5. The Blanket #2
They had speculated. Perhaps the Veil Isles, which notoriously were unfixed in their location among Tenibria’s treacherous seas, had drifted close enough to Averly for a vampire to make its way to shore and bite Madaze.
Perhaps an unlucky sailor had foundered on the Isles and somehow found his way home, changed and contagious.
But no evidence confirmed one theory or another.
Folklore and legends and speculation were all they had about Madaze and all Miles had been able to find in his research about possible explanations for the phenomenon at Rookgate Manor. Except. Well.
Genna.
He grimaced in the darkness. Genna had a sensitivity to the undead that Miles had never been able to classify.
She could sense presences, distinguish a haunt from a revenant, pinpoint the source of a disturbance.
She’d helped the Order clear two infestations that Miles knew of, both times identifying the type and location of the entity before anyone else had even confirmed there was one.
Her reluctance in both cases was difficult to understate.
She refused to explain the mechanism behind her abilities.
She’d told him once, flatly, that she was not a necromancer, and the look in her eyes had made him drop the subject permanently.
Some unwanted talent, she’d said. A sensitivity she’d been born with and would rather not have.
He’d filed it alongside the handful of other things about Genna that she kept behind locked doors: how she had come to be an orphan, the white streak in her hair, her insistence on avoiding Guild certification tests despite the boon an official Guild rating would be to her business.
She’d have to come look. She was the one with actual experience in hauntings, in the stranger manifestations of magic that didn’t fit neatly into Guild classifications.
She would not be pleased.
He could already picture her expression. That flat, unimpressed stare. The way her mouth would thin. She had no love for her skills with the dead, and here he was, about to drag her into this morass. After canceling dinner.
But they needed her. Gabriel needed her.
At least it was a next step. Something concrete to do tomorrow. Find Genna. Convince her. Bring her to Rookgate and let her sharp eyes see what he’d missed.
Gabriel’s fingers twitched in his grip.
Miles squeezed back.
And the house was only part of the problem .
The title. The taxes. The bureaucratic trap Master Quillmane had sprung with such relish.
Forty-seven thousand gold. And even if they found the money, Gabriel would still be Lord Goldmar until they found an heir.
And Lord Goldmar couldn’t marry a Guild-rated magical practitioner. Which Miles was.
Miles closed his eyes and sighed. The Separation Decrees were clear.
Absolute. No exceptions. Political power and magical power could not be held by the same individual or joined by marriage.
It was the bedrock of Averlian governance, a policy so strongly held it was partially responsible for the ongoing war against Lyonnor and its Witch King.
A sovereign who wielded both the crown and the magic to back it up was the fear that drove the war on year after year.
The blood claim Averly’s infant Queen held to Lyonnor’s throne was almost beside the point.
And that fear also drove the law that forbade him from becoming a noble, even by marriage.
Madaze had managed his magic use by hiding it and relying on a web of corrupt allies and business partners to shield him, and relying on that shield had been a risky game indeed.
Proof of Madaze’s magic use had been almost as crucial as his vampirism in getting tacit permission to kill the man and walk away free.
Flimsy or not, he and Gabriel had no such shield. To the contrary, their knowledge represented a threat to that very web, should they be so foolhardy as to dare to use it.
The ring was tucked away in that third travel trunk. The harvest festival in Briarleigh was in two weeks. Miles had pictured it: a joyous moment in the middle of the community they had chosen. Down on one knee. The question he’d been rehearsing in his head for months.
Marry me.
Not handfast. Not a private promise. A real marriage. Legal, recognized, safe . The kind of security Gabriel had never had. The kind Miles wanted to give him.
And now.
Miles sighed again.
He wanted it so badly it scared him.
Gabriel didn’t want the title. Which was a relief.
Because the ugly truth was that Miles didn’t want him to have it either.
Didn’t want the complication. The barrier .
He wanted his proposal. His wedding. His future.
He wanted Gabriel as his , legally and irrevocably, and the title stood in the way of that like a wall of bureaucratic stone.
He was a selfish bastard.
A head emerged from the blanket cocoon like a turtle from its shell. Hair stuck up at angles that defied nature. Gabriel’s face appeared, scowling.
“Stop sighing like some lovelorn idiot in a melodrama. You’re distracting me from wallowing in my own woes.”
Miles smiled and sighed again, this time in relief. That tone. The cranky edge. The freedom to complain.
This was his Gabriel. Not the careful, brittle thing from those first weeks together who would have swallowed the irritation and said nothing. Who wouldn’t have dared.
Miles loved this. The barbs. The banter. The permission to be annoyed with each other.
He loved it so much he fed it sometimes. Gave Gabriel things to grouse about on purpose, just to hear the bite in his voice.
He did it now.
Miles pressed the back of his hand to his forehead and gazed soulfully at the ceiling. “Alas. My heart is too full. My thoughts too tumultuous. The burden of my affections weighs upon me like—”
“I will smother you with this blanket.”
“—like the very heavens themselves, crushing and yet uplifting in their—”
“Miles.”
“—their profound and overwhelming—”
A pillow hit him in the face.
Miles laughed and tossed it back. “You wound me.”
“You’re an ass.”
“Guilty.”
Gabriel sat up, extricating himself from the weighted blanket with a series of graceful movements that shouldn’t have been possible given how thoroughly he’d cocooned himself. The fabric fell away, and there he was. Pale skin, tousled shoulder-length hair, sleep pants riding low on his hips.
He crawled across the bed and tucked himself against Miles’s side, his head on his shoulder, leg hooking over his thigh, and splayed across his chest .
“Better than the blanket,” Gabriel murmured.
Miles wrapped his arm around him and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “I should hope so.”
He felt Gabriel smile against his skin.
Miles twisted his head to look down at him properly, and Gabriel lifted his face. Their mouths met. Not chaste. Not even close. Gabriel’s lips parted, tongue sliding against the seam of Miles’s lips and darting in when he parted them in answer.
Gabriel’s hand moved. Fingers carding through the hair on Miles’s chest. Thumb brushing over his nipple.
Miles inhaled sharply.
Not chaste at all.
The impulse to ask rose— are you sure —and Miles shoved it down.
Gabriel had initiated. His touch was deliberate.
Confident. And Miles had learned, through trial and painful error, that questioning him in these moments did more harm than good.
That Gabriel needed him to trust that he knew what he wanted. That he could say no if he wanted to.
So, Miles pulled him closer with the arm already beneath him and let his free hand stroke down Gabriel’s side. Ribs. The dip of his waist. The curve of his hip.
Gabriel made a low sound and kissed him harder.
They were both hard, pressing into each other’s groin.
Very hard. Something about adrenaline, probably.
Delayed response. Fight-or-flight transmuting into this.
Miles’s analytical thoughts fragmented as Gabriel’s hand slid lower, pushing down the waistband of his sleep pants, fingers wrapping around his cock.
Miles groaned and reciprocated, pushing down Gabriel’s pants until his hand found Gabriel’s hardness. Stroked him. Light touches at first, learning the shape of him all over again, even though he knew it by heart. The heft. The smoothness of skin here, impossibly soft.
Gabriel’s hips rolled. His breath came faster.
Miles kissed his jaw. His throat. The hollow beneath his ear. “What do you want tonight?”
Gabriel’s teeth grazed Miles’s earlobe. His voice dropped to that register that turned Miles’s brain to static. “Your cock against mine. Get the oil.”
Miles released Gabriel’s cock and reached blindly toward the nightstand. His fingers found the drawer pull, then the familiar smooth glass of the vial. He pressed it into Gabriel’s palm and watched as Gabriel uncorked it, poured a generous amount into his hand, then passed it back.
Miles did the same. The oil was cool against his heated skin, slick between his fingers as he wrapped them back around Gabriel’s length.
Gabriel hissed and mirrored the grip on Miles, then shifted closer until their cocks aligned.
Pressed together. Gabriel’s hand joined Miles’s, their fingers interlacing around both of them.
“Like this,” Gabriel breathed.
The pressure was exquisite. Miles’s cock trapped against Gabriel’s, oil-slick and hot, their joined hands creating a tight channel. Gabriel thrust upward, and Miles groaned at the drag of skin on skin, the way Gabriel’s cock slid along his own.
He thrust up into their hands as Gabriel thrust down, then matched the movement and the rhythm. Their mouths met again, messy and desperate. Gabriel’s free hand fisted in Miles’s hair, yanking his head back to expose his throat.
“Mine,” Gabriel said, and bit down on the tendon between shoulder and neck.