Chapter Seventeen
Greeting each other near the rotten stump, Pip was home again, in the Hunter's arms. The Hunter's sturdy hands held him from behind. Pip exhaled and sank back against him.
This time, as the world started to slip from view, Pip barely noticed. The transition between one world and the next had become second nature very easily. Even the emptiness of the in-between didn’t bother him.
“You wear my cloak,” the Hunter whispered into Pip’s ear. The heat of his breath and the low, sultry notes in his voice dove from Pip’s ear straight to his groin. He hardened. “It suits you.”
“I wouldn’t want to wear anything else,” Pip whispered back. The Hunter’s presence filled him, lighting up the dark places in his soul. It assured Pip he’d made the right choice.
Aunt Lauren and Uncle Joe couldn’t understand, and he didn’t expect them to, but they were grounded enough to listen to him as he turned the feelings in his heart into words.
They listened and tried to understand. He explained as best he could. As an adult, when it came down to it, he was responsible for his own life. No matter how hard it was to step away from the family and the familiar, the time had come to forge a new path alone. Forging his own life didn't mean cutting all ties with his beloved relatives.
“Tell me,” the Hunter said as the hut appeared around them. The pup, who’d previously stood by Pip’s feet, darted out from beneath his cloak and joined his brothers as they lazed by the fire. “Is this a goodbye? Are we to part?”
“Never,” Pip promised. He let his head roll back, exposing his neck. The Hunter kissed the skin there, greedy. “I never want to say goodbye to you again. We’ve already been apart for too long, and my life is incomplete without you in it.”
The fire in the center of the hut cast flickering shadows. Pip let his gaze focus on the way the light played with the darkness. This place had felt homely and familiar from the first time he'd woken up here. Wherever here was, this place, elsewhere, it was his home now.
After hundreds of years, his soul had found its way back to the Hunter, and now it would never leave again.
The Hunter’s kisses grew ravenous. He nuzzled against the crook of Pip’s neck, then nipped it. Pip drew in a startled gasp, but the pain was short-lived. It bloomed into pleasure, spreading through him like a flower opening its petals to the sun. Pip let the feeling grow, savoring each of the Hunter’s kisses.
He’d never have to miss this again.
The Hunter drew him close, and Pip felt vaguely aware of their small pocket of reality. It stole the clothes from his body and left him nude. The Hunter’s traced along his bare hips, feeling the bone there before dipping inward to follow his abdomen all the way down. By the time the Hunter’s fingertips arrived at the nest of hair that sheltered Pip’s sex, he was hard. His body responded naturally and craved the Hunter's touch more than ever.
“I love you,” the Hunter whispered as his fingers brushed the base of Pip’s shaft. “I have been in love with you for centuries.”
“I love you, too.” Pip closed his eyes and let the words take root inside him. One day he'd ask how many centuries. He was loved and cherished. What else could he want? “I can’t choose anything but to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“The rest of your life?” The Hunter chuckled. He nipped at the ridge of Pip’s ear. “Beloved, if you will have me, we shall be together for the rest of time. What I extend to you is immortality.”
Immortality. Pip shivered.
The Hunter and his previous incarnation had spent hundreds of years together, but Pip also knew a powerful magic had resurrected him from the dead. This time around took no dramatic sacrifice, no harrowing death, and no exertion of power. At that moment, it was just them and their raw desires.
Nothing more.
Somehow, that made the promise all the more real.
The Hunter wasn’t keeping Pip because he felt obligated to, but because his heart wanted this. And Pip's heart's desire was completely in tune with that of the Hunter.
Silent tears streamed down Pip’s cheeks, and as they did, the Hunter stopped. He lifted his fingers from the base of Pip’s cock, and he held Pip flush against his chest instead. “You shed tears.”
“It’s okay,” Pip promised. He wiped away the tears and smiled with every ounce of love he had. “I’m happy, that’s all. I’m crying because I’m happy.”
“Happy?”
“To be home,” Pip said, hoarse. He choked back a sob, the resolve he had left starting to crumble. Flashes of his past life returned in bursts and flashes. He foraged with the Hunter late in the afternoon as the sun set, laughing at a joke the Hunter didn’t understand. He curled up against the Hunter’s chest as the night turned cool, the furs and body heat warming them. He stood by, heartbroken, as the Hunter knelt beside one of their wolves and stroked his head as he passed.
Home.
Hundreds of years of memories. Thousands of shared moments that had shaped Pip’s existence. Millions of minutes in which he’d looked the Hunter’s way and fallen in love all over again.
Pip didn’t know if he’d ever regain his memories fully, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Here and now, he could fall in love all over again, like it was their first time.
That love already filled him—now Pip wanted it to lead them to a shared future.
The Hunter lowered Pip onto the furs. He nestled into them, savoring the feeling of velvet against his bare skin, before the Hunter lowered himself down on top and claimed all the attention for himself.
The Hunter kissed the trails of tears from Pip’s cheeks, then sealed their lips together. The gruff, familiar feeling of the Hunter’s mouth enchanted Pip, and he kissed back with everything he had. In many ways, his body remembered what his mind didn’t. Not only was Pip hard from the Hunter’s presence, but he knew the man's kiss better than he had any right to.
Just as the Hunter knew his body and all the best ways to please it.
The Hunter’s lips traveled from Pip’s lips to his jaw. With a press of his nose, he encouraged Pip to turn his head. Pip obeyed, nuzzling the furs with his cheek as the Hunter peppered his skin with hot kisses and grazed his teeth across Pip’s neck.
It was heaven.
The Hunter’s kisses dipped lower, along the pronounced ridge of Pip’s clavicle, then down his sternum. The shallow breaths Pip took disturbed his chest greatly, and he tried to hold his breath to keep the Hunter on track. He lifted his head to watch as the Hunter kissed across his chest, then ran his tongue over one of Pip’s nipples. The breath Pip had been holding burst from the back of his throat, and he ran a hand around the back of the Hunter’s to hold him in place.
His soul was used to the touch, but his body wasn’t.
Before they'd slept together, Pip had been untouched. The Hunter taught Pip about pleasure as no one else could. Each new sensation was a discovery,
“Hunter,” Pip panted. “Oh my god.”
The Hunter grinned against the pebble of his nipple, and Pip squirmed. It wasn’t right, to feel this good. No matter how many times he slept with the Hunter, Pip was worried it would come to an end—that the Hunter would realize his mistake and cast Pip aside—but when Hunter touched him like that, it was easy to forget his fears.
Their bodies were made for each other, and their souls were connected through means Pip couldn’t begin to understand.
He belonged to the Hunter, and the Hunter belonged to him in turn. There was no alternative way in this life.
The Hunter worked his tongue in small, quick circles. When he’d teased enough that all Pip could do was surrender with a moan, the Hunter still continued to nip and tug. Red-hot ecstasy scorched Pip from the inside out, and he twisted and cried out in sudden pleasure as the Hunter drove him further into lust.
Hearing Pip’s cry, the pup scrambled out from the wolf pile and jumped into the pile of furs. Pip saw a flash of gray before the wolf was in his face, nosing against Pip’s cheek, panting. The Hunter lifted his head from Pip’s chest, looked at the pup with a flat expression, and lifted him by the scruff to set him outside of the furs.
The comic interruption made Pip burst out laughing.
“He will need to learn the difference between when you are in danger and when you are in bed with me,” the Hunter said sternly.
The words and tone made Pip's cock throb a little harder. Even so, Pip laughed harder. It struck him deep inside and refused to be shaken, even when the Hunter pinned him back onto the bed. It wasn’t until the Hunter silenced his laughter with a kiss that Pip pulled himself together, and even then, he struggled to return the Hunter’s affection without snorting.
The Hunter broke the kiss, looking down at Pip with his startlingly green eyes. “Is this how it shall be, now?”
“Hmm. It was just funny.” Pip struggled not to laugh. “I bet if it wasn't you in bed with me, he would’ve gone right for your throat instead of checking to see if I was okay first.”
“If I were not the one in bed with you, I would want him to,” the Hunter replied.
Pip stuck out his tongue. “Jealous much?”
“Indeed. I brought you back from the dead and waited for your soul to return to me for hundreds of years,” the Hunter reminded him. “I will not have another threaten what is mine.”
“It must’ve been killing you to think I would leave,” Pip said. He brushed his lips against the Hunter’s. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
“I believed in you,” the Hunter said. “Whatever choice you made, I knew it would be the right one. And here you are.”
The Hunter rolled them over, allowing Pip to lie on top of his chest. The rocking motion awoke Pip’s libido, and he pushed his hips forward to put pressure on his erection. It slid across the Hunter’s stomach, rubbing up against the side of his cock.
For the rest of time, they’d do this, Pip realized. Nights in bed spent seducing each other, hot and sweaty beneath the furs. Mornings curled up together, groping, kissing, and wanting more. He’d graduated from high school expecting a mediocre life with few prospects, and now he was committed to a creature who guarded over the gate between worlds.
He experienced the tingling feeling Pip had come to know meant his passage had become slick with moisture to accommodate his lover. The Hunter made his desires clear, and Pip was quick to fill them. For a while, he focused on grinding against the Hunter, building the anticipation of sex. The Hunter’s shaft worked between Pip’s cheeks, seeking something to fill without finding it. It was just as slick as Pip’s passage was, and Pip loved to feel it glide against his skin.
“I want you,” the Hunter breathed. “Please, beloved.”
Pip’s cheeks flushed, and he reached back to grasp the Hunter by the base. With a little bit of manual manipulation, Pip rocked back onto the cock, burying the head into Pip’s ring.
Pip winced, but pushed through the pain. He knew pleasure was waiting just a little bit deeper.
From that point onward, their bodies moved together. Pip pushed down and impaled himself on the hard shaft, and the Hunter rocked up into him in turn. The rhythm was natural, and with Pip on top, he was able to control it to best suit his desires. He kept the pace slow, hoping his lover watched every time Pip sank down and let every inch of his thick cock fill him.
The Hunter held his hips as Pip worked, thumbs anchored upon Pip’s slender stomach. Pip twisted and gyrated, eyes closed and head thrown back as he took the cock. This was what he wanted. This was all he wanted. Pip didn’t regret his choice for a second.
For the first time, he was on his own, free to live however he wanted.
Free to spend his life with the Hunter, if that was what his heart told him to do.
Pip panted as he worked. He kept his hands braced on the Hunter’s stomach, straining to maintain the right position to keep the pressure on his prostate. The waves of pleasure from each bounce of his hips were unparalleled.
Pip didn’t hear the Hunter come—he felt it. The Hunter’s member pulsed then flooded him with warm seed in abundance. Pip gasped and went rigid. His hole tightened around the Hunter’s shaft and milked it out of instinct, desperate to work his lover’s release deep into his body.
Pip came before he had the chance to realize his balls had clenched and the tension had come to a head.
Exhausted, he collapsed onto the Hunter’s chest, and the Hunter held him close. They kissed lazily, neither of them energetic enough to go for another round.
“I will never grow tired of this,” the Hunter promised. He smoothed Pip’s hair back from his brow, his green eyes partially closed and his body relaxed. “How I missed this time with you. I am spoiled, to get to enjoy it every day from here on out.”
“I’m the one who’s spoiled,” Pip whispered in reply. He kissed the Hunter one last time, heart brimming with love. “To have found a man to stay by my side, not through just one lifetime, but two?”
“I will be faithful until the end of time,” the Hunter promised. “Even should one day, you stop loving me.”
“I will never stop,” Pip swore. He laid by the Hunter’s side, one arm draped over his chest. “Not for as long as I draw breath. And then maybe even after that, if this life is any indication.”
The Hunter smiled. Across the room, the pup settled back down among the other wolves and drifted off to sleep. Pip wasn’t far behind him.
Nothing in life was ever perfect, but he’d come about as close to perfection as he could. The Hunter was his, he was the Hunter’s, and nothing would come between them anymore.
The rest of time was theirs to share.
Pip didn’t think he could ever want for anything again.