Fánadh, Ngarradh
“Hey, I like your new digs.”
Kevin’s head jerked up. Was I asleep? Nah, couldn’t be. His computer screen hadn’t had time to gray out; page 43 of Janet Kilgarten’s perfect Memorandum in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment was still staring back at him from the computer screen. “Thanks. I’ll probably like them a lot better myself once the new carpet smell fades a little, but any office Art O’Halloran wasn’t murdered in is a step up in the world.”
Tiernan stepped out of the shadows in the corner, passing the closed door without a glance, to peer out the window as if to make sure he hadn’t been seen Fading into Kevin’s office. As if some window-washer might have been doing the ninth floor windows at 11:00 at night. “I still don’t know what possessed them to give you that office in the first place. Not that I believe in ghosts, but if they exist, that office has a big beefy stage Oirish one with a slit throat.”
Kevin shuddered. “Do you mind?”
“Sorry.” Tiernan eased a well-formed ass cheek onto the edge of Kevin’s desk, his jeans doing a fantastic job of advertising the outlines of every muscle.
“I doubt it,” Kevin muttered.
One blond eyebrow went straight up. “Testy.” Tiernan turned Kevin’s monitor, studied the document on display. “Since when does a partner write his own briefs?”
Kevin shoved the monitor back into place, a little harder than he needed to. “One of our new associates wrote this. I’m just checking it.”
“At 11:00 at night?”
Kevin wanted to growl. Or snap. Unfortunately, his innate sense of fairness wouldn’t let him do either. That didn’t necessarily mean he had to say anything, of course.
“You’ve been stewing ever since Rian called us into conclave.” Tiernan’s voice was surprisingly gentle, for him. “What’s going on?”
Kevin nearly replied I don’t stew, but realized just in time how juvenile that would sound. “I’m not happy with how that so-called planning session went.” There, that had the advantage of being true, as far as it went.
“Really?” Tiernan manifested a tiny knife from the living Stone of his left hand, and used it to clean the nails of his right. “I thought it went pretty well, myself.”
Kevin didn’t have to feign a snort. “Really? If I’d been in a room full of humans, I would have called it a meeting of a mutual admiration society. But Fae aren’t into that sort of thing.”
Tiernan grinned, his attention still on his nails. “True, we usually save our admiration for ourselves. Maybe a circle jerk?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
He’d spoken louder than he meant to, apparently; Tiernan looked up slowly, the knife absorbing back into his hand. “What’s wrong?”
Kevin took a deep breath; another, when the first one caught in his chest. “We’re going to be attacked, probably any day now, by an embodiment of evil that’s tried to kill everyone in the Demesne of Purgatory at least once, literally mind-fucked me, and is out to destroy the Realm, and our world along with it if it can figure out how. And all the Fae can manage to do is take turns bragging about how they’re going to humiliate and destroy it single-handed.” He couldn’t help a pointed glance at Tiernan’s crystal hand.
“Oh. I get it.” Tiernan did a quick Fade; when he reappeared, he was facing Kevin, his long legs dangling over the edge of the desk to either side of the leather captain’s chair. “Lanan, that’s as close to a strategy session as you’re ever going to see among Fae. There’s a reason we don’t have armies, or large-scale wars.”
“You don’t work and fight well with others.” Kevin could feel his face going red with embarrassment at his outburst. “I know.”
Tiernan’s Stone hand was warm against Kevin’s unshaven cheek. “What you heard the other night was a gaggle of rugged individualists who know their lives are going to depend on each other whether they like it or not, and who were letting one another know their respective strengths. What they can be counted on for, when fire comes to stand against dragon’s-breath.”
“I’m less than crazy about that particular Fae saying.” It was hard to stay pissed off, with his husband gently caressing him. Unfortunately, something else was eating away at him, something Tiernan’s uncharacteristically tender touches weren’t alleviating in the slightest.
Something he really, really didn’t want to talk about. Sooner or later, though, he knew he would.
Tiernan didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. “Even a dragon runs out of fire eventually. A Fire elemental doesn’t.”
“Great. We can beat a proverb.”
“Somebody has a thorn in his paw.” Normally, the sexiness quotient of Tiernan’s smirk would have completely cancelled out Kevin’s dark mood. “Don’t forget, we also managed to agree on what needs to be done. I’d call that an accomplishment.”
“Spare me. Conall figured all that out weeks ago.”
Long fingers gripped the back of Kevin’s neck, setting his heart racing despite everything. “Some fancy persuading was still required, if you’ll recall. Cuinn was so not on board with the idea of unmaking the Pattern, I thought we were going to have to call on Fiachra’s special persuasive talents.”
“Do you really think that would have worked? On a Loremaster?”
“That’s where those talents came from in the first place, so maybe.” Tiernan didn’t exactly shrug, but the lift of his eyebrows gave the same impression. “We did agree, though, in the end. Unmake the Pattern, so the ley energy and living magick exchange between this world and the Realm will stop fucking up both worlds. And end the reason the Pattern was called into being in the first place.”
“Kill the Marfach, you mean. Kill something that can’t die.”
“If you grind your teeth any harder, you’re going to get lockjaw.” Tiernan’s faceted eyes and crystal hand wouldn’t let Kevin go. “You weren’t this angry at the conclave. What’s going on?”
Kevin suspected he knew what a balloon with a slow leak felt like. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can persuade you that you don’t want to know?”
“None whatsoever.”
Kevin sighed deeply. Maybe getting it off his chest would help, at that. “Just before Maelduin came over from the Realm, I had a... I guess you’d call it a premonition. Deja vú. Something like that. So intense, I thought for a second I was losing my mind.”
One advantage to having a partner for whom channeling magick was as natural as breathing was that said partner didn’t necessarily think you were crazy when you sounded crazy even to yourself. Tiernan just nodded, the hint of a frown putting a line between his blond brows. “What did you see?”
“A sword. You.” The single word stuck in his throat to the point where it was barely recognizable. “But... it wasn’t so much what I saw, as what I felt.” Kevin shivered; his skin prickled, the short hairs rising on his forearms. “Evil. Pure lust for death. Like it felt when the Marfach was in me, except it was everywhere.”
Tiernan’s grip loosened on the back of his neck, became a caress. “Doesn’t take a premonition to know the Marfach’s coming after us, lanan.”
“It was more than that. The premonition, I mean. The evil went away. Everything went away. And I was... empty. Alone.” Kevin stared at Tiernan, but he didn’t see him. He didn’t see anything. “I was hollow. Silence, so deep, smothering, I couldn’t hear my own heartbeat, or even feel it—”
Tiernan slid off the desk to sit astride Kevin’s thighs; the desk chair creaked, but it had been selected because it could hold both of them if the need—or anything else—arose. Kevin leaned into his husband, as strong arms wrapped around him; he could feel the echoes of his shudders in Tiernan’s body.
“Gan cé g’vratheann m’croí,” Tiernan whispered into Kevin’s hair. “Not while my heart beats, lanan.”
Unable to speak, Kevin nodded, listening to the reassuring beat of that heart next to his ear.
“You should have said something sooner.” Tiernan held him tighter. “Or I should have asked. Fuck me, I could see something was wrong.”
Kevin shook his head—not much, he liked it right where he was. “I didn’t want to bother you with it. It’s ridiculous, a grown man crying over a daydream.”
“Crying?” Tiernan pulled back at this, just enough to gaze down at Kevin with narrowed eyes. “And you didn’t want to bother me?”
Oh, shit. “I... no, I...”
Tiernan’s eyes glittered, sharp and bright. “Have you forgotten how to trust me, m’lanan?” A finger traced along the line of Kevin’s shirt collar, stopped behind the half Windsor of his dark blue silk tie.
Kevin forgot how to breathe, and by the time he finally remembered, sweat was trickling down his temples. “No... but I have a feeling I’ll enjoy the next few minutes a lot more if I say ‘yes’.”
“Say whatever you like.” Tiernan tugged at the knot, gently and teasingly at first, then harder when it refused to yield. “I’ll do as I please, and as pleasures you.”
Kevin suspected the head of his cock was already peeking up above his belt before the tie was undone; Tiernan’s pulling his shirt out of his trousers confirmed his suspicions, and left him breathless again.
“Belt?” he croaked.
“Get it yourself. I’m busy.” Tiernan slid Kevin’s tie out from under his button-down collar, then undid the top button of the shirt.
“Asshole.” Kevin managed something like a little laugh as he fumbled with his belt buckle.
“You tempt me, but I have other plans at the moment.” Tiernan pulled on one end of the tie, then the other; the friction of the cool silk heated the skin on the back of Kevin’s neck. “No safe word this time—you’re just going to have to trust me.”
Kevin swallowed hard. Once, Tiernan had misjudged the timing of their breath play, and Kevin had actually blacked out. He hadn’t cared much for the experience, so the two of them had agreed on ‘spoon’ as a safe word. He’d had to use it a couple of times since then, on occasions when Tiernan was in just such a mood as he was right now. Chancy, unpredictable... Fae.
His husband’s instincts were dead on, though. Kevin needed this.
Kevin could hear and feel Tiernan slowly wrapping the tie around his hand, just behind his neck and off to his right, as his belt fell open, followed immediately by his trousers. His cock didn’t exactly spring free—it was already too large and heavy for springing—but it bobbed. A little.
Then it was trapped between bodies, as Tiernan leaned in and fit his body to Kevin’s. Kevin tried to work his hand in between them, but was brought up short by the low, sensual growl in his ear.
“No touching.” Teeth closed briefly around Kevin’s earlobe. “Your pleasure’s mine tonight, remember?”
“I don’t think that was ever expressly stated.” Lawyers could be brats, too.
Kevin thought he heard and felt a barely suppressed snicker. He might have been imagining it, though, because Tiernan’s kiss had nothing of laughter in it; it was hungry, focused, and possessive. Kevin sat back slowly, on a low, shuddering moan, and the incredible kiss followed him. Time didn’t exactly stop, but Kevin was definitely paying no attention to it. The kiss, his husband’s body against his, the scent of their combined arousal filling him, the sweet painful tension of his erection drove out everything else.
Then the makeshift noose tightened, too quickly for him to steal a breath. And Tiernan arched back just enough to let him wrap a hand around Kevin’s cock.
Oh, shit.
Darkness crept in, all around the edges of Kevin’s vision. That was all right, though. He could still see what he needed to see, and nothing could keep him from feeling what he needed to feel.
“You’re buttoned down tight, lanan.”
Kevin’s remaining breath left him in a rush. He would never forget those words, the words that had drawn him into the orbit of a Fae, his first night in Purgatory.
“And you’re with me because secretly you want someone...”
Damn.
“Someone like me...”
The darkness was almost total; the hand pumping Kevin’s huge cock, his elafantabod, reached for everything Kevin had left in him.
“...to unbutton you.”
Tiernan demanded everything. Kevin’s hips slammed up.
And with a guttural cry, he gave everything.
* * *
Tiernan gazed down at Kevin’s face, his spent half-smile, his closed eyes, the long lashes forming dark semi-circles over his unshaven cheeks.
His own face was expressionless. His husband shared a Fae soul, which made him just Fae enough to make a Foreseeing a real possibility.
Once, just once, it would be nice not to have bigger things to worry about.
* * *
Union Station, Washington, D.C.
One brief glimpse of a dank, moldy space, windows boarded over. A rusty barrel, charred wood visible through a hole in the side. The scurrying of rats, or tiny monsters falling from a great monster’s tail, seeking deeper darkness.
This, too, had once been home.
Now it was oblivion.