Bloodline (18 page)

“I asked him to search for the shifter because Micah had access to a route into West Land and all known portals to that kingdom have been closed for months. I didn’t know why. Now I have part of an answer. An unstable king.”

“Did you tell Micah the portals had been closed?” Inigo asked. “I—”

“Inigo.” Micah moved to his side and put his hand on his arm. “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay, but he buttoned his lips.

“What were your impressions of the kingdom when you arrived?” Roman asked Micah.

“After we landed in the king’s bedchamber, he told us to look out of the window. Ellie didn’t appear to see anything wrong. I did. Not much I could put my finger on, but an awareness something wasn’t right. The people are on edge, cautious. Not happy.”

“Why don’t the kings of the other lands do something about it?” Inigo asked.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Roman said. “The kingdoms are distinct and independent. Any interference would be seen as a breach of the agreement between them. There would be war again, and no faerie wants a return to those times.”

“So what are you going to do?” Inigo asked.

“We make sure the bill of sale stays safe,” Micah said. “We check on the whereabouts of Oberon’s aunt and uncle and any offspring.” He glanced at Roman. “Are they on the register?”

Roman rose to his feet. “I’ll check, and look for this Kit Rivers too. I’ll meet you there.”

“Can I bring Inigo?”

“It’s daylight.” Roman looked Inigo up and down, and Inigo could have sworn his gaze lingered on the pocket holding the flask. “But then, he’s awake, which isn’t normal. Hmm. You could be useful, vampire. Your choice.”

Roman left, and Micah slumped on the bed, pulling Inigo with him.

“What the hell
is
he?” Inigo asked. “How did he manage to heal your wings?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think he might be an archangel.”

Inigo sniggered, and when he realized Micah wasn’t joking, he gulped. “Shit. Should I have bowed? Oh Jesus fucking Holy Christ, did I swear?”

Micah laughed and slid his hand over Inigo’s. “Roman’s okay. Bit intense, but a good guy.”

“How come you’re working for him? What does he do? What exactly do you do?”

“He…rescued me from a difficult situation, asked if I wanted a job, and I said yes. It basically involves policing supernaturals, making sure clashes between them and also those between supernaturals and mortals are dealt with quickly, efficiently, and quietly. And I also check up on illegal immigrants—supernaturals who haven’t gone through the proper channels to get into the country.”

“And look for lost dogs.”

Micah smiled. “Like I haven’t heard that joke before.”

“I had no idea anyone was doing that stuff.”

Micah rubbed Inigo’s palm with his thumb. “Because you’re a good boy and you’ve never come to the attention of the authorities.”

Inigo wasn’t sure he wanted to be a good boy. He’d kind of thought he wasn’t. No vampire was, right? But he’d not done anything really bad except for that one thing all those years ago.

“I like good boys who’re bad in bed,” Micah whispered.

Inigo swallowed hard. Micah took his hand and laid it over the bulge in his pants. The heat of Micah’s cock warmed his palm, and a shock wave of desire flooded his body.
I have this bad.

“Isn’t your boss expecting us?” he mumbled.

“He can wait. I can’t. I haven’t been this desperate since…last night.”

Inigo laughed, and Micah pressed his lips to his mouth and propelled Inigo backward on the bed. A quick roll and Inigo was on top, raking his teeth down the faerie’s neck. Even befuddled by lust as he was, he was surprised he didn’t feel the urge to feed, just to tease. Micah arched into him as he licked and gently sucked the slender column of the faerie’s neck and at the same time snuck his hand between them down into the front of Micah’s pants.

“Oh fuck,” Micah gasped.

With his other hand, Inigo undid the buttons on Micah’s shirt and kissed his way down his chest. He spread the shirt wide, opened Micah’s pants, and laughed when the faerie’s cock sprang out and smacked his chin.

“Commando,” Inigo growled. “I’d forgotten.”

Micah laughed. “How the fuck could you forget? You’re not wearing underpants either.”

“I only have one thing on my mind.”

Inigo knelt with his face over Micah’s crotch and slowly licked from the tip of the faerie’s cock to the root, then back again. Micah’s fingers fisted the sheets at his sides, and his breathing turned jerky and uneven.

“Oh fu…uck,” he mumbled.

Inigo smiled as he traced the prominent veins with his tongue, mapping their route before he sucked at the sticky pearl decorating the crest of the cock.

Micah propped himself up. “I love to watch you doing that.”

Not as much as I love doing it
. A jolt of lust spiked straight to Inigo’s dick, which was begging for attention, but he concentrated on Micah, teasing the sensitive head, curling his tongue underneath, licking over and around the slit until Micah was hardly coherent.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Shhh. Jeee…fuuu… Inigo. Oh God.”

He released Micah, dropped back off the bed, and came up on his knees. “I want you to fuck my mouth.”

“Uh? You were doing just great where you were.”

“I want you deeper.”
So long since I’ve let anyone do this, since I’ve wanted anyone to do this.

Micah stood, and Inigo wrapped his hands around the faerie’s slender hips. It was a turn-on that they were both vaguely dressed, although Inigo’s cock was painfully constricted. Micah wrapped his hand around his dick and brushed it over Inigo’s lips and then over his tongue. Inigo widened his mouth, looked up at the faerie, and Micah took in a noisy gulp of air.

The first thrusts were gentle, and Inigo tightened his mouth around the soft-hard flesh and tugged as Micah pulled back.

“Oh shhhhhit,” Micah mumbled.

I want him deeper
. Couldn’t happen with Micah lying down, not so easily. Almost as though Micah had read his mind, he increased the speed and depth of his thrusts. He let out a loud groan when his cock hit the back of Inigo’s throat, and Inigo angled his head so that Micah could get even deeper. With no requirement to breathe, he could let the faerie do this as long as he liked.

“Oh shit,” Micah gasped. “Shit, shit, shit.”

The next thrust was perfect, and Inigo worked his tongue along the shaft, precum soaking his mouth. He clung to Micah’s backside, and when Micah wrapped his hands around Inigo’s head and bucked harder, an ache set up in Inigo’s balls. Micah was trembling, and Inigo realized he was too. No one had done this since Gabriel, and he’d only half enjoyed it because Gabriel was a selfish prick. But this…this was perfect.

“Yeah, yeah,” Micah panted.

Inigo swallowed repeatedly against Micah’s cock, knowing the pressure was likely to tip the faerie over. As Micah gave a ragged cry, Inigo’s mouth filled with spurts of bittersweet warmth, and he swallowed and swallowed. When Micah pulled back, the faerie looked at him with the kind of wonder Inigo usually saw on the faces of his dinners. Inigo wiped his mouth, then licked the palm of his hand, and after that licked Micah clean, swirling his tongue over the semihard shaft. Then he began to worry because Micah hadn’t said anything.

“Okay?” Inigo asked.

“You honestly think I’m capable of speech?”

Inigo grinned. “That sentence came out okay.”

“Yeah? Well, I meant to say, ‘Fucking hot shit.’ I think.”

Inigo laughed. He carefully tucked Micah’s cock back into his pants and zipped him up. Micah pulled him to his feet and then onto the bed. They lay facing each other, Micah’s hand resting on the curve of Inigo’s body between his ribs and hip.

“I want to ask you something,” Micah said. “Why did you want to be turned?”

Even though Inigo had known the question would come after Roman’s revelation, he still felt himself folding in, closing up in untidy creases like a child’s attempt at origami.

Micah stared into his eyes. “Why would you choose to lose the light, and the ability to eat and drink, to have to watch your loved ones die?”

Memories clogged his throat, and his cock softened. Micah must have sensed he’d triggered something, because he moved his hand to Inigo’s face and stroked his cheek with his thumb. This wasn’t something Inigo talked about. He rarely let himself think about William Hargreaves. Roman’s mention of his name had sent shivers racing up and down Inigo’s spine.

“Didn’t you ask to be turned?” Micah whispered. “Is Roman wrong?”

“Is he ever wrong?”

Micah opened his mouth and closed it without saying anything.

“He’s not wrong,” Inigo muttered. “I did ask to be turned, but it wasn’t because I wanted it. I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

Inigo shook his head. “No, there isn’t.”

“Will you tell me?”

“My parents owned a coffee shop in Cheapside. I was the eldest of five children, and I’d been shopping with my youngest sister, Julia. She was sixteen, and she’d dared me to wear eyeliner, which is why I’m stuck with it. It wasn’t late, but it was winter and dark had come early as we were on our way home. This big hulk emerged out of nowhere, and Julia greeted him by name. William Hargreaves. I knew he was trouble. I didn’t know how she knew him, but I told her to hurry home with me. Hargreaves caught hold of me, put an arm around my neck, and dragged me close. My sister smiled at him, and even in the gloom I could see her eyes were wrong, as if she wasn’t there anymore.”

He shuddered, and Micah squeezed his shoulder.

“Hargreaves said he was going to take Julia away, give her a life of wonder, and we’d never see her again. I begged him not to. I wriggled and tried to get free, and I felt him grow hard against my backside. Fuck, I was scared, and I couldn’t yell for help because he’d tightened his hold on my throat.

“He said, ‘How good a brother are you? How much do you love your sister? Would you take her place?’ I knew what he meant. Well, I thought I did. He wanted to fuck me. I couldn’t let him do that to her, so I said I’d take her place, and he told her to go. I understood later that he’d glamoured her, and understood much later I’d been the one he wanted all along.”

“Shit, Inigo.”

“I thought he was a madman. If he’d told me he was a vampire, I wouldn’t have believed him, but he showed me.”

He trembled when he remembered what Hargreaves had done.

“He said I had to become like him or he’d turn every one of my brothers and sisters. The catch being, I had to
want
to be a vampire. He was lonely. He needed a companion. So I made him swear not to touch my family, and I let him turn me. I hadn’t understood I’d lose them anyway. I used to sneak back to watch them from a distance, glimpses of a life lost to me. Hargreaves grew sick of me pining, and…he slaughtered them.”

Micah pulled him into his arms and pressed his forehead to Inigo’s. “I’m sorry.”

“I decided to kill him. He was a fool, because his hold over me had gone. I plotted how to do it, tried, and failed. But it amused him.
I
amused him. He told me one more attempt on his life, and he’d kill ten children.”

“Oh fuck. What happened to him?”

“I waited and waited for the perfect opportunity.” Inigo chewed his lip. “He was on the roof of the house we lived in, ready to watch an eclipse of the moon. That sort of thing fascinated him. In fact, he was so engrossed he didn’t register me coming up behind him with a crowbar. I…smacked him hard over the head, and he went down. Before he came round, I chained him to a chair I’d already fastened down on the other side of the roof. By the time he opened his eyes, he was so smothered in iron links he could barely be seen. I sat by the door to the stairs and waited. He tried to get free, pleaded, threatened, begged. He roared and screamed, but when the first tinge of light appeared at the horizon, he stopped yelling, and for the first time he said he was sorry.”

Micah pulled back to look into his eyes.

“What did you do?” Micah whispered.

“I went to bed. I didn’t believe him. Easy to be sorry when the alternative is death. As my eyes were about to close, I thought, maybe he’s learned his lesson, I should let him go.” He gave a short laugh. “Too late. On my way back up to the roof, I fell asleep on the steps. When I woke and opened the door to the roof, all I found was a pile of chains and ash. Course, I panicked then that he’d somehow got free and had put the ash there to trick me. It was several months before I accepted he was gone for good. Though sometimes, I have to check under the bed and in the closet before I settle down to sleep.”

“Hell, Inigo.”

He stiffened as Micah pulled him back into his arms, but the tighter the faerie held him, the more he relaxed into the embrace.

“He’s the only person I ever killed,” he whispered. “I have too much respect for life to take another’s. Except that prick Oberon has made me reconsider my position. Cavan too. We have to do something about them.”

“We can’t do anything while we’re on this side. And what can two of us do if we go back?”

“Will the organization you work for take action against them?”

Micah released him, but wrapped his fingers around Inigo’s hand. “I don’t think they can do anything in Faerieland, but maybe we don’t need to be there to help things change.”

“So you’re a cross between a policeman and a spy?”

“I suppose I am.”

Inigo smiled. “My very own James Bond. Need a witty and brave sidekick?”

He was only sort of joking, but Micah shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

Fuck you
. Inigo snatched his hand away, rose to his feet, and strode to the window before Micah could see the anger on his face.

“What are you doing?” Micah came after him.

“Testing a theory,” Inigo said and yanked open the curtains.

Light flooded the room, and he didn’t catch fire. Not that he had much time to ignite, because Micah threw himself at his legs and brought him crashing to the carpet.

“Idiot,” Micah gasped.

“I’m okay. Get off, you big lump.” Inigo pushed Micah aside and rolled to his feet. He looked out of the window and swallowed hard. He’d been out in daylight in Faerieland, but this was different. This was home. He widened his eyes and felt his jaw dropping. Nearly two hundred years since he’d seen London by day. He stared at the different color cars and red double-decker buses in the street below, the bundled-up people hurrying past, the snow falling gently from a leaden sky, and gave a happy sigh.