34. Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Four
“We have to go.”
“Wait.” I took the flashlight from his hand and shone it over the body.
“Austin, we have to go now.” He tugged on the sleeve of my jacket, but I refused to budge.
“The message,” I said, holding up a hand to tell him to wait as I searched. The small piece of parchment was tucked into the band of Wesley’s belt, the words slightly smudged. I crouched down to read it without touching it.
Be Broken
I read it aloud and Rook shook his head. “Take a picture and let’s get the fuck out of here. If someone from the Council catches you here with the body, it looks really fucking bad.”
I beamed the flashlight on it to produce enough light for a clear photo and handed it back to Rook.
“Wait,” he said, lifting the light toward the passenger window. “Shit.”
A second message was scrawled across the window in messy, dripping spray paint, stark white against the window’s tint.
A message just for me.
Get ready. It’s almost your turn.
“Get in the car,” Rook demanded. He climbed in the passenger seat and rolled down the window despite the chill, so that the message wouldn’t be visible to anyone as we drove past.
The drive was silent. Rook looked out the open window as the cool air ruffled his hair, lost in some thought of his own, while I stewed over clues that still didn’t fit together.
The moment the penthouse door closed behind us, he slammed me against the wall, his hands pressing against the painted stretch on either side of my head and his lips searing into mine like he was trying to brand me.
“Maybe you should leave town,” he said when he finally took a breath, the words a little airy as the oxygen filled his lungs.
“Why?” My eyes flitted between his, searching for the emotion behind the words. His face was drawn, almost furious in the weak light, but those eyes were wide and panicked.
“Because someone wants to kill you.”
A small laugh eased past my lips. “Everyone wants to kill me.”
Rook planted his hands on my shoulders and I don’t think he realized how he pushed me into the wall until they ached. “Yes, and this bastard is crazy enough to do it. He’s killing Council members—important people. He doesn’t have the same wariness as everyone else.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“You’re full of shit, and you can’t control everything.
You can’t control someone who isn’t afraid of you!
” He finally released me, spinning to pace the living room.
“Austin, I want you to leave. Tonight before this gets worse. He knows where you live. He’s got one more person to off and then you’re an easy target.
He already has everything he needs to know about you. ”
I straightened my jacket where he’d rumpled it and frowned. “He’s left silly notes and graffiti. Why are you so upset about this?”
He stopped, gripped the back of the couch, and when I turned on the light, his face was flushed. “Because I care about you, and I don’t want you to die! You can’t—you can’t go anywhere. I don’t want to have nothing to care about.”
I stalked across the distance between us, and his eyes went wider as I gently lifted one of the tightly locked fists that was trying to strangle my cushions and raised his hand to my mouth, kissing his palm and fingertips.
“I’m not going anywhere.” His tension eased a fraction under my lips.
I kissed his wrist, his forearm. He yanked his hand away and glared at me.
I had never seen him so terrified, so enraged at the thought of losing me.
“I promise, I am not going anywhere. If you’re worried about it, help me find out how to stop him, but I’ve got a primordial death creature to kill and a man I don’t want to abandon, so I’m staying right here. ”
I realized then that I wouldn’t leave him; I didn't want to. Maybe I couldn’t have escaped the pull of us if I’d tried.
Rook had worked his way under my skin so thoroughly I couldn’t separate myself from him even under threat of death, and now all I wanted was for him to stop looking at me like I was a ticking bomb.
“Rook, I can’t die, and whoever this cowardly little fucker who keeps leaving morbid doodles is, there is no way he will kill me nine more times. I will end him, and this won’t be an issue anymore. You are worrying for nothing.”
“It’s Emmett,” he said, his voice quieting with surrender.
I unlatched his other arm from the couch and hooked it around my waist. When my lips found his neck, he tilted his head to one side. Yes, perhaps it was Emmett, but something didn’t sit right with the assumption. I agreed with him anyway, just to soothe fear’s grip on him.
“He came to see me at Avalon.” I scraped my teeth lightly over his throat. “He’s not a threat to me.”
“Except for the part where he threatened you,” he argued, still trying to sound angry under my touch, and failing miserably. Each word lost a little fury until the last one tapered off into a soft moan.
“He threatened my business.” I slid a hand between his hips and cupped his cock, rubbing it in the palm of my hand.
“If you hadn’t noticed, my business is already fucked, at least until I fix the mess from the fire.
There’s nothing he can do to me—can’t fuck with me, can’t kill me. You’re worrying about nothing.”
He forgot how to speak as I pressed harder against the length of him.
“Let me distract you,” I murmured. I fumbled once as I unbuttoned his jeans and my fingertips danced beneath the stretch of fabric that kept me from touching him skin-to-skin.
His cock was fully hardened and leaking at the tip, aching for release.
I swiped my thumb over the drop of precum glistening there, smearing it across the head of his cock, then meeting his eyes as I licked some of it from my skin.
He closed his eyes as he sucked in a shuddering breath.
“How would you like to be inside me tonight?”
He shrugged off his leather coat and gripped me by both hips.
He forced his tongue into my mouth, licking against mine in hungry, consuming strokes, like he was trying to eat the very breath from my lungs.
Then, in one loud rip that echoed in the dark, he tore my shirt in half and choked me with his tongue when the words rose to bitch about it.
“Say one word about the shirt, and I’ll gag you with what’s left of it,” he breathed against mouth.
Undressed was an unfit word for the way he tore my clothes from my body, as if they had personally offended him and he had declared war on their existence.
He removed his slower, watching heat ignite my eyes.
His cock bobbed between us, swollen and thick-veined, but when I reached for it, he stopped my hand with his.
“I want to taste you first,” he rasped, dropping to his knees.
He cupped my balls and squeezed, just to the edge of the line of pain, then opened his mouth and took me deep inside it.
Everything with him was eager, needy, hungry.
There was never build up or savoring each moment.
He sucked my cock like it might vanish if it wasn’t jammed down his throat.
I wanted it deeper, wanted him to feel in his fucking bones that I wouldn’t disappear.
“Tap my leg if this is too much,” I said, threading my fingers through the silky strands of his hair, then tightening them until he made a broken sound around my cock.
I slammed into his throat and he choked, the last air in his lungs puffing out around me.
He gasped as I withdrew and drove into him again, then took up a bruising pace, the head of my cock assaulting everything soft inside him.
Quick, stuttering gasps came out of him at my pace, air fighting its way in around my shaft.
“I will not go anywhere,” I growled over the sound and the wet smack of my cock hitting the back of his throat over and over again. “You will not lose me.” My laugh bordered on cruel. “You couldn’t escape me if you wanted to.”
I shoved myself all the way down his throat until his chin jabbed into my balls and his breath stopped entirely. I held there, watching something in his blue eyes fracture and yield.
“Make my cock more precious than your breath, Carter. You’re mine.
” A noise escaped him, so soft it was only the suggestion of a sound, and a single tear leaked down his cheek.
The sight of him undone in front of me made a tightness grasp my balls.
They ached as I resumed thrusting, so fast, so hard he couldn’t close his lips around me, and my cock scraped lightly against his teeth.
I spilled down his throat and my orgasm left my body like a tide that washed away all the uncertainty resting heavily on my shoulders.
I withdrew and Rook’s chest heaved as he found his breath again, but not quite the right tempo to keep it steady. He wiped away the saliva from his chin with the back of his hand and swiped at a few other stray tears that had spilled down his face.
“Tell me you understand,” I said, but all the power had drained from my voice. Didn’t he know that it was all his, anyway? That I was nothing if he didn’t love me back?
He rose to his knees shakily and nodded. His voice was hoarse when he said, “I understand.”
“I love you,” I told him.
He kissed me, still breathless and shaking, and kneaded my arse with his hands.
The muscles there relaxed under the massage, and arousal tingled through the nerve endings around my arsehole.
He scooped his arms around my backside and lifted me off the floor until my legs hooked over his elbows and our cocks pressed against each other’s stomachs in the shallow distance between us.
“Use that handy spell of yours,” he said, one hand dancing lower to circle the tight ring of muscles.
I shifted my hips so I could reach between us and braced myself for him to drop me, but neither my weight nor the difference in our heights tested his strength.
I touched my first two fingers to my arse and lube, slick and cool, spread over them.
I skimmed them over my arsehole, dipping them slightly to spread the lube into my channel.
Rook pulled my hand away and placed it on his shoulders as he took all of my weight on one arm and used the other to touch me.
He circled a finger around the base of my cock, glided over my balls, and then pressed it slowly inside me.
I breathed deeply, relaxing into the small intrusion, and reveled in the feeling of him working it in and out of me.
A second joined it and I moaned at the stretch. He wiggled the digits slightly, together, stretching the firm muscles in every direction and making my cock stand a second time.
“Fuck,” I rumbled against his jaw. “I need you to fuck me.”
“You have to wait.” He did not sound the least bit apologetic as he squeezed a third finger in with the rest, and the stretch stole my breath.
He kissed my shoulders as he fucked me with his fingers, widening me so I could take him.
I bounced my hips against him, forcing those fingers deeper and moaning as I took the pleasure I wanted.
“Fuck it.” He took his hand away and lined his dick up with my entrance. Rook did not fuck like he did everything else—hurried. Inch by inch, he pressed himself inside me, my arse opening to engulf him, and sensations like glowing fireflies lighting up all over my body.
“I am yours,” Rook said as he seated himself fully.
“But you’re mine too. I will not leave you.
I will not share you. And you sure as hell will never get away from me.
If someone touches you, they die. If someone fucks with you, they die.
If someone looks at what’s mine, I will send you their fucking eyeballs in a jar.
I don’t need thirteen lives to keep you, but I will spill blood to make sure I do. You are mine.”
He thrust, lifting my weight and pulling me back down onto him in a steady, but brutal rhythm. “Tell…me…you understand,” he panted.
“I understand,” I gasped as my cock throbbed.
Every glide of his rigid length over my sensitive prostate made stars flash at the edges of my vision.
“Fuck, Carter, I’m going to come again. Faster.
” My blood rushed, and the world narrowed to the feel of him ramming inside me in bursts that made it hard to breathe. “Please.”
He plunged deeply and my cock spurted all over him, spattering my cum across his broad chest and tight nipples. He tensed, lungs locked and cheeks red, as he found his own release deep inside me. His forehead was sweaty against mine as his breath ghosted across my face.
“You can’t leave me, Austin,” he whispered.
“I won’t,” I promised.
He carried me to the bathroom and we showered, washing each other slowly, watching the sweat and cum and overwhelming need swirl down the drain at our feet.
When we lay together in the bed, he wrapped his body like a living shield around my back, and for a foolish moment, I believed he was enough to save me from what was to come.