The Gunslinger's Man (29 page)

“We see the long game.”

“Is that why you’re down here with me?” Asher scoffed. “’Cause you were thinkin’ ahead? Come on.” Owning to a crime Halloran hadn’t committed was poor decision-making. There were no two ways about that.

“Why do you reckon I did it?” Halloran wondered aloud, his breath warm on Asher’s ear.

“Ain’t it obvious? You couldn’t stand a puny little human getting the credit.” Ambrose was the big bug in town. The boot that crushed him could belong only to a man out of legend, whose myth spanned half the country. Asher turned his head against Halloran’s shoulder. “What else could it be?”

Halloran’s gaze dipped to his mouth. “Not a goddamn clue.”

He bridged the gap between them before Asher could clarify which of them he meant. His kiss was soft, gentle.

Asher twisted in his arms and deepened it. Halloran could keep
soft
and
gentle
for his next piece of property. Asher straddled his legs and kissed him in earnest, raking teeth along his bottom lip as they parted for breath. “Is this clue enough?”

Despite the beard, Halloran’s jawline was smooth beneath his fingertips. He enjoyed the ticklish caress of bristly red hairs as he cupped his cheeks. Rising on his knees altered the angle of the kiss. Halloran had to cant his head back to keep their lips locked but his hands were busy elsewhere.

A stuttered gasp spilled from Asher’s throat. “Fuck, your fingers are cold…” And spreading shivers down his spine as Halloran pushed up his shirt and waistcoat, drawing Asher close.

“You can warm ’em up.”

“I-I can?”

“Mm-hmm.” Halloran’s idea of tormenting him seemed to have veered dangerously into the Machiavellian. Rather than do away with his shirt, Halloran merely shoved it out of the way. He traced Asher’s rib cage with absentminded kisses, avoiding the metal inserts, zeroing in on the fluttering muscles beneath goose-prickled skin.

“We’re in a church,” Asher bit out and rocked his hips, seeking friction.

Quick to notice, Halloran dropped a hand between them and squeezed him through his pants.

The pleasure was muted, not nearly enough to put Asher over the edge, but he moved into it all the same. He’d never been good at denying himself. “Isn’t this—ah—isn’t it sacrilege?”

“We’re in a crypt,” Halloran pointed out, having changed his tune.

“So?”

“Under the ground’s where the other guy lives. And he doesn’t mind.”

In different circumstances, Asher would’ve liked to ask if Halloran was often in congress with the Devil. They seemed to have a lot in common. But Halloran had just wrestled open his fly and, in the ensuing fog of lust, Asher wouldn’t have cared if he was rutting against Ambrose’s first born son. His hunger surged with a viciousness that nearly floored him.

They could be dead in a matter of hours, if Halloran’s prediction came true. Asher wouldn’t put it past Malachi to execute him if he lasted as far as the trial. This was all they had. A crypt, a fast-dying light. The smell of death and decay all around them.

Halloran yanked his pants to mid-thigh and spilled Asher to his back on the rough stone. “Tell me to stop.”

“Like you’d care,” Asher lobbed back, spreading his legs. He ought to have been embarrassed by how quickly he’d firmed with arousal. Even being spilled on the cold floor wasn’t enough to curb the flare of desire in his belly.

“Tell me.” Mirth had fled Halloran’s voice. He almost seemed angry, his jaw flexing as he prowled toward Asher like some fearsome jungle animal. He forced Asher’s shaking knees to stillness as he straddled him, curling one hand around his cock. “I won’t ask you again.”

Propped on his elbows, Asher thrust his chin out, defiant. He was prepared for the brutal shove that sent him flat to his back on the floor, though Halloran somehow snuck a fist in his hair and stopped him smacking his skull against the stone. He was less on his guard as far as the jealous tug at his erection. His hands came up of their own accord—not to arrest Halloran’s movements but to grab his shoulders. To anchor him when he might have come undone with that first rough stroke.

Halloran’s expression darkened. It was a beautiful thing to behold. Asher didn’t bother trying to suppress a shiver at the sight. Fear would always thrum within him when it came to vampires, Halloran included. But fear wasn’t revulsion and it wasn’t the ever-present desire to run that had been his closest companion for most of his life.

He submitted to Halloran’s kiss, his touch, gasping with no care of who might be listening when Halloran stroked him faster. He’d been here before—at Halloran’s mercy, under his control—but he’d never relished the bizarre thrill of it more. Perhaps his body knew it was the last time.

Halloran broke off the kiss and looked down. “Did I say you could touch me?”

Asher faltered in opening his belt. “No.” But he slid the buckle open all the same and unbuttoned Halloran’s trousers with shakings hands. “Could always hold me down…”

“Careful with that tongue.”

“Think it’s gonna get me in trouble someday?”

Halloran’s first attempt at a reply seemed to snag in his throat. Asher smirked, pleased with himself, and gave Halloran’s length another slow, long pull. His body remembered how it felt inside him, stretching him to the point of pain. It remembered the hollow feeling, after, that drove him halfway mad.

“You could,” Asher started.

Halloran sat up, his center of gravity shifting entirely onto Asher’s thighs. “Give me your hands.” The order was a kindness, unwarranted, and when Asher failed to answer it swiftly enough, Halloran seized his wrists and placed them on his knees. “Move them and I’ll stop.”

A chuckle tore free of Asher’s throat. “You’ve changed your tune…”

The jape fell on deaf ears and, after a moment, Asher didn’t feel like laughing much, either. Faster than the human eye could follow, Halloran slid his pants down and off, and settled astride him again. His cock bobbed between them, fully erect and flushed with blood. Asher wanted to put his mouth around it. He wanted to bring his hands to that long shaft and draw out Halloran’s pleasure.

He wanted to do as he was told even more, the desire to obey as alien as the sensation of Halloran grasping his length in his damp, callused hand and holding him steady when he sank down.

Asher’s groan echoed against the bare crypt walls. It would have embarrassed him if he could think past the urge to thrust up.

Tight, silky heat drowned out all other sensation. Squeezing his eyes shut, Asher arched his back and tried to keep still when every cell in his body demanded friction. Halloran took care of that, at first, stroking the last couple of inches of Asher’s cock as he squirmed, and breathed, and tried to take him all the way down.

“Does it hurt? You can—oh,
fuck.”

You can stop
, Asher meant, but the lie wouldn’t make its way out of his mouth. He was so desperate for more, for satisfaction that he whined when Halloran rose up on his knees and took him all the way down in a single stroke.

Asher dug his fingers into Halloran’s thighs and tried not to sob for the intensity of the pleasure roiling inside him. As if that weren’t bad enough, Halloran began to move. Short, gauging strokes, at first, then deeper, longer ones.

“Don’t,” Asher choked out, teetering on the brink of release. “God, don’t…”

“Look at me.” Halloran’s voice was a growl that demanded submission.

Asher didn’t think to refuse. The frustration humming beneath his skin melted in a heartbeat. Halloran was watching him so intently that he all but forgot to breathe.

“You’re mine,” said Halloran and slid his palm up his own cock, matching the stroke to the rise and fall of his body over Asher’s. “You’ll
always
be mine,” he growled on the downstroke. “Say it.”

All those nights at Willowbranch, Asher had rebelled against the notion. He’d fought Halloran at every turn. He’d bled for his defiance. He had spent days locked in a room, fettered to a bed. And somehow, he’d managed to keep from giving in until now.

Halloran sped his strokes. “Do as you’re told, Asher.
Say it.
”

Breaths knifing in and out of his chest, Asher sank teeth into his lower lip in an effort to hold back the words.

“Say it,” became a plea on Halloran’s lips as he faltered, strength deserting him, his body curving like a crescent over Asher’s.

He was close. Asher felt it in the harshness of his strokes, his all-too-human gasps. He’d been told to keep his hands to himself or Halloran would stop, but some rules were meant to be broken. Asher wrapped his fist around Halloran’s cock and the other around his shoulders, and pulled him down. There was just enough of a shift to grant Asher a little room for movement. He planted his feet against the hard, cold stone and rocked up.

Surprise flashed onto Halloran’s features, before a low, wrecked groan fled his throat. He grimaced as if in pain and, moments later, spent all over Asher’s hand and belly, shaking through the aftershocks.

Asher wasn’t far behind. He muffled a moan into the curve of Halloran’s neck, tasting the salt-alkaline flavor of his skin.

“If…if I’m yours,” he wheezed, “then what’re you, huh?”

Halloran grunted, for once too wrung out to speak.

“What are you?” Asher asked again, a possessive edge underpinning those three words.

He didn’t have a vampire’s sharp teeth and he couldn’t pierce Halloran’s flesh without a lot more strength than he possessed. But he wanted his mark on Halloran, if only for an instant. He wanted to feel him start at the sensation, as Asher did every time, before he surrendered to it.

This time when he bit down, it wasn’t for the sake of idle play.

If I’m yours, then you’re mine.

Neither of them had picked the other. Halloran’s spur of the moment call to take him on had been a show of defiance rather than an endorsement of Asher’s charms. But they were here, now, the two of them alone in the basement of a church, at the heart of town that didn’t cede many second chances.

Mercy didn’t grow in this valley. Neither did hope.

“I can hear your brain churning,” Halloran drawled, sitting up fractionally.

Asher hissed as his spent cock jerked in the tight clench of Halloran’s muscles. “Is that all you hear?”

Halloran’s gaze went a little foggy. “Spurs, pacing…” The crinkling at the corners of his eyes deepened. “Someone’s dug out a harmonica.”

As reassurance went, it would have to do.

Asher stretched out a hand for the gas lamp. It took a few attempts but eventually he managed to give the dial a twist. Stars shattered into a million fragments across his vision, one more colorful than the next.

Darkness pressed in, concealing them from the world and each other.

The first shouts echoed above their heads just as they finished putting their clothes to rights.

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Keep your head down and do exactly as I say,” Halloran commanded.

“Don’t get your hopes up.” Asher regretted the quip as soon as he set foot above ground and saw what Halloran must’ve sensed down in the crypt.

Buckshot and splinters dusted the church nave. Bullets had perforated the wooden pews, rendering them useless as barricades. Asher had been hoping their jailers had fled in the commotion. No such luck, although Malachi’s men were rather too preoccupied to pay their prisoners any mind.

“Go,” Halloran said, low under his breath, and squeezed Asher’s wrist in a vague indication that he should veer left.

Around the altar it was, then.

A sudden burst of sound and jagged shards stopped Asher in his tracks.

He ducked as the skylight behind the cross burst into piercing fragments. Glass shattered and crunched underfoot, a body rolling through the newly formed aperture and leaping effortlessly to its feet.

From the smoothness of the landing alone, Asher guessed that it wasn’t human. The fast-healing cuts on its face and the fangs it bared cleared up any lingering doubt.

The vampire lunged at him, but Halloran was faster.

They collided like two immovable objects, the church ringing with the force of impact. Momentum turned against the unknown vampire, who fell back, skidding on debris-strewn stone. Its snarl raised the hairs on Asher’s nape.

He’d seen vampires rage before, but not like this. This creature seemed more animal than man. It shifted its weight to its back leg and kicked up again, this time aiming for Halloran standing in its path.

Asher opened his mouth—to warn, to draw the vampire’s attention—but Halloran had already made up his mind to fight rather than run. He caught the vampire by the neck, his head swinging violently to the side under the force of a fearsome backhand. In his stead, Asher would’ve been spitting loose teeth.

The vampire made to wedge a foot between them and break free. For a moment, it he seemed likely to get his wish. Then Halloran seized its heel and twisted hard enough that the crunch of bone was audible under the vaulted church ceiling.

Vampires healed inordinately fast but they weren’t impervious to pain. The creature screeched and fell to the ground, its knee dislocated. Before it could scramble to reset the joint, Halloran was upon it, a torn-off piece of the cross in his hand. It shouldn’t have been enough to finish his opponent. Lumber was just lumber until it slashed a vampire’s head off.

Halloran took two more stabs at it before the creature stopped flailing. Its head lolled away over the stone, expression a cross between surprise and animal frenzy.

A puddle the color of spilled wine had swelled between the body and the pulpit. Asher couldn’t fathom ever touching another drop of the stuff.

“We have to keep moving. Blackjack will have a horse ready… Asher.
Asher,
you with me?”

Halloran’s features floated into view, twisted with worry.

“I…yes. I think so.” Asher shook himself. Outside, another flurry of gunfire inspired the need for
doing
rather than
thinking.
He could wrestle with what he’d witnessed later.

He didn’t question why Halloran felt it necessary to anchor a hand in his sleeve and drag him along over the spill of broken glass. The church echoed behind them, screams and snarls confounded. Asher made to turn his head but Halloran had already pulled him through a side door and the chaos was fell from view.