All Souls’ Night: A Midnight Doms Boxset

by Renee Rose

  “Do I have a toy you wish to play with, Tiberius?”

  If we were anywhere else, there’s a damned good chance my fist would have already punched through his ribcage so I could yank out his unbeating heart. “You snagged him out of the damned line. I saw you.” And I distinctly heard the adorable guy tell Taylor he’s a virgin.

  And gay. He can’t be older than thirty, if that.

  His sly smile widens. “Don’t think I missed watching you when I walked in with him.”

  Taylor has a very bad habit of breaking his toys. He plays with a human two or three times, max, before wiping their mind and sending them away.

  And he doesn’t care how much of their memories he takes when he does it. Sometimes he reshapes only what he needs to, and sometimes he carelessly eliminates days or even weeks or more of their life from their mind. Plus, he tends to play on the heavier end of the scale. None of the club’s house humans will play with him anymore. He always has to bring someone, or find someone in line or on the dance floor.

  “You have that woman. She can handle you. I’ve seen you play with her.” She’s actually pretty tough, and I’ve seen her play with a couple of other Tops before. “What. Do. You. Want?”

  He leans in close and I force myself not to recoil from the stench of his body spray, or whatever the hell it is he’s wearing. “Get me a ticket to the masquerade party next weekend,” he whispers. Vampire whisper, not a human whisper.

  This sounds like a trick. Could it really be that simple? “That’s it?”

  He nods. “With a plus-one, of course.”

  “Done.” I don’t even wait to shake on it or anything. Theophilus might chew me a new one later but I don’t care. I spin on my heel and return to the table, where the adorable guy’s gorgeous green eyes widen when I appear.

  Oops. Maybe I blurred a little. Hard to say, but I want the little human that badly.

  Need him.

  Maybe I owe an apology to some of my brothers who’ve already found true love. I sincerely believed they were full of shit when talking about love at first sight.

  I extend a hand to him. “Tiberius,” I say.

  I’m trying not to thrall him, but it’s damned difficult. I can’t tell if his wide gaze is because of that, or the alcohol’s hitting him, or because he’s a damned virgin—plus I’m certain he’s never been here before—and he’s just overwhelmed by everything.

  He takes my hand and shakes with me. “Baker. John Cameron Baker.” A sizzling tingle runs through my body at his touch, lighting up the darkest places in my soul.

  Places I thought were forever beyond the ability to feel anything warmer than the most casual hints of lust or the eager slaking of my hunger.

  I don’t release him. Now that I have him, I’ll do anything to hold on to him. “What do you prefer I call you?”

  “Baker’s fine. Or John.”

  “Would you like to come talk with me?”

  Okay, maybe I used a little thrall that time.

  But only a little. I want him far away from Taylor immediately. I can sort out the consent about further actions once I have him alone. This man’s scent washes over me, and I feel my fangs wanting to slide out and sink into his tender flesh.

  Meaning I need to be very careful how I approach this. The last thing I want to do is force him. I need consent, whether it’s for sex or play or feeding.

  I mean, unless the other person’s a psychopath or something, and I’m doing a community service by taking them out of the world. That’s different.

  Also beyond the scope of this evening, for certain.

  Baker nods while Taylor stands next to me, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “It was lovely meeting you, Baker,” Taylor drawls. “Perhaps another time we can get to know each other better.”

  Somehow, I manage to resist the very strong urge to bare my fangs and hiss at Taylor.

  Instead, Taylor slides back into the booth on the woman’s far side as I gently tug on Baker’s fingers to coax him closer to me. “We can go talk somewhere quieter. Just talk.”

  Taylor snorts, and this time I shoot him a dark glare that silences him and wipes the fucking smarmy-ass smile right off his goddamned face. The little prick was turned about fifty years ago and is going through a “disposable human” phase, since most of the people he might have ever given two shits about in life—or who gave two shits about him—are probably dead now. I’ve seen other vampires go through that. Survived it myself. Grief will fuck you up.

  Taylor’s forever twenty-something and, unless he wants to greet a sunrise or fall on a stake, will stay that way while nearly everyone else previously in his life now rots underground, or is close to it.

  I get it. I really do. I’m not so old I can’t remember that feeling, of wanting to slake my loneliness and grief with blood and sex.

  But not this human, and not this time.

  Not tonight.

  I maintain my grip on Baker’s hand. On our way past Maximus, I whisper to him that I’m probably taking the rest of the night off. His gaze drops to where I’m holding Baker’s hand before he nods and gives me the slightest hint of a smirk.

  Fine. I’ll allow him that. I deserve it.

  Worth every bit of razzing I’m likely to receive from them all, quite frankly.

  I don’t want to take Baker downstairs yet, so I spirit him up to the office and into the small conference room there, where we’ll have plenty of privacy. Again, this is highly unusual, and will probably earn me a few choice words from Theophilus, but I won’t drag Baker downstairs into a dungeon with an ongoing kinky sex show of sorts in progress without first establishing a few ground rules.

  Like whether or not he even has any legitimate interest in me beyond being thralled into it.

  I take a deep breath and sit at the end of the table, with him next to me on my left. Smiling, I force myself not to thrall him. “I’d like to talk,” I say again, more for my benefit and to settle my nerves. “I’ve never seen you here before.” Admitting I heard his admission might cause more problems than I’m ready to deal with right now.

  “Tonight’s the first time I’ve ever been here.”

  “What brought you out tonight?”

  A dark flare of confusion makes him scowl, and I wonder if Taylor already thralled him when he finally answers. “I was going to look for someone.”

  “Someone as in a specific person, or someone as in a type of someone?”

  “A specific person.” He looks into my eyes and my cock jerks, angrily wondering why I’m not already balls-deep in this man’s mouth right now.

  Down, boy.

  I’m also trying not to lose hope. If he is already taken, I’ll gracefully step aside.

  Maybe. “Looking for a friend of yours?”

  “Sort of.” He looks down. “We’ve been chatting on a dating app for a couple of weeks. I’m beginning to think he’s stringing me along.”

  Rage surges through me that someone would dare take advantage of him. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Show me.”

  His eyes widen—oops, I thralled him, sorry not sorry—and he pulls out his phone and unlocks it so he can open the app and tap on his DMs.

  Then he hands me his phone.

  I quickly scan through the messages and chuckle in relief. This boy is definitely not taken.

  I mean, by someone else. He’s absolutely taken by me now. “Baby, he’s catfishing you.”

  “He’s… what?”

  I realize Baker is clueless in more ways than one. Such a rarity in this day and age, a true innocent. “He is stringing you along. He might not even be a real guy. He might be a woman pretending to be a guy.” The pictures look too staged to be real. They were probably scraped from a stock photo site, or maybe from someone else’s account. And the texts are worded in such a way that it reads more like a woman’s ideal of a gay relationship, not what a living gay man might say. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

&nb
sp; I haaate how disappointed he looks as I return his phone. “Oh.”

  “Hey.” I gently catch his chin with my fingers. “That’s fine. It means you can spend time getting to know me tonight, right?”

  No thrall that time.

  The uncertainty in his gaze trips a switch inside my soul I thought had long since been welded shut by my immortal existence—fear.

  “If… if you want to,” he says. “If you’re not too busy.”

  “I’m not too busy. In fact, I told them I’m taking the rest of the night off.” I hold out my hand to him again and my spirit soars when he lays his in it. I bring it to my mouth and feather my lips over his knuckles. “I’ll always make time for you.”

  Watching his throat work as he nervously swallows nearly makes me come in my boxers.

  Especially when he blushes. “I’m not very good at this.”

  “Good at what, baby?”

  “This. All of this. Dating. I’m new to all of it.”

  “Excellent. Then I can keep you safe.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him all the other things I want to do to him but I really don’t want to terrify him.

  Not like this.

  “I mean, I—” He sucks in a deep breath, and the heady scent of terror and lust rolling from him makes my fangs ache all the more. “I’m a virgin.”

  I still have a grip on his hand. I lift it to my lips and, as I’m looking him in the eyes, I slowly lave my tongue over his fingers again. He tastes every bit as good as he smells. I can’t wait to sample his blood. “Excellent. Then I won’t have any reason to be jealous of any men from your past, will I?”

  A nervous laugh barks free. “Jealous?”

  “I don’t like knowing people have had their hands on what’s mine.” That’s a calculated risk, but I only have so much control, and it’s a miracle the boy isn’t already naked on his back on the conference table with his legs around my waist and my cock in his ass.

  Do I get bonus points for that?

  Because I really should.

  He blushes again. “You might not feel like that when you get to know me. I’m kind of boring.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I’m also broke. I don’t even have a car.”

  I hate to tell him he’ll never have another financial worry in his life. Again, there’s the whole “not wanting to scare him right now” thing. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. What do you do for a living?”

  “I work at a bakery.”

  That’s apropos, given his name. “Where are you from?”

  He balks—I feel it. Not to mention his pulse suddenly spikes in a bad way, and his breathing gets shallow. This is an answer he absolutely does not want to give me. I struggle with and finally win against the urge to thrall him and compel it from him.

  The only thing holding me back is his change in scent which, combined with his racing pulse and shallow breaths, reinforces to me it’s fear.

  Eventually, he answers. “I’m not from around here,” he softly says. “I’ve lived in Tucson for ten months now.”

  “Estranged from your family?”

  He nods.

  “By choice or necessity?”

  The heavy sigh escaping him makes me want to go murder whoever hurt him in the past. “Both, I suppose.”

  “I can protect you.” Okay, so we’re going there already. “I’m a powerful person with powerful friends.” Belatedly, I realize that might intimidate him, but too late now. It’s out.

  Rightfully, I see doubt flicker in his eyes. “You don’t even know me.”

  “But I want to.”

  “Why?”

  I search his green gaze for the right words, the perfect words that will reassure him.

  For once, they’re also honest words. “Because I’ve never before felt like this about anyone.”

  Chapter 6

  Tiberius is a hunk. There’s no other word to adequately describe him. His British accent elevates all of that to an exciting level.

  When I stare into his blue eyes, I feel like I could dive right into his soul and disappear forever. To never want to emerge after being subsumed by him.

  Is that… normal?

  I’m so woefully ignorant, I don’t even know what I don’t know.

  Strangely enough, this also feels right, even as my common sense tries to tell me to not only slow down, but to back up, because something isn’t adding up. Maybe it’s the alcohol in the drink I stupidly slurped down so fast, despite knowing that was a bad idea.

  Except… those blue eyes of his. “Tiberius is an unusual name,” I note. I don’t even know where that comment bubbled up from, except that I really want to get his focus off me and where I come from.

  Yet I can’t look away from his eyes. Flecks of midnight and granite and oceanic depths swirling with evening sky and turquoise hold my attention.

  I don’t want to look away. Never in my life have I ever felt such a desperate yearning. Not even for my freedom, when I escaped my family in the dead of night with only what I could carry.

  This night has turned magical in ways I never dreamed possible. Why am I not more upset over discovering David is likely not even a real person? Shouldn’t I be feeling… something?

  Maybe because this hunk is already showing me more interest in just a few minutes than David has in ever.

  He smiles, and my cock twitches again. “It’s a very old name,” he says. “Many of my brothers have old names.”

  “Are you from the UK?”

  “I have lived in many countries in my life, but the UK holds a special place in my heart, and I lived there the longest.”

  The question blurts free before I can choke it back. “Naomi and Taylor said something about a secret downstairs?”

  Something, maybe a frown, flashes through his expression before he smiles again. “Yes? What did they tell you?”

  “We didn’t get that far.”

  He still holds my hand. I can’t get over how his fingers feel comfortably cool and perfect wrapped around mine. I don’t want him to release me.

  “Downstairs, there is a secret BDSM club,” he says. “Spanking, sex, all sorts of things. Does that interest you?”

  I think about a website I stumbled across a few months ago, one that showed men together, having sex and doing… things like that.

  And how hard it made me, because it was like it struck a perfect chord in my soul, a chord I never realized was missing in my life.

  “Yes,” I whisper. I don’t know why I’m whispering because we’re alone up here.

  Which is another thing my brain struggles to process, that we’re alone in the deserted office when I have a feeling that only employees are usually allowed up here.

  “Should I assume all that is new to you as well?” he asks.

  I nod because my throat’s gone dry and I can’t speak.

  That, and it feels like all the blood in my body’s now pooling in my rigid cock.

  He chuckles again, a sexy, rumbling sound. “Then I’ll be happy to show you things. Safely. I will go slow, baby, I promise.”

  He means it, too. Of that I’m certain.

  Again, I don’t know why I’m stupidly thinking that, but here we are.

  There’s something in the air tonight emanating from Tiberius, sweetly thick, liquid, and as intoxicating as the drink I consumed earlier. It wafts through my senses, drugging me with his very essence.

  I sense he’s far older than me, even though he doesn’t look that much older. There’s a timeless quality to him. Based on his appearance, he’s probably in his mid-thirties, if I were forced to guess.

  My gut tells me I’m wrong. So, so wrong. That he’s much older.

  His gaze narrows again. “What are you thinking about, baby?”

  Can I just admit right now I love that he’s calling me that? No one’s ever called me that before.

  I also find myself answering without hesitation. “How old
are you? Really?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  This shouldn’t be a trick question but I sense it really is. Like he’s gauging my reaction. “Really old. Way older than you look.”

  His head cocks a little to the right. “Why do you think that?”

  I don’t miss that he hasn’t confirmed or denied my answer. “Because I feel it.”

  He brings my hand to his lips and feathers them across my knuckles again. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Well then.” He smiles, gently squeezing my hand as he does. “At least I’m not completely robbing the cradle.”

  Tiberius leads me downstairs again—yes, by the hand—and through the main club area, toward the front entrance. Another large and beefy guy steps out of our way as we duck into the coat check area and head toward the back wall.

  I feel like I’ve stepped into one of the exciting spy movies I’ve started watching online on my phone. Some of them are older than I am, but very famous, and it’s weird coming to them as a new viewer. I have a lot of things to make up for, though. I hate listening to my coworkers talk about stuff that I have never heard about before. It makes me feel like even more of an outsider than I already am.

  I just want to fit in. For once in my life, I want to feel like I belong somewhere.

  Now, in the space of less than an hour, it seems my life has just turned into an exciting drama worthy of the big screen. A hunky, mysterious stranger has walked into my life and swept me off my feet. In the movies, the next step would be getting drawn into some sort of dangerous intrigue.

  I can deal without that part, thank you very much. I just want the exciting, mysterious hunk.

  He turns to me. “You don’t talk about this space with others who don’t already know about it. Understand?”

  I nod as an unfamiliar thrill ripples through me. Excitement? Fear?

  Definitely desire, because my cock’s rock-hard.

  When he reaches up and quickly does something so fast that, in the dark, I can’t tell if it’s a button or keypad or what, a section of wall swings open and exposes a staircase. As I follow Tiberius down into the darkness, my pulse once again pounds the way it did the night I escaped from my.