Chapter 12
“Hey, wait!” Eden grabbed onto Ares’ arm when he moved for the empty corner in the kitchen.
“Let him,” Zar ordered. “He’s not schizophrenic, and he isn’t hallucinating. His mind’s been split between too many realities. Sometimes he struggles to hold onto what’s real.”
“That makes no kind of sense.” Not a hallucination? Eden couldn’t see anything, and if nothing was there, yet Ares saw something…wasn’t that the very definition of a hallucination?
Maybe this Zar guy was off his rocker as well.
That was a problem for later, right now, there was a Black Hart in his kitchen experiencing a psychotic break. And he had a gun.
That had somehow turned into a bracelet.
What the actual fuck.
Ares slipped from Eden’s grasp and extended an arm toward the empty corner, his fingers appearing to stroke the air, right around the height where a woman’s cheek might be.
“Screw this.” Eden latched onto his elbow, twisted him around and then shoved, forcing Ares into that spot he was so obsessed with. He came crashing over him, lifting onto his toes, mouth sealing over the Black Hart’s in a breath-stealing kiss.
He held his face still as his tongue dove between Ares’ full lips, tasting the tang of blood from where the Black Hart had bitten himself. Eden pressed in closer when Ares gave no reaction, rubbing against him until he began to harden beneath the towel.
“Lucifer,” he urged, making his voice breathy and a bit desperate in the hopes it would call to the man’s primal nature. “Hey. Come back to me.” He kissed him again, pouring all the pent-up passion he’d been left to deal with on his own into it. “I need you. We have a game to play, remember?”
“Game?” Ares sounded incredibly far away, and when he blinked at him, Eden couldn’t tell if he was actually seeing him or not.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re going to try to blow my back out.
” Maybe he shouldn’t phrase it that way to a man with a blaster.
“I mean, you’re going to see if you can fuck me hard enough that I can’t walk straight tomorrow.
What’s wrong? Not interested in playing anymore?
” It was a shot in the dark, but Eden motioned with his head toward Noon.
“That’s fine. I bet he’ll play with me. Same game.
Different cock. Who knows? Maybe his will be better. ”
A dark chuckle came through the multi-slate speaker. “Precarious choice. I approve. Did you hear that, Creation? Your Starling is about to fly away.”
Fire flared behind Ares’ gaze, and he moved in a flash, switching their positions so he could roughly pin Eden against the fridge. His body was tense, corded muscles pressed against Eden, trapping him between hard surfaces so tightly it became hard to breathe.
“Five things I see,” the Black Hart practically growled. “A Starling who wants to be filled. A Starling who belongs to me. A Starling with a wandering eye. A Starling asking to be punished. A Starling—”
Eden kissed him again. Maybe he shouldn’t have, since it seemed like Ares was running through a series of steps to calm himself down and refocus, but the urge was too great, and before he knew it, Eden was giving in to it.
It was the Black Hart’s own damn fault. All that talk about ownership and punishment, when Eden was already so turned on he felt like his balls were about to burst.
Ares bit his tongue, hard enough to draw blood, and Eden moaned and ground himself forward as best he could as pinned as he was.
There was little to no room to do it, but his attempts didn’t go unrewarded.
The Black Hart’s cock hardened against Eden’s stomach, the impressive length and size of it causing his breath to lodge in his throat.
Good Light. Was he even going to be able to take all of that?
A hand came to the towel wrapped around his waist, and fortunately, Eden recalled they weren’t alone, just in time to stop Ares from tearing the covering away.
“Hold on!” He gasped and tore his mouth free, shaking his head when a primal sound of displeasure spilled from between Ares’ lips. “It’s not that I don’t want to. Noon is still here.”
“He isn’t the only one,” Zar’s voice drawled from the speaker. “Are you present now, Creation? Or are you thinking with the head between your legs and still drifting?”
Ares blinked wildly, and then the words seemed to register. He gave one last longing look down Eden’s body and then stepped back.
Zar clearly took his silence as an answer and gave a sigh of relief. “Where is Mother?”
“Dead,” Ares clipped without hesitation.
“Yes, but where is she, little brother?”
Oh. They were brothers. Eden didn’t bother picking apart why that made him glad.
“Hell if I know.” Ares closed his eyes and exhaled slowly through his nose. “She isn’t here. The veil is closed.”
“Keep it that way.”
“I know.”
“This was…”
“I know.”
“Starling,” Zar called out to him, and Eden reacted to the commanding tone without thought.
“Yes?”
“He hasn’t fractured like that in eight months, six days, seven hours, and four minutes. If you aren’t going to be conducive to his healing, then—”
“Don’t threaten him,” Ares interrupted, sounding tired more than anything. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“No, you’re right,” Zar surprisingly agreed. “It was the friend’s.” There was a brief pause, and then, “Kill him.”
Ares reacted faster than Eden’s eyes could track, the blaster somehow back in his hand and aimed at Noon again.
“Wait!” Eden leapt between them, flinging his arms out to create the biggest barrier he could.
“He saw you breaking,” Zar reminded Ares.
“He won’t say anything,” Eden pleaded with the Black Hart in front of him, trying to tune out anything the one on the multi-slate was saying. “You can trust him. Tonight never happened, right, Noon? Tell them.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Noon wisely replied. “I wasn’t even here tonight.”
“See?” Eden urged Ares with his eyes.
Ares hesitated but didn’t lower his guard.
“How about this,” he offered, “you mentioned punishing me. Let’s do that. I’ll let you do whatever you want, okay? Noon is going to leave, and we can pick up where we left off, yeah?”
“That’s hardly a punishment,” Ares stated, “seeing as how that’s something you want.”
Eden bristled. “Are you saying you don’t want to fuck me?”
“You hurt his feelings, Creation,” Zar grunted.
Ares lifted his gaze to Noon. “Get out.”
His best friend didn’t need to be told twice. Noon vanished down the hall as quickly as he’d appeared, the sound of the front door slamming shut coming a heartbeat later.
“Keep your shit together,” Zar gave that golden parting nugget of advice and then promptly hung up.
Eden was a bit surprised, staring at the device around Ares’ wrist for a moment. All of that, and the guy just…ended the call? Like nothing had even happened? How was he even so certain Ares was okay? Eden certainly wasn’t.
“Drop the towel,” Ares said, voice low, an edge of barely suppressed instability present.
“Can you, uh,” he cleared his throat even as his hands dutifully went to unknot the towel, “put the gun away?”
Ares flicked his wrist, and the weapon deconstructed, metal twirling in the air before reforming into a band that snapped into place. The bracelet was familiar at this point, since the Black Hart was always wearing it, but Eden never would have guessed what it actually was.
The towel spilled to the floor at his feet, and Eden waited for the next command, too nervous to act on his own.
He had a million and one questions swirling in his head, but it was clear Ares wasn’t completely out of the woods of insanity just yet.
He’d make sure he was stable before asking the things he wanted to know.
“Go to the couch,” Ares told him, and Eden practically darted around the kitchen counter, dropping down on the center cushion of the cheap mauve couch he’d gotten secondhand at a restore shop a town over. “Lay back.”
Eden took a shaky breath and laid down, the top of his head brushing against the arm of the furniture. He instinctively curved his knees, keeping them pressed together even as he felt his hole tighten and his dick twitch when Ares started for him.
He took his time with his approach, shedding his clothing as he moved, discarding pieces here and there. By the time he was standing over Eden, he was completely naked, cock jutting from between strong thighs, a pearlescent drop of precome trickling from his slit to roll down his impressive shaft.
Maybe he was the insane one, because just like that, the events of the past half hour vanished from his memory in a puff of hazy, lust-induced smoke. Eden succumbed to the brain fog willingly, eyes locked onto that solid part of the Black Hart that promised delicious pleasure.
“You’re such a horny little thing,” Ares said, tilting his head. “A normal person would be afraid. Disgusted. You’re…”
“Not normal,” Eden provided, allowing his legs to slip open, exposing his private parts to the Black Hart’s view. “Adrenaline stimulates me. Has ever since my family was murdered. Nasty side effect.”
“The sudden death of my family did not provide the same ramifications,” Ares told him, and before he could question that, added, “Pity.”
He didn’t really see Lucifer as the type to try and solve his trauma by connecting with strangers for wild sex, so…made sense they’d developed different “coping” mechanisms.
“Sex isn’t therapy,” Ares said. “It’s an avoidant strategy. Your compulsion to manage your feelings about their deaths through intercourse will only get you so far.”