A/N: No clue why I am up so damn early...but got the chapter edited and up for your viewing pleasure. Now I am going to go devour a few cups of coffee and prepare for the storm that is my toddler. May the odds be in my favor this morning. Enjoy ya'll!
Chapter 55 - Leave Out All The Rest
I knew there was something wrong with my sister the instant I saw her when I got back to the compound. Chase and Eric had broken away first and went ahead of me and Zach. They had to go and deal with training matters but they also didn't want it to look like we had all been together.
So Zach and I had made our way into the compound and by way of different hallways ended up in his office. Dinner wasn't for a few hours so I did end up staying with him in his office for a little bit.
He worked on a few things while I looked over a Dauntless faction law handbook; much to his amusement and him saying he could just see the smug look on Eric's face already when he told him what I had chosen to read. I chuckled in agreement and kept reading.
I had read and been forced to read the Abnegation ones before. Reading the first time hadn't been bad but the second and third times were just horrible.
Reading my chosen factions laws was enlightening, disturbing and interesting all at the same time. It started to bring up questions to my mind while at the same time answering others.
During that time Zach has asked me about Peter and my interactions with him. I gathered he was trying to get a sense of his motives and I answered that I couldn't begin to really guess other than it had something to do with his parents. From Zach's expression I knew he didn't think that was all of it and I agreed but I couldn't pinpoint what it would be.
It was also clear that he agreed with rolling with it. He also promised to have a talk with Peter and before Eric could get ahold of him.
Dinner time rolled around and with him walking me, I went to find my friends and sister. That was when I knew something was wrong with Tris. She came in looking upset and at first I thought her avoiding where Will, Christina and Al were sitting was all because of what happened in the Pit with Will's sister. It was the little looks that she cast in Al's direction that made me think otherwise. She didn't seem to want to talk about it and I knew better than to press her. I did vow to keep an eye on the meathead though.
Everyone involved in training was missing from dinner that night so it was just my friends and sister along with the other regulars at the table. Then we all went to the Pit to hang out. I got some quiet time with Tris and we talked about the visit from our parents.
I told her what dad had said and we both held hands with tears shining in our eyes a little from that. When I asked her if mom had said anything she got really quiet and just mumbled that she had said something similar. She was lying of course or just evading telling me. Mom must have said something that upset her but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it might be.
The part of me that needs to protect my sister, to shelter her from all the bad that I know is out there, wants to push and snoop until I find out. The thing is that over the past weeks I have come to see that my sister is blooming. I don't want her to hurt. I don't want her to have to face dangers or difficult situations.
I know that she needs to though. I know that she needs to learn to be able to stand on her own, to fight her own battles. Because I know she can. I also she needs to know that I will always have her back.
"Tris.." I say lowly and look at her seriously. "I'm not going to push and ask what happened with Mom. If you can or want to tell me then you know I will always be here for you. I also want you to know Tris, that...I will always have your back. We belong here. You belong here."
I squeeze her hand to emphasize the last point. She smiles at me but I can tell it is strained. She nods to me and sigh. On the sigh I catch her exhaled whispered "What if I don't belong anywhere?"
I frown heavily and I jerk her hand to get her attention. My eyes burning with worry and anger at whatever is making her doubt herself. "Hey. You belong where you choose to Tris. Do you want to be here?" I demand of her and my anger making my tone come out something close to what I know Eric uses, but I don't care.
She bites her lip and barely hesitates but nods. "More than anything."
"Then you will belong because you choose it. Because you will do whatever it takes to make a place for yourself in your faction. To be with your family and friends."
Tris looks off into the distance and takes a slow deep breath in and nods. "I belong here."
"Don't forget it. No matter what someone might try and fill your head with. We have always known where were belong."
Despite her smile to me, despite the bit of relief and confidence I can see coming back into her eyes, I can also still see that deep worry behind her eyes.
A worry that I know I can't touch right now no matter how much it might kill me. I realize in that moment that I am not the only sister that could be harboring some deep secret. Until I can go to her with mine I can't demand hers.
The dorm is full of the sounds of people in deep sleep. Whether exhaustion induced or not it all results in me being able to slip away at the time I am to meet Zach. What I am not expecting is Peter to slip out right along with me. Taking my elbow with a tight jaw he guides me along and had hissed for me to be quiet when I tried to demand what he was doing.
I find out soon enough when I see Zach smirking but also waving us to a hallway.
"What's he doing here." I whisper out to Zach when we finally get close to him.
Zach glances over to Peter, who finally let go of my elbow but is still walking close with his jaw clenched. "Well as your boyfriend, it is only logical that if you were found gone in the middle of the night, he would be too. It will be assumed you two went off somewhere to be alone."
I groan at that and try to hold in the sick to my stomach feeling the thought of going somewhere with Peter to do anything of the sort brings me.
Peter glances at me and rolls his eyes with a huff. "Trust me, Stiff, the feeling is mutual. You aren't exactly my type."
Surprisingly his tone wasn't cruel or mean. If anything he was kind of amused. When we got to the hallway Zach had Peter wait a little ways away from the door.
"Better keep out of sight, Peter. I am not terribly sure he won't make good on that promise from earlier today." Zach mumbled to Peter, trying to keep it from my ears but failing.
I threw Zach a look wanting to know what promise Eric had made but just shook his head at me then guided me to the door. Just like the night of my dinner with Eric, Zach knocks briefly before putting in the code, sticking his head in and then making sure I go in before he goes off.
I give him an amused wave before turning back to see Eric's dining room has been transformed for the night with some kind of foldable table instead of the dining table along with a stool.
The surprise is seeing Bud there but also Eric bent over the table and working on what looks to be a sketch pad.
Bud looks up and sees me and his eyebrows go into his hairline before he gets a stern and worried look in his eyes. He huffs and crosses his arms over his chest before glaring at Eric. "Eric, you know I give a shit less about your reputation. But I swear to gods you better start explaining what half-pint is doing here in your apartment right now. I thought this was for you."
Eric looked up from whatever he was doing, his eyes cold and hard as the two men squared off. I moved forward and was about to speak but Eric looked over to me out of the side of his eyes, letting me know with a look to stay out of it. "We are together and just like anything else you know about me, that will be kept quiet. She isn't here against her will and I am not forcing her into anything."
"So all the shit about your torturing and beating the shit out of her on a daily basis in those punishments?" Bud asks, not giving an inch in the staring contest.
My temper rises and I huff angrily. "Hello. I am right here."
"So you are. In a leader's apartment after lights out." Bud looks over at me briefly as he says this dryly.
"The punishments are mostly a cover for us to spend time together but I won't lie and say we don't do actual work in them either." Eric replies blandly with a shrug.
There is tense silence before Bud turns to me with a sigh. "You know you are going to catch some major hell for this if it is ever found out, Kat. Right?"
I bristled and scowled at him. "I don't give a shit. Anyone that cares for me will only care that I am happy and anyone else can bring their happy asses and say something to my face. I won't live my life worried about what others are saying and let it dictate who I should be with."
Bud smirked at me and shrugged. "Ok then. Well, come take a look at what Eric has drawn up and see if you want any changes made."
My mouth drops open a little and my eyes snap over to Eric, who is looking down at the paper. Only knowing him like I do, can I tell that he is slightly embarrassed and maybe even worried? I didn't know he could even draw.
Intrigued and touched, I moved over to where he is standing. One look at the page has me melting inside and desire pooling in me. I let my fingers ghost over the shading and image he captured so perfectly from my description and what Chase and Zach found for me.
I lean against his chest for a moment and take a breath before I look into his blue eyes, full of anxious energy. A smile curls my lips and crinkles my eyes.
"It's perfect." I breathe out and my smile gets even wider as Eric has his own heart melting smile spread across his face.
He reaches out to cup the side of my face and strokes a thumb across my cheek but doesn't speak the words I know he wants to say. Not in front of Bud.
The moment is broken when Bud clears his throat and shifts.
"Let's check the placement and get it started. It is pretty big so it is going to take some time to complete." He warned and moved into the kitchen to where the rest of his equipment and instruments were set up.
With a blush I moved to Eric's bathroom when he told me I should go get changed. I would need the majority of my torso free so I chose to put on the sweatpant pajama bottoms, a sports bra and threw my hair up into a bun on the top of my head.
Eric tensed when I came out, lips thinned and cast a slight glare at Bud. The older tattoo artist smirked without even looking in my direction, apparently highly amused by Eric's behavior. The only time that Bud had any reaction to my state of dress was when he saw and encountered the scars along my side and back.
I was already laying on the table, facing away from him but towards Eric, who was holding my hand. They must have shared some look because Eric's lips thinned and he shook his head in the very slightest.
"Half-pint, I know you usually go without the numbing cream. Rib tattoos in the best conditions are painful as hell. But you have two other things going against you. I am afraid I am going to have to insist you go with the cream."
My hackles and temper start to rise when I knew where he was going with it. But him demanding me to use the cream has me seeing red.
"Angel…" Eric gives a pained whisper and leans forward, a hand pulling my head forward until his forehead is against mine. "You are the strongest person I know but you need to know when you do more harm to yourself in trying to prove you aren't weak. Maybe if you weren't dealing with the nerve issues it would be easier to see the sense in what you want to do. Why you want to do it. The reality is that you do have to deal with it. Ignoring it and not preparing for it is a bad way to approach things, just because of pride."
My eyes narrow at him and a growl comes from me as I huff. "Fine." I grit out between my clenched jaw, annoyed he used rationale and logic in the argument. "Use the damn cream."
"Thank you" Eric says in the softest of whispers before he kisses me quickly and pulls back. He is still smirking.
"Ass." I mutter.
Eric laughs loudly at that and shrugs, then repeats the words he said the first time I called him that. "I know. A completely in the right ass, but an ass."
My lips twitch around the snarl I try to keep on my lips as Bud chuckles and spreads on the cream before he begins the tattooing process.
The entire time Eric never leaves my side, nor do his eyes leave mine. My hand curled in his as the rendering of my past, my future, my fears and my pain is inked into my skin.
Eric
"Fuck!" I grunted out in loud harsh bark.
I take back everything I said about wanting to get Kat more books to read. In fact, I am seriously contemplating confiscating every fucking last one she already owns. Hell, I just might go confiscate every goddamn book in Dauntless and have a huge bonfire!
In her hands they have become instruments of torture. Weapons of mass destruction on my sanity and control.
A guttural growl breaks free as my body trembles. My stomach and abdomen muscles tensing with the tension of trying to reign myself in just a little. Kat gives a loud moan that vibrates up my shaft while my hands are wrapped tightly in her hair. There is no gentle guiding in my movements right now.
I lost that fucking war and now feel nothing but fierce hunger and animalistic urges.
I have only myself to blame really. I went into the night on fire for her. The entire day had ramped up what I feel for her on a normal basis. Add that I felt this primal need to mark her, claim her, against any claim Hayes might have. No matter that Zach assures me there is no way he wants her like that. Even the thought that someone, anyone, might think she belongs to anyone other than me is driving me insane with jealousy.
Her tattoo desgin had been part of my need to satisfy that craving. It had started out that way but the more I started to work on it in my office, the more it had also turned into trying to encompass everything I see and feel is Kat. Being able to be there during her getting it inked was the most erotic fucking thing I ever experienced.
As soon as Bud had finished I had kicked his ass out. Then I had proceeded to spend the better part of an hour hungrily devouring Kat in a flurry of orgasms that I continuously brought her to. Her trembling, gasped, moaning sobs had driven me wilder and wilder. I hadn't been able to stop myself. Had no plans to stop.
Only her sobs turning to ones begging me to do just that stopped me from carrying on. I had held her then. Still burning with hunger and desire, hornier than I had ever been; but smug in the knowledge that I had pleased her so thoroughly she couldn't speak or think.
I should have thought more clearly. I shouldn't have relaxed my guard. I should have realized that Kat would never just accept not wanting to return my attentions with ones of her own.
She had started out teasing in that innocent way she has and even that, with the state of my arousal, was stretching it. Then she took every trick I had been using, adapted it, and applied it to me.
Any control I had was wrecked. The war I had to treat her gently and not like a fucking animal was gone. It didn't help that the rougher I got, the more she moaned around me.
Her movements were still inexperienced and I could tell she was trying to take more and more of me into her mouth. Both her hands are wrapped around me and moving up and down along with her mouth as I move her head and my hips in a fast rhythm.
Now I am fighting myself from letting loose a string of filthy things in response to the urges being with her brings up. Urges I had never had before with anyone and was for fucking sure not going to give in with Kat.
"God damn baby you make me feel so fucking good." I growl out, panting as I get closer to a release.
Kat gives a pleased hum and sigh around me making me close my eyes at the sensation.
Fuck the things I want to do to her. Why does she inspire this shit in me? Maybe it is the absolute passion and abandon she has when she is with me. The trust she shows in taking and giving pleasure.
My hands tighten in her hair, as my body tenses while I near what I can tell is going to be a hell of an explosive release. My moan joins hers as she increases her efforts, knowing and feeling what is about to happen.
"Baby…." I husk out as I open my eyes and look down at her. The sight of her, head bobbing up and down on me but her bare ass right there for me to see has me clenching my jaw and fingers digging into her hair. She is wiggling and moving her thighs, plainly trying to ease her own raging arousal. "Shit you look so good with your ass in the air, kitten." I growl feraly out before I can bring the words back.
She doesn't get repulsed or pull back, if anything her movements increase as do her moans. No not moans, at least not normal ones. I recognize it for what it plainly is and it pushes me over the edge.
Her body is trembling and she is crying out in what is clearly an orgasm while I explode inside her mouth with a grunting growl and a hoarse bark. I swear my eyes roll back in my head and my heart feels like is going to break free of my chest.
When the trembling stops and my body lets go of the muscle lock it went under, I collapse back onto the bed, panting and breathing hard. In a state of shock and wonder. Sometime during that Kat had freed me from her mouth and was collapsed with her forehead against a thigh. I couldn't see her face but I felt a sense of embarrassment from her.
Panting and with a frown, I reach for her. "Come here, kitten." I husk out in a pant.
To my own slight embarrassment, rather weakly, I manage to drag her up and tuck her close to my side. She lays her head on my chest and is panting as well.
"Fuck you wreck me, baby." I say finally with a slight chuckle as I run my hands through her hair. Her eyes turn to mine and I see that darker green in them.
"Is that a bad thing?" Her voice is soft and a combination of completely done in as well as nervous.
I shake my head with a scowl. "Not at all, kitten."
Not really anyways. Yeah, it is bad I seem to lose control around her but that if it results in what just happened...is it so bad?
"I came." She said innocently and with that tone of self-consciousness.
"I know, was sexy as hell." I reply simply.
I feel her smile on my chest and she sighs, relaxing into me. Her fingers trace over the bare flesh of my side, the tattoos under her cheek and along my ribs. I look to see her studying them. Probably analyzing them differently now that she knows I drew them all myself.
Does she recognize that the same type of shading I have in mine, I used in hers? That how I used smoke and shadows to obscure the lower body of the panther, they way it curls sinuously and seductively along her sides, is the same basis for parts of my own tattoos.
When thinking about everything I had discovered about her, some of her struggles and ones that I could only guess at; I had developed the design. The majority of the tattoo was a mixture of realistic looking smoke but shaded in the varying colors of black and grey. There are parts that wrap slightly around her back, following the scars in a way that incorporates them but morphs them as well. There are hints of the body of a black panther weaved into this until breaking out near the top is the upper body, with the head turned in profile. The look is as close as I could get to the exact way Kat looks when she is charged with her fire of determination. The mouth just slightly open, muscles tensed and breathtaking.
The only color is the one eye. Gold with flecks of green and there is no way anyone that knows her wouldn't know it is her eye color. The overall effect is that the pather looks to be formed from or emerging from those shadows and smoke.
Sexy, intelligent, deadly….strong and proud. Everything I see and feel in my kitten.
My arms tighten around her and I feel her movements begin to slow down, her breathing beginning to even out as she starts to drift off. I should force myself to help her get dressed. To clean up and then take her to the dorm for the rest of the time before morning.
I am pushing things with keeping her here. I close my eyes and lean my head down to press my lips to her head knowing I am not letting her go.
She drifts off deeply. I extricate myself to send off a few messages. Zach is keeping Peter out of the dorm in some way so that is covered. Chase is handling the other part of it. With a sigh of relief I straighten up the dining room, slip out of the pants that I never completely took off and into some pj bottoms. Then I carefully slip one of my shirts over Kat before slipping into bed beside her.
She curls into me and I am out before much longer in content and a small smile on my lips. The remaining weeks might seem like they will take forever but at the end I know I will have her right where she is and belongs every night.
