Page 22 of Outside the Veil (Endangered Fae #1)

Chapter thirteen

Afterglow

S pring nights had been pleasantly cool up to this point, but the thing outside plunged the house into deep winter.

The wind had blown out the pilot light. The heater wouldn’t fire.

Diego hurried upstairs to grab every blanket and down comforter from the bedrooms so he could wrap Finn up tight.

It can’t come in, it can’t come in , he reminded himself over and over, each time the unnatural wind crashed against a nearby window.

Finn lay shivering on the sofa, nursing a cracked rib and an aching skull, while Diego struggled to light a fire.

“Please, please don’t do things like that.” Diego perched on the cushion next to him. “It could have killed you.”

Finn opened the blankets to invite him into the warmth. “Quite a bit more effort would be necessary to kill me. When one heals so quickly—”

“Yes, yes, I suppose you could have your head hanging half off and still survive. Don’t expect me to be happy about having to watch.” Diego relented and nestled close. “What if it had used a weapon instead of just wind? Can it handle iron?”

“I couldn’t say.” Finn looked away, brows drawn together.

“Right. We don’t know enough. And I think you would certainly die if you had an iron arrow through your heart. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I… No, you are not.”

“Then don’t tempt fate. All right?”

Finn stared into the fire without answering. He stroked Diego’s back, his gaze far away. “There must be a way. There is always a way,” he whispered to the flames.

Diego let him think, grateful for the life in his arms. He felt so secure in Finn’s embrace, he dozed off. The soft touch of lips on his startled him awake. Finn’s leg lay over his, lean body pressed close enough that Diego could feel the insistent erection against his stomach.

“Maybe this isn’t the best time,” Diego murmured against insistent, gentle kisses. “You’re hurt. We’re both tired.”

“I’m much better already.” Finn’s voice vibrated against Diego’s throat as his lips brushed against the pulse point. “And I believe someone said now is all we have and we must take advantage of it.”

“Finn—” Diego broke off with a moan when Finn’s hand slid under his shirt, long fingers pinching his nipple. The front windows rattled and creaked from the assault again. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Your scent says otherwise,” Finn told him in a husky growl. He snuck his hand under Diego’s waistband to stroke along the top curve of his backside. “I will beg if you require it. Grovel on the floor if it would please you.”

“Um, no. Rather you didn’t.”

“Oh, good.” Finn sighed in exaggerated relief. “I didn’t relish the thought of leaving the blankets.”

Despite the fear, or perhaps because of it, Diego’s shaft stirred. He shivered as another howl ripped through the night and Finn pulled him closer.

“Damn the beast,” Finn muttered. He took Diego’s face between his hands and closed the distance between them for a ravenous kiss. “This is the sacred dance, my hero. Life. We turn our backs to death. He has no power here.”

Diego traced a finger over Finn’s smooth jaw. “‘If after every tempest come such calms, may the winds blow till they have waken’d death.’”

“Ah, a recitation. You are a bard, after all.” Finn’s smile turned wicked. “But you think too much.” He yanked Diego’s shirt off over his head and curled forward to plant hard, sucking kisses on his throat.

A sweet ache spread through his groin to his knees.

Diego tipped his head back, letting the balm of surrender wash over him.

The sacred dance, yes…oh, yes. He eased Finn’s fly open and reached inside to take him in hand.

Uncut, unmarred by modern sensibilities—though how could Finn’s cock be different from the rest of him?

Diego’s palm slid easily over the slick head of his erection.

The soft moan against his throat sent sparks through his veins.

“You sure you’re up to this?”

“Wsht, my sweet.” Finn growled.

“But your head—”

“Hush.” Finn surged up and rolled him underneath, his smile soft and hungry. “I expect you prefer being the sheath to the sword.”

“I’m…flexible.” He swallowed hard, fighting the ridiculous urge to say things like ‘take me now’. “You don’t like it, ah, rough, do you?”

Finn leaned his head on his fist. “Do you?”

“Not really, no.”

“You have enough pain.” Finn kissed his eyelids, eiderdown soft. “I would not add to it.” He pulled Diego’s clothes off the rest of the way and caressed him in long, soothing strokes over his chest and arms.

“That feels so wonderful,” Diego whispered.

Heavenly warmth spread from Finn’s fingers, muscles relaxing in places he hadn’t realized were in knots.

He slipped his legs around Finn so his foot could caress up one long calf.

The anxiety he often had with a new lover between his legs refused to surface. This felt right…no, it felt perfect.

Finn wriggled out of his jeans and dove under the blankets to nuzzle at Diego’s sac and lick behind it. He bit his bottom lip, but still, a gasp and a soft moan escaped when Finn slid lower. Dios , that tongue…

This careful preparation was something Mitch had often skipped, and when he bothered to take the time, it was fingers and lube, never his tongue. Diego squirmed, panting, fists curled into the thick waterfall of Finn’s hair.

“Must you mention him even while we make love?” Finn’s head came up, his tone aggrieved.

“But I didn’t—” Had he said it out loud?

Finn snorted and returned to his earnest efforts. The prehensile tongue pushed up inside farther than Diego thought possible and tapped against that sweetest of spots. He gripped Finn’s hair tighter as his hips bucked.

“God… Finn…stop…oh, please,” he gasped out. “I won’t last for you this way.”

With a soft growl, Finn crawled up his body to settle atop him.

He angled himself to Diego’s entrance and pushed with a gentle roll of hips, soft, teasing nudges until his head slipped inside.

“Pray don’t torment yourself, my sweet, about such small things.

Simply be, feel. My pleasure lies in yours. I devour every scrap of it.”

Diego arched, fingers clutched on Finn’s biceps. The shaft sank deeper inside, smoother, cooler than a human’s, glorious how it filled him, stroked him, and edged him onward despite the constant counterpoint of howls and rattles.

Hands and lips traveled over skin with slowly increasing need and ferocity.

Diego wrapped his legs around Finn’s waist to pull him closer.

Finn slid his arms underneath to do the same.

The ache soon escalated to a wall of pressure.

Trapped between their bodies, his erection throbbed with every slide of Finn’s powerful body, every kiss that blazed across his throat and chest.

“Finn.” Diego pulled back, panting. He wanted to watch Finn while he came. The request stuck in his throat. “Finn, you’re…glowing.”

Hardly the word, but his passion-muddled brain failed to find words to describe the colors dancing like a halo over Finn’s head, around his body, under his skin. Warm blue, how can blue be warm?

His confused thoughts flew away in a flock-of-crows scatter as his orgasm slammed up through him in a sudden rush. “ Dios …Finn…”

“Oh, my Taliesin,” Finn whispered, as he heaved and bucked atop him, hips jerking as he came in hard, short thrusts. “You’ve begun to heal, to touch the world again.”

Chapter 9—Magic

Thistle sits with me by a stream. He feels most comfortable near or in water. At the moment, a globe of water hovers over his palm while the silt forms swimming fish shapes inside.

How do you do that?

“Do— Oh, well, there’s not much to it. A small magic.”

I couldn’t do it.

“Perhaps if you were not so stubborn. You could try.”

There’s no magic in my fingers, not like yours.

(Thistle laughs and the water globe falls back into the stream.)

“Of course there is, bucko. You simply don’t feel it.

You don’t feel the blood flowing through your veins, either.

Not unless there is some pounding pressure or pain, or if you bleed profusely.

So it is with magic as it flows through you, around you, within every fiber of your being.

Threads and flows and tendrils, cascades and cataracts and floods of it.

It connects you to every other thing, every petal, every bird, every stone, every star, to every possibility, every lifetime, every word ever spoken.

It is, you are, you have no less or more than I have. ”

(He takes my hand and holds it palm down over the stream.)

“Here, while I speak to the water, coax it to me, do you feel it? Feel the dance of the water? The joy of its song?”

No. I’m sorry. I don’t feel anything.

“Ah. Please forgive me. I forget how wounded and ill you have been.”

Only their gasping breaths broke the silence. The howls and shrieks had ceased.

“Is it gone?”

Finn sifted through the night a moment, still fogged from one of the most incredible orgasms in a thousand years. “It has retreated.” He combed through Diego’s hair and kissed his forehead. “Perhaps it was jealous.”

“Maybe.” Diego gave him that hesitant half-smile, the one that so tugged at his heart. “What was that? At the end? Was I seeing things or do you always, um, shine during sex?”

Small degrees, one had to lead Diego in small degrees, his disbelief a greater barrier than any powerful spell.

In the unguarded, heated moments of passion, though, he had heard his lover’s thoughts clearly, as if he sent them with purpose.

He murmured into Diego’s shoulder while his member softened inside his heated sheath.

“Your channels…begin to open. Out here, away from the city. You’ve begun to reach out with things you’ve kept long shuttered. ”

“And here I thought I was asking a yes or no question,” Diego said on a soft sigh. “I don’t even know what you mean.”

“There are other ways to see beyond your eyes. Other ways to feel than with your hands.”

“Magic, you mean.”

“Even so, my hero.”