5. Aven #2
That's enough for him to kiss me again, slower this time, as if the choice matters more than the need.
We make it to the bedroom badly, in uneven steps and interrupted kisses, my hands catching on the doorframe, his shoulder hitting the wall hard enough to make him hiss.
I almost laugh, but it turns into a breathless sound when he sits on the edge of the bed and draws me between his knees instead of throwing me down like the monster in every sermon would have.
My room's too small for him. The bed's unmade, the nightstand crowded with books, a dead phone charger, a glass of water gone warm, and the locked drawer I refuse to look at. Cain does look at it. Then he looks back at me.
"Do you have what we need?" he asks.
The question's so practical that my face burns. It also grounds me more than any prayer ever has. No ancient vial. No convenient magic. No theatrical inevitability. Just my stupid bedroom, my shaking hands, and the fact that if I say yes, I have to open the drawer beside the cross.
"In the nightstand," I say.
His gaze doesn't leave mine. "Can you get it?"
I want to make a joke. I want to say something awful and clever and sharp enough to cut the heat out of the room.
Instead, I turn, crouch beside the nightstand, and unlock the drawer.
The silver cross lies wrapped in cloth at the back, exactly where I left it.
Beside it, half-hidden under a receipt and an old bottle of aspirin, is the small bottle of lube I haven't touched in months.
I take the lube and shut the drawer before the cross can become a witness.
Cain sees all of it. He says nothing.
That silence might be the kindest thing he's done all night.
I set the bottle on the mattress, and he catches my wrist before I can pull away, his grip loose enough to break. "Last chance to make me leave."
The dead are gone. The room's quiet. My body's shaking. I'm terrified, and I'm so relieved I could sob from it. I climb onto the bed and kiss him because I can't survive one more second of being asked to be sensible.
Cain's hand slides to the back of my neck, and the silence closes over us as he follows me down onto the mattress.
"I need it," I whisper. It's the most honest thing I've said in years. I'm tired of being a vessel for everyone else's unfinished business. I'm tired of the noise. "Please."
He doesn't move right away. His eyes search mine like he's looking for the exit I haven't taken yet. For a second I think he's going to step back, tell me this is a bad idea, that I'm too fucked up and too drunk on the sudden quiet to know what I'm asking. Good. He should.
Instead his hand stays on my jaw, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth, and the silence deepens again—warm, heavy, the kind of quiet that makes my bones feel too light.
"This is dangerous," he says, voice low. Not a threat. Just fact. "You're shaking."
"Because they're gone," I say. It comes out raw. "Because I can't hear them and I don't know how to stand in my own head without them screaming. So if you're going to do this, do it. Before I remember how to be scared of you."
He exhales, something that might be a laugh if either of us were capable of finding this funny.
"I'm already terrified of what wanting this makes me.
" Then he kisses me, his lips traveling down my neck.
"Tell me to stop," he murmurs against my collarbone.
His lips are cool but the words burn. "Right now.
I'll go. You don't owe me anything for the quiet. "
I reach up, frame his face with both hands. My thumbs drag over his cheekbones. He looks at me like I'm something that could still break him, not the other way around.
"Don't you dare stop," I say. My voice cracks on the last word. "Please."
He starts with my clothes like he's unwrapping something he's not sure he's allowed to keep.
My shirt catches on my elbow. He frees it, then pauses, eyes tracing the line of my ribs like he's counting every place I've let myself get too thin.
I tense. The old seminary static tries to flicker at the edges of the silence—Ezra's voice, my mother's absence, every prayer I ever choked on.
Cain feels it. He stops. Leans down and kisses the center of my chest, right over my hammering heart, slow and deliberate until the static backs off again.
When he finally gets my jeans and boxers off, the air in the room feels too cold and too hot at the same time.
He strips out of his own clothes with that same fluid care, and I see the full extent of the wound at his side—angry and half-healed, the kind of thing that should've kept him in bed somewhere safe instead of here, with me.
He catches me looking and goes still again.
"I can still leave," he says.
"Shut up and touch me before I start praying," I answer, and pull him down.
His mouth moves over me like he's learning the shape of a sin he's willing to commit.
Jaw. Throat. The hollow under my collarbone.
Lower. When his hand finally wraps around my cock I make a sound that'd get me excommunicated twice.
He strokes me slow, thumb dragging over the head, eyes never leaving my face.
Every time I start to spiral—every time the shame tries to crawl back in—he slows down, waits, kisses the inside of my thigh until I'm the one reaching for him again.
He reaches for the bottle I left on the mattress, slicking his fingers with the same careful focus he’s given everything else tonight.
The first press inside me burns in the best way.
Two fingers, careful, working me open while his other hand stays heavy on my hip like an anchor.
I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper.
He adds a third and I arch, a broken noise tearing out of me.
"Still here?" he asks, voice tight.
"Unfortunately," I gasp. "Keep going."
When he finally pushes into me it's slow enough that I feel every inch.
The stretch makes my vision white out at the edges.
He pauses when I tense, forehead pressed to mine, breathing like he's the one being undone.
I nod. He moves again. Inch by inch until he's buried deep and the silence goes so complete I can hear the wet slide of him, the creak of the cheap bed frame, the distant wail of a siren somewhere in the city that suddenly feels like it belongs to another lifetime.
He fucks me like he's afraid of breaking the quiet and like he can't help chasing it anyway.
Slow, deep thrusts that drag against every nerve.
I meet him, desperate, angry at how good it feels, at how the blood-magic pulse under his skin keeps yanking me back into my body every time the old ghosts try to whisper at the edges.
My legs lock around his waist. My hands dig into his shoulders.
The headboard thuds a steady rhythm against the wall and I don't care who hears.
When I come it's with a sob I can't swallow.
The pleasure rips through me so hard the silence flares bright and total for one blinding second—relief so sharp it feels like grief.
I shake under him, come streaking between us, and for one stupid, dangerous heartbeat I think maybe this is what it feels like when the noise finally stops for good.
It won't. I know it won't. But right now it's quiet and Cain's inside me and the dead are somewhere else.
He follows seconds later, a low guttural sound against my throat as he pushes deep one last time and stays there.
His weight settles over me, heavy and real and exactly what I need to keep from floating away.
One of his hands strokes my hair back from my damp forehead.
I'm still shaking. Still crying, though I don't know if it's from the orgasm or the knowledge that the voices'll come screaming back the second he leaves.
He doesn't pull out right away. Just stays inside me, breathing against my neck like he's memorizing the sound of a heart that isn't his.
Eventually he shifts just enough to look at me. His thumb catches a stray tear on my cheek.
"Aven," he whispers.
"Don't," I whisper. My voice is raw enough to hurt. "Don't say anything. Just stay."
He nods and pulls me into his arms. I let him because the ghosts are gone and my body's empty in a way that feels almost clean. My head rests against his chest. His heart's slow beneath my ear, not human, not right, but steady enough to follow down into sleep.
For the first time in my life, I fall asleep without a single ghost watching over me.
I wake to sirens somewhere in the distance and the cold, flat reality of morning light. The room's pale and grey, the shadows of the night retreated into corners that look ordinary now. For a few seconds, I'm still in the bubble, warm and silent, anchored by the heavy arm draped across my waist.