by TA Moore
Pleasure twisted in on itself until it was almost an ache, and the need caught at his balls and the back of his tongue like hooks.
“God, please,” Took whimpered as he dragged his mouth away from Madoc’s spit-slick neck, the hunger for more of him—all of him—held back by wire and will. “I can’t….”
Madoc laughed, low and smug and satisfied, as he reached down between their bodies to grab Took’s cock. He dragged his fist down from head to root in a slow, tight stroke.
“Really, I think you can,” he rasped. “Now fuck me before I change my mind and bend you over the desk.”
Took shuddered as the temptation of that clenched from his balls back along his taint to his ass. It was hardly a bad alternative, but Madoc was already in his lap, and if Took wasn’t going to bite him, he needed to be inside somehow.
Took gripped Madoc’s lean hips and hitched him up off his thighs. The thought of protection or lube flicked briefly through his head, but Madoc had already shifted his grip on Took’s cock. The quick squeeze of his fingers around the base scattered everything in Took’s head. Madoc grazed a kiss over the corner of Took’s mouth and down his jaw.
“I’m going to bite you,” he said reasonably as he lowered himself onto Took’s cock. Pressure ached down the length of his cock as the head nudged against Madoc’s asshole, blood slick and slippery against the tight entrance. The throb in Took’s balls as his cock pushed past the tight seal drowned out the quick, sour rush of panic that filled his skull. Nearly. His hand flexed nervously against Madoc’s hip, and a clot of words caught on his tongue, although he didn’t know if they were consent or not. Madoc slid his hands down Took’s back in a slow caress that ended at his ass. “Do you trust me?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? No. Yes. Sometimes.
But the confusion of answers in his brain didn’t slow down the quick “Yeah,” that tripped off his tongue.
“Good.”
The teeth pinched at first, so sharp it took Took’s nerves a second to catch up and scream pain back down the relay to his brain. He hitched his breath in, ready to protest, but Madoc pushed his ass down against Took’s cock at the same time. The tight grip of it sent cramps of pleasure down the length of the shaft to clench tight as a knot in his balls.
By the time his brain remembered the teeth, the sharp pain had peaked and spilled over into something like pleasure. Instead of the battery-acid sting he expected, that he remembered, the curse spilled into him like poison-laced wine. It felt like warmth in his cold veins and spread a slow, sweet pleasure under his skin.
Took flexed his fingers around Madoc’s hips and felt the appreciative purr against—under—his skin. He pulled Madoc down onto his cock and the tight grip of muscle flexed around him as he slid deeper. Pleasure pulsed and tightened in his balls as Madoc’s ass pressed flat against his hips.
He held him there for a second and then let Madoc lift himself up. The air of the room felt hot against his cock as it slid out of Madoc. Cool fingers clenched around Took’s ass, dug down into the muscle as Madoc thrust down again and Took rolled his hips up to meet him. The slow build of pressure banked low in Took’s stomach, a heaviness in his balls and weariness in his tight thighs as Madoc moved on top of him. The cool grip of his ass as Took buried himself in it pushed against the hot pressure of fangs as Madoc worried himself deeper.
Had it felt this good when whoever turned him ripped the veins in his throat or his arms? If it was, he shuddered away from the idea. He didn’t want to know.
Despite the flicker of doubt, he couldn’t help the whine of disappointment as Madoc finally unlatched from his throat. It felt… unfinished, like something had been left blue-balled and undone.
Blue-fanged, he supposed.
Madoc sat back, his ass against Took’s thighs and Took’s cock buried in his ass, and braced his hands against Took’s shoulders. He flexed his fingers around the heavy slope of muscle and shoved Took back down onto the bed. Took sprawled backward, sticky with blood and come, and kicked his legs awkwardly out from under him.
Madoc leaned over him, shoulders tight as he put his weight on his arms and studied Took thoughtfully. “Next time, it’s your turn,” he said. “Fair’s fair.”
Fang or fuck, Took wondered. Or did it matter?
Madoc dipped down for a quick, rough slant of a kiss, the taste of mingled blood odd and salty on his tongue. It pinned Took’s mind in the here and now, in the taste of Madoc’s mouth and the roll of his hips as he drove himself down onto Took’s cock with quick, rough thrusts. Took grazed his hands up lean thighs, the muscles under that pale skin hard as bone, to the rigid jut of his cock. Before he could do anything Madoc caught his hands and pulled them away.
“Later,” he said through clenched teeth. “I want to pay attention.”
He rocked faster against Took, and Took obligingly bucked his hips up into each stroke. The undead, even dhampir, didn’t sweat, but they did groan and bite their lower lip hard enough to draw blood when a cock bumped their prostate.
Took wanted to touch him, but Madoc just smirked and tightened his grip when he tried to pull away.
“Wait,” he said as he thrust down.
“I don’t want….” Took pressed his head back into the mattress and clenched his hands into fists, his nails digging down into his palm. “I can’t….”
Madoc pulled him up by the arms and pressed a hard kiss against his still-bloody neck. “Then don’t,” he said, as he rasped his tongue over the bloody wound. “I want to see what I did for you.”
It was enough. The hot flash of pain from his worried neck was pleasure by the time it hit his spine and spilled out. He groaned as he thrust up off the bed, his cock settled a little deeper inside Madoc, and his balls untwisted with a wet spill of come. He leaned against Madoc’s shoulder, a soft, openmouthed kiss pressed to the crease where shoulder met neck.
For a second, he was tempted to bite down, but he lost his nerve at the last second.
Madoc pulled them both down onto the bed, legs tangled together and stickiness smeared over their thighs. His cock was still rigid, and he guided Took’s hand over to it. Took easily cuffed the shaft and idly rubbed his thumb along the thick vein on the base of it. It made Madoc clench his jaw and move his thighs apart. He reached over and tucked a finger under Took’s chin as Madoc turned his head toward him.
“I want to see your face when I come for you,” he said. The corner of his mouth tilted with amusement. “I like your face.”
Took stroked his hand, fingers tight as the skin creased around it, from base to tip. It was slick with precome and blood, fine skin pulled tight over the thick shaft. Madoc hissed softly between his teeth and arched up into Took’s fist. He pumped again and twisted his fist around Madoc’s shaft on the way down. Took could feel the wire-taut tension under Madoc’s skin, and Madoc’s balls were clenched up tight between his legs. Madoc came after a few more strokes, with a rough sound in his throat and a spurt of pale liquid that dripped between Took’s fingers and over his knuckles.
They both sprawled out against the sheets. After a second, Took made a halfhearted attempt to roll away but was pulled back. He let himself settle against Madoc’s side, one arm slung over lean hips and his chin propped on one broad shoulder.
“Should I be self-conscious my fangs are smaller than yours?” he asked.
“Yes,” Madoc said without missing a beat. He waited through Took’s chuckle and then brushed his finger over Took’s lower lip. “I have missed you.”
“Me too,” Took admitted. The truth slipped out before he could catch it back. He let it be for a second and then made himself ask, or try too. “That night. Do you remember—”
Madoc stiffened under the sprawl of Took’s body and scowled. “Not today,” he said as he stroked a finger down Took’s back. “I don’t want to think of that here. Tonight.”
Neither did Took, but it was hard not to when he was curled around the man who probably did it.
Or it should have been hard. Instead he let it slip and relaxed into Madoc’s body.
When he woke up that evening, Madoc was gone.
Chapter Ten
LAWRENCE STOOD with her hands braced on the wrought iron railing of the balcony and stared out through the glassy, gothic skyscrapers, toward the skyline. Her jaw was set, and she didn’t look around at Madoc once as he outlined what was going to happen next for her.
“I doubt we’ll get any of the children back alive,” he admitted as he leaned back against the wall. The moon hung fat and yellow overhead. Drakul keeping an eye on them went the old superstition. Madoc had met the man—or whatever you would call what Tepes had made of the raw material of his birth—once, but he had no idea if the great old vampire really could see through celestial bodies. He wouldn’t put it past him. “But when we find their remains, or find nothing at all, that will be laid at our door too.”
Lawrence sighed and leaned forward, her weight braced on her arms. Her gaze finally dropped from the skyline to the street below. Madoc didn’t move from his sprawl, but he was ready to grab her if she suddenly pitched forward. She was a good agent, and he would call her a friend if someone asked, but he’d never had to see her take bad news before—not this bad, at least.
“When you say ‘our door,’ what you mean is at my feet,” Lawrence said acerbically. “I’m not a child, and I don’t need the facts of life spoon-fed to me. Took caught something I didn’t, and now I have to take the consequences. That’s fair enough.”
Madoc relaxed slightly. He’d had men about to kill themselves vent their spleen on him before, but not with a declaration of responsibility.
“Everyone missed this,” he said.
“Took didn’t.”
Divided loyalties stung when they caught you unexpectedly. Madoc hesitated on the edge between support for his agent and loyalty to his… whatever that worked out as. If it worked out. That pessimism should have made it an easy choice, but it didn’t.
“He’s the best. After the incident, the Academy in California invited him back as an instructor,” Madoc said. “And even he only saw this because he was bored and followed a shadow on the file further than anyone would think made sense. If you’d come to me with the same lead, Lawrence, I’d have told you that it was a waste of your time.”
She leaned back against the rail and crossed her arms. The smile on her pale mouth was wry. “But what would you have told him?”
It was a good point, and they both knew it. Madoc acknowledged that with a lack of acknowledgment as he changed the subject back to the present rather than answer her about the past.
“It’s not a sanction, Lawrence. It’s a heads-up,” he told her. “When the boyars get this new information, they’ll reopen the case, and that won’t be easy for any of us. We’ll get questioned about our protocols, they’ll probably want to do audit on this case, and the press will rip us to shreds.”
Lawrence’s shoulders slumped under the weight of his words. She licked her lips.
“Will I get fired?”
“Don’t act stupid,” Madoc told her, not unkindly. “You’re the director’s daughter. No one will ever fire you. They’ll just promote you to a dark room in a far-off state and avoid your calls. Except I won’t let that happen. You’re a Biter, and you’ll stay as long as I say I want you to stay. Got it?”
The medicine tasted sour, but Lawrence swallowed it anyhow. She never traded on her mother’s influence, not that Madoc had seen, but it would take a more naive soul than Lawrence not to know it was there. She rubbed her neck and pressed her fingers down on the neat scar just above her collarbone.
“And this? Will the schedule for my Kiss go ahead as planned?”
Probably not. Maybe never. The Anakim could pass the Kiss like a contagion if they wished, spread it through a city until the only prey left was each other and their fragile society collapsed into cannibalism and legend. They weren’t meant to offer the Kiss too often, and what rose from the human shell wasn’t always right, but they could.
Their own children, though? Dhampirs were rare even in Europe and—except in unfortunate cases like Madoc’s—treasured and cosseted throughout their fragile childhoods by any vampire they came across. If people discovered there had been a chance to save these lost children, one that VINE had squandered, there would be an uproar. After that, there was no way VINE could be seen to reward the human who’d caused it all, no matter how high her connections ran.
“Not until the case is closed,” he hedged around the harsh truth. “If nothing else, they won’t want you out of commission until this case is over.”
She pressed her hand protectively over the scar and nodded tightly. “So what now?”
Madoc pushed himself up off the wall and brushed a fastidious hand down the borrowed uniform he had on. He could smell the sex on it, still on his skin under the cotton.
“I am going to get changed,” he said. “You’re going to brief our host about last night’s events. Then we get ahead of this story. By the time this filters down to the press, we’ll have answers to most of their questions.”
“Will Took work with us?” Lawrence asked.
Madoc hesitated as he pulled open the heavy door. Where did last night leave them? Rough sex and tender afterthoughts meant nothing on their own. Madoc had lived long enough to know that. It had been more lust than love, whatever Madoc’s feelings, and the morning after was where regret lived.
“If we need him,” he said as he gestured for Lawrence to go through the door ahead of him. “I don’t know if anyone told you, but we used to solve crime at VINE before Agent Luke Bennett flew out from LA.”
Lawrence looked thoughtful as she stepped through the door. “I just wonder what he’d do next? If he were here.”
“The same thing you’re going to do,” Madoc told her as he gave her a nudge down the corridor. “Brief SSA Crane. Then meet me down at the car.”
YELLOW-AND-BLACK TAPE cordoned off the street at both ends. A few reporters lingered at the curbs as they filled the air with morning-after updates on the fire. The houses either side of the burned-out husk stood empty, doors left open in the neighbors’ haste to get out.
Madoc couldn’t blame them. The fire had left the house a skeleton of charred timbers, full of smoky ghosts and a replenished stock of bad memories, some of them his. Madoc absently scratched his jaw. The skin had healed already—the trickle of ichor he’d tapped from Took’s throat was more potent than a draft from a human—but he could remember the hot, bubbled scorch of pain. It hadn’t changed.
When humans came to kill him, they always brought fire to do the job. It hadn’t worked yet, but sometimes Madoc wondered if the fire had scorched something that he couldn’t heal, that one day what walked out wouldn’t be him anymore.
Not this time, but one day. That would end well for no one.
Back at the tape, fingers pointed as Madoc crossed the road and the cameramen swung around to grab some quick, static-blurred images of him. He ignored them as he headed to the tent the fire department had set up as a makeshift on-site office.
Chief Kendall pinned her glove under her armpit to pull her hand free and offered it to Madoc as he joined her outside the house. Her palm was hot and sweat-damp as he gripped it.
“I just wanted to thank you for last night,” Kendall said gruffly. “If you hadn’t realized someone had adulterated our tanker, the whole damn street would have burned down. There were other fires set around the city. We wouldn’t have been able to get back up here until it was… far too late.”
Madoc smiled at her. He’d always appreciated courtesy, the more so when it was grudging. Gratitude was easy if it didn’t bother you. It had more impact from someone who’d rather withhold.
“I was here too,” he pointed out. “There was some self-interest involved in that warning.”
Kendall chuckled roughly and ran her fingers over the buzz-cut fuzz of curls that clung to her skull. “Fair enough,”
she said. “You want to walk through the scene?”
“Want isn’t quite the word,” Madoc said. “But yes. Hopefully, if there was something other than me in there that the Hunters wanted to destroy, we managed to stop them in time to find it.”
Kendall turned and gave the ruin of the house a dubious look. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “It’s pretty gutted. You’d probably have more luck with the man they grabbed from the backyard. The survivor.”
“Another agent is already talking to him,” Madoc said. “I like to have the answers before I ask the questions.”
Kendall shrugged and gestured for him to follow her. She pulled the glove back on as they walked around the house. Burned grass crunched underfoot, and the sour smell of old shit rose from the puddles that pocked the charred ground. Madoc filled his lungs in case he needed to say something and then stopped breathing.
“The fire investigators have been and gone,” Kendall said as she led the way around to the back of the house. Metal scaffolding had been laced across the building, struts burrowed into the walls to keep the slouched architecture on its foundations.
“Did they work out what caused the fire?” Madoc asked sardonically.
She snorted but shrugged it off. “Protocol. I told the detectives on the case they couldn’t go in until we’d finished securing the building. There’s some risk of collapse still. I doubt health and safety is much of a worry for you, though.”
Madoc used some air to chuckle along with her, even though she was wrong. The thought of being buried under burned timbers, the charred smell worked into his clothes and his lungs filled with splinters and smoke, picked at his brain to release stale, aged adrenaline.
