Chapter 19 Kaian #2
“Hey, you two, quit running your mouths and let’s go,” Quinn gripes. He’s pulling on the door to the building and is surprised when it pops open. “What do you say we use the stairs? This is one of the few apartment buildings on this stretch.”
Would he prefer the stairs to being punted like a bag of laundry? Yes, yes, he would.
Soren shakes his head. “Not yet, let’s do the next three. Then we can go down at the corner. Outside stairs.”
So that’s how Kaian spends the next fifteen minutes being tossed and caught from the roofs of three buildings.
When they finally hit the last building, and Kaian is clinging to the rusty staircase—which is really more a series of ladders—Kaian stops two rungs from the second-story landing.
Two black SUVs hurtle past the alley’s narrow opening down the street toward Quinn’s apartment.
Quinn and Soren can’t see it, but the two vehicles ooze greyish-brown magic in their wake.
“Kai?” Quinn says, looking down through the hole in the fire escape.
“Those are the big guns, I’m guessing?” Soren asks, looking up from beneath him to where the SUVs have disappeared. “We should go.”
Heart pounding, it occurs to Kaian that he has nowhere to go.
Soren’s fingers are gentle on the soft skin of his ankle above his checkered Vans. He doesn’t bother with platitudes, just the soft pressure and a squeeze to get him back in motion.
The last set of ladders ends eight feet off the ground, and swings and pitches wildly as Kaian tries not to fall.
The hinge gives way, and Kaian is sure he’s going to fall flat on his back and crack his head open.
His fingers slip free, seconds from pulling on The Plain to cushion his landing with Air, when he falls into Soren’s arms. The bigger man doesn’t even stagger.
“Easy there, Angel-Baby,” he whispers, and they’re close enough that Kaian can count the light smattering of freckles over his aquiline nose. “It’s just like you fell from heaven.”
Kaian licks his lips, trying to catch Soren’s flavor on his tongue, and when he flicks his gaze up into Soren’s, he’s watching Kaian’s mouth.
Catching his breath, Kaian breathes, “Kiss me.”
Soren’s forehead presses into his. He lets Kaian’s feet slip to the ground, just enough that his toes touch and he’s held close against Soren’s chest. His hand curls around the back of his neck, his thumb pressed into the hinge of Kaian’s jaw, holding him immobile.
He’s directing Kaian, making it so easy not to think—to simply want, and inhale Soren deep into his lungs.
“Like this?”
“Please,” Kaian says, gripping the front of Soren’s leather jacket.
“You beg so pretty.” Soren’s mouth brushes his. It’s not a kiss. Just the ghost of one, like he’s learning Kaian by proximity—lips barely there, but heat everywhere else. Kaian doesn’t dare move.
The anticipation hurts.
And then—
Soft. Slow. A press of mouths that steals his knees and pours all the wanting straight into his chest. It’s like heaven, held in a perfect limbo by the way Soren’s hand tightens at his neck, by the way Kaian sighs into the space between them like it’s all he’s been waiting for.
Kaian opens for it, dying to drink Soren down in great gulps like it’s the very air he needs to breathe. And when Soren pulls back, just enough for Kaian to whisper against his lips, “Yeah. Like that.” Kaian chases the kiss again, anyway.
Quinn’s feet hit the ground behind them, the hard soles of his boots slapping loudly, causing Kaian to jerk and try to pull away.
But Quinn eases in close and runs his nose up the side of Kaian’s cheek as he breathes them in.
His arm goes tight around Kaian’s waist, squeezing as he steals his taste from Soren’s tongue.
He has a front-row seat to the voracious kiss, tongues flicking and teeth flashing. Soren groans. “Blaze, fuck.”
“He’s so sweet. Can taste him on you. Didn’t think I could love your mouth more.” The words are pulled from him, and Kaian’s cock goes from semi-interested-I’ve-been-running-for-my-life, to please-fuck-me-now.
Whimpering, he bucks his hips, lifts his legs so Soren or Quinn can bear his weight and help him find much-needed friction on his dick.
There’s a broad hand under his ass, and one around the back of his head, as Quinn pulls his head aside so he can lick a strip up his throat. “So good, bébé. Fuck, wanna eat you. Bet you taste this good everywhere.”
“Put our marks on you. Here,” Soren growls, nipping his jaw with blunt human teeth. “And here.” He pinches the lower curve of Kaian’s ass.
“Yes. Yes. Please.” God, how he wants that. Here. Now. In the alley, or wherever they end up.
Quinn sucks a sliver of Kaian’s throat up between his teeth, sucking hard enough that Kaian can feel it throb in his dick. Maybe if he keeps it up, Kaian could come.
“We don’t have time. Fuck. Soon, though. Yeah? Then we can lay you out. Make it good.”
Soren pulls Kaian in hard. Grinds his dick against Soren’s belly with a groan before letting Kaian’s feet slide to the ground. He holds him steady as the world tilts on its axis and his dick throbs in disappointment.
“Soon?” He hates that it sounds like a whine, but the breathy sound makes both men shiver. He wants to ask when and how soon, but instead says, “Where are we going to go?”
“Good fucking question,” Quinn says. He adjusts his cock, the hard line visible in his jeans, and Kaian wonders if it’s big enough that if Quinn lifted his shirt, they could see the wet head he’d felt earlier. Wonders if he would let Soren show Kaian how he liked it.
“Kai?” Soren asks, and by the look on his face, it’s not the first time. “His eyes are up there.”
Quinn chuckles and runs his thumb over Kaian’s lower lip. “Look all you want. Think about how I’m going to fill you up.”
A bolt of heat causes Kaian to moan, while Soren’s groan only adds fuel to the fire. Images of being pressed between them, filled at both ends, letting them decide everything, make him sway into Soren’s chest.
A muscled arm holds him up while pushing the hair off Kaian’s damp forehead. “Not nice, Blaze. Hard enough as it is. Jesus fuck.”
“You started it. Talkin’ about marking him up. I’m just having my say.” Quinn steals a kiss to try to shut Soren up.
Kaian uses his nose to nudge aside Soren’s jacket to find his hard pec. A glimmer of heliotrope and cherry-smoke tickles his nose. Reminds him that the faster they get out of this stinking alley, the faster Kaian can get flat on his back with his knees around his ears.
“I hate to interrupt this very, very intriguing argument, and I am definitely on board. But again, where are we going?”
That seems to stop their bickering cold.
“We can’t go to my place. Vincenzo has that under watch twenty-four/seven, though he’s not very subtle about it.”
“Where are you staying?” Soren asks him from far away. His big hand is petting Kaian’s hair with the occasional scritch across his scalp.
“Hostel on North Baker. Got in from NYC earlier today.”
“Baker?” Quinn asks, a tinge of exasperation. “Fate really wanted Their way.”
It doesn’t make any sense to Kaian, but he knew Fate worked in mysterious ways. The urge to get the lunar moth coin is completely absent for once, and it’s enough that he pries his nose out of Soren’s shirt.
Soren hisses. “We aren’t going to a fucking hostel. Too many strangers and not enough exits.”
Quinn rubs the back of his neck. “A hotel, then? I have enough tips for a night, anyway.”
“Same problem, just more money.” Soren shakes his head, nudging Kaian into Quinn’s arms so he can pace back and forth the narrow width of the alley. They’d already spent too much time here when the Academy’s scouts were around the corner.
Kaian tightens his cage around The Plain, dampening the call of the light, and ignoring the ache that seems a bit worse around Soren and Quinn.
Maybe there’s something to what they said, about just knowing.
He may not be Were, but now that he’s looking, The Plain doesn’t seem so content to lie behind Kaian’s defenses.
“I’ve got an idea,” Soren interrupts Kaian’s inner musings. “We’ll have to…ugh…borrow a car. Ubers and cabs leave a paper trail. And the bus doesn’t go out that far.
“Borrow a car? You mean steal? That’s going to piss someone off enough to alert the cops.”
“I think I know where we can borrow a car and no one will notice, but we’ll have to catch a cab back to All’s End and hope they’re not waiting there too. Worth the risk, but we’re not defenseless. You got cash?”
Kaian thinks about his meager thirty bucks and cringes. It might cover the ride to All’s End.
“Yeah, I got it covered. The tips were decent tonight.”
“Yeah?” Soren growls. He looks like he wants to say something else, but shakes it off.
Quinn seems to take pity on him, though, and with a twist of his lips, he nods. “Just the cage, Ren. Like always.”
Soren’s shoulders drop, and he gives a brusque nod. “Yeah. Okay. Stay here and I’ll flag a cab.”
Kaian shakes his head. “Um…maybe I should flag the cab? You look like you got into a fight and lost.”
“Ha-fucking-ha.”
“He’s funny. I like him.” Quinn squeezes Kaian’s shoulder. “You stay here, no one good is picking you up in the middle of the night, bébé. I’ll be right back.”
At the mouth of the alley, Quinn checks the traffic toward his place and turns in the opposite direction, leaving Kaian and Soren alone for the first time.
Or at least, the first time since he’s been awake.
“He’s pretty amazing,” is the only thing Kaian can think to say—suddenly shy for a guy begging to be fucked minutes ago.
Soren nods, pats his jacket pocket, and pulls out cigarettes and an antique lighter. He covers the flame with his palm and inhales deeply, flicking the lid of the lighter open and closed. Open and closed.
“That’s pretty. Looks old.”
The flicking stops. “Huh?”
“May I see?” Kaian holds out his hand, not surprised at all when Soren hesitates before laying it in Kaian’s palm.
The lighter is beautiful. Silver, with sides worn smooth from use. The front has a lunar moth on it under a full moon, and the reverse has the words Grá gan chríoch engraved on it.
Love without end.
“It’s a beautiful gift.” Kaian barely holds back the urge to ask Soren who it was who loved without end, and why he watched Kaian handle it like it might disappear if he took his eyes off it for even a moment, but a blue cab rolls up to the end of the alley, and Quinn gets out.
“We gotta go,” Soren says around his clenched jaw.
As soon as he says it, a fire truck screams down the street, followed by another and another.
Soren grabs him under the elbow and stuffs him into the back of the car, sliding in after him. He grits out, “All’s End.”
The cabbie does a three-point turn away from Quinn’s apartment, currently on fire in a three-alarm blaze. He and Kaian watch out the rear window as the swarm of firemen unrolls hoses and a crowd of bystanders gawks.
But Quinn keeps his eyes forward, and even though there’s a muscle ticking in his jaw, he doesn’t look back at all.