To Be Where You Are, page 7
Rahenna glared at Jackson before she knelt beside her lover.
Rugh’s bleary eyes rolled up to look at his attacker. His expression bore no hint of terror or toxic hatred. Instead, one corner of his mouth tipped toward a wry smile. “A wizard,” he said hoarsely, “is always a worthy opponent. A wizard in love can be a deadly one.”
“The next time you try to hurt Adin,” Jackson said in a monotone, “I’ll destroy you. Don’t doubt it.”
Rugh coughed. “Never.”
Adin rested a hand on his shoulder. Jackson turned to him and tenderly stroked both hands down the sides of his face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll probably have a bruise on my ass, though. Hope you don’t mind.” He tilted to one side and regarded Rugh. “How could you be so brazen?”
“Ask my hormones.” Rugh’s expression became tinged with guilt. “I am sorry, Adin. You do have a lovely behind. What I did was … just a reflex. I hope you understand.” He pushed off his shoes, which must've been uncomfortably warm, then lowered the zipper on his jeans. His fingers kept flinching away from it. “I think the son of a bitch circumcised me,” he muttered.
“You deserved worse than that,” Adin said.
With the help of his loving companion, Rugh kept picking scraps off himself. Rahenna collected them in her free hand. She carefully petted the healed areas, perhaps testing them for any lingering rawness or sensitivity.
“How could you have been naïve enough not to expect this?” Rugh asked Adin. He seemed annoyed with his former lover, as if Adin’s shortsightedness were to blame. “Surely your memory hasn’t failed you. You’re still too young.”
“Don’t try to lay this at my doorstep, you bastard. Things aren’t the same as they were. You know that.” Adin rubbed his hip and winced. “We won’t be sharing lovers anymore, Rugh.”
“Pity. You always did have the most exquisite taste.” Rugh got to his feet with surprisingly little effort and studied his arms and torso. Occasionally he brushed away or lifted off remnants of charred cloth. He glanced from Adin to Jackson. “Well, you can hardly blame me for trying.”
Jackson leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed over his chest, and watched. Rugh did have a magnificent, rugged body, all woven muscle and taut skin. It was understandable how a man like that could think himself irresistible. And he probably did throw a mean fuck. Suddenly uncomfortable, Jackson shifted his position.
“I didn’t expect you’d be quite so averse to my offer,” Rugh said to him. “You practically bleed testosterone.”
Jackson felt his face flush, as if Rugh had read his thoughts.
“Keep your damned opinions to yourself,” Adin snapped.
His reaction almost drew a smile from Jackson. Guess I’m not the only one who gets jealous. “A proposition I can handle,” he said to Rugh. “But intentional harm—”
The vampire put up his hands in concession. “I know, I know. There’ll be no more misbehavior.”
“You sure?” Jackson asked. The question had a flinty edge.
“Quite,” Rugh said, rotating a forearm to regard it. “I apologized, which means I saw the error of my ways. What more can I do?”
“If I come up with something, I’ll let you know.” Jackson’s voice remained cold and hard. He wanted to make it clear where he stood.
Rugh sighed and put his hands on his hips. What little clothing remained on his body was, thank goodness, pretty much confined to that area. “I know you’re not feeling very charitable toward me,” he said to his host, “but would you mind terribly if I stepped under your shower for a moment?” He held out his arms to display his near-nakedness. “I may also need to borrow some clothing while I’m here.”
Jackson nodded, reminding himself why he had to play nice. He’d made his point, after all, and pretty effectively. “All right. I’ll grab a couple of things and let Rahenna put them in the bathroom.”
“Thank you. I’ll return them before we leave. I can always fly from the car to our hotel room.” He again glanced at Jackson, more tauntingly. “Unless you can conjure up some new clothing for me.”
“I could, but I don’t feel like it.” Jackson wanted to add, You’re not worth the trouble, asshole.
Rahenna forked a hand into Rugh’s thick hair. “Well, at least we got that business out of the way. I tried to warn you, even though I didn’t think your appetite would nearly get you incinerated.”
“What business?” Jackson asked suspiciously. He glanced at Adin, who glowered at Rugh.
“It was inevitable I’d try to entice you into a tryst. I saw you at Adin’s party, you know, and was quite drawn to you. But I was”—he angled a glance at Rahenna—“busy with other things.” Rugh shook out his hair and pushed it away from his face. It sent up a burnt odor, but not strong enough to be offensive. “I always did have a weakness for smart, handsome, well-built men.” He smiled charmingly. “Ask Adin.”
“Rugh hasn’t had one in a while,” Rahenna said, as if she were talking about his favorite entrée. And maybe she was. “I’m afraid I’m the sexual equivalent of methadone. You and Adin, Mr. Spey, are the uncut heroin.”
Rugh affectionately kissed her cheek. “Don’t underestimate yourself, my sweet.”
“I’ll get you some clothes,” Jackson said, standing up from the wall. “Let's hope we understand each other now.”
“Wasn’t that line uttered at the Inquisition?” Rugh asked Rahenna. He turned toward the bathroom.
Jackson and Adin headed for the bedroom. Rahenna waited just outside the door. After Jackson pulled a pair of jeans and a plain t-shirt out of two dresser drawers, Adin grabbed his arm and forced him to turn.
“I’m so sorry about that,” he whispered, then pulled Jackson toward him for a kiss.
He pressed one hand against Jackson’s back and flattened the other on the side of Jackson’s face. The kiss was stunningly passionate. Jackson tossed the clothes on the bed and held Adin, sealing their bodies together. The contact of their lips alone, for Adin’s were always soft and warm and supple, shortened his breath. Their tongues slid together, then skated over their lips, then connected again. As the contact became more heated, so did Jackson’s response to it.
“I fucking adore you,” Jackson said on a breath, holding Adin’s face, kissing him more, kissing him deeper. It had taken him a long while to make that declaration. But once he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop.
“I’ll never get sick of hearing you say that.” Adin nudged his crotch against Jackson’s and smiled. “We’re not really fit for company now.”
“Shit, you’re right.” Reluctantly, Jackson stepped back. “I hate repositioning a woody.” He shoved a hand inside his jeans and tried to make his rigid cock less noticeable.
“Here,” Adin said, pulling Jackson’s shirt out from under his waistband. “This always helps.”
He smoothed the bottom of the shirt over Jackson’s hips, but he only made matters worse.
“Quit feeling me up,” Jackson whispered peevishly.
“I can’t help it. You’re so … there.”
They began chuckling.
“There?” Jackson said. “What does that mean?”
“You know. Obvious.” Adin stroked the ridge again. “You have a big dick. It isn’t easy to hide. It isn’t easy to ignore, either.”
Jackson squirmed against his hand. “Stop it!”
Adin rubbed his hard-on against Jackson’s and they kissed again, snickering into each other’s mouth.
“I’ve seen erections before, gentlemen,” Rahenna said, leaning through the doorway. “Just give me the damned clothes, will you?”
Chapter Eight
“Yes, we remember them. Quite well.” Rahenna glanced at Rugh, who nodded in affirmation. “The ambisexual one, Perez, even sought us out in New Orleans.”
“That’s what Noah suspected.” Jackson was back in the recliner, sitting in his favorite position—one ankle resting on the opposite knee, elbows resting on the chair arms. “You didn’t go ahead and change his ass, did you? He isn’t skulking half-demented around some bayou?”
Rugh snickered. “Yeah. Wrastling ‘gators to drink their blood.”
“I think you’d better hold off on the sarcasm,” Adin said from the other recliner. “And, FYI, alligators are cold-blooded.”
Still smirking, Rugh shrugged.
“We didn’t do anything of the sort,” Rahenna said defensively. “Perez asked questions and we answered them. I think he hung around primarily to see what our ‘lifestyle’ was like. In fact, he made a point of telling us he wouldn’t undergo the blood birth unless Noah did.”
Jackson wasn’t quite getting it. “So where is Perez?”
“He didn’t follow us back to Chicago,” Rugh said. “I can tell you that much. He was still in New Orleans when we left.” He and Rahenna exchanged a glance that bore some meaning Jackson couldn’t interpret.
“What was that look about?” He sat forward by a few inches. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Rahenna’s gaze moved back to him. It was steady enough; she didn’t seem intent on hiding anything. “We met a man while we were down there. He didn’t like us. I think he knew what we were, or sensed it. But he could hardly avoid us if he wanted to be around Perez. And he did want to be around Perez.”
“He wanted more than that,” Rugh drawled, studying his slightly charred fingernails.
“Do you think he ever got it?” Jackson asked. “Do you think he got what he wanted?”
Rugh turned up his eyes without lifting his head. “We don’t know. But the man tagged along wherever we went. As long as we had Perez with us.”
“We did a lot of pub crawling, for obvious reasons,” Rahenna added.
Adin, who remained quiet, was watching Jackson. In fact, he watched Jackson every time Jackson looked at Rugh. It was absurd, Jackson thought, how one guy's presence could make them both so uptight. But this was the first time they’d been together in the company of a seriously desirable man. Especially a desirable man who'd already had one of them and now wanted to sample the other.
“I think Perez liked him at first,” Rahenna said. “Or at least liked the attention. The stranger behaved like a suitor. He enjoyed looking at Perez, dancing with him, fondling him. And spending money on him.”
“And Perez allowed it,” Jackson said, just to verify his impression. “Even encouraged the man.”
“For a while. Then Perez began tiring of it.”
“The man was too clingy and persistent,” Rugh said, his voice subdued. His gaze flickered inexplicably in Adin’s direction, and Adin looked down at his lap. “Perez went from feeling flattered to feeling suffocated.”
Jackson tried not to be distracted by this strange, fleeting interplay. Something Rugh said must have snagged a piece of flotsam from his and Adin’s shared past. It was unsettling. It made Jackson realize how short a time he’d been with Adin—a blink, really—and how very much of his lover’s life was closed off to him. Regardless of their devotion, they were still making the transition from being discrete individuals to being a couple. There was a lot they had to learn and even more they had to get used to.
Rugh was starting to seem more like a test than a guest.
Rahenna had begun talking, redirecting Jackson’s attention. “Perez missed Noah, too,” she said. “And maybe felt guilty about being so flirtatious. Anyway, he and his suitor finally had a falling-out, and that was the end of the courtship. The guy disappeared. When we felt confident Perez was safe, we came back to Chicago.”
Adin’s cell phone rang. It was like hearing Mozart played on a toddler’s toy piano. But it wasn’t the robotic sound that made Jackson’s heart skip or his gaze jerk to the dining table, where the phone lay. Immediately, he knew who was calling. And it wasn’t one of Adin’s clients.
“Sorry,” Adin murmured, taking his time about getting up from the recliner and going to the phone. He was probably hoping it would fall silent, but it didn’t.
Snatching the cell off a small stack of papers, Adin was halfway down the hall before he answered. The bedroom door closed loudly at his back. Rugh, who’d been watching Adin with interest, lifted and lowered his eyebrows and made a point of not looking at Jackson.
Jackson cleared his throat and shifted position. He didn’t want to explain what was going on with Celia. The vamp couple didn’t need to know that. “Okay,” he said to them, “tell me everything you can about this suitor. What he looked like, how he acted, the things he talked about. Anything at all.”
“Hard to pinpoint his age,” Rahenna said. “Between twenty-five and forty-five is the best I can do. Medium-brown skin, a couple shades darker than Perez’s. Eerily pale eyes. Average height but incredible physique. Shaved head. A striking man. Magnetic, too, in an understated way.”
“A New Orleans native, a local?” Jackson asked.
“No, I don’t think so.” Rahenna glanced at her lover, who no longer stared down the hallway. “He mentioned Mississippi more than once. And some town. It sounded like ‘elephant’.”
Jackson made a skeptical face. He doubted there was an Elephant, Mississippi, but he’d check. “What was the man’s name?”
“Joseph. That’s all I heard. No surname. Sorry.”
“I heard something else,” Rugh said, “although I didn’t pay it much mind at the time. When the four of us left a bar one night, there was a small group of men and women huddled on the sidewalk outside. One of the women looked alarmed when she saw us. Or rather, when she saw that Joseph character.” Rugh’s expression became tinctured with concern. “She referred to him as a ‘bokor’.”
Jackson stared at Rugh as the word’s meaning came to him. “Holy fuck.”
*
Finally, Rugh and Rahenna were gone. Finally, Celia had ended her telephonic interrogation. Adin walked up behind Jackson as Jackson peered into the open refrigerator. He ran his hands up Jackson’s back, relishing the feel of its low, hard muscles through the fabric of the t-shirt. He angled his arms around Jackson’s shoulders and nuzzled the nape of his neck.
“You smell good,” he murmured against hair that was clean and soft and faintly redolent of lavender.
It was getting harder and harder to walk away from this man.
Adin inched his lips closer to Jackson’s ear. “I have to leave. Celia’s really not in her right mind. I don’t want her showing up and making a scene.” He flexed his lips, and Jackson’s head leaned into the kiss. “I know it’s a long way to drive to make a scene, but I wouldn’t put it past her.”
Jackson swiveled his head to the side. “You haven’t even been here twenty-four hours yet.” Replacing something he was about to pull out of the fridge, he sidled to the left just far enough to close the door and then turned, gently grasping Adin’s upper arms.
“I know.” Adin touched Jackson’s face, looked into his eyes. They were grayish green now, the loveliest of their several shades. “I mostly wanted to come here so you wouldn’t have to be alone with Rugh and Rahenna. I hadn’t intended to stay long—not with Celia so unbalanced.”
Jackson tenderly cradled Adin’s jaw, tenderly ran a thumb over his lips. “Don’t leave. Not yet.”
A delicate shiver ran through Adin’s core. “Damn, Jackson…”
Then came a kiss, cajoling and all too persuasive. Jackson matched it with his voice. “Not yet, baby.”
Adin’s cock swelled. “Oh, Christ, you make me hot.”
Jackson’s mouth curved into a small, lopsided smile. “Hotter than I make Rugh?”
Weakly, Adin snorted. His amusement quickly ebbed, overtaken by desire. His gaze fell to Jackson’s mouth. Slowly, with care, he pressed his lips there. Jackson’s lips immediately opened to him.
That decided it. There’d be no resisting. When their kisses were this fervid—all soft heat and moisture and movement, rasping whiskers and twining tongues—restraint wasn’t an option.
Reaching behind himself toward the sink, Jackson turned on the tap. When his hand came forward, he let warm water cascade over Adin’s lips. Then he kissed Adin wildly, their mouths sliding and sucking, their fingers scrabbling at the slickness. Adin reached around him and fumbled for the sprayer. He pulled it forward and showered Jackson’s chest. The pale green t-shirt, thin from years of wear and washing, became semitransparent as it clung to his pecs and nipples.
“Let me please you.” Jackson panted as Adin fondled his face, his chest. He slipped his hands beneath Adin’s shirt. Trapping the hem between his thumbs and forefingers, he pushed the shirt up. His roughened hands caressed Adin’s skin, waist to armpits. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Adin pushed his wood against Jackson’s. “Kneel in front of the pipe,” he said harshly. “Keep the shirt on but shove your jeans down. Halfway.”
In mute surrender, Jackson sank to the floor in front of a pipe that ran from ceiling to floor in a corner of the kitchenette. It was narrow. Adin had no idea what it was for, aside from what he planned on doing with it.
Lightheaded with lust, he jogged to the bedroom and pulled some things out of the nightstands’ drawers. On his way back to the kitchen, he grabbed a chair from the dining table and dragged it behind him. Jackson was still kneeling silently in the corner, head lowered, hair partially veiling his face. His arms were already behind his back.
Adin stripped off his own clothing and threw it aside. His cock stood out from his hips. It wasn’t just the stimulation of kissing and touching that had made it rock-hard; anticipation further fueled his arousal. He stepped to the side, leaned over, and secured Jackson’s cuffed wrists to the pipe. Trembling with excitement, he filled a glass with water and splashed the water onto Jackson’s shirt.
“Raise your head,” he said. His voice didn’t sound like his own. “Look at me.”
Jackson did so. His chest rapidly rose and fell, the drenched shirtfront plastered to it. Adin could make out the twin rises of his well-defined pecs, the dark swatches of hair over his taut nipples.
