Chapter 25
Crane
“I’ve fallen deeper in love with her,” I tell Brom, placing a drop, just a drop, of the laudanum on my tongue. “I didn’t think that was possible, but it is.”
Brom chuckles, sitting on the floor and leaning against the side of my bed on which I’m lying in a state of well-earned stupor. “You told her you needed to stay sharp, Crane.”
“And in the moment, I meant it,” I tell him, passing the bottle down to him. “But it’s the middle of the night, and I should be asleep. You should be asleep. Is it so wrong to have a little assistance?”
“She needed the drug for her own pain,” Brom points out as he takes it from me, his finger brushing against mine, holding on for just a moment.
“I filled up a vial for her,” I remind him. “It’s very dangerous to give a young woman that much opium when she’s never had it before. Ms. Peek should know that.”
“Sounds like Ms. Peek had other things to worry about,” he comments gruffly, putting a drop on his tongue. He coughs, making a face. “Do you really think that the sisters can spy on us through paintings?”
“Let’s just assume that they can,” I tell him.
“Let’s assume everything. Let’s assume the worst even.
That Ms. Peek’s nightmares are real. That she’s being drugged, perhaps with the opium she smuggled in for Leona, and is being taken to the cathedral in the night, her organs removed while she’s still alive, then sewn back up and healed through magic. Let’s pretend that’s what’s happening.”
“Fuck,” he swears, bringing the bottle back to me.
I take it and put it on the desk, then lie back on the bed again.
“Then I shall stick to my original feelings on the matter,” he says. “That we kill them all.”
I stare at him, unable to stop from smiling. “You really went from feeling guilty that the horseman was killing people based on your feelings to just wanting to massacre every witch you see.”
He shrugs. “I’m already damned, aren’t I?” He rolls his head to the side to look at me. “I’m serious. Give me the word, Crane, and I’ll get the horseman to do it.”
The drug wants my mind to slow down, to relax, to submit, but I can’t, not yet.
“Brom,” I say, blinking hard at him in order to force my brain to work.
“I know you feel connected to this evil spirit inside you, and you think that’s a good thing, but it really isn’t.
The horseman is letting you think he’s on your side.
He’s not. No matter what, he was summoned by the coven, and he belongs to the coven.
At any moment they can recall him and order him to do their bidding.
He’s not going to pick you when the time comes.
And he’s certainly not going to kill the coven when they’re the ones controlling him. ”
He exhales heavily. “Then why let my emotions influence him at all? Why let me have some control over what he does and who he kills?”
“Because he’s an extension of you. Because the end goal is you, Brom.
They can’t control you, but they can control the horseman, and that means they control you by default.
You know what they want. You know they want you to fuck Kat, get her pregnant.
They want you to father her child.” I swallow down the hurt in those words.
“The marriage is for show. If what your history teacher said is true, this is a union between two covens who are promised immortality. You are a bargaining chip. So is Kat. The horseman is a means to an end.”
He falls silent at that, his chin dipping down, his dark hair falling forward.
“The two of us,” I begin, “we’re simple in many ways. Me and Kat? We’re also simple. You and Kat…you should be the most solid line in this triangle, but you’re the most complicated piece of the puzzle. Twisted in on itself and over again.”
He snorts. “You don’t even want us together.”
“I love her,” I tell him, sitting up. “And I love you. I don’t care how many times I say it to you and you don’t say it back, but I love you. And all my jealousy and possessiveness put to the side, I want the two of you to love each other. The three of us are one. We don’t work without the others.”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “Right. And if I stepped out of the picture, you wouldn’t take Kat for yourself?”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t,” I say with a crooked smile. “She’s mine to the end, pretty boy. But my life wouldn’t be as sweet if you weren’t in it.”
He frowns at me with a mocking look in his eyes. “What happened to Crane? Who is this man?” He lifts up the end of the covers and pretends to look under the bed.
“This man is high right now,” I tell him. “Why don’t you take off your clothes and come to bed?”
“Ah,” he says with a nod. “There he is.”
I grin. “It sounded like a question, but it was a statement.”
“Of course,” Brom says. He gets to his feet and starts unbuttoning his shirt, knowing what I like to see, the peek of his taut, tanned skin underneath the white fabric, the slow reveal as he pulls it over his head.
I take my time gazing at his upper body, never getting tired of it.
His veined, thick arms, the wide expanse of his shoulders, the dusting of dark hair across the chiseled planes of his hard chest, the way the hair leads down over the furrows of his etched abdomen, down farther past the sharp V of his hips.
His trousers come off next. His cock already at attention, a dark and formidable seven inches against his muscular thighs, his balls heavy underneath, swinging as he takes two steps toward me.
“Where do you want me?” he asks. His lids are heavy from the drug, maybe from desire.
“Where do you want me, sir?” I correct him, just for fun.
“Where do you want me, sir?”
I watch him for a moment, the petulance in the way he holds his mouth, the defiance and lust in his dark eyes, the furrow in his brow. God, I love this man.
I want him to love me too. That might be my darkest secret—not what happened to Marie, but that I want this wild, contemptuous young man to love me the way that I love him.
“I want you to undress me, slowly, using your hands, using your tongue. I want you to take your time. Then I want you to take that oil in the drawer and put it on your cock. Then put it on me. I want you to lie on top of me and fuck me.”
He stares at me, his mouth parting and wet. “When you say you want me to fuck you…”
“I’m saying come inside me. I submit to you for tonight, Brom. I am yours.”
He swallows hard, his cock visibly twitching in response. “You really are high,” he whispers, practically salivating.
Maybe I am. Maybe this isn’t what I would normally do.
But I’ve thought about it.
I’ve thought about it with him, wanting to know what his cock would feel like inside me. I’ve thought about submitting to him for once, just to know what it feels like.
“I’m curious,” I tell him, “to see what I’m missing out on.”
“Aren’t you worried?” he asks, reaching down and undoing my trousers and freeing my cock, which springs to full height. “About the horseman?”
“Not for tonight,” I tell him truthfully. “I trust that you can keep him at bay.”
He doesn’t need to know that while he was in the bathroom earlier, I very liberally sprinkled salt all around the room and placed some obsidian and black tourmaline towers at certain spots for good measure.
He might not be in chains, and I might be high, but that doesn’t mean I trust the horseman not to show up announced.
He nods at that, and then he gets to work.
He slowly undresses me until I’m nude, then takes his time sliding his hands all over my body, running his rough beard along my skin, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake.
He does this until my whole body feels alive and my nerves are dancing, begging for more.
Then he takes the oil out of the desk and slides it over his cock. I watch for a perfect minute as his eyes close, and it’s just him and his beautiful body, his hands working himself with expert precision, bringing himself close to the edge but never over.
Then his eyes fix on me and he shoves my knees up, making my legs part further, ensuring my hips roll back to give him the best access.
I’ve never felt more open and vulnerable in my life.
“Am I the first man to fuck you here?” he whispers, circling my hole with his oiled finger. The sensation is so strange and so good, and his gaze keeps coming to mine. His expression is so studious and so earnest as he tries to make sure I’m enjoying it.
“No,” I say, feeling breathless already. “I had a tryst with a vampire once.”
“A…vampire?” Brom says, pausing.
“Don’t you dare stop,” I warn him, and he goes back to rimming me with his fingertip. I suppose I’m still in control after all. “Yes, a vampire. They exist. I had a very brief relationship with one while he was visiting New York. Which is also rare since witches and vampires are natural enemies.”
“And you let this vampire dominate you?”
I chuckle. “He was a lot older than me, by several hundred years, and he was a vampire. Yes, you let them dominate you. You don’t get a choice in the matter. They are very persuasive.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes. Very much so. But I dare say I’ll enjoy you far more.”
Because I love you.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “I’ve never done this before,” he says. “I want to do it right.”
I laugh and lie back. “Oh, pretty boy. You’re already doing everything right. Now hurry up and fuck me before I get too impatient.”
Slowly, Brom slides his finger inside me to the knuckle and I instinctively clench around it. My cock is so hard and stiff and weeping onto my stomach and this is already pushing me to the edge. How will I survive him, let alone another finger?
“How is it?” he whispers, staring up at me through his lashes. “Does that feel good? Can I make you feel better?”
I groan as he pushes another finger in, this time farther, and he knows all the places to hit, knows the spot inside where it feels full, where it makes me gasp, my body tight and burning for release.