Chapter Twenty-Three
Garrett locked the back door and checked it was secure, then carefully hung the key back on the nail driven into the frame. It may have been meant to allow employees access to the sunroof, but it had the nice secondary benefit of giving him access to the streets and alleys so he could hunt and feed without advertising that he was leaving the building.
He checked for observers, but it was after midnight and the few cast and crew that were living temporarily in the hangar seemed to be sober, sensible types that turned in early and got plenty of sleep. No wild Hollywood parties while principle photography was in session. It created bags under the eyes.
He moved carefully anyway, as he made his way back to the trailer, keeping close to walls and objects and out of the sightlines of the security cameras, which he had made a point of spotting and memorising the first night he had roamed the hangar.
So when Roman’s arm snaked out of the dark and wrapped around his neck, and the point of a blade pressed under his ear, Garrett was annoyed. He hadn’t made allowances for someone as sneaky as him and he should have.
He kept still. “Are you still pissed at me about…oh, I don’t know. The list is long and distinguished now. Or have I added another transgression to the tally that you forgot to inform me about?”
Roman’s grip around his throat tightened. “Back up,” he ordered.
“Okay, we’ll play it your way.” Garrett backed up a few steps and Roman turned him, backing him further into a short blind alley – more a pocket – made by three twenty-foot piles of scenery flats. It was dark in there.
Roman pushed him face-first up against the side of the flats. Then he jammed the knife into the frame of one of the flat, at Garrett’s eye level. “Recognize it?” Roman asked.
Garrett turned his head to look at the six inch single-sided blade. It was serrated and gleamed dully in the low light. The handle was black and there was a jewel buried in the hilt – put there to give the knife better balance for throwing. Garrett knew that because it was his knife. It was a sgian-dubh, the knife all Scotsmen owned.
“I thought I had lost it.”
“In a way, you did. You left it behind, in Greece. When you left me.” Roman’s body pushed up against Garrett. Hard, driving him against the flats, pushing the air out of him.
Garrett shoved back, pressing on the flats for leverage. “You told me to go. Remember pressing that musket against my chest and threatening to cut out my heart and watch me bleed out if I didn’t get the fuck out of your sight?”
Roman’s hands reached for his belt buckle, sliding it undone. Pressing his hips back so his ass was pressing against him. Garrett clamped his jaw against the flare of arousal. “You don’t get to pretend that never happened,” he ground out.
“You ran like a frightened rabbit.” Roman pushed his jeans down to his ankles in one sweep.
Garrett closed his eyes, giving up the fight. He was primed, his body aching. His cock and balls were congested, swollen. It’d ever been this way. His jeans were removed and his legs spread and that made his cock pulse with the possibilities.
“You ran,” Roman breathed in his ear. “Didn’t it occur to you I needed you most just then?”
“Even I can only fight you so much,” Garrett whispered back. “A man will fight forever on nothing but daydreams and hope, if you give him a glimpse of a possibility. You never did.”
Roman slipped his hand between Garrett’s cheeks, teasing and exploring. The sensation was achingly familiar. Garrett gripped the frames, unwilling to groan aloud and demonstrate just how easily Roman was affecting him.
Roman’s other hand took the place of the first, and this one was slick with lubricant. Garrett’s pulse skyrocket. His hips pushed back, opening him up, easing access. It was old habit, instinctive and without intention on his part.
Roman eased his fingers inside him. “The heat of you.” He let out a breath. “Jesus, you’ve just fed.”
Garrett didn’t answer. Roman, who was still drawn to humans, had always liked it when Garrett had freshly fed, for he was human hot then. Roman made a sound in his throat. It might have been a groan, choked off. His fingers withdrew and were replaced by the tip of his cock.
Garrett stood still and let Roman take him. He wanted it. His body ached for it.
Roman slid into him with so little resistance it might have been yesterday they had done this, with no two hundred year hiatus between.
The only sounds between them now were their breath. Both of them were breathing hard, with little hitches and catches as their excitement rose.
Roman’s hand curled around Garrett’s cock and began to stroke in time to his thrusts and Garrett threw his head back in an agonized pleasure. This would end him, end both of them, too quickly.
And abruptly, he wasn’t willing to end this.
But his climax was rushing at him. It had been far too long. The delicious friction, the feeling of fullness, the internal pressure and Roman’s hands on him…it was too much.
He came with a hard rush and it felt like it was pulling from his toes. He could feel his pleasure triggering Roman’s climax, the choked sound he made as he came and the little uncontrolled, helpless thrusts as he poured his essence into him.
Garrett folded his arm against a flat and rested his head on his arm, feeling his heart slow and his body quieten. Roman stayed inside him, his body touching Garrett’s back, just lightly enough to let him know he was there, as if his cock wasn’t enough.
“I missed you,” Roman said, his voice so low, it was nearly bodiless.
Garrett’s heart squeezed.
“It was my fault,” Roman added. “I’m sorry.”
He pulled away. Garrett spun to face him, not willing to let him slip away this time. Roman was sliding his jeans back on, half-turned away.
“So what is this, then?” Garrett asked. “Are you trying to play catch-up, Roman?”
Roman grinned. “Two hundred years of some of the best sex I can recall?” He grinned. “I should be so lucky.”
“Then what?”
“You started this,” Roman reminded him. “You tell me.” He stood looking at Garrett, waiting for an answer, genuinely interested.
Garrett picked up his jeans from where Roman had tossed them and shoved his legs into them one at a time, giving himself time to think. “I don’t know,” he admitted truthfully.
Roman scowled. “Would your answer be any different if you weren’t fucking Kate every time I turned my back?”
“I’m not—”
Roman grabbed his shirt and twisted, dragging Garrett closer and holding him still. “I can smell her on you, Calum. Jesus wept! Tell me you wouldn’t be hedging your bets if you weren’t thinking about her right now!”
Garrett suddenly wished he had Winter’s ability to calm himself on demand. His heart was running out of control. It had been doing way too much of that lately. He fought for a steady tone as he looked Roman in the eye. “It doesn’t matter what I’m thinking or what I might have answered. It is what it is now. You were a fatalist once. You know this better than I.”
Roman let him go as suddenly as he had grabbed him. “You can’t straddle the fence forever, highlander. You talk about fate like you know it, but you’ve forgotten that fate will choose for you if you fail to make a decision.”
“I remember,” Garrett assured him. He straightened his shirt. “But doesn’t the decision really rest with you? I’m just the side-dish in all this.”
Roman’s face darkened. Then he suddenly grinned. “Ah, we’re fooling ourselves, Calum. You know who is really going to decide in all this?”
“Kate,” they both said together.
They looked at each other.
“Five hundred years,” Roman said. “I never thought I’d see you dangling at the behest of a human and a woman again.”
“Times are changing.”
“So are you,” Roman replied.
Garrett shook his head. “That’s the point you’ve missed in all this.” He tucked his shirt back in with sharp, annoyed thrusts.
“And now you’re the one that’s pissed.”
“Because this, whatever the hell this is, was all about you.” Garrett grabbed the back of Roman’s head, moving fast so he wouldn’t have a chance to duck it. He kissed him, hard and deep, and let him go. “I’m not changing, Roman. I’m changing back. I’m returning to what I once was and you don’t like it. That’s why you’ve suddenly realized you miss me — because you are missing me. The old isolated me is gone. You did so much damage it crippled me for two hundred years, but I finally got past it and you can’t stand the idea that I can move on without you.”
Roman’s fist whistled through the dark in a text-book upper cut that, had it connected with Garrett’s jaw, would have knocked him flat on his back. But Roman’s response to being in a jam had always been violence and Garrett was ready for it. He blocked the fist in his hands, using the advantage of his few inches of extra height to press down on Roman’s hand and keep it down.
Roman struggled to drive his hand higher, then simply to release it, the tendons in his neck straining, his black eyes locked furiously on Garrett’s. But while Roman had always looked stronger, they had in fact always been evenly matched. Garrett waited out Roman’s struggles, until he gave up.
“I’m changing, but you haven’t changed an inch,” Garrett told him. He let his fist go, tossing it back against Roman’s chest. “You’re predictable, Roman. You’re still looking out for yourself and screw anyone else who is in the way.”
“Bastard,” Roman muttered in Greek.
Garrett strode back to the trailer, his black Celtic temper high and hot, careless of the security cameras or of anything else. He wanted a drink. He wanted a punching bag.
He halted with his hand on the door of the trailer and spun away. It was too small, too cramped in there. He leaned his back against the cool metal.
He wanted someone to tell his troubles to, but Nial and Sebastian were busy and everyone else he knew that he could possibly talk to were human or needed sleep like humans.
He wanted Kate.
He wanted Roman.
He was so completely screwed.