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MERCER

His lips on Rahil’s felt good .

He’d been afraid—not just afraid, but terrified, that it wouldn’t. That he’d gotten so far, led Rahil along throughout their date and into this delicious game of pain and pleasure, and it would all fall apart with one kiss. When Rahil deepened it, Mercer pulled away, but not very far—just far enough to look him in the eye and speak.

“I’m not… great at this. Doing what I just did to you—that’s easy. Or, easier, at least. But having you… being touched, and…” With each word, he could feel himself collapse inward, the world constricting as his heart beat faster and faster.

“You had sex with Leah, right?” Rahil didn’t sound demanding or judgmental, only inquisitive. Thoughtful.

It loosened the knots forming inside Mercer just enough that he could nod. “Yes—many times. We made Lydia.” Mercer shrugged, motioning aimlessly toward the house. His throat felt heavy, but Rahil was still there, his shirt dangling and his body marked by Mercer’s exploration of it, yet his attention so thoroughly on Mercer now, like this was his only reason for living. He was everything Mercer had ever wanted, and more. “Leah made me breathless just by being there—like you do, I suppose—but that was… it was more about the romance. The sex came because of the romance. And we did have good sex, but it was still hard in the beginning and sometimes hard after that, too. In the media, adults throw themselves at each other without shame or awkwardness, but it hasn’t come that easily for me. I grew up being told that I wasn’t allowed to so much as think like that about another person until we were married, and then we were married and I—” He sighed and a little tremble went through him. “If I’m in the right state, the right place, I love sex in my head; sex feels sexy in my head. But getting it to feel that way in life is harder. Does any of this make sense?”

“Oh, babe.” Rahil rubbed the side of Mercer’s arm. So slowly, like he was asking for Mercer’s permission, he eased closer, wrapping Mercer up in his arms, solid and steady. “Are you asexual?”

“Am I…” The question caught Mercer square in the chest. It wasn’t that he’d never thought about it before. But it had never seemed like something he could say for himself conclusively, not when it was just him and Lydia. “Can someone be asexual as a result of their upbringing? Like, because of religious trauma and such?”

Rahil looked pensive as he answered. “I don’t think so. But I imagine that can mask the fact that someone is asexual because that trauma tries to convince you not to look too closely at what attraction you do feel.”

At what he did feel. Mercer felt a vague, disembodied lust, and shame for that lust, and shame for that shame. He felt awe for Rahil’s beauty, for every part of his graceful body, for his skin and his lips and even the way his ass curved. He loved the sounds Rahil made as he was pleasured—and the fact that it was Mercer who could make them. And he certainly had the capacity to orgasm. Despite all of the incredible parts of that, he wasn’t sure whether any of it counted as attraction.

“Perhaps I am asexual,” he said finally, “But I’m still… I still want physical love, if it’s from someone who loves me. I still feel . It just might not be the same way you do?”

Rahil cupped the side of Mercer’s face so tenderly that it made Mercer want to curl up inside himself, with just that feeling to hold onto forever. “Then, if you’re okay with it, I’d like to try something.”

Mercer’s heart slammed against the front of his chest, and his body warred between wanting nothing more than whatever Rahil could offer him and fearing it so thoroughly that the anxiety shut down his desire to even try. He managed to nod, though, drawing in a little breath. “All right. Okay.”

Rahil smiled, and it seemed to light up the inside of Mercer’s chest. “Do you want to go somewhere more comfortable?”

“I have a cot in the back cupboard.” It felt right to do this in the same place he’d explored Rahil’s body—gave it some symmetry.

Rahil nodded. He fiddled gently with the lip of Mercer’s shirt. “Would you like me to take these off for you, or—”

“I’ll do it.”

Mercer held his breath for a protest, but Rahil’s soft grin never wavered. He let Mercer go, his braid bouncing against his bare ass as he made his way over to the cupboards with the cot and bedding. “If my heart stops when I see you shirtless, don’t call the ambulance, just bury me in garlic flowers and write ‘died from looking into the face of God’ on my tombstone.”

Mercer couldn’t help but crack a smile as he turned away to strip out of his shirt. “Well, if my heart stops when you touch my bare chest, call me three different ambulances, please. If Lydia has to visit a tombstone that says ‘died from foreplay’ I will rise from the grave and murder you.”

“Mhh, that assumes I haven’t dispatched myself on your grave in a fit of passion.”

“I heard you say dispatched , but I think what you meant is debauched .” He pulled his pants and boxers off at the same time, before his brain could get caught on the fact that he’d be naked afterwards. And then he was naked, and he couldn’t go back.

“You should know better than to kink-shame me,” Rahil teased.

Mercer turned to find him staring down at the bed he’d assembled, mat and pillow and blanket spread neatly in the center of the aisle. He shook as he stepped toward the vampire, one step, then another, until he was so close… “Could you just lean against me, like—ahh.” Mercer’s breath caught as Rahil obliged, settling his back against Mercer’s chest, his ass cheeks gently cupping the bulk of Mercer’s half-hard cock. A shudder ran through Mercer, and he tried not to think of anything but how sweet and perfect Rahil was, letting his body take over as he wrapped his arms around Rahil and pressed his face into Rahil’s neck. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Why are you thanking me ?” Rahil’s voice sounded rough, wet with emotion. “This is the best night of my life.”

Mercer held him all the tighter for that, gently nuzzling into his skin. Despite the churning of his stomach, when he kissed the crook of Rahil’s neck, it felt good . Felt right. With Rahil’s gentle, compassionate presence, the alarm bells telling him to flee the intimate vulnerability of it all were just quiet enough that he managed to give Rahil’s ass a little squeeze and a push toward the cot. “When I lie down, will you bite me? I think the venom will help.”

“As though you have to ask for that, babe.” There was a smirk in his voice, and as Mercer awkwardly stepped around him, settling onto the cot with all the grace of a preteen having sex for the first time and not a man who’d conceived a full-ass child, Rahil’s expression turned delirious. “Fuck, you’re just as gorgeous without clothes.”

Mercer gave the chub on his thighs a little wobble. “It’s genetics?”

“Mm, no, it’s magic,” Rahil replied. “Definitely some fairy nonsense.” He ran his hand along Mercer’s knee as he sat down, touching him in such steady, smooth motions that it felt calming.

“And here I thought I was a bear.” Mercer gave the hair on his chest a ruffle as evidence. The way Rahil’s eyes dragged over him made his skin feel like fire.

“You can be everything. Infinite.” Rahil slid his leg over Mercer’s stomach to straddle him, and the weight of him atop Mercer’s hips was a good feeling.

Mercer pressed his fingers beneath Rahil’s chin, admiring him for a moment before sliding his thumb, then his index finger, into Rahil’s mouth, carefully removing the fang caps. He tried to truly focus on his senses this time, to push back the shame and let himself want. And he did want, in a distant, fantastical way—he indulged in the thought of this mouth holding him, sucking harder and faster as his tip drove against the back of Rahil’s throat, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure he did want that at all. He enjoyed the thought of it, the way he’d always enjoyed the thought of Leah’s mouth when her lips quirked from intense concentration, and had, too, enjoyed the sensation of that mouth when she’d taken him in it beneath the sheets, classical music gently playing in the background. But there was a gap in between those joys—a gap he’d always assumed he just hadn’t figured out how to cross. Maybe the truth was that he didn’t need to cross it.

Mercer set the fang caps to the side. With his hands empty, he wasn’t sure what to do with them. Rahil must have seen his indecision, though, because he took them, placing Mercer’s palms on his thigh and ass, before leaning in to stroke back the loose curls around Mercer’s face. He tugged at Mercer’s bandana. “Would it help if I pulled this over your eyes?”

The thought sent a flare of what felt like panic through Mercer, but as it settled in his center, he realized the emotion was something else entirely—a deep, consuming worry that if he asked for this, and it didn’t help, then it would be his fault. But that wasn’t how kink worked. It wasn’t how people worked. And it certainly wasn’t how Rahil would see it.

So, Mercer nodded. “It’s worth a try.”

Rahil’s tiny grin was repayment enough for any risk. He tenderly drew Mercer’s bandana down, and Mercer closed his eyes as the fabric slid across them. His not-panic tried to rear again, but he breathed and let the moment linger, and once his body settled, it felt… nice. Calming. It was just him, lying on a blanket, with the skin of someone he loved pressed gently to his. Whether there was a God watching him didn’t matter. Whether he looked like a fool, whether he reacted right, felt the right things, wanted in the right way—that didn’t matter either.

Rahil’s mouth pressed tenderly to the edge of his, and Mercer focused on the sensation, the softness of it. He found his lips tingling, parting slightly. Rahil caught them in a kiss, just as gentle but not nearly so chaste. Mercer lost himself in the moment as his body took over where his mind had failed him, going back to the thousands of kisses he’d shared with Leah. These were different lips, a different gender, a different soul entirely—each movement a little surprising, Rahil’s technique not quite what Mercer had been used to once upon a time—but somehow, he still managed to fall into it, a thoughtful hum rising in his throat when his tongue grazed Rahil’s.

As he pulled away, Rahil whispered, “Tell me how I’m doing.”

“You’d like to know whether you’re a good boy?” Mercer smiled, his lips still a mess of lighted nerves and curious wonder.

“Fuck you.”

“Not yet,” Mercer teased. “But hopefully next time. For now, just, keep going.”

And Rahil did.

He kissed Mercer again, and again, moving from his mouth to his forehead, to his temple, and his jawline, tugging at his earlobe before shifting down to his neck. Mercer anticipated the bite, was ready for it, but the pressure of lips and the devilish sucking of his skin before fangs even penetrated made him ache for it all the more. He could feel the rising of his dick, and not being able to see it, to judge whether he was reacting appropriately, made the sensation far better, letting him focus on purely enjoying the moment, each little tug of teeth and press of tongue.

“You’re doing so well,” he whispered. “What a lovely boy, with your lovely mouth.”

Rahil made a pleased sound, working on Mercer’s neck all the harder.

Finally his fangs sank in, lighting Mercer up with a dose of venom, and he was a goner. With how far down his hips Rahil was straddling him, he could feel Rahil’s crack against his dick, and his body shifted to accommodate as a second wave of venom rolled through him. He squeezed his fingers into Rahil’s ass and thigh, riding out the moment of bliss in a gasp so long and hard it left him breathless. He fell limp afterward.

Rahil barely managed to lick up the side of his neck as he laughed. “Did you—did you just come?” He seemed to be confirming the question as he spoke it, his fingers finding the slick that now coated his ass and dripped onto Mercer’s balls. He laughed again. “ Baby .”

“I was watching you be pleasured for an hour,” Mercer grumbled, pushing back his bandana. “What were you expecting?”

He grinned. “Next time, we’ll have to put you in one of those rings too.”

Mercer glared at him, but he was already trying to decide if anything he currently had would fit. Not that they’d need it tonight. He was already feeling part of his mind slip into the grasp of the post-coital void. “Grab that towel on the bench—yeah, it’s clean enough . And then… would you lie here with me?”

“Isn’t that what we’re already doing?” Rahil asked as he wiped them both down, before snuggling against Mercer’s side. His tongue snaked across Mercer’s skin, and it felt… like a tongue. But the tongue of someone Mercer cared about, and in that, it was lovely.

“As in, through the night,” Mercer clarified.

For a split second, Rahil seemed to stop existing, so frozen in place that Mercer worried even his heart wasn’t beating, but then, quietly, he said, “I’d like that.”

“Good. Because I don’t have the energy to see you home.” Mercer stretched to the counter for his phone, managing not to dislodge Rahil only because his lover clung to him like a parasite. He settled back down, and drowsily found the lights app. He flicked the remaining few off. The darkness that settled was so complete that it felt like slipping out of consciousness. His perception of the world contorted into the feeling of Rahil’s skin on his and the vague sense of a dreamscape somewhere to the left of him.

Rahil’s voice echoed, distant, through the darkness. “Merc?”

“Mhmm.”

“There’s still that thing you should know,” Merc thought he said.

Something he should know? There was a vague tickle in the back of his half-asleep mind, but he felt like he knew everything in that moment—had felt everything, certainly. “Hmm.”

“This is important,” Rahil said.

Ah, yes. Of course.

There was one last, important thing to be said.

“I love you, too, Rahil,” Mercer whispered. He pressed his lips to the side of Rahil’s head, and if Rahil had anything else to say, Mercer didn’t catch it.

He was already sliding thoroughly into sleep.

Bright light rimmed the high window shutters, casting bold lines on the shed’s varnished wood. Dust motes floated between the streams, drifting with the same careless frivolity as Mercer’s sleepy thoughts. He drew his fingers up and down Rahil’s back, soft and slow. Despite the sloppy, sideways position they’d ended up in, the pressure of Rahil’s elbow making Mercer’s side numb, he’d never felt so utterly content—well, perhaps not never. But not for a good long time.

Rahil groaned and shifted, nuzzling against Mercer’s neck. Mercer stilled as he felt the press of fangs. “Baby?”

Rahil only groaned again. It was such an unconscious sound, yet so obviously trusting, that it made Mercer’s heart warm.

He stretched his neck a little longer. “You can feed, if you’d like.”

“Mhmm,” Rahil replied, and Mercer thought for a moment that he was still too deep asleep to understand, but then he tipped his head enough to nip at Mercer’s neck.

The venom was muted compared to last night, but the pleasure of knowing Rahil was waking to this comfort made up for it, the gentle glide of Rahil’s tongue over the punctured skin so soothing that Mercer found himself drifting back into a half-dream.

He startled awake at a knock on the shed door.

Adrenaline pounded through his body, ridding his mind of the last traces of sleep as he instinctively shoved himself into a sitting position, dislodging Rahil in the process. Mercer could feel blood still dripping down the side of his neck, but the second set of rapping on the shed door had the potential to be infinitely more dangerous than a simple pair of pinpricks. After an awkward moment of flopping off the cot and tangling in the blanket, Rahil seemed to come to the same conclusion.

Mercer was already standing, hopping into his boxers and pants, which were still conveniently paired from being removed together last night. He didn’t bother with the shirt. Instead, he reached for the pointiest of his nearby tools. For once he couldn’t hear the echo of that knock ten years ago, too engaged in the very entirely probable threat of the one now .

The knock repeated, a little louder. “Mercer, are you here? I hope I’m not intruding.”

The war drum in Mercer’s ribcage stuttered. That was—

“Dr. Hilker?” Mercer cracked the shed door. With the panic still coursing through his body, he was half-expecting to find William Douglas holding the scientist at knifepoint, but it was truly just Anthony, tired circles under his eyes and his hair in a sloppy bun. His undercut looked overgrown. “Good—good morning.”

“Am I early?” Anthony asked, lifting a brow. “Your email last night said nine-forty-five and it’s nearly ten now.”

Oh goddamn, was it already—

Fuck.

Mercer shook his head. “No, no, I just lost track of time. Why don’t you…” He glanced behind him, hoping to gauge Rahil’s feelings on the situation, but Anthony seemed to take it as permission to enter, shoving the shed door open another six inches to slip past Mercer. He stilled as his gaze landed on Rahil. His brow tightened.

At least Rahil was now mostly back in his clothes, some of his shirt buttons even finished. He held the third from the bottom as he stared right back at Anthony.

“Rahil, was it?” Anthony asked.

“Yes, um,” Rahil said, swallowing instead of acknowledging Anthony’s name in return.

“How do you know… ah .” The lightbulb flicked on in Mercer’s head and he really wished it hadn’t because he could not unsee that pairing now that his imagination had grabbed onto it. “Well, this is…”

“No, no, I understand,” Anthony smiled. “A vampire needs to feed, after all. Besides, you must like someone on which to try out all these very specific toys you create.”

Rahil said something to the effect of, “That’s not,” and “We’re technically,” but then he was staring at Mercer like Mercer was meant to continue the explanation, and all Mercer’s brain could do was fix on the idea that Anthony was envisioning him with Rahil and sink into ever deeper circles of dismay.

Anthony broke the awkward silence by clearing his throat. “Unholy gold then, you’re calling it?”

“Yes,” Mercer responded on instinct. His brain clicked into customer service mode. “It’s a 22 karat base with all the same attribute-reduction properties of holy silver, but it produces none of the damage.”

He lifted his lockbox onto the bench and opened it mechanically, ignoring its other contents as he retrieved the little case with the unholy gold. As he lifted it out of the container though, Rahil took hold of his arm, his grip shaky.

“Can I speak with you in private?” he hissed, his tight smile clearly forced.

Mercer blinked. His gaze shot to Anthony, who seemed too preoccupied with his curiosity about the unholy gold to be curious about this too.

But— shit —Anthony.

As the dots connected, Mercer cursed himself for not stepping in when Anthony had made assumptions about their relationship. Of course Rahil wasn’t just any old vampire Mercer had picked up for a good time. He’d been a great time, truth be told, and more than that, Mercer hoped they were moving in the direction of a heartfelt forever. And he was proud of that. Rahil deserved to see that pride.

Slowly, Mercer nodded.

“Sure, babe,” he said, choosing the pet name on purpose.

It only seemed to make Rahil more uncomfortable, though.

But why? What was—did Rahil have more feelings for Anthony than—but no, no he’d said all his previous dates had been primarily quid pro quo. He’d talked about the loneliest whale. There had to be something else going on… Mercer just couldn’t figure out what.

His mind tumbled through options, pulling in one after another, each worse than the last, and as he walked Rahil out of the shed and around the side to a more private space near the forest, the swelling of his heart collapsed slowly into confusion and dread.