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The crackle and pop of the dying fire in the forge hissed as rain started to fall, blown in by small gusts of wind past the thatch of the open-sided hut. Smoke carried across the small farmstead as it sputtered to a glorious death underneath the smouldering coals.
At least until tomorrow.
Amongst the sumac trees near the cottage built of river stones, a black cat with mismatched eyes played with a vole it had caught between its lair and the berry bush nearby. The soft rustle of it made the man standing in the yard smile slightly around the ribbon held between his teeth.
Simon Riley stood in the middle of the yard, replaiting his hair from where it had frizzed out during his work at the forge while the drizzle fell in a soft hush around him through the trees. It dampened the shoulders of his black tunic enough past his own sweat that it grew uncomfortably sticky. Tying the blue ribbon back in the end of his dirty blond hair that tinged just this side of red in the sun—one of the only marks of vanity he allowed himself—he reached behind his neck and hauled his shirt up over his head to toss it back through the open wall of the forge where it fell over the anvil. He had hopes it would be dry by the time he was willing to put it back on.
Striding through the clearing around the cottage, he headed for the creek to kneel at the bank. The water ran clear over the rounded river stones that glittered when the sun wasn’t hiding behind dreary clouds. Taking cupped handfuls of cool water, he scrubbed the soot from his arms below where his tunic had covered. He braced himself and splashed it over his face to get the grit out of his eyelashes and nose.
He reconsidered a bath and rose to sit on the stump of a tree he’d cleared his first summer here to pull his boots off. Sighing quietly through his nose, he pushed his trousers off and laid them over the stump to stand nude on the bank. With the cool water, he stripped away the rest of the day’s sweat after wading to a depth where he could sit down on a larger rock and be covered to his waist.
Rough calluses caught against the tender skin of his ribs and his inner thighs. Whispers of sin and the wrongness of what he was and wanted to be drifted across the back of his mind, but he’d been alone out here for years. No man would want one such as he with his towering height and deep voice and wide shoulders and his unwillingness to be a delicate flower in a dress. Out here, he was just Simon Riley, a loner woodsman that only came into town to trade for more iron and other goods that he couldn’t grow on his own.
Out here, he was alone with himself. No twittering cousins to tell him he was being improper. No pastor telling him he was committing crimes against God. No mother looking at him forlornly when he had a strong opinion about marriage.
No guilt when his hand slid between his thighs and dipped down into slick heat in the midst of the cool water, molten by comparison.
His head fell back with a sigh as he slicked his fingertips around the bud that made him feel euphoria before slipping into himself. The stretch of never having a man made the burn all that much more enjoyable. A quiet moan slipped from between his lips, and he moved with purpose to release the tension of working the forge all morning.
A hitch of breath that wasn’t his own made his eyes snap up to the opposite bank of the creek. His heart stopped in his chest when he saw one of the young men from the village—Henry he thought his name was—leaning around the trunk of an oak. One of the sons of the baker.
And right at that moment, Henry’s eyes were locked on where Simon was spreading himself open, frozen, beneath the water that was crystal clear.
“Yer no man,” Henry whispered. “Yer a witch come to seduce me to the ways of the Devil ‘imself.”
Simon’s eyes widened as fear spiked into his chest. “Henry—”
The man—little more than a boy—turned and ran toward home.
Simon cursed and shoved himself up out of the water in a rush of splashing droplets. He struggled his wet legs into his pants and picked up his boots to run back toward the cottage. Spotting Demona along his way, he scooped the cat up into his arms and shut them both into the cottage, throwing the lock.
His hands were shaking as he tried to breathe through the panic of his secret being discovered. Demona mewed plaintively in his arms, and he pressed his face into her fur for a moment before placing her down on the stone floor. He focused on settling his breathing as he set about locking the shutters over the windows.
The words out of the boy’s mouth made him more worried than anything. There had been whispers of witches being hunted and hanged or burned in an effort to keep the people in God’s favour.
He needed… God, he needed to leave.
Tears slipped down, unbidden, as he looked around at his home. He’d built it with his own hands after his family had died from an illness. He’d been the only one to survive, burying them all in the little family plot before gathering up everything he could carry. He’d started walking, and he’d stopped three days later when he could no longer see anything familiar. He’d settled down exactly where he’d stopped, building his home from the stones of the nearby riverbed. Time had passed with him forging and whittling things for the villagers nearby with the skills his bastard of a father had given him against his will. A daughter he’d been, but the bastard had only seen a worker from an early age.
And now…
Now, he had to give it all up. He had to surrender everything he built from nothing. Including himself. He’d left his family’s plot as Simone. Along the way, he’d stolen trousers and tunics that had sort of fit, and he’d arrived to his own land as Simon.
Anger welled, sharp and bright. He’d been stupid. Careless. He usually checked around him before he stripped to bathe. But with the rain and the work of the day, he’d been too preoccupied with his own pleasure.
Was this the Divine striking him down for his own sin as they would have him believe after all?
Swiping the tears from his face, he sniffled and grabbed his pack from the post of his bed. Shoving in his clothes and a spare pair of boots, he strapped it closed. He knelt by the chest there at the foot of the bed and dug through to find his good knife. Instead, his hand closed around the leather binding of an old book he’d never even had the bravery to open.
He blinked in surprise. He’d forgotten all about it, truthfully. It had long since just become part of the bottom of his trunk.
Sitting back on the stones, he cradled it in his hands and stared at it for a long time. The leather had no words. It was starting to crack from disuse, but he’d had no reason to open it. The leather was stained and worn smooth from constant touching over the years, and there were pages that had either come loose or papers that had been shoved between the bound ones. He wasn’t sure.
Finally, as the light started to fade between the cracks of the shutters, he opened the cover and started to read.
—
The air in the cabin was stifling. The fires had been stoked high for light, and the smoke that didn’t quite get caught by the floo choked him as he sat on a stool in the corner away from the mourn watch happening in the loft. As far away from it as he could be with a book clutched against his chest under the rough fabric of his dress.
Tommy was on the dirt floor playing with wooden blocks his father had made at his mother’s insistence. The younger of them was utterly oblivious to the sobbing coming from their mother upstairs and the muttering of prayers by the priest they’d called for. His father was stone silent outside the house. He’d been reshoeing the plow horse when Simon had been called in to say goodbye.
His grandmother’s death rattle in her chest would live with him for the rest of his days as she’d clasped his hand with her own wizened, boney one. Her grip had been far stronger than her state of being would have had him believe. The knobs of her knuckles had been callused as his own and pinched his to the point of pain as she’d grasped at him.
“Child, my child, take the book,” she’d gasped, pale blue eyes wild and unseeing. “My book. Don’t let anyone else take it from you, child. It’s yours now. He will protect you when you need it most. Take it.”
He had blinked in utter confusion. “Grandmother, who—”
“Take the book, Simone. Now,” she’d whispered as her mother had been busy welcoming in the priest. “No one else must have it. Especially not that man.”
He’d shakily dug through her things and pulled the book out, hiding it under his dress and tying his sash tighter to keep it there.
“Yes, good girl. Now, go. Know that I love you,” she’d murmured. “He’ll protect you.” A moment later she slipped into oblivion.
—
Snapping himself out of the memory, Simon traced a fingertip along his grandmother’s elegant writing for the first time in over a decade.
Property of Elizabeth Cooper nee Smith
He sniffled and ignored everything else as he flipped through the hand written pages. Drawings of plants and notes on things along with recipes were written neatly amongst the pages that had started to wave with age. Stains littered the pages along with thumbprints in ink that he pressed his own against.
A little piece of her left behind he hadn’t even known was in his possession.
He continued to search for something because she’d been adamant about a Him that would protect him.
If he’d ever needed to be protected, he imagined now would be that time. The mayor wasn’t a kind man by any stretch of the imagination, and he didn’t particularly like Simon after he’d turned down his proposition to marry his daughter. This would just be a convenient excuse for petty revenge if he allowed it.
The pages eventually turned away from botany and recipes toward… something more.
Diagrams and talk of protection and spells and someone named John. Simon had no idea who this man could be or how he would be any help now. If he’d been his grandmother’s age, he was likely dead now, and Simon was miles and miles away from home. He had to have faith that she meant something else.
His brows furrowed as he started to read over ingredients and rites in Latin. He could barely make heads or tails of it. His Latin hadn’t ever been something important to his father, so the lessons had fallen to the wayside as his grandmother had passed and his mother hadn’t cared to keep up with them.
The list of ingredients wasn’t a long one, and he had everything…
Why was he even considering this?
He needed to leave. He couldn’t bank his life on some stupid spell he wasn’t even convinced was real. In his life, he’d never known magic. He’d never even really known anything like God’s presence either. He couldn’t count himself a believer in the fantastic.
His grandmother’s grip tightened down on his wrist—somewhere between memory and spectre—and made him flinch as her voice whispered, “He will protect you.”
He swallowed and laid the book on his table where lunch still sat half-eaten.
Gathering the chalk he used to mark iron and the berries and herbs he had hung from his rafters, he set them out across the table and rolled the rug up that protected bare feet from the stones in the winter.
As the sounds in the woods changed from day to night, he started to hear things beyond them as he set to drawing the glyph on the floor before he finished reading the instructions. He didn’t have time to do so as voices started to sound in the darkness when villagers tried to find his footpath in the dark. Not if he wanted this to work.
Tears started to slip down over his cheeks as he stripped off his trousers again as the instructions said when he got that far. He made a circle of salt around it. Sitting down in the middle of the complicated glyph where there was bare space left for him, Simon swiped at his face and started to mix the herbs together with fat. He smeared the green paste over his throat and down over his belly.
The tart berries of the sumac he mashed and stained his hands bloody as he started to read in stilted Latin. The red smeared the edges of the pages where dark purple ones already existed. It gave him only a moment of pause that maybe his grandmother had needed this some time in the past for some reason. He wished he could ask her why.
Rain started to fall in a loud cacophony against the thatch of the roof and the trees surrounding his home. Sheets of it coming down in buckets.
Voices grew nearer, making him stutter through the words. Tears blurred his vision but still he read even as the fire started to flicker when the wind picked up outside and rattled the shutters.
Calls of his name joined the chattering of the closing mob. Angry.
His own fear answered as he finished the incantation and waited, muttering a “Please help me” while he held hard onto the book and listened to the… silence.
Silence fell over the cottage and… everywhere else. He couldn’t even hear the call of the night birds or chattering of foxes in the distance, nor the rain.
Demona peered at him from between the mussed covers of his bed and let out a low purr as her eyes flicked up past him.
His heart leapt to his throat as he slowly turned. He stumbled over backwards when he found a man standing in front of the door with dark hair curling long over one side of his head. The other was shaved. Sparkling blue eyes the colour of the ocean stared down at him, crinkled at the corners with the amused smile on his full mouth. His torso was bared, showing off the glittering gold markings that swirled across his tanned skin. One trailed up over his cheek to decorate around one fathomless eye.
He crouched in front of Simon inside the circle and leaned on his knees as his eyes slowly trailed over Simon’s nude form. It made him wish for his pants as his eyes lingered between his thighs where they’d spread in his surprised attempt to backpedal.
The man’s lips parted as he spoke, revealing two sets of fangs that were as long as the first joint on Simon’s thumb. Simon’s pulse quickened, but he wasn’t sure why.
“Well, aren’t you a bonnie one,” he murmured. “I didn’t think anyone would ever use Elizabeth’s seal again. It’s been ages.”
His accent was oddly Northern, and by God he was beautiful—heavy shoulders and a softly squared jaw.
His tongue was lead in his mouth as it really occurred to him that it worked. He couldn’t get the ten thousand questions past his tight throat as he just stared with parted lips, unable to move to even hide himself from view.
“Can I have yer name?” the man asked.
Compulsion pulled it from Simon’s throat past his leaden tongue. “Simon Joseph Riley.” His name. The one he’d given himself from the graves of his ancestors. The one he’d taken with hands bloodied from the shovel.
A slow, dangerous grin spread across the man’s lips, baring those long fangs. “Aye, Simon. That’s a good solid name ya have there.” He glanced down to his own shoulder and it burned itself in swirling gold into his skin. He didn’t even flinch as he turned his attention back to Simon. “Now, ya gottae finish the contract, bonnie, fer me tae help ye.”
Simon’s lips parted but the only thing that left him was, “How?” The book lay open and fluttered to the wrong page beside him where he’d dropped it.
A dark brow sliced toward the man’s hairline. “Didnae ya read the whole thing afore ya started scrawlin’ on yer floor?”
Sniffling past his runny nose from his crying, Simon shook his head. “No, I… I needed help. My grandmother… Elizabeth. She told me someone would help me when I needed protection. Didn't have time to read the whole thing.”
The man blinked at him in surprise. “Grandmother? Aye, it’s been longer than I’d thought.” His head tilted to the side, and the dark sheet of his hair fell over his shoulder. “Eliza was in her twenties the last time I saw her.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the door. “And ya do seem ta be needin’ help, lad. What with all them pitchforks. What happened?”
Simon blanched at the confirmation of his fears. “They found out I’m…” He glanced down at himself where his sex was very much not that of a man and on full display. “The boy… He…” He swallowed hard as more tears came. “He found out I’m not what I say I am when I was bathing. They think I’m a witch.”
Slow, burning blue eyes trailed over Simon again, and he rumbled out a low noise that reverberated around the small cottage, reminding him of Demona’s purring. “Aye, ya are now, though, beautiful. Gottae demon sittin’ on yer floor waitin’ on the blood to fulfill the contract an’ everythin’.”
Simon’s eyes widened at the realization that he was both now capable of magic of some sort and staring at a demon. One with his name scrawled across his shoulder in beautiful script.
“I… Blood?” he whispered, voice cracking.
The man grinned at him again and leaned forward. The glint in his eyes changed. Simon suddenly felt like prey. “Oh, aye. Gottae sign the contract as it were. Nothin’ works better’n blood. It’s yours and only yours, and I only hold one contract at a time, love.”
Simon stared at him for a long moment before glancing around. The knife he’d been looking for was still in his chest. Outside of the salt. He’d read that the salt couldn’t be broken before the end of the ritual. That had been important at the very beginning but… How. How could he bleed with nothing but a bit of chalk and a stone mortar and pestle?
He glanced back at the demon, and his eyes dropped to the fangs still slightly bared between plush lips. “You’ll have to bite me. I don’t have a knife.” The fact that he was considering a contract with a demon came after.
That same dark brow raised at the notion. “Oh, yer full o’ surprises, bonnie. Nay, cannae do that. I’m not allowed ta hurt ya in the circle,” he said as he circled a finger, indicating the salt. “Even if it’s voluntary.”
A frown pulled at Simon's mouth as he considered his options. No weapon. Nothing remotely sharp…
His mind flashed back to the riverbed and his lingering thoughts as he'd touched himself.
Scarlet blush flamed over his face and spread down to his chest. “I… Would…” The words wouldn't come for a long moment. Admitting it felt as though he was surrendering some part of himself that had always been just his.
The demon didn't move past trailing his eyes over Simon's body while he tried to get the words out. As though he were interested.
Simon swallowed, unsure if he would even go for it. “I haven't had a man. That could be your blood to fulfil the contract.”
Blue eyes the colour of forge flame flicked back up to Simon's as his lips parted in surprise. Like that had been the last thing he'd expected Simon to say. He licked his lips , and his eyes skated down over Simon’s body and back again. “Aye, it could be. Yer needin’ my protection that badly, bonnie Simon?”
For the first time since his arrival, the demon moved, shifting forward onto a knee between Simon’s and planting a hand near Simon’s hip. It forced Simon to lean back, but they were still too close. He could see molten metal in the demon’s pupils where only darkness should lie.
“Would you have my full protection, Simon Joseph Riley?” he murmured, eyes languidly tracing over Simon’s features as if he couldn’t get enough of his face.
Simon’s eyes flicked toward the door where an unknown horde waited on whatever spell had stopped them before returning to the demon’s. Not knowing the depth of what he was asking for, Simon swallowed but nodded. “I… Yes, I think I need it.”
The demon reached up with a hand that terminated in small claws dipped in gold. Simon flinched minutely when he touched his face, but he only swiped at the tears still staining Simon’s cheek gently with his thumb. It felt like smooth bone dragging over his skin.
“Aye, I can’t disagree. Quite the crowd has gathered for our bonnie Simon, and ye don’t have it in yer heart to hurt ‘em without a damn fine cause even if yer own life’s on the line. Ya see people instead of the monsters they are.” He smiled as Simon just watched him quietly, wondering how he could see these things about his soul. “My Father would be pleased with them, but he should be waiting on souls like your’n.”
He leaned impossibly closer until Simon could feel the heat pouring off of him even past his own still-vibrant blush. Velvet lips brushed over his cheekbone and dragged lightly as the demon went on. “Aye, bonnie Simon, yer soul is one I could see keepin’ forever. Tha’ what ye want? Tae be one of my prized souls, protected and cherished fer all eternity?”
His voice was so low and soft, Simon’s lashes fluttered closed, and he understood temptation for the first time in his life. “What does that mean?” he whispered, feeling as though to speak any louder would shatter this. Whatever this was.
That low rumbling noise returned as velvet lips brushed down over his cheek to his jaw and right over his pulse which made his heart take off at a rabbit’s pace. It turned into a quiet laugh against his skin.
“For you, with your soul being as bright as it is despite what you’ve been through?” His hand clasped over the back of Simon’s neck, and he pulled away.
Simon’s lashes opened just enough to see him in the firelight. His lips parted when he got a good look at his demon again. The gold around his eye had crept in to leech into the white of it and pulled the molten metal of his pupil outward, wider than the other. Transfixed, he saw something in the swirl of it.
He saw… himself but… different. Not a reflection. The future. Or maybe what could be.
His hair had been combed free to fall down his back, longer than it even had been as a child. His skin looked soft and unmarred by the sun as it was now. He was lain across a plush throne of blue velvet, clothed only in some kind of sheer garment he’d never seen before with pretty designs in silver that glinted in the light. It left nothing to the imagination and merely acted as a suggestion of clothing.
He flushed at seeing himself as some kind of temptation of his own. The emotion didn’t feel like his. It felt like…
This was what the demon wanted to give him. The promise. The exchange for his soul. Comfort and luxury, it seemed. Things he’d longed for but had never dared to dream of.
Simon blinked, and the demon’s eyes were back to normal, tattoo still firmly wrapped around his eye and over his temple. “What’s your name?” he asked quietly. He didn’t know if it was alright to ask, but he thought if he was to bleed for someone, he’d like to know their name first.
The demon’s mouth slowly split into an easy grin, fangs teasing his full bottom lip. “Clever.” His head tilted slightly, and Simon felt like a particularly interesting mouse to a tom cat. “Lucifer, but your nan called me ‘John’.”
Simon’s breath caught, and his lashes flared at the revelation. “Lucifer?!” he wheezed. He wanted to backpedal, crawl away. If this was the truth, he was in far more danger than he’d even thought.
The throne made a lot more sense.
“Aye, don’t go lookin’ like that, dove. I cannae hurt ya even if I wanted to. Yer nan made a pact with me ages ago to watch over her kin when yer granda turned out to be a right bastard. Disappeared him, didn’ I?” he said with a grin, fangs still far too close.
Simon’s memories were watery of his grandmother talking about his grandfather. She never did so often, and she’d rarely had anything nice to say.
“He will protect you,” whispered across the back of his mind with that same death grip around his wrist, and he remembered his grandmother mentioning her friend named John that’d helped her when she needed it most.
Was it… Could it be the same man?
Calling the Devil a man seemed a stretch at best, but… the demon had been nothing but kind since his arrival. Understanding, even. He hadn’t flinched at Simon’s secret. Nor his name.
Steady blue eyes awaited his answer as Lu—John… John was easier to swallow as a concept. John stayed lingering over him, too close to his nude form with his name scrawled across his body like a collar. Poised to seal a pact older than Simon had even been aware of. Older than Simon.
Tentative fingertips reached up to touch over the gold swirling around John’s eye. He was surprised when the demon leaned into his hand with lowered lashes as if he wasn’t used to it. As if he was just as starved for attention as Simon was.
The lingering guillotine of the mob outside the door and the perpetual reminder that his grandmother had made this deal years before Simon had even been born made the decision for him, really.
His hand slid into the dark waves of John’s hair and grasped the roots gently near the base of his skull to pull him forward. He’d never kissed anyone before past a town boy when he was twelve, but it didn’t seem that hard to remember. John seemed just as surprised as he was with his action as their lips pressed together softly.
John pulled away slowly after a long moment and just stared at him with his lips parted, tips of his fangs barely visible. “Yer sure this is how you want to fulfil the contract, Simon?” he asked quietly.
Simon hesitated for only a moment. If he broke the circle just to get a knife, John would be banished from their world for a fortnight. He didn’t have the time or the option to use anything else. And really… he didn’t see a downside. Not if the vision had been true. “Didn’t think I’d ever do this in the first place. Might as well be you since you already know.”
Blue eyes searched his for a long moment. “Mmm, cannae say I’m not pleased with this offering. Usually, virgin sacrifices are a lot less fun.”
Simon almost asked. Almost. Instead, he leaned up and kissed John again. “Get on with it, then. We don’t have forever.” He was sure the spell would only hold so long to keep the mob away.
John dragged the tips of his fangs down the column of Simon’s throat lightly in a barely there threat of violence. He sat back on his heels and took Simon’s knees in hand to spread his thighs. “Darlin’, we have as long as I please unless my Father comes knockin’, and he’s a little busy.”
Flushing over his nose, Simon’s legs fall away, and he let himself actually admire John. He was unworldly handsome and exactly the kind of man Simon had always fancied but never been brave enough to pursue.
John’s head tilted as his eyes raked over Simon. “Want ye ta touch yerself, love. Show me what you like so I don’t hurt ye.”
The blush over Simon’s face deepened and spread back down to his chest under the smear of the herbs. He was going to argue, but the fact that John didn’t want to hurt him in this like the horror stories he’d heard as a girl… He let a hand slide down over his own hip to tentatively touch himself like he had in the creek, slow at first. His eyes stayed on John’s, but the demon’s were locked on his hand’s movements.
He was learning.
Simon let himself embrace the taboo of this, and it made his heart race even faster as he dipped into himself with two thick fingers without hesitating as he had earlier in the day. The burn made him groan as his head fell back against the floor with a quiet thud.
“You are beautiful, Simon,” John said in the quietest murmur yet. Simon barely heard him over the rush of his own blood in his ears. He wasn’t even sure he was supposed to hear him. It made it feel that much more important that he did.
Simon moaned for him in response as he pressed into the place that made him lose focus when it was just him and this. He huffed a breath as he withdrew and slicked over the little bud at the top with roughened fingertips. Warm palms spread his thighs wider, and he let them fall open as his lashes parted just enough to watch John. The demon’s eyes were locked on his sex that was spread open for him.
This was wrong, but Simon couldn’t find it in himself to care with ocean blue eyes devouring him like he was the last meal the demon would ever have. “You can touch me,” Simon whispered.
Claw points dug into the soft fat of his thighs in response just enough to be felt as if John were restraining himself. “Lad,” he murmured. “If I touch ye, I’m not gonnae stop fer hours.”
The quiet promise made Simon shudder, and he spread himself open with slick fingers to push further, test the limits of John’s control. “Thought that was the point?” He felt like he was in the position of power at the moment with John looking as though he was salivating. It made him want this, and he knew it wasn’t because he was being forced. John had questioned if he even wanted to go through with it.
As Simon watched, gold rippled out from John’s eye, and horns started to twist out from his forehead to curl back and in on themselves like a ram’s. The sclera of his eyes shifted to black, but his pupils stayed molten gold. When he spoke, his fangs seemed even more prominent, as did the claws clutching at Simon’s thighs. “Ya sure about that, bonnie Simon?”
He knew he should have felt horror at the transformation. Fear, even. Instead, his hole fluttered around his fingertips, and his own lips parted on a quiet noise he didn’t recongize for a long moment. Until his fingertips shifted again, and he moaned just as softly. “Johnny, I’m sure. Ya can’t scare me. Men have been far more terrifying than you.”
The gold flashed white hot, and a low, angry rumble left John. “And when I’m free of this binding, ya bet your bonnie arse they’ll pay for their sins against ye.”
The threat made Simon tighten down on his fingers again, but before he could respond, John removed his hand with gentle touches to his wrist. “Now, lemme have ya, gorgeous. Made ya wait long enough.”
Simon flushed, and on impulse, pressed his slick fingertips to John’s lips. He didn’t expect them to open and close around the digits to suck them clean as John looked up at him in the firelight with eyes that verged on monstrous.
That same, slow vibration rattled out from John as his lashes fluttered when he withdrew enough to release Simon’s fingers. Shifting, he lay on his stomach with Simon’s legs over his shoulders and nipped his inner thigh lightly enough that he didn’t break the skin, though it hurt with his fangs.
It made Simon’s head fall back with a moan as new pleasure rocked through him as the bruise left behind throbbed in time with his heart.
His eyes flew open when John’s wet, hot mouth closed over the bud that made him see stars, and a cry left his lips as he crested and fell over the precipice that rushed up to greet him far faster than he could ever remember. His back bowed up off the floor, and his hands scrambled to hold onto John, settling on the roughness of his horns.
John didn’t relent, jaw opening wide to press the flats of his fangs against Simon’s tender flesh, and a long tongue pressed inside of him to lap at his inner walls.
Eyes wide open and seeing nothing, Simon’s hands sank into John’s hair and pulled him closer. It took him a long moment to realize the bubbling noise he was hearing was his own babbling of Johnny’s name as he rode his face.
Johnny didn’t seem to mind, rumbling purrs rolling out from him as he brought Simon over the edge again and again until he was sobbing from it and begging for relief from Johnny’s insistant mouth.
Eventually, Johnny did pull away to grin up at him with wet lips and slick dribbling off his chin. “Cannae get enough of ye, love.”
Simon huffed weakly and pushed Johnny’s hair back from his face to hook over his horn. He looked absolutely debauched with the gold of his pupils wider than should be possible and shiny lips. His hair was mussed from Simon’s hands, and he had a self-satisfied smile on his lips like he knew exactly how good he was at bringing Simon pleasure.
Disrespecting the sheer power Johnny could wield as one of God’s children, Simon tugged on one of his horns and said, “Then get up here and have some more.” He was already sore and swollen, but the contract was incomplete. And he wanted to know what this was like. Johnny couldn’t hurt him by his own admission. It was the perfect opportunity to try.
Johnny groaned at the firm pull and allowed Simon to drag him up his body. “Anythin’ you want, bonnie. Anythin’,” he murmured, sounding drunk, as he dragged wet kisses over Simon’s body on his way.
The kiss he gave Simon was slick and tasted of himself, making him moan from how filthy this all was. He chased the taste into Johnny’s mouth until Johnny pulled away to press himself up enough that he could drag claws down Simon’s side. It led him to his own trousers around his hips. He touched them, and they flickered out of existence to leave them both bare. His cock hung thick and heavy to lie against Simon’s sex, hot like a brand against sensitive skin.
Without thinking, Simon reached down to touch him and closed a hand around the shaft. Johnny hissed, and Simon almost pulled away like he’d hurt him. Johnny’s hand closed around his wrist to stop him. “Nay, doesnae hurt. Jus’ been waitin’ to touch ye since I first saw ye.” Still holding Simon’s wrist to still him, Johnny’s hips rolled into the circle of his hand to stroke himself while meeting his eyes.
Simon flushed and tightened his hand lightly which earned him a moan from Johnny and a squeeze around his wrist. “Why?”
Johnny huffed a breath, hips still moving slowly. “Ever seen yerself in a looking glass? Yer gorgeous, an’ yer soul burns brighter than mine, love. An’ ye know enough Latin to know what my name means.”
He did. His grandmother had left him with that much. The Morning Star. But what did that mean for him? It was well and good for Lucifer to burn brightly, but how did his soul figure into this past being a bargaining chip with the Devil himself?
The compliment registered after, and he cleared his throat, looking away. “Hardly.”
Johnny bit his jaw just hard enough to get his attention without leaving a bruise. His voice was a reverent whisper when he said, “I have seen all of Creation, Simon, and you are one of my Father’s finest works. Even I have to admit that.”
Simon’s eyes prickled with tears from the unexpected reassurance, but he didn’t flinch away from it this time. He turned his head and kissed Johnny. Using the hold he had on him, he slipped his cock down between them to press against his entrance.
One of Johnny’s hands slid up his body through the herbs and clasped below his jaw to hold him still. He pulled away to look down at Simon through his lashes. “Last chance to back out, love.”
Simon shook his head as much as he could in Johnny’s hold. “‘M not a coward.”
Johnny smiled slowly, baring his teeth. “Aye, that I know.” With steady pressure, he rolled his hip forward in slow waves until he slipped inside. “Am sorry in advance, dove,” he murmured before slamming deep and staying there.
Simon arched under him with a pained noise as Johnny bottomed out, the burning sting telling him everything he needed to know. He understood why Johnny was holding him still as he resisted the urge to shove him off.
A soundless shockwave rocked out from their bodies and disturbed anything loose in the cottage. Including the salt. It feathered across the floor, tossed completely askew. Not that Johnny seemed to notice. His eyes were still locked on Simon’s.
“Alright, love?” he asked softly as the pad of his finger dragged across Simon’s jaw.
Simon blinked away involuntary tears from the stretch even after all of Johnny’s attentions and blew out a breath. “‘M fine.” He relaxed the hold he had on Johnny’s waist with his thighs. He’d endured far worse, if he was honest.
The reassurance seemed to be all Johnny needed. His hips started to move without further words and dragged slowly inside of Simon until he was barely breeching. The glide and heavy weight of him made Simon’s lips part with a low groan somewhere between pleasure and pain. All of the air was knocked out of him when Johnny surged forward again just as hard as the first time, and his nails sank into Johnny’s shoulders as he shouted.
The blade’s width between agony and ecstasy made him fall over the edge of another orgasm as he clung to Johnny, head thrown back against the rough stones of the floor.
John didn’t relent as he snarled at Simon’s throat, the barely restrained violence rattling the glass bottles on one of the shelves. His thrusts were all hard and as deep as he could possibly be, bordering on truly painful. It kept Simon cresting over and over again.
It took ages later and an eternity of endless orgasm for Johnny’s hips to stutter. By then, Simon was sobbing from overstimulation, begging for him to finish. It was all far too much after having nothing, and Johnny didn’t seem to be slowing down despite the ragged breathing against his pulse.
Johnny’ shuddered hard and nuzzled up under Simon’s ear. “Oh, doll, am nae ever lettin’ ye go,” he mumbled before he bit down into the meat of Simon’s shoulder, long fangs sinking through flesh like knives.
Simon screamed as an alien burn spread out from the bite wound, and Johnny gave a few more ragged pumps of his hips before stilling. Heat spread in Simon’s core as pain and violent flames errupted in his veins down to the fingertips of his left hand.
After a long moment of Simon trying not to tear his own shoulder from the fresh agony, Johnny unlocked his jaw and licked over the wound. The pain eased before disappearing entirely after a moment.
Simon sagged back against the stones, entirely limp as he panted. Soft kisses being pressed to his jaw surprised him and made him ease further. He huffed a breath and felt Johnny’s fingertips trail through sweaty hair to gently comb it back from his face.
As if he cared.
Simon sniffled and wiped at his face even as he let Johnny worship him with little attentions. He squinted when his hand felt different before his eyes flew wide. “What—?”
Held above Johnny’s shoulder, he turned his hand this way and that. The skin looked as though it had been charred and blackened, but gold filigree danced down his arm in elegant sculpture of where he would want someone to look. It highlighted all of the muscle he’d fought for over the last decade. Terminating around his fourth finger, Simon felt his breath catch as he inspected the char of his skin. He rubbed his fingertips together and nothing happened. The flesh didn’t flake away like he thought it might. It was all intact. No pain any longer.
Johnny glanced at his hand over his shoulder before turning his attention back to Simon’s face. “Told ye. I’m never lettin’ ye go. Yer mine, Simon Joseph Riley.” He licked over the wound again and made Simon shiver with the drag as well as the promise. “Served yer family for an eon. Now I want my due, and that’s you, doll,” he said as he pressed another kiss to Simon’s pulse right below his jaw.
The tenderness of Johnny’s touch belied the possessiveness of his words. Simon wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he didn’t have much choice given that he was still throbbing from the pact being sealed.
John pressed up and looked down at Simon, dark hair hanging down around them to cast Johnny’s unreal eyes in shadow against the fire light.
Idly, Simon reached up to trace the gold around Johnny’s eye and up over his temple where a morning star burst out across his shaven scalp. “Show me what that will look like again?” he asked quietly, voice thready from the subject as well as the leftover stress his body had just gone through.
Johnny’s tattoo shifted under his touch, but he didn’t feel the difference. He watched as his pupil spread again, but this time it took up the whole of his eye. Simon fell into the vision wholly this time, smelling flowers on a wind that hadn’t been there a moment before.
A garden spread out before him, lush and green and warm whereas the night he’d left behind had been chilly. Fine trousers swirled around his legs, and his toes were bare in the grass. A soft tunic rested over his shoulders, and a fur trimmed cape hung loosely over that.
Rumbling came from behind him and to the right. He glanced over his shoulder as it turned into laughter. Johnny stood behind him with his thumbs tucked into a belt that hung low on his hips. Dark trousers and a tunic so pale blue it was almost white. “I give you Free Will and reign over my dominion, and your first thought is to have peace in the Garden. Your soul would have been wasted in Heaven.”
He approached and set his hand on Simon’s waist. “But I wouldn’t be so drawn to ye if ye’d dreamt of waging war or riches.”
Simon’s brow furrowed. “You mean this isn’t what you want?”
Another laugh left John. “Nay, yer in control of this vision. Am just allowed to be a passenger. Ye know the information because I gave it to ye. What ye did with it was yer own accord.” He looked around them. “Think I could get used ta spendin’ more time in the Gardens I stole rather than my throne. Don’t use the Free Will I give you often enough for myself.”
Looking around them, Simon was confused by the implication that a garden could be stolen. “You stole this? From whom?”
John snorted and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, suddenly bashful. “Father was going to destroy it. So I snatched it and took it with me to Hell. Welcome to Eden, love.”
Simon’s lashes flew wide as he stared at John. “What—?” He looked around them and it was lush. Everywhere his eyes wandered, the plants flourished. This wasn’t just a garden. It was the Garden. “I—” If this was his usage of Free Will… It made complete sense in his heart that he’d sought out the peace of it. It was untouched by Time or strife.
There were no people to hurt him. No one to bother him.
He pressed the back of his hand to his lips as real freedom washed over him and what that would mean.
“Johnny…” he breathed once he had enough control to get his voice past his lips. “Is this alright to want?”
John tilted his head and smiled slightly, a little bemused. “Doll, this is the whole point. Father wanted to keep this from everyone because they dared to want this and more. Now, yer the only human to walk these grounds in ten thousand years. Could do with some tendin’ to.” He took Simon’s hand and pressed it over where his name still burned in John’s skin. His voice was tender when he said, “Takes a kind soul to look after it.”
Simon wasn’t positive he was just talking about the Garden anymore. As Johnny stepped closer to pull him down and kiss him, Simon was sure of it. Everything was being laid at his feet to look after if Johnny had his way.
Ripping himself from the vision by sheer force of Will, Simon looked up at John before pulling him down to kiss him softly. They were still tangled together, and Johnny’s hips twitched down into Simon with a little groan. Simon exhaled a sigh through his nose and brushed a thumb over Johnny’s cheekbone where the tattoo swirled under the skin. “I agree to the terms of your demands,” he murmured against Johnny’s lips.
Johnny opened his eyes just enough to look at him through his lashes, gold bright as it shone through. “Am glad about that, love.”
Slipping his arm under Simon’s back, Johnny canted his hips just so and started to move in much slower waves that brought them both over again in a much gentler pursuit.
When Johnny finally withdrew, Simon huffed and groaned when Johnny pulled him up to sit in front of where he was kneeling. “Should’ve drawn the circle on my bed,” he complained, back sore and shoulders raw from the stones.
Johnny grinned at him. “If’n ye need to summon me again, least ye know now.” He rose and offered a hand to Simon to pull him from the floor.
When their hands touched, Simon’s pains eased, but Johnny left him swollen and sore on purpose, he was sure. He felt his hair unbind down his back, and it fell around his shoulders in a golden sheet as if he’d brushed it out for the night. From John’s touch, black fabric spread and wound up Simon’s arm to spread out over his chest. A hem fell to the floor on a belted robe of a slick fabric he’d never seen before. A loop wrapped around his middle finger to pull the tight sleeve down across his knuckle. The arm and shoulder blackened by Johnny’s bite were left bare. Turning his unmarred hand over to look at it, he arched a brow and glanced at John in question. He blinked and John was wearing black trousers again.
John shrugged. “If’n yer gonnae scare and torture a buncha souls before I collect ‘em, might as well look the part, aye? And yer braw enough ta be intimidatin’ on yer own without me.”
A laugh cracked out of Simon. “Didn’t really need the help. Mayor’s terrified of me since he tried to coerce me into marryin’ his daughter, and I had to physically pick him up to move him out of the way in my smithy. Just can’t guarantee my survival against fifty on my own with a belt knife.”
Fingertip tracing the gold down Simon’s arm, John looked up at him in unfettered amusement. “Aye, didn’t need the help with him, but I cannae wait to see what ya do with me at your back.”
Simon leaned down and pressed their foreheads together, terrified of what was about to happen even though he knew he was no longer alone or in any real danger. “We’re going to find out together.”
John grinned at him and stood on his toes just a little to press their lips together in a barely-there brush. “Aye. Together.” He stepped into Simon’s space and slipped an arm around his waist to pull him close. With his eyes still glowing from within, Johnny just held him there for a long moment. “Ready when you are, love.”
Blowing out a breath through his nose, Simon laid his hand along Johnny’s forearm. “Don’t think I’ll ever really be ready,” he confessed. He leaned down to kiss Johnny one more time before pulling away.
Crossing the remnants of the salt line, he pulled his boots on. His knife belt went around his hips to cinch the robe. The blade, faithfully, hung down almost to the middle of his thigh, and he picked up a lantern. He lit it with tinder from the fireplace and reached for the bar to lift it free of the door.
He paused and looked over his shoulder at Johnny who stood still behind him with his arms over his chest, waiting patiently. “Alright, Johnny. Let ‘em loose.”
The gold at Johnny’s temple flashed, and the rain started to pour around them again, deafening after the silence. The shouts of Simon’s name and ‘witch’ joined it to create an awful cacophony.
Simon turned back to the door and took a deep breath before pulling it open. Before him stood the majority of the adults from the town about half an hour’s walk from his home. They were all soaked to the bone. Falling quiet as he stepped from the house with the door carefully left open behind him, he raised the lantern to illuminate himself a little better so the gathered masses could see him and the state he was in.
“Who goes there?” he asked as if he didn’t know.
The mayor stood at the front of the mob, his own torch sputtering and trying to go out. He was a horrible little man who stood a full foot shorter than Simon. His Puritan clothing made Simon want to roll his eyes. The man was far from a standing example of the beliefs of the Church. Simon didn’t have enough fingers to count the amount of times in his six years here he’d found the mayor on his evening walks drunk enough that he couldn’t stand behind a barn on the way back from town. Once, memorably, Simon had found him half-drowned in the horse’s trough.
But now, the mayor was the head of an angry mob, and he was spiteful when it came to Simon after he’d turned down the proposal to marry Catherine.
“Thomas Cooper, Simon Riley, and everyone else in this town. Henry Baker’s sayin’ yer a witch. Said you tried to seduce him down by the riverbed.” His face was an angry little wad of pinched features.
Simon watched as the water ran down off of Thomas’s hat and hit his neck where it slid into his coat, noticing that he was still dry despite being further than the eave of his house. A little gift from Johnny, he assumed. “Did Henry tell you he was watching me bathe from behind a tree until I caught him?”
There was murmuring from several of the people gathered, but Thomas didn’t waiver, still glaring up at Simon. “Said you weren’ no man. Said you was a man with a woman’s—”
Simon snorted. “And you believed him?” He leaned down into the mayor’s face. “I was no witch before that boy came into my woods,” he spat. His hand, blackened by Johnny’s touch, shot out to take Thomas by the throat, and he heard a rumbling clickclickclick behind him as he lifted him free of the ground.
Thomas’s nails raked at his arm as the others started to scream and scramble away as he felt heat rock out from the cottage behind him. Fire roared to life in spite of the rain, and the gold on his arm lit from within as he dropped the lantern at his feet. The glass shattered, but the rain put the flame out before it could spread. The weight of the mayor strained his shoulder, but he’d had enough.
In the light of the blaze behind him, he watched as Thomas’s expression shifted from fury to unadulterated terror as his dark eyes settled on something over Simon’s shoulder. Simon glanced over his shoulder and forced himself not to flinch. A huge, monstrous form with a mouth full of razor sharp fangs and horns curled back from his forehead was crawling its way out of the cottage’s front door. The house was ablaze, thatched roof spitting and smoking as the rain hit it. Massive claws gouged the stones around the front door as Johnny squeezed his massive form through it.
Turning his attention back to Thomas, Simon reached across his body and pulled his knife. “Should’ve left me be. Now, I am the bride of Satan himself,” he murmured before plunging the knife into Thomas’s stomach and dragging it sideways to spill offal across the stepping stones of his home.
He dropped him as he gurgled in pain, and Johnny let out a shrieking roar before launching into the fleeing horde to rip them apart in the dark.
Simon watched for a long moment, letting his shoulders sag back against the stones of the doorway. He idly listened to Thomas’s last wet, sucking breaths while watching each light in the distance flicker out, accompanied by screams that grew further and further away. He almost felt remorse, but these people had come to burn him alive with little more excuse than he’d been born different.
The remorse faded as he folded his arms across his chest and waited for Johnny to return. Demona wove between his ankles, careful to stay out of the rain, and disturbed the hem of his robe. He smiled slightly and bent to give her a gentle scratch behind her ears that earned him a plaintive mew in response.
After a long stretch of silence, Simon heard soft snapping of fallen tree limbs in the distance. Eventually, Johnny’s monstrous form breeched the trees, and he shook himself out as if he were a damp dog. He approached Simon slowly, and Simon held his marked hand out to him. Johnny pressed his soft nose against Simon’s palm and huffed out a breath that steamed in the chilly night.
“Care to put the house out?” he asked as he gestured up to the still blazing roof. Somehow he knew it wasn’t causing any real damage, but it wouldn’t do to alert the entire area as to what had happened here.
The gold around Johnny’s eye flashed even in this form, and the area fell dark except for the fire still burning in the hearth behind Simon.
Simon leaned forward and kissed his nose despite the remnants of blood. “Good boy,” he murmured.
Johnny flashed in brilliant light before he was standing mostly human in appearance before Simon again. Blood ran down the front of his jaw and throat, but the white tunic he wore now was spotless. He stood on his toes, pulling Simon down, and kissed him hard with the taste of lifeblood on his lips.
Simon hummed against him and wrapped his arms around Johnny’s waist to pick him up a few inches. “Thank you,” he murmured against his lips.
Licking over Simon’s lips, Johnny rumbled out a low noise. “‘N thank you for a hunt. Been a long time. Yer grandfather wasnnae nearly as much fun as a pack.”
Simon rolled his eyes and nipped Johnny. “I’d say any time, but you and I have plans elsewhere.”
Johnny sighed and pressed his forehead to Simon’s. “Aye, I need to prepare fer yer arrival. Need tae leave ye here a few days.”
Feeling a frown pull at the corners of his mouth, Simon sat Johnny back on his feet. “Prepare for my arrival?” he asked, dubious.
“Aye,” Johnny said, nodding. “Never taken a consort before. There’s… the court… They’ll need an explanation, an’… Well, I wannae prepare yer space fer ye. Cannae have ye not have a space of your’n.”
Simon felt his chest constrict at the thought of Johnny leaving him behind, but he understood John’s explanation. He didn’t seem the type to lie to him with his big, earnest blue eyes rimed in gold and too many lashes to count. “I’ll just stay here, then, so you can find me.”
Johnny smiled slightly. “I’ll ward yer woods. Noone should come botherin’ ya. They’ll get confused and wander off, forgettin’ why they were comin’ this way in the first place. Make sure yer safe while I’m not here.”
A slow, relieved sigh left Simon. “Alright, Johnny. I’ll be here when you return.”
Reluctantly pulling away, Johnny stepped back into the middle of the yard. As he did, Simon noticed Thomas’s body was gone. Johnny turned to face Simon, and his arms rose to shoulder height, hands palm up toward the rain. His head fell back, and giant wings exploded from his back. They glittered like black glass in the dim firelight from inside the house. Fluttering softly behind him, Simon heard the tinkling of glass like a windchime.
His lips parted in utter fascination as Johnny started to glow from within, and a shockwave like soundless thunder rolled out from his body. Simon saw lights flare to life in the distance all the way around his house through the trees. It briefly lit up the night sky like lightning.
Once the light passed and fell back into darkness, Johnny’s head dropped to look at Simon, and he stepped close again. It gave Simon a clear view of the massive wings behind Johnny that were made of black glass edged in gold like church windows in the cities.
Without thinking, he reached out to trace one of the gold veins, and Johnny shuddered. He snatched his hand back, and Johnny chuckled. “Nae. Doesnnae hurt. Sensitive is all.”
Simon nodded but didn’t reach to touch again.
Johnny took his marked hand and squeezed his fingers before kissing them lightly. “I’ll return in a few days for ye. I promise ye.”
Doubt flickered across Simon’s heart, but he sighed through his nose. “I’ll remain here until you do.”
Johnny smiled slightly and brushed his thumb over the golden markings on Simon’s fourth finger. “Aye. I know ye will. I’ll be back for ye.”
Without another word, Simon Riley was left in the pouring rain, alone and suddenly cold.
—