by Amy Lane
“So do you.” Mullins arched an eyebrow. “Actually, you six, talking mostly to yourselves for so much of your lives—it’s taken you all an appallingly long time to not sound like British immigrants from 1860. Even Bel.”
Edward’s cheeks pinkened, and he took a bite of his own bacon. “Well, that’s humbling, but you dodged the question.”
Mullins chewed thoughtfully. “Somewhere in England?” he hazarded. “When you’re a peasant in a small village, you don’t really get schooled in where you are. You just sort of live your life, you know?”
“Could you read and write?” Edward asked, all curiosity.
“No,” Mullins said promptly. “Not beyond my name. But Leonard saw my… my induction, as it were. He was… I think I shocked him out of his spiral. He grabbed me the moment I entered hell and put me to work as a scribe. He had to teach me then, how to read and write, how to reason. Having a friend there, having someone to give me purpose… that’s why I never really lost my soul.” He paused, his food suddenly less appetizing. “I hope. It’s not like we have it in a jar or anything to check to make sure it still lives.”
Edward’s look was all compassion. “It’s there,” he said kindly. “Your soul. You’re our friend, Mullins. You’re my lover. Nobody who touched me like you touched me last night can be soulless.”
Mullins nodded, still worried, but Edward cleared his throat.
“Eat,” he commanded. “After breakfast, I need to review our spell and look over some maps. As soon as Harry’s back online, we’ll need to be ready.”
Mullins gnawed on his bottom lip. “It’s odd, isn’t it?” he asked, before taking an ordered bite of eggs. “That Leonard noticed me—he said himself that he was a heartbeat away from giving up. That mentoring me, keeping me out of trouble, it’s what gave him back his heart.”
Edward twisted his mouth. “Honestly, it’s no more odd than three boys being in the underbrush when Emma needed three familiars to survive. It’s one of those random twists of fate—”
“That almost feel destined.” Mullins could feel what he was hinting at, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. There seemed to be a blank place in his mind whenever he thought about it. He shook his head. The breakfast was lovely, and Edward was so full of plans. He’d been a young man before he went to hell, and he was feeling young again.
But Edward surprised him—as he often did. “If there was another hand—a kinder hand—in the things that happened to us, I certainly wouldn’t turn down any help now,” he said graciously. “Whoever tampered with the spell to get you here gave us last night. They gave us this breakfast and the things I plan to do to you afterward. They gave us many years of a friendship that sustained us. Perhaps not angelic—Suriel’s people don’t feel especially warm to me, although Suriel is a charming exception—but… but something important. I’m going to count my blessings and be grateful.”
Mullins smiled shyly at him. “You have plans for me afterward?” he asked, taking a bite of perfectly crispy bacon.
Edward nodded and took his own bite. “I do indeed.”
Oh. Mullins’s brain—always the part he’d relied on to keep him safe in hell—took a long deep breath and kicked back to enjoy the show.
He was warm and comfortable, clean and fed, and his skin still tingled from lovemaking of the kind he had never thought to have again.
And Edward—his boy—the boy he’d guarded and avenged, the boy he’d taught and loved—was there, across from him, a wicked gleam in his bright green eyes.
“I’ll enjoy that,” Mullins said simply. He took his cue from Edward and shook some sriracha sauce on his eggs. A little spicy, but some milk to wash it down? Perfect.
“Good.”
Mullins had seen many moods on Edward’s face over the years, but this one, this playful smugness? He shivered deliciously. This could be his favorite.
Never Enough Touch
MULLINS OFFERED to clean up while Edward looked at maps to try to find the possible whereabouts of a fairy hill in the middle of the Sierra Nevadas. It wasn’t going well. After the tenth try, Edward looked up from scrying over the most recent map he could find, to see a stunningly handsome young man washing dishes in the cabin kitchen, and had a heart-thumping moment of disconnect.
This is Mullins. I’ve loved him forever. He’s mine.
Mullins bit his lip in thought, and Edward felt another terrible pressure on his chest.
He can’t go back. He never should have been there in the first place.
Everything Edward had learned thus far, both of heaven and of hell, told him that a person’s self-perception, their empathy, their forgiveness, all had a hand in determining where they should end up. Nothing about Mullins’s story the night before told Edward he should have been in hell.
Mullins was right—something about his fall, his stay, his association with Leonard felt both random and destined. Right down to Mullins’s rather crafty and dogged determination to not do anything he couldn’t forgive himself for.
Nobody with that sort of integrity deserved to be in hell. Even the hell of his own making should have been forgiven and absolved when time and experience and maturity had shown him that what seemed to be an unforgivable sin had been a painful lesson, exacerbated to insanity by mob rule.
It all seemed so odd, and Edward’s mind wandered to and glanced away from the most random part of the story.
He gritted his teeth and focused on that thought. Dammit, he was too old a wizard to allow his attention be… what? Deflected? Abruptly the thought came into focus.
“Mullins?” he asked, feeling out of sorts. “Did you ever figure out who the red man was?”
“He was blue at the end,” Mullins said. “Wait… no… sunset orange.”
Edward heard it then.
There was a blankness to Mullins’s voice. A magic-induced blankness.
“That’s not an answer, love,” Edward said, keeping his voice gentle and firm. He needed Mullins to see it.
“He came to my sister’s window,” Mullins said.
“You told me that. Why?”
The blankness eased. “She was so sweet.” There was a smile in his voice. “Everybody loved Ruthie.” And now, sudden animation. “I wonder… we’ll have to see what happened to her. I mean… I know it was the last thing on the list, but… but we’ll get to find out what happened to her!” He turned toward Edward then, all thought of the red man or the blue man gone. “Do you think—when Harry’s better, I mean—we can scry for my descendants? I mean… I had other sisters but….” His face fell. “For some reason, I just keep thinking…. Ruthie was supposed to survive. She was supposed to grow old and have children, and they were to have children, on down the generations. Four hundred years in hell—I have to think he kept his word and let Ruthie survive. Surely she must have lived, loved, had children. I would love to see my Ruthie’s children.” He turned his face away. “Sorry—you’ve all been so focused. It’s not fair of me to—”
“I think we have to,” Edward said, to make him smile. “It’s part of the spell.”
Mullins brightened. “Oh, it is! Good.”
Edward stood and moved toward him, dismayed when Mullins turned his shoulders, warning him way. “But it’s okay if you want it just for yourself.”
“Only if it’s necessary,” Mullins said, still looking away.
A century and a half of falling in love and a month of playing boomerang around the planet, and Edward was going to let him get away with that?
Edward moved behind him, invading his space, wrapping his arms around Mullins’s waist and digging his chin into his shoulder. He felt a restless twitching against his leg, and while part of him thought, “Aha, there’s his tail,” most of him was focused on the feeling of Mullins in his arms and the necessity of having him open up.
“There’s no sin in the question,” he murmured against Mullins’s ear. “Harry looked up his sisters about seventy years after we came to live with Leona
rd and Emma.” His voice dropped. “They both died in their twenties. No children. He… he was hurt. I understand—the hope and the fear. But I think… I think that the interference in our hunt was sort of a good sign. So was your story. Your midnight lover promised your sister would be safe. He might even have come to save you from that demon.”
“In which case I’m the dumbest fucking—”
“Shut up,” Edward said gently. “You wouldn’t let us destroy ourselves over our mistakes—you don’t get that option either. You were young and scared and hurt—and in over your head, I might add. If a blue man appeared next to my window when I worked at the Golden Child and said, ‘Hey, let me make this not suck for you,’ I would have been all over that shit like a clean diaper. Don’t be angry at yourself for wanting to enjoy something new and exciting. Fidelity is a luxury of maturity, experience, and self-knowledge, none of which you had a zillion years ago.”
Mullins half glared at him. “You’re so damned reasonable! You make it sound like it’s all so normal.”
Edward felt the flush of embarrassment wash over his cheeks. “I… I was not reasonable as we were searching,” he admitted. “I… I drove Harry. I didn’t say anything and he’ll never blame me for it, but I… I worried about you, beloved. I was so afraid to hope for so long, and then… I was impatient, love. It’s why I’m not champing at the bit now.”
Mullins’s mouth twisted wryly. “Is it the only reason?”
Edward kissed him, savoring his taste all over again, and then pulled back. “Finish the dishes,” he said a little breathlessly. “I need to write something down—carve it into the table if I have to. Then….” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
“Plans?” Mullins asked, a flush washing his pale cheekbones.
“I will see that tail,” Edward vowed. “I have to. I’m walking funny after last night, and it’s your turn.”
Mullins turned away, completely mortified, so he could upend the washtub and clean out the sink.
And Edward went back to the table and wrote carefully on his legal tablet at the same time he wrote on the tablet in his mind:
Who is the red man and why is he trying to help us?
Mullins wiped down the counters and Edward went back to the map, scrying with a clear mind. In a few moments, a wash of triumph heated his skin, and Mullins’s arms around his neck felt so much a part of that, he didn’t even startle.
“You see that?” he asked, excited.
“I see I’m being extremely forward here,” Mullins pouted, and Edward grinned and turned his head for a brief, hard kiss.
He pulled away and rubbed his lips against the back of Mullins’s hand before pointing to the map.
“You see that?” he asked. “That spot right there?”
“Yes—you haven’t marked it once.”
Edward laughed, almost manically. “Nope. I’ve marked to the north, the south, the east, the west. Twelve times I cast a scrying spell, and twelve times the charm landed decisively—decisively I tell you—everywhere but this quarter-sized spot right here.”
Edward glared at it, because ha! He had it now, dammit!
“It’s….” Mullins moved a hand so he could trace the spot with a finger. “It’s oddly blank, isn’t it? This is a fairly detailed map, and something this size should show changes, a mountain, a gulley, a road, a driveway—something. But no—just the same graded green.”
Edward snorted grimly. “I would imagine if I looked this up on the computer, I’d find the satellite just handily doesn’t intersect any bit of this. Nothing to see here, folks—trees and brush right off the road, driving by a full-blown fairy hill with nothing to show for it.”
Mullins leaned further, his chest heating Edward’s back, his cheek rubbing against Edward’s ear. “That is some serious power,” he said in awe. “For one thing, that’s nearly twenty thousand acres, if the proportions are right. For another, that’s not just us. That’s….”
“Everybody,” Edward breathed, nodding. “That power keeps everybody out.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Your mother trusted him,” Mullins said, as though he was trying to keep his fears at bay.
“Of course.” Edward rubbed his cheek against Mullins’s barely stubbled jaw. Shaving. He would have to learn. “I’m not thinking that this is a fearsome thing. I’m wondering what our thirty or so acres here in Mendocino would look like if someone were trying to scry for us.”
Mullins let out a little chuff of air into his ear, and all Edward’s skin began to tingle.
“You’re thinking it’s protection.”
“Absolutely. Think about it, Mullins—an elven king, and more than that. Vampires? Werewolves? Brownies? In 1850 he was willing to go to town and risk exposure to try to keep his land and people safe. If he’s gotten more powerful—and more people—what do you think he’ll try to do now?”
“Mm….” Mullins let out a strained chuckle, and his hands moved to Edward’s chest, where he started kneading. Edward’s brain—so clearly focused until now—became a pleasant blank. “I’ll be honest, beloved. I want to puzzle this out like you do, but at the moment, I’ve developed more pressing concerns.”
Edward stood and stepped around the chair, then caught Mullins’s chin between his fingers. “Seems we have the same interests,” he murmured, a sweet shiver coursing down his spine. Mullins closed his eyes and raised his face for the kiss, impressing Edward with that implicit trust he’d shown all along.
Edward and his brothers would finish what they’d started. They would break off all ties to hell, leaving Mullins free and clear and safe in the Youngblood family circle.
But now, this moment right here, was not the moment for great quests.
It was the time to take his lover to their bed and make him truly, irrevocably Edward’s.
Edward kept kissing, backing Mullins up to the bed, still rumpled from the night before. He grabbed the hem of Mullins’s shirts, dragging them up over his head and steadying him as he went over backward before yanking at his own sweatshirt, his jeans, his boxers, letting them puddle on the floor in his urgency.
His fingers trembled as he fumbled with the faded pair of Francis’s jeans Mullins had put on when he dressed. “These look very good on you,” he said, finally freeing the button-fly. “You look better with them off.” With a yank he added the jeans to the puddle on the floor and stretched out, pressing his lips to Mullins’s soft, bare neck.
Mullins shuddered in the open air, pulling Edward closer to him, like Edward would cover his nakedness. “We just did this,” he murmured, tilting his head back, giving Edward access.
“Not enough.” Edward took a pink nipple into his mouth and sucked hard, waiting for Mullins to writhe and moan.
He was not disappointed.
Mullins’s body had learned from their adventures the night before. He moved a little slower now, like he had just enough space between thought and sensation to fit some self-control.
Good.
Because Edward wanted to take his time.
He took Mullins’s cock into his mouth—but he didn’t suck hard, didn’t squeeze. Just laved, putting enough pressure to keep things interesting, but not enough to amp up the excitement, to raise the stakes.
He tortured.
Mullins’s quivering body started to jerk—his arm, his hand, his foot—as he pressed against the bed, trying not to take over.
“You want something?” Edward taunted, his own erection pushing against the bed. “Anything in particular?”
Mullins gasped, inarticulate, and Edward kept laving. He dribbled enough spit between Mullins’s thighs to run his fingers through it.
Very carefully, he traced a path between Mullins’s cheeks.
“Edward!” Mullins protested, just as Edward breached him. “Ah! Oh sweet hells!”
He bucked up, then down, the momentum of his hips driving Edward’s finger in farther.
Edward lifted his head and wiggled
his finger. “Now, Mullins,” he panted, trying to keep his voice even, “you need to be clear. Was that ‘Sweet hells, yes!’ or ‘Sweet hells, no!’”
He pushed in a little more. “Yes!” Mullins cried, and Edward rewarded him with another finger.
He could feel Mullins’s tail thrashing under his knuckles, but he ignored it.
What was important was that Mullins let Edward love every bit of him—the flaws, the moments of weakness, the tail, and all.
Mullins moaned, and Edward licked his cockhead with lazy intent.
“Was there something you wanted?” he asked. Two fingers, moving back and forth. But not stretching. Not really fucking. Just… tormenting.
“Augh! Edward! Please!”
Edward pulled back—but kept his fingers where they were. Mullins was naked, thighs spread in the pale daylight of the room. One wicked hand had moved to his pink nipple, where he plucked and pinched while Edward ministered to him with clever fingers and willing mouth.
The other hand was knotted in the sheets, pulling rhythmically as Edward moved inside him.
“Please what?” he taunted.
Mullins opened blue eyes and snapped hotly, “Fuck me, Edward. God, I need!”
Edward grinned with satisfaction and squeezed Mullins’s cock slowly, base to tip, while Mullins thrashed below him.
“Edward!” he wailed.
“Of course, beloved,” Edward said mildly. He let go of Mullins’s erection, reached for the slick on the dresser, and prepared himself cursorily.
Then, with a little more care, he drizzled some on his fingers and penetrated Mullins again, stretching with purpose.
“Nnn….” Mullins went absolutely still. “I’m going to come,” he panted.
“Not. Yet.”
Edward pulled his fingers and moved into position between Mullins’s spread thighs. “Look at me, beloved,” he rasped.
Mullins’s eyes flew open again, and Edward pushed against his entrance. “Edward?” Uncertain and aroused, he tugged at Edward’s heart.
“I’m here,” Edward said gently. “I see you. I see all of you.” His pale skin was blotched with arousal, and he needed activity and food to shore up his muscles, give his wiry, muscled body substance and weight.
