‘There we are.’ His arm was a steel girder beneath Pitch’s arse, his body a pillar of rock hard stone. ‘I have you, Pitch. Not long now.’
Pitch kept his face against the ankou’s neck, but peeked one eye open. He glimpsed wide open space, and a large, gleaming structure in the distance. The Crystal Palace, he supposed. It distracted him a moment, thinking on the wildness in its box. But then he made the mistake of looking further around, seeing that Silas held onto the kite with only one hand upon its rope, twisted twice around his forearm.
That grasp was all that kept them from plummeting.
‘Oh fuck.’ Pitch squeezed his eye closed again. ‘I cannot do this.’
‘Nearly there.’ Silas sounded a little raspy, which had nothing to do with the fact Pitch’s arm was digging into his throat, of course. ‘You are being very brave.’
‘Patronise me again and I shall pinch your tits so hard they’ll throb for weeks.’
‘Youdowish me to patronise you, then?’ Another body-rumbling chuckle. Heat flooded between Pitch’s legs, a stiffening there that was damned inconvenient, his famished incubus blood deciding now the time to remind he’d not fed in far too long, and was drained to empty by all that had been done to him.
‘Stop laughing. It’s not helping matters.’
Silas, blast him, patted Pitch’s arse. ‘That’s not how it feels to me. A shame though I’ll never get to touch you again.’
‘Forget that.’ He spoke into putrid strands, his lips peppered with grit, but he was not about to raise his head. ‘I shall need you to fuck me senseless so I shan’t have nightmares about this.’
Silas’s laughter burst from him.
‘Stop!’
The ankou did his best, but the stifling of his laughter led to all sorts of violent jerks of his body which were just as bad against throbbing balls. ‘Well I’m relieved you’ve changed your mind about not letting me ever pleasure you again.’
The wind whistled prettily as they descended. The day was warm enough, a good thing considering Pitch practically undressed.
‘I am not in my right mind, on account of a fucking awful few days, and now falling slowly to my death.’
The ankou was hopeless. A belly laugh came again, and as Pitch could not let go to slap him, he went in for another bite instead. This time one Silas would feel, right on the ear lobe.
Evidently Pitch did not do it viciously enough. The ankou sighed. ‘I missed you, so terribly. I thought it might kill me.’
There were a thousand poor jokes, a hundred snide remarks, a dozen untruths that could be said. But Pitch had no desire for anything but the truth.
‘It was the same for me.’
He heard the click of Silas’s throat as he swallowed, felt the tightening of his hold. The ankou’s body shuddered.
‘We are here,’ he whispered.
Not the sickly-sweet reply Pitch was expecting. He opened his eyes, and lifted his head. By the balls of the Celestials, there was the ground indeed, covered with softly swaying grasses of candy pink. They had landed at the edge of the forest that grew in the shadow of the monolithic tower, the fronds of a purple palm overhead.
Pitch released his legs, letting his heels drop. Silas kept his arm cradled around his arse, his fingers gently caressing worn and dirty trousers.
‘You’re shaking.’
‘I despise flying, and you are fondling me.’ He was aching with need. All he wanted was to sneak off into the fae forest and ride Silas until they both forgot where they were, and who they were. He wanted distraction from the emptiness at his core. There’d been no talk yet of the wildness, and what was to be done about its theft.
Silas did not let him go, and Pitch did not try to step away, despite the awkwardness of their pose. The ankou set the scythe into another transformation.
The rope moved like an obscenely long serpent, falling from the air in a looping curl upon Silas’ outstretched hand, the kite folding in on itself until it was no bigger than a calling card. The change was done in a few moments, the thick weave of silver vanishing and reassembling itself into the dull ring upon Silas’s finger.
‘You’ve become quite the master with your scythe.’
Silas turned about, wrapping both arms around Pitch’s waist, keeping him close. ‘I think I have just been pathetically slow in realising I already was.’
‘You are not pathetic, Silas. Not in the least.’ Oh gods, truly, he needed to feed his incubus blood before it made him anymore of a swooning sop.
