Jaeger smiled, kissed Wren’s forehead, and pushed the locks away. A weight had been lifted from his soul, and the smile that he sported was euphoric. Jaeger felt truly blessed with the opportunity for a second chance at life. Actually many chances had passed before him, but he finally got one right. And his reward? Wren Cazador.
Wren stirred, and his hard cock rubbed against Jaeger’s thigh. Jaeger’s dick took notice and rose to the occasion. He stretched and reached for the lube on the nightstand and unsnapped the cap and slicked his fingers. Gently he traced his finger down the cleft of Wren’s ass until he reached his asshole. Massaging the wrinkled flesh, Jaeger smoothed the viscous liquid around the entrance until he was able to pop the tip of his finger in. Wren squirmed in his arms and rocked himself on Jaeger’s thigh.
“Mmm. Is it morning?” Wren’s sleepy voice egged him on.
“No baby, it’s still nighttime, but I have to have you. Is this okay?” If Wren wanted Jaeger to stop, he would. He loved Wren, and no harm would ever come to him—by his hand or any other—ever again.
“It feels so good. It’s been too long since you were in me. I dreamed, but you never came.” Wren pushed back into Jaeger’s finger until it was fully inserted.
Jaeger leaned down and kissed Wren’s face—eyes, nose, lips—wherever he could reach. The feel of Wren’s skin, the slight stubble against Jaeger’s lips, sent shivers throughout his body.
He removed his finger from Wren’s ass, and Jaeger rolled Wren over and spooned his body. He lifted Wren’s leg over his thigh, reinserted his finger, and smoothed along the walls of his channel. Jaeger found the tiny pleasure nub, and Wren rocked farther back on the digit. One finger became two as Jaeger scissored Wren open and stretched him for his cock.
“One of these days, I’m going to insert my entire fist into you and hold your very essence in the palm of my hand.”
Wren’s shiver and shake told Jaeger that he loved the idea. Jaeger turned Wren’s face to meet his and took a sloppy kiss. Mouth upon mouth, tongue dueled tongue, and Jaeger couldn’t get enough of Wren.
A sheen of sweat formed on Jaeger’s brow, and tears trickled down Wren’s cheeks.
“Am I hurting you, amor? Do you need me to stop?”
“Don’t you fucking dare. I just…. I don’t…. I’m just happy. Happy tears, and I can’t believe this is happening. We’re together again.”
“Baby, we’re going to be together in so many ways, you won’t know where you end and I begin.”
“As it should be. Now make love to me, my knight in shining armor.”
Momentarily taken back by Wren’s words, Jaeger lost the rhythm of his plunging fingers.
“What did you call me?”
“My knight in shining armor, because that’s what you are to me. You saved me in more ways than one. Like a romantic fairy-tale novel.”
Overcome with emotion Jaeger smiled and took Wren’s lips and gently kissed him. There was no force or hurry. Wren believed in him and really saw him for the man he used to be and for the one he hoped to become. That was what true love was about, and Jaeger savored every moment of it.
“Take me, my knight. Make me yours again. Make love to me.”
Never removing his four fingers from Wren’s ass, Jaeger rolled on top of him and balanced himself on his forearm. He leaned down and swiped his tongue along the large prominent vein on the underside of Wren’s thick cock. The crown leaked a little and raged purple with the need to explode.
Starting at the base, Jaeger nibbled his way up and down and then took the crown into his mouth and inserted his tongue in the slit to feast on the precum slipping from the top. He tasted like sunshine, sea salt, and musk—three of Jaeger’s new favorite essences. Jaeger had to taste his ass to see if it his nether region sported the same flavor.
Jaeger removed his fingers from Wren’s ass and commanded, “Hold yourself open for me, baby. Love the way you look.” He knew he sounded gruff, but Wren had brought him to the point of desperation, and Jaeger wasn’t sure if he’d be able to hold out much longer. Wren was a feast, and Jaeger needed to eat to sustain his life.
Wren obeyed and grabbed behind his knees to expose his open and glistening hole. Jaeger could see lust in the forest green of Wren’s eyes.
“I’m yours, Jaeger. Every part of me,” Wren said breathlessly.
An invisible string pulled Jaeger toward Wren, and he muscled his way between Wren’s splayed legs, lifted his ass. Then he dove down, impaled his tongue into Wren’s channel, and fucked him with his mouth. He ran his tongue in and out to show Wren what he was going to do with his cock.
Wren moaned. “Fuck. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.” Wren began to jack himself off in rhythm with Jaeger’s tonguefucking.
Jaeger grabbed Wren’s furry balls and yanked down to stave off Wren’s orgasm. He came up for air and said, “Not yet. I need a bit more of you.” And Jaeger feasted again.
He released Wren’s balls and swatted Wren’s hand away from his cock and took over. Precum slid down, easing the way for his hand to move.
“Please Jaeger, I want to come with you inside me.”
Brought out of his spell, Jaeger looked up at Wren, debauched and open and ready for anything Jaeger desired.
“Condoms?” Jaeger had been tested for everything under the sun while hospitalized, and he knew he was clean. Prior to Wren there had been no one for many months. But it would be Wren’s decision.
“No condoms. I’m clean. Tested, and I’ve been with no—” Jaeger reached up and kissed him within an inch of his life, until the need to breathe became paramount.
“Nothing between us. No barriers. Only us. Forever.”
“Forever.”
Jaeger slicked his cock with lube, placed the tip at Wren’s entrance, and pushed in.
“Exhale, baby, and let me in.”
On Wren’s exhalation Jaeger slid his entire cock into Wren’s ass, balls deep. The connection was euphoric. He had never had sex before without a condom. Never desired it. But sliding into Wren’s heat was like coming home. Allowing Wren time to adjust to his girth, Jaeger held himself in check until Wren nodded and gave him the go-ahead.
Out and in, Jaeger took Wren to new heights. With every other stroke, he sought Wren’s prostate and drove him higher and higher. Then they changed positions, and Jaeger tossed Wren’s legs over his shoulders. The angle drove Wren farther up the bed and into orgasmic bliss. Sweat dripped down Jaeger’s face and combined with the pool of precum on Wren’s navel.
Jaeger tugged on Wren’s dick in time with his pounding.
“Close, Jaeger. Just a bit more,” Wren pleaded.
Jaeger felt the tingle in the base of his spine as his balls drew up. His orgasm was imminent, but he wanted Wren to come with him, so he inserted his pinky finger into the smeared slit of Wren’s dick. Cum erupted and claimed its spot on Wren’s chest. Jaeger watched as Wren emptied his seed with his head thrown back and the muscles in his neck taut.
The clamp on Jaeger’s dick brought him to his own orgasm, and his balls emptied inside Wren’s channel.
“Fuck, Fuck, Fuck,” they both chanted at the same time.
“It’s so warm. Fuck, Jaeger, your seed is so warm inside me.”
“I fucking love you, Wren,” Jaeger shouted for all to hear.
“I love you too.”
A few more spurts and both men had nothing left to give. Jaeger looked down at his Wren and then licked the jizz from his body. He kissed Wren and allowed him to taste himself on Jaeger’s tongue. Jaeger’s dick softened, and he carefully pulled out.
“I’ll be right back.” Jaeger hurried to the bathroom and snatched a warm washcloth. He quickly wiped himself and then cleaned Wren’s chest, stomach, and hole. Then he tossed the cloth in the direction of the bathroom door and wrapped Wren in his arms.
The sun started to peek through the linen curtains, an indication of another beautiful, sunny day in the Cadiz Province.
&n
bsp; “Do you want to get up and watch the sun come up over the ocean?” Jaeger wanted to do all the firsts with Wren now that he was back in his life.
“Mmm. Yeah. I’d like that.”
Jaeger disentangled from Wren and got out of bed to retrieve pairs of sleep pants for the two of them. He hoisted Wren from the bed and handed him the pants. Wren followed him to the front porch, and they sat side by side on the glider. When Jaeger reached for Wren with his left hand, he stopped in his tracks.
“What’s wrong? Jaeger, are you okay? You’re pale all of a sudden.”
Jaeger was stunned by what he saw. The scar on his left wrist was gone, completely healed. Not a trace remained. He ran the pad of his finger over the flesh. The wizard had kept his promise. Jaeger was truly free of the blood oath he made centuries before. He had forgiven an enemy—his one—the man he was destined to spend the rest of eternity with. His very own Lord Wren.
“It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?” asked Wren.
“My scar.”
“Maybe it finally faded all the way, and you just hadn’t noticed.”
Jaeger answered, “Maybe.” He knew better.
“Your tattoo. Wasn’t your tattoo a broken sword?”
“You know it was, silly. I designed it myself to represent you and what we once had and lost. But now it can take on a whole new meaning. Why?”
“Wren, look. It’s not broken anymore.”
Wren looked down. “What the fuck?”
The gray blade, no longer severed, was a complete sword. No break between the hilt and the blade remained. The sword was intact.
“I don’t understand. It wasn’t like that….”
Jaeger leaned into Wren and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Does it really matter? The sword represents us and our new beginning. It’s fitting that it’s whole.”
Wren leaned in, kissed Jaeger and allowed Jaeger to take control.
Hand in hand they looked over the horizon and watched the sun come up—a new beginning.
Jaeger Tripp of Germania was no more.
Jaeger of España, lover of Wren, had arrived.
Exclusive Excerpt
Gabriel
Order of the Black Knights
By R.K. Staunton
Gabriel Ingram is running from a past no one could understand. It’s common knowledge at the college where he teaches that he’s a former CIA technical analyst, but no one knows the things he really did—or about the rage and bloodlust that are his constant companions, the darkness that forced him to leave the agency for fear it would swallow him whole. He’s holding on to his normal life with both hands, but he knows someday he’ll to lose his grip.
Lucas Craig is a social worker studying to become a family therapist. For reasons Lucas can’t understand, the normally reclusive Dr. Ingram takes an interest in him, and Lucas secretly hopes their friendship might become more.
Then Eric, Lucas’s roommate, disappears. Lucas is frantic. The police are no help. With nowhere else to turn, Lucas begs Gabriel for his expertise.
What starts as a simple errand to help a friend becomes a journey into a violent world of gangs and human trafficking—one that will bring Gabriel face-to-face with the forces intent on stealing his soul. But Lucas might be the one who can save him—if Gabriel can get them out alive.
Coming Soon to
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
GABRIEL DIDN’T know whether to be amused or pissed that, in the end, it was a bullet that got him. He tried to laugh, but it came out as a gurgling wheeze that left him coughing and choking on his own blood. It wouldn’t be long. He dropped his head back to rest on the wall of the building he was slumped against. The crack of his skull against the brick should have hurt, but he barely noticed. There was too much else hurting right then—his ribs, his chest. The bullets had left burning paths through him that hurt like a motherfucker. That would stop soon enough, though. He had already lost feeling in his feet.
There was a certain poetic justice to dying that way, he supposed. Like the old saying—you live by the sword, you die by the sword. He had certainly done plenty of living by a gat, though it wasn’t his weapon of choice. He preferred subtler methods, poisons particularly, and he was the best man The Outfit had with them—maybe the best in the whole city of Chicago—certainly better than anyone Moran had. Any goon could use a gun. Subtlety took skill. He was the Shadow. He could slip in and out of almost anywhere, unseen and unnoticed, like a whiff of smoke.
He was dying that way too. On the main street off the alley where he sat, dozens of people swarmed by. Someone knocked—three times, then two, then three again. A door opened and closed. There was a speakeasy two alleys over, tucked in the basement of the Italian restaurant. Piano and sax drifted out, probably from the clip joint down the street. A couple of dames walked by, laughing and talking loudly. He could still vaguely see them, but his vision was dimming.
Not a damn one of them knew or cared he was there, bleeding to death in an alley filled with rotting garbage and smelling of puke and piss. He might die alone, but he could take comfort in the knowledge that his death would be avenged. No one messed with The Outfit and got away with it. Bugsy’s goons may have gotten the drop on him, but there would be hell to pay when Capone got wind of it.
He curled his lips in a small, weak smile. His family had his back in this world and beyond. There might not be a drop of blood between them, but The Outfit was family, make no mistake. He was closer to them than he ever was to his own blood.
He let his eyes slide closed as the numbness stole up his legs. It didn’t surprise him much when the memories flashed in the reddish-black space behind his eyelids. From the tenement fire that took his ma and pop when he was barely eight to when Franco Vassallo found him living on the streets, scraping by as a pickpocket and dodging the nuns and do-gooders, and took him to the Four Deuces. Torrio and Capone had been impressed with his quick hands and uncanny ability to disappear into a crowd—a ghost even then—and hired him as a delivery boy.
He progressed fast from deliveries to other sorts of errands and learned to use guns, knives, bombs, and anything else he needed as he went along. No longer a skinny orphan, the boy grew into a man. He had his first kill when he was barely eighteen, his first hit barely a year later, and over time, he became a skilled assassin and enforcer who protected The Outfit and its interests by any means necessary. There had been so many deaths… so much blood. He saw them all again.
Then the memories shifted and changed. They became older, much older, morphed through hundreds of years and showed things centuries before his own time—things he couldn’t possibly be familiar with—and yet they were familiar and as real and intimate as the steel of the gun in his hand. They tunneled back, farther and faster, and finally converged on the moment some eight centuries earlier, when he sold his soul to the devil.
Moriel.
Like the memories, the name was foreign yet familiar. Then the face came into focus in his memory. Oh yes. He knew that bastard.
“Moriel!” His shout choked off into a gurgling cough. He took the deepest breath he could, which at the moment really wasn’t very deep, and tried again. “Moriel!”
A small wizened man with a deeply lined face and intricately patterned midnight-blue robes appeared out of nowhere, stood over him, and peered down on his dying form. And Gabriel remembered.
THEY SAID he was lucky. After all, he had survived the fever that killed his parents—his father only hours before his birth and his mother moments after. Being only a bairn, it was a miracle the sickness hadn’t taken him too. T’was only the Lord who could have saved him, they said. They gave him to the abbey when he was just hours old. The monks baptized him Gabriel, for surely he was to be a great messenger for God.
Gabriel snorted at the thought. He was a great messenger, all right. Great for running messages from the brothers to the blacksmith or the cobbler. Great for running messages between the brothe
rs in the monastery. “Brother Anhelm, Brother Barnabas says would you please come and help him in the gardens?”
Great for running right into trouble. His knees still ached from spending the previous night kneeling on the frigid stone floor before the altar. Brother Fergus had caught him asleep in the gardens. As though his furious lecture on the sin of sloth wasn’t enough, he also sentenced Gabriel to a night of prayer and contemplation.
It wasn’t that Gabriel minded the night. Quite the opposite. The night was comforting. The quiet wrapped around him like a warm blanket. No one harped at him or ran him this way and that, or worse yet, punished him for something he had done wrong yet again. The steward gave him a thrashing last e’en, and that thought woke the soreness, spurring him to walk faster. The castle was still some ways off, and he had no desire to face another beating.
That year the monks had finally given up on trying to make him a scholar. He had a little Latin but no talent for manuscript illumination. No use for it either. Instead he now spent part of his days in the service of Lord Craeg, doing whatever his steward commanded. His contract had just begun, so he did not yet live in the castle, but only came for some hours during the day. The steward was still deciding whether Gabriel would be suitable for full-time service.
Gabriel rather hoped the steward would find him lacking. For though Lord Craeg was regarded as a kind and generous man, Gabriel soon learned his steward was quick to anger and quicker to strike. The beating he was still feeling was proof of that. Not that he dared complain, even among the other servants. If word got back to the steward, it would only earn him another beating—if not worse. As the steward was eager to remind him, servants died all the time. No one would think twice if he fell into the fire while fetching food or met a bad end when he accompanied the steward to collect rents. There were outlaws about in the wood. Gabriel could disappear, and no one would even spare moment’s thought about him.
Jaeger Page 18
