Stone Cold Read online

  “I think so. Provided you and I make a proper start of things.” Conall slid a hand up Josh’s arm. “Stupid clothes.”

  Josh agreed whole-heartedly. He had no objection at all to being on display for his scair-anam; however, given the tendency of some of his tattoos to come alive under the right circumstances, which circumstances included exposure to a powerful channeling such as the one Conall was about to create, it was prudent to keep his ink covered, at least around the nexus.

  Josh knew how much Conall hated to be prudent. He wasn’t crazy about it himself, especially when it meant he had to keep his clothes on around his partner, a Fae who craved physical contact the way other men craved air. But Árean, the black-headed hawk on his chest, couldn’t resist Cuinn’s hair when he was free-flying, and as for Scathacrú, well, one miniature gold fire-breathing dragon winging around while Conall was trying to channel was one miniature gold fire-breathing dragon too many. A long-sleeved shirt made sure they both stayed asleep.

  Conall brushed the backs of his fingers along the line of Josh’s jaw, and Josh spent a second getting lost in faceted peridot eyes. A second that was about an hour long, long enough to let Josh read Conall’s memory of every minute of three hundred years he’d been forced to live without a single loving touch. And then the centuries-old red-haired twink pulled Josh down into a kiss that made the rest of the nexus chamber go away without the need for any magick at all.

  Josh slid his arms around Conall’s waist and drew him in close. Fae magick needed the channeler’s arousal in order to be at its strongest, and he was always glad to oblige the greatest mage the Fae race had known since the time of the Loremasters. But there was no separating arousal from love, not when the one in your arms and in your body was your SoulShare.

  Dimly, Josh heard a scraping sound that he guessed was Cuinn and Rian moving the battered black leather chaise away from the center of the nexus. He ignored the sound, because Conall needed him.

  Conall nipped lightly at Josh’s lower lip. “When we’re done here, can we go back to our shibari session?” The question was punctuated with a swaying of the Fae’s lower body that wasn’t quite a thrust of the hips.

  “Of course we can—”

  “I thought you said we were on the clock, Twinklebritches.”

  Josh grimaced at the sound of Rian’s voice and Cuinn’s chiding.

  But Conall shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and pulled back from Josh. “We are. These calm periods usually don’t last long.” His smile was all for Josh, pure innocent wickedness. “Ready to finish me off?”

  “You’re impossible to finish. You just pause to catch your breath, and sometimes you fall asleep.” Josh grinned. “Need to come inside for this one?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Horndog,” someone muttered.

  “Don’t make me channel a gag for my Prince, Cuinn, it’s not respectful.” Conall tiptoed and nipped Josh’s chin, then quickly Faded and was lost to view.

  Josh knew, though, that his scair-anam wasn’t going anywhere—other than for a very short Fade-walk. He pushed up the sleeve covering his inked truesilver bracelet, then stood perfectly still until he felt the cool touch of metal encircling his wrist, binding Conall within him.

  I’m in. Conall’s voice, in his head, was just added confirmation of what Josh already knew. You may fire when ready.

  Give me a second. Yes, they were in a hurry. But there was time for this. Josh closed his eyes, wrapped his arms around his torso, and released a long, slow breath, letting himself feel Conall inside him. The first time they’d done this, it had been an act of desperation, the only way to get the disembodied Fae back to the great nexus to get his body back. And then they’d discovered that the mage could only work his greatest channelings when he had the added support of his human SoulShare. But it also hadn’t taken them long to acquire a taste for the extreme intimacy of this contact—the ultimate penetration, Josh had called it once. Too intense to endure for long… yet they kept coming back to it. Loving it. Loving each other.

  Do me a favor? Conall’s inner voice was almost wistful. Imagine us in the shower. Like the first time.

  Conall’s favorite. And Josh’s, too, frankly.

  Keeping his eyes closed—he knew Cuinn and Rian were out there, but he didn’t care, because where it mattered, he was entirely alone with his lover—he set the scene, with loving attention to detail. Bryce and Terry’s shower, it had been then, tiny worn white tiles scattered with black and a frosted glass door set in stainless steel tracks. It would have been sterile, if not for Conall slowly going to his knees at Josh’s feet, red hair turned auburn by the water and plastered to his head, apple-green eyes fixed on Josh. Wanting to know if he was doing it right.

  Was I? Doing it right? Even after all this time, Conall still wondered.

  Instead of answering, Josh let Conall see and feel and hear his memories. Let himself feel a mouth even hotter than the water sealing itself around his rising cock, taking him deep. Gorgeous green eyes. Soft throaty moans—even when Conall hadn’t dared to let himself feel physical arousal, for fear of the damage his unleashed magick might do, he’d wanted Josh, and he’d left Josh no room to doubt it.

  He could hear and feel Conall moaning now, too, with his own arousal and with Josh’s. One more thing they shared, when they loved this way. It was strange, but a strangeness Josh was used to by now, looking down in his imagination to see Conall stroking his cock base-to-tip with a flat tongue, and at the same time feeling Conall inside his body, sensing everything along with him, his own erection sheathed inside Josh’s and straining upward.

  You’re too damned good at this. Conall wasn’t complaining, not really, and Josh knew it. You make me want to stand here like this until the sun comes up.

  You need me to back off a little? If Conall came before he channeled, everything would have to wait until he was ready again—so far as anyone knew, Rhoann was the only Fae whose magick was more potent in the afterglow.

  No. Conall’s inner voice was breathless, as impossible—or at least unnecessary—as that was. Keep me right here. Right on the edge.

  You don’t ask much. Keeping Conall on the edge of orgasm meant doing the same for himself. And living with a Fae was gradually removing concepts like delayed gratification from Josh’s sexual vocabulary. The things I do for love.

  Conall’s faint, wild laughter nearly pitched Josh headlong over the edge he was trying so hard to balance on. Then he felt the surge of living magick rising in Conall, and braced himself, opening his eyes to help orient his partner.

  Reach out, dar’cion—just one hand.

  Obediently, Josh extended a hand toward the center of the nexus. Cuinn knelt next to the center, with Rian beside him. They didn’t need to be making out—Cuinn’s role in what was about to happen didn’t require much in the way of magick, as far as Josh knew—but they were still holding hands, and the young Prince was leaning on his consort’s shoulder. Craving one another’s touch.

  Josh knew just how they felt.

  * * *

  Kneeling in the ley energy was more than a little unnerving. And Cuinn really didn’t need to be unnerved more than he was—the restless wellspring, and the very real possibility they were being eavesdropped on through it, were already giving him a serious case of the inní-cnotálte.

  What’s chafing you, then? Rian’s gaze never left Josh, but his hand tightened around Cuinn’s.

  There were disadvantages to having a bondmate who could literally read his mind if he didn’t take care to keep his thoughts to himself. Especially when his bondmate was a Fire elemental who had already expressed a heartfelt wish to burn down the entities who were responsible for his knitted guts. Entities who were the only beings capable of giving him back his voice, and who were unlikely to do so if turned to ashes by a volatile Fire Royal.

  Best to stick to the ley energy as an excuse. Honesty was the order of the day, at least if they didn’t want the daragin frying F
iachra’s brain from the inside, but Cuinn was willing to bet there were still some things it was better not to be brutally honest about. I’m not sure how Conall got the idea the nexus is calmer than usual tonight. It feels loaded for bear to me.

  He could feel Rian nodding against his shoulder. Maybe that’s why the center’s calmer—when the energy’s moving faster round the outside it stays clear of the—oh, he’s starting.

  ‘He,’ of course, was Twinklebritches. Or Josh, in loco scintillans braccis, with what looked like the rolled socks of an entire basketball team pushing out the fly of his jeans and his hand stretched out toward the center of the nexus. His usually-but-not-always tattooed truesilver bracelet gleamed in the torchlight, and a stream of carefully crafted magick issued from his fingertips, arcing toward the center.

  The magick found its target just a few inches from Cuinn’s knees, spilling into the foam of ley energy. And somehow stilling it, turning the foam to glass, in a circle that started out as wide as Cuinn’s palm, then slowly expanded to the size of a Frisbee, or maybe a record album. Cuinn doubted a kid Rian’s age even had any clue what a record album was.

  “You can start any time.”

  Cuinn found Josh’s voice fascinating, when he was speaking with Conall inside him. He could hear both of them, somehow, tenor and baritone. Oil and vinegar. Peanut butter and chocolate.

  Rian nudged him in the ribs with an elbow.

  Ow. Ask them what I’m supposed to be writing, will you?

  Rian obliged, and Josh frowned, no doubt reflecting Twinklebritches’ ruminations.

  “Tell them… living magick is breaking out into the human world faster than we can ward it. And that the daragin are awakening, and we can’t ward the wellsprings without their help. And that a better solution would be to stop the magick from breaking through in the first place. Ask them if they can do anything to help us. Because otherwise the Marfach is going to find an unwarded wellspring, sooner or later, probably sooner.”

  Cuinn thought about it, trying very hard to forget that he’d ever considered it a pain in the ass to communicate with the Loremasters in the Pattern by writing in a notebook or on an iPad, from the comfort of his bed or his sofa or the john or wherever the hell he happened to be. I’d just like to remind you that there’s no shorthand form of d’aos’Faein.

  Josh put up an eyebrow as Rian translated for Cuinn. “I wouldn’t mind having crises that could be expressed in 144 characters or less, myself, but the hostage doesn’t get to choose the grace-blade he falls on.”

  Cuinn snickered at the expression on Josh’s face at Conall’s use of the common Faen proverb, then bent to his work as Josh returned to the task of keeping the mage aroused. Whatever Cuinn wrote here with a fingertip, in the ancient nonlinear d’aos’Faein script, would be invisible here, but would be traced out in silver in the center of the Pattern on the other side of things. Hopefully it would stay there until someone had a chance to read it; they had no way of knowing for certain.

  Cuinn really, really needed someone on the other side to read it, and to have a bright idea or two. There were an extra couple of reasons for urgency, neither of which it was advisable for him to remind Conall of out loud within earshot of a wellspring. The truce with the daragin depended on the tree folk never overhearing a Fae lying. And he strongly suspected any chance he had of getting his voice back hinged on the daragin and the Gille Dubh becoming convinced the Fae as a race had mended their ruthlessly self-centered ways—the ways he himself had so admirably demonstrated when he stole the Moon’s magick and killed off the mutually symbiotic races of daragin and Gille Dubh.

  And Cuinn wasn’t sure how long they could keep the daragin from overhearing something that would totally fuck up either chance.

  He wrote quickly, and as carefully as he could, given that he couldn’t see the tracings his fingertip was leaving behind. I hope I’m not inviting all the Loremasters to fornicate with basilisks next Midsummer’s Eve. There isn’t all that much difference in the d’aos’Faein script, and I don’t think any of them would find the request unusual, coming from me.

  I think I’ll keep that bit to myself. The snicker Rian didn’t let out permeated his inner voice. I suspect my court mage is a bit on edge as it is.

  “Are you almost done?” Cuinn couldn’t tell whether the strain in the voice was coming from Conall or Josh. Might have been both. All that arousal was undoubtedly a strain on both of them, a strain Cuinn considered poetic justice.

  Keep your britches on. Cuinn grinned as Rian elbowed him again. Almost done. One last whorl, a quick slash, and the message was finished. All right, Josh, you can let him—

  Silver etched itself against the glassy surface, and Cuinn held up a hand before Rian had finished. Wait. There’s an answer.

  A few curves of d’aos’Faein script, a hurried note.

  GUARD THE GUARDIAN.

  Conall’s magickal barrier, holding back the ley energy, burst, spilling the foaming energy over the glyph, erasing it.

  “Guard the guardian?” Rian repeated. “What kind of a feckin’ answer is that?”

  That was Aine’s writing. And maybe it wasn’t an answer.

  “Tiernan’s the guardian of the nexus.” Conall’s voice, unmixed with Josh’s; Cuinn looked up to see, not an aroused twink, but a frowning mage. “We may not be the only ones having problems.”

  Chapter Seven

  The design in the floor is so beautiful, so hypnotic, that for a second even a male as driven as Maelduin is capable of forgetting what he’s come here to do, content simply to stare. The fine lines of bluish silver set into the black glass of the floor could be lace, or fine knotwork. But on the edge of vision, they move and change; they cast their own light, vying with the moonlight.

  Maelduin shifted uneasily in his sleep. Beauty had lied.

  Moonlight. He looks up, at the face of the moon, visible through the chamber’s sole window, an odd round hole seeming only slightly larger than the moon itself. The orb nearly fills the window. For some reason, the Fae thinks of the ancient children’s story of the Mother in the Moon, brushing out her long hair in front of her glass, her skirts spread around her. He had never known his own mother, but sometimes he had wondered if the one in the moon might be his. Now he wonders if she might be looking at him, whoever she is.

  An arm came around Maelduin, hard-muscled, soothing. A soft murmur, felt but unheard, erased the line from between his brows.

  He blinks, brushing a hand across his face as a breeze stirs his long blond hair. The breeze grows stronger, sending a leaf or some small thing skittering across the beautiful floor. The sound makes him look down, and a fine sweat breaks out all over his body; his breath catches, and he feels his heart kicking like a barrel-drum in his chest. The lines are moving, vibrating with an energy he can almost hear. And in the spaces between the lines, where there is glass no longer, he can see the stars of another sky. A sky, far below him.

  He tries not to fall.

  The wind howls to life and hits him like a smith’s hammer—

  Maelduin’s whole body jerked as he woke, the sweat of his dream slicking his naked body. He fervently hoped the echoes of the cry he heard were only in his imagination.

  “You okay?” Terry’s voice in his ear was blurry and indistinct, as if the human were not yet fully awake.

  Maelduin frowned, looking down at the arm wrapped around his waist, in the sunlight slanting in through the sheer-draped window. He had never awakened in the embrace of another before—no Fae had ever been tempted to spend a night in his bed, not with the reputation of his House and his line, and frankly he had never been tempted to ask any of them to stay.

  Yet he liked this sensation. Or at least he thought he did, having so little with which to compare it.

  Carefully, he sorted through his available vocabulary. The human language was oddly structured, but between the comments of the bystanders in the underground moving room and his limited conversation with Terry the n
ight before, he hoped he had the words he would need for the task ahead. “I’m okay, yes. Just… hungry.” Hopefully that would explain any untoward sounds he might have made in his sleep.

  He definitely liked the way Terry’s laugh felt, where the human was spooned against his back, the opposite of the way they had fallen asleep. The sensation drove away the last clinging tendrils of his nightmare. “Worked up an appetite, did you?”

  “I would have to say yes.” Maelduin was surprised to catch himself running his fingertips over the fine hairs on Terry’s forearm. And enjoying doing so.

  I am not supposed to be able to enjoy this.

  Maybe I don’t care.

  “Well, I’m not in any mood to get up just yet.” A line of gentle nips and nibbles ran down the back of Maelduin’s shoulder. “But if you want to get up and make us both some breakfast, I think I might regain enough of my strength for another round.”

  The thought warmed Maelduin, and he grinned—even though his back was to Terry, and there was no way the human could see him. Another thing Fae were not known for. “I can do that.”

  I hope. His initial optimism was somewhat frayed by the time he made his way back to what he thought was the kitchen. There was still no fire in sight, and no place to make one, unless the metal basin was some kind of fire pit. He suspected not, since the fittings over the basin resembled those in the bathroom, which had yielded water. Unless they’re meant to put out the fire…

  Fae were not given to headaches, but Maelduin thought he felt one coming on. Everything around him was strange beyond belief and wanted figuring out, he himself was hopelessly clumsy… and emotions were stirring in him unlike any he had ever known, or was supposed to be able to know. The combination left him feeling naked, in ways much less pleasant than his present nudity.

  “Know what I’m in the mood for?” Terry’s voice wafted in from the bedchamber.

  “Sex?”

  Spluttering laughter left Maelduin feeling as if something inside him glowed, a banked fire ready to spread and catch alight.