by Joey W. Hill
Rand could handle the vampire being an asshole. What he wouldn't tolerate was him lying. And he was lying his ass off.
Rand offered a short, curt nod. "Fine then." Holding Cai's gaze, he closed the distance between them. Dropped to his knees in front of the vampire. "Why don't you start with my mouth? I'll get you started again."
Cai stared at him. "You can't pretend you don't need more. You don't want this. I'm not what you need. You need a family."
Rand rose, coming toe-to-toe with him. "What the fuck do you think you and I are?"
The vehemence struck Cai in the chest, opened a window he didn't want to look through. The view was murky to him, but Rand could apparently see through it clearly. Which meant the wolf was delusional.
Two and a half fucking weeks. Cai had lasted two fucking weeks before he couldn't stand it any longer. Admittedly, Rand had probably accelerated the timeline with his stunt tonight, but who was Cai kidding? He could have held out maybe another week. Tops. And Rand was continuing to talk, saying things that were so terrifying, Cai should be running.
"You may not have sought that, but I don't believe you don't want it. I'm offering it to you, freely, willingly, to figure out where it will take us. You're the bravest and stupidest male I've ever met, because you back down from nothing." Rand's gaze flashed. "After all the things you've faced, I can't believe you'll back down from this."
Cai gripped Rand's shoulder, digging in. Part reproof, part warning, but the second he made the contact, it became about more than that. He didn't want to fucking let go. They were standing so close, barely two feet between them. His wolf was as immodestly naked as he often was, but Cai was the one who felt stripped.
"Doesn't matter," Cai said. "I don't know how to love someone."
"Bullshit." Rand said it evenly, without malice. "You took off because you wanted what was best for me. You were willing to give up your own happiness for it."
"Well, happiness is a strong word," Cai pointed out. "And I abandoned you at a vampire stronghold and left you to find your way home."
"I did. I just had to come to Atlanta to bring home back to me."
Too much. Way too much. Cai should have kept it on the footing of him busting Rand's ass in all sorts of obscene, unspeakably delicious ways for being at Club Atlantis. Not allowing the conversation to go in this direction. He had no idea where to go from here with it. He was going to get hot and hard again soon, which meant he'd say stupid things. Even now, he wanted the wolf under him, but there were other things causing problems. Like that strangling thing, and apparently shrapnel had exploded inside his chest.
"Don't talk anymore," Cai said. He moved away. Not a retreat, but to deliberately establish distance. Rand ignored his words and followed him. There was a big-ass rock in front of Cai and a big-ass wolf behind him. One who would not shut up.
"You took care of me," Rand continued. "Helped me want to live again. Yes, because that was what you wanted, but later on more was driving it than that. Because it bothered me, you even stopped cursing as much, for a second or two. Though you took it out on me in other ways. Swear jar, my ass. Literally."
Cai huffed a chuckle, but he stared at the rock, wondering what it would be like to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming stone, incapable of feeling anything, so nothing would ever hurt. So something, anything, would finally stop fucking hurting.
Can't fight what you can't change. Hurts. Just want to stop...hurting.
Cai suddenly recalled his wolf's thought, all that time ago. In the same heartbeat, he knew the truth. The meaning of those words to Cai, as much as the wolf's fine ass, was why Cai had refused to let him die.
Cai. Rand closed the distance between them. Didn't touch, but was so close. So fucking close.
"If you leave them to stay with me," Cai said bitterly, "it will always be because you settled, gave up the family idea. I'll be less. I'll feel that. Fucking pathetic, but there it is."
A sudden heavy silence. Cai wished he hadn't said it. He could feel the wolf's eyes upon him and, as usual, they would be seeing too much. He should just turn around, deliver on his threat. Fuck Rand a dozen more times, until the wolf would be crawling away from him, barely able to walk, finally understanding just how much Cai wanted and could take from him, without giving enough back.
Cai stiffened when Rand placed his mouth on the sun-like scar beside his shoulder blade. He tasted flesh with tongue and caressing lips as his hands slid down Cai's back. Fanning them out to grip Cai's waist, Rand dipped his thumbs inside the waistband of the jeans, caressing the upper rise of Cai's buttocks.
"I thought the last two weeks at Fane's were hard on me," Rand murmured. "Every day hurt more and more. The nights; they were pure torture. But it was worse for you. You were alone. I didn't think about that."
Cai tried to jerk away from the contact. Rand moved with him, earning a hiss and answering it with a growl.
"It's no different between vampire and servant than it is in a pack," the wolf said. "I give up my choices to my alpha, because I trust that he'll care for me. Isn't that what a servant does with his Master?"
Cai turned his head, startled, and Rand met him, eye to intense eye. "You remember me saying I'd tell you sometime, how an alpha wolf approaches another alpha?"
"Yeah. I remember."
Rand nudged Cai forward so he was closer to the large rock. Then the shifter put a palm against it by Cai's shoulder, leaning forward so he could bring his mouth to the vampire's collar bone from behind. Rand tilted his head, nudging at Cai's jaw until he lifted it.
"The alpha adopts some of the same submissive body language as other wolves," Rand said in a husky voice. "So the other alpha knows he's not interested in a fight. He nips at his chin and throat."
Rand continued the demonstration, using teeth, mouth and tongue to arouse. "And to make the point, the wolf might go down on his belly and avert his gaze."
"Why do I expect you wouldn't do the averting gaze part?" Cai managed.
Rand half-chuckled. "It's not a capitulation. Just an acknowledgment of what I'm willing to give."
Cai's pulse accelerated as Rand's capable hands slid over his ass and thighs when he dropped to a kneeling position behind Cai. The shifter was too close for Cai to turn, unless Cai swung a leg over his head. He would have done that, but Rand had reached around him and slipped the button of his jeans, taking them back down off his ass.
"You're right. A vampire's body can take a hell of a lot of punishment and still be beautiful," Rand said. "But in this case, I think that's because of the male inside."
Cai's fingers dug into the rock, a harsh noise breaking from his throat when Rand parted his buttocks and licked his rim, reaching beneath him to caress his testicles.
The vampire could try to change their position. But Rand made sure it felt too damn good for Cai to work on the thought. Let me please you, Master.
Cai stilled at the mental address, his breath rasping. "I'm still going to fuck you through a wall," he promised, a hoarse threat.
Okay. Rand continued to play with his ass with a heated, wet tongue. Cai's hips flexed, his cock pressing in a humping rhythm against the rock as that oh-too-fucking-good-to-describe feeling rocketed through him. He opened his mind further, let Rand have the gift of knowing what he was doing to him. In return, Rand's heart cracked open.
I want to be inside you, Master. Let me fill you. Let me fill up everything.
Yeah, he hadn't won the war, but Cai was here, and he'd finally said by implication what Rand had suspected was true. Cai had never asked for a family, for a pack, but he wanted, needed one. Everything that Rand had learned about Cai over the past few weeks, and everything that Cai knew about him, had tangled up into a big knotted ball that would likely never get unknotted. Rand was okay with that. They'd continue to fight it out, and that might take a couple decades. Or longer, if Rand stayed with him, as his servant.
Cai went even more still, a clue he was listening in. Good. But Rand di
dn't want things to go wrong if Cai got stuck on that, so he renewed his efforts, closing his hand around Cai's cock to pump it. Hadn't they just done this, a matter of minutes before? Didn't seem to matter. The vampire was already stiffening. The same response gripped Rand when Cai lifted his hips, grinding his muscular ass in Rand's face, wanting more of his tongue. Cai left furrows on the stone with his fingernails.
"Fuck, hell...fuck me, wolf."
Rand still had the lube within reach, and he one-handed it on himself while he kept after Cai's ass, using the long fingers of his other hand to keep the vampire open to him.
When Rand rose to his feet and pressed against the vampire's back, he savored their bodies straining, tight against one another. Cai's head tilted. His eyes were closed.
"Just drill it. Fuck, it can hurt. I just want you all the way in."
That last part was exactly what Rand wanted, but he took his time, wanting his Master to feel it the way he did, all the way to the root. Not just the root of his cock. The third marking linked the soul of vampire and servant. Rand wanted that bond. What's more, he wanted to know the path to the very center of a vampire's soul. This vampire.
Cai had thought the absence of a finish line meant he could never quit. Whereas Rand had tried to draw his own before it was time. For the first time, he realized he was glad that he'd failed. And that the vampire had never given up.
Rand could feel Cai intertwined with his thoughts, listening, feeling. Having his own reaction, and it wasn't a bad one.
Rand wrapped his arm around Cai's chest as he thrust inside him, setting a slow, easy rhythm that gave them an excruciating stroke on each forward and retreat motion. Cai had adjusted his hips toward Rand to make the angle work. While one hand was braced against the rock, the other gripped Rand's forearm as the feelings built. Rand closed his eyes. He wondered if the vampire realized how much of himself he was giving. Rand didn't need access to his mind. He could feel, scent, taste and simply know, deep inside, what was happening in the roller coaster of Cai's emotions and physical response.
Then Cai's mind opened even more to Rand, so wide he felt like he did when he was running full out in the forest, leaping and twisting through endless passages, open and closed spaces.
Hell, I might as well let you all the way in. You're already there. Know more about my thoughts than my mind could ever tell you.
Rand smiled against his shoulder, brushing his lips against the flexing muscle. He didn't stop with that, rubbing his cheek there to enhance the contact, the marking.
Marking could be an act of dominance, of connecting, of recognition. Of ownership. Rand felt some of all of that, and the vampire didn't seem inclined to argue. At least at this second. That was miracle enough from the contrary male.
"Fuck you," Cai muttered. Rand slid his palm down Cai's chest, over the taut bud of his nipple. Along the sectioned stomach muscles, to the iron evidence of his arousal. Curling his fingers around it, Rand began to stroke it in rhythm with his thrusts, his fingers playing, caressing, nails digging in at unexpected moments, thumb rubbing over the slit and spreading the thick fluid gathering there.
Cai groaned at the sensation. They moved together, Cai's hand slamming against the rock, sending a vibration through them both. Then the vampire was coming, body jerking, beautiful, animal-like sounds breaking from his lips.
Come for me, wolf.
Rand was already hovering on that precipice. His movements became stronger, more forceful, a growl meeting Cai's snarl as he thrust deeper, harder, into his ass. He let his release fill the vampire, wet heat. His teeth were set to Cai's shoulder, fingers digging into his chest as he took them to the end of it.
Or to the beginning.
As they finished, they slowly slid down so they were kneeling together. When Rand pulled out, they were nested hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. So much of the wolf was with Rand, even in human form. Rand proved it when he slid an arm across Cai's chest and laid his cheek in between his shoulder blades. It was a sheltering, protective move that also drew comfort. A balance. Rand was good at balance. Cai wasn't.
Even so, Cai turned his head to meet the shifter's mouth with his own. The annoyance and anger about Rand's stunt, his irritability and confusion about the things he didn't understand, had receded. The kiss wasn't edgy and angry. It was soft, tender, long and heart-altering. When Cai finally raised his head, he realized he'd turned, was framing the shifter's face to hold him still and savor his mouth. Rand was gripping his forearms.
Rand had called him Master. More than once. Cai liked that, way too much.
"Don't get used to it," Rand said, in a voice laden with that sexy, post-coital thickness. "Asshole fits you a lot better."
Cai tried for a smile, failed. He couldn't get used to it, because he still hadn't agreed to this. And Rand damn well knew it, even if he was pretending otherwise. "How about the kid thing?"
At Rand's bland expression, Cai shot him a don't-bullshit-me look. "I know you want them."
"There's a lot of ways to do that. If we decide to expand our pack, we can."
Before Cai could point out just having a servant was freaking him out, Rand pushed onward. "Dovia's father is ill and the wrong kind of wolves are circling the door, right? Leona is a servant. Brian thinks Greenwald has less than a couple more years to live, because he's having less success controlling his disease. When he dies, so will Leona. Before Dovia is thirty years old, a fledgling among born vampires, she'll be alone."
Cai narrowed his gaze at Rand. "When did you have this discussion with Brian?"
"When I met with him to discuss the marking, I also asked him about that." Rand's eyes sparked with a pointed complaint about Cai's note and taking off, but he continued, leaving that alone. "Sounds like she'll need a vampire willing to mentor her, protect her. Why not us? You live a long time and, as your servant, I'll be around quite a while. I bet Lyssa would support that, because unlike Tyra and Chavez, we don't have any designs on Dovia's wealth."
Cai drew back and sat down, rubbing his forehead. "You have us adopting a vampire and taking on the cadre of opportunistic sycophants around her. Even before we pick out curtains."
A slight smile touched Rand's firm mouth. "I don't have us doing anything. I'm just pointing out the possibility. We can be a big or small family, but it starts here, you and me, the two pillars holding up whatever we decide to put under its roof."
He curled his hand around Cai's forearm. Cai had drawn up his knees and linked his arms around them. Rand was totally missing that this conversation had turned Cai into a vertical fetal ball.
Noticing it, vampire. Just not mentioning it, to spare an insult to your manhood.
Cai coughed over a half laugh. That explosion in his chest still hurt, but it was hurting less. He found that even scarier, because it meant he was listening to Rand.
"We have time to decide," the wolf said. "We'll go to the desert a few months, think it through. Hell, I'm still working through shit, too. This whole vampire-servant thing, it messes up my head sometimes. You've seen it."
Rand took a breath. For the first time, his gaze skittered away from Cai's, which sharpened Cai's attention on him. "When I was there at Fane's, late at night, and then here in Atlanta, the few days in the hotel... That despair...the grief. When I realized you might be gone for good, and that feeling came back, I knew--"
Cai was out of his curl in a blink. He had Rand by the throat and on his back, his body pressed to him and fuck, he felt so good. But Cai didn't let that detract from the red haze covering his vision. "Never," Cai snarled. "You got it? I don't care whether we're a family or not. That thought's never crossing your mind again. If it does, I will put a flagpole up your ass to give you something else to think about."
Rand blinked up at him, and slowly a smile tugged his lips in a sensuous curve. "There's my Master," he said.
"Fuck. Fudge. Darn." Cai sat back on his heels and rubbed his hand across his face once more.
"If you
'd let me finish before you had your caveman moment," Rand said, earning that narrow look again, "I was going to say I realized those feelings wouldn't ever push me down that road again. And that's because of you."
Rand sat up and touched his arm, but his face remained resolute. "I'm more than capable of deciding where I want to be, and who with. You told the Council not to take that from me. You don't get to do it, either. You don't want me, I'm gone. But you'll have to make me believe it."
"Fuck me." Cai sighed. "Well, in those touchy-feely animal movies, they do it by throwing rocks at the wild creature and screaming, 'Go! I don't want you anymore!' And the wolf or deer or water buffalo or whatever goes away, looking back like he's really hurt. Though he usually comes back at just the right moment to save the day."
"You tried that tactic once before. Not falling for it again. And you throw a rock at me, I'll feed it to you," Rand promised.
"I throw a rock at you, and you'll be knocked unconscious. Or have a great big through-and-through hole through your head."
Rand adjusted so they were sitting shoulder to shoulder. "Have you watched any TV since Lassie?"
"That kind of scene has been in plenty of dog movies," Cai said defensively. "And Lassie's been in syndication forever. Some of the people I've taken...I've stayed at their houses a few days. Watched their TV, that kind of thing."
"Oh." Rand sobered, making Cai wish he hadn't brought it up. But then Rand nudged him. "Did you mean it, about not killing humans anymore?"
"I'm considering some changes in my diet. You know, only criminal assholes from here forward. Got to expend my rage against life somewhere."
At Rand's look, Cai sighed again. "You wondered why I didn't razz you about not knowing how to arouse a woman. I was told I could have sex with a human before I killed them. I thought that meant rape, and I had no stomach for that."
He shook his head. "Lodell pointed out that if I could make it pleasurable, make them think something else was about to happen, then they wouldn't suffer. And since I still killed my prey, the Trads would feel I was being ruthless like I was supposed to be. That's why I learned how to pleasure a woman. As a way to make her death more humane. I actually envy you your innocence, because it's for the right reasons."
