Page 114

As they walked back from Jamie’s mother’s house, the air felt heavy and full, an unusual moisture in the air. The heat from the day hadn’t begun to fully dissipate yet, although the sun was beginning to set.

Jamie had Luc’s hand in his, humming an off-key tune and swinging their arms together as they walked.

Luc was tempted to tease his human for holding on to him like a little kid, but he didn’t actually want him to stop.

Luc’s monster was still surprisingly calm—content, even.

A man had cut them off with his car in a crosswalk, and his monster hadn’t so much as pressed Luc to rip his head off.

It was a goddamn pussycat at this point, even up to allowing him to yet again eat human food, taking a few bites of chicken and rice at Jamie’s family home.

Luc had expected Jamie’s demand for a reward to be sexual in nature, given his human’s apparently insatiable desire for him, but Jamie had asked for a family dinner instead.

Luc hadn’t known what to feel about the fact that, mere hours after he’d been an uncontrollable beast, lusting for blood and violence, Jamie still felt comfortable having him around his family. It was mind-boggling, the trust this human had in him.

And Luc wondered, not for the first time, just how much Jamie’s mom had picked up. The fact that Luc didn’t easily eat. His odd fucking face. Did she know her son was cavorting around with someone less than human?

Would she be horrified if she did?

Luc pulled his phone from his pocket with his free hand. No answer still.

“Oh yes. ” Luc grunted as Jamie tugged at his hand with sudden purpose, pulling him off the sidewalk over to a fenced area at the end of the block. Luc could smell the overwhelming scent of chlorine, the chemicals almost enough to drown out his mate’s much more preferable cinnamon scent.

As Jamie stopped at the chain-link fence, Luc ducked closer to run his nose along the crook of his mate’s neck, trying to rectify the offensive change.

Jamie tilted his head to bare himself more easily to Luc’s touch but kept his eyes on what lay inside the fence in front of them.

Luc barely glanced at it, his attention focused on the softness of Jamie’s skin, but he recognized what had caught his mate’s attention.

A neighborhood pool. How quaint.

Luc’s pleased rumble at Jamie’s closeness was cut off as his mate started clambering up the fence with no notice whatsoever. One second, his mate’s head was in front of him, and the next moment, his bitable ass was suddenly at eye level.

Luc couldn’t help it this time. He grabbed it with both hands.

“Hey!”

Luc glanced up to find Jamie attempting to glare down at him, the effect slightly ruined by the amusement twinkling in his eyes.

“No time for grab ass. Hop up before someone sees us.”

Luc let out a forlorn sigh, reluctantly releasing those fleshy globes, and he was down on the other side of the fence in an instant, holding his arms up to catch his mate.

Jamie laughed in delight and scrambled up over the top before hopping down neatly without Luc’s assistance.

He stuck his tongue out as part of his dismount. “Show-off,” he accused.

“Why are we here?” Luc asked, wrinkling his nose as the chlorine smell grew even stronger.

“This was our old neighborhood pool. We used to live on this block. Had a key and everything. Now sometimes I hop over and take a dip anyway, when it’s empty.”

“And if someone comes?” Luc asked, more curious than concerned. Human laws and customs were more or less irrelevant to him, especially those regarding something as mundane as trespassing.

Jamie shrugged, meandering over to the edge of the pool. It was a surprisingly decent size, the water a bright, unnatural blue in the twilight, with a lined area for swimming laps. “We act like we belong. Who’s to say we don’t have a key still? That’s the secret to fitting in anywhere, really.”

The old phrase “fake it till you make it” ran through Luc’s mind.

That was what Jamie had been doing with him whenever they went out in public.

The jokes about cosplay, the body modification explanations.

He acted like Luc was—well, not normal per se, but not paranormal either—and the humans around them took it at face value.

Luc was torn from his thoughts by the sight of his mate stripping down to his underwear, his beautiful, slim chest and long limbs looking absolutely golden in the fading light. “We’re swimming right this moment?”

Jamie tossed his clothes in a messy heap. “Psh. Of course. Why else would we come here?”

Why else indeed?

Then Jamie ran up to the edge and jumped into the pool with his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them.

Cannonball was the term, Luc believed.

He smirked at his mate’s antics, then shrugged and followed suit, disrobing to his silk underwear, briefly mourning the damage they’d undergo from the chlorine. Ah well. He’d buy himself more.

Luc dove in with barely a splash, gliding under the water for a long stretch before surfacing. He didn’t get overheated the way humans did, but he could still appreciate the pleasurable feel of the cool water on his skin.

He did some easy laps while Jamie swam playful little circles around him, twisting and undulating in the water like some kind of river otter. When Luc paused at one end of the pool, Jamie joined him, wrapping his arms around Luc’s neck and encircling his hips with his legs.

Luc ran his fingers through Jamie’s wet strands, giving him a sorrowful look. “I hate to tell you, flower, but the chlorine seems to have turned your hair green.”

Jamie stared at him for several long seconds before he burst out laughing, head flung back with the force of his amusement. “Did you just make a joke ? Like a real, honest-to-God joke ?”

Luc supposed he had. It was so easy to feel playful with this human. To feel light and buoyant with his flower there, keeping the darkness at bay.

Jamie gave a last little chuckle, then leaned his head back more fully, letting out a deep, satisfied sigh. “A cigarette would make this absolutely perfect right now.”

“No,” Luc ordered, giving his mate a swat on the ass in remonstration.

“Oh my god, not this again.”

“You’re still mortal,” Luc scolded. “They’re bad for you.”

“I have an oral fixation though,” Jamie teased, biting at his red lower lip and grinding suggestively against Luc. “I really need something to do with my mouth.”

“You can suck on my tongue like a good boy.”

Jamie huffed playfully. “Being a good boy is boring. I’d rather suck on other things.” He made as if to unwrap his legs from Luc’s hips and move downward, but Luc grabbed onto him, pulling him closer instead.

“In this disease-ridden cesspool? I think not.” Luc wouldn’t risk giving him any sort of infection. Wasn’t that how humans got strep throat? “And are you so sure you don’t want it the other way around? My lips around your cock? I recall you being rather…dominant…just a handful of hours ago.”

Jamie squirmed against him at the mention of it, his already hard cock brushing against Luc’s rapidly filling erection.

“Don’t remind me. That was so fucking hot.

I can’t believe I lasted more than two whole seconds.

” He wrapped his arms tighter against Luc’s neck, pulling him in to whisper in his ear, “Don’t worry, Monster Daddy, I still crave being filled up by you. ”

Fucking hell.

Luc’s cock throbbed at the little minx’s words, and Jamie teased him with another swivel of his hips, tilting his neck at the same time. “Bite, please,” he requested, his tone suspiciously sweet. “If you’re not gonna let me blow you, gimme that vampire aphrodisiac bloodsucking goodness.”

An embarrassing strangled noise made its way out of Luc’s throat, the monster within him writhing in delight at Jamie’s suggestion. His perfect, fearless mate, asking Luc to drink his blood like it was a sexy treat rather than the unavoidable symptom of Luc’s damnation.

And how could Luc deny him?

He nudged Jamie’s head further to the side with his nose, pausing for a moment to nuzzle at the soft skin of his mate’s neck before biting down, his mouth filling with peaches and cinnamon and everything good in the world.

He groaned as rapture coursed through him.

It was beyond belief, how good this human tasted.

Luc found himself tangling his fingers into Jamie’s hair, tugging his head more firmly into position, gulping down his mate’s coppery essence greedily.

Luc had bitten plenty of humans in his time, but none had tasted like Jamie.

He tasted like what Luc imagined heroin would have felt like, had he ever tried it as a human.

Luc thought again of the rumor that those humans with special powers had especially delectable blood.

There could very well be truth in that. But Luc wanted to believe it was just…

Jamie. That he would be this alluring, this delicious, no matter what abilities he did or didn’t have.

Jamie gasped as the pleasure of the bite coursed through him, his body rocking against Luc’s subconsciously.

Luc used a hand on his bottom to guide him into a steadier rhythm, their cocks rubbing against each other through the drenched fabric of their underwear.

Jamie was panting in no time, his limbs trembling. “Gonna come. Oh fuck, Luc, gonna come.”

“Yes,” Luc urged. “Come for me, flower.”

Jamie rocked desperately a few more times before he shuddered in Luc’s arms, the scent of his release combining with the taste of his blood enough to drive Luc to his own orgasm.

Luc licked his bite closed carefully while his mate recovered, limp against him. “This is why public pools are disgusting,” he mused, pressing a kiss to the healing bite.

Jamie gave a tired laugh, his warm breath tickling Luc’s shoulder. “ This is why? Vampires biting poor, innocent humans and rubbing their junk together until they both get off? I’m not sure that’s as much of a public health issue as you think it is.”

Luc grazed him with a warning fang. “You’re a menace.”

“ Your menace,” Jamie mumbled into his skin, still chuckling softly.

Yes. Yes, he was. Forever and always, as soon as fucking Soren texted Luc back.

Luc considered whether he needed to drive up to Colorado and see for himself, but for one, it was possible Roman and his posse would tear his limbs off before he could ask any pertinent questions, and for two, he didn’t want to leave Jamie alone for a whole hour, let alone days at a time.

He was also pretty sure his monster would turn the car around before they even crossed city limits.

After a few more minutes of embracing in the cool water, Jamie wiggled out of Luc’s arms. “Time to dry off, monster.”

In answer, the heavens opened up, the heavy fullness of the evening air finally giving way. Rain pelted them both, and Jamie laughed, twirling in the shallow end of the pool, raising his head to the sky. “It’s a monsoon!” he cried, delighted. “I thought they were done for the year.”

Luc watched his mate dance in the water.

Luc was sure, if anyone else could see him, he’d look like a fool, smiling widely with his fangs out like some kind of Halloween jack-o’-lantern.

But he couldn’t help it—he was mesmerized.

There was a key part of Jamie that Luc was just… missing in himself. This zest for life.

Luc had appreciated certain things over the years, surely. Sex. Luxury. Elegance. Violence.

But not this. Not the simple pleasures in life. The rain. Old books. Fresh peaches.

Jamie seemed to love it all.

He would appreciate eternity; Luc was sure of it.

And Luc would appreciate Jamie . That would be enough, wherever they ended up.

The desert rainstorm barely lasted fifteen minutes, all of which Jamie insisted spending in the pool, claiming there was nothing better than swimming in the rain.

It wasn’t until afterward, changing into their wet clothes, that Luc smelled something…

off. The storm had let loose the smells of the desert city, strong enough to cut through the chlorine—creosote and asphalt mostly.

But underneath, there was a sense of….subtle decay.

Luc followed his nose to the small building that served as the pool’s changing area, Jamie close on his heels.

“That’s always locked at night,” Jamie warned him.

Luc tried the handle, which gave easily at his turn. “Not tonight.”

He opened the door to find the source of the scent sprawled in the tiny changing room. Luc had already known in the back of his mind, of course. It was a smell he knew well.

There was a dead body on the floor.

A very pale corpse. Drained of its blood.