Jack&Teague [& Katy] stories 1-5

by Amy Lane

  Teague’s vision started going dark with the effort of keeping upright and not coming. He looked at Katy desperately, and she grinned back, naked and blushing. She’d moved so she was on her stomach, her face right next to his thigh, pushing up on her elbows and watching Jack’s technique with avid interest.

  “Katy…you and me…”

  “Got all day, baby. You think what? You don’t get to me right now and I’m going home?” Her hand came out and feathered a touch down the side of his flank. “Got news for you, pappi. I am home.”

  Jack’s hand, the one cupping Teague’s dangling parts, shifted, moved back to caress that sweet spot between places, and Teague looked at Katy’s sweet adoration and came helplessly in Jack’s mouth.

  He collapsed on the bed then, half naked and buzzing from the sex, and Jack climbed up behind him and Katy turned around to face him. She tangled her hands in his shirt and helped him wiggle out of it and Jacky stripped down to nothing and suddenly Teague was…

  Naked.

  Absolutely naked, and completely sheltered, cared for, swaddled in the flesh of his lovers. He found he was shivering, mindlessly, and Jack pulled up the comforter to his shoulders and whispered, “We’re here.”

  “Right,” he said back. “Know that.” He was trying to be tough, trying to let them know he could take care of himself—take care of them, and they didn’t need to worry about him. This was an anomaly, a glitch, a one-time moment of letting his guard down, that’s all.

  But Jack kept stroking his back and Katy, she looked into his eyes and rubbed his chest and his arms, and neither of them seemed to want anything from him, need him in any way but to love him. He found himself sinking into them, letting their comfort seep through his bones. He must have dozed a little, because abruptly he startled. He almost managed to jerk himself right out of bed, but Jack literally held him down, where he shivered some more until Katy pushed her full mouth against his for a kiss.

  He broke away, blinking hazily into the sunlit room. It was now past one in the afternoon, and the most he’d managed to do was shower and eat.

  “Don’t we have something to do?” he asked—a last ditch effort, to make this quick, to avoid the things crushing on his heart before he had another embarrassing episode of raw agonizing emotion.

  “Yeah, baby,” Katy murmured against his mouth. “You gotta keep kissing me—you owe me from yesterday.”

  Her mouth was sweet and soft, and Jack was at his back, hard and warm. He didn’t even stop to think about what he owed her or why, he just kept kissing, again and again and again. His hand found a palm-full of soft breast, and he massaged it and rubbed the nipple with his thumb. She gasped against him and threw her leg over his bare hip, sliding over his erection and taking him deeply inside. Jack was rubbing up against him, his cock slick with pre-come, and sliding between the crease of his thighs even as he rocked slowly, deliriously, inside of Katy.

  Her dark-cocoa colored eyes were wide and full of wonder as he moved inside her, and her lush mouth was parted slightly as she gasped out sexy little sounds of arousal.

  “Katy,” he said in wonder, tracing the tiny little spots along her cheekbone with his thumb, “you’ve got freckles.”

  She blushed, and tried to hide her face in his neck, even as he thrust particularly hard, but he wouldn’t let her. He kissed her again and pulled away, breathing “Oh, Katy, you are sooooo pretty,” through a tight throat.

  He was unprepared for her eyes to grow bright and spill over. “I always hoped you’d notice,” she whispered, and he kissed her again, tears and all, and Jacky continued to thrust along his thighs, harder and tighter and…

  “Go-od, Teague,” Jacky grunted, spilling along Teague’s backside in a hot rush. Teague rolled Katy under him, so he could move faster and so he could see Jacky’s face, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed and the last of his come spurting over his sloppy hand.

  Teague closed his eyes and tried to maintain some control, to keep it slow and good for Katy, but when he opened them again, she was still slick and warm around his body and Jack’s eyes were sleepy and half opened and between the two of them… Oh God… oh Goddess.

  “Jacky’s pretty too,” Katy gasped and then raised her heels up to dig into his ass and speed him on.

  “Oh God yes,” he blurted, and then he was pounding, thrusting, loving the two of them with every part of his soul. He spilled into her and spilled again and again until he buried his face in her neck and groaned to the point of screaming with the force of the pleasure and the pain.

  They wouldn’t let him get up after that. Jack got a washcloth, but Katy just kept him there, pulsing inside of her, while Jack cleaned up the spill on the backs of his thighs. Jacky’s thumb brushed along the scars as they disappeared into the crease of his buttocks and Teague flinched.

  “Don’t,” Jack muttered. “Don’t. Not now. Not after that. Please. Just trust us, okay?”

  Teague sighed and Katy cupped his face with her hands. “You can tell us the story if you want. It might make it not so scary.”

  Teague bit back the impulse to say he was never scared. Okay—maybe he did owe them some honesty, right? “I was hungry,” he said softly, rolling away from her but pulling her up into the crook of his shoulder. Jack slid in next to him and curled into his other side. He reflected that he might be able to survive having the two of them in his bed. He’d never in his life felt so warm.

  “That’s it?” Jack asked carefully.

  “What can I say, Jacky? My father was a sadistic motherfucker. He liked friends just like himself.” He looked carefully at Katy, and then away. “Mikey Daniels was a hanger-on—you remember that.”

  Katy shrugged against him, her fingers drawing firm and absolutely non-ticklish little designs against his ribs. “It doesn’t surprise me, pappi. Someone’s got to laugh at your jokes, even if you’re a sadistic motherfucker.”

  Teague chuffed out some air, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a laugh. “Yeah. Well, this guy thought the broken beer bottle was really fucking funny. I… I bled out at school the next day. Hey—at least the hospital fed me.”

  Jacky stroked his hair away from his face and he realized it needed to be cut. It didn’t stop him from rubbing up against Jack’s hand though.

  “Why didn’t they take you away from him then?” Jack asked, and Teague shrugged.

  “Lucky me—the one time I actually ended up in the hospital for something they could prove was abuse, and somebody else did it.” Teague shrugged. “It was a long time ago, you two. I…I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It still hurts,” Katy told him astutely, and he curled into her, knowing Jacky would curl along his back.

  “Yeah… yeah it does. But I’m happy now. Let’s just… you know. Be happy now?” Something was wrong with that, he thought, a little bit puzzled. That wasn’t something he would have said a month ago. But a lot had happened in that month. He’d learned a long time ago that the world changed, and if you wanted to survive, you had to keep up with it.

  “I’m very happy now,” Jacky murmured thickly against his neck. Teague shifted and turned his head, and was not surprised when Jacky met him in a sweet, hard, deep kiss.

  “Me too,” Katy murmured. Teague closed his eyes between them, and if they looked at each other, had some sort of secret eyeball-to-eyeball conference, he didn’t want to know about it.

  He’d just work on being happy now.

  Cory

  A Fellow Sufferer

  I worked very hard to be productive that day, but the men weren’t going to let me do much out of bed. It sort of irritated me, really, considering the fact that Bracken had been the one who was actually bleeding during the fight. However, Green had stroked his sidhe-pale skin and given Bracken’s neck a sensual kiss, and pronounced Lambent’s work top notch. Which meant, I guess, that my meltdown trumped Brack’s bullet wound, and don’t think that didn’t piss me off.

  The third time I
tried to sneak out to at least go see how our captive werewolves were doing, Arturo stopped me at the door and ordered me back inside and back to a sleeping Nicky. Bracken and Green were taking care of it, he assured me, and I wasn’t doing anybody any good by doubting their abilities.

  “It’s not that I doubt their abilities,” I sniffed as Nicky wrapped his arms around me and chuckled, “it’s just that I feel sort of responsible. I mean, wasn’t I the one who thought this was such a swimming idea?”

  “We all did,” Nicky murmured. “Which means our brains can all simultaneously take a giant crap on occasion. It’s kind of comforting, really.”

  I glared at him. “You are so weird.”

  Nicky shook his rust-colored hair from his eyes and did his best Scar impression. “You have no idea,” and then he giggled, his freckled cheeks squinching appealingly. I socked him in the arm and grabbed a paperback book from the end table and immersed myself in the world of Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden. Goddess, I loved that guy, but I couldn’t imagine how he accomplished everything he did with no sex to fuel his magic. Or his soul.

  But I conceded to everyone’s wishes, and took a day off. It felt decadent and fattening, but sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. I mean, who needs chicken soup for the soul when you’ve got a big chocolate cream pie, right?

  Which is how it came to be two in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. Finally, finally, I managed to sneak away (from Bracken this time, who was sleeping in our bed—Green was back on duty in his own) and knit. I was still working on Bracken’s Christmas present, and the deadline was getting nearer and nearer.

  So I was there in the living room when Teague came tiptoeing in, wearing the same sort of guilt on his face that I was wearing on mine.

  We met eyes and laughed.

  “Jacky snores,” he said defensively, and I shrugged.

  “I’ve got no other reason other than that I needed some space,” I told him mildly. It takes a while to realize that treating yourself well also includes being by yourself sometimes. “Want some cookies?” I gestured to the almost full plate next to me. Grace had baked up another batch, just for Teague, mostly because I asked her to. Half the hill had heard that scream last night, and the other half knew about it now. He might never know that we knew about his pain, but we’d do our damnedest to make sure he never felt it again.

  Teague shrugged as though he hadn’t been staring at the plate with covetous eyes, and took one, then sat down at the opposite end of the couch to eat it. “How’re the werewolves?” he asked with a full mouth.

  I stood and walked to the refrigerator for a bottle of chocolate milk for him. “They’re locked in the crazy-vampire room,” I told him, dropping the bottle in front of him and moving the plate of cookies as well. My stomach was still all porcupiney from that horrible roller-coaster drop of knowing Bracken and Nicky were in danger, Bracken’s wound, and then seeing Teague, locked in a death battle with five other werewolves. I’d eat cookies later. I wanted to recoup now.

  “That’s it?” Teague asked, taking a swig of milk. “You just locked them in a room?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a steel vault with a door a foot thick. We gave them some food and a bedpan.” And water, milk, soda, some pillows, blankets, a mattress, clean clothes, yadda yadda yadda. We didn’t want prisoners--we just didn’t want to have to fuck with them when we were closer to killing them in irritation instead of doing something productive. “Don’t worry—we’ll let them out tomorrow. Today, I think everybody was just too pissed off to deal with them. Tomorrow, we’ll do what we planned to do in the first place.”

  Teague took another cookie as though he wasn’t aware he as doing it. “Negotiate?”

  I sat back in my couch corner and nodded. “Damned straight. Here’s hoping Darwin was right and the smartest survived, you think?”

  Teague grimaced, but he smiled a little too.

  I picked up my knitting—I was at the mindless part now, where I just churned out a bunch of tiny, perfect (I hoped) stitches until I got to the waist. Top-down construction—it had plusses and minuses, like everything else. We sat in silence for a moment, and then I dared to ask.

  “You going to be okay, Teague?”

  He looked away, thinking about the question carefully for a minute. Then he met my eyes directly, and nodded. “As long as Jacky doesn’t make any more runs with me, I think I’ll be fine.”

  Well, I can’t say I agreed with him, but I can’t say I blamed him, either. Jacky would survive. The difficulty was to make sure Teague would too.

  “Good,” is what I said. “We were worried about you.”

  He couldn’t meet my eyes. “Yeah. Well. I guess it was a helluva way to celebrate bad-shit day, right?”

  That made me wince. “I never wanted to pull you into our bad shit. You have no idea how bad I feel about that.”

  Teague shook his head seriously. “Lady Cory—on your worst day, your bad shit is still some of the best shit to happen to me. Almost.”

  Except for two lovers who would die for him. Almost indeed.

  “Hey—you want to watch something? We’ve got all seven seasons of Buffy? All four so far of Supernatural? Name your show!”

  Teague grinned. I could tell he liked Supernatural. The tall guy must have reminded him of Jacky. “Season one, Supernatural?” he asked, and I grinned back.

  “The pilot it is.”

  I started the television and sat in the quiet and knit. Soon I’d slip back into my bedroom with Bracken and nuzzle his perfect body while he slept, but for now, I was happy in my own skin. Watching Teague wipe out a plate of cookies, I couldn’t help wonder if maybe he was too.

  Ten minutes in, Mario wandered into the living room, looking for cookies. He and Teague sat on the couch, and the world was quiet for a little while. Now wasn’t that a change?

  Becoming

  By

  Amy Lane

  The 5th Jack & Teague (& Katy) story

  Prologue

  Jack

  Teague wasn’t the only one who had bad dreams—at least not this night.

  Two days after the ‘Werewolf Debacle’ (as Jack was starting to think of it) he lay beside his lovers. He should have been hearing their breathing in the dark, but instead he was sweating, trying to recapture the dream as it had ripped apart his night. Jack had been a big reader as a kid, and much of his life had been spent in stories of knights and ladies, quests and battles, silly idealistic bloodshed for a sheltered, bloodless boy. This dream had been just like them. He remembered bold lines and fairy tale colors—just like a comic book or a kid’s story. And just like a comic book or a kid’s story, the movements had been broad and stylized—it hadn’t looked real at all, but the beautiful parts had been more beautiful and the scary parts had been terrifying…

  Unlike in real life, when she was a rather plain college student, Lady Cory was very beautiful in the dream. Her hair was a glorious scarlet waterfall and her eyes flashed green/brown fire. There were no freckles to make her average, and her cheekbones seemed to have moved up and gotten a little narrower. The results were lovely and terrible and terrifying—there was nothing of the friendly, frightening human being that Jack had been humanly jealous of. In her place was an inhumanly beautiful, cold and bloodless monarch, the kind that men would die for and women would kill to serve.

  Teague stood before her—wearing armor polished to a sheen, of course. He held his helmet under his arm, and was kneeling on one knee with his head bent forward in servitude.

  “I give to thee, my Lady, all that is in my power...” Not Teague’s words in real life, of course, but Jack could see the sentiment was real. The Lady could too, and she bent her head and replied. Her words were humble—but her face was haughty and indifferent and Jack felt a blaze of anger in the dream because he knew—just knew—that bitch had no idea what it was she was being offered.

  “Your sacrifice is unnecessary, Sir Knight. You serve us well. Be happy, go home to your love
rs. Be well.”

  Of course Teague wouldn’t just let that stand, now would he? He’d have to go and do the noble goddamned thing and make her accept what he was offering.

  Jack watched in horror as Teague turned the sword inward, and-- grabbing it by the blade-- thrust it into his chest. (Of course, in real life, this would be impossible since he was wearing two tons of armor, but just for Jack’s dream, because he was horrified and freaked out, that fucking sword slid in like the steel plating was butter.) And the damned Lady of the house—she did nothing. She did jack-fucking-diddly-shit as Teague reached inside that wreckage of metal and chest cavity and pulled out his still beating heart.

  In the dream, Jack started to scream—one of those terrible screams that you have when you’re asleep, where your mouth is open and your chest is working like a bellows but no sound comes out. Teague looked at him with that beautiful fuck-me grin and winked. When he spoke, blood frothed and bubbled from between his lips.

  “Don’t worry, Jacky. There’ll be enough for you when she’s done.”

  But the Lady Cory was gnawing on that thing, flashes of scarlet blood coating her cheeks and dribbling down her chin, and Jack was pretty damn sure there was going to be nothing left.

  Jack’s eyes opened in the dark and his heart—still securely in his chest, unlike Teague’s dream heart—hammered blood in his ears.

  He turned to Teague, his bantam, wiry body back-spooning into Jack’s arms, just in time for Teague to gasp like a swimmer who’d been under for too long. He struggled to sit up, making what sounded like suppressed screams in his throat, and Jack tightened his embrace and forced him to lie down.

  After a few minutes Teague’s body relaxed, and he turned away from Katy who was soundly asleep and let Jack kiss his forehead and nuzzle his cheek. As his breathing calmed down and his terrible shivers stopped, Jack spoke, his voice startling in the dark.