Only You (4 page)

Nick did manage to shove his palm under Barrett’s cock to give him something to thrust into that was warmer and happier to have it than the mattress. His thumbnail caught the tiny nodule of scar tissue where Barrett had flirted with a piercing once upon a time, almost as sensitive now as if he still had a titanium hoop hanging free. He held tight through Barrett’s surprised jump and stifled shout, and ground hard against Barrett’s skin.

Words spilled out of Barrett when Barrett got close. He always had been like that, loud in bed, and it wasn’t until the sound of his voice now startled Nick into an awkward pause that he realized Barrett had barely spoken at all.

Though he more than made up for the lack now. Pushing back into Nick, grinding his hips, Barrett rested his weight on his crossed arms and almost babbled, words and sounds that meant nothing rushing out of him, trailing into a choked sip of air when he hitched forward as if he’d been punched and came, thick-sticky-messy, slippery over Nick’s hand.

“Come on,” Nick heard Barrett chanting over the rush of blood in his ears. He reached back, clumsy but insistent, grabbing at whatever bits of Nick he could reach. “Come on, I can feel you wanting to—”

Nick bit the inside of his cheek instead of Barrett and let go. He couldn’t have stopped if he’d tried, and he didn’t try—he pounded Barrett through the orgasm that spiraled up from his balls to snatch at his insides and didn’t want to stop. He dropped his head to rest on Barrett’s back, between Barrett’s shoulder blades, and swallowed down the growl that wanted to come out so much that it tore at his throat.

It ended too soon for Nick. Fast and slow at the same time. Draining him of energy, of the ability to make words, or even to hold himself up. Nick could barely manage to pull out, and might not have bothered if Barrett hadn’t turned to grope for him and tug him into a messy, heated, open-mouthed kiss.

Finally, he could breathe again. He sucked for air and opened his eyes to stare at the tiny constellation of freckles on Barrett’s back.
What the hell?
He blinked, dazed, but not so much he couldn’t boggle at himself.
What the
hell
was that?

Barrett held back the laugh as long as he could. When he lost the fight and it slipped out of him, at least the noise came out rusty and rough. “If that’s ‘not trying to start something’ then I don’t know if I’d have survived you really meaning business.
Jesus
, Mary and Joseph.” He nudged Nick until Nick scooted off his back and tumbled into a heap at his side.

One look made him want to laugh all over again. Golden hair fell over Nick’s face in far less of a curtain and far more of a tangled mess. One wide blue eye peeked through, making him look damned near shell-shocked.

“So, no need to ask if it was good for you too,” Barrett commented. He flexed his thighs cautiously. He’d be sore for a while, no doubt about that. He didn’t mind. Give him something to remember the occasion by, that was what he liked. “Nick?” He waved in front of the dazed blue stare. “Hello?”

Nick blinked once, then twice, then groaned and covered his face. “Oh my God,” he said, muffled, and Barrett gave up the effort to behave himself.

Chortling, he turned on his side to drape an arm and a leg over Nick, comfortably proprietary. “Not that I’m complaining, but where did that come from?” Barrett asked. “I need to know where to buy that kind of mood if I’m going to pay you back for it.” He poked Nick in the ribs. “Which, believe me, I will. When the time is right. When you least expect it.”

Nick pushed his hair out of his face and peeked sheepishly at Barrett. Rosy pink colored his cheeks beneath his stubble, which Barrett figured he probably shouldn’t find endearing or cute but did, all the same. “Um…”

Barrett snorted. “Um, yourself.”

“You sure you’re all right?” Nick raised himself on crossed arms, exactly as Barrett had done earlier. Barrett doubted he noticed they did that, but every so often they twinned one another and moved in echoes of synchronicity. He’d never told Nick. It’d just embarrass him, and Barrett liked it too much to make it stop.

“If you have to ask me that after a fuck like this…” Barrett whistled and pretended to shake his head in despair of Nick.

Nick scowled and shoulder-bumped him.

Better
. Barrett grinned at Nick, wide and open, and sat up to stretch. “God yes, I’m all right. I’m fantastic.” His stomach rumbled. “And hungry. Fucking starving, actually.”

Nick’s shoulders shook with amusement. “Walking stomach.”

“You were the one singing all those praises to beef stew,” Barrett retorted. He thumped Nick’s back twice and gave him a little nudge. “So, going to make me eat alone, or do you want to come and put your mouth to better use than biting me?”

Nick touched his lips. He looked baffled. “Would you believe me if I swore on my own grandmother’s grave I had no idea why I did that? Honestly?”

“Nope. Because your grandmother’s still alive.”

“Darn. Good memory even after being fucked to the moon and back.”

“You don’t think highly of yourself, do you?” Although he wasn’t wrong. Barrett shifted position and reached for Nick, meaning to drag him out of bed by the shoulders if he had to. “Stew’s on. Unless of course you want me to eat the whole pot myself, which I could probably—”

He stopped.
What the…?

Nick’s eyebrows drew together when he frowned. “Okay, that’s a look I haven’t seen before. I didn’t really hurt you, did I?”

“Shut up,” Barrett said, the command almost absent. He pressed Nick down into the bed rather than pull him up, and leaned across the expanse of Nick’s bare back. Nick’s untamable hair tried to slither down in rogue random curls that Barrett pushed out of the way with an impatient noise. “Lie still. You’ve got something back here. You didn’t go into the woods, did you? Looks like a tick.”

“What?” Nick peeked up at Barrett, clearly baffled and showing it. “Not as far as I know, unless you count landscaping around the coliseum. A tick, really? Thought I felt something bite me earlier.” He tried to feel around his neck. “I was going to tell you, but then I forgot.”

“So if you get Lyme disease, we can blame your libido? Stop poking at it and let me get a clear look.” He cleared the hair away from Nick’s nape.

Not a tick, no. The diffuse light from the fire helped his eyes adjust. Not an insect at all. More like a…bruise? Strangely shaped bruise, and a stranger place for one. He couldn’t imagine what Nick might have run up against that’d make such a mark, almost patterned, almost like a—

Barrett stopped. His hand slipped away, falling nerveless to the sheets.
Oh, God
.
Fuck me. It’s a soulmark. A fucking soulmark.

Chapter Three

“What, now?” Nick sat upright. The sheet Barrett had draped across him fell over his thigh but left his groin exposed. He touched the back of his neck. “No, seriously. Say that again.”

No light of humor showed in Barrett’s dark eyes. He looked…flat. Almost like a stranger. “You heard me,” he said, sounding equally empty. “There’s a soulmark starting on your—”

“The hell there is,” Nick protested. He bent his head and ran his fingers up and down, fast, scraping the back of his neck. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Because you’re going too damn fast.” Barrett took his hand and stilled it over a spot just between vertebrae. “Here. It’s barely bigger than a dime.”

“I still don’t feel it,” Nick said. Soulmarks were raised like brands—enough to let the bearer distinguish its pattern by feel. He couldn’t locate anything but smooth skin and tangled hair that kept slithering over his questing fingers. “I don’t feel anything.”

Barrett made a frustrated sound and let go of Nick’s hand. “It’s still coming through, but you’re touching it. Your forefinger’s right on the center.” He brushed the back of Nick’s hand. “It’s pale. The color of weak tea.”

Barely begun, then, if it had begun, and Nick wasn’t buying it. “The hell you say,” he grumbled as he kicked at the sheets. They tangled around his calves when he tried to slide his legs over the edge of the bed, and would have tripped him up—he wasn’t in a careful state of mind—if Barrett hadn’t given them a sharp yank to set him free. “This is Abram thinking he’s funny.”

“Abram what?” Barrett followed in Nick’s footsteps, hard at his heels. “What does Abram have to do with anything?”

Nick waved irritably. “I made the mistake of napping in his presence last night. He probably thought it’d be funny to draw on the back of my neck. He’s always doodling.”

“It doesn’t look like ink to me,” Barrett said, tight and taut. “It looks like a—”

“It isn’t.” Nick stepped over the threshold to the cottage’s small bathroom and hit the light switch with his elbow.
Ow
. The strong, clean light from the fixtures made him squint and his eyes watered. He flipped his hair forward, over one shoulder, but then he really couldn’t see.

Barrett nudged his way past and plucked up a leather hair tie from the towel rack. “Don’t ask me how this got there, I don’t know, but here. You’re not explaining yourself as well as you think you are. Why would Abram do that? As far as he knows, you and I are mated.” He held up his arm, showing off the paler strip of skin on his bare wrist where he’d normally wear his cuff. “Doesn’t he?”

“Yes. I think so? I mean, I
thought
so, I…” Nick shook his head, frustrated. He couldn’t get the leather tie seated. Shaky hands made him drop the thing. “Fuck!”

“For God’s sake, stop.” Barrett crouched to pick up the tie and came up standing behind Nick. “Bend your head forward. Let me do it.” He pulled too hard, securing a bunch of Nick’s hair in a ponytail, but Nick wasn’t complaining. He twisted to the side as soon as he possibly could, craning about for a look in the mirror. “I don’t see—” he started, then stopped.

Because he did see, now. Milky pale tea color, a ripple of pigment half the size of his fingertip. It
could
be a bruise. Or a bite. When Nick rubbed at it, nothing happened. Not even when he scratched at it with his thumbnail, as if he could get the mark to peel off.

Soulmark.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath.

“I told you,” Barrett said. He’d gone pale with the shock. Nick couldn’t blame him. “When did this happen?”

“I don’t know.” Nick tugged the hair tie loose—he’d give himself a hell of a headache with all the weight pulling on his scalp—and shook his hair free before starting over and making a looser ponytail. He could see Barrett didn’t believe him. “It’s the truth, I swear.”

“Right.” The bathroom wasn’t at all large, but Barrett kept as far back as he could, arms crossed and face shuttered. “Tell me what happened this weekend. Start to finish.”

“There isn’t much to tell.” Nick flipped open the lid to the laundry hamper and pawed through its contents. He didn’t know why, or didn’t want to know why, but standing naked in the cold bathroom had started to make his skin crawl. A pair of Barrett’s pajama pants presented themselves. Definitely Barrett’s. He didn’t know anyone else who willingly wore virulent green and blazingly yellow plaid to sleep in. Too long in the leg for Nick, but they’d do. He did up the drawstring before he broke and had to speak again. The words wouldn’t be kept back. Well. One word. “Ivan.”

Nakedness didn’t seem to bother Barrett. “What about Ivan?”

“It has to have been Ivan, somehow,” Nick said. He refused to touch the back of his neck, even though the rising soulmark stung and prickled, demanding to be soothed. “Did you know he was mated? That he’s had a soulmate for years?”

“Ivan?” Barrett dropped his stony façade for half a second. Just long enough for Nick to get a peek beneath the surface and wish he hadn’t. “No, he doesn’t. He’s been single for as long as I’ve known him.”

“He does, though.” Nick jerked the drawstring of the pajama pants in a hard knot. “I think his mate’s named Robbie. I could be wrong. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to him before he and Ivan disappeared for the night.”

“You mean…he found his mate, last night?” Barrett asked, with the slow hesitation of someone sorting through puzzle pieces that didn’t match. “But that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?”

“Not ‘found him’ as in ‘found him for the first time’.” Nick leaned against the sink. He twisted the spigot and started to wash his hands to give them something to do. To keep himself from worrying and scratching at the soulmark, which stung like nettle rash by then. He rolled his shoulders to try to ease the needling pressure. “That happened years ago. Not sure how many. A long time. Abram said they were ‘barely legal’ then. They split up and hadn’t seen each other since then.”

“What?” Barrett sat slowly on the porcelain edge of the tub.

The strangest thought, a reminder that they’d kept meaning to replace the old bath with something big enough for two, flashed through Nick’s mind. He kept it to himself.

Barrett shook his head. “I don’t get it. If they were soulmates, they couldn’t live apart. It’d drive them crazy. It’d
hurt
.” He paused. “Wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, well.” Nick rubbed his face hard. Too hard, over his closed eyes. White flashes and spangles of color crackled across the insides of his eyelids. He shrugged harder, trying to soothe the itch. “Guess all those jokes about Ivan being a little unbalanced were more right than we’d figured.
Damn
this thing, I—”

Barrett stopped Nick from scratching his nape. “Quit that,” he said. Cool fingertips brushed the raw skin, the relief enough to make Nick’s shoulders sag. “You’ll hurt yourself if you’re not careful.”

He left his hand there. Nick pressed his lips together, at a loss—what could he say, and how could he say it?—but not willing to move, or to let go. Or to think about what this meant beyond the impossibility of it all.

He could have stayed there for hours if the doorbell hadn’t pealed as loud as a gong in his ears.

Daniel. I’d forgotten. Damn!

“Stay there.” Barrett put a hand on Nick’s shoulder to underline the point and stop him moving. He wasn’t nervous by nature, but he flinched as if he’d been shot. Barrett sympathized with his jumpiness. He couldn’t wrap his head around any of this and it wasn’t even happening to him.