Kinked (42 page)

He put his face in her neck and held her tight.

When he finally loosened his hold and they went to stand, Graydon and Grym were there to offer them a hand up. The other sentinels wore sober expressions. Behind them, a wide-eyed crowd had gathered to watch the fight. Now that the fireworks were over, people began to drift away.

Graydon pulled Aryal upright and into a tight bear hug. “Good to see you surface,” Graydon said to her. “I almost came over to bang down Quentin’s door.”

“I almost did too,” said Grym, as he gave Quentin a
smile as sharp as if he had pulled a sword. Telepathically he said,
I have just one thing to say about you and Aryal.

Hit me with it,
said Quentin with an equally sharp smile. He shook out his arm muscles and readied himself in case Grym’s message became physical.

If you betray her in any way,
said Grym,
I may not be able to kill you, because that would kill her. But I will hurt you very, very badly. And repeatedly. That’s a promise.

Quentin relaxed, and his smile turned real. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” he said aloud.

Grym ran his fingers through his black hair, blew out a breath then gradually relaxed.

Whatever Aryal and Graydon said to each other was private too. Afterward, Graydon turned to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good to see you. I’m glad you guys are home.”

Quentin studied the First’s craggy, good-humored face. Graydon had said it in all sincerity. “It’s good to be home.”

The days continued to trickle by. Alex gave them each a hug and a gift of the top fifty Oscar-winning movies on DVD. Bayne and Constantine brought stacks of pizza and beer one night, and stayed overlong.

Aryal showed Quentin her apartment in the Tower. He took one long look around at the chaotic mess. Then he said, “I think it’s a good thing if we each have our own place for a while, yes?”

She grinned. “Yes.”

After their fight in the gym, she ate better but still had trouble sleeping. When her face started to grow tight and stressed, he made love to her with single-minded passion until they both fell into oblivion.

To work off nerves, they went running, sometimes for hours on end until their bodies poured with sweat, setting two treadmills in the gym on their highest setting. They burned out the motors in two pairs of treadmills. Nobody complained.

One evening, wearing a pair of her jeans and one of his old sweatshirts, she disappeared for a short time. He said
nothing when she left his apartment. He’d had a key cut for her, and really, he couldn’t watch her 24/7. He was with the surgeon on that one. She was a big girl. In the end, it was up to her to decide to do the right thing.

He regretted that thought almost immediately and paced furiously, because he had developed all the obsession in the world needed to watch her 24/7, if only she would show up again so that he could get to it.

A key turned in the lock forty minutes later. He spun away from the living room window where he had been staring out blankly.

Aryal walked in. She carried a longish bag and looked settled on some kind of decision.

“Hey, sunshine,” he said. His tone was mild. He was such a goddamn liar.

“Hi.” She shut and bolted the door behind her.

He picked up a novel he was trying to read and thumbed through the pages. “Where’d you go?”

“To a store I know.” She took a deep breath that shuddered a bit, and then it was her turn to pace through the wide-open area. The jitters were back. Her gaze bounced to him and away again. “I haven’t said it yet, and it’s past time. I love you. And I am really grateful for what you’ve been doing over the last several days.” She craned her neck from side to side. He saw, grimly, that her hands were shaking. “I have one more favor to ask.”

“For God’s sake, just spit it out.”

She reached into the bag, drew out a crop and threw it at him. He stared without catching it. It struck his chest and fell with a clatter to the floor. Whatever he had braced himself for, he hadn’t expected this.

He said, “Aryal.”

She had never asked such a thing of him before. This was a game changer.

This was not what they were together. They played at games of dominance and bargained for time with each other, and that was one of the very best things they did together, the strain of the give and the sweetness of the take, all leavened with the spice of uncertainty.

She tore off the sweatshirt. She didn’t wear anything underneath, her racy, streamlined torso bare. “I need you to do this. I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t do something. I’m like an addict. It’ s—” She looked outside at the sky, her face stark. “It’s my food, water and air. It’s all of that, and we aren’t even paragliding.”

They had talked about trying to paraglide, and had decided against it for the two-week wait. She didn’t trust herself not to shapeshift if she got into the air.

“I get it,” he said, and he did. Her pain crawled in his marrow. The waiting and the uncertainty were a cruel combination. If they only knew one thing or the other, they could take steps to deal with it.

Her face clenched. She kicked off her shoes, tore off her jeans and came to stand in front of him.

“I have to get this feeling out,” she said through her teeth. “Help me get it outside of my body.”

Slowly he picked up the crop and he turned away as he looked down at it. That whip she had inside of her that was so like his—it wouldn’t stop driving at her until she got some relief.

“I love you too,” he said. He turned back around and struck at her, a fast, controlled blow across one thigh.

She jerked and bit back a strangled sound. She said, “Again.”

He walked around her, struck at her buttocks and watched as a reddened welt raised against her pale skin. While he was no stranger to whipping scenes, his experiences had always before had a sense of playfulness to the game.

This wasn’t playful. This was raw. He felt so strange, heavy and aching and his chest started to burn again, and all he wanted was her inner pain to ease so that she could get some peace for a little while.

“Come on,” she said. Her nose sounded clogged. “Do it.”

The crop rose and fell across her back, that beautiful back with the etched muscles that was so strong and feminine
at once. He said from the back of his throat, “Please tell me if this is helping.”

Her head nodded jerkily. “ I—I think so.”

His arm rose and fell.

Rose and fell.

Every time he watched her jerk under a blow, he seemed to step outside his own body. He struck her again, and the crop almost fell out of his nerveless fingers. He honestly didn’t know how much more he could take.

Then he walked around to face her. Her eyes were closed and her face had turned peaceful. All strain had eased from her features. As soon as he saw that, his own crisis of strain eased until he felt light-headed.

He asked her softly, “Do you need more?”

She fingered the welt on her thigh. “No,” she whispered. “The pain’s all on the outside now.” She looked up quickly and searched his gaze. “Did we go too far?”

He shook his head. “There isn’t anywhere I wouldn’t go with you.”

The truth, laid out between them.

Wrapped in a double negative.

Perfect. Kinked.

Her mouth pulled into a wry smile. She walked over to him and kissed him gently, her lips caressing his. “There isn’t anywhere I wouldn’t go with you either.”

“You owe me now,” he said. As he licked her lips and caressed her breasts, his cock hardened.

She didn’t even try to quibble. “I do, don’t I? What do I owe you?”

“A collar around your neck, and your wrists handcuffed,” he whispered.

She drew back her head and looked at him askance. “We’ve had that conversation already.”

“Yes, and we’re not finished with it. Remember—I said, what would it take?
You
said my soul for all eternity.” His sense of humor surfaced. Brimming with sensual mischief, he cocked his head and held out both hands. “I’ve lived up to
my
side of the bargain. I thought that might mean
something to someone like you, since you revel in legalistic thinking.”

She started to laugh, her face creased with genuine humor. “You got me. You rotten son of a—”

He put a hand over her mouth. “Stop talking. There are much, much better uses for your mouth than that.”

I agree,
she told him telepathically.

She ran her hands down his body as she knelt and unzipped his jeans. He stroked her hair, staring without blinking as she pulled out his penis and kissed the tip. Then she took him in her mouth and suckled at him until his breath sawed in his throat and he pumped into her.

She reached up with one hand. He laced his fingers through hers and held on until his own climax ripped through him. A harsh, shaken groan broke out of him as he spurted into her mouth.

Afterward, he whispered, “My turn.” And he nudged her onto the couch so that he could spread her legs wide. Her fluted sex was so beautiful, so drenched, he bent his head and feasted on her until her body jerked underneath his hold. She gave her own climax to him, crying out sharply as she shuddered.

He pushed her to climax again, and again, until finally she lay lax, eyes half-closed and drifting. Then he couldn’t stay outside of her a moment longer. He eased his cock inside of her, rocking gently into the warm, tight home she made for him. She wrapped her legs around his hips, nuzzling at him as he moved.

He thought their joining this time was about tenderness, but then something happened, some switch flipped between them. She growled or he did. His rhythm picked up urgency. Gods, he could not get deep enough inside of her. When they both climaxed that time, it felt wrung out of them, all wildness, all passion turned inside out in the blaze that consumed them both.

Afterward, as she stroked the back of his neck and he looked down the length of their entwined bodies, he knew one of the deepest reasons why they fit together was that they drove each other until they finally achieved peace.

Q
uentin wasn’t about to leave anything to chance. He talked with her late into the night and made plans for when the fourteen days were up. He knew that having something concrete in her mind would help, and it did.

She would try a short flight at dawn. If she couldn’t manage it, they would head out immediately for the nearest regional airport and he would give her the first paragliding lesson. One way or another, she would be in the air that day. All day, if she needed.

And that did help. Her volatile emotional spinning stopped, and she was able to calm down and focus.

They asked Dragos and Pia to join them on the rooftop of the Tower.

“I don’t think I can stand a lot of spectators,” Aryal said. “But I want them there. Dragos can be my spotter in case—well, in case. And I wouldn’t even be trying without Pia.”

“I agree,” Quentin said. “It’s a perfect plan.”

Both Dragos and Pia responded readily and said they would be happy to be present.

Quentin and Aryal spent a sleepless night on the rooftop, wrapped in blankets and watching a fabulously clear swathe of stars. As a bright dawn broke over the water, the rooftop door opened and Dragos and Pia walked out. Dragos wore black camouflage pants and a T-shirt, and Pia wore something fleecy that looked soft and comfortable. They had left Liam with a nurse.

“There you are,” Aryal blurted out. She shot to her feet, a hectic flush staining her cheekbones.

Quentin rose almost as quickly. By the time he had straightened to his full height, she had already shapeshifted into the harpy. She held her wings closed and tight along her back, her feral face miserable and fists clenched.

“Good morning,” Pia said. She smiled at Aryal.

Quentin couldn’t stand it. Waiting the last two weeks had been such an agony for Aryal, and pleasantries were like rubbing salt into the wound. He nodded to Dragos and said to Aryal, “Let’s go. Do it.”

She jerked her head in a nod. They walked together to the edge of the building, and she hopped up on the ledge. Then she turned back to face him. The tension came off her in palpable waves, and she still had not unclenched her wings.

The harpy looked at Dragos, who walked over to stand by the ledge as well. He regarded her calmly. “If you need it, I will catch you,” Dragos said. His gold eyes were as steady as the earth.

Quentin might never like the dragon much, but in that moment, because of Dragos’s steady promise to his unnerved mate, Quentin loved him.

Aryal glanced at Quentin. She appeared to be frozen.

So she preferred the element of surprise, did she?

He shook his head as a fitful wind blasted his face, and he struck her in the middle of her breastbone with the flat of his hand. The blow was so strong it knocked her off the ledge.

As she went backward, he said, “Time to rip off the Band-Aid.”

Something about that wind must have irritated his recently healed eye, because his vision blurred with wetness as he watched her tumble in the air.

Then her wings snapped out.