Beast in Me (The Divination Falls Trilogy) (10 page)

Chapter Nineteen

‘I’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll sit and talk more then.’ Slaughter, dressed in a T-shirt to go with the gym shorts pulled from his cruiser, dropped them off. ‘For now we have the gist of it. There’s a monster under the falls and it’s causing bleed-throughs. We need to get rid of it, heal the rift, and see if we can finally get these things out of here. Because –’ he turned to face them over the seat
‘– it’s been here since those Malus jokers were on the scene a few months back, right?’

Cam nodded. ‘Probably.’

‘Right. Awesome.’ The sheriff blew out a sigh and scrubbed his face with his hands. ‘I’ll be back in the morning. Will you tell Father Finn so I don’t scare him?’

‘You’re very scary,’ Eliot snickered.

Slaughter growled at her, but it was playful. ‘You two need to do it already,’ Cam said before he could stop himself.

Dead silence. Then the sound of one wolf laughing, very hard. Cameron quickly shuffled out with a muttered, ‘Sorry, I’m so tired there must be no filter between my brain and my mouth.’

Thankfully Slaughter and Eliot were still speechless.

Inside the blissful hush of the rectory, Trace said, ‘Don’t you know they’re already doing it, Lightning Boy?’

‘I … What?’

‘The smell was all over them. The sheriff and the town seer are knocking boots.’

‘Dear God.’ Cameron sighed and that made Trace laugh harder.

‘You go sit down. I’m going to go tell Father that the sheriff will be here in the morning. No detours, you look beat.’ The wolf swatted Cam on the ass and Cameron made a small, surprised noise. ‘Go on. I’m worried about you.’

‘Since when?’

Trace leant in and ran his hands over Cameron’s chest. Even through his tee the touch was welcome and borderline erotic. He knew the other man could feel his wildly beating heart. There was no hiding it. ‘Since I realised I need to stop hiding in what is basically a basement. That my life is slipping away and I’m down here in a pit alone. And it’s all my doing.’

With that, he turned and bounded down the hall, his footsteps almost silent. Because he was a predator. A gorgeous predator.

Cam shuffled off, slightly stunned, somewhat scared, and a good amount pleased. Flashes of their encounter in the library crowded his mind and he shivered at the remembered touch. The orgasm that had ripped through him. That man’s mouth on him, kissing and biting until he …

‘Jesus. Stop,’ Cam said to himself. In that moment, it hit him. What he wouldn’t give right now to be a normal man. No elemental double. No energy coursing from him randomly. Just a man who wanted another man. OK, so that man happened to be a wolf too, but ya know – shit happens.

In his room he stripped off his clothes. That balloon head feel that always came with fatigue overcame him, but all he wanted in the world was food, a shower, a hug from Trace – any order would do.

His clothes formed a misshapen pile on his bedroom floor and he shuffled like an old man into the adjoining bathroom. The light was too bright, the room too small, the bare bones shower curtain nothing more than a milky barrier between inside the tub and out. It was the epitome of cheap and no nonsense and he loved it. A more welcome sight he couldn’t imagine at the moment.

The shower water was hot almost instantly and Cam was thankful for well serviced rectory boilers. Serviced by handsome wolves with big cocks. Thick forearms. A way of growling that made his dick hard …

Cameron pushed his face under the water to derail his dirty mind. But his dick was hard anyway – he was just a man, after all. There was a very mild rustle and thump in the room. The hair on the back of his neck went up as he imagined big things coiled in the dark. Things with tentacles and suckers and beaks. Things that wanted to rend and tear and eat.

‘Calm down, it’s just me,’ Trace said softly.

Cam wiped his eyes and peered through the opaque white curtain. ‘How did you know I was scared?’ he almost whispered.

‘I could smell it. Taste it on my tongue.’ Trace was moving as he spoke but Cam couldn’t make out what he was doing. ‘The good father is putting in a brick oven pizza as we speak.’

‘What?’ Cameron laughed, but his belly grumbled.

‘He cooks when he’s nervous or upset.’

‘He’s a good cook,’ Cam said.

‘He must be nervous or upset a lot.’

Cam tried to focus but the hot water was lulling him like a siren’s song to a sailor. He just wanted to let his muscles unknot and his fears abate. ‘Do a lot of people attend church?’ he asked, his eyes closed, head tilted back to let the water sluice through his hair.

‘None.’

‘Why a church, then?’

Trace’s voice was closer and that made the hair on Cameron’s neck go back up, but for an entirely different reason. ‘None of us are particularly religious,’ Trace said. ‘But we like having a church here. And we like having Father Finn.’

‘Nice man,’ Cam said, feeling a bit breathless and he wasn’t sure why. Was the wolf closer?

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Not me …

‘He is a nice man. He’s a confidant for most of the town. We are his congregation whether we attend service or not. I think he has a smattering on high holidays. Some do baptisms and weddings. But mostly he’s more like our fucking therapist.’ Trace laughed.

Then the curtain was drawn open and Cameron was opening his eyes and there was a broad, naked chest in front of him. And an imposing man with very intriguing eyes.

‘Hi,’ Trace said.

‘Hi.’ The word puffed out of him and he was helpless to not touch that chest. Run his fingers over the peppering of hair and the random scars. One that he couldn’t help but notice up close and in the light looked like a jag of lightning.

He didn’t get to say it aloud, though, because one big bad wolf was drawing him forward. One strong arm looped around his waist, the other cupping the back of Cam’s head. Trace’s kiss almost buckled his knees. The way he worked his tongue over Cam’s, the slight tug when he sucked Cam’s tongue. Thank God he didn’t have to speak because his voice was gone.

‘Thank you for saving my life back there, Cameron,’ Trace whispered, pressing closer. They were pressed tight together – front to front – hard-ons touching. Cameron wondered if they stayed this way would their heartbeats synch up?

He didn’t get to answer Trace, because as soon as the wolf said it, he pressed his mouth against Cameron’s again and deepened the kiss. There went his hands again, trailing slippery lines over the broad chest. Cam let his hand rest over the steady beat of the wolf’s heart. He curled his fingers against slick skin even as he licked the bigger man’s lip. That soft touch ripped a growl out of the wolf and he pressed Cam to the wall.

‘You make me nuts, you know. You don’t make sense. You’re such a nice, gentle man and yet you run hot blue with lightning of all things. You don’t know any of us from Adam and you come to help.
Want
to help.’ His bulk pressed Cam to the wall of the shower; cool tile kissed his back.

‘Here?’ Cam asked, unable to suppress a smile.

‘Here,’ Trace rasped. His hands slipped behind Cam, teasing the sensitive skin along his sides before finally reaching out to grab his ass. Hard. Effectively pinning them against each other in the most intimate of ways. Trace’s hard cock pressed to Cam’s belly and Cameron found it hard to catch a breath between the friction and the steam and the kiss.

‘Good,’ he managed, and that was all as thick, strong fingers wrapped around his cock. Stroking him until his body seemed to vibrate with the need to stand taller or simply buckle. It was a bizarre but blissful feeling and Cam sighed into the wolf’s mouth.

‘Turn around.’ Trace turned him roughly. Just rough enough to heat Cam’s blood. To make his pulse beat as if trying to escape his skin.

Trace’s fingers trickled down his back like the water, the fingertips dancing on each knob of Cam’s spine. It made him shiver, the almost gentle touch after the rough turn. Those same fingers tickled along the small of his back, before fingers became palms smoothing down over his backside. Trace laughed softly and squeezed gently. ‘Have I told you that you have quite a fine ass?’

‘No.’ Cam gulped.

‘Well you do. Outside …’ There was another gentle caress and then a finger slipping into his hole, stretching him. ‘Inside,’ Trace finished.

That intimate insinuation of just a single digit had Cam panting. He pushed back to open himself, make room for another finger or, hopefully, something more substantial.

He moaned before he realised he was doing it. Had a wild moment of panic that the priest would come down and hear them. Something told him Father Finn didn’t interfere in people’s lives. Or spy.

‘Yes,’ Cameron said, biting off any more words from spilling out of his mouth. Yes was all he really had to say. The only real sentiment he had to convey, so he simply swallowed down the waterfall of the same word over and over to push back, greeting a second finger being forced into his willing body.

‘So tight,’ Trace growled in his ear. His teeth raked over that soft flesh, his tone enough to make Cam’s cock even harder than it was – something he felt impossible.

The water rushed down over them, and Cameron remembered seeing this man being tugged under. Seeing him taken, seeing him struggle, feeling the terror all over again. A sob floated out of him and he tried to gulp it back. Too late.

‘Am I hurting you?’

‘No, no.’ Cam shook his head. ‘I’m … sorry.’

Trace grew still, patient. ‘You’re what? We don’t have to do this –’

Cameron blurted it out before he lost his never. ‘I was just remembering. Seeing you go under. Being afraid … So afraid.’

‘Tentacled beasts are scary,’ Trace said, removing his fingers and running the broad head of his cock against Cam’s ass. It felt good. Almost too good. Cam moaned again, and again it twisted itself into almost a sad kind of sound.

‘Tell me,’ Trace said, pushing but not hard enough to penetrate.

‘Not afraid of it. Afraid for you. Afraid I’d never …’ He shook his head. Eyes stinging. Trace would think him a fool. Some kind of clingy waif of a man.

‘Never what? Tell me.’ He pushed again. The very tip of his cock spreading flesh, penetrating just enough for that sweet, stinging jolt of pleasure. Cam’s eyes slammed shut and he held his breath. Waiting. Wanting to be filled.

‘Never see you again. That’s what scared me. Not the beast. Not anything else, just seeing you pulled under and thinking – fearing – that was it for us.’

‘I just found you,’ Trace reminded him. He leant in and there was another slow drag of flesh on flesh as he pushed into Cameron. His hand snaked around to find Cam’s hard-on and he slid his fingers along the shaft, lingering like the feel of it was heaven to him.

All the words died in Cam’s throat. Swallowed up by the sensation of those fingers playing over the length of him, sweeping wetly across the top of him. He let himself thrust just a little into that waiting hand as Trace pressed even deeper into him from behind. He was full of the wolf. Not just physically, but mentally too, and yes, his heart seemed to swell to the point of almost bursting from just being with him.

This, right here, was more dangerous than any monster from beyond. This emotion was more volatile than any dynamite, more deadly than any weapon. And it felt so good to embrace it: that swell of caring, that rush of … something more.

He hung his head and bit his lip and let Trace take him, relaxing his body to ease the bigger man’s way. Falling backwards into the constant thrum of lust that was always in him when the wolf was around. Even after he’d pulled him free of the water under the falls and the sheriff and Eliot had come crashing up, he’d noticed how wet and vulnerable Trace was and he’d wanted to help. But not just help. He’d
wanted
him.

‘Good?’ Trace whispered, his mouth pressed up tight to Cameron’s ear so he could hear the words above the rushing hiss of the shower.

Cameron could only nod. He curled his fingers to the thick forearm locked around his waist. The contact during total surrender was the final step in what felt like a complete circuit. If he were an electronics geek, he could explain the complex and yet simple workings of a circuit. He wasn’t. Instead he understood instinctually that rush of you touching me, touching you, circle of contact.

The water turned cold and they both let out shocked sounds. And then Trace was chuckling – a sound that never failed to send arousal skittering along Cam’s skin – before pulling free.

‘Don’t worry. Not done with you,’ he growled. He cut the water and held back the curtain. The small bathroom was a churning landscape of mist and steam.

Trace pushed him by his shoulders and Cam sank to his knees. He didn’t think twice about doing it, parting his lips and moving forward to take him, but Trace shook his head. ‘No, Cameron. Face away from me. Belly up to that tub, boy.’

Cam moved in a stunned sort of fog. But it was fine, it was good. He’d do just about whatever Trace wanted as long as he made him feel that way only he could. He pressed his belly to the cool porcelain, his fingers flat to the wet bottom of the tub. Trace got on his knees behind him, pressing his body to Cameron’s without entering him. Every beat of Cam’s heart was accentuated by the chill of the tub beneath his belly. He felt his pulse thump through his body – every vessel, every cell.

Trace draped his body over Cam’s, moving in short, sharp bursts that forced Cam’s cock to the cold tub. It was blissful and horrible and wonderful and he feared he’d come like a teenager with a hair trigger.

‘Don’t you dare come,’ Trace said gruffly.

When he said that, it made it all the worse. Trying not to. Worrying he would. Keeping him on edge and panting, fingers curling against slick porcelain and doing him no good at all.

Trace thrust hard once, twice, a final time, and he grunted roughly as he came. His teeth scraping a hot line along Cam’s shoulder.

‘Good boy,’ Trace said in his ear, his breath short from the orgasm. He rolled his hips side to side, thrust lazily even as he softened and then withdrew. ‘Now stand up.’

Cameron stood slowly on shaky legs. His cock so hard it hurt, his heart so full it hurt too, but in an entirely different way. It really didn’t matter if he ca –