Page 102

Colin

C olin stretched slowly and blinked blearily up at the ceiling, noting the quiet surrounding him. He was alone in the bed.

Huh. Were the twins giving him privacy, after how he’d disappeared the last time they’d been…intimate?

He rejected the thought immediately. Those two wouldn’t know the meaning of personal space if it slapped them in the face.

They most likely hadn’t wanted to keep him awake with their presence.

They didn’t need sleep. And how fucking great would that be, to stay awake all night and not suffer all the annoying side effects of insomnia?

Speaking of. Colin grabbed his phone from the bedside table. Two in the morning. Damn. He must have slept almost six hours. Like, in a row.

Was vampire sex an insomnia cure? Was that one of their superpowers?

If only they could bottle that up—they’d make millions.

Except there was no way to bottle the things Fox and Dane had done to him, the way they’d made Colin feel.

It was almost too much to remember head-on—Colin could only handle it in little sideways mental glimpses.

Writhing on Fox’s lap while he kissed Colin senseless.

The blindingly gorgeous sight of the two of them undressing for him.

His neck stretched tight while Dane pressed his cock against Colin’s lips.

Giving head had never been Colin’s favorite thing.

It wasn’t that he hated the act itself—he’d always found it hot in theory—but it had always brought up too many wayward thoughts.

Was he doing it right? Was he enthusiastic enough?

Were they bored? Was the guy going to try to fuck his face without his permission?

He’d found it like everything else when it came to sex: disappointing. Impossible to lose himself in.

But he hadn’t even had a chance to overthink it this time, because there had been Fox, riling Colin up with his fingers, making him desperate beyond belief to be filled. To be fucked .

What choice had Colin had except to lose himself in it? To give in to the feel of Dane’s cock stretching his mouth, the subtle salty taste of his skin.

It was tempting to blame it on the numbers.

To pretend Colin would be satisfied with any threesome.

But he knew it wasn’t the case. It was them.

It was this magnetic draw he had to each of these vampires.

They did something to him, something no one else ever had.

It was an attraction he’d begun to think he’d never feel.

His phone buzzed, taking him out of his lusty thoughts. He peered down to see Jay’s photo pop up on his screen, requesting a video chat.

It wasn’t the first time Jay had called him in the middle of the night.

Thanks to Colin’s terrible sleep habits, the time didn’t really matter.

They had an agreement: Colin would put his phone on silent if he was actually trying to sleep, and Jay was welcome to call anytime.

The chances were always good Colin would be awake anyway.

He debated declining this time—he wasn’t exactly decent, in his current state, as the not-so-subtle ache in his ass could attest to—but it been awhile since the last call, and he missed his friend.

Fuck it. He had the covers on over any naughty bits, so he wasn’t exactly indecent either.

He accepted the call, and Jay’s face popped up in place of the picture, beaming at him. “Colin! I’m so glad you’re awake! Well, I wish you could sleep better,” he amended. “And feel better, but I’m glad you’re awake now because—” He stopped, his eyes widening. “Colin, you’re not wearing a shirt.”

Colin looked down at his bare torso. “I was sleeping earlier.”

“But you sleep in a shirt.”

“It’s hot here.”

“Oh, right.” Jay studied him through the screen, his head cocked. “Colin, your hair.”

Colin touched a few strands self-consciously. “I know, it’s all faded.”

“It’s sex hair .”

Colin froze, unsure of what to say. It wasn’t like he cared if Jay knew he’d had sex, but he hadn’t expected to be called out on it quite so immediately.

That was his mistake though. Jay was such a strange ray of sunshine that people tended to forget he was observant as fuck.

Colin was usually better about it, but the twins must have sexed his brain to mush.

There was murmuring off-screen, followed by Jay whispering loud enough he might as well have been talking normally, “Well, it is . He looks like he’s just had sex.”

“Hi, Alexei,” Colin said loudly, more than used to the guy’s off-screen presence for his and Jay’s chats by now. He wasn’t lurking every time, but often enough. Fated mates seemed to be attached at the hip.

Or maybe it was just those two.

“Hi, Colin.” Jay obligingly turned the screen so he and Alexei could exchange a nod, although his eyes were still wide with awe, like Colin had appeared on his screen in a Santa suit in July.

Colin hadn’t thought much of Alexei at first—he’d been wary of the way the guy had stalked Jay with his eyes at the coffee shop, the want and the yearning there—but it had turned out all that want and yearning had been reciprocated, and Alexei treated Jay like the precious gem he was, so who was Colin to hold a grudge?

Jay focused the screen back on himself. “Colin,” he said, uncharacteristically hesitant. “I thought you didn’t like…”

“Sometimes I like,” Colin told him gently.

“Oh.” Jay’s gray eyes went even wider, if possible. “ Oh. And you found a—a sometime that you like?” At Colin’s blank look, he gasped. “Colin, are you dating someone?”

“What? No.” Nothing he and the twins were doing exactly fit under Colin’s definition of dating. “I just found a place to live.”

“And you’re paying with sex ?” Jay whisper-yelled, aghast. “ Colin .”

“Jesus, Jay.” Colin laughed. He couldn’t help it. “No. God. I just—” His laughter died, and he scowled at the phone. “I don’t have to tell you any of this, you know.”

“No, you don’t,” Jay agreed placidly. “But you can. Because we’re besties, and besties share deets.”

“Is that a Soren motto, by any chance?”

“It is!” Jay beamed at him. “He had some questions about Alexei’s dic—”

“Sweetheart,” Alexei admonished from off-screen.

“Okay, fine,” Jay said with a pout. “Not all deets are meant to be shared, is what Alexei says.” He gave Colin his most sincere face. “But you can.”

“Right.” Colin toyed with the comforter at his waist, unsure of how to phrase any of it.

“I have roommates. I like them okay.” There.

That counted as sharing deets, right? But apparently Jay knew him enough to know there was something more, because he was making incredibly unsubtle wide-eyed faces off-screen to Alexei. “Roommates? Plural?”

“Yes. Brothers. Vampire brothers. Twins.”

The wide-eyed faces stopped, and Jay was suddenly looking incredibly seriously at the camera. “Redheaded twins?” he asked.

“Yeah…”

Jay took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “So, Colin,” he began, as if apropos of nothing, “I’m a nice vampire.”

Colin resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes.”

“And Alexei here is the nicest vampire.”

Debatable, but Colin let it slide.

“And since we’re the only vampires you know, you might think all vampires are nice. But some—”

“Are assholes,” Colin filled in. “Jay, I know enough about your past to know that. And I know all about Jamie and Luc now. And the creepy child turner we’re on the lookout for.”

“Oh, okay.” Jay’s tension relaxed all at once, as if the matter was fully settled. “So the twins are nice?” he asked hopefully.

Colin almost laughed again. “Not exactly.”

“They’re nice…to you?”

Colin considered. Nice? He wasn’t sure about that. Spit roasting him probably didn’t count on Jay’s niceness meter.

But then again, Jay was a horny little thing, so maybe it did…

“They’re very…clingy,” he finally settled on.

“Oh! Clingy is good.” Of course Jay would think it was, codependent creature that he was. “And—”

“Short stack,” Colin interrupted. “Why don’t you tell me what I’ve missed at DBC? Is Alicia still fending off that one douchebag who comes in to flirt with her?”

Jay narrowed his eyes, like he knew exactly what Colin was doing, but then seemed unable to resist the urge to chat about his favorite place on earth. “Yes! So…”

After an appropriately long gossip session, they ended their call. Jay hadn’t asked any more about the twins, but he’d certainly have more questions soon, and Colin would have to figure out answers. And to do that, he’d have to figure out what the twins were to him.

Besides clingy, that was. But clingy they were: following him around the house, insisting on coming to his dad’s…

In fact, where the fuck were those clingy bastards? It was annoying of them to be so inconsistent, disappearing when he was used to having them underfoot at all hours.

Colin rolled out of bed with a huff, pulling on a pair of shorts. He stumbled downstairs to find the two of them on the couch, playing some video game on low volume that seemed to involve a lot of explosives.

“There’s our sleepy boy,” Fox crooned, a teasing glint to his eyes.

“I’ve been up for an hour,” Colin countered. It came out sullen for some reason. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he cared that he’d woken up alone, or that they hadn’t come up in all the time he’d been awake.

“We heard you on the phone,” Dane said. “Figured you’d throw something at us if we interrupted.” He tilted his chin. “Come here.”

Colin made to sit on the carpet at their feet, but he was pulled off the ground and arranged before he knew it, his head on Fox’s lap and his feet draped over Dane’s legs.

“Manhandling,” he accused with a yawn.

“Hush,” Fox scolded. “I’m beating Dane.”

Maybe clingy isn’t the right word at all , Colin amended, accepting a beer from Jamie.

They were back at the same bar from before, although this time, Jamie’s friend was joined behind the bar by another bartender, Alice, a petite woman with light-brown curls who clearly had Monique smitten beyond belief.

Colin had come alone.