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“That was a good move though. The public smooches. You know how many people have tried to give that one their number? That sleazy doctor Monroe was in here earlier, practically salivating.” Her smirk only grew as she watched Alexei’s muscles tense at the thought of someone else salivating over his vampire.

“Anyway, good to lock the Jayster down.”

Alexei couldn’t even pretend to himself that locking Jay down didn’t sound like the best idea he’d ever heard.

The house they pulled up to (Alexei had ended up driving, since apparently Jay had a tendency to “terrify people” behind the wheel) was a cute yellow number, backing up to the pine forest surrounding their town.

Not too far from the local hospital either.

Jay had told Alexei his friend Danny was a nurse.

A vampire nurse, which sounded only slightly terrifying.

Not that Jay was terrifying in his vampire form.

He was gorgeous and sweet in every iteration, fangs or no.

More like, it gave off the impression that vampires had infiltrated all these mundane aspects of the human world.

They were in hospitals, obviously enough.

What about schools? Were there vampire elementary schoolteachers? Politicians?

There was so much Alexei didn’t know about Jay’s world. He said he’d been raised in a den, but how many dens were out there? Were they all as isolated as his?

Alexei did his best to put it out of his mind, to focus on getting into a socializing mindset. He didn’t want Jay to regret inviting him to dinner.

The man who opened the door, a barking cattle dog at his side, answered a question that had been in the back of Alexei’s mind: whether all vampires were adorable aliens like Jay.

No. Definitely not.

This guy—almost as tall as Alexei, dressed in a full suit, with blue eyes so cold it seemed like the already frigid evening air dropped by another ten degrees just looking at them—was the furthest thing from adorable.

He reminded Alexei much more of the mobsters he’d grown up with than the sweet-natured vampire beside him.

But Jay seemed unfazed by the chilly demeanor. “Roman!” he greeted happily. “I brought my human friend Alexei. I already asked permission from Danny, so I’m not being rude.”

Before Roman could respond, Alexei’s mouth worked against his will, his earlier conversation with Alicia hovering in the back of his mind. “Boyfriend.”

Roman arched a dark brow, his focus shifting from Jay to Alexei. “Pardon me?”

“I’m Alexei, his human boyfriend .” Alexei glanced down at Jay as he said it, worried maybe he’d misread the meaning behind Jay’s blanket permission to kiss in public earlier, but Jay was beaming at him, clearly delighted by the possessive declaration.

Good enough for Alexei. After all, if he was going to stake his claim, why not start with Jay’s intimidating vampire friend who looked at Alexei like he was an annoying bug to be squashed under his expensive Italian loafers?

Lucky for all of them, Alexei was used to cold, murderous-looking men sizing him up and finding him wanting. He could handle it well enough with mobsters. He supposed he ought to be able to handle it with vampires as well.

Jay turned that beaming smile to Roman, seemingly undeterred by the cold reception. “Yes, my human boyfriend. Isn’t that nice, Roman?”

Alexei could have sworn for a second there was something close to fondness in Roman’s gaze as he stared back at Jay, but the next moment, his eyes were cold again, and he turned his attention to the dog at his feet.

“Settle, mutt,” he ordered the animal, who was wiggling and whining and trying to get Jay’s attention.

The blue-gray dog immediately sat, muzzle shut obediently.

“That’s Ferdy,” Jay explained to Alexei. He gestured to the dog. “Ferdy, this is Alexei. My human boyfriend.”

Ferdy cocked his head, and Alexei had the momentary, insane thought the dog was actually listening to Jay’s words. Roman only stepped aside from the door, sighing a little, like Jay introducing people formally to his pet was an everyday sort of occurrence. “Everyone is in the kitchen.”

“Everyone” meant three other people. Vampires all, Jay had told Alexei.

There was the strange blond one from the day before; a muscled, all-American-looking guy who towered over him, holding on to his hand; and a third, dark-haired one with pretty brown eyes, who looked vaguely related to the second.

They were each ridiculously good-looking. Maybe there was also a vampire modeling agency somewhere?

Jay gasped in apparent surprise as they entered the kitchen. “Soren. You’re here early .”

Soren grinned that wide, creepy grin. “Didn’t want to miss a moment, Jaybird.”

Introductions were made, Jay emphasizing the word boyfriend three separate times, to Alexei’s satisfaction, and then Soren stepped toward Alexei with a goblet—an actual fucking goblet —of ruby-red liquid in his hand. “Can I offer you a drink, human?”

Alexei couldn’t help it: he hesitated. There was that eerie fucking smile again.

The third guy—Danny, the nurse—made a sound of distress. “Soren. You’re being creepy on purpose.” He made an apologetic face at Alexei. “It’s just red wine, I promise. No blood at the table.”

“Me, creepy?” Soren’s manic grin fell, and his lower lip pushed out in an exaggerated pout. “Cutie, you wound me. I never get to play it up with humans.” He waved a hand in Alexei’s direction. “He already knows . Let me have my fun.”

“Not at the expense of our guest.”

The big guy, Gabe, grabbed Soren by the waist, tugging him back against his front. “Come here, brat. Behave.” He then looked Alexei over in that way buff guys sometimes did when they realized Alexei was bigger than them and they didn’t like that fact one bit.

Alexei did his best not to glower back, trying to keep his face in some semblance of a neutral expression. It wouldn’t do to alienate Jay’s friends at the very first meeting, not when the word boyfriend was being thrown about so wonderfully.

Soren relaxed back in Gabe’s arms with a sigh, looking to Alexei, then to Jay, and arching a brow. “I should lend you my heeled boots, Jaybird. Your human is going to get a crick in his neck trying to kiss you.”

Alexei huffed a reluctant laugh, but Jay shot Alexei a concerned look, his brow furrowed.

“Does it hurt your neck, kissing me?” Before Alexei could even answer, Jay was patting his arm soothingly.

“Poor human. Next time, just pick me up.” He turned to the rest of the room.

“He’s very strong for a human. He can toss me around no problem. ”

A variety of expressions went around the room at that statement: Soren looked delighted, Gabe horrified, Danny embarrassed, and Roman completely neutral.

Alexei shrugged.

There was an awkward silence after that, Alexei doing his very best to hold in the urge to ask everyone to pull out their fangs because—other than Soren’s creepy vibes and suspicious goblet—no one was acting like a vampire, and that in itself was kind of freaking him out.

Surprisingly, it was Roman who came to his rescue. “I am concerned I perhaps added too much garlic to the sauce for the chicken. Jay tells us you are versed in the culinary arts, Alexei. Perhaps you can try it?”

With those words, it hit Alexei for the first time how good the kitchen smelled. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Oh. Well, I’m not really. I only know a few Russian recipes. But my palate isn’t bad.”

When Roman didn’t rescind the offer, Alexei tasted the sauce. Fucking delicious. And it was kind of hard to tell, but he thought the vampire seemed pleased enough by his praise when he told him so.

That seemed to set everyone else in motion, Danny pulling Jay into the other room to help set the table while Soren and Gabe let the dog out into the backyard.

Alexei, left alone with the intimidating vampire, cleared his throat, feeling once again unspeakably awkward. “So…garlic?”

Roman shrugged a shoulder. “A myth, of which there are many. Sunlight is irritating to our eyes but not deadly. An invitation to a human’s home is not necessary to enter. Mirrors and photos depict us just fine. A stake to the heart would only earn you an enraged vampire at your heels.”

“Beheading or fire,” Alexei murmured.

Roman turned to Jay, who had come back into the kitchen and was rummaging for glassware in the cabinet. “ Johann .”

Jay didn’t even turn from his search. “What? He’s not going to hurt us. Are you, Alexei?”

“ No . No, of course not.”

Gabe—and when had he and the dog come back from the backyard?—glared at Alexei from his spot at the door. “What are your intentions toward Jay?”

Roman scoffed, stirring his sauce. “Did you not hear? He is the boyfriend .”

Danny, among them once more because apparently no one could stay out of the kitchen for more than thirty fucking seconds, smiled happily at Roman. “Remember when you were my boyfriend?”

“I prefer husband. Lover. Mate,” Roman declared, turning from the stove to kiss him soundly, and from the way Danny looked so flushed and happy afterward, the guy couldn’t be made completely of ice.

Alexei’s ears perked up. There was that word again. “Mate? You two are mates?”

No one answered him right away, but everyone was looking at him with strange intensity. Looking at them , Alexei realized, as Jay had come to stand at his side, a stack of glasses in his hands.

“So Jay…told you about those?” Danny finally asked hesitantly.

“You have two mated pairs in this room, mobster,” Soren said, that intense grin once more on his face.

Alexei startled a bit at that “mobster,” but he couldn’t dwell too hard on his past being outed when he had a room full of vampires and a head full of questions. “Oh. Okay. How…I don’t understand quite how they work. How do you know you’ve found your mate?”

Alexei had no fucking clue if this was polite predinner conversation to have with a vampire crew or not, but he wanted to know, and no one seemed about to bare their fangs and tear his throat out in anger or anything.

Jay for his part was now ignoring the conversation completely. He’d set his glasses aside and had his attention focused on the cattle dog at their feet.

“A pull,” Roman answered, eyes boring into Alexei’s. “An intense, unshakable draw to another. My demon wanted him, and I just…knew.”

“Your demon?” Alexei asked. Maybe Roman was—what—some kind of supervamp?

“His beastie,” Jay answered from his crouch on the kitchen floor, his voice strangely flat. “The vampire part inside him. The part you see when my fangs are out.”

“Ah. Okay.” Alexei would come back to that later. “And how are they…chosen? What makes someone mate material?”

Was Alexei’s desperation—his fucking obsession with being bound to Jay in whatever way possible—coming through in his questions? Probably. It was hard to care, though, when he was actually getting answers.

“We don’t really know,” Soren answered, his gaze fixed on Jay and Ferdy. “Fate, they say. Can’t really argue with that. Roman and I ended up in Hyde Park, of all places, and our mates were just…here.”

Alexei tried to wrap his head around the likelihood of that. “But you’ve both been alive for centuries? Like Jay?”

Soren and Roman both nodded.

“So the odds of two of you finding your mates here…”

“Oh yes,” Soren giggled a little wildly, seemingly at some joke of his own. “ Two of us.”

Danny cleared his throat. “Shall we eat?”