Love for the Cold-Blooded (39 page)

“Will you tell them I — I —”

“Yeah,” Pat husked. “
Yes,
Nick, Nicky, come on,
move
, are you trying to kill me or what?”

But Nick didn’t move, at least not to thrust; instead, he leaned forward, taking Pat’s mouth in a soft, gentle kiss. The enveloping force field trembled, and Pat found that his legs were free to wrap around Nick’s waist, though they slid awkwardly over the slick material of the armor.

“I love being inside you,” Nick whispered against Pat’s lips. “Every time I see you, I want to tear off your clothes and bury my cock in you.”

Pat suspected it was a terrible line, especially given Nick’s track record when it came to dirty talk. Right now, though, when he was trembling apart on Nick’s cock, his entire body thrilling to Nick’s touch… right now, it really worked. Just as the shift of Nick’s hips worked, and his subtle scent of storm and spice, the brush of his hair against Pat’s face, the glorious press of his muscled abdomen against Pat’s cock, the low rasp of his voice…

Nick moved, pulling back with torturous slowness, muscles shifting. When he drove back in, it was hard and fast, at the perfect angle. A wild burn of pleasure spiraled through Pat, and he cried out raggedly, clutching at Nick with helpless greed.

“Patrick,” Nick gasped, sounding just as lost as Pat felt. “Patrick, Pat — Pat.”

Pat lost track of things after that. All he knew was that Nick gave up on slow and gentle in favor of fast and hard, finding a quick, demanding rhythm that had Pat going to pieces in no time at all. Then, Nick curled his hand around Pat’s cock and jerked him to the rhythm his hips were setting as he drove inside him, and that was it. Game over, thanks for playing, hope you have this much luck next time.

Once Pat had come, Nick lasted only several more strokes. He groaned and trembled and clutched Pat close, and Pat was so blissed out he found himself thinking that even the man’s dumb, terrible orgasm face was beautiful.

Afterwards, Nick dispelled his force fields (he’d even used one as a combination of lubricant and condom — there was a reason they called this man a genius). They spent several minutes lolling about in an exhausted, sweaty heap. Nick was a heavy weight on Pat’s chest, but he didn’t mind; it was nice having him there, even though the way he was snuffling into the side of Pat’s neck kinda tickled.

He jostled Nick until he shifted to bury his face against Pat’s throat instead. Sir Toby’s desk wasn’t the most comfortable place to chill out on, but even so he could probably have fallen asleep there, all naked and sweaty and semen-spattered, sleepy hoagie draped over him like a blanket… except, of course, for the sirens blaring out in the hall.

They were quite loud, really.

“Wow,” Pat said, after another while. “That was… wow.”

“It was, wasn’t it.”

Wasn’t there some kind of rule about smugness being terminally unattractive? Pat would have told Nick as much, except he suspected it would have been obvious what a huge honker of a lie it was.

“Your force fields.” Pat struggled to his elbows to look down on Nick, stomach fluttering weakly. He felt as limp as though he’d swum a marathon, every limb heavy and warm with the best kind of exhaustion. “That was awesome, man. I had no idea you could do that kind of thing with them.”

Smugness hadn’t grown less attractive now that Pat could see it in the cast of Nick’s smile, rather than merely hearing it layered in his voice. “I’m very good at what I do.”

Pat managed a doubtful face as a matter of principle. The way Nick’s smile edged dangerously into smirk territory suggested he wasn’t fooled. Which was a little annoying, really.

Less annoying was the way Nick was now absently petting Pat’s legs, stroking soothingly from knee to mid-thigh. Pat would have told him to stop — might even have shoved him away and gotten down from that stupid table to make a point — if it hadn’t felt so nice. Relaxing, like.

Being a minion was a stressful job. Pat wasn’t about to turn down a relaxing massage by a nubile superhero who totally put out, too.

“It’s the first time I’ve — had sex while, uhm. In uniform.”

“Silver Paladin gets no tail, huh,” Pat said, now smirking openly. “That’s sad, man. That dude has got no game.”

Nick’s snort of derision was accompanied by a deliberate once-over of Pat’s dissolute state. “I don’t know about that. He seems to be doing alright.”

“Evil minions have no standards, well-known fact.” Pat grinned as obnoxiously as he could manage, which was plenty obnoxious. “Besides, sometimes they’re just doing their duty. You know, distracting the hero by any means at their disposal.” The other minions had definitely had plenty of time to finish their assigned clean-up tasks by now. Talk about effective distractions. Pat totally won the minion of the year award… or would have, if there had been such a thing.

Of course, Nick had been the one who started fooling around, and the entire thing had snow-balled from there with no planning or calculation involved on Pat’s part. But Nick entire body froze for an instant, his expression locking into stillness, and Pat knew that for one second, he was actually considering it. For the space of that one second, he was wondering if Pat had fooled him all along, and was in reality an ice-cold, cunning elite minion with the deception skills of a chameleon.

In the next second, Nick grinned, and the strange hard distance vanished from his eyes as though it had never been. Pat had one moment to feel a surprisingly intense rush of relief. Then, Nick was looming purposefully closer, hands tightening high up on Pat’s thighs. Pat couldn’t get hard again this quickly, but there was a definite hot flutter in his gut at the feel of Nick’s hands on him… Nick’s attention focused solely on him, to the exclusion of all else.

“Would you look at the mouthy minion. Seems like someone hasn’t learned his lesson yet, doesn’t it?”

Seemed very much like that, yeah. Very much indeed.

Chapter Fifteen

Expect the expected. (Expecting the unexpected is a given.)

W
hen the attack came, Pat was loaded down with plastic bags, backpack hanging heavily on one shoulder. He’d been taught better than this from the time he could toddle — but he wasn’t thinking of things like challengers and heroes, monsters and minions. The need for constant vigilance had momentarily escaped his mind. Instead, he was wondering whether he’d go to the trouble of heating up his sweet and sour veggies or just scarf them down lukewarm. Rather than balancing carefully on the balls of his feet, equally ready to attack, defend or evade, Pat was shifting the slightly sticky plastic bag holding the fried bananas so he could grip it with his teeth, maneuvering his backpack forward so he could pin it in place against the wall with one knee while he fished for his keys.

And that — the exact moment when he was most off-balance — was when the lurking monster struck.

The blow came from nowhere, catching him entirely off guard. It landed squarely across his shoulders and knocked him into the wall, teeth clicking together painfully. All of the air left his lungs in a whoosh. Sudden heat bloomed against his chest even as something unseen whipped by behind him, brushing against his calves, his back; gripped him by the shoulders to send him reeling through the hall with the coordination of a drunken frat boy trying to dance the macarena.

The fried banana, a distant corner of his mind announced even as the rest of him flailed in confusion, trying to catch up with what was happening. That was the source of the heat — the banana’s flimsy plastic container had been crushed, and now Pat had hot banana and honey mush all down his front.

He finally caught himself and began to turn, catching a glimpse of light sparking off iridescent armor and a massive, looming form that filled out the entire corridor. He even spotted a blur of movement from the corners of his eyes — something was darting towards him — but it did him no good. He was nowhere near fast enough to evade it.

A hard coil of armored muscle caught Pat around the middle, lifting him straight up in the air. Sweet and sour tofu stir-fry flew across the hall like a missile. The world shifted crazily as more and more cold, scaled coils drew tight around him, enveloping him from ankle to shoulders. He was moving, he noticed belatedly;
they
were moving, his assailant swinging him through the air to pop him through the suddenly open door of his apartment. Once inside, he found himself lifted so high he was momentarily afraid he’d crack his skull on the ceiling. The muscled coils holding him drew tighter until he could hardly breathe, ribs creaking from the strain.

Pat wheezed and tried to wriggle in protest, but it was no use. He was nearly completely immobile, couldn’t even find the leverage to push at the coils properly. And he still hadn’t seen more of his assailant than confused impressions of a long, thickly muscled body covered in bronze and gold, of razor-edged scales, writhing strands of onyx hair framing a pale visage dominated by burning red eyes, and sharp bone-white fangs in a gaping black maw.

If he strained his neck all the way to the right, he could see those same fangs at the very periphery of his vision, drawing closer. They glistened with a thick, viscous fluid that Pat was pretty sure was poison. “I could just eat you up,” whispered a harsh, sibilant voice, resonant with the terrible power of a hundred long-dead serpent gods.

“Mo-ooommm,” whined Pat, fighting to take in another half breath in the grip of the overly tight hug.

She let up on him at last, lowering him to the ground with no further attempt to break his ribs with her greeting. Pat turned around as soon as he could move, hugging her back with barely less enthusiasm. Her hug was still exactly the same, cool and dry and full of love. She smelled the same, too, like sunlight and earth and the perfume she always used, an incense-touched scent called
Witch Summer
.

By the time he let go of his mother again, Pat was feeling embarrassingly unsteady, eyes burning. It had been so long since he’d seen her — nearly two years, now. So much had happened… so much had changed. So many things he’d wanted to share with her, so many unimportant little secrets he’d wanted the chance to guard.

“Patpat, my darling snakelet.” His mom took him gently by the shoulders, smiling her beautiful, familiar smile. “Look at you, all grown-up and handsome! Only yesterday you were a tiny hatchling, and today you’re ready to claim your own territory. You grew up so fast.”

Pat hadn’t thought he’d changed that much since she’d sailed off to her secret jungle hide-out on another continent, but hey, that kind of thing was always difficult to tell if you saw yourself (or whoever) every day. Maybe he really had matured. Grown as a person, like. Moms could tell that kind of thing, right?

One thing was for sure, though: His mom had changed a lot more than he. Her serpent form was at least twice as large and powerful as it had been when she’d last worn it, back when Pat was a kid. Even coiled up so tightly it looked uncomfortable, she still filled his entire living room. He remembered her being mostly green, but now she sparked gold and bronze whenever she moved, light glancing off her jewel-like scales like cascades of sparks. Her face and torso were shining with what looked to be an entirely human youthful beauty at first glance, but a closer look revealed that this skin, as well, was covered in scales — soft, tiny skin-toned ones that formed an intricate, monochrome diamond pattern. Her casual lime-green sun dress brought out the lively metallic shade of her scales. Her eyes shone in the richest of ruby hues, and her hair was caught up in a ponytail, the ends of the more vivacious strands writhing on her shoulders and down her back.

She was beautiful, and glorious, and terrible, and Pat had missed her so much.

“What do you call the thing happening on your head, Patrick? We’re not medusas, unless there’s something your father isn’t telling me.”

Pat grinned and promised to get a haircut soon. Complaints about his hair were a time-honored West family tradition; Pat himself never paid that much attention to it, and just forgot to get it cut when he was busy. Besides, he thought his curls looked kinda nice when they were a bit longer and actually had the chance to curl.

He surprised himself by wondering whether Nick had an opinion on the matter. Maybe he liked Pat’s hair a little longer, too… Pat ought to check with him.

His mom was giving him a narrow-eyed ruby look when he shook off his momentary distraction. She didn’t comment, though, just smiled warmly enough to show the tips of her fangs. “Show me your domain, my child. I would see your territory.”

So he did. She laughed at the Jaguar cover prettying up his brand-new couch (Nick had sent a bunch of people to deliver the thing without even asking Pat, so Pat was exacting vengeance by adorning the stylish, no doubt hideously expensive sofa with Jaguar’s manly abs). She subjected Pat to a Glare of Maternal Rebuke over the contents of his fridge, which was pretty unfair, seeing as she’d just destroyed his dinner. She nodded approvingly at Pat’s new computer, monitor and printer, and seemed genuinely interested when he showed her some of his designs.

A bit later Pat rescued the remains of his take-out from the hallway, and they shared a meal of reheated sweet and sour tofu, with a spoonful of smashed banana for dessert. He told his mom about urban design and swimming and the reading his favorite author was giving next month, and his mom told him about her plans for world domination, and that she’d taken up photography as a hobby and was old-school enough to actually develop film in a dark room.

Pat did not mention that he’d kinda enjoyed being Sir Toby’s minion. He didn’t want to get his mom’s hopes up. He so did not need another round of that discussion — he’d only just gotten his family to accept that he wasn’t studying to construct a clever cover, but because he fully intended to be an actual urban designer.

He also didn’t mention Nick. He couldn’t even imagine the kind of discussions they’d be having about Nick, and he didn’t want to start earlier than he had to. It wasn’t cowardice… it was prudence.