Waking the Dead (9 page)
John eased Nick’s jeans open and down, going to his knees to finish the job. Nick cooperated with him without initiating a single movement, though from the breathy, husky gasps escaping his lips, that was only through an effort of will.
John traced the strong, supple curve of Nick’s instep and watched Nick’s toes curl hard from the fleeting touch.
He couldn’t resist dragging his lips up along Nick’s thigh, or pressing them briefly to the sweet spot just beneath the head of Nick’s cock. John knew he’d linger too long if he let himself, though, so he got to his feet and kissed Nick again, the feel of all that bare skin against his own enough to make him ache with need.
“Let’s get you onto the bed, love,” he said, urging Nick to move with hands that trembled. It only took a few moments to pull down the covers -- only hastily pulled up that morning anyway -- and to push Nick, in all his naked glory, down onto the mattress. “God, I want you.” He climbed onto the bed as well, knelt beside Nick, and ran a hand along his skin, feeling bone and muscle and the strength that never failed to surprise him.
“Good thing I’m right here.” Nick smiled, reached for John’s cock, wrapped his hand around it, and began stroking.
John shuddered and fumbled for the bottle of lube that was tucked between the bed frame and the mattress. “
Christ
. I won’t last long enough to fuck you if you keep that up.”
“Oh, should I stop?” Innocently, Nick opened his hand, and John took the opportunity to shove the bottle of lube into it.
“Don’t stop; just make good use of that.”
He watched, unusually aware of the thudding of his heart in his chest, as Nick’s hand spread the slick, cool liquid along the length of his erection, fingers and thumb teasing at the head until he moaned despite himself.
“When you sound like that, I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t let you do to me,” Nick said, sounding as if he meant it.
John watched Nick’s fingers move in small circles, pressing down lightly, and fought down the need to put his hand over Nick’s and shape it to a tunnel he could fuck. Nick would let him, but it wasn’t what he’d asked for, and John loved giving Nick what he wanted, in bed and out of it, too much to deny them both a greater pleasure, no matter how good this felt.
He pushed Nick’s hand away and picked up the lube himself. “Lie back, then, because I’m going to do plenty.”
Nick sprawled out on the bed, knees up and spread wide. Without taking his gaze away from John, he ran his fingers down his thighs and over his flat stomach, teasing himself with touches that skirted the soft swell of his balls and the flushed, dark hardness of his cock.
“I don’t have the words to tell you how you look doing that,” John said to him, his voice barely a whisper. He let the lube pour out of the bottle over his fingers, heedless of the drips, and, tossing the bottle aside, moved to kneel between Nick’s legs. “And I’m not sure I even need to give you my fingers when you’re this ready for my cock, but I’m going to anyway, just to watch your face.”
He pushed two fingers into Nick, carefully and slowly enough to rob the action of any force, but pressing deep inside, and felt Nick’s body ease open for him, welcoming, demanding.
“God, yes,” Nick said thickly. “Again.”
John looked his fill at Nick’s face, contorted with pleasure now, his green eyes cloudy, half-closed, and then bent to suck at the tip of Nick’s cock, the tang of fluid sharp against his tongue. His fingers thrust again and again, too slowly to be enough for Nick, but he wasn’t inclined to rush this.
Nick groaned, the sound long and low, and lifted his hips to meet the next thrust, and then the next. His sense of rhythm was shaky at best, but his cock was hard as it moved in John’s mouth and his body clenched around John’s fingers. “Fuck,” he whispered, his voice breaking on the single syllable. “Fuck me.”
“Soon,” John told him, pulling back to speak and then applying his attention to Nick’s balls. He mouthed them wetly as he slid his fingers into Nick again, so slowly that Nick trembled and gasped. “Is that good?”
“Yes.” Nick had a handful of sheet fisted in his hand. “Yes, God.”
Nick
smelled
incredible -- of salt and wind and the cheap herbal shampoo he bought six bottles at a time from the big chemist’s on
“I could come just watching you like this,” John said, his words less of an exaggeration than they sounded. Nick was close to losing every shred of control, close to begging, and John wasn’t used to that, because keeping Nick waiting just wasn’t something he did that often.
Maybe he should make it something he did a lot, because Nick was just so fucking beautiful like this, spread out, his skin glowing and damp with sweat, the heat and need pouring off him so that John could taste it with every breath he took. If it’d been him lying there, hurting with the need to be filled and taken and fucked, John wasn’t sure he could have done it, but Nick was trying so hard to be patient…
“Don’t,” Nick managed to say, the single word carrying with it a weight of love and desperation. “In me, come
in
me --
John
--”
“Oh, God, like I can say no to you,” John muttered. He eased his fingers free, which drew a wail of loss and anticipation combined from Nick, and replaced them with the head of his cock. He nudged against the slick, tight opening, helped by the demanding tilt up of Nick’s hips.
“Please.” Nick clutched at John’s arse, pulling him closer. “Please, please…” That was begging, sure as John had ever heard it, and the sound of it snapped whatever self-control he’d been clinging to. He plunged into Nick, who moaned, cock trapped between them giving a warning throb.
Christ, the heat of him was like something in a dream, only this was reality, with Nick’s hands sliding around to his hip bones, tracing them with a featherlight touch of his thumbs.
“Don’t stop,” Nick said. He looked blissful now, though the tightness in his jaw still hinted at his arousal. He looked like a man who’d been given everything he ever wanted, which was just how John was feeling.
He pulled back a bit and thrust in again, going about as deep as he could in this position. There was nothing like it -- he’d had a lot of sex before Nick had come into his life, and it had felt good -- hell, there’d been times it had felt great. But none of it had ever felt like it did with Nick, who gasped his name and moved with him.
John paused, trying to get some of his control back, and Nick whimpered and lifted his hips, fucking himself on John’s cock as best he could.
Oh, the hell with it. Nick wasn’t going to last much longer, and there was a fine line between spinning out pleasure and sheer, bloody torture. He moved one of Nick’s hands from his hip to Nick’s cock in an unspoken signal that he was done teasing them both.
He could feel his climax building inexorably as he began to fuck Nick in good earnest, with all his strength behind each thrust. Nick gave him one startled look and then his eyes slid closed, a look of intense concentration on his face. John felt the room blur, nothing real but Nick under him, around him, their hands bruise-tight on each other, both of them grunting with the effort of sustaining the pace John had set. Fuck, Nick was so tight around him, so slick and tight, and --
“
Josh
.”
John was on his own now. Nick had gone still, his eyes open, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, a frown creasing his forehead, his hands by his sides.
John came because he was on the brink and that last long, driving slam into Nick had triggered it, a chain reaction he was unable to stop, but he couldn’t say it was enjoyable, not when he was staring down at a Nick, who was there in body only.
He pulled out of Nick, feeling as if his teeth had been set on edge, every nerve screaming with disappointment, but if his body felt cheated, his thoughts were all of Nick. He knelt beside him and stroked Nick’s face with the palm of his hand. Nick’s skin was cool and damp to the touch. “Nick? Nick, love?”
There was no response.
Chapter Eight
“Are you cold?” Josh asked, glancing at Caitrin as they headed down toward the caves. It hadn’t taken much to convince him to go along, really; he actually felt better about going now that he knew Nick hadn’t seen the slightest hint of a ghost. The idea of being in a place where there
were
ghosts, only he couldn’t see them, had no clue what they were up to, was enough to give him goose bumps. Now, the caves were just an interesting place to explore, and he was definitely drawn to Caitrin. If she wanted to spend time with him, good. If she wanted to spend time with him somewhere private, even better.
“No.” Caitrin grinned. “Unless you’re asking because you’re going to gallantly offer me your jacket to keep me warm, in which case I might change my answer.”
Josh
had
been thinking about offering, because the sweater she was wearing didn’t look as warm as the one she’d had with her the night before. “You mean you’d lie to me?” he asked, splaying one hand across his chest. “I’m wounded.”
Caitrin gave him a gentle shove. “Don’t lie to
me
. Look, there they are.” She pointed toward the sea where some rocky outcroppings sprang up. Josh could see at least one entrance to what must be a cave.
“They’re not haunted,” Josh told her.
“Your brother might not think so, but the people who’ve grown up on this island know otherwise. Why else would that story have been passed on for generations?”
“Because that’s what people do.” The sand was hard-packed under their feet, stretching out for a hundred yards or so -- the tide had been out for hours, but now it looked like it was starting to come back in. Josh caught a faint whiff of something unpleasant, dark and dead-fishy.
He caught a flash of irritation from Caitrin, but before he had time to process the thought, he was given the reality of speech, the emotion echoed in her words. “Listen, you! If you’re calling my people liars, making up stories to --”
“I’m not,” he said, startled by her vehemence but more by the perfect mirroring of her thoughts; most people filtered out a large part of their emotions, but Caitrin seemed to say what she thought, for the most part.
Which explained both why she got into so many arguments with her mother and why she wasn’t seeing anyone, he guessed.
“I’m not,” he repeated. “I’m just saying that if Nick couldn’t feel anything --”
“Do you really believe he can do that?” she asked bluntly. “I know Uncle John does, and I’ve heard people talking about some pretty weird things that happened when Uncle Nick first came here, but I’ve always… oh, I don’t know. I believe
he
believes it, but me…” She shrugged. “I’m not a kid.”
“So why do you think the cave’s haunted then?” Josh said, the words coming out with more of an edge than he’d intended because he knew she was wrong. “God, how illogical is that?”
“Why would people have talked about it for all these years if there was no truth to it at all?” Caitrin looked annoyed.
“I know he can see ghosts,” John snapped, frustrated that someone who seemed to be fairly bright was being so stubborn about this one subject, “because I can do it, too!” Caitrin’s expression wavered, and Josh backpedaled immediately. “I mean, I can’t see ghosts.”
“Why would you say it, then? Just to make a point?” Caitrin was beautiful when angry, there was no arguing that.
“I can hear people’s thoughts.” He said it quickly, before he could talk himself out of it. It wasn’t like it really mattered what she thought of him, did it? He wouldn’t be here for long, and then he’d be a thousand miles away.
Caitrin frowned skeptically. “You can hear people’s thoughts.”
“Yeah.”
“You can hear my thoughts?”
“Yeah.” Josh wished they’d never started this conversation -- why couldn’t they have just gone into the caves, done a little bit of exploring, maybe made out for a while, and then gone home for the night? Well, him to John and Nick’s home, obviously, and Caitrin to her own.
“You can hear everything I think? Or just some things?” Caitrin was smiling now, like she thought he was just messing around. Maybe it was better that way.
Josh decided to go along with it. “Not everything.”
“Can you tell what I’m thinking now?” Caitrin stepped close to him, so close that she was pressed right up against him, and raised herself up onto her toes so she could lean in and whisper in his ear. “Can you, Josh?”
His body thought it could and started to respond eagerly right away. He dared to put a hand at her waist, steadying her, and her lips brushed against his ear.
Then she was gone, whirling away and running toward the nearest cave. “Come on, then!”
In the few seconds it took him to recover from the effects of the fleeting touch of her lips, Caitrin managed to get far enough ahead that he had to run full out to catch up, which took care of explaining away the flush on his face and quieted down the interested reaction in his jeans.
It also gave him time to decide to drop the subject; she didn’t believe him, and that was really for the best.
They arrived at the first cave, panting and grinning at each other, exhilarated by the run and then peered inside. “It’s dark,” Josh said dubiously.
Caitrin had a purse, the way every girl he’d ever met did. Hers was a brightly embroidered Hessian bag, slung across her body to bump against her hip, and large enough to carry just about anything. She reached in and pulled out a flashlight with an air of triumph. “Fresh batteries. We should be able to explore all of the caves with this.”
One light against the inky darkness didn’t seem like much to Josh, but it was better than nothing. He waved his hand. “After you.”
“Well, aren’t you the gentleman.”
