Page 61 of King Among the Dead

He urged her thighs wider with his knees, pressed one hand between her shoulder blades, keeping her chest down on the mattress; gripped her hip, and started to move.

No more teasing or drawing it out. He fucked into her with steady purpose, panting, grunting when she clenched around him. He’d pleasured her first, holding back, and now he sought his own release without hesitance or apology. He thrust into her, the sound of their joined wet, sweaty skin slapping. His hand gripped tight at her hip, blunt nails digging at her skin.

The friction, and the knowledge that she was giving him pleasure, that her body could draw these rough sounds from his throat, sent her right back to the brink.

They came together, and he leaned down to bite her shoulder, the sharp sting of pain adding to the pleasure until everything was sparkling and whited-out and good.

She didn’t think she swooned, but next she knew she was on her side again, facing him, and he was pulling her in close, hand cupping the back of her head and tucking her face into his throat. He smelled of cedar, and smoke, and soap, and clean sweat. She tasted his pulse with her tongue, and he shivered.

“Oh, my Rosie.”

When she drifted back to sleep, she dreamed of roses…roses floating on a shifting sea of blood, Beck warm and safe against her.

EIGHTEEN

Beck took her to watch a drug deal.

It was a rare, clear night, and so they’d taken extra precautions on their approach. They perched now in the gnarled branches of a tree too starved to produce more than a token number of leaves, now crisp and brown, rattling in the winter wind, but too stubborn to give up and die.

She didn’t know how Beck had known about this particular meeting – Kay had said something offhand about wiretapping – but it had led them to a cemetery, which seemed fitting. An old one, scattered with crumbling mausoleums and slanted tombstones so weather-worn that the names had faded to shallow echoes, illegible. The tree spread its branches over a dark, acid-eaten marble mausoleum with the name KENNEDY carved into the lintel. Below, a lone figure in a trench coat waited, hands in his pockets, whistling nervously amidst a scattering of tall stones pointed like spires. A one-armed angel perched at the top of one, watching him. He glanced at it now and again, and would shudder, and bring his hands out to chafe and blow on them.

He never noticed the two demons in the low branches at his back.

When the crows started chattering and croaking, Rose knew the buyers had arrived. She glanced over, caught Beck’s gaze, and earned a slow nod.Steady on. He was after information on this hunt.

Three men came around the bend in the path, walking shoulder-to-shoulder, which meant one of them had to walk along in the stunted, brown grass, dodging bits of fake hedge and a few flat grave markers. Frightened, Rose decided. They might have been afraid of the dealer they were meeting, or the rustling of the wind, or the gravestones around them. Or all three, she figured. These were nervy, big-eyed, drug-taking sorts. Young, gawky, with bad skin, and worse fashion sense.

The dealer lifted a hand, as if to flag them down. The three paused, conferred together, and then came toward the man in the trench coat.

One step forward when they reached him, chin kicked up, jaw set – eyes full of terror. The appointed leader. “Do you have it?” he asked, like a character out of a movie.

The dealer chuckled. “You ain’t trying to be subtle, huh? I might. Depends on what you’re looking for.”

The buyer – a kid, really – pressed his lips together, gaze darting across the headstones. Frustrated, freaked out, ready to flee. He’d come for his fix, though, and Rose didn’t think he’d leave without it.

“Come on, man.” He was starting to sweat, his forehead shiny, and he wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. “Over the phone you said–”

“Over the phone, I said there was a code word. You give me that, and we can start talking numbers.”

The kid’s eyes widened. Then he nodded and exhaled. “The code. Right, right. It’s…” He made a face. His brows jumped. “Calypso!” He dimmed. “Right?”

The dealer chuckled again. “Right. Come here.” He produced several small vials from the inside of his jacket, and the three buyers crowded close.

Rose glanced toward Beck again, and found him leaning forward, gaze intent, straining to listen. She didn’t think they were going to take out the buyers as well.

Didn’tthink.

“…heavensent.”

She glanced back toward the action. The lead buyer held a vial up overhead, searching out the faint, ambient light from the lamps scattered across the cemetery. Rose wondered, briefly, if he would spot them in the tree, their faces pale inside the black of their hoods. But his gaze was fixed on whatever was inside the vial: heavensent, if the dealer was being honest. And why wouldn’t he be? That was Castor’s big money maker.

As she watched, the kid’s eyes widened, and his lips parted: he was enraptured. It was the sort of look someone would give a lover. A pale shade of the look Beck gave her when they were alone.

“That’s two bills for ten,” the dealer said, and the kid reacted with belated shock.

“What?” He gaped at the man. “That’s…that’s…” Made another face.

“Twenty bucks a pill,” one of his friends supplied.

---