Oculus (Oculus #1) (17 page)

The door closes behind me and I can smell my father before he says a word. “What on earth!” He snaps at me as he gets up from his chair in a hurry, causing the metal legs to screech irksomely across the floor.

“I’m going to bed,” I announce flatly as I tug the collapsible stick from my back pocket and drop it haphazardly on the small dining table.

“Oh no you aren’t!”

“I most definitely am.” I ignore my father’s demands and move to pour myself a glass of liquid fire. The first sip scorches my throat, but lands with cushy warmth in my belly.

“Iris Tierney!” My father bellows, earning a flinch from me. “You may be an adult, but you are still my daughter,
my blind daughter
, and you’ve just dragged in two minutes before compound curfew with dirt on you, torn clothes… and you think I’m just going to let you traipse off to your room after you’ve helped yourself to my whiskey cabinet?”

“Well, that’s what I’m doing, so…” I open my mouth wide and down the last of my drink. My stomach protests the alcohol with a queasy churning, but settles back down as the liquid goes to work. I turn on my heels, ready to trudge up the stairs to my room.

“You had better be forthcoming with me, right now!” He snaps.

“Oh. You mean just in the same way that you’re so forth coming with me?” The calm in my voice contradicts the mayhem roiling just beneath the surface.

“Excuse me? What are you talking about?” He’s affronted by my implied accusation or maybe he’s panicked that I now know something that I shouldn’t. Either way, I’m regretting not listening to Sic more and more as the seconds tick by.

“Does the name Sicarius mean anything to you?” Part of me wants him to deny knowing anything about a man named Sicarius and part of me wants to barter the lies and deceit if it means that Sic, my phantom, is indeed real.

“Where did you hear that?” he whispers conspiratorially.

“Oh, a wild dream I suppose.” My veins tingle and warm pleasantly as my father’s whiskey courses its way through me.

“Never speak that name again,” he whispers without explanation.

“Why, father? You don’t want to be forthcoming with me?” There’s an intonation about the way I ask my rhetorical question that I know will rankle the hell out of him.

“This discussion is over.”

“That’s what I thought. Do as I say not do as I do, isn’t that so, dad?”

“You know nothing,” he grates out.

“Yep and that’s no thanks to you! This is useless. I’m going to bed.”

“Shut your fucking mouth you stupid girl! You have no idea what you’re meddling with! There are bigger things in this world than you, than this compound, than Fenra! They won’t hesitate to kill you.” I halt in my tracks and begin shaking for three reasons. First, he’s never spoken to me this way. Second, I believe him. Third, something deep inside knows that he’s exactly right. I’m disposable just like everyone else here. Fear tightens around my throat. Even whiskey won’t help what I feel right now.

I can think of only one medicine right now.

Sic
.

Hattie doesn’t hesitate to answer. “Iris! Oh my god, Iris! I heard what happened. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Where’s Cade? His friends?”

“Why are you worried about him? I haven’t spoken to him so I wouldn’t know where he is, but I heard my mom say no one was caught during the raid. What were you thinking going there?”

“Oh, you know, just felt like running for my
life
! Jesus, Hattie. I didn’t want to go, trust me.”

“Then why did you go?” The suspicion in her voice isn’t hard to miss, even through the fog of whiskey.

“Why?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I—I can’t tell you,” I admit, falling back onto my bed in a heap.

“I see. Well, I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” she says haughtily then ends the call.

“What the fuck!” I yell with my face buried in my pillow.

“Iris Tierney, you are hereby under arrest for suspicion of being a Resistance Sympathizer, for suspicion of conspiring against Fenra Corporation, unauthorized furlough from corporate grounds, falsifying statements to a Fenra agent, and extortion of corporate official Chief Dillon Ingram. The Council has convened to hear your case posthaste. Please comply.”

“Wh-what?” I screech. Multiple sets of hands grab at me under my blanket. “Wait! Just stop! Dad!” I scream as loud as I can. Bile surges up my throat. I thrash and kick at the people handling me.

“Iris. Just cooperate,” my father’s voice is smooth and even in a way that confuses me.
Why is he so calm?

“What? Cooperate? I didn’t do anything! I didn’t extort that sick fucker, Ingram, either! He seduced me! He forced me to go to that meeting!”

“A likely thing for a traitor to say,” an agent says in a dispassionate voice.

“I didn’t do anything I wasn’t forced to!”

“Haven’t heard that one before either,” another agent chimes in as they secure my hands behind my back.

Sic. Oh my god, Sic. Help me! Get me out. Get me out. Get me out. Get me out. Get me out.

I chant in my mind, willing my heart to slow its pace and my brain to clear the last vestiges of whiskey-induced fog.

My bare feet move jerkily across my bedroom floor as the agents around me herd me from the safety of my bedroom.

It’s odd how time seems to alter and switch and slow and speed and pause altogether when a person is faced with inconceivable circumstances.

I’m oddly confused, blurry and I haven’t the slightest idea how much time has passed since my trial. Odder still is that I can’t even recall the trial. All I can recall is the deafening sound of silence in this cell underlined by the finality that awaits me.

I was hoping for exile. Give me the Dark Lands. Give me prison camp. But none of that is going to happen.

Today is the day of my death and the pity of it all is that I don’t even know the damned date.

“Miss Tierney, please rise,”

“Wait, I’m not ready!”

“Your execution is to be carried out right away.”

“I don’t belong here!” I shout. “I don’t belong here!” I scream, thrashing against the bindings around my limbs.

A hand claps over my mouth. A familiar hand.
Sic!

“You
will
believe me,” he whispers with his lips pressed to my ear.

The blankets are tangled around my legs and arms making me feel claustrophobic in a way that I’ve never experienced. My nostrils flare as I try to catch my breath. The rough hand against my mouth stays put while the fog of fear and whiskey and fitful sleep clears away.

Sic’s hand slowly moves away. My bed dips as he settles himself at my hip. “You called?”

“I did? I did. I’m sorry I—didn’t,” I stumble along trying to gather my thoughts.

“It was just a dream,” he declares, plucking errant tendrils of hair from my sweat dampened forehead.

Tears sting my eyes. My heart is still pounding and I’m overwhelmed at the comfort that having him here right now establishes within me.

“It’s okay,” he goes on. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. I can’t even if I wanted to.”

“Why? I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m so confused,” I huff. My head is spinning.

“Would you like me to clear things up for you?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

Sic’s calloused hands cup my face like he has done in my dreams. His soft, full lips cover mine and in an instant my world as I know it falls away. Flashes of color and thoughts and memories that I don’t feel are truly mine, flit through my mind like a string of explosives as his lips do all the clarifying I need.

My hands roam up his chest to his neck, to his face. The scar beneath my palm feels so much more real than it ever did in my dreams. My lips part invitingly and he seizes the opportunity without hesitation. A moan of pleasure that I don’t even recognize as my own, slips from me and it seems to encourage him. He drinks from me with unbelievable thirst.

Sic breaks away from me, panting. He rests his forehead against mine. “Do you understand now?”

“Yes,” I breathe.

“If you choose not to believe the things that I have to tell you then you have to at least understand
that
…
this
,” he brushes his lips over mine once more sending a chill through my body. “I meant what I said, Iris. You’re mine. You always have been.”

“Yes,” I whisper barely loud enough to hear as I pull myself onto his lap hoping that he won’t miss the invitation that I’m extending.

My brain is screaming for me to ask questions, but it can wait because my body is in control, driven by a need to consume Sicarius in the most intimate way that a woman can possess a man.

Please, Sic
, I think to myself, testing the connection that we clearly share. Sic doesn’t waste a moment. He lifts me off his lap and brings us both to stand beside my bed.

I can tell that my anxiousness is mirrored in him. My ears thrum with the sound of my own heart slamming away in my chest. I rise on the tips of my toes and press my lips to his, willing us both to relax and enjoy what we are giving each other. I go to work on his clothing, dropping it away to collect in a scattered pile on my floor. He allows my hands to explore him in the way that I must. The palms of my hands map the planes and slopes and valleys and curves of his body. He’s impressively fit. Lean and strong. Tall and broad. His skin burns white-hot under my hands making me want to rush so that I can take that heat into me, to consume the fire that’s burning within him. It’s all I can do to take my time exploring, memorizing, mapping.

I take the solid length of him into my hand and my heart leaps in my chest. My center pulses with the desire that feels as though it’s clawing at what resolve I have left to take this slow. Sic groans subtly as my fingers wrap firmly around him.

His hands go to the hem of my shirt and tug it up and over my head. He makes short work of what’s left of my clothing. With one sinewy arm snaked around my waist, he lays me back on my bed, the same bed that I’ve dreamed of him so many times for so many years. And now…

You’re here. You’re real. You’re mine.

Sic nods, brushing the tip of his nose against the tip of mine. Our connection is unfathomable. My brain tells me that I should feel threatened to have such a connection with a Dark Lander, but every single cell of my being tells me that Sic is my home and there is no safer place for me.

He kisses me breathlessly as I take him in my hand and coax him forward to settle comfortably between my thighs. With one even, measured thrust, Sic drives home, and I’m forever changed.