After the Calling

<<The Lie: Part VII (B)

Warnings: Adult themes, sexual themes, profanity

_____________________________________________________________

“Aeryn.”

Aeryn’s eyes flew open, her body jerking violently at the sight of Jax above her. He was holding her, cradling her against him.

“Relax,” he commanded, and to her own surprise, her muscles obeyed.

She looked up, realizing that she was no longer outside but rather back in Chauncey’s guest bedroom. She had no idea how she had gotten there and decided that she would prefer not to think about the amount of time she had lost. Jax had laid her on the lumpy mattress and taken up residence beside her. No, on top of her. But the weight of his body was oddly stabilizing, almost comforting, for something inside her felt like it might float away if he weren’t there to anchor her.

Her eyes travelled the room, as if to make sure that it was real, before returning back to his face. She frowned angrily at the sight of him.

He gave a low laugh, and she was obscenely aware of his chest vibrating against her.

“Don’t be that way,” he said. “It’s been done. I can’t take it back. Let’s move past it.”

“Get away from me.” She pushed against him with her palm, but as she did so her arm reignited with traces of the miraculous sensations that had so incapacitated her before. She cried out as her arm recoiled and her entire body shuddered. She found that her senses were overwhelmingly fragile. Any movement she made wracked her nervous system, an overstimulation that hovered indiscriminately between pleasure and pain.

Jax leaned back and gently turned her wrist over, revealing two weepy puncture marks.

“It takes some getting used to,” he said. “Your senses will experience a bit of a shock for a while, but I assure you, it is temporary. Just… enjoy it. You are enjoying it, no?”

God yes, she thought, but, “Get off of me,” was her answer.

He repositioned himself on top of her, disregarding her words. “Am I causing you discomfort?” he asked.

She didn’t answer him. He knew he wasn’t ‘causing her discomfort’. She was sure he was very aware of exactly what sort of sensations were quaking up her spine, none of which being ‘discomfort’. It angered her that he would pretend otherwise. It angered her that his aura was positively gleaming and he, forsaking modesty, was making no efforts to try and hide it. It angered her that his psyche had taken on characteristics similar to her own.

It also angered her that he wasn’t holding her tighter. It angered her that she was too high strung to fall asleep in his arms. It angered her that she wasn’t even really angry.

She closed her eyes, trying to search for the right words to say to him. Touch me. No, that wasn’t right. Give me more of this. No, she couldn’t possibly mean that. She knew what to say. “You disgust me.”

“Ah.” He half smiled, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “But, I don’t.”

She attempted to glare at him, punish him for the accuracy of his words, but her eyes wouldn’t retain the proper amount of malice required to melt his face. Instead they filled with confusion. Exhaustion. Resignation. Desire. She wanted to despise him. She felt like she should. She wanted to think him repulsive, but her mind wouldn’t cooperate. In fact, if he made the decision to bite her again, she knew she would not resist. But she couldn’t understand why.

“I want you to leave.” She had to force herself to say it, and nearly choked on the words.

“Do you?”

She flinched involuntarily. He had called her bluff. His being here was wrong, but she found herself dreading the moment when he detached his body from hers. Whatever the hell he had done to her, it wasn’t supposed to have happen, but she would almost welcome the opportunity to experience it again.

Yes. Yes, she did want him to leave, if only to deprive him of whatever satisfaction he was getting from seeing her in such conflict with her own emotions. But, she couldn’t bring herself to say it again. How dare he call her bluff.

The line of his brow furrowed slightly as he studied her. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll leave.” With his thumb he traced a trail of moisture down the side of her face. She hadn’t even realized that she was crying. Her eyes had taken it upon themselves to fill up and overflow.

Her skin tingled with an exhilarating pulse under his touch, but she refused to react, even as he leaned down close to her, brushing his lips across hers. Everything in her wanted to lift upward, meet his lips with her own, but she didn’t. She pressed her body as flat as possible against the mattress in order to prevent herself from doing so.

“Alright,” he said again.

He pushed himself back from the mattress and onto his knees. She could feel a void form in the place where he had lain against her, and the discomfort of it almost ached. She balled her hands into fists against her chest to keep from reaching out and pulling him back towards her. He kneeled above her for a moment, as if waiting for her to change her mind, before swinging his leg over and hopping lithely from the bed.

Aeryn didn’t bother to watch him leave. Instead, she curled against her pillow, hugging herself lest her body explode. What had he done to her?

It took her a while to finally convince herself to drift to sleep.

______________________________________________________________

Mickey spent the day cooking for Aeryn, cleaning, and rearranging the décor. She chatted pleasantly, completely unaware of the events from the night before. Aeryn tried to keep up with conversations as best she could, taking care to keep her sleeves down and avoid sitting, silently dazed, in one spot for too long. But eventually, the conversations became one-sided, and Aeryn had managed to sit, unmoving, at the dining table for an entire hour.

Mickey finally took notice. “Hey, I’ve been having this crazy craving for unicorn tail, so I’m thinking we should totally pop that supergun off the wall and go hunting. We don’t even have to walk, because we have a pet hippopotamus tied up out back. They aren’t very fast on land, but once you get them flying… I’m talking chicken-fried unicorn ass,” Mickey added in a last ditch attempt to catch her attention. “Aeryn?”

“Huh?” Aeryn looked up, pulled from her haze. “Oh, yeah, that’s fine. Whatever you want to do,” she answered quietly.

Mickey cocked her head to the side, peering at Aeryn and clearly giving her aura a once over. “Yeah, you didn’t hear a word I said and you’ve been weird all day. Are you okay?”

“I think I’m just…a little under the weather.” She considered telling Mickey about what had happened with Jax, but she kept quiet. She knew it would start a panic, and was probably more trouble than it was worth. But more so… she was embarrassed about it. She didn’t want to have to describe the way she was feeling now. Every touch, every smell, every taste hit her body like a sledgehammer, and her aura felt expansive, swollen. She didn’t know what to make of it, hadn’t Jax taken energy from her? Would her aura feel depleted and dead? Not vibrant and alive. This made no sense.

She had fallen back into her thoughts and was caught off guard when she realized that Mickey had stood up and circled behind her. Aeryn cried out in shock as Mickey passed a line of energy into the center of her psyche. Her senses lit up like fire and her body erupted into an intense shudder as all the psychic energy in her body condensed and then expanded violently.

“Whoa!” Mickey jumped back as if Aeryn had exploded.

Aeryn took in a strangled breath, her lungs seizing, and tried to push herself away from the table but Mickey pressed down on her shoulders, forcing her to remain in the chair.

“Oh no,” Mickey said. “You stay right there.”

The back of her palm to her face, Aeryn tried to gain control of herself and her trembling limbs. “I…,” she started to explain.

“Were you feeling okay after Chloe read you?” Mickey asked, studying her.

“I’m fine, really, I’m just feeling – ”

Mickey grabbed her hand. “This is very important, Aeryn. Did you feel like she took energy from you? I was watching her the whole time, and she wasn’t being shy with your aura at all. Especially when you were channeling her vision. I didn’t think she had done anything to you but…”

Aeryn sat blinking, not knowing what to do. “I… she didn’t… she didn’t take anything from me. I’m just… tired. Maybe channeling her vision was a little too strenuous for my aura. She was… she was very strong, and… well, I’m not.” She had no idea where she had come up with that but she felt Mickey’s demeanor relax a bit.

“That… makes sense,” Mickey nodded reluctantly. “If I had known that it would make your aura so reactive… I mean on second glance, I guess it looks fine. You’re a little pale though.”

“I’m sure it’s… temporary,” Aeryn said, remembering Jax’s words. She sat still, letting Mickey stare at her until it started to make her nervous. “You know, maybe I should just call it a night.”

“Okay.” Mickey said, releasing her, although she was still looking her over. “But, when Chauncey gets back, maybe he should go have word with Chloe.”

“No.” Aeryn stood up. “No, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“I don’t know if that’s nothing. Listen, I’ll be down here if you need anything, okay babe?” Mickey said, watching her walk upstairs.

“Yeah… thanks,” Aeryn answered quietly, her focus beginning to blur again.

When she got upstairs she rushed to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Jax had somehow managed to hide his handiwork from Mickey and she didn’t know whether to be relieved or disturbed by the fact that he had the foresight to do it. She had just lied. Pulled some bullshit out of the sky and watched with relief as it went over smoothly with the queen mother of aura inspection. She was beginning to think that it might have been better if Mickey had been able to see her aura for what it really was. A spazzing, quivering mess. That way there wouldn’t have been a shadow of a doubt of what had happened to her and she wouldn’t have to question herself for lying. For protecting the man who had put her in this predicament in the first place.

“Pull it together. Please, pull it together,” she pleaded with her reflection.

She tried to get a grip on her senses, but they were going haywire. Light was too bright to see clearly, the air was too thick to breathe, and she thought that she might actually be able to feel the blood coursing through her veins. But she was reveling in it. The pleasure center of her brain seemed to be set on overdrive. The base of her spine was encircled with tiny, unrelenting shivers. Every inch of her skin tingled.

If this was a high, she couldn’t blame those who were addicted.

“What the fuck is this?” she asked out loud.

When the concrete walls did not answer her, she wiped her face on her sleeve and walked out of the bathroom.

She pulled off the sweater she was wearing, twitching as the feeling of fabric sliding across her skin sent shocks through her system. All she wanted to do now was sleep. It was exhausting to feel this way. To think about it. She flopped down on the edge of the bed, already half asleep before her body even made contact with the mattress. It wasn’t long before she had made her way into a dream that not only bordered on nightmarish and erotic, it also featured Jax.

__________________________________________________________

Jax sat slumped on the floor in the dark of his bedroom, blinds drawn, door locked. He hadn’t moved from that spot since he had made his way back home, ignoring Chloe’s eyes on him. He knew that his physical form wasn’t even registering in her eyes. It was his aura that she was interested in, for it contained the damning evidence of his transgressions. Shiny hints of energy that did not belong to him, despite its slow assimilation into his psyche. Energy from an aura so distinctive that there was no way he could pretend that he had taken it from another source. Energy so potent and pure that all he wanted to do was sit in the dark and feel it infiltrate his psyche, take hold of his core, and rip through his veins.

Energy from an aura reborn. An aura that had died, and from some unknown singularity, some miracle, had come back to life. The aura was a resilient thing, many times even outliving the body that held it. But in all its resilience, once destroyed, revival was myth. A parable. It didn’t happen. But if it did, the resulting aura would contain a psychic vigor comparable to none. And the myth had walked right into the center of his life, contained within a woman. Aeryn.

He had been unsure at first, thinking only that she had been heavily damaged in her past, as the marks of it were still upon her. But he had tasted her, and there was hardly any doubt now. She should not have even existed, and yet, not even 24 hours ago, he had been forcing himself to obey her conflicted tears and leave her side.

He found himself reliving the entire encounter in his head. How she had resisted him only to succumb so completely. How, despite her weakness and low awareness, her arms had sought out his body and clung to him. How she had trembled when he touched her. How she had moaned.

He exhaled sharply and forced his mind away from her, feeling the beginnings of an erection that he could do nothing about.

He sat up, realizing that he could sense Chloe standing outside the door, although she didn’t knock. They hadn’t shared a bedroom in a long while, not because they did not get along, but more so because their lifestyle was not conducive to it. Even so, it was rare that doors were locked in their home, and he knew that she was drawing unhealthy conclusions from the state of his door handle. Or maybe she was drawing the correct conclusions, and he was the one being unhealthy.

Reluctantly, he stood up and made his way to the door. Opening it, he moved aside so that his wife could enter but she remained in the hall, staring at him with placid eyes. Chloe’s expression was most docile when she was unhappy, so her calm façade only allowed for a thick film of tension to drape itself over them.

“Come in the room, Chloe,” he said softly. But she didn’t move, choosing to continue staring at him, not a hint of anger or judgment in her eyes. Something that confirmed to Jax that she was angrily judging him. He reached out and gripped her arm, pulling her inside.

He pushed the door closed, doing nothing to stop her from scrutinizing his aura, her clenched jaw the only sign of her unease. After a many long, tense minutes, she looked away.

He knew she wouldn’t break the silence, so he did. “I’ll deal with the consequences.”

“As if you had a choice?” she replied quickly. “Yes, you’ll have to deal with the consequences, but you knew that before you even incited them. The consequences mean nothing to you. So why should your dealing with them mean anything to me?”

“Chauncey – ”

“Chauncey will take you to task. And probably less so than you deserve. But until that happens, you should probably be more concerned with your own internal…” her eyebrows furrowed just slightly, “consequences.”

He blinked at her, knowing she was referring to the state of his aura. Aeryn’s energy was snaking its way through him, taking hold in ways he didn’t even think possible. Its unusual radiance was drastically enhancing the mild intoxication that came from consuming purana, and he could tell that this was not something he would get over quickly. He had never felt anything like it before, but he ignored that fact. “There is nothing consequential about my aura,” he said to her. “I’m no more or less affected than I am in any given situation.”

She looked up, glaring at him for a moment before replying, “Are you attempting to lie to me, or to yourself?”

He frowned slightly, but didn’t answer.

She let out an angry huff and spun away from him, jerking the door open.

“Cut it out,” he said sharply. He shoved the door closed and pulled her away from it, but as he did it, he realized he should have just let her go. It had been an impulsive reflex to stop her, but he didn’t have anything to say. He could not bring himself to apologize for something he did not regret, and she wouldn’t accept such an apology in any case. He was not going to ask for her understanding, because she understood better than anyone. This was what it was. Chloe’s words were only superficial, and he had a feeling that she knew it just as well as he did.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” Chloe seethed, wheeling around and sending a palm into his chest. The blow, backed with a strength honed from years of purana consumption, forced him back a step. “I don’t just sense it. I feel it, I see it, I taste it. It’s in your skin, bleeding out of your pores. It’s in your fingertips. It’s making you weak! You’re drowning in it. In her! I told you to leave it be! This one temptation, and you were too stubborn to even do that. And now what will you do? Let it incinerate you?” Her eyes flared as she glowered at him. “She’s an anomaly. She shouldn’t exist. But she does, and you’ll resist her. You will not go back to her.”

She turned and opened the door, unfettered this time, and walked out.

He only blinked, watching her leave. It was not his habit to make return trips, fully content with sampling the offerings of strangers. It was Chloe’s tendency to foster addiction, build relationships, and make friends and lovers out of her hosts. While he benefitted from her collection of puranadicts, it was not his preference, and he would never risk making an otherwise unbound individual dependent on his fangs by visiting them more than once.

But Aeryn was not comparable to any other person he’d ever encountered. She had been an experience all its own. Before Chloe had mentioned it, the actual thought of returning had never manifested itself in his head, but he realized that he had had every intention to do so. He still had every intention to do so. The sensations trailing through him had sealed fate.

Deceiving the Lie: Part VIII>>>>