“I don’t want to.”
Oliver flinched at the strange yet familiar sensation as he sat up. Over the years, his memory of that horrific moment had blurred to a haze of emotions and sensations that he could keep at bay as long as it didn’t hurt. He grounded himself by staring into Felipe’s features. His eyes flashed in the evening darkness, and all Oliver could think was how they were the same color as the ring he had given him and just as luminous. Like the tiny flowers preserved in that stone, Felipe had made it against the odds. He had hardened and darkened over the years, but that hadn’t diminished his light. If anything, it made him all the more precious. Pulling Felipe onto his lap, Oliver cupped his cheek and stroked the salt and pepper stubble on his jaw. His Felipe, his light and life.
“I love you more than you could know,” Oliver whispered.
The tether pulled taut between them as Felipe wrapped his arms around him and kissed him softly. Oliver’s eyes fluttered shut at the press of Felipe’s body against him. Oliver’s nerves were frayed and raw, the contact too much and all at once not enough. His partner’s body melted against him as Felipe took them in hand in slow, firm strokes. Oliver sucked in a tremulous breath, his lips pressed to Felipe’s neck. The tug and pull of skin on skin was sweetly torturous, but Oliver forced his hips still. He needed to last. As if sensing his weakness, Felipe stopped mid-stroke. A whimper broke from Oliver’s lips and a needy bead of moisture gathered on his cock.
“What do you want, Oliver?” Felipe asked, his voice a velvet rumble.
“To come. With you.”
A heady wave of arousal sluiced across the tether as Felipe circled his thumb over Oliver’s head with the lightest of strokes. “I can do that.”
Felipe slicked his moisture over both of them and scooted closer until their bodies were nearly flush. Oliver gripped Felipe’s hips with a hiss at the skim of his cock against his stomach. Wrapping a hand around both of them again, Felipe caught Oliver’s mouth in a kiss and thrust against him. Oliver tried not to move his hips, but the moment he shut his eyes, the rhythm pulled him along. Meeting Felipe stroke for stroke, Oliver couldn’t tell where his body ended and Felipe’s began. Pleasure roiled from both sides of the tether, crashing together and drowning out all else.
With every frantic thrust, the dilator knocked and shifted inside him. The discomfort remained, but it was overlaid with pleasure that sparked and built like steam. When Felipe’s hand slowed, Oliver took his place and redoubled his efforts. His core tensed in warning as Felipe braced himself against Oliver’s shoulders. He gritted his teeth and ground against him; a stream of encouragement littered with curses poured from his lips. His fingers dug into Oliver’s back in time with a wave of heat, and that was all it took to send him over the edge.
“Felipe, I—” was all he could get out before his body trembled and locked in climax. White hot pleasure burned through him, tearing a cry from his throat. Felipe’s legs tightened around him and his mouth opened in a silent moan a second before he came. Oliver stroked him harder as his head fell against his shoulder and his body twitched against him. The punch of ecstasy that rushed across the tether sucked the air from Oliver’s lungs and nearly knocked his heart out of rhythm, and for a long moment, they leaned bonelessly against each other until the final reverberations of their climax passed. Oliver’s hand was stiff and sticky, but he didn’t dare move and break the spell while Felipe’s head rested against his shoulder.
When the radiator hissed to life, Felipe peeled himself off Oliver’s sweat-slick skin and sat back on the bed. Grimacing,Felipe pulled the towel out from under them and mopped Oliver’s arms and chest and then his own. Oliver was dimly aware he would need to clean up before the sensation overwhelmed him, but right now, he could scarcely think, let alone care. A knowing smile spread across Felipe’s lips as he caught his dazed gaze and gave his shoulder a grounding squeeze.
“You okay, love?”
“I’ll be fine. I just need a minute.”
Leaning against Felipe’s shoulder, Oliver drew in slow breaths until his pulse slowed enough that he could think straight. He had expected to be upset or awkwardly uncomfortable after the fog cleared, but this time, it had been no different than any other time they were intimate. He knew his mind was fickle and he could do exactly the same thing next time and be riddled with anxiety. Still, he was grateful.
Threading his fingers through Felipe’s, Oliver brought his hand to his lips. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being patient and gentle with me. For… for making me feel safe enough to try.”
Felipe froze, and a maelstrom of conflicting emotions swept through the tether so fast Oliver couldn’t parse them. When he reached for his partner’s heart, Oliver found the tether had solidified into a knot of grey sinew that was at odds with Felipe’s smile as he stood and kissed Oliver’s forehead. He didn’t say a word as he padded out of the room to get a wet cloth, but Oliver could still feel the knot lodged in the tether like a barb.
Chapter Nine
Verba Volant Scripta Manent
Felipe tossed the notes from the police onto the desk with a huff. He had hoped to read them over dinner the night before, but DeSanto had taken his sweet time dropping them off. Felipe regretted telling him that he didn’t need them immediately; he had expected him to leisurely return to the society and drop them off, not send them down the tube rumpled at two in the morning after a night of carousing. Apparently, he had too high of hopes for an eighteen year old. If the interview notes had actually been useful, he might have been more annoyed, but as usual, the Metropolitan Police proved they were only good for protecting the sensibilities of robber barons. When Felipe checked the major newspapers that morning, he found they all reported that a vagrant had broken into the Livingston’s home and died of some unknown disease while the house slept. The reporting had gone one of two ways: demonizing the poor as a source of crime or raking the elite over the coals for not alleviating poverty and therefore crime. In both cases, there was no mention of magic.
Inspector Easton had been true to his word and forwarded them copies of everything. The problem was that the interview notes were repetitive and useless. After he and Oliver sorted them by name and position in the Livingston household, it was obvious where the police had cast their suspicions. Thenotes from the interviews with the Livingstons were more about their comfort and what the police were doing to deal with the situation than about the dead man in the library. Mrs. Livingston’s responses made it clear she cared more about potential scandal and the swarm of reporters than that a man had died in her house. If Mr. Livingston had been home, perhaps he would have been interviewed more thoroughly since the death happened in his library with a book he purchased, but the staff had taken the brunt of the police officers’ attention. As Felipe sifted through the papers, the same names popped up repeatedly, though the answers remained the same:
No, they had never seen the dead man before.
No, they hadn’t seen anyone loitering outside the house.
No, they hadn’t seen or heard anything strange that night.
Considering the dead man had more than likely entered the home as a lynx, none of that was surprising. The only variations in their stories were their movements before everyone went to bed and whether they knew anything about magic. Some of them obviously had no idea what the police were hinting at, but those who did were repeating second- or thirdhand knowledge. A friend of a friend’s brother has a weird way with horses, or Great Uncle George can throw a dart with his mind and cheats at roulette. Nothing that set off alarm bells for Felipe. Despite the large population of magical people in Manhattan and the areas surrounding it, most people who embraced their magic didn’t work as maids or valets for the non-magical if they could help it. There were plenty of jobs tied to the Paranormal Society or private businesses owned by other magical people where their talents could be put to good use for better pay or places where they could at least use their powers without having to hide them. None of their answers about magic were evasive, and there was no one there Felipe particularly wanted to speak to again without further evidence.
The police had also set their sights on Mr. Ramsey, which at least made sense given that he purchased the books and had access to the library. Inspector Easton had done that interview himself, and while it was thorough, there was really nothing that he and Oliver hadn’t already learned from their chat with Mr. Ramsey. Running a tired hand over his face, Felipe stared at the papers. He had hoped they might find something of use, but the Livingstons’ household felt like a dead end. More than likely, their dead man had entered the house in bobcat form without help and proceeded to sculk and hide until he found the perfect moment to grab the book, and the only reason the household was involved was because he chose to read the book before leaving. If they were going to figure this out, they would need to determine their dead man’s identity and work from there. Oliver’s second test had confirmed methyl violet was present in the man’s blood, so they would need to determine the provenance of the book too. Pulling out his notebook, Felipe jotted all of that down and circledgo to the bookstore Monday.They might be able to find both answers there.
He would have to talk to Oliver about it after Mr. Turpin came to look at the book.Oliver. Felipe put his head in his hands and shut his eyes against the look on Oliver’s face when he bolted out of the room after they had sex. Ever since, Oliver had been wary but attentive. He could feel his presence gently prodding the tether as if he could figure out what was going on in Felipe’s head. He wished he could tell him, but it barely made sense to him. Digging his fingers into his palm, Felipe rode out the pain until it faded into focus. Oliver had thanked him for making him feel safe, and all Felipe could think was how wrong he was. He wasn’t a safe person. He had been raised to be anything but, and while he didn’t want to lie to Oliver, he couldn’t bear the thought of him knowing who he was supposed to be. Oliver knew bits and pieces. He knew his relationshipwith his parents was strained, that he and Louisa ran away to New York as soon as they could, and that he was supposed to be his grandfather’s successor, but he didn’t understand what all of that meant.You will be a sword and a shield. You will bring glory to our family.Felipe Galvan had brought his family only disappointment, but their training had been successful. Destruction was instinctual; gentleness was not.
Oliver had glimpsed that in Aldorhaven. Felipe had confessed that his nights had been haunted by memories from his youth, and even if he never told him anything else, Oliver knew there was more he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about. He had offered to listen whenever he was ready to talk and to love him, the man he was now and the boy who hadn’t escaped yet, but would it be possible for Oliver to know everything and still look at him the same way after? Felipe didn’t want to feel the sting of losing Oliver’s esteem once he knew who he was raised to become. After all, Oliver had been brought up by his Quaker grandmother who never yelled at him or struck him and who had instilled in him such strong morals that the only thing to break them was Oliver’s love for him. He knew Felipe was good at his job and what that required, but Oliver didn’t know how he had come to be that way. He had been born to be another blade in the Galvans’ sheath until, by fate and misfortune, his grandfather plucked him from obscurity and hand-raised him to be his heir to the Galvan legacy.
The Patrón had taught him everything he knew about tracking demons and creatures not of this world, but he had also taught him how to kill without hesitation. While Felipe had always been good at sparring, his grandfather had pushed him to be great. He had honed his reflexes, sharpened his nerves, and showed him how a weapon could become an extension of himself. Everything that made him useful to the Paranormal Society had come from his grandfather’s training, includinghis ability to keep going no matter what happened. Felipe internally flinched at the memory of a blow, though his face betrayed nothing. They had to test the limits of his powers, his grandfather had said. After all, the future Patrón couldn’t go into battle unprepared for the sting of a bullet or a blade. To be their family’s future savior, Felipe had to become untouchable or die trying.
