by Mary Calmes
“Can you find them?”
His smile was warm. “I can. It would be easier if it was the other way around and I was there and had to find you, but I can do it.”
I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Your energy is like a beacon, you know.” Leith patted my hand on him before he stepped away. “I can always sense where you are.”
I heard that from my fellow warders all the time.
“Come right back,” I ordered.
He nodded, then walked out of the room and out the front door. I noticed the looks from the other warders then. Surprise, astonishment, from all of them.
“What?”
“He can come back?” Shane asked.
A wormhole was how we traveled when we had to get to one another over any great distance. We opened up a channel from one warder to the other, and we jumped through what was basically a swirling vortex of wind. It took a great deal of energy and concentration, and I was guessing that none of them could do it more than once a day.
“Didn’t he wormhole here to you?”
I nodded.
“And,” Shane said slowly, waiting, “he’s gonna do it again?”
“I’m guessing,” Joe said as he stood up next to me, “that you guys don’t travel to and from other planes like the clutch in San Francisco does on a consistent basis, exercising that vortex muscle, huh?”
They didn’t say anything.
“Marcus’s sentinel told me that a warder builds power by being in a clutch of other warders that are dependent on one another. Did you know that?”
No one answered Joe.
“Warders have to spend time together every single day like they do in Marcus’s clutch. Do you guys do that? Are you guys even friends?”
He was listening for a word from any of them.
“Speak up,” Joe scolded them. “I’m blind.”
“No, we….” Shane stopped, then began again. “We don’t work like that, Joe. We all check in with our sentinel, but we all do different things and don’t talk to each other much. We’re all very strong warders. We don’t need to partner up the way they do in Marcus’s clutch.”
I was suddenly very happy that my sentinel was the kind of man he was. Jael had insisted on building a family, not just a team. He always said that together we were strongest, not individually.
“When do you want us back to go with you to the demon’s home?” Kyle asked.
“You don’t have to go at all. Just tell me where—”
“No,” he insisted. “We’ll be there. When will your warders be here?”
“Give them at least a couple of hours.”
“Okay, so it’s six now. We’ll meet here at eight,” Shane said, getting up from the couch to stand beside Kyle.
“We’ll see you then,” I agreed.
Shane moved forward to reach Joe, but I instinctively clutched him to me, and just like always, the man turned and folded in tight.
“You’re very lucky,” Shane said.
“I know,” I told him. “And keep your distance when you return.”
“Why?”
I cleared my throat. “Leith is the rational one.”
And Shane understood then that coveting my hearth when my friends could see him might not be all that good for his health.
JOE STAYED downstairs with his parents and talked about warders and hearths and when he had found out and why they didn’t need to be afraid and how safe they all were now that everyone knew. I went upstairs to shower and try to wake up. When I fell asleep on my feet, I realized that maybe it was time to get out of the water.
I was yawning while walking from the bathroom to the bedroom I shared with Joe. My eyes were watering when I fell down spread-eagle on the bed, and I closed them for a minute, just for a quick rest.
The shaking woke me.
“Awww, crap,” I grumbled, rolling over on my stomach.
“You gotta change soon,” Joe told me, hand massaging the back of my neck.
“Oh God, that feels so good,” I almost purred, lifting up to move into his lap.
He was chuckling softly. “I wanna go with you.”
“What? No.” I yawned.
“Please, Marcus.”
“How ’bout hell no,” I reiterated. “Not gonna happen, Joseph.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t go with me to fight demons. I—”
“But if I go as that offering they were talking about, then—”
“You heard him. It’s a dimensional door. There’s no telling what he’s got in there, and you are not going to be guessing with me. No.”
“Marcus, I—”
“No,” I said loudly, lifting up, grabbing him, and pinning him under me with my weight.
“Marcus, goddammit, don’t manhandle me!”
But he loved it, and we both knew it. I shifted over him to press my thigh between his legs and began suckling on his throat.
“Stop.” He jolted beneath me, hands on my chest, clutching at my skin as I kissed over the line of his jaw back to his earlobe.
The whimper that came out of him sent blood rushing to my cock.
“Shit,” I groaned, realizing too late that I was playing with fire.
“Marcus.” He moaned my name, arms lifting, wrapping around my neck, pulling me down to him.
“Joey,” I sighed, trying to lift up off him.
“No,” he whispered, swallowing hard, wetting his lips, his breath warm on my face. “I missed you. You need to fuck me now.”
And the way he said it left no doubt in my mind that he needed me just as badly as I needed him. We were locked into the same mindset, had been for years, so I didn’t have to guess what felt good or where to touch him. Words were unnecessary.
I lifted myself up, loosened the towel around my hips, and tossed it at the chair by the desk. He rolled over under me, passed me a tube of lube from under the pillow that would have been mine—I slept closest to the door wherever we were—and I watched as he hurriedly stripped out of his jeans and briefs and climbed back onto the bed.
His beautiful ass, so taut and round, beckoned me. I couldn’t help bending to take a bite out of it.
“Oh, please,” he whimpered, pushing back against my mouth.
He was gorgeous on his hands and knees in the middle of the bed. Head back, eyes closed, waiting, trembling, spreading his legs apart so his pink hole was there, ready for me…. I could not even imagine anything more bewitching than my man.
“Jesus, Joe,” I groaned, leaning forward, my tongue gliding over his puckered entrance.
“No,” he hissed. “I don’t want you to lick me or suck me or do anything else but fuck me. I want you inside me now.”
“I don’t want to hurt—”
“Marcus Roth, when have you ever hurt me?”
Never was the answer. Not once.
“You’re the only man who has never hurt me in any way.”
Which basically answered any question I’d ever had about Shane Harris.
“I’ll tell you if you want me to,” Joe asked, because he knew what I was thinking. He always knew.
“Please.”
“We hid things in high school,” he told me as I opened the flip-top lid of the lube. “And then the summer before college, he told me he couldn’t see me anymore. He didn’t want me to get hurt.”
I understood why and now so did Joe.
“So he became a warder then, Marcus, and he—oh!” Joe’s voice cracked as I slid a slippery finger inside him. “Figured that because I was blind that I wasn’t strong enough to be the hearth of a warder.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The fuck I don’t. What else could it be? He looked at me, just like everyone has done my whole life except you, and saw someone that had to be taken care of, not the other way around.”
But why? “He knew you guys could go to bed together,” I said as I added a finger inside him, scissoring them apart slowly and
gently, stroking at the same time, pushing in, easing out, back and forth, over and over, going deeper with each press, finally reaching his gland.
“How would he know that? All we ever did was suck each other off.”
“But even that would have told him you were strong enough to be a hearth.”
“Oh, fuck, Marcus!” He gasped, his body going rigid for a second. “He didn’t think I could be the hearth of a warder. All he saw was my blindness, not the home I could make, not the partner I could be. You’re the only one who ever saw an equal.”
It wasn’t true. I had met Joe’s exes at the supermarket, at restaurants, at concerts, out at clubs. There had been a lot of them, the man having been a serial dater before me. Joe bored easily, and because he was blind, most men felt like they had to take care of him, and Joe would simply not have it.
He kept his own apartment for a year after we got together because he didn’t want me to think he needed me. He wanted me, but I wasn’t necessary—until I was.
“Do you remember what you said when I invited you to move in?” I asked, adding a third finger, spreading them, stretching him.
“Yes,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper, pushing back, wanting me deeper. “I said I didn’t need to move in; we could just be fuck buddies.”
“And what did I say?”
“You—Marcus,” he whined. “You didn’t say anything. You just got up and walked to the door.”
It was all or nothing with me, which scared the hell out of most people. I loved hard and possessively, and for every man before Joe, it had been suffocating and simply too much. But for Joe, who always spoke of freedom and independence and no commitments, the wall that broke that day was the one around his heart.
“And what did you say, Joseph?” I delved as I grabbed hold of his perfect ass and spread his cheeks.
“I said ‘stay’.”
“Is that what you said?”
“I said, ‘Marcus, please stay. Don’t leave me, don’t ever leave me…. I’ll be with you forever, but please stay now—don’t go.’”
“You said ‘stay’,” I growled, sliding my lube-slicked cock deep inside of him in one powerful forward thrust.
“Fuck!”
I remained still for a second, buried in his ass, letting him adjust to me, savoring the feel of his tense muscles rippling around me, squeezing. He was so tight, so hot, and looking at my groin flush against him, the paleness of his skin contrasting to the darkness of mine, I was struck, as I always was, by the merging of our flesh.
“Marcus, you gotta move.”
Reaching between his legs, I stroked him from balls to tip until he shuddered.
“I’m gonna come with how full I am,” he confessed, shivering some more. “And I want you to just have me—God, Marcus, why are you holding back?”
Because normally I made sure he was close before I pounded inside of him. I wasn’t small, the opposite, actually, and so I was careful to never—
“Marcus, you know better.”
And I did.
I pulled out partway and then grabbed hold of his hip, anchored myself, and drove inside hard and fast.
He swore and babbled, and the filthy words coming out of his perfect mouth drove me right out of my mind.
“Marcus, baby, please, could you just fuck my brains out already?”
I smiled and eased out again only to plunge back inside, beginning the driving, rhythmic thrusting that would bring us both to a shuddering climax.
“Jesus, Marcus, you feel so fucking good.”
A lot of men couldn’t swallow my cock, instead choking on the length and the girth, and many didn’t want me buried to the balls in their ass, terrified of being hurt. So I was careful and respectful and had always made sure that my lovers were ready and willing to take me in. It was only with Joe that I had ever just let go. The man loved my dick. He could take me down the back of his throat, sucking hard, and would straddle my hips and impale himself on my shaft with his head thrown back in ecstasy as I brought him to release. He looked delicate and small, but in bed, the man was demanding and vocal about his needs. Big and thick and hard was how he liked his ass filled. I was perfect for him.
“Marcus,” he cried, writhing under me as I thrust into him, so close, barely breathing, loving him wrapped around me.
“Joe, I’m gonna come.”
I felt his muscles bear down, felt him tighten, and then I fucked him through his orgasm even as my balls tightened and I came deep inside him seconds later.
The man annihilated me.
He was shaking hard, and when he collapsed, I crushed him under me, both of us panting and sweating, aftershocks spilling through us even as I stayed where I was. Joe liked me there, inside, until his muscles released me. When the spasms eased, I could slowly, gently, withdraw, but I had to wait until his body was ready for me to go. I loved the closeness at the end, loved feeling his heartbeat from the inside, the last bit of our joining.
When he stilled, I slid free and rolled over on my back. Instantly he was there in my arms, claiming my mouth. I opened for him, and the kiss was as hungry as the lovemaking had been. He tasted so good that when he tried to pull free, I bit his plump bottom lip to keep him there.
“Quit.” He laughed softly, the grin on his beautiful mouth stopping my heart.
“Kiss me some more,” I urged.
“This is not helping you wake up.” His smile widened. “Jesus, Marcus, you’re gonna pass out on the drive over there.”
Oh, but it was worth it. “Just let me have you.”
“Don’t whine.”
I growled, my hand around the nape of his neck easing him back down.
“Marcus.”
His lips were turned up into a wicked smile that made my stomach flip over.
“Are you looking at me?”
I grunted.
“Baby.”
I stopped staring at his mouth and looked up into the pale blue I loved, marveling as I always did at the flecks of cobalt in them.
“There was a time that I loved Shane Harris.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“But you know that since the day I took you home with me that there’s only been you.”
I knew that, because as hard as I loved, as completely and possessively, as all-consuming, Joe was worse. With me—and from what I understood, only ever with me—he was like a tiger in the body of a man. Once he claimed you, God help you if you tried to get away. I had understood when the man moved in with me that I belonged to him body and soul and nothing was taking me away from him, not even my own jealousy.
“I love you,” he said before he kissed me.
But I didn’t need to be told.
V
IT WAS so nice to see them. As soon as I walked into the living room, Malic levered off the wall he was leaning on and crossed to me. He didn’t hug me—it wasn’t what we did—but his hand went to my shoulder and held me. There was a time not too long ago when even being affectionate with my best friend in front of my hearth was problematic. Joe had mistakenly thought Malic wanted me. It was not the case. Even if they wanted to, warders getting together did not end well. Malic and Ryan had even tried, to no avail.
Sometimes warders—and it happened to a lot of them, because warders could be women or men—were drawn to one another. They fought together, bled together, and so the camaraderie that came with that sometimes got mistaken for more. The problem was that another warder could not provide a sanctuary. Another warder could not provide a home, a place where you were loved and cared for and welcomed with open arms. If two warders were together, they would fight side by side, go home, and fuck all the adrenaline out of their systems. But afterward, when that was done, when the pulse-pounding rush had dissipated and you needed to be held and kissed and even be something as simple as fed, you were both looking at the other, waiting for them to deliver. A warder, simply put, needed a caretaker, and another warder could never be that.
&n
bsp; Coming home bruised and bloody, carrying the weight of what I’d seen with me—the gore, the horror—I was normally not even capable of speech. But I was met at the door each and every time by a man who gave me a quick kiss before having me step onto a garbage bag to strip off everything from head to toe and then pointing me toward the shower. As I lurched through our living room, I could feel the warmth of our home, smell the food, and hear the soft music. Joe liked a lot of alternative bands, so the sound reminded me of him, which was good. It was all so comforting that sometimes, just for a second, I thought I would fall apart. But he would check my progress, put a hand on the small of my back or give my ass a pat or take my hand and lead me to the shower. And then he’d leave me under the steaming water, and all of it, the blood, the memory, and the pain, would just roll off me, down the drain.
Sometimes, if it wasn’t so bad and he could see that it had not been, he would join me in the shower and run his hands all over my skin before dropping to his knees and taking my cock down the back of his throat. Those were the best starts to my homecoming. But other times, when he would touch me and I’d shiver, he’d wait until I finished my shower, dried off, changed, and returned to the living room. There I would find him, normally reading, his fingertips skimming over the page, because he knew I didn’t like the television on when I got home from warding. Any loud noise would make me cringe. So the music was low, and the only other sound in the room was his voice… and that was really all I wanted to hear.
“Come here,” he would call, and I would move fast, lay down on the couch, and settle my head in his lap.
Joe always sat on one end so I could stretch out completely and wrap my arm around his knee as he petted me. He would then tell me what he made for dinner, point at the enormous glass of ice water on the coffee table just waiting for me, and tell me that after dinner he was going to have his wicked way with me. At which point I would get up, sit back on the couch, and he would climb into my lap.
“I bought this new wine today too,” he’d say as he smiled. “Gonna get you drunk off your ass.”
And I knew I was home and loved and safe… and now Malic knew what that was like, too, because he had just found his own hearth. When Joe met Malic’s man and heard them talking, he’d realized that he was jealous, had been jealous for five years, for nothing. Now, when I stepped back from Malic, Joe was there to walk into his arms and hug him.
