Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (51 page)

“No.” He groaned and broke away.

My hands tried to pull him back, but he gently pushed my arms against the pillow.

Eyes darkened with need bored into mine. Insistent. Demanding.

“Don’t hide.”

I closed my eyes. Frustration clawed at me.

His mouth warmed the curve of my shoulder. Kissed my collarbone.

I let out a soft sound, a whimper for more.

“Not beside me or for me.” His lips trailed over my neck. “With me, Kendra. With me.”

He let go of my arms and brought his mouth back to mine. This time the kiss wasn’t blistering.

It was slow, hypnotic. A honey of sensation that didn’t burn away in a moment.

It stayed.

His hands traveled down my sides, tracing my ribs, caressing my breasts, stroking small circles around the sensitive skin of my stomach. He slowed, his fingers lingering long enough to sear my core and leave an indelible mark.

Every kiss, every touch. An inescapable demand.

This wasn’t what I wanted.
 

“Faster.” I tugged his shoulder.

“You’re favoring your right side.” His lips grazed the hollow beneath my ear. “Your body hurts.”

His hands slid lower, fingers curling into my hips. He moved over me, every gesture deliberate, making me feel every drag of his lips, every brush of his skin, every breath tickling my skin.

With every stroke he rooted me here, in my body, in this moment.

“Don’t hide, Kendra.” His voice deepened, roughened. “Let me in.”

He moved lower, his mouth and fingers teasing every hollow and tasting every curve. His hands shifted me open, balancing my thighs on his shoulders, and he dipped his head.

I stiffened, the shock of it racing up my spine.
 

It was too close, too intimate.

It would become about remembering, not forgetting.

I couldn’t.

But when his mouth pressed against me and moved softly, carefully, I knew I’d caught myself in another lie.

This was Tristan who would do everything to find me, to fight beside me, to believe in me.

I trusted him.

I could let him see me. I could remember.

His breath was hot against my sensitive skin, amplifying the intimacy, demanding me to be here with him every step of the way. Desire spiraled, a tight knot low in my belly.

My head fell back, my hips moving on their own as I allowed myself to simply feel.

His hand on my waist kept me anchored while his other hand reached up and slipped into mine, our fingers entwining tight.
 

My breath, my pulse, his breath, his touch, everything spinning and swirling together strong and sweet all at once.
 

There was so much heat, so much care. He squeezed my hand, while his lips caressed, teased, delved, revealed until my entire body gasped, back arching, hands clenching, holding on to him as limbs dissolved, reason and control shattered.
 

Until all that was left was Tristan.
 

And when I finally came down, he was right there, his hand brushing my hair off my cheek. “I love you.”

My mouth moved but no sound came out.

Words had always failed me. But I could show him in another way.

Empath did what it had never done before, the tentative magic unfurling and coiling inside him, feeling the truth of his words, the raw pulse of desire.

His eyes widened. Understanding how naked I was.

His expression softened. His hand reached out, brushed a strand of hair off my face. And I felt his awe as he touched it as if it were my own.

Fascination as his fingers rubbed the soft curve of my cheek.

An ache of sharp, almost painful desire, as he traced the curve of my lips.

Admiration as he grazed the tip of the tattoo on my shoulder.

He touched the scar my elbow, the dip in my back, the ridge of my hip, all the way down to the four beauty spots forming a diamond on my ankle.

I closed my eyes, letting my Virtue tell me everything I needed to know. Desire built again, slow and steady, a hum of touch and breath, of magic and trust.

He moved up and cradled my face. “Look at me.”

Floating in a sensual haze, I forced myself to open my eyes and meet his scorching gaze. Moonlight filtered through the windows, catching the breadth and muscles of his shoulders and arms, the naked emotion in his face, the way his jaw tightened with pleasure and his eyes reflected me.

Our foreheads touched as he entered and with each stroke, something inside me thrummed, alive and undeniable.
 

There was only us, linked by magic and body, his essence and mine tangled and twined until I no longer knew where he ended and I began.

***

The distant crash of waves against the shore echoed through the open balcony doors into the room.

Warm arms pulled me close. I closed my eyes, enjoying the security of being in his arms.

“You were right.”

I turned in his arms to face him. “About what?”
 

“I wouldn’t have let you go after Ian without me.” His brow furrowed. “Because I love you and that’s who I am. Just as I wouldn’t have been able to stop you from going after him.”

Because that’s who I was.

“But I wish you’d told me, Kendra.”

“I meant it when I said it was because I only trusted you. I knew you’d try to stop me or go with me and I needed to do this on my own. I wanted you to be here, for Haverleau, for elementals.”

“I know. But you don’t get to tell others what battles they can fight,” he said gently. “Just as no one can tell you the reasons for your fight. Isn’t that why you let Ian undertake the mission to meet Scabbard?”

It was. I’d even fought with Aubrey over it.

“You told me that when you saw me in San Aurelio I looked free.” I touched his chest. “I wasn’t.”

He shifted. “No?”

I shook my head. For a second, my mouth threatened to shut down, to stop working again and cut off the words that needed to be said.

But this was important.

I couldn’t say the words he really needed to hear. The words that remained frozen in my chest, the words my body feared.

But I could tell him this.

“Mom had rules, a way of controlling our safety. My life was always about the war, about survival. It was about training, working, achieving objectives. I never met her expectations and a part of me always felt as if I was missing something. Not just normal things, like friends or a home, but something more. I wanted her to tell me a truth I didn’t even know existed.”

Tristan’s gaze remained on mine. His silent acceptance urged me to continue.

“When I was eight years old, we lived in Texas.” I glanced down at our entwined fingers. “She got me a bike and every day after school, I took off for the beach. I’d race to the end of the promenade, pedaling as hard as I could and I’d aim for this one spot in the sky. The bike flew into the air then landed hard on the sand. I repeated it over and over again.”

I shook my head. “It was silly. But during those few milliseconds in the air, I felt like I was flying.”

“You felt free.” He rubbed my shoulder and turned his face into my hair.
 

I nodded.
 

“Maybe that’s why sky blue is your favorite color.”

“How did you know that?”

I’d never told him and yet when he’d given me the iPod last year, it had been the pristine blue of that Texas spring.

“You look up at the sky when you think no one’s looking. Like you’re searching for something.” He brushed back a lock of hair and studied my face. “Did you ever find it?”

I thought of the mother who’d spoken to me that day, the Shadow snaking his way into the crevices of my life, the way I’d abandoned that bicycle on the side of the road.

“It wasn’t real.” None of it was. “It was him, Tristan. It was always him.”

Even the most sacred, the bond between mother and child, had been perverted and mocked by him.
 

And from the shadows of the past, the truth demanded to be told. Because once it emerged, once its being was unlocked from the box you put it in, there was no way to shove it back.
 

It demanded to be told. It demanded to be paid attention to.

And now, when the words escaped my lips, there was nothing in the world I could’ve done to stop it.
 

Because I needed to tell someone and Tristan who loved me, Tristan who believed in me, would accept it.

This time, telling him was easier. Maybe because I’d already told Aubrey. Maybe because the first door to my past had been unlocked.

But the words now spilled out, the truth about what happened in a darkened hotel room at the hands of my friend.

He didn’t say anything. Just listened and in the end he pulled me close, waiting until the tears ran their course and my breaths and heartbeat slowed.

“I spent three months in New York trying to find Eric,” he murmured against my hair.
 

I pressed my mouth against his throat, feeling the truth as if it was my own. “You believed you could save him.”
 

“I kept looking for him because I thought if he saw me, if I just talked to him, then we’d be brothers again. Finally received word of a sighting on the east side. He waited for me to arrive. We fought. He told me I’d improved, but that he was better.”

He was silent for so long I thought he’d stopped.

“And what did you say?”

He carefully traced a line down my arm. “The last words I said to my brother were, ‘I still watch the sunset.’”

His fingers laced with mine. I squeezed gently.
 

“I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. A sign, maybe, that Eric was still there.” He still wouldn’t look at me. “But his expression didn’t change. He said sunsets didn’t matter. They were as meaningless as dirt beneath your shoe. That nothing mattered when the world spread before you for your taking. And that’s when I knew my brother was really gone. There was no future for him. The day he said always came, wouldn’t come for him. ”

We were all so separate from one another, each of us on our own paths, our journeys sometimes intersecting and crossing, other times running parallel for awhile.

Loneliness was who we were; our truths could only be known to ourselves.

Sharing a tiny sliver of it with someone else was an act of faith. Although we may never fully hold the full truth of another, we could hold on to threads of it.

And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough.
 

Wordlessly I reached up, wrapped my arms around his neck, and pulled him to me.

Lips met; bodies rocked.

We reached for the solace we could only find with each other.

***

That night I dream of myself.

I stand in a darkness so deep I can’t see my hands in front of me.

But I do not panic. I don’t race forward to find my way.

I remain where I am.

I still.

And in that stillness, darkness recedes and light inches its way forward until I finally see where I am.

I stand alone on the floor of a gymnasium, sweat and tears marking my skin, the familiar ache of overworked muscles and bruising seeping into me.

Hundreds of eyes press against me, faceless spectators watching in judgment from the bleachers.

My heart beats faster, pounding against my ribs in a jittery rhythm of adrenaline and nerves.
 

I want to talk to that girl, the one with the tightly pinned ponytail, with both fear and angry defiance in her eyes.

I want to hold her like I once held Charisse and Helene and tell her it will both be okay and not okay, that she will feel pain and joy, that she will do what was right and what was wrong and that each day will begin anew.

I want to tell her that everything will be okay.

But I can’t.

There are many ways to tell a lie.

But there is only way to tell the truth.

You cannot tell a truth you don’t know.

THIRTY-ONE

Afternoon light lazily trickled through the tall windows of the Governing House library.
 

I pulled my fourth book of the day toward me. My finger traced the small embossed iris stamped onto the corner of the rich leather cover. The Irisavie crest.
 

I’d spent the day pouring through these books, hoping to discover the truth and answers I sought.
 

The last is found in the first.
 

The first and the last.

You are the last and the first.

Like Nexa, Brigette and Rhian had supposedly known the truth but were bound from speaking it.

Nexa told me to start with what I know. I’d spent the past few hours going through the Irisavie family history, but had found nothing interesting yet.

 
“I’m bored.”
 

Helene sprawled across a gold chaise lounge, her thin frame hanging off the edge, earphones dangling around her neck and phone in hand.

She’d sprang into the room about an hour ago, joining me and the other person in here, as if she had nothing better to do than to hang out in the library.

I turned a page. “So go.”

“Where’s Chloe?”

“Working with Jeeves.”

The abrupt end to the ondine training program had caused an uproar among the communities who’d sent students here to train.
 

Chloe was using her diplomatic talents to mobilize a movement against the program cancellation. The goal was to gather enough supporters to present a unified position to the Council.

I wasn’t sure how effective it would be. But Chloe didn’t want to sit still and do nothing.
 

It was the same reason I was here in the library. My efforts may be utterly useless, but at least I felt like I was doing something.

Helene heaved a loud sigh. The reverberations echoed throughout the library’s three floors with dramatic effect.

Spare me. “Don’t you have school work?”