Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
CALLAHAN
I consider just jumping in the lake.
It would certainly cool me off. Maybe stop my heart from the shock, if I was lucky.
But then I remember the lake is frozen. So I settle for the coldest shower Camlann House has ever seen.
When it’s over, and my teeth are chattering, I wrap myself in a towel, shove my glasses back on, and grab my scapular back off the hook. I drop it over my neck and the two pendants settle strangely cold against my skin. Like they’re just of the freezer.
It’s almost a relief.
“Everything okay?”
Lanz is in the kitchen when I come downstairs. I almost jump out of my skin on my way to the fridge.
I breathe out hard and push my glasses up my nose. “Fine.” Pause. “Why?”
Lanz looks up from where he’s reading at the kitchen island and shrugs.
“You look like you’re on edge, is all.”
I grip the towel at my waist. Say nothing.
“Night shift go all right?”
“It was fine.” Not two minutes out of the shower and my body feels hot again. I ignore it and push things around in the fridge, foraging for orange juice, like this is any normal morning. I try to pretend Lanz isn’t there as I find a glass.
Wait a minute. Lanz usually isn’t here.
“Why aren’t you on duty?” I ask, not turning around.
“Swapped with Kai. I haven’t been feeling…” He trails off.
Okay. I set down the glass, uncap the juice.
“I have to tell you something,” comes Lanz’s voice.
I stop mid-pour. “Tell me what?”
“I…uh…” There’s a long pause. “I may have told Gwenna that you liked her.”
Alarm seizes me. I spin around.
“What the fuck?” I say it before I can stop myself. “Why?”
“Because I’m an idiot?” Lanz winces, scrubbing the back of his head with his hand. “Yesterday. I…I was feeling bad, I was kinda…out of it.” He leans his head back against the wall. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I say, my voice sounding strangled. I can’t move. Can’t drink the glass I just poured. Just stand there in my towel and scapular. I blink. Breathe in.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why’d you say that to her?”
“What, you mean…” Lanz cocks his head at me, eyes narrowed. He rolls his lips together. “I mean, it is true, isn’t it?”
My mouth goes dry.
Her body pressed against mine.
The look in her eyes.
I say nothing.
For some reason, that seems to tick Lanz off. His blue eyes darken, and he jumps to his feet.
“Oh, so you’re going to deny it?” He looks me up and down. Goosebumps prickle over my skin. “Come on, Cal. I know you too well for that.”
I look at the ground, unable to answer.
Not sure I even need to.
Because he’s right. He does.
Lanz takes a step closer.
“You do want her, don’t y0u?” He leans in and whispers into my ear. “Just admit it. I bet it’s burning you up inside.”
Fuck. I clench my teeth, but it’s no use. “Yes.”
Lanz rams his mouth into mine.
Hard.
He pins me to the kitchen wall. I’ve got a few inches on him, but he’s strong. And besides, I don’t really want to resist.
No, I do. I want to want to stop him.
But I don’t. Not even close.
He anchors my wrists down and bites at my throat, and the touch of his lips sends my cock stirring under my towel.
Instantly, I think of the other day. The searing cross the Prior at Arms made on my forehead, the dizzying feeling.
We can’t be doing this, I think. We should never have started. It’s a bad idea.
Lanz kisses me again.
Or maybe I am just a bad person.
“What would you do with her, Cal?” Lanz is saying into my ear. “What are you fantasizing about?”
My mind goes blank. Too many ideas and not enough, all at once.
“I knew it.” Lanz grins, that wicked-devil grin I hate that I love on him so much. “Knew it, knew it.” His hand falls to my throat, where he traces the twin thongs of the scapular with his fingertips. His touch is hot, fiery, almost. “Tell me.”
I shiver. Shake my head.
His hand tightens around the leather. All at once, he yanks it taut, pulling me towards him.
I gasp.
“Tell me,” he all but purrs. “You want to kiss her?”
I swallow. Nod. He grips the leather around my neck as his other hand finds my hip.
“You want to touch her?”
I nod again. “Mhm.”
“I thought so.” One hand slides under my towel as the other tightens the hold around my neck. “Say it,” he commands. “Say what you want.”
“I want to—fuuuck.”
My thought is lost on a moan as he tugs my cock free and pulls, an agonizing slow stroke that he ends with a thumb swirled over my wet tip.
It’s too much. I’m too far gone, too heated from last night, too dizzy from the slight bite of the leather taut around my throat. A lifetime of cold showers could not fix this for me. No confession, no penance, nothing.
I am bound to be like this.
I don’t last long. I choke as I come, swift and spurting, all over my stomach and his hand. Lanz is panting hard, too, but he smirks, and I can tell he’s about to make some smartass remark when footsteps ring out through the house.
“Someone there?”
Kingston.
Kingston.
His face blank. Stunned. Holding a brown paper lunch bag that flutters to the ground.
Nobody moves. Me least of all. Naked and coated in my own cum with my dick still in Lanz’s hand.
Then Kingston takes a step back. He looks up at the ceiling, blinking.
“Gwenna?” he says at last, his gaze fixed high above any of us.
“With Kai,” Lanz chokes out. “I—we swapped.” He lets me go, moves for Kingston—who’s leaving, I realize. “Wait. King, wait, I can explain—”
“Can you?” Kingston takes another step back, then another, then turns his back, and sweeps out of Camlann House entirely.