Page 31 of Missing Piece (Neon Scars #2)

Vincent’s cool lips on his stopped his racing thoughts so suddenly he was pretty sure he heard brakes squealing.

It was a painful kiss, and Vincent’s grip on his face was anything but gentle, but he closed eyes and just breathed through his nose, his chest heaving.

Had he really been hyperventilating like that?

His head swam, all of him off balance, but the longer Vincent’s lips lingered on his, some semblance of self-control returned despite his heart threatening to burst through his chest at any moment.

He pursed his lips as more tears rolled down his cheeks as Vincent pulled away. “Adam, look at me,” Vincent whispered, loosening his grip on his face.

He couldn’t. Not after he let that out. No one was ever supposed to know about all of it, and yet he just word-vomited all over his own lap. He didn’t want to see the reaction to his weakness. But when he heard a small, barely audible, “Please”, he forced his eyes open.

“Don’t say anything like that ever again,” Vincent said in a low voice, his eyes wide. “You’re not just the worst thing you’ve ever done. No one is. I won’t kill you, because I don’t want to kill you.”

He opened his mouth to say something. Anything.

But nothing came to mind, mostly because he hadn’t expected Vincent to react so strongly.

But even as his bubbling panic faded into the foggy alcohol haze of his mind, he couldn’t stop staring at Vincent, even as his chest spasmed as it attempted to bring that sob back to his lips.

Vincent’s thumb swiped over the tears still drying on his burning cheeks, his lips parting slightly as he took in a shaky breath.

“I’ve done things I regret too. I’ve been the reason people died.

I can’t go back and fix it, and neither can you.

Hurting yourself with drugs doesn’t fix what happened. It doesn’t make their lives better.”

He shook his head in Vincent’s grip, trying to push away the idea of kissing him again and the idea that maybe, just maybe, he had buried himself in a misery he didn’t deserve.

He did deserve it. He deserved every torturous craving, every painful symptom of withdrawal, he deserved the injuries covering every inch of him.

This gentleness, the kindness radiating from Vincent in waves…

he wasn’t worthy of that. “Why? Why do you care? You’ve kept me here to be your food and beat the shit out of me for no reason. Why do you care now?”

He watched Vincent’s Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he suddenly seemed at a loss for words. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Bullshit,” he echoed Vincent. Even as his senses returned, he was melting beneath Vincent’s cool touch. His mind kept trying to push his body forward, to close the distance and let their mouths relieve the weirdness that built between them. Like waiting for the first shoe to drop on a landmine.

“Because you’re mine!” Vincent snapped, his cheek twitching his eyes turned black. “I want you, so you’re mine, and I’m not going to share you with anything. Not a human, not a court, not a vampire, and I’m sure as shit not sharing you with a goddamn drug!”

There it was. The explosion.

It was his permission to make the last ten minutes disappear.

He lunged forward and smashed his mouth against Vincent’s, ignoring the itching pulling pain in his back and his ankle screaming at him as he pushed himself onto the blond.

The pain didn’t matter. Not with a gut full of Macedonian alcohol and a desperate need to make himself feel better, and Vincent seemed too caught-off-guard to stop him, his arms having fallen to his sides like he was a teen who didn’t know what to do with his hands.

The inside of Vincent’s mouth was just as cool as the rest of him, and even as his tongue scraped one of his fangs and filled his mouth with the taste of copper, he decided he wouldn’t stop.

He couldn’t. He needed to chase the bad feelings away, there was a blood sucking beast in bed with him that would help him do it.

Vincent moaned into the kiss, his hands finally moving and settling on his hips.

“What are you doing?” Vincent gasped as he pulled away. He looked genuinely surprised, which wasn’t something he thought he would ever see on Vincent’s face. It just made him want to see how far he could push him, what sort of concessions he could squeeze out of a shocked vampire.

“You want me? Then you can have me,” he whispered against his lips. Vincent pulled back a little, like he didn’t want to put too much pressure on Adam’s busted mouth. Oh God, this feels so nice. No one ever kisses me like this.

But this isn’t what I need.

He pushed back harder, clamping his hand around Vincent’s jaw as he fought to control the kiss.

He wanted more, and like any good addict, he would not wait to get what he wanted.

He pulled Vincent’s lower lip with his teeth, locking eyes with him as he ground his hips against Vincent’s.

“You can have me,” he repeated, smiling and wincing as Vincent’s cool hands ran up his sides, brushing against the black and blue bruise that had formed on his ribs.

“You’re drunk,” Vincent said, turning his face away from him even as he continued to let his hands wander over his torso, his touch light. “You’re drunk and emotional and I can’t—”

He didn’t want a light touch. He needed something else.

Something as fucked up and as dark and twisted as him.

“I’m not drunk,” he grumbled as he leaned forward, running his tongue along Vincent’s neck.

He tasted oddly sweet and salty. A horrible idea then barreled through his mind, plowing through any semblance of common sense.

He’ll either kill you or fuck your brains out. Or both. It would be a perfect exercise in being too-stupid-to-live.

But he had never been one to turn down a challenge that could kill him.

He slipped a hand between their bodies, grinning as his hand found Vincent’s hard cock through his flannel.

Then he did it. He bit a fucking vampire.