Chapter 24 #2
Before he can decipher what I’m doing, I scoot off and engage the Officer in a very detailed chat about the notes on the board.
Which happen to be about the mechanics of the winged breeds; the Dragons, Demons, and what not.
It genuinely is fascinating, and I ask about a hundred questions.
I only meant to ask one of two so none of Wren’s, or is it Den’s, team approaches me, but when I finally look around the room is completely empty.
The Officer, who tells me her name is Zafihra, and a dragon shifter, wishes me a good day and I grab my own stuff and head out.
I keep a keen eye as I walk the corridor, just in case I’m about to get jumped. But, either Thirty-One hasn’t discovered his missing file yet, or the revenge they’re planning is going to come later, because all appears quiet.
Until a noise in the final room before the exit makes me halt in my tracks. The door is open and a muffled sound comes from inside. It sounded like whispering, meaning maybe there’s two of them.
Moving to the wall, I creep along, before diving into the room, taking the element of surprise from whoever is waiting for me.
It’s not any members of the team I’m expecting though. It’s Milo. And it wasn’t whispering I heard, it’s the hushed sounds of him crying.
He’s sitting at the back of the room on one of the desks, legs crossed and tears streaking down his cheeks. Immediately, I’m filled with equal parts concern and a burning rage to go end the life of whoever has done this to him.
The concern takes priority, and I’m at his side in a heartbeat, taking his face in my hands. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
Doubting he can talk currently, I search his gaze as fresh tears spill over, wetting his eyelashes and making fresh tracks down his cheeks.
His fingertips push gently on my abs, over the file I’ve got hidden. Caging my instincts to wrap him into my arms, I let my hands drop, placing them on the desk instead, one each side of his thighs.
He starts signing shakily, “I fucked up.”
I laugh because of course Tacita has already taught him the cuss words.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to swear,” I apologise when his face crumples more.
Leaning over me to the seat tucked halfway under the desk, he grabs his notepad and pen. Schooling my features so that he cannot tell how impatient I’m getting, I hold my tongue between my teeth to stop myself from being a dick.
Whoever has hurt him is going to pay.
He turns the page eventually, and through the tear-stained ink I read.
It’s all my fault. I’ve tried to stop it, to make it stop, but I can’t. And now you and Tacita are going to get hurt. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to start feeling anything. It worked before, I don’t know why it won’t work now.
My heart feels like it's beating out of time and my palms are sweating as I get a glimpse of Milo’s thoughts.
They echo my own in ways but I can see he has some trauma rearing itself inside that head of his.
I’d guessed he has been through a lot just because of how subdued he can get, and that his lack of speech is not a physical disability but wrapped up in something from his past.
“Oh, Sweetheart. I don’t think any of us imagined the path we all seemed to have started on.
I certainly didn’t foresee that feelings would get involved.
” I move a hand to his thigh and gently caress it through the joggers he’s wearing.
“But I don’t regret it. I meant what I said last night, or this morning.
Time is getting a little warped in here.
“What I’m trying to say is that nothing is your fault. And I should’ve made this clearer earlier but my feelings for you are not conjoined to my feelings for Tacita.”
His head tilts as he searches for a lie, but if anything, he looks more fearful at not finding one than if he had.
“No matter what happens with her, I want to be with you. If you want that, of course,” I try to reassure him.
He flips the pad back round so he can write.
You don’t want me. You can’t.
“Don’t tell me what I want,” I say sternly. I can’t tell if this is coming from some deep self-esteem issues, or something else, but I won’t tolerate these kinds of thoughts from him. He can tell me anything he wants but he can’t dictate my feelings.
“I haven’t ever felt like this before, Milo. But I’m not going to ignore what’s going on in my chest. I want you to be mine. I am already yours.” His eyes widen and I don’t give him the opportunity to argue back a second time. Gripping the back of his neck, I pull him forward until our lips meet.
I kiss him gently at first, this isn’t about carnal need. It’s about claiming him, letting him see that my feelings are not about sex and that the physical touches with him are because I want–no, need–to show him how hard I’m falling.
His lips taste slightly salty from his tears but they’re warm and soft. He doesn’t drive the kiss forward but doesn’t brace against it either. Licking his plump bottom lip that he chews too often, I seek permission to link us deeper. His head angles further in response as his tongue seeks mine.
My chest explodes. It’s not butterflies, it’s fucking fireworks, as the ground shifts around me.
I meant what I said, whether Tacita wants in on this or not, I want him.
I’ll burn my singlehood in the fire and embrace this new side of myself.
All the people I’ve been with, had fun with, and even hooked up on the regular, pale in comparison to this.
I have a new gravitational pull and it's to the man currently twirling his tongue with mine.
Breaking the kiss when we’re both panting, I lean my forehead to his, our breaths mingling and keeping us in this little bubble for a few more seconds.
His fingers brush my abs again and his forehead crinkles with confused lines as he registers the feeling of the card file instead of skin under my scrub top.
He pulls back and mouths the word “what” even though no sound comes out.
“We should get out of here,” I tell him, pulling back so I can gather our things, putting both our bags on my shoulder. “Come back to my room and I’ll show you.”
Milo had lit up like it's Christmas when I showed him my stash from the day’s mission. He’d immediately started pulling out the individual sheets and mapping the new information to the web we’ve put together on my wall.
I’d apologised to him about ignoring him for most of the day, and I prattled on about this and that as he worked. He’d shown me the odd paragraph and we’d worked through it together, fitting more pieces of the puzzle to our existing theories and coming up with a couple of really strong leads.
He seemed to come alive at being able to progress this challenge. His face was more animated than I ever remember seeing. He’d used a mixture of signing and writing to join in with my chatter. He’d also managed to say a few words as we worked.
It was only the odd “yes” or “no,” but it scrambled my brain every time I got to hear his voice.
We also got each other off in the most sensuous round of frotting I’ve ever experienced. Then he let me play with his arse a little when we’d showered afterwards, and I’d gotten him off a second time when he immediately got hard again. This was shaping up to be a fucking great day.
We are both clean and clothed once more when there's a knock at my door. It’s well into the evening now and I was about to suggest we go and see if the canteen was still serving. Jumping off the bed where we’d been sitting together, I pull the door open a crack.
“Is Milo with you?” It’s Tacita. Seffy is also with her but my focus is on the woman currently determined to break half my heart.
Her hair is loose, the multicoloured underneath creating a bright halo around her face and shoulders.
She does, however, look concerned and I don’t have the will power to toy with her, knowing how unnerved I feel when I don’t know where either of them are.
“Yes, he’s here. We’re working on the game together.”
“May we come in?” she asks almost hesitantly.
“We brought food,” Seffy adds, holding up what looks like a take-out bag.
Swinging the door open, I let them both into my room with a clenched jaw. I don’t want Tacita here if she’s just going to cause more issues but at the same time I cannot deny her, other parts of my body lighting up at seeing her.
I do push in front of them, though, so that I can plant myself back on the bed next to Milo. He's sitting at the headboard end so I’m boxing him in. Tacita takes a seat on the opposite bed.
“Neither of you came to dinner,” she says. It's an observational statement.
“We were busy,” I tell her, stretching my arm behind Milo’s back in a possessive gesture I know she notices. There’s a flash of something in those chocolate eyes of hers. Jealousy? Lust? I am not sure. And it’s petty but I’m glad to see that she looks slightly regretful.
Milo starts signing but Seffy inadvertently speaks his words as she stares at the wall. “You were adding to the timeline.”
Tacita whips her head around and stares, her jaw going slightly slack. “How did you get so many new files in a single day?”
“How many times do I have to tell you, I am the best at what I do.” I can’t help myself.
She turns back to me and rolls her eyes, her lips twitching in a smile. Reaching into her satchel, which she must’ve brought with her, she pulls out another couple of manilla files.
“Here, I think you already have one of them, but I have it on good authority that this is the only copy of this one in the game.” She drops one file on the bed next to her but passes the other over the gap.
Milo immediately reaches for it, opening it into his lap. I curl my body around him so I can read it over his shoulder. It is indeed a different profile. One that we’d identified as missing from our collection during our work this evening.
He slips from my grasp and moves to the other bed so he can start adding it to the other information we already have.
“Nice one, where’d you find it?” I ask, content to let the dust settle and hope we have something there to save. We will need to talk more but for now I can live in ignorance.
“The group that’s all guys, they had it. Idiots decided to stash their files in the library thinking that no one uses ‘the old dusty tomes.’” She air-quotes those last four words and laughs.
“What bleedin’ eejits.” I burst into laughter as well.
“Indeed. I overheard them as I was looking some stuff up a couple of aisles over. As soon as they left, I stole their entire stash. The rest I got the dragon shifter to burn as they were duplicates of the ones we already had.”
All three of us go still and blink at Tacita like she’s spoken a foreign language. Seffy is the one to recover her voice first, “One of the guards helped you?”
“Yeah.” Tacita eyes each of us, like she doesn’t understand.
“Can we do that?” Seffy asks. “I know they’re helping us by teaching us but they never seem that friendly.”
“Well, I asked and she complied.” Tacita shrugs like it’s normal that we just get favours granted.
I nod. I’d not considered getting to know the guards much, they seemed more like our jailers than anything else. And most of them are a bit intimidating, even to me.
“They’re just people,” Tacita tacks on.
“They’re not though, are they? People, that is.” Seffy finally sits, perching on the foot of the bed I’m on. “They’re demons, or whatever.”
“Yeah, but so will we all be, if we survive this thing,” Tacita says.
“Guess I’d not really thought about that bit,” Seffy replies.
“What would you want to be?” Tacita asks her. Milo goes back to scribbling on the wall.
“I don’t think I want to be a shifter, it must be so weird to have another body,” Seffy says, shuddering.
“I’d love it,” I counter. “Imagine being something with wings that could fly, it’d be freaking awesome.”
“Yeah, flying is definitely a perk,” Tacita says, nodding like she already knows. She catches herself and quickly adds, “I mean, I imagine it to be. Wouldn’t it be great to soar in the skies?”
“No thank you. I want my feet permanently on the ground,” Seffy says.
“What about you Milo?” I ask, bringing him back into the conversation. He seems most uncomfortable when there’s more than two people but I don’t want him left out. And I know no one in this room will judge him for needing to write something if he can’t sign it.
He does sign though, “I don’t know.”
“You haven’t thought about it? You seem to love studying the different species.” Tacita responds.
“Yeah, wouldn’t you love to be one of demon’s with bat wings or something, you were reading that book in class today. You’d look badass with those horns.”
Milo’s cheeks flush that beautiful rosy colour that I can’t help but smile at.
“He can’t be a true demon,” Tacita says.
“Why not?” I ask, offended on my partner’s behalf.
“Haven’t you been listening to the lectures? True demons are born, not bred. It's only the shifters, witches, and dark angels that are created.”
“Oh.” Guess I should pay more attention to some things. I had been studying but guess I’d only really been paying attention to the bits that interested me.
“Well, a shifter then. I could totally see you as a cute fluffy animal.” I look at Milo.
He breaks into one of his shy smiles and shakes his head. “Just want to survive,” he signs.
“That is something I think we can all agree on,” Seffy says.
“Here’s to that,” I agree.
“Then let’s get on and solve this thing.” Tacita says and we all get to work whilst munching on the various noodle, meat and vegetable dishes the women brought for us.