He shook his fist then poked a finger at the miserable bugger in the mirror. “Buck up, pet. You knew the score. Even when you lay dying half out of your mind with pain and a beautiful man appeared from nowhere, asking if you wanted to live, you knew it wouldn’t come without a price.Thisis the price you paid for bargaining with unnatural forces.” He shut the bathroom door and flopped onto the bed once more, staring at the ceiling. “And that,” he said, still quietly, but out loud as if he had to hear the words to believe them, “is why he can’t be yours. He might turn into an animal but he’s a creature of substance, same as the merfolk, same as the Fae. He has a soul. He has a purpose. He has a lifespan.” His voice cracked. The denial of what he wanted was a pointed stake to his chest, splintering as it entered his torso in the region of his heart, needle-shape slivers lodging deep under the skin, adding to the myriad scars of past injuries. He sucked in a breath as a way to calm his ricocheting thoughts, and concentrated hard on counting before he released the breath, repeating the pattern until the unfulfilling but oh-so-necessary repetition calmed him to a place where he could consider closing his eyes. They had a bad guy to find and fight — he needed to be rested and alert for the days ahead.
Sorley laced his hands behind his head and told himself he would sleep. He would lie here quietly and let the magical power of the sun penetrate these thick stone walls and hewouldsleep.
29
GETHIN
Gethin breathed out an agonised sigh.He’d come straight upstairs from his run to freshen up, with the sole purpose of seeking Sorley out for what he’d hoped would be a fast and furious fuck before they collapsed in each other’s arms for several hours of blissful obliviousness from the crazy situation they’d found themselves in.
Except, when he’d been poised to knock on the vampire’s door, silent-footed on the thick, luxurious carpet runner that muffled everyone’s footsteps on the upper storeys of the house, he’d heard someone in Sorley’s room and had paused to listen.
He quickly realised Sorley was talking to himself, and, against his better judgment, he leaned in to hear better. A chill crept through his bones at the resigned despair he heard in Sorley’s bitter acceptance of what he was, then outright pain lanced through him as surely as if someone had taken a knife to his heart to hear the man voice his gloomy abandonment of any hope for a future with Gethin. He felt his wolf bristle, his fur ruffled the wrong way, his jaw clenched.Wrong. Mate sad. Fix.
He steeled himself not to react vocally. Leaning against the wall, his innards in turmoil at the threat his wolf perceived to his happiness, and to their bond, — because who was he kidding, he couldfeelthe fucking bond trying to connect him with Sorley — Gethin thought quickly. The notion he’d been processing, the idea that at first had seemed too fantastical to be realistic, now crowded his mind like a dense, clamouring swarm ofdo, take, love, secure.
He shook his head and inhaled a choked breath. He was out of time. They had a maniac to subdue and neutralise, and time was of the essence. But this, this was the most important.Mate,his wolf bayed silently but insistently.Mate, need, take.
“Yeah, I know,” Gethin croaked. “I know, pal.” He swallowed around the boulder-sized lump in his throat and rapped lightly on the door.
Sorley, a rumpled vision in burgundy silk, stared at him too vacantly for Gethin’s liking. “What?” he demanded, his tone defeated. “Why are you half naked?”
Bingo,thought Gethin. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to pull on nothing more than an old pair of joggers and his indoor shoes, but apparently his wolf was smarter than him and knew how to tempt a moody bloodsucker to speak to him, if nothing else.
Gethin pushed past him and locked the door behind them again. He kicked off his shoes and flexed his bare feet on the soft flooring, eyeing the wary vampire. His wolf lashed his tail, impatient.
“C’mere, babe.” His voice came out husky, threaded with need. “I can’t comfort you when you’re standing over there as prickly as a cactus.”
Sorley’s eyebrows rose. “What the hell? Who says I need comfort?” He huffed, an irritated, harsh sound that didn’t disguise the want leeching off him so thickly Gethin was surprised it wasn’t visible.
He grunted, then shot out an arm, snaking his hand around Sorley’s neck and reducing the space between them to a mere inch or two. “Don’t tell me you don’t want me, because I know you do. My wolf knows you do. I can feel it, Sorley.” He tugged a little, feeling resistance as Sorley’s toes dug into the rug. He tried a different tack. “Is this about Dalziel?”
Sorley went totally stiff. Eyes narrowed, he shot Gethin a filthy look. “Don’t use your shifter mind-fuckery on me. I don’t need to be psychoanalysed by a bloody dog.”
Ouch.So that was how it was going to be. Usually this would be the point Gethin threw his hands up and walked away, but as he and his wolf were nearly cowering, the overwhelming weight of Sorley’s pain enveloping them, almost brutal in its assault on his senses, hehadto act. They both needed it. He sucked in a lungful of air, of the glorious light cool scent that was all Sorley.Mate,his wolf said again.
“Give me an hour,” he said firmly. “And I’m not psychoanalysing you, you dipshit, I can feel your emotions. You’ve been wound tighter than a ball of wool after a kitten’s got into the yarn stash ever since we got here.”In for a penny…He lowered his tone, putting every ounce of sympathy into it he could as he said softly, “You know he won’t ever love you that way, don’t you? He couldn’t, wouldn’t make you happy.”
Sorley sagged against him. “I hate you,” he spluttered into Gethin’s chest. “I really fucking hate you.” But he didn’t resist when Gethin picked him up and laid him on the bed. He turned his head away, but didn’t argue when Gethin plucked at the pearl buttons on his pyjama shirt, then slid the top down his arms to throw it over the nearby armchair. Didn’t say a word when Gethin dotted featherlight kisses to Sorley’s brow, his temples, his ears. His chest hitched when Gethin nuzzled the patch of soft skin below his right ear, but he still didn’t speak.
Gethin rolled Sorley onto his front, arranging him comfortably when the vampire flopped like a rag doll. He drew the silken fabric of Sorley’s pyjama bottoms over his hips where they went the same way as his jacket.
“I know it hurts,” he soothed. “You’ve been following him for decades, centuries, waiting for the crumbs he gives you, wanting the whole loaf.” He ran his hands in tandem down the length of Sorley’s spine, pressing in a little with his thumbs. “He’s a good sire, a decent vampire from what I can tell, but he’s not going to give you what you need.”
Sorley snarled. Ragged hurt bled through his furious tone. “You know fuck all about anything.”
“I know more than you think.” Gethin repeated his sweep of Sorley’s back, from nape to tail bone, digging in with his thumbs. “You spent your human years trying to be a dutiful son, a dependable colleague, a loyal husband.” He hesitated. “A loving father.” Sorley tensed minutely, then smothered a moan as Gethin’s hands continued working along his spine. He brushed hair away from Sorley’s nape and chanced a kiss to the vertebra there before continuing, “Nobody had ever put you first, told you they valued you foryou.You were a son to continue a family line, a soldier to advance your country’s ideals, a husband and father because the seventeenth century didn’t allow you to be who you really were, to have what and who you really wanted. And then Dalziel came along. He found you at the very moment you saw your miserable life flashing before your eyes and offered you the second chance you never thought possible. Of course you took it. You were young, vital, had been robbed of the life you dreamed of. Why would you not have tried again?” He broke off to kick free of his joggers, then straddled Sorley’s thighs and bent over him. His tongue followed the path his fingers had laid out, hot, wet, and needy as his wolf keened for more.
Sorley echoed him with a muffled whine which he bit off abruptly, as if he wasn’t in charge of his response until a fraction too late to hide it. Anger poured off him, glowering and defensive. Gethin laved his hurt with his tongue, side to side, kissing and biting each nobble of the slender vampire’s backbone.
With one hand clamped around Sorley’s hip and his head resting on his lower back, Gethin caressed a slow path down one leg and back up again, torturously gentle.
“He won’t ever change, you know,” he whispered. “Does he love you? Of course he does. You’re his. His creation, his precious offspring, his first. How could he not love you? But it’s about time someone else spelled out what he’s been trying to get through to you, that he won’t ever love you the way you think you want him to. And he certainly won’t right now. You said it yourself.” Another series of tender licks and kisses to the dimples nestled in Sorley’s perfect buttocks. “You stink of shifter. Dalziel might be a fearsome, badass vampire, but he’s not suicidal. He would hate how you smell, and hecertainlywouldn’t like to fight my wolf.”
The snarl that ripped from Sorley’s throat was excruciating. A fresh wave of pain blanketed Gethin, suffocating in its ferocity. He rose up, then down, and enveloped Sorley in his arms, grinding the vampire into the mattress with his full weight. “I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Let me love you the way he can’t.”
Sorley made a choking sound like a bitten-off sob, but he went lax under Gethin.
Gethin wriggled back down the bed to where he’d left off. He stroked his forefinger through Sorley’s crease. “I’m going to remind you of just how good we are together,” he promised thickly.
