Surrender the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  Benjamin only nodded, but he knew Tzadkiel realized that he had more than a passing familiarity with the concoction that had brought the vampire and his brothers low.

  “Can you toast the bread?” Benjamin nodded to the slices of whole grain Tzadkiel had slipped from the bag. “The toaster is stored under the counter.”

  Tzadkiel went abruptly back to the sandwich making and didn’t turn around again until their meal was assembled. He crossed to the table, placed the plates down and sat.

  “I do not blame you for your actions then. You were a child,” Tzadkiel said. Then, when Benjamin opened his mouth to apologize, “We will not speak of it again.”

  Benjamin nodded . He had no desire to relive his part in the events that had unfolded. His family had been responsible for destroying the balance between the city’s supernatural factions that had resulted in the Morgan assuming his greater and darker power.

  Benjamin shifted his chair so his back was to the kitchen, Tzadkiel on his right. Catching Benjamin’s attention, Tzadkiel brought his sandwich to his mouth in a deliberate motion and bit. Chewing and swallowing followed. Benjamin watched, rapt that such a simple act as eating could be so erotic.

  “Believe me now?” Tzadkiel asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

  The devil got ahold of Benjamin’s tongue, forcing him to ask, “Does it taste as good as my blood?”

  Tzadkiel breathed deep as if cut. Features that had been tense darkened with a different kind of emotion. Benjamin’s heartbeat quickened as the predator in Tzadkiel surfaced.

  “Drinking blood has its…advantages over other kinds of sustenance. Namely magic.” Tzadkiel put down his sandwich. “Blood also has a way of telling a story about a man.” He delivered the information with deliberate eye contact. Benjamin wanted to look away, but didn’t. “What I do not understand is why you saved my life, when you could have ended things much sooner, and in your favor, by allowing my death.”

  Outside a truck rumbled, briefly vibrating the chair under Benjamin’s thighs and reminding him of the world beyond his front door. What had his blood told Tzadkiel about him? The options were myriad, and some not as pretty as others. Benjamin’s fingers curled around the chair edge, anchoring him in place.

  “I acted in the moment.” Benjamin’s voice caught, his throat crammed full of all the things he didn’t have the courage to say. He pried his fingers from the chair and lifted his sandwich, shying from Tzadkiel’s gaze. “It seemed the right thing to do.”

  Tzadkiel’s answering grunt was noncommittal, and they finished their meal in relative silence. The house was quiet, with Nyx and Akito sleeping upstairs, Tzadkiel said. Dryas and the other members of Tzadkiel’s mora had returned to an undisclosed location.

  Nyx had apparently deemed the vampire’s odd brand of honor enough to keep Benjamin safe for now, alone with his…Enemy didn’t seem the right word, but there really was no name for what he and Tzadkiel were to each other. Reluctant ally was as close as he managed to get, but so very far from the other term that bubbled to mind. Lover.

  Benjamin watched as Tzadkiel did the dishes, then pretended to be engrossed in the day-old newspaper when Tzadkiel turned, drying his hands.

  “Why do you get the newspaper delivered?” Tzadkiel nodded to the pages in Benjamin’s hands.

  “You mean because I’m blind and can’t read it?” Benjamin supplied the words Tzadkiel hadn’t said.

  Tzadkiel tossed the towel onto the counter. “Yes.”

  “Nyx comes over almost every day.” Benjamin focused on the paper, folding it into precise thirds. “She reads it to me. It’s more her thing than mine though.”

  “It gladdens me to think of you having friends to ease the loneliness.”

  Benjamin snapped his head up. “How did you know that? I’ve never told anyone I’m lonely.”

  Sometimes the emptiness in his life reached gut-hollowing proportions, the ache so deep it seemed a bottomless well of despair. Only Akito and Nyx’s company had ever filled that terrifying abyss…and now Tzadkiel’s.

  “As I said, blood tells a lot about a man.” Tzadkiel tilted his head, indicating the door. “Bed?”

  Benjamin’s arousal, already simmering close to the surface, came to a full and rapid boil. He licked his lips. “Yeah.”

  They walked to the top of the stairs together. When Tzadkiel made to turn left toward the guest room he’d been occupying, Benjamin impulsively touched his arm. “Vampire?”

  Tzadkiel paused and looked down at Benjamin’s hand where it still rested on the warm cotton of his sleeve. “Yes, hunter?”

  So many times since that first night, even after Benjamin had known who and what Tzadkiel was, he had wanted to give himself over to a walk on his wilder side. That desire, however, in the face of everything he and Tzadkiel had been through, had distilled into something purer—the need to affirm life in the face of his mortality.

  “I want you.”

  The blurted admission dragged Tzadkiel’s eyes to Benjamin’s face. “I know.”

  Heat flooded Benjamin’s cheeks at the cool reception. “I—yeah. Never mind.”

  It was Tzadkiel’s turn to catch his arm. Breaths seesawing, he and Benjamin regarded each other. Now that the vampire had him, he didn’t seem to know what to do with him.

  Benjamin hovered on the precipice, a prisoner of that sweet spot between fear and ecstasy, remembering all the moments when he’d been completely at this man’s mercy. So many times, he’d courted death with Tzadkiel in search of this feeling—the knife’s edge of pleasure where getting cut was a natural consequence of entertaining dangerous desires. He wanted, no, needed to know what it felt like to finally fly. To do so, first he needed to jump.

  So he jumped.

  Fingers wrapping in Tzadkiel’s hair, Benjamin yanked, exposing Tzadkiel’s neck. A hard nip conveyed just enough threat. Tzadkiel snarled, recoiling.

  “Ah. There you are,” Benjamin breathed, his spirit coming alive with recognition of the beast. “Now you know what to do.”

  Awakened from its slumber, the dragon stared down at him. The hunter would now be the hunted, and what seemed like an eternity of wanting and waiting would come to a beautifully crashing end.

  Chapter 22

  Years of hunger had formed a chasm in Tzadkiel’s existence, its reaches so wide he had doubted anyone but the gods might have the means to fill it. Craving for blood, a longing for touch, and an ache for companionship had dogged him for so long, they’d become part of his identity. Isolation and deprivation were old enemies that time and necessity had fashioned into friends. Wraithlike, their twin presences were things on which he could depend. Though empty and joyless, they had been a constant without equal. Until now.

  Now that he’d been healed and his hunger assuaged, an even greater adversary stood before him, threatening to upend his world. The hunter, in offering his body, had stoked a different manner of appetite, filling Tzadkiel with unaccustomed light and banishing the gnawing emptiness on which his demons had thrived.

  Benjamin. A hunter born. A hunter bred.

  Gentler feelings pushed through new, fertile ground. Tzadkiel pulverized them under his figurative boot heel. In their place, lust scorched the earth, leaving it barren of everything but his desire. Fisting springy curls, Tzadkiel tugged as the beast purred to life inside him. The bright blue pulse of a jugular leaped and Tzadkiel growled. Unable to refuse what was so willingly offered, he licked the pale column of Benjamin’s neck.

  The hunter arched, gasping, and blood rushed into Tzadkiel’s gums, his body priming itself to push his fangs down so he could feed. Equally insistent, his cock pushed against leather trousers never intended to accommodate his aroused length or girth. Agitation rode him like a winged beast, flapping and circling, until tenderness was no longer an option. Still, he retained the presence of mind to make certain…

  Nipping at Benjamin’s neck, Tzadkiel eroticized the not-so-veiled threat with a cant of his hips that presse
d the hunter against the wall. “Want this?”

  “Gods, yes.” Benjamin’s response was reedy with need. Rough fingers bit into Tzadkiel’s shoulders, pulling him closer, demanding more. Demanding everything.

  The air was thick with tantalizing scent, its spicy sweetness bathing Tzadkiel’s senses until he was drugged with man and musk. Benjamin quested under Tzadkiel’s shirt, tugging it upward. Skin, glorious skin, brushed his back, and he shivered.

  The hunter broke from the jagged edge of a kiss to ask, “Cold?”

  “No.” This wasn’t cold. He knew cold…and dark. This was heat, and light, and life.

  Tzadkiel sampled the bruises along Benjamin’s throat. Delicate flesh released the elderflower-sweet essence beneath in tiny drops. Fingers dug into his back, under his shirt. Short nails raked, and Tzadkiel bit harder. Bright heat bathed his tongue, and his swollen tissues throbbed, the ghost of his fangs crying out for more.

  Desperate fingers explored below Tzadkiel’s waistband until the leather became an unyielding torture. He latched on to the discomfort, using it as an anchor to keep him from drifting out to darker waters. Tzadkiel lifted his head and stared, transfixed as bright crimson trickled in a little river to rapidly saturate one white-blond lock.

  Oh, how I envy that curl.

  He dipped to lave at wounds he’d worried open with his lips and teeth. His saliva closed those injuries upon which he’d dined. One appetite sated, he moved lower to satisfy another.

  Benjamin whimpered his disapproval, attempting to stop Tzadkiel’s retreat from his neck. “Don’t stop. So good.”

  “I guarantee this will be every bit as pleasurable,” Tzadkiel murmured against the delightful hollow at the base of Benjamin’s throat. “Likely more.”

  “Bed…” Benjamin murmured. “I can hardly stand.”

  With a reluctant sigh, Tzadkiel swept Benjamin up in his arms and booted open the bedroom door before closing it with a similarly violent kick. He deposited Benjamin on the bed, where the hunter bounced, his hair tumbling around his naked shoulders. Two glorious nipple rings beckoned, and Tzadkiel swooped down to claim one with his mouth and the other with his fingers. The heavy silver barbells pierced claret-dark nipples, gathering them to pencil-sharp points. The flesh had puckered sharper still with Benjamin’s arousal. Tzadkiel had longed to tease these metal-laden confections from the moment he’d encountered the hunter in the kitchen that first time.

  The first barbell slid against his tongue, and Tzadkiel growled his approval at the contact with flesh and steel. He caught the little bit of metal in his teeth and tugged, gradually increasing the pressure. Benjamin’s fingers threaded in Tzadkiel’s hair, and the hunter arched. Metal clicked satisfyingly against Tzadkiel’s teeth. Exploring the length, sliding them from side to side through puckered skin, he vowed someday he’d find other areas to so provocatively decorate.

  Tzadkiel smiled wickedly at Benjamin’s breathless, “Oh wow. Hell yeah.”

  He stared down at the riotous sprawl of limb and fall of curls while he shucked his trousers. When he crawled onto the bed, looming over the hunter, Benjamin wasted no time in palming him, taking the weight of his sacs and rolling the delicate skin until Tzadkiel’s cock wept in warning. Manacling the hunter’s wrists in one hand, Tzadkiel stretched Benjamin’s arms above his head. Using his other hand, he explored pectorals and lean abs.

  Chest rising and falling, Benjamin strained the limits of the bandages binding the wounds at his middle. Pale flesh peeked between the loosened strips, exposing bruises that were a violent purple. Benjamin shifted in a blatant attempt to bring his cock into contact with Tzadkiel’s fingertips. Tzadkiel flattened his hand against Benjamin’s belly. Benjamin’s growl of frustration might have been heard three doors down on Pinckney Street.

  Tzadkiel laughed, his mood lightening another fraction. “Did you desire something, hunter mine?”

  Benjamin jerked at Tzadkiel’s hold. “You’re still treading hand job in a cold shower territory.”

  Tzadkiel answered with a slow push to the hunter’s pajama bottoms. He hadn’t watched when Akito had dressed the unconscious hunter, but now he allowed himself to look his fill. Inexorably, the drawstring loosened, and the material slid obligingly over slim hips. Released from confinement, Benjamin’s cock bobbed upward, a single tear weeping from the head. Tzadkiel swooped in to lap up the drop.

  Benjamin strained upward, hands fisting above Tzadkiel’s grip. “Cock. Tease.”

  “I am unfamiliar with the expression.” Tzadkiel carefully wrapped all five fingers of his right hand, one at a time, around Benjamin’s shaft. “Let us explore the definition and come to an agreement on the term before we proceed.”

  Benjamin inhaled sharply.

  Tzadkiel kept his grip light, his fingers barely touching the heated silkiness beneath. Benjamin moved, attempting to find friction, but Tzadkiel widened his grip.

  Benjamin choked out, “Please.”

  Tzadkiel slowly tightened his grip. When Benjamin moved, Tzadkiel released, toying with him. Benjamin bit his lip and dipped his chin to observe the painfully slow tightening of Tzadkiel’s fingers around his shaft. A whimper escaped his lips, but this time he did not move. He wouldn’t dare. Which meant Tzadkiel had the hunter right where he wanted him.

  Relinquishing his grip on Benjamin’s wrists, Tzadkiel kept his hold on Benjamin’s cock with his other hand as he slid lower. Hobbled by the partially lowered pajama bottoms, the hunter tried and failed to widen his legs in welcome. Tzadkiel glanced up the landscape of pale flesh to Benjamin’s achingly handsome face where he didn’t so much notice the scars and tattoos as absorb them as evidence of a shared history and connection.

  Tzadkiel lowered his head and breathed deep of man and musk. He’d always enjoyed this moment—that first sampling of heated flesh that unfolded in layers of wine-like complexity. First came the bright note of Benjamin’s essence, the always-apparent elderflower. Next the loamy richness from which those flowers had blossomed. After that, a mellow scent not unlike coffee that folded them all together.

  Saliva eased Tzadkiel’s way on the next stroke, and wetness slickened his hand’s passage. He hollowed his cheeks and sucked downward. Benjamin moaned something unintelligible and approving. Tzadkiel flexed his hand in warning. Don’t move. Benjamin’s thighs trembled. He and the hunter danced like this for countless minutes, Tzadkiel lost in the rush of blood in his ears and the taste of Benjamin on his tongue, until he couldn’t have said who was the consumer and who the consumed.

  Benjamin tensed, hips coming off the bed.

  Tzadkiel uncurled his fingers. “Not yet.”

  “Gods.” One hoarse word, uttered with all the desperation of a man on insanity’s cliff.

  Tzadkiel slid upward and stroked the unruly curls from Benjamin’s face before finding his way to the shell of an ear. Tzadkiel’s hot breath—expelled in a sensual eddy—flowed back onto his lips. “I want to fuck you while you spill into my hand.”

  Benjamin groaned. “You’re trying to kill me.”

  Not yet.

  The grim thought intruded, and Tzadkiel brushed it away in annoyance. “Where is your lubricant?”

  He looked around the room, gaze alighting on the nightstand as Benjamin replied, “Top drawer.”

  Tzadkiel reached for the drawer. When it stuck, he yanked in frustration, spilling the contents onto the floor. Among a small box of tissues, an aspirin bottle, and assorted scraps of daily necessities, he saw a jar of petroleum jelly and a tube of hand cream, but no actual lubricant. Well, Tzadkiel supposed he’d worked with less.

  Bringing the jar with him, he returned to kneel next to Benjamin. “Turn over.”

  Benjamin complied, and the pajama bottoms framed the pale roundness of his cheeks. Unable to resist more teasing, Tzadkiel poised over Benjamin’s back, laying his erection against heated flesh. Benjamin sighed, his shoulders lowering in submission, the position pushing his buttocks higher. Moisture pulsed from Tzad
kiel’s shaft in mini shivers. His body was primed, perhaps too much so, for this claiming.

  He forced the lid from the plastic jar with one thumb and dug his fingers into its slick contents. The jelly melted in the heat of his hand. Raising himself, he pressed his thumb to the tight rosette of the hunter’s entrance, and brushed back and forth. Visible ripples of pleasure formed at Benjamin’s nape, and made their way down the hunter’s spine. Tzadkiel used gentle but insistent pressure first with one finger, then two. Sweat ran in rivers down the hunter’s back, making his tattoos glisten.

  Benjamin gasped. “Much more of that, and the only thing I’m going to be spilling over is the covers.”

  Unfortunately, Tzadkiel had to agree. Applying the lubricant liberally to his shaft, he was careful not to linger over his own pleasure points. Kneeling behind Benjamin, he slid himself against the hunter’s still impossibly tight entrance and groaned at the friction. He paused, one hand on a pale hip emblazoned with a fragmented, runic tattoo.

  “Tell me if it hurts?”

  Benjamin’s teeth gritted, the sound like stone against stone. “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re doing it wrong.”

  Where this tender care for the hunter had come from, Tzadkiel wasn’t sure, but apparently Benjamin was having none of it.

  Very well then…

  Tzadkiel fisted himself and pushed forward.

  Blowing out a shaky breath, Benjamin raised himself up onto his hands and pressed backward. Tzadkiel slid into the hunter in a slow, inexorable stroke. Muscles flexed in Benjamin’s arms as the hunter’s head fell forward and brought the sharp blades of his shoulders inward toward his spine. The rhythm Tzadkiel attempted to create, and then maintain, slowly fragmented, coming undone with each tug of pleasure that fisted and released, fisted and released, low in his belly. Sweat slicked his grip on Benjamin’s hips.

  “Not gonna break,” Benjamin panted.

  Grabbing on to the bed’s edge with one hand, Tzadkiel braced himself over the hunter. On the next stroke, Benjamin’s teeth clacked audibly. Tzadkiel withdrew and entered him again at full bore. They built a symbiotic rhythm, Benjamin rocking upward to meet each of Tzadkiel’s pummeling downstrokes. The staccato slap of flesh set Tzadkiel on the edge of release. He’d forgotten how erotic that sound could be. Hot washes of sensation gripped him. He curled his toes against release and then realized that was the wrong reflex, and stilled.