Chapter 32
Crane
Brom stares at me deeply, and I know he’s trying to remember who I am, where we’ve met before. But every time it looks like he’s on the cusp of something, he freezes. He’s afraid. I know that fear. I know how debilitating it is. I’d seen that same fear in New York City before he’d submitted to me.
He swallows hard and looks up at Kat, who is still cradling his head in her lap. A moment passes between them, something instinctual, a product of two people who have known each other a long time, but instead of feeling jealous of their relationship, I just feel love for them instead.
God Almighty, am I in love with both of them? My pretty boy and my sweet witch?
The realization is terrifying.
But I don’t run from it. I embrace the fear.
Because it’s magic.
“Don’t be afraid,” I tell Brom. “Don’t block it.”
“I tried to tell you,” Kat says softly, stroking the side of his face. “I tried to tell you that you knew each other in New York.”
Brom’s dark brows come together, and he swallows hard. “I don’t remember.”
“I think you don’t want to remember,” I tell him. “But I can help.”
His jaw goes tight. That fear again.
“Maybe we should get off the road,” Kat suggests. “Do you think you can stand, Brom?”
He nods, and I go behind him, putting my hands under his arms and pulling him to his feet.
But I don’t let go of him. I keep my arms around him, holding him from behind.
He’s a tall, muscular man, but I have half a foot on him, and I rest my chin on his good shoulder, my hands flat against his chest and pushing him against me. “Don’t fight it,” I urge him.
But he does try to fight it. He tries to move from my grasp, and he doesn’t have the stupor of opium slowing him down and giving me the upper hand like had happened before.
I do my best to hold on. “Stay still, pretty boy. You don’t want to reopen that wound.”
He freezes at that. Just as the Hessian did in the library.
I can reach him.
I know I can.
“Brom,” Kat says, coming in closer, her body against his, sandwiching him between us. “Don’t fight it.”
He lets out a snort of indignation.
I lean in and run the tip of my nose down the rim of his ear, and he rips his head away in disgust, but I’m nothing if not persistent.
“Do you remember how we first met?” I whisper to him, my breath on his neck. I pull back enough to notice the goose bumps on his flesh, and I smile in triumph.
“It was just like this,” I continue. “We were in the opium joint in Chinatown. Manhattan. You were in the darkened corner of the room, smoking the pipe, and you were watching, always watching, a man who was being hunted. And, of course, I was watching you. I suppose I was the one doing the hunting.”
“I don’t remember,” Brom protests, his voice raspy, his body stiff.
“I’ll help you remember if you let me,” I say, bringing my mouth to the soft spot behind his ear. I don’t press my lips there, just let them hover like hummingbirds, and I know how much he loved it when I would do just that.
He swallows audibly, and I run a hand down over his chest, slowly, taking my time.
“I went to you. I wanted you. You said your name was Abe. You were so very high and scared. So very scared. And I knew I would do anything to save you, protect you, help you.” I bring my mouth to the crook of his neck and press my lips there, and he shudders.
“I invited you to my place. I told you I had a private bath. I made it very clear what I intended to do with you.”
My hands go down to his hips now, gripping him there and pulling him back against my erection, and he gasps.
My gaze goes to Kat now, who is staring at me with her big blue eyes.
She’s in awe. She’s in lust. She’s mesmerized.
I want to kiss her deeply, then have her kiss Brom, but I know that’s not the plan for tonight.
I have to be the one to reach him. It’s the memories of me that are locked away in him.
It’s his own desires that he’s too afraid to face.
“You tried to fight me,” I whisper to him. “You told me to fuck off. So I left, and I didn’t think you’d come—I didn’t think you would be into me. But you did. You came after me like a stray dog on the street, and I took you in. I bathed you. I gave you a home for weeks.”
I fell in love with you, I think, but I don’t dare say it. I’m already putting so much on the line, my soul laid bare with each sentence I speak.
“You’re lying,” he says gruffly, but I can hear the hesitation in his voice.
“Am I?” I ask, sliding my hands from his hips, down over the V of his sharp bones and over his cock. It’s hard as a rock, stiff against his pants. I chuckle, feeling another stab of triumph. “Then that means your body is lying too.”
His breath hitches, and the tiniest of moans escapes.
“Your body isn’t lying, Brom,” I tell him. “It remembers me when you don’t.”
I give his cock a squeeze.
“Oh God,” he whispers, trembling in my arms now.
“That is what you’d call me,” I say, kissing his neck, sucking in his sweet skin. He tastes like heaven. He melts back against me, and I grip him tighter. “Give in to me, pretty boy.”
I reach up with my other hand and press my fingers at his jaw, pushing his head to the side, where I lean and capture his mouth with mine. My lips envelop his, my tongue parting his mouth for me.
He moans, the feeling vibrating through me, making me unbearably stiff, and I take advantage.
With my lips never leaving his, I move around his body, Kat stepping out of the way, until I’m right in front of him, my hands in his hair, on his face.
I kiss him deeply, a year of wanting him, missing him, mourning him, all coming out in my tongue as it lashes the inside of his mouth, licking him.
He lets out another groan and kisses me back, his hands at my coat, making fists in the collar.
And it’s in this moment that I decide to take my shot.
I gather the energy up inside of me, and I push it into Brom, feeling it travel through my mouth and into his head.
I feel myself move through him, in the planes, and then I’m in the void, the black space between the veils, and while the door from earlier is there, still shut, still a war raging behind it, there’s another one that’s open a crack, light shining from the other side.
I go toward it, pushing open the door, and suddenly, I’m flooded with a million images.
I see Brom as a child, crying, his parents cold and indifferent to him.
I see him older, with Kat, sitting on a hay bale in a barn and giggling over something.
I see him as a teenager, mind drifting off in school as he notices the way the boy beside him swallows, how he likes the look of his neck, and how ashamed that makes him feel.
I see him older now, and he’s in a church on his knees, and he’s giving a pastor head. He feels excited, he feels dangerous. He’s never felt so alive.
Then he’s older again, and it’s the same pastor from before, and he has Brom bent over at the altar, fucking him from behind.
He’s enjoying it, he’s loving it, and then suddenly, the doors to the church swing open, and another man appears.
He threatens Brom. Tells him that he can’t show his face around Sleepy Hollow again.
The next image that hits is of him outside Kat’s window. Him desiring her but torn by a conflict inside. He knows he has to leave, but he doesn’t want to leave without her. He can’t bear the idea of life without her.
Then they’re in the barn, and he’s fucking her, and she’s bleeding beneath him, and she’s nervous and in pain, but she’s submitting, and he loves it. He loves her.
He loves her and knows he has to leave.
Suddenly, Brom pulls back, puts his hands on my chest, and shoves me.
I come out of his head and back into my body, and I’m stumbling backward into Kat, her hands going to my arms to steady me.
I stare at Brom, eyes wide, panting hard, and he stares back at me, his expression like a wild animal. He blinks, chest heaving. His beard is wet from my kiss, his erection visible against his pants.
“You didn’t run away because of Kat,” I manage to say to Brom, and Kat’s grip on my arms tightens. “You ran away because you had an affair with the pastor and you were caught.”
“What?” Kat exclaims with a soft gasp.
Brom doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t need to because I know all the memories I just unlocked are now raining down on him. His eyes blink as if they’re processing each one, a lifetime flashing before his eyes.
“You were caught by someone,” I go on. “The police chief, the mayor, someone like that, and they told you to leave, or you’d bring shame down on your family. They said you could never show your face here again. So you left. You had no choice.”
“Pastor Ross?” Kat asks Brom. “He left the year you disappeared.”
Brom presses his lips together, swallowing hard.
“I…I didn’t know what to do.” He looks at Kat, pain radiating off him.
“I thought I would ruin my family. I thought maybe, maybe I would come back one day, later, after the magistrate was gone. I was waiting to come back to you, Daffy. Biding my time until I could see you again.”
She goes to him. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t you tell me that night?”
“I tried to,” he explains. “I tried, but I was scared. I was scared that you would think differently of me, that you wouldn’t love me anymore, that you would think I didn’t still want you, because I did, Kat. I did, and I do. I wanted to prove to you that I wanted you more than anything, and I…I…”
He puts his head in his hands, fingers in his hair. Oh, my poor sweet boy. So pretty and so broken. I want nothing more than to put him back together.
“I remember everything,” he cries out, the sound muffled in his palms. He lifts up his head, his hands falling away, and his eyes meet mine in a thunderbolt of recognition.
His eyes are so dark, so wild, so beautiful.
And they finally see me again.
“Crane,” he says softly, in the sweet, obedient voice that I heard so many times.