by Jamie Craig
“Oh. Well, that’s good to know . But, I promise, Gideon, it’s never going to happen.”
The sponge got caught on a patch of dried come low on Jesse’s hip, and Gideon pulled back in order to turn Jess around to face him. He knelt to his knees to begin washing the lower half of Jesse’s body, and though it brought him eye level with Jesse’s cock, he studiously ignored it. For now.
“Is this a first for you?” he asked. If they were going to continue, Gideon realized he needed to know how much Jesse had done before. “Being…punished, I mean.”
“I experimented with light bondage and S&M before. I’ve always been…attracted to the idea of it, but it’s not easy to find the right partner.” Jess ran his fingers through Gideon’s hair. “I tried a few clubs before when I was younger, but that didn’t work out for me. So this is, by and large, entirely unexplored territory for me.”
Pausing in his attentions, Gideon glanced up at Jess. “Then how do you know this is what you want?”
“It feels right. Every time you touch me, everything you do, it just feels right.”
Gideon averted his eyes and returned to washing before his thoughts betrayed him. “I think we’re very compatible,” he said, instead of the far more fervent vows going through his head. “It helps that we know each other so well.”
“We are,” Jesse agreed, “and it does help.” There was a long pause before he asked, “What was it like for you tonight? What does it do for you to see me…like that?”
The truth was a double-edged sword. Gideon was glad he was working on Jesse’s calves and feet when it was asked. It meant it was all right not to meet his eyes when he replied.
“It excites me,” he said. “Part of it is seeing you taking and giving so much pleasure. That’s arousing, in and of itself. I’ve always thought you were gorgeous, Jess, and getting to see all of you…” He swallowed, trying to will down his growing erection. He’d promised Jess he wasn’t going anywhere near his ass tonight, and after everything, he wasn’t in the mood for jerking off. “The other part…I guess it’s pride. Of ownership, if that makes sense. I mean, we’re partners, I know that, I know I don’t own you. But, while we’re someplace like Sangre, for a few hours, I can pretend I do. I like knowing people are looking at you and hating me for being the one to take you home at the end of the night. That you respond like you do because of me.” He shrugged. “I know it probably doesn’t make much sense.”
“It makes sense to me,” Jesse said, his words almost lost under the roar of the shower. He pointed to the bruises on his upper-thighs. “Do you like to see me marked like this?”
Lifting his gaze meant seeing Jesse’s thickening cock as well as the flowering colors adorning his skin. “Yes,” Gideon admitted. “I’m still a vampire, you know. The only thing that would make it better is knowing that they were mine.”
“Some of them might be.” Jesse’s fingers brushed over Gideon’s head, face, and shoulders, like he couldn’t stop himself from touching him. “I know that you do like them, and I know why. It’s just…I’m curious about what makes you tick.”
He shot Jess a crooked smile. “That’s because you’re a brainiac and can’t stop with the quest for knowledge.”
“And because it turns me on. Though that might have something to do with my brainiac status as well.”
On impulse, Gideon leaned forward and brushed his mouth across the nearest bruise. He caught a rivulet of water with his tongue, and the slight contact brought goosebumps to the surface of Jesse’s hip.
“Did you enjoy tonight?” he asked. “I know you’re hurt, and I know we had that stupid fight in the car, but the rest of it. What did you think?”
“Yes, I did enjoy the rest of it. Quite a bit. I don’t mind getting hurt. It’ll heal, and modern pharmaceuticals are a wonderful thing—and it’s worth it. When you fuck me too hard, or when Eric fucked me tonight, it should hurt enough to make me beg for you to stop. But it doesn’t really hurt. It’s…it’s all just…sensation. And I guess it’s my turn not to make sense.”
But he was. And the more he said, the more Gideon wanted to take him in his arms and never let him go.
He chose instead to resume mouthing the bruises on his hips, sucking just enough at each one to make Jess feel it before moving on to the rest. Jesse’s hand rested on the top of his head, not guiding Gideon but merely following his path. When Gideon felt his cock brush against his cheek, he noticed that Jess had grown completely hard again, his balls hanging heavy between his legs.
“Talk to me,” he said, lightly grasping Jesse’s cock. He lifted it up and out of his way, exposing Jess’ smooth sac to his tongue. “I want to know what you want me to do to you. I want to hear the dark secrets that you jerk off to in the middle of the night, what you want more than anything but were always afraid to ask for.”
“I like to be bound, helpless. I can’t tell you the number of times I thought about you tying me, chaining me, like you did last week.” Jess paused for so long that Gideon was about to prompt him for more. “I always used to think about being tied to your bed, completely immobile, stretched spread-eagle. Your fangs are descended. I used to read the old reports about you, about what you used to do to your victims. There were some that survived, some you didn’t want to kill. And I always wondered why they were the lucky ones. One day, it occurred to me that maybe the people who wrote the reports couldn’t tell the difference between your victims and people who were like me. But I thought I could tell the difference.”
Jesse’s voice was low and haunting, and the images he evoked made dark coils slither around Gideon’s spine. “You’re not a victim,” Gideon murmured. He sucked one of Jesse’s balls into his mouth, relishing how silken the skin was against his lips, and groaned at how delicious it felt. Jesse’s fingers tightened in his wet hair, but Gideon pulled off, albeit reluctantly. “Victims don’t get the chance to choose.” Before Jess replied, he pulled the other ball between his teeth.
Jesse moaned softly. “I know. I thought about you long before I met you, Gideon. I thought about your fangs, and your cock, and your skill with whips, knives, chains, leather…I want you to use my body like it’s yours. My skin, my blood, my flesh, I want it all to be yours.”
The needy growl rumbled unbidden through Gideon, and he raked his blunt teeth up the length of the cock to suck the dripping head hard into his mouth. Jesse’s hands flew to his shoulders, nails digging into the muscle as he swayed against Gideon, but Gideon pried them away, bringing them up to either side of Gideon’s face instead. Holding Jesse’s cock steady at the base, he pulled off and looked up to meet Jess’ questioning eyes.
“Do I have to order you to fuck my mouth?” he teased.
Jesse’s eyes widened, as though such a thing had never occurred to him, and would never occur to him if he had a hundred years to contemplate everything Gideon could do while on his knees. The pressure increased on Gideon’s face as Jesse’s nails curled into his cheeks, and he allowed himself to be guided back to Jesse’s cock. He parted his lips, and Jesse thrust forward immediately with surprising force.
It was not the rhythm Gideon expected, but Jesse’s hunger was a shot of adrenaline through his veins. His tongue swirled around the smooth shaft, absorbing the heat, and when Jess pulled back, Gideon let his teeth catch the edges of the crown before skipping over to slide across the head. The effect made Jess drive back in, and quickly, they set a tempo of almost frantic strokes, deeper each time, until Jess finally buried his cock in Gideon’s throat.
Gideon sighed in satisfaction, his hands going around to gently cup Jesse’s ass in order to hold him in place. He wanted this moment, one where he could both give a little something back to Jess and savor the taste and fullness of him, to last.
Jesse stood perfectly still, but his entire body quivered. His gasps had turned to short, sharp moans, and Gideon realized Jess would stand there for as long as Gideon held him in place, simply waiting. Gideon loosened his grip, and Jesse immediately began
moving again, slamming down Gideon’s throat. Gideon’s throat constricted around his cock, and he looked up, meeting Jesse’s gaze. Jess made a shocked, strangled sound and then his warm come filled Gideon’s throat.
“Gideon, please bite me…please…I want to feel you…”
Whatever Jess wanted, Gideon knew he couldn’t fully give it to him. Gideon had fed from him twice already that night, the second far more filling than it had needed to be. But his begging warmed him even more than the come sliding into his belly. It was impossible to resist, even if Gideon wanted to.
The second he felt Jesse’s cock stop twitching, Gideon slid his mouth off, holding the length out of his way as he licked a path to Jess’ inner thigh. The artery was easy to find. It pulsed with the force of Jesse’s orgasm, and when he felt it throb against his lips, he let his fangs descend and sank them into the yielding flesh.
Jesse slammed his hand against the wall and shouted as loud as his sore throat would let him.
His rich, hot blood filled Gideon’s mouth, coated his tongue, and flowed like syrup down his throat. Gideon only took one swallow, though it was very difficult to pull away from the freely flowing blood. He licked Jesse’s thigh until the bleeding stopped, and light pink rivulets flowed down Jesse’s thighs and across the shower floor.
“I…I think I need to lay down,” Jesse said haltingly.
Gideon rose to his feet, curling his arm around Jesse’s waist in order to help him stay up. “One thing you’re going to have to learn is your blood loss limits,” he murmured. With his free hand, he reached behind Jess and turned off the water. “I won’t take more than you can give, but do you know how hard it is to keep my head when you beg me like that? It’s like the finest music, and all I can think about is giving you what you want.”
Jesse smiled thinly. “I’ll keep that in mind. I know I probably lost too much already, but I just needed…well, I probably don’t need to explain it to you.”
Sliding open the doors, Gideon grabbed the nearest towel and dragged it in, drying Jess off. “I made tea. It’s probably cold.”
“I can reheat it,” Jess murmured. “Though at this point, I just want something wet.”
Gideon couldn’t resist nudging his erection against Jesse’s hips. “You know…that could still be arranged. Stretch across the bed, just kind of let your head hang over the edge.” He smirked. “I’ll do all the work.”
“Maybe after the tea.”
The smirk turned into a genuine smile, and Gideon tightened his hold around Jesse’s waist. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
Chapter 9
Jesse became aware of the world around him long before he opened his eyes. Gideon wasn’t in the room, but he heard him in the kitchen, and then heard him running upstairs, rustling around in the office above Jesse’s head. Jesse knew they had work to do, but he was in no hurry to jump out of Gideon’s bed.
If only because there was a possibility that if he lingered long enough, Gideon would come in for him.
He swallowed, trying to wet his dry, slightly bruised throat, and carefully rolled onto his back. He didn’t mind waking up sore. He especially didn’t mind waking up sore in Gideon’s bed. Images from the night before bombarded him, but the only thing that seemed real was the emotions that very nearly carried him away. The blow jobs, the fucking, the biting, the almost endless come, all of that was already fading. But the insane impulse to tell Gideon over and over and over how much he loved him was still very vivid.
But he couldn’t imagine that Gideon would want to hear those words. Jesse was not intimately familiar with Gideon’s history—how could he be? Gideon had a lot of it, and if there was one thing Gideon was not into, it was sharing. But he knew enough from his own research, and from the clues Gideon had dropped, to piece together the story.
There was a girl. One Jesse had never met. One who died ten years before Jesse was born. But what was forty years to a creature that was nearly four centuries old? It was nothing. More than once, he had cursed the ghost of a woman he’d never known. All he knew about her was her name—Mary—and that she had been a natural force Gideon couldn’t resist. But Jesse shouldn’t curse her. Because while she was the reason Gideon was emotionally inaccessible, she was also the reason Gideon was trying to save the very humans he used to prey on.
She was the reason Jesse was working in Gideon’s office at all.
Jesse wished he knew more details about their story. How had a vampire with a reputation like Gideon’s met and fallen in love with a young black woman during the height of the Civil Rights movement? How had she convinced him he would be better, happier, stopping the monsters that stalked the streets? Had it been the strength of her goodness?
Jesse didn’t know and didn’t dare ask. All he knew was that Gideon didn’t want anything to do with love, and he especially didn’t want to fall in love with another fragile human.
That was why Jess wasn’t truly angry about Gideon’s behavior the night before. He already considered humans pretty far below him in the grand scheme of things. That was natural, since humans had been food for so long, and he was stronger, faster, and in many cases, smarter. But Jesse had thought they really were friends and partners, and Gideon’s decision had angered him, but most of all, it had hurt. And when Gideon had said taking him to Sangre at all was a big mistake, he had been teetering on the edge of devastated. Which might have been the only reason he’d had the courage to issue the ultimatum.
Jess opened his eyes. If he had wanted to be Gideon’s sex slave with nothing better to do but laze about in bed all day and wait for Gideon to call for him, he wouldn’t have bothered with being angry or issuing an ultimatum. But he had.
With a hint of regret at leaving the large, soft bed, Jesse rolled off the mattress, pushing himself to his feet and swaying for a moment. After a few experimental steps, he decided he’d be able to function normally. He smiled and headed for the bathroom, his grin only fading when he remembered he didn’t have any clean clothes at Gideon’s place.
It returned again when he saw the pile of folded items on the closed toilet lid. An index card had been propped on top, and Jess picked it up to read it, his smile broadening.
You didn’t really think all I bought were the clothes you wore last night, did you?—G
He started to set the note down to look at the clothes more closely when he noticed writing on its other side.
Come up to the office when you’re dressed. We need to figure out how to move next on the Richards’ case.
That, more than the new jeans or shirt, made his smile warm.
Jesse dressed quickly, pausing only for a moment to check his reflection. His neck was still red and raw from the leather collar, and of course, Gideon’s mark was still prominent. He couldn’t see the one on the back of his neck, but he brushed his fingers over the sensitive skin, sending a chill down his spine to his cock. But the knowledge that Gideon shouldn’t really bite him again for at least another day or two cooled his heated blood.
He hurried upstairs, bypassing his own cluttered desk for Gideon’s office.
Gideon stood in front of the map of the city he had pinned to the opposite wall. His back was to the door, but Jess knew from the stretch of his thin sweater over his broad shoulders that he had his arms folded in front of him while he studied the meandering streets. It was Gideon pose number seventeen. He did a lot of thinking staring at that map.
“Do you think it’s significant that Sangre isn’t anywhere near the warehouse?” Gideon asked without turning around.
“I think the most likely explanation is that the warehouse was the most convenient one available for Henry’s purposes,” Jesse said, moving to stand beside him. A red pushpin indicated Sangre’s position, a blue one marked the warehouse. “The club’s in the middle of an area with a fairly dense vampire population. He might have chosen a warehouse that was still accessible but not standing out like a beacon for every vampire looking for their next fix.”
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“True.” Gideon still looked unconvinced, though he kept musing aloud. It was how they always worked, bandying theories back and forth until they found one that both felt right—for Gideon—and was logical—for Jess. The fact that they were doing this the morning after their fight didn’t escape Jesse’s attention. “Its effects are too easily achieved to have it that handy. Were you ever able to get the obsidian on the door knob analyzed?”
“Yes. I got the results back yesterday morning. It’s psilocybin based. A simple hallucinogen that really shouldn’t have any sort of effect on vampires at all. It’s easily absorbed through touch, obviously. Whatever is going on, it’s not chemically based.”
Gideon fell silent for a moment. “I wasn’t hallucinating,” he finally said. “So that’s probably the medium Henry’s using for transferal.” He glanced at Jess. “The clothes look good, by the way.”
“You have a good eye,” Jesse returned, though he knew Gideon wasn’t actually complimenting the clothes. “So, are you thinking magic, too?”
“Unfortunately.”
Jesse frowned, staring at the map like it really did have the answers they needed. From his own knowledge, and Gideon’s tone, he knew it’d have to be very dark magic. And there was only one place in the city to fulfill all their dark magic needs. “I think that means we should visit Black John.”
“Christ,” Gideon muttered. Running his hand over his hair, he turned away from the map and went over to his desk, sitting heavily in his chair. “You’re going to make me go with you, aren’t you?”
Jesse almost smiled at the thought of making Gideon do anything he didn’t want to do. “I think that would be a good idea. It’s the respectful thing to do, and God knows we don’t need to be on his bad side.”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “I’m already on his bad side. What you mean is you don’t want me to make it even worse.”
Personally, Jess thought Gideon was exaggerating. True, the last time they had been forced to deal with the black mage, Gideon had ended up killing the man’s assistant, but the circumstances had been beyond their control. Even Black John had admitted nothing else could have been done, but that didn’t change the fractious relationship between the two men.