Threadbound, p.49
Threadbound, page 49
“They attacked us!” the kelpie insisted.
It struck Jamie that this was the war-council equivalent of the childish retort that they started it. It was a foolish response then, and it seemed foolish to him now, as well. Moreso, perhaps, because the people around him were perhaps centuries old.
“Bran has the right of it,” a woman with vibrant green skin and horns that seemed to be made of branches spoke up. “The balance should be our first concern.” She ducked her head. “And we should be shamed that we put ambition before it.”
“But for the balance to be restored,” the Wyrthing man with solid black skin said smoothly, “Darach mac Craobh-na-Beatha must also agree. Without peace, there can be no balance.”
The room went quiet. “I will take the offer to him,” Bran rasped, and Jamie gaped at him.
“Absolutely not,” Cairn snapped. Jamie had to agree, although he wasn’t going to say so out loud.
“We think that would perhaps be unwise,” Cuileann mac Eug remarked diplomatically. “Given that it was your power that destroyed the armies of the Sunlit Court.”
Jamie swallowed. Bran had not quite mentioned that part of it.
“It was your power filtered through me, my lord,” Bran replied, his eyes turned down toward the wood of the table.
“But it was your tactics and your ability that were necessary to channel my power,” Cuileann replied. “We neither of us could have accomplished the victory alone.” He looked around the table. “Nor could we have been in a position to do so without the sacrifices made by all. Would we ask them for more blood? Or shall we do them honor by seeking peace in balance once more?”
“They will just break it!” blue-black man insisted.
“Perhaps in a century or a millennia, they will,” Cuileann acknowledged. “We cannot know, and we should not let what they may choose to do in dishonor drag us to join them.”
Bran was sick of the infirmary and insisted that he be able to sleep in his own bed. With Jamie, although Jamie seemed uncertain about this.
“Are you—” Bran couldn’t quite make himself finish the question, in part because he didn’t want to know the answer, if it wasn’t what he wanted it to be, and in part because he didn’t know which of a dozen questions he actually wanted to ask.
“I don’t want to roll over and hurt you!” Jamie explained, clearly frustrated, probably with him.
“I dinna care if you do!” Bran retorted. “I just—” Exhaustion hit him, then, and he half-collapsed onto the edge of the bed in question.
The gealach marcaiche that had clearly become a permanent fixture in Jamie’s life let out a distressed chirp and then shoved her fuzzy head against Bran’s thigh.
“Bran?” Jamie was on his knees, one big hand on Bran’s calf.
Please, just stay with me.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jamie repeated, and it sounded like his heart was breaking.
Please.
Jamie helped him undress, his nimble fingers gentle, and then turned back the covers, good-naturedly moving Patch when she got in the way of the bedclothes. Then he helped Bran lay back, arranging a mountain of pillows behind him so that he didn’t have to lay all the way flat.
“Jamie.” He needed to feel Jamie beside him, Jamie’s warmth, Jamie’s hands.
Jamie opened his mouth, and Bran could see his objection on his face.
Please.
Jamie took off his shoes and carefully—still dressed in a pair of loose trousers and a tunic—climbed in beside Bran.
“I—”
Please.
With a sigh, Jamie cuddled close, very gently pulling Bran into his arms. Bran nestled his face in the side of Jamie’s neck.
Thank you.
Jamie’s fingers brushed through his hair, and Bran felt his body relax for the first time in weeks. Months, maybe. Letting go pulled a heavy sob from his chest, and he clung to Jamie’s chest as more ripped through him, painful and harsh.
What did I do? Jamie’s question hurt more than the emotional overload.
Not you. Never you.
Jamie’s arms tightened a little—careful and tender. I love you. Please don’t leave me.
Bran held on tighter. You are my everything. I will never leave you.
He could feel Jamie’s confusion. I love you. The thought repeated.
I love you. Stay? Arms squeezed gently.
Always.
Chapter
Fifty-Two
Even though Trixie usually dragged them all out to celebrate the new year with loud music, dancing, and copious amounts of alcohol, this year she suggested they stay in, have some takeaway, and share a bottle of bubbly at midnight. Rob had immediately agreed. Jamie had waited a day before suggesting the tiny apartment he was yet again sharing with Bran.
They’d spent new year’s eve eating fish and chips and Jamie’s fresh-baked cookies, one of which they’d shared with the booka family, whom Bran had convinced to come out and be introduced to Rob and Trixie, who had been delighted with them.
They played cards and drank cheap wine and toasted to a new year with little plastic champaign glasses. Rob and Trixie left at about one in the morning, hugging both Bran and Jamie before making their way out into the winter night of a new year.
Bran had been asleep by the time Jamie came back upstairs from taking out the trash.
Bran was recovering—slowly. He still slept more than Jamie thought was healthy—a nap every morning, another every afternoon, and he was usually asleep before Jamie was tired enough to think about bed. But he slept lightly, waking when Jamie made too much noise, so Jamie tried not to worry too much. This wasn’t the dead sleep that he’d fallen into when he’d been poisoned.
The part that had Jamie the most worried, though, was that sometimes, when he slept, Bran would speak—sometimes in a language that Jamie didn’t understand, a strange and ancient tongue that seemed at once alien and familiar, sometimes in a stilted kind of Scots English Jamie recognized from manuscripts half a millennia old, and sometimes in his familiar, modern tongue. But always about pain or darkness, sometimes weeping softly, the tears drying on his face before he would awake.
When Jamie woke on the first morning of the new year, he could see the tracks on Bran’s face, the salt of his tears having left slightly more pale streaks. Unable to help himself, Jamie ran a fingertip down one of them.
Bran’s vibrant green eyes opened.
“What do you dream about?” Jamie asked, running his finger down the track on Bran’s other cheek.
Bran’s brow furrowed. “I canna remember,” he replied.
“It makes you cry,” Jamie said softly.
Bran’s frown deepened. “I really dinna remember,” he said.
Jamie nodded, accepting the answer.
“I think—sometimes I feel like all my thoughts are na’ mine,” Bran continued, his tone thoughtful. “As though as I stood on the wall, a thousand or a hundred thousand lives rushed through me, and not all that’s left is mine.”
Jamie didn’t know what that meant. “What do you mean—their lives rushed through you?” He let his fingers stroke gently through Bran’s feathered hair.
Bran drew in a long breath, resting the long, gnarled fingers of one hand on Jamie’s arm. “When you summon the dead,” he said, his voice quiet, but serious. “You become part of them. It is your will, your spirit, I suppose, that reanimates them for the time that they walk again. And in return, a part of them stays with you, even once you release them back into sleep.” He paused a moment. “Perhaps that is what I dream—the lives of the dead. Their deaths, perhaps.” He gave a small, careful shrug. “I dinna truly know.”
“And they stay with you? These dead?”
“Aye, for a while.” Bran’s talons brushed gently across Jamie’s arm. “They fade, like all memories.”
“Can—Can I help?”
Bran’s lips curled up in a smile. “You do,” he replied, his features relaxing into an expression of fondness.
Jamie felt the corner of his own mouth turn up. He couldn’t help it.
And when Bran kissed him, he couldn’t help kissing back, either, even though he had been so careful not to hurt Bran, essentially keeping his hands to himself.
Bran wasn’t having that any longer, the long fingers of one hand sliding into the hair on the back of Jamie’s skull, tightening, and pulling Jamie close so that he could drink him in like water. At first, Jamie kissed him back hungrily, a starving man who hadn’t had a meal in days. But then he pulled back.
“I don’t—”
“You willna hurt me, Jamie Weaver,” Bran interrupted, knowing exactly what Jamie meant to say. “Not now, not ever.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” Bran told him, tightening his grip in Jamie’s hair and pulling him back into a kiss. Yes, his ribs ached, and yes, his arm hurt, and yes, his whole body felt like it had be wrung out and hung to dry from the battlements of the keep. But it had been weeks since he’d had Jamie’s big, warm hands on his body, and he missed it desperately. A little physical pain would hurt him far less than if Jamie continued to treat him like he was made of spidersilk and eggshells.
Now he just had to convince Jamie of that.
He began by drawing one leg up the back of Jamie’s calf, using the dexterous talons on his feet to grip a fist around the loose fabric of Jamie’s plaid pajama bottoms and tug them downward. He felt Jamie’s lips curve in a smile against his own. So he did the same thing with his other foot.
That earned him a laugh that broke the kiss.
“You have too many opposable toes,” Jamie told him.
“You like my toes,” Bran pointed out, tugging hard enough that he exposed the soft skin of one hip. And that let him move first one foot, then the other so that he could grab the elastic waistband with those same toes, which made it much easier to pull Jamie’s bottoms all the way down to his knees.
Jamie sucked in a breath as the elastic caught on his semi-hard cock, then released, exposing his skin to the slightly chill air. Bran ran his toes up the now-bare skin of Jamie’s calves and thighs, drawing a shudder from the larger man’s frame.
“Bran.” His name crossed Jamie’s lips as half a warning, half a plea.
“Jamie,” he countered, using his legs to pull Jamie’s hips—and erection—against his own.
Jamie let out a soft groan, seemingly unable to help himself as he rubbed his rapidly stiffening cock against Bran’s. Bran used his one good hand to pull Jamie’s head back, letting him kiss down the side of Jamie’s strong throat.
Jamie had braced himself on straight arms, one on either side of Bran’s body. When Bran gestured with his fingers—still in Jamie’s hair—and vanished his own pajama bottoms, Jamie’s moan of desire at the feel of their naked bodies pressed together raised the hair and feathers on the back of Bran’s neck.
“Bran…” Jamie was breathless. “Are you sure?” He left unsaid that he didn’t want to hurt him.
“Aye,” Bran answered, warmth pooling low in his belly. “I’m sure.”
Jamie stopped holding back, and Bran’s eyes all but rolled back in his head as Jamie lowered himself enough to lavish attention on Bran’s jaw and throat with his tongue, one heavy thigh pushing up against Bran’s erection.
The heat of Jamie’s body chased away the slight chill that had been nearly constant since his poisoning, and which had gotten worse since the top of the wall. But Jamie ran warm—his body was a constant source of warmth as they slept or cuddled, and when—like now—Jamie ran his hands and tongue all over Bran’s body, he lit that same internal fire inside Bran.
And then Jamie was kissing and licking his way down Bran’s torso, one big hand only just barely skimming over the skin of Bran’s ribs, careful and gentle. Always careful and gentle—until Bran pushed him.
“Harder,” the fae begged. “I need to feel your hands.”
Jamie paused, and Bran could see the thoughts that flitted through his mind. I don’t want to hurt you.
Never, Bran thought back at him.
Jamie tightened his grip—slightly—on Bran’s hip, propping himself on his other elbow so that he could pull one nipple into his mouth. Bran gasped as electricity slithered through him from the tugging of Jamie’s lips.
“Jamie,” he gasped out.
Another tug, then Jamie looked up at him. “Yeah?”
“I want you inside me.” He itched with it—desperate to feel Jamie’s skin against his own, Jamie’s hands on his body, Jamie’s breath in his lungs, Jamie’s heat filling him.
Jamie’s response was a soft, low groan, pressing up with his arms so that he could rest his forehead against Bran’s. Bran grasped the back of his head, pulling him down into another kiss. Jamie pulled away before Bran was ready to let him go, and he made a soft noise of protest.
“I’ll come back,” Jamie promised, rolling so that he could reach the drawer where he kept lube and condoms.
“Just you,” Bran whispered. He wanted to feel Jamie’s skin everywhere—wanted to feel every pulse and shift of skin and muscle, wanted to feel the heat and slickness of Jamie when he came inside him.
Jamie took only the little bottle of lube.
Bran spread his legs, giving Jamie the space he needed to reach what he wanted Jamie to touch, pressing up with his legs. Jamie pulled a pillow from near their heads, pushing it under Bran’s hips, then slicked two fingers on one hand.
Bran’s back arched as Jamie pushed a finger into his body, pulling at his aching ribs, but he ignored the discomfort—the feeling of Jamie stretching him, rubbing a finger against sensitive nerves, was far more intense than the pain of a few cracked ribs.
More.
A second finger pressed into him, and Bran let his head fall back, his feet instinctively knotting in the sheets as he pushed his hips into Jamie’s hand.
“God. Bran.” Jamie’s voice was rough, his breath coming faster as he worked Bran’s body with his fingers. Bran pushed against Jamie’s hand again.
More.
Jamie withdrew his hand, then moved between Bran’s legs, bracing his arms on either side of Bran’s head, his cock pressed up against Bran’s body, its tip trembling at his entrance. Bran reached up, gripping Jamie’s forearm with his good hand.
Yes.
Jamie bent, pressing his lips to Bran’s forehead, the gesture tender. Bran’s long fingers tightened around his arm as Jamie pushed—slowly, so achingly slowly—into Bran’s body, stretching muscle, sliding along nerves already sensitized by his questing fingers. Bran could feel Jamie’s breath against his forehead, the rasp of careful control pushing up against the desire to move faster, push deeper. A desire Bran very much wanted him to fulfill.
More.
Jamie moaned again, but began to move, sliding himself away until Bran thought he might pull out altogether, but then pushing his way back home, the friction causing the back of Bran’s throat to tighten with need. He used his legs to pull Jamie all the way in, letting him withdraw, then forcing him to move faster and harder.
I don’t want to hurt you.
Never.
Jamie let Bran win, finally giving himself over to the rhythm of their bodies together, letting himself thrust hard into Bran’s willing body until their hips met with an audible impact, skin and sweat-slicked flesh striking like flint and steel between them.
Bran could feel his body tightening, the ache in his cock desperate for release.
Please.
Jamie dropped to one elbow, their teeth scraping as he all but tore a kiss from Bran’s mouth, his other hand reaching between them to wrap around Bran’s erection, a few quick strokes all it took to send him spiraling over the edge, his toes gripping the back of Jamie’s thighs as Jamie thrust a handful of times and then moaned his own release against Bran’s bruised lips.
They stayed, forehead to forehead, catching their breaths, Jamie holding himself up on his elbows, his body still buried in Bran’s. Bran re-tangled his fingers in Jamie’s blond hair.
“We can stay here, in Dunehame, if you wish,” he murmured, his breath brushing Jamie’s lips.
“Is—Is that what you want?” Jamie asked, his voice soft and vulnerable.
“I want you,” Bran answered. Did he want to stay in Dunehame forever? No. But their lives would outlast those of the humans Jamie loved—it would be sad, to watch them grow old, to watch them die, as all mortals did, but half a century, three-quarters, even, was not so long when your life could span a thousand years or more.
“And if I want this life?” Jamie asked. “Here, the museum, a tiny apartment?”
“Then that is the life we have,” Bran answered. Then his lips curved in a smile. “This lifetime, anyway.”
Epilogue
Jamie stood on the wall at the keep of the Court of Shadows, Patch wrapped around his shoulders. It was autumn, and the spreading arms of the Nimh Coille—the forest that formed a half-moon shape around one side of the field surrounding the keep—were painted in riotous color. It was dusk, and Jamie had come up to stand in the last hour of the sun’s fading light.
It was Mabon, the Autumn Festival, a time of harvest and plenty, a time for celebration.
And a handfasting.
Jamie had only one regret—that his siblings were not here. He’d written to Billy—Will, he reminded himself, as his half-brother had decided to change his nickname to something that put more distance between himself and his father—and told him about Bran. Will was twenty-one, and had managed to get himself into a community college while working night shift as a janitor. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he knew he had to do something to get out of Maynardville. Nora was almost eighteen, Ginny fifteen, and Tommy eleven. Will was afraid for the youngest two—and so was Jamie, but Jamie also knew that when he was there, Bill Eckel was angrier than when he wasn’t.
Will had written back, promising that he would look out for the youngest two, since Nora was applying to a real four-year college in Memphis and was moving out—whether their father liked it or not. She didn’t plan on telling him.
