No, she wasn't at all like Beck. By the time he got Sara's body bare to the candlelight, Beck would have come twice and fallen asleep straddling him, or possibly have brought out the handcuffs. Beck's breasts were smaller, more muscle than softness, but there was still something deeply feminine about her, tattoos and piercings and all. He followed the lines of her tattoo with his mouth, pushing her onto her back—it was a game she enjoyed, playing with control. He pinned her shoulders with one arm and slipped his other hand down between her legs, all but shoving his fingers inside her, but her cry of pain was deceptive—she was already wet, hips thrusting up against his hand, eager. She was a biter, of course, but he bit back, hard. A low growl built in her throat.
She tried to force her way back on top of him, but he was stronger than he looked, and held her down a moment longer, cruelly teasing her in slick circles while she strained and moaned and snarled. Her eyes lost their color and went silver—the feed was on her, as he'd heard her put it. He saw her teeth lengthen and sharpen about halfway, and though at this point she could have subdued him easily, she stayed where she was.
"Smart girl," he hissed into her ear, then shifted down the length of her body, seizing her thighs and replacing his fingers with his tongue.
Her cries were beautiful, almost bestial, as he flicked his tongue against her clit. Her hands wound in his hair and held him there, as if he had any interest in resisting. She would put off her orgasm as long as possible, to make him work for it, and he would allow it, allow her to think she was the one who knew. Meanwhile he would reach into her mind, his power sliding inside her the way his fingers did, stroking the energy centers of her body, driving her pleasure to a fever pitch. She wasn't just a biter, she was a screamer, but few men ever got to hear it—she was so wrapped up in the idea of controlling events that she almost never let herself dissolve into her own skin.
She would scream for him. She would scream herself hoarse, and when he was done with her—when he had fucked her so hard her pelvis felt like it was cracked, and when he had sculpted her into positions no human body could attain without mechanical assistance, he would finally come, sweat gluing them together as he tore into her shoulder with his teeth, leaving a mark she would touch again and again for days with one hand while her other hand snaked beneath her gun belt.
Rowan sighed, thankful it wasn't daylight like it had been the last time he'd had this much difficulty with his impulses. Last time, he'd been in the R&D lab when it started, and had caught himself staring at poor Frog, who was working with him on the technological wonder that they hoped would one day allow Rowan to leave the base and be of use in the field.
Frog was straight, of course, and like most geeks painfully under-laid, but that was of little consequence to a rethla; it would take mere moments, perhaps even a single kiss, to overwhelm the boy's usual preferences and have his pants around his ankles.
He couldn’t help it; the thought made him laugh now, but at the time it had been alarming, especially for Frog, who saw the look in Rowan's eyes and went pale.
"Rowan? Um…Agent 5, are you all right?" The boy blushed—damn it, Rowan hated it when humans blushed, it was about the most attractive thing their species could do—under the intensity of the Elf's gaze. Grinning awkwardly, Frog groped at his own cheeks and forehead. "Do I have something on my face?"
"Do you want to?" Rowan asked softly, looking around the room…then he blinked, appalled at what he was doing. He was evaluating the height of the lab tables and desks for the appropriate place to bend the boy over and fuck him. Straight human males often loved being penetrated; it was a hallmark of the breed. They would insist otherwise, out of abject terror of being branded unmanly, but he would have them begging, offering, bargaining away anything he would take, if he would take them. Frog wouldn't take much convincing; he was young, and funny-looking in the eyes of women, and didn't get out much. One slow, hard stroke of the palm, delivered to the outside of his jeans, one hand curved around his…
Damn it.
"Excuse me, Frog," Rowan said, standing up and nearly bolting from the room.
The good thing, or perhaps the sad thing, about it was that Rowan's own body would show no obvious signs of arousal until he permitted it to. He had learned in his first month of training as a rethla how to control himself, and even after everything he had endured, he still had that control. It was easy, really; he marveled at how difficult a time human men seemed to have with their penises. So, at the very least, he didn't have to contend with a massive erection terrifying Frog, just a certain look, a certain change in his energy that, to another Elf, would be unmistakable. Then afterward came the pain—fighting his sexual impulses, and the need to give himself to another, triggered the nerve damage that had yet to heal. He had spent that night stoned out of his mind on painkillers; an Elf of his power relying on oxycontin was just embarrassing, but he had no choice.
The next day they'd gone back to work and not mentioned it again, but still sometimes he knew Frog was watching him warily. Luckily it was well known among long-time staff that Rowan was celibate, and his behavior and aura would never give anyone reason to think otherwise…most of the time. In the last few years he had noticed a marked increase in his…episodes. He knew why, and that knowledge terrified him.
Jason.
Why, oh why, did a beautiful gay vampire have to join the same Agency branch as Rowan had? Each state plus D.C. had its own branch, and with a reputation like SA-7's he could have had his pick. But everyone knew about Austin: it wasn't the biggest or the busiest, but it was the best. The minute the Adams twins walked through the doors, that reputation was locked. No one, human or otherwise, could compare to either of them in the field. They could out-shoot, out-fight, out-track, out-intimidate, and out-command every Agent in the United States, and even the director of the FBI had gotten up and let Jason have his seat once in a crowded conference room.
One simply did not fuck with SA-7 or SA-8. That was part of the reason Texas was so quiet in terms of illegal occult activity. People who wanted to cause trouble usually went to Louisiana instead.
And while Rowan's psychic gifts allowed him to know how he would serve Beck, she wasn't the one he lay awake craving. She wasn't the one he had actually fantasized about—he, whose entire purpose was to give pleasure to others, and who hadn't been genuinely attracted to any one individual since he was still with his Clan. It wasn't the way of the rethla to bond with any one person, or even to want any one person at the exclusion of any others; they saw the beauty and desirability of everyone, even geeks like Frog. His charge was to lie with those who needed him, and his own needs…well, it was assumed that rethla had no needs, that their own pleasure was fulfilled entirely through the ecstasy of those they served.
Apparently not.
But, he reminded himself, he was no longer truly a rethla. He had been broken—if he had still been with his Clan, another of his own kind would have been assigned to him, and through magic and the holiness of lovemaking they would have worked together to restore the sanctity of his body and his power. The humans who had rescued him had no such ability. They could heal his body, offer him counseling, but even if they had understood what he was, that level of magic was almost unheard-of among humans. Sara was probably the closest to his peer, and even if she were fully trained she was still a single drop of water compared to his sea. There was much she could do, but she could not heal him.
No one could.
He curled up on the sofa, wishing he could think about something else, but there was no help for it. Sex preoccupied most males regardless of species, but for him, it was far worse; until a dozen years ago, sex had been his entire life. In the end he still couldn't decide whether it was worse to be forced to use his gifts under torture, or too scared and scarred to use them at all.
He could no more stop himself from mentally filing away the erotic subtleties of everyone he met than Beck could stop drinking blood. He knew that Ness, the tough-as-na
ils head of the entire Texas branch, liked having her toes sucked, and also had a thing for dessert toppings. He knew that for vampires the neck was the primary erogenous zone. He knew that SA-19, a gigantic African-American man who chain-smoked and played professional football until being recruited for the Agency, gave fantastic head. He knew that SA-21 was a virgin. He knew that Jill, one of the Admins, had masturbated with a cucumber she then sliced up into the salad she brought to the Christmas party last year.
Only Jason remained an enigma to him. That, perhaps, was why Rowan wanted him so badly.
Vampires had unparalleled shielding ability, and while Beck seemed to wear everything on her sleeve—or rather, in her ammo belt--she was actually an expert at psychic protections and barriers, just as her brother was. The difference was that she chose to let people see more of her. She laughed, she joked, she made inappropriate comments about people's asses, she brought Rowan fruit every night from the organic market near her patrol route. She had told him once that her twin was the reason she had learned to give of herself. She didn't want to end up lonely and, in her words, "all mopey goth" like her brother.
Jason had never seemed mopey or particularly goth to Rowan, but he was definitely a closed book. Rowan knew he had been hurt by love, long ago, and that the story was somehow bound up in his becoming a vampire. He could easily have passed as asexual, like Rowan, but he made no secret of the fact that he was gay, even though no one had ever actually seen him express any interest in a man. Some speculated that he was actually straight but wanted to keep the legions of women who flirted with him at a distance.
Not true. Shielded or not, to Rowan, it was as easily visible as his cobalt blue eyes. He had in fact seen it the first moment Jason had walked into the Agency, mere weeks after Rowan had finally left the infirmary and was working on his first case.
He remembered it quite well. It was late evening, just after sunset, and Ness had called an Agent meeting—Rowan had only just been given a number, and chances were he would never go into the field, but he'd felt almost as proud of his badge as he had long ago, the day of his initiation as a rethla. He sat at the long conference table surrounded by the ten other Agents, right next to SA-4, who would die two days later on assignment.
"I heard we're getting two new Agents," she had said to him quietly as they waited for Ness. "A couple of badasses from somewhere up North."
"Humans?" he asked.
"No. Vampires. A brother and a sister."
Rowan was about to say something about how odd that was, two vampires in the same family, but just then the Director of Agency Operations arrived…and she wasn't alone.
Ness was a formidable woman, toe-sucking aside, and it took a lot to make her look small and insignificant. As eyes widened all around the room, Rowan watched Ness take her chair—she seemed almost nervous, and it was easy to see why.
The two Agents strode in side by side, in the standard SA uniform but with the addition of long black coats—hers shiny patent leather stopping just at her knees, his wool and nearly touching the floor. No one was permitted to bear arms inside the base except in the training rooms and locker room, but the way they walked it was obvious they were both used to wearing weapons.
The woman was almost pixielike, the man topping her by a good five inches, but their facial features were simply two gendered versions of the exact same thing. Shining black hair, the woman's razor-cut down past her chin and streaked with violent purple; eyes of blue fire, typical among vampires; flawless ivory skin.
They even walked with the same swagger, but there the similarity ended. The woman's expression was unsmiling but there was humor in her eyes, as if she was perfectly aware of how intimidated everyone in the room was by her presence. Rowan could see some sort of tattoo wrapping around the back of her neck, and her eyebrow and nose were both pierced. The other was all business, unimpressed by his surroundings, though Rowan knew he had taken in every detail of the room the second they entered, his glowing eyes sweeping over them all…but lingering, Rowan noticed, on the men.
Aha.
Rowan tried not to stare, but he felt that gaze move over him, and lifted his eyes just in time to lock with the vampire's.
Amazing, how quickly it happened. In that split-second of eyes meeting, Rowan felt the entire world fall out from under him, and his life spun off axis, forever.
"Good evening everyone," he heard Ness say distantly. "As you can see we have two new Agents on the team. Meet SA-7 and SA-8, Jason and Beck Adams. They are both transfers from Washington. I hope you'll all do your best to make them feel welcome here in Austin."
She gestured, and the two swept forward to take their seats, conveniently where Rowan could observe them both without being noticed if he chose.
He tried to pay attention to the briefing, he really did, but he kept stealing glances, and to his shock found that he couldn't stop. It had only been a few months since his rescue, and keeping his powers contained was already hard enough, but he found himself nearly losing it halfway through the meeting—sweat broke out on his forehead, and his head pounded as he held back the tendrils of energy that reached toward the vampire, seeking to wrap themselves around him and learn all they could about his body, his tastes, his needs.
Thankfully, he had met a brick wall. The surprise at being unable to read Jason had jolted him back to the present and kept him from getting himself fired.
Now, a decade later, every time he was near Jason he had that same feeling of breathlessness and pain. They had a strange relationship; though it never seemed that the vampire sought him out deliberately, they had a tendency to wind up alone together, talking, and Rowan was fairly sure he knew more about Jason than anyone but Beck. He wished he could attribute the attention to attraction, but the fact was, Rowan's kind always invited confidence; it was part of what they were. His calling was equal parts courtesan, healer, and confessor. People shared their secrets with him, even now, even Jason. They rarely discussed the past, but occasionally Jason would let things slip, and more than once Rowan had wanted desperately to simply blurt out his whole story, confess his feelings, and essentially beg for even an hour spent alongside that perfect body without guns and a coat and horrific memories between them.
He thought of Jason's hands…efficient, capable…changing out the clip on one of his myriad weapons…watching the vampire arm himself before a night out in town was one of Rowan's favorite ways to torture himself. Jason knew the intricacies of at least fifty kinds of firearms, including those designed to kill his own kind. He could throw knives with supernatural accuracy and had about a half-dozen black belts to his name. He had spent years in Asia learning how to beat the shit out of people. Those hands, strong and long-fingered, could wrap around a sword's hilt or choke the breath out of a mortal or squeeze the trigger of a semiautomatic, but there was something else Rowan knew they could do…they made music.
Rowan was one of the few who had ever been in SA-7's quarters, and seen the violin.
He was waiting for Jason to change clothes so they could go to dinner after their shift, and wandered around the apartment taking in all the things that made the vampire such a lovely tangle of paradoxes. A vast collection of CDs, books from floor to ceiling, ranging through every taste and genre; art from travels all over the world, disparate cultures that somehow worked together without pretension or any real plan; luxurious textiles; and then, the real surprise.
The violin sat on a stand in the corner where, in most quarters, the TV was located. There was sheet music in an untidy pile beneath it.
Rowan had walked over and held his hand out over the instrument, letting his empathy seek out anything it had to say; he wasn't a contact clairvoyant like Sara, but if the emotional impressions in an object were strong he could pick them up. This instrument, its slender body and its dark wood, had been a part of Jason for a long time. It had taken his sorrow, his rage, his confusion, and turned them into beauty.
He stood there hand extended,
rocking slightly back and forth, imagining Jason's hands caressing the wood, drawing the bow back and forth, the room's dim light casting shadows that moved over the dragon on his arm. He'd gotten the tattoo in Japan, and it had taken every scrap of Rowan's will not to lean over and run his tongue along the outline…more than once. God, those hands…how it must feel to be that violin, fingertips brushing over the strings, pressing down, drawing out melody like a lover's cries. It had been so long since Rowan had been touched that way, and if he wanted to…if he only could…it would be so easy…
"What are you doing?"
He had looked up, guilty, ears turning pink. "I'm sorry. Do you…I didn't know you played."
Jason eyed him, the openness they usually shared shutting down, something hard and unyielding replacing it. "Not for other people. Let's go eat, Rowan."
Rowan nodded, acutely embarrassed and angry at himself for violating the vampire's privacy—all immortals guarded their secrets well, and he was already more in Jason's confidence than anyone save Beck. He couldn't stand to lose even that much. Their friendship, such as it was, was the closest he could come to what he truly wanted, and to break Jason's trust would break his own heart.
The Agency, Volume I Page 10
