Duck Duck Ghost (27 page)

“And he’s seen them? Wolf? Talked to them?”

“Yeah, interacted with Mara a
lot
. I think she’s got a thing for him. She likes his ass.” He shrugged. “There were others. Ones that Winifred brought with her. And well, Winifred.”

“Damn. That’s complicating things right there. Bringing along captured souls. And this was the one Meegan nearly killed you with?” Cin cocked his head, his expression growing more serious. “So now I’ve got to wonder what the hell this one has on her plate? We’re going to run out of salt. There’s only so much in the barn for the animals, and even with Sey’s ice cream making fetish, there isn’t enough to keep out a horde.”

“Wolf’s right about the sound thing, you know.” It’d been a song that drove Winifred back, and Tristan wondered what music he had on his phone to send a crazed little girl on to wherever she should have been in the first place. “It disrupts them. He starts talking about spectrums and ultrasound, but it’s pretty much like microwaving or using sonar on them. We’ve just got to find where she is on that scale. Or dial. I don’t have the science for that. I make up the monsters in my books. I don’t actually worry about having to fight them off.”

“He’s been so busy trying to prove the impossible exists he hasn’t thought about a way to get rid of the damn things.” Cin swore under his breath, some language Tristan couldn’t parse out, but it certainly was something hot enough to blister the damp from the air. “Shit, Wolf, what the fuck have you been doing with your life?”

A flare of something rose along Tristan’s spine, and he stepped in closer to Cin. Sure, he had to look up to Cin to meet his gaze, and there was about a foot of muscle on either side of him when he got close, but it wouldn’t have been the first time Tristan walked through shit and didn’t have the sense to scrape it off before he took another step.

Poking Cin’s chest with a sharp jab of his finger, Tristan growled back, “He’s been trying to show the world that what you’re doing with
your
life is real. That’s important to him.
You
.
Your
damned family that threw him out because he has different ideas about… whatever the hell it is you all do.”

Again the man’s burnt gold stare washed hot over Tristan, but he stood his ground—even as the ground seemed to shake beneath him. A long, hard moment passed between them, and then Cin nodded, his shoulders relaxing from their tense coil.

“You’re right,” Cin admitted softly as he raked his hands through his long black hair. His elbow narrowly missed Tristan’s nose, but he didn’t seem to notice when Tristan jerked his head back to avoid getting hit. “I guess I figured Wolf would do this kind of shit with me. Instead, it felt like he turned left when I went right. And now he’s going around looking to disprove everything I believe in. It’s hard to swallow.”

“He doesn’t disbelieve now,” Tristan replied gently. “He just now… really needs to be shown it
is
real. How many times have you been someplace to get rid of a ghost to find out it’s just bullshit?”

“More times than I can count,” he admitted. “Usually it’s kids. Sometimes it’s an asshole who wants to prank someone. But there are real ones out there too. Ones like this. Although this is the first time I’ve actually
seen
all of a ghost. Usually it’s just shapes or lights. This is…
different
.”

“He does the exact same thing you do but with uncommon tools to send them on their way. Okay, maybe not along, but he could.” Peeling back Cin’s cynicism and distrust was like pulling teeth, but when Cin quirked a small smile his way, Tristan knew he’d at least gotten one layer off. “He doesn’t know what you know. He wasn’t allowed to follow you because he thinks about it in a different way, but when it’s all said and done, you guys did both turn right.”

“Hmmmm.” Cin nodded, and his attention drifted off to the yard for a moment before returning to Tristan. “I’ve got to think about that.”

“Well, hurry up and get over it fast. We’ve got to take care of what Sey bought in one of those boxes.”

“Yeah, the boxes.” Cin looked over his shoulder toward the room they’d ringed in yards of the sequined fabric they’d found in Sey’s workroom. “I’m going to mop the floor one last time to get rid of any blood we didn’t catch, then start going through those damned things. Shit, that’s another thing. He probably feels guilty about leaving you in there by yourself. We were supposed to have been in there with you.”

“You were helping Sey with the animals. And fuck, I don’t know
—
I needed to do something. Maybe I felt like I had something to prove, I guess. He treats me like I’m a fricking teacup he found in a china cabinet.”

“More like a coffee mug someone left in a phantom tollbooth.”

Cin’s teasing hit him unexpectedly, and Tristan laughed despite the gnarl of stress sitting in his belly.

“Why don’t you go see if you can go talk some sense into him while I start in on the room?”

“Might be a while,” Tristan warned. “He’s pretty pissed off.”

“Don’t forget, I’ve known Wolf since he was a larva. I know you’re going to be a while.” The man’s grin was pure wickedness and Kincaid. “You’re going to have five minutes of argument and then after that? An hour or more of make-up sex. And considering how sweet of an ass you’ve got there, Tris, I’d be disappointed in Wolf if he didn’t take his time.”

T
HE
ONLY
light in their bedroom was the soft glow coming from the bathroom’s night sconce, and Wolf debated getting up just to turn that off too. It was hard to sulk when one’s body was bathed in a soft golden murmur, and it was even harder to brood when he could hear his cousin and lover discussing him as if he were a head of cabbage they’d found in a grocery bin.

He also couldn’t get up and close the window without them hearing the wooden sash hitting the sill, and it would have seriously cut down on his eavesdropping. And if there was one thing he’d carried over with him from childhood, it was stealing secrets out of the air around him.

“Curiosity will kill the Wolf.” Their Nan said that so many times when he’d been a child, Wolf’d grown up thinking that was how the phrase actually went.

Of his three grandmothers, Nan’d been the constant—the one who’d stayed at the main house while her other two wives went off to con marks and sometimes exorcise a ghost or two. It’d been Nan who’d picked up Cin at the airport when he’d fled Central America after escaping his father’s clutches, and it’d also been Nan who first turned her back on Wolf when he’d announced he wanted to go to school for parapsychology. It was one thing to be educated about the spirit world, she’d said, it was another thing to go around trying to prove things didn’t actually go bump in the night.

No amount of explanation could dissuade her, and he hadn’t been really willing to try. In true Kincaid fashion, he’d slammed doors and declared them dead to him. All except a rare few—a few that included his older and much wiser cousin, Cin.

The cousin who’d just hit on his lover in a such a roundabout way Wolf couldn’t even be pissed off at him for doing it.

“That’s what you get for eavesdropping. You hear shit you’d rather not hear,” he told himself as Tristan told Cin he was going to head up to talk to Wolf. “And sometimes, you hear shit you really
need
to hear.”

His disgruntlement was gone, burned off by half an hour of lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling. There’d been some residual anger, but it was mostly aimed at himself.

Especially at himself.

“You’ve got to stop acting like he’s fragile, dude,” he scolded himself. “He stood up to Winifred. Shit, look what he’s dealt with already. Why the fuck do you treat him like he’s….”

Precious.

That was it. Tristan was precious. And his—only his. Wolf sat up, suddenly wishing Tristan would take his time coming up the stairs because he needed to have a moment while his brain imploded with the knowledge that he truly, dearly loved the man he’d once been hired to destroy.

And he felt that love all the way past his fears and into his spine. Being out of control—being stupid in love with a man who saw images of dead people imprinted onto the world around him—none of that mattered because he had Tristan. Tristan was his—red rubber ball, manic ghost dogs, and howling out bad eighties songs in the shower—Tristan Pryce was his.

“Fucking shit, I’m stupid,” he announced to the room, which would have been an empty witness to his private little confessional, but Tristan opened the door right as Wolf laid himself open to the universe. Their eyes met, and Tristan shot him a tentative, goofy smile—and everything went crazy in Wolf’s heart. Holding his hand out to the blond, he said, “Come here.”

And Tris trustingly walked across the room’s wooden floor and took Wolf’s hand.

Wolf didn’t say anything. He didn’t beg for forgiveness or revisit the argument they’d had downstairs. Instead he got up onto his knees and met Tristan halfway when he climbed onto the bed. Then he pulled Tristan down and straddled him, holding him down with his weight, and kissed him until Tristan didn’t have any breath left in him.

“I’m sorry,” they said at once, and Tristan’s low chuckle rolled under his own hearty laugh.

“I’m not… used to having a partner,” Wolf admitted. “And God, I keep fucking it up. Fucking
this
up. Guess I’m worried about how many times I’m going to end up saying I’m sorry before you walk away from me.”

“Can’t walk away from you.” Tristan slid his fingers through Wolf’s hair. “Didn’t we promise we’d deal with the crap we give each other? I’m awkward and fucked up—”

“You are
not
fucked up.”

“And you’re bossy and domineering,” Tristan finished, yanking Wolf’s hair lightly. “You also don’t let me finish my damned sentences sometimes.”

“Yeah, I’ll admit that,” he conceded wryly. “I don’t know how fast I can change that—the bossy part. Too used to being—in charge. Shit, it seems like every time I take a step forward, I then slide back two.”

“I’ve just got to make sure not to let you roll me over.” He shifted under Wolf, arranging their bodies so they were more comfortable. “It’s not like I won’t tell you to stop, but babe, you’re more insecure than me sometimes. You’re always expecting me to walk off, and sometimes you do it first just so you can
be
the one who lets go. I can take the bossiness because you’re easy to stab with a fork, but if there’s one thing I want you to work on, it’s trusting me to stay next to you.”

“Even as you’re calling up crazy homicidal ghosts?” Wolf teased.

“If you recall, I’m not the one calling these things up. It’s all on you Kincaids, and well, the last time was Matt and Gidget, but they count for your side.” Tristan tugged on Wolf’s ear, twisting it just enough to turn it around. “I don’t mind you rescuing me, Doctor Kincaid, but I’ve got to need rescuing. You can’t cut my steak for me just because you’re sitting beside me.”

“But I can stab a bull if it’s heading straight for you?”

“Not one of Sey’s. I like them.” Tristan pulled a face. “More than I like York the camel. Fucker spits like crazy. The ghost camel didn’t spit that much.”

“Better manners. York’s more of a bad boy biker camel.” Wolf captured Tristan’s mouth in a simmering kiss, sighing right before he let go. “You make me crazy, you know? Inside and out. I am absolutely crazy for you, Thursday.”

“Good, because it would be awkward if I was the only one who felt like this. I think they call that stalking.” Tristan worked his hand down the front of Wolf’s body and rubbed at the hardening cock in Wolf’s underwear. “Is this when I can make a bad pun about stalks? Because I’ve got one right here.”

Tristan’s shirt didn’t survive Wolf’s hands. His jeans nearly didn’t make it either, but Tristan was quick to shed them before they were torn apart at the seams. The blond tasted of coffee, gold, and lightning, and Wolf dove in deep, cupping Tristan’s face to ravage his mouth.

There didn’t seem enough of Tristan for Wolf to consume. He tried to go slowly, but Tristan’s hands kneaded and dug into Wolf’s body, clenching his ass with a strong grip. His boxers were gone, probably lying in shreds on the floor with the remains of Tristan’s shirt, but Wolf was more than glad to sacrifice his underwear.

“Still mad?” Tristan gasped when Wolf’s teeth closed in on his nipple. “Shit… fuck.”

“I’ll get there,” Wolf promised. “Or you in me. I’m good either way. And no, I’m not mad. Fuck, babe. I just… never want to let you go.”

Tristan palmed Wolf’s balls, fondling them with his fingers. Wolf spread his legs to let Tristan have room to play with them and drew out a long gasp when Tristan pressed his finger against Wolf’s hole. It stung a bit, and Wolf groaned, wondering where they’d put the lube.

He didn’t have to worry much longer because Tristan slid out from under his arms then reached for a small bottle of oil on the nightstand.

“Can I have you?” The question was said softly, as gently as Tristan’s hand on his balls. “This time?”

“Any time you want.” He didn’t like hearing the shake in Tristan’s voice. For his own insecurities, he’d found the mines laid down in Tristan’s soul more than a few times. Usually though, when he was the most careful was when he set them off. “I just
need
you. And I kind of like that you need me back just as bad.”

Tristan was gentle. For the most part. His mouth closed in on Wolf’s cock tight enough that he was afraid he’d shoot off before his lover could even get inside of him. Twisting about, he returned the favor, prolonging the event with a slurp of his tongue along the firmness of Tristan’s shaft. Tris smelled good down there, fresh powdery and lemon with a dash of sweat. He took care to circle around Tristan’s head, amused at its lack of foreskin and how the slit crinkled up when Wolf licked at it.

“Tickles.” Tristan’s hips twitched, and he pulled back, stifling what Wolf was sure had been a giggle. “How the hell do you do that with your tongue? Feels like you’re sticking the whole thing down there.”