by Kayleigh Sky
“I’m insulted.”
Otto’s gaze snapped up and locked on Jessa. His breath lodged in his throat. Jessa leaned against the doorframe, strands of wet hair clinging to his broad shoulders and chest. His position forced a gorgeous curve on his body as his waist dipped in and sloped back out into an angular hip. His dick dangled between his legs, rosy pink from his bath. Damn, he was hot. Otto tried to imagine him frail and sickly but came up blank. Jessa was strong. Stronger than Otto would ever be. Maybe in every way.
“Never,” Otto murmured. You are a treasure. “I’d never insult you.”
“You gave up a bath with me to read your pamphlet?”
“A hundred-dollar pamphlet, and you’re still here.”
“I could shun you.”
Otto laughed. “I repent.”
A smile brightened Jessa’s face. Even from across the room his dimples flashed. With a slight grunt he pushed off the doorframe and came across the room. Otto swung his feet off the bed and cupped Jessa’s hips. His skin was warm and smooth, his scent fresh and soapy. Under Otto’s gaze, Jessa’s dick twitched, and he bopped his hips. “Taste it.”
Otto chuckled. “Well, aren’t you bold.”
Whatever happened to his shy, flower-loving baby prince?
He took in the expanse of fair, freckled skin to glowing eyes. That wasn’t human. It scared Otto for a moment. The intensity in the gaze, the burning of emotions Otto knew to steer clear of.
Soon. Soon this would be over.
He leaned in, resting his lips against the skin under Jessa’s belly button. That was all at first—feeling his skin contract, the muscles underneath tightening. He inhaled. Would he ever forget the sweet fragrance that was all Jessa? Flowers and spice and musk.
Oh God.
Just sex. That’s all.
His life since Maisie’s murder had led him here, and he was close to the killer. Murky images tickled his brain. He had to stay strong. Get justice. Revenge. Every fiber of his being burned for it. For Maisie. To make the drainers pay.
Otto lifted his gaze.
Jessa bit his lip, a slight frown furrowing his forehead.
Otto tugged on him, leaning back until they lay on the bed, Jessa on top of him. Slowly, a glassy lust replaced the worry that had come into Jessa’s eyes.
Please don’t let him say it.
“I love you,” Jessa whispered.
“You can’t.”
“But I do.” His voice was as soft as his breath.
Otto held his face, bringing him closer until their lips met. He breathed Jessa in, thumbs stroking his cheekbones, tongue teasing the seam of his lips. Jessa opened, surrounding Otto in his heat and sweetness. They ground their cocks together, rubbing against the cotton of Otto’s briefs. Sparks of pleasure caught fire in Otto’s belly. He pushed Jessa’s head away, taking in the tips of his fangs that showed through his parted lips, his flushed cheeks, and hooded eyes. Otto nipped his bottom lip before rearing up and flipping Jessa onto his back. A startled look flashed in Jessa’s eyes, but he smiled.
Otto kissed him again. Slowly. Exploring his mouth as though he’d never been there before, drinking in Jessa’s moans, pressing down on the muscles bunching and straining beneath him. Jessa gasped as Otto broke the kiss and trailed his tongue down Jessa’s body. His warmth radiated like the heat off a sun-baked rock. Steel muscles quivered. He scraped his teeth along Jessa’s belly.
“Oh… fuck,” Jessa muttered, bucking his hips.
Otto lifted his head. “Is that a hint?”
A growling sound rumbled out of Jessa’s mouth. A command.
“In that case, my sweet prince…”
Otto slid his lips over the head of Jessa’s cock. A sharp hiss and Jessa’s hands clamping down on his scalp rewarded him. Sweet, salty musk filled his mouth. Closing his eyes, he suckled on the hot flesh, letting the sensations on his tongue and the fire in his dick wash over him. Jessa’s whimpers followed him into the dark. Thought was gone. Flesh consumed him—hot and soft and hard. He clamped down on Jessa’s hips, bone pressing into his palms, and slid his lips up and down, feeling a slight pulse against his tongue, Jessa’s body pushing against his hold, but not too much. Steely muscles tightened and softened. Any control Otto thought he had was Jessa’s gift to him.
“Oh… Oh… Stop.”
Otto rose slowly, dragging his lips along the soft skin. A tiny spritz of precum sang on his taste buds.
He popped off, and Jessa gasped with a relieved-sounding laugh though his hips bucked anyway, chasing Otto’s mouth.
“Oh God,” Jessa panted.
“Ride me, baby.”
“Yes… Yes, I want that.”
Otto flipped onto his back again and shucked his briefs, kicking them somewhere across the room. The sight of Jessa swinging his leg over him burned into his brain in a way he hoped would never fade. His dick bobbed and his hole winked. The heat of his ass resting on Otto’s crotch flowed like a wave through his body.
He groaned, and Jessa rolled his pelvis, leaning back with his palms on either side of Otto’s legs. The position thrust his rigid dick out. A bead of precum quivered on the tip. Otto salivated, but he made no move toward it, only stroked Jessa’s thighs.
The slip and slide of Jessa’s crack across Otto’s dick sparked through him like fireworks. He bit down on his lip, grunting at the sensations, absorbing Jessa’s blissful face. His eyes were half-closed, his lips parted.
“Really want in you,” Otto muttered.
A smile grew on Jessa’s face, and he blinked, letting out a breathy laugh. “I can do that.”
“Then do it,” Otto growled, and Jessa scrambled off, dug the lube out of the bedside table and squirted some onto his fingers.
Without thinking Otto grabbed his wrist and said, “Turn around. I want to see.”
He ducked at the sight of Jessa’s foot flying toward his face, but it breezed by above his nose as Jessa swung around. Holding onto Jessa’s hips, Otto eased him back toward his face.
“Fuck yourself.”
Jessa grunted as he reached behind him and probed at his hole. “Too bad I’m not a twin.”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Otto growled.
Jessa’s fingers wriggled their way inside him. Otto stroked his balls and Jessa groaned. His dick jerked and a string of precum stretched to Otto’s belly. Jessa’s body pulsed with heat. Sweating, Otto lubed his own fingers and joined his with Jessa’s. He tugged on Jessa’s rim and bent forward to kiss his flushed perineum. The tendons in Jessa’s legs shook, and a few seconds later, he pulled his fingers loose, dropped both elbows on the bed, and poked his ass closer to Otto’s face. Otto pushed in deeper and nibbled around his hole.
Jessa gasped and bent down to lick at Otto’s cock.
“Oh fuck.”
Otto froze for a moment, shocked at the jolt of pleasure that hit him like a punch, rolling through him with a dull, achy throb. Oh shit, shit, shit.
Jessa worried the nerves under Otto’s cockhead with the tip of his tongue. Otto stiffened, curled his fingers, and got a yelp as Jessa threw his head up and jammed himself backwards. Otto rubbed the little bump inside him again, back and forth.
“Sweet… sweet.”
He nibbled a rosy cheek and licked through the rasp of soft, fine hairs.
“I think… I think I’m ready,” Jessa moaned.
“Get on.”
He swung around again, this time half-collapsing on Otto’s chest before pushing back up. His hair clung to his face now, and his fangs emerged. Wild-eyed, he planted a foot on the mattress and lifted himself over Otto’s cock, reaching down to guide the tip to his hole.
Otto’s eyes rolled as Jessa sank.
Heat engulfed him. Life-generating heat. The heat of the sun or the earth’s core.
He groaned, the sound dragging up from his aching balls. He dug his fingers into the sheets and held on. Jessa’s muscles gripped him and tore another groan out of him. He squeezed his eyes shut.
The lure of Jessa’s voice dragged Otto’s eyes back open. He was bendy and bewitching, a dark creature who hid his fangs. But Otto remembered when hordes of screaming vampires rent the bloody sunsets with their silhouettes. Night after night, hunting humans in the rubble. Otto’s whole reason for being was to avenge Maisie’s death against Jessa’s own kind. Against Jessa. The last thing Otto wanted was this vision of ecstatic innocence. His purity of heart and wanton body. Otto concentrated on the bouncing cock and flexing thighs, his dick disappearing into the grasping heat between Jessa’s cheeks.
But he stroked Jessa’s ribs, running his palms to his chest where his heart pounded and his amulet flopped on his chest. The letter cut a jagged wound across the stone. Hell. Remorra. Remorse? Something stirred in Otto’s brain, but he couldn’t hold onto it. He cupped Jessa’s face, feeling the heat of his breath on his wrist as Jessa twisted and buried his face in Otto’s palm. A jolt ran up Otto’s arm straight to his heart, a bolt that threw his lungs into a stutter.
Fated… love.
But, no. Not to a vampire. Not for a drainer. Not until everybody paid for Maisie, for the life he’d lost to hate.
“Jack yourself.”
Jessa nodded. Sweat ran down his face, dripped from his chin. A smile fluttered on his lips, then he groaned as his hand closed around his dick, and he pumped it in a blur. Otto thrust, holding onto Jessa’s waist, pushing himself in deeper and deeper. His thrusts grew shallow, and Jessa’s pants turned into soft cries.
Otto gritted his teeth, growling “Come,” and Jessa slammed himself down, clenched hard and spurted creamy ropes onto Otto’s chest. The splash set him off, and a bolt of electricity swept down his spine. His vision whited, fire shooting out his dick.
Otto froze, locked like a stone.
In the dark behind his lids, he imagined Jessa’s face twisted in a rictus of pain he had no hope of taking away. A moment later, Jessa’s weight pushed him down into the mattress, and Otto wrapped him in his arms.
Hours later, he struggled awake to a pain in his shoulder.
Jessa’s necklace.
It was jammed into him, smashed against his arm and Jessa’s chest. The vamp lay on his side, arm stretched across Otto’s body. The fire had burned down, and dark pressed against the sliding glass door. Otto stared outside until the trees took on shape against the black sky. The wisps of a dream floated away but left him anxious. He’d been dreaming of Maisie. Though nothing appeared in the dark, not even her ghost, she’d come to him. The clamorous presence in his brain was her trying to tell him something, but in the dull-eyed realm of consciousness, he was deaf and blind.
Cautiously, he slid out from under Jessa’s arm. The vampire moaned and drew himself into a ball. After grabbing his book and an extra blanket off a chair, Otto eased open the sliding glass door and stepped outside.
The wind was still, the air soft and chilly. He lit a lantern on the table, wrapped himself up, and sat down, opening his book. Over the next hour he read through to the end before flipping through it page by page again. Amid the practical matters of rules, history, resources, and vision statement were snippets of vampire lore, religious dogma, and strange, out-of-place comments. He finally found reference to the vase, a sketch done in more detail than the picture on the cover. In a pale script underneath was the phrase Order of Ascendancy in True Faith. What order? What faith?
Leaning back against the chaise lounge Otto rubbed his shoulder, still marked from Jessa’s necklace. Stars winked over the tops of the trees, fading quietly as day came on. He traced a ridge on his skin, letting his eyes close.
Come to me. A sign. Anything…
And as though summoned, Maisie floated in the dark toward him. She wore the dress she’d died in and her necklace, though the necklace had never been found and…
Another face followed hers and cold seeped into Otto’s bones and froze his lungs. No, not... And yet…
His gut churned with… Your instinct. The instinct that had kept him in a job he hadn’t deserved in a long time. The one that made sense of clues that made no sense.
Remorse. Remorra. The cuneiform symbol for the Seneras. Hell.
Otto understood hell. He’d been living in it.
And so had Rune.
He dug a finger into the ridge Jessa’s necklace had made on his shoulder and stared blindly into the dark. When he’d bent over Brillen where he’d sprawled in the weeds, the dull tattoo had drawn him to it. Its image rose into his mind again—its broken edge and a scratch mark, like a fingernail or a… burn. Like the burn of a chain pulling off. The chain of a necklace. And now he was back in an all-night diner, Rune smiling a bitter smile at him from across the table. “I went against my father…”
How far would Otto’s guilt over Maisie’s death take him? How far would Rune’s guilt take him?
Remorra.
“I admire your idea of justice. It has a touch of fanaticism.”
The burning dark of Rune’s eyes pierced him. He was a fallen king, and those weren’t the eyes of someone who had accepted defeat. The necklaces were common, but what if some were real, and Rune collected them on his travels while he mapped the new earth. Was he searching for the source of the treasure too? Jessa’s necklace might be Rune’s way of hiding it in plain view. If it were real. But Maisie’s must have been. She’d gotten herself killed by stealing it, and someone had stolen it back.
Rune.
But what about the Adi ’el Lumi? Otto had no doubt they wanted the treasure too. Was Rune a part of them? He must be, but so was Solomon, and Solomon hated drainers.
Otto stared into the dark as though all the pieces of the puzzle would align in front of him. But they swirled—disjointed, oddly shaped. Was he crazy? Dragging his theory out of thin air?
When he was a kid, before his mom got sick, his dad had spent months in the garage building a sailboat from scratch. Every time Otto joined him to watch all the pieces coming together, he’d asked, “What’s this thing… what’s that one?” and his dad would shrug. “I dunno.” By the time he’d finished building, he’d had a pile of parts he had no idea what to do with. Otto’s mom had refused to go sailing with him and wouldn’t let Otto or Maisie go either.
Maybe that’s what Otto was doing now. Trying to build something from scratch and coming up with too many pieces. Were they important and would the whole contraption fall apart without them?
Otto had fallen into a black lake that stretched into a misty distance. In front of him were Brillen, drainers, Solomon, the necklaces, the robbery at the shop, the attacks on Isaac and Jessa, the murders of Wen and Mateo. And what about the guy Mateo’s uncle had told Otto about? The one who’d come looking for Mateo. Was he a piece? Or just a guy looking for a friend? Otto suspected he mattered, though only one ripple stirred the still lake, and only one face broke the surface.
Rune’s. Rune was Brillen’s killer.
Stripped of a crown. Qudim’s avenger. Maybe he hadn’t meant for Qudim’s death and for the vampires to turn on Qudim, as dead sick of fighting and blood as the humans had been. Dinallah had come into possession of the formulation for a synthetic blood and had used it to broker peace. But Qudim had fought on until a mob set loose by Rune chased him, and he leaped to his death into the rupture above Celestine City. As the murderer of a king, Rune paid for his crime with the dishonor of his family. Was he now avenging Qudim against those who had gone too far? He was Abadi’s son, connected to Solomon Frenn through her. Connected to the Adi ’el Lumi? He had the means to collect the necklaces through his travels and he had motive.
What was the treasure to him?
Money. Power. My father always told us we had hidden powers…
Rune needed the necklaces because the letters somehow unlocked the chamber. A circle of the Nine. Originally, there were nine families, Mal had said. Maybe Rune knew that, maybe not. But if he did and didn’t have all the necklaces yet, that would
mean… More bodies.
Otto returned to the book, flipping pages until he found the passage, “Always seek a circle of the Nine, continuous and unbroken, in the order of the true ascendancy… Apply the revelations, the prize of punishment suffered, to unlock the promised gift.”
The evil close to Zev was his old boyhood friend—the one he’d conquered and disgraced. The one who wanted revenge.
Otto’s mind had tied itself into a knot when his gut went quiet, but all along the motive was simple. Greed, and revenge for ancient crimes.
Maisie.
Otto didn’t want to believe Rune had killed her. Jesus, Otto liked him. Vampire or not, something about the guy drew him. His darkness and passion, things Otto understood, the things that had been his fall. And he was still falling and about to drag Jessa into the dark with him.
Fuck. How was he going to tell Jessa?
A piercing silver light lit the backs of the trees as the sun began to rise.
But if Jessa’s necklace was real, as soon as Rune found the treasure he’d want it back. Was Jessa safe? Was Rune’s love real or possessive?
And Otto’s love?
Getting up, he slipped back inside, dropping the blanket back on the chair. As he approached the bed, Jessa rolled over and smiled at him. “Hey,” he murmured sleepily.
Otto climbed over him, imagining himself like a dark cloud, suffocating everything light and bright and good. He buried his face in Jessa’s neck and held on.
47
Train Wreck
The train thrummed on the tracks. Jessa jumped on, disappearing inside. Clambering after him, Otto pushed through a group of people jostling for seats and took his by the window facing Jessa.
His stomach lurched, but not from the vibrations underneath him. He tried to keep a normal face. Tried not to ruin Jessa’s excitement. He was pressed to his window, watching the crowds outside.
He flashed his bright gaze at Otto. “I’m so glad we’re taking the train.”
