“Good. Cym, you and Fourteen can check each other over for injuries while I take care of Jack.”
Instead of making a joke like Cym expected, Jack had all of his attention on Marshall. It was like nothing else existed around him. No half-burned compound, no gusts of smoke mixed with demon remnants swirling around, and no random piles of hopefully only unconscious bodies slowly getting covered with snow.
Jack allowed Marshall to pull him toward the forest without a backward glance. Cym caught a look of calculation on his face before his features were swallowed by darkness.
Chapter 26Fourteen
“This is the Stillbringer’s room, and this one is yours. Guardian Jack told me it would be better to keep you two close, so—”
Fourteen nodded curtly and carried Cym through the door Samantha indicated was his and kicked it shut behind him. He ignored the surprised laugh on the other side of the door and placed Cym on the massive, luxurious bed in the center of the room.
The thing looked ridiculous, but it was better than the floor. When he set Cym down, his small body nearly vanished as he sank into the plush duvet.
Fourteen was worried that if he sat down beside Cym, he’d vanish too, so he scooped Cym back up and stripped the stupid thing off the bed before placing him back down. Fourteen’s body temperature ran hot, so he was more than enough to keep them both warm using only the sheet under the duvet.
It had taken forever to leave the Blaike compound. Fourteen had tried to fade away with Cym in his arms dozens of times before finally resigning himself to the fact that being attached to the new head of a prominent witch family meant that sneaking away from the clusterfuck wasn’t an option.
Cym was dead asleep in Fourteen’s arms before Marshall came to rescue them. It hadn’t taken much convincing to get Fourteen to agree to follow him back to their chapter house. Fourteen was dead on his feet and had blown through all of his easily accessible resources. He needed a safe place to rest and regroup before deciding with Cym what their next move should be.
Fourteen wasn’t concerned his new allies would hurt Cym while they rested, because it was clear to him that they considered Cym a priceless treasure. Fourteen was more concerned about how they’d feel about the two of them leaving.
He would bomb that bridge when he got to it.
For now, he needed to fucking sleep.
He kicked off his boots and shucked his armor before joining Cym on the bed.
Instead of instantly falling asleep like he was used to, he found himself tracing Cym’s cheek with the back of his hand. Slowly, reverently.
Even after holding him for hours this evening, the surge of pleasure and comfort from touching Cym was heady. It had felt wonderful to hold him, but he hadn’t been touching Cym’s skin directly.
How could anyone feel this good?
Fourteen’s mind provided him with a query of what sliding into Cym’s tight little body would feel like, and he told it to fuck off.
Later. He would find out said information later. For now, they both needed sleep.
Fourteen pressed a kiss into Cym’s hair, but before settling in next to him, he remembered to attach a cuff to Cym’s wrist and put the other on his own. There was no way Fourteen would be able to sleep without making sure his flight risk was properly secured.
Finally satisfied, Fourteen slung an arm over Cym’s chest, a leg over his hip, and curled around Cym like a dragon protecting his precious hoard. Only then did he allow himself to sleep.
He woke up to discover that Cym had not only not tried to run during the night, but had instead managed to burrow his way inside Fourteen’s shirt. Since they were cuffed together, it had left them in a tangled mess.
Cym had also managed to get rid of most of his own shirt, so the amount of Cym’s skin touching his own had Fourteen’s dick wide awake and his soul singing. He doubted he’d ever felt this good in his life.
Fuck. It was almost like Fourteen was a person.
Fourteen pressed his nose into baby-blond hair and breathed in the smell of smoke, magic, and Cym. Overall the effect was very… pink. Fourteen huffed into Cym’s hair and smiled. Everything about Cym was so fucking cute, from his silly little cat backpack to his soft, fluffy hair and huge, blue eyes.
He reached down to find the cuff on Cym’s wrist and stroked it thoughtfully. He could take it off now before Cym woke up, but he wasn’t going to. It was better to get Cym used to who Fourteen truly was from the start. Cym hadn’t met Fourteen at his best. Or at his worst, depending on how one looked at it.
Even Fourteen didn’t know who or what he was anymore, but he didn’t think he was a good person. He was a little concerned that Cym thought he was.
Regardless of the magic Cym had pumped into Fourteen to give him access to some of the emotions and memories the Colonel had stolen from him, he was still a mess of programming and chemicals that had irrevocably changed who he was on a foundational level.
The starry-eyed kid who idolized his dad was nothing more than a wisp of a memory. His dad was dead, and the man who’d killed him had turned Fourteen into a monster.
He looked forward to showing the Colonel exactly what he’d created.
The body in his arms shifted and began to wiggle.
When Cym began to make tiny happy noises, Fourteen pulled him even closer to his chest, remembering at the last moment to hold back his strength enough to keep from crushing Cym’s delicate frame. Fourteen’s enhanced strength had been an asset in the field, but he’d never had something so fragile to protect.
He was going to need to work to keep from hurting Cym by accident.
“Mmmmph,” Cym murmured into Fourteen’s bare chest. Half of his face was obscured by Fourteen’s shirt. If it hadn’t been warped and stretched out by its second occupant, Fourteen doubted he’d be able to see any of Cym’s face at all.
“Good morning.”
Cym’s body froze. Then he jerked his head back, and it disappeared into Fourteen’s T-shirt entirely. There was some wiggling inside the shirt and the jingle and small tug of Fourteen’s wrist told him Cym had noticed the cuffs.
Fourteen waited patiently for Cym’s reaction. He didn’t fully know Cym yet, so Fourteen couldn’t guess what his new person’s response would be to the discovery, but he looked forward to the day he would be able to know him well enough to anticipate such things.
Cym gave a little snort. “I suppose I deserved this, but I think shoving me inside your shirt was a bit excessive.”
