Nexus Read online

  The demon base in Lexington, Breka’s home, and everything that happened that night had been covered up under the umbrella of a gas leak and everyone had bought it. What else could it have possibly been?

  Jael spent time catching me up, and it seemed odd, but his company, though not welcome, was all I could seem to accept. Just the thought of talking about it all made me not want to see anyone. And Joe, especially, what could I say about my weakness, my inability to get back to him? What rationale could I give? I was supposed to protect him and his family, and I had instead disappeared, not been there. The failure was great.

  “You’re insane, you know,” Jael told me as I stood on the back deck of his guesthouse, staring out at the bay. “If you just let them, they would all tell you what you did.”

  “But I just want it to all go away,” I said, breathing in the warm summer air. It was August now and I had left them all before Christmas. I had been gone six months and had been holed up at Jael’s for another two. It was so strange.

  “Can you return, Marcus? Would you prefer to start over somewhere else? Go where no one knows you? I’m sure it would be easy to do at work, and I can recommend you to another sentinel.”

  Start over.

  “Maybe,” I exhaled, finally faced with the reality.

  “But Joe,” Jael said softly.

  I had to see him. “If he’s waiting, I’ll see.”

  “You don’t throw away six years, Marcus.” He didn’t understand. “Explain what you’re thinking.”

  “What happened to Deidre?” I asked suddenly, desperate to change the subject.

  “Nothing happened; she was here three months ago. It’s my turn to visit her next.”

  “She’s not going to move here?”

  He cleared his throat. “She’s not ready to give up being a sentinel, and neither am I. It was boorish of me to think that because she’s a woman that it would be her sacrifice to make.”

  I studied his face. “So quit and go to her.”

  “You say the same idiotic things as Jaka. One doesn’t just leave.”

  “I think one does,” I smiled, sighing. “If you love her.”

  “Love is complicated, isn’t it?” He had brought me right back around to my problem. It was clever. “Talk to me.”

  “Just—”

  “Marcus—”

  “You know, that’s weird already,” I cut him off. “Coming from you, it’s…. Just go back to Marot.”

  “Fine, Marot.” He took a breath. “I want to hear what you’re thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About Joe!” I could hear the frustration in his voice. “Please.”

  “I just… why would he want me anymore? I’m supposed to protect him, and I didn’t, and he’s supposed to be my whole life and then what—I just forgot him? What he means? He must hate me. I would hate me if I were him.”

  “Mar—”

  “Just thinking about how he’s going to look at me…. Why have that scene? Why not just spare us both?”

  “You’re scared.”

  “It’s more than that.” Simple fear would not have kept me from my hearth.

  “You’re resigned.”

  It was closer to the truth, probably a little of both. “I…. Jael?”

  He looked strange, lost in thought, a million miles away.

  “You okay?”

  And I watched the light sort of turn on in his eyes. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Jael,” I began. “You can’t fix—”

  “To your mind,” he cut me off, “you were on that alternate plane a week but to your body and soul, the wear on both, the pain…. It was six months. And now you’ve been back two, and…. God, I’m really just so stupid.” He turned away from me, charging into the other room, and slamming the door behind him.

  I had no clue what was going on, so I left.

  The five-mile run up and down the hills of Sausalito felt good. My body would never be the same, there were scars in hard-to-reach places, but I was strong again, and I could feel my muscles respond when I asked.

  When I got back, I took a long hot shower and had changed into basketball shorts and nothing else when I wandered into Jael’s kitchen for dinner.

  “How dare you,” the cold, flat voice said.

  My head snapped sideways, and I saw Joe standing by the dishwasher next to the sink. He didn’t look like himself, and I wasn’t sure why, and then it came to me. I had never seen the expression he had on his face before in my life.

  I waited.

  He trembled just slightly, and I restrained myself, stamped down the urge to go to him.

  “Marcus Roth, explain yourself right fucking now.”

  He looked thin, his coloring was off, and his hair was shorter. He was wearing thick black-framed Buddy Holly glasses with yellow lenses that made the blue of his eyes a strange lime green. It was odd.

  “Marcus!” he barked.

  I cleared my throat, holding onto the back of one of Jael’s barstools for dear life. It was easier to articulate as I had said it earlier to my sentinel. I wondered briefly if that had been the point. “When push came to shove, I didn’t think of you. You weren’t right there. The guys were there, and so I put them first. I sacrificed myself, and in so doing put you in jeopardy. I’m so sorry, Joe.” My voice bottomed out. “I let you down like I said I never would. I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded, and I saw the clench of his jaw, heard him take a breath, saw the shiver run though his body.

  “So you think that you’ve let me down.”

  I nodded.

  “Use your words, Marcus.”

  “Yes,” I managed to get out, feeling my knees go weak, my power deserting me when I needed it most.

  I did not expect the plate—and this was Jael’s house, so who knew what the damn thing cost—to narrowly miss me and shatter into a thousand pieces behind me.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “You stupid ass!” he screamed as he began emptying the cupboard above him. The plates flew toward me, and I had no idea how, but he knew where I was, and he had great aim.

  “Joseph.” I tried to calm him, tried to get closer at the same time.

  “You idiot! This hurt me! You not coming for me the second you got home! You not sending for me the minute you could—that is fuckin’ killing me, not the rest of this self-serving martyr bullshit!”

  Martyr? “Now wait!” I yelled, and then I saw that the plates were gone, and he moved to the next cupboard full of glassware.

  “How dare you not send for me!”

  “Shit,” I growled, coming around the island even as he retreated.

  “Stay the fuck away from me!”

  And it hit me—all the pain, all the longing, all my need, all of it. My hearth. I couldn’t breathe without him.

  “Joe,” I gasped.

  “No!” he roared, walking backward.

  “I need you.”

  But he was furious, and hot, angry tears were running down his cheeks as he unloaded on me, screaming, yelling, and calling me every name he could think of. Mostly I was a bastard. Over and over.

  “Baby,” I soothed.

  “Fuck you!” he railed. “You did what you had to do, Marcus! You didn’t just save me and my family, you saved Malic and Jacks and Ry and Leith and all the hearths too. We don’t work without our warders; do you even fucking get that? You did it all, Marcus, and then you’re gonna do what, punish us all, stay away from all of us—leave us?”

  I inched closer to him.

  “Fuck you, Marcus Roth! I fuckin’ hate you, and I’m gonna leave you like you left me, and I hope you cry yourself to sleep every night like I did and miss my smell on your sheets and my hands on your skin and just fucking rot!”

  The crystal punch bowl missed me by inches. The matching ladle bounced off the copper pots hanging from the ceiling, but because he’d really flung it, put his back into it, he upset his balance just a little.

 
It was enough.

  I moved fast, faster than he could or would ever be able to, reached him, and wrapped the man up tight in my arms.

  “No,” he screamed.

  I held on, squeezed tighter, and the flood of relief was overwhelming. All of it, everything was just done. Nothing mattered; I had Joseph Locke in my arms.

  “I hate you, Marcus,” he sobbed, face pressed to my collarbone, hands flat on my bare chest. “I’m gonna leave you.”

  I sighed as I rubbed my chin in his hair. It was so soft, his thick auburn hair, and it smelled so clean. He was shaking so hard, pressing into me so close, struggling now to free his arms.

  “I thought you’d hate me, and I couldn’t bear to see that on your face.”

  “I’d never hate you for doing what was right, Marcus,” he said, his voice nasally, stuffed up, full of tears. “I never once thought you made a decision, them over me. It never occurred to me that saving them would keep you from me. You forgot who I am; you forgot that I understand every part of you, your heart especially.”

  I had been so lost, and the epiphany took me literally to my knees.

  “Marcus!”

  He was dragged to the floor with me, and I was kneeling with him, still holding on tight, tucked against my chest.

  “Forgive me,” I begged. “Please, baby, forgive me. I’m so stupid. I was so wrong. I thought…. I didn’t give you credit for being the man you are, for knowing what you know, for loving me like you do.”

  “I don’t love you anymore,” he told me, wrenching free, scrambling away, and turning to look for a door, any door.

  It was the back deck, which, if he got out, would strand him there as there were no stairs down. Jael lived on a cliff.

  I didn’t mention that he was walking out onto the lanai. It was too dear. Instead I slammed the door shut before he could get it open further, held it closed, my hand braced beside his head.

  “Put your hands on me.”

  “You threw me away.” His voice shook because crying and talking was hard to do.

  “I was terrified of what you’d do, and that was stupid,” I told him, my voice low and husky, coaxing, seductive. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

  His teeth were chattering with the welling emotion, and the trembling was obvious.

  “Please, Joey,” I begged. “How long have you waited?”

  “Waited for what?”

  “To put your hands on me?”

  His breath stuttered, caught.

  “I’m right here,” I whispered, leaning forward, my forehead pressed to his. “Joe.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I know. Put your hands on me,” I ordered, my voice hardening.

  “How could you do that to me? Leave me?”

  I would go out of my mind if he didn’t touch me, if he didn’t need to anymore.

  “Me? You’re supposed to love me.”

  “You have to forgive me. You just have to.”

  “Marcus,” he whispered.

  “This will kill me when nothing else did.”

  He gasped as he slid his hands up my abdomen, his fingers sliding over muscles, exploring new scars, touching me everywhere, mapping new terrain and old. His hands were so sensitive, his fingertips, his palms, and I watched his lips part with the sensation.

  “Promise it’s okay,” I pressed him. “Swear we’re still us. Joey, I’m so sorry. I can’t be more sorry. Please.”

  The whimper, the sweetest sound I ever heard, let me know I had him.

  “Your skin is like warm silk, Marcus, smooth and made to be touched. And I know you, you’re worried what I’ll think of these scars,” he said as he bent and kissed one, tracing the next with his tongue, then following with his teeth.

  My cock hardened so fast it hurt, swelling with blood, with my need for him. “Fuck, Joe.”

  “I love these marks. I love every single part of you, Marcus Roth, always.”

  I took his face in my hands, tilted his chin up, and took the glasses off, dropping them onto the kitchen counter. Here were the eyes I knew, welled now with tears, red-rimmed, full of hurt. I swallowed hard.

  “Swear on my life right this second. Promise and I’ll believe you.”

  “What?” I asked, even though I knew.

  “That you will never, ever, stay away from me again,” he said his breath warm on my face. “If you can, if you’re able, you come home to me.”

  I nodded furiously so I didn’t break down.

  His smile was breathtaking. “Use your words, Marcus.”

  But there was no way. I ground my mouth down over his instead, kissed him ravenously, my tongue pushing inside, claiming what was mine, what I had to have.

  His arms wrapped around my neck as he whined in the back of his throat, pushing against me, rubbing, toeing off his black Chuck Taylors at the same time.

  He hung onto me, kissing me back just as passionately even as my hands flew over him, unbuckling his belt, working his zipper, rough as I disrobed him, wanting him naked as fast as I could get him that way.

  When his jeans and briefs were gone, when there was only bare ass under my hands, I wrapped an arm around his waist, lifted him up, and pulled and yanked at the clothes bunched around his ankles. I left them in a pile in the middle of the broken glass in the kitchen.

  His legs were tight around my hips as I walked him to my bedroom. He lifted his lips from mine to gulp air and then reclaimed my mouth with first a bite before the sucking, devouring kissing began all over again.

  Our tongues slid together, over and under, around, and he wanted deeper, more, and when I fell over him, down onto the bed, pinning him under me, his arms tightened around my neck so I couldn’t pull away.

  He wanted me that close, and I understood. Any farther away was too much. At home we…. But we weren’t at home.

  I pulled back, and he lifted up to recapture my mouth, but I moved out of his reach.

  “Marcus!”

  I tried not to smile. “Lube.”

  “What?”

  I was so glad he couldn’t see my grin. “Um, we don’t have any lube, Joey.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  He was indignant, and I put my head down on his shoulder and laughed. And it felt so good. I felt so much like me I was giddy.

  He shoved me off the bed, and I couldn’t stop laughing. When he pulled the comforter off the bed, wrapped himself in it and stomped out of the room, the tears were rolling down my cheeks. The ridiculousness of it, passion done in by lack of Astroglide or any other slippery substance, was hysterical… and normal.

  I was okay.

  Joe was okay.

  We would be us again.

  I was laying there, sprawled out, still chuckling when he came back, chucked a small tube at me, and then slammed the door.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked, smiling crazily at how annoyed he looked, how his hair was sticking up, how red and swollen his lips were and how flushed his skin was.

  “From my backpack!”

  “Carrying lube around, are you?” I asked even as I saw it was brand new, the seal unbroken.

  “Shut up, Marcus,” he said, dropping the comforter and walking over to me.

  He reached for my hand, and I lifted mine toward him, the action so engrained, so ordinary, and when my fingers curled around his, I felt it in my heart.

  “I was stupid,” I said as I guided him down to me, on top of me, straddling my hips.

  “Yes.”

  I let go of his hand as I pulled down my shorts and briefs, letting my hard cock bounce free, letting Joe reach behind him and ease the clothes down to my ankles.