Ascension (8 page)

Hurting Ro wasn’t going to happen, though, not in any way. Conner rotated his wrist, stretching Ro’s guardian muscle, preparing him for what was likely to be a short, hard ride.

“Please,” Ro gasped. “Fuck me already, Conner. In me.”

Conner gritted his teeth, telling himself to hold on another minute. He found the little nub inside Ro, rubbed over it gently.

“Ah!” Ro twisted on his fingers, shoving his butt down. He wailed and pinched his own nipples as Conner watched. That broke Conner’s restraint, and he pulled his fingers out. He lapped at Ro’s pucker a few more times, getting it as wet as he could, then he slicked his own shaft with saliva.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

Ro opened his eyes and took a hold of his knees again, pulling them clear up to his ears just about. Conner lined his cock up, letting the tip touch Ro’s opening. “Keep them open,” he whispered, “please.”
See me. Let me see you.

As if he heard Conner’s thought, Ro nodded. “Yes.”

Conner braced a hand where he’d placed Ro’s earlier, above Ro’s shoulder. He canted his hips and hissed as the crown of his cock sank into Ro, stretching that wet pucker around it.

Conner had to fight to keep his own eyes open at the incomparable pleasure that filled him from toes to the top of his skull. It made him tingle all down his spine, over his own hole and down to his balls. An incoherent sound spilled from his lips as Ro’s body just sucked his cock right in, massaging and milking his length.

“Fuck yes,” Ro chanted, “fuck yes, fuck yes,” until it was almost a song in Conner’s ears. He lowered himself to his elbows and pushed his arms under Ro’s shoulders so he could get his hands into the long, dark hair. Then Conner slanted his mouth to Ro’s, having to hunch to do so because of their height difference, but it was worth it to be able to kiss Ro as he sank the last few inches of his dick into Ro’s tight ass. He closed his eyes and let himself go in the delicious sensations Ro brought to him.

Ro shook so hard beneath him Conner thought he might come apart. Then Conner couldn’t think at all because Ro’s inner walls contracted around his dick, driving everything but the need for release out of Conner’s mind.

Conner pulled out halfway then thrust back in. He grunted, unable to form words as ecstasy stole his ability to do anything but mate with this one man. He was dimly aware of Ro holding onto him, of the sharp bite of Ro’s fingernails scoring his biceps, but Conner could dwell on it.

He was melting from the inside out as Ro’s body welcomed him eagerly over and over. Conner felt more animal than man, his baser nature taking over as he got to his knees, sliding them up until he was almost folding Ro in half. Guttural sounds were torn from him and Ro both as Conner pushed into Ro’s ass. Ro drove his hips up, eager for each thrust, and he whined and keened every time Conner withdrew even an inch.

Conner tried to hold back, some inner voice nagging him to wait,
wait,
but it wasn’t until he opened his eyes and saw Ro try to reach between them that a brain cell flared to life and it occurred to him what he was waiting for. Conner growled and caught Ro’s wrist again.

“Mine,” he got out right before he levered himself up enough to get his hand on Ro’s dick. It was hot and hard and leaking pre-cum. Conner pumped it once, twice, then Ro’s sweet mouth opened on a shriek that would have done a banshee proud. His ass clamped down on Conner’s shaft, and spunk shot from Ro’s slit in hot white spurts.

Conner’s eyes crossed, his vision blurring and doubling and doing all sorts of new tricks. He pushed in as deep as he could and his cock pulsed, releasing his seed into Ro’s body. His earlier climax had seemed explosive at the time, but it was nothing compared to this, to marking Ro inside with his very essence.

“Give it to me,” Ro whispered just before the last jet of cum spurted from Conner’s dick. He squeezed his butt and Conner yelped in surprise as another dribble of jizz left him. Conner collapsed on Ro but had enough sense to will his body to be more fluff than not. Ro wrapped his arms around Conner and held him tightly.

“That was worth dying for,” Ro said after a while.

Conner raised his head and glared. “That’s not funny, Rogelio.” Even if he agreed, on his part at least. “You had—”

“I had nothing,” Ro said, anger giving his voice an edge. “Don’t tell me I did. I was too scared to do anything other than wait tables at Virginia’s Café. I wasn’t close to my siblings anymore. I was depressed and angry and Dad doesn’t seem like he’s going to miss me—”

“You had more than you realised,” Conner corrected, wishing he could make Ro understand. “A lot of people loved you, and will miss you.” But Conner stopped there, because the fact was, he loved Ro, too, and now he didn’t have to lie to himself about it.

Chapter Nine

It was never a good thing to wake because you felt like you were being watched. Ro didn’t handle it well at all, screeching when his eyes popped open and he found a blurry face too close to his own.

“Ack!” someone yelped.

Ro flailed his arms, smacking into something, and he blinked in time to see Stefan fly backwards as if hit by an invisible hoof to the gut. Conner appeared then, looking perplexed before he burst into raucous laughter. Ro didn’t think anything was funny when he first woke up. He’d never been a morning person, and that didn’t seem likely to change now.

Conner was still chortling, him and Stefan both now. Ro stood up then quickly let out a mortified sound when he realised he was bare-assed naked.

“Just think on your clothes, man,” Stefan advised around giggles. He got himself together while Ro closed his eyes and pictured himself wearing his most comfortable outfit. Stefan must have taken his acquiescence as a need to hear more, because he started talking as Ro willed himself to be clothed.

“You expected to be naked so you are. Just like you expected to have to sleep, so you did. Man, once I realised I never had to sleep again, I was bummed and happy both. Bummed because sleep is so good sometimes, but happy because there’s so much I could be doing instead of snoozing!”

“Enthusiastic, ain’t he?” Conner asked, his lips brushing against Ro’s ear.

Ro opened his eyes and was relieved to find Stefan had been right and his dangly bits were no longer dangling quite so freely. “He’s helpful.” Ro smoothed a wrinkle out of his shirt then asked Conner, “Where were you?”

Conner looked away and sighed. “Went to check on everyone. That weird-ass wall is still around your dad. I tried talking to Sev but he shooed me off because he was talking with the funeral parlour guy.”

“Well, that’s not depressing,” Ro muttered, reminded again that he’d only just died and had left people behind to hurt. “I feel so scattered, like I should be more shook up, more freaked out, I don’t know.”

Conner turned back to him then and pulled him in for a hug. “It took me a lot longer than it’s taken you to get to where you are. Honestly, right after I died, I don’t even think I was whole, if that makes any sense.”

“I was scared and confused,” Stefan said before Ro could ask what Conner meant. “I was still pretty stupid back then.”

“Stefan!” Conner snapped. “Don’t talk about yourself like that, not even in the past tense. You were never stupid.”

Stefan rolled his eyes so hard Ro was surprised they didn’t hear the tendons straining. “Riiiiiiiiight. I was”—Stefan hooked two fingers from each hand in the air—“intellectually challenged. Whatever.”

“You can be sit-challenged,” Conner warned.

“What the hell does that mean?” Ro asked.

Stefan sniffed and turned his nose up at them. “It means Conner will try to paddle my behind. He’d have to catch me first, though, and he’s
old
!”

“Brat.” Conner growled the word and Stefan giggled then vanished, off to tease someone else, Ro was sure.

“What did you mean when you said you didn’t think you were whole after you first passed?” he asked Conner then.

Conner steered them over to a shady patch of grass beneath a huge old oak tree. They sat, Ro not feeling the ground beneath him but that was okay. He was more interested in Conner’s explanation than he was in anything else. Conner didn’t keep him waiting.

“The thing is, I don’t know how we come to be like this, what makes us stay, but I figure our brains work on electrical impulses, or have some kind of electrical current.”

Ro nodded, following along so far.

Conner linked their hands together and continued, “Okay, well, I don’t know how that works, but it seems like all those electric particles have to keep going on when the body doesn’t, you know? Like that energy has to go somewhere, and I could be way wrong, but I prefer to believe that’s us, the core of us, our soul or whatever you want to call it.” Conner tilted his chin towards the sky. “Like water, how it evaporates then comes back down to Earth as rain. I know it’s all more complicated than that, but maybe it’s as simple as that kind of recycling, too.”

“It sounds as likely as anything else,” Ro said after thinking about it. “So how were you not whole?”

“I’m not sure, I just felt like I was scattered, like someone took all those protons and neutrons, whatever it was that had a current running through me, and tossed them up like a handful of confetti. Pieces of me were everywhere.” Conner squeezed his hands. “I didn’t come to like you did, passing over from life to death and retaining everything about myself. I remember some things, but it took me a while to feel like I had any substance. At first I was terrified and hurting still.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was the trauma of how I died. Don’t suppose there’s anything saying a spirit can’t suffer from that.”

How anyone wouldn’t be haunted by such a violent death was beyond Ro. “Makes sense. So what happened?”

Conner drew them back until they were lying, looking up at the green canopy of leaves. Ro didn’t think they were nearly as fascinating as the man beside him, so he chose to watch Conner instead. “What happened was, I became aware in fits and starts, and somehow gathered myself together, kinda like a magnet taking up metal shavings. Then one day, it was just right, done. I was as whole as I’d ever be, and things began to snap together in my head, the need to reach Laine the most pressing. Took me over three years, but I did it. Now, here I am.”

“Here we are,” Ro corrected.

“Yeah, that too,” Conner agreed, his lips curling up in a smile that brought out those dimples.

Ro wondered if he should suggest they get up. There were things he needed to do, like check on his dad and learn how to be a proper spirit—or at least how to do that popping in and out thing. But Ro didn’t want to think about any of that now. He wanted to stay there beside Conner, studying that chiselled profile for at least a week.

What did he really have to do? Ro thought about it. He didn’t want to go to the funeral home—that was more than he felt capable of handling. Seeing his own body hadn’t fazed him last night, but he’d been confused and discombobulated. Today, however, he cringed just thinking about seeing his corpse. Checking in on his dad was something he did need to take care of. Even though Conner had said Roger was still walled off from them being able to get too close, Ro still wanted to see him for himself.

“Can we go see Dad?”

“We can do whatever you want to.” Conner ran a hand through his thick blond hair, pulling the ends of it at his crown before letting go. “Adela and Martin are with him, or they were when I checked on Roger a few minutes ago.”

“So he’s not alone.” A knot of worry in his chest loosened a little knowing that his sister and brother were there. He didn’t feel as pressing a need to go now that he knew his da wasn’t alone. “How were they?”

Conner startled him by lifting him and settling Ro between his legs. With an arm around his middle, Conner pulled Ro until his back was pressed to Conner’s chest. It felt good, right. Safe, though Ro didn’t know what he might be unsafe from at this point.

“They were sad, Ro, I’m not going to lie to you.” Conner kissed the side of his head, his ear, down to his neck where he inhaled, rubbing his nose on Ro’s skin. “You smell so good.”

Ro’s cock perked up but he twisted his head around to frown at Conner. “Are you trying to distract me?”

Conner grinned crookedly, making Ro’s heart flutter. “Maybe. Sometimes you have to let the living grieve and give them a little time. I learnt that from popping in on people more than I should have.”

Ro frowned harder, until his forehead kind of ached with it. “What would I be hurting, going in and checking on him?” Conner licked his lips and glanced away. The man was sexy as fuck but Ro wasn’t going to be put off. He had the distinct impression Conner knew something he didn’t. “Where did you go earlier? Just to see how my dad was?”

“I went to see Laine, too.” Conner still wouldn’t look at him, and for the first time, Ro wondered if Conner was still in love with Laine, if there was something going on between the two. He didn’t think Laine would ever cheat on Sev, but if it was with a spirit, would it count?

“Rogelio, I don’t know where your mind went to but get it out of there, because that ain’t good thoughts you’re having.”

Ro squirmed and moved until he had himself turned around, kneeling and facing Conner. “Are you still in love with Laine?” Even asking made him want to cry, a stupid reaction for a man his age, but he’d wanted Conner for so long—

“I’ll always love him,” Conner said slowly, caution clear in his pretty blue eyes. “But not like
that
kind of love, Ro. I don’t pine after him anymore, or fantasise that he’s mine.” Conner’s cheeks went ruddy and he looked down at his hands, folded on his belly. “I won’t lie and say I didn’t do that for some time, because I sure enough did. Even after he and Sev fell in love, sometimes I’d let myself imagine me and Laine together again, in life or in death. But…” Conner raised his gaze back to Ro’s. “But one morning I peeked in on them, and they were making love.”

He smiled cheekily, looking for all the world like a mischievous kid. “I’ve never had an issue with how nosy I am, and Laine and Sev didn’t really seem to mind most of the time. Usually I’d goose one of them or throw sheets over them, just mess with them and throw ’em off stride.”