Death Song (Tales from the Tarot)

15. Rex

Chapter fifteen

Rex

B eauty lays on the bed in front of me, his hair splayed over his forehead and his eyes closed. He is smiling though, and in that smile, I see the whole world. His legs part, revealing himself to me and then it is not just the world I see, but a feast, ready and waiting for me to taste.

I lean forward and slick my tongue between his cheeks, inhaling the scent of his honey deep into my lungs. He shivers and I take that as my cue to keep going. Sticking my tongue out again, I flatten it over his pucker, swiping my tongue over it as he shudders and moans softly in front of me. Bolstered, I move forward even more and begin lapping my hungry tongue over him, slicking him with saliva as I move to grip his hips, keeping him steady in front of me. He inhales a deep breath when I catch the rim of him with the tip of my tongue, toying with the sensitive part of him for a few seconds before backing away. He’s slicked and loosened a bit before me, but it isn’t enough, I know.

I won’t hurt him, though my cock is straining between my legs. It would be nothing to slide right into his warmth, setting myself deep inside him where I long to be. Reaching for the lube, I intend to add more to my hand to open him up with, but he shakes his head at me the moment I hold the bottle up over my fingers. With a grin, I dribble a line down my cock, slicking myself up as much as I dare before dropping the lube to the bed beside where my Charlie rests.

“If it hurts, you tell me.”

He nods and I place myself at the edge of him, pushing slowly at his opening. Charlie takes a deep breath, pushing out as I push the head of me into his warmth. I hesitate there for a moment, letting him get used to me, though I long to drive deep into him, the tightness around just the head of me sending me reeling. I attempt to slowly slip into his body, but Charlie moves then, a sharp cry leaving his mouth as he impales himself on my cock. I gasp as I come to be fully seated inside him, feeling the squeeze of his body on my length.

And then, I cannot stop myself from pulling out and pushing back in hard. Charlie moans as I look down to watch my cock slipping in and out of his body, the sight only serving to send me spiraling higher in my need for him. Gripping his hips, I pull him back as I thrust into him, the sound of skin on skin echoing through the otherwise empty bedroom. Charlie is letting little soft moans leave his lips, and I long for more. How much pleasure can I wring from him and how loud will he get?

Reaching forward, I pull him upright, holding him on his knees with his back to my chest. He arches his back, putting one hand behind him to circle my neck and tilting his head to the side, showing me his pretty neck. I grip his hip with one hand, my fingers digging into his skin, and the other splayed across his chest as I pummel his hole with my cock, hips bucking wildly now. His neck beckons to me, the tight grip of him around my cock pushing me towards taking his blood as I’m giving him my dick.

I lick the skin between his ear and throat, hearing a whimper of need leave his lips. He is salty, yet sweet and I want more of him. I want so much more. I open my mouth and let go, sinking my teeth into his skin as my cock slides deep into his tight warm body. He cries out then and his whole body shudders in my hands like he’s just come. His hot blood fills my mouth, and I begin to pull greedy mouthfuls out of him, fucking into him hard as I take what I crave from his veins.

When I’ve had enough of him to leave him lightheaded and wanting, I slip my fangs from his throat and he slumps in my arms, but I do not stop fucking him. I cannot stop fucking him and he’s starting to push back against me with every thrust, so I know he is also not yet done.

“Rex,” he murmurs, drunken in lust and blood loss. “You feel so fucking good.”

“You are everything, Charlie. Everything.”

He tightens around me then, just for a split second, and I know he is close. Perhaps again, if the sink of my teeth into his body hasn’t already drawn an orgasm out of him. A low simmering heat licks through me, and I feel everything inside me tensing as I glide my cock in and out of Charlie’s body. I am close, so close, and as I thrust into him again, deep and fast, everything tenses inside me one last time before I am coming. I ride out my orgasm in his warm body, thrusting my stuttering hips as each spurt fills him with me. With one last, deep thrust, I pull Charlie back onto my lap, impaling him on my dick and watching as his gorgeous cock releases, milky white fluid spurting from the tip of him and sliding down his quivering length. He lolls his head back onto my shoulder, panting hard.

I expect him to move, but he doesn’t. He sits there, lazy on my lap, as I soften inside his body. When my cock slips out of him, he still does not move and I’m starting to think I’ve somehow broken him, but when he turns to face me, he offers a sweat slicked grin.

“Okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he pants, following that with a yawn. “Did you drink enough?”

I snicker softly, moving his hair off his neck so I can see the marks I’ve left there. From this awkward angle, I have to crane my neck to close them up, but I do manage it in the end. Traces of his blood linger and as I swallow them down, I am filled with a sense of rightness. A sense of clarity and understanding.

Charlie is mine.

Whether it be mates or fated or by pure chance that he has come to me, he is mine and I claim him. I close my eyes and tilt my head upwards to the ceiling and the stars beyond as Charlie starts to softly snore on my lap. I hold onto him there, asking the universe and the gods to make him always mine. To allow him to be by my side until the end of his life or the end of forever, whichever shall come first. I asked this of them before, hundreds of years ago and their answer was a resounding no, for Marius died the next day.

I hope they’re listening this time, because while I survived Marius being taken, I know I will not survive the loss of Charlie.

Hours later, I’m awoken by a soft voice humming a song I know. I open my eyes slowly to find Charlie, seated on the edge of the bed. His chest rises and falls as he hums the song I once sang, starting it over when he reaches the end. I can’t help but mouth the words to the death song I wrote for Marius as he died, while Charlie provides the tune, though his voice is cracking slightly as he carries the notes from his lungs.

When he reaches the end of the haunting melody again, he makes a sound like he means to start it over again, but instead he sighs, slouching where he sits on the mattress in his plaid pajama pants. He is silent for a few moments, but then slips from the bed. He must have dreamed again and is heading to paint what he saw. Since he arrived, his dreamless nights have increased, though there are still nights that push him out of our bed to go and paint. In the mornings, he’s shown me what he’s created, and we’ve had conversations about some of the events he’s seen. Instead of letting him go tonight though, I reach for him, gripping his wrist before he can leave.

“Oh shit,” he whispers, startling.

“It’s all right,” I murmur back. “Bad dream?”

Charlie nods, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands. He crawls back onto the bed and lays down, but I can see more tears gathering. I reach over and tuck a stray lock of hair behind his ear, gently running my fingertips down his saddened face. “Wanna talk about it?”

He snorts a soft laugh, wiping his eyes again. He sighs, then flops onto his back. “How did you survive it?”

“Which part?”

“Losing Marius. I saw the whole thing. The vampire in the garden, you running to his side. The song you wrote for him before he died. I only dreamed a snippet before, but this was more.” He turns his head to me. “How did you survive that?”

A stray tear slips from his eye, and I curse the fates again for burdening him with sadness so deep that dreams draw grief from him. It isn’t his to bear, yet he is the one paying the price for what was done long before he was even born. “I kept moving forward. I had a choice. Shift into learning what life without love was like or give up and end myself right there in the dirt beside him.”

“You can die?” he asks.

“I can, but it takes a lot. Remove my head or pull out my heart. The pure morning sun. I can be killed, Charlie. Nothing is unkillable.”

He is silent for a moment, deep in thought, then he rolls to face me again. “Did the seer die? The one in the castle?”

“Yes.”

“Was he a vampire?”

“No, he wasn’t. My brother used him for his gifts and offered nothing in return. Are you bothered by that?” Something is inside his brain, and I don’t know if it’s the dream or whatever else he has learned earlier taking up space in his thoughts.

“What happened to him?” he asks, softly and sadly. “How did he die?”

“I am not sure. I was long gone before his death. They say he went even more mad in the years after my brother took the throne.” I pause for a moment, choosing my words as carefully as I can. “Untrained seers can become unstable, Charlie. When we know it’s safe, I’d like to take you to meet with The Owner. He will have some idea how to save you from that fate, if it is indeed where you are headed for. Recall that we are not sure the nature of your sight as you are solely focused on my past instead of seeing present and future. Perhaps the madness that gripped the seer below the castle will not be yours to bear.”

“Oh, good.” He sighs. “Madness. Can’t wait to add that to my list of party tricks.” Silence enters the room again, but only briefly before he asks, “What was his name? The seer, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “He was never allowed to leave his quarters, and I was given no introduction. I remember very little of him.” And what I can remember, the screaming from beneath the castle and the twisted things he whispered to my brother’s listening ears, is something I will never share with Charlie.

“If this madness comes and takes me, you’ll remember me, right?”

“Charlie,” I say, reaching to cup his cheek in my hand. “You will never be forgotten. Even if you were to die, I would bury you with fine linens and jewels so that when you are dug up thousands of years from now and nothing of your body remains, there will still be proof of your existence and my love for you.”

“Love?”

“Why not? Fated, as we likely are.”

“It’s been, like, not even two months since we met.”

I laugh softly, knowing that is more time than shifters get. Their kind gets sort of a meet, fuck, love in ten seconds flat sort of pull that drives their souls to connect the moment they scent their other half. “Ask Finn about how fast mates work, if you’re concerned. I assure you; two months is a long span of time for fated connections.”

Charlie hums thoughtfully, then offers a small smile. “I feel it too, you know.”

“Yeah?” My heart flutters in my chest at the thought that my devotion to him is returned. He nods, then his eyes look away from mine for a split second and I sense there’s more he needs to talk about. “What’s on your mind, Charlie?”

“Would you ever make me a vampire? Or does that make me dangerous if I’m just going to lose my mind at some point?”

Heavy thoughts for such a late hour. “You aren’t going to lose yourself, Charlie. I won’t allow that to happen. The seer at the castle’s fate is not yours. Forget him and instead remember Pythia, for she did not go mad and lose herself to her gifts.” I pause, waiting for the words to sink in before starting again. “If you wish to become eternal, you need only ask. The gift of vampirehood is yours to have, should you wish it.”

My entire body warms as I consider being with him forever. I have taken such care to not mention it, not knowing how he would respond, but this conversation fills me with hope for a split second. Then I recall that Charlie has now seen all the moments before Marius died and knows that he would not allow me to turn him. He now knows, if he did not before, the way I flayed my own arms open in a failed attempt to close up Marius and how I had rued the moment for he wasn’t vampire and couldn’t heal himself. My anguish and grief from years ago sits in Charlie’s eyes and when he blinks, the tears that slip down his face are mine.

“If you accept the change, Charlie, it needs to be for yourself. Not for me. Marius made his decision to remain mortal for himself, and you saw that at his death, he was. I regretted that he wouldn’t let me turn him vampire like me, but that was my own selfishness talking. I don’t want what you saw in my face or heard in my voice so many years ago to have any weight in your decision. It must be for you.”

“You were so lonely,” he whispers, wiping his eyes with his hands. “I hate that. I don’t want you to be lonely and lost. Even with the wolf in the trees, you were alone.”

“What wolf?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him, but I heard him. I could feel his presence there with you. Maybe he was hiding in the trees?”

“Charlie, there was no wolf in the trees.”

“Sure, there was,” he says, new tears falling. “He howled as you buried Marius beneath the garden. I could feel it inside me somehow within the dream. He was mourning for you and howling to Mother Moon in sorrow because you were so lonely and so lost. Don’t you remember that?”

Mother Moon, who has sent him protection though he does not have a wolf. “Did Bowman tell you of Mother Moon?”

“No?” he replies, sounding a bit confused. He wipes tears off his cheeks, and looks into my eyes. “I know it from my dream, I think? Are you sure there wasn’t a wolf?”

“I am sure.” Though I am growing less certain of the scant information I have about Charlie and who he is. Marius reborn or a shifter without a wolf of his own?

“I don’t want you to be lonely and lost,” Charlie whispers, closing his tired eyes and leaning into his pillow again. “I spent a lot of time after my mom died feeling that way, and it isn’t fair. I won’t leave you to be lonely and lost again without me, Rex.”

I wouldn’t be lonely and lost without him, because while I don’t know the ins and outs of having a mate, I do know enough of shifter fates to understand that I would not survive beyond the moment his heart stops beating. Whether by choice or by pure heartbreak, his death would likely be my own. I don’t dare say this out loud and let this sway him, though, instead leaning forward to kiss his forehead, feeling his skin beneath my lips.

“It must be for you,” I whisper, pulling back and settling my head down on my pillow again.

Charlie nods, giving me a half smile. “It worked.”

“What did?”

“Your voice,” he comments, yawning. “It stops the pain and soothes the parts of me that demand that I paint my dreams. Thank you.”

“Always, Charlie.” Whether he be Marius or not, he is mine always.