First Fruits

by Amanda Carney

  “Come up here and give me your mouth,” he said, looking down at me with dark eyes.

  My skin heated at the demand, and I allowed him to pull me to my feet. Holding the back of my neck, he stepped into me and took what he wanted. I whimpered and reached down blindly, working with clumsy fingers to unzip his jeans. And then it was just hands and kissing and frantic undressing. Him untying and kicking off his boots with one hand while still managing to keep our mouths joined. Me unclasping my bra and tossing it and then shimmying out of my jeans before pulling his unbuttoned shirt over his shoulders and dragging it off.

  When we were naked and panting and in each other’s arms again, he paused, looking down at me with amusement.

  “What?” I breathed, lifting up to kiss the five o’clock shadow on his chin.

  He ran his finger down the bridge of my nose, grinning. “You’re covered in cheese.”

  “I am,” I agreed, grinning too.

  “It’s kind of sexy.”

  I laughed loudly, and then he was picking me up once more, carrying me inside the glass walls of the shower. I clung to him, entranced by the way our naked bodies felt together. While he turned on the water and adjusted the temperature, I busied myself with kissing every square inch of his jaw and throat. He groaned, his fingertips digging into my lower back as he held me with one hand and worked the lever with the other.

  “You do things to me,” he whispered in my ear as he took us under the warm spray.

  The water poured over us and steam started to rise. My voice was breathless. “Good things, I hope”

  Gripping my wet hair, he pulled my head back and kissed me deep. “Very good things.”

  I held onto his shoulders and managed, “If I asked for something, would you give it to me?”

  “I’d give you anything.” He kissed me again. “Everything.”

  “Take my blood.”

  When he froze, I hurried on, “I want you to, Jesse. Please.”

  And I did want it. Not just because I’d noticed how pale and drawn he’d been since we’d left the witch’s, either. I wanted it because I wanted my blood inside him. I wanted to share myself with him in a way I could with no one else. And somehow, I wanted the bite. I wanted the pain. I wanted everything he could give me.

  Mostly, I didn’t just want to know part of him. I wanted to know it all.

  “Par,” he sighed, water running off his nose and lips.

  “Please,” I whispered again, arching my throat and tugging his head down by the hair.

  Almost as if against his will, he hovered over my throat with a strained growl. “I get rough,” he warned, sounding strangely vulnerable. “I . . . can’t hold back when I . . .” He trailed off, licking the vein right below my ear as though he couldn’t bear it anymore. “Oh, fuck,” he breathed. “I want to, baby. I . . .”

  My entire body trembled in anticipation. I could barely breathe. My nipples were hard nubs against his slick chest, and my fingers dug into his hair as I held on. “You can have it. Take it,” I said. “Take—”

  The bite came hard and unexpectedly, his fangs breaking the skin and sinking deep in the blink of an eye. The pain was instant and burning and sharp, and yet I cried out from the sweetness, arching into him. The growl he made was raw, and he sucked at my throat, his tongue and lips moving against my skin, his chest heaving as he breathed through his nose.

  Distantly, I knew that control had been lost. By both of us. We were nothing but skin and bones and instinct. We were stripped bare.

  We were wild.

  I’d never felt more alive.

  Still at my throat, Jesse raked his fingers up my thighs, pushing my back into the glass wall. I moaned and spread my legs as wide as I could get them. I was ready. Gone were my inhibitions. My shyness. I was swollen and wet and I’d never known such an ache.

  He was just as hungry. Reaching down, he gripped himself and without any preamble this time, shoved deep inside me with a guttural snarl. I groaned, my eyes rolling back. And then he was thrusting into me—hard, deep thrusts—and all I could do was make gasping whimpers and clutch at him as hot water fell down on us and the billowing steam swallowed our sounds.

  Whether it went on for hours or minutes, I didn’t know, but when it was over, we were both trembling and clinging to each other, chests heaving, foreheads pressed together. I didn’t remember him pulling away from my throat and I felt a distinct sense of loss that he had. What we’d done hadn’t been soft or gentle or sweet like the first time, but it had been just as beautiful. Maybe even more so in some ways.

  “I love you,” I murmured against his shoulder. I didn’t have the strength to lift my head, so I kept my eyes closed, letting the water cascade over my face. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

  I couldn’t seem to stop saying it.

  He made a soft noise and kissed my temple, my cheek, my nose, my chin. “You . . . liked that.” It wasn’t a question. More of a quiet confusion.

  I ran my fingertips absently up and down his back. “I did.”

  “I didn’t hurt you.”

  “No.”

  We stood there in silence, under the hot spray.

  Finally, he spoke, so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “You were made for me.”

  Raising my head, I looked up at him. Kissing his wet lips, I said, “We were made for each other.”

  He kissed me back, thoroughly, his fingers going into my soaked hair, and I tightened my legs around him. Pulling back slightly, he looked into my eyes and started moving inside me again, slower this time. More tender. A moan eased from my throat, and I let my head fall back against the glass, just feeling the way he stretched me. The way his hot breath felt against my neck. The way his wet hair brushed against my skin with each penetration.

  And just like that, I was swept away again.

  21

  Coming & Going

  Jesse closed his eyes as Par touched him.

  “It’s . . . amazing.” Her fingers were reverent as she traced the lines of the tattoo covering his entire back. They were lying naked in his bed, the lamplight casting soft shadows over their skin. He’d rolled over so she could examine what had been painstakingly inked so many years ago.

  “You’re the only one who’s ever seen it,” he murmured. Oh, Patrick and countless of Jesse’s brethren had seen it during so many depraved nights at the mountain, but nobody had ever seen it the way she was seeing it right now—with a soft heart and tender gaze. Nobody had ever seen it and known that it was more than just ink. That it was a memory. A portrait of a life he’d once lived. He could tell by her touch she realized all this without having to be told.

  She was silent for a few minutes and then, quietly, “What does it mean to you?”

  In his mind’s eye, he could see the massive, haunting oak tree stretching across his back in black ink. The intricately drawn leaves and bark. The great, gnarled trunk. The lonely swing hanging from one of the lowermost branches. He could also see the actual tree in his memories. And the swing too, which he’d built and hung with his own hands.

  She slid her arm around his waist and rested her cheek against his back. He took her hand and brought it to his lips.

  “It’s so I don’t forget my family. The life I used to lead,” he said. “The swing was Nina’s.”

  “It’s here, on this property, isn’t it?”

  “Used to be. Lightning struck it in the twenties.”

  “And destroyed it,” she guessed.

  “Most of it. The rest fell over and rotted throughout the years. Hardly anything left now.”

  She kissed his shoulder, right where the top of the tree started. “I’m glad you have this.”

  He smiled a little. “You know what I remember most about pushing her?”

  “What?”

  “Her laugh,” he said. “She would laugh and laugh, like it was the best thing in the world. Would’ve swung for hours if I’d have let her. I think it’s why I love to hear yo
u laugh so much.”

  “I wish I could have met her,” she murmured.

  “So do I.” He rolled over so he could look at her. They’d lain like this for hours. Talking and touching. Touching and talking. He’d never been so at peace in his life.

  If only it could last.

  She lay silent for a few moments and then asked, “So, why can’t I hear your thoughts like everyone else’s? Or Felix’s? I mean, sometimes I can, but only if I’m really trying. Not that I do try. I just mean—”

  He laughed. “It’s okay. And you can’t because I was trained to shield them.” If only he’d been trained to shield himself from Patrick’s coercion. Then again, it’d all led him to this moment. There was some good to be found in that.

  “Trained.” She sounded impressed.

  “You’re not the first telepath I dealt with.” He cleared his throat, regretting for the millionth time . . . everything. “I had to learn how to stay quiet around them. Hard to lie to someone if they can hear your thoughts.”

  Silence stretched between them as she considered what he’d said, a pretty frown on her face.

  “Now it’s just habit,” he added, needing to say something.

  “But what about Felix?” she asked. “He didn’t stay and . . . do the things you did.”

  Jesse thought back to those early days. “He did before he realized he could resist Patrick. Back then, we were just kids. Didn’t know a damn thing about anything supernatural aside from our own abilities. We clung to Patrick at first because everything we’d known and loved had been destroyed and our heads were a mess.”

  “It was easy for him to infiltrate your minds,” she guessed.

  “Like popping a balloon.”

  “But Felix regained control?”

  He nodded. “And I didn’t. Just never realized it.”

  “Didn’t you wonder about Felix? About why he left and you didn’t.”

  “At first, yeah. I think Patrick’s compulsion was like roots though. It just tunneled deeper and deeper, spreading until I wasn’t me anymore.” He sighed. “I wasn’t a brother. Or a son. I was whatever Patrick wanted me to be. And every time Felix tried to warn me, my shit went all haywire and I lashed out at him. Never believed him.”

  Her voice was sad. “And eventually he stopped coming altogether.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you have each other now. You’re together again.”

  “Because of you.” He touched the side of her face. “Will you tell me something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why did you run? All those years. One town after the next. Why not just settle down somewhere?”

  He didn’t think it was because she’d somehow known about Patrick, but perhaps her telepathic abilities extended to premonitions. A forewarning to keep moving. Stay hidden. Stay quiet. Like a mouse that knew the cat was there even if it couldn’t see him.

  After a moment, he realized she hadn’t answered.

  “What is it?” he asked, raising up on his elbow. “Tell me.”

  “I . . .” She swallowed. “I don’t know where to begin. I’ve never told anyone.”

  “You can tell me.”

  Clearing her throat, she took his hand and held it to her chest.

  “When I was fourteen, I lived with a foster family in Tennessee. They had this old farmhouse, like the one we went to today. I hated that place,” she said with a humorless laugh. “The roof leaked every time it rained, and there were roaches. And my room was in the attic. Full of boxes and dust and cobwebs. It was so hot up there you couldn’t breathe.”

  His jaw tensed, but he continued listening.

  “One day, I was sitting outside on the front porch after school, reading, when Dwayne came out.” She glanced at him. “He was their son.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “He told me he’d been . . . watching me in my room.” She cleared her throat again and looked up at the ceiling. “And that he’d seen me move things with my mind.”

  He had the sense she wasn’t telling him everything the boy had said and the implications made him feel homicidal. “Go on.”

  “He said he wanted to know what else I could do or he’d tell his father. And that,” she took a deep breath, “that wasn’t an option. So I told him about the telepathy.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He dared me to read his mind. Said he didn’t believe me.” She swallowed. “He said I was just a stupid redheaded whore whose parents hadn’t wanted her.”

  Jesse forced his jaw to relax.

  “But I proved him wrong,” she said and then looked at him. “It was the only other time I did what I did with you. Went in so deep.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Bad things,” she said. “A few weeks before, a litter of barn kittens I’d been keeping an eye on went missing. Let’s just say I found out what happened to them.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. What a life she’d lived. And didn’t it make him hate himself even more for the part he’d played.

  “Did it hurt you?” he asked. “Like it did with me?”

  She nodded. “I woke up on the floor of the porch, bleeding. I can still remember how scared he was when I started screaming at him, telling him all the things I’d seen in his head. All the sick things.”

  He shook his head in disgust and waited for her to continue.

  “What I didn’t know was that his dad was watching. He’d just come around the corner of the house and heard the whole thing.”

  “He was angry,” Jesse guessed. It wasn’t uncommon for humans to hate what they didn’t understand.

  “No,” she said, her bottom lip starting to tremble. “He was . . . interested.”

  “Interested how?”

  “He learned real fast that people would pay him a lot of money to have their mind read,” she said. “Really read. Not some fake, palm-reading stuff like at the fair. At first, he started locking me in the attic when I wasn’t in school. Bringing people in mostly at night. Some just paid for the novelty. Others were brought against their will because they knew things and wouldn’t talk.” Tears welled in her eyes and her voice began shaking. “Eventually he kept me out of school altogether. I was in that attic for two years. They only let me out to use the bathroom twice a day. Baths twice a week. And they were supervised.”

  “What about your social worker?” Jesse asked through his teeth.

  Her sigh was wobbly. “They told her I ran off. And they were smart enough to file a police report.”

  “Because a fourteen-year-old foster-kid runaway is more than believable.”

  “Exactly,” she said with a nod. “There was a police investigation, if you can call it that. They . . . the family even helped search for me.”

  “But nobody found you.”

  “No. There was an old trapdoor in the basement that led to an underground cellar. He would put me in there and shove an old freezer over it when the police or social workers came.” She closed her eyes. “He would gag and tie me and leave me in there for hours. Sometimes days.”

  “What about your telekinesis?”

  “You’d think I could have done something, right?” she said with a dry laugh. “I tried. Once. I hit Charlene with a bookshelf one evening when she brought me dinner. I ran. Made it all the way to the front door when Tom saw me. He was fast for being so big.” She looked down at their hands. “After that, they kept me drugged all the time. Some kind of pill they crushed and put in my food. They kept my hands tied.”

  “The drugs made it impossible to concentrate.”

  She nodded. “And usually I can focus my energy through my hands, but with them tied too . . .”

  He studied her. “You were trapped.”

  “They only let my head clear when a paying customer was coming in. And even then, Tom guarded me with a knife.”

  “How did you finally get away?” he asked quietly.

  She took a deep breath. “Dwayne. He was eighteen by then a
nd not,” she hesitated, “attractive. I saw the way he looked at me and . . . I used it.”

  Jesse went still. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No, but I promised him things,” she admitted, her cheeks coloring. “If he’d untie me, I’d do whatever he wanted.”

  “Did he untie you?”

  She nodded. “Then I put a pencil through his eye, grabbed my things, and ran. Again. Only this time there was nobody home. It was just Dwayne and me.”

  He studied her. “What did you do then?”

  “I ran and ran.” She gave a small, sad smile. “Forever.”

  He thought back to her file and the notations of all the times she’d moved since she’d turned eighteen. Before that, even with his many resources, Patrick had had a hard time tracking her. Now Jesse knew why. “But they came after you,” he guessed.

  “Always,” she sighed, running her fingertips over the rumpled sheet beside her. “The last time was about a year ago. They must have hired some kind of private investigator and found me in Kentucky. I was sick that day and when I called the restaurant where I worked to tell them I wasn’t coming, my boss told me that my dad and brother were there, but that it was supposed to be a surprise.” She shook her head. “She even apologized for not being able to keep a secret. I left in a hurry and didn’t look back.”

  “And that’s how you ended up in Floyd.”

  She looked at him. “Yes. So when I say running and hiding from Patrick is nothing new to me, I mean it.”

  And what a shame that was. “With your name . . . how did you keep from being found? There can’t be too many Parsleys out there.” None, in fact. He’d checked. If he was her shithead foster father, it would have been the first thing he would’ve searched for. Five minutes on any computer with internet access is all it would’ve taken.

  She nodded as if expecting the question. “He never knew me as Parsley. Only Sarah. Legally, that’s my name, so it was on all my paperwork.”

  He nodded. He’d known from Patrick’s file on her that she was in the system as Sarah Walker. That she’d been smart enough, even at such a young age, to keep her true identity a secret, was impressive. “Convenient error.”