The Neverloving Dead (Haunted Hearts)

CHAPTER 5

RULE 3: NEVER GET SUCKED IN

PATRICK

“ S o there we have it,” Patrick said, purposefully not looking at Gethin, whose name he knew now, anyway. “We’ll find another way.” They were sitting in two leather Chesterfield chairs in Stuart’s lounge, which Patrick had insisted upon so this ‘Gethin’ wouldn’t have to travel back through a wall when he was so weak. He’d explained most of the problem: how feeding a ghost would drain his energy; how it would set him back; how he, Patrick, might lose his mind if he had to stay here much longer; how it would be difficult to do anyway. Dangerous.

For Gethin, he’d stressed.

He hadn’t mentioned some distant, inexplicable sense that it might be dangerous for him , too, for reasons other than draining his energy, which made no sense.

Nor had he mentioned what had happened to him after Stuart had climaxed – the fact he’d felt almost visible at the same time as being solid . That he’d even thought Stuart had seen him. Just briefly.

Or an impression of him.

That meant he was nearly there. Now, more than ever, he mustn’t jeopardise his one path out of this unending, meaningless emptiness. How long had solidity and visibility together been his Holy Grail? How long had he worked for them? The living had no idea what they possessed, just in those two simple things.

There could be no better way to ruin that than regularly siphoning off his energy to build another ghost’s solidity for them. Let alone a ghost who was already on the razor’s edge of oblivion. The only reason Patrick knew it was even possible was because a ghost had once done it for him. Once . When he’d nearly starved himself after his accidental killing.

The ghost who’d saved him hadn’t fed him repeatedly though, as a way to make him solid. If he, Patrick, did that for Gethin, he’d have to find sleeping men nearly constantly to make up for it. And that was without the idea of this ghost sucking his cock over and over. Again and again. His lips wrapped around it.

Patrick swallowed, unnecessarily. The thought was almost intolerable.

Unsettling.

That was without the fact it would clearly traumatise Gethin to do it.

He folded his hands, doing his best to process the frankly horrendous tale the Welshman had just told him – with almost none of his customary anger – about what had happened to him. How he’d died. Why he couldn’t get his form the way Patrick did.

Even by the standards of some of the many, many horrible deaths Patrick had heard about in nearly two and half centuries of existence, it was appalling.

And he understood, at last, the Welshman’s difficulty with how he fed. Why he saw Patrick as a monster.

Again, Patrick wasn’t sure he wasn’t one.

He looked at Gethin across the coffee table, a little guiltily, wishing he could scrub the Welshman’s words from his ears. Again, he thought of how he’d drilled down, thirsty and unknowing, into that last spark of life. Of the sheer amount of energy it had given him. Of how he wished, even now, that he could give it back.

“Right?” Gethin said, as if he’d been waiting. His arms were folded, colours still oozing faintly from him. “What other way?”

Patrick stroked the cover of his book gently, uncomfortable. The fact was he didn’t know many other ways – not if the other ghost was sickened by human bodies. Gethin had already ruled out blood banks on the grounds he’d probably take more lives than he saved, and now sperm banks too, after what Patrick had said. “Animals?” he suggested.

“Animals?”

“Their blood, I mean,” he added hastily. “Though you’d have to get them to stay still. They tend to spook at ghosts.” He hadn’t intended the pun.

Gethin’s lip curled as if he lacked words heinous enough to describe Patrick.

Patrick looked downwards, drumming his fingers on the book. “And you’re certain he’s going to kill again?”

“Crikey, can you just stop with the whole supercilious thing? Of course I’m bloody certain.” He sighed, rubbing his throat, which he did a lot.

Patrick hadn’t really doubted the killing thing. Not after the story. It had just been a hope. He stroked the book, comforted, as always, to feel its leather cover under his fingertips. It had once been his Bible. He’d died with it stuffed in his robes, his way of holding onto God as he’d gone. The words had faded over time, as they’d left his memory; and he couldn’t write new ones, since even if he’d had a pen, the only shapes ghosts could form in limbo were circles, reflecting the maddening pointlessness of ‘life’ here. The pages displayed whatever he remembered, though. Some biblical passages, yes, but also snippets of philosophy or poetry, even parts of some novels he’d read: A Picture of Dorian Grey, Orlando, The Well of Loneliness .

“The feelings usually kick in each morning, then get worse as the day goes on.” Gethin rubbed his face. “I dunno what the fuck to do.”

Patrick didn’t reply. What was there to say?

Gethin huffed, rubbing his throat again. “I mean one thing I do know is I don’t want to suck your ghost-dick. Like fair play, I’m sorry I asked. I didn’t realise that’s what this ‘feeding’ thing would involve. For ghosts too, I mean.” He ground his eyes into his palms, then looked up, blinking. “Can I not just suck your finger or something?”

It annoyed Patrick. Not so much the fact his plan had been going perfectly well until he’d selected Stuart as a meal – but the reminder of how hideous the Welshman plainly found him. He held up an ugly hand. Wiggled his ghastly, bloodless fingers. “You’re welcome to try.”

And why in all heaven had he said that? He knew it wouldn’t work. All that would happen was that he’d have to watch a beautiful, angry man suck his finger. “But there’d be no point,” he added. “It’s the orgasm that matters.” He set his hand awkwardly back onto the book. “It’s a large release of energy. Without that, I’d be taking your energy, since mine is stronger. Whatever you sucked.”

Had his voice gone quieter as he’d said the last three words? Lower? He swallowed, again forgetting he didn’t need to.

Gethin gave him a long look. Patrick felt rather as if he were having his soul weighed. He felt monstrous. Gethin had told him what had happened, and what had he done? Waggled his fingers and started talking about orgasms.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “How can a ghost have an orgasm?”

Patrick winced. He was feckless and insensitive. Of course the Welshman hadn’t tried – not with how he’d died. It would have been the last thing he wanted. He should probably change the subject. Stop making everything worse. “Memory, I think. The mind is powerful.” He realised he was stroking the book again and stopped. “Though there’s more to it than that. Orgasms are stronger the more energy one has.” He’d masturbated a few times since he’d died – sometimes in solid form, sometimes not. He’d eventually given up on both, since he needed all his energy for rebuilding his form. The truth was, he’d had more orgasms when he’d been alive than in his entire, long death.

Though it was better not to think about that. Or to tell Gethin. The man didn’t need to hear about his piteous orgasm count.

“Is there jizz?”

“Is there...?”

“Come,” Gethin said. “Ejaculate. Sperm. When a ghost orgasms.”

Patrick tried not to think about that either. “Obviously not.”

“Can you try not to patr– You know what? Never mind. I just thought I might be able to manage the sucking if I knew there wouldn’t be any come. I was just trying to think of ways to get stronger, to do something , you know? Like I can’t go anywhere so, short of my killer turning up and attacking Stuart here, I’m not going to find him, am I?” He huffed again. “And even if he did, how the sodding heck would I stop him?”

He wasn’t actually considering it, was he?

Gethin raised a broad, tanned hand. “Don’t worry. I told you I don’t want to suck you off.”

Again, Patrick tried not to let his ranklement show. Gethin had looked so contemptuous as he’d spoken. Of course he had. “Well,” he said, hearing his own cool drawl. “There I was thinking stopping your killer was your priority – the entire reason you’re holding yourself in limbo. But apparently, your commitment stops short of fellating one consenting man who can’t even ejaculate!” He broke off, reminding himself: anger lost energy.

He’d get his body back. His chance.

Gethin flinched. Or possibly it was just a frown. “One consenting man? You just said you didn’t want me to!”

“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t,” he snapped. And what the fuck was he doing now? He didn’t consent. He had said that. He was finally getting close to his future – the last thing he needed was to be drained. Especially whilst watching Gethin’s disgust.

“Gosh, well, aren’t you the gracious one?” Gethin replied, as if Patrick had somehow offended him . He rubbed the back of his head. “Look, forget it. It’s not your problem. I don’t want it, you don’t want it and it sounds like it’d make a pig’s ear of your plans.”

Your foul incubus plans , he might as well have said. Patrick drummed the book cover again, more sharply. “Well, if you’re going to solve your problem, it looks like it’s an incubus, your delicious, handsome flatmate, straws of semen, or getting animals to stand still while you drink their blood like a vampire, doesn’t it?” He knew he was deflecting. He didn’t need to care that Gethin thought him grotesque, he told himself. It didn’t mean nobody else would ever choose him.

“Delicious, is he? I thought you said you didn’t do it for pleasure.”

“I was being flippant. This is purely about practicalities: bringing your killer to justice enables us both to move on. In opposite directions,” he added pointedly.

Gethin scowled, as if he found Patrick confusing. Another thin ribbon of colour floated up from his shirt, wrapping back around his bicep. “Only one of us is trying to move on,” he said eventually. “ You want to go backwards.”

“ I’m damned,” Patrick returned. Again, he sounded more snappish than he’d have liked. “So my choice of direction is limited.”

He had to stop letting his feelings rise. Stop letting this ghost get to him. Emotions are dangerous , he reminded himself. He packed them down.

“Right, well, in that case.” Gethin stood, continuing to glower in the same strange way. As if Patrick had said the exact, awful thing he’d been priming himself to hear. Patrick couldn’t see what.

“What?” he said. Was Gethin about to fly into another rage? Leap across the coffee table and attack him? Unravel and move on after all, beaten by the very circumstances that had kept him here?

Gethin began moving closer, footfalls as silent as any ghost, despite the fact he still used his human gait. From his expression, the bootheels should have echoed on Stuart’s floorboards like gallows drums. He stopped about a foot away, navel level with Patrick’s eyes, looking down, as if Patrick were a wall. “You’re right,” he said. “If this is what I have to do, it’s what I have to do.” He lifted his eyebrows, barely. “How does it work?”

Patrick tried to dampen some stray feeling or another, reminding himself: feelings were for when he had his body.

“We can only touch when we’re both solid or both non-solid, right?” Gethin pressed.

What on earth was he doing? He couldn’t mean... “Yes,” Patrick said anyway. He paused, evening out his tone. “Though you lack control and you’re too weak to maintain solidity right now. If yours dropped, I could kill you.” He forced himself to keep looking stoically upwards, as if he didn’t find Gethin standing this close odd in the slightest.

“Right, so we’d both have to stay like this, would we: non -solid?”

He just couldn’t be suggesting... “Yes.” This wasn’t really about to happen, was it? Gethin wasn’t actually saying he wanted Patrick to feed him? He had a fleeting imagination of Gethin going to his knees. Or was he waiting for Patrick to stand?

Everything suddenly seemed equally unlikely.

“Do you still consent?”

Did he still ... he had implied he would, hadn’t he?

He realised his thumbs were stroking the cover again. He should say no, he thought. Because Gethin shouldn’t – though he supposed that was Gethin’s business. But also because he, Patrick, was meant to be saving energy. Building it.

For the future.

To enjoy it.

To enjoy men.

He looked up at the one in front of him: mostly see-through, yes, but muscular, comely, vibrant.

Even the thought made him feel vile and immoral. Everything Gethin already thought he was.

Would it help atone for the man he’d killed, he wondered, if he was giving life force instead of taking it? It would help stop a serial killer, some part of him added, unhelpfully.

And it had been so very, very long. Would one feeding really set him back so much? Just as a trial?

Gethin looked like he was steeling himself to wrestle lions. “Do you?”

Under the gaze, Patrick was stunned by how small his objections looked. How hard they were to see. “Yes.”

It came out so quietly he might not have known he’d said it, had it not been for Gethin pressing the button through on his fly and lowering the zip. Patrick didn’t know where to look. Gethin parted the material and pushed the jeans down. The entire groin area of the jeans vanished, leaving denim material around Gethin’s thighs only, fabric fading into the skin. One never really took off one’s death clothes in limbo, but they could be disappeared. Like this.

Patrick might not know where to look, but his eyes weren’t having the same doubts. They roved hungrily over the toned muscle and bare skin, as if they didn’t see naked groins every single night. This was no different, he told them. To no avail.

He has an aversion to sex , he reminded himself instead.

Perhaps because of that, it was something of a shock to see Gethin’s entire pubic area was shaven, as it must have been on the night of his death. His hipbones were forward-facing, rude-looking, somehow. His cock was soft, the foreskin hugging the head like a cowl. The ridge was visible beneath, even in the gloom with Gethin himself partly transparent.

“Would you mind going first, then?” Gethin said in a rather transactional tone. He made no move to touch himself. His cock just hung there, resting on his naked balls.

Patrick forced his gaze up. It was probably just the fact Gethin was standing up, he told himself. He wasn’t accustomed to vertical men. Or maybe it was because it was the first penis someone had offered him since the ghost who’d saved him, centuries ago. Obviously, he’d have some sort of reaction, even if Gethin looked more determined than desirous. “You don’t have enough energy,” Patrick said, throat tight. Again, he felt the dim, creeping memory of the noose.

As if there were a threat. As if Gethin were a threat.

Just the fear of killing him , he told himself. Or of me losing more energy when it’s my turn. Naturally, those things would make him feel strange – as if his future was shrinking to nothing all over again. His groin throbbed. His throat seemed to burn. “I’d drain you ,” he added. “That’s the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.”

Gethin frowned, jaw setting. “I don’t mean me coming,” he said. “I get that that would drain me, but neither of us are solid, so it should be okay otherwise, shouldn’t it?”

He was right, of course. If Patrick didn’t get carried away...

Which did feel like an ‘if’.

He looked back at Gethin’s penis. He could still see straight through it, and it hadn’t got any harder. He did have an urge to take it in his mouth, to make it hard, to see if he could taste anything from a ghost and, if so, what Gethin would taste like. He pushed the urge down. Gethin had said he didn’t want this. He plainly found Patrick repugnant. And besides which, he reminded himself yet again, he didn’t want to lose his future.

He needed it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, surprised at the soft flutter of disappointment in his chest. “I can’t.”

Gethin’s expression was a little too level, a little too hard. “I see. Incubi can’t suck people unless they’re unconscious, is it?”

Patrick knew the “is it” was just something Welsh people added sometimes, but it sat awkwardly anyway: as if Gethin wanted him to agree about how awful he was. He looked away. “Actually, I meant...” But what more was there to say? He’d already told Gethin he’d waited a long time. It hardly seemed as important as a killer on the loose.

It wasn’t as important as a killer on the loose.

Or Gethin bravely baring himself, after what had happened to him.

Gethin sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. Look, it’s not... I just needed to see if I could do it, you know? If I went first... well, I thought it might even things up, give me a bit of control over things. Trust me, I wouldn’t have asked otherwise. I’d have just got on with sucking you.” He ran a hand down his prick, pulling and releasing the foreskin a few times, looking troubled.

Patrick’s eyes followed the movement. He hadn’t missed the I wouldn’t have asked. Obviously someone like Gethin would never ask someone like him. He positioned the book over his groin, not wanting Gethin to know that he, at least, was aroused. He should keep everything as professional as possible, he decided. Push down any feelings he might have, and just help the man.

After what had happened to the poor fellow, he did deserve help.

He arranged his face. He was more than two centuries old. He’d sucked tens of thousands of penises. This one wasn’t any different, he told himself. He didn’t need to worry about it – any more than he needed to worry about killing Gethin. If anyone knew how to be careful when fellating a chap, he did.

He reached out, touching Gethin’s hip with his knuckles. They looked hideous there: white and knobbly against the tanned golden skin. He looked up, cringing with humiliation. “Would you still like to try?”

Gethin frowned, but didn’t move away. Eventually, he huffed heavily, as if trying to ease something. “Mm,” he managed. Not a resounding yes.

Patrick’s eyes dropped back to the lovely shape, which was easier to look at than Gethin’s judgement. Perhaps he should just lick the cock or something, he thought. Suck it, but gently. Give Gethin plenty of time to see him there and change his mind.

What the hell am I thinking? he chided himself. He could almost feel Gethin watching. Every few seconds, a wisp of warm colour bled from his hip, his hands. Patrick could see a potted yucca through his midriff. Gethin did need this – that was obvious. Patrick should just get on and do it. If he did it right, Gethin might even conquer his problem and, after a couple of ‘meals’ from Patrick, begin feeding himself . From the living. Then Patrick could resume his plans for corporeality, and all would be well.

Those plans seemed suddenly very far away.

He curled his fingers lightly around the cockhead. He didn’t push back the skin. He could barely feel it between his fingers as it was. Gethin was completely still.

Patrick opened his mouth, wondering if he should make himself watch the Welshman anyway, for signs – not of waking, for a change, but of disintegration. Instead, he licked the tip. Barely a touch, really. Just enough to test whether it might cause an outpouring of energy into his mouth. Gethin seemed calm now, but Patrick had seen how volatile he could be...

He looked up, despite himself.

Gethin’s expression was intense. Concentrated. The brown eyes seemed paler – caramel or honey-coloured – though there was no extra light in the room.

He licked again, more carefully than he ever had, hoping he wasn’t doing something terrible and wrong. Hoping, equally, that Gethin wouldn’t find him so foul that he pushed him away after all. He wished he knew some way to make the experience more pleasant for him. He tried to remember what the incubus he’d fed from had said and done, when Patrick had been at his weakest – never in danger of passing ‘on’, since damnation prevented that, but starved far beyond the point an undamned ghost could have ‘survived’.

The creature had been absolutely filthy. He remembered that . A natural at what they now called ‘dirty talk’ and able, astonishingly, to transform into different beings to seek out the fantasies of those it fed from for its energy. It had grown so strong, it could travel not just London but the entire globe to do so, never killing anyone. Just bringing pleasure. It had turned itself into all manner of things for Patrick: some exotic, others commonplace, some pleasing, others gross and off-putting, gradually refining its forms until Patrick had been sucking with abandon, guzzling the ghost’s energy like a calf at its mother’s teat. Its energy had been so powerful that when it had come, Patrick had seen his own body gain in form – watched his spidery hands, splayed in front of him, emerge from the dust.

It was the moment he’d seen his future. He’d never have those sorts of skills, but he could eventually be free of the interminable, bodiless loneliness of limbo. With discipline.

He kept licking Gethin’s penis, thinking again of the dirty talk.

“You have a splendid prick,” he muttered, feeling like a fool. In all his years arousing strangers, he’d never once had to speak to them. Now he was trying, the words sounded stiff and formal.

Not that they weren’t true. It was splendid – the tone muted and even, the head gorgeously defined inside its shroud of skin, and all of it a fine size, even semi-transparent and less than half-hard, as it was.

“ Diolch ,” muttered Gethin. “Thanks.” There was a subtle change in his energy: fractional relaxation, possibly, coupled with the faintest increase in density around his groin. Patrick could still see the yucca through him, but less clearly.

He began to stroke the skin lightly, circling a finger underneath, running it softly down to the balls and back again. The line lit white in the finger’s wake, like a fingernail drawn over living skin. Gethin’s hips shifted. As if he found it interesting.

Patrick did it again, letting his thumb brush the balls this time, a little ham-handedly. His brain seemed to have stuck. He was usually so confident in his movements. The outline of Gethin’s penis flickered, filling in as it grew a little, despite Patrick’s clumsiness.

That was encouraging, especially as it wasn’t blood filling it, but Gethin’s own memories of arousal. Living bodies could respond regardless of desire. But Gethin was a ghost. Any arousal now was all his.

Nervously, as if handling the relics of a saint, Patrick eased back the foreskin, revealing a glans only a few shades duskier and mauver than the air. He ran a thumb over the slit. If his heart could still have thumped, it would be pounding like hooves of death. He followed the thumb with his tongue. Again, just the tip.

Lightly, he circled the head, checking along the shaft for signs Gethin was either fading or losing additional ribbons. It was difficult to say this close whether it was getting any denser, but it was certainly firming up. Gethin plainly had plenty of good memories of sex prior to his ordeal.

Which just made Patrick feel even more inadequate.

It struck him, for perhaps the first time since he’d become an incubus, that he was inexperienced. Not in terms of numbers. Not even in terms of technique – though he wasn’t sure arousing a man so indiscernibly he stayed asleep, said much. But in terms of this : having a man standing in front of him. Watching. Interacting . In life, Patrick had only had one lover – and he’d run off for a life in France when his dalliance with Patrick had been discovered. Patrick had felt too unworldly to go with him. Too afraid of his feelings. After all, he and Julius had hardly explored each other.

He concentrated, burning with embarrassment, wishing he could think of something to say before he filled his mouth. Most of what the filthy ghost had said to him was long forgotten. The rest would sound all wrong coming from him.

He wondered, as his mouth engulfed Gethin’s cock, how many lovers Gethin had had.

Gethin hissed.

Patrick set to, watching the man’s belly studiously for any changes in solidity – either towards formlessness and death, or in the opposite direction: towards some strong emotion, such as disgust, that might render Gethin abruptly solid and drain Patrick . There was no taste, no warmth as he bobbed. He could feel the shaft but not as strongly as if they’d both been solid. Even so, Patrick’s own erection began to poke at his robes. Gethin looked sumptuous looming above him, naked but for the denim merging with his sizeable thighs. Everything shaven.

When he eventually summoned the courage to glance up fully, Gethin was still frowning, but now as if something was puzzling him. Patrick’s neat, sparing technique, perhaps. He wished he could suck harder, more vigorously, but he was both unfamiliar with how to do so and afraid of sucking Gethin away. And anyway, Gethin wouldn’t want him to, he told himself. Gethin didn’t want him .

“Stop.”

Patrick halted, halfway along Gethin’s cock. It didn’t mean he’d been doing it badly, he told himself. There could be any number of reasons why Gethin had halted things after barely three minutes.

He looked up – not moving in case movement caused Gethin to lose control – readying himself for solidity the moment that looked like happening. He felt ridiculous, speared on the man’s prick like a harpooned fish.

In fact, Gethin just looked concerned. It was a few seconds before Patrick saw why.

Gethin’s cock might be hard, but his form was fading. A long strip of colour was drifting eerily from his neck, lifting in the air like a veil in a breeze. Another was unravelling from his golden hair. One side of his body was blurring. Patrick immediately released his cock.

Gethin looked like he might be sick.

Patrick felt the noose again. He retreated from Gethin’s penis, giving the man space. He didn’t know what was causing it: aversion to Patrick, a memory from Gethin’s murder, or perhaps the act reminded Gethin of Patrick doing the same thing to Stuart. He ought to feel relieved, he thought: he had been doing it poorly. He’d been thrown by the realisation that, other than the incubus, this was only the second conscious man he’d ever fellated – and that the last had been more than two centuries ago. Gethin would have had far better, countless times, even without the paltry sensations of limbo.

The other ghost dropped to his knees, pressing his palms to his eyes as if holding them in. Patrick held his book, not knowing what else to do. Afraid to touch him again.

After a while, the scraps of colour began gathering back in.

Gethin’s face emerged from his hands, expression determined. “Do it,” he muttered.

Patrick had almost forgotten why they’d begun. He couldn’t mean... “You’re too weak–”

“I’m not gonna get stronger any other way, am I?” He grimaced, as if his stomach was in pain – which wasn’t possible. “I have to lie down, though.” He crawled away, twisting onto his back over the coffee table, closing his eyes, hovering there, preserving energy.

Patrick wasn’t sure what Gethin wanted him to do. For once, Gethin looked more dead than he did. He couldn’t just crawl over him.

Have his way...

“Please, Patrick.” It was a bare mutter. The colours were starting to leak again, spooling out thinly then looping back in. Gethin looked exhausted.

The absurd thought struck Patrick that it was the first time since he’d died that anyone had used his name.

He wasn’t sure why it mattered – only that it did. He couldn’t remember ever feeling more discomposed. Not just the name, but this ghost. He seemed to be turning everything upside-down. All of Patrick’s plans. All his separation.

He remembered telling Gethin he didn’t ‘go in’. Not in any sense. He just sucked. And sucked and sucked. That was all he ever did. Because he had no body. Because, as he’d told Gethin, no one could consent if they couldn’t see him.

And because nobody would if they could .

Except this man was asking. Asking .

This was purely functional, he told himself. Nothing felt upside-down and he wasn’t discomposed. He felt nothing. It was a transaction, exactly as Gethin had implied: cost and gain. He, Patrick, was merely helping a fellow ghost as he had once been helped: ‘paying it forwards’ as they said now...

And besides, he needed the practice, he thought. He could look at this as learning how to enjoy his body once he finally had it.

He felt horrible.

Gethin just lay there. Half-dead, it seemed.

Pulling his robes up to his hips, exposing his shamefully hard penis, Patrick lifted a leg and straddled Gethin’s neck, taking care to keep himself as insubstantial as possible so as not to absorb anything from the ghost; wishing, for the first time in a long time, that he’d just died on the hangman’s scaffold.

“...the cassock off,” Gethin mumbled. His eyes were, in fact, open a crack. Patrick couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t tell if he was mocking. Gethin was beautiful. Patrick was colourless and cadaverous-looking. “All knees and elbows,” his grandmother used to put it, more kindly. The Welshman was right, though. If Patrick left it on, it would be in the way.

Mortified, he hitched the garment over his head, where it dangled behind him as if on a short string. As with Gethin’s jeans, it wouldn’t disappear entirely – this was as close as he’d ever managed to get. Ordinarily, he wanted almost nothing more than to be rid of the entire godly outfit. Right now, he was already looking forward to pulling it back on. He’d never felt more naked.

His cock was just there – drifting above Gethin’s mouth.

He looked at it now: long, bent and thin. The balls were streaked with dark hair, as was his belly. Not enough to make it a feature and call himself an ‘otter’ or a ‘bear’, as he’d heard men do these days. As Stuart was, he supposed. He, Patrick, just looked wraithlike and wan.

“Well, there you go,” Gethin said. Did that mean he was disappointed? Repulsed? He opened his mouth. Huffed. Lay there.

Fighting his humiliation, Patrick leaned forwards, lowering his hips above Gethin’s head, looking down to line up with Gethin’s mouth. Before he could back out entirely, he slid his cock in a few inches, watching it disappear. This was to stop Gethin dying, he reminded himself, beginning to move. Patrick was doing him a favour. It didn’t matter if the Welshman was disgusted or underwhelmed by him.

Gethin didn’t try to turn away anyway, which was a blessing. He closed his mouth around Patrick’s cock, opened his throat with an ease born of significant experience, and took it. He frowned, but didn’t look up. Patrick could see from here that the man’s dick was soft.

He couldn’t decide whether to shut his eyes or not. On one hand, it was mortifying: Gethin had been raped and here Patrick was, fucking his mouth with his unattractive dick whilst the man could barely move. On the other hand, he hadn’t had his prick in anything that wasn’t his own hand for two hundred years and it looked marvellous.

The latter only exacerbated the former.

So, of course, his eyes stayed open – glued to the act. He’d resisted sex for so long. He hadn’t even masturbated since 1924: a few minutes of weakness caused by drifting into a flat above the Strand Theatre and finding Ivor Novello pleasuring himself in the bath. He’d forgotten how wonderful it felt. Even in this lesser, non-solid form. Gethin’s mouth was like silk. He clamped his lips shut, trying not to make a noise – anything so that Gethin wouldn’t realise he was enjoying it.

Gethin’s mouth tightened just slightly, as if he were gaining energy already. Or possibly to encourage Patrick to get it over with. If so, he needn’t worry, Patrick thought: validating as it might feel to prove his stamina and prowess, he was going to finish in a demeaningly short time. Gethin’s open throat was superb. No warmth, of course, but Patrick was sliding in and out freely by now, the tip squashing itself into the tight passage each time.

Gethin’s cheeks tightened a little more, carving hollows under his cheekbones, creating a truly heavenly seal.

Patrick began fucking harder, hips moving of their own accord, trying to stop himself grunting like a common beast. He could feel his orgasm rising: not as strong as in life, but the sensations still seemed to blot out his thoughts as they grew. All he could think about was the energy coalescing in his groin, gathering and thickening there, heating him somehow. He didn’t speak. Even if he could have, he wouldn’t have.

Gethin mustn’t think he was taking pleasure from this.

All the same, the sight of his ugly cock in the Welshman’s perfect mouth was... stimulating. Hypnotising. He bit his lip hard, desire surging, urging him deeper into Gethin’s throat. Appalled, he resisted. Gethin looked up, gaze as steady as his suction. The energy changed, seeming to hang there for a moment, immobile, deepening. Then Patrick bit back another grunt, something swelling and rushing through him, relaxing as it poured from his balls and arse into the man’s gullet.

His first orgasm in a hundred years. Since Ivor Novello.

He’d never wanted to cry out so much. Not at anything. But he mustn’t. He shouldn’t even be feeling things – anything – he reprimanded himself as the Welshman’s eyes closed under a frown, mouth still clamped around his cock, sucking pulse after delirious pulse from him. Patrick let him. The man’s mouth was a miracle. He wanted to give him energy, wanted him to keep suckling...

At the idea, his throat constricted. Again, he had the sense of his future narrowing out of existence. Every second of this was weakening him, he reminded himself. Setting him back.

How had he let himself forget?

He looked down again, to the spectacular sight of Gethin gourmandising his penis. Still suckling. He glanced at his hand. A little less opaque than it had been.

“Enough,” he said. Gethin mustn’t take too much. He couldn’t kill Patrick in one go – Patrick was too strong for that – but he could already tell he’d need several meals to make up for it.

Gethin swallowed again, then relaxed. He, at least, looked stronger. More vibrant than Patrick had ever seen him. It increased the tanned glow of his face. Patrick tried not to notice it.

Carefully, he lifted his spent penis from Gethin’s mouth. It was still hard.

Then he pulled his robes down, gliding away from Gethin and off to one side, folding himself back into the Chesterfield armchair, setting his book on his lap again.

“Well? Was it okay?” Gethin said. “Did you lose too much?”

Patrick almost told him the truth – that in fact he’d lost quite a bit; that they probably shouldn’t do it again; that Gethin was going to have to try feeding from a living human next time, which would give him far more energy in any case.

But he suddenly didn’t want to think it might not happen again.

He paused, looking at his knees rather than Gethin. Was it just because it hadn’t happened for so long? Might it simply be surprise? He usually kept pleasure so firmly away from himself. In which case, wasn’t it possible the feeling might lessen with repetition? Hadn’t he just realised how inexperienced he was? How unready he was for doing this with the living...

“Actually, I lost less than I thought I would,” he lied. He could manage it, couldn’t he? So long as he got ‘extra feeds’ from elsewhere.

He could help Gethin and stay strong.

If Gethin wanted that.

Gethin sat up, looking at his own thigh as if checking its density. “So you’re okay to help me build my strength that way?” He glanced up, the honey-brown eyes bright in the gloom, muscular front looking twice as appealing as it had. He really was stunning. “For now,” Gethin added.

Patrick opened his book, peering at it even though no words appeared on the page since he wasn’t actually thinking about books. He shouldn’t be thinking about Gethin either. Desire was an emotion. A strong one. He had to avoid it.

He knew what it cost.

“Yes,” he said, anyway, turning the page, not looking up. “I think that would be a good idea.”

It was simple, wasn’t it? All he had to do was hunt more And stay detached.