Page 1

Beginning

Carson

The darkness was heavy, pressing him to the mattress. There was a welcome weight threaded through with a reflected heat, circling around him and pinning his form in place.

A barely remembered bass beat strummed in his blood, making his heart race. Earlier tonight, he’d found the upscale bar on the main drag had been hopping for a Thursday night, wildly crowded with unknown faces, their anonymous features—cheek and nose, chin and eyes—scarcely seen as individual structures through the slashing lights run in sync with sounds from the DJ’s booth. It wasn’t that he often went out, but he’d anticipated recognizing at least a couple of people from work. Not an unreasonable expectation, given he lived in a small town. But after the first hour, he’d given up the hunt, realizing the one face he had hoped to see hadn’t shown, his swipe-right date for the night standing him up.

Unsure why he’d woken, Carson Holden let the memory of last night’s jostling crowd drift through his mind, those grazing glances from hips and hands tethering him to the bar long after when he should have been home in bed. Women, sure, but a thrill of arousal shot up his spine as he recalled the strength behind some of the oh-so-welcome touches. There’d been one man in particular, not out in the thrashing knot of flesh that was the dance floor but standing solidly against a wall. Each time Carson caught his gaze, it had felt like a snare of rope around his chest tightened, cutting off his air until he was gasping.

No words had been exchanged, nothing more than a handful of hooded glances, and still Carson had felt as if the man’s hands had been on him, stroking him erect, making him wild for the next chance to see those eyes. He’d whirled away, ground up against a leather-clad ass, whirled back—and the man had been gone without a word. After his audience vanished, a strangely deflated Carson had made his way to the edge of the crowd, scanned the faces and, still coming up disappointingly blank, left to come home.

Which was where he was now, the familiar sounds of his appliances providing a subtle background to whatever this dream was.

What’s your name, beautiful one?

That thought sprang into Carson’s mind fully formed.

He waited a beat, and the thought—or voice—asked again.

What’s your name?

He focused and thought: Carson.

In the next moment, Carson realized he couldn’t move, not the barest quiver of a fingertip; even his eyes were fixed open, unable to shift side to side. There was no sense of any fear or terror, and that was how he determined it was a dream, since he knew even the thought of being paralyzed should be terrifying.

The covers shifted, the cotton sheet slid across his sensitized skin, and the chill surrounding him moved, intensified as it drew even closer, aligning itself with the angles of his back, fusing tightly to his spine. His body was shifted across the mattress without much effort, pushed into a more comfortable position, and then the distinct form of a hand slipped smoothly along his ribs to curl around his hip, dipping under the waistband of his briefs.

He drew a quick breath, idly noting his involuntary functions were still intact, and against the chilling stillness, he found that the brushing touches grazing across his abdominals and inner thighs raised his awareness to a quivering need.

Callused and strong fingers teased along the crease of his hip, and blunt nails dragged through the crisp hair at the base of his cock in a show of restrained strength. Then the grip shifted, moving to his shaft, a too-tight pressure drawing up and down slowly. Too much, and yet still not enough in the same breath. While each dry drag along his skin stung, burned in the wake of the movement, he wanted more.

There was weight mixed with the chill, and so much pleasure, the added dimension pulling his nerves taut, strings of passion anchored in his groin that were twanging with every stroke. It was immensely frustrating to have to take what was on offer, not even able to thrust into the hand that grasped hold of him, ceding control of everything to the unseen maestro. Riding the edge of what was sure to be a painful, aching release, he found a sweeping river of desire, the fingers on his cock exactly what he needed in that moment.

A welcome movement at his neck, the rough, low groan telling him it was a man’s gusts of breath coating his skin with a numbing chill.

Weight, pleasure, and pressure.

Fingers in his hair pulled lightly, then more firmly, stretching his neck backwards as the hand around his cock tightened to a pain-filled pleasure that couldn’t be ignored. His testes lifted, coiling towards his body, the skin on his sac puckering with the instinctual need to come. His groin pulsed as if shot while his brain picked that instant to worry over the notion that he couldn’t be dreaming. Release exploded outwards through his body as the hand gathered up his spunk so that heat engulfed the head of his cock and a point on the side of his neck at the same instant, pressure so near his ear he could hear the rasp of suddenly hot lips moving against his skin when that gravel-filled voice breathed one word.

“Exquisite.”

Chapter One

Mathias

Mathias Parson turned the final corner headed back home. It was as much his home as anything could be called these days, but he was grateful it had strong walls, a ceiling, and a way to bar the younger ones of his camp deep inside and away from the sun as she rose. His steps were nearly soundless, and he kept an alert ear cocked for anything untoward, anything out of the ordinary, that kind of evidence saying he’d garnered more than idle interest from an onlooker along his way. A dozen muted roaring sounds surrounded him, starting quietly and rising to a climax before fading slowly away. Each house he passed held one or more of those heartbeats, the susurration of the living muscle testimony to lives lived behind those walls. Individually, each was a steady, rhythmic throb of living noise, nothing to indicate any alarm.

Turning down a darkened alleyway, he walked to where the little street ended in an abandoned field, plants waist-high on either side of the tiny, winding path beaten through the stalks. After a handful of minutes, he paused where the noise of the city behind him bled away, and there was only the silence of the woods to the front of where he stood. He tipped his head back and let his pupils blow wide, bringing his vision into sharp focus as he drank in the brilliance of a million stars overhead.

Forcing unused chest and abdominal muscles to break free from their stasis, he took in a deep, scent-rich breath, filling his lungs for the first time since leaving Carson’s side. Lips pursed, he let the fresh memories of the past hours roll through his mind as he exhaled in a long, measured stream.

When he’d initially sensed the young man at the bar, there had been a prickling all along his skin. The scent wafting by plucked at his curiosity, and he’d carefully stalked the origin, unsurprised when he’d found an attractive male at the end of that thread. Observation was forever his watchword, so Mathias had secured a nearby spot guaranteed to give him a good view of the dance floor, where the source of the intriguing aroma had become occupied. Graceful and flowing, each movement was seemingly effortless, the man giving and taking in equal measure from his partners while still seeming to search for something.

It had only been when their gazes locked from across the room that he’d realized the man had been looking for him, having somehow intuited the rising interest that filled Mathias. After that first collision had come a dozen more, Mathias watching as the man teased partner after partner with the barest of attention, retaining the bulk for the duel of wills playing out with fifty feet separating them.

A dozen times Mathias steeled himself to enter the fray of bodies to gain closer access, but it had been too long since he’d fed, and he worried how easily his control might be unraveled by close proximity to those hypnotizing eyes. Even with the strict distance that he’d forced himself to keep separating them, Mathias had been hard-pressed to keep a snarl from his lips at each set of hands landing on the man, fondling and caressing him as Mathias longed to do.

Eventually, he recognized his presence was the reason the man stayed even as exhaustion dragged his lids half closed. Breaking free hadn’t been easy, but faced with the stark necessity, he picked a moment when the man faced away and then succeeded in moving down the wall and behind a wide column, only barely managing to stay there. The man’s distress at his disappearance had rung through the air like a bell clapping noon, sour tones of disappointment interjected into his scent. Mathias had remained still and quiet, wrapping shadows from within the club around himself. The man roamed the room for an hour, searching, and Mathias listened to the thudding of his laboring heart race in renewed anticipation, only to flag a moment later with another burst of that bitter note in his aroma.