxiety and lowered my hands.
Stepping away from her, I turned on the shower and waited until the water fell warm in my palm.
“Hot water actually works here,” I signed, and Dylan stared at me in bewilderment.
I gestured at her torn leggings and then pointed at the stream of water. Finally understanding, Dylan’s expression grew even more alarmed and, for a moment, she just stood there.
I held her gaze, coming to a decision. I knew that deep down a part of me still feared the woman in front of me. Dylan looked lost and alarmed and incredibly human then, but I knew what those fangs were capable of.
But even so, I wanted to see her, all of her. I wanted to know her like the back of my hand. If we were to have any hope of salvaging the connection between us, we had to know each other. We had to let each other in.
Dylan seemed to notice the change in my eyes, the resolve that had settled there. She hesitated for a moment and then began to undress, slow and uncertain. She shimmied out of her torn leggings and underwear, and her eyes never left my face, wary as if it was some kind of test. But all I wanted was to know her inside and out.
My heart thudded a frenetic beat as I watched Dylan step into the shower. The water streamed down her slender body, pasting her long black hair to her back. She turned and watched me through the steam, ethereal in her starkness.
I stared back, teetering on a knife's edge.
Slowly, I tugged my shirt off and undressed. Steam clouded the room and condensed on the mirror above the sink, softening the edges of my reflection as I passed it and stepped into the cascading water beside Dylan. The space was small and cramped, and the hot water cascaded around us as I moved closer, taking small, shuddering breaths.
My hands explored her inch by inch, sifted through her hair, and traveled down her back. The pads of my fingers pressed into the twin dimples below her spine. My palms brushed her hips and settled on her waist.
Dylan granted me time to learn her, closing her eyes and turning her face upward like the whole thing was a religious experience. When my hand moved to her stomach, palm flattening against the slope below her navel, I saw her lips part. She sucked in a breath I couldn’t hear, but the motion lifted her shoulders and expanded her ribs. I stilled there, but my fingers were tempted to travel lower.
A static electricity prickled under my fingers, and Dylan closed her palm over the back of my hand.
We looked at each other, face to face under the stream that soaked through my hair and flowed down my body in rivulets. The water took all of the dirt and all of the anguish and animosity down the drain with it. Dylan held my gaze and edged my hand further down her stomach, guiding my fingers to the honey pot between her legs. Warmer and warmer, hot to the touch, my fingers met her burning desire. My body quaked and I glanced up at her, for permission, or maybe to gauge her reaction. I wasn’t quite sure myself.
Dylan dipped her head toward me in response. Our mouths met gently, tentatively, like it was the very first time they did so. Her lips were cold and soft, melding perfectly to mine. At the slightest contact, that crackling electricity sparked through my body, a burning heat pooling at my center. It was more than lust, more than a simple want. I put a hand to her sternum and gently pressed her to the wall, my fingers moving to stroke her bare mound.
Dylan’s back arched in response, her hips bucking out to meet me. She parted her lips to let me in and I ran my tongue across her teeth, feeling the sharp prick of her fangs. A part of me wanted to climb her, wrap my legs around her narrow waist, mark her, and beg her to claim me in turn. But more than that, I wanted to stay very still, conjoined as we were, while the water poured down around us.
I ran a hand once over her bare, wet entrance, stroking along the length, before carefully delving a finger inside. Then two. I watched Dylan groan again and thrust her hips out, pushing my fingers deeper. I curled them inside her, stroking and coaxing. With my tongue probing her open mouth, I brought my thumb up to circle her clit.
The slow, steady rhythm had her breaking the kiss, leaning back against the tiles and pushing her jaw out as the sensation overwhelmed her. It wasn’t fast enough to make her cum, wasn’t slow enough to not leave her on the edge. I drew her to a precipice, refusing to let her topple off the end.
After almost a minute of tormenting her like that, Dylan lifted a shaking hand, gripped the back of my neck, and hauled me closer. Our chests collided, skin-on-skin contact that made my nipples harden.
“More.” I watched her lips move, felt the breathy plea against my cheek, and finally obliged, pumping my fingers in and out of her until my hand was wet with her juices. I watched with hazy arousal as she constricted around my fingers.
The dim light of the bathroom illuminated her pale body, her dark hair streamed down her shoulders, cascading over her chest. I nudged aside wet strands, catching the raised bud of her nipple and lapping at it with my tongue. My free hand came up to tease at the other. Dylan’s grip on my nape tightened, crushing me closer to her slicked body. I explored her with my mouth, running my tongue over smooth soft skin in unhurried thoroughness.
When her bucking hips grew frantic and disorderly, I removed my fingers, feeling the accusatory dig of her nails in the nape of my neck at the loss of sensation. Acting on impulse, indulging in every aspect of her, I lifted my fingers to my lips and tasted her. Like faerie food, it was transcendental. No taste could ever compare. It sent me rearing forward to capture her lips in a rushed, devouring kiss before dragging my mouth down her body.
I dropped to my knees, trailing my tongue down the scarred flesh of her stomach as I went. When I looked up, Dylan’s eyes were closed, relishing every caress with parted lips. She looked almost angelic like that, with a halo of steam on her brow. Water rushed down the slopes of her body like Aphrodite rising from the ocean.
My fingers traced a path down her hips, hauling one of her legs over my shoulder, both hands digging into the soft, supple flesh of her posterior. I tilted my head to watch her as I licked at her inner thigh, circling ever closer to her epicenter. Dylan propped an elbow against the shower taps for balance and leaned her head on her arm. Her eyes fluttered open, watching me with unfettered desire.
With careful, tempered restraint my mouth found her heat and she bucked against me, spilling hot nectar on my probing tongue. It was quickly replaced by my fingers, sliding into her welcoming warmth and stoking the fire in her belly. My tongue stroked at her swollen clit, and the warmth between my legs blazed like an all-consuming inferno. I flicked at the swollen bud, dipping my tongue in and out of her dripping sex.
Dylan writhed above me, her quivering hands resting on and then fiercely gripping my shoulders. My prying fingers picked up speed, my mouth working at her entrance even as hot streams of water cascaded over me, making it impossible to breathe. I had no need for air. Lost in the tantalizing taste of her, there was nothing more I could ever want.
Her body broke quickly after that and I felt her inner walls tighten around my fingers as she threw her head back and thrust against my welcoming lips, riding out her climax on my tongue. I lapped at her center, holding her in place as she twitched and writhed, her body wracked with a shuddering instability.
When the spasms finally subsided, Dylan lowered her leg from my shoulder and leaned unsteadily against the wall. Her chest rose and fell in quick succession, and she watched me through heavy-lidded eyes. Before I’d fully climbed to my feet, Dylan gripped my chin, claiming my mouth with a fierce kiss that nearly knocked me over.
Without a word, she turned the water off and wrapped her arms around me again. She crushed me to her chest, lifting me off my feet and carrying me back into the bedroom while my legs dangled around her ankles. In one smooth motion, she splayed me out on the bed and crawled on top of me. Water dripped from her hair that hung around me like dark ravines. The sheets beneath me were damp but I didn’t mind. I thrust my head back as she descended upon me, arching upward to meet her.
It felt good to let go. I didn’t know how much I needed the release until I handed the reins over to her. Dylan gripped my hips, melding her body to mine. The look in her eyes said it all. There was no going back now. I had reached another side of her, and this possessive streak was primal.
Dylan kissed her way down my neck as her hands began a gentle exploration of my body in turn. She brushed damp tendrils of hair from my face and planted soft kisses and gentle nips over every area of bare skin.
I murmured inaudibly, my lips moving of their own accord as she moved her mouth lower, trailing down my chest and running her tongue down the length of my stomach. She took her time, tasting me, teasing me. But her eyes burned with that same ravenous intensity. Shivers shook my bare body and I reached for her, tugging her closer and grinding slow, licentious thrusts against her thigh.
I felt the point of her fangs brush my throat, right below my earlobe. A distant voice in the back of my head warned me to be cautious, but the tantalizing graze of her tongue on the juncture of my neck made my head spin.
Dylan removed herself for a moment, edging backward and leaving my hot skin vulnerable to the cool air. I opened fluttering eyes to find her and felt her fingers close on my calf, flipping me over to my stomach with an alarming strength that overshot her slender frame.
I whimpered and winced under her touch as she glided gentle fingers along my dripping slit, teasing between the slick folds, stoking hot coals in my burning loins. Her fingers nudged at my entrance and I pushed back against her, eager for her. Undoing for her. She circled my clit, pressing at the sensitive bundle of nerves with a competency that drove me to complete depravity.
She leaned over me, the soft mound of her breasts cool against my back, and moved her fingers to my lips, sliding them against my tongue so I could taste myself.
I moaned with her fingers in my mouth and bucked backward against her. My hands fisted in the damp bed sheets, spine curving like a scorpion poised to strike. Dylan’s breath was hot against my ear, my cheek, my shoulder, as she pressed passionate kisses to every available inch of my damp skin. Before I could blink her fingers were gone again, but her weight against my back remained, even as she plunged those missing digits deep into my aching sex.
My orgasm came quickly, bursting through my body while I rode her fingers with a raging need. Even as I spasmed and clenched around her, embroiled in an earth-shattering release, Dylan didn’t let up. Her tongue lapped at my entrance, flicking out to torment my sensitive, throbbing clit. It was overwhelming, decadent, too much for my quivering body. I threw a hand back to push at her shoulder, but Dylan gripped my wrist and slammed it back down on the bed, delving into me with ravenous intent and wrenching me closer to a second peak.
After a staggering hail of tongue and fingers, I tumbled over the precipice a second time. Drunk on her, disorientated in her all-encompassing presence.
When I was finally done, unraveled entirely, my spine relaxed its backbreaking arch and I collapsed against the mattress and rolled onto my back. My legs twitched slightly and my eyes shut as I slowly regained my senses.
Dylan sucked the remnants of my climax from her fingers and lay down with her head on my stomach, snaking her arms around my bent leg. Her head rose and fell against my abdomen alongside my labored breathing.
I tangled my fingers in her hair, stroking absently as my body melted into the mattress. Unlike the last time, the afterglow of our entanglement settled over both of us like a warm blanket. It felt… not quite safe – Dylan was far too dangerous and unpredictable for me to be truly at ease – but there was comfort to be found in her arms.
My muddled mind was unwilling to truly unravel my feelings on the subject, not yet, not there. Not when the touch of her fingers massaging small circles into my thigh felt so irrevocably sensual.
As if she had heard my hazy musing, Dylan tightened her grip on my leg and pressed a fierce, final kiss to my stomach. Something like a soft sigh escaped my lips and I closed my eyes.
Precarious and dysfunctional as our alliance was, maybe I could stick around a little longer.