Chapter 11
A Battle of Admissions
Zandra wanted to get lost in the taste of Anani, but her mind was muddled and she couldn’t believe that what she was seeing was real. Pushing him away, the witch tried to figure out what happened. “I belong to no one.”
The shifter pulled back, a pained expression on his face. “I would never claim that you are mine. I just–”
“No. It’s a trick. I am not fooled.” She thrust her hands forward and blasted a small ball of fire. “I am not yours, demon!”
The feel of something wet and sticky splashing over her face caused Zandra to pause. She licked her lip and tasted a familiar minty tang. Placing a hand up to her mouth, she drew it away and saw blood. Her eyes went wide as Anani moved away from her. “Blood?” She sat bolt upright and began to pat her body, trying to remember where she had been hurt. Her eyes turned to Anani, who was holding his wrist, his eyes wide.
She crawled over to him, and he immediately tried to back away from her. “You are hurt! How did you get hurt?” She began to mend the wound as best she could.
Anani pulled his arm away. “No. I will not allow you to mend me. You nearly died because I didn’t realize–” His voice was thick as tears filled his eyes.
“Who hurt you?” Zandra could feel the anger welling up, and she wasn’t about to let the incident go without retribution. “Who did this to you?”
Anani shook his head. “I did this to myself. I didn’t know what else to do.” There was uncertainty in his voice as he looked at her.
“You were going to kill yourself?” Zandra stood up rapidly. “Gods, Anani, I am not worth your life. Not 100 of me would be worth a single year of your selfless life. Don’t you ever try–”
He pushed her back. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was trying to bring you back.”
Zandra sat back on her feet, her mind furiously working to process what she was hearing. “I don’t understand.”
“When I found you here, I finally realized what you had done. Why you felt so wrong. You took his pain, and then you buried it under how many months of the pain of others?” His eyes searched hers as if trying to understand how what he was saying had been true.
“More like two.”
“Two months of pain, and it nearly killed you.” He moved closer to her, his voice full of emotion.
“No.” She shook her head. “Two years.”
His jaw dropped open, then he threw his arms around her. “I am so sorry. I am so terribly sorry. I have treated you so badly while you carried all of this. I–” His voice broke as he tried to pull her body into his own.
“You stabbed yourself with an abyssal sword? Are you insane?”
The accusation in her voice forced him to pause. Slowly he pulled away from her. “How could you possibly know about that?”
“Oh my gods, that was real!” She covered her mouth with a hand, then stretched out a hand to his stomach. “How did you survive?”
“It takes more than a couple of stab wounds to kill me. It’s nothing like–”
She threw her arms around him, pressing her body against his. As soon as the reaction registered, he wrapped his arms around her. “I am so sorry, Anani. I have been terrible toward you and Akeno.”
“Yes, you were. In the past, but in the end, you were able to allow me to say goodbye to him. My hurt pride made it so that I couldn’t respond to him. He called me in his last days and wished me well, but he never told me what was happening. I only returned to find out what he meant, but I couldn’t sense him anymore. I knew then that I had lost him. I thought that he had imprinted himself on you, and that was how I was able to say goodbye, but it was you who saved him. By taking on his pain, you radiated some of his light.”
“Wait.” She moved away from Anani. “Is that why you wanted to hold me so close that first night?”
Anani looked flabbergasted. “What?”
“You begged me not to let go of you. Was it because of his imprint? Where you–”
Anani shook his head and pressed his lips against hers to shut her up. His tongue slid into her mouth and his hands moved down her back. All other thoughts left her head as her body pressed into his.
He lay her down on the thick grass a ways from the quiet stream. “I held you because I was so grateful. The rest was what I have felt for you for decades.”
She shook her head, trying to understand what he meant.
Anani smiled at her, and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Akeno didn’t think that I was good enough for you. After everything he had seen you go through, he feared that I wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate you.”
“But I felt how much it pained him to leave me behind.”
Anani nodded, “Yes, he fell in love with you, too. He regretted the pain he caused you because of how he came between us, then instead of giving you the future he thought you deserved, he…” Anani’s voice trailed off as he pulled her against him, his arms keeping her back from touching the ground.
“So why are you bleeding?” Her voice was a little uncertain. Something told her she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Anani cleared his throat before speaking. “It was to bring you back.”
She narrowed her eyes and realized he was having trouble looking her in the eyes. “Anani, how did you use your blood to bring me back? I have no physical injuries.”
“Not now, but your whole body was covered in them before…”
She forced him to look her in the eye. “I had aged. That’s not a physical injury.”
“I don’t agree. It was one massive injury that you did to yourself, and I did the only thing I could think of to bring you back.”
“Anani.” Her voice was like that of an adult trying to get a confession out of a child.
His shoulders sagged. “I let you drink it.”
Zandra closed her eyes and ran her tongue over her lips. Then she realized how that must look. When she opened her eyes, Anani was looking down at her with a confused expression. “Do you need more?”
He brought his wrist close to her face.
Zandra leaned forward and kissed the wound that was starting to heal. “Hold on,” he was reaching for something she couldn’t see.
“I don’t want any more blood.” She leaned forward and kissed his neck as her hips pressed into his. Immediately, Zandra could feel that he understood what she meant. He grabbed her arms and stretched them over her head, pressing his body against the full length of hers. He lowered his face to hers and smiled as he looked at her, his hips thrusting against hers.
She smiled back at him, then moving one of her hands just a little out of his grasp, she snapped her fingers. Their clothes appeared in a neat little pile to the side. His expressions changed rapidly as he looked down at her, finally settling into a look of pure desire.
“Wait. I need to tell you.” He began to kiss her forehead and his tip pressed into her. She moaned, trying to keep her concentration. “Wait. Oooh.” She moaned louder as he slid halfway into her. “There’s something I need to – Ah, oh, more. Gods.”
He had pushed all the way insid her, his face taking in the rapid changes in her expressions as he toyed with her. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I quite caught what it was you wanted to say. Could you speak a little louder, please?” He leaned down, his face just above hers. As Zandra finally found her voice again, he gently began to slide in and out of her. She gave several unintelligible groans as she fought to find the words she needed to say.
He continued to play with her, delighting in how he was able to distract her from something that she clearly thought was important. The closest she got to speaking was repeating the word “they” as she climaxed several times.
His hands moved down her back and rested just under her lower back, tilting her up so that he could slip further into her. She arched up into him, her body clenching up again. “Still alive!” she shouted into the air.
“What?” He stopped moving and looked down at her. “What do you mean?”
Zandra panted as she looked up at him. “Don’t think that I’m going to take the time to stop now that you have an interest in – oh!” Her ability to back talk vanished as he pressed himself fully inside of her and began to slowly pulse against her. She banged her hands on the ground, trying to keep her train of thought and losing spectacularly. The way she fought to talk despite what her body was saying caused him to harden further. He leaned over, his mouth beside her ear. “I love you, Zandra. I have loved you for so long. I am so sorry.” He pulsed against her, and her responses were gasps as Anani told her what he felt. “If I hadn’t been so stubborn, just think how many kids we could have had by now.”
“Wait?” Zandra’s eyes widened as she looked at him. Anani covered her mouth with his own, keeping her from asking anything else. He felt her body tensing again, and this time, he didn’t fight the urges of his own.
The stars were out when they finally stopped. He pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head. “What were you saying about ‘still alive’? Was I finally able to get you to confess that you are quite enamored with living now?”
She nestled against him. “I have always felt that way when you are near. But no.” She propped herself up on her elbow. “That’s not what I was talking about. Cyprian and Ash are still alive.”
He frowned at her. “Are you just trying to make me feel better?”
Zandra shook her head. “I make you feel better like this.” She brought a knee up against him and rubbed. She enjoyed watching his eyes close as he enjoyed the sensation. His arm went around her waist while the other pulled her leg further onto his body. The next thing she knew, Zandra was looking down on him.
She grinned at Anani. “Is this your way of saying that it’s my turn to torture you?”
He smiled, “I am giving you a chance to try.” His hands moved her body, settling her just on top of him.
Zandra was distracted by the fact that he was already hard again. In all of her years, she had never known anyone able to be ready as soon as she wanted more. Leaning down, she covered his mouth. At first, she slid her tongue into his mouth, then she blew a little bit of air. When he looked up at her in surprise, she slid down over him. Immediately the look of surprise changed to one of desire. He moved her body a little, bringing her nipples close to his mouth. The gentle breath of air against them caused her to close her eyes and slide further down on him. He groaned as his tongue flicked out over her nipple and his lips gently tugged at it. Zandra began to slide over him a lot faster, her breath getting shallow.
The sun was starting to chase away the stars when she finally collapsed beside him. “I need–” she panted, then tried to catch her breath. He rolled over and began to play with one of her breasts, but for the most part he allowed her to speak her mind with little other distractions.
“Mm, that feels really nice.” She ran a hand up and down his arm, then along the dragon on his chest. It stared back at her with something that she imagined to be a smirk. She leaned forward and kissed it on the nose. He chuckled, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
She cleared her throat. “Anani, Cyprian and Ash are still alive, although I don’t know where. I think Ash has gone to Melzi, but I don’t know where Cyprian is.”
He pulled away from her. “How do you know about Ash?”
“He was shouting at Cyprian at the mouth of the volcano, saying that Ailey could prove that not all humans were bad. Of course, that’s paraphrasing it, but he said something along those lines.”
“How do you know about any of that?”
“Noely dragged you down the hill after Ash dove into the volcano and saved Cyprian. I don’t know what happened after that, but that was why you were alone. Noely can’t do that kind of magic, but she was able to do… something to your wound to get it to stem the blood flow. The demon watched you.”
His frown deepened. “What demon?”
Zandra ran a hand through her hair. “The one that Akeno rescued me from a long time ago. Every once in a while, it tries to drag me back. Usually they are just nightmares, but when I was dying he was actually able to drag me down.”
“You have had dealings with a demon?” He let go of her and sat up.
Fear began to grip her as she looked at his expression. “It got me when I was dying, and it kept me alive.”
Anani shook his head. “That’s not the way they work. Demons can’t keep someone alive. It’s kind of the whole point of their existence. Destruction and cruelty. Well, not all of them, of course. There are some decent ones knocking around out there.”
“What?” Zandra had lost his train of thought some time ago.
He turned and took her hands. “If he showed you images that showed they are still alive, that means that they can be part of the solution to get rid of him.” He looked up at the sky. “They are still alive.” It was a simple sentence, but it caused a smile to spread across his face. Zandra watched him for a moment, trying to capture every detail of his face. She wanted to lean forward and kiss him, but now clearly was not the time.
Then something splashed across her thoughts like a heavy ocean wave. “Um, Anani?”
He looked at her with his beautiful smile, his head cocked to the side a little. Her body shivered at the image, but her mind fought to stay in control. “The demon knows about Noely.”
The smile faded from his face. “How does the demon know about the angelus?”
Fidgeting, Zandra tried to face the fight she felt certain was coming. “He showed me the image of Noely running to you at the altar, then again holding you at the volcano. He tried to tell me that you loved her and that you only wanted–”
Raising an eyebrow at her, Anani placed a hand over her mouth. “You were so happy to prove him wrong that you blurted out who she was and why there was no chance that she and I were a thing.”
Zandra gave a small nod of her head and waited for him to start the fight. A finger moved under her chin and lifted it up so that she was looking into his eyes. “When you do a deal with a demon, you need to learn that the only way to beat them is to lie better than them. You only give them power by being honest.”
She bit her lip. “So, you aren’t mad at me?”
One side of his mouth hitched up, “Mad at you for what? Not knowing how to swindle a demon? I have to admit that I am rather pleased. My opinion of you just keeps growing the more time I spend with you.” He leaned forward and gave her a gentle kiss.
She placed a hand on his chest, then gave him a short push away. “It’s not like it was that difficult to do. You hated me there for a while.”
“No, I never hated you. I certainly hated myself, and right now I hate Akeno a little bit.” He leaned forward and kissed her neck as she tried to protest. “Think about it.” He wrapped a hand around the small of her back and he moved down her neck. “If Akeno hadn’t decided to sleep with you, we would have gotten together nearly two decades ago. I mean, when you get down to it, he was a bit of a dick.”
Zandra pushed him away from her. “I do not want to hear you talking about him like that.”
He smiled at her, his hand sliding down her thigh.
She frowned, “I– ah–”
Anani continued, “But when you think about it, we are now enjoying each other in the place where he grew up. So I guess that means I know how to be a bit of a dick right back.”
Zandra giggled until his hands made her forget everything but pleasure. He lay her down again, his hand running along her thighs. When he moved up to kiss her, Zandra turned her head to the side. He looked down at her in surprise.
She frowned at him for as long as he forgot to stroke her into distraction. “I really don’t like you- ah- ah- talking about- ah!” Her body arched as he waited for her to finish her thought. “Fuck it. I'm done trying to converse with you when you are like this.”
Anani smiled and positioned himself between her legs. “That is the most logical thing I have ever heard you say.”
“I can do one better.”
“I doubt it.” He smiled down at her and watched as she closed her eyes in anticipation. After a few seconds, she opened them again, and he immediately thrust inside of her, causing her to arch up into him. His arm wrapped around the small of her back, pulling her against him.
Roughly, she pulled his head down to her, and she kissed him, her tongue sliding into his mouth. While he was momentarily distracted, she began to set the rhythm. “Now that I have your attention, I just wanted to say...” He moaned, but quickly opened his eyes as she toyed with him. She moved up so that her mouth was near his ear. “I love you, Anani. I have never loved anyone the way I love you.”
“Okay, that was more logical.” He smiled down at her before getting lost in the moment.
The End
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