Silenced (36 page)

I kiss down between her breasts. Flick my tongue out across her left nipple as I pinch the right one between my thumb and index finger. She shudders. I continue my journey down her body, kissing my way toward her navel. Her hands shoot out to the edges of the table. I grin as I keep kissing her, down and down, pulling the rest of her suit off as I go past her navel, down the insides of her thighs, toward her ankles.

“Mm, Pike.” She digs her fingers in my hair and pulls.

I grin as I run my lips back up her thighs. My eyes slide closed as I flick her clit with the tip of my tongue.

She bolts upright, and I stumble backward. I narrow my eyes at her. She’s seated, cross legged and covering herself like that Venus painting, only with short hair. I lose concentration, and we’re back in the tank.

“What the hell are you doing?” she says.

I open my mouth and stare at her. I shrug my shoulders. Once. Twice. Three times. No idea what to say.

“I asked you a question!”

I shake my head, then clear my throat. “Um, I was…” I know what I was doing, but the words don’t come easy. “I was… going down on you.”

“What?”

I furrow my eyebrows. I can’t figure out if she’s serious or not. She certainly looks serious, but there’s no way she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I inch closer to her.

“Um, I was going down on you.” I place my hand at the fold in her legs. “I was kissing you right here, and if you’ll open up, I can do it again.” I wink at her.

She swiftly shakes her head. “No, I don’t want you to.”

That’s a first.

“Um, why?”

“Because it’s weird. Just fuck me like a normal guy.”

I scratch my eyebrow with my pinkie nail. “Um, I assure you that it is normal. And if you’ve never been kissed down there, you’ve been with some lame ass dudes.”

She scowls at me. It only makes me want to eat her up more. I have to laugh.

“Look, cray. Just lay down and let me blow your mind.”

She pouts, a move I’ve never seen on her face, and shakes her head again. With a sigh, I gently push her down by the shoulders. She gives me resistance at first, then eventually allows me to push her back to the floor.

Her body is a taut rubber band. I massage my hands into her legs.

“Relax,” I say as I wrap my arms around her upper thighs.

I glance up at her before I dive and flick my tongue over her clitoris again. She flinches. I smile. Then, I wrap my lips around her and gently suck. Her body tightens even more, then, just as suddenly, she relaxes and lets out a loud moan.

That’s more like it. I alternate between sucking and tongue flicking. In a matter of seconds, she comes in my mouth. As soon as she does, she tries to scoot away from me. I tighten my grip on her thighs. Then I blow on her so she’s not so sensitive, because I want more, and I intend to get more.

As soon as I’m sure she’s ready, I go back to licking her, slow, like a Blow Pop. I don’t want to get to the gum too soon. Gently, I slide one finger deep inside her, then two.

“Oh, Pike! My gods!” Her body raises up into the air like some exorcist shit.

She starts to scream so loud I’m afraid she’ll shatter the armored steel around us. Then I remember that’s more my thing.

I love every second of it. Everything about it. The way she tastes. The way her body contorts with pleasure. The way she hollers my name. The way she shakes like she’s having a spell when she can’t take any more.

Then, and only then, do I pull away. Subtly, I wipe my mouth and smile down at her.

She closes her eyes. “Oh.” Huff. “My.” Huff. “Shiyay.”

I burst into laughter as she wipes sweat from her brow. “What in the hell is a
shiyay
?”

She shakes her head. Her eyes are glazed over, and she appears bewildered.

“I have no idea. I just know that was amazing.”

I smile. “I love that I can make you feel that way.”

She arches an eyebrow. “You love it?”

I half scowl. “I like it.”

With a half-smile, she climbs into my lap. “Well, I kinda like doing the fury shuffle with you.”

I would have laughed, but she slides herself down onto me and humps the laughter right out of me. We don’t do it like we usually. Hard. Fast. Desperate.

We do it slow. I pull her bang back away from her eyes and peer into them. We fuck deliberately. Feeling her against me in this way makes me shiver. She’s a summer breeze hitting me. I close my eyes and rest my head on her shoulder and make being inside her last as long as possible.

I come hard as hell, and she comes with me. Soon after, I fall asleep and wake up what seems like minutes later with someone kicking me in the back.

My eyes snap open, and I look up at blurry surroundings. Juliet stands in the glint of yellow, morning light. I squint up at her.

“What the hell do you want?” I ask.

Under me, Kiwi groans. I glance down at her. It’s only then that I realize we’re still naked, wrapped around each other. I contort my body to shield hers. Seems like the gentlemanly thing to do.

Then, I stare back up at evil bitch. “What?”

She grins and flips that frickin’ hair. “I hope you had a good night, because it’s time to go. I need you two to get dressed. Can you do that for me?”

My eyes narrow. Her expression doesn’t change.

“I’ll wait outside. You have five minutes.” She kneels toward the hatch and places a hand on the handle. “By the way, how’d you enjoy that Ana meal last night? You look well fed.”

Before I can respond, she ducks out of the hatch and I imagine ripping out that hair she’s always flipping, one strand at a time. I press my lips together. It was a shitty comment. I decide to ignore it. Kiwi was right. I have to get this cure to Sadie and find a way to get out from Colonel Jax’s thumb.

Gently, I nudge Kiwi awake. She lets out a groan and stirs. After a few seconds, she sits up and blinks up at me.

“Juliet was just here,” I say. “Time to go.”

She lets out a huge yawn, which I mirror, then nods her head. Together, we get dressed while shooting almost shy looks at one another.

This shit is weird.

It doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as it did, but it’s still weird.

True to her word, Juliet is back inside the tank within five minutes. As she sits in her seat and starts up the tank, I expect Kiwi to take her place beside her. Instead, she straps into the seat beside me. The tank lurches forward, then comes to a sudden stop.

“What is she doing?” Juliet says.

I glance up and notice a figure blocking our passage. My eyes narrow. It’s XJ.

“She wants to talk to me,” I say under my breath.

Juliet turns and stares at me. “How do you know that?”

I shrug as an urgency presses down on me. Without thinking, I undo my harness.

“What are you doing?” Kiwi asks as I make my way to the hatch.

Without looking at her, I mutter, “She needs to talk to me.”

“Make it quick, Pike,” Juliet says. It’s the last thing I hear before I duck outside.

Slowly, I round the tank. XJ saunters over to meet me.

“What is it?” I ask, again, without thinking.

XJ, her face half hidden by her hood, smiles. She gestures me forward with her hand. “Take a little walk with me, siren.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s Pike.”

I don’t know why I’m wary of her. Sirens and witches get along like cornbread and collard greens. But this one, she makes me a little twitchy.

“My apologies, Pike. Come take a little walk with me.”

I frown slightly, but follow her, anyway. It’s not until we’re several feet away from the tank that she says anything.

“First, let me say, I admire your courage. And try not to beat yourself up over Ana.” She stops and looks up at me.

I wince and back away a few inches. Hearing her name sets me on edge. Once again, without thinking I say, “I don’t like the smell of bullshit this early in the morning, so why don’t you just get to what you got up this early to tell me?”

She laughs, which makes me even angrier. I’m an eight year old boy she kicked with a chuckle.

“You’re more powerful and far better a man than you know.” She smiles. It’s a warm, open thing like blankets of sunshine.

It doesn’t make me feel any less uneasy.

“If you think I’m good, you’re one of the less talented witches I’ve meet in my day.”

She shrugs. “I know you dwell on what you were forced to be, instead of what you’ve done to resist it.”

With a sigh, I glance back at the tank, then at her. “Look, I don’t have time for riddles.”

“Ah, yes.” She rubs her hands together. “You have to get on with putting the world right. And that’s sort of what I want to talk to you about.”

I raise my eyebrows, a prompt to go on.

“You must convince Kiwi to reject the knowledge of who killed her sisters.”

My insides tighten. No matter how much I forget about all the bad stuff that’s about to happen, I can’t.

I shake my head. “Why?”

“Because she’ll die once she finds out, and you need her. You need her to travel back to Compound Six and watch after Sadie.”

I don’t ask how she knows about any of this. About Kiwi, about Sadie. Some witches just know things.

“Why do I need her to do that?” I ask, even though I know the answer. It’s why a fate showed herself to me. It’s why I didn’t want to see. To be her victim. It’s what I’ve been dreading since I left Sadie at Compound Six.

I’m not going to make it back.

“I think you know why. You just don’t know that it has to be Kiwi.”

I glance toward my shoes and kick the gravel. “Why?”

“It just does. She’s the only one at that place that truly cares about Sadie’s wellbeing. And Sadie must make it.”

I nod. That we can agree on. She makes it sound like destiny, but for me Sadie has to make it because Sadie has to make it. I can’t imagine a world without her.

“And…”

I look up at her in time to catch her staring intently into my face. “If she knows who kills her sisters, she will not look out for Sadie. Or for anyone. She must never know.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You know who killed her sisters?” My voice comes out hushed, as if I’m afraid furies have super hearing.

She nods. Her face twists into a grave mask.

Dread hits my stomach like some tangible thing. It makes me ache all over.

She nods as if confirming some recurring nightmare.

“You did.” She touches my arm to offer comfort. “You killed them.”

I walk back to the tank on phantom legs. I don’t know how they carry me, but they do. I get back into the tank without remembering going through the hatch. Then, I’m in my harness and we’re rolling forward again.

It all feels like a dream.

An incredibly shitty dream.

Kiwi nudges me and offers a small smile. That tangible dread shoots me in the gut again. “What did she want?”

My mouth gapes open, and I try to think of an answer for her. Finally, I just shrug. “I’ll tell you later.”

She nods, then offers me some crackers from her pack. I force myself to smile and accept them.

We enjoy a dry breakfast together.

I almost choke on mine.

We’re on the road for an hour before I nod off and memories slip in, catching me off guard. They take me before this. Before this tank. Before Compound Six. Before Kiwi. They take me to the beginning of the shit bombs. When I was in hiding with Lorna, a witch that was my best friend and saved my life.