Destroyer of Worlds (14 page)

“
Of course I am.”

“
There’s a private bathroom attached to
the room. Leave your clothes outside the door and we’ll see if they
can be cleaned. There are t-shirts and sweatpants in the dresser so
I don’t have to look at your naked ass. And there are condoms and
lube in the nightstand.”

“
You’re kidding.”

Tiffany rolled her eyes. “This is a safe
house. Some people like to get freaky to unwind after a tense
situation. It’s going to happen; we might as well make sure
everyone stays healthy. We don’t throw people away.”

Did she mean it as a criticism of SPECTR? Or
was he hypersensitive at the moment? He opened the door. “Thanks,
Tiffany. For saving me.”

She shrugged. “I owed the drakul.”

She looked tired in the soft light of the
hall, dark circles around her eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever seen
her like this, dressed in clothes not specially tailored for her in
Milan or Paris, no trace of makeup, her many braids pulled back
into a sloppy ponytail. When had she joined up with the Vigilant?
And what pushed her to it? The way she behaved, she must be high up
in their organization. It must have been soon after they became
agents. Maybe while they were still at the Academy, even.

He’d never guessed. Goddess, had he ever
known any of the people he’d thought were his friends?

“
Did you know?” he asked. “About Sean
working for Forsyth, I mean.”

“
No.” Her mouth went hard. “I’m going
to catch hell for it tomorrow.”

“
Tomorrow?”

“
When
la
capitaine
shows up. I have the feeling she’s not going
to like a lot of the decisions I made in the last twenty-four
hours. But that’s my problem, not yours.” She turned away. “Take a
shower and get some sleep. Somebody will bring your boyfriend up
once he’s clean enough to let in the house.”

John went into the room, stripped off his
clothes, and tossed them outside the door as instructed. As Tiffany
had promised, several shapeless, one-size-fits-all sweatpants and
shirts were tucked away inside an antique dresser. As he padded to
the bathroom, he heard other voices coming from the rooms below and
around him, but the walls muffled them too much to make out any
words.

Stepping into the shower, he turned on the
water, adjusting it until it was as hot as he could stand. Closing
his eyes, he leaned against the tiled wall, letting the scalding
flow wash away sweat and dirt and blood.

If only it could take other things with it.
Like the memory of hearing the gunshot, of turning and seeing Caleb
lying dead at Sean’s feet.

He dragged in a deep breath, steam warm in
his nose and lungs. He kept telling himself over and over Caleb was
okay, and Gray, and everything was fine. But it was a lie, because
everything wasn’t fine, not at all.

He should have killed Sean. Except Sean
thought he’d been saving John.

And Forsyth? Who did he think he was saving?
Paranormals? The people of the United States? He’d taken SPECTR and
corrupted everything it stood for, and now John was on the run from
the very organization which took him in when his own parents
couldn’t stand the sight of him. Who gave him hope, and a job, and
who the fuck was he if he didn’t have SPECTR anymore?

A sob wracked his body. How had everything
gone so wrong? How?

He remembered a night in another shower.
Fifteen years old and stripped raw, nothing left inside but a red
wound after months of counselors telling him he had to stop feeling
etheric energy, that he was damned. They claimed he’d invited a
demon inside and had to repent. And he had repented, and prayed to
God, and begged, but nothing had changed. He was sinful and
worthless and didn’t deserve to live.

Death seemed like the only way out, by means
of a belt tied to a showerhead, the other end looped around his
neck. If the cheap fixture hadn’t broken under his weight, he would
have died. Never done any of the things he had since: learned to
use his ability for good, exorcising those who would have been lost
otherwise. Saving people whenever he could, and giving them peace
when he couldn’t. And maybe someone else would have stepped up and
taken his place. But he would have missed out on so much, up to and
including Caleb and Gray, and his chest ached to think about
it.

Maybe he didn’t know who he was, or what
would happen tomorrow. But he still lived, and so did they, and it
had to count for something.

The soap left his skin smelling faintly of
gardenias. When he finished drying off, he wrapped the towel around
his waist, rather than pulling on the sweatpants. He paused at the
bathroom door and laid his hand lightly on the wood, closing his
eyes and letting himself feel the pulse and churn of etheric energy
on the other side.

Gray waited for him.

* * *

Gray stood near one of the tall windows,
staring out into the night. His hair roiled and twisted over his
bare shoulders, the wind lashing it unfelt now, not manifested as
it had been in the compound. He wore only a pair of the sweatpants,
which rode low on his narrow hips even with the drawstring pulled
tight.

His presence filled the room, vast as a
gathering storm on the horizon. He ought to be standing on a
mountainside, or in a desert, somewhere wild and powerful. Not a
bedroom decorated in antiques, the oak four-poster with its white
coverlet looking like the centerpiece of a fussy bed-and-breakfast.
Ozone and petrichor saturated the air, underlain with some resinous
incense John couldn’t quite identify.

John’s heart beat faster, and his cock
stirred under the towel. Gray had turned him on from the first,
when John had originally tried to exorcise him. And the kiss…how
Gray looked, striding across the compound, lightning flashing all
around him and his coat billowing out…John stiffened further at the
memories.

Gray didn’t acknowledge his entrance into the
room, however, only continued to stare out the window, unnaturally
still except for the movement of his hair. John crossed the room
and stopped a few feet away, uncertainty taking the edge off
arousal. “Gray?”

“
Yes.” A quick glance of obsidian eyes.
“Caleb says I should speak to you, but if you would prefer him, I
will withdraw.”

The hesitation in his deep voice startled
John. Up until today—or maybe yesterday, he’d lost track of
time—he’d only ever seen Gray face to face during exorcism attempts
and fights for their lives. In the former, the drakul seemed
annoyed and generally put out with John and in the latter, a
creature of pure strength and unhesitating confidence.

“
The two of you have to decide,” John
said. “It isn’t my place to say who gets to be on top.” He laughed.
“Okay, maybe not the best way to phrase it. Um. I’d like to spend
some time with you, if you’re okay with it.”

“
You would?” Gray turned to face him,
head cocked slightly to one side.

“
Of course.” John moved closer, until
only a few inches of cool air separated them. He wanted to lean in
and lick the brown circle of Gray’s nipple, but resisted the urge.
“I meant what I said earlier. I love you.”

Gray took a deep breath, as if inhaling
John’s words. “It is only I do not know what is expected,” he said
in a rush. “How to act. What you want from me.”

He’d never seen this side of Gray before,
never imagined it existed. His exorcist’s senses insisted he stood
just in front of something huge and powerful, a predator which
could tear him to shreds faster than he could blink. All of which
was true, but maybe even badass NHEs could feel nervous. Be
vulnerable.

“
I don’t expect anything,” John said,
carefully settling his hands on Gray’s hips, just above the
sweatpants. It felt strange, because this was Caleb’s body, a body
he’d touched dozens of times before, yet everything seemed new.
Gray held himself differently, moved differently: quick and
decisive, or utterly still, like a tiger or some other big cat. “We
can talk if you’d like. Or just stand here and look out the window.
What do you want?”

It should have been hard to tell where
Gray directed his gaze, without pupil or iris to interrupt the wet
obsidian of his eyes. But John
felt
Gray’s attention, skimming from his lips to his chest to his
cock.

Oh ho. If Gray wanted that, John knew how to
work with it.

He let his hands drift up, shaping the lean
muscles just under the pale skin, wandering around to trace Gray’s
spine as he stepped in closer. Gray’s breath caught, and John’s
cock stirred through the layers of cotton between them. Static
shivered and crackled in his hair, dancing off the backs of John’s
hands.

“
I love the way you smell,” John
murmured.

“
You do?”

“
Yes.” He hesitated on the confession,
but holding things back hadn’t gotten them anywhere. “The incubus
on the lighthouse…you were the scent lure it used…the thing I
wanted but couldn’t have…”

Gray growled, pressing up against John,
crowding him back against the bed. “We would not have let it take
you from us.”

“
I know.” The hell? Was Gray…jealous?
“I just wanted you, so bad.”

Gray kissed him, hard and demanding. He
tasted like mint toothpaste and Caleb, which startled John a bit,
although it really shouldn’t have. John kissed back eagerly,
arching against Gray, rubbing his cock against the drakul’s narrow
hip. “Almost as bad as I want you now,” he whispered when the kiss
ended.

Gray pushed him back on the bed, looming over
him, all hair and bared fangs. One hand pinned John’s wrists over
his head, firmly but not painfully.

John’s heart pounded and his cock poked out
of the gap in the towel, pressing against skin-warmed sweatpants.
Apparently he had some kinks he’d never realized he possessed,
because he could barely keep from rubbing himself against Gray’s
thigh.

Gray kissed him again, exploring John’s mouth
thoroughly with his tongue, clearly having pushed past his
uncertainty. John tipped his head back when Gray’s lips trailed
along his jaw and down his throat. Fangs scraped against his
vulnerable skin, and he gasped, hips bucking involuntarily.

“
You like this?” Gray asked, and this
close the drakul’s deep voice vibrated in his bones.

“
Oh, fuck, yes.” John twisted, tugging
against the hand pinning his wrists to the bed. Not to escape, but
just to feel himself restrained. Gray was far stronger than any
human; John had no hope of breaking free. “I promise, I’ll say
something if it gets too intense, but right now, I’m ready to beg
you to keep going.”

Gray pulled back to look at him with a
surprised expression which eased into something like
wonder…followed by a slow smile. John had never even imagined Gray
smiling; like everything else about him, it was sexy, oddly sweet,
and, given the flash of fang, borderline disturbing.

“
Beg, then,” he said.

John barely suppressed a groan, body arching
to rub against Gray. “Touch me, please. Kiss me, suck me, do
everything to me, before I go crazy. I want everything, I want you,
I—”

Then he couldn’t think straight enough to
talk anymore, because Gray went right for the sensitive spot
between neck and shoulder, sucking hard at the tender flesh, fangs
scraping, teasing. John loved having the spot sucked on anyway—Gray
must have known it, had indeed been paying attention when he and
Caleb were having sex.

“
Is Caleb watching? Is that how this
works?” he asked through a haze of lust.

Gray licked John’s throat, traced the line of
his clavicles, before replying. “Watching. Experiencing.
Feeling.”

“
Good.” He didn’t have to worry about
feeling like he cheated on Caleb somehow, even though Caleb had
pretty obviously endorsed the whole idea earlier.

“
Caleb thinks so.”

Gray kept him pinned with one hand, but the
other slid through the gap in the towel to cup the inside of one
thigh, the claws just barely extending so John felt the lightest
prick. Not enough to break the skin, just enough to stimulate the
nerves. He let out an involuntary gasp, and the claws
retracted.

“
Forgive me,” Gray said, releasing him
and pulling back hastily.

“
No! I mean, no, I liked it. It was
just a little unexpected.” John laid his hand against the drakul’s
cheek, tracing the edge of Gray’s lips with his thumb. Damn, Gray
looked magnificent, his hair billowing around his shoulders like
something alive, lightning-sparked black eyes heavy-lidded with
pleasure, lips swollen from kisses, parted just enough to expose
the tips of fangs. Beautiful and scary and sexy as hell.

Gray turned his head, sucking the tip of
John’s thumb into his mouth. John carefully ran the pad across
Gray’s teeth, over normal human incisors suddenly interrupted by
long, curving canines. They weren’t particularly sharp, made for
violence not subtlety.

“
Kiss me,” he said, and Gray did, long
and sensual, lowering his body to press against John’s. Etheric
energy shivered across John’s skin like a static charge, his
paranormal senses saturated with smell and touch. Goddess, what
would it feel like to thrust his dick into Gray, feel all the fully
manifested power around him?

The thought drew a moan from him. He ran his
hands over Gray’s shoulders, their geography familiar from all the
times he’d touched Caleb. Silken hair writhed over his fingers,
sparks of static licking his skin.