Page 18 of Outside the Veil
Finn’s hand wandered down to Diego’s hip. He grabbed it and pulled it back up to his chest.
“I became a dog. One of the best ways to hide in a human settlement. Out in the open. There was a village, of sorts, nearby. Too big for my liking. Too many people and strange machines. But I did learn that humans no longer believe in the Fair Folk. Stories for children, that’s what we’ve become. The reverence and fear and even love we had once received from humans reduced to ridiculous caricatures of little men in buckled shoes.” Finn snorted in disgust. “Leprechauns.”
“Ah. Sorry about that.”
“How were you to know?” Finn stroked circles around one of Diego’s shirt buttons. “I reasoned Eire had become so overrun with humans because it is so small. I could, after all, fly fromUlster to the southernmost tip of Munster in a day. America was rumored to be vast, I recalled. Endless expanses of woods, mountains so tall their heads pierced the clouds. There I would find clean water again and perhaps others who had been left behind. Imagine my horror when I left the ship and found…” He waved a hand toward the window. “This.”
“You were right, though. It isn’t all like this…” Diego trailed off when he realized Finn was unbuttoning his shirt. “Please don’t do that.”
Finn ignored him and tugged the shirttails from his jeans. The hand stroking his stomach felt so damn good. So easy, just to give in. His breath caught when Finn shifted his head to take a nipple in his mouth in a hard-suctioned kiss.
“Holy mother of… Oh, shit…” Diego whispered.
“An odd deity to pray to, but who am I to dictate such things?” Finn smiled against his skin, his hand sliding under Diego’s waistband.
“Stop that! I said no!” Diego hauled the hand back out though his cock pressed achingly hard against his jeans. He tried to sit up but Finn moved so fast to straddle him, he had no time to do more than cry out in shock. Pinned, both wrists trapped above his head in Finn’s frighteningly strong grip, he struggled and snarled in helpless frustration.
“Let me go!”
Finn shook his head, curling forward to kiss his eyelids. “Your scent calls to me. You want this. You need me to take you. I need this.”
“Damn it, Finn, I’m not an animal.” Diego stopped struggling and caught Finn’s gaze. It wasn’t a trick of the light. His eyes actually glowed red when emotions ran high. “Yes, my body wants sex. I can’t help that. I’m hurting and lonely, and it’s a natural physical reaction to you being nearby. But I’m not ready. And I wouldn’t be doing it for the right reasons. I’d feel awfulafterward. Guilty and ashamed and… I just can’t do this right now. Please. Can you understand that?”
A low growl rumbled in Finn’s chest, but he cut it short and dismounted to turn back to the window. “Forgive me. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. I wished only to help you. You carry such a terrible ball of pain under your heart. And you will not let the tears flow to release the poison. It’s no wonder you fall into fits. But you let no one help you. As if you believe you deserve the agony.”
Diego wanted to protest. What a thing to say. But he couldn’t recall a single tear since Mitch had left him. Not that he hadn’t felt like sobbing. Why hadn’t he cried? Why couldn’t he?
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “I appreciate the thought.”
“Please, let me help you…”
This wouldn’t do. Finn was close to tears himself again.
“Look, if you really want to help, go clean up that mess in the bathroom. I don’t mind if you keep your water in there for a couple of days. But it doesn’t belong on the floor.”
Finn stared at him, blinking. “Oh. Very well. I didn’t realize.” He rose and returned to the bathroom.
“Don’t you want a mop or some—” Diego followed and trailed off when he reached the doorway. One hand stretched out toward the floor, palm down, Finn watched calmly as the water flowed back up into the tub.
“Never mind.”
He went to the kitchen to start dinner, needing some space to breathe and to think.
Chapter six
Art and Asthma
At dinner, Finn recovered his usual humor and inquisitiveness, as if nothing had happened in the bedroom. He declared Diego’s chicken ‘quite edible’ though he mourned Tia Carmen’s absence. Halfway through eating, he leaped up to retrieve the art book from the living room. Nothing would satisfy him until Diego slid his chair closer to explain each picture.
Luckily there were captions. Diego hadn’t studied art since college. He recalled enough to relate a bit about the major artists’ lives, though, which interested Finn more than technique or theory.
“But why?” Finn asked, after Diego explained Michelangelo’s struggle with the Sistine Chapel.
“Why what? Why did he keep going, or why the ceiling?”
Finn shook his head. “No, no. Why any of it? Why do humans insist on making these representations of other things?”
That stumped Diego. “Don’t you find them beautiful?”
