Blurred Memories (9 page)

“
Not finished yet,” Blake
offered with a grin that might have tried to be cocky but trembled
too much. And then he was lowering his head again, this time to
engulf Marc’s cock.

Marc had not expected this,
and electricity seemed to shoot through him as Blake’s mouth
resumed the blowjob from earlier as though he had never stopped.
Marc’s hips jerked upward, and Kate’s still-trembling body started
to slip to one side. Marc tried to hold on to her and not moan
quite so loudly, but she turned her head to press a kiss to the
corner of his mouth and murmured a quiet, “Let me help him,” that
turned Marc’s will to little more than a memory. He unwound his
arms, and she immediately shifted off of him, sliding down the bed
to join Blake.

Be careful
, he wanted
to warn her.
Don’t rush him
.

But it was difficult to form
coherent thoughts, let alone express them, when Blake was still
sucking on his cock. More difficult still when Kate’s hot little
mouth joined Blake’s, the tip of her tongue stroking along the edge
of Blake’s lips against Marc’s cock.

Marc struggled with himself,
wanting to grab both their heads but afraid he’d be too rough if he
did. He clutched at the sheets instead, clenching his hands tightly
as he shut his eyes. If he looked down at them and watched them
play with his cock together, things would end much too
fast.

He felt Blake slide upward,
and moaned at the wet little popping sound when his dick slipped
out of Blake’s mouth.

“
Now will you kiss me?”
Kate asked, and her smile rang so clearly in her words that Marc
could picture it in his mind.

He opened his eyes again and
started to sit up, a weak protest at the back of his mind, but
forgot what he was about to say when he saw—felt—their mouths press
against each other, right against the underside of his cock. A
tongue—warm; it had to be Kate’s—caressed him before slipping away.
A deeper kiss, then, and Marc was right in the middle of
it.

Slumping back down against
the pillows, he scrunched his eyes shut tightly again. They were
sharing wet, sloppy kisses all around his cock, sometimes right
against the very tip, sometimes closer to the base. The combination
of their touches drew continuous moans from him, but he was barely
aware of it. All he could hear were the whispered words they
shared, “Here,” and “Like this,” and “Doesn’t he taste good?” and
finally, “Up or down?”

That last question puzzled
him for a second before he understood. Hot breath and a warm tongue
were suddenly caressing his balls, while a cooler mouth, a little
bit warm still from kissing Kate, was closing over the head of his
dick and sucking hard.

His body jerked, trying to
press up against them, but four hands on his thighs and hips held
him in place. Blake had also shifted upward so that he was now half
resting on Marc’s stomach, pinning him down but also leaving more
space for Kate between Marc’s thighs.

“
Be good, now,” Kate
demanded, her laughter just a breath away. “Let us make you feel
good.”

Her mouth only left him for
an instant. When it returned, she carefully sucked on one of his
balls. Marc gasped, only to cry out the next moment when Blake
swallowed over and over around his dick, his throat constricting
and releasing rhythmically.

“
Slow down,” he grunted,
twisting his hands in the sheets. The fabric ripped, the sound like
thunder in his ears. “Too much.”

“
Just let go,” Kate said,
pressing the words like kisses against the most sensitive part of
him.

“
Can’t—”

But he did. It might have
been her teeth that pushed him over the edge, carefully closing at
the root of his cock for a painless bite. Or it might have been
Blake’s tongue, swirling and slurping around Marc’s shaft as he
pulled up again. Or maybe it was the fact that the three of them
were together at last, the way they had wanted for so
long.

As his orgasm rippled
through him, one wave followed by the other, each stronger than the
last, he came in Blake’s mouth then Kate’s and clung to the hope
that it would be only the first of many times, and that each would
help Blake heal a little more.

It felt like hours before
they stopped licking him clean, sharing slow kisses again around
his softened flesh. They both rested their heads against his chest,
and now Marc allowed himself to thread his fingers through their
hair. Kate’s was still a little damp, and he combed his fingers
through it like he did to Blake.

“
That was…”

His voice trailed off. He
had no clue how to finish that sentence. Apparently, he wasn’t the
only one with speech difficulties, because Kate laughed—oh, God,
how he had missed her laugh—and said, “It really was. And it’s not
over.”

She raised her head then,
and when Marc did the same, he saw her give Blake a wicked
look.

“
Someone didn’t get a turn
yet,” she said in a sing-song voice.

Laughing quietly, Marc drew
Blake higher onto the bed. His amusement faded when he saw the
traces of wariness at the corners of Blake’s eyes. Everything
wasn’t as good as it seemed, then, was it?

Marc kissed Blake lightly,
just enough to taste both himself and Kate on his lips, then asked,
“What do you want, Childe? Tell us how to make you feel good,
too.”

Having moved higher on the
bed, Kate now sat on Blake’s other side. She didn’t say anything
but rested a hand on Blake’s chest, well above the place where his
cock waited, hard and full. Had she also guessed that Blake’s mind
might be more clouded than they both would have liked?

Blake licked his lips, his
eyes going back and forth between the two of them before he finally
murmured, “Can you… Will you…touch me? Just… Together?”

Marc kissed him again. Kate
reclined on her side and pressed her lips to Blake’s shoulder.
Their hands found each other over his cock, and their fingers
linked together. They worked his dick as he had asked—together—and
much too quickly Blake yielded to pleasure, his body arching, his
eyes closed, his bottom lip caught between his teeth as he silenced
a cry.

As he caught Kate’s eyes,
Marc wondered if this was anything like what she had had in mind
when she had asked for them to be closer again. He also wondered
how much time would pass before Blake was ready to try again—or to
move further still.

Chapter 8

Kate had great expectations
for the night after Blake’s first breakthrough.

She tried not to hope too
much, to tell herself she shouldn’t expect anything and just let
things take their natural course, but as the hours passed while
Daniel briefed her more thoroughly on the situation in the city,
her pulse quickened, and images started swirling through her
head.

That morning had been a
gift, and as with any gift, she should have been grateful, not
greedy, and give thanks without asking for more.

But she
wanted
more.
She wanted so much that it scared her, at times. She wanted Blake
to touch her, to kiss her, to hold her as close as Marc did. She
wanted to wrap both of them around her and never let go again. She
wanted the past two years to disappear, and better years to take
their place.

“
Long day. I’m
exhausted.”

Just a few words from Blake,
and Kate’s hopes were dashed. She had tried to tell herself it
would be okay if they didn’t have sex again right away, but it was
a disappointment nonetheless, especially when she knew that Blake
was making excuses. Somehow, in her mind, Blake’s healing and
shared intimacy had become intricately linked, and she couldn’t
separate the two anymore.

“
Did you two spar a lot
today?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light. She took another
bite of food; it suddenly seemed to taste like sawdust.

Blake was peering into his
glass of blood as though seeking answers in it. It was Marc who
finally replied.

“
We did. Trying to get back
into shape for the next fight. What’s the news from
Simon?”

He already knew what the
news was; after all, they were there, in the dining hall, having a
late dinner, rather than on their way to the breach. But talking
was better than silence; she could understand that.

“
He says he’ll have
something by tomorrow night. He was marinating herbs or something.
Honestly, it sounded like cooking when he explained what he was
doing.”

She tried to put a bit of
humor in her words, but the two smiles she obtained in response
were equally strained. Blake lifted his glass, drank deep from it,
and rose from the table after setting the glass down
again.

“
I’m going to turn in
early. Good night.”

“
Good night,” Kate repeated
after a beat, feeling a little numb, but Blake was already leaving
and she wasn’t sure her words reached him.

A gentle hand settled on top
of hers on the table, and she looked up at Marc.

“
Give him time,” Marc
murmured. “It was a big step he took this morning. Let him find his
balance again.”

Kate nodded mechanically. “I
know. It’s just…”

A weight seemed to press on
her chest, making it hard to finish.

“
You hoped things would go
more smoothly now?” Marc offered with a small, sad smile. “Me too.
And they will, just as long as we give him the time and space he
needs.”

“
I know,” she said again,
but she was nonetheless grateful for his words and touch as he
continued to hold her hand while she finished her
dinner.

* * * *

When Blake climbed into the
back of the truck, he couldn’t help but feel as though he was
climbing back through time and returning to those long-gone nights
when he and Marc had first joined the squad and started fighting
demons in the City. The truck was identical to the ones in his
memories: the metal painted a dull black and stained with dust and
mud, a heavy canvas of tarp in a black, brown, and dark green
camouflage pattern over the back. The benches that lined each side
of the truck lengthwise were the same, too: simple wooden seats
that were stained, here and there, by dark spots, blood that had
seeped into the wood and couldn’t be washed away.

Blake sat near the back,
holding his scabbard and sword in front of him. Kate took place at
his side, Marc across from him, and that, too, was familiar.
Daniel, Simon, and half a dozen men rounded out their group. Their
mission today wasn’t to fight, but they were going to the breach,
and it was likely that they would encounter demons.

If there was small talk,
Blake didn’t take part in it, or even hear it. He was trying to
find that place in his mind that had once been so familiar: the
eagerness for the fight, for something to happen. All he could
find, however, were memories. He had gone to that last fight, the
one during which he had been taken, in a truck like this one,
seated next to Kate and Marc, like he was now. The thought was
disconcerting.

“
You never told me what the
engraving meant.”

Blake turned to Kate and
watched her for a little while before the words made any sense in
his mind. He blinked. “Didn’t I?”

Her smile seemed forced. He
hated that she thought she had to wear a mask in front of him. It
meant that
his
mask had slipped too much.

“
Oh, you did. You gave me a
dozen different meanings. But I don’t think any of them was the
truth. So what does it really mean?”

Dropping his gaze to the
sword in his hand, Blake brushed his thumb against the Latin words
engraved in the metal.

Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit,
occidentis telum est
.

He had had someone put them
there for him, standing by the blacksmith’s side the entire time
and checking the spelling against the book in which he had found
the quote. He couldn’t remember the name of the book, and that
wasn’t all he had forgotten. It had been so long…

Before he had been taken, he
had thought of those words, of what they meant to him, every time
he had picked up the sword. But he had been away for a long time,
and as familiar as Seneca’s hilt still felt in his hand, it was all
too easy to recall those endless years during which he had not been
allowed to hold a weapon.

“
I don’t remember,” he
admitted quietly, and it was almost like he was confessing having
lost a part of himself. He looked at Marc from the corner of his
eyes, wondering if Marc knew what the quote meant but strangely
reluctant to ask. “I remember thinking it was important,
but—”

“
I know what it
means.”

Kate’s head whipped toward
Simon where he sat on the long bench across from them. Blake was
slower, but he looked up as well. Simon’s eagerness lay undisguised
on his features and in the way he leaned forward, bent over the
leather bag he was holding to his chest.

“
Remember, when we first
met?” Simon said, a hesitant smile flickering on his lips. “I saw
the inscription then. I told you I spoke Latin and you
said—”