Kuza rested his head back on his mate's shoulder and let his mouth fall open. The way Chris' lips felt along his neck, he swore he was in Heaven. A few moans slipped from his lips as his dominant's hands rubbed between his legs. It'd been far too long since either had met a sweet release. Their bodies were dying for satisfaction.

He turned back to Chris, stealing a kiss from him, "You make me feel so fucking good, baby."

"Then I'm doing my job right." His breath fell deep into Kuza's ear, making him shutter. When Chris brought his voice down to that sensual whisper that he's mastered, it made his little fire dragon weak at the knees. "Tell me what you want."

Kuza blushed as his hair fell down into his face, "Don't make me."

"Well, how am I supposed to know what to do?" Chris teased him.

"You already know what I want."

"Oh?" He taunted, running his fingers down his arm to raise goosebumps, "Do I?"

"Stop it!" He giggled. With women, he was never shy in the bedroom. It was different when you were in the woman's position. Before, he never understood the ones that would stutter or hide their faces. Now, he gets it. It's a lot scarier to be the submissive one. You feel so exposed and small.

"What's wrong?" Chris softly asked while tucking his long hair behind his ear for him.

"It's never going to get easier, is it? Having sex? It's always going to feel so fucking raw and gut wrenching." He responded.

A sigh fell from his mate's pierced lips. "I'm not sure. I've told you before, how it eventually turned into an addiction for Ricky and Ryan. They're the only ones I've known that had the same problem we did, where it's a painful pleasure. It's a sign of an incredibly strong connection, you know."

"I don't want you to think... Because of some of the things I've said, that I doubt what we have. I don't. I just doubt myself, that I could ever earn this kind of love. I don't deserve it, Chris. In all honesty, when we used to fight, that was when I was less scared of being bound to you. I thought I belonged bound to someone that treated me like shit, because that's what I deserve. I never truly paid my penance for what I've done."

"How could you ever say that?" Chris grabbed his jaw and guided him to look into his eyes, "Have you looked in the mirror? Do you really think this wasn't penance enough?"

His eyes welled and glassed over, "N-No, it wasn't. It isn't. If it weren't for you, and for Devin, I would've killed myself a long time ago." Tears began to stream down his scarred face. "I deserve to die a thousand times for all the lives I took, all the people I hurt and tortured. The reason Demon's Card kidnapped me and tortured me is because I did it to one of them first. I- I needed info from them, and I didn't care if it put the entire Oath in danger to poke the sleeping bear like that.

It's my fault- It's my fault that kid lost himself. I don't care if he was our enemy, I fucked up a fifteen year old boy's life. Fortune, I took him and locked him in a meat locker to freeze to death. I taunted him with death just to make his suffering worse, and I took something from him that meant a lot to him. He lost his eye because of me, and he went fucking crazy. He doesn't even know who he is anymore, and he wasn't the only person I did that to. And if I hadn't done that, Dex wouldn't have lost his hair, and Deysa would've have been nearly killed trying to save me."

"You never told me Deysa got hurt in that fight." Chris muttered, just as the door opened.

Speaking of, the sunny-eyed pirate walked in with three cups of coffee in his hand. He set on down for himself and offered over the other two to his travel companions. "I leave for twenty minutes and I come back to see you a mess. Some things never change, huh? I know you said you didn't want anything, but I brought some coffee. Are you a coffee drinker, Chris?"

He chuckled, "I've drank so much I'm surprised I haven't turned into a coffee bean. Thank you."

Though Chris took his cup happily, Kuza didn't even bother to look up. With a soft sigh, Deysa set the cup down next to his own. Hopefully he'll touch it a little later. Deysa took a seat in the small train window. "I heard you mention my name as I was coming in. What fight were you talking about?"

Considering Kuza had pretty much shut down, Chris decided to answer, "When Demon's Card took him."

"Oh, yeah, that was a doozy, wasn't it?" Deysa laughed lightheartedly. He stood back up and lifted up his shirt to reveal a huge scar, "Lolli got me good. I had to have major surgery and I was on bed rest for weeks."

"All because I made a stupid decision." Kuza mumbled. He raised his hand to his flushed cheek and wiped his eye.

"You don't really blame yourself for that, do you? Mike, c'mon, you're smarter than that. You know it's not your fault. Demon's Card would've come after us no matter what. They were looking for an excuse to attack us and because of what you did, we knew where their base was. If you hadn't interrogated Fortune, we never would've been able to save you or any of our men."

"Was it really worth it, Deysa? We all ended up here anyways. We just all had to suffer a lot more in the process, because I made a lot of selfish choices." He stood up and grabbed his leather jacket. With a sigh, Kuza cloaked over his skin. The scars disappeared, his hair morphed to solid black, and he even changed his eyes this time to a hazel tinge.

"Where are you going?" Chris worriedly asked.

"Just to go find something to drink." Kuza mumbled before slipping out of the room.

That was the first time since they'd crossed over that he bothered cloaking himself. Maybe he just didn't want to scare any passengers, or maybe drugging up the past rubbed against a few raw nerves. Whatever the reason was, it was clear he still had yet to full accept what happened. It may have been over six years ago now, but the emotional damage had yet to heal.

"We all made mistakes back then." Deysa admitted, much to his companion's shock. Chris really wasn't expecting him to open up in any way, but he surprisingly did. "You'll find this out eventually, so I might as well tell you. I knew Devin and her brother long before anyone else in the Oath. We all grew up together in California. We weren't compatible to merge, but we did sleep with each other. From the time we were fifteen, until the day I died. I would do anything to make her happy, and I killed a lot of people I shouldn't have because of that.

We all made our mistakes, in different ways. I probably killed the most people. I wanted to protect her, but it wasn't just that. My kind, Lost Ones with yellow eyes, are see the same way black cats are. People think we're bad luck and we're evil. Anytime someone called me that, evil, I couldn't help myself from proving them right. Mike, he didn't kill as many people as you'd think, but he beats himself up about it because of the way he killed them."

"What'd you mean? How'd he do it?" Chris questioned, receiving silence. Though he didn't want to beg, he craved the answers. "Please, I promise I won't judge him for it. That's not who he is anymore, but I do think I need to know."

Deysa let the warmth of his coffee cup seep into his skin as he thought for a moment. He took a slow drink before responding, "He loved to torture people. He always had something in him that desperately wanted revenge, but I never figured out who he was trying to take all that anger out on. He didn't talk about his life much before the Oath. It's a mystery to all of us, really. I guess, he never told me anyways, but he might've told Dex.

He liked to test the limits of the human body. He'd never go after any supernatural creatures, but humans, he fucking hated all of them. He'd lock people in freezers to make them talk, or burn their skin, but that wasn't bad. People could survive that, if they were smart. A lot of those old torture methods, like the saw, rat traps, stretching, gross shit like that, but he'd also go for things like drowning."

"I wish I could say it's hard for me to believe he was ever that evil, but I can understand it. He's still a pretty angry person. He's just not as murderous, I suppose. He values life a lot more, and I hope that over time, he can learn to loose some of that anger too."

"You and me both." Deysa sighed.

People can change. Chris knew that much, because he's watched it happen in his own family. Ricky used to be as angry as Kuza. Well, okay, maybe he still is, but he can better direct his anger these days. The point is, some people can learn to grow past that. They can evolve from their emotions and their emotional scars. If Kuza had the ability to do that, however, he wasn't exactly sure.