Page 14 of Vampire Kings Box Set

“He’ll go into shock presently, I imagine,” Maddox said with a soft sigh indicating the end of his patience.

“CHRIST!”

“Or not,” Lorien smiled. “Shall we put him out of his misery?”

Lying on the freezing ground below the back window he’d crawled out of instead of taking a shower, Will wasn’t in shock. He fucking wished he was in shock. Instead he was in agony. Fucking absolute agony. The bone had snapped and pushed up through his shin in a way that made him want to be sick.

He heard footsteps approaching. Maddox. Of course it was Maddox. He was everywhere, an omnipresent menacing embodiment of every daddy issue on the planet combined. Will tried to get up, in spite of his injuries. He wanted to scuttle away and hide in a corner somewhere until the inevitable overtook him. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and pushed up on his good leg.

Hopping over the icy ground, he scrambled for the wall for another support. He could sense Maddox’s approach as inevitable as the coming of the dawn. It was not so much that he was trying to flee; more that he was trying to not be caught in one of the most embarrassing positions he’d been in a really long time. The only thing worse than being caught in an escape by someone charged with the task of catching you was fucking it up yourself to the point you couldn’t help but be caught.

“William. Stop.”

His name sounded strangely compelling coming from Maddox’s lips. So much so that he stopped, panting, his breath making dragon-puffs in the night air as he attempted to regain control of himself.

“Let me go,” he choked out, grasping at the wall.

“Don’t be silly.”

Maddox was beside him suddenly, taking his arms and moving him gently so he could lean against his captor, and not the other cold, hard, overwhelmingly massive obstacle preventing his freedom.

Will tried to resist. His hands loosened and he let himself fall to the ground rather than grip onto Maddox. He slumped down. Maddox let him go. He could have caught him, but he let him fall. Will learned a lesson in that moment, a painful and brutal lesson. Maddox had come to his aid, but if he refused, he would be allowed to suffer.

“Look at me,” Maddox said, crouching down next to him, extending a finger in front of his eyes and drawing it back to his own nose. “Look into my eyes.”

A dark passenger rode in those eyes. Will saw a flash of secrets and horrors in that moment of unprecedented connection. It was more intimate than the sex he’d had with Maddox when he was crushed roughly against the floor and drunk from. That had been nothing but domination and conquest. This was something else, a flirtation with some mutual vulnerability for just a second, which made the pain seep away as Will lost himself in that dark gaze.

“You’ve broken your leg, pup. Now why would you do something as silly as that?”

“I wanted… I had to… I can’t…” Will stumbled over his words, fumbling with the very ideas he was trying to express. How to say that he was terrified of Maddox — and not because the man had turned out to be a vampire. That barely registered. Will was accustomed to living in a world of monsters. For someone to be a true monster was not unusual. What was unusual for him was the fear and horror of disappointing the man he had already come to depend upon.

“Shhh, shhh,” Maddox interjected smoothly. “You’re okay.”

Will was not okay. Will was severely injured.

“It’s broken,” a nearby voice said. “We’ll eat him and find another. A stronger one.” There was hunger in those masculine tones, the kind that made Will whimper with near certainty that he was about to be consumed. Lying on the ground, in the dirt, with the grit of concrete bits digging into his wounded flesh, Will gave up on life, abandoning himself in the hypnotic gaze of the dark-eyed master who loomed over him.

The tension was broken for a brief moment as Maddox pulled his gaze away, cursing softly under his breath.

“Lorien, go lock yourself in the basement. Now.”

Lorien hesitated but did as he was told. Or at least disappeared from view in one way or another.

“Two of you,” Maddox sighed. “One as bad as the other in different ways. Are you ready to behave, Will?”

“Yes,” Will whispered. There could be no other answer. Yes. Yes to whatever Maddox wanted. Yes to whatever he might command.

Mad scooped him up from the ground, lifting his couple-hundred-pound muscular frame as if it weighed nothing at all. The pain in his leg was still there, but it no longer felt like something he had to be personally concerned about. It throbbed and ached, pulsed and bled of its own accord.

“What are you going to do with me?”

The question went unanswered as Maddox carried Will back inside and settled him on a long piece of designer furniture which would never be the same after this.

“Do I need to chain you up, pup? Is that it? I thought I told you about the functions of the collar?”

“Oh… I forgot about the collar,” Will admitted.

“Humans!” There was an exclamation from a nearby space that was probably not the basement.