Chapter Six
RYDER CLUTCHED HIS reaver in his palm, smoothing across its delicate ridges with desperate strokes of his finger. Rain splattered the windshield and Liam’s thumbs drummed on the steering wheel. A string of beads swayed from the Subaru’s rearview mirror. One of the cup holders was filled with polished stones, and a vial of essential oil was stuffed in the compartment of Ryder’s door.
Liam’s car smelled like him—crisp and clean, with hints of rosemary and citrus. Ryder had sat exactly where he was sitting many times before, foot propped on the dash, watching Liam out of the corner of his eye while music drifted from the speakers. Everything was different now. Everything was evolving and accelerating, and it could be ending before Ryder even understood when it’d begun in the first place.
The woods were a safe haven, even in the storm. Especially in the storm.
Ryder glanced at Liam and their eyes met briefly. The intent between them was palpable.
Liam directed the car down a dirt path toward a familiar meadow nestled in the trees. The forest stirred. Critters crawled onto branches to watch, as if they’d been anticipating their arrival. Ryder heard the trees whisper in a different language.
Darkling. Storm wielder. Bone bender. Water conqueror.
Liam put the car in park. The headlights went out, shrouding them in darkness. They sat there, listening to the rain come down and the forest come alive, until Liam unclicked his seatbelt and sighed. “Ry…”
“C’mon,” Ryder said. He kicked his shoes off, his socks, and slid out of the car. Soft grass cushioned his feet. He curled his toes and closed his eyes, pulling his elemental magic to the surface. Heat pulsed around him, warming the rain as soon as it hit his skin. He took off his shirt and threw it to the ground.
“You don’t have to do it.” Liam’s voice was muffled by the rain and the trees. “We can find another way to make this work.”
“Until I kill someone,” Ryder said.
Liam walked around the side of the car. Thunder rolled across the sky, each loud rumble in tune with his footsteps. Until I kill you, Ryder thought.
The forest stirred delightedly. Sea sorcerer. Alchemist.
Liam stood in front of him. His brown eyes were masked gray and white, and his lips were parted, chest heaving in breath after breath. He shook his head, and Ryder looked at all of him, every bit of him. His gaze wandered the slope of his neck, along his shoulders and down his arms. The raindrops clung to Liam, while steam lifted off Ryder’s bare skin.
“If I come back—if I make it—can we do this?” Ryder flicked his wrist between them. “Me and you, us, can we be something?”
Liam shook his head. His hands latched around Ryder’s hips and pushed him backward. “We’re already something,” he said.
Ryder stumbled, almost tripping over his feet. The rain poured down on them and the night felt endless. The forest chattered and whispered, and Ryder’s eyes squeezed shut when Liam crushed their mouths together. Their lips were slippery, and Ryder could barely keep up with each step, with the part of their lips, every shared inhale and exhale, the grass around his ankles and on his back.
It happened in segments. Ryder’s head spun and heat built in him. Flames licked across his bones, coiled around his joints and ligaments, hummed in his muscles. He clung to it—to the Fire inside him. They’d landed on the grass somehow. Ryder tripped or Liam pushed him; either way, it didn’t matter. The meadow was cool on his spine, soft and grounding, and the air smelled like pine and magic, like every spell they’d ever attempted to perfect in these woods, like every afternoon spent lying in the sun with his grimoire open, surrounded by his circle-mates.
Liam kissed him harder, longer, with intermissions of steamed breath drifting between them, and Liam’s teeth set in Ryder’s lip. Pain radiated in the indentions left behind from Liam’s canines. Want ached behind Ryder’s ribcage and between his legs.
“Off.” Ryder tugged at the bottom of Liam’s shirt, guiding it up until Liam pulled it over his head and dropped it beside them. “Tell me to stop, okay?” Ryder’s reaver was snug around his index finger. He dragged the tip of it through the water on Liam’s stomach, across his hipbones and up his side. “If it hurts, just—”
Liam’s fingers closed over Ryder’s hand, guiding the point of the reaver into the flesh stretched across his bottom two ribs. Another flash of lightning splintered above them. Fog turned the moon hazy and blurred the stars, clung to the treetops and snaked between their gnarled branches. Blood soaked Ryder’s fingertips and pooled in the hollow of his reaver.
He dragged the bloodied point across his tongue and Liam watched, transfixed. Vitality tasted like sea salt and honeysuckles. Ryder focused on it—the emotions, the power—and let his pupils bleed over, allowed his Fire to burn hot and his magic to be present and unrestrained.
Liam’s fingertips dipped under the front of Ryder’s jeans. “What’s it like?”
“Your energy or you touching me?”
“Both.” Liam’s fingers moved slowly, sending shivers across Ryder’s arms and down his legs.
“You feel like a storm.” Ryder lifted his hips off the forest floor, chasing sensation. “It’s like drowning, but not. Like I’m being held under water until it hurts.” He shifted his hips until his jeans slid lower, and he kicked them off, followed by his briefs. If it were any other night, with any other person, being bare in the woods would be unthinkable. But it wasn’t any night, and Liam wasn’t any person. “C’mon,” Ryder rasped. He fumbled with the button on Liam’s pants. “Like our ancestors used to.”
Liam laughed against Ryder’s mouth. “Witch jokes?”
“Yeah, Princess, might as well laugh about it while I can.”
“You’re coming back,” Liam said and tossed the rest of his clothes away. Ryder shoved him onto his back. The trees whispered through the rain. Wildfire. Death dealer. He slid his thighs over Liam’s hips and watched the rain bounce off Liam’s chest. It streamed over his shoulders and gathered on his cupid’s bow. Liam’s lips quirked at the edges. “And stop calling me that.”
Ryder leaned down to kiss him. Moonlight bent through the mist and sharpened the dark hollows of Liam’s collarbones, the faint dip of muscle on Ryder’s stomach. He sucked in a sharp breath when Liam sat up, hands steady on Ryder’s hips.
It was a halted, tilting moment—Ryder looking at Liam and Liam looking back. The forest went quiet, listening, and the rain slowed, waiting. Liam nodded, hooked his teeth over Ryder’s clavicle and bit, pulling a gasp from deep in his throat.
Ryder gripped Liam’s jaw until he let go, and sliced the edge of his collarbone open with the reaver. Liam surged forward. He bit down again, and wrapped his arms tight around Ryder’s back.
The rain froze in place. Ryder clutched the back of Liam’s head with one hand and dug his nails into Liam’s shoulder with the other. Emotions rushed between them. Every stint of eye contact, every day spent practicing his spell work with Liam in his apartment. Liam’s head resting on his stomach last summer, out there, in the same woods—the dread and anger and hopelessness that spiked through Liam when Ryder said he’d chosen to die. The elation and excitement of their first kiss, bloody and messy and overdue. Liam’s unyielding, absolute fear that Ryder might not come back.
It was quiet and still. Ryder stayed present in the shared emotions for as long as he could, enduring the whiplash of their energies and magic. Liam’s lips hovered over the wound and he dipped his hand between Ryder’s legs, two fingers sliding into him without pause.
“You sure?” Liam’s mouth was bloodied and warm on Ryder’s jaw.
Ryder tried to say yes, but Liam’s thumb circled his clit, and the word skidded out of him in the shape of something else, wounded and steep.
Liam replaced his fingers with his cock, and Ryder couldn’t breathe. He tilted his head until their lips met. It was kissing and moving, and then it was Ryder’s lungs catching up with their actions, breathing into Liam’s mouth, eyes open, watching Liam from under his lashes. It was Ryder’s hips rolling, and Liam pressing up into him, the tender sound of their bodies meeting, chased breath and fluttering, shaky moans. Ryder’s magic flared; the Fire in him rushed to the surface. The rain fell again. The trees around them chattered and howled.
It was unlike any dream or daydream or nightmare, because when Ryder dreamed, he dreamed of his brutality, of blood and sacrifice—and when he dreamed of light, of Liam, it was never as good as this.
The grass cushioned his shins and knees. His reaver curved delicately over Liam’s cheek, the bite of Liam’s evening stubble harsh on his palm. Ryder’s eyes returned to their Lewellyn green. His body trembled, hips grinding down again and again. Liam’s fingers dug into him, the storm ceased, and his gray eyes turned golden brown.
Ryder’s name slipped from Liam, and Ryder swore he felt both syllables slither between his ribs.
Their energy hovered around them. Something wicked watched with a thousand eyes—the same something from their reading. The air parted. Everything sped away and came back, compressing around them. Ryder felt it like a free fall. Autumn wind cut through the trees, rustling copper leaves and ivy vines.
Liam swiped his thumb over the fire rune etched into Ryder’s hip. The hazy moon looked down on them, highlighting Ryder’s pale skin and making Liam appear otherworldly against the darkness. The whisper of the forest died down. Heat thrashed in Ryder, pleasure building and building. He kissed Liam hard, his mouth opening wide for deeper, longer, fiercer kisses.
Time turned over.
Ryder felt like a king or a god or a magician.
Liam made the darkness in him feel like a gift.
Ryder trembled when he came. He gasped, body tightening in spasms and jerks and tremors. Liam moaned prettily into Ryder’s mouth, stilling inside him and digging his thumb into Ryder’s hip hard enough that Ryder pawed at him, telling him to let go.
The trees rambled again. This time Ryder understood them.
The Magician. The Tower. The Devil. The Lovers.
Liam’s eyes were half-lidded. He hummed when Ryder leaned into him, their chests pressed together, bodies spent and shaking.
“To ravage,” Ryder whispered, resting his cheek on Liam’s shoulder.
Liam ran his fingers along Ryder’s spine. “A dark partnership.”
The fog lifted and moonlight dripped across their bare skin.