Hellsinger 01 - Fish and Ghosts (P) (MM) (27 page)

He felt Tristan’s desire give way, first in the shuddering twists of the man’s hips, then by the faint hint of hot filling his tight channel as his lover’s seeds were caught behind their latex sheath. Wolf mourned the loss of Tristan’s fill. Something within him
wanted
that. It was an intimacy he’d never wanted from another man, but here, in the curiosity of a manor haunted by passing spirits, he’d found a man he wanted to fill with his own release, and he was eager to have the same done to him.

Tristan collapsed next to him, too exhausted to do much more than protest feebly when Wolf tugged the condom off his softening cock. They were both too sensitive, and the rub of Tristan’s soft T-shirt over their cocks was painful, but Wolf carefully cleaned up as much as he could of their mess.

“There we go. One condom down.” Tossing the shirt someplace where it could keep the condom packet company, he pulled a very sleepy Tristan into his arms and kissed his nose. Wolf did a quick calculation and mumbled. “And sixty more to go. I think. Plus or minus that one you lost if we ever find it.”

“You like noses,” Tristan mumbled. “You keep kissing mine.”

“I like your nose,” Wolf agreed. Their legs tangled, a seemingly effortless braid of their limbs, and Tristan sighed, relaxing in a boneless slump on Wolf’s chest. “It’s a pretty nose. You’re pretty. Shit, right now I’m happy enough to think Boris is pretty. But not in a want-to-love-Boris kind of way. Not like how I think about you. Shit, I’m babbling. You’ve done fucked me senseless, Pryce.”

“I didn’t… hurt you, did I?” The blond blinked, focusing on Wolf’s face, searching for reassurance. “I wanted it to be good for you.”

“Tris, you… made me
fly
.” There was no other way to say it. Tristan reached into him and squeezed out every bit of want Wolf had. “Damn. I am
never
going to let you go if you do this to me.”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean,” Tristan murmured. “I know this has been… nice—”

“It’s been more than nice,” Wolf cut him off. “I’m serious. You and I… fit. There’s something between us. Even in this crazy nuthouse you’ve got going on, I feel like… it fits.
You
fit. Just… think about it, okay? You and me. Is that such a bad thing? Can you see
us
?”

Tristan was silent for so long Wolf wondered if he’d actually fallen asleep, but a hitch in his breathing told Wolf otherwise, and after a sigh, the man settled in and murmured his reply against Wolf’s throat.

“Yeah, I can see
us
.” It was a sweet whisper, nearly as climactic as the release they’d both shared. “I can totally see an
us
.”

Chapter 16

A
LIGHT
drizzle left cobwebs of water drops in Wolf’s dark hair, and Tristan became fascinated by a single bead soaking up the others around it until it swelled large enough to fall from its spiky perch. It followed the curve of the man’s cheek, then ghosted around his mouth, touching on a spot Tristan knew drove Wolf insane when he nibbled on it. From there it fell from grace, landing in a soundless plop into the murky shallow pond below.

The same murky, smelly pond that was also home to a man-eating turtle with flesh-rending jaws of steel, a beast so fierce and deadly Wolf needed Tristan to stand guard with a pole to fend it off as Wolf skimmed the mostly drained pool for Winifred’s lost wedding ring.

So far, Tristan not only saw no sight of the rabid terrapin, he was also beginning to suspect a medium-size, hump-shaped rock near the edge of the pond was what Matt had scraped his ankle against when he’d fallen into the water.

Still, spending the morning with a cup of hot, steaming coffee and watching a damp Wolf stretch his body out to squeegee a length of the pond wasn’t a bad thing. Especially since the drizzle plastered the man’s thin T-shirt and cotton shorts to his hard body, and the rise of Wolf’s tight ass was something to behold as he moved about.

The ass he’d been buried in only a few hours before.

Tristan was pretty sure his face was now hot enough to turn any of the misting rain into waves of steam. He shifted on the patio cushion he’d dragged down with him, feeling a bit of a tug on his ass from times he and Wolf switched things up. The ache in his knees was different, as well as the pull along the inside of his thighs, a reminder of the first time he rode Wolf’s thick cock and nearly fell backward when trying to shift his rhythm.

“What are you thinking about?” The man’s rumbling voice broke Tristan from his cataloguing of aches and burning muscles.

“Nothing.” He poked at a particularly turtle-like clump of lily roots, finding nothing beneath the pad other than a scatter of mosquito fish.

“First off, you’re a shitty liar, and you’ve got that contemplating-the-depth-of-my-navel look on your face that tells me you’re about to stab your finger into something to try things out.” Wolf arched out again, dragging up another line of thick algae and mud to go through. “I am amazed you didn’t electrocute yourself licking light sockets when you were a kid.”

“Fuck you. I only did that once,” Tristan growled at his lover, then paused. “Wait, I never told you that.”

“Nope. Didn’t have to. You look like the kind of guy who spent a lot of his childhood in the ER trying to explain why you thought sticking your hand into a wasp nest seemed like a good idea.”

“Okay,
that
I didn’t do.”

Wolf lay down the squeegee he’d been using and picked up a metal detector they’d found in Uncle Morty’s workroom. Stashed among the strange devices and objects his uncle had stored away in the garage, it proved to still be in working order, beeping furiously when they’d tested it out on different metals. Wolf moved smoothly, without a hint of discomfort, and Tristan shifted on his slightly sore ass, mildly resentful of the continuing ache there.

Pulling up his knees, Tristan rested his cheek on his thigh, listening to the scanner’s faint beeping. “Can I ask you something?”

Wolf waggled his eyebrows at him. “How do I make this mud look so sexy?”

“No, that’s a given.” Tristan smiled at Wolf’s scoffing guffaw. “I want to know….” He bit his lip, unsure on what to say. “Is it normal to kind of… for my body to ache a little bit after… um… you know?”

“Sex?” Wolf’s eyes flicked up from his study of mud and searched Tristan’s face. “Are you in pain?”

“No, just….” He sighed. “Sometimes it’s like I can still… feel you. Inside I mean. Or like, there’s a kind of… not burn but… a throb? I don’t know what to call it. Something anyway.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling. Kind of right now, as a matter of fact. You know, from what you did to me last night.”

Tristan was sorry there wasn’t enough water left in the pond to drown himself in. Or at the very least, put out the fire eating at his skin when Wolf’s cocky glance burned his cheeks up with embarrassment. Maybe in the winter when the pond iced over a bit. He was pretty sure his face would still be red by then.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Wolf said quietly. “Or me for that matter. You’re new to this. To sex. To being with someone. I know that, babe. And it’s okay. I want you to ask questions. Don’t be scared to open up to me. I’m here to take care of you. Okay?”

“Okay.” Tristan nodded. “It’s just… weird talking about stuff like this out in the open.”

“Well shit, remind me to keep you away from our family reunions,” the man snorted. “Those fucking people pry you open like they’re gynecologists looking for teeth. If ever we go to a Kincaid dinner, hide behind me and I’ll fight them off, but between you and me, you’re safe to ask me anything you want.”

The beeping grew furious, and Wolf bent over to dig through the muck with a stick to loosen up what he’d found from the mud. Sighing, he tossed a metal toy soldier toward Tristan’s feet, then picked up the detector again, resuming his sweep.

“Your family sure likes to toss its toys in here,” Wolf said above the dancing sounds. “That’s like the seventh soldier we found in here. Of course, little boys like doing shit like that, so maybe it’s normal.”

“The Pryces only have boys. I don’t think we’ve had a girl born into the family in forever.” Tristan watched Wolf work. “What about your family? I mean, there’s Ophelia….”

“It’s Ophelia Sunday,” Wolf murmured with a shake of his head. “My mom let me and Bach name her. Crazy shit, but there you go. It’s
always
Ophelia Sunday. No Opie or Sunny. She said it made her feel like she was choosing between her brothers. She was a very serious kid. Probably like you were.”

“So it’s just the three of you? In your family?”

“Yeah, about my family.” The sexy look was replaced with one Tristan had begun to think of as Wolf’s apologetic little boy with puppy dog eyes. “I haven’t been… I’m not going to say I’ve lied, but there are probably a few things you should know.”

“They’re all ax murderers, and your mom’s really upstairs chopping up Gidget and Matt for stew tonight?”

“God, no.” Wolf looked horrified. “Did you miss the part where I said not to eat her cooking? Murdering them would be the nicest thing she could do to them so they wouldn’t have to eat her stew. No, nothing that bad. Shit. I wish it was that simple.”

“I see ghosts. How fucking bad can
your
family be?”

“They… um… hunt them,” Wolf mumbled down into the mud, scraping at a pile of gunk with his foot when the detector began beeping again.

“They hunt them? Like….” Tristan tried to make sense of the images in his head. “Like they catch them in… a muon trap?”

“I’m kind of scared you know the name for that thing.” Wolf eyed him from across the edge of the pond.

“I’m not surprised
you
know what I’m talking about,” Tristan replied. “So do they?”

“No, nothing like that.” Wolf frowned as he thought. “I don’t know if that’s actually possible. I mean, you’d have to quantify what type of energy, and really, there’s no way to register an apparition showing up on that broad of a spectrum, much less somehow contain it into a—”

“Can we get off of the science and back to the family thing? What do you mean they hunt ghosts?”

“Not just ghosts. Kind of… anything funky.” He stopped sweeping and put the device down. Once free of the muck, Wolf shook off the wellies he’d found in the manor’s garage, then plopped down next to Tristan. “Now, you’re going to think this is nuts—”

“Have you been missing the whole sees dead people thing I’ve got going on?” Tristan shot back.

“Okay, fair enough,” Wolf acknowledged. “My family… the Kincaids… make their living hunting ghosts. Well, and doing things like reading tarot cards, séances… kind of anything to do with the supernatural. Some of them are like my cousin, Cin. People hire him to rid themselves of infestations or hauntings. Or… other stuff.”

“What kind of other stuff is there?” Tristan’s mind reeled. “Like what? Vampires?”

“Vampires aren’t real. Do you have any idea how impossible it would be for an undead to function? The sheer generation of energy to move a large mass of dead cells would be incredible. There’s no possible way for that to happen. Not really. And the whole drink-blood-to-survive thing wouldn’t work. You’d have to drain someone dry every few hours just to walk across the street. Not to mention decay—”

“I now understand why your brother beat you when you were kids.” Tristan rubbed at his eyes in frustration. “Wolf, finish what you’re saying, and we can get back to the why vampires can’t exist later.”

“Well, they can’t. Even with a supposedly magical element powering their existence, the drain of energy would be too great.” Wolf snuck in the last word as he scraped bits of drying mud from his fingers. “Some people think they’re being visited by cryptids or maybe being possessed by a spirit. Cin and a few others handle those kinds of things. We’ve been doing this for centuries. We’re descendants of the Van Helsing family. Well, the Kincaids are the American branch. It’s where the word Hellsinger comes from. It’s what the family calls someone like Cin.”

“And you,” Tristan whispered. “Because you
do
hunt them even if you don’t do anything about them.”

“Yeah, me too,” Wolf admitted slowly. “It’s why I chose it for my business. Kind of a shout-out to the family, even if I’m not knocking down walls to draw out bones or spirits. The others… they
believe
. Me? I don’t know. I mean, I see them. Shit, here at the Grange is the closest I’ve come to actual activity on a large scale, but is it recordable? So far we haven’t documented enough to prove anything other than electrical fluctuations and possible video anomalies, even if we’ve seen the shit Winifred’s done.”

“Is it so important to prove to the world that ghosts exist?” There was a bit of sadness on the edges of Wolf’s mouth, and Tristan leaned over to kiss it away, taking long enough to draw a growling moan from the man’s throat.

“Yeah, it is,” Wolf said when they came up for air. “If I can prove ghosts exist… I feel like I can prove my family’s legacy, I guess. I hate that we operate in the shadows. People think we’re nuts until they’re scared shitless, and even then, when everything’s over, they still begin to explain things away with excuses like infected rye bread or poisonous gas coming up from a nearby swimming pool. I guess I kind of want to shove it into every skeptic’s face and say… fuck you from the Kincaids. From all Hellsingers. You can all go suck my dick.”