Chapter Thirty-Four

 

 

 

Halloran sucked in a breath, as though Asher biting his neck was worth acknowledging. “What was that for?”

“Checking to see if you’re still alive.”

The grip in Asher’s hair tightened in retribution, his scalp prickling with the sting.

“I’m a vampire, bloodbag. Already died once.”

“Not for good, though. Not yet. Keep taking treats from strangers and who knows? Maybe that’ll change.”

The gibe was only half-meant. The hours had crept sluggishly along since Uncle Howard’s visit, with no other guests. The gas lamp’s hazy gleam had begun to wane. Outside, the moon would be bright in the sky by now. Sargasso would have shut its doors and windows for the night.

What were the survivors from Redemption waiting for?

“You humans,” Halloran rumbled, sliding his arm higher up Asher’s chest. “You always think in black and white.”

Between cold stone and a cold body at his back, Asher couldn’t quite suppress a shiver. He’d draped himself over Halloran in a moment of reckless indifference, expecting to be shoved off. Once again, Halloran had bucked his expectations. The proprietary clutch of his fingers in Asher’s hair even gentled now and again, as though he enjoyed petting him.

Asher squirmed. He hated it. He really did.

He hadn’t tried to break free for about an hour, but it had nothing to do with relishing Halloran’s touch.

“Spare me. Y’all ain’t that different.”

“We see the long game.”

“Is that why you’re down here with me?” Asher scoffed. “’Cause you were thinkin’ ahead? Come on.” Owning to a crime Halloran hadn’t committed was poor decision-making. There were no two ways about that.

“Why do you reckon I did it?” Halloran wondered aloud, his breath warm on Asher’s ear.

“Ain’t it obvious? You couldn’t stand a puny little human getting the credit.” Ambrose was the big bug in town. The boot that crushed him could belong only to a man out of legend, whose myth spanned half the country. Asher turned his head against Halloran’s shoulder. “What else could it be?”

Halloran’s gaze dipped to his mouth. “Not a goddamn clue.”

He bridged the gap between them before Asher could clarify which of them he meant. His kiss was soft, gentle.

Asher twisted in his arms and deepened it. Halloran could keep soft and gentle for his next piece of property. Asher straddled his legs and kissed him in earnest, raking teeth along his bottom lip as they parted for breath. “Is this clue enough?”

Despite the beard, Halloran’s jawline was smooth beneath his fingertips. He enjoyed the ticklish caress of bristly red hairs as he cupped his cheeks. Rising on his knees altered the angle of the kiss. Halloran had to cant his head back to keep their lips locked but his hands were busy elsewhere.

A stuttered gasp spilled from Asher’s throat. “Fuck, your fingers are cold…” And spreading shivers down his spine as Halloran pushed up his shirt and waistcoat, drawing Asher close.

“You can warm ’em up.”

“I-I can?”

“Mm-hmm.” Halloran’s idea of tormenting him seemed to have veered dangerously into the Machiavellian. Rather than do away with his shirt, Halloran merely shoved it out of the way. He traced Asher’s rib cage with absentminded kisses, avoiding the metal inserts, zeroing in on the fluttering muscles beneath goose-prickled skin.

“We’re in a church,” Asher bit out and rocked his hips, seeking friction.

Quick to notice, Halloran dropped a hand between them and squeezed him through his pants.

The pleasure was muted, not nearly enough to put Asher over the edge, but he moved into it all the same. He’d never been good at denying himself. “Isn’t this—ah—isn’t it sacrilege?”

“We’re in a crypt,” Halloran pointed out, having changed his tune.

“So?”

“Under the ground’s where the other guy lives. And he doesn’t mind.”

In different circumstances, Asher would’ve liked to ask if Halloran was often in congress with the Devil. They seemed to have a lot in common. But Halloran had just wrestled open his fly and, in the ensuing fog of lust, Asher wouldn’t have cared if he was rutting against Ambrose’s first born son. His hunger surged with a viciousness that nearly floored him.

They could be dead in a matter of hours, if Halloran’s prediction came true. Asher wouldn’t put it past Malachi to execute him if he lasted as far as the trial. This was all they had. A crypt, a fast-dying light. The smell of death and decay all around them.

Halloran yanked his pants to mid-thigh and spilled Asher to his back on the rough stone. “Tell me to stop.”

“Like you’d care,” Asher lobbed back, spreading his legs. He ought to have been embarrassed by how quickly he’d firmed with arousal. Even being spilled on the cold floor wasn’t enough to curb the flare of desire in his belly.

“Tell me.” Mirth had fled Halloran’s voice. He almost seemed angry, his jaw flexing as he prowled toward Asher like some fearsome jungle animal. He forced Asher’s shaking knees to stillness as he straddled him, curling one hand around his cock. “I won’t ask you again.”

Propped on his elbows, Asher thrust his chin out, defiant. He was prepared for the brutal shove that sent him flat to his back on the floor, though Halloran somehow snuck a fist in his hair and stopped him smacking his skull against the stone. He was less on his guard as far as the jealous tug at his erection. His hands came up of their own accord—not to arrest Halloran’s movements but to grab his shoulders. To anchor him when he might have come undone with that first rough stroke.

Halloran’s expression darkened. It was a beautiful thing to behold. Asher didn’t bother trying to suppress a shiver at the sight. Fear would always thrum within him when it came to vampires, Halloran included. But fear wasn’t revulsion and it wasn’t the ever-present desire to run that had been his closest companion for most of his life.

He submitted to Halloran’s kiss, his touch, gasping with no care of who might be listening when Halloran stroked him faster. He’d been here before—at Halloran’s mercy, under his control—but he’d never relished the bizarre thrill of it more. Perhaps his body knew it was the last time.

Halloran broke off the kiss and looked down. “Did I say you could touch me?”

Asher faltered in opening his belt. “No.” But he slid the buckle open all the same and unbuttoned Halloran’s trousers with shakings hands. “Could always hold me down…”

“Careful with that tongue.”

“Think it’s gonna get me in trouble someday?”

Halloran’s first attempt at a reply seemed to snag in his throat. Asher smirked, pleased with himself, and gave Halloran’s length another slow, long pull. His body remembered how it felt inside him, stretching him to the point of pain. It remembered the hollow feeling, after, that drove him halfway mad.

“You could,” Asher started.

Halloran sat up, his center of gravity shifting entirely onto Asher’s thighs. “Give me your hands.” The order was a kindness, unwarranted, and when Asher failed to answer it swiftly enough, Halloran seized his wrists and placed them on his knees. “Move them and I’ll stop.”

A chuckle tore free of Asher’s throat. “You’ve changed your tune…”

The jape fell on deaf ears and, after a moment, Asher didn’t feel like laughing much, either. Faster than the human eye could follow, Halloran slid his pants down and off, and settled astride him again. His cock bobbed between them, fully erect and flushed with blood. Asher wanted to put his mouth around it. He wanted to bring his hands to that long shaft and draw out Halloran’s pleasure.

He wanted to do as he was told even more, the desire to obey as alien as the sensation of Halloran grasping his length in his damp, callused hand and holding him steady when he sank down.

Asher’s groan echoed against the bare crypt walls. It would have embarrassed him if he could think past the urge to thrust up.

Tight, silky heat drowned out all other sensation. Squeezing his eyes shut, Asher arched his back and tried to keep still when every cell in his body demanded friction. Halloran took care of that, at first, stroking the last couple of inches of Asher’s cock as he squirmed, and breathed, and tried to take him all the way down.

“Does it hurt? You can—oh, fuck.”

You can stop, Asher meant, but the lie wouldn’t make its way out of his mouth. He was so desperate for more, for satisfaction that he whined when Halloran rose up on his knees and took him all the way down in a single stroke.

Asher dug his fingers into Halloran’s thighs and tried not to sob for the intensity of the pleasure roiling inside him. As if that weren’t bad enough, Halloran began to move. Short, gauging strokes, at first, then deeper, longer ones.

“Don’t,” Asher choked out, teetering on the brink of release. “God, don’t…”

“Look at me.” Halloran’s voice was a growl that demanded submission.

Asher didn’t think to refuse. The frustration humming beneath his skin melted in a heartbeat. Halloran was watching him so intently that he all but forgot to breathe.

“You’re mine,” said Halloran and slid his palm up his own cock, matching the stroke to the rise and fall of his body over Asher’s. “You’ll always be mine,” he growled on the downstroke. “Say it.”

All those nights at Willowbranch, Asher had rebelled against the notion. He’d fought Halloran at every turn. He’d bled for his defiance. He had spent days locked in a room, fettered to a bed. And somehow, he’d managed to keep from giving in until now.

Halloran sped his strokes. “Do as you’re told, Asher. Say it.”

Breaths knifing in and out of his chest, Asher sank teeth into his lower lip in an effort to hold back the words.

“Say it,” became a plea on Halloran’s lips as he faltered, strength deserting him, his body curving like a crescent over Asher’s.

He was close. Asher felt it in the harshness of his strokes, his all-too-human gasps. He’d been told to keep his hands to himself or Halloran would stop, but some rules were meant to be broken. Asher wrapped his fist around Halloran’s cock and the other around his shoulders, and pulled him down. There was just enough of a shift to grant Asher a little room for movement. He planted his feet against the hard, cold stone and rocked up.

Surprise flashed onto Halloran’s features, before a low, wrecked groan fled his throat. He grimaced as if in pain and, moments later, spent all over Asher’s hand and belly, shaking through the aftershocks.

Asher wasn’t far behind. He muffled a moan into the curve of Halloran’s neck, tasting the salt-alkaline flavor of his skin.

“If…if I’m yours,” he wheezed, “then what’re you, huh?”

Halloran grunted, for once too wrung out to speak.

“What are you?” Asher asked again, a possessive edge underpinning those three words.

He didn’t have a vampire’s sharp teeth and he couldn’t pierce Halloran’s flesh without a lot more strength than he possessed. But he wanted his mark on Halloran, if only for an instant. He wanted to feel him start at the sensation, as Asher did every time, before he surrendered to it.

This time when he bit down, it wasn’t for the sake of idle play.

If I’m yours, then you’re mine.

Neither of them had picked the other. Halloran’s spur of the moment call to take him on had been a show of defiance rather than an endorsement of Asher’s charms. But they were here, now, the two of them alone in the basement of a church, at the heart of town that didn’t cede many second chances.

Mercy didn’t grow in this valley. Neither did hope.

“I can hear your brain churning,” Halloran drawled, sitting up fractionally.

Asher hissed as his spent cock jerked in the tight clench of Halloran’s muscles. “Is that all you hear?”

Halloran’s gaze went a little foggy. “Spurs, pacing…” The crinkling at the corners of his eyes deepened. “Someone’s dug out a harmonica.”

As reassurance went, it would have to do.

Asher stretched out a hand for the gas lamp. It took a few attempts but eventually he managed to give the dial a twist. Stars shattered into a million fragments across his vision, one more colorful than the next.

Darkness pressed in, concealing them from the world and each other.

The first shouts echoed above their heads just as they finished putting their clothes to rights.