Page 51 of High Stakes and Soulmates (Fanged Mistakes #3)

CYRUS

I’m not quite sure how this shower is even going to work. Ezio won’t even let go of me long enough for me to undress. He just keeps holding me like if he lets go I’m just going to evaporate.

“You know…” I begin as we stand in the bathroom. “If you let go just a little, you could hold me naked .”

“I’m afraid to let go,” he whispers. “I’m afraid that the moment I let go, I’m going to wake up and realize that this was all a dream. It has to be a dream. There’s no way this is real. There’s no way I just…” His grip tightens.

I rub his back as I close my eyes and try to see what I remember, but every time I do, I just find myself back on that boat screaming for the man I lost.

My fingers dig into his back. I want to remember something else. “Tell me again how we met.”

“I was fleeing from a house, and I ran into you. Literally. Best meet-cute ever. Me having just murdered someone and falling into a panic attack and you just being your delightful self,” he says.

“Was there a tree?” I ask.

Ezio jerks back enough to look at me, of course without letting go. “There was. Do you remember more?”

“I don’t know. It’s so fuzzy. I’m confused. Like… I remember playing with my brother. I remember picking flowers for our mother. I remember Joaquin… but it wasn’t Joaquin… I can’t believe I just… like I know now that he’s not my brother, but it just… it feels like my brother, you know?”

“You’re remembering your life from before,” he says. “You told me about it. About how your mother was poor, so you and your brother would sneak into fields of flowers, and then your mother would spend all night making little arrangements she’d sell at the market.”

I tuck my head against his shoulder while I think about it.

As I think about my brother… but it seems so dark.

It would be very strange to look for flowers in the dark.

Is that why I thought it was Joaquin? Because the darkness hid his features, my mind just painted over it?

Or because Louis really was such a big part of my life?

“You said you met my brother?”

“The man who attacked Louis claimed to be your brother.”

That was the man whose throat had been slit, the man I’d gone to, hoping to comfort him. “So he’s like… my brother or Cyrus’s brother?”

“I don’t know.”

“He was really hurt, so the people from the club were going to get him some help…”

“We’ll talk to him tomorrow. It’s too close to dawn now.”

“So then… I’m not Cyrus at all. I just… took his place? Because Cyrus was a real person, right?”

“He was. I mean… technically you’re not, but I don’t know if you had a place in this world before, you know? Did you have IDs and a degree and all of that… whereas here, you have a house, money, you’ve done schooling to become a detective.”

“Right… before the attack, I… I mean ‘Cyrus’ was a police officer. I wanted to be more, hoping it’d help me learn how to find the man who killed my family, so I worked hard to become a detective.

I took more schooling and it helped fill in the gaps in my memory of things pertaining to law enforcement because I didn’t recall specific procedures.

I thought it was because of the attack, but here it was because I wasn’t Cyrus.

Joaquin—I mean Louis—had insisted we get away from that place.

I wonder if it was to keep people from recognizing that I wasn’t Cyrus.

It might have been easy to fool the police, I was in horrible shape after the attack, but I wonder if people would have realized once I healed. ”

“I mean, I’d only seen the real Cyrus at a glance and when I met you again, I really didn’t notice you were someone else, but you two look quite similar and you had such bad head wounds after the accident,” Ezio says. “Your whole face was black and blue.”

I shake my head. “This is too hard to wrap my mind around. Let’s get back to the naked thing and you telling me how you had more stamina than a plow horse on your first go.”

He grins. “Stamina for days.”

“You’re ridiculous,” I say as I tug at his shirt, but it seems like I’m not getting it off him unless I begin cutting it off. “Ezio.”

“You won’t just be a dream when I pull away?” he asks.

“I don’t plan to be.”

He grudgingly lets go and kisses my hand and fingers as he does. It doesn’t make it the easiest to pull his shirt off while his lips are peppering kisses all over my fingers and hand, so I just leave his shirt draped over his head and start on his pants with my one free hand.

“No, no, no. I can’t see your beautiful face.”

“You really don’t need to,” I assure him as he pulls from me for the first time since we entered the house. His shirt drops to the ground, and when he reaches for me again, I push his hand down to my shirt. He grabs the edge of it and draws it up.

“So… if I’m really not a werewolf, why did I feel so much better after the hospital? It was like I felt alive for the first time in so long.”

“Because they gave you blood,” he says.

“Holy shit, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? I was over here thinking that I was finally feeling good because I was going to turn into a wolf, and here it was because I’d been starving myself.”

“Louis almost had to have been giving you some blood or I’m not sure you’d have been as well as you were,” Ezio muses. “He probably mixed it into your food and you didn’t even notice.”

“That’s fucked up,” I say. “All of it… I was prepared to destroy my life for him. He was… he was my brother.”

“I’m sorry.”

I nod, not sure what else to do. “Thank you. Come on, we haven’t gotten any cleaner at all.”

“Do you want some blood?”

“I don’t… have any blood in the house.”

“You can have my blood.”

“I thought it had to be human blood?”

“I believe dhampirs can drink whatever they’d like.”

“Um… you already lost a lot of blood. I’ll get some later,” I say.

“Come on.” I tug him into the shower, and I think it’s only because I’m not forcing him to let go of me that he follows.

The water rushes over him, washing away the blood that marred his gorgeous face.

He’s too busy kissing my neck and cheek to notice as I scrub at the spots the blood has dried.

His eye looks discolored, but of course he doesn’t seem to care in the slightest. I really hope it will heal, that maybe it will just take more time.

While I wash away the blood on his body, Ezio simply kisses all over mine. And when his hand snakes around my bare back, I begin to question how clean we really need to be.

But no! We rolled around on the ground. His legs nearly exploded off. He’s coated in filth and blood and… other stuff that I’m not even sure I can identify. So I dutifully clean him while his hand slides down to my ass, squeezing a cheek as his lips move over my neck.

There’s something so familiar about him. I know we’ve known each other for a while, but the way his hands move over me feels so comfortable. And when he kisses that sensitive spot on my neck, it feels so right.

When I close my eyes, it’s like I can imagine his hands traveling all over my body. I can imagine him holding me, kissing me, caressing me, inside of me…

But when I open my eyes, I struggle to remember, and it frustrates me. He remembers so much, and I remember so little.

“What’s wrong? Am I moving too fast? I’m sorry,” he says.

“No… no, I’m just… a bit jealous you remember everything, and I just… it’s fragmented. It’s like… was that a dream I had or an actual memory?”

“I’ll tell you everything,” Ezio promises. “Maybe me talking about it will help you remember.”

“Maybe,” I say as I cup his face. “At least you’re clean.”

“Is that what we were doing?”

“Sure was.”

“I was cleaning you too… with my mouth.”

My face scrunches up. “That… I… what about a washcloth?”

“I can lick the dried blood off you.”

“That’s really not as romantic as you seem to think it is,” I say while I scrub my arms. Really, most of the blood on me is from holding on to Ezio, who was the one who’d bled all over.

I press myself against him, my cock brushing against his wet skin, and I see the expression he gives me, telling me that he doesn’t care how clean we are, he just cares about getting me out of this shower and onto the bed.

Ezio turns the water off and lifts me out of the tub, positive that the last thing I need is to use my own feet.

“I love you so much,” he says as he guides me into the bedroom.

“I love you too.”

“Thank you for forgiving me.”

“There was nothing to forgive. Please,” I beg, forcing him to look at me. “Please stop being so hard on yourself.”

He nods, but I’m more than positive he’s not going to listen.

Maybe time will help. I continue, “You know this is a two-way street? All of it? If I thought you were alive, I would have found you. If you thought I was alive, you’d have found me.

And look, you did, even though you thought I was dead. ”

“I’m not listening to any voice of reason,” he decides as he lays me down on my bed. “Do you have lube?”

I reach over and grab it and when I come back, I notice the way he’s looking down at me, his eyes are roaming over me, making me feel like he’s never seen something so wonderful. It makes me feel a bit flustered and question how he can look at me this way.

He kisses a line down my chest to my hip as his hand slides down my cock and cups my balls. Then his fingers toyingly circle around my cock before drifting back up to the tip, and when they reach it, his lips are there to meet them.

Ezio’s tongue swirls around me before he dips down, taking the head into his mouth.

His hand wanders up my thigh, pushing it up while I hear the lid of the lube pop open.

His finger slides down between my legs as I realize that I can’t do anything other than lie here and enjoy every fucking second of it.

His finger rubs over my hole, circling it, leaving me in anticipation of what’s to come before pressing into me.

All the while his mouth sinks down my length and I moan, fingers digging into the sheets as I close my eyes, and I can hear him tell me he loves me.

I can feel him holding me. And it all just feels so fucking right.

Another finger joins the first, opening me up and stroking, sending shivers of pleasure through me. It’s like he knows every spot that’s sensitive. Every place that makes me moan. After so many years… how can he still know me so fucking well?

He draws his fingers out as I grab the lube and pull him up to me. I squeeze some onto my fingers and when he leans down for a kiss, I slide my fingers over his thick cock.

“Feels so fucking good,” I whisper.

“Me too,” he says, but I’ve barely touched him while he’s over here treating me like royalty.

His cock brushes against my hole before he shifts my hips up and settles between them.

He presses against me and I feel myself opening up.

He sinks deeper inside of me and I grab on to him while his hand moves over my cock, caressing me so gently.

“You alright?”

“Better than,” I assure him.

“I love you,” he says, like he can’t get enough of saying it.

I smile at him. “I love you too.”

Ezio draws out just a little before thrusting deeper inside of me, but the angle of it hits me just right, making me moan.

“This has to be cheating,” I decide. “You know all my favorite spots.”

“You like that?” he asks.

“I love all of it.”

“Good,” he says while he moves inside me. He moans as he tucks his head close to mine and kisses my neck. When he nips it with his fangs, pleasure races through me. I find myself wanting him to bite me and I don’t even know why. Wouldn’t that hurt?

It’s like I’m hypnotized. I hold on to him tightly while this overwhelming rush of feeling complete hits me.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, grabbing my trembling fingers.

“Nothing… I’m just. It’s like… I feel like it’s been a very long time since I felt this happy,” I say.

He kisses my fingers. “Me too. I love you. I love you, Arturo.”

My breath catches, but for some reason it feels so fucking right. “I love you too.”

Then he reaches up to his neck and cuts it with his nail.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Ezio shifts me up so I’m sitting on his lap, cock still deep inside of me, making me moan. He presses my head against his neck.

“Drink it.”

“What? But…” I hesitate, positive that this isn’t right.

“I’m going to heal if you don’t, and I’ll have to cut myself again. Just a taste.”

I feel uncertain, but I lean in and let my tongue run over the blood and realize that nothing has ever tasted better.

“Oh fuck,” I moan before sucking on the spot.

He thrusts up into me as I get a mouthful and groan.

I grip him tightly while I fall into the bliss of it all.

Honestly, I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out, not with the way he’s stroking me and moving inside me.

He heals far too quickly, and I find myself still sucking the spot, wanting more.

Ezio drives up into me as I come, unable to handle any more.

Pleasure rushes through me as come hits his stomach.

He pushes deep inside of me while I squeeze around his cock.

And I love the moan that escapes him when he comes inside of me.

He kisses my neck and cheek before he lays me down and slowly pulls out of me.

“Don’t move,” he says as he rushes off to get something to clean us up with.

And when he’s done, he lies down beside me and draws me into his arms while he tells me everything that I want to know. From the first time we met, to the books we read together, and how I helped pull him out of the darkness he’d been in.

At times, I feel like I’m a stranger listening in, but at other times, I’m hit with such a sense of familiarity that I know I can’t deny any of it.