Chapter Nineteen

L ater—significantly later, leaving an isolated house burning—Stephen finished washing his hands in the scullery and walked back through Piper's long corridors until he reached the library door, outside which Crane was leaning, propped by his shoulders against the doorframe.

"Hello."

"Hello," Crane said. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine. More or less. How are you?"

Crane's eyes narrowed. "Are we having a polite conversation?"

"It's been a fairly trying day," Stephen said. "If you need some time for reflection—"

Crane reached out, jerked him off his feet, pulled him into the library, and shoved him against the door to push it shut.

"Right," he said, leaning down into Stephen, voice low and intent. "There is now plenty of power in this house. You're perfectly capable of throwing me across the room with a thought. Right?"

"Yes...am I going to want to?"

"Let's find out," said Crane. "Because the hell with ghosts, the hell with families, I intend to have you, right now, and that's not up for discussion or reflection."

He wrenched Stephen's shirt off as he spoke, jerking at the buttons, dragging the torn, filthy linen over his narrow shoulders .

Stephen's mind stuttered to a stop. In the brief respite since he'd finished killing people and burning bodies, he'd veered between the fear that the end of the danger would spell the end of Crane's interest, and the fantasy, sternly pushed away, of a private compartment on the train home with uninterrupted time for Crane's perceptive, teasing lovemaking. He had not expected to be unceremoniously fucked against Piper's walls with the blood barely washed off his hands.

Not here, he thought helplessly, as the old horror of this house, this family stabbed through him again. Not like this.

Crane's hands stroked Stephen's thin bare chest, lined white with faded scars, brushed his nipples and slid down to his hips, where Stephen's body, unlike his mind, felt no doubt at all. The long fingers ran over his stiff cock, his arse, then flicked the buttons at his waist open, and Stephen made a stifled noise that was somewhere between need, protest and terror.

Crane pulled sharply back to look into his face. His hands were still firm on Stephen's body, his breathing ragged with lust, but his eyes were questioning, concerned, and with that second's pause, Stephen could think again.

Hector was long gone. Piper was cleansed, purified by fire as the bodies burned and the fresh air rushed in. The hands that claimed his body now had held his bloody fingers in the darkness of the cellar.

The past was dead. They were alive. He wanted this man so much.

Right here, right now, exactly like this.

" Yes ," he said aloud, and saw the smile in Crane's eyes for a second before he was hauled up into a ferocious kiss.

CRANE COULD BARELY breathe, for the mouth on his, and for his own need. He was very familiar with the urge to fuck after fighting, to reclaim life and expend energy, but this wasn't that. This was days of wanting and desire and liking too, it was the sheer glory of the astonishing, brave, magical man in his arms, it was simply, wonderfully, Stephen .

It was also, without question, the dark thrill of fucking a very dangerous man. That particular penchant of Crane's had driven Merrick to despair and profanity many times over the years; even for his history, Stephen was something special.

They broke the kiss for breath and Stephen grabbed for Crane's belt, hands sparking and prickling. They kicked and wrenched each other's clothes off impatiently, and Stephen gasped as he saw the final two magpies that adorned Crane's body, one across a lean hip and the top of his groin, one on the opposite inner thigh.

Crane gave him no time for admiration, let alone second thoughts. He'd long concluded that Stephen thought a great deal too much. Instead he picked the smaller man up, clear off the ground and pushed him against the wall, holding him up with one hand as the other probed with practised skill. Stephen, whimpering, wrapped his legs round Crane's hips and grabbed on to his shoulders, and the power in his hands spangled through Crane's skin like shards of diamond, leaping with Stephen's gasp as Crane's fingers worked inside him, opening him, tormenting him, and their cocks jutted hard against each other's bodies.

"Oh God," Stephen whispered. "Please. Please, Lucien..."

Crane ran his tongue up Stephen's neck, nipped his ear. "Tell me what you want. Exactly what you want. Let me give you the fucking you deserve."

Stephen took a shallow breath and looked into Crane's eyes, direct and naked. "Take me. Right now. Make me beg."

Oh sweet God. Crane was well aware that Stephen's tastes ran in harmony with his own, but that surrender was still a jolt right to the groin. "At your pleasure," he said thickly, lifted the little man away from the wall and half-fell with him onto the desk where Stephen had lain on his back just the day before. "Hell. I need— "

Stephen's hand was on Crane's cock, and there was a sudden sensation of slick wetness. "Done."

"Slippery little witch." Crane pushed into Stephen's body, spread before him for the taking. Stephen's hands clawed his back, their touch like a burn that intensified as he drove harder, deeper. He pressed on Stephen's shoulders, holding him down, using words and cock and fingers to bring him to the edge of ecstasy, and Stephen writhed and thrashed and cried out with breathless pleas as Crane mastered him with deliberate roughness, spurred by the fizzing, sparking hands that betrayed Stephen's pleasures and demanded more.

Crane took him thoroughly, almost brutally, and when he had fucked him into helpless, whimpering submission, he pulled back and almost out, and lifted Stephen's hips, before plunging in at an angle of attack that had the little man gasping.

"Please. Please. Oh God, I can't—"

"You'll take my cock whenever I want to give it to you." Crane lifted him clear off the desk as he thrust into him. "Won't you?"

"Yes, my lord," Stephen whispered.

Crane gritted his teeth against his own climax at those breathy words and all they implied, feeling Stephen's hands flare with ecstasy like burning rain on his skin. "Say that again. Beg me to fuck you."

"Oh God, don't make me—"

"Say it." Crane drove in as hard and deep as he could.

Stephen cried out, desperately. "Please, my lord, please fuck me, my lord, fuck me, fuck me —"

It turned into a scream as he bucked violently, and as Crane felt the hot wetness spurt against his belly, Stephen's hands tightened convulsively on his hips with a surge of power that sent Crane suddenly, uncontrollably over the edge of his own climax, spilling into Stephen's body, howling as he fell.

Crane let Stephen flop back onto the desk and slumped over him. Their rasping, gasping breath mingled for a moment of silence .

"God," Crane said finally. "For a quiet man, you fuck like a mink."

Stephen didn't respond to that. He was completely still for long enough to make Crane wonder if he could be regretting their act. Then he gave a sudden, convulsive shudder, and his whole body spasmed into rigidity.

"Stephen?"

Crane pushed himself up on his arms, withdrawing as gently as he could. Stephen didn't react. His eyes were wide and blank.

"Stephen!"

His pupils enlarged terrifyingly, blotting out the gold irises, and returned to normal equally quickly. He blinked and focused on Crane's face.

"Lucien."

"What is it?" said Crane sharply. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing. I—" He broke off, staring at Crane's chest.

Bewildered, unnerved, Crane looked down too and saw...

"The hell. What the hell ?"

His tattoos were moving. The birds hopped and turned and stretched, fluttering over his skin, two-dimensional but alive.

Stephen laughed out loud, a stunningly joyous sound. He pressed his hand against Crane's chest and gave a whoop of glee as a magpie flurried along his fingers, up his arm, and began to explore his own chest with its inky beak.

"It took me years to get those done," said Crane, more or less at random. "I'll want it back. Oh my God, look at the woodwork!"

Stephen tipped his head back. The magpies carved on a line of decorative panelling were moving, pecking and shifting. One took off along the length of the frieze in a flurry of wooden wings.

"I bet the entire house is doing this," Stephen said, face alight. "I want to see your Great-Aunt Lucie's china set. And the tapestry!"

At that Crane started to laugh too, watching incredulously as the magpies fluttered around them. Two of his tattoos were now hopping across Stephen's narrow chest, pecking at an old burn scar. "What's going on? Why is this happening?"

"I think we're the Magpie Lord," Stephen said. "Me and you. You in me. Your blood and my power and the ring, together. This is how Piper wants to be, can't you feel it? It's warm again. It's alive." He looked alive too, and much younger without the constant air of nervous tension that had dogged him for so long. He was happy and vivid, and glowing with pleasure, and Crane stared at him, unable to imagine how he had ever seen this man as drab and unmemorable.

"You amaze me," he said. "Continually and wonderfully. Is this going to happen every time we fuck?"

"Only when it's as good as that." Stephen's lopsided grin was particularly foxy. "Honestly, I've no idea. We could find out empirically."

"Which means...?"

"Do it a lot more and see what happens."

Crane pulled him upwards, wrapping the small lithe body with his arms. He felt Stephen nestle in to him with a satisfied purr, and kissed the top of his cropped head. "Ready when you are."