Chapter 6 #2
“You die an awful lot for someone who’s immortal,” Rowan finally said.
“I do not,” Yves protested, but there was not much argument in it. He’d died more than the average person, at least.
“At least three times since I’ve known you.”
“To be fair, one of them was your fault.”
Right, the bullet that was still lodged in Yves’s heart. Rowan’s was the only scar that still marred Yves’s perfect body.
“One tends to get a bit reckless when returning is inevitable.” Yves’s tone was light, trying not to let his darkness show. His arm tightened around Rowan’s waist. Rowan’s heart squeezed painfully again, an old anxiety resurfacing like a bloated body.
“What if someday you don’t come back?”
Yves pinched Rowan’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting his head so they were eye to eye.
“Not even your bullet could kill me for good, my love. Trust that I’ll always return to you.”
A shiver ran up Rowan’s spine. He did trust that Yves would always come for him. And that was why Rowan worried. He couldn’t let Yves sacrifice for him again and again, always returning, only to die again. What if there was a limit to his resurrections? What if one day he ran out of time?
A tide of possessiveness washed over Rowan then, an overwhelming need to keep Yves by his side and protect him from the world’s ills.
It was ridiculous. Yves was essentially immortal, and Rowan himself was mortally breakable.
Was this how Yves felt about him all the time?
Was this the reason for all those hungry looks, and his borderline obsessive need to fuck Rowan into submission every minute they were together?
Rowan leaned further into his husband’s embrace, his lips brushing up the side of Yves’s neck.
“You can’t go on dying. What if you run out of lives?”
“I am a demon, not a cat,” Yves said gruffly, then seemed to soften again. “I have thought of it.”
“You don’t know when you’ll die for good?” Few people got such a luxury, yet for Yves not to know the true terms of his existence seemed horrifying all the same.
Yves returned Rowan’s kiss, nuzzling into the side of his head as if he really was a cat.
Rowan was unfortunately sitting with his blind side to Yves, and could not adequately see him.
He shifted on Yves’s lap but Yves held him fast. All the same, he could feel a shift in the air, hear the deepening of Yves’s voice that heralded the demon becoming more present at the forefront of his consciousness.
Ever since learning Yves’s true nature on their wedding night, Rowan had watched him closely.
The two souls within him, the human and the unfathomable demon, were woven together so tightly that it was hard to separate one from the other.
But sometimes one took the lead. The man, who loved Rowan and wanted to do right by his crew.
And the demon, whose only humanity lay in loving Rowan in its own cruel and possessive way.
They were one, but there were many parts of this whole.
The murderous creature who hadn’t recognized Rowan on the Valliant’s deck and almost killed him?
That was the demon, always lurking just beneath the surface.
The one who always kissed Rowan so tenderly after wrecking him? That was Yves.
“Believe it or not, this is the first time I—the demon,” Yves corrected himself, “has possessed a mortal body. I…” He grit his teeth, clearly struggling with the nomenclature now that the demon was making its presence more known.
Usually it came to the forefront when there was no time for talk.
“It was not expecting our consciousnesses to meld so thoroughly. Perhaps we will be immortal forever. Perhaps one day my final death will come and it will perish alongside me, or return to its own form. We do not know what will happen. Just as the demon’s presence has enhanced this mortal form, my fragile mortality has dampened some of its more godly abilities. ”
Rowan had the sudden urge to remove his eyepatch, to see both sides of the man he loved.
He shifted in Yves’s lap again to face him more fully and removed the little piece of leather that blocked Yves’s demonic form from his view.
Yves did not stop him, even as his eyes took on the black depths of the sea, and the shadowy blue tentacles unfurled against the back of the armchair.
Rowan ran his fingers through Yves’s luxurious black hair as one of the smaller tentacles revealed itself to be already coiling up his leg from ankle to thigh.
Rowan huffed. The tentacles sometimes groped him when they were in their imperceptible form, and Rowan had given Yves a stern talking-to about it several times.
Yet this felt more like the demon side clinging on to him for comfort, so he didn’t complain as the tentacle snaked further between his legs. Another had decided to invade his boot.
“You better not go dying again then,” Rowan murmured, curling into Yves’s embrace so their lips nearly touched. “Either of you.”
His thumb traced over Yves’s sculpted cheekbone.
Yves’s breath caught. His arms flexed around Rowan’s waist, and the tentacle wound tighter.
But he waited for Rowan’s lips to capture his.
It was just the lightest brush at first, deepening as Rowan’s tongue slipped past his lips.
A breathy moan escaped Yves’s throat, and a bead of moisture slid against Rowan’s thumb where it rested against Yves’s cheek.
He pulled back, astonished to see that Yves was crying.
“I-I’m afraid to die. I don’t want to leave you alone,” Yves blurted, clutching Rowan close as if he would disappear at any moment.
Rowan sucked in a startled breath, and Yves blinked at him with wide eyes, as if he’d just heard something utterly ridiculous escape his mouth without his permission.
As if neither soul that resided within him had quite expected the other to feel—let alone say—such a thing.
Which side had it come from? The man, who’d been drowned, hanged, shot, burned, and all manner of things, and was probably still so like that scared teenager who’d made a deal with a demon? Or the demon itself, who’d never expected to experience death at all?
Rowan cupped Yves’s beloved face between his hands, wiping the errant tears away with his thumbs.
“Many people fear death,” Rowan murmured.
“You are not alone in that.” It was unnerving, these flashes of vulnerability, of raw humanity, that sometimes gripped Yves.
He always appeared in control, poised and perfect.
Yet with Rowan he did not have to pretend.
Rowan knew all sides of him. The ugly and the beautiful.
To see those fathomless black eyes brimming with tears pulled at Rowan’s heartstrings in a painful way.
As fast as the tears had begun, they dried up, blinked away as if they’d never been. Yves cleared his throat, watching Rowan from under his thick black lashes, still subtly beaded with tears.
“I don’t know what came over me.” Yves’s voice came out low and rough.
As disquieting as it had been, Rowan found himself instantly missing Yves’s openness.
“Don’t apologize.” He smoothed Yves’s hair back from his forehead reassuringly.
“I’m sorry for revealing our relationship too. I should have controlled myself despite the circumstances.”
Oh, right. That was how this conversation had started in the first place. Rowan had been angry with him. But he couldn’t hold onto that anger. Not after Yves’s confession.
“I’ve put you in danger,” Yves said.
That had been Rowan’s worry as well, but now the cat was out of the bag, and it could not be put back in.
“We’ll just have to deal with it.”
“I’ll gladly kill them all, if you wish it. Dead men tell no—”
Rowan pressed a hand to Yves’s mouth, silencing him. “We said they’d live if they joined up. I’ll not go back on my word so carelessly.”
Yves huffed in annoyance, but nodded, and Rowan released him.
“Your life is worth more than all of them,” Yves said, his dark eyes trained on Rowan’s face.
Rowan tried to force his worries down, away from Yves’s perceptive gaze.
It was no use torturing himself over it when nothing would change.
He’d do his best to convince Yves to be more careful, but there would be no answers to his questions about the bounds of Yves’s immortality.
The only creature who could possibly answer was already in Yves’s head, and it was just as out of its depth as they were.
Rowan ducked his head against Yves’s shoulder. His lips brushed Yves’s exposed throat.
“Never mind that now. You won’t have to kill anyone for me. I can do my own dirty work.”
“I know you can.” His deep demon voice vibrated through Rowan’s body, deliciously suffocating. Rowan traced Yves’s pulse with his tongue.
“What was that you said earlier about being wet and primed for you?”
Yves’s body went still beneath him.
“Are you in the mood, darling? After all that talk of death?”
Rowan ran his hand up Yves’s chest, savoring the hard planes beneath the soft, expensive fabric.
He wanted to tear it away and get at the porcelain skin beneath.
He could no longer stand to think of Yves’s many deaths or his own fragile mortality.
He wanted only to wrap himself up in Yves and forget everything else.
He wanted to feel how alive his many-times-dead lover was.
Yves caressed Rowan’s thigh with one elegant hand, long fingers tripping over the coils of tentacle.
“Did all that talk of my death turn you on?” Yves asked again.
Rowan sat up a little straighter, his lips finding Yves’s sharp jaw.
“It just reminded me how alive you are. And that I should take advantage of all this beautiful blood pumping through your veins while I have the chance.” He wiggled, grinding his ass down on Yves’s lap.
Yves’s cock hardened at the pressure, and the silver plug, still buried deep inside Rowan, shifted. He let out a small, breathy moan.