But it also made her bare her teeth at Merrick.
Teeth that no longer felt small and blunt.
And in return, he did the same thing. He showed off fangs, and eyes now a different color from the shade they’d been before. It wasn’t a red like Zeke’s, but there was a shift. The cool blue was now a hazy gray—almost as though someone had drawn a veil over them.
It only made him more beautiful, however. No matter what she thought of him—or indeed any of this—she couldn’t deny that he made a gorgeous vampire. Feral and mean like he’d said, but with another quality he clearly couldn’t see in himself.
A lovely quality, buried deep beneath the bitter frost.
He didn’t just want to win, she thought. He wanted to soothe Zeke. He wanted to stop him feeling this terrible ache, in a way that made her nearly moan with longing. What would it be like to feel someone’s hand on her now? She thought she might die if someone so much as glanced against her elbow with their foot, never mind all the things Merrick was doing to Zeke.
He started slowly, oh so slowly. But somehow slowly was worse than if he’d gone far quicker. She kept having this unsettling urge to tell him to speed things up, even though they were supposed to be rivals and he was supposed to be her captor and this was not supposed to be in any way electric to see. She shouldn’t have wanted a vote on how things went down.
Yet she did, God she did.
It was as though he was touching her, instead of touching Zeke. When he parted the wings of Zeke’s shirt, she practically felt the material shiver over her own skin. She got that little tingle she usually did when something passed over the stiff tips of her breasts, and if Zeke’s reaction was any indication, he knew that exact feeling.
He arched his back the second the shirt brushed over his own tight nipples, one hand flying up to do exactly what she wanted to. The need to chase that pleasure—to pinch herself there—was so strong she almost went ahead, no matter who was watching or what was happening now. Only the thought of Merrick sneering at her kept her from it, but of course Zeke didn’t have to worry about anything of the kind.
He was supposed to touch himself. He was supposed to moan and writhe and run a hand down to the thick shape in his jeans. And if he didn’t feel like it, well—Merrick was there to do it for him. In fact, after a second of watching him rub himself there and toy with his nipples, Merrick did exactly that. He batted the hand away and replaced it with his own, then proceeded to tease Zeke so exquisitely she could have cried.
She did cry when he used something other than his fingers. He leaned down to lick the place he’d just been teasing, and a sound escaped her mouth. The sound she’d been trying to hold in for what felt like hours. The sound she had sworn she wouldn’t make. Now it was loose—and yet another victory for Merrick.
She even saw him turn his head a little, so he could look at her while he tormented Zeke. Though it wasn’t really Zeke he was tormenting at all. It was her, it was her, oh God, it was her. She watched him mouth a wet path down over that perfect chest and perfect stomach—every tiny move designed for maximum lewdness, so slippery and wet and always punctuated by breathy sounds that set her hair on end—and knew he wanted her to suffer. She was sure he wanted her to suffer.
Why else would he do things like this?
When he bit, she knew it was for her benefit. He trailed his way back up and made a bloody mess of Zeke’s shoulder, so she could see it all glossy and red and want it with every beat of her nonexistent heart. She had to actually put a hand in her mouth to stop her from doing something stupid—though she did something stupid anyway.
She could taste the meaty tang in her mouth. She knew she’d pierced the skin.
Yet she kept going all the same. She had to, because now he was unbuttoning Zeke’s jeans. He was pulling them down, one slow inch at a time. And that would have been bad enough back when she was a human—seeing someone reveal Zeke’s thick thighs and his hard-boned hips and his other things.
But as a vampire suffering through some ridiculous fever, it was unbearable. She saw his cock bounce free, as glorious and glossy and swollen as she’d ever imagined in her weaker moments, and her head flooded with all of those lewd thoughts and fantasies she’d had a moment before.
She imagined herself creeping forward to take the heavy, slippery head of his cock in her mouth—or maybe just so she could touch it a little. Surely Merrick would let her touch it a little? Then once he’d accepted her hand he might actually like her to do more. He might want to put a hand in her hair and hold her still so when Zeke finally came she was ready to take the first spurts of his delicious come and oh God what was she thinking?
Why was she thinking things like that? Her own mind had turned into a treacherous place, full of crazy things that would never ever happen. Merrick didn’t want her to taste Zeke’s come. He didn’t want her to suck Zeke’s cock. No, no, no—that wasn’t the thing.
No, he wanted to do all of that himself.
He wanted to do all of that right in front of her, while he watched and Zeke watched and everyone in the whole world watched her writhing in frustrated agony. And the thing was, she couldn’t even be angry about it. He wasn’t really being cruel, once she looked at things from an objective and non-vampiristic standpoint.
Zeke did belong to him and only him.
The bite he’d given her was a mistake.
She was a mistake.
And now she had to watch Merrick proving it, in the most exquisitely torturous way.
He took that cock in his mouth in one long, slow slide, everything designed for maximum impact. She saw the flicker of his tongue around the swollen head; saw the strain it put on his jaw to take him all. But the real kicker came when he worked his way back up, cheeks hollowing as he went. Just so she would know how hard he was sucking, how much effort he was putting in, how good he was making it.
Not that she really needed any visual clues to work that out. She could tell by Zeke’s reaction. She could tell by the way his spine arched up off the bare boards, and his head went all the way back. And then there were the sounds he made, oh dear God, the sounds. Did he know he was making those sounds? She wasn’t sure he would have carried on if he did.
His moan wasn’t just long and deep and dark. It was punctuated by all of these panting, brutal-seeming gasps—as though he could barely believe this was happening, despite the fact that it must have happened a thousand times before. She could tell it had happened a thousand times before.
He kept saying stuff like, “Yeah, do the thing,” and Merrick always knew exactly what he meant. He meant stroke my asshole and squeeze my cock and all kinds of stuff she could hardly stand to watch. She wanted to close her eyes, but her eyes were afraid of missing something. She tried to turn her head, but her head refused to obey.
And the worst part was: she didn’t know why.
Sometimes it seemed like the fever was forcing her, and other times she was sure it was just her. This was Zeke, after all. It was the man she had longed for from afar for God knew how long, and here he was half-naked with his stiff cock in a man’s mouth and all of these lewd words coming out of him and then, dear Lord, then he turned to look at her and . . .
There was nothing she could do after that. She couldn’t even pretend she wanted to turn away in some respectful manner—or in any manner at all. Whatever the relationship between him and Merrick, he still gazed at her with eyes that seemed on fire. They reached out for her, in the exact way she wanted to reach out for him.
She simply couldn’t go to him, that was the thing. She couldn’t go to him because of what might happen to her and because of the infection and all of that other nonsense. But there was another reason now. It was there the second she thought again of throwing caution to the wind. It had been there a moment ago, but now it really took on some shape and form.
If she went to him, she would hurt Merrick. Merrick, who didn’t understand who he was beneath the frost. Merrick, who had m
ost likely lived with this man for hundreds of years and now quite clearly didn’t know what to do about any of this. She knew he could see Zeke looking at her. It was obvious that it bothered him beyond reason.
But he didn’t stop what he was doing. He didn’t demand Zeke look at him. He just carried on licking and sucking and doing his best to soothe that fire, until finally Zeke groaned a name as he climaxed messily in Merrick’s mouth.
It wasn’t Merrick’s name he called out.
It was hers.
They put her in their bedroom-basement after that—the room they’d been in when she heard them speaking below her those first few days—as though doing so would help. Both of them had to know it wouldn’t, however. It was like lifting some forbidden thing from the bottom shelf to the top one so that some kid can’t get it. The kid still knows the forbidden thing is there. The kid is aware that a simple stepladder can get her what she wants.
Or in this case—a padlocked trapdoor and a rickety staircase up from this musty hellhole could get her what she wanted. And judging by the sounds from above, Zeke was more than aware of that fact. During the first hellish night she could hear him rattling that padlock. She could hear him trying to convince Merrick that it was safe now to go near her, and failing hopelessly. Even he couldn’t really believe that at all, considering it had been less than the allotted week.
And her shouting to them that it was fine, that being a vampire seemed cool, didn’t appear to make any difference. Merrick just referred to her as delirious or mad, and after a while Zeke would seem to come to his senses and agree.
Though it was never long until he was trying to get to her again. It was like he had two people inside him—one who wanted her to go back to her normal life, and another who didn’t care about anything but reaching her. And she could understand, because there were times when she didn’t care about anything else, either. She still didn’t know if she honestly did want to be a vampire, but that didn’t seem to matter when the fever rose up inside her.
On more than one occasion she found herself straining at the chain Merrick had attached at her ankle, with no idea when she’d even gotten to her feet. Other times the urge to touch herself or bite herself was so strong she had to physically fight it. She had to fight it, because if she didn’t, something really bad would happen—something far worse than being a vampire forever and ever.
Merrick might see her doing those things.
He would see her and he would sneer at her, and even if he didn’t, she doubted his reaction would be any kind of comfort. He seemed to get heavier and heavier every time he came down to her, to the point where he started to bother her more than the pain of separation. Every argument with Zeke seemed to take a toll on him, and of course all the arguments were about her.
“Just let me go to her and hold her,” she heard Zeke say, and even she winced to hear it. He didn’t really mean it—but what did that matter? He was still telling his boyfriend that he wanted to go hold someone else. He was still calling out her name whenever Merrick did whatever he could to take the fever down. She heard him moaning deliriously while Merrick fucked him, but none of these moans were directed at the man above him.
They were all for her, always for her.
It was really no wonder that she said the things she did, on the second day of this absolute nightmare. He came down the stairs with the usual slop, expression as tight as ever she’d seen it, always refusing to meet her eyes, and the words simply blurted out of her.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m putting you through this.”
He went very still the second she spoke—a feat that seemed impossible considering how still he already was. Sometimes she wasn’t sure he was actually moving while walking across a room, so this was really something to see.
And then there was his voice when he finally answered . . .
“What do you mean by that?” His tone almost touched accusatory. It made her wonder if she’d accidentally done something other than apologize, but when she checked back she felt pretty sure she had. Unless sorry meant something else in a secret vampire language she didn’t know about, that was.
And if it did, what was she supposed to do now?
Apologize again, she thought, but that seemed stupid. If sorry was actually some kind of curse word, saying it a second time would only make things worse. No, no, she had to come up with something else—like a really good explanation. She even had a reasonable one all lined up and ready to go, which made the actual words she spoke all the more disappointing. She simply panicked and blurted out: “I feel as though I’m trying to steal your boyfriend.”
Then considered running through the nearest wall. Why had she said boyfriend? That was absolutely not the right word to use. Now she’d made everything sound like some teen drama, instead of the relentless insane nightmare it actually was.
And he agreed, apparently.
“I am appalled that you would use such a word to describe our relationship.”
“Well then, what do you want me to say? How . . . how should I put it?”
“I am not obliged to provide you with definitions or explanations.”
“That’s usually what people say when they don’t really want to be gay,” she said, and immediately regretted it. She regretted it almost as much as the whole boyfriend thing. But it was too late—the sentence had slipped out and now she was going to have to deal with the fallout. Starting with the slightest cock of Merrick’s head, and the barest raising of one eyebrow, and the sense that he was laughing at her and her puny human ways.
“Of course you realize that such labels mean absolutely nothing to me. I am older than the pyramids. I’ve seen civilizations rise and fall. But please continue in your efforts to comprehend what you clearly fail to. Perhaps you might next describe me as ‘cool’ and ‘awesome.’”
“That . . . that isn’t really how people talk in this decade.”
“No, but I believe they did talk that way this century. And that is how I understand such matters—in centuries, not something as fleeting as decades.”
For the first time she found herself glad that she didn’t breathe anymore. If she had, it would have been obvious that he’d made her breath catch in her throat. At the very least she was clutching a fistful of her nightdress, out of either terror or amazement.
Had he said pyramids and centuries?
She’d heard things like that from him before, in passing. But to have it described in such frightening terms—to be forced to think about him seeing some kind of dawn of time—that was another kind of thing altogether. How was she supposed to talk to someone like that?
How was she supposed to be in the same room as someone like that? She felt like she should bow, and only the idea that he knew it stopped her. There was a gleam in his eye that said he understood completely how small she was currently feeling, and that forced her to swallow her awe.
If she ever managed to be friends with him, then she could be awestruck.
Right now, she had to carry on trying to set this straight.
“Well, however you view things . . . I’m sorry it’s happening. I’m sorry that I’ve kind of taken him away from you, if that’s really what I’ve done.” She hoped against hope that he would find her sincere this time, and at least understand. And he did, in one way.
But that wasn’t a positive.
“You cannot steal what is already yours,” he said, as though the whole thing was a given. She had played some game without knowing it and won without meaning to, and now here she was probably lording it over him. How could she seem like she didn’t want to lord it over him? How could she make him see that this was all nonsense?
She didn’t know—but she was going to keep trying.
“He isn’t mine, though. It was just a stupid accident and now you’re paying for it. But I want you to know—I don’t care about resisting because of the vampire thing. I will resist because I don’t want to get in the way. I don’t want to hurt you
.”
There, that would do the trick. He’d surely get the picture now—and for a moment it even seemed he did. He turned his head over the word paying and a flicker of something crossed his features over the word hurt. Some of that stiffness left him, in a way that suggested relief. Or at least, it did until he answered.
“Clearly you misunderstand the situation. Do you not wonder why he came to you at the party? He came because he could not help it. He has been unable to help it for months, though he has tried. But your blood would have continued to call to him no matter what, just as his called to me. We only have one fever for someone, and it is irrelevant to whether we bite them or not.”
She saw it plainly.
He wasn’t relieved at all. He was so jam-packed with despair and resignation it was starting to make him sag. He was coming apart at the seams right before her very eyes, and she hadn’t the first clue what to do about it. It was hard enough processing what he’d said, for all kinds of reasons.
The first of which was this:
Zeke had wanted her before any of this happened. He really had. The weird feeling and the sense of connection she’d experienced between them at the party had actually existed, outside the wildly fantasizing confines of her imagination. She hadn’t made any of it up, and that was good, it was very good, oh it was.
She just wished that goodness didn’t come at someone else’s expense.
Merrick needed to know she didn’t want it to come at his expense—only when she tried to explain, it came out all wrong again. It always came out wrong with him. He was too cold and alien and ancient. Every time she spoke, she felt like a child attempting conversation with the CEO of some incredibly important company, and this was no different.
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