Chapter 23 Cord
SINCE WE WERE up all night on the stakeout, Dante sends reinforcements to replace Eli and Snipes on the roof, then tells the rest of us to go home and get some sleep, with instructions to meet back at the warehouse at sundown.
I grab a quick shower when I get home and fall into bed, ready to surrender to unconsciousness and forget all this Python drama for a few hours. As soon as I lay down, however, my phone rings. I glance at the screen; Asher. The last person I want to talk to, and yet, my dick disagrees.
“Yeah?” I answer.
“Just checking in to see how it went last night. Was the intel good?”
His voice sounds husky, like he just woke up. I settle back on the bed and glare down at my mutinous erection. So much for falling asleep now.
“We sat on the warehouse all night, finally got enough activity for Dante to greenlight us going in.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Oh.” He’s quiet for a moment and I almost think he might have dozed off, then he sighs, his voice pitched low when he asks, “Do you remember the first time we were together?”
What the hell kind of question is that at a time like this? As much as I might want to ignore it, it’s now seeped into my thoughts. How do you ignore something that’s imprinted on your soul?
Two days in solitary. That was the punishment for my undisciplined actions. In my defense, I did try to follow the rules, but I was just so damned hungry. At least I didn’t kill anyone.
There’s no way to tell how long I’ve been in the cell, but I know it’s less than the sentence when the lock clicks and the door swings open.
He’s standing in the dim shaft of light from the hallway, his hair disheveled, his normally neat clothes wrinkled.
“What are you doing here, Ash?”
“Looking for you.”
He steps inside and closes the door, plunging us back into near darkness, then crosses the tiny room to lower himself beside me on the narrow cot.
“I was worried about you.”
“Do they know you’re here?”
“Of course not. I was careful. I stole the key from Oscar when he went to feed.”
I shake my head. “I’m a bad influence on you.”
“That’s not all you are.”
His hand closes over mine and I look up, meeting his eyes. In the dim light their normally emerald depths appear black. I’ve been fighting it for months, this unnatural attraction. Chalking it up to side effects from the transition. Does he feel it, too?
He leans closer, his velvety voice brushing against my ear. “Cord?”
“Yes?”
“Would you hate me if I kissed you?”
I think I would hate myself if I stopped him. Rather than answer, I turn my head into his, bringing our lips together.
The effect is like lighting a match to kindling.
He moans in my mouth and that gives me all the encouragement I need.
I press closer, marveling at the pillowy softness of his lips.
At the desperate hunger of his mouth as it seeks mine, his tongue first testing, then burrowing inside, tangling with mine.
He tastes like honey and that rich meatiness of fresh blood from his recent feeding, and I can’t get enough of him.
My hand wanders up to his chest, hovering over his heart where his life pulses steady and strong. He leans closer, encouraging my explorations, then grabs my hand and pulls it down to rub against his stiffening bulge.
I want him. More than the maddening lust for blood that landed me in this cell. I want Asher Winston inside me. Around me. Consuming me.
Since the first day we met, there’s never been anyone else. And this godforsaken transition has made that craving even more pronounced. I would gladly starve if I could have him.
“I want you,” he breathes in my ear, echoing my own thoughts.
Fuck yes.
There’s no artistry to the way we undress each other. It’s pure manic lust. Clothes are ripped and thrown around the cell.
My only regret is that there isn’t more light so I can see his salacious body. I want to commit every inch of him to memory in case this all turns out to be another fevered dream.
“Cord, I…I’ve never done this before.”
I smile and wrap my arms around him. “Neither have I. We’ll learn together.”
All inhibitions are thrown to the wind when his lips close around my cock.
I nearly come on the spot. For someone who has never done this before, he takes to it like a pro.
I have all I can do to last a few minutes, and when I come, he swallows it all and licks my cock clean.
Then he straddles my hips and grips his own dick, sliding his hand through the precum glistening on the head.
“Let me do that,” I offer, replacing his hand with mine.
“I want to fuck you,” he breathes. “Is that okay?”
I nod eagerly, fisting his stiffening cock.
“Get me wet.”
He leans over me and I suck his cock into my mouth, running my tongue around its smooth heat.
I bury my nose in his groin, breathing in his musky maleness as I lube his shaft.
He pulls away from me and inserts two fingers in his mouth, pressing them against my hole.
At first I tense up, wary of the intrusion, but then he bends over to kiss me, easing me into the contact.
“This will probably hurt,” he says, and I wonder how he knows about this stuff. “We’ll take it slow.”
When he drags the head of his cock along the crack of my ass, I feel myself harden again. I don’t know if it’s because it’s the first time or the fact that it’s Asher, but I feel like I’m hyperventilating. He teases my hole, pressing against the ring of muscles but not entering until I beg him.
“Put it in me, Ash.”
He goes slow, inching in a little at a time. Once his cock bottoms out inside me, I feel like I can finally breathe again.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks.
“Yes, but it’s a good hurt.” The best. “Don’t stop.”
We’re both new at this, so it’s messy and awkward and painful, but it’s also the best thing that has ever happened to me. Better than my transition. Better than that first taste of blood afterward. Better than all the fights I’ve sought and won over the years.
Both of us come within minutes, but it doesn’t diminish the experience. That’s when I decide having Asher’s cock inside me is the greatest feeling in the world.
I try to push the memory away, but its warmth spreads through me.
“We did learn together, didn’t we?” he asks.
We were each other’s firsts, the consummation of a need I’d had since that first day I saw him in the group home.
I don’t know what attracted me to him. Why a twelve year old boy would crave the attention of another like that.
No one had ever come close to tempting me away from him.
Even after I left, no one had taken his place.
So why can’t I let myself trust him? Why do I keep pushing him away?
“That was a long time ago,” I murmur.
“And yet I remember it like it was yesterday. More than my transition. More than that first taste of blood.”
Exactly how I felt when it happened. How can two people who fit together so well grow so far apart? “You were my world, Ash. Until you met Carlyle.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I can’t change what’s already happened.
All I can do is promise to be better. I never meant to hurt you, Cord.
You were–are–everything to me. That day I went to your cell, I had made up my mind that I would accept whatever punishment Oscar handed out if I was caught, but I was going to tell you how I felt.
I couldn’t live with the secret any longer. ”
“And you were caught.”
Oscar discovered us together and threw Asher in another cell. Not for fucking me, but for stealing his keys and violating my punishment. We didn’t see each other for a week.
It was one of the longest weeks of my life.
Until I walked out on him and spent the last ten years without him.
I know I don’t have the strength to do it again, so I have to be sure.
I have to know that he’s not going to pull the same shit on me.
Because as much as I love him, I’ve also learned to love myself.
It’s taken a long time, and it’s a struggle I’m proud of, but I’ve finally come to accept myself, with all my faults.
I know I’m not perfect, but I still live by a code, despite what I’ve become.
“It was worth it,” he says now. “Everything I’ve ever had to endure to be at your side has been worth it.”
Why does he have to say things like that? It just makes it harder to be strong.
“I need time, Asher.”
“I know. And I’m trying to be patient, but you know it’s not one of my strengths, especially when it comes to you. Plus, I worry about you.”
“I told you, I can handle myself.”
“I know that. Hell, I’ve always known that. It’s one of the first things I noticed about you. Doesn’t mean I don’t worry, especially now. With this new threat.”
“I’ll be careful.”
He sighs, and I can tell he feels the same way I do about this. We can chase each other around this tree all day going nowhere. I guess that’s why he changes the subject.
“I had to play the vampire card last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a human follow me when I left Lupercalia and try to intimidate me into feeding off him.”
An irrational surge of protective rage clouds my vision. Someone threatened him? “What happened?” I manage to grind out.
“I think I channeled you and went all dark and scary on him. He nearly pissed himself getting away from me. I have to say, it felt…good. Right, somehow.”
“Does that mean you’re going to go darkside on me now?”
He chuckles. “Highly unlikely. But it was entertaining, if just for a few minutes. I guess it made me realize how it used to be for our ancestors.”
“They weren’t our ancestors.”
“You know what I mean. Those who went before us.”
“So now it’s my turn to ask you to be careful.”
“Are you worried about me, Cord?”
“Just be careful.”
“I will if you will.”
Touché. I walked right into that one.
“Okay, I know you need to get to sleep and I have to go to the office, but please let me know how things go tonight.”
“I will.”
He hangs up and I stare at my phone for several minutes, revisiting the memory he dredged up.
As first times go, it couldn’t have been much better.
Sure, it would have been preferable not to be in a cold cell, but the setting didn’t detract from the meaning of the act.
If we had been inseparable before that, it was magnified tenfold after.
We couldn’t get enough of each other, awakening dark appetites neither of us had been aware of.
I liked to give, Asher liked to take. Every twisted idea we came up with we acted upon. Nothing was too outrageous or taboo. It was the perfect foil for all the newly-awakened needs our transition had birthed.
Had we been human, we surely would have hurt or maimed each other, possibly permanently. But we weren’t, and that seemed to give us the freedom to try anything.
Though that only applied to each other. No one else was allowed into our games.
Over the years, others had tried to insinuate themselves, but we were adamant in our determination to keep what happened between us private.
We might have sported the evidence of our excesses on our bodies, but that didn’t mean we wanted or needed any help from outside.
I have entertained the thought, in the years since our breakup, of experimenting with others, but when it came down to actually doing it, I couldn’t go through with it.
It just didn’t hold the same appeal as it did with Asher.
Regardless of how crazy we got, I always knew he had my back.
That he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.
There’s something liberating about that.
I guess it’s safe to say Asher has ruined me for all other lovers.