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In the darkness, a succession of visions hit. Each one more debilitating than the last, and I bellowed with pain, but my cries were soundless in this horrifying black pit. Death intruded in many forms, starting with my sister and then my older brother. My mother and father were next and my heart thundered in agony.
Some of the memories were mine, but a great many were sourced elsewhere. Memories of a concrete prison blanketed me, and the deaths in that place were just as violent as my mother’s. Other memories layered over my parents’ memories, and until I saw an infant fitted with an explosive onesy and Jennifer’s wide eyes, I realized I was seeing the more devastating moments in Steve’s life. His experiences were even more painful than mine.
A blood mist blanketed the room along with a sound that pressed on my eardrums, sending a shot of torture through my entire form.
I sat up screaming, the sound like rough sandpaper drawn over lead escaped from my throat. Valerie stood next to my bed with a syringe in her hand and a panicked look on her face like the devil had just jumped out from the closet.
I couldn’t catch my breath, not with the dozens of deaths now emblazoned in my memory. When the room started to spin, I dropped my head to my knees, forcing myself to breathe, despite the energy each labored breath drew.
A cool sensation covered the back of my neck and I turned, meeting Valerie’s much calmer gaze. She removed the washcloth and dipped it in the bowl of cool water before pressing it against my skin again.
“How long this time?” I asked.
She uttered a hysterical laugh and met my gaze.
I glanced around at the surroundings, confirming I was still at the house and then back at her. I sat up slowly, wincing at the deep ache present in every muscle. That alone gave me a clue it was more than just a couple of hours. “How long?” I said, this time with more force.
“A couple of weeks,” she whispered. “And your heart stopped twice.” Her eyes filled with tears and she showed me the syringe. “I thought I’d have to use this again.”
“What is that?” I asked, homing in on the long, nasty looking needle.
“Adrenaline shot to restart your heart,” she said. “My healing powers did nothing this time.”
“Holy shit,” I said and rubbed my face, trying to grasp the current situation through the clutter of so many horrific memories. “What happened after I passed out?” I asked without the thick stutter. It seems the connection between my brain and mouth wasn’t quite as bad as it was before I dropped into memory land.
She bit her lip and tears formed again. “Tom was hauled in for killing Raven’s father.”
“What?” I snapped, clearly recalling the entire situation. If anything, it was self-defense.
“They came to the same conclusion,” Valerie said, reading my thoughts. “I was the only solid witnesses. Steve hadn’t fully come to at that moment and Jennifer focused her attention on him, not the situation. Of course, both Raven and Tom were biased, based on what that bastard did to them, and you were knocked out cold. They wanted to bring you to the hospital, but I explained I was a doctor, and you had already been under home care for seizures. They left me in charge of your case as long as we had the local visiting nurse in daily. The only thing we really couldn’t explain were the bite marks, we just said he arrived with those wounds.”
I gave a nod and rubbed my face again, before swinging my legs over the side of the bed. That’s when the I.V. line tugged and I glanced down at the back of my right hand. I gave Valerie a raised eyebrow.
“You needed nutrients,” she said and gave me a shrug. “I didn’t know how long you’d be out and I certainly didn’t want you to starve to death.”
I offered what I hoped was a smile and her head dipped to her chest. The shake of her shoulders clued me in to how difficult the last two weeks had been for her. She thought she’d have to go years without me again, and I reached out with my un-tethered hand and pulled her into my arms.
“Shhh,” I cooed in her ears while she trembled and sobbed. When she finally stilled, I held her a few minutes longer, smoothing the hair away from her face before I pulled away. “I think I know who possessed Raven’s father, but I thought Damian killed him,” I said and she met my gaze.
“You remember?”
“Yes. Some things, but not everything. There are still some big ass gaps and I think those are my true memories.”
“You aren’t stuttering nearly as much anymore,” she whispered and sniffled.
I couldn’t help the smile that surfaced. “You sound disappointed.”
“No, just surprised.” She peeled out of my arms, crossed to the box of tissues on my dresser, and used one before turning back to me. “How far back did the memories go?”
I sighed and put my hand out for her to remove the I.V. while I figured out the first memory from the clutter in my head. She stepped next to me and began pulling the tape off, and with it any hair that had grown on the back of my hand. It took me a moment to pinpoint the timeframes of the memories. It all blended, folding in on each other like a complex puzzle, but I think the first memory was that of my grandfather’s funeral. “I only saw death and destruction,” I said, meeting her gaze. “Starting with my father’s dad’s funeral and ending with my mother’s death.”
She nodded like she understood.
“Coupled with the vision I had at Tom’s, I’d say that brings me up to date.”
She paused and looked at me, her features filled with skepticism and the laugh she uttered told me I had only scratched the surface.
“I think I was looking at my mother and father’s memories.” I rubbed my hand after she pulled out the last of the tube. “I also saw the things Steve has seen,” I said.
“Okay,” she stretched the word out like there was more.
“Besides my own, whose memory am I missing?”
She just stared at me and then turned away.
“Yours?”
She nodded, and glanced over her shoulder. “When we first touched, the powers that Steve transferred to me reshuffled, leaving me with only the healing thing and you with everything else. When that happened, we swapped memories.” She gave me a shrug.
“Wouldn’t that have been part of my memory, too?”
Her eyebrows arched as she considered this before nodding.
“Is that all?”
She slowly shook her head. “You said you only saw the deaths. If you had gotten everything, the first death you would have seen would have been from over twenty-five hundred years ago.”
I blinked and my jaw slowly opened. “I have Damian’s memories?”
“Yep. And so do I. There’s a lot of shit in our heads.”
“Whose heads?”
“Damian, Steve, Jennifer, you, and me.” She shrugged and took a seat on the bed next to me. “If your parents were alive, they’d probably be in the memory share category as well.”
“And yet, I still don’t know why two years of my life were spent in the dark,” I said and hopped off the bed. The adult diapers I was wearing had to go, and I needed to feel clean after the litany of deaths I witnessed. With a pair of boxers and shorts in hand, I crossed to the bathroom, leaving Valerie to do whatever she needed to restore my bedroom from the sick room it had become.
The hot shower felt good, but after expending the energy to clean every inch of my body, my reserves were drained. I shut off the water and pulled the shower curtain back. I was tapped, and I sat down on the edge of the tub before I collapsed.
The door opened and I looked up at Valerie’s soft gaze. She didn’t need to ask if I needed her help. She already knew, and slipped inside the steamy room. The towel she draped across my shoulders felt good, and I leaned into her when she put her arm around me.
“I should have warned you,” she said and I huffed.
I didn’t remember being this exhausted when I woke from my coma. “I am so damned tired,” I whispered.
She helped me dry off and get into my shorts before aiding me back to the bedroom. Valerie guided me into the chair and I stared at the stripped bed, wishing it was made and I could just crawl into it and curl up around her.
“What you need is food,” she said and pointed to the desk next to me.
The small serving of soup did nothing for me, but I sighed and picked up the bowl, forgoing the spoon. The moment the warm broth hit my stomach, you would have thought I hadn’t eaten in years. Like a switch had turned on, my exhaustion morphed to a ravenous need for sustenance. Not only did I forget about being tired, but the soup revived me from the core out, and I drained the bowl, suppressing the urge to lick the china clean.
Valerie let out a stifled laugh and I met her gaze.
“I’m hungry,” I said, stating the obvious since my stomach was now making a grumbling racket.
“Let that settle and if you’re still hungry in a few minutes, we can go downstairs. I just want to make sure it’s not going to decide to come up.”
I rolled my eyes and put the bowl back on the desk. A yawn caught me off guard and I stretched with it. In the middle of my stretch, my stomach clenched, sending a horrific cramp that pulled me into a ball, freezing my breath in my lungs.
Breathing was not something that I could live without and I fought for air while my chest resisted. Each breath drawn amplified the pain until my seized muscles recognized the oxygen flowing and loosened.
I glanced up at Valerie. Her features remained neutral, waiting for me to recover. She had warned me, so I had no recourse but to thank god I hadn’t barreled downstairs and raided the cabinets. This was from soup, and I couldn’t imagine how excruciating it would have been had I continued stuffing my face.
Slowly, I unfolded and leaned back in the chair, out of breath, but no longer in crippling pain.
“Damn,” I whispered.
She leaned in to brush my cheeks with her lips. The warmth left behind settled my stomach and I sighed, watching her as she continued making my bed for me.
“I don’t think I need any more rest for a while,” I said when she folded the sheets back. The bed now looked like those fancy hotel turn down services and she glanced over her shoulder at me with a grin.
“I’m just making it for later, silly.”
I forced myself to my feet, shuffling the short distance between us and wrapped my arms around her waist. She smelled as delicious as the soup and my lips found their way up her neck.
Before I could maneuver her around and catch a kiss, the bedroom door opened. I turned and took in my guardian. Steve’s eyebrows rose, and then the initial surprise etched into his face stretched into a smile.
“You’re awake,” he said and stepped into the room.
“Ap...parently,” I said, pleased that I only screwed up one of the four syllables in the word.
“It sounds like your speech pattern is improving as well.” He walked into the room and pulled me into a hug. He gave my back a quick pat and then he stepped away, meeting my gaze. “How are you?” he asked.
I shrugged. The amount of pain and horror this man had experienced left me speechless, especially since I could see the depth of caring in his eyes.
“I remembered some things,” I said and looked at the floor. “Some... disturbing things.”
“Your life hasn’t always been a picnic,” he said and my gaze bounced to his.
“My memories are still locked up tight.”
The truth slowly dawned on him and he pointed at his chest, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah. And not the good parts, either.”
He pressed his lips together in a tight smile and gave me a nod. The shrug accompanying it was more a way to let the memories slide than to acknowledge the hell he’d been through. “I lived.”
“I’m glad.” I had seen him through my father’s eyes as well as his own and they had polar opposite views. My father thought Steve was a man of honor and truth and as close to a living saint as one could get. Steve, well, he’d always beaten himself up for not being fast enough to stop the bad guys. Sure, he’d made some mistakes, but I would have to side with my father on this one.
Steve laughed. “You saw everything?”
I inhaled and shook my head. “No,” I said with an exhale. “I only saw the... bad things.” I chose my words carefully and shrugged. “Same with the memories of my mother and father. Only the devastating circumstances presented.”
“That sucks,” Steve said and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Pretty much. I’m sorry about your kids,” I said and a cloud of sadness passed over his features before they cleared.
“I was lucky enough to get a second chance,” he said. With a nod in Valerie’s direction, he turned and headed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
With my stomach settled and my hunger now manageable, I turned my sights on Valerie, and a different kind of hunger brewed.
“If I recall correctly, it’s my turn to be tied up.”
“Chris,” she sighed.
I stepped closer, looking down into her upturned face. “It’s only fair,” I whispered and tucked the stray hairs behind her ear. She tilted into my touch and closed her eyes. Her lips parted in that way that sparked my needs and all I could think of was those lips stroking me and sucking until I came.
“If you have that kind of energy, I think we should use it to get you a little more food,” she said, although the color in her cheeks bloomed.
“You don’t want to tie me up and have your way with me?” I teased and covered her protest with my lips. I sat on the edge of the bed, breaking the kiss and looking up at her. A grin played on my lips and she rolled her eyes. When I put my arms out for her and raised an eyebrow, she grabbed onto my wrists and pushed me back on the clean bedding. Her eyes lit up in that playful gaze that raised more than just my heart rate.
“You really want me to tie you up?” she asked in a husky whisper.
I nodded. Being at her mercy created a sizzle in my loins that neither of us could ignore. She climbed off me, and crossed to the closet to retrieve the sashes I had hung after our last experience.
Valerie tied the sashes tightly around my wrists, much tighter than I had bound her and she gave me a crooked smirk as she tied my right wrist to the farthest post and my left to the closest one to the bedside. She stretched me out to the point of discomfort on purpose.
“You know damned well I can break these,” I said.
She pulled the bindings tighter, creating an unpleasant burn in my wrists. Valerie stepped back and assessed her work before meeting my gaze. “I know you can, but you won’t.”
“I didn’t tie you up this tight,” I whispered. I couldn’t even shift my weight without my shoulders screaming in protest. The reality of being bound to the bed lost its appeal, even when she stripped my shorts. I was still so focused on my discomfort that it didn’t spark the flickering flame.
It wasn’t until she slid my cock in her mouth that everything else disappeared. The juxtaposition of discomfort and heaven consumed me. Her pace was painfully slow and each stroke of her mouth tugged me farther into bliss.
“Faster,” I gasped and she just kept on doing that slow, long stroke, bringing me to the brink and then she’d pause and blow a stream of air on the tip of my cock, sending chills through every pore.
Every ounce of energy I had pooled in my lower abdomen, building up the pressure with each pass of her mouth.
She glanced up at me through her lashes, sending a chilling smile in my direction before swallowing my entire cock. The low hum in the back of her throat rippled through me.
“Ah, fuck,” I whispered and tilted my head back, clamping my mouth shut against the groan building just as frantically as the energy inside me. My muscles tightened and the release barreled from my core, sending a torrent down her throat, drowning that heavenly hum.
After shocks ripped through me as she swallowed and sucked until there was no more.
“Okay,” I whispered as she passed her tongue over my sensitive slit. I couldn’t move to stop her and she chuckled, ignoring my plea. Each pass of her tongue sent shockwaves through me and I couldn’t help the low growl that rumbled in my chest. “Val,” I said more forcefully and lifted my head.
She batted her fucking eyes at me and grinned. “You wanted this, babe,” she said and flicked my cock with her tongue.
I dropped my head back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling debating on whether I should break the bindings holding me in place, or order her to stop. She climbed her way up my chest and looked down at me.
“Don’t you dare,” she said.
Just her scolding tone narrowed my eyes and the wicked gleam in hers clinched my decision. The fabric bindings shredded to bits, along with every stitch of her clothing and I grabbed her arms and twisted my body, pulling her underneath me. The utter surprise in her wide eyes and dropped chin made me smile.
“Never is...sue a dare like that,” I said. “Not when I can do this.” I willed her arms into the same position mine had been.
“Christopher James,” she said and her terse tone pulled forth something akin to a giggle.
I ignored her protest and licked, nipped and kissed my way down her body. By the time I reached my destination, her protests had morphed to pleas. I teased her the way I had before and when she had soaked the sheets beneath her, I moved up her body with the same care, and thrust inside the sweet wetness, losing myself in the very essence of Valerie.