Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (2 page)

They’d laugh when the vampire talked casually about ruining someone’s life. Then they would turn around and suck his dirty ball-sack some more when the vampire cried crocodile tears about how others forced him to do it.

People had turned into sheep. Carrion-eaters and jackals.

Every year, it got worse.

Vampires. Sycophants. Cowards. Children.

They walked around looking for rich people to suck off, for vampires to lie to them and steal from them, for the famous and important to bestow them with a vicarious sense of significance. They looked for people with no soul to validate them. They looked for liars to teach them the truth. They searched desperately for someone to defile themselves with––for anyone they could hand their integrity to, their dignity, their principles, their dreams––as long as they might feel important and liked, if only for a few seconds.

No one had grace anymore.

No one carried the fucking
light.

He came here, thinking it might be different.

He’d tried before, in the mecca of decadence and depravity, the City of Angels which had fallen to earth, betraying their One True God. He had tried there, so very very hard. But the longer he dug in the sand, the faster those demons worked to fill up the hole.

Then he got a sign. A woman on the street, an old woman. A beautiful woman, made of light...

She was kind to him. She saw his pain. She saw what he was. After they talked, and she asked him if he knew of God, if he had a personal connection to Jesus, she touched his arm. She handed him a picture of St. Francis.

The guardian did not know what it meant at first. He did not understand.

But after that, he saw St. Francis everywhere. He saw statues in every garden. He saw images on necklaces around the necks of people at work, stuck to the dashboards of cars, in a stained glass window of a neighborhood church. He saw St. Francis on advertisements, outside a veterinary clinic, on bird baths and next to a pond where he sometimes ran.

Then one day, he understood.

He knew where he needed to go.

He knew where God was sending him.

The guardian took no pleasure in righting those few wrongs he could. He continued to send the message, even if most were too deaf dumb and blind to understand. Those few listening might hear. Those few who understood might even take up the torch with him some day, become guardians themselves. Enough guardians and the world would be a different place.

For now, he would be work alone, unrecognized.

Unthanked.

Anyway, the job had its own rewards.

It would be a good night.

And perhaps this psychologist would be one of the awake ones.

A guardian-in-training. A muse.

Perhaps she was even the reason he was here.

Perhaps she would be worth teaching the true meaning of the Light.

One

ADJUSTMENT ISSUES

 
“MOVE IN WITH me,” he said, his voice a murmur.

I tried to turn my head, but he held me against his body, pressing into me from behind. He kissed the back of my neck. When he started working his way down my spine with his lips and tongue, I shivered, fighting to clear my mind... to try, anyway.

It came and went, that clarity.

Mostly––if I was being totally honest––it went.

“Black.” I started to turn over, but he wrapped his arm around me tighter, pulling me deeper against him. Seconds later he shifted his weight, dragging me up the bed until I was lying under him. When he kissed me that time, I forgot he’d asked me anything.

Well, if what he’d said could be construed as a question.

When he raised his head, what felt like a long stretch of time later, he was hard and lying between my legs. The long fingers of one hand wrapped around my thigh. He yanked it up and around his waist, avoiding the bandage there out of rote as he repositioned his body. He held himself up on his other hand and arm.

He was inside me before I’d recovered from the kiss.

Once he was, I let out a low moan.

He groaned too, his heavier than mine. When I opened my eyes he was watching my face, his gold eyes half-lidded. “Fuck... Miri. Move in with me. Move in with me...”

I gripped his hair, letting out a half-laugh once I could make sense of his words. It got cut off when he arched into me harder––hard enough to blank out my mind for real.

When I looked up next, he was watching me again.

“Are you really not going to answer me?” he said, frowning.

Those flecked irises had gone a shade colder, making me pause.

I found myself remembering he’d been really touchy the last few days. Really touchy. Even more touchy than me, and both of us had been borderline hair-trigger about things that didn’t always make a lot sense to me afterwards––not even when I tried to piece together the sequence of events rationally. Some of those things didn’t make a lot of sense during, to be honest.

Remembering that now, I gripped his shoulders in both of my hands, hard enough to get his attention, even as I massaged the muscles there.

“Black, relax, okay?” I murmured to him, sending a pulsing warmth through my fingers, a trick I realized I’d picked up from him. “...Relax. Both of us need to just calm down...” I let out another low gasp when he arched into me again, curving my back involuntarily. “You don’t need to worry about this... I’m not going anywhere.”

His eyes softened, but only a little. His gaze remained fixed on my face. “You aren’t going to talk to me?”

“We should either talk... or do this...” I said breathlessly. “Not both. I can’t do both...”

He pulled out of me at once.

I admit, that wasn’t the thing I was thinking we’d wait on.

I let out a surprised cry.

I found myself clutching him tighter, shocked by a flood of pain that hit me, that strange, nonphysical thing that happened between us––increasingly more and worse since we’d started this. I couldn’t think at all until it passed. I felt it hurt him too, but he only clenched his jaw, closing his eyes for longer than a blink and lowering his head. Then he wrapped his arms around me again, pulling me on top of him.

“I want to talk,” he said, breathing harder. His eyes still held that intense sharpness. “Are you going to fucking
talk
to me this time? Or are you going to blow me off again, like you did at that restaurant?”

I stared down at him in bewilderment.

“I didn’t
blow you off,”
I protested. “You flipped out––”

“I didn’t flip out!”

“You
totally
flipped out! You accused me of using you for sex. Then you tried to
fuck
me in the middle of the restaurant. And your
friend
was there...”

He grimaced, looking away.

I watched him, my voice incredulous that time. “You told him we were
married
for crying out loud! You might as well have pissed on my leg, Black.”

“You were flirting with him!”

Anger exploded through me. “I was NOT!”

He blinked in surprise, then backed down. “Okay. Maybe you weren’t.” His eyes narrowed. “But he wanted to fuck you. I heard him thinking it, Miri... I fucking
heard
it. All that bullshit about how I’d get tired of you. How maybe he could get your number for when that happened... how I never stayed with anyone for more than a few weeks...”

“I’m supposed to be able to control that?”

He conceded that, too, but I felt his anger worsening again. “You still believe him? That I’m incapable of having a real relationship?”

I rolled my eyes. “Black, Jesus. I never said I
believed
him. I just said it was accurate
as far as he knew,
and that he didn’t think it maliciously, or because he doesn’t respect you. Anyway, I didn’t mean to read him like that... or defend him. So I’m sorry. I’ll never read or defend one of your friends in a non-life-threatening situation ever again...”

“You’re still defending him,” he muttered.

He didn’t seem annoyed with that though, not really.

He was annoyed because he still thought I was side-stepping him.

“Because you are,” he growled, clutching me harder against his chest.

His fingers curled into my hair. Then we were kissing again, and for a few more minutes I lost the thread of what we were talking about. His tongue was hot in my mouth. He was pulling on me, driving me fucking crazy, and not only with his hands. Some part of him pulled me so far inside him I lost myself there. I fought to understand the near-electric charge I felt coming off him still, even as he kissed me harder, that pulling sensation growing more intense. It held so much possessiveness I was having trouble thinking past it.

Some part of me wanted to hit him, but I didn’t even know why.

He pulled sharply away, still gripping my hair in his hands.

“So fucking hit me,” he growled. “If you’ll
talk
to me and open your goddamned light, you can beat the hell out of me every night if you want, Miriam...”

I let out a low laugh, but he cut me off.

“It’s not
funny,
goddamn it!”

Before I could answer, we were kissing again.

I felt the frustration on him though and wrapped my arms around his back. That time it felt like it was me trying to pull him into me. He let out a heavier groan when I did it, his body arching against mine. When I felt that sadness on him again, I raised my head, fighting to control my breathing as I looked down at him.

“What’s wrong? Why are you worried?” I said, breathing hard. I fought the urge to hit him again. “I haven’t left your place for weeks. What is
wrong?”

“I mean move in for real,” he growled, meeting my gaze. “Get rid of your place. Move your shit here. I mean for
real,
Miri.”

“Black, I haven’t
left.
I haven’t left once since we got back from Paris. I’m unclear how this is even an issue... why are you obsessing on this right now?”

I saw him think about that, too. That harder pain pulsed at me in the background, a sadness mixed with something I still couldn’t identify. His frustration flashed brighter.

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

The sheer honesty of his response made me laugh again.

He cut it off, pulling my mouth back to his.

I was astride him minutes later and maneuvering him inside me. His arms tightened as I did it, gripping me around the waist as he let out a gasp. He fell to his back while I rocked up against him, but he didn’t have the patience to stay with it. He rolled us over, bringing me under him. I let out a louder sound once the angle changed, feeling him use it to go deeper. He had his face pressed to mine as he slowed us down, his presence growing hotter as he aimed his body into me, moving with a sensual precision that made me lose it all over again.

In minutes, I could feel him so intensely I could barely breathe.

I gasped, clinging to him, but I felt the part of me that clenched in fear. That same part withdrew to the background, even as I gripped him tighter in my hands.

He stopped dead, raising his head.