And he who Love touches walks not in darkness.
—Plato
The next morning, and the mornings that followed, I woke up feeling strong, loose in my limbs, with a sense of true joy I hadn’t felt since I was a kid pedaling like mad down the street.
There were days I snuggled in with Fran, content to wait until the last minute before we had to run downstairs and work on matters of the intellect with Elizabeth, while on others, I’d join Uncle Cort in the kitchen and work—on breakfast.
I didn’t feel the need to walk around with a dick on all the time to complete my disguise, as it were. Besides the fact that it really just made me too sensitive and distracted me from everything, I didn’t need to. Maybe it was cutting my hair and maybe there’d been a slight shift in body language, or maybe it was simply in the way I thought about myself, but whatever it was, it was enough.
Things were different, at least with Uncle Cort. He lifted my traveling restrictions enough that I was once again allowed to wander about the neighborhood freely, and he didn’t wait too long to let me know it.
“Hey, why don’t you and Fran take today and tonight off—get out for a bit, go and do something fun?”
I turned from the skillet on the stove to stare at him, surprised. It had been well impressed upon me, and Fran as well, how important progressing my training had been—where did fun fit in with that?
“Watch, kid,” he said, nodding at the stove, and I quickly returned my attention to the task before me. This was the first time he’d trusted me solo with his secret mix and I didn’t want to muff it up.
He came to peer over my shoulder and roughed up my hair. “Doing good,” he said, approval obvious in his voice. “You can finish that, then seriously, it’s been a stressful few days—you need a break. Why don’t you guys get out of here after breakfast, okay?”
“Sure,” I agreed. A break sounded good to me, and there were a bunch of spots neither Fran nor I had gone to yet. I thought maybe we could do something extra-weird and touristy like visit the Tower of London.
He carried a tray with the rest of breakfast in his hands. “Stop by the shop before you go, will you?” he said, then left for the dining room.
When Fran came downstairs and entered, she greeted everyone with the usual good morning.
“Hey, Frankie.” I smiled up at her as she neared.
“Hey, Sammer.” She leaned over and kissed me, a kiss I returned with genuine affection, before she sat. It wasn’t until I caught the smile Elizabeth cast upon us, or the warm spark from Uncle Cort, that I realized anything different had happened.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about for a bit,” he said as Fran and I walked into the shop. A set of athames glittered on the counter, while artifacts were hung carefully from the walls. We followed him to the back, through the boxes of raw materials and past his workbench the light shimmered on through watery glass, and Fran gave my hand a quick squeeze.
There was a door for the back room—it led out to a small courtyard that could be reached from an alleyway from the sidewalk. We kept it gated, and I never went there, but out to the yard was where we headed. I felt the excitement jump from Fran’s skin as Cort waved us out the door.
“Been on my mind,” he said as he gathered us around a black-cloth-covered pile on the center of the cement. “Seems a shame your car’s in storage back in the States and you can’t drive around. A young”— he hesitated —“person needs a little freedom, needs to get around, so…” He fished into his pocket and tossed something to me. I caught it reflexively.
“This is for you.”
A key, it was a key that winked from my hand in the early morning light, and Fran grinned at me as I palmed it.
“Go ahead—what are you waiting for?” he asked, and gave me one end of the black tarp.
I’d always been the sort of person who carefully unwrapped things—I untied ribbons, delicately slit tape, unfolded corners only to fold paper back with perfect precision. It was odd, I supposed, but I suspected it was part of what made me a musician, part of what made me enjoy other things I cared about as well, the savoring of discovery, the collection of clues and hints until all was revealed.
This was no different, and I could hear Fran sigh impatiently—that made me smile to myself, because I knew she was equally meticulous—as I gathered the corners and walked forward, uncovering a chrome metal basket that jutted out with a small luggage holder that held a thick tire. I uncovered the rear wheel and its side compartments, excitement and disbelief warring in my throat. One black helmet, then another, perched on two leather seats, and by the time I’d uncovered the handlebars, the front leg shield with mounted glove box, the perfectly restored dial indicators, and the front tire, I was speechless, the canvas knotted in my hands as I stared at the onyx and chrome shine.
“Sixty-six Vespa,” Cort said. “It’s got—”
I knew what a Vespa was; I loved old cars and old bikes. “By Piaggio,” I almost whispered. “This…is a VBC Super 150.” I handed him the canvas as he smiled widely, then popped the key I’d squeezed in my hand into the ignition. I’d missed that: the sound, the pop in the lock, the unmistakable click, the resistance of the key against my fingertips and my palm as it snugged in and hit home.
“It’s been kitted out a bit,” he said offhandedly as I scooped up a helmet and handed it back to Fran, then grabbed the other one. Lightweight but solid, and it felt good under my arm.
“Electronic ignition,” I commented, observing the new work. “Single-cylinder engine?” I asked as I stroked the handlebar.
“Yeah, and automatic transmission. Tweaked your speed a bit too, you’ll get over,” he frowned as he thought, “seventy mph if you treat it nice.”
“That’s a little over one hundred twelve kilometers,” Fran told me, and I gave her a smile before I checked out the seats then popped the glove box. I laughed at the map he’d already put in it for me, wrapped about with a rubber band and a small clear plastic bag with almost three pounds’ worth of change, and a compass.
Mine? This was mine? I could go anywhere, I could, I could… “I don’t know what to say,” I told him honestly, “I just—”
He messed my hair again. “Seats are new, gas is full. All it needs is someone to ride it.”
Still I stared, unable to convey how much it meant, how much I appreciated it. “Go on,” he said and patted my shoulder, “you two, get out of here.” And he turned back to the door of the shop. “Oh, by the way,” he said as put his hand to the knob, “take a ride over to the local Green, that’ll give you a feel for the streets before you head out—use your American license if you get stopped, and we’ll get you a regular one next week sometime. Oh, and skip the visit to London Bridge—go by Tower instead. They’ve a tour and all that, and then you can go on to visit the Tower proper, if you’re still of a mind.”
He grinned at us both before he closed the door.
“Did you know about this?” I turned and asked Fran.
Her eyes shone a pure gold and her smile beamed at me. “Yes—and this is yours too,” she told me and reached into her coat, “because I know you never button up.”
She put a scarf about my neck, one of those wide, long ones that would fold and wrap properly, done in the MacRae tartan. “Besides,” she said as she tucked its ends into my coat, accidentally-on-purpose smoothing over my breasts to ensure it lay right, “since your haircut, your neck is almost bare.”
I put an arm around her waist and pulled her to me. “Thank you,” I said quietly, then kissed her as her fingers caressed my cheeks.
“Do you want to drive?” I asked her.
She bit her lip and smiled at me in a way that only gave one message. “Maybe…later. Let’s go.”
*
After about twenty minutes of zipping around the neighborhood, we were off, and we had more fun getting there and back than doing the actual tour. The Tower of London, other than the crown jewels, was a rather grim place, from the legend of the ravens—when the last ravens left the Tower, the Empire would end—to its often violent history: there was a heavy cast, a weight in the air of the past, proof that events did indeed embed themselves for all time in the Aethyr.
“Hey, can you feel things?” I asked Fran. Even though we might not have been learning exactly the same things, I was sure there had to be some similarities, especially if as Cort said, she would be bound to the Circle, and to the Light as well.
“What do you mean?”
“You know,” I shrugged, then waved a hand about to take in everything, “pick up on the traces left, that sort of thing.”
She gave me a slow grin. “Can you?”
The spark of friendly challenge in her eyes and the angle of her chin made me smile. “Let’s see.”
We went through the halls and galleries, extending that extra sense, allowing the memories imprinted on the walls to form images in our minds that could be described. We’d narrate what we “saw” to one another before we’d look up the history; we were both surprisingly accurate. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise.
It was more than enough after a while, tiring as well as depressing given what we were picking up on, so we cheered ourselves after by taking a detour over to the dockyards, where we found the tiniest chip shop along the harbor, a small newsstand-like construction, and after I insisted on paying for the well-battered and deliciously fried fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper and soaking through a paper bag, we amused ourselves by warming our fingers as we ate them, bumping against each other while we walked along one of the piers.
“Hey,” I asked with sudden inspiration, “there’s this new club the band keeps telling me is great—wanna go?”
“Sounds cool. Do you know how to get there?” she teased, her eyes and smile bright under the lamplight in the twilight.
Her smile was killer, and I couldn’t help but respond to it. I crumpled what was left of the paper bag in my hand and shoved it in my coat pocket as I leaned closer to her. “I’m well supplied for these things, you know,” I told her, then wrapped my fingers into the thick wool of the peacoat. “I…have a map.” I gently pulled her to me as her hand came up and cupped my neck, while the other eased under my jacket, over my hip.
“That’s not all you’ve got,” she murmured against my lips as her fingers slipped against my back pocket, traced the projection of what they found, and kissed me.
From the sure way our lips moved and the sensual haze that clouded around us, even if I wasn’t completely sure of where we were going, map or no, I knew where we’d end up.
*
We eventually found a phone so I could call and let my uncle and Elizabeth know that we intended to stay out a bit later than originally planned—I didn’t want them to worry too much—and after promising both of them that I’d call if there was a problem, we were set and on our way.
Hannah, Kenny, and Graham had described it well. It was an old factory, and a little placard right next to the door claimed it as a one-time refuge during the— The rest was pasted over with a bit of laminated cardboard that read: “The original scoundrel who owned this place was mad as a hatter, a dashing dresser, a scoffer of parking laws, a lover of wine, and a master of the tango, both long and short forms. In short, a legend. We liked him—lots. Welcome to SPIT.”
A faint hum, a hint of beat, of rhythm, came through the door itself, which was spray-painted with a large, black message: “You don’t know SPIT.” I gave Fran a quick smile over my shoulder, then opened the door.
Even without knowing that the building had survived the industrial revolution, the moment we walked through the door and onto the worn, broad brick steps that flowed down in huge half circles to the main level, there was no hiding the age of the place. There was no missing the blast of sound either, the low sensual throb that pulsed under the electric buzz of people and the pattern of emotions, muted by the brick, that came wafting through the air.
I handed the bouncer a few bills, then asked where the bar was.
“First time, huh?” he asked with a wide grin as he handed me back my change.
“Here, yes,” I agreed.
“Well, don’t miss the show—or the house drink.”
I wasn’t certain I wanted to drink anything called “spit,” and he smiled at my expression.
“It’s not spit, really,” he assured me. “It smells like a suntan and it’s a real treat. Get one for your girl,” he said, nodding at Fran next to me. “She’ll like it.”
Down the steps we went, through another corridor, following the beat that became a buzz under our feet until we passed through a darkened archway and there…
I hadn’t known how thick the walls were, how effectively the combination of layers of brick and iron could contain the thoughts, the feelings, the nonsubtle sendings of intent, but because there was nowhere for them to flow, they gathered, concentrated, a thick soup of sensation, accentuated by the music that poured through the speakers, the press of bodies that moved to it under the lightning strikes of color and the illuminated panels that played a variety of images, only to darken as others lit up. Somewhere, farther in through the cavern, was an unlit stage, hinted and highlighted by the occasional glancing strobe.
I stood still for a moment, letting it all run through me as I peered through the dimness for the promised bar. I felt the lift under my skin, the rise of my blood, the automatic body response to the call that sounded out across worlds, and the heady, reckless feeling that accompanied the unmistakable, unavoidable sense of hunger.
I shut down the extension of myself that echoed through the Aethyr, shut out the sense of others as well until all I felt directly was Fran’s presence, the barrier that surrounded us both, and the remains of the tide the wild call had roused through me. When Fran’s thumb brushed along the column of my neck while her fingers tickled under my collar, we exchanged a glance, and I knew she’d felt it too.
It figured. It simply figured. Soho may have been a hunting ground, but Spit? Was a lair.
*
“Dance or drink first?”
“Hmm?”
“Dance or drink first?” Fran repeated as we came to stand near one of the many steel columns, the bare supports for the floor above us, and she gave me a smile.
I glanced around and decided there was no time like the present to know for certain whether or not my “hide in plain sight” plan would work.
“Drink,” I said and could feel the tiniest quirk of a grin work my mouth.
“Wait here, then,” she asked, “otherwise you won’t let me pay for them.”
I rolled my eyes at her and was about to argue the point when she curled her fingers into the edges of my jacket and tugged me to her. The kiss she gave me was purely sensual—and she didn’t merely slide her tongue between my very willing lips, she pressed her body to mine and kissed my mouth with intent, an intent I answered even as it made my knees loosen, made me force a hand around her waist and the other to the nape of her neck, everything forgotten but the race of blood through me, through her, the very real need to—
“Wait,” she whispered into my ear, and leaving me with another small kiss, she strode through the crowd to the bar.
With my heart rate and my knees unwilling to let me move very far, I leaned my back against the steel column and fumbled into my pocket for a cigarette and a light as I watched her, the set to her shoulders, the toss of her head, the pure “don’t fuck with me” confidence she radiated as she moved. She was beautiful, on every level, inside and out, and I knew it.
Fran, I thought, was every inch, every bit, the golden champion everyone had so admired in high school.
It had been…interesting, I reflected.
When we finally had “switched,” since I’d promised we would, it had been a little awkward at first, and as I caressed her hips, untwisted the strap that had gotten caught up and smoothed it along the silken skin, I realized something: she was afraid, afraid of her own strength, her own power, and as much as she’d helped me find and explore myself, she hadn’t done that for herself, not really.
Something had changed, between us, within me. She accepted me, welcomed me, let me be whatever I was, without reservation, without hesitation, from the embrace of my cock within her to the deepest hurt of my heart, a hurt we shared honestly. And it was the sharing, the sincere and accepting acknowledgment, that somehow set yet another part of me free, a part even I didn’t know was there; it allowed me to love her with an ease I hadn’t had before.
As her friend, I wanted to help, wanted her to know herself; as her lover, I wanted to see that, to feel it, because I saw it so clearly in her. Her bravery awed me, left me humbly honored knowing that she would dare so much, face so much, test herself so deeply, with me, for me.
I watched the muscles play in her back as she took another step away from the bed, and she adjusted whatever she needed to. I took in and admired the fall of her head, the drape of her hair as she set her hands on her hips, then glanced down her own body. And then, suddenly, something shifted for her, in her—I not only witnessed it, I could feel the switch.
She squared her shoulders and tossed her head, and as she turned to me with the light from the window glancing from her eyes, the tiger no longer prowled behind them, trapped within. From the bronze cast that lit her skin in that same light, the jut of her jaw, the proud, proud set of her body, she was the great hunting cat, the lion unleashed.
She really was. That beautiful body, the muscles that built her shoulders, stretched across her chest, the lush breasts I couldn’t fill my hands enough with, nipples dark, hard, tight…the taper of her ribs to her waist and the split, the narrow channel that led down her stomach to her navel, down to the lovely curve, the demarcation sharply heightened by the dark leather that skimmed skin over skin on compact hips. She wore that cock nice and low, good and proud. She wore it perfectly.
I wanted that, wanted her, all of her, and I did my best to let her know it. “God, how I want you,” I told her, the words barely audible above the beat of my heart. “You…that…you’re just so fucking hot!”
“You think so,” she stated more than asked, her voice silky and low as she neared.
I glanced up at her eyes, the bright flame in them. “Yeah,” I breathed against her lips and I wrapped my arms around her and drew her down, the warm fit and weight of her on me very welcome as I covered us against the chill of autumn.
Fran sucked the tip of my tongue, drawing it between her lips and into her mouth the same way she did my clit as her legs fit along, then became a velvet slide between mine.
“Sammy,” she whispered when she took her mouth from mine, “is it really okay for me to want you like this, to want to do this?”
A wayward lock fell down over her face, tickled against my neck, and I carefully stroked it behind her ear, reading the desire, uncertainty, and fear that swam in her eyes. I brushed my thumb against her cheek. “Yes,” I assured her, then pressed my lips against her neck to confirm it with the taste of her on my tongue. I reached down between us and guided her cock to me. “I want you,” I told her and gently bit the delicate skin under her jaw. “I want you to.”
She drew in a slight shuddering breath before her body closed over mine, then caught my mouth with hers. She kissed me with a deliberate intensity she’d never shown before, a commanding thoroughness that delivered her intent, a sending of riotous sparks that flared under my skin while her cock slid between my thighs.
Her fingers covered mine and I let go so I could smooth my hands along her face, her neck, the span of her shoulders and the muscles of her arms, to feel for myself the contained power and the strength of the woman above me, the tremor that moved through her, the result of her restraint as she played her cock against my pussy, and the pounding in my chest was painful, savage. My breath caught, became a solid weight in my throat, and in that one very naked second, I realized why: I was scared.
“Sammer,” Fran groaned into my neck as her cock pressed with contained urgency against my entrance, “do we love each other?”
“We do,” I assured her and myself. Still, I couldn’t help the shiver that ran through me.
“But…but we’re not in love, right?” Her eyes searched mine and I searched deep for the answer, in me, in her.
There was no denying we loved each other in ways so profound I had no way of defining them, and I knew she couldn’t either. But there was something… In these conscious moments, where there was time to reflect, to analyze, it was almost as if there was one last step, one last barrier held in place only by the fact that it seemed that if we said it out loud, put it into actual words and admitted this…this indefinable thing, it would plunge us both into something neither one of us could handle.
“I think…” I began as I stared up into her eyes, caught once more by what I saw in them while I reached to skim my fingertips against her face, to loosely twine them in her hair over and over again. What I read, what I felt, from her, for her….it wasn’t something we could say, I could say, only show. “I don’t know.”
She shifted her weight and caressed my cheek, traced my lips with her fingertip. “That’s okay,” she said and smiled so gently it pierced my heart, made my eyes sting. It made the fear recede and it completely disappeared when she lowered her mouth to mine. “I think I don’t know either.”
If there was a kiss that could convey everything someone felt and meant, even with the meld we already shared, this was that kiss: honest love and muted longing, real friendship and unmistakably deep desire. It was the melody that played over the deeper, anchor notes of pain, linked in perfect harmony and timing to the rhythm of life.
As strange as it may seem, there was a safety in that, a security in knowing that while I couldn’t, or perhaps, wouldn’t, name what we shared, we did share it, and we loved each other.
We held each other carefully, tenderly. “I do know that I love you,” she whispered as she moved against me, erasing everything in the building need that made me burn, burn with a flame that licked along my legs as I skated my fingers down her spine, then fanned them across the toned and tight flex of her ass.
“Me too,” I murmured against her lips, “I love you too.” It was such a relief to finally say it, to say it and know that she knew what I meant, the way I meant it, how much I meant it. And then I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, all I could do was hold her tight, cling to her with everything I was, everything I could be as finally, finally…she filled me.
There was the initial slow breaching of entrance that was a combination of thrill and bruise and I was surprised, the shock a lurch in my chest, that it actually hurt. But she pushed past that and farther into me, replacing the discomfort with the absofuckinglutely incredible slide of her cock fully within me, stretching me, and I couldn’t help but bear down on that.
“Oh…” It was a soft and beautiful sound in my ear as once again she rested her body on mine and wrapped her arms around me. “This…feels really good.”
“It does—you do,” I told her, reveling in the way we moved together, the profound sense of satiety at the complete body contact. Even my skin felt full.
It wasn’t at all the same as other ways we’d shared love, but ultimately it wasn’t very different, either, and it was more than really good, the effort and strain of muscles that shifted under my hands, the glaze of her belly as her breasts grazed against me, and the clear, clear knowledge—beyond the hurts, the loss, the past—that I loved her, I really, truly loved Fran, my Frankie, for herself. It blazed through me, a heat that moved into my chest as she took my mouth with hers again, and I knew, I knew, she felt it too.
Soon. It was too soon to end the sheer beauty of our embrace as my body tensed below hers and Fran herself was a sexy, sweet encouragement, in my ear with every hitch of her breath and the low song in her throat, the taste of her tongue on mine, the deliberate drive of her dick deep inside me, the heavy wet thrust. Her hands…her hands touched me everywhere with a love and longing that made me ache with her desire.
“Don’t stop,” I begged her, speaking to the moment between us, what she was doing, to the pure clarity of how completely she loved me. It made me desperate to be even closer to her, to reach through until her very heart touched mine through the skin that slicked over hot, working muscles, the breasts that now pressed firmly against mine with the sublime ache of coalescence as we held each other in the ultimate connect, through the air and the Aethyr.
I gripped and slid my hands along her back, to her waist, her gorgeous ass, wrapping my fingers around the leather that fit so snugly against her, then unable to stop running my fingers through the beautiful hot wet that lay beneath it.
“Baby…please…don’t stop.”
“I won’t.” She caught my face in her hands and as she stared into my eyes, I saw the glint of tears in hers. “Sweetheart, I promise—I won’t.”
There was so much she meant in that, so much she was telling me, the rapport between us once again perfect, the sending of emotion and intent so clear that I let my body speak the words I couldn’t say any other way as I thrust my fingers into the open softness of her cunt and I came, wrapped around the lion that roared in my heart.
And still, that wasn’t enough for her as she covered me with kisses stained with sweat and tears, a burning trail until she had me in her mouth, and I understood, I so very much understood her need to do that, to touch and taste the place her cock had been, because I had done that, had needed it too. But I also understood something else: I might not speak my pain, but she wouldn’t voice her desire—and what she wanted, what she really wanted was so very easy for me to give.
“Frankie…” I spoke past the eloquent way she sucked on my renewed hard-on, dipped her tongue inside me with a precision that was about to make speech or even thought impossible as I stroked my fingers through her hair. “Baby, come here,” I asked and held my hands out to her.
She raised her eyes, then folded her fingers around mine, and once more she covered me with her body, her cock dancing between us.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Do you—”
“Shh.” I hushed her with a kiss, explored her mouth with my tongue. I let my hands, let my body guide her until I was where I knew she wanted me, and she had what she needed.
“I’m gonna come, baby…” Her voice was a hot breath behind my ear that flowed down my neck, her arm wrapped tight around my waist as she jerked me off, the hard muscles of her belly working smooth along my spine as her fingers clutched through mine.
“Oh yeah,” I groaned out, “come just like this, just like this inside me.” She felt so fucking good, and she felt so fucking right and I could feel how good she felt for herself, in herself, in me, and then there was no room for words, no room for air, no room for anything but Fran, my Frankie, beautiful and beloved, filling me exquisitely while her fingers were frantic on my clit, and over and under was the beat, always the beat, of my heart, of her heart through me as she came taking me with her, to her, her lips so wondrously soft on the nape of my neck, her body a beautiful warm weight on my back until we rested, amazed, sated, overwhelmed by the exchange.
We lay awake for what seemed like hours afterward, reassuring each other of the naked power in touch, of the very real enjoyment of our bodies as they were, and we finally slept to the whisper touch of kisses and the incredible clutch upon the flutter of fingers within which in the end we both preferred.
So with that on my mind and her kiss still fresh on my lips, the flame that flared before my eyes surprised me as a voice I recognized said, “You’re the prettiest boy I’ve seen in a while.” And as I recovered and accepted the light for my cig, I looked up into Kenny’s eyes.
“Kenny, it’s me,” I told him and laughed at the searching look he gave me before he righted himself and grinned.
“Bloody hell, mate,” he chuckled, then clapped my arm, “you look just like my kind of boy, and if we weren’t in a band together, I’d definitely do you anyway.” He grinned broadly. “Unless of course, that doesn’t trouble you?”
“And what exactly is it that shouldn’t trouble her?” Fran asked as she stepped up with a pint for me and one for herself. She smiled sweetly at Kenny, but her tone was exactly like Elizabeth’s: silk over steel.
I took the mug from her and she casually draped her now-free hand across my shoulder.
“Nothing at all,” Kenny answered hastily.
It didn’t require any extra sense of anything, or even the connection between us, to know that Fran had not only heard the earlier exchange, but was less than pleased about it.
“I’m not sleeping with you, Kenny,” I told him very deliberately and I smiled at him as I eased my arm around Fran’s waist to reassure her. I slipped my fingers beneath her waistband, scrunching her tee out of the way a bit so I could smooth them against her satiny skin.
“Right-o. No touchy, then,” Kenny agreed and saluted us both with his drink. “But still, you’ll make a boy turn his head, that’s for sure. Oh hey, Hannah and Graham will be here in,” he peered at his watch through the ambient flicker, “about fifteen minutes. And what’re you doing out and about anyway? Isn’t this a school night for you or something like that?”
Fran took a sip from her mug, then snuggled closer and brushed her lips against my ear before leaning against me.
“Night off,” I answered shortly, because suddenly the skin on the back of my neck prickled, sending a cold shiver through me that I covered by shifting my stance along the column, but then two things happened that took those thoughts out of my head.
“Wotcher,” Graham greeted with a grin that turned into a wide smile as he caught sight of Fran’s head on my shoulder.
“Hey.” I couldn’t help smiling back; I was the one with Fran, after all.
“Hi,” she said and I could hear her smile as I felt her slide her thumb into my waistband.
“Can’t believe you’re out tonight—great band’s coming on!” he said enthusiastically.
“Yeah?” I may have sounded a bit more distracted than I’d meant to because Fran was skimming her fingers—a light little stroke that fit exactly to the circumference in my back pocket—teasing against the denim in the same way she would before she entered me, and it sent bolts of arousal flaring through me. I kissed her temple, let my fingers slide over the ridge of her hip, and pulled her that much closer to me, pressing and massaging against the warm skin, an unconscious imitation of how I’d move within her, until I suddenly realized what I was doing. I didn’t stop, though.
“Absolutely smashing—they’re playing under a different name, of course, trying out new stuff, and”—he turned as a hand grabbed his arm and resolved into Hannah’s face above his shoulder through the flicker—“perfect timing!”
“Of course—I’m a drummer,” she teased, before she saw me. “Ann, is that you or your brother?”
I laughed. “It’s me—and I’m my brother,” I joked.
“Looks fantastic,” she said and Fran’s grip shifted slightly as Hannah’s gaze seemed to almost automatically travel down past my waist. But in the next moment all was forgotten, because the lights went out for half a second and the most amazing sound flew through the air before the stage lit up.
Graham, I decided, knew a lot about dicks, but less about music. If this was the new “dark-wave” stuff he’d decried weeks and weeks ago, then he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then again, he had said this was a fantastic band—maybe this was the exception to his rule, because Floorshow played the most amazing music I’d ever heard—and if it was dark, it spoke to me, and when it moved, it was with a sensual thrum that needed no translation. For the first time in my life, I was completely transported by the live performance of music, and I got it, I really got it. That was the music I wanted to play, to write, to breathe, to be to, and I listened and stared, rapt, lost in rhythm and melody, carried by the muscular pulse of the bass as they played.
When Fran wasn’t next to me, people kept grabbing my rear end. Correction—men kept grabbing my rear. One particular guy I’d bumped into, or more accurately, was bumped into by on the way back from the bathroom was a bit more aggressive with his come-on.
“Nice ankh,” he said after he’d jostled me. He pointed at the charm that hung over my shirt with his glass.
I gave him a quick glance. He was pretty enough, several inches taller than me, with dark hair swept to one side and curving to his jaw, dark, dark eyes under full lashes that made his face look delicate. He wore the requisite black long-sleeve tee that hugged his frame and the single hoop earring that so many favored. Kenny’s sort, I thought as I gave him a brief nod in acknowledgment.
I turned to make my way through the press back to the group and he followed me through the crowd.
“You’re pretty, I’m pretty—let’s cut the bullshit and get out of here,” he said almost in my ear.
Startled he’d gotten so close so quickly, I almost stopped, but didn’t. “You’re not my type,” I told him and kept walking. I considered opening my awareness a bit, but decided against it. If I could see “them,” they could see me, and that…that’s what I was trying to avoid. In the meantime though, there everyone was, exactly where I’d left them.
“Oh, what, you’re straight? So we’ll get a girl too, if you want—I can do that, it’d be pretty hot.”
Later I’d realize that he, like Kenny, had thought I was a guy and I’d be happy about it for several reasons, not the least of which was that it meant my idea worked, but this had to stop and I turned to tell him exactly what he could do with his suggestion.
“Paolo—you made it!”
The smirk he surveyed me with changed to a friendly smile as we both looked over my shoulder. “Hannah.”
She stepped next to me and reached out to shake his hand. “I see you’ve met our bassist,” she said with a smile. “Since Graham’s sure he’s taking that singing gig with the Waves or whatever, Paolo will audition with us next Sunday,” she told me.
Well, that was certainly news, but I’d been schooled well enough not to let my surprise show. Good for Graham, I thought as Hannah officially introduced us. He’d said all along that was what he preferred; I was glad he’d gotten what he wanted.
“Ah,” Paolo said after the ritual exchange of names, “my apologies. I know band rules quite well.” He smiled as he shook my hand and was pleasant enough for the rest of the night.
I got nothing from him, not a read, not a pulse, just the faint flicker of energy that surrounded every human being; he was completely closed to me, not even the attraction or whatever it was he’d professed evident. I dismissed it as my being too closed, too guarded to get the usual read that the brief contact could have given me. But I should have known then not to trust him.
“That’s right,” Kenny said as he shook his hand next, “Ms. Anarchy here follows the no-touchy tradition.”
Paolo raised an eyebrow at the “Ms.” part and gave me a searching glance that I returned with a blank stare.
Someone told me, and I don’t remember if it was Paolo himself or Hannah, that he’d played guitar semiprofessionally for the last six years and that he was the son of the Brazilian ambassador to France, or his cultural attaché, or something like that.
It meant nothing to me. If he played well, great, if he didn’t…there were plenty of guitar players around, I was certain. Meanwhile, the music was too good, the dancing lively, and the combination blanketed out quite a bit of any other sense. Here and there, I’d catch the trace of hounds, the circling search, the occasional flash of triumph as they found potentials to play with. But there were also moments, the random send that I’d catch, not from Fran herself but nearby, the very edge of a dark cloud that would surround her. But when she’d catch my eye, she’d throw me an amazing smile, and it would all disappear.
When it really was way too late and time to leave, I finally managed to realize that Fran had perhaps had a bit more to drink than I had. That was her prerogative—she wasn’t under the same restrictions I was, or so I assumed.
“I think…you’re driving,” she said with a smile after we said our various good-byes and I retrieved our things from the coat check.
“Am I, now?” I drawled at her, and drawn by the bright sparkle in her eyes, the slight flush to her cheeks, I leaned over and kissed her. God, I loved kissing her, and I learned a few things in the embrace of her lips. The first was that any natural barrier she’d had seemed gone, her feelings were on the surface and perfectly readable, and I understood exactly why I’d been asked not to get drunk: Fran was wide open and vulnerable.
The other thing I learned was not only that she loved me, I knew that already, but that she held images of us, a future she was thinking about and—there, I saw it, the dark cloud edge and it reached over her and toward me.
That caught me cold. I hadn’t even come close to being recognized, and I was rather certain I’d left no aethyric trace, but my energy, the unique signature that marked me as an individual was bound to and threaded through Fran’s—and if she’d been read, it was inevitable that I’d been sensed as well. And once I was found—and I had some idea what kind of damage it might do to Fran to accomplish that—it was a direct line through me to Cort, to Elizabeth, to the yet-unknown others that were the Circle. It would take less than the half second of realization before whoever was doing the sending actually found me.
Not wanting to startle or scare her, I gently ended our kiss. It took no effort on my part to break the connecting reach, to bolster her barrier with mine, and it was the work of less than another five seconds to seek the source.
About fifteen feet away, a knot of about a dozen or so people tramped up the stairs, Kenny and Paolo within it. Somewhere in that crowd was an adept hound.
I didn’t have time to search further—I wanted Fran safely out of there—and besides, I’d caught a unique signature. I’d find whoever it was on the Astral and deal with it there.
As we rode home, Fran’s arms snugly around my waist and her head on my back with a warmth that reached through my coat and made me feel equally warm within, a sinking feeling filled me anyway. I knew I had made a huge mistake: I’d let myself forget this had to end.
*
The chill of the ride home had driven whatever effects the few beers Fran had had from her system, and once inside, upstairs and in our room, we went slowly, prolonging the exploration and the dance, to love with a tenderness that made me want to weep because I knew what we shared was rare and precious, and too soon it would be gone.
She was still so amazingly wide open to me, her love for me so clearly distinct from her love for Nina, a difference she laid bare before me as she let me see myself through her eyes. And I let her do the same, to see for herself what I saw, what I felt.
I held her in my arms so she could sleep with her head pillowed under my chin and it hit me so hard it made my head reel: of course I couldn’t love Fran “that way,” how could I? They were different people. I loved Fran her way, the way I was supposed to, distinctly and completely. She was my Frankie.
That shook me, shook me in so many ways. There was no one I could name that I loved who wasn’t gone. I cared, so very deeply cared, for Cort, for Elizabeth, but I hadn’t—I couldn’t—allow myself the luxury of more than that. I had more than allowed that here. I had done the thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do after my father had died; I had allowed grief to open the door for familiarity and comfort, and then not only permitted, but encouraged and welcomed it to become so much, so very much more. And now, having allowed it, I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t what it was, or deny what I felt, even if I couldn’t ever actually tell her.
I had been completely selfish in allowing it to happen—and at what cost? I wasn’t concerned that I could be read and tracked through Fran; I could take care of myself. What scared me all over again was that in using her to reach me—and that in and of itself infuriated me almost past the point of rationality—she could be, she would be hurt, and not in mere physical ways either. She’d be hunted on the Astral, haunted by dreams, her mind clouded, her heart used against her, to her own pain, to her own regret, and she didn’t deserve that, my golden champion didn’t deserve that.
Some of my thoughts and feelings undoubtedly translated to her as I held her even closer.
“Love you, Sammer,” she whispered and kissed the skin that lay beneath her lips, over my heart, and she tightened her hold a moment before falling peacefully back to sleep.
“I love you too,” I whispered into the waves and curls of the wheaten gold of her hair and kissed the top of her head. “God, Frankie, I love you so much—I just can’t keep you.”
I allowed myself a small scatter of tears before I swallowed them down. It was an indulgence I couldn’t afford: I had plans to make, things to learn, and little time to do it. First things first. I had to speak with my uncle in the morning—there were other things that had been left in storage back in the States, including my father’s footlocker; I wanted it. And I wanted to finally learn how and why my father had been killed, because I had more than the niggling suspicion it would hold clues for me.
I would spend however many hours or days it took to track that hound—fuck my work with Elizabeth for the day, this was more important. I wondered for half a moment if this was a test like so many other things had been, then decided it didn’t matter—I knew what I had to do.
I’d been very well trained, and while I might not have my full strength yet, I knew what to do and I knew I could do it. Oh, it wouldn’t be a full-on hunt, just a small one, small enough for me to find the hound, then trace it back to the Material. I was still furious over the attempted breach of Fran, and until that cooled or until matters warranted it, I would do nothing else. But I wanted a good look at the enemy because as above, so below, and if things had moved on this level, something else had already progressed even further on another. I knew enough to know that something major was headed my way; I needed to know where it would come from. And as for Fran, well, I’d talk with Elizabeth. I needed to know more about what she could and couldn’t do, then create both the shields and the distance that needed to be there, to keep her safe, or at least, as safe as I could.
I hated that, hated to think about it, hated knowing I had to do it, hated even more the hurt I would cause her and I felt something inside me tear and break just imagining it.
For a moment, I wondered if there was a choice, if perhaps I could share any of this with Fran, discuss it with her, but as her breath warmed my chest, I remembered how determined she had been when she’d been asked if she was ready, the fire in her eyes when she said she’d do whatever it took. It was the same fire that burned from her heart through her eyes when she looked at me, blazed from her when we touched…God, she loved me, and I knew just how much she loved me, but I loved her too, and I’d already risked her enough. Fran might be willing to go with me to hell, but there was no way in this world or any other that I would lead her there. There was no other choice.
This time, I did weep.