Page 17 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Corvin

“So, tell us about her bloodwork. We all know there’s something magnetic about it already. Well, Lowell still hasn’t tested her yet, but I’m sure he’d agree.” Jasper looks at Lowell, who sits back in his chair. He crosses his arms and nods.

I sigh, opening my file folder. Perusing it, I try to figure out where to start.

“Well, she’s most definitely the key for me, based on the markers in her blood. I’ve yet to taste her blood for my sanity, and from how I’ve seen you two react, I’ll steer clear.”

Lowell wipes a grin from his face as I eye him for snickering. “Sorry.”

I heard about what happened between Lowell and Jasper when Lowell walked in on Jasper, who was taking far too much from Silver’s vein.

“What about her heritage?” Jasper asks, diverting attention from his mishap.

I know he’s reeling, and likely he’ll wallow over it for months to come. He’s going to be insufferable.

Even if she’s his key, he still feels horrible for pushing her too far, too soon.

“That’s where it gets tricky,” I answer, turning the page on my file.

“How so?” Asher sits forward, his brows furrowing.

I try to keep Jasper’s words about separating my love for Asher from the attachment I need to form to Silver in my mind as I flick my eyes toward him.

“I don’t know that she was any relation to Soliel. Well, scratch that, I know she wasn’t.”

This has silenced the room.

Jasper moves to the edge of his seat, steepling his hands. “Their DNA doesn’t match?”

“No.” I shake my head.

“What the hell?!” Asher sits back, scrubbing his tattooed hands down his face.

“The only thing I can figure is someone’s made her think she’s Soliel’s family, or she’s lying to us.”

“We’d have sensed it,” Jasper says offhandedly.

Lowell clears his throat, and the room collectively holds its breath for whatever unhinged input he has.

While he’s not the darkest of us, he’s the most traumatized by his past. Sometimes, I wonder if he lives in the now or is still floating in the ether of his reveries—one foot in this world and one in the other.

“She has nightmares she doesn’t remember,” he says.

“How would you know that?” Asher asks, realizing his folly and then laughing. “Never mind.”

“When I watch her at night, she cries and scratches herself. I’ve tried singing to calm her, which she didn’t like.”

Jasper smirks, fighting a laugh.

I bite the inside of my cheek.

Lowell’s innocence is sometimes hard to understand. But once you get to know him, it makes sense.

“I mentioned hypnosis,” he adds.

“And?” I ask.

“She didn’t seem opposed to it. I can try to push a bit more.” There’s excitement that feels dangerous in his eyes as he forms a plan.

“Do that. And try consoling her, just being beside her to calm the dreams,” I offer.

He nods, sitting up straighter in his chair, avoiding the others’ eye contact.

Asher locks eyes with me and winks. “So, how are we going forward?”

“Corvin, keep digging.” Jasper looks at Lowell. “You take all the time you need. We understand your predicament. Let us know if you need anything.”

Lowell nods before hanging his head in shame.

“And me, Boss?” Asher asks with a snarky tone.

“Don’t cause any more trouble.” Jasper eyes him sternly.

Asher salutes him, and Jasper rolls his eyes.

Everyone moves out of the lab besides Asher, and I toss my file on my desk, removing my lab coat with a sigh and a stretch of my neck.

“Why do you goad him?” I turn on Asher as he pins my hips to the desk, both hands squeezing, his veins popping to the surface.

“He’s still mad at us for Valentina, and I’m sick of his shit. And who is he to act like he’s in charge, when we all know the only power he has is because Lowell allows it? Seems to me he needs to be reminded.”

“Asher. He’s been cursed for nearly a hundred years because of us.”

“It wasn’t all our fault.” He leans in to kiss me. It’s his move: a distraction.

“It is, and you know it.”

“Can I ask you something?” He gives up and straightens, letting his hands fall from my sides.

“Go on.”

“Why haven’t you talked to me about your time with Silver?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you haven’t said shit to me, yet spent two full days with her watching some horse show. It’s unusual for you.”

I swallow thickly, hoping this isn’t the start of what happened before.

“I don’t really know. I’m trying my hardest to do things differently this time.”

Something like pride flashes in Ash’s eyes. “Are you, now?”

I nod, biting my lip as he leans into me. The tattoo on his neck, meant to symbolize our bond, flexes as he tips my face with a nudge of his against my jaw, opening his mouth to let his tongue flick out and tease my bottom lip.

“Have you kissed her?” he whispers.

Usually, this kind of talk between us would make me shut down, but this time, I pushed past that need.

“No.”

“I thought of you kissing her this morning.”

“You did?” I whisper against his lips as he continues to tease me.

His hand sinks into my hair, opening me to him as my lips fall lax, my breathing growing ragged.

His other hand grips my cock through my slacks, tugging a moan from my throat.

“I did. It made me so fucking hard.”

His admission has my dick throbbing in his hand.

“Ash,” I plead.

“You know I’m proud of you. I know you’re doing your best, and I know you’re doing it for me.”

“I’m doing it for all of us.”

“Even so, I’m still proud. No one will ever replace you in my heart, Corvin. You’re it for me. Anyone else only adds to what we already have.”

I didn’t know how much I needed his words until he gave them to me, and I whimpered as he stroked me over my slacks.

His kiss that comes next is hard and heavy, soul-damning.

We wrap around one another and sink into one another as quickly as we usually do, stripping one another bare quickly before Asher shoves me to my knees.

His frantic red eyes look down as he lines his cock up with my mouth, which gobbles him in, sucking him deep until I gag on him.

“Fuck, you’re always so perfect.” His words sear through my psyche, causing an electric heat to surge through my body.

I bob on him, my hand working in time with my mouth as he fists my hair and rides the wave of us.

We’re chaotic and beautiful. We’re unending, forever tied together by an undead destiny.

“Now, think of her.” His grumbling words have me looking up.

He bites his lower lip, holding onto his climax the best he can. “Think of her with us, beside you, sharing me, loving both of us.”

Silver’s image works through my brain, causing my body to swell in multiple places.

This is where it gets tricky for me: the sharing.

The splitting of myself to give to two others.

He presses into the back of my throat as my hand frees my cock to fist as I close my eyes and think of the moment in the bed between Silver and me. The way the air turned electric and how she looked at me.

The others weren’t like her. She’s forgiving and accommodating, maybe because she’s lived a life where no one has been that way for her, which only makes me want to do whatever I can to return the favor.

“Think of her hand sliding over your thick cock,” Asher taunts from above, and my hand works overtime to jerk.

His voice grows strained. “Think of her warm mouth suckling your balls before sliding over you, taking the head of your dick down her throat until it waves around it, fighting the urge to push you out.”

I groan around him as he grabs both sides of my face and fucks my mouth unceremoniously, his words causing me to lose rhythm.

“Imagine her then lying back, opening her legs to you like a blooming flower and inviting you home, where you belong.”

That’s what breaks the spell, and my hand stops stroking.

I’ve never had a home, not until Asher. Imagining another feels wrong. Like a square peg trying to push through a round hole.

“Fuck,” Asher says, grunting through his orgasm as cum floods my mouth.

I fight to swallow through building emotion heavy in my chest, and he moans breathlessly as his body jerks, his hips thrusting in tiny movements to wring every ounce of pleasure out.

“You’ll have to get over that,” he tells me, looking down with awareness in his eyes. “If you’re going to undo what we’ve done in the past, you have to get past this.”

“I know,” I offer weakly, standing and stuffing myself back in my pants.

Asher stops me, grabbing my cheeks firmly in his hand before crashing his mouth to mine.

His tongue invades my mouth, pressing against mine in dances of eagerness. “You’re mine, but you’ll also have to be hers if this is going to work.”

“I need to do this in my time,” I whisper.

He nods, grinning.

“What?”

“I love it when you taste like me,” he teases, kissing me again, pulling back to look deep into my eyes. “I love you, too.”

I sigh. “I love you. Even if you’re a pain in my ass.”

“Never claimed to be anything less.” He grins.

As I head into the hall, I find Silver flushed and lingering by the door.

“Silver?”

The rouge in her cheeks is enough to keep me captivated for hours as I study it and the blood supply that puts it there.

She startles as if she’s not looking directly at me.

“I’m sorry. I came to see you, but then I…”

I turn and look at the door as Asher walks out, his low-slung pants falling just below the deep V-cut of his hips.

“Oh, hello,” he says, and I fight a grin, realizing how rare it is that I feel this way instead of enraged.

Silver shifts on her feet, and her hard nipples press against the thin nightgown she has on.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” I ask her.

She looks between the two of us. “I couldn’t sleep, so I was coming to see if you had anything for that, and…” She swallows, the action looking hard to muster as her throat struggles.

“And?” I press.

Asher throws his arm over my shoulder. “And she walked in on a show.”

My head snaps to the left, eyeing him before looking back at Silver.

The idea of her seeing me on my knees with Asher down my throat does something to my insides that I’m not ready to evaluate yet.

“Did you see more than you bargained for?” I ask her.

She sucks in her bottom lip, her eyes traveling between Asher and me. “I didn’t mean to. I knocked…”

My smile breaks into a laugh at her expense, and she exhales as tension visibly leaves her body.

Asher eyes her as he kisses my cheek and then breezes away from us, seeming entirely unworried about whatever we’ll get up to without him.

I recall his words as I usher Silver inside the lab, making sure there’s no evidence of what Asher and I had been up to prior, as I turn my eyes over the room.

“Sorry, you had to see…”

“I’m not,” she cuts me off, the beautiful blush filling back into her cheeks.

I clear my throat. “Now, as for your inability to sleep, I don’t truly have anything that I think a human could take other than…

” I reach into a cabinet above my microscope station.

“Here it is. Yes, I have some lavender you could use for tea. It might not taste the best if you don’t like lavender, but it would help you settle. ”

She nods, holding her hand out as I drop the tin into it. “Thank you. I’ll try just about anything.”

“You’re most welcome.”

She makes it to the door before turning back, eyeing me as she seems to decide whether to speak again. “How long have you been together, you and Asher?”

“Well, Jasper made Asher in 1862. We got closer over the fifty years that followed. We’ve been together around a hundred years, give or take a few. There were a few rough years where we were more friends than lovers. The 1920s got hairy.”

I realize I’m blabbing and being more open with her than I usually am with anyone, and zip my lips closed.

Silver, however, looks consumed with intrigue. “I still can’t wrap my mind around any of this.”

“It takes some getting used to.”

There’s an awkwardness between us for a moment before she lifts the tin in her hand, smiling awkwardly. “Thanks for this.”

“Sleep well,” I tell her as she exits the lab, shutting the door behind her.

Scrubbing my face, I let out a groan at myself.

“Alright, back to work,” I mutter, shoving everyone and everything to the back of my mind, other than figuring out the question of who Silver is and where she comes from.

Which is better than focusing on the alluring creature currently brewing herself lavender tea. A mistake on my part because lavender is my favorite scent in the world, and now for at least a day, her blood is going to be tinged with the shit.

Letting my forehead fall and hit the icy surface of the lab table, I growl.

In all my stumbling and bumbling after finding her in the hall, I forgot to ask her about her nightmares.

Fuck.