“Shh,” he says, his voice a dark caress. He leans over me, his eyes locked on mine. “Look at me, Aven. Stay right here with me. No ghosts. Just this.”
He reaches for a small bottle on the nightstand, the scent of sandalwood filling the air as he slicks his fingers. He’s patient, working me open with a slow, methodical care that leaves no room for anything else. One finger first, sliding in deep while his other hand strokes my cock in steady pulls. He coaxes, twisting his wrist, crooking his finger until he finds that spot inside me that makes my back arch off the bed.
“Good boy,” he whispers, voice low and rough with approval. “Just like that. Breathe for me. Let it go. You’re safe. I’ve got the door locked.”
The word safe shouldn’t be this erotic. It shouldn’t make my heart hammer against my ribs like a trapped bird. But hearing it from him, while he’s opening me up in the dark, makes me feel like I’m finally allowed to exist. I’m not a vessel. I’m not a conduit. I’m just a man on a bed, and someone is taking care of me.
He adds a second finger, then a third, stretching me with that same relentless patience. The burn turns into a heavy, pulsing fullness that makes my thighs shake. His thumb keeps working the head of my cock, smearing precome, keeping me right on the edge without letting me tip over. I’m panting, fingers twisted in the sheets, the bond humming thick and steady between us like a wall I can lean my entire weight against.
When he finally pulls his fingers free and lines himself up, I’m already wrecked. He’s bigger than the others and the first push inside me is a slow, thick slide that forces a broken sound out of my throat. He fills me inch by inch, stretching me until I’m shaking, until there’s nothing left but the feeling of him and the solid weight of his body pinning me to the mattress. He freezes when he’s buried to the hilt, forehead resting against mine, breath coming in ragged hitches.
“You okay?” he grunts, jaw tight with the effort of holding still. “Aven. Talk to me.”
“Don’t stop,” I gasp, wrapping my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. “Don’t you dare stop. I need… I need you to fuck the noise out of my head, Ira. Please.”
He starts to move with slow, deep thrusts at first, then gaining that rhythmic, overwhelming power. He isn’t rough. He’s thorough. Every time he slams into me, my world narrows until there is nothing left but the feeling of him filling me and thesound of our skin slapping together in the quiet room. One of his hands clamps at the back of my neck, thumb resting firm against my jaw, holding me exactly where he wants me. Grounding me. Containing me.
“They don’t get you,” he says, the words rough against my skin, punctuated by a hard, deep thrust that hits that spot inside me dead-on. My back arches, a helpless moan tearing out of me. “The Church doesn’t. The dead don’t. Stay with me, Aven.”
I can’t remember anything else. My mind goes completely, blissfully blank. The spirits, the journals, the burning cross until it all vanishes into the friction of his body against mine. I’m drowning in him, and for the first time in my life, I don’t want to be saved. I want to sink. I want to be buried under the weight of his protection until there’s nothing left of the boy who was afraid of his own shadow.
I come with a sharp, broken cry, my body clenching around him as wave after wave of heat crashes over me, my vision swimming, as Ira follows me over the edge. He thrusts one last time, burying himself as deep as possible, his body tensing as he spills inside me with a low, guttural groan against my throat.
Ira stays there, his weight a heavy, comforting blanket, until our breathing slows and the sweat begins to cool on our skin. The silence in the room's absolute, just the hum of the amber lamp and the sound of Ira's heart against mine.
He pulls me against his side, his arm draped over my waist, and reaches for a damp cloth he must've prepared earlier. He cleans me up with a tenderness that feels like another kind of prayer, as I just lie there and let him do it, my body feeling heavy and boneless.
"Sleep," he says, pulling a thick duvet over both of us. He tucks it around my shoulders, his hand lingering on my cheek. "I'm right here. I'm not leaving the room."
I don't argue. I just let the silence take me.
14
Aven
WakingupinIra'sarms feels less like an awakening and more like a tactical error I'm currently too comfortable to correct. My body is a roadmap of yesterday's poor decisions and last night's desperate ones, but all I can hear is the low, steady rhythm of a man whose chest is broad enough to act as a physical barrier against the rest of the world.
The air smells like burning coffee and a very specific kind of magical tantrum. From somewhere down the hall, in the kitchen of Soren's shop, there's the unmistakable sound of metal hitting linoleum and a voice that sounds like a cello being fed into a woodchipper.
"I will hex your entire lineage back to the Industrial Revolution," Soren snarls, presumably at the espresso machine. "You miserable, steam-venting heap of scrap metal. Do you have any idea what my essence feels like right now? You're an affront to the gods of caffeine."
Ira shifts beside me, his muscular arm tightening around my waist for a second before he relaxes. He's warm in a way that feels unfairly practical. I'm embarrassed, sore in places that remind me Ira is roughly twice the size of a standard human, and quietly furious that a witch's backroom feels safer than my own apartment ever has. My apartment has a leaky faucet and three ghosts who think they're entitled to my Netflix password. This room has iron-bound walls and a man who treats my safety like a professional obligation.
"You're awake," Ira mumbles, his voice a gravelly vibration against the back of my neck.
"Hard to sleep through generational violence against kitchen appliances," I say, my voice sounding like I've swallowed a handful of dry seminary dust. "Is he always like this in the morning?"
"Usually worse," Ira says. He pulls back just enough to look at me, his green eyes scanning my face with that terrifyingly observant gaze of his. He's checking for cracks. Not the kind on the ceiling, but the ones in my head. "How's the noise?"
"Quiet," I admit, and the word feels like a betrayal of every prayer I ever offered to a god who never answered. "It's... it's okay."
I look toward the window, where the morning light is filtered through stained glass and the dust motes are dancing in the air. A spirit is standing there, a thin, translucent woman in a Victorian-era nightgown who's currently blocking a good portion of the sun. She's staring at the bed with an expression of mild disapproval, which is rich coming from someone who hasn't had a pulse since the invention of the telephone.
"If you're going to block the light, the least you could do is make yourself useful and judge the coffee," I mutter to her. "Tell Soren his technique is lacking."
"Tell her to pay rent if she wants an opinion on the roast," Soren's voice carries from the kitchen, sharp and manic. "And tell her if she touches my beans, I'll find a way to bind her to a toaster."
I laugh. It's not the sharp, defensive bark I usually use at Gabriel's Bar to keep the drunks at arm's length. It's a real sound, surprising and unweighted. The spirit huffs, her image flickering like a dying bulb, and drifts through the wall toward the library. It's the first time I've spoken to a ghost in this shop without feeling like I was one second away from a nervous breakdown.
