Miles opened his eyes and looked blearily up at his lover. “There is no questioning that. Terris—” His throat became thick with emotion too intense to express, and he shook his head. “Please. I don’t know how someone like me ever attracted someone like you, even in a dream—I could never be disappointed in you. Everything about you pleases me. Everything.”
Terris was not moved by this speech; if anything, his countenance became more shuttered. But before Miles could wonder at this, Terris rose and smiled. “Then let me please you more.” He began to undo the ties to his shirt.
Miles propped himself on his elbows and watched, his breathing narrowing to shallow, desperate gasps as Terris removed his clothing and revealed his body. Everything about Terris was so right it almost hurt. His skin, so smooth, so rich and yet so pale. His lips, still swollen, parted just enough to entice without being too much. His shoulders, broad and yet slender. His chest, beautiful, sculpted, like a marble David, not the jarring bulges that looked too much like an actual washboard. His absolutely hairless chest, sloped and perfect, drawing the gaze down to his navel—on a stomach perfectly, achingly flat—and then his groin, where soft blond hair teased in a small tuft of curls before—
The panel of Terris’s crisp white trousers fell away, and Miles groaned.
Oh, God.
Terris’s cock: uncut, straight, rising slowly as his arousal grew. Pale, but now flush as it lifted, the foreskin pulling back just slightly as the organ it surrounded swelled. The ball sac: bare, raw, perfectly shaped, just resting, so soft and sweet and the size of Miles’s mouth, which ached to know them.
Perfect.
The trousers fell to the floor, revealing Terris’s thighs, and his knees, and then Terris moved forward, his naked body sliding over Miles’s own.
Flesh on flesh—the heat of Miles’s skin against the cool, sleek slide of Terris, as thighs, chests, and, of course, cocks met. Miles, overcome, reached up, helpless, and Terris caught his hands at the same time he caught his mouth, diving inside, seeking, claiming, and through it all, begging.
Surrender to me. Surrender to me, Miles. Surrender to me.
Miles did: over, and over, and over, but it never seemed to be enough. He moved when Terris wanted him to, where he wanted him to—at some point the bench became a bed, wide and thick and cased in silk, and Miles didn’t even question it, just gave himself to the dream that was Terris, that was sex with Terris. He was lost, so lost, and he never wanted to be found. But it was not enough.
Terris lifted from the kiss and stared down at him, studying his face. At Miles’s neck, his fingers toyed with the necklace and ring he had placed there. Then he smiled and kissed Miles’s nose.
“But of course. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” He let go of the ring and reached down to lightly slap Miles’s rump. “On your side, darling.”
Miles rolled toward Terris, unsure of what was happening, but willing—very, very willing. Terris shifted himself alongside, their bodies reversed so that he had his mouth at Miles’s cock again, but lying so that this time his own was available to Miles as well. Miles needed no encouragement or instruction. He took the beautiful rod in his hand, cradled the balls, and took his shaft deep into his mouth. When Terris did the same, he thought, here, here is where I will surrender, where I will give myself to him.
But he didn’t.
Oh, he gasped, and he cried out, and he became slick as a seal with his own sweat, but he did not come. He made passionate love to Terris’s cock, teasing it, sucking it, palming it, pulling back the foreskin with his tongue. He toyed with Terris’s slit, and he sucked as if he could pull the spunk out of him, all the while thrusting and shuddering at Terris’s equally intense onslaught. Miles was so aroused he was lost in pleasure-pain. He had stopped being dazzled by the perfection of it all and had given over to the experience itself, but even then he did not come. And he didn’t even mind. But it was driving Terris crazy.
He broke away and climbed back around to Miles’s mouth, his kisses desperate now. “Darling,” he gasped, taking their cocks together in his hand, guiding their joined thrusts. “Darling—what is it you desire? What is it that you need, which I lack?”
But Miles couldn’t answer. He only pushed his hips in time to Terris’s urging and rode on, sure that he could do this forever. Even when Terris gripped his chin and looked down at him in alarm, he only grinned and kept on thrusting. Forever, and ever, and ever, and ever—
Above him, Terris frowned. Then his eyes went dark, then silver, and he bent down and whispered a single word in Miles’s ear.
“Seolfor.”
A great rush came through Miles’s body like a hard, hot wind, and the next thing he knew, he was bucking and shouting as he came, harder and hotter than he ever had in his life. What felt like gallons of cum shot out of him, onto his stomach, onto Terris, onto the sheets below. Flicks of white landed on Terris’s still-swollen mouth, and it would have been beautiful. Except Terris had not come. His erection, in fact, had vanished. And he was looking down at Miles in terror.
“No,” he whispered. He reached out and touched Miles’s face hesitantly, all the while shaking his head. “No. No. It can’t be. You cannot have gotten to him first!”
“What—?” Miles tried to ask, but he was too weak to finish the rest.
Terris’s face shuttered, and he sat back, resting on his knees as he straddled Miles. He reached down and touched the ring in the center of Miles’s necklace.
“Terris?” Miles whispered.
“Take him,” Terris said, his voice not silky or loving, only hard and cold.
There was a bright, painful flash, and everything was gone. The castle, the bed, Terris—everything. Miles was still lying on his back, and he was still naked, but the ground beneath him was rough and hard, not soft. The air was not sweet with flowers and sun, but heavy and close, and it stank of death. It was pitch-dark too. Miles stilled, terrified, because he knew exactly where he was.
He heard the beast’s hooves click against stone, and he whimpered as the hot breath fell, rank and putrid against his face.
Then the beast was gone, and a silvery ghost man stood in his place, Katie’s silver ring glinting on his finger.
“Know your heart,” the man said.
Then he vanished, and the beast returned in his place. It growled and reached for Miles.
Miles cried out—and the darkness was gone.
He lay naked in the leaves at the edge of the wood. He could hear the shouts of someone in the trailer park in the distance, and when he sat up, he could see the tops of some of the trailers. He looked down at himself and saw that he was naked, though he did have a string of hickeys across his chest and thighs. On a stump beside him were his clothes, folded neatly. His hat, scarf, and gloves were there too.
Scattered over the top of everything were the crushed, ruined petals of a white rose.
Chapter Five
Once I taste your honeyed wine,
once I see your glories shine,
once I am yours and you are mine,
then, sweet lover, I will be fine.
THE HOUR AFTER Miles had reappeared in the woods wasn’t precisely pleasant.
After stumbling back into enough clothes to keep himself from getting arrested, he’d run back to the shop, where he had, as Patty put it, “raved like a loon, scared off all the customers, and taken six years off her life.” She spent a solid half hour trying to calm him, then drafted her partner to help, but Julie had spent the whole time Miles had been gone in a meditation, and she was convinced that his danger was even greater than she’d first foreseen. She insisted they all go together to Katie’s place right away, because Katie had studied magic longer—magick, she would say, with a k—and would hopefully know what to do.
And that was how Miles ended up sitting at Katie’s kitchen table, watching a beetle crawl across the wood as the three women argued in hushed but agitated tones in the dining room behind him
.
He would have welcomed the rage he’d felt the last time he was here, because it would have been a great place to hide. But the rage was long gone, lost somewhere between leaving the trailer and the palace of the Lord of Dreams, and in its place was only an aching emptiness. The colors all around him were dull and lifeless, and even his friends’ voices sounded discordant to his ears. Miles found his thoughts drifting back to Terris and the gleaming castle whenever he would let them, and these thoughts made him ache and yearn. It didn’t matter that there was something disturbing about all of it, something that made him nervous and want to go lock himself in his room. It didn’t matter, either, that all of this was absolutely crazy, seriously batshit crazy now. None of it mattered, not when he was thinking of Terris. When he thought of Terris, Terris was all that he wanted. It didn’t matter that all of it had to be a dream. He wanted Terris any way he could get him.
The beetle was still crawling across the table, and Miles focused on tracking the insect to keep himself focused, though he also listened in increasing alarm to the snippets of conversation drifting through the closed door. The beetle was about a quarter inch long, fat as a dime, and it was black, though sometimes when it shifted it glinted a little. He wondered if its wings were doing that or if it had some sort of oil on its surface. He wondered, too, what kind it was. He’d seen it around his whole life, but he’d never bothered to figure out what it was called. It was just Some Black Beetle. Ugly, slightly gross, and it wandered across the table. Having spent several minutes exploring the classified section of a newspaper, it now wove its way to Miles.
“—should cast a few spells first, just to be sure. But I warn you, the stars are not aligned properly for this sort of thing. And I’m out of frankincense.” Katie’s voice cut through the door, and Miles hunched forward, holding his uneasy stomach. There was a high likelihood that soon he’d be drinking funky tea and sitting in the middle of a circle of candles wearing nothing but a towel draped around his waist, and knowing Katie, he’d have to beg to get that.
Because he’d been down this road, and he knew how this scene was going to play out—Katie would want to do a spell, Patty would make a face and say something scathing, and then Julie would give her a scolding look and point out that certainly it couldn’t hurt. And Patty, though she would be thinking it was a bunch of nonsense, would concede Julie’s point and not push because it wasn’t her going to have to sit naked around hot wax, and because she didn’t like to upset her wife. They’d done this to him when he’d first arrived, some charm or spell to “help him redirect his life.” It had done absolutely nothing except embarrass the hell out of him.
There was no way this was going to end any other way, though. It was either going to be one of Katie’s spell circles or a rehab clinic, because Patty was convinced Miles was high. Or insane. Or both. If Miles protested the spell, Patty would empathize, but she’d want to take him down to County Hospital. Which maybe was where he belonged.
Miles almost wished he had taken drugs, that this was all it could be. Because the alternative was far too surreal to contemplate.
He rested an elbow against the table and leaned heavily into his palm, watching glumly as the beetle crawled closer. “I don’t want to be crazy,” Miles told the insect. “But I don’t want this to be real, either.”
The beetle twitched its antennae at him, then turned and headed off to explore the wrapper of a blueberry muffin instead.
Miles sighed and went back to trying not to listen.
He didn’t have to try long, because the next thing he knew the door opened and they came in. Patty crossed to the far side of the kitchen, where she folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the counter, looking cross. Julie came up beside her and stroked her arm, whispering soothingly.
Katie swept around the table with a flourish, her velvet skirt swishing and the beads on the hem of her shirt clinking as she sat down in the chair across from Miles. Her graying hair was thick and curling, but frizzy, and it reminded Miles of a dandelion gone to seed.
“So.” Katie folded her arms over one another, tilted her head to the side and gave Miles a sad, knowing look. “We’ve had some trouble, haven’t we?”
Miles turned to Patty. “Look, I’ve got enough money to go to the clinic and get an appointment. They’ll give me, antidepressants, something to make me sleep, and an appointment with a counselor. I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll be fine.”
Patty wasn’t appeased. “You came running into the shop half-naked, Miles. You were screaming and carrying on about some beast chasing you in the woods. And you were full of hickeys.”
“There is something odd about your aura, Miles,” Katie said, still speaking in lofty tones. “Even worse than that day you were in my shop. You are spiky and uneven all around. And yet in some places, it’s like you aren’t even here.”
Miles blushed at the memory of stealing the ring, a reflection made worse by the fact that he’d lost it. But before he could offer to pay for it again, Katie was speaking once more.
“There’s something going on with you, Miles. Something dangerous. You owe it to your friends and to yourself to discover what it is.”
“For the last time—I wasn’t with anyone. I fell asleep in the woods. I don’t know how or why. I just woke up there. I had a weird dream.” He saw the beetle poke its head out of the wrapper and had a fit of inspiration. “I bet the hickeys are bug bites. Please, Patty—I swear to God, I’m not on anything. I’ll take whatever tox-screen you want.”
Katie reached out and patted his hand, her lip bulging in an empathetic pout. “You poor thing. You just let Aunt Katie take care of you, hmm? We’ll just check a few things, and then you can go home and drink some tea and get some sleep. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Julie came up beside Katie, her arms crossed and her hands tucked protectively against her sides. “Miles, your cards are very bad. And she’s right. You have some strange energy around you. You need to let Katie cleanse you.”
Miles cast a pleading look at Patty.
Patty stared back hard, worrying the side of her cheek with her teeth, but she just shook her head. “You weren’t drunk, Miles, I know that, but you had to be on something. And you’re not staying in my trailer if you’re using. You can go shack up with whoever gave you your love bites.”
Katie stood, scooped up the wrapper, beetle and all, and tossed it into the trash. “Come on into my workshop, sweetheart. It will only take a little while.”
Miles cast one last pleading look to Patty, giving her his most innocent, most vulnerable look.
Fifteen minutes later, Patty and Julie were gone, and Miles was sitting naked in the center of a circle of white candles, a white washcloth over his groin as he listened to the dulcet whispers of Katie’s spell.
Katie called to the four elements as she spread a ring of salt around the both of them, casting them inside with an altar. Miles also had his own circle inside the candles. It was cold in the room, and he had goosebumps.
Worst of all, though, was that Katie was naked too. It was for the purity of the spell, that much he knew, but it still unnerved Miles.
“I’m going to put you in a trance,” she told him, setting down her bowl of salt and picking up a burning stub of sage. She sat down on her haunches and tilted her head to the side as she looked at him. “It’s perfectly harmless, but by placing you inside the circle, it will make sure that if anything does go wrong, you’ll be contained.”
“You really think I’m dangerous?” Miles kept his eyes on her face. He’d tried looking at her knees, but then she’d shifted and given him a view he really, really didn’t need. But when he saw how serious she was, he straightened. “Seriously—you think I am, don’t you?”
Katie gave him a condescending smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll clean you up, just you watch.” But there was a flicker of fear on her face too. She was scared.
And the fact that Katie was scared made Miles downright petrified.
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Miles watched her continue closing the circle, chanting again, saying something about the four elements and the lords of each. Her fuzzy hair brushed her pale, freckled shoulders, and Miles stared at them to keep his gaze from drifting lower. But as he watched her move around the circle, her pale skin illuminated by the candlelight, he had a sudden flash back to a different set of shoulders in a different room, in a different light.
He had only remembered the dream in fragments, but now as he watched Katie move around the circle, it came back in a flood: Terris’s shirt falling away. Terris’s trousers sliding down his legs. Terris, gleaming and perfect, sliding his skin against Miles’s own—
A faint clicking sound drew Miles partway back to reality. The black beetle from the muffin wrapper, or one of its cousins, skittered across the wood floor just outside the circle. Miles watched its antennae quiver and twitch, and he smiled at it in a daze.
The room began to fade, and Miles felt a momentary twinge of unease. Just as it had in the forest, the light began to change again. This time his unease was brief, and Miles quickly slid into a feeling of intense pleasure. He was dimly aware of Katie chanting on the other side of the circle of candles, but he was too focused on the increasing flood of sensory memory to pay her much attention. He could see Terris again, could feel him, could remember what it felt like to lie beneath him, what it was like to have Terris’s body sliding over his own. Miles remembered the taste of him: his mouth, his skin, the tuft of hair above his cock. Katie’s work room was disappearing, the dream castle returning. He could smell the summer wind drifting in through the open window, could smell the sun heating the silver velvet drapes.
He could feel the weight of silver necklace and the heavy press of the ring against his neck, so light, so sweet, so tight.
Something tickled against Miles’s hand. He blinked, then gasped as a bright flash of light drew him abruptly back.
Miles and the Magic Flute Page 7
