40. Ghost Story
GHOST STORY
ASHER
“ F or fuck’s sake, Blakely. You scared me half to death.”
Asher opened his eyes and lowered his hands.“Me?”
“Did you cut yourself?” Lev gripped Asher’s wrists and inspected his hands.
Asher pulled his hands free and balled them into fists. “I’m fine.”
“Good.” Lev reached past him and turned the sink off. “What on earth are you doing down here?”
Asher narrowed his eyes. “Looking for you. I saw someone out there… Turn off the lights.”
“There’s no one out there.” Lev sighed, as if Asher was the one who’d inconvenienced him by getting out of bed to look for him.
“Forget it.” Asher crossed to the switch and turned it off himself.
“Ash…”
Asher scanned the darkness, but whatever light he’d seen wasn’t there anymore. “I thought it was you. I…” He turned back to Lev. “Where were you?”
Lev stroked his jaw, and with each second that passed, Asher grew more convinced that Lev would lie .
“I checked all your usual haunts.”
“Darling, you couldn’t possibly know all my usual haunts.”
Asher crossed his arms over his chest. “Thanks for the reminder that I don’t know you very well. I’m going back to bed.”
Lev could follow him right up the stairs if he wanted to, but Asher would slam the door shut in his face and shove that wardrobe back in place.
He’d given Lev so much of his heart and he couldn’t even trust him to say where he’d been after Asher had shared his most degrading moments with Ben.
“Please let me explain. I couldn’t sleep.”
“I couldn’t either, and now I’d like to.” Asher jogged up the stairs off the back of the kitchen and through the steep and shallow-ceilinged servant stairwell.
At the landing to their floor, vertigo and hunger made him dizzy, and he nearly tumbled backward until Lev steadied him.
“Did you forget to eat again?” Lev asked, all sweet and doting and condescending.
Asher turned. Lev still stood on the step below.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was a little busy searching the castle for you and being scared half to death in the kitchen.”
“Scared?” Lev’s brows lifted. “Why?”
“I’m going to bed so go paint, or have your morning constitutional, or meet up with whoever is waiting out there for you.”
Lev laughed. “That’s what you’re upset about? You can’t seriously believe I’m interested in anyone else, let alone meeting them for a clandestine rendezvous during such dreadful weather.”
“I wouldn’t laugh at the top of a stairwell if I were you.”
“Come now, Blakely. Let’s not resort to murderous threats.”
“Let’s not resort to abusing the word come for your own manipulative devices.”
“My manipulative what?” Lev climbed onto the landing and stroked Asher’s arm. “I promise, there’s no one out there. Boat lights look like lanterns or will-o-the-wisps. The ocean was playing tricks on you.”
“Why won’t you tell me where you were, then? Were you with Silas?”
Hurt dashed Lev’s features. His mouth opened and shut.
Asher winced. Fuck. Hurting Lev was like kicking the Great Dane puppy his mom had compared him to.
“I’m sorry. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I was worried about you. I thought you were out there, and I tried to make coffee but I couldn’t figure out your overcomplicated appliances, and tea is disgusting…”
Lev turned his head sharply and looked back down the stairwell.
Goosebumps and dread crawled over his skin. Did he see someone? Was it Silas?
“Lev?”
Lev didn’t answer or indicate in any way that he’d even heard Asher.
“Lev?” Asher said, softly this time.
Still no answer.
Asher stepped between Lev and the deathtrap of a stairwell. Lev looked through him.
Was that what it felt like to be a ghost? Starved for connection, and completely ignored?
“Lev.” Asher cupped his cheek and forced Lev’s gaze to him. “What do you see? Look at me. Only me.”
Glacier eyes blinked once, twice before Lev’s unfocused stare trained on him.
“Are you okay? I’ve been trying to get your attention.”
“Ah, that would be my ADHD.”
“It wasn’t ADHD, Lev.”
Lev’s lips twitched into a small smile. “Perhaps we both need sleep.”
Asher’s stomach sank. Why was he lying ?
“If you woke up on the wrong side of an empty bed,” Lev continued, “I think the best way to correct it is to go back to sleep and start the day anew.”
“You can’t just put me to bed like a child.”
“Of course not. I was going to put myself to bed.”
Asher rolled his eyes. Flirting aside, he wasn’t going to let Lev out of his sight. Spacing out at the top of a staircase was nearly as dangerous as walking on the cliffs at night.
Lev paused in front of their door. “I’m sorry I worried you. I was in the library. There are some boring books in there.” He squeezed Asher’s shoulder and darted a glance down the hallway and back to him. “Let’s talk inside. I have a secret stash of emergency almonds.”
“How very squirrel-like of you.”
Lev didn’t laugh as he steered Asher inside and shut the door. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
He raked his distracted gaze over Asher and crossed to the bathroom.
Asher sat on the bed. “Why are you talking to me like I’m a hotel guest seeing your room for the first time?”
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” Lev called from his closet. Cabinets opened and drawers slammed. Plastic bags crinkled.
“For someone with bat-like hearing, you’re a terrible liar,” Asher teased, offering an olive branch of banter.
Lev was freaking the fuck out, probably because Asher had accused him of having a romp with his dead ex, but something else had spooked him on the stairs too.
“Ah, here it is.” Lev emerged from the closet door with a comically large bag of almonds the size of a pillow. He tore the bag open and placed it on the bed beside Asher.
“Lev, are you okay?”
“Eat and I’ll explain.” Lev kneeled, ginger lashes kissing as he dropped his gaze, and slipped off Asher’s shoe, wordlessly taking care of him even when Asher was being an irritable asshole .
Asher popped a few almonds in his mouth. “Well?”
Lev smiled, and slipped off Asher’s remaining shoe, then started talking, exactly as promised.
“We only ever talk about places being haunted, but sometimes it’s not the place, it’s the person, and it’s not ghosts that haunt them, but their memories.”
Lev sat back on his heels and stared up at Asher with ocean eyes exactly as haunted as he implied.
“My memories walk the halls of Lichenmoor. They hide behind locked doors. They pirouette on cliff edges, and wash up on the shore. They haunt me with their stories, and all of them are true.”
Lev stroked Asher’s knee and stood. “Everywhere I go reminds me of what I’ve lost. That’s what kept me up last night, and where my mind went in the stairwell. Now, please eat.”
Asher looked down at the almonds he’d forgotten.
Was Lev telling the truth? Was he haunted by loss or by something else? Or was he lying to himself because he was scared of the truth too?
“Yesterday was a lot,” Lev continued. “The mausoleum especially. It was a lot for you too, hm?”
“I shouldn’t have gone there?—”
Lev lifted his hand. “The mausoleum wasn’t your fault. Rebecca took the blame while you were putting her saddle away.”
“Don’t mock me.” Asher ate one almond and lobbed the second at Lev.
Lev released a scandalized, exaggerated gasp as it bounced off his chest and skipped across the floor.
“I wasn’t mocking you. I took her confession quite seriously.” Lev’s attempt at a serious expression failed on a burst of laughter.
Asher tossed the rest of his almonds at him. He darted out of the way, but reflexes didn’t matter when he was such a big target and all of them pelted him.
“You’re so prickly today.” Lev pushed Asher back and climbed onto the bed after him, knocking the bag of almonds to the floor.
“Yikes. You’re going to have a lot of almonds to clean up.”
Lev peered over the edge of the bed and winced. “They’re your almonds.”
“Okay, then I better get started.” He tried to sit up.
“Don’t you dare.” Lev pushed him back down and pinned Asher’s hands by his head. “You can clean them up after I fuck you, or are you still sore from last night?”
“I am, actually.”
Lev clucked his tongue. “See. You should have let me prep you longer.”
“Please. All the prep in the world couldn’t have prepared me for Mr. I’ve Been Told I Feel Bigger Than I Look. ”
“Are you sure I said that? It doesn’t sound like me.” Lev nipped Asher’s Adam’s apple.
Asher scrambled to get away, laughing.
Lev tightened his grip on Asher’s wrists. “Finally, a real laugh, but if you keep writhing around like that, Blakely, I might fuck you after all.”
Asher froze. His chest tightened. He fought to free his wrists, this time seriously, with claustrophobia and panic intermingling.
His thoughts came in single words, fragmented memories. Ben hadn’t been as big as Lev, but he’d fucked Asher dry as punishment, or used a bigger sex toy, or both, and being sore had never stopped him from topping.
Asher could have safe-worded, but safe-wording meant disappointing him, and he didn’t want to disappoint Lev either, and?—
The invisible bindings around his wrists disappeared as Lev’s hands released him. The weight started to lift from his chest as Lev climbed off of him.
Lev helped Asher sit at the edge of the bed again. “Breathe, Ash. You’re safe. I promise. I’ll always keep you safe. Always. Breathe in slowly.”
Asher did his best to follow along.
“There’s a good lad,” Lev murmured.
The praise was totally undeserved. Asher had started his next breath before Lev had even finished exhaling.
A few more cycles later, Asher’s head stopped spinning. He focused on his senses, on Lev’s hand rubbing loving circles over his back, on the devastated look on his face, the scent of his aftershave.
Asher leaned forward and nuzzled his cheek against Lev’s wiry beard, desperate for more sensation, something to root him, to remind him he was with Lev, not Ben, who’d always been clean-shaven.