The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil

by Heidi Cullinan

  He ducked his head and took Charles into his mouth again.

  Charles arched his back and dug his fingers into Timothy’s hair, moving his hips to the rhythm Timothy set for him. He groaned when he felt Timothy’s finger push lightly against him before slowly entering. Charles came quickly and ferociously into his lover’s mouth, and yet the release was like the breaking of a wave. As the peace of release overtook him, he wept, silent tears sliding out of the corner of each eye and down the sides of his head and into his ears.

  Timothy released his sex with a soft pop, then dragged his tongue slowly down each thigh, over his sac and down the line to his entrance. His finger trailed after his tongue, kissing, dipping softly, tenderly. Timothy applied the sponge too, cleansing him in slow, gentle circles before moving the sponge aside and repeating the same action with his tongue. Charles lay still, spent, feeling the cool water of the sponge touch him, then push inside, then lave around him again. Then Timothy’s mouth. Then the sponge. Then Timothy’s tongue, pushing deeply inside, making Charles moan as heat rushed to his sex again.

  He lost himself on a sea of sensation: he could no longer tell sponges and oils from fingers and tongues. For what seemed like hours, Timothy bathed his anus and his cock and his stomach and his thighs. When he was done, he applied the same treatment down his legs and to his feet; he suckled and nipped at each one of Charles’s toes, and Charles basked in the sensations. When Timothy returned to his cock, Charles was hard again.

  Timothy gave the organ another deep-throated greeting, but then he moved back to Charles’s abdomen. He was using only oils now, a new scent filled with warmth and a soft tingling that made Charles want to purr.

  “We wash the dark feelings away from your life center,” Timothy said, sliding the oil over Charles’s body. “You have walked in pain, but now the pain will leave you. Tonight you will dance in the darkness, the darkness that lifts and frees you, which changes you.” The oil slicked up to Charles’s chest, his shoulders, his arms, his wrists, his neck. Charles was breathing faster now. There was something in the oil that made him feel thick and fiery and hard all over, as if his entire body were one great erection. He felt good, not just in body but in his heart. He felt wildly erotic and very strong. And he wanted Timothy as he had never wanted any other person on the earth.

  He caught Timothy’s mouth in a quick, hard kiss as Timothy passed by, and he delighted at the way Timothy fumbled, then doubled back and kissed him again before continuing. The oil was prickling hot against him now, but as he tasted Timothy’s mouth, the smell of it and the taste of his lover merged. He opened his eyes and looked up at his Timothy, realizing he had been slick with this stuff since before Charles had even come awake.

  Timothy touched Charles’s mouth, dragging his thumb across his lip, staring at it as if it were the ripest, most succulent fruit of all. Then he smiled, looking momentarily dazed. “A moment, quiera. We are nearly there.”

  Timothy rose and stood beside him, and Charles felt his erection pound as he watched Timothy stand in the candlelight, glistening as he reached down and tugged on the tie of his sarong. It fluttered as it fell away, but Charles did not watch where it landed. He feasted on the sight of Timothy revealed completely before him, proud and dark and full. Charles wanted him in his mouth. He wanted Timothy inside him everywhere.

  Timothy stepped over Charles, dark and powerful and smiling. He squatted down, moving gracefully to his knees. He reached behind himself, removed something he tossed into the darkness, and then he turned back to Charles, his eyes on him as he lowered himself. In a move like nothing Charles had ever seen before, Timothy took Charles’s cock inside his body. He took him quickly, deeply, pausing only once to shut his eyes and gasp in pleasure as Charles’s sex entered him completely. Then he opened his eyes, now hot and wet with lust as he reached back and held tight to Charles’s hips.

  “Give me your darkness, Charles,” he whispered in a voice so slick and tight that it alone nearly made Charles come. “Give me your darkness, Charles, and we will transform it into light.”

  Timothy began to move, urging Charles along with him, rolling Charles’s hips with his hands. When Charles swelled harder, larger, Timothy let his head fall back with a moan.

  The fire, already hot and liquid inside Charles, burned brighter still. As Timothy opened his mouth and made a soft, sweet sound, the fire went white inside his mind, and he was gone.

  He closed his hands over Timothy’s and took charge of the rhythm, moving deeper, rolling the thrusts, gasping and moaning and thrilling when he felt Timothy begin to shudder and go soft above him, his legs trembling as the pleasure sapped him of his strength. But the fire was raging inside Charles now; he withdrew from Timothy, pulled his mouth down to his own, and thrust into him again as he rolled them over, pinning Timothy to the pillows. Then he slid down his body, tonguing his navel before drawing deep and hard on his oil-slick sex, pushing his fingers inside him, one, two, then three. He suckled and stroked him until his lover was murmuring incoherently in his own tongue. Then Charles rose, spread Timothy, and replaced himself inside before bending down to reclaim his lover’s mouth.

  “Quiera,” Timothy cried, clutching at him, his head rolling back as Charles impaled him again.

  “I love you,” Charles breathed, then suckled on his lip. “I love you, Timothy. I love you.”

  “Donna mati, etu quiera,” Timothy whispered back. He was practically sobbing. “Qu’erah, quiera. Qu’erah, qu’erah.” He took Charles’s face in his hands, kissing him so hard that Charles stumbled forward to his elbows. Timothy laughed and kissed him again. Then he lifted his knees and wrapped his feet around Charles’s back.

  “Ride me, love. Take me to your stars.”

  Charles took his mouth and thrust hard, letting the fire drive him, giving Timothy everything he had, every bit of darkness, but every crack of light as well. His orgasm erupted like a volcano inside him, moving through his whole body, streaming, flowing, driving. He thrust once more and felt it leave him: his fluid, yes, but his dark thoughts as well, flowing on and on, into Timothy, then out again, sliding over their bodies and off into the night. Charles sighed and fell against him, shutting his eyes as he felt himself spin away, safe in Timothy’s arms as they soared together into heaven.

  * * *

  As the first fingers of dawn streamed sideways through the east window of the tower bedroom, Jonathan woke and rubbed his eyes. When he lowered his hand, it came down on the tousled locks of Madeline’s hair, which was spread out across his chest and over his abdomen. Her head itself was pillowed over his heart, and she was deeply asleep.

  He wished her hair were over his naked chest and abdomen, but this was not the case. It annoyed him less now than it had last night as he’d heard both the parties above and below him enjoying each other in a very primal fashion; this morning, his greater discomfort was the fact that while his clothes had largely dried, there was an uncomfortable stickiness to them that was beginning to make him itch. Also he was hungry and thirsty and, conversely, increasingly desperate to piss.

  He didn’t attempt to rise, though, because the feeling of Madeline splayed like this atop him was still more desirable than filling any of these other needs. His eyes stung, and he rubbed them again before resuming his stroking of her hair. Despite the pond water, it was still soft under his fingers, and nothing could dull the Madeline scent that he had clung to through all the years of war. But as he reached up to rub his eyes again, he realized that he was, in fact, smelling something else. Smoke. Fire. He was extricating himself from the bed even as he heard the soft but insistent knocking at the door, a rap he knew was Timothy’s even before he fished for the key and admitted him.

  “The fire’s not here,” Timothy said, reading Jonathan’s face. Timothy looked grave, and he jerked his head toward the rising stair. “Come. You won’t be able to see it properly from this level.”

  Jonathan followed him, feeling relieved about the fire not be
ing at the abbey and yet wondering what else could be burning. He also noticed the half-moon indentations of fingernails on Timothy’s naked shoulders and the sharp smell of oil and sex, a scent that only increased tenfold as they came into the turret, which had transformed from the nightmarish place where Jonathan had slain his father and his lover into a sensual bower. As they passed to the window, Timothy discreetly dropped a silken sheet over Charles’s middle. Charles himself was unconscious again, but instead of looking pale and stricken as he had last night, he now looked lush and rumpled and very, very sated.

  “When did you acquire all this?” Jonathan whispered, taking in how much stuff there was in the room.

  Timothy shook his head and held up a hand as he stopped at the window. Not now, the gesture said. “Look.”

  Jonathan looked out across the moor, and he swore. Rose Cottage was burning.

  “I did a quick scout below. No one has been here or tried to enter,” Timothy said, “but I am assuming we are next. I am also assuming this is your grandfather.”

  Jonathan’s jaw was tight. “Count on it.” He gripped the casement tightly. “That bastard will not quit. If we don’t find a way to stop him, stay him, or at least slow him down, there will be blood.”

  Timothy paused. “I could slip out. I would be quick and clean.”

  Assassination. That’s what Timothy was suggesting. Jonathan’s stomach doubled over at the thought, and he closed his eyes, holding up a hand of refusal. “It’s not possible. Not here. Not him. To start, it would make me Lord Whitby, something I’m not ready for. I would also be the first suspected.”

  “You wouldn’t have done it, and I would leave no way to link myself to the crime. They can suspect you all they want; they’ll be able to prove nothing.” Timothy had clearly given this a lot of thought.

  “They can build a case on circumstantial evidence here,” Jonathan explained. “Even being the most likely to have killed him could damn me.”

  “Then we will leave before anyone can build a case.” Timothy nodded across the moor, at the east. “We’ll go o the coast and hire a ship, and we’ll go back to the Continent. We’ll leave and never return.”

  “We’ll take them straight into a war zone,” Jonathan said, but his mind was already spinning away from him. They could go to the south. He and Timothy knew where the reef islands were, and they could call in the favor the hill shepherds owed them. Just a house big enough for them all, there on the sea, nothing but peace and quiet and no one trying to kill them.

  But now Timothy’s hand was on his arm. “They are coming here. They aren’t even waiting.”

  Jonathan snapped out of his South Continental fantasy and looked out to where Timothy pointed, to the edge where the forest met the moor. He saw a grubby-looking band of thugs, thirty strong, marching toward the abbey carrying torches and several great barrels of what was unquestionably oil.

  “If we take pistols and get to the gardens ahead of them, we can take out most of them before they come through,” Timothy said, his voice tight. “Maybe we can use their own oil against them and burn them before they burn us.”

  Jonathan was already moving to the door.

  Madeline was sitting up as he burst back into the room. His heart was in his throat as he rummaged through his chest for his heaviest artillery, but when he spoke to her, he kept himself even and cool. “There’s trouble below,” he said, handing things to Timothy and strapping them onto himself. “Lock us out once we’re through, and leave for nothing.”

  She was already rising from the bed. “What is it?”

  He wanted to spare her, but he could not. “They’ve burned your cottage, and they’re coming for the abbey. Thirty men.”

  She started, shocked. “Villagers? Parishioners?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure they come from Whitby.” He grimaced and buckled on the last knife. “He is after the cup. I’m sorry that I let him know you had it. I am so sorry.”

  “You can’t stop thirty men,” she said. “Not on your own. Let me go with you.”

  Goddess, no. “Madeline, these are men with torches and barrels of oil.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

  “We could use her spells,” Timothy said. Jonathan wanted to choke him.

  Madeline was already lacing her boots—Jonathan belatedly realized he had not yet donned his. He also still needed to piss. He reached for his boots and told his bladder it would have to wait a bit longer. “I don’t like this,” he said to Timothy.

  “I’ve seen her work; she stays.” Timothy headed for the door. Madeline didn’t look at Jonathan as she followed. But as Timothy banged on the study door to give orders to Stephen, she stepped back and pulled Jonathan aside.

  “I need to stay beside you,” she said quietly. Jonathan bit back the tart response that he had never intended otherwise and was glad he’d done so when she added, “And I will need to hold fast to one of your hands.” She blushed at his frown. “I have no guides, as you recall. If I require anything but the most minimal spell, I must ground. I have been able to use tricks and cheats to get by, but the chaos is too strong in me now. I will need you.”

  Timothy reemerged from the study. “We move,” he said, and he headed the rest of the way down the stairs.

  Only the knowledge that she had confessed her weakness with great cost to her pride kept Jonathan from pulling Madeline aside and demanding a fuller explanation. That and the fact that they had to rush out to meet the thugs coming to kill them. But his head swam with her words all the way through the halls and out the front door. And when she took his hand as they ran through the garden, he couldn’t hold back any longer.

  “What do you mean, the chaos is too strong?” he asked.

  “When I took my Apprentice vows, I was infused with part of the Source of the Craft. The guides monitored and balanced it. They do not do so in me any longer, and so I must do it myself.” She pointed to a path and nodded to Timothy. “This way. There is less debris, and it is shorter.”

  “How can you get your guides back?” he dogged her as they ducked onto the new route. “How can this be fixed?”

  “It can’t.” She tossed him a look that said plainly, This is why I did not wish to bring it up.

  He glared back with one that said, Too late. Start talking.

  “We have cover ahead,” Timothy said, pointing to an overgrown hedge of shrubbery. “This is our best position.”

  Jonathan stopped her from following him. “Madeline—what will happen to you if you are not reunited with your guides?”

  “This isn’t the time!” she hissed.

  “Then tell me quickly,” he growled back.

  “Stop, the both of you!” Timothy dragged them both into the shrubbery. “Children.”

  “What happens,” Jonathan whispered. He held tight to her hand. “Tell me. Now.”

  She flushed, but she was not glaring, only defeated, and the fear in her face as she lowered her eyes made him cold. “The witches’ Council will come for me, and I will be destroyed. I don’t know why they haven’t come yet, in fact. When I disobeyed the guides, I broke the covenant. That is not tolerated.”

  “You disobeyed them for me,” he whispered. He felt sick. “Madeline—why?”

  She looked up at him, still afraid but calm. “Were our situations reversed, what would you have done differently?”

  Nothing. But he couldn’t say it. He was having a difficult time breathing. He swallowed and gripped her hand tightly. “When we finish this,” he vowed, “I am taking you away. All of us—we’re going to the South Continent. I will take you away. I will keep you safe. I will not let them destroy you.”

  He expected her to tell him she couldn’t, that it was her duty, that the Council would find them. He did not expect her eyes to go soft, nor did he anticipate that she would take his face in her hands and kiss him hard and fast directly on his lips.

  “Hush,” Timothy said. “They’re close.”<
br />
  She pulled back reluctantly, and Jonathan caught her for one more quick touch of her lips before he took up his position with her on the other side of the hedgerow, drawing and priming his pistol. At no time did he let go of her hand. They waited in silence, ready for the battle the second the men cleared the forest.

  They never came.

  All three of them startled at the first cry of alarm; by the time the chorus started and the cries turned to screams, they stepped onto the path and looked to the forest. Black fog was rolling down from the tops of the trees, falling on the men like a cloud. Jonathan and the others could not see what happened inside the darkness, but they could hear the snap and crunch of bones.

  “Mathdu,” Timothy whispered.

  “It’s the daemon—the Elliott daemon.” Madeline shook her head, taking a step backward, looking terrified. “It can’t… It can’t—”

  Jonathan looked out across the garden, at the entire perimeter of the abbey, and he stepped back too, but farther, tugging Madeline with him. “It’s coming down everywhere. The fog is everywhere.” His insides twisted with new fear, and he swore. “Back. We fall back now.”

  They ran at full speed. Timothy took Madeline’s other hand, and they moved as one through brambles and over ruined pathways, not looking back but looking too often to each side as the black come closer and closer. Jonathan’s heart stopped at the dark fingers coming together over the path before them, trapping them neatly together in the heart of the garden. Then he felt a sharp tingle down his arm and through his spine to his feet as Madeline began to chant. He knew a strange moment of silence before the world shut out for a fraction of a second, and then the magic streaked out of the center of her heart like blue fire.