The pieces had come together for Shane slowly but surely, drenched in numbing denial.
“Andres?”he’d asked the person he could recognize only as the farthest thing from a stranger, a part of him expecting—hoping—to be corrected. A tremble ran up his spine, and he gripped the boardwalk railing as he repeated the name. “Andres?”
He tried to turn, but a hand pressed against the side of his head and another cupped his hip. The hot breath on his neck slid all his suspicions perfectly and painfully into place.
“Be still for me.” Andres’s lips brushed Shane’s skin as he spoke. Shane couldn’t find the strength to disobey, his knees so weak that only the vampire behind him and the railing before him held him up.
His vampire, Andres Serrano.
Andres, whom Shane had been harboring a small, guilty crush on for weeks now, smiling over every time his phone chimed, was his vampire. His vampire, who’d been so very good to him tonight, who’d gotten him the interview of his dreams and then pressed him to a wall and bitten him like he was precious. Two personas, who’d both worn masks, kept this secret, lied through their teeth just to trick him into—into this.
Whatever the hell this was.
Andres loosened Shane’s tight arms, winding through them, wrapping him up. A panicked tremble in the back of his mind shouted through his shock, screaming at him to refuse. To fight—
“Give me your neck.” Andres had it already, his mouth against it, but Shane knew what he was asking for: not just the flesh and the blood but the surrendering. Shane’s submission, the way he’d given it to his vampire every night.
But this was not just Shane’s vampire anymore.
“Your neck, my Cygnus.” There was a little growl to his voice, so dark, so sensual and yet it was now unmistakably Andres’s.
His presence felt smothering, claustrophobic, and Shane curled toward the wood, instinct pushing him away from Andres. As he did, Andres loosened again, and Shane could feel the tremor that ran through the vampire’s chest. Two of his fingers slid beneath Shane’s, just as he had done during their first bite in the alley: a kind of safe word.
“Cygnus?” Andres said, like a question. Or a warning. “I want you. Will you let me?”
Shane trusted his vampire—had trusted, until now, until this—but in that moment he feared the predator behind him, feared him properly for the first time. It was a terrible sensation, thick and ugly like a room with nothing but empty blood bags and a needle jabbed into his arm. It closed up his lungs and got into his chest, and he could not—could not—
“No!” He squeezed Andres’s hand like he was trying to draw blood.
Andres let him go, his presence vanishing from Shane’s back in an instant.
He could breathe again.
The boardwalk life echoed through his ears, distant laughter and muted music. Pain throbbed behind his jaw, building in the back of his throat. He sucked in air and let out anger.
“You fucking—” Shane spun as he shouted it, turning so fast that his shoulder rammed into Andres’s chest. The vampire stumbled in surprise, eyes wide, and Shane took that as a sign to keep going. “Asshole. You knew I didn’t recognize you from the bar. You knew, and you just left me in the dark? For weeks,” he shouted, “you’ve strung me along. All the while, pretending you were my—my friend?!”
That’s who he was pissed at—Andres, his friend. His vampire had been clear that there were hidden parts of himself; a literal mask to be removed. But Andres? Andres had presented like that was all they were, just a thoughtful human with big emotions who liked Shane’s odd takes on life. They’d become a solid, sure part of Shane’s everyday life. And all the while they’d known they owned Shane, had been whispering sweet nothings to him and demanding his neck in the darkness.
The bastard—
Shane pushed both palms against Andres’s sturdy chest, enough to force them backward. “You fucking—” He shoved again, for good measure. “Manipulative—” And again. “Asshole!”
Andres’s expression stiffened. “Shane…” They said, gentle, cautious, but as they did, they grabbed for Shane’s arms.
“Don’t touch me,” Shane snarled. “I’m not done yet!”
He was so, so fucking done, though, done being deceived and coerced, done being stared down by those dark, tear-stained eyes of Andres’s, just as deep and beautiful as his vampire’s but twice as soft and so uncertain it hurt. When Andres tried to step toward him again, not reaching this time, just holding up their palms in a gentle onslaught, Shane grabbed them instead, locking around Andres’s wrists like he could transfer the confusion and pain and fury in his chest into his vampire’s flesh if he just held on tight enough.
Like he could keep his almost-lover and his traitorous friend there long enough to truly be done with them both.
But as Shane latched onto Andres, the motion send a visible shock through them. Their fangs slid out, and faster than Shane could track, they jerked from his reach with such force that it flung Shane backwards. Shane hit the boardwalk railing with a crack. Pain shot up his back. He whimpered, struggling to stand, that new fear creeping back in, harsh and debilitating and—
“Step away from him, bloodsucker!” The command came from down the boardwalk, far too near for comfort, though Shane wasn’t sure there was any distance at which he’d find comfort in the police, especially not one already fondling the hilt of his gun. “Hands on your head.”
Andres stepped away, lifted their palms to the side, their chest wide open. An easy target. They said nothing, but they looked weaker suddenly, looked like the tear-stains that had begun to form in their makeup.
Shane’s heart squeezed.
“I said stop,” the cop shouted, as though by retreating, Andres was secretly preparing to lunge for his neck. His grip tightened on his gun.
Everything else Shane felt toward Andres was nothing compared to the chilling rush that overtook him then. He was not done with Andres—he was not done with them at all. And he would sure as hell not be rid of them like this.
Shane stepped out, sliding himself neatly between the approaching cop and Andres, both his hands spread out from his body in a pacifying motion. “Please, officer, what’s wrong?”
The cop gave him one look, then another, his gaze catching on Shane’s neck. On the visible bite mark. “That creep been feeding on you?”
“Yes, but—I let them.”
There was so much more Shane could have said: that he craved his vampire’s bite, dreamed of his vampire’s hot breath on his neck and the pressure of his tongue, yearned for the way he’d whisper in his ear: you’re mine.
But the cop deserved none of that, so Shane told him the simple truth. “It was consensual.”
“That didn’t look consensual.” He still had one palm on his gun.
Shane’s vampire—his Andres—had pushed him, had held him in place, but they’d listened to him too, had let go when he’d asked. He didn’t know what that meant. Didn’t know if it could mean anything in this moment. “We were arguing,” he pleaded, “that’s all.”
The cop hesitated. His gaze strayed behind Shane once more, and he shook his head. “There’s been a disturbance involving vampires in this area. I’m sorry, I have to take him in.”
The thought made Shane sick and angry; far angrier than he could ever have been at Andres. For Shane, a simple arrest would have been merely inconvenient now that all his legal documents had been fixed with his proper gender, but for a vampire… There was a reason they now built windows into holding cells, and it wasn’t for the view.
From down the boardwalk, the cop’s partner jogged toward them.
Shane could still sense Andres behind him, waiting uncertainly in their tear-stained makeup. He slipped his hand behind his back and made a shooing motion to them. Run, he wanted to shout. Run, dammit—can’t you see I’m not done with you yet?
And Andres did.
The cop cursed, bolting after them as he drew his gun, but the split second he had to take to dodge around Shane was enough for Andres’s vampiric speed to carry them across the boardwalk.
Shane watched long enough to see them cut down a path toward the main street and vanish between the buildings. Then he broke into a jog himself. Neither officer tried to stop him. That was worse somehow—worse being alone.
By the time Shane reached his car, he was shaking, trembling from head to toe. He was too afraid to check his glucose—there was nothing he could do about it now, except pick at the bag of emergency fruit gummies he kept in his glove box. Through the miserable, resentful bitterness in his mouth they tasted like sweetened wax. He drove in a daze, cycling between the same series of thoughts and emotions; anger at Andres’s lies, fear of them and for them in equal measure, and a numbing uncertainty about what to do for any of it.
Somehow, he made it to his apartment, his heart pounding in his chest. He closed the front door behind him and when he couldn’t push himself any further, he slumped against the wall there, pulling in his arms and sniffling.
He had to think about this rationally.
It could, technically, be a good thing: he was obsessed with his vampire, in love with the way their relationship made him feel, and Andres—Andres he’d been quietly crushing on nearly since they met. Rating-wise, this should have been a ten out of ten for love interest consolidation. But Andres had been lying to him.
Taking him for a fool.
The jacket his vampire had given him felt constricting suddenly, and Shane tugged violently out of it, his arms catching twice in the twisting sleeves before he managed to rip it free of his skin. The chill of his apartment immediately replaced its warmth and gentle floral scent. It felt like the way Andres had gone stiff when Shane had shoved him, the aggression with which he’d yanked from Shane’s grasp. With a curse, Shane slid his coat back around his shoulders, hugging the sleeves to himself.
The vibration of Shane’s phone startled his heart into a panicked rhythm once more. He scrambled for it, hating the way he needed to know.
It wasn’t Andres.
He breathed out, and it felt like a sob.
Nat1
Hey fucker. /affectionate
Boyfriend is gone again tonight and I’m lonely.
Shane-anigans
Fuck him.
Nat1
Wishing that was literal lmao.
It’s fine, I’m fine.
She finished it with two fire emojis and a dog.
Shane-anigans
You and me both.
What he thought were his two potential relationships was actually a single relationship set ablaze in the least sexy way possible, and he was the kind of fine that needed so many black-slash sarcasm tags.
His traitorous fingers automatically switched him over to his thread with Andres, swiping through motions he’d performed a thousand times that week. Their contact name still read Anders Serrano he/they, with a little sparkle emoji Shane had added a week into their texting. He hadn’t known his vampire’s pronouns, he realized.
His stomach turned, grief first, then anger, then grief again. I’m not done yet, he’d said. And he didn’t feel done, still—he felt raw and empty, like a piece of himself had been ripped away.
When a text appeared at the bottom of their thread, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to hug the device or hurl it across the room.
Andres
Did you get home safely?
Shane
Yes
He didn’t hesitate to answer; didn’t even realize that letting Andres sit with their fear was an option until after he’d already pressed send, and despite the hurricane of emotions rushing through him, Shane couldn’t dream of cruelly holding Andres in suspense like that.
Andres sent back a single heart, white and small and somehow so hopeful that it severed right through Shane. He slumped against the wall beside his door, light still off, his vampire’s jacket around his shoulders. Dots appeared on Andres’s end, then vanished. Appeared, then vanished. Shane wasn’t sure he wanted to see what would finally come over. Maybe he wanted to jump the gun, get in his own accusations first? But he’d shouted enough of those on the boardwalk, and Andres had…
Andres had hurt him.
His back still felt bruised from the shove, but the jarring shock of it was as painful as any physical malady. The surprise and horror that had crossed Andres’s face when it happened, like they were just as hurt as Shane had been…
Finally, Andres’s text came through—not a long message after all, but four words that spoke louder than any essay.
Andres
Can I come over?
A chill ran down Shane’s skin, disquieting and uncomfortable and yet still yearning. Always this goddamn wanting, like his body had tuned itself to his vampire that first night they’d met and with every bite since the thrall had grown. Anger or not, fear or not, part of Shane belonged to his vampire, not just for better, but for worse too. No matter what happened between them, a part of him always would.
But he still had to be rational. He had to.
Shane
I don’t know.
He leaned against the wall, watching the text sit there. No response dots. No pressure.
He hated it.
A knock came at the door.
Shane jumped. He tried to steady himself, but he still shook, like the extra adrenaline was determined to course through his system in a terrible repetitive cycle. His fingers glided over the chain. Before he could second guess himself, he slid it into place. Calmly, he opened the door a crack.
“Shane,” Andres started, pushing forward.
The chain caught, snapping the door to a stop.
Andres froze. The four inches of their face that Shane could see through the crack transformed, descending from confusion to horror to shame. They let go of the handle. “I see.”
“I can’t, not yet.” Shane leaned against the wall beside the door, staring into the gap. Even now, he wanted so badly to reach through it. “I don’t know how to say no to you otherwise.”
“Oh.” Andres’s mouth moved through the sound, and seeing his face with it, makeup smeared and eyes puffy, was like an entirely new experience. “If you tell me to leave, then I’ll leave. Otherwise I’m going to keep being here. You’re… mine.” He seemed to hesitate over the words, testing them out, tasting them. When he repeated them, they felt different from any time he’d said them before, not a claiming, but a revelation. “You’re mine, Shane. I’ll never see you again, if that’s what you ask of me, but your safety, your joy, your passion, will always feel like they’d been mine to protect. You’re mine, and I’m failing you.”
“Of course I’m yours,” Shane replied, because goddammit, it was still true. This night had, if anything, set that in stone. “But you are failing me. You lied to me. You twisted my feelings around your finger and I know two of you now but I don’t feel like I know you at all.”
“I’m sorry.” It sounded sincere—so desperately sincere. “I did lie by omission; I tricked you—I wore the mask and made sure not to meet you as more than your vampire. But I never meant to manipulate your feelings. What I’ve shared with you has always been the truest parts of me. I’ve meant everything I’ve ever said to you, as your vampire and as your friend.”
That stung, but the burn faded warm, bringing relief with it. The way Andres had made Shane feel—the fire of his gaze and the intimacy of their texts; that wasn’t a lie, at least. Shane folded his arms tighter to his body. “You hurt me. On the boardwalk.”
A flash of terror spread across his face, but it was gone as soon as it had come. “I didn’t mean to react that way. It won’t happen again. I would never… I promise to only ever be gentle with you.”
That Andres meant always to be gentle was the truth; Shane had known it before he’d even known Andres, and while it hadn’t stopped whatever came over him on the boardwalk, that aggression felt like the fluke, not the routine. Even flukes had reasons, of course, but if Andres claimed he was handling himself, then Shane would believe him until proven otherwise.
“Don’t make me go.” Andres watched Shane, his brow tight and his gaze soft yet hungry. “You can ask me anything you’d like. I’ll answer truthfully. Or you can ask me nothing at all. Just let me be here. Lock me out if you must, but don’t make me leave.”
“Andres…”
“I know, Shane. And I’m sorry.”
Shane couldn’t find a way to say no to him, and as the adrenaline left his body, he found he didn’t want to. His knees went weak. He slid down the wall, settling onto the floor.
Andres watched him, fingers on his lips, then running through his hair, before both hands clutched behind his neck. Slowly, like he was testing whether the weight of the floor would hold him, he settled there and slumped against the door. The light of the little apartment porch set shadows across his beautiful face. Two little fangs peeked out between his lips.
Shane didn’t make him leave. He stared, and, quietly, he commanded, “Tell me something.”
“Something true?”
“Something you.”
Andres exhaled. He nodded, his gaze shifting into the middle distance. “I make my own clothing—or doctor up existing pieces—and I have a channel where I share what I’ve created. The videos do well. They get ugly comments on occasion, when the wrong person notices how masculine my hands are, but it inspires people too. I never tell anyone it exists, though. I’ll get questions at the Fishnettery and I just shrug and pretend I can’t remember where the jacket came from.”
Shane fingered his rose gold fabric. “You made our outfits?”
“I’m a criminal and seamstress, and occasionally the two collide.” It sounded like a confession. “Letting you believe I was two different people was exceptionally selfish of me, but I want you to know that in both cases you’ve gotten a version of myself that’s the most me I’ve been in a long time. I’ve withheld things, but what I did give you has always been sincere. Always been me. I think you’re the only one that’s true for.”
It helped, knowing that at least what they had in itself hadn’t been a lie. But it didn’t fix things. There were the obvious questions: why me, why this. Instead, Shane asked, “Who are you without me?”
“Without you, I’m no one,” Andres whispered, fiddling with his long necklace—the one that matched Shane’s collar.
Part of Shane wanted to let the dramatic words woo him into submission the way his vampire’s possessive murmurings had been doing since they met. But they were supposed to be getting to the bottom of this. After weeks of dodging the truth in favor of the romance, Shane owed it to himself not to be led astray, because maybe—just maybe—then they could really have that romance they both seemed so desperately to want. “That doesn’t seem healthy,” Shane replied. “I can’t make you real, Andres.”
“No—I know,” Andres admitted. He tipped his head back against the door, still gripping his necklace. “I suppose what I mean is that before I started texting with you, and before we decided to stand against Vitalis-Barron together, I’d grown incredibly shallow in how I presented myself. Not really an individual, but a caricature of a vampire; strong and dark and secretive and sensual, and I let no one see beneath that for so long that sometimes I wondered if there was a me there at all.”
Shane could relate to that, in a way. He hadn’t dimmed himself, but he had portioned out who he was where it felt appropriate, and the people who’d received the biggest and brightest versions of him—the ones where he hadn’t buried his passions or limited his emotions—had all left one by one until his only friends were a woman nearly as obsessed with vampires as he was, and the vampire who was obsessed with him. “Why wear the literal mask with me, then? What was so terrible about the person I texted, that you were afraid for me to see them?”
“You’re looking at them.” Andres drew a breath that could have been a laugh or a sob and waved at his face, long lashes and dark eyes and tear-stains blurring his makeup. “I’m not a pleasant sight.”
He was, in fact, gorgeous, and holding his gaze made Shane hot in all the right places, though Shane recognized neither of those things were the point. Gently, he stated, “I had seen you already, back at the Fishnettery.”
“And you thought I was a wreck.”
“True,” Shane admitted. “But I’m also a wreck, and it doesn’t seem to bother you much.” He felt himself grinning a little at the thought of waking to find his apartment tidied that first morning. Andres had seen how far he’d been letting his life deteriorate and instead of judging him for it, he’d quietly committed to helping pick up the pieces. If Andres’s life was a mess, too—and clearly it was, beneath the mask—then what other option did Shane have but to offer him the same compassion in return?
Andres stared through the crack in the door, brow tight and lips parted. “Well, you only wanted to be friends.”
Shane snorted. A wreck, indeed. “I had a vampire who owned parts of me and pressed his mouth to my skin every night! How was I supposed to explain that on a third date? There’s open relationships, and then there’s I’m in a toxic blood-bondage thing with a mask-wearing vampire criminal!”
A twisted expression broke over Andre’s face, and in the low light it took a moment for Shane to realize it was a shocked delight. “Us, toxic?” Andres scoffed, lips quirking. “I’m offended. I thought you liked my antics.”
Shane snorted, but the little shiver that ran down his spine was blissful. “What gave you that impression?”
Andres’s smile grew. He leaned toward the gap in the door, and his hand crept closer, brushing Shane’s. Goddamn, how the one little touch could make all of Shane’s body light up. He drew in his fingertips, forcing Andres to follow him.
His vampire did, lacing his fingers between Shane’s, gently tugging them out. He encircled Shane’s wrist with the barest of touches. “May I?”
Shame lifted a brow. “Are you asking or commanding?”
A growl came into Andres’s voice as he responded, fangs bared. “Give me your arm, my pet.”
Shane closed his eyes.
Andres tugged, and Shane loosened, letting his arm be drawn through the gap in the door. The vulnerability of it coiled in his gut and tingled along his skin, the jacket slipping off his shoulder to leave his arm bare but for the billowing strips of his outfit’s sheer fabric and the small sleeve Andres had given him for the crook of his elbow. Beyond that, his brain sparked with the uncanny knowledge that he was trapped like this, his shoulder in the gap of the door and his arm stretched at an angle where one wrong push could snap it. It would be easy for someone with Andres’s strength—would be just as easy to hold Shane in place and dig in fangs as he cried and struggled.
But all that fear felt muted by the brush of his vampire’s fingers, like their quiet touch was slowly but surely calming Shane’s demons.
Andres touched the edge of the tiny sleeve that protected Shane’s inner elbow. “May I?”
“Yes,” Shane breathed. As Andres tugged down the piece of fabric, he focused on his breathing and the gentle pressure of Andres’s nails on his skin, so tender and thoughtful that it formed a lump in Shane’s throat. All the pain he’d felt on the boardwalk and the longing he couldn’t seem to extinguish came together, thick in his chest, and he whimpered.
“Look at me,” his vampire whispered. Two fingers traced into the crook of Shane’s arm, settling there with a pressure that trapped Shane’s lungs. “Cygnus, look at me.”
Never, not now, of course—a cascade of reactions flew through Shane’s mind. This was his vampire and this was Andres, and they both wanted him, all of him, one a request, the other a demand. Shane’s heart said yes and yes and yes again for good measure.
He pressed his forehead to the gap in the door and opened his eyes.
Andres held his gaze, strong and sure and wonderful. Slowly, they lifted Shane’s arm, cradling it as they brought the crook of Shane’s inner elbow to their mouth. They pressed a kiss to Shane’s pulse.
Shane’s world quavered, his heart pounding, but all he could feel was the softness of his vampire’s lips and the giddy lightness in his chest and a warmth so pleasant that it seemed to form a film over the awful memories of Maul’s vampire’s bites. The pressure of the kiss retreated without a prick or a nip, and somehow that was perfect, because it left Shane with a wanting in place of his fear. A desire where apprehension had been.
His vampire smiled and laced their fingers through Shane’s. “Hi, I think it’s time I make your acquaintance,” they said. “I’m Andres, your vampire. I’m a little bit obsessed with you, and I’d like to turn that into loving you instead. If you’ll let me.”
Shane groaned with relief. “God, fucking yes.”