Page 20 of Blood Loss (The Obscura Saga #2)

LAT H AN

Kylo opens his jaw of fangs and razored teeth as wide as it will go. The metal cheek rings squeak within their leather wraps as Lathan lodges the ball snuggly into the wolf’s mouth—his tongue firmly pressed back, blocked from escaping—and secures the mechanism against his tangle of brown curls.

The blush that darkens Kylo’s skin clouds down the sides of his neck, and Lathan’s fingers linger along his jugular, his throbbing pulse of hot blood, after tightening the ball gag. His teasing touch wretches a groan from Kylo, and he reaches his hands back to search where Lathan’s body is perched behind him still, but the vampire catches those paws by the wrists. His hands travel down the werewolf’s furred arms, soft like heavy body hair, gently laying them against the small of his back.

“I’m going to tie your hands here so you can’t touch me,” Lathan whispers against Kylo’s sharp ear, and the wolf whimpers, struggling to look back at him. “It’s your birthday, Ky.”

His top is easy to rip, already bulging at the seams from his partially shifted torso. With his body bare, Lathan retrieves a soft but hefty rope from underneath their pillows. He knots Kylo’s wrists together as his head drops back against Lathan’s chest, panting into the ball between his teeth and growing stiff quickly. He pulls the rope once around his warm body, tightly under his nipples, and circles it back to his spine where the ends lay flat on the mattress, jutting out from either side of Kylo’s waist once Lathan pushes him down.

Looking down at his work, Kylo writhes, rolling his hips to get closer to his mate, trying to wrap his legs around him.

“So impatient,” Lathan says with a dark grin, moving forward to press his pelvis against Kylo’s to stop his squirming. “Don’t you want to enjoy your present?”

The werewolf growls with furrowed, frustrated brows, and Lathan laughs. He shimmies off his pants to expose those impatient legs, and Kylo seems to settle some with his newfound freedom, watching down his naked body, the flush of his hardening cock.

Until Lathan slaps his palms against the back of his thighs and pushes his knees into his chest. Kylo’s eyes—irritated from the sand and the lakewater—go big and round, and he moans prematurely with Lathan between his legs. He meets his eyes through a heavy-lidded gaze, dropping lower and forward, and feeling Kylo’s anticipation rake chills through his body.

“Don’t get too excited,” he purrs, and yanks the rope ends taut. Kylo grinds his teeth into the instrument in his mouth, the black of his eyes pulsing into a wider circumference. Lathan ties his partner’s legs where they are, elevated off the bed and held into his stomach, decorating Kylo’s body with the artful crisscrossing of the textile.

Clamping down on the ball gag, saliva seeping from the corners of his lips; pupils dilating and erection hard and hot; arms roped behind him and legs pinned to his chest, opening him wide and vulnerable. Lathan finds it pathetically beautiful, and after the fucked up several months they’ve shared—the impossible trauma Kylo’s lived through—he wants to pamper him as much as he can, and remind him how good things can feel.

He presses his lips into the side of the wolf’s bent knee, aware of his pleading stare as he draws lower, trailing kisses down his inner thigh. Though his nose nearly brushes Kylo’s length, directed up in the same direction of his knees, Lathan flicks his eyes up as he bypasses it, and Kylo sighs with frustration. It delights Lathan how easily he can make him squirm, how fast he can get him excited—all elevated now that they’re mated, though he was undeniably at his mercy beforehand, too.

A gasp sucks in between Kylo’s teeth as Lathan’s touch finally reaches him. He teases his asshole, his thumbs dug in nearby, opening him to his mouth. Kylo huffs, his back straining against the rope mosaic to arch. When the tip of Lathan’s tongue breaches inside, Kylo’s foot flexes to the right of his head as he sighs gravelly.

Lathan feels Kylo soften, relax, as he prods him, his airy sounds becoming more strangled. He licks his wet tongue slowly up his taint as his hand crawls, gripping his leaking cock as he takes one of his balls in his mouth. Kylo’s yelp of pleasure is swallowed by the gag, but Lathan can hear how wet his mouth is with his own drool.

A dual-syllable noise grounds out of him, and Lathan recognizes it from enough of their foreplay in the past as an attempt at his name. So he releases his mouthful to lap his tongue up to Kylo’s tip, licking off the salty precum and then lifting his head to look at the mess of his mate he’s created, tilting his chin so Kylo can see him swallow.

The wolf snarls, upper lip curling up to his gums, and he shimmies, worming his way down the mattress a few inches.

Lathan holds his head to the side, stroking the thin fur of Kylo’s abdomen. “What’s wrong, boy? Need something?”

Kylo’s eyes blaze, burning black. He flares his nostrils and growls, failing to grind his ass against Lathan’s thighs.

“Ohh,” Lathan drawls, and thrusts the front of his pelvis—his hidden hard-on—against Kylo, “you need me .”

“—uchk mmm .”

Lathan’s fangs slip down as his gums ache, and he grins with them once the desperate, demanding growl rebuilds its clarity in his mind.

‘Fuck me.’

And so he does. He undoes the denim he changed into when they got back home from the beach, and doesn’t bother pushing them down or taking anything off, filling Kylo within moments and exhaling at his bodily heat just as the wolf whines, long and low. He rocks his body with each thrust, rips out moan after moan, hisses as Kylo’s eyes roll back.

“What else do you need, Kylo?” he grits, looming over him, their faces close.

Kylo cries out a parade of sounds, eyeing Lathan’s mouth.

Lathan’s heart ricochets in its cage, his throat itchy and tight with Kylo’s moaning gaze.

“You need me to bite you?” His fingers clutch around Kylo’s throat, feeling his pulse, his breathing going ragged.

Kylo nods.

“You need my venom?”

He moans.

“Need me to suck your blood until you cum?”

He sinks his head back into the pillow below it, giving Lathan his whole throat.

And he bites it. Coating his mouth with Kylo’s blood as he fucks him, rendering the werewolf completely spent beneath him, howling and crying and frothing and cumming onto his abdomen. He trembles involuntarily as Lathan stimulates him through it all, and then until he finishes too—with the hot, fresh blood on his tongue, he doesn’t last much longer than Kylo.

“Happy birthday,” he breathes down at Kylo’s fluttering lashes.

◆◆ ◆

Kylo’s gone by the time Lathan wakes up—the sun exposure yesterday helped him sleep longer than normal. But placed oh so loving on his empty pillow: the ball gag, riddled with teeth indents.

He smiles tiredly to himself. I don’t know if we’ll ever use this thing again, but knowing Kylo, he’ll want his revenge for keeping his hands off me.

And the thought only makes his smile deepen.

To his right, on the bedside table, his phone buzzes. Without flipping over, he thwacks an arm over to the device and brings it to him, squinting his unadjusted eyes at the backlight. And then his muscles flex, instinctively ready to toss it away.

Messages and missed calls from his mother.

But a certain string of words stops him, and he stares at the opened notification until his screen fades to black again.

6:09am

Why aren’t you listed for the internship?

He’d sent in his application for the law internship his dad kept bugging him about months ago. He didn’t bother to tell his mom, because he knew his dad would do that for him. He’d figured it could actually be good for them—both he and Kylo—if he does the internship and spends his days learning on-the-job. It’d make their transition into Society much smoother, and could give Lathan an in so he can work on cutting out his parents. The only thing he could need them for at this point is the job they’re adamant about giving him.

He didn’t account that she would find out if he’s been accepted or not before him, though. And the only way that’s possible is if the firm has announced the interns for the upcoming year on their website.

He sits up, unlocking his phone—the facial recognition refusing to acknowledge his bedhead the first attempt—and then tapping the name of the Ridley law office into the search engine. Tabbing to their PARTNERSHIPS page, the OBSCURA ACADEMY LEGAL INTERSHIP is the second listed, and he sees what his mom must have.

Four interns. Four students. Four names.

And Lathan isn’t one of them.

He didn’t want the job. But he needed the experience. The reference. The hope of a life with Kylo, away from the bite of his parents.

Literally.

He laughs. Staring at the names of the chosen applicants, he laughs. Parents who hurt me, a pack who hates me, a mate who’s always hurt because of me. And I couldn’t even have this.

8:13am

Guess I didn’t get it

Her response is immediate, as if she’s been holding her phone since five in the morning when the first calls and messages came through. He’s about to power it off and let her steep in her unbridled rage until he catches the scarred marks of her fangs on his wrist—this would be enough to drag her back here, and the Garcias already have enough legal trouble to worry about.

“Did you apply to another internship?” she demands as he touches the phone to his ear. “Does Obscura have more options now?”

“You would know if they did,” he says dully. And she would; she keeps tabs on the department, and probably still will after Lathan graduates.

“Lathan,” she hisses, and he can see the vein up her temple tense, as if she’s in front of him. “Is this a mistake? Forward me your emails with the firm.”

“And I’m the mistake, right?”

She curses in Korean—that much he can identify from his childhood. “What are we supposed to say to our clients? That our son is not as competent as us? Why would anyone want to work with you if you can’t prove you’re just like us?”

Lathan pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just say it.”

“That you are a mistake? Maybe you are, if you insist on being like this. Since meeting that dog, you have done nothing but—”

“Fuck you,” he spits. “He’s not a dog . He’s a werewolf. And he’s my mate .”

He expects for the line to go quiet, but instead he’s wincing at the chorus of snide laughter that comes from his mother.

“You aren’t an animal, Lathan. It doesn’t matter how hard you try; you are not one of them. And without them, what are you?”

His lips part, but none of the arguments listing in his throat come forth. Because they don’t answer her question. ‘Who are you’ is easy enough: I’m Lathan. Your abused son. A social recluse. An alternate music-loving law student. A queer man with an amazing partner .

But the ‘what’ changes the meaning. I’m Lathan. A vampire. A monster. A murderer. A mistake.

And without them, I am nothing.