Soren #2
Aven makes a soft, surprised sound in the back of his throat.
He doesn't vanish from the kiss. He leans into it, hands coming up to grip my waist, fingers digging into my hips as if he needs to prove I'm solid.
The bond between us flares, not silent, not clean, not the dark velvet hush Cain gives him or the wall Ira builds around him.
This is warmer. Brighter. A match struck in a room full of old paper, dangerous exactly because it knows what it can burn.
“Soren,” he murmurs against my mouth, his breath hot and ragged. “We shouldn’t... not with them right there.”
I pull back just enough to see his face.
His pupils are blown wide, but there’s still that flicker of hesitation, the part of him that’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to decide he’s more useful than wanted.
My hands stay on his waist, thumbs stroking slow circles over the soft wool of the sweater.
“Tell me what you want,” I say. “Not what you think you’re supposed to tolerate. Not what keeps the room comfortable. You.”
Aven’s fingers tighten on my hips. He doesn’t look away. For a second, the only sound is the faint creak of the table behind him and the too-loud beat of both our hearts. Then he nods, small but certain, and tugs me closer by the front of my shirt.
“I want it,” he says, barely above a whisper. “I just… don’t know how to be loud without the dead hearing.”
“Then let them hear,” I say, and kiss him again, slower this time, but no less hungry.
I back him the last step until the edge of the mahogany table hits the backs of his thighs.
He goes willingly, hands sliding up under my shirt, palms hot against my skin.
The bond flares warm between us, not the clean silence Cain gives him, not the wall Ira builds, but something textured and alive.
It pushes at the jagged edges the ring left behind, smoothing them just enough that the residue stops scraping.
I get his jeans open with one hand, the other braced on the table beside his hip. He’s already hard, cock thick and flushed when I wrap my fingers around him. The first stroke pulls a broken sound out of him that he tries to swallow. I don’t let him.
“Look at me,” I say, stroking him slow and deliberate, thumb dragging over the head on every upstroke, spreading the slick there. “Breathe. Feel my hand. The dead can wait five fucking minutes. This is yours.”
Aven’s head falls back, throat working, but he keeps his eyes on mine like I asked.
His own hand fumbles at my zipper, gets my cock out, and the first clumsy pull of his fist around me makes my knees threaten to buckle.
We find a rhythm—messy, urgent, the wet sound of skin on skin filling the quiet library.
Every time he starts to drift, every time that old instinct to joke or vanish tries to surface, I tighten my grip just enough to bring him back.
“Stay with me,” I murmur against his jaw, biting the tendon there when he gasps. “Don’t disappear into your head. Feel this. The heat. The way your body answers. You’re not a vessel right now. You’re not a conduit. You’re just Aven, and I’ve got you.”
His free hand comes up to fist in my hair, pulling me down into another kiss that’s all teeth and breath.
The bond pulses hotter with every stroke, warmth flooding outward until the books on the nearest shelf go still and the air stops feeling like it’s full of knives.
Aven’s hips twitch into my fist, desperate, and I match his rhythm, jerking him faster now, twisting my wrist on the upstroke the way I’ve learned makes his thighs shake.
“That’s it,” I breathe, forehead pressed to his. “Let it happen. I’m right here. The noise doesn’t get this part.”
He comes with a choked, helpless sound that he doesn’t quite manage to bite back, body arching hard against mine.
I feel it through the bond and in my hand, the way he pulses, hot and wet over my fingers, the full-body shudder that rolls through him like he’s finally letting something go instead of holding it in.
The warmth in the bond crests with him, taking the worst edge off the residue the ring left behind until the library feels, briefly, less like a tomb.
I follow seconds later, my hips jerking into his fist, the release tearing through me. It leaves me shaking, my forehead still against his, draped over the library table. The air is thick with the smell of desire and lingering magic, the silence that follows so absolute it’s almost deafening.
Aven is the first to move, his eyes fluttering open, unfocused at first, then mortified as awareness returns to him in pieces. He looks at me. Looks at the table. Looks at the ring sitting several feet away, like the world's least helpful emotional support object before looking back at me.
"So," he says, voice rough enough to scrape. "Does this mean the lesson's over? Because I'm not sure I've got another archaeological discovery in me today."
I let out a breath that tries to be a laugh and almost manages it. My hands are still on his hips, and I have to make myself loosen my grip before I start pretending possession is the same thing as comfort. "The lesson's over."
"Good." He shifts, trying to pull the sweater down and regain some dignity, which is difficult while looking debauched on my grandmother's library table.
"Because the table has probably seen worse.
" His brows draw together almost immediately.
"Actually, has it? No. Don't answer that. I don't want to know why I asked."
I look thoughtful because I'm a terrible person and also because terror has to go somewhere. "I could check the archives. Vera kept very thorough records. Possibly diagrams."
Aven’s eyes go wide. “Please don’t. I don’t want to know. I really, aggressively don’t want to know. If there are diagrams, I’m moving out and becoming a lighthouse keeper. At least then the beacon thing comes with a salary.”
The laugh that leaves me is shaky, bright, and embarrassingly real.
It echoes through the stacks, brushing against the books until a few of them rustle in offense.
It's the first clean thing I've felt since Vera's ring hit my palm.
The weight of her secrets is still there.
The blade under the love is still sharp.
But Aven is in front of me, alive and flushed and wearing my sweater badly, and for one breath, the room belongs to us instead of her.
I feel the change in temperature before I see anything, a cold oily slide of energy that makes the hair on my arms lift.
Aven stiffens under my hands, his gaze snapping toward the shelves near the back wall.
His pupils shrink. The sarcasm vanishes from his face so fast it leaves him looking younger and much more frightened than he should ever have to look.
"Aven?" I ask, my voice lowering. "What is it?"
He doesn't answer right away. He stares at the narrow space between two bookcases, where the light doesn't quite reach.
I look too, but at first I see only dust and old leather.
My magic brushes the air and finds the usual library static, the old wards, the sour aftertaste of Vera's memory, nothing clean enough to grab.
"There was something there," Aven says too quickly. "Probably just another dead voyeur with boundary issues. Very on-brand for this house."
The joke lands wrong. Too fast. Too sharp. His eyes keep cutting back to the shelf where the shadow stood, and for half a second I see it too: not a body, not a face, only a dark thread dragging through the air before it snaps out of sight.
Aven pulls away from the table, his movements tight as he tugs the sweater back into place. He's shaking again, but this isn't the raw openness from before. This is the look of a man who knows he's being watched and can't prove it to anyone in time.
"It's gone," he says, but he doesn't sound relieved. He sounds like he's counting the seconds until it comes back. "Great. Fantastic. Love a haunting with performance anxiety."
Cain is suddenly closer, silent enough that I don't hear him cross the room. Ira has abandoned the warding plate entirely before looking at Aven, then at the shelves, then at me.
I pick up Vera's ring from the table. It's cold again, and for a heartbeat I hate it with enough purity to qualify as worship.
I slip it back into my pocket anyway, because apparently I collect cursed inheritances and emotionally devastating men now.
The weight of it has changed. It's not only grief.
It's proof that the dead can leave instructions behind and call it love.
Whatever's been whispering to Aven is getting closer.