Marked by Shadows: MM Paranormal Romance Mystery (A Simply Crafty Paranormal Mystery Book 2)

by Lissa Kasey

  “Had a lot of car break-ins in your life?”

  “Yeah. Before I left for the Army it happened at least once a month when I was at my part-time job. Lukas got his broken into all the time while he was at school or college. Even when we never left anything in the car. I think it’s why he still owns an older vehicle. No bells and whistles to tempt people. Especially since his car is parked most of the time.”

  “I’ve never owned a car,” I confessed as Alex parked around the side and in the last spot right next to a window. “Most places I lived had good public transportation. And the rest were short-term, so I borrowed a car from a family member.”

  Alex shrugged. “Cars are stressful. You don’t own a car. A car owns you. Repair costs, gas costs, insurance, it all adds up, even if you don’t have a car payment. But I’d like to get my license back, so I can drive if I need to.” He motioned to the car. “Legally. But I think Lukas will let me borrow his should we need to go anywhere we can’t get to by trolley back home.”

  He got out of the car and dug through to find his duffle bag. “I stuffed clothes and bathroom stuff in here for tomorrow. Anything else you need for the night from the car?”

  I blinked at him as I got out, pointing to the quilt we’d brought. He grabbed it, and my laptop bag, and handed them to me before locking the car. We made our way inside through the keycard access side door and down the hall to our room. It was basic enough, bathroom, queen-sized bed, TV on a big dresser, and a table shoved in the corner. I put my computer on the table. Alex opened the curtain for a second to confirm the car was parked right there, and it was. Then he stripped the bed of the blankets and laid out our quilt.

  He kicked off his shoes and unzipped the duffle bag, taking out a bag I’d made that I knew was filled with toiletries for the both of us and setting it on the counter in the bathroom. I watched him move, focusing on him as I breathed, and let a moment of peace begin to roll through me. He latched the metal door lock and paused to look at me.

  “You okay?” He asked.

  “Sure,” I said absently.

  He frowned. “You gonna take your shoes off and stay awhile?” He glanced down at my feet.

  I looked at them too, and absently toed my shoes off, leaving them near the table. “Are there any ghosts or anything in this room?” I asked him.

  “No,” Alex said.

  And that was settling. No ghosts. No cosplay group. Just four walls, a locked door, and Alex.

  “What do you need?” Alex said crossing the room to wrap his arms around me. He touched my face, gaze searching, concerned. “There’s a couple fast food places across the parking lot. I can go grab us something to eat. You should eat.”

  “I don’t want food.”

  “What do you want? You know I’ll give you whatever you need.”

  I felt a smile tug at my lips, thinking a cascade of naughty thoughts since we were alone at last and in a place where I didn’t feel vulnerable. “You don’t know what you’re promising.”

  “I do,” he said, his body responding to something he saw in my face, because his breath hitched, and I felt him harden against my thigh. “Fuck, anything.”

  I shoved him back on top of the bed. He landed with a little bounce and waited, watching as I crawled on top of him, straddling his hips and reaching for his face. Our lips met with fury, a heat of need, my demand of possession. He was mine. He wanted me. Looked at me like I was his world. Saw me in ways no one else did. Sometimes that scared me, but right now it made my body sing. It was easy to turn the anger to lust. The emotions weren’t far apart, and I could never be angry with Alex.

  I devoured his mouth, tasting every crevasse, memorizing the flavor of his tongue, and sucking on his lower lip while grinding my hips into his. I could come this way, a mess of fast frottage, but wanted more. Needed to see his pupils blown wide from pleasure, body trembling, breath labored, sweat glistening on his skin.

  There were a lot of parts of our lives where I felt older than him, more experienced. Often it made me sad, realizing so much of my youth had been strained, while somehow, he’d survived with some portions of his innocence intact. His years in the military had tainted him in other ways, colored his vision of politics, war, and power, but everyday life sometimes awed him. However, in this instance, his body beneath mine, I reveled in my knowledge. Fantasized about a thousand ways to make him come, and teach him the ins and outs of our bodies.

  “Please tell me you at least packed lube in that bathroom bag,” I begged.

  “Course,” he said between kisses, his hands cupping my ass to slow the drag of our erections together. “Condoms too. Wasn’t sure what we’d need.”

  I thought about that for a moment. A thousand thoughts in my head. Doubts, questions, anxiety.

  “Hey,” he said. “Don’t go all quiet, share the train of thought.”

  “Condoms?” I asked.

  “I don’t need them if you don’t.”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, and bit his lip lightly. “Let me go grab the lube.” He did one more small sway of his hips, a nearly painful glide of our dicks trapped by fabric, and it was so good. “Fuck.” Now I was copying him. Swearing like an Army man. He was rubbing off on me. I gave a dirty little laugh as I pulled away and went to find the lube. “I’d like him to rub off on me,” I told my own reflection, not caring how silly it sounded.

  “You can rub off on me whenever you want,” Alex promised from his spot on the bed as I returned.

  I stripped off my shirt, unbuttoned my pants and shoved them down before getting back on the bed and dropping the lube beside us.

  “No fair,” Alex said. “I want to be mostly naked too.”

  “I want you completely naked,” I said, tugging his shirt up and off, then pushing at his jeans. He didn’t even try to keep his underwear on. He shoved them and the jeans off in one go, kicking off his socks. He tugged my underwear down until I had to crawl out of those and cast them aside. When our bodies met it was like a roaring fire of heat.

  “Fuck,” Alex groaned as I slid my body against his, sweat almost instant and mixing with the precome from both of us. His hands went back to my ass, cupping my cheeks and pressing our bodies together, increasing the slickness. He breathed out a long breath like he was trying to keep himself from coming. “What do you want? Need?”

  “You,” I answered immediately.

  “Yeah?”

  I realized then that he was really offering me anything. Willing to do whatever I wanted. I could have turned over and told him to eat my ass for the next few hours and he would have. And wasn’t that insanely hot?

  He smiled up at me. “Share what’s on your mind.”

  “Ass eating,” I said. I liked that he was beneath me, thought briefly of sliding into him. How long had it been since I’d been on the giving end? And then was suddenly struck with an image of him riding me. Well fuck wasn’t that hot. “You riding me,” I added without thought, and instantly regretted it. What if Alex never bottomed? Would he get mad?

  Alex rolled us over, startling a gasp from me. “What do you want first?”

  I couldn’t breathe. Had my cock ever been so hard? I groaned as he gripped it and ran a slow squeeze over my length, adding lube, I realized. He fingered the head, teasing my foreskin and the sensitive underside. “I should stretch you,” I whispered to him. “Don’t want to hurt you…”

  “You just want to play with my ass,” he teased.

  “Yes,” I sighed. “Always.”

  He captured my lips with his, tasting me, teasing me with his tongue while his hand worked me to a fire. I could have come just from his lazy stroking, it was maddening, almost tight enough to hurt, drag slow enough to keep me on edge, but teetering so close. I wasn’t sure I would last more than a second of him around me. Maybe I should have gone with the ass licking first.

  He smiled, moving a little above me, breathing in my air and meeting my gaze. I felt him then, the tip of me
at his entrance, both of us burning up. He pressed down, and I held my breath as he swallowed the tip of me, his body tight and clenching at the intrusion. I couldn’t help but cry out as I slid in, a steady glide until I was fully encased. His body rippled and shifted around me, accommodating my size, which had never been small despite being the fem boy of all my former equations.

  “Fuck, you’re huge,” he groaned.

  “Am I hurting you?” I prayed not, he felt incredible, soft and tight, squeezing me and guiding me deeper.

  “No,” he said almost in a growl. “Good, so good.” Alex closed his eyes, leaning back a little, shifting his hips a time or two as though trying to find the perfect seat. I felt a tiny bit more give, my balls resting against him, his pressed between us. He groaned, glanced down, and then reached between us, where he stood hard, and jutting against my stomach, adjusted his balls, the weight of them hot and sweaty. I slid in a little more, until he was fully seated. He let out a long breath. “Fuck, it’s been so long. Never been this full. Feel it everywhere. The stretch is so good.”

  We both sat like that, breathing for a minute, me trembling with the need to move, his body still shifting and clenching around me, adjusting. He rocked his hips a little, his breath hitched and eyes fluttered.

  “Fuck,” he said drawing out the word.

  “Like that?” I asked, mimicking his movement and adding a bit of a pressured shove up into him.

  “Yes…” he sat back hard against my hips. “Yes, fuck me please. Do that again. Hard.”

  I reached for his hips, something to hold as he rode me, shoving my hips upward as he pressed down into me, friction gold. We rolled together, not a dance, but a wicked slam of circling hips. I could tell each time I grazed his prostate because he gasped and trembled, eyes deep, pupils wide, eyelids fluttering. It wasn’t like videos, with the full pullout and shove back in, no, this was a balls deep glide of only a few inches, his heat like lava. And the way he looked at me wasn’t that absent interest in only my body. He gazed at me, seeing me, focused on me in a way I realized I hadn’t been comfortable with in the past. Not with anyone but him.

  “I’m so crazy about you,” I told him, tracing a hand up his chest, playing with his hair, and the sweat, pinched at a nipple, teasing it, drawing more decadent sounds from him. Alex might have been thin and needing to be fed up, but he was still beautiful, breathtakingly so, body moving above me. I traced his lips and face for a moment, marveling at the high cheekbones and soft beard that tickled my skin. Couldn’t help the sweet sigh that left my lips as he caught my palm and kissed it. I was close, dancing on the edge of release, fighting that final explosion because I didn’t want it to end. Not even for a second.

  “Yeah?” He gave me that boyish grin I loved so much with a mix of added lust and desire. “Want me for more than my body, right?” He teased as he rode my cock like something out of a dream of an incubus.

  “Fuck yes.”

  He guided my hand up to his hair, let me take a firm grip and tug his face back down to meet mine. The angle wasn’t as good this way, not as tight or deep, but still enough to make me tremble as I tried to stave off my release. I would have reached for him, squeezed his fine cock and teased him to release before me, but it was trapped between us at that moment. His movements adding to the friction.

  I sighed into his lips. “Don’t want to come yet,” I told him. “Want this to last forever.”

  He smiled against my mouth, the feeling a funny tickle of his beard and the soft flesh of his skin. “We have all night.”

  Alex reached back, and I wasn’t sure what he was planning until I felt a finger where our bodies joined. A press of the digit against his hole and our bodies. I paused, but Alex didn’t. The fingertip pressed in beside my cock and it triggered a thousand things at once. Dirty thoughts of Alex fingering himself, the stretch of his body around me and that digit, and lots of longing to put my own fingers inside him until his eyes fluttered back in his head.

  Then there was his body’s reaction, a clenching, almost bucking frenzy of movement, muscles gripping me in a vice but still sliding until I couldn’t hold back the climax. It poured from me like his body was milking it from me. I spurted inside him as he continued to ride me, his finger pressing in a little further, causing another ripple effect.

  I screamed into his lips, my entire body coming in a way I couldn’t recall ever happening. A tightening of everything, an explosion of all senses, body, brain, and soul. I might have even lost consciousness for a few seconds because I gasped, and opened my eyes to Alex kissing my face. We were no longer moving, at least not intentionally. Our bodies were still locked together, sweat pooling between us. His come warmed my belly and dripped down my sides. We both spasmed a few times, bodies clenching and unclenching around each other, like an ongoing play of mini orgasms.

  He danced small kisses around my face, palm on my chest over my heart. “I love you,” he said softly.

  I smiled, realizing my hand was still gripped in his tight curls, aching with the strain. I hope I hadn’t hurt him, though he didn’t look unhappy in any way. “Holy fuck,” I grumbled into his kisses.

  “That’s back at the shop,” Alex said. “And I don’t think we need it. We do just fine on our own.”

  And wasn’t that the truth. He slid off of me and I was instantly saddened by his absence. “You should be permanently attached to my cock,” I told him.

  He laughed. “What would people think?”

  “Fuck people,” I said.

  “I’d rather it just be us fucking,” Alex said.

  “Oh, yes. Most definitely. Plus, you still owe me ass eating,” I pointed out.

  “Right!” Alex reached up to untangle my hand from his hair, then sat back and lifted me, flipping me over with such ease I was laughing until his face dug between my butt crack and found my hole. He delivered a few experimental licks, leaving a trail of saliva, then breathed his warm breath over it. “Careful what you wish for,” he said.

  “Even I can’t get it up right away,” I told him. Though I was half hard anyway, simply from the thought of his mouth on me.

  “We have all night,” Alex promised, using his hands to spread me open and began to dig his tongue into my hole. “I think I can make you come a half dozen times yet tonight.” And he set about doing just that.

  Chapter 27

  I felt Alex’s kisses on my face and my eyes fluttered open. “It is not morning yet,” I grumbled at him. “And I don’t smell coffee.”

  He laughed lightly. “Actually it’s just after ten at night and I’m starving. There’s a Subway across the parking lot. I’m going to run and get food for us.”

  “My legs are jelly,” I told him. “Not going anywhere.” I reached for him. “Stay with me.”

  He let me wrap him up in a hug and shared in a long kiss, but he was dressed so I couldn’t grope him properly. “You need food too,” he said. “Neither of us have had anything all day.”

  “Fasting is good for us. Reduces aging,” I told him absently running my fingers through his hair. “I think there’s science.” Of course my stomach took that moment to let out a loud growl. “Traitor,” I said.

  “Mhmm,” he said, kissing me again. “You nap. I’ll be right back. We can talk science tomorrow.”

  “Take your phone,” I said.

  “Of course. What sort of sandwich do you want?”

  “Meat,” I said smiling, half teasing. “All the meat. Never enough meat.”

  Alex’s laugh was wicked and delicious. “I’ll give you all the meat you want.” He delivered a long lick to my torso, making me remember the half dozen times he’d brought me earlier with his mouth. “Extra pickle too.”

  “You could stay and do more of that,” I offered though wasn’t sure I’d stay awake long enough to play.

  He tugged the quilt up over me. “After food. Nap. I’ll be right back.”

  I sighed and settled into the bed, closing my eyes and apparently fa
lling asleep that quickly because when I opened them again, he was gone. I frowned at the dark silence of the room, wondering what had woken me. Alex couldn’t have been gone long. I rolled over to look at the digital clock radio and was startled to find it after midnight.

  Wait. Hadn’t Alex said it was after ten when he’d gone to get food? I sat up, my entire body aching like it had had a good workout. Technically it had been a while since I’d been quite so vigorous with sex. I’d been careful with Alex previously, letting his shyness dictate what we did. Tonight, he’d given me reign, and I’d taken everything I wanted and begged for more. Just remembering made me half hard again. Why wasn’t he back yet?

  The room was dark and untouched. Alex’s duffle sat in the chair. His shoes were gone. I climbed out of the bed to the window, pushing the curtains aside for a moment. The car was still there. Where the hell was Alex?

  A lead ball began to form in my gut. Had the shadow thing taken him again? I reached for my phone, unlocking the screen, hoping for at least a text explanation from him. But there were only a few from an unknown number, which I didn’t open, instead going for the list that popped up from Freya’s number.

  Had she done something to Alex? I hadn’t thought her the killer, though plenty of signs pointed to her. Maybe I was just that bad a judge of character. What did that say for the rest of my life and the people I cared about then?

  I’m sorry. Freya’s first text read.

  I should have thought it through. I know you’re happy where you are. And I’m glad you’ve found Alex. He seems good for you.

  It was stupid. Keep the computer and software. Please don’t stop designing. You’ve amazing talent even if you’re not running around with media attention.

  I’m sorry you’re leaving early, but I understand.

  Alex says you’re very angry. And while I’m sad that it’s at me, I’m happy because ever since your breakup with Tim you’ve been very reserved, almost cold. I’ve worried for a while that he really damaged you.