Page 17

“You’re coziness personified, sweetheart.

” The new term of endearment dropped from Alexei’s lips without his permission, but he couldn’t really regret it.

Even if he’d started out meaning to tease, the beaming smile Jay gave him in return made him happy he’d said it.

He stepped back from the door, beckoning in his guest. “Come in from the cold, kotyonok.”

“I will, thank you.” Jay stomped his boots first, clearly mindful of tracking snow into Alexei’s apartment. “It doesn’t bother me though. Just so you know. All temperature is more or less the same.”

Alexei nodded pointedly to the giant coat. “Well, you’re certainly dressed for it.”

“It’s to blend in,” Jay informed him, shrugging off his outerwear.

Alexei processed that information as he was handed the practically neon coat—one of the most hideous things he’d ever seen in his life—and tried his best to keep a straight face, but Jay’s focus was already 100 percent elsewhere.

The little vampire bounced onto his toes, doing a strange little skip / dance up to the ingredients on Alexei’s kitchen counter—there weren’t many in the recipe itself, but Alexei laid out all the toppings as well, to add some flair—and Jay’s enthusiasm for something as simple as making Russian pancakes had Alexei grinning like a fool.

He tried to school his face into something less ridiculous, rubbing at the back of his neck, his hair already tied up and out of the way. “I thought we’d just do each step together. I don’t have a written recipe or anything.”

Jay was turning the block of farmer’s cheese over in his hands like he’d never seen anything so fascinating in his life. “Who taught you again? Your mother?”

“No, my grandmother. She’d make them with me the few times we visited Russia, when I was a child.

” Watching Jay—whose very presence imbued the small kitchen with such sweetness and warmth—Alexei felt compelled to share a truth he didn’t give often.

“My mother was very…sad when I was growing up. She was kind but not always there, I guess you could say. And then she left when I was quite young. I don’t even know where she is now. ”

His memories of her were at this point a blurry haze of scattered moments, filled with Russian endearments and a softness he hadn’t felt since.

Jay set the cheese down, immediately giving Alexei his full attention, his gray eyes empathetic. “That’s so sad. That’s too sad. I’m so sorry.”

Alexei cleared his suddenly dry throat, ready to shrug it off, but then another truth was just spilling out of him like poison. “I wouldn’t have stayed with my father either.”

“Your father the…mobster?” Jay asked hesitantly.

“My father the asshole,” Alexei said, with more harshness than he had intended.

“He wasn’t kind, not like her. He raised my older brother and me with a real ‘heir and a spare’ mentality.

Pitted us against each other, always let Ivan know he was replaceable and me know I was a backup.

It was like he thought if we loved each other, supported each other, it would just make us… weak.”

Jay made a small sound of distress, and then suddenly he was in Alexei’s arms, a warm bundle of comfort, the distance between them gone in the blink of an eye.

Alexei was taken aback by the hug and not only because Jay moved so incredibly fast. Alexei wasn’t used to people who… comforted. Not since the last time he’d seen his grandmother, well before he’d even reached puberty.

But he wrapped his arms around Jay’s small frame anyway, grateful for the contact.

There was a cynical part of him that worried he’d just used his own personal pseudotragedy to imbue closeness between the two of them.

But wasn’t that just what normal bonding between two people looked like?

For people who weren’t raised by cold Mafia men where everything was secrets and stoicism and pain?

“Would you like to talk about something less sad now?” Jay mumbled the question into Alexei’s sternum after a solid minute of silent hugging.

Alexei tightened his arms one last time before releasing Jay from his hold. “I would love to, kitten. Let me show you what we’re working with.”

It was an easy enough recipe, probably boring for most people, but Jay was an incredibly enthusiastic student. He hadn’t been lying about being good with direction. When told what to do, he followed each step with a perfectionism that was mildly alarming.

When relaxed and happy, he was also apparently a very chatty little thing.

He asked approximately a million questions for such a simple meal—about each and every ingredient, about the chemistry of the process itself—only half of which Alexei had the answers to.

But Jay was never dismayed when Alexei told him he didn’t know something.

The vampire would just beam at him anyway, saying, “Okay, we’ll look that up later. ”

Alexei loved that “we.” He absolutely fucking adored that “we.”

He noticed other little things about Jay.

Like how he seemed oddly…distressed when he made a mess with the excess flour.

He seemed upset when he made any mess at all, actually, up until Alexei exaggerated his own clumsiness with the ingredients, telling him, “If you’re not making a little bit of a mess, you’re not doing it properly. ”

Then Jay positively glowed , telling Alexei once again he was the “nicest human.”

Alexei almost felt like that could be true, with that little bundle of sunshine in his apartment, beaming at him at every opportunity.

Alexei felt a new sort of contentment growing in him, one he had very little experience with, as Jay sat upon the counter, legs swinging, watching him flip the last of the remaining pancakes.

“I’m sorry your mother was sad and never taught you to make pancakes. But I’m very glad your grandmother did.”

“Me too, kitten. And I’m happy to have you here as my assistant. The best pancake assistant there ever was.”

Jay flushed deeply, pink all the way down to his neck, and squirmed a little on the counter. “Really?” he asked, voice hopeful.

God, he was so fucking responsive to the least bit of praise. “Really, really,” Alexei said, placing the last of the pancakes on a plate and turning off the burner. He sidled up in between the vampire’s dangling legs. “You know the only thing that could make you a better assistant right now?”

Jay leaned forward, eager. “What?”

“If you gave me a kiss.”

Once again, the speed with which Jay moved was alarming, his arms wrapping around Alexei’s neck in an instant, his eager lips on Alexei’s mouth before he could blink.

But Alexei rolled with the fucking punches, kissing the sweet vampire with enthusiasm, letting it devolve quickly into absolute filth, licking into his mouth and letting Jay explore as much as he wanted in turn.

For such a sweet little thing, Jay kissed Alexei like he wanted to devour him whole, moaning when Alexei pulled him forward by the hips, the counter setting him at the perfect height to grind their cocks together.

When Alexei finally pulled away for air, they were both panting like mad. Jay had been panting the night before as well. “Do you—do you need to breathe?” Alexei asked between his own labored breaths.

Jay blinked dazedly at him, cheeks flushed and lips swollen. “It won’t kill me not to, but it’s a very uncomfortable reflex to suppress. The body remembers.”

That brought up a question that had been lingering in the back of Alexei’s mind, but he wasn’t sure how to phrase it in a way that wasn’t horribly macabre, or just plain offensive.

Jay seemed to read it in his face anyway, smiling softly at him, sadness tinging the corners of his mouth.

“Beheading or total consumption by fire. That’s how to kill us. ”

“Well, fuck.” Alexei had seen men die, yes, but not quite like that. “Did you—have you ever seen that?”

Jay dropped his arms from Alexei’s neck. “Beheading, yes.”

“That sounds like a story.”

“I’m over two hundred years old. I definitely have stories.”

It was so easy to forget most of the time.

Jay had such a youthful air, to go along with his youthful face.

But then there were moments like this one, when something came into his gray eyes: an air of unknowable depths, completely at odds with the enthusiasm he showed for simple things, like making fucking pancakes.

Alexei should leave it alone. But his hunger for Jay extended to all of Jay, including his history. “Maybe—maybe a bad story?” he pushed.

Jay shoved him back gently then, as if he needed the distance to consider Alexei properly, cocking his head and looking him over. Alexei could only hope he passed the test.

He really wanted to pass the fucking test.

After a moment of that, Jay cleared his throat and folded his hands on his lap, like he was preparing for a recital of some kind.

“I was turned to be someone’s…companion,” he said.

“I was raised as a vampire in a den where humans were considered lesser. And even within the den, there was an established hierarchy. If you turned someone, they were yours, to do with as you wished. If it didn’t work out, the newer vampire was killed.

My companion, Vee—Veronique—she needed me to be neat, and quiet, and obedient.

If I was, we got along quite well. If I wasn’t, I was…

left alone. I’m very good at passing time alone.

” Jay looked him straight in the eyes then, his gray pair looking positively ancient. “But I don’t like it.”

Alexei tried to put together the strange pieces of that story, mulling them over in his mind. “You were…owned? And…abused.”

Jay shrugged, but the movement came off as anything but casual.

“My friend Soren was in the same den. His maker wanted him for sex as well as service, and he—he hurt my friend. A lot. Vee never did that to me. Not physically.” He took a deep breath, letting it out in a whoosh.

“Ten years ago the lead vampire of the den went feral. He had to be put down, and Vee helped in the effort. She was killed. I was there, but I ran. I’m not—I’m not very brave. ”

Alexei wasn’t sure what to say in the face of all that. Except, “I ran too. From my brother. I’m not very brave either.”

“Well, your mortal body is very fragile,” Jay conceded.

Alexei had never been called fragile in his entire life. “What did you mean, he went feral?”

“It’s the natural end for many vampires. A loss of our humanity. Unless we’re tethered, mated to another.”

Something cold ran through Alexei’s veins at the thought. “You’re not mated, are you?”

“No.” Jay seemed to misunderstand the direction of his question. “But don’t worry. If I were ever to have signs of going feral, I would leave Hyde Park. I wouldn’t endanger anyone here. I promise.”

Alexei wanted to tell him that was the last fucking thing he was worried about. That he was much more terrified of the thought of this sweet vampire losing his mind, being potentially attacked by his own kind. But Jay looked so sad, and it was all Alexei’s fault for bringing it up.

“Hey,” he said, stepping forward again. “Have I told you yet you’re the best pancake-making assistant I’ve ever had?”

Jay smiled, a tentative thing. “You have. And you’re lying, which isn’t very nice.”

“Never.” Alexei pressed a kiss to Jay’s cheek. “So sweet.” A kiss to his forehead. “So gorgeous.” A kiss to the very tip of his button nose. “Perfect.”

Jay giggled, that old sorrow seeming to seep from his body, but then looked at the counter, at the specks of floured dough, and his brow furrowed. “We’ve made a real mess. Everything was so tidy before.”

Alexei shrugged. “I’m not really that much of a neat freak. I only straightened up for you.”

Jay seemed delighted by that confession, perking up considerably. He reached up to tug Alexei down by his shoulders, stretching up to whisper in his ear, like it was some kind of secret, “I actually like things a bit messy.”

Alexei arched a brow at the little vampire, wanting to kiss his nose again but figuring he’d already been cheesy enough for one evening. “Yeah? Okay, kotyonok. Let’s get messy.”