PASSION PLAY
Notice: Sexual content
Fairhill Academy, Ohio River Valley, Autumn 2050
Isdra and Sally found Zachary's body when they went to feed the horses that morning. Connor heard the girls' shrieks and ran to see why. Most of the draining blood had been caught by the feed pan that Zachary had thoughtfully placed beneath himself, and there was a tarp as well, but his head had bounced quite a ways and left a spattered red trail.
"Did someone kill him?" Isdra asked with horrified fascination, but the carefully folded glasses atop the suicide note said no.
"I can't live this way," Zachary had written. "I'm sorry. Goodbye."
The memorial service was held in the meditation garden at noon. The students were bewildered, some stricken to weeping, the immortals grimly silent for understanding why. The grave marker read "Zachary M. Barclay 28 Sep 2000 – 28 Sep 2050."
"Happy goddam birthday," Baden muttered, low enough so that only Connor heard.
Gregor ended the service with a reading from the Bible, and then people filed silently away. Terah stayed, huddled against the wall, her thin arms wrapped around her knees, her head bent, and her face hidden behind a curtain of dark hair. Chelle was by her side.
It was their weekly game night, but in the staff lounge after dinner, no one took out the poker cards. Ceirdwyn had set liquor and glasses on the sideboard. A special occasion.
"To Zachary," she said, raising her glass, and they drank in his memory. Ra'el drained hers in one go. Then people drifted about, finally finding places to be in the room. No one sat in the corner chair.
"I didn't realize…," Sally's mother began, breaking the silence, and when everyone looked at her she continued,. "Zachary once said he didn't think he would ever grow old. When I asked why, he said he had a health condition."
An eternally good health condition, Connor thought with bitter wryness.
"Do you know what it was?" Stef asked Gregor.
Gregor cleared his throat before saying, "I wasn't his physician."
Ceirdwyn offered, "Huntington's Disease starts showing symptoms at middle age. It's debilitating and incurable. I wouldn't want to live with it."
Connor appreciated the neatly phrased replies: completely true, utterly irrelevant, and eminently believable.
"I wouldn't either," Ra'el agreed.
"And there can be other reasons," Sally's mother put in. "Like Mr. and Mrs. Horst in town. They took the farewell pills last Sunday after church."
"Weren't all of their children lost when Yellowstone blew?" Stef asked.
"Yes, and they were getting old, past seventy." Sally's mother shook her head. "I only have the one daughter, but I can't imagine that. It's not right to outlive all your children."
"No," Stef agreed.
Connor tossed back what was left of his drink, avoided the eyes of the other immortals as he left the room, and went to bed.
Later that night, Connor woke instantly when the sensation of an immortal crawled through him. His hand went to the handle of his sword, stored under the bed. He sat up, weapon in hand, and swung his feet to the floor. The door opened slowly, and Chelle slipped inside.
"Duncan's room is down the hall," Connor told her, relaxing his grip but not letting go.
"I know where Duncan is." Without turning or taking her gaze from his, Chelle reached behind her and shut the door. Then she locked it.
"Chelle—"
"Are you going to tell me to leave?" she broke in.
He ought to. It would be responsible. It would be wise.
But in the dim light, her eyes held shadows of promise, and her black robe flowed over a body of supple quickness. He hadn't touched that body, but he'd gone running with her nearly every day these last six months, and they'd been sparring partners a few times. He'd noticed. And from their other practice sessions in the "CerebroQ", when they'd reached out into the world, Connor had caught a taste of her spirit: impatient, stubborn, occasionally flaring in rage or joy. He'd noticed that, too.
Her narrow feet were bare, and her unbound hair was a dark cloud of softness. Connor locked eyes with her then slowly shook his head.
"Then shut up," she ordered. She took two steps to the center of the room, nearly close enough to touch, close enough so that Connor could catch her scent.
Connor took in a slow and silent breath then slid his sword back under the bed and left it there. He stood so that they faced each other, unsmiling and intent. She raised her right hand, palm forward; he mirrored the motion until their fingertips touched. The connection turned into a careful exploration, palm to palm, fingers interlacing, a clasping of hands.
Her hand slid down to his wrist, then tightened there. Her fingers were surprisingly strong, and she knew exactly where the nerve junctions where. It wasn't pain, not yet, but it was pressure, and Connor put a stop to it by clamping down on her right hand with his left. He turned that into a sweeping caress, sliding his thumb slowly along the inside of her wrist, where he could feel her pulse, rapid and strong.
Chelle stepped forward, her robe swinging open a little as she moved, and he caught a glimpse of naked thigh. He could feel the heat of her body all along his, even through their clothes, and he could hear his own blood surging in his ears, and definitely moving lower down.
"Don't," she began, laying her free hand upon his, so that all four of their hands were tangled together, and they stood only a half-step apart.
Connor froze, uncertain of what it was she didn't want him to do, but certain that she got to make that call.
Chelle drew in a slow and careful breath, much like his earlier one, and tightened her grip again before telling him, "Don't be gentle with me."
At that his blood was leaping, each heartbeat distinct, cascading into exquisite painful throbbing in his guts and groin. Yet Connor stayed exactly where he was, unmoving. One of his mistresses had liked to play out domination scenes, and a few centuries back there'd been that redhead in London who enjoyed spanking. He'd sampled other variations in brothels over the years. But they'd all been mortals who didn't heal; with an immortal, the line between pleasure and pain didn't have to apply.
Not that he'd ever wanted to go that far, not for fun. Rebecca hadn't been interested, and Cassandra, understandably, had a deep need for gentleness. None of the other immortal women he'd been with had suggested it; that level of trust usually took time.
But Chelle was young and impatient. And she was standing right in front of him, waiting, wearing nothing but a thin, silk robe. "Never took you for a submissive," Connor said, wondering just how far and in which way Chelle wanted to go.
"Oh, I'm not," she replied. Her fingernails dug lightly into his skin, creating tiny crescents of pain. "I don't want to be gentle with you, either."
Connor let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, a mix of a chuckle and a grunt above a growl of lust. But first, he forced himself to ask: "Limits?"
She shrugged. "We're immortal."
"I won't kill you," Connor warned.
"Uh, yeah," she said blankly then followed it with a rapid, "Right. Good. Not my thing."
Not his, either. But Chelle clearly hadn't thought this though, not all the way. "Limits?" Connor asked again.
"Right," she agreed slowly then came up with, "I'm not a masochist; I'm not into pain. Or humiliation. No punching, nothing broken. Just vigorous, even aggressive. You know?"
He did. She wanted it rough, but with a partner, not a master.
"I want … primal," Chelle said next. "No pretty words."
He knew about that, too. Not many people were so forthright about asking, especially not the first time. They liked that civilized layer, that safety and control. Untamed scared them.
It sure scared Cassandra. She liked it tame. She wanted him tamed, but he wasn't and he couldn't ever be, and when she'd finally realized that, she'd shuddered in revulsion and turned away. Two years, it had been.
Two years since Sara and John had died. Nearly ten since Rachel had gone. Colin would be fifty-four in two months time. Not old, certainly, and he was still in good health, but he wasn't young. And even if Colin lived another thirty or forty or even fifty years, eventually he would die.
Yet Connor would still go on, immortal, outliving his children and his wives. He knew more than he wanted to about that. But right now, Chelle was looking up at him, tensely eager, a little nervous, but not afraid. Her lips were slightly parted, the youthful softness of her face drawn sharper by urgent need. A need to lose herself, to release some of the frustration and rage and pain of immortality, a need to be overwhelmed by passion and sensation and not to think of anything at all.
He knew that need.
"Are you up for this?" Chelle asked, and for the first time since he'd met her, she sounded unsure.
"Oh, yeah," he reassured her. Definitely up.
She caught his meaning and responded with a quick, knowing grin. But first she asked: "Limits?"
Farther than hers, he was pretty damn sure. But he simply copied her earlier line: "Don't be gentle with me." She nodded, now seeming more nervous than eager, so Connor merely tightened his grip on her hands, finding her pressure points as she had found his, pressing almost to the point of pain. Then he relaxed and waited for her to make the next move.
She shivered a little, a rippling of skin, before she pulled her hands free and stepped back. Still watching him, with unhurried fingers she untied the sash to her robe. Its edges drifted apart, revealing the curve of a breast, a glimpse of shadowed navel, a slender thigh.
Connor watched with half-closed eyes, enjoying the show.
The tortuously slow strip tease continued as Chelle wrapped the sash around one hand. With a rough whisper of silk upon silk she pulled it free. But instead of dropping it, she draped the length of it across the nape of her neck and pulled the ends forward, so that it fell down over her breasts and the ends of the sash grazed her hands. The narrow strip glistened darkly against the whiteness of her neck.
She started to circle him, slowly, as though taking his measure during a duel, but Connor didn't turn to keep her in view. He stood still and let her come up behind him, close enough to feel the heat of her body and her breath upon his back through the thin fabric of his shirt. With one hand pressing in the small of his back, like a dance partner leading the way, she maneuvered him to face the wall.
Chelle started with a light touch, just her fingertips, tracing the contours of his back, his shoulders, his biceps, and then down his forearms to the cuffs of his shirt, not touching skin to skin. On the way back up, she used her nails, scratching lightly. Then again, harder, her hands caressing down this time, her nails dragging up. Then the same from his back to his waist, then along his sides, her hands sliding from nipples to ribs. At the front, her fingers found the buttons of his shirt, and she undid them, one by one by one, taking her time about it. The edges of the shirt parted, and Connor felt a shiver of cool air drift across the bare skin of his torso.
Chelle took hold of the collar and tugged his shirt down his back, baring his shoulders and his upper chest, but then she stopped, leaving his arms entangled. Connor immediately shook the shirt off the rest of the way; he'd let her have her way with him, but she couldn't tie him down.
"Limits," she murmured, sounding amused, and then she was behind him again, just barely touching, the tips of her breasts sudden islands of heat on his back. Her hands followed the same paths as before, but this time she touched naked skin, and as her tempo and the fierceness increased. Scratches deepened to gouges, and her fingers caressed and pinched and caressed again.
She used her knee to push his legs apart then pushed at his ankles with her foot to spread them even more. Her wicked knowing fingers went back to work, leaving Connor shuddering between waves of pleasure and pain.
He had to lean forward and brace his hands against the wall to keep his balance, and she leaned into him, her naked thigh hot between his legs, her breasts warm against his back, her breath moist and close upon his skin. He'd been spread-eagled and pushed up against a wall before, but when the cops did it, it never felt this damn good. Chelle's fingers went to his nipples, and Connor closed his eyes, either gritting his teeth or gasping.
Down his spine came tiny hot kisses, and her hands slid lower, down to his waist. Silk rustled as she sank to her knees, and then she started in on his legs. Over the cloth of his sweatpants at first, as she'd done with his shirt, until—finally—she took hold of his waistband, one hand by each of his hips. But there were no buttons to undo this time, and she simply pulled the pants straight down, so that Connor swore hoarsely as the cloth scraped over his already painfully hard cock. Even before he'd kicked the pants off and away, Chelle was already pushing his legs apart again, her hands demanding and insistent, down the outer thigh and up the inner, at the back of the knee, the top of the foot, switching quickly between stroking and scraping, between pressing and pinching, until his skin was quivering in unsure anticipation and his throat was dry.
Her lips planted more tiny hot kisses, now at the base of his spine, alternating with puffs of air and sharp nips, while her hands kneaded his buttocks, and every so often her hair would drift feather-light across his naked skin, all of it driving him crazy, until—when he spread his legs for her even more—her hands and her lips and her tongue moved farther down, and his world contracted to a red-hot pulsing need that throbbed with every heartbeat, and she still hadn't even touched him there.
"Damn it, woman," he muttered, because he couldn't take much more. But when Chelle only laughed in triumph, Connor swiftly turned around. She was already on her feet, facing him, her robe half-open over her shadowed nakedness, her eyes dark with desire. Connor held out his hands, and she interlaced her fingers in his, as they had done when first she came into his room, but this time he was the one to put the pressure on. Unsmiling and intent, he slowly bent her wrists backwards, forcing her to her knees.
From her place on the floor she looked up at him, tossing her head in defiance, shaking loose her hair. He let go of her wrists and wound his fingers through those dark strands, luxuriating in the softness between his fingers. Then he tightened his grip and twisted, controlling her head, reining her in.
She came to him, but slowly, resisting until she had to bend her head to the pain. But for all of that, her mouth was eager and her lips were hot, and her tongue lapped deeply at the roots of his desire, drawing him deeper, harder, faster, even while her arms wrapped around the back of his thighs and her fingernails were carving lightning-hot splinters of pain from his back and his buttocks and his balls, until Connor's world exploded in white scintillating fire, burning out pain and pleasure in slowly ebbing waves, leaving at the end a warm contented glow over every inch of skin.
When his breathing was almost back to normal, he carefully untwined his hands from her hair. Chelle pulled her head back and rested her cheek against his thigh before taking his hand in both of hers and pressing it to her lips. But instead of those tiny hot kisses and sharp nips, she traced delicate patterns with the tip of her tongue then blew softly, so that air chilled the skin so recently moist and warm. He opened his hand, sliding his fingers across the softness of her cheek and down the line of her jaw.
Like a cat tired of being petted, she turned her head and sank her teeth into the web of skin between his fingers and thumb. But this was no love bite, and he grunted slightly with the pain. Chelle still didn't let go, and so he twisted his free hand in her hair and yanked her head back. His left hand was throbbing where his skin was scraped and torn, and then it was burning as the lightning of healing cauterized the wound. Her eyes were half-closed, lazy and lidded, and from deep in her throat came a sated murmur of desire as her tongue flicked out and licked her lips clean of blood.
His blood.
Connor hauled Chelle to her feet by her hair, then swiftly grabbed the neck of her robe and pulled it halfway down her back, pinning her arms to her sides and stripping her bare at the same time. She'd done the same to him, but he didn't give her the chance to shake free, because what she'd done to him gave him a good idea of what she wanted him to do to her.
The silk sash flowed in two dark stripes over her pale skin, half covering one nipple but leaving the other breast bare. He left the sash where it was, for now.
Chelle was writhing, trying to bite, and he spun her sideways and pulled her back against him, his left forearm across her throat, his right leg hooked over hers, holding her in place, and also forcing her legs apart. Then he grabbed her hair again and twisted, using the strands like the rope on a winch to pull her head back, far enough so that she had to pant for air. He used his own teeth to nip at her ear lobe, her jaw, her chin, and she shuddered every time. He tasted her all along the length of her throat, from the softness under her chin to the hollow between her collar bones, drawing from her urgent, hungry moans. He licked a trail to her left breast, small and perfect, and he sucked its nipple to sweet tightness before biting down.
She whimpered in pain, then whimpered again when he drew the delicate skin up to tautness and let his teeth scrape against it when he let go. He kissed his way back to her throat, her blood pulsing beneath his tongue, and when he bit down into her neck and sucked, it flowed hot and salty sweet before the healing sparks closed the wound and tingled like a battery on his tongue.
"You son of a bitch," she swore then started cursing him monotonously.
He lifted his head and ordered, "Be quiet." Her blood was sticky on his lips.
"Make me," she challenged.
Fine. With his foot, he swept her feet out from under her and took her down with him to the floor. Her arms and feet were still entangled within her robe, and he simply pinned her down with his own weight before reaching for the ends of the sash she'd hung around her neck. He knotted it into a leash around her throat, loose enough for her to breathe, tight enough for him to control.
He sat back on his heels, straddling her legs, and pulled. She fought the leash to the point of gasping as Connor brought her back against him, but at least she didn't have breath enough to swear. Finally, she was kneeling, with her hands still caught up behind her and with only the bunched silk of her robe covering the luscious curve of her rear. Connor kept the tension on the leash with his left hand, while with his right hand he ruthlessly explored.
No gentle stroking of naked skin, no soft touches or deft arousal. This wasn't sharing a between lovers, this was plunder and domination, from his brutal pinching of her nipples to his shoving her knees apart then thrusting his fingers roughly into her cleft, slick and moist and hot, and then forcing her to lick them clean. She was his to toy with, his to control, and he squeezed and pinched and fondled until she was moaning again and leaning into the leash on her own. He slid two fingers inside her, his thumb on her clit. Then he waited, his own breath sounding harsh in his ears, each exhalation stirring her hair.
"Damn it, man," she begged, writhing against him, then cursing. But he didn't move until she finally said, "Please."
Slowly, he started, then even more slowly increased the rhythm and the roughness of his hand, matching those pulsations to the tightening and loosening of the noose around her throat. She moved with him, against him, and when her legs started shaking, he pressed into her hard and also squeezed, while his other hand jerked the leash tight and held it there. Chelle bucked then quivered all over and started uttering low and breathless moans, and he timed the motion of his fingers to her quivering inside.
As her breathing evened out, he let the sash unwind from his left hand, then took hold of her robe and pulled it away, freeing her arms and revealing all her lovely curves. He pushed her forward, onto her hands and knees, eager to take her from behind. He was ready—he'd had been ready since before he'd pulled her to the floor—but still he paused to ask, "Chelle?" because even with what they'd just been doing, this was different.
"Yes," she urged, pressing back against him, opening to him. "Now."
Connor closed his eyes, for now it was, only now and only here, and this was all that mattered, this was all there was—the feel of her against him and around him, the warmth and slide of skin on skin above the mingled sounds of their desire, with both of them caught up and carried by that ancient timeless rhythm, moving together, merging together, his hands gripping tight and her legs between his, and it was now and here and here and now. "Yes," she whispered fiercely, and "yes" he answered, again and again and again, and everything that mattered was in that one sweet word.
But eventually they fell silent, and the now turned into then, and they were back in the world once more. The floor, Connor noticed, was uncomfortable and cold. "Bed?" he suggested.
"Desk?" she countered.
Bed, desk, chandelier… they all sounded good to him. She got to her feet and so did he, and then for the first time tonight, they were pressed together, front to front, with nothing in between, save for the thin ribbon of silk hanging down from her neck. He buried his face at the side of her neck, nuzzling through her hair and beneath the sash to use his lips on her skin at the same spot where before he'd used his teeth, but he should have remembered she didn't want tender. When her nails sliced long ribbons into his back, he bit her again, and he didn't let go until she slapped him, and then he slapped her in return.
And so it went between them, with tooth and nail and slicing pain that flooded into pleasure and back again, with hands that shoved and slapped then gripped each other tight and close with an urgency hard enough to bruise. Their skin, scraped raw and bleeding, tingled and burned from the healing sparks, and their bodies grew slick with sweat and blood. They mated with a passion made brutal in its fierceness, a brutality that fed a climax shattering in its agonizing release.
After, like a sailor who'd clung to a spar during the raging surf of a storm then kept on clinging, too exhausted to let go, in gently rocking waves, Connor couldn't move. His limbs lay heavy with sated desire, and his heart thudded against his ribs. Close beneath him, he could feel Chelle's heartbeat, too. Her arms and legs wrapped tight around him, holding him close, still inside her. Sparks danced with heated pinpricks along the bloody scratches she'd gouged down his backside, then his skin started to grow chill as sweat and blood dried. She sighed against his ear and muttered in exhausted wonderment, "Fuck."
"In a minute," Connor replied, because even though he was immortal, he didn't recuperate quite that fast.
That got a chuckle, a delightful vibration from her head to her toes, and Connor summoned the energy to carefully roll off her, keeping her close on the narrow bed, and pull the blanket over them. But before their breathing had settled back to normal, she got up from the bed. She left the sash where he had tied it, a leash around her neck, and pulled on her robe as she headed for the door.
Connor sat up. "Chelle—"
"You talk too much," she told him, glancing back over her shoulder, one hand clutching the edges of her robe together, then slipped from the room.
Alone in his bed, Connor laughed aloud. No one had ever said that to him before.
The next morning at breakfast, Chelle ignored him. Connor had expected that. She showed up for their usual 5K run, but didn't talk then, either, which was also normal. A week later, she slipped into his room again. They didn't talk at all that time.
The next day, in a quiet moment after the run, Connor asked, "How long were your marriages?" Chelle shook her head with a look halfway between amusement and annoyance; Connor wasn't sure if the expression was because of him or because of her husbands.
She answered, though. "Twelve years, five months, fifty-two days. You?"
"Forty-eight, two, and thirty-four. Years."
She shook her head again, but this time she looked incredulous. And maybe a bit envious. "Widowed?" she asked. "Or divorced?"
"Widowed." When she didn't volunteer her own information, he lifted an eyebrow.
She straightened from her stretch against the side of the building to answer, "Twice widowed, once divorced."
Connor was wondering if the divorce had come after the fifty-two days, the five months, or the twelve years, when she added without prompting, "No kids."
"Four kids," he answered in turn.
And that was the end of the conversation. The next time she came to him, in the office of the dojo, they didn't even bother to take off much of their clothes, but she kissed his cheek before she left.
The days grew shorter. The trees began to lose their leaves. Chelle hadn't been to visit him again, but she was friendlier during the day, sitting at the same table at meals sometimes, asking him to spar, even engaging in conversation.
Her change in behavior prompted discerning glances from Baden, who found a quiet moment to tell Connor, "Don't hurt her."
Connor wasn't sure if that was a warning or a plea. And it didn't even admit the possibility that she might hurt him. But Baden had been Chelle's student and was now her good friend, and he only meant well, so Connor answered with a reassuring nod.
Duncan noticed, too. "I think she's starting to like you." He added with a teasing grin: "Wolverine."
Connor mimed extending lethal claws, and didn't bother to explain that he and Chelle were in the "getting to know you better before this goes any farther" stage. Passion was straightforward, but tenderness was complicated.
And often frightening.
Continued in "Something Wicked", in which a darkness comes