Leaning forward, he placed his free hand, the one not gripping his beer, lightly on my thigh. “Does that mean you’re warming to me, then, love?”
Smiling, I shook my head, moving my legs out of reach of his fingers. “There’s a serious shortage of female seers on this ship, am I right?”
“Brutally small,” he agreed cheerfully. “And Chandre’s as likely to try for you as I am. But you’d be a peach anywhere, love. And that pain coming off you is simply...maddening. I don’t know how he can stand it...”
I felt my jaw harden again. I considered making a joke, trying to laugh it off, but decided there was no way it would come off.
I shrugged instead, folding my arms.
“Revik said that seer relationships were ‘complicated’...and largely biological. He said I shouldn’t take it personally. Is that true, too?”
Eliah snorted. “Bloody romantic.”
“Is it true, Eliah?”
He shrugged. “It’d be true in a way, I suppose. We’re a bit more biologically wired for monogamy than humans. But that’s not exactly the same thing, if you don’t mind my saying...and doesn’t have anything to do with who we choose as a mate. In fact, you could say the reverse is true.”
At my puzzled look, he shrugged with one hand, seer-fashion.
“The biological symptoms could be unsettling, I suppose. Especially if you didn’t know what was happening. Someone like you, who thought they were human, it’s got to be that much harder...” He frowned, studying my face. Leaning forward, he looked at my eyes.
“Gods. You’re not in love with him, are you, Allie-girl?”
I shook my head, but felt my chest clench a little anyway.
“I barely know him,” I said.
“That’s not what I asked.” Still studying my eyes, he added more cautiously, “The rest of us, we assumed you chose him for protection. Or, frankly, because he was the first male seer you met, and bad luck on you for that.”
He hesitated, laying a hand on my arm.
“But if you are in love with him. Well...that changes things. Won’t be so easy to pull out of this thing with him then, pet. And I’m sorry for that.” He caressed my arm. “I truly am.”
I focused on his eyes. They seemed to brighten strangely in the dim light of the cabin.
As they did, his words faded, as if someone twisted the dial on a radio.
Every other sound in the room seemed to amplify. Ambient noises grew deafening: the sound of the ocean through the propped-open door, the wind lightly banging the hanging blinds, the ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall. I heard an odd hitch in Eliah’s breath as he watched my face, his heart beating through his rib cage, slowing as he listened for my answer.
I had time to note I’d been kidding myself, telling myself I hadn’t known where he’d gone, or what he’d intended to do.
I got the chance to think the timing was ironic...
Then everything in the room dimmed.
I should have known I’d feel it when it happened. From what Eliah told me, along with what happened with Jaden...even from what little Revik had said, in his own vague way...I really should have known.
I should have known a lot of things, but they still always managed to surprise me.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic#p#分页标题#e#
19
BREAKDOWN
...I stand on a rock bluff, above a valley riddled with spider-web cracks. Wind tunnels between chasms. Everything is gone. All trees, animals, plants are dust, blown away.
I’m alone. But not really. Not really alone.
...He raises himself up on his arms, sweating, reading her, watching her eyes as he brings her to the edge. I see the tattooed writing on his arm, sweat sticking his black hair to his neck and forehead as he moves over her, his arms tensed as he adjusts the angle of his body. He holds her still, fingers clenched in blond hair as he arches deeper...deep enough to pause when she cries out, holding some part of himself back, going in with his mind so he can feel it when...
She climaxes, gripping his arms. Pain ripples off him as he watches.
Then it worsens.
Red sunlight shines behind my lids, but that pale, bird-less sky fades.
I feel him fighting. With himself, with me. He loses control and then he’s asking me, winding some part of himself deeper into my light.
He pulls me inside of him, even with her lying between us.
...and he’s inside both of us now, and I feel his relief mixed with frustration, a kind of horror at what he’s doing even as he asks me again. He wants me now, more than he can tell me, more than I can let myself feel. It hurts, that want, but I’m lost inside the conflict on him too. Fear hovers behind desire, masked in anger at me for forcing him to revisit that place, to remember.