Chương 12: The scout who went dark

I groaned as an intense feeling of pleasure enveloped my whole mind. There were wet dreams, and then there was this dream. In it, I thought I could picture Nadia's perfect lips around my cock, her soft hands stroking me as her mouth sucked and licked the tip. At times, she attempted to swallow more of my length, but she was inexperienced, which only made the whole dream ten times hotter. Then I realized it was not a dream. The warm, wet sensation and the soft weight settled on my legs were real.

My eyes shot open, revealing a blurry ceiling as I blinked back the tears from sleep. The storm had weakened sometime before dawn, but rain still ticked against the windows. The light filtering in from the gaps in the blinds wasn't much, but it was enough to reveal a silhouette kneeling on the bed and hovering right above my crotch. All movement ceased, the girl freezing when she realized I'd awoken. Nadia.

I opened my mouth to croak out something, my mind spinning itself awake but struggling to make sense of all the sensations. She smirked when she saw my struggle, her hand resuming its work with slow, lazy motions up and down my shaft. She bent down, placing a kiss on my tip that made my cock twitch, and I knew that I was quite close to bursting.

"W-what are you doing?" I mumbled, even though I thought I had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

"Nothing much, prince charming," she said easily, zeroing in on my cockhead for a slow, languid, wet lick.

"Just paying you back for saving me. Obviously. Now lay back, relax, and let me take care of... mmh?" The way I suddenly jerked awake and up made her stop. I pulled her face away from my cock and caught her hand before she could keep stroking me.

"Come here," I told her softly. She tried to protest, pushing me away.

"Why? You need lots of kisses on that big, beautiful dick of yours."

"Nadia, stop for a moment." Something in my voice made her listen. I moved her away from my crotch and brought her up beside me. It was almost painful to do, with how close I was. The reptile part of my brain didn't care shit about any of this. It wanted to come, and it was going to complain to the end. But I held strong. Her warmth settled against me, and I looped my arm around her.

She looked at me, the amusement in her face slowly turning brittle and vulnerable and it made me want to tell her that everything was going to be alright and that… I love her, that's what. Fuck.

"You don't need to give me sexual favors. Ever," I said.

"There's no debt between us. Nothing to pay back."

"I know."

"Do you?" She looked away. I used two fingers to gently turn her face until she was looking at me, our lips painfully close. Staring into her gold-brown eyes, I thought I could lose myself in them.

"I helped you because I wanted to," I told her.

"And I'll keep helping you. Whatever happens with your power, whatever I can or can't do, you don't have to earn any of it from me. Okay?" Her expression tightened. For a moment, I thought she might pull away, and so I added some more pressure to let her know it was okay to do the exact opposite. I was beyond relieved when she shoved herself closer, even though she was glaring at me like I had personally offended her.

"I don't give a shit about paying you back or anything," she said, mock anger cracking around something much more raw.

"I just fucking like you, okay??" I kissed her forehead.

"And I like you too, Nadia." Her mask didn't come back. She stared at me, breathing hard, then grabbed the blankets and pulled them over both of us, wrapping us in a cocoon of fabric. It was cold in the room without them, especially with most of our clothes still displaced. Her fault, I thought with no little amount of heat. She tucked herself against my side, but she was tense. Stolen story; please report.

"That's why I have to tell you something," she said.

"You don't have to say anything." She put her hand over my mouth.

"I want to, okay? Now shut up and listen." I nodded, and she removed her hand. The tension reached her face, making her lose her soft smile. Not all of it, but enough that I could see something old and practiced and almost artificial taking its place. Nadia looked at the ceiling as if going over the facts there before she spoke.

"I was the scout," she said.

"The people I worked for heard a rumor about technology connected to an old man on this hill. They sent me to watch the house, confirm whether there was anything real here, and report back. That was the assignment. Observation and confirmation. Nothing else." The words landed one by one, and they made sense. Of course they did. More than she could ever know. The old man? The tech? Yeah.

"I don't know who they really are," she continued.

"The people who gave me orders were a cutout. A small cell between me and whoever actually wanted the information. Not like I could actually meet people for long, with my condition. I knew the people immediately above me, but not who sat above them or who the cell answered to. They made sure I couldn't lead anyone past the next link." She spoke plainly now. Even the self-deprecating joke she snuck in did not stick for long, and there was no pretty smile to make me forget that a question had gone unanswered.

"They didn't send me here to steal anything," she said.

"I was supposed to watch and report." She exhaled through her nose.

"I had spent eight years existing in a careful, hateful, lonely soap bubble, Adrian. Sleeping in my car. So when I heard that the rumor might be real, I thought the technology could cure me. The idea was that if I found it, I would take the cure for myself and disappear. I wasn't going to give it to them. I wasn't going back." That matched what she had told me before. She hadn't come because they wanted the technology. She had done it for herself.

"I watched the house for a while," she continued.

"I watched you too."

"So," I said, as my brain came to terms with the implications.

"All the dead stuff around the garden. The… crop circles. It was you?" But then again, I knew already, didn't I?

"Yes. It was me. I tried to keep my distance, but the drain was always there. I couldn't stop it from leaving marks." My arm tightened around her before I could stop it. Just once, but it was enough that Nadia noticed. Her eyes flicked down to my hand, then back to the ceiling. She didn't apologize or rush to explain it away. She kept going, and I was grateful for that.

"The night you caught me, I saw you leave the front door open and run out into the rain. There was a key on the little table near the sofa. The ornate one with the wings that looks so cute around your stupidly handsome neck."

"I slipped inside," she said.

"I took the key and tried it in the only locked interior door I had found. I didn't know it would fit. I didn't know what was behind the door. I was trying to reach the cure before anyone else could. Hopes and dreams, right?" I remembered the wood scattering across the floor. Nadia at the cellar, holding my key. Her violet eyes and hands blazing as that horrible pressure crawled inside me and pulled the life from my body. To me, it had felt like an attack, but it had just been her aura.

"The rest you know already. When you came back, I panicked," she said.

"You burst through the door, I got scared, and the death fucking aura flared." I said nothing.

"The break-in was all me," she continued.

"The cure was all me. None of that was authorized. I had already decided to betray them before I ever spoke to you." Her voice stayed level, but her fingers had tightened around the blanket she was gripping, a layer that separated us yet kept us together.

"I never reported what I found," she said.

"They probably know that their scout went dark, but that's it." Nadia finished and waited. She didn't ask whether I hated her, not out loud. She didn't offer me another excuse. She had put the entire ugly thing between us and left it there for me to judge. I kept running my fingers through her hair.

"Just one question," I said.

"The same one I asked you before. Are we in danger?"

"I don't know." The answer made the cold feeling in my stomach tighten, but she did not look away from me.

"They might think I ran or that I died. I don't know whether they'll look for me, and I can't tell you what anyone above the cutout cell will decide. No one is coming for me that I know of. For the tech? Who knows, and believe me when I say that this is the most honest answer I can give you." I thought about the woman who had gone back for the car that carried her entire life and returned to me anyway. The money on the table. Her car key in the bowl by the entrance. Everything. The little gestures. The kisses.

Even the wake-up blowjob that I thought more transactional than it had probably been intended to be.

"I believe you," I said. Her breath caught. I pulled her closer until her head rested beneath my chin. For a moment she stayed rigid, as if she didn't know what to do with the answer. Then her fingers released the blanket and curled into my shirt instead. I ran my hand through her hair. She pressed her face against my chest and held on. I was still scared. That was fine. She was too. I held her, she held me. We had each other. A thought came and made me smile. Fuck the rest of the world.

Some time later, Nero joined us on the bed. It was the first time he ever slept here, and it was very nice. Suffice to say we got up from the bed very late indeed, just in time to skip breakfast and start working on lunch.