“Water is often seen to be the element most associated with emotions. When we struggle to be at peace with what we feel, we will always struggle with control of our element. Today has been very promising. Very promising, Jake. It usually takes months of training to move water like that, so you must allow yourself to be pleased by that.” He nodded, eyes trained on the ground. “I’m going to suggest that you spend some time with one of our counsellors—”
“No.”
“You’ve obviously experienced considerable trauma. Your water affinity reflects your emotional state. Lack of control can be dangerous. I won’t insist, but please, consider it.”
He didn’t get a chance to reply, one of Ashanti’s people appearing at the door of the training room.
“Mother, apologies for interrupting, but a delegation from the sentinels has arrived. They are demanding an immediate audience.”
“Demanding?” Her eyebrow cocked upwards. She shook her head with a hiss. “Jake, think about it. My door is always open. Keep practising your swirls, but not for too long. If you’re struggling more and more for control, it’s time to stop.”
She nodded to me, then strode out the room.
I’d seen Jake getting ploughed relentlessly by another man, shining bright in the gloom, so why did this room suddenly feel a lot more intimate? The door was open, so in theory, anyone could walk past, yet it felt so small. As if responding to my thoughts, he turned around to face me.
Jake got put into a lot of boxes—wild boy, submissive, child abuse survivor. But when he turned around, water trickling down his bare chest, tracing the lines of the muscles there, his eyes burning into mine, what I saw didn’t fit into any of them. His mobile mouth curled slightly into a one-sided smirk, those eyes glittering as he waved his hand in the air, a spray of water obeying his command and resolving itself into a plume of fluid that shifted in response to his gestures. It was hypnotic—the slow, sinuous passage of the water, the muscles in Jake’s arm and chest shifting and changing. I should’ve looked away, I was just distracting him, but while he held my gaze, I couldn’t bring myself to.
His hands stilled, the water forming into a ball. He didn’t follow the gentle, sweeping motions Ashanti had prescribed. Instead, each he moved in a different way, jerking, fluttering, slicing, thrusting. The water was sliced into two balls, each one rocketing through the air in chaotic sweeps.
“You wince when you sit down.”
I looked at him blankly, not sure what he meant.
“I saw it for just a second, at breakfast. You’re hurting.” He didn’t look disturbed by that at all, if anything, his eyes burned brighter. “Someone, someones put an ache into you.” His eyes ran down my body. “One you’re still feeling now.”
I was. At his words, my cunt clutched down, tugging at muscles and skin that had been well used. I felt it—the shadow of the pleasure they’d pulled out of my body and kept on pulling until I was crying for them to stop. If you thought big declarations of love were enough to stop things, you’d be wrong. Aen couldn’t keep his hands off me, pulling me to him over and over, and when I was against him, he was touching me. When he was touching me, he was winding me tighter until I was on hands and knees, begging them to use me once more. I couldn’t stop coming, and neither could they, rallying like they had the devil in them.
Jake’s smile widened, his teeth shining white in the artificial light.
“Show me,” he said, crooking a finger.
I felt a little sting, watching a droplet of water appear from my chest and sail over towards him, the balls splashing down on the ground when he held out his hands to catch it. I watched it, heart racing as it landed on his palm, breaking on contact.
“Oh!” His cry was soft, his eyes falling closed, his head tipping back as whatever he’d pulled from me rushed through him. “Mm mm…” he purred, then burst out laughing, that same crazy chuckle of his that’d come rushing out whenever he went on stage. His legs spread wide, as if that was all it took to keep him upright, the wet denim making clear how he was enjoying this. “Oh fuck! Fuck! Oh….” His voice trailed away, silence falling over the room again, broken only by his rasping breath.
He was slow to right himself, and it became apparent why. His eyes shone with unshed tears when he opened them again, looking like I’d cheerfully trampled all over him and left him with the resulting destruction. His gaze quested, seeking mine, seeking something in my eyes as one tear fell free, then another. He twisted his fingers, the droplets of water pulling away from his face as his lips thinned down, then he flicked them at me.
The splash of them against my skin was barely perceptible, but soon followed by this. One, two, they were gut punches spearing into me—what Jake felt, sensed, what beat within him now beat within me.
I saw him curled up in the bed at the back of the bus, one of the shirts I’d left behind acting as his pillow. He was still half asleep so he could persuade himself I was still there, lying next to him, ready to—
“Snap the fuck out of it, Jake,” Liam spat at him from the other side of the drum kit. “She’s gone. She doesn’t want us, but the fans do. Focus on them and get your shit together.”
Him standing in the shower, one hand on the wall, another on his cock, stroking it long and slow. That’s the way I’d do it, he was sure, making the pleasure string out so long as to almost be painful, just edging him closer and—
“I want to be your petitioner and your slave, your brat who needs to be brought to heel. I want to go everywhere with you. Every fantasy, every kink that calls to you. I wanna explore it. I want to…”
I felt it more keenly now, the full palmed slap of each word he’d said as we opened Aragide together.
“I think I love you.” I watched my lips stumble over the words, the distress plain, shaking my head, no, no, no, like I can’t let this happen. “Like, I can’t. We’ve played some cool sex games. I’ve blundered into some arrangements. I don’t even know you!”
He didn’t really hear the rest of it, the first bit catching his full attention. I think I love you. The words were a stone dropping down into the water, the ripples spreading out, out, out until Jake was lost in them. Still lost in them.
“You said you needed to get to know me?” My eyes blinked open to see Jake now striding over to me. “Like…what? Intro-fucking-ductions are needed? You know me. Deep down inside you, you know. You feel the fucking beat, Kira. You call it something else with all those sharp words you have, cutting things into smaller and smaller parcels until they’re nothing.” He shook his head. “I put everything out there, and most people, they walk on by. Or stop, pick me up, use me until they’re done, and then throw me the fuck away.” Droplets flicked off his fingers as he gestured. “You didn’t. You watched me, directed me, touched me.” He loomed above me now, a massive figure blocking out the light in the room until there was just him—a dark star pulling me into his orbit. “You know me. There are details to fill in, gaps to plug, but you know. Here.” His finger pushed on my sternum. “You know, here.”
“Excuse me.”
A woman stood at the doorway looking quietly horrified for interrupting, but she’d obviously been directed to.