by Cari Z
“I’ll take your word for it.” Colm had never learned to care for heights, and his gait was still a trifle uneven due to his amputation, so he’d left the climbing to Nichol and contented himself to work inside the house. They hadn’t given the inhabitants of Faoilea, only about a hundred in total, enough warning of their coming to provide much in the way of fuel stores. That meant that for this winter, at least, they would be sleeping beside the stove to make the most of its warmth. Both of them had spent enough time with Megg to fare well enough with cooking simple meals, and Fergus had left a ridiculous amount of supplies for them: pots and pans, dishes, soap, spices, traveler’s fare that lasted and lasted in the cool air.
In the spring, they would open up more of the house, patch more of the roof. In the spring, they would make spaces for others in this place. But for now…
Colm leaned back and reached for Nichol as he started to walk by, catching the hem of his pants and reeling him back. Nichol laughed and let himself be caught, pulled down onto the bedroll next to Colm and tucked in close to his side. His nose was cold, and Colm shivered as Nichol buried it against his neck.
“Alone at last,” Nichol teased, and Colm still couldn’t get enough of seeing that easy grin on his lover’s face again. Nichol had never quite lost all his spirit, but it had taken months of travel and several adventures for him to get back to his gleeful former self. Their time on the road had done him good, a way to fulfill his sense of adventure without the accompanying grief of traveling with the rovers. Marley had reluctantly taught him the basics with a saber, and after six months of daily practice, Nichol had become competent enough with it to help protect the caravan against a half-hearted group of malcontents in one town on the edge of the Fasach Steppes. He’d walked away beaming with a cut on his leg and a boast on his lips. He had been riveting.
Colm turned and brushed his face against Nichol’s curls. Colm’s hair had grown out again and Nichol had a habit of running his hands through it every chance he could get, but he kept it trimmed short. Nichol’s, on the other hand, was almost long enough to bind behind his neck, and Colm loved the feel of those soft strands against his body.
A fact that Nichol knew and took advantage of. “Our dinner won’t be ready for hours,” he said slyly. “I’ve a thought for how we could pass the time.”
Colm smiled. “You have that thought quite often.”
“What can I say? I find you irresistible.” It was utterly true, odd eye and mangled foot and all. Colm never had to look far for affection, because Nichol was always there, ready to lavish him with love. Colm was his heart’s only outlet, and he would never dream of refusing such a gift.
“How fortunate that the feeling is mutual,” Colm said, and Nichol laughed and rolled him over onto his back, as close to the stove as they could get without touching it.
“Then you’ll give yourself to me?” He kissed Colm lingeringly. “Let me touch you? And you can be as loud as you want, you can yell the house down and there’s no one to care…”
“You,” Colm paused to catch his breath as Nichol stroked him over the fabric of his trousers, “are the one who makes all the noise.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Nichol pointed out. “I know you’ve a voice in there that’s just dying to be heard.”
He might be correct, but right now… Colm got his arms around Nichol’s waist and rolled them again. “I’d rather hear yours,” he said before nipping at Nichol’s lower lip. Nichol leaned up into the embrace, already breathing harder.
“Gods, yes,” he murmured fervently. “Anything, anything you want.”
Colm wanted…everything. For now, though, he would content himself with a taste. He slid down Nichol’s body, lifting his shirt and kissing the taut skin of his belly as he untied Nichol’s trousers. Nichol helped push them down, eager, and Colm rewarded him by not teasing, just licking a path over the trail of hair that crept down his abdomen until the head of Nichol’s cock was in reach, rosy and already slick. Colm wrapped his lips around it, and Nichol groaned.
“Oh…gods, you, Colm…mmm…”
It was a good start, but they could do better. Colm stroked Nichol’s hip and inner thigh as he swallowed and licked, teasing his lover until all Nichol could say was his name, over and over again. Finally he let his hand join his mouth and stroked Nichol’s cock as he sucked, hard, desperate to collect everything his lover had to give against his tongue.
“No, no, wait wait wait, Colm, wait…” Colm didn’t want to pull back, but he obeyed the gentle tug of Nichol’s hands.
“What is it?” he asked hoarsely, unable to let go completely of Nichol’s cock, so red and swollen and ready.
In response, Nichol pulled him around, shifting Colm until he was facing the other way, kneeling above Nichol bemusedly as he pushed Colm’s clothes out of the way. “Come with me,” Nichol said just before he enveloped Colm’s erection in warm, wet heat.
They hadn’t done this before, tending to each other like this at the same time. It felt so good that Colm had a hard time concentrating on the task at hand, but he didn’t have to do much at this point. A few more strokes from him had Nichol tensing and arching his back, breathing hard around Colm’s cock as he came. He didn’t stop, though, kept working Colm through his own orgasm, pulling and pressing and finally, as one finger just began to penetrate him, Colm came as well, groaning Nichol’s name as he spent himself.
They curled around each other afterward, Colm barely having the presence of mind to cover them with a blanket to keep the chill off now that they were naked. Colm closed his eyes and didn’t try to fight the pleasant languor that felt so heavy now. He could go to sleep. The pie would still take some time to finish cooking, and he’d smell it if it stayed in too long. Sleep sounded perfect.
“What do you think Gran will do when she gets our letter?”
Or he could talk to Nichol. “I think she’ll sit down at her table with Sari on her lap and read it a dozen times, just to make sure it says what she thinks it says.”
Nichol relaxed a little. “Do you think she’ll be angry?”
Colm kissed Nichol’s forehead. “Why would she be angry?”
“Because I left her. I just…left her.”
Colm remembered the quaver in Megg’s voice back at the cove when she spoke to her selkie husband about Nichol and how poorly he was doing. “I think she’ll be happy to know that you’re alive and well,” Colm said at last. “She might be a bit upset you didn’t tell her what you were going to do, but she loves you too much to let that affect her joy.”
“And at least she has Baylee now.”
Colm shut his eyes. “I hope so.”
“If your sister is resourceful enough to make it as far as Devanon, then I’ve no doubt that she made it to Caithmor. She’ll be a comfort to Gran.”
“She’ll be furious that I’m not there.” Colm could see the expression on his sister’s face now, her mouth working with silent rage, eyebrows furrowed. It was a look she’d inherited from their father. “And sad.”
“Well, that’s what your letter’s meant to allay,” Nichol said easily. “They’ll be all right, the two of them.” He yawned and edged a little closer to Colm until they touched from thigh to chest.
“I think they will,” Colm agreed.
I think we all will.
About the Author
Cari Z was a bookworm as a child and remains one to this day. In an effort to combat her antisocial reading behavior, she did all sorts of crazy things, from competitive gymnastics to alligator wresting (who even knew that was legal!) to finally joining the Peace Corps, which promptly sent her and her husband to the wilds of West Africa, stuck them in a hut, and said, “See ya!” She also started writing then, because what else are you going to do for entertainment with no electricity? She writes award-winning LGBTQ fiction featuring aliens, supervillains, soothsayer
s and even normal people sometimes.
Contact & Media Info:
website: www.cari-z.net
blog: carizerotica.blogspot.com
twitter: @author_cariz
Facebook: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008212125132
Look for these titles by Cari Z
Now Available:
Tempest
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When the sun goes down, their passion awakens…and so do their nightmares.
Somnus, Book 1
Centuries ago, a man with Bryn Llewelyn’s dreamwalking ability would have been a shaman or a priest. In this time, he’s merely exhausted, strung out on too much caffeine and too little sleep.
Sleep means descent into Somnus—an alternate reality constructed of the combined dreaming consciousness of ordinary humans. A place he’d rather avoid. Trouble is, his powers don’t include the ability to go without sleep indefinitely. At some point his eyes close…and his nightmare begins.
As a teen, the treatment that cured Laszlo Grimm’s sleep disorder stole his dreams—and his ability to feel emotion. Petrified of needing more “treatment”, he clings to familiar rituals and habits. But lately his nightly terror has returned, and when he meets Bryn in the real world, the man seems hauntingly familiar. Not only that, Bryn awakens feelings in Laszlo for the first time in years…
Slowly Bryn and Laszlo realize they are both unknowing pawns in a plan of unspeakable evil. And that their powerful attraction could release the destinies locked within them—or be the instrument of their doom.
Warning: Contains the stuff of your lustiest dreams—and most frightening nightmares. You may want to read with a candle at the ready…just in case the lights go out.
It takes a con to expose a con. But this con could strip their secrets bare.
Framed for his twin sister’s murder, Sebastian Swift has been kept drugged in a mental institution since age thirteen, aware of only one horrible fact—every night in his dreams, he drowns.
After a freak storm frees him, Sebastian learns the truth. His guardian, Emrys, has been siphoning off his inherited magical power over the waters of Cantre’r Gwaelod—one gruesome vial at a time. And the man’s bastard son, Macsen, has been raised in his place. Determined to find his twin’s killer, Sebastian assumes her identity.
Macsen Finch isn’t about to give up his guise as the young earl—and not just because of the fortune. His cousin’s return from the dead threatens Macsen’s own efforts to undermine his father’s evil plan. Yet he can’t deny his inexplicable attraction to the imposter.
Acting on their mutual desire puts them both at the mercy of a madman’s wrath. To stop Emrys from stealing his power, Sebastian will have to learn how to use it—and whom he can trust.
Warning: May contain copious exchange of fluids, men in corsets, and dirty dancing. Apply liberally before bedtime.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Tempest
Copyright © 2016 by Cari Z
ISBN: 978-1-61923-338-6
Edited by Linda Ingmanson
Cover by Kanaxa
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2016
www.samhainpublishing.com