Chapter 21
Cole
I didn’t know what I was doing—I hadn’t known what I was doing since the second I picked up the gun and fired it, though. I just knew I couldn’t let Sephtis leave that house. I couldn’t let him sacrifice himself for me.
And I couldn’t let him keep killing for me. Not alone.
I needed to be on equal ground with him—I needed to feel responsible. Maybe I just wanted one more reason to hate myself. I didn’t know.
I just knew I needed to get my mouth back on his before everything around me crashed and burned.
The demand sparked in my chest the second I’d fired that bullet, and it raged into an inferno with the first brush of Vitality entering my body.
Sephtis wasn’t feeding it to me; it was pouring through us both, and it broke through every barrier I’d ever put up.
Every excuse I’d ever made.
It stole the word hate from my tongue and left me with the naked, honest truth that the man in front of me—the monster who had been ready to give up his life to keep me safe, had compromised everything he was to keep me—was the only thing that could make me feel whole.
I let out a low, desperate sound when Sephtis cut through the trees behind the house where we’d left the evidence of my crime and started walking toward the sound of water. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered his apartments were by a lake, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered but my lips on his throat, the foreign sensation of kissing along his neck and not feeling a pulse beneath the touch. Nothing mattered but the fact that Sephtis smelled soft and sweet, like flowers in the clean night air. Petals in the moonlight.
Everything I’d ever dreamed about holding me so close I could barely draw a breath.
Maybe I didn’t need to breathe—or maybe the only thing I needed to fill my lungs with was him.
He didn’t hesitate as we broke through the trees. Sephtis kept walking along the stony shoreline at the edge of the lake… and then kept moving until we were chest deep in the water and I wondered if it was going to wash the blood from my clothes.
There was blood on my clothes. I’d killed a man. I’d killed a man, and I was kissing a monster… and everything in my life felt right for the first time since Caiden had gotten sick.
Another low whimper caught in the back of my throat when Sephtis threaded his fingers through my hair, pulling me back long enough to look at me… To really look at me—to see the way my eyes were wide and desperate, the way tears were still streaking down my cheeks.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” The question came out softly, almost like it hurt him to ask. Permission.
He was getting consent, trying to make sure I was in my right mind, even though I knew he’d probably wanted this longer than I’d even known he was real.
“I have no idea what I’m doing.” I gasped the truth and rocked my body forward where I pressed against him, letting out a low groan when my cock brushed his stomach through our clothes.
“I have no idea what any of this is. But I know I want it, Sephtis.” Saying his name drew a shiver from him, made his fingers in my shirt clench.
“I know that if you don’t make me forget everything but the way you feel, I’m never going to forgive you. ”
The burn in my chest was all-encompassing—the need to feel connected to him was the only thing I could think of.
I didn’t know if it was the thread, if it was my grief, or if it was Fate, finally sick of my shit and telling me I couldn’t fight this anymore.
Sephtis was as inevitable as the stars in the sky. Hate and love, grief and comfort, monster and man.
All the lines were blurred, and when they came together, the only thing I could see was him.
Us.
It had always been leading to us.
“Cole, I don’t…” He paused when my mouth found his again, lost in the kiss, his arms spasming around me when I rutted against him. When he pulled back with a gasp, his eyes were like a solar eclipse—blown-out black surrounded by a halo of golden sun. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Oh. Of course. If he’d never felt anything before all of this, and he’d spent every night after watching me…
When else…
When would he have had time? When had he really looked at anyone but me?
The thought stole away the rest of the logic I might have had—the knowledge that there were hounds close, that the lake water wasn’t quite washing away the blood on my hands.
All I could think about was Sephtis, and the infinity of the night sky burning in his eyes. I was drowning in how good it was to finally let go of my pain, my grief, the weight that had been chasing at my heels since the day we’d learned Caiden was sick.
Fuck, it felt amazing to let go of all that and just let myself feel.
And all I could feel was him as I drifted my lips over his and whispered, “I’ll show you.”
We weren’t really in a position for me to do all the things I wanted, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t about doing it right, or being perfect. It was about the touch—the connection. It was the way I was drowning in need, hungry for his skin pressing against mine.
It was about his arms around me pressing all my broken pieces together for the first time in so long that I felt liquid, loose.
My mouth found his again, and I slid my tongue inside, the unfamiliar sensation of the coolness of his lips not unwelcome.
That ice burned through the fire that had been eating me alive and made me shudder.
My fingers spasmed in his shirt, yanking at the material in frustration. I needed more. I needed to be closer.
Closer.
For someone who’d done a good job of letting me know that I wasn’t in charge of my own life or death, my own destiny, Sephtis was so compliant with my demands.
He raised his hands above his head and let me strip him out of the tight black sweater he seemed to pour himself into every day.
The sound of it landing wetly on the shore was the best I could manage.
I didn’t even bother throwing mine beside it—it was covered in blood.
Blood.
When my mind tried to drift back to what had happened in that room, I silenced it by dropping my mouth to the line of Sephtis’s bare shoulder.
He let me kiss and suck against his skin with little rumbles of desire guiding my path, let me taste and nip until I knew every place across the sweep of his chest that wrung out sounds of pleasure.
I was faintly aware that the howling had gotten closer, but I was so caught up in the taste of Sephtis’s skin beneath my tongue that I couldn’t convince myself it mattered.
Nothing mattered but what was happening right now, because every time I closed my eyes, I could see that red light between us shining brighter.
Every time I closed my eyes, it felt like the man clinging to me—the monster I’d shaped myself to fit with—was the only thing keeping me tethered to the world.
The only thing that mattered.
For the first time in so long, since Caiden’s death…
since before then, if I was being honest with myself…
I felt something close to whole, like I could touch it if I just tried hard enough.
Like I could find every piece of myself I’d been missing if I pressed my lips to Sephtis’s and licked into his mouth.
It felt like he could drink down my pain, my loneliness, every broken part of me, and leave me as something different.
Something made just for him—not to break, not to mourn or hate.
Something new.
My fingers fumbled between our bodies, and I was grateful for the water, for the strength of Sephtis’s arms. He held me up while I unfastened my jeans and shoved his pants down in near frantic motions.
There was so much I wanted and so many things we couldn’t do because of where we were.
I wanted to crawl onto the shore and fuck him open with my tongue and fingers.
I wanted to see if his skin tasted as cool as it felt pressed against mine.
Instead, I wrapped my legs around his waist and lined up our cocks, rocking my body up again to feel the friction of us rutting against each other beneath the water.
It was…
It was good.
Better than anything I’d ever felt. Just that point of contact made his mouth fall open, his head drift back. Moonlight caught in water droplets clinging to his hair, and my entire body shivered.
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and here in the lake with the light shining down on us, the crimson line trailing from his chest to mine was so visible it was nearly blinding. It was the ignition to a fire that had been smoldering since the first time I’d seen him.
Embers of hate stoking to flames of lust. An inferno of desire…
A wildfire of wanting to see him fall apart and look at me like I was the only thing he could see.
That wasn’t hate at all.
My body started to move, the rhythm echoed by the sound of water lapping around us and the little punched-out sounds of surprise tearing from Sephtis’s chest. Every touch made him shiver, every slide of my cock against his made his arms around me tighten.
It made me want more.
And for some reason, the sound of the hounds in the distance, howling as they found the body I’d left behind, only drove me into a frenzy.
If we were going to die—if the hounds were going to find me and tear me apart—I wanted this first.
I needed this. If I had to go, I wanted the image of him falling apart and bathed in red light to be the last thing I saw. If I had to die…
Well shit, if I was going to die, there were worse ways.
“Look at me.” I breathed the demand, and Sephtis’s golden eyes opened to soft slits.
He was dazed, so wrapped up in what was happening that I wasn’t sure he could see me at all.
It made me shift, made me drag one hand up and into his hair so I could pull at the black strands while the other cupped his jawline.
I slid my thumb across his mouth, catching on his lower lip.
He opened for me almost helplessly, and I licked into his mouth so I could drink down the groan of pleasure when I tugged at his hair again.
Even though he said he wasn’t sure what to do, it was obvious that some part of him did.
His hips were grinding in time with my rhythm, and the feel of his cock sliding cooly against mine was enough to drive me closer to the edge than I should have been after a few light touches, a few possessive kisses.
It was him, though.
It was this.
It was his little punched-out moans and the way he clung to me like he was the one who might fly apart.
And it was the way he buried his face against my shoulder and set his teeth against my neck. It hid the cry that tore from his chest when I dropped my hands between us and wrapped my fingers around our cocks together beneath the water, giving friction to the glide of our bodies.
I was like a man possessed, but I wanted to drown in the feel of pleasure building in my stomach, of heat compressing to a breaking point in the center of my chest. What was happening now washed away everything else—what I’d done, what I’d failed to do.
Who I thought I was.
I wanted to live in that feeling, and he had to stay here with me. We needed to drown together.
“Have you ever felt anything like this?” I whispered, the question hot in his ear, and his teeth on my neck bit down harder.
The low little groan against the curve of my neck was accented by his head shaking back and forth, his fingers spasming at my hips hard enough that I wondered if he’d leave bruises.
I wanted him to leave bruises.
“I, oh fuck…” In the back of my mind, I knew a part of me wished this could last, but the heat between us was too much. “Tell me,” I demanded.
I needed to hear him.
I needed his voice and his confession so much it felt like I was burning alive waiting for it.
I jerked on his hair and his head fell back—his pupils were blown wide and his hips rocked again, grinding into my palm that still held us together.
One of his hands slid around and joined mine…
our fingers brushed, and the feel of hot and cold, his palm and mine, was too much.
Too fucking much.
“Sephtis, tell me you’re with me.”
I needed to know that after what I’d done—after everything I’d done and everyone I’d failed—that he was still here.
Shit. That wasn’t what I’d meant to ask. I wanted him to tell me he wanted me. To tell me he’d never felt anything like this before.
Want and need were two different beasts, tearing me apart and making me into something completely different… and in the end, need was the monster that devoured my heart.
I needed Sephtis to tell me I wasn’t so broken that I couldn’t be held together in his hands. And like he knew, his arms squeezed around me, pulling me in until my heartbeat seemed to echo between us and drag us both under the waves of the inevitability of this moment.
It had always been this moment.
“I’m with you. I’ve always been with you.”
That red light flared so bright it was blinding, and when my vision returned, my mouth was pressed against his and I was drinking down the sound of a cry tearing from his throat as his cock pulsed between us.
As much as I wanted to hold back and savor the moment, to lick his desire straight from his mouth until I was so drunk I didn’t have to remember anything but the taste of him, I couldn’t.
He tasted too good, and his hands were so desperate where he clung to me….
“Cole…” The sound of my name spilling in a trembling breath from his lips was too much. Whatever control I had left vanished, and my arm slid around his neck so I could press my lips to his again and feed him back an echo of his desire.
Of our connection.
Because as my body jerked against his and orgasm overwhelmed me, making me feel like I was floating among the stars instead of in a lake… I couldn’t deny the crimson thread that wrapped around me like stitches, weaving through every broken part of me, and finally…
Finally holding me together.
For the first time in so long I felt like I could breathe, because my lungs were filled with the promise of him.
Fuck… I was in trouble.