Andres hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep since they’d visited Mercer’s metal shop, and he was beginning to feel it. Between his hours of sewing—and taking videos of his progress to put up on his channel, which he was thankful Shane had not connected to him yet, probably because it never showed his face—and starting a new infiltration project for Maul despite better Coachella results than expected, he’d been texting with the friend-version of Shane nearly constantly. He devoured Shane’s hopes and fears and poetic wonderings with the same passion that he drank his little swan’s blood.
With what time that left, Andres tossed and turned, his sleeping mind unable to decide whether roping Shane into this upcoming part of the investigation was a dream or a nightmare. In either one, he still felt a little like a monster. A monster who’d designed two impeccable outfits.
The rush orders from Mercer had been worth it, too, the jewelry matching perfectly to the clothing he’d designed. He would have paid every penny again, and the ten thousand on top of it, just to see Shane in them a single time, to run a fingertip along the upper edge of his collar and feel him tremble…
Andres clung to that imagery as he came up behind Shane in the dim alley. The chaos and joy of the boardwalk echoed from two streets over, just loud enough to hide his soft footsteps, but not the inhale that Shane took as Andres traced three fingertips over his shoulder. “Shall we?”
Shane settled with a sigh, but when he spoke, his voice had that odd hollow ring he’d adopted at Mercer’s. Fear, annoyance, displeasure—Andres still couldn’t pinpoint it. “I think the theme of this night is that you give me orders, not options.”
“You’re always free to disobey.” He meant that, but with the way it came out in the sultry, deepened layers of his fictitious vampire voice, he wasn’t sure it sounded as such.
They walked around the side of the building, following a series of chalk-marked symbols to a simple wooden door. Andres knocked. The door cracked open, an androgynous person in an old-fashioned butler’s outfit peeking out. At the confident flash of Andres’s fangs, they were led inside, where an antique desk sat in an otherwise bare room with a curtain at one end, candles twinkling from sconces on the plain walls. Shane stiffened, halting in his tracks.
A rush of predictions spiraled through Andres’s mind—he wasn’t as accepting of this arrangement as he seemed, he couldn’t bear to go through with it, he’d realized that even pretending to belong to Andres in public was too despicable—before realizing just how many similarities this entrance space shared with the room Maul had nearly drained Shane dry in.
Gently, he pressed his palm to Shane’s back, rubbing his thumb up and down. I’m here for you, Andres wanted to say, and so long as that’s true, nothing will ever hurt you.
Shane released an audible breath. They approached the desk together.
Their host opened an elegant notebook, raising one brow. When they smiled, their fangs slipped out. “Names?”
“This is Cygnus and I’m his vampire.” He curled a finger through Shane’s hair as he said it, adding a little growl beneath his voice. From what he’d been able to learn of the place, they didn’t seem to be actively forcing the humans to participate, but he knew the kind of thoughts that had led him to crave this scenario, and he could imagine just what monsters lay behind the curtain.
The host scanned their notebook and frowned. They took a second look at Andres’s mask. “I don’t have you on my list. Did you put any other names with that?” As they spoke, they withdrew a tablet from inside the top drawer, the technology breaking their otherwise faux-historic surroundings. They tilted its screen out of view, but seemed to be flicking through another registry.
Andres had expected this. “Were we meant to fill something out before arrival? I was recommended here by a friend who said she’d put in a booking for us. She didn’t mention anything else.”
The host’s other brow raised then too. “Which friend is this?”
“Tara Williams. She works here.” He said it with a confidence and poise that could outplay honesty. “I could call her, but I know she has duties tonight.”
“Oh, right, they’re on the floor I believe,” the host muttered, and Andres’s heart lifted at the casual use of Tara’s second set of pronouns. “Well, you won’t be as integrated as if you’d filled out our story forms, but tonight’s all free-play anyway. I’ll still need a few signatures for the non-disclosure and consent agreements.”
That was how they did it, then. They got their humans to sign things—things that were unlikely to hold up, should the club be taken to court—but which might convince someone unversed in the law or unable to find or afford a decent lawyer that they were trapped into this system of obedience and blood-letting. At least no one had asked for their legal names yet. Or Andres’s face.
“And I’ll need that mask off.”
Well, damn. He fiddled with Shane’s hair again, curling half his mouth up, a fang bared. “It’s part of our game, you see...”
“Just while you sign.” The host sighed, shuffling up two small stacks of forms. “Your identity is sacred to us, I assure you, but so is that of every person who’s already walked through these doors. We have nothing against masks, only those who have to hide beneath them from their own people.”
It was well said, Andres had to admit. He tried not to look at Shane, whose face had already tipped toward his, gaze searching like a spotlight. If he found out now, how much would that ruin? Everything, perhaps. Nothing, maybe. If Shane already didn’t want to be here, would he accept it more or less if he knew he had come with the silly, emotional fool he’d been platonically trading ridiculous musings with for weeks? He would shudder less, Andres was certain. And god, despite how much of a monster it made him, he didn’t want to lose that. Didn’t want to lose the way Shane had started looking at his lips, like he was remembering their kiss, or the tiny, whimpered moan that left him every time Andres’s fangs sunk in.
Shane glanced down, a soft heat in his cheeks. “Is there somewhere else I can sign mine instead?”
“Of course,” the host answered immediately, handing Shane one of the stacks and a pen. “If you go through the curtain there, you’ll find the dressing room.”
Something hot and wet burned behind Andres’s eyes, but the most he could do to thank Shane was press his lips to the top of Shane’s head. “I’ll be in shortly.”
The way Shane startled at the kiss could have been everything or nothing. Andres watched him leave, unable to tear his gaze away until the curtain had re-settled behind him. He took a quick glance around the room, trying to spot any cameras they might have hidden in the corners, but the attempt only slid his contacts slightly off-center. The tunneling effect they had on his non-human eyes made him nauseous at that angle and rolled the red of the colored iris he’d chosen for the night directly into his vision. Oh well; if they really were providing a space for a bunch of vampires with morally-questionable preferences, then they were probably locking up that information tight.
He removed his mask long enough to squeeze an eyedrop into both eyes, then signed the forms after an attempt to look like he’d skimmed them, planting a fake name on the print line and hoping Shane had the forethought to do the same. Andres felt terrible just for asking him to put any mark on something like this. They could be waiting at the back door for Tara to emerge later, or stealing their employee records to hunt them back to their house or—
“Thank you very much. You may proceed whenever you’re ready. If you wish to return for future events, stop by before the end of the night and I can provide you with a code to our pre-event forms.”
And that was it.
Andres slipped his mask back into position and pushed into the hall-space behind the curtain. Shane’s scent had already taken over the space, turning the air bright and bold and a little sharp to Andres’s nose. A bench and three ornate dressing mirrors had been arranged inside, electric candles hidden in bundles of fake flowers along a counter. He hung their outfits from an elegant metal rack and plopped the bag on a stool. Shane was still staring at his form, his brow tight and his focus unmoored. He startled, then signed before tucking the papers farther onto the counter.
Andres felt sick. He was going to enjoy this evening—he’d put so much work into making sure it happened—but god, he wished Shane could do the same.
He tried to be gentle as he set Shane’s ornaments on the counter and showed him the pieces of his outfit, not quite relishing these particular flinches and swallows as Shane brushed his fingers over the silk and refused to meet Andres’s gaze. He’d be sure their outfits to Vitalis-Barron’s gala looked nothing like this.
Andres turned away to let Shane change. Flashes of skin still caught his attention through the surrounding mirrors: a graceful shoulder blade, a pale hipbone, an ankle with a line of ink. He forced himself not to look.
His own outfit was coordinated to match Shane’s in an opposites attract fashion. Black lace gloves ended halfway down his fingers, and his high-waisted black pants were tucked into his tall boots, an elegant belt holding in the deep red shirt he’d unbuttoned nearly to his navel to show off more lace in the form of an undershirt. He kept his long dark coat over it—a new one, thrifted two days ago, which he’d augmented with frills of lace. His dangling earrings of black and maroon gemstones matched a brand-new necklace that he slid on delicately. It hung down the front of his chest, a rose gold chain ending in a large maroon gem at the base of his sternum. It all came together nicely with the spiraling red of his gala mask and the scarlet of his colored contacts.
He looked good. He looked great; like he’d drawn his soul into the fabric and formed it to fit. It was the kind of outfit he felt seen in, regardless of whether anyone was looking, but especially when they did. And if they had a problem with it, then, well, he had the strength and the teeth now to make that a problem for them.
But his looks were less important than—
“A little help?” Shane asked, his voice low.
Andres’s knees went weak at the sight of him, but he cleared his throat, stepping in to button the back of the rose gold outfit. Every faint brush of his fingers on Shane’s back was like being reborn, the world started afresh just for him, the first ever touch of skin on skin. Shane was so soft, so elegant, from the long curve of his neck to the graceful slopes of his shoulders, scattered in constellations of freckles, and down his back, his spine a defined ridge.
With a few quick twirls and tugs, Andres fastened the stray waves of Shane’s hair with bobby-pins studded in pearls and little red stones. Finally, he took up the collar. It felt so much lighter in his grasp than everything it could represent. He slipped it around Shane’s throat with the utmost tenderness, basking in the way his swan trembled as he drew his fingertips along the sides of his neck.
His tension accumulated into a visible shudder as the jewelry clicked shut.
“You can remove it whenever you’d like,” Andres whispered, taking Shane’s hand to glide it over the latch.
Shane fiddled with it for barely a moment, but he kept his fingers in Andres’s far longer, staring at himself in the mirror like he was trying to see inside the being that stared back.
Shane was a vision. His pale silk shimmered pearlescent in the low light. The fabric started at his shoulders, wrapping in an x across his chest before turning to a jumpsuit that appeared as a skirt at first glance. It made up for how little of his torso it covered by pooling in waves off his shoulders, turning fine and translucent and filled with twinkling white gems—a star to Andres’s black hole. A puff of the same material fluttered around Shane’s arms, veiling the little white glucose monitor on his triceps, and tucked into his wrist cuffs.
On its own, the outfit would have been spectacular, but Mercer’s work exalted it. Each polished rose gold piece contained flat segments of elegant etching connected by delicate chain linkage, with a red stone suspended against Shane’s pulse on the cuff’s undersides, and a dangling series of them in the gap where Andres preferred to sink his fangs into Shane’s neck. He knew the little clip beside each would unlock them, giving him unrestricted access—though in truth the metal hardly covered enough to prevent a bite. Like the loop of delicate chain that draped down the front of Shane’s chest, waiting to be tugged on, it was for the show of the thing. The message it sent.
Shane belonged to Andres.
For tonight, at least.
Shane seemed to be coming to the same conclusion, his throat bobbing against the collar. He shifted, swaying first to the right, then the left experimentally. A pair of sneakers poked from beneath the swirling fabric around his feet. Andres knelt before him, wordlessly pulling them off to replace them with the jeweled sandals he’d altered to match the rest of the ornamentation Shane now wore.
“There’s one more piece,” he said, withdrawing the simple sleeve from his pocket. “Give me your arm, my pet.”
Shane drew in a breath, hesitating for a deliciously long moment, but slowly he let it out, and as he did, he uncurled the arm that Maul had tried to drain him from. No trace of the vampire’s work remained, but Andres could still see the invisible scars of that night in the way Shane moved, his arms always tucked in close—closer the more tense he grew. It was wrong of Andres to enjoy that tension, wrong of him to love how it gave him the chance to peel his Cygnus apart.
He wondered, absently, if Shane ever held himself so tight while texting the Andres he’d met at the Fishnettery.
A quaver rolled through him as Andres took hold of his wrist. Still on one knee, Andres gently slid the six-inch sleeve up until it covered the crook of Shane’s elbow, remaining still when Shane twitched and letting him slowly ease into the touch. As soon as the fabric was in place, he seemed to relax, just a little. It fit perfectly.
Andres let his gaze travel up Shane with what he hoped came across as tender adoration even from behind the mask. His attention caught on a pair of scars that Shane’s outfit didn’t quite cover; small, light things with a hint of a crook around one of his ribs where a tattooed flower had been inked as though it was splitting from the irregular tissue.
Oh. Oh. The thought was small and bright and it settled quickly into a contented warmth. His little swan had searched and found himself, the same way Andres had, and there was a beauty and bond in that Andres could find nowhere else. He was a wonder, a monument to his own godhood. Andres wanted him all the more for it.
“I…” Shane started, then flushed, turning his face away.
“My Cygnus,” Andres breathed. He lifted his hands to the scars, slow enough that when Shane flinched back, he could move like a wave with the motion, steady but gentle. The tips of his fingers drew over the sliver of the line he could see, then his thumb followed as he cupped Shane’s sides, staring up at him once again. “You’re magnificent.”
Shane’s eyes gleamed. His lower lip quivered.
“So very magnificent,” Andres repeated, because it was true. But if Shane was like him—if he’d strived for so long to find the styles that showed his soul and not merely his body—Andres worried. He’d picked what he’d known would look good on Shane, taking inspiration from the thin, loose scarves and flowing cardigans he commonly wore in his videos, but Andres had never actually asked. “Did I overstep with the design? If this makes you feel too feminine—”
“No,” Shane interjected. “It’s princely, truly. I feel like me.”
Andres stood, and as he did, Shane—his magnificent, starlit Cygnus—leaned into him, wrapping both arms around Andres with a tender sound.
“Thank you.”
Andres was too shocked to reply. His arms knew better than his brain, though, because they drew naturally around Shane, holding him close like he was meant to be there. “You’re mine,” he finally managed.
Shane trembled at that, and Andres swore—swore—he held tighter.
From beyond the curtain came the vague sounds of new arrivals, and the butler lifting their voice. “Let me check if the couple before you has finished yet.”
“I think that means we should go in,” Shane whispered, like they were criminals up to mischief.
Andres supposed this was a type of con, after all, if only because their target seemed determined not to let them approach in any other way. He brushed his fingers over the delicate chain that hung down Shane’s chest. “If you’re overwhelmed or uncomfortable, tell me. We can always—”
The laugh that Shane cut him off with was so sharp and frazzled it grated. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
Andres tried not to as they handed off their regular clothing to the host and were directed to the double doors at the far side of the hall. It felt like so much more was riding on this night than just a conversation with a Vitalis-Barron escapee, every one of his terrible fantasies begging him either to take the leap or let go forever.
His breath caught as he pushed the doors open.
The lighting was dim still, electric candles hidden behind wall chalices and set into candelabras. Across the ceiling hung strings of tiny fairy lights, arranged in what Andres swore were real constellations, even if the only ones he personally knew were Orion and now Cygnus. They gave a sophistication and sensuality to the already gorgeous array of old-fashioned lounge furniture: sofas and loveseats, chairs draped in silks and little end-tables filled with bundled flowers and tiny discarded appetizer plates. The room sprawled, its seating clearly arranged to inspire close connections, with paper and wooden screens and potted plants artfully assembled to create the feeling of rooms in a space where it seemed the only truly separate chambers were a series of doors along two walls. Curtains shimmered over a half a dozen of those entrances, revealing glimpses of private, shadowy spaces, while further down it seemed their doors opened to more intimate parlor settings like those in the main space, blocked by silk ribbons that likely signified reservations.
It was a brilliant design, mobile enough for the constant moving that kept them secret, but with plenty of solid and detailed pieces to make the place feel truly grounded in its own ethereal way: a gothic castle, not pulled from time but from fantasy. Though Andres suspected it would have been far less a sight without the people occupying it.
The space was already full of low, sensual talk and sharp laughter. A few more vampires dressed like butlers walked with platters of bite-sized appetizers, while six humans in the same dark velvet—though noticeably less of it—moved behind them, filling tiny shot glass-sized goblets with a splash of dark red liquid. With the aroma of so many tapped veins already wafting through the room, it took Andres a moment to spot the tube the human servers were pouring from… how it slipped beneath the band on their wrists and vanished.
Their own blood, offered to the vampiric participants like a taste test.
A terrible, selfish part of him leapt at the concept, not for want of it—not while he had the blood source he desired most already standing at his side—but at the idea of having the necessity he’d spent his adult life lying and stealing and charming for presented on demand, like a gift. But it probably wasn’t a gift, he reminded himself. Even if the humans smiled as they offered it, laughed at the languid touches some of the vampires gave their hands and seemed to bask beneath the obvious looks their bared skin received.
As Andres scanned the room of suits and dresses, frills and lace and overwhelming jewelry, he found nearly half of the two-dozen vampiric occupants had a human of their own, lounging at their feet or curled obediently in their lap. Most wore even gauzier, more revealing pieces than Shane’s, with their own collars or cuffs—though few as lovely, Andres noted with a bizarre burst of pride. Bizarre and mildly unwarranted, considering that Shane had only come with him for the chance to talk to Tara.
And Andres shouldn’t have wanted to compare himself to these people anyway. Not their smirks or their possessive touches or the way their humans melted against them, submissive and vulnerable and so obviously theirs. He should have been checking on Shane, who could only be far more aghast at all of this than Andres.
But when Shane’s hand slid against Andres’s, it wasn’t with fear or trembling, but a thoughtful pressure. He glowed beneath the lights, a quirk to his lips and his eyes wide and alive. His fingers drew up and down Andres’s wrist in an absentminded motion, steadier than Andres and just as eager.
For the life of him, Andres couldn’t figure out why.
He didn’t have much time to think on it, because a blonde, pale-skinned vampire in a suit of blue flowers with full blooms spilling off his jacket collar meandered over from a group that was clearly appraising Andres and his human. Despite how young he looked, Andres was certain he had to be at least forty, a depth to his eyes and a few laugh lines around his lips.
“New to my home, are you?” he asked with a purr. “It’s a pleasure to have you here; I’m Master Valentine.”
Valentine. Andres almost snorted. That had to be some kind of stage-name. “Pleasure,” he replied.
Valentine’s gaze meandered over Shane, half-veiled behind lashes that sparkled with gold mascara. “You’ve brought someone delicious with you, I see.”
The obvious attention made a sharp heat stir in Andres’s chest. He wrapped an arm along Shane’s back, barely touching him, but sending a signal all the same. “He is. And he’s rather special to me.”
“Now I’m just more intrigued!” Valentine made a show of licking one of his fangs, like he was thinking of Shane on his tongue, in his mouth, and Andres had the urge to knock the pointed tooth right out.
He could feel Shane’s breath catch.
The other vampire laughed, and the barest flush sprang to his pale cheeks, gentling his haughty expression. “Relax, I don’t take what’s not offered to me. Though I must say, he looks born out of pure starlight…”
As he spoke, he reached for Shane, his long gold-tipped nails stretching eagerly toward the locks that dangled around Shane’s cheekbones, as though he might tuck them back. Andres could sense the tension that came over Shane like it was pounding in his ears. For all the times he had relished in Shane’s vulnerable flinches, this he could not stand.
He caught Valentine’s wrist, his grip tight and rough, and he lowered his voice beyond even the dark, sensual tones he’d been using, cascading into something truly menacing. “I will split open your skull if you touch him.”
Fear flashed in the other vampire’s eyes, and he flinched so hard his fangs retracted partway, the color draining right back out of his face. Andres was proud of that. Proud, at least, until it was echoed in Shane’s surprised yelp.
“Let him go, please,” Shane said, reaching for Andres’s wrist—reaching, like he might grab—
Andres instinctively yanked away. Shane’s fingertips barely brushed the back of his hand, the touch searing up Andres’s spine and tightening like claws into his lungs.
That was fine. He was fine.
Andres stretched his fingers, breathing in, then out. Fuck, how long had it been since someone’s mere grasping had triggered a panic response? How long since someone had tried to touch him like that to begin with… Had dared. He tried not to think about it.
“Give us a moment, Master Valentine,” Shane murmured.
Andres took the hint, stepping back with the barest of nods.
So did Valentine, his brow tight as he bowed to them. “Of course.”
He hurried across the room, toward a tall man cloaked in sheer blue and cuffed with silver, his bare chest defined despite the white beginning to pepper his dark hair. The human—Valentine’s human, Andres assumed—didn’t tremble or grovel, but wrapped an arm around him like an old friend, their heads close as they spoke. It was such an odd sight that it took Andres an extra moment to realize how imprudently he’d acted. He should never have let himself react with such obvious aggression. If he’d turned the place’s owner against them before they’d even spotted Tara…
But he knew, too, that if their success required him to let another vampire touch Shane without consent, he would have rather failed a thousand times over.
Except Shane seemed convinced that Andres was the one in the wrong here. His Cygnus stared at him with narrowed eyes, whispering through his teeth, “Did you not read the packet?”
“The what?”
“The forms we signed!”
Andres suddenly worried they’d stated that the master of the house—who was still talking in low tones to his human—was allowed to partake in any blood brought on the premises. “I didn’t put my real name,” he admitted, “so it seemed irrelevant.”
“You’re a terrible journalist,” Shane grumbled.
“That’s probably because I’m a thief and a con-artist, but go on.” Andres could tell they were disrupting the flow of the event, standing in the open and having a hissed argument like an old married couple. Valentine’s human kept glancing their way. “Your insubordination is attracting attention,” Andres muttered, curving his lips into a smirk. He pinned one palm against Shane’s lower back, and gracefully fiddled with the chain on Shane’s collar with his other hand, giving him the softest tug.
Shane huffed, but as he leaned away with his shoulders, his hips came forward, brushing Andres’s. Andres could feel the thrum running through him, less like fear and more like… anticipation? “That’s not what they care about, master,” Shane breathed, tipping up his chin. “It’s a game.”
Did he just call Andres his… Andres knew his heart shouldn’t have leaped with such abandon, and it caught in his throat when the rest of Shane’s comment sunk in. “A game?”
“Yes, a game.” Shane didn’t sound annoyed, but rather alight, his enthusiasm growing with each word. “It’s like a sensual form of LARPing. My contract was full of all the rules—lines we’re not allowed to cross, and safe words to communicate consent and refusal, ways to inform staff if we need intervention and how the staff themselves need to be treated. When the event host—Valentine—referenced starlight, he was letting us know that he understood he was pushing a boundary and if we objected he would back off. And then you did object, by sincerely threatening to murder him.” Shane gave Andres an adorable glare that melted as his gaze swept the room. “It’s all so… safe. And look how much everyone is enjoying it.”
Andres’s heart pounded in his ears. His knees felt weak, suddenly. It wasn’t possible—Shane had to have misunderstood somehow. Of course the vampires would be basking in their own manipulative control, but their humans couldn’t be pleased with this.
He scanned the room again, searching for evidence that proved him right; he’d seen it when they’d first entered, he was sure of it. And the humans were certainly wearing less, preening and submitting and bleeding on command, but when he looked closer, he found one of them swooning as she was fed chocolates by her vampire, another giggling in their own lover’s lap as the vampire whispered in their ear. A man in the corner of their own parlor section looked nearly orgasmic every time his vampire kissed his wrist with their fangs.
They… were happy.
Somehow, Shane was right.
Andres had painted these vampires as monsters in his mind, but everyone here seemed to be genuinely eager. Because they found joy in this, he realized, and perhaps because they wanted to be sure the people participating with them would find joy as well. And if what Shane said was true, and they were being protected by the rules of the establishment, giving them a safe place to act out their submission, without their blood being literally bought by a vampire who made a point of sneaking up behind them in the dark and turning their forced obedience into a fantasy…
Standing among them, Andres felt small and exposed. He rubbed his cheek beneath his mask, like that might dim the heat rushing through his face, and wished he could bury himself in the ground. He was right in thinking these people weren’t like him. They weren’t.
They were so much better.
Shane’s fingers trailed along his arm. “Are you all right? We can sit down?”
Andres shifted just out of reach. “No, I’m… I’m good. This is good.” His voice was too weak, as pathetic as it had been the night they’d met at the Fishnettery.
Shane watched him. As he did, his hand drifted up, towards Andres’s face. It detoured away at the last moment, coming to fiddle with the edge of his collar.
A sudden thought hit Andres. “Do you wish I hadn’t objected to Valentine touching you?”
Pink blossomed beneath Shane’s freckles, and he pressed his hand to his neck, just above the metal. “I would have accepted whatever you asked of me,” he said, so softly that the emotion behind it was muddled. “You just didn’t have to scare him. I think he was testing the waters, trying to feel out what we’re into.”
Whatever you asked of me.Because of their mission. So they could talk to Tara. Not because Shane was his little swan who lived to please Andres. Even if he was Andres’s, even if he had always obeyed of his own free will…
Andres swallowed, the laughter of the party ringing in his ears. Here were people who’d taken that pretense and made it—what had Shane called it? Safe. At least for a predetermined period of time. Perhaps there were ordinary couples beneath the costumes, but for this one evening they got to be something else entirely, and they reveled in it, vampires and humans alike.
Andres was not sure what to do with the lightness forming in his chest.
One of the human servers took note of his and Shane’s weird little huddle and moseyed up to them. She was lovely, with flawless brown skin and long dark lashes, and the personal jewelry she’d added to the customary velvet server’s outfit looked like it had come from a Bollywood movie. Andres could smell her, a faint shimmer of blossom and a deep oaky scent that reminded him of red wine, and while he doubted he could ever fall in love with her the way he was quickly feeling himself tumble head over heels for Shane, he knew that—before meeting Shane, anyway—he would have been able to lose himself easily in her blood and body.
Her bright smile outshone the room’s flickering lights, and when she bowed her head to Andres, it seemed both sincerely submissive and exquisitely eager. “Master vampire, I see you have a delicacy of your own, but if you would like a taste of me, I’m happy to oblige…”
Shane stiffened, glancing up at Andres, his expression went so hard that he looked like he was contemplating murder based on Andres’s response.
The sight made Andres giddy. He coiled a finger through Shane’s hair, drawing the tips of his nails gently down the side of his little swan’s neck until he reached his collar, relishing in the way it birthed a tremble so strong it tore through Shane’s indignation for a moment. “What do you think, pet? Should I indulge?”
Shane leaned into his touch and turned a sharp smile on the woman. “He’ll have nothing from you, temptress,” he snapped, then flushed, his voice turning to an apologetic whisper. “Sorry; you’re wonderful. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“What you’re doing is great,” the server assured him, waggling a hand at him with a smile. “You both have a lovely evening.” The quirk of her lips grew playfully sly. “But do tell me if you change your mind…”
As she wandered off to the next couple, Andres wrapped his arm around Shane. “I’ll have nothing?” he purred. “Is that so?”
“I’m your human. If you want to go biting other people, you have to drain me first.”
It took Andres a moment to register the words in relation to his tone—sharp and serious with only a hint of a tease at the end—and then another moment to convince himself they’d actually come from Shane. His Shane. Who was claiming Andres, and not only claiming him, but claiming a sole spot as his human. It felt wonderful, right and warm, and it filled Andres with overwhelming pride. Shane wanted to be his, or something very like his, at least—even if it wouldn’t last beyond the moment Andres removed his mask.
Unless this was all just for the show of the thing? But the show here was obedience, and Shane was very obviously breaking that. It seemed then only right that Andres put him back in his place, made him quaver and swoon and turn his sharp edges to puddy. For the sake of the game.
He tsked, flashing Shane a loose smirk. “Bossy little pet. And overdramatic, too.” He eased his hand down Shane’s shoulder, pressing his fingers into the slits of his transparent sleeves to touch him, skin to skin. “If I did want to drain you, you know where I’d go for?”
Shane stiffened as he kept moving, drawing his way down Shane’s arm toward the vein inside his elbow. He didn’t pull away, though, trembling meekly under the touch. Each soft brush of skin still sent a rush through Andres, the thrum of Shane’s pulse and the rise and fall of his chest such fascinating things that Andres would have been happy to bask in them forever.
At the last moment, Andres diverted away from the vulnerable inner elbow that hid beneath Shane’s shielding fabric and scooped his hand around the back of Shane’s arm to lift it, sweeping Shane’s wrist towards his mouth. He kissed the tender skin there. Shane breathed out and leaned against him. It felt so natural, to let him linger there, to share his release in the most physical way possible. Weeks ago in that alley Andres had basked in this with a hunger, but now what he felt went deeper than desire. It sparkled like the laughter around them, stable as a safe word and warm as fresh blood.
From across the room came the clatter of falling plates, and Shane jerked, stumbling. Andres caught him with an arm around his waist. “Be gentle with yourself, my swan,” he muttered, trying not to laugh.
Shane straightened with a flush, but his lips lifted. “Isn’t that your job, master?”
“Is it a master’s job to treat that which they own in any particular way?” Andres countered teasingly, baring his teeth.
“Perhaps not, but my master has always been good to me, and his hands and mouth are soft… even if his teeth are sharp.” He touched Andres’s mouth as he said it, his thumb brushing Andres’s top lip with such tenderness that Andres was caught between adoration and disbelief.
He wanted to live in that moment forever, to take up permanent residence there. But across the room, where Valentine and his human had been standing, he spotted a vampire he’d heard described so many times that even with their cloud of cotton candy hair dyed all in deep blue streaks, he still recognized them.
He brushed Shane’s fingertips as he whispered, “I think I’ve found our target. Would you like to pay Tara Williams a visit with me?”