Patrick tangled one hand in Jono’s hair, tugging him down into another kiss. His entire body felt charged, different from the way his magic made him feel. The heat in his belly was spreading, making him desperate for more, for whatever Jono wanted to give him.
“Make me come,” Patrick panted, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “I want to come.”
Jono snaked a hand between their bodies, wrapping warm fingers around Patrick’s cock, and started to stroke him in time with his thrusts. Patrick made a strangled sound that wasn’t any kind of language.
“Yeah, love,” Jono said, his voice a deep thrum in Patrick’s ear. “I’m not stopping you.”
Patrick could feel his body reaching the edge, like lightning in his skin skittering over his nerves. Jono didn’t speed up no matter how much Patrick pleaded for him to. That long, thick cock filled him up over and over at the same slow, relentless pace, dragging soft cries from his mouth that Jono drank down like fine whiskey.
Patrick came with Jono’s hand on his cock, the other man grinding down into him without stopping. He buried his face against Jono’s shoulder, fingers clenching and unclenching against the hard muscles of Jono’s back as he shuddered through his orgasm. Patrick’s cum was sticky between them, Jono still stroking his sensitive cock in loose fingers.
This time when Jono pulled back, he slid all the way out. Patrick watched with interest as Jono jacked his cock with a hard fist until he came with a groan, painting Patrick’s thighs and spent cock with his cum.
“There’s less messy ways to mark me,” Patrick said.
Jono rubbed his cum into Patrick’s skin, dipping his fingers down to stroke over his loose, sensitive hole. Patrick hissed a little at the touch but didn’t move away. “Who said anything about marking you?”
Patrick arched an eyebrow, too sex-buzzed to really argue. “I’m not sleeping like this.”
Jono got the hint and got up to grab a washcloth from the bathroom. He wiped up the mess he’d made of Patrick with gentle motions before tossing it on the floor. Then Jono crawled into bed next to Patrick and pulled him close. He was almost too warm for Patrick’s liking, but he didn’t push Jono away.
Patrick slept, wrapped up in Jono’s arms.
He dreamed of ravens.
The fog rolled through his mind and the street of his childhood home in Salem, Massachusetts. It led him through the door of a place he could never go back to, into a basement full of blood and covered by a gray sky. The stairs leading down below were made of bone that cracked beneath his feet but never broke. Thunder echoed loudly in his ears. Patrick couldn’t tell if it was his heart beating or the sound coming from hundreds of wings flapping through the sky above.
Red concentric circles and black radial lines filled the concrete floor of the basement, surrounding a figure who stood in the center of the pentagram. Bloodstained clothes hid the grievous wounds in the woman’s body. The hooded cloak she wore was made with thousands of black feathers that rustled softly with every breath she took. Pale-skinned, with fingers stained red at the tips from blood and bare feet covered in grave dirt, she lifted her head, shadows peeling away from bone.
The features Patrick saw were that of a dead woman.
The voice coming out of his mother’s mouth belonged to something else.
War does not rest, came the warning in twin echoes.Neither do the dead.
The shade of memory spread her hands, and feathers burst through skin and bone, folding into two shapes that matched the ones flying through the sky.
Glossy black wings and sharp black beaks. Talons that could rend a soul from a body. The pair of ravens stared at Patrick with black eyes that swallowed him whole, their attention like a knife through his heart.
War is owed what was stolen from her.
Thought and memory were dangerous things, and always would be.
Patrick woke up Sunday morning from the nightmare feeling as if he couldn’t breathe, jackknifing up from the bed so hard he nearly bit through his tongue. The scream his lungs wanted to expel was locked behind his teeth, kept inside by old training.
“Patrick?”
Jono’s quiet voice broke through the cold terror wrapped around Patrick’s mind. He heaved out a shuddering breath, then another, struggling to hold the panic at bay. His skin was sweaty and clammy, and his hands shook from a buzz of adrenaline that hurt. His head felt as if someone had taken a pickaxe to his skull and was trying to excavate his brain.
Jono touched his shoulder and Patrick instinctively jerked away, cradling his head in his hands as he hunched over.Thiswas the reason he always slept alone—his nightmares weren’t pretty, and they didn’t belong to anyone else but him.
“I need a shower,” Patrick managed to get out, already scrambling out of bed.
He neededspace, needed clarity, maybe someone else to live his life for him. All Patrick got after washing off the sour stench of terror was a cup of coffee pressed into his forced-steady hands and a careful kiss against the corner of his mouth.
When Jono pulled away, there were questions in his eyes, but he didn’t ask them, the same way he hadn’t asked them last night. He merely stroked his hand and wrist over the side of Patrick’s throat in the same spot Emma had done to him on the street outside Ginnungagap.
Humans couldn’t smell whatever it was werecreatures used to scent-mark those they considered pack. Patrick had half a thought to go back into the bathroom and shower Jono off him.
