Revik hit me again, harder. I felt pain on him and I gasped, fighting him, fighting his hands and his light. I felt his light twist out of control. I felt him there, alone, and for the briefest instant, my shield fell. I felt him trying to reach me, fighting to get to me through that dark.
Somewhere in that, that heated, hard rock in my chest broke open.
Blackness filled me. Liquid heat swam out in flames through my chest, blinding me as much as the darkness. For a long moment time stopped. I wasn’t in the room at all.
When I came back, I was crying on Revik’s lap.
I cried until I was exhausted, until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
I cried until I was gasping, fighting to speak.
I felt that thing break more. Heat pooled out of me as it broke, liquid light. I remembered everything again, even the things I’d forgotten so intensely, I didn’t realize there was anything to remember. That sick feeling in my belly worsened.
I’d seen Revik aligned with all of them against me: Kali, Dalejem, Balidor, even Cass.
They all wanted to take my child from me.
They wanted to do to her what had been done to me.
I couldn’t let it happen again. Not to her. I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
Revik’s light coiled deeper into mine. Heat blanked my mind, like a living furnace. He enveloped me in his presence, wrapped his arms around me.
I felt fierceness there, a protectiveness and love so intense I couldn’t feel anything else. I’d never felt anything like it before, not on anyone. Somewhere in that, he yanked me off his lap. I moved with his hands, and he rolled over with me, laying me on my back.
That hurt, too, but I didn’t care anymore.
I yanked at the towel around his waist, jerking it off him as he pinned my other arm to the mattress. I got most of it off…
Gods. Then he was inside me.
It felt like dying. It felt like he’d killed me for real that time.
It hurt and filled me with relief and angered me.
I was so fucking angry at him.
I saw him crying, and that harder feeling in my chest broke open again. His fingers clenched in my hair. He gripped my ass, holding me against him as he angled into me deeper, letting out a heavy sound I felt in my feet.
That emotion in his light strengthened, frightening in its intensity.
Somewhere in that, I remembered him.
I remembered who he was… the bad parts, and the good.
The weak parts, and the strong.
Everything from the past year. Everything since he’d walked into the diner that day, and tried to take me out of there. I felt the pain in him, the grief, the longing and frustration. I felt the want to be someone better than who he was… a want to smash those walls, to smash whatever it was that stood between us, even if it killed us in the process.
I remembered feeling that way with him while we were in the first tank.
I remember feeling it after, when I was in Beijing, and could scarcely feel him at all. I remembered feeling it when I thought I might kill him, when I was pretty sure Ditrini would probably kill me.
I felt his heart open. In those few seconds, I felt nothing but anger on him.
Not at me, but at pretty much everyone else.