“Give or take.” Three years now, actually. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“Part of me thought you’d figured out some way to screw me over,” he admitted. “But then I tuned in to the promise between us, and I knew that, even if you wanted to, you’d need to make good on it somehow. You dream big, though, bigger than a sorry asshole like me. I never would’ve thought it was possible to rid the world of the Mark.”
Seeing how happy it made Johnny to think we’d actually succeeded, could I really take that away from him? Our plan certainly yielded a corpse, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it belonged to the Devil. If we’d actually succeeded in killing him, then why was I still trading in his Mark?
No, the body the police recovered was just some anonymous old man.
I’ve pondered that at great length over the past few years, trying to figure out how things might’ve turned out more advantageously if only I’d made different decisions. There was no way of knowing his body was just a shell. No one had gotten as close to destroying him as we had.
My cock shifted. Johnny jacked it through the fabric and murmured, “Good fucking riddance. No amount of power is worth having the old man’s bony fingers sunk in up to the knuckle.”
After this long, I wondered, would I even know what it was like to go without the Mark? The favor I’d promised Johnny that couldn’t be dispatched was my constant companion, a yearning that verged on pain. Nothing could bury it. Drink, drugs, men—I’d tried it all, even wined and dined a few ladies to see if I could retrofit them into the agreement. But no. Even without laying a hand on their slender young throats, I could tell it would be a waste of time. When the dark favor was forged, there was no girlfriend. And so I’d had to come to terms with the perpetual craving.
It was simply a part of me now.
“Fuckable as ever,” Johnny told me.
I glanced over at him raking his gaze up and down my body. It was truly bizarre to know exactly where he was looking now that he wasn’t bursting with dark favor anymore.
His appearance had changed so dramatically that he could’ve been a different person—and only partially because of the hair spilling past his shoulders and the prison tattoos. Mostly it was his eyes. Hazel. I told myself that maybe I’d feel some existential sense of relief when I could be with him again—though, thankfully, I didn’t really believe it. If I had, I’d be sorely disappointed. The pangs of the undone favor still licked at me mercilessly. Even so, it was good to see him again.
I’d missed him. Imagine that.
Evidently he’d missed me too. I had to pull over, out by the old water tower, or risk running us into the ditch at the side of the road. He handled me roughly when he wrangled out my cock. It was rock hard when he pried it from my pants and dove for it, face-first.
I suspected that, like me, he’d had plenty of opportunities to hone his skills over the past few years. Maybe someday, once he’d scrubbed off the prison stink and covered the amateur tattoos on his neck with something more fashionable, he’d whisper in my ear and tell me his lurid stories… all of them true.
My cock gave an eager kick at the mere thought of all the filthy things he must have done, and then another as I realized I now had that gorgeous ruin of a man all to myself. His mouth felt good, but it was his desperation that spiked my desire. He had a gearshift grinding into his liver and a steering wheel smacking him in the skull, but he was so starved for me that the only thing he cared about was sucking me off. He even remembered how I liked it vividly enough to toy with my ass while he blew me. The clothes in our way stunted the sensation somewhat, but even through the fabric, the rough prod of his fingers was enough to escalate the situation—fast.
I tangled my fingers in his hair and forced myself in deep, and he took it, all of it, right down to the root. Close. So close. Already. My eyelids fluttered shut behind my mirrored aviator shades. I leaned my head back against the tinted window and enjoyed the feel of that telltale gathering as my body ramped up to spill down Johnny’s throat.
As a rule, I’m nearly impossible to startle. But a sharp rap on the window while I was riding that delirious knife edge was enough to make even me jump.
A state trooper stood, arms akimbo, glaring into the car. I glanced first at his face—stony, and mirrored shades not unlike mine—and then his belt. Taser. Cuffs. Colt semiautomatic. Johnny had scrabbled to the far end of the cab, aiming to get as much of himself as possible out of the lawman’s sight. Me? I considered tucking myself away, but I was still hard. If anything, playing to an audience with a belt full of weapons was more of a turn-on than a deterrent.
I powered down my window and casually said, “Officer?”
“It may have escaped your attention, but this is a county highway, not a truck stop bathroom. Bad enough I gotta deal with the hitchhikers without fag scumbags like you….”
A cloud scuttled over the sun and my reflection shifted in his sunglasses. I caught a glimpse of his eyes. Roiling black. I considered letting him vent about our gay repugnance, but was too eager to enjoy the look on his face when he saw me for what I really was.
I pulled down my shades and gave him a meaningful look across the top of the frames. My reflection looked back at me from his mirrored cop glasses with piercing blue eyes.
But that wasn’t what the state trooper saw.
He stopped his tirade midsentence and worked his jaw. Imagine what sorts of favors he could have done for me, given all the toys at his disposal. Back before I met Johnny, I might have been tempted to have him put his arsenal to creative use.
Not now. The sight of Helen being hauled off in cuffs had changed everything.
These days I hoarded my favors for a rainy day. True, not like Johnny, back in the day. He was the champion of scrupulous self-denial. Still, I kept myself so amped up that, to my fellow Chosen, my eyes would shine like sleek black onyx.
I could have asked the trooper for a favor and told him to go take a hike. Instead I merely stated the facts. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen my lover. We’d appreciate some privacy.”
Why spend the Mark, after all, when the mere sight of my eyes was enough to let him know I wasn’t anyone you’d want to fuck with?
Without a word the trooper turned tail and stomped back to his cruiser.
Johnny and I sat and listened to the receding crunch of soles on gravel.
He smirked, but only because it was expected from someone as jaded as he was. “Your lover, huh?”
Well, my cards were on the table. I supposed I’d need to prove to myself, sooner or later, exactly how he saw me. I slipped my shades the rest of the way off and leaned in to kiss him.
He kissed me back—no hesitation, none at all. I’d figured as much. The kiss wasn’t the test. When I pulled back… now, that was another story. I eased away from him without the barrier of reflective glass between us and let him have a good look at me. He met my eyes. Unerringly. In a way that proved, in no uncertain terms, what he saw.
Blue.
He didn’t know me for what I was, because he was no longer Chosen. Not because he’d earned back his soul, but as a punishment for his audacity.
Poor Johnny. Nothing more than one of the herd now. Even worse, he thought everyone else had got their balls cut off too.
Was that really so bad? It must have brought him some measure of peace. And as for me, I found him just as alluring, even without the darkness swirling through his eyes. I still thought of him as the guy badass enough to try to kill the Devil.
And my punishment, other than the insatiable urge to rid the world a person who didn’t exist? Knowing we’d somehow failed… and grappling with the task of breaking the news to Johnny.
I was still hard, though my cock was settling toward my stomach now, and not jutting straight up. I glanced down at it. Johnny took the cue and got busy again.
Apparently it held some advantage for him to know where I was looking.
Enough to compensate for th
e fact that he was no longer seething with dark favor? Surprisingly, yes.
I cupped his straining jaw and ran my thumb over the single teardrop tattooed at the corner of his eye. His fellow inmates thought he’d killed a man. But more importantly, Johnny believed he’d vanquished the Devil. I couldn’t keep him in the dark about it forever, but I did want him to enjoy his newfound freedom first—without the burden of knowing he’d donned the veil and now had to wonder who was Chosen and who was not. When the time was right, I’d come clean.
And until then… I could be his eyes.
Author and artist JORDAN CASTILLO PRICE writes paranormal sci-fi thrillers colored by her time in the Midwest, from inner city Chicago to various cities across southern Wisconsin. She’s settled in a 1910 Cape Cod near Lake Michigan with tons of character and a plethora of bizarre spiders. Any disembodied noises, she’s decided, will be blamed on the ice maker.
Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who’s plagued by ghostly visitations. Also check out her fascinating psychological M/M thriller Mnevermind, where memories are made… one client at a time.
Connect on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Jordan-Castillo-Price-257078438055
Connect on Twitter: @jordancprice
Website: jordancastilloprice.com
Published by
DSP PUBLICATIONS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dsppublications.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Devil Take Me
© 2018 DSP Publications.
Edited by Tricia Kristufek
Infernal Affairs © Jordan L. Hawk.
Collared © TA Moore.
The Counterfeit Viscount © Ginn Hale.
11:59 © C.S. Poe.
Wonderland City © Rhys Ford.
Dark Favors © Jordan Castillo Price.
Cover Art
© 2018 Reece Notley.
[email protected]
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dsppublications.com.
Digital ISBN: 978-1-64080-887-4
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64080-888-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018906980
Digital published October 2018
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
Devil Take Me Page 55