Chapter Five
Hell House Client Brief: Don't feed the hellmouth door-to-door salesmen. They give it gas.
The conservatory door flew open and cracked against the wall behind it.
“Sorry,” Shepherd muttered, through a mouthful of Kel’s tongue, as they staggered over the threshold. He blindly swapped the boxed-up slice of Marlborough Pie from one hand to the other as he grabbed the back of Kel’s shirt and dragged it up over his head.
Kel broke the kiss long enough to squirm out of his T-shirt before he got strangled with the collar. He laughed, quick and breathless, as he licked his lips and reached back to close the door. Before he could, Shepherd grabbed him by the waistband of his jeans and dragged him closer.
“Leave it,” Shepherd told him, lips brushing over Kel’s. “Just in case.”
That made Kel’s eyebrow twitch. “In case?” he said. “In case of wha—”
Shepherd stretched up and kissed him to stop him from finishing the question. He could have come up with a lie, but he didn’t have enough blood in the brain in charge of that sort of thing right now. Besides, this was more fun.
From the way Kel shrugged off his own curiosity and leaned into the kiss, he thought so too.
Besides, the faint breeze from the open door cut nicely through the muggy heat of the conservatory.
Kel curled a big, rough-palmed hand around the back of Shepherd’s neck as he stole the rich, sweet taste of sugar off Shepherd’s tongue. Heat licked under Shepherd’s skin and pinched at all the right places. The fact that this was a really stupid idea somehow only made it better.
…somehow?
Who was he trying to kid? He already knew that was his kink.
Shepherd absently consulted his mental map of the conservatory layout. After a week, he was pretty confident he could navigate through the plants and workbenches to the…
He tripped over a terracotta planter, stepped on something soft (fuck, a body…no, compost), and tripped over his own feet as he tried to recover. Since he didn’t have the presence of mind to let go of his grip on Kel’s jeans, the big man came with him.
They landed on one of the big, work-notched potting tables. Shepherd grunted as Kel’s weight landed on top of him—the man was lean, but there was a lot of him—and the table creaked precariously. Something rattled and then broke with a sharp, pottery crack.
“Shit,” Shepherd muttered as he dragged himself away from Kel’s mouth to crane his head.
The Eleusinian asphodel he’d only just repotted had pitched off the edge of the table. It lay on the tiled floor in an accusing sprawl of dirt, broken shards of pottery, and bare, tangled roots. A drift of thin, white petals fluttered away over the tiles as the breeze from the door caught them.
There was probably something that Shepherd could do, but…
what? He had one hand full of pie, the other had hold of Kel.
Shepherd’s brain ran through all the available scenarios—mostly grow another arm but with a brief consideration for developing TK powers—only to discard them and shrug a: ‘well, we tried’ at Shepherd.
Before he could panic—asphodels did not grow on trees…not in the mortal world at least—Kel said, “I got it.” He reached down with a long arm to grab it, give it a brisk shake, and set it back down on the table. The asphodel, roots still naked, flirtily shed some more leaves onto his freckled arm.
Kel braced both arms either side of Shepherd’s head and smirked down at him. “You take this housesitting gig seriously, huh?”
Shepherd gave the asphodel a hard look. It could wait its turn.
“Yeah, well, the breach of contract terms are a killer,” he said dryly.
Kel dipped his head down to brush a feather-light tease of a kiss over Shepherd’s mouth. His erection nudged insistently against Shepherd’s stomach through his jeans.
“And yet here we are,” Kel said. He ran his hand up under Shepherd’s T-shirt, grazing dirt-cool fingers up over his ribs.
The casual caress made Shepherd’s blood heat fizz under his skin.
“Even after Doncaster told you not to have me on the property. Do you know how pissed he’d be if he knew what we were doing? ”
The sticky undercurrent of pleasure in that idea made it clear what Kel’s kink was. Shepherd filed that away in the back of his head. Just in case. He’d no real plans to revisit Kel’s pants, but he hadn’t planned this out either. So, who knew.
Shepherd wrapped his free hand around the back of Kel’s neck and pulled him into a kiss. The other man’s mouth still tasted vaguely of lemon, and his lips were gritty with the residue of sugar.
“He said to keep you out of the house,” Shepherd finally made the correction as he broke the kiss. He tipped his head back as he nodded up at the age-smoky panes of glass above them. “This is the conservatory. It’s not attached.”
Kel laughed. “Detail-oriented,” he said. “I like that.”
Shepherd stretched up to kiss him again.
“The devil’s in the details,” he said, the words mouthed against Kel’s lower lip. It might have qualified as a warning, but even Renfield’s legal department would struggle to make that case. “And you have no idea.”
Kel’s mouth curved into a smile against Shepherd’s.
“Well, why don’t you show me?” Kel asked, his breath warm against Shepherd’s skin as he grazed a lazy kiss down his throat. “Or am I supposed to take that on trust?”
Shepherd snorted out a laugh.
“Oh, you definitely shouldn’t trust me,” he said confidently.
He twisted his head around to scan the table for a clear spot.
There was one next to the sundews that were to go back into the garden next week, but they’d been bottle-fed and were bold.
He stretched his arm back and propped the slice of pie on top of a stack of gardening pamphlets. “My contract isn’t with you.”
Kel raised his eyebrows.
“Huh.”
Shepherd looked at Kel’s face, all bad-boy stubble and heavy, built to take a beating, bones. He looked thoughtful. That was never good. Sex and thinking didn’t mix.
“What?” Shepherd asked.
Kel pursed his lips and shrugged.
“It’s nothing, just… That’s usually my line,” he admitted. “Never thought I’d be on the receiving end.”
“You tell people?” Shepherd asked. “That seems…counter-productive.”
Kel chuckled, the sound low, warm, and tickling something low in Shepherd’s stomach as it vibrated between their bodies.
“You just told me,” he pointed out.
Shepherd shrugged awkwardly, feeling the grit of old bone and gravel through his T-shirt. He pushed Kel away enough that he could sit up, his hands braced behind him.
“I was pointing out my loyalties aren’t to you,” he said. “Not that I don’t have any.”
Kel caught Shepherd by the hips and tugged him forward to the very edge.
“It’s not like they ever believe me,” Kel said. “But when the shit hits the fan, they can’t say I didn’t warn them.”
It was always good to have some claim to the moral high ground. Even spuriously.
“What about you?” Shepherd asked. “Do you believe me?”
“Of course not,” Kel said as he nuzzled Shepherd’s throat, teeth sharp as they scraped over tender skin. “It’s not in my best interests to make good choices right now.”
That made Shepherd bite back a whimper. That was…hot. Objectively, obviously, but also in a way that felt very personalised to Shepherd’s libido. He could probably work the specifics, but...later.
“Well, like you said, you can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he murmured breathlessly.
Kel smirked as he stepped back and pulled his T-shirt off over his head. He let it drop to the floor as he reached up to rub the back of his neck.
The gesture looked casual, almost boyish, but it put his long, lean body on display. The sunset, filtered through the age-smoked glass, highlighted the heavy muscles layered over his ribs and the tight line of his biceps.
“I will, though,” Kel said. He shrugged when Shepherd looked up at his face. “Everyone does. You will too.”
Shepherd hopped down off the table. The clay shards of the broken pot crunched underfoot as he stepped forward. He grabbed the waistband of Kel’s jeans, the plane of Kel’s stomach firm as his knuckles pressed against it.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said. “I like that you’re a liar. The only way you could let me down is…well, if you don’t.”
Kel’s mouth was already open to respond to whatever he’d thought Shepherd was going to say. He stopped himself before the words could get out and knit his eyebrows together as he puzzled that through.
“Gotta say, not sure I want to fuck someone who thinks so little of me,” he said mildly.
Shepherd flicked the button on Kel’s jeans open and slid the zip down.
“See?” he said as he slid his hands around under the waistband to slide along Kel’s hipbones.
They were bony and prominent, a natural resting place for his thumbs.
He could feel the sharp intake of breath that Kel took.
Shepherd smirked as he looked up at the other man. “It’s hot when you lie.”
He left the ‘badly’ part unsaid, but…that was part of the charm.
Kel grabbed the back of Shepherd’s neck, all callused fingers and bruising strength, and pulled him into a kiss that was all business and no flirt. His mouth was hard as it crushed down on Shepherd’s, and his teeth were sharp as they scraped over his lips.
That was hot too.
Shepherd leaned into it. He shoved Kel’s jeans down impatiently and grabbed his cock.
Sight unseen, and this early in proceedings, it felt like a nice handful and thick enough to make his stomach clench in anticipation.
He liked the weight of it against his palm and the way Kel’s whole body tightened in reaction when he wrapped his fingers around it.
He kinda liked a lot of things about Kel, he guessed…and he wasn’t going to think about that too hard.