by Flynn Eire
“God no,” he sighed, closing his eyes. “I hope I never do.”
I took the hint and carried him inside. He told me how to get to his room, and I beelined it right there, ignoring Helios as he called after us.
I should have known the man would be persistent enough to follow.
“Helios, he doesn’t want anyone to see him like this,” I argued as he entered the bedroom after I’d kicked the door closed behind us. “He wants to get cleaned up.”
“I know he does,” he mumbled and looked at Theo. “I’m sorry, but Evan can’t be the only witness for this to stick. He found you and made the accusations to call us in. Someone else has to be able to testify as to your condition. I’m Wyrok so it would be best if it’s me.” Theo glanced at me and I nodded. He was right.
“Yeah, okay,” he whispered, shaking in my arms.
“Helios is a good guy, I promise.”
“And you never break a promise,” he murmured, giving me a soft smile.
“I don’t,” I chuckled.
“Did I hear someone right that you’re Councilman Ashton’s son?” Helios hedged as I sat Theo on the chair at his desk.
“Yes, Theodor Ashton.”
“And what was this regarding?” Helios kept his tone gentle as he nodded for me to take my shirt off Theo.
“My father hated I wasn’t born a warrior,” Theo muttered, lifting his arms so I could remove the clothing, looking away. “He’d tried to mate me for connections for years. I always turn them down. Finally he found a huge fish as he put it, and she’s really into me, likes my type or some shit. So when I said no this time, he wasn’t having it. He threw me in the bomb shelter and told me I’d mate her one way or another. He thought if he starved me long enough he could bring her around and I’d bite her.”
“But you didn’t?” Helios checked.
Theo shook his head and looked up at me. “What’s the date?” I felt like a complete ass. Of course he’d want to know. I told him and he hung his head but not before I saw tears in his eyes. “Six months. I’ve been in there over six months.”
“Hey, be proud of how long you held out,” I praised as I knelt down next to him. “You may not have grown big like a warrior, but you have the heart of one, Theo. I would have caved after a week and I’m gay too. I don’t know how you held out that long.”
“You haven’t met Meggan Carter,” he rasped, rubbing his chest. “The woman is just as big of a monster as my father. The way she beat me when I wouldn’t bite her and—”
“So she was directly involved?” Helios asked, jotting down notes.
Theo raised his head, anger in his eyes as tears glistened on his cheeks. “It was her idea to deny me blood so I’d bite anyone who got close to me. My father was just going to lock me up, confine me so I submitted, but she was willing to risk starving me to death to get her way.”
“We’ll have her brought in as well,” Helios promised. After that we did a basic inventory of his wounds. Since he’d barely eaten or had his needed blood intake, he was healing slower than a human. My heart hurt seeing the state Theo was in. “Okay, you can get cleaned up. I’ll have food prepared for your compromised system and blood brought in—”
Theo snorted. “Walk out to the barn. My family owns one of the largest blood banks in the country. We supply to most of the covens. The threats against my father are because he jacked up the prices like an asshat to fill his bank accounts. There’s more than enough blood here for everyone and to withstand any apocalypse. There’s a whole underground cooler of it below the barn as well for his personal, paranoid stash. While he’s been selling blood to the covens that humans would reject since we can’t get sick, he’s been hoarding clean blood for himself.”
“Wow, your dad is a dick,” I mumbled.
“You don’t have to convince me of that,” he snickered. Helios excused himself, stating he had more than enough to get started with updating the people he needed to and the ball rolling on everything else. I stood to go turn on the shower but paused when Theo reached out and put his hand on my arm. “How bad am I? I can’t even look.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. There weren’t words for the condition he was in, but he was holding it together pretty well—good enough to crack a joke and tell off his father at least—and I didn’t want to push him over… So I went with my normal smartass default. “Hard to say. I didn’t see you before. This could be an improvement for all I know. I mean, you could have been hideous to start with and—”
“Asshole,” Theo cried, wiping his eyes even as he smiled. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Then I paused. “Don’t look though. I was banged up really bad once from an ambush of Zakasacs and I wish I’d never looked. People say that what you imagine will be worse than the reality, but I don’t think that’s true. We’re taught to be so hard on ourselves that what we see can be so far off from what’s actually there that I think it makes it harder on us.”
“Okay, but now we’ve built it up to Pandora’s box level and my bathroom is full of mirrors,” he grumbled.
He had a point there. I hurried into the connecting room and turned on the shower. Then I found some spray-in conditioner and along with the steam from the shower, covered the mirrors with it as best as I could. Enough at least so Theo would be blurry if he did look instead of clear as normal. Then I turned down the heat of the shower and went back for him.
“Were you pumping the water from a well?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “My room needs to be disinfected from my stench now.”
“Mucking up the mirrors.”
His mouth fell open as I lifted him up. “You’re awesome.”
“I have my moments.” I had him check the water temperature, turning it colder when he asked. It turned out the heat and steam hurt his dried out and fragile skin from being so dehydrated. I set him on his feet, ignoring that his shorts were getting all wet and closed the door.
“Evan!” he exclaimed a second later. I yanked open the door and caught him just as he was falling down. He leaned his head on my shoulder, sobbing. “I can’t shower myself. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re not the first guy to use that excuse to get me naked,” I joked.
“God, you’re gorgeous and normally I would totally look for any excuse to get you in a shower with me but not like this,” he whimpered.
It was hard not to take the compliment even under the circumstances. I turned the spray away, glad I hadn’t gotten much on my clothes, and brought him back out, sitting him on the counter as I stripped until I was just in my boxer briefs. Then it seemed silly when I’d have to get him all the way naked.
Theo blushed and looked away as I picked him back up. “This is so humiliating.”
“Do you want me to get someone else?”
He sniffled and shook his head. “No, then I’d just have to be humiliated with two people.”
I let the comment go and quickly washed him up. He could do a better job later once he was feeling better. I found out then that his hair wasn’t dark, but all the shit in it had made it seem that way. He actually had thick, ear-length strawberry blond hair that had a lot of shine to it.
And when he blinked up at me from under his lashes, the water pouring all over him, it was my turn to be humiliated… Because I got hard and there was no way to hide it or he didn’t feel it.
Theo was beautiful. Once all the grime, dirt, and months of mistreatment were washed away, even in his malnourished state, I’d never seen anyone more breathtaking.
And he was naked.
With me.
In the shower.
Naked.
I was so fucked.
2
When we were done, dried off, and redressed, I carried Theo out of his room and back to reality… And right into more bullshit. Alexander was interviewing people at the estate, trying to find out who knew what was going on.
“I knew,” a woman sobbed. “I was party to the whole thing. I ad
mit I never helped Mr. Theo. Lock me up and—”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” Theo snapped from my arms. “Shut it, Dottie. Anyone touches her and I will bite them.”
“Um, she just confessed,” I mumbled as I stopped in the doorway. “Maybe you shouldn’t jump in until you’ve rehydrated at least and—”
Theo rolled his eyes at me and waggled his finger at Dottie. “Tell them how many different ways my father threatened you and your family. Your guilt at what happened is making you confess you knew but that’s not the whole story. This is not your fault. They lock you up and I have no family left. Don’t do that to me when I’m going to need you now more than ever. Mother knew so she’s going down too. She wasn’t threatened to go along with the plan though. You were.”
“Is this true?” Alexander asked her, his face relaxing from the angry expression it had when we’d walked in. He waited until Dottie nodded. “What were the threats specifically?”
“Councilman Ashton said he would give my daughter to his security to be their whore,” Dottie whispered as tears filled her eyes. Then she looked at Theo. “That doesn’t make what I did right. Protecting one child does not mean leaving one who I practically raised to be beaten and starved. I should be punished.”
Theo snorted. “And how would you have alerted anyone? Has my father ever let you off the property since I’ve been chained up?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Has he been watching your family?”
“Yes.” She hung her head, totally busted.
“Um, how do you know all of this since you were chained up?” I asked, shooting Alexander a look. I could see the same question in his eyes.
Theo looked up at me then. “I’m a hundred and three. That’s a long time to learn my father’s playbook. He’s paranoid and mistrusting. Dottie loves me and he flipped out and beat her right in front of me when he caught her sneaking me blood. She was just as much a victim in this as I was. I won’t testify against her.”
“No, I must be punished,” Dottie argued, slamming her hand on the table.
“Fine,” Theo drawled, rolling his eyes. “Your punishment is to nurse my weak ass back to health and treat our guests like kings for rescuing us both from the hellish reign of my father’s twisted dictatorship.”
She blinked at him, doing a great impression of a fish. “I would have done that anyways.”
“Well then it works out for everyone.” She opened her mouth again but Theo rubbed his throat. “Dottie, I’m really thirsty and in pain. I think I need to eat too.”
“Oh god, of course, Mr. Theo,” she worried, jumping to her feet. She rushed over to him, kissing his cheek. “I’m so glad you lived, but I’m not stupid, young man.”
“Never said you were, but the two bags of cold blood Evan gave me weren’t much. Everything seriously hurts.”
“I know,” she rasped as she ran her fingers over his cheek. “We’ll get you better. You’re free now.”
“Thank fuck,” he sighed and snuggled up against me. She hurried away, and I sat down next to Alexander, about to move Theo to his own chair but all he did was adjust so he was more comfortable on my lap.
Okay then. Maybe he needed the physical contact after all those months of none and the security of being around the person who rescued him?
“Why am I so cold?” Theo chattered, wrapping his arms around my waist.
Or that.
“Us being underfed for so long is the same as extreme blood loss to humans,” Sam, our medic, explained as he joined us. “I just heard you were all cleaned up and with us. I’m Sam. Anything in particular that hurts worse?”
Theo’s face turned about ten shades of red and I knew what he didn’t want to say. I also had a feeling it was why he was sitting on my lap which had to be softer than the hard wood of the chairs.
“No one here is a gossip or will run their mouths,” I murmured as I ran my hand over his back. “You’ll have to testify to what was done anyways, Theo.”
He nodded and closed his eyes. “Meggan Carter got exceptionally pissed last week when I wouldn’t claim her, especially because she doesn’t believe men are really gay. She said I was hers and I just needed to admit it already so we could move on. When I wouldn’t, she brought down a brand from her ranch they use on the cattle, heated up and ready to go, and branded my ass with it over and over again saying no one would fuck me now because they’d see I was taken.”
“That will heal with blood,” Sam assured him. “No broken bones or dislocations you know of. Any weird bruising that might be internal bleeding?”
“If I had internal bleeding, I would already have been dead,” Theo whispered. “They haven’t been down to see me in like a week. Someone brought me one gallon of water and a bag of blood, but that was it.”
“Okay then.” Sam shot me a worried look, and I had a feeling it was bad from the way Theo was shivering. “We’re going to focus on getting blood into you and some broth, but I also would like to hook you to an IV to speed up getting you rehydrated with some nutrients you’ve been lacking. You’re going to have to pace yourself on the blood no matter how much you want to chug it. Let’s say one mug every half hour.”
“Whatever you think is best.”
We moved our party to the living room where Theo got his first warmed up mug, then another mug of broth, while Sam hooked him up to the IV. Just as he finished, Theo’s eyes went wide and he turned on his side.
I had no idea what was going on, but Sam did. He grabbed what looked like a fancy bowl, dumped out the fake fruit in it, and handed it to Theo just in time for the poor guy to puke up his guts.
That couldn’t be good. I felt my heart drop into my chest as I saw it wasn’t just broth coming up… It was the blood too.
“Okay, new plan,” Sam muttered, his muscles tense. “Alexander, take the chopper to the nearest coven and get me a blood warmer so we can get it into Theo at the right temperature. Or call whomever we can and get me one here ASAP.”
“Shouldn’t we take him to the coven?” Helios asked.
Sam shot him a look and shook his head. I felt all my own blood drain from my head. He didn’t think Theo would last until then. Oh god, while we’d been messing around and taking our sweet time in the shower, I could have been killing him. Alexander caught on as well and booked it towards the door without another word to us, pulling out his phone to make it happen.
“What do we do in the meantime?” I exclaimed, getting to my feet. Everyone looked at me with wide eyes. I snapped my fingers and pointed to the kitchen. “I saw on Discovery once that you can heat water in a sink to the right temperature and put the blood in there for so many minutes to a temperature the body will accept.
“Yeah, I know that trick too,” Sam agreed. “Candy thermometer, not meat.”
“Got it.” I booked it into the kitchen and told Dottie the plan. We hurried into action and had everything set up, the water to vampire body temp, and the blood in there a few minutes later. I was just about to bellow for Sam to ask how long when he came in and took over.
“What’s with you?” he hissed as he pulled out the first heated bag.
“I was taking my sweet time getting him cleaned up, joking around that he didn’t stink, and trying save him heartache instead of, um, making sure he lived because I’m an idiot,” I seethed, more at myself than him for asking. “How would you be feeling right now?
He winced. “Fair enough.” We hurried back into the living room and Sam hooked up the bag of blood along with the IV.
“Freezing,” Theo whimpered.
“Body heat’s best,” Sam ordered.
I didn’t need more than that. I was already shirtless since I’d loaned mine to Theo and it was now pretty nasty and the rest of my gear was still in my truck. I whipped off my pants which was easy since I hadn’t put my shoes back on, and then got under the blanket with Theo.
“You really just want to get naked with me,” he quipped. It took me a moment
to figure out what he was saying with the teeth chattering, but when I did I growled.
“Yeah, can’t imagine I didn’t figure out why you were in such bad shape.” I yanked off his sweater and pajama bottoms, ignoring he was naked on my lap now as I tucked the blanket securely around us. “You were cracking jokes and teasing me after all.”
“Low blow, Evan,” he whispered as he hung his head. “I did feel better. Anything feels better than on death’s door though. I wasn’t shivering or wanting to throw up. Not my fault.”
I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” I hugged him gently as I rubbed my hands over his chest and back for warmth. “I’m scared but I shouldn’t have lashed out like that. I—just—you—I—get better. I should have gotten more blood in you sooner.” I pulled my knees higher to box him in as he sat curled up on me with his right shoulder against my left one, his head resting on it.
“Yes, Evan,” he murmured. Then soft lips kissed my skin. “You smell so good.”
I froze. “Theo, what are you doing?” I realized what as I felt his fangs against my skin. I also knew there was no way to stop him in time without hurting him when he was in such a bad place. “Theo, don’t cave now. You’re stronger than this. He’ll still win if you claim someone because of what he did even if it’s not the person he wanted you to.”
I saw Wally and Roarke’s eyes go wide from across the room. Then I saw Helios move out of the corner of my eyes and I gave the barest shake of my head. He actually could make it in time but I didn’t want Theo to live with that he’d almost tried to claim me against my will. I wanted it to be his decision not to.
How fucked up was that? I was willing to risk myself like that for a stranger. Yeah, I had issues.
“It’s a little soon to claim you, Evan,” he chuckled, sounding slightly drunk. “You’re the hottest guy I’ve ever been naked with, but really? Claim you? I’m not that desperate for men. When I’m all filled out, I have a fine ass I’ll have you know.”
