The Gunslinger's Man (17 page)

There might have been a time when whispered direction and timid caresses could distract from the war being waged inside him. But Halloran hadn’t known him then and for all his unnatural gifts and herculean strength, not even he could turn back the clock.

Asher’s cock slapped against his belly once his pants came off, leaving him bare and wanton, and utterly deprived of friction. He groaned in protest, but Halloran’s kiss put an end to that soon enough. They were a mess—Halloran with burns and scars from a lifetime ago, Asher with the gears grinding in his joints and the metal warming fast between his flesh and Halloran’s—but there was no one to see. If the squeaking of bed springs traveled through the cracks in the door, then it went unacknowledged.

Before Asher could brace himself against it, Halloran turned him to his stomach and pinned him there with a heavy arm across his shoulder blades. The message was clear.
Stay still. Behave.

Asher dug his palms into the sheets and bucked like a wild horse.

In the heat of the moment, Halloran must not have been ready for that show of defiance. He nearly lost his grip, dropping onto Asher. Control was such a precious thing for vampires. It fueled something greedy and not altogether nice in Asher to know that he could shake Halloran’s.

“That the best you got?” he choked, the taunt partly muffled by the sheets.

“You insolent little
tramp
,” Halloran growled. Tension thrummed in his voice and translated into a harsh roll of hips against Asher’s backside, nestling his stiff cock into the cleft. “Is this what you want? You want me to treat you like a whore?”

Air fled Asher’s lungs on a startled gasp.

But Halloran was on a roll. “Ain’t so tough now, are you? Bet you’re wishing you never started down this path. You’d deserve it, running your mouth like you’re a big man.” Curling a hand into Asher’s hair, Halloran yanked his head back hard. “You belong to me.
Say
it
.”

Asher wheezed. He was flying dangerously close to the edge of sanity, no longer able to discern punishment from reward. He blamed his muddled psyche when he rocked back into the insistent curve of Halloran’s cock and gritted out, “Fuck you.”

It wasn’t what Halloran wanted to hear. The hand in his hair turned vicious. Halloran slammed his face into the bedding hard enough that breathing briefly became a challenge. Asher’s lungs burned, blood pounding in his eardrums with a mixture of adrenaline and anticipation. He could feel consciousness beginning to ebb from his grasp before he was allowed to turn his head and inhale. Relief flooded his chest, albeit curtailed by the none-too-gentle press of fingers into his mouth.

He sucked them instinctively, every cell in his body rousing to the taste of blood and whiskey, and almost regretted it when Halloran wrenched free. It wasn’t a long separation. Asher clenched up, heat racing his face. His own touch had only ever been gentle, exploratory. He’d never been breached by anyone else’s hand before. He’d certainly never been with a man like this.

The few times he’d conjured the experience during his furtive strokes under the covers at night, he had imagined someone gentle, coaxing him to relax with tender words and soft hands.

Halloran was nothing of the sort. He groaned into Asher’s ear as he entered him, first with one finger, then with both, heedless of any resistance.

Tears sprang to Asher’s eyes. “Fuck.
Fuck
.” The bed sheets would surely rip if he clutched them any tighter.

“Tell me to stop,” Halloran rasped, his breath stirring the hairs on Asher’s nape.

Asher’s mind was well and truly gone if he still thought Halloran sounded lucid in that moment.

“Too much,” he bit out, “too much of a milksop to see it through, are ya? Fucking figures…”

By way of answer, Halloran simply curled his fingers inside him with a brutal twist.

The burn of penetration morphed sharply into the kind of pleasure that would’ve made Asher’s knees buckle if he were standing. Prone on the bed, it only dragged a mortifying sound out of his throat, every muscle tightening.

“Say that again,” Halloran challenged.

Asher could barely recall his own name, never mind what nonsense left his lips. What
was
that? It felt as if Halloran had reached deep into him and screwed some broken part back into alignment, as if Asher was maybe always supposed to know this sensation but born too defective to discover it on his own. He recalled the spirit of the taunt before he could recall the words.

“Coward. You’re a fucking—ah!”

Halloran’s voice caressed his ear. “
Again
.”

“God-goddamn
weasel
,” Asher forced out through chattering teeth.

Sweat beaded on his upper lip and slicked down the arch of his back, stinging the barely healed sutures. His cock was hard enough to burst, but attempts to rut against the bed were arrested when Halloran shifted his weight, kicking his knees apart. Asher splayed them wide. He would’ve done anything in that moment—anything except beg. He was still present enough to swear to that.

A sudden shift left him bereft. It took every last shred of dignity Asher had left to keep from crying out. The emotional uppercut flared with fresh agony when Halloran aligned them and, without warning, pressed inside. He wasn’t cruel about it, but wasn’t kind, either. His spit-slicked length stretched Asher to the point where all other sensation faded.

Asher must have been slightly delirious for thinking he began and ended with the ballast of Halloran’s weight bearing him into the bed, his hands around Asher’s not-entirely-human wrists. His slow thrusts, when he started to move.

“You’re mine,” Halloran breathed in his ear. “You’ve always been mine. Took me a while to find you, but you were waitin’, weren’t you? Good boy. That’s it. Let it happen now. Let it come…”

It was like being ripped apart and simultaneously put back together, a heady mix of pain and pleasure Asher was too far gone to spurn. He wriggled his hands in Halloran’s grip, but his meaning must’ve gotten lost because Halloran only held on tighter, the joints aching in his grasp. Asher extended a trembling thumb over the few inches of space between his immobilized hands to caress Halloran’s knuckle. He’d given up on trying to resist. The fight had left him, subsumed by Halloran’s depravity.

He was helpless against his climax. Halloran had made sure of that. As it began cresting and ebbing through his body, Asher had to squeeze his eyes shut. He wasn’t responsible for the moans yanked out of his throat.

He couldn’t have kept his pleas to himself if he’d tried.

With another handful of thrusts, Halloran shuddered against him and followed suit, almost silent in his release.

“Can you…?” Asher murmured, turning his head. His hands were still immobilized in the unyielding clutch of Halloran’s grip.

“Hmm? Ah, of course.” Halloran went as far as to curl a hand around Asher’s hip and separate them. He was gentle about it, a stark contrast to the past few minutes. He stilled at Asher’s wince as he rolled over. “I hurt you.” His tone was subdued but not surprised.

“Yeah.” No use denying it. Vampire senses could pick up on Asher’s pulse beats, his slightest twitch of discomfort. A lie would leave him exposed before Halloran’s keen gaze as both dumb
and
deceitful. Asher cracked an eye open. “Thanks.”

Fighting the lure of exhaustion would have been worth it just for a glimpse at Halloran’s bemusement.

“I can do something about the pain,” Halloran said and dropped his fangs.

The inside of his wrist was no more fragile than the rest of him. Asher seized his forearm before Halloran could sink his teeth into it. “Don’t.”

“But—”

“Don’t take this from me. I earned it.”

They locked gazes, neither of them moving to press the other. Then Halloran let him tug his arm down. His canines disappeared behind his lips. As seconds passed, he began to settle. The tension in his shoulders waned.

Worn out, Asher put his back to the vampire in his bed and closed his eyes. He was halfway to sleep when he heard Halloran’s whisper.

“Why won’t you say it?”

Asher sighed languidly. “You haven’t earned it… Not yet.”

Chapter Twenty

Over the ticking of clocks and the faint jangle of the wind-powered mechanisms that had caught the draft, Nyle’s voice trickled into the shop like smoke.

“I’ll be damned if it wasn’t mighty kind of the big bug, letting you come back…”

Asher looked up from the pocket watch he’d been striving to reassemble for the past four hours. The gaslight reflecting off the metal on his hands had begun to sting his eyes anyway. “You need something?”

The shop had never been this quiet when Uncle Howard had manned it. Even the poorest of the poor liked to drop in to gawp at the strange devices that crammed the shelves, blossoming day after day and night after night from the mind of a single, brilliant man. Many of Uncle Howard’s gadgets remained, forever unfinished, though a good number had been trampled underfoot in the raid that had seen Asher’s life turned upside down.

It was strange to be back here. Harrowing too. Asher dismissed Nyle’s conclusion. Kindness had nothing to do with it. Ambrose had offered Uncle Howard empty promises in exchange for a lifetime of service. If Asher walked the streets of Sargasso free, it was because the mayor still thought there was a vein worth tapping in the Franklin family.

Nyle shrugged. “Thought we ought to catch up. You left in such a hurry, we didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.” He pinned his hands on the far side of Asher’s desk, rattling his array of instruments. “’Course, you’re a new man now. Maybe you don’t recall—”

“I remember everything.”

A wide, gratified smile crested on Nyle’s lips. “Then you know you’ve got a debt to repay. Now, lucky for you, I ain’t no banker. I don’t charge interest. But I will see my investment repaid.”

“Does Halloran know you’re here?”

Nyle shook his head, his eyes never leaving Asher’s. “Probably out huntin’ Redemption vermin…or practicin’ his letters.” He snorted. “But I won’t tell if you don’t.” And with that, he swung his legs over the desk, sending the gas lamp flying and scattering Asher’s tools like seeds on the ground.

Asher barely had the chance to slide his chair back to avoid getting Nyle’s boot in his face. He had nowhere to go. The wall was behind him, the chair fallen on its side. In front, Nyle seemed keen to press his advantage with a hungry grin.

Panic ignited a timid flame in Asher’s gut.
Not again.

He registered Nyle’s fangs almost as an afterthought. The moment he dove was the moment Asher parried with his metal-plated arm and planted a fist into Nyle’s solar plexus.

Vampire speed being what it was, he didn’t have time to extricate himself from Nyle completely before a foot hooked his ankle and sent him tumbling to the floor. His teeth rattled as he hit the ground, the impact more sobering than distressing.
No. We’re not doing this again.
Irate, he kicked up with his mechanized leg, the pistons in his knee doing what human joints could not.

Nyle flew back into the wall, looking, for the first time, slightly flummoxed.

“Fuck me,” he blew out on an almost-whistle. “He was right.”

Priceless metal gears crunching underfoot, Asher levered upright. “
He
?”

The answer, when it came, wasn’t delivered by Halloran’s rider.

“That will be all, Nyle, thank you.”

Adrenaline pounding in his ears, Asher glanced to the door. Malachi stood there in a long coat that had probably last been in fashion when the North was kicking their asses.

“You’ll have to forgive my methods,” he said, once Nyle scurried off. “I will compensate any damages, of course.”

“Of course,” Asher echoed, shamming a smile as he dusted himself off. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Calling it one was about as accurate as saying summers in the valley were mild.

“Can’t a man express an interest in his father’s property?”

A man could, but like any vampire, Malachi held himself to be above mere mortals.

“And here I thought your father gave me away.”

“Yes, and wasn’t that an inspired move?” Idly pacing the room, Malachi grazed the shelves with a fingertip. So much of what should have been on display had been destroyed. What remained was Uncle Howard’s life’s work, distilled into a few automatons that didn’t work properly and a number of half-finished contraptions.

Asher’s skin prickled. He didn’t want Malachi touching any of it.

“What can I do for you, Malachi?”

Pouting, the vampire gave up his stroll. “I’m here to invite you to sup with my family. You can start by giving me your gracious promise that you’ll attend.”

“
Why?
” burst out of Asher before he could clamp down on the inane question. As if Malachi would ever outline his motives.

“My father is in another of his moods. Seeing what his power has wrought will cheer him up.”

He meant seeing Asher restored. He meant Uncle Howard’s painstaking efforts to bind metal and flesh. None of it was Ambrose’s doing, but in a town where only vampires counted as whole citizens, human achievement meant precious little.

“Shouldn’t you be asking Halloran?” Asher deflected.

“I already have.”

“So this is just a courtesy visit.” And all the more astonishing for it.

“Not quite.” Malachi’s smile grew teeth. “Halloran refused. No doubt so you wouldn’t have to… It was very sweet of him—a vampire sticking up for his pet.” His tone suggested that he found it anything but. “Idiotic, of course, but sweet.”

“If he turned you down, then—”

“Oh, I think we both know the influence you have over him,” scoffed Malachi. “You’ll set him straight. I’m expecting you both tonight.”

Nothing was more likely to spoil Asher’s evening. But that wasn’t the sticking point. “What influence? I don’t have…”

Malachi’s leer was as effective as any taunt.

“You heard us,” Asher surmised

“There’s not a vampire in town who didn’t,” Malachi confirmed cheerfully. He pinned a hand to the desk and swung around its broad, untidy surface to peer closer at Asher and the metal scales on his neck. “I would’ve expected it to bother him, you know. That pretty throat all hidden away…but then I suppose you’ve got enough flesh left to find a pulsing vein.”