Dreamcatcher 2 Ben in the Shadows

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everyone has supernatural powers and straight people are the
minority. The whole place is apparently falling ass-backwards in gay
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werewolves and vampires and whatever other fairy-tale bullshit you
want to dream up. It’s called…”
Jasper spread his hands in front of him, pausing as if for emphasis
before he muttered the magic word, but Ben beat him to it.
“Morgana,” he whispered, his dry throat croaking out the word before
he could stop it.
Jasper’s face went white as a sheet. “What did you just say?”
What had he just said? “I–I don’t know. It was just a word that
popped into my head.”
“You said Morgana. Like it was the name of the plane.”
“Is it?” Ben asked. “Is it?”
Jasper didn’t respond, just stood there stupidly, staring at the
floor. Ben’s head was spinning with the force of the revelation.
“Before Pierson,” he finally began, slowly and carefully, “where did
you come from? What did your parents say about…”
“I don’t remember my parents.”
“What do you remember?”
Ben stayed silent. Because of his amnesia, he couldn’t remember
anything before Pierson except for wandering the Devils River below
Ecstasy Rock. Being there tonight with Jasper had stirred something
in him, though, some vague, dark past from before his conscious
memory, just like the word, planeswalker, had stirred something now.
“This Morgana place,” Ben said quickly, “is Danny from there,
too?”
Jasper shook his head. “His parents are both human. They’re from
Oklahoma.”
“But there are other werewolves, right? Or planeswalkers?” Ben
asked. “Are they from…”
“We’ve never met anyone else.”
“Oh.”
For the barest of seconds, Ben had hoped to find some kind of
clue to where he was from or who he was, but that hope deflated as
Ben in the Shadows
65
quickly as it had appeared. Just like his hopes for what mating would
be.
“My parents said a lot of stuff,” Jasper said. “And I’m pretty
convinced now that most of it was total and complete bullshit.
Especially this planeswalker garbage. My mom was really…I don’t
know. I think having all of us…not-normal kids…sort of messed her
up.”
“Did your mom tell you about mating, too?”
Jasper bit his lip. “Look, whatever we just did…”
“Is that why you didn’t want to mate with me? Because you don’t
believe in mating or any of that stuff your parents said?”
“I don’t believe in planeswalking,” Jasper snapped, “because my
parents tried to do it once. They jumped from the top of a very tall
rock. A cliff, actually, with some very sharp, very unfortunate rocks
underneath—”
“This is Ecstasy Rock?” Ben asked, his eyes wide. This new detail
stirred something, too. He could tell he was upsetting Jasper, but he
had to ask. He had to know more. “What happened to them?”
“They’ve been unconscious for the past ten years,” Jasper
finished. Ben snapped his mouth closed, wishing to God he’d kept it
that way in the first place. “So no, I kinda doubt that particular
bedtime story has any bearing on reality.”
Ben swallowed. “Oh.”
He sank back onto the bed behind him. He had felt an awful lot of
raw emotion surge into him when he bit into Jasper, and he’d been
terrified at how painful most of it was. For the first time since it they
mated, Ben was starting to think that pain had nothing to do with him.
He pulled his legs up onto the bed, hugging his knees to his chest.
Jasper came to sit next to him on the bed, keeping a careful distance.
Ben stared at the space between them.
“This whole mating thing,” Jasper said slowly. “It’s not like I
don’t believe in it.”
“You just don’t want it.”
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“What I went through was ten years ago, and I’m still screwed up
about it. What you went through…”
“You don’t know what I went through.”
“I know how it made you feel.”
Ben’s chest rose and fell as he breathed in and out. Jasper raised a
hand to his back. It felt good, comforting, but he shrugged it away.
“You were supposed to fix me. You rescued me, and you kissed me.
We made love?” Jasper bit his lip at that, and Ben could feel so much
guilt rolling off of him. Ben continued. “I thought that was going to
take all the pain away, but it only made it worse.”
“Don’t say that.” Jasper’s voice was almost a whisper. That hand
came creeping back to Ben like a magnet, running across his knee.
Ben could feel the need coming off of him. If Jasper had taken him in
his arms altogether, Ben would have collapsed there, but he didn’t. He
stopped with just the muted brush of that one shy hand. Ben pushed it
away again, more forcefully this time.
“Why are you trying to comfort me, anyway? You fucked me, and
now you don’t want me—”
“I don’t know what I want.” [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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