Celestial Seductions: The Complete Series: An MM Gay Paranormal Mpreg Romance Collection

by Odin Nightshade

  Marcus looked up, finally meeting his eyes, and repeated, “Have you changed your mind?”

  Isaac sighed again, rubbing his hands together as if they were sore from a hard day's labor. “I haven't,” he confessed. “I can't. I need you here as much as possible; you wouldn't be contactable during a day of auditions, and there's nothing either of us can do about that.”

  “You've never needed me during the day before,” Marcus protested. “Not once.”

  “It's the possibility,” Isaac said. “The risk.”

  “You know,” said Marcus, still a little frosty, “I might have an easier time agreeing with you if I had the faintest idea what we were talking about.”

  The older man shook his head, with a prematurely gray lock of hair falling in front of his eyes. “You know I can't tell you that. We've discussed this before. Everything I can tell you, I already have.”

  Marcus opened his mouth to argue, but they were both interrupted by the same thing – the sound of Marcus's cell phone, loud and obnoxious in his pocket. It felt slightly comic, and it took both of them out of the argument for a second, Isaac fighting a smirk off the corners of his handsome, cut lips.

  “Give me a minute,” said Marcus, reaching to answer the call. “Hello?”

  “Marcus,” said the voice, sing-song and confident. It took him a moment to place it, after having been out of the audition loop for a couple of weeks, but soon the puzzle was solved on his behalf. “Hey. It's Jack.”

  “Jack!” said Marcus, raising his eyebrows at Isaac – one minute? – and crossing to the window to look out of it as they spoke, as if expecting to look down and see him out there, waiting. “Hey. Long time no talk. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, it's about that long time, no talk. Where've you been, dude? Charles said something about a new job, but…? I haven't seen your name on any call sheets.”

  “Oh, right,” said Marcus, shaking his head though Jack couldn't see it. At the very least, Charles hadn't gone around telling everybody he was a prostitute now. He wouldn't have been at all surprised if that had happened. “No, no; not a job like that. Different kind of job. I'm a caretaker.”

  “Like… of a building?”

  “Of a person.”

  He could practically hear the incredulity in Jack's voice. “That's pretty different from acting, though. You're not giving it a shot anymore? You could make it, man.”

  The positivity was a nice change from Isaac's blunt pragmatism, and he couldn't help but be charmed by it. “That's very sweet, Jack.”

  “It's just true. Besides, we all miss you down here. We miss your calming presence chanting your scripts before call.”

  “I appreciate the sarcasm,” he said, but he was grinning. He'd forgotten how much he liked Jack, and many of the others; he'd been so absorbed by Isaac recently that it had completely slipped his mind to keep up with his friends. Even Charles had only had a few brief moments of contact, when it occurred to him. He didn't want anybody to think he'd died or gone missing, after all.

  Even if he had gone missing, in a sense. Stuck in a penthouse he wasn't permitted to leave.

  Jack laughed, in any case, and changed his tone. “So, listen. I actually really have been missing you, and it reminded me I really ought to ask you to have dinner sometime, or something. I've been meaning to, and it'd suck to miss out, right?”

  “Right,” he said, pulse lifting at the thought of this. Jack's flirtations had all been real, Marcus hadn't imagined them. “I'd love that, Jack. It's just...”

  He glanced over at Isaac, attempting to give him some kind of desperate, begging look. Of course Isaac couldn't hear what he was talking about, but maybe he'd be able to pick it up from the context. Let me go. Let me go.

  Isaac shook his head just as Jack said, “It's just…?”

  “I'm kind of tied up with work,” he said, hating himself for doing so. “It's a great job, but this guy needs me here on call literally 24/7. I can't leave.”

  “It's just dinner, M. Few hours tops. Drinks after...”

  He couldn't help but melt a little at the nickname, peering back at Isaac. He seemed to be thinking about something.

  “I know. I'm sorry. It's just-”

  Isaac waved at him, miming that he should lift the receiver down.

  Well, alright then. “One second, Jack. Sorry.”

  The older man seemed reluctant, but after a brief hand gesture to get himself going, he made what sounded like a reasonable offer. “Bring him here, whoever it is.”

  “...Are you serious?”

  “We have the chefs in,” Isaac reasoned. “I've got the movie screening room opposite the gym. You can take that. So long as you're on call for me here, it's alright. I can live with that; that's a compromise. Okay?”

  Marcus met his eyes for a few moments, searching for the catch. When none surfaced, he cleared his throat and lifted the phone again, still not feeling entirely certain about this. It was probably about to sound kind of weird. “Hey, Jack. New suggestion.”

  “Shoot.”

  “He says you're welcome to come here.”

  “To his caretaking place…?”

  “It's a penthouse,” Marcus admitted, his voice deliberately tempting – but the words he was using alone could have done the trick. “In Tribeca.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “I mean… alright. What's the address?”

  He delivered it with a grin, and it didn't slide off his face for the rest of the phone call. Though he'd spent most of his time here lusting after Isaac, he'd clearly failed to realize the obvious fact of his own loneliness. Having Jack come here would be good for him. It would give him a break from the monotony of his own company, and Isaac's deliberate distance. He was excited. “So, you'll come?”

  “We're going to say… tomorrow at 8pm. Right?”

  “Make it 7pm?” Marcus suggested. “My employer needs everyone out by 10pm, so… should give us more time. There are chefs here – no need to bring anything.”

  “Sounds great. Jesus, Marcus. What's your life like now?”

  “Amazing,” he admitted, without thinking. With the promise of this interaction in place, he did feel lucky once again. He did feel amazing. “You'll see. I'll see you tomorrow, then, I guess?”

  “Sure. Looking forward to it. Wear something nice, right?”

  “I will. I look forward to it too. See you then.”

  He hung up his cell with a grin, slipping it back into his pocket and utterly failing at attempting to look calm and collected. Isaac had one brow raised coolly as he returned to the table, his lips quirked up in a smile that betrayed his amusement, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

  “Was that your mom?”

  Marcus snorted at the joke, pulling his water back over towards himself. “God, I hope not.”

  Isaac grinned, eyes down on the plate. “Who, really?”

  “One of my actor friends,” Marcus told him. “This guy I always had a… well. Not a thing with, per se? But he was always kind of touchy-feely. I figured he was either a flirt with everybody or I was reading him wrong, but… I guess not.”

  “Well, that's good.”

  There were a few moments of silence before Isaac spoke up again.

  “You know, you're not allowed to have sex after 7:30pm in this house.”

  Marcus looked up, ready for an all-guns-blazing argument again, but thankfully realized just in time that Isaac was grinning down at his plate, in no way serious.

  “I hate you,” he said, swatting at him from across the table, and completely missing. “You scare the shit out of me. I can never tell if you're serious or not.”

  “Oh, you'll know when I'm serious,” Isaac insisted, going back to his omelet. “I can promise you that.”

  Marcus thought back to the moment Isaac kissed him, pressed up hard against the vault wall, and tried to ignore the flash of red that burned across the back of his neck and his ears. Not now, brain. In fact, not ever.

  Ch
apter Eight

  When the night in question finally arrived, Marcus was as close to a nervous wreck as it was possible to be – perhaps even more so than he had been to turn up for this interview in the first place. He wasn't sure why that was. As hot as Jack undoubtedly was, and as much as he was looking forward to his company, Jack wasn't someone whose opinion had ever seriously mattered to him, and if things didn't turn out, it wouldn't be a huge burden.

  Part of him wondered if it was the risk that Jack would just identify that what was going on here with Isaac was incredibly weird. If somebody else confirmed it, after all, then he'd have no recourse for ignoring it anymore.

  Besides, Jack was sure to talk about what he saw here. It seemed vitally important to Marcus that he talked in a very positive way, not just about Marcus himself, but about the entire setup. About the penthouse – about Isaac.

  Isaac was surprisingly even about the whole thing, even checking the way Marcus looked once Jack was on his way up in the elevator. “Very handsome,” he judged, smoothing something-or-other that Marcus hadn't seen away from his shoulder. “He won't be able to resist, I'm sure. I'll… make myself sparse, I suppose.”

  “Not in your own home,” Marcus insisted. “You're not going to eat with us?”

  “I'd rather stick pins in my eyes,” Isaac said, dry-voiced and apparently serious. “Present company excluded, the vast majority of young male actors I've met have been completely intolerable. From the way you've described him, I don't think I'd get on with this Jack of yours.”

  “He's not my Jack,” Marcus insisted, full of blushes as the elevator arrived on their floor. He headed to the door. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck,” Isaac consented, bowing his head at him warmly as he made his way out of the corridor and into one of his many comfortable rooms.

  Jack was personable, when he arrived, but not as handsome as Marcus remembered. Was it unkind to think so? Perhaps – but compared to Isaac's 30-year-old chiseled features and well-cut suits, Jack seemed like a young boy in comparison. A jock.

  It didn't help that he wrinkled his nose at the idea of what the chef was preparing. “Sounds kind of… you know. Over-formal. You don't just want to order pizza in, or something?”

  It was with a sizable amount of guilt that Marcus asked if it was possible that these meals be frozen for him to eat tomorrow, and some pizza be brought in instead. The chef understood, and she was more than happy to take over ordering for him, but it didn't stop the crushing feeling in his stomach. He didn't think it'd be physically possible for him to refuse a meal cooked by a home chef when he was a guest in someone else's home – especially not when the food was already nearly done.

  Jack, however, seemed to see no problem with it. He also saw no problem with casually announcing that it was good that they were here instead of out at a restaurant. “Way cheaper date,” was the way he described it.

  It was like the charismatic and charming man on the phone and in those flirty, mid-audition moments had a twin brother, and was trying to get him laid instead. Jack was aloof and had an unkind sense of humor, laughing at things in the movie – which played over their conversation – which were not meant to be funny. He answered all of Marcus's polite questions about how he was doing, and how his career was going, and asked none of Marcus himself.

  He'd been excited for this, and it had turned out to be a washout. He'd pushed at Isaac's boundaries and wheedled this favor out of him, allowing a stranger to come into his home – and this was what it was for?

  Frankly, he felt disillusioned. No matter how hard he kept trying to engage with the date and listen to Jack's endless self-centered rants, all he wanted to do was check his watch and urge the time on to 10pm, when he could finally see him out and go back to Isaac's company.

  Things weren't technically romantic between them, because Isaac didn't want them to be. He knew that. All the same, he couldn't help but long for the chemistry and the back-and-forth of his evenings spent with the older man.

  Apparently, however, Jack had sorely misinterpreted his intentions as he checked his watch. He grinned, so broad that it turned his handsome face into a caricature of itself. It could have starred in a cartoon about the dangers of arrogance. He could imagine it in the paper tomorrow.

  “Look,” he said. “If you're worried about missing this 10pm deadline, we can start right now. You really don't have to be coy about it.”

  “Oh,” said Marcus, his cheeks filling up with red. Honestly, after how horrendous Jack's company had been, he was no longer really interested in sleeping with him. He had figured it'd be easy to play off that he didn't sleep with anyone on the first date, and usher him out like that – no harm, no foul. As it turned out, however, sex seemed to be the primary thing on Jack's mind. He had already started inching towards Marcus, as though his answer was a foregone conclusion.

  Marcus hated that more than all his other bad behavior combined.

  He lifted a hand, smiling weakly to try and take the head off the tension. “Oh, honestly; I'm… I don't think we should. First date...”

  “Date?” Jack said. “Or just a booty call?”

  Did people even still say booty call in 2016? Really? He shook his head, shrinking back against the wall. “I'm sorry if we've had crossed wires, but… you know, you said dinner, so I assumed you meant dinner and not a hookup, and I'd really kind of rather-”

  “Come on. We've been looking at each other in the audition corridors for weeks. I know what you want.”

  “I really just want to finish this pizza and the movie, then I'm probably going to go to bed. Really, I'm not in the mood...”

  “I can put you in the mood,” he said, low-voiced and possibly attempting to be seductive, as he pulled his shirt off over his head. Either that or he was soothing Marcus – talking him into sedation so he'd be an easier prey. “I'm good at this. Just – c'mon, take your shirt of...”

  Marcus had been intending on shoving him back, but in reality he never got there. Half a beat after Jack's hand came near him, a vicious roar came from the doorway of the room – the kind of noise you heard from a wild animal. Both their heads whipped over to look, half-expecting one of the movie surround sound speakers to have fallen and tricked their minds.

  Instead, however, a wild panther stood in the doorway, large and muscular. Its dark fur glistened under the low lighting of the movie room, eyes fresh and furious.

  “Holy shit,” said Jack – which was about all he had time to say before the panther leaped forward and separated him from Marcus.

  In one gut-wrenching move, it ripped the hand that had pulled at Marcus's shirt right off his body; blood gushed from the open wound with more force than Marcus had ever imagined there would be when he heard about blood pressure and circulation. Jack's screams were enough to push him into action, scampering away from the corner of the room where Jack was being ravaged – but the movie room door was already sealed shut, and no amount of banging on it yielded any reward.

  “Please help me,” he begged, shouting through the door. He hadn't yet had time to wonder where in god's name a panther had come from in central New York – only to panic for his life. “Isaac! Please, please. Please help me.”

  But no answer came, and pulling on the door handle did not help. Terrified that the animal would soon turn on him, and haunted by the sound of Jack's raw screams behind him, he moved to a different part of the wall in the hopes that it would disturb another room – maybe alert Isaac to his plight.

  “Please!”

  In shoving this wall, however, he made a mistake. He knocked into the shelves that lined most of the wall as he tried to batter it with his shoulder and his fists, and in doing so dislodged a marble bust that he had never seen before, balanced precariously on the top shelf. When it fell, he barely felt the impact – just remembered the world spinning around him as he dropped to the floor, vision fading out to black.

  I'm going to die, he thought, as he lost his consciousness. And t
here was no evidence his logical mind had to combat that with. In the brief moments of wakefulness he had left, he made the mistake of glancing over to Jack's corner.

  Needless to say, it was the panther's corner now.

  Chapter Nine

  Sometime in the night, drifting in and out of consciousness, Marcus realized that the panther had come to sit with him. Perhaps it had noticed he was injured and saw no need to attack, or perhaps it was sated after killing Jack; either way, it was placid as it laid beside him, identifiable as a living creature only by the rise and fall of its ribcage, and the light in its eyes.

  Was he dreaming? He didn't think so, but he must be. When he made a sound of fear, involuntary and rather too loud, the panther lifted its head to look at him, with serious gray eyes that were unmistakably familiar.

  Unmistakably Isaac's.

  The panther lifted his great head and shuffled closer, choosing instead to rest it against Marcus's chest, one great paw in gentle contact with the fabric of his shirt.

  It had to be a dream, of course. It had to be – but somehow, Marcus knew full well that he was really awake.

  When he woke properly in the morning, it was in slightly different circumstances.

  Remembering the interruption in his sleep, and the gentle contact with that wild creature that had come so close to hurting him – and probably killed his date – he felt the weight of something against his chest, and his eyes flew open to look.

  It wasn't a panther. It was Isaac, and those eyes he'd recognized so easily looked back up at him with a baleful look.

  “Do you understand now?” he asked, voice soft with something that sounded remarkably like fear, if not for the fact that it came from Isaac's mouth. Up until now, Marcus hadn't believed Isaac to be capable of fear. “The chains. The secrets. The lack of answers. All for this.”

  Marcus swallowed, head aching and still full of panic. The room smelled faintly of copper and iron – like blood. “Jack…?”

  Isaac's eyes dropped. He didn't need to say a word.