Anyone but Him [A Dragon's Growl 12] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove)

by Marcy Jacks

  Warren would want it, too.

  Lasius tested that theory out by experimentally thrusting his hips forward, though it was less of a thrust and more of a flex of his hip and thighs.

  Warren, who had shoved his face against the sheets beneath him, pulled his face back and moaned. He shook some of that brown hair out of his eyes. He kept it a touch longer than Lasius would have thought, considering what his job was.

  Maybe that was another part of blending in. If his hair was buzzed short military style, then it would be much harder for him to hide in the middle of a vampire ball.

  “You like that?” Lasius did it again, barely inching forward. He remained balls deep, but even the slightest of movements seemed to have an impact.

  Warren nodded, his eyes staying shut, his lips parted.

  The only thing that ruined the image for Lasius were the fangs in his mouth.

  Lasius wanted to fuck him again. He did, so badly.

  So, why deny himself?

  He thrust slowly, building himself up, and his mate, bringing them closer and closer to that edge, but at a slower pace this time.

  “Do you know what this is?” Lasius asked, delighting in the way Warren’s hole clenched and unclenched around his dick.

  Warren shook his head, groaning as the easy, back-and-forth rocking continued. He was fighting it this time. That was adorable.

  “It’s a mating heat. That’s what you want me to think.”

  Lasius stopped short. “What I want you to think?”

  Warren glared at him over his shoulder. Even though his face was a bright shade of red from the sex, he still managed to look both incredibly dangerous and cute at the same time. “You want me to think you’re mated to me, so you can control me. You’re never going to control me.”

  Lasius didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t thought it was possible to be punched in the gut again in such a short span of time.

  First finding out he had a mate, then realizing his mate was a vampire, and now this.

  “You think this is a trick?” Lasius thrust his hips forward again, harder this time, knowing the effect he was having on the other man as Warren sucked back a sharp breath. “You think that’s anything other than your own lust?”

  “Lust isn’t love,” Warren gasped.

  Lasius had to give him that. “You’re right.”

  He pulled out of Warren’s body, halting the sex immediately as he righted his clothes.

  He stared down at Warren. The vampire turned, rolling off the mess he’d previously made with his orgasm on the sheets.

  The man was red from his chest all the way to his neck and face. When he was angry, he still managed to be cute as fuck.

  “What? Are you done now?”

  Lasius growled at him. “Yeah, I am.”

  He couldn’t help but glance down at the vampire’s erection. Yup, still there, still throbbing as though the man hadn’t come at all.

  The mating heat would take over the both of them, but Lasius would be better able to handle it.

  He thought so, anyway. At least he knew he was resisting the mating heat. This bloodsucker here just thought he was being tricked into something, which was the absolute worst insult Lasius could have ever received from anyone.

  “I’m going to run downstairs and make sure Seth knows not to kill you. You’d better still be here when I get back.”

  “I won’t be.”

  Lasius glared at him. Then he smiled. “Right. That was the dumbest thing you could have said.”

  “Uh-huh. You think I’m stuck here, don’t you?”

  “You weren’t fighting too hard to get away from me when I dragged your ass here. It’s the middle of the day, and you aren’t going anywhere.”

  “I’ll escape, and when night falls, I’m getting out of here.”

  “You think so?” Cute. That was too cute. He thought he stood some kind of chance of getting away.

  Right, as if Lasius was ever going to let that happen. He’d found his mate, and Warren could hate him all he wanted, but Lasius wasn’t going to let him go.

  He went to his dresser.

  “You’re seriously going to leave me like this? My dick hanging out and everything?”

  Lasius smiled at him. “I like you like that. Maybe I should shred your clothes. It might keep you from trying to escape if you’re naked.”

  “I once crawled through a sewer tunnel barely big enough to fit my body to get out of a vampire dungeon. You can do whatever you want to me. It’s nothing that I couldn’t handle.”

  Lasius’s heart clenched. He forced himself to stop with that. Such a foolish emotion to be bothering himself with when his mate was a vampire assassin.

  “If that’s true and you had been in a vampire dungeon, you probably deserved it.” Lasius pulled out a couple of ties. He hadn’t worn them for anything, but they had been given to him anyway. A lot of the fine clothing left behind from the vampires before Seth had taken over was still in the house, and it was all used as extra clothes.

  No one wore it as far as Lasius could tell though, but at least these would come in handy.

  Warren eyed the ties when Lasius approached him with them, and then he glared at Lasius. “Those for me?”

  Lasius nodded, taking the man by the throat and pushing him back against the headboard of the bed. “I have no doubt in my mind that you know how to get out of some tricky situations, but you’re not getting out of this one. You’re staying here.”

  He tied the man’s neck to the headboard. “Don’t struggle. If you pull on that, it’ll choke you, understand?”

  Warren answered by glaring at him.

  Lasius didn’t have time for this. He pulled his claws out, and even though he figured it was true that the vampire would escape naked if possible, the lack of clothes would still make it harder on him, which was exactly why Lasius cut away his boxers and then the T-shirt, shredding both of them and revealing Warren’s entire body to him for the first time.

  What he saw made him freeze.

  Scars. Everywhere, there were scars on his chest. They seemed to reach their grip around to his back, as well. Long lashes, like the scars on Lucian’s back after he’d been whipped.

  Only they were everywhere. So were several small burn holes, as though someone had been putting cigarettes out on his skin.

  Then there were the smaller cuts. They were more precise, thin lines that seemed to be ordered along his flesh.

  Lasius looked at the man. Warren glared back at him.

  Lasius made the decision that he wasn’t going to ask where those scars had come from. He didn’t want to let himself feel sorry for the man. If he felt sorry for Warren, then it would open up something Lasius wasn’t ready to deal with.

  He took another one of the ties and put it around Warren’s head and in his mouth, gagging him tightly.

  “Stay here. If I come back and even suspect that you tried to get away, I’ll make this look like nothing, got it?”

  He didn’t mean it. There was no way Lasius had it in him to do this to a mate. Even one who may or may not deserve it.

  From the way Warren smiled at him through his gag, it was clear he didn’t believe it either.

  Lasius needed to go. He needed to get his shit together and make sure Seth wasn’t going to kill this man before Lasius did it himself.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Why say that? Why bother saying anything at all? As though he was trying to comfort the man by letting him know he wouldn’t be far or something.

  Whatever. Lasius turned and walked out the door before he could do something else he regretted.

  Like have sex with his mate again.

  Walking down the hall, noting the way some of the omegas scurried out of his way, he knew they knew. Fuck. This wasn’t good. He needed to get Seth to agree to let Lasius keep his mate. Otherwise, this wasn’t going to turn out well for him at all.

  God, he wanted to go back. He wanted to spend hour
s in that room making love to his mate, not simply fucking him.

  But no. He was going to hold back, and if he did ever touch his mate again, it would only be because Warren had begged him to do it.

  Then the little bastard would know better than to accuse Lasius of trying to trick him into anything.

  Chapter Four

  Right, of course Seth wasn’t pleased. Lasius wasn’t sure why he’d expected different. The alpha ranted and raved. He practically transformed into his dragon shape right there in the library when Lasius had told him the news and that he would fight to keep the vampire he’d taken alive.

  Evzen appeared more horrified than anyone. He stood on the far end of the room, his arms crossed, but at the same time, he stared at Lasius with his mouth slightly parted, as though he really couldn’t believe such a thing had happened at all.

  Lasius didn’t blame him for being confused. Lasius was still adjusting to this.

  Seth rubbed his face when he finished yelling, as though he was desperately trying to pull himself together.

  “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe this.” Seth glared at him. “You’re serious about this? A goddamned vampire? No offense, Sorin.”

  Sorin nodded from where he sat next to his mate. “None taken.”

  Lucian, on the other hand, growled a little at the comment, but he said nothing.

  “I can’t help who I’m mated to,” Lasius said. “But he is mine. I don’t love him, that’s not what this is about, so if you want to question him, then be my guest, but you’re not going to kill him. I’ll take him and leave if that’s what will be best for the clan.”

  “No,” Evzen said, who then looked to Seth. “I know when I came here I said I would defer all my authority to you, but Lasius is a good alpha. He’s strong, and he can handle himself in a fight. We can’t afford to lose him.”

  “He brought home an assassin,” Marxus said. His claws were out, and he glared at Lasius as though personally insulted by this.

  Lasius had heard that one of Marxus’s friends had been recently killed by the vampires. He hoped Warren had nothing to do with that. Lasius didn’t know what he would do if it came out that Warren had been here that day when the omegas and that dragon had been killed.

  “There’s already a vampire here,” Lucian said.

  Seth rubbed his eyes. “We’re not talking about Sorin. This isn’t the case of a vampire who was dragged into something he couldn’t help. This man is an actual black-clad assassin. He came here with the others to hurt us. Probably to kill a few of us and steal some of the omegas.”

  Seth sent Sorin another sorry look, as though apologizing for even bringing up something of that magnitude in front of him.

  Sorin didn’t seem to take any offense to this, which was good.

  If there was one vampire in the house already, then that increased Lasius’s chances of keeping Warren here.

  “We can use him for information,” Lasius said. He hadn’t thought he would walk into this conversation feeling the desperation that he did, but it was there, and it was definitely real. He didn’t want his mate to be killed, and he didn’t want to be banished from this house.

  It was one thing to have a clan and nowhere else to go, but to be on his own, all the while keeping a vampire mate on a leash…that could prove to be more difficult.

  “You’d let us torture him?” James asked, raising a brow.

  “No,” Lasius snapped, glaring at the man. “No, not that, but we could talk to him. I could talk to him. I’m his mate. He doesn’t like me much, but he’s going to be feeling the same mating pull that I am. He’ll want to be truthful to me.”

  Seth shook his head. “I don’t like this. I really don’t like this. You should have put him in the dungeon.”

  “Yeah? And what about him?” Lasius pointed at James. “You don’t want to use Sorin as an example around here. What about James? He used to work for Varrick, too, you know. Or did you think I wouldn’t have known about that?”

  Seth glared at him. “James was a former slave of Varrick’s, and he risked his life to return here with Taylor. He spent some time in our dungeon, and he’s proven himself.”

  Lasius thought about the scars on Warren’s body, how they left so little of him untouched.

  Those couldn’t be the scars of simply doing his job. “And what if Warren was a slave, too? Does that let him off the hook for the nasty things he’s done? Or do you only do that shit when it’s convenient to you?”

  Seth’s eyes turned a bright shade of red. “You’re going to keep your mouth shut about that right now, or I’ll have my men hold you down while I run upstairs and slit that vampire’s throat.”

  Lasius glared at him, and then he turned his glare to Evzen. “This is the alpha you thought we should follow?”

  Evzen sighed. “His land, his laws. If we want to live here, then we obey those laws. However”—Evzen looked to Seth—“I would still recommend a better approach if possible.”

  Seth didn’t seem as though he was in any mood to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and his red scales were starting to form over his face and hands again.

  “Can I talk to him?” Sorin asked.

  All eyes turned to him.

  Lasius was especially shocked.

  Sorin looked down at his hands, as though he couldn’t bring himself to be looked at by so many people.

  “I…I don’t recognize him, but maybe if I spoke to him, one vampire to another…maybe that would help. It could be true. He could have been another slave. Or he could be like Josh and Zane. He might not have had much of a choice.” Sorin looked to Seth. “Living in a vampire household is a lot more complicated than it looks.”

  “If he’s killed people, then he needs to be held accountable for that.”

  Sorin nodded. “I know.”

  Lucian took Sorin by the hand. Lasius noted the way the dragon squeezed Sorin’s hand tightly.

  And his heart ached at the realization of how unlikely it was that he would ever be able to so casually, and lovingly, touch his own mate like that.

  “I want to be there with you when you talk to him. I won’t leave you alone with him.”

  “I should be there, as well,” James said. “I’m not a vampire, but he and I shared a…similar job description. If he sees another shifter who has turned his back on Varrick, it might make him more willing to cooperate with us.”

  “Should we be there, too?” Zane asked, looking up at his mate, Marxus. “I used to work in that house, and so did Josh.”

  Josh was currently not in the library. He was patrolling the house, making sure everyone was safely tucked away in their rooms with his mate, Dimitri. Someone needed to take care of the house while everything went to shit.

  “It’s unlikely that will help,” James said in his deep voice. “You’re a human. There’s not as much respect in that. If we’re desperate, then it might be a possibility.”

  He didn’t sound as though he was trying to be insulting, though judging by the noise Zane let out as he crossed his arms, James hadn’t much succeeded.

  Lasius honestly didn’t care about that in the slightest. The only thing he cared about, the only thing he could focus on, was the fact that it sounded as though he was about to get what he wanted. He might be able to get out of this and keep his mate alive.

  If he could keep Warren alive, then everything else could fall by the wayside. He didn’t care. He just wanted his mate to live. He wanted Warren to keep breathing, his heart to continue beating.

  He could work on the rest later.

  “Do you still want to kill him, Seth?”

  Seth growled at him. “For wanting to come into my home, on my family property and take my mate away and kill my friends? Absolutely.”

  Lasius clenched his fists.

  “But for now, I’ll agree that keeping him alive is probably the better choice. He could give us information we might need. Just make sure that he doesn’t try anything on you.”

&n
bsp; “He won’t,” Lasius said quickly. He wasn’t entirely happy with the answer, but he was going to take it. “I’ll make sure of it. He’s still in the middle of his mating heat, and he doesn’t even really believe that he and I are mated. He’ll cooperate if he wants me to touch him again.”

  Marxus whistled. “You’re going to deny him in the middle of a mating heat? I’d say that was harsh, but, you know, he’s a vampire.”

  Don’t growl. Lasius couldn’t growl at him. He couldn’t shoot himself in the foot when he was so close to making it to the finish line.

  “How are you going to handle denying yourself?” Seth asked. “This is going to affect you, too.”

  “I’ll think of something,” Lasius replied, though in all honesty, he had no clue what he was going to do about the mating heat for himself other than a lot of cold showers and rubbing one off whenever he had a spare moment.

  In fact, it was one of the reasons why he wanted to get out of here right now. He wanted to get back upstairs and into the relatively private space of his bedroom. The shower sounded like an amazing place to be right about now.

  Fuck, how was he going to watch over Warren for so long without letting himself get carried away? Lasius didn’t trust anyone else to protect his mate without wanting to hurt him. How could he blame them for that? There was a vampire enemy in their house, so it meant Lasius was going to have to be the one to be vigilant.

  But being near him at all times…Lasius was sure he could contain himself, that he could hold off until Warren asked to be taken again.

  But shit, that was going to be tough if he was the one who had to constantly be around him, protecting him.

  “Let me get upstairs for a little while. I’ll bring him down, and James and Sorin can talk with him if they think that will help.”

  “I’ll be there, too,” Seth growled.

  He and Lasius looked at each other just then, and Lasius knew a challenge when he saw one. The alpha wasn’t going to be cut out of this just because Lasius wanted to keep his new mate safe.

  Seth wouldn’t be denied an audience with him.

  Fucking perfect.

  “All right, just give me an hour. I’ll get him dressed and bring him downstairs.”