Bump in the Night Read online

  “You’re warm, Josef,” Adel says, his voice still dreamy and distant, dragging Josef’s attention back from the theoretical. “And I can touch your warmth.”

  “Of course,” Josef says hoarsely. His hand is still splayed across Adel’s chest. “Of course you can.” It’s encouraging to see Adel forming such thoughts. It means he’s returning to himself.

  Adel closes the distance between them again, almost drifting, as though some unseen force pulls him to Josef’s body. “I want your warmth.”

  “It’s yours. It’s always been yours.” He should be stopping this. He should be helping Adel with the rest of his clothes and preparing them both for travel. Instead, Josef is wrapping his arms around Adel’s slender frame and holding him closer. The stillness of Adel’s body unnerves him: no breath, no true heartbeat. He cannot let go.

  Adel reaches up to twine his arms around Josef’s neck. One cool hand burrows into Josef’s hair, loosening the tie that holds it back and taking a firm grip. His eyes are so dark they’re barely still blue, and the sparks in their depths seem to have a crimson strangeness to them instead of the yellow reflection of the fire. “Come here,” Adel demands.

  Josef lowers his head to give Adel his mouth. The bitter herbal taste of the cordial is still present on Adel’s lips, and when he parts them, it’s prelude to a bite. Josef moans, a helpless, half-swallowed sound, as Adel’s teeth capture his lip. This is no teasing love-bite; he tastes blood, and shivers at the combination of arousal and fear that twists through him.

  “Josef,” Adel whispers, breathing the name into his mouth. “Help me. I’m cold. I need you.”

  Those words are as potent as a bolt through the heart. Josef could not resist if he tried. “Anything, Adel. I’m yours. I’ll give you anything.”

  He’s still unprepared for the chill when Adel pulls his shirt up and reaches beneath. He shudders at the touch, cold and hard. “All I want is you,” Adel says. “We had this before. You were mine before. I remember.”

  “Yes,” Josef says helplessly. He pulls his shirt untucked the rest of the way, hands shaking as he discards it. They’re near enough to the fire that it will keep him warm, and if this is the first appetite Adel wants to satisfy now that he’s returned, Josef can scarcely complain. It worked, and Adel is here with him. Everything else is secondary.

  Adel’s hands trace his skin, rough enough to leave red lines in their wake. He was never so forceful before, but perhaps his senses are dulled as his soul settles back into its home. Perhaps he needs time to grow accustomed to his own strength again. The inscriptions on his arms pulse, slow and steady, a replacement for the heartbeat he no longer has.

  Josef runs his fingers through Adel’s hair, brushing it back off his face. Adel captures his hand and brings it to his lips—kissing the palm, licking the salt from Josef’s fingers, biting the fleshy pad of his thumb. Josef’s skin prickles with sensation and his cock stirs. At the sound he makes, Adel looks up.

  “You want this, too.” It doesn’t sound like a question, but the look in his eyes might make it one. Josef nods.

  “Do you remember this yet?” Josef asks. He leans down to kiss Adel’s throat, and the bare hard sweep of his collar bone. “All the things we did together? The times when you would come to see me?”

  He pulls back to look Adel in the eyes. There is a moment of hesitation. Then Adel smiles, slowly, as if he has to think about making his face move properly. “You adored me.”

  “I still do.”

  Adel looks from Josef’s eyes to his bloodied mouth, then lower, gaze traveling over bared skin. “Show me.”

  Josef sinks to his knees, kissing his way down Adel’s chest as he goes. When his lips brush one of the pulsing marks, Adel shivers; Josef takes that for encouragement and runs his tongue over the mark instead. His mouth tingles with strangeness and power, with the odd sharp taste of it, and Adel clings to his shoulders. Josef laves the mark again, the word for breath, and Adel’s fingers dig in hard enough to bruise. The pain plummets through him to burst at the pit of his stomach into a wash of heat and need. His cock stiffens, tenting his trousers.

  He follows the lines of script, licking each rough-textured character, and Adel kneads his shoulders like a cat. The prayers circle the opening where Adel’s garnet heart throbs, and Josef hesitates there: what if he disrupts the workings somehow?

  “More,” Adel says, and his voice sounds raw, hungry, alive. That makes Josef’s decision for him. He presses his lips to the incision, lapping delicately at its edges, and already the concentrated power there makes him ache. This is Adel’s flesh, opened by his hands, bared now to his mouth. His tongue slips into the opening and brushes the pulsing stone. It feels as though he’s just swallowed lightning, his nerves scorched and sensitized, and above him Adel cries out. The force of the sensation knocks him back on his heels, gasping for breath. Adel stands above him, a beautiful nightmare, open shirt dripping off his shoulders and the script on his exposed chest pulsating with light.

  “Again,” Adel demands, snarling his fingers in Josef’s hair and pulling him back.

  Josef moans his assent as he presses his mouth to Adel’s cool flesh. He curls his hands around Adel’s bare hips to steady himself, sharp bones fitting into his palms, before he dares lick his way back into the incision. He knows what to expect this time, but that doesn’t mean he’s prepared for it. Only the tenacity of Adel’s grip keeps him pressed close to the spot as power surges through him. He cannot properly call it pain, but he’s feeling too much, too intensely, his entire body so sensitized he can’t bear it. The firm chill of Adel’s skin under his hands, the hardness of the floor beneath his knees, the roughness of fabric against his trapped cock—all of them leave him trembling, overwhelmed by the onslaught.

  Nor is Adel unaffected; his cock has stiffened, caught between his belly and Josef’s chest. At any moment, Josef expects to be pushed down to put his mouth to use there, and the idea makes him squirm in anticipation, hungry for the feel of it smooth on his tongue and sliding down his throat. But then Adel goes taut and trembling against him without needing any further attention, his climax like the sudden snap of a violin string. In its wake he is perfectly, deathly still, and the sound of Josef’s breathing seems loud and harsh.

  “Adel,” he says, “please, I want—”

  Adel looks down at him, for an instant so blank-faced and alien that the words die in Josef’s throat. That deathly, inhuman stillness is unnerving, so unlike the vibrant, animated young man he remembers. Right in that moment, the cold of Adel’s hands is all he can feel.

  Before he can actually panic, Adel flows into motion again, sinking to the floor to kneel with him. The smoothness of Adel’s movements is still unnatural, but it’s so much easier to accept than seeing him not move. He twines his arms around Josef’s neck and straddles Josef’s lap, pressing bare skin against skin. His tongue traces the line of Josef’s jaw, and he hums as if the taste fascinates him. “More,” he says. “You still want more.”

  “I do,” Josef says. He knew there would be . . . changes, when Adel came back. That was unavoidable. The experience can’t help but leave its mark on a soul. But it doesn’t matter; Adel is here, and Josef will accept him as he is.

  Adel nuzzles his throat. “Then show me.”

  Josef fumbles for the laces of his trousers, and Adel sits back to watch him. The urgent, painful need had begun to subside in that moment of unsettled fear, but he’s still hard. Now the fascination on Adel’s face as he watches, even the sparks of red dancing in his eyes, bring the sense of urgency right back. If Adel doesn’t remember everything, and his body responds so differently now, then they’ll have to learn each other all over again.

  He barely has time to shove his trousers down and bare his cock before Adel lunges for him, pressing him down. He’s pinned to the floor, cool wood under his back and Adel’s cold skin against his front. “Touch me,” Adel murmurs, squirming out of his shirt, careless enough that the
shoulder seam tears. He writhes, rubbing up against Josef’s body in an almost catlike motion, and his marks tingle and spark against Josef’s skin. The more they touch, the nearer it comes to pain, but Josef clings to him all the same. The marks clearly bear a more diluted strain of the same power that pulses through the garnet, hungering for Josef’s life and pulling at him where they touch.

  Josef runs his hands over the marks on Adel’s back, following the line of each phrase, trying not to sob at the way it aches right down to his bones. He bucks under Adel’s weight, rutting up against his body. The excess of stimulation does nothing to dampen his enthusiasm—the head of his cock slides against the lowest characters crossing Adel’s belly and he cries out, the feeling almost like having a climax forced from him.

  “I remember,” Adel growls, his eyes shining as he reaches down between them. “I remember this.” His fingers skate over Josef’s hip bone and down, closing around the waistband of Josef’s half-removed trousers. He pulls, hard, and the seam gives way with a tearing sound.

  “Oh God,” Josef whispers as Adel slides down his body, hard grasping hands and scraping teeth, rough lines of sensation that leave their own less-elegant marks behind. “Adel, please.”

  Adel stops, looking up. “Please?”

  Josef gasps for breath, trying to pull his thoughts together enough to beg coherently. “Please don’t stop,” he says, the best he can do.

  Adel laughs, the sound bright and chiming and unnatural. God help him, Josef doesn’t care. “I won’t stop. You don’t want that. You’re mine, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Josef breathes. “Yes.” He lets Adel leave blunt-nailed scratches across his stomach, down his thighs; he jerks and twists at the sharpness of the quick little bites Adel scatters across the arch of his rib cage. His breath catches in an instant of panic when Adel’s fingers cup his balls, but the touch doesn’t linger, doesn’t take on the bruising intensity that he’s shown elsewhere.

  Instead Adel is pushing his legs apart, kneading his thighs, staring up at his face. “Like this. You liked this.” His cock is hard again—or perhaps still; did he ever soften?—and he leans over Josef, intent.

  “Wait,” Josef says, trying to sit up. He’ll gladly give himself to Adel, but it’ll go more easily for both of them if Adel isn’t taking him dry. Adel lets him rise as far as sitting, but won’t let him go, clutching at him when he tries to stand.

  “Stay here,” Adel says, fingers digging into Josef’s arm.

  He’d only been planning to go far enough to fetch a vial of oil, but he falters at the fierceness in Adel’s face. He’s not going anywhere. “It’s all right. I’m still here.” He shifts awkwardly onto his knees and leans down, licking his lips to wet them before he takes Adel’s cock in his mouth. His heart pounds, every bit as nervous as he was the first time they did this, when he was afraid Adel would be shocked by the depth of his perversity. Does Adel still remember that now?

  Josef laps at the head of Adel’s cock, teasing back the foreskin with tongue and careful teeth, exposing the sensitive ridge along the underside of the crown. He presses the flat of his tongue against that spot as he suckles, and Adel moans, sweet and low. Adel’s fingers tangle in his hair, pulling him down until his lips brush the coarse hair at the base of Adel’s cock and his throat convulses around the invasion. His eyes sting, and he squeezes them shut. If Adel is content with his mouth instead of his ass, he’s happy to provide. He curls a hand around his own neglected cock and pumps in time with Adel’s thrusts down his throat.

  Adel’s nails scrape his shoulder hard enough to make him cringe. “Need you closer. Need your warmth.” He pulls, drawing Josef back off his cock, tender-mouthed and breathless.

  “Anything,” Josef says, the litany he’ll repeat for Adel endlessly. “Anything you want. Here.” He lies back, spreading his legs and pulling Adel down on top of him. Spit will be enough.

  And Adel is right: it’s better when they’re closer, when they’re touching. The prickling energy of the marks plays across Josef’s skin as Adel stretches out above him, making him shudder. For an instant as the spit-slick head of Adel’s cock rubs at the cleft of his ass, he wonders what it would feel like if he’d written some fragment of the spell on Adel’s shaft, whether he’d even be able to stand the intensity of that sensation on the delicate flesh inside him.

  Josef groans as Adel’s cock breaches his ass, and the chill of it makes him squirm. Adel whines in his throat, tiny animal sounds, rocking deeper with insistent, short thrusts that force Josef open an inch at a time. His cold flesh is a terrible reminder: he is dead, yet he lives, just enough to take pleasure in Josef’s surrender.

  No, more than that. Josef meets Adel’s eyes and he would swear there is warmth and memory there—the man he loves, reunited with him in defiance of death itself. He pushes himself onto Adel’s full length, forcing his muscles to relax. Adel belongs here, between his thighs, buried deep inside hm. “More,” Josef pleads. “Move.”

  Adel nods once, a sharp staccato motion. He pulls Josef’s hips into his lap, and the wantonness of the position is thrilling—Josef feels spilled and spread open, shoulders still braced against the floor while his ass is pressed flush to Adel’s hips and his thighs fall spread. Adel’s marked thighs spark bursts of crackling energy against Josef’s lower back and ass. His fingers dig into Josef’s hips, still right on the edge of too much to bear; his first thrust is a rolling, full-body motion and the pain doesn’t matter in the slightest. Josef sobs, reaching down between them, cupping his balls in one hand and stroking his cock with the other. Adel growls and reaches up to wrap his hands around Josef’s shoulders, pulling him closer, laying claim to his body.

  The pace he sets is punishing and desperate, demanding, staking a claim in defiance of death. Pleasure pulses up Josef’s spine with each hungry thrust, shaking his composure apart. He’s ruined—he thought he’d known how much he could crave this before, but the desperate relief of having Adel back magnifies every sensation. Josef loses all coherence, gasping and whimpering as Adel takes him.

  Adel leans down and licks a wet stripe up Josef’s chest, then another, as if he craves the taste of Josef’s skin as much as the feel of him. When his tongue teases a nipple, followed by the rough scrape of teeth, Josef tips over the precipice, climax surging up from the root of his cock as Adel bites down on the flesh of his chest just above the nipple.

  This bite makes the earlier ones seem timid. The pain is sharp, tearing, completely discordant with the climax that simultaneously wracks him. Josef draws a sharp breath to cry out and barely manages to stop himself. He pushes Adel away, and blood splatters down his stomach to mingle with his seed.

  Adel falls back, catching himself on his hands and going still. He makes no move to attack again. Josef presses his fingers to the wound to stay the bleeding; the flesh feels raw and hot, all the more so after the chill of Adel’s skin under his hands. He sits up gingerly, careful of the aches and bruises he’s suffered. Blood from the bite trickles between his fingers. Adel watches him, strange-eyed and wet-lipped, completely still. Josef stares back, focusing until he’s sure he can see the man he loves and not just a beautiful monster.

  “Adel.” Josef’s voice is hoarse, weak in his throat. “What’s happened to you?”

  “I’m still hungry, Josef,” Adel says plaintively. Is there an apology in his tone? There must be. “I need more than just one bite.”

  “Of course.” The bite throbs with each beat of Josef’s heart, and he tries to wish himself calm. So the price is higher than he realized. He won’t falter. “We’ll find more for you when we leave. Enough to give you what you need.” How much will that take? Will animals suffice? He prays they will, hopes that Adel needs only blood and flesh, not the life force of a man. If Adel’s condition does require life, how much can he give? Can he heal himself quickly enough with his arts to keep Adel satisfied feeding on him alone? He’d thought his greatest work would be accomplished tonight; now he
realizes it’s only beginning.

  “Soon.” Adel tugs on Josef’s wrist, staring at the way Josef keeps his hand pressed to the wound. Josef relents after a moment and lets Adel take his hand to lick his fingers clean. Each swipe of his tongue as he laps up the blood makes his garnet heart pulse with light. His mouth is still cold, a wet chill that aches right into Josef’s bones. He should have come back warm. “It hurts, going hungry.”

  Josef’s heart clenches in his chest. It’s too late for him to back out now. He’s chosen what matters most to him. “I’m sorry. Whatever it takes, Adel, I’ll do it. I’ll make sure you have what you need. I promised I wouldn’t lose you, and I mean to keep that promise.”

  Adel stares at him in silence for a long moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, the gesture carefully perfect, he smiles.

  “Still no job?” Keith passed the basketball across the court behind my building.

  He’d been hounding me for a pick-up game for weeks, anything to get me out of my apartment and into the sun. So when he’d knocked on my door with a ball balanced on his hip, I’d relented. “The interview last week sounded promising,” I said. I curved my fingers along the textured orange surface as I lined up another warm-up shot. When it bounced off the rim, I wasn’t surprised. Over the past two months, my game—and my life—had gone to shit.

  Keith scrambled to rebound and then paused to squint at me. “You know,” he said, “I still need an assistant for the lab at home.”