A Ferry of Bones & Gold (Soulbound Book 1), page 18
Jono pulled off with a hard drag of his tongue to the underside of Patrick’s cock. He couldn’t stifle the moan, watching as Jono finally lifted his head, a thin strand of saliva stretched between his tongue and the tip of Patrick’s cock.
“That’s the point,” Jono told him.
Patrick drew in a shaky breath. “Yeah, well, it’s been a while outside my own hand. For me.”
“Good.”
Patrick met Jono’s heavy-lidded gaze. His wolf-bright eyes seemed to glow in the dim lamplight, reflecting the light back at the world. Patrick reached for him, cupping his jaw, palm curving around his spit-slick chin. The shadow of a beard Jono sported tickled his skin.
“I want you to fuck me,” Patrick said quietly.
Jono blinked, turning his head into Patrick’s touch to press a kiss to his palm. “I’m taking my time with you.”
“You are the absolute worst at listening to orders. I want—”
Patrick broke off with a gasp as one long finger, slick with lube, pushed into his hole. Patrick bore down on the intrusion instinctively, lips parting on the exhale. Jono shifted on his knees, one hand pressing down on the bed for balance as he moved to kiss Patrick. His tongue stroked in deep, matching the motion of his finger as he thrust it in and out of Patrick’s body.
Patrick wrapped his arms around Jono’s neck, keeping him there, feeling almost too warm from the heat Jono was putting off and his own arousal that was coursing through his body.
“I’ll get you there,” Jono said against his lips as he pushed a second finger inside.
Patrick bit at Jono’s bottom lip, arching up against him to get some friction on his own cock as Jono stretched him open. When Jono found Patrick’s prostate, he couldn’t quite hold back the cry that escaped his throat, burying his face against the curve of Jono’s throat.
“You are such a fucking tease,” he panted out, licking at the sweaty skin and tasting salt.
Jono’s laughter rumbled in his chest. “You make it so easy.”
Patrick dragged his fingers down Jono’s back, blunt nails scraping over warm skin. “Are you calling me easy?”
A third finger pushed into his body, the sudden stretch nearly making Patrick swallow his tongue. The burn was almost too much, too soon, but it felt good. And Jono was careful with him in a way Patrick never got to experience.
“You don’t strike me as a bloke who does easy,” Jono murmured. “But I want to make this good for you.”
“Pounding my ass into the bed would be the quickest way to get me off.”
Jono pulled back, taking with him the warmth that seemed to live in his skin. “I said good, not quick.”
He punctuated his words with two more hard thrusts of his fingers. Patrick twisted against Jono’s hand with a whimper, biting his lip. He tipped his head back, swallowing thickly. When Jono wrapped a hand around his cock, Patrick couldn’t help but thrust up into that frustratingly light touch, hips rolling back down onto Jono’s fingers buried in his ass.
“You keep this up and I am going to come without your cock in me, and I really want your cock,” Patrick told him.
Jono chuckled, the sound making Patrick’s cock twitch. “Greedy.”
He stretched his arms over his head, pressing his palms flat against the headboard, using the sturdiness of the bed to drive himself into Jono’s touch. Jono smiled down at him, teeth just a shade sharper than usual in his mouth before they evened out. That hint of something preternatural didn’t scare him away.
Patrick reached between his legs where Jono’s hand was, curling his fingers around that strong wrist. “Don’t tease.”
He didn’t get what Jono wanted to give him often, if ever—not like this. Not easy and warm and sweet in a way Patrick didn’t think he deserved. But Jono thought he did, and Patrick was willing to let Jono believe he was worth that kindness, just for one night.
It wouldn’t mean anything, in the end.
Jono pulled his fingers free and slid his hands up Patrick’s thighs, pushing his legs farther apart. He lost his hold on the headboard and had to make do with the pillow when Jono finally guided his cock to Patrick’s hole. The first push inside had him moaning, body stretching around the thick length seeking to fill him up.
Patrick nearly swallowed his tongue at the stretch. “Yes.”
Inch by hard inch, Jono worked him open, lube making each slide in slick and easy. The feel of that hard cock inside him left Patrick breathless, unable to do anything but let Jono own him, just for one night. The slow thrusts were guaranteed to drive him mad even as his body made room for that thick, wonderful cock.
When Jono was finally buried to the hilt, throbbing deep inside him, Patrick sucked in a shaky breath, body aching from the fullness stretching him more than he was used to these days. Jono was thicker and longer than the guys he’d hooked up with in his past, filling him up so good. While Patrick wasn’t complaining, he definitely needed a moment to let his body adjust.
“Fuck,” Patrick groaned, pressing his knees against Jono’s chest. “You feel so good in me.”
Jono settled on top of him, his weight pressing Patrick down against the mattress, caging him in. Patrick had an idle thought that he could get free, could twist his body and flip them over, but he didn’t want to lose this feeling of tenderness settling between them.
He unclenched his hands from the pillow, wrapping his arms around Jono’s neck again. The shift of their bodies had Jono’s cock gliding against his prostate, and Patrick squeezed his eyes shut, biting back a moan. A warm mouth covered his, and Patrick tasted himself on Jono’s tongue.
“You need some looking after,” Jono whispered against Patrick’s mouth right before he rolled his hips and thrust in deep.
Patrick let out a shaky cry, nerves on fire as Jono did it again and again. He opened his eyes, finding Jono’s face mere inches from his own, staring down at him with an intensity that made him want to hide. Instead, Patrick kissed him again, gasping at a particularly hard thrust that sent his own cock sliding between their bellies.
“Harder,” Patrick moaned, moving his arms so he could clutch at Jono’s shoulders with desperate hands. “Jono, please.”
Jono sucked a kiss into the side of Patrick’s neck, right over the spot Lucien had bruised. “No. I’ll give you what you need. Trust me.”
Patrick opened his mouth to say he didn’t, but the words wouldn’t come, blocked by the pleasure coursing through his body. Each hard thrust of Jono’s cock hit his prostate, driving in slow and deep, filling him up. Jono lifted his head, stealing another kiss while he fucked Patrick with a focus that was almost too much to handle.
Jono dipped his head, nipping at Patrick’s bottom lip. “You like my cock in you?”
Patrick let out a breathless little laugh that became a gasp on Jono’s next thrust. “Do you even have to ask?”
Jono’s smirk was far too self-satisfied for Patrick’s liking. He clenched down around Jono’s cock on the next thrust, liking the way those wolf-bright eyes darkened just a little with hot desire.
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. This was 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 needed space, 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.
He didn’t.
“Don’t leave without me, yeah?” Jono said.
Patrick nodded slowly, and Jono moved past him for the bathroom. While Jono cleaned up, Patrick mentally pulled himself together. It wasn’t enough the gods fucked with his life, they had to fuck with his mind as well.
He went back to the bedroom and retrieved his dagger, strapping it onto his right thigh before clipping his holster to his belt. The weapons went a long way toward steadying him. He hesitated before grabbing a handful of the Greek coins off the nightstand and shoving them into his pocket. Moving around reminded him that it’d been a while since he’d last had sex, but the discomfort was easily ignored.
“Ready?” Jono asked when he came out of the bathroom ten minutes later in clean clothes, sunglasses perched on his nose.
“Yeah,” Patrick said.
Even to his own ears, it sounded like a lie.
They left the apartment and got picked up by an Uber that took them to the Upper East Side, close to where Marek’s home was. The driver dropped them off in front of a seven-story mansion that had no less than twelve gargoyles crawling across its façade.
Patrick got out of the car, eyeing the gargoyle sitting over the double-door entrance to the home, munching on a pigeon. Stone wings arched over the gargoyle’s body as it gnawed off the head of its lunch. The sound of its teeth coming together reminded Patrick of the crunch of gravel beneath a tire.
“Great,” Patrick sighed. “Guard dogs.”
“Think it’s supposed to be a bat,” Jono said.
“Whatever. Let’s go.”
Someone who owned the home must have warned the gargoyles they were coming, because the stone creatures didn’t try to chase them away. Patrick rang the doorbell, making sure to stand off to the side on the porch so pigeon blood didn’t fall onto his head.
He heard footsteps beyond the door, and moments later it was opened by a woman Patrick recognized from pictures in Casale’s office.
“Uh, hello,” Patrick said, staring at Angelina Casale. “I’m here to see Isadora Cirillo?”
Angelina arched an eyebrow as she opened the door wider. “Yes, she said you would be stopping by, Special Agent Collins. Please, come inside.”
Angelina was a woman aging gracefully, her graying, light brown hair tied up to keep it off her neck in the New York summer heat. She was dressed in casual clothing and white leather loafers, and her soul’s aura carried the power of a strong witch. The only jewelry she wore other than her wedding band and diamond engagement ring was a silver necklace that had a lotus-tipped staff pendant hanging from it. Patrick stared at the symbol and felt his stomach sink somewhere down to his feet.
Well, shit, he thought.
He locked down his shields, ignoring the sharp look Jono gave him as they crossed the heavy threshold stretched across the mansion. The power within that barrier set Patrick’s teeth on edge. The uncomfortable feeling didn’t fade until Angelina offered him the ritual of hospitality.
She reached for the small china plate holding fresh-baked bread and a small glass of wine, offering both to Patrick with a polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Be welcome in my lady’s home,” Angelina said.
Patrick ripped off a piece of the bread and chewed fast, swallowing it down with a mouthful of wine. The invisible pressure bearing down on his shoulders eased as he took part in the ritual. Angelina offered Jono the same greeting, and he ate the bread and drank some of the wine.
“Thank you,” Jono said politely, because his manners in some areas were better than Patrick’s, or it was the British in him.
“You sent your son to guard Marek,” Patrick said, not taking his eyes off Angelina.
“Yes, because my lady asked me to. Tyler is more than capable of handling himself in a fight, as he is an exceptionally strong sorcerer,” Angelina replied. She put the bread and wine back down on the ornate side-table and curled her fingers at them in a beckoning gesture. “Come. The high priestess awaits your presence.”
Isadora Cirillo might have been the Crescent Coven’s supposed high priestess and a missing hedge fund manager’s wife, but she was immortal to Patrick’s senses when they finally reached the rooftop terrace. And wasn’t that revelation a kick in the fucking teeth.
The muggy heat hadn’t faded despite the heavily overcast sky, a far cry from the clear skies of yesterday. The change in weather was worrisome, especially with summer solstice two days away. A reactionary storm wasn’t out of the question if things got worse. Nature reacted to powerful castings of magic by escalating natural phenomenon. Patrick only hoped a hurricane wasn’t in the mix.
Central Park stretched out before them beyond the rooftop terrace walls, as did the New York City skyline in a view Patrick wouldn’t be able to afford in three lifetimes. A round glass table beneath a wooden pergola covered in ivy was set with four place settings, two of which were already taken.
“My lady,” Angelina said as they approached. “Your guests.”
“Thank you, sister,” Isadora said. She lifted her delicate porcelain teacup to her mouth, watching their approach with fathomless brown eyes. “You may leave us.”
Angelina inclined her head in a gesture of respect before retreating. Patrick stayed standing in the sunlight, eyes flicking from Isadora to Hermes and back again. Isadora sipped at her tea, the porcelain coming away clean, her lipstick as perfect as ever. Her eyes never left Patrick’s face. Hermes ignored them both and kept shoveling fried potatoes into his mouth.
