by Amy Lane
“Good?” Edward asked on a moan. “Do you like that?”
“It’s a beginning,” Mullins said, in complete seriousness before he went down again.
He was shifting, though, shoving himself between Edward’s thighs. He released Edward’s cock with a soft little pop and moved his palms to Edward’s ass.
“This,” Mullins said. “This here. I watched you in that orgy. I saw you getting fucked. And all I could think—besides easing your pain—was that I wanted to possess this. I wanted to be the one stretching you. I wanted to be the one who left my spend inside.”
“You want that, right?” Edward asked as Mullins parted his cheeks and breathed softly on his tender hole. “You want to be the one to possess that?”
“Yes!” Mullins punctuated that with a lunge forward. He buried his tongue between Edward’s cheeks and licked hard, relentlessly, until Edward had to clench his stomach to keep from spewing come.
“Then take it!” Edward cried. “Take it! Take me. Possess me. I want to be fucked and taken and used by you, Mullins. I want to be claimed.”
“Slick!” Mullins demanded between licks. “Spit isn’t good enough!”
Edward was in a raw mood—spit would be just enough to let him slip in, and that would be great. But Mullins wanted to care for him, and that would be glorious too. Edward fumbled with the bottle and dumped some lubricant on his fingers, then shoved them past Mullins’s tongue, coating his asshole and shoving both fingers inside.
Mullins yanked them out and replaced them with his own. “Mine!” he roared, scissoring two fingers while Edward shook with need beneath him.
“More,” he demanded simply.
Mullins added another finger, and Edward let out a little whine as the stretch took over his body. Needed—it was needed—because Mullins was well endowed—but everything behind Edward’s eyes became a ring of fire on a background of black velvet. He needed so much.
“Take me,” he ordered from a throat gone rusty with moaning. “I need it—I need you. I need you inside me, Mullins—take me!”
His fingers disappeared and Edward grunted with yearning.
“Turn over,” Mullins told him, and Edward, blind with wanting, shaking with emptiness, would have done anything he asked. He rolled over to his hands and knees and waited.
Mullins leaned over his back, capturing his throat with the vee of his finger and thumb. “Mine,” he said again. “Forever. I won’t take this back, Edward.”
“I won’t give it,” Edward snarled. “Fuck me!”
Hard and huge, he thrust in, not without pain, but the pain was worth it. He seated himself completely, and Edward buried his face in the covers and screamed, flush and full with him, not sure he could breathe if Mullins ever went away.
“Good?” Mullins asked, his sweating, shaking hand against Edward’s throat telling him everything about self-control.
Edward took his thumb into his mouth and sucked hard, nipping as he let it go. “Fuck me,” he demanded again. “Fuck me!”
Mullins pulled out, slowly, slowly, slowly, until Edward buried his face in the quilt and howled, just as Mullins slammed back in again.
“Yes!”
Edward knew he screamed—his throat was raw with it—but he heard Mullins behind him, saying it hoarsely as he thrust in to the hilt, and Edward pounded the bed with his fist. “So good,” he panted. “More.”
Again and again, every thrust exploding inside Edward’s body like they were reforming his insides to take his forever lover, to hold him, cradle him for all time.
But Mullins couldn’t last long—not this time—and too soon he stopped, deep inside Edward’s body, and started the mini-thrusts that signaled his climax. Edward wasn’t done yet, wasn’t ready, and he grabbed his cock, stroking hard, hoping to make it soon enough to send Mullins over but—
“Augh!”
And Edward could feel it, deep inside, hot and full. He buried his face in the sheets and groaned as Mullins softened, still not full, still not—“Oh!”
Mullins didn’t collapse on him, didn’t roll over. Instead he pulled out and licked Edward again, his tongue probing the slack, tender entrance while Edward stroked himself hard and harder, and then Mullins’s fingers took over, four of them this time, and Edward screamed as his climax destroyed him.
He fell to the bed, limbs useless, Mullins’s fingers still buried inside him, thrusting.
“No more,” he whispered. “Done. Please.”
The fingers disappeared, and Edward collapsed against the mattress, melting against the sheets.
He barely hit consciousness when Mullins started kissing his shoulder gently, whispering soft things in his ear.
Finally, the syllables became words, and Edward could find words to respond.
“Good?” Mullins asked uncertainly.
“I’m dead,” Edward mumbled back. “Annihilated. Destroyed.”
“So that’s good?”
Edward turned his head, relieved when Mullins took his mouth without making him move too much. “You know some good tricks,” he mumbled. “Where did you learn all that?”
“Later,” Mullins whispered. “Right now I just want to kiss you.”
Edward smiled dreamily. “Kiss the man who did that to me just now? My pleasure. I can’t imagine kissing anyone else.”
Mullins’s mouth on his felt right, dominant, taking charge. Perhaps Edward would take him next time—or perhaps not. Right now it was enough that they’d possessed each other, that he could feel Mullins’s come trickling down the back of his thigh, taste some of it on Mullins’s tongue.
“Mm….” Kissing. It went on and on and on, until Edward grew hard again, rolling over to his back and spreading his legs in invitation. Mullins took him again, holding his legs up, slamming into him with suppressed violence, until Edward—tender and primed—went off again from his own hand on his cock.
This time Edward saw Mullins’s face as he climaxed, saw his jaw grow slack, his eyes roll back, his mouth contort.
Saw him lose himself trustingly as he spent inside Edward one more time and collapsed forward into his arms.
SOMETIME IN the middle of the night, Edward turned cat and curled up against his chest. It wasn’t conscious—mostly habit. All three of the brothers did it—four, if they counted Beltane’s dog form, a gift from Leonard, who had dabbled in old magic before he’d become a demon.
He woke up to Mullins stroking along his back, paying particular attention to the base of his tail. Edward purred and kneaded his chest, enjoying the comfort.
“I didn’t realize how much you three used your forms still,” Mullins said softly. “Bel does it to stay with Francis. Why do the three of you do it so much?”
Edward licked a paw, because part of the beauty of being a cat was that he didn’t have to answer shit.
Mullins grunted—but he kept scratching his ass.
“So you do it to feel safe,” Mullins said, because asked and answered. “I wish I had a form that would make me feel safe.”
Edward started licking his face with a rough tongue, proud when Mullins smiled.
“So your form will make me safe?” Mullins asked, but Edward could hear the melancholy in his voice, and it needed to be answered like a man.
He changed, suddenly face-to-face and intimate, Mullins’s slow blink the only proof that he was surprised. “I only spent a few years in hell,” he said softly. “But I was a child. We were all children. The cat was like a gift—an easy escape from hell. I… I can take you out of your hell, Mullins, but I can’t give you an easy way to leave it in your mind. I… I think you may need to ask Leonard how he did it. Just know you’re not alone.”
Mullins’s lower lip wobbled a little. “That’s the worst part,” he rasped. “It’s the only reason I haven’t… haven’t given my soul up. It’s the only reason I haven’t despaired. Leonard held my hand for three hundred years. His family held my heart for the last century and a half. But this last month, wa
tching you boys go off and adventure, I suddenly saw what I’d lost, what I’d missed, by not giving in sooner. Oh, Edward… I have… I have been so alone.”
Edward’s turn to soothe. Edward’s turn to comfort, to hold.
He only hoped he was as good at it as the people who had taught him—Emma, Leonard, and Mullins himself. Holding his lover and whispering him out of hell was the only currency he had.
Joy and Chaos
MULLINS AWOKE to the smell of breakfast—bacon, toast, and fruit—and stretched, yawning.
Somehow, he and Edward had managed to make love when they should have been eating the night before, and his stomach rumbled fiercely—but his body?
His body felt newly made.
He rolled out of bed, naked, and reached quickly for a pair of boxers from the chest of drawers near the bed. His old sulfur-infused eighteenth century clothing wasn’t practical, now that he wore a man’s shape and was no longer subject to being summoned back to hell. He was rather looking forward to dressing as the boys did—jeans and T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts—all worn and comfortable and casual.
“Suriel wears a leather jacket,” he pondered, sliding on a pair of jeans that could have fit any one of the Youngblood boys except Bel.
“I wake you up with breakfast and you’re wondering about Suriel?” Edward asked from the kitchen side of the cabin.
Mullins found his grin came easier and easier with practice.
“He wears a leather jacket. Why is that? Even Beltane wears sweatshirts.”
Edward rolled his eyes. “Pure vanity,” he responded. “Harry once told him he liked James Dean, the actor, and Suriel showed up for the next fifty years wearing a leather jacket and jeans.”
Oh! Mullins slid the sweatshirt he’d claimed from the drawer over his head, then held his hand to his chest, suddenly conscious of the softer emotions and how much he treasured each one.
“They’re very dear,” he said, and Edward’s sardonic expression softened.
“They are. I popped into Harry’s head today—he’s miffed because Suriel’s serious about bed rest being actual rest, but he says he feels much better.”
Mullins’s mouth twisted. “You don’t believe him?”
Edward held out a hand and tilted it both ways. “Maybe yes maybe no? He’s a really excellent liar when it comes to his own health. By the way, that was cleverly done.”
“What?” But Mullins never could lie worth a damn. It was why he’d chosen to tell the truth to Jonathan rather than mislead him about his time with the red man.
“You hid your tail. We made love four times by my count last night, and not once did I get to see your ass.”
Oh damn. Mullins couldn’t fight the flush taking over his body, so he gave up trying.
“Is it because you don’t like to be penetrated,” Edward asked, raising his eyebrows mockingly, “or because—”
“Not when you can see my tail,” Mullins bit out, not wanting to be this cranky, but… tail!
“Mm….” Edward took the few paces to cross from the kitchen to the sleeping area and stopped in front of him. “I think tails are cool,” he proclaimed, and it was Mullins’s turn to roll his eyes.
“I think mine means I might still end up in hell,” he responded shortly, and then his irritation faded. “And I’d rather you not think of me like that.”
“We won’t let that happen.” Edward wrapped his arms around Mullins’s shoulders and kissed him.
Oh, Mullins wanted to believe him. With every fiber in his being—except, presumably, the flesh invested in the damned tail—he wanted to believe in Edward’s power to overcome every obstacle in his path.
But he’d spent 400 years watching the young and innocent being deceived and watching the older and wiser succumb to the need for power. He’d seen people corrupted by greed, corrupted by lust, by addiction, by despair.
He’d seen people with the same hope Edward had, that of overcoming old power. He’d seen them ground into the dust.
“You’re so young,” he whispered. Then, before Edward could repeat that he was over 150 years old, because that didn’t seem to matter in the youth and naivety of the Youngbloods, he kissed him to stave off the argument. They all just had such a dreadfully strong belief in themselves, in their lovers, in the power of love to change the world.
Edward grinned cheekily and turned toward the kitchen, dragging Mullins along with him.
“That reminds me. Harry and I talked about when you transform completely—we’re going to need to do some spellcasting, you realize.”
Mullins frowned. “Why? What do you mean?”
“Well, Emma stored a great deal of her power in us, and then spilled the balance into Leonard and back into herself. She took what was probably a two or three millennium lifespan and spread it out among the five of us, you understand?”
Oh. “I knew that,” Mullins said, nodding. “I wasn’t there, but yes. She told me.”
“Well of course. So, Francis, Harry, and I have all been building power back, and Emma and Leonard have been building their own. We are, in fact, significantly stronger now as a family than Emma was by herself all those years ago—and we have Beltane and Suriel as well. Suriel came with his own power—shapeshifting, healing, telepathy. Harry’s been teaching him spellcasting, like we do, and he’s been getting pretty good. And of course Bel’s supposed to learn more at Oxford—”
“It’s not Hogwarts, you know.” Because they spoke of Bel’s time away like it would send him back a completely different person.
“Well, it is the way Bel’s doing it. So anyway, I asked Harry, and Harry and the others agreed. When we do the spell—the one that breaks you completely free—we’ll all pour some of our power into you. Enough to lengthen your lifespan, you understand? We haven’t asked Emma and Leonard—they’ve given plenty. But Suriel, Beltane, me, Francis, Harry—that should be enough.”
Mullins blinked, discomfited by such practical discussion of power, as though it were food or water or electricity or something else mundane and replenishable.
“So you’ll be bringing me to your world as your lover—”
“For as long as we both shall live.” Edward’s smile suddenly reminded Mullins that he wasn’t young. That his optimism was hard won and defended by the formidable strength in his heart. “I wasn’t kidding about not being able to lose another lover, Mullins.” He held up his hand, and Mullins answered him, lacing their fingers together. “You and I are going to be bound for many, many years. Are you ready for that?”
Mullins had to laugh. “I assure you, Edward, if I didn’t love you enough for that to sound like a perfectly wonderful arrangement, I would have told you.” His laughter faded. “I would have told you from the very beginning not to try for me. Watching you and your brothers labor, watching you working with all your heart to bring me back to your side—only a truly evil person would have let you do all of that with no intention of loving you for eternity.”
With his other hand, Edward traced Mullins’s lower lip with his thumb.
“Not evil, beloved. Desperate. Tired and sick and terrified of hell. You’ve proved to us again and again that you are more than just a task. I have faith. Are you ready to walk by my side forever?”
“It’s the hope that fed me,” Mullins confessed brokenly. “For the past hundred and forty years, it’s the hope that kept me sane.”
Edward smiled slightly and pulled Mullins in for a long, heated kiss of avowal. The kiss was about to become so much more when Edward yanked back sharply. “Bacon,” he said, pulling away and running to the stove. “Almost overdone.”
Mullins laughed softly, somehow feeling lighter now that they’d had that conversation. As he sat down at the table—already set with flowers and place mats in an absolutely charming fashion—he had a thought.
“Will I be a cat too?” he asked. “A familiar bound to you as you were to Emma?”
Edward grinned at him over his shoulder. “Do you want
to be a cat?”
Mullins scratched his nose. “I’m rather fond of Beltane’s dog,” he confessed shyly. “I… I mean, I don’t have to have a shape, it’s just, you know, watching you all fall asleep in the minivan over these weeks… a dog or a cat would be—”
“Convenient,” Edward told him archly. He sobered. “And damned helpful if we’re to resume the family business.”
Mullins felt something more than hope bubbling up in his chest. He felt purpose. “Freeing the enslaved?” Oh yes. “Yes, Edward—this is a thing I would love to assist with.”
Edward smiled reassuringly. “Then we shall come up with a way. I’ll tell Harry after breakfast.” He finished plating up their food and served Mullins with a flourish. “Here. Breakfast. Most important meal of the day.”
Bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese, toast, and fruit. Simple and perfect.
Mullins paused in front of it, inhaling.
“What?” Edward asked anxiously.
“Food. I… I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten in 450 years.”
Edward grinned again. “Suriel hadn’t eaten ever. I swear, Harry learned the boomerang just so he could go to the market and get him fresh whatever, because he lights up like a little kid.”
Mullins took a bite of the bacon and closed his eyes, shuddering. “Oh… poor Suriel,” he mumbled through a mouthful of bacon. “Never? Because I remember this. Warm bread—” He took a bite of that and chewed blissfully. “Emma made this?” He’d seen modern breads. Most of them weren’t really… substantial. This was homemade, simple, wheat flour, water, yeast.
“I made it,” Edward told him, a delighted smile on his face. “Because I am Emma’s son.”
“You’re wonderful at it,” Mullins told him. “In my day, the baker could bake and the townspeople bought from him. Very few people had an oven that could make all of this.”
“Where are you from, originally?” Edward asked, frowning. “You have an accent, but….”
