by Ella Frank
His eyes trailed over long legs encased in dress pants, and he wondered what exactly he would find when he…
Oh wow.
“Good evening, agóri.”
Before he could think not to, Leo’s mind was flooded with thoughts. The first being that, if Alasdair was the most beautiful male he’d ever seen, then this man… He had no words. He was simply—
“Oh, Alasdair, you have a true admirer here.”
A rush of heat hit Leo’s cheeks as his thoughts were interrupted and the vampire addressed Alasdair.
“He thinks you are quite beautiful.”
Alasdair’s stare found his, and he ran his tongue over his top lip, causing Leo’s pulse to thump. “Does he now?”
“Yes, he does,” the other vampire stated matter-of-factly, returning his gaze to him. “But he thinks I’m indescribable. Of course.”
The arrogance dripping off his tongue had Leo more than aware that this being, whoever he was, knew his effect on others. He had an aura about him that commanded one’s attention. Not only from his undeniably good looks, but in the way he held himself.
With his black hair and jade eyes, Leo couldn’t help but stare. He was dressed for a black-tie dinner, his broad shoulders filling out his jacket to perfection, and his trim waist was accentuated by the tailored cut of the suit. He looked sophisticated, worldly, and the very epitome of the word gentleman. But in his eyes lurked darkness, and it made Leo wary as hell as he waited, silent and unmoving.
It was quite obvious that, in this world, his world, there was none more deadly.
Ordering himself to blank out his mind, Leo thought of emptiness and black holes. As that filled his head, the vampire took a step closer and the hair on Leo’s arms stood even taller, if that were possible. Even his body was aware of the danger it was in.
“You are quite the vision yourself. The light hair, those eyes. You remind me of someone…”
Knowing he wasn’t to speak unless told to, Leo remained mute. He couldn’t believe what was happening. He still didn’t have any idea where he was, but he knew one thing for sure: He was in the presence of beings more powerful and destructive than he had ever known existed.
“Alasdair? Does he remind you of anyone we know?”
Alasdair stood beside the one now inspecting Leo like a bug under a microscope, and Leo’s pulse jumped.
“Ahh, listen to his heart pound whenever you gaze upon him.” The vampire laughed, the sound hedonistic. “Do it again, Alasdair. It’s very amusing how affected he is by you.”
Even though it went against his “question everything” nature, Leo let the two who held his life in their hands analyze him.
“Why is that so amusing? Do you not think I’m worthy of such a response?” Alasdair asked as if deeply offended by the taunting vampire’s words.
The air in the room thickened with tension, clearly sexual in nature this time. The suited male turned towards Alasdair and placed a hand on his white shirt.
“I think you are worthy of a much greater response than a thumping pulse and an aching erection, omorfo mou agóri.”
My beautiful boy, Leo thought, again translating the Greek. He couldn’t tear his attention away from what he was witnessing as Alasdair arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow and asked, “Such as?”
The male moved even closer and ran his palm down Alasdair’s abdomen to the visible skin at the top of his pants, where he drew his finger over the button securing them. Not only did Leo’s heart pound at the seductive caress, but his cock stiffened as if he were the one being touched.
Several different feelings competed for dominance then.
Flight, fight, and—yes, as a gay man watching the epitome of masculine sexuality and beauty—fuck.
With his dick hard and sweat beading on his forehead, Leo suddenly had the urge to fuck someone or watch the act take place.
Christ. What’s the matter with me? he thought as the one in the suit recaptured his attention by cradling one of Alasdair’s cheeks. He then leaned in and dragged his tongue up the other side of Alasdair’s neck and sank his teeth into the dark stubble on his jaw.
Damn, they’re hot together. Dark, dangerous, and totally focused on one another. It was as though he were no longer in the room.
Alasdair tipped his head back, and the other male slid his mouth down under his chin and over his Adam’s apple. Leo glanced at the hand on Alasdair’s waist, and the fingers there unbuttoned his pants before the soft sound of a zipper being lowered echoed around the room. Leo then fisted his hands by his sides.
He wanted nothing more than to shove his fingers inside his own damn pants and grip his aching shaft. But he didn’t dare move as the suited one dropped down to his knees. He parted Alasdair’s pants, and when his thick, veiny erection came into view, Leo’s knees weakened.
Fucking hell. He couldn’t believe what was happening. It was unreal.
He’d been wishing for this very scene only moments ago, but he hadn’t actually expected it to happen. Yet, as he stood there, feet away from the two horny-as-hell males, he was pretty fucking close to coming. No touch or stimulation required.
A raspy sound emanated from Alasdair as the one he’d called Vasilios circled his erection with his fingers. Alasdair clasped the back of the male’s head and jerked it forward, cursing when the other vampire’s hand came up to rest on his thigh.
“Ypomoní̱ agóri. You’re so eager,” Vasilios said—right before he lowered his head and swallowed Alasdair’s cock down his throat.
A groan ripped through the air then, and when Alasdair’s eyes lifted from the one at his feet, Leo realized that the sound had come from between his own lips.
Oh shit, he thought and quickly shut his mouth. But he wasn’t sure he could stop himself from masturbating to the scene playing out right there. He continued to stare, unwilling to miss out on what was going on only an arm’s length away. If the punishing way Alasdair was fucking the mouth sliding up and down his shaft was any indication, he didn’t care one way or another what Leo did as long as he got to come down the throat of the other male.
They were intoxicating together, and when a growl resonated throughout the room, Leo’s focus shifted back to Alasdair, whose teeth were now bared to him. From the taut way the skin was pulled across Alasdair’s cheekbones to the glow in his eyes, it looked as though he was closing in on his climax. Leo wondered briefly what had triggered the fangs. And how would they feel against his skin. Wait a fucking minute. What?
His teeth, Leonidas. He’s using his teeth on my cock, and it makes me fucking crazy. Just as you’re imagining mine on yours now.
The impure thought was thrust into his head, and it had Leo’s eyes seeking out the devilish ones of the man who’d put it there. When he found Alasdair fixated on him, Leo licked his lower lip.
He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do next. Lower his head? Turn away? But even as he ordered himself to look at his feet, he couldn’t help himself from watching, wanting to see how this would play out. He was positive he would never be able to erase it from his mind.
Alasdair was pulling the other male to his feet now, and once he was there, he took his mouth in a brutal-as-fuck kiss. As the two began to devour one another, Leo told himself that it was just a kiss. Then Alasdair’s hands gripped the ass of the suit and hauled him close so he could grind his naked erection against him.
He’d seen hundreds of men kissing in the clubs, bars, and parties he went to. But with the way Alasdair had pushed his thoughts into his head, it was like he was now involved.
Alarmed and aroused by everything he could see and hear, Leo dropped his gaze, and he was glad he did, because that was when the other vampire finally chose to speak. His voice was raspy and low, and it was seductive in its delivery as he vowed, “You, Alasdair, are worthy of pleasures you will only find in my mouth and my bed.”
As a frustrated sound surrounded them, Leo had a feeling the pleasure portion of this evening was over
and Alasdair was now being taught some kind of lesson.
“So keep your yielding. And when you mark him later, know that I am the one who made you need the release. But don’t let his pretty face enchant you—you’ve always been so good about disposing of your food once you were done.”
The jarring reminder of who they were, and who he was, slammed into Leo with the force of a wrecking ball.
Mark me? Dispose of me? With those teeth? That does not sound pleasant.
“You have my word,” Alasdair murmured. “I’ll get what I need from him, and that shall be all.”
The words weren’t a promise of his imminent death, but they still did nothing to bring any comfort to Leo as the two figures vanished from sight.
“YOU HAVE CHANGED these past few weeks, Alasdair.”
The serious tone in Vasilios’s voice as they left Leo and reappeared outside the Adjudication Room had Alasdair bracing himself for whatever might follow. He already had a severe case of fucking blue balls after having been denied a release, and as he looked at Vasilios, he wanted nothing more than to be finished off by him—and his sire knew it.
“Always so sure. That was my agóri. A picture of contentment in who and what he is. But lately…” He paused, and his knowing eyes shifted to the wall Leo was behind. “Lately, you have changed.”
Alasdair bowed his head respectfully. And when Vasilios placed a finger under his chin, raising it, and moved in so they were a whisper apart, he caught Alasdair’s lips in a kiss designed to make him want to weep. He remembered a similar one from the night Vasilios had finally come to him. The night he’d made him his.
“What is so special about this one, Alasdair?”
Alasdair thought about that first night when he’d noticed Leo and tried to pinpoint what he’d felt the precise moment he’d seen him. But when Vasilios’s lips brushed over his again, nothing was in his mind but the male seducing him.
“You are so quiet lately. In your mind and your voice. As if you are hiding something from me. I don’t like you blocking me out. It troubles me.”
It troubled him too. But he had nothing to say. All he had were questions, and he wasn’t ready to share them yet. Or risk his life, for that matter, over a strange fixation with a human.
Vasilios moved his mouth over to his jaw and slowly kissed his way up towards his ear. Desire shot through him as those tantalizing lips continued to weave a spell over him, and his cock strained against the confines of his pants.
“Se thelo, file mou,” Vasilios rasped in his ear, and Alasdair’s hands clutched at the arms of his suit. “But you want the one in that room, don’t you?”
He thought about lying for a second, but when the tip of Vasilios’s tongue flicked over his lobe, all other thoughts left his mind.
“I am not averse to the thought of the both of you in my bed, Alasdair. Although I am not pleased with how taken you are by him. I believe that is something I need to think on before I allow him to join us. Until then, if you choose to dip your dick inside him, do it away from this lair. Away from where I have to hear you.”
The bite of jealousy in his sire’s words was evident. Alasdair had never before taken a yielding on, so the emotions running through both of them were new and…unfamiliar.
“I have not yet taken him as a yielding.”
“But you want to. Alasdair, with as long as we exist and thrive upon the Earth, it makes sense that we would need something different time and again. I understand that. What’s important is that you know whom you come back to. Whom you belong to. I’ve never had reason to be concerned in the past. You’ve never doubted this before. Are you doubting it now?”
Alasdair shook his head. “No. Of course not.”
Vasilios crossed his arms over his chest. “I hope not. You seem to be faltering of late. Do not forget: There are many degrees of closeness. Remember your promise the night you were turned. Remember your vow. That cannot change because something shiny has caught your eye. You and I, we live in a state of symbiosis. There’s intimate, and then there’s life. We are of the life variety. You live because of me, and I because of you. Try to remember that and things will remain pleasant for you.”
As Vasilios walked down the corridor, Alasdair watched him go. The male still had the ability to arouse and put him in his place all at the same time, and as he rounded the corner out of Alasdair’s view the words, If you forget whom you belong to, ómorfo mou agóri, things will be unbearable, lingered inside his mind.
Alasdair closed his eyes and tried to get his fucking head on straight. What was the matter with him? He needed to pull his shit together before he faced the human again.
ELIAS FONTANA, THE director of the National History Museum, glanced at the clock on the corner of his desk. It was a George III Walnut Bracket Clock, circa seventeenth century, one of his most prized possessions, and it currently read ten thirty p.m.
He scrubbed a palm over his face and stretched his neck from side to side in an effort to ease the tension knot that had formed there. For the past two years, he and his staff had worked nonstop to get their latest exhibit off the ground. He was tired and stressed, but they were now ready to unveil the exhibit: The Gods and Myths of Ancient Greece.
Any other time before an opening like this, Leo, Paris, and he would head over to The Dirty Dog to celebrate the long, arduous hours they’d put into creating a piece of history. At the same time, they’d commiserate over the social lives they’d neglected to do so. But the pub wasn’t in the cards tonight because one key person was missing—Leo.
Elias stood from behind his desk and placed his letter opener back on the inbox tray. He’d finally finished catching up on his mail after having neglected it for the past week, his mind having been preoccupied. He buttoned his suit jacket then switched off the lamp that sat opposite the clock and looked at the date displayed. It was the last day in October, and it’d been nearly two weeks since his friend and colleague had disappeared.
He’d known Leo for a little over ten years, ever since he’d walked into the offices at the university he’d worked at and asked for a course outline for his bachelor’s degree in archaeology. Elias remembered the fresh-faced kid like it was yesterday. He’d been young, seventeen at the most, while he himself had just celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday. Over the next four years, Elias had watched him become one of the brightest students he’d ever had the privilege of teaching.
Around the same time Leo had graduated, he’d finished his master’s degree in ancient history and moved on to pursue what he really wanted: to work in one of the top museums in the country. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that Leonidas Chapel walked back into his life and interviewed for a job as one of his curators.
Now, that man was missing.
Elias crossed the office to the door and took his coat off the antique rack in the corner. Then he folded it over his arm, and as he reached for the handle, the door was pushed open.
Standing in front of him was Paris Antoniou, the museum’s head registrar. His wild, sable-colored hair was tied the best he’d been able to manage at the nape of his neck, and he had a pencil stuck behind his ear. His black T-shirt with his favorite band’s logo across the front was covered in dust, and beneath the neckline was a quarter-sized hole. He had a white glove on one hand, and in the other, he was clutching a piece of paper in a death grip.
“I think I may have something,” he said, pushing past him into the office.
Sighing, Elias replaced his coat on the rack and switched the light on.
Paris held the piece of paper out to him. “I was going through—”
“Snooping?” Elias interrupted.
“No. I was going through some of Leo’s things while I was down in his dungeon packing up…well, you know. You’re the one who told me to go and do it.”
Elias took a step forward and reached for the paper. He’d hated giving Paris the task of clearing out Leo’s office, but after two weeks of no phone calls and
the police getting involved, it’d seemed time to box things up.
Leo’s handwritten scrawl was all over the paper. There were three dates, all fairly recent, starting towards the end of September.
9/25/15, 1:13 a.m. — Strange dream tonight. I was standing in a huge room at an altar or something, and there was a light. A bright, blinding light. And I was holding something in my hand. A scroll? A map, maybe? Usually I wouldn’t care about writing it down, but it felt so real that I want to keep a record. - Leo
10/02/15, 2:13 a.m. — Tonight I had the same dream. The light, the altar, the rolled-up paper in my hand. I still have no clue what it means. I need to look this stuff up online, see if I can find anything. Maybe I should’ve stayed at the pub longer tonight for my birthday. Then I might’ve dreamed something more exciting. Or sexy. I’m probably exhausted from the past few weeks finishing up this exhibit. Note to self: Tell Elias to pay me more. - Leo
Elias glanced at Paris, a wary look in his eye. “Okay. He was stressed and having dreams. I don’t think the police can do much with ‘huge room,’ and ‘a big, bright light.’”
Paris rolled his eyes and stepped beside him, turning so he too was facing the paper. Then he pointed to the final date. “Read that one, smartass.”
10/09/15, 3:13 a.m. — Okay, this is getting strange now. Same room, same light, but this time, I recognized the scroll in my hand. It’s the Scriptures of Delphi that I’ve been reading about. Vampires and gods... Hmm, sexy combination. Maybe I just need to get laid by a hot guy so I stop imagining strong, dominant males.
“Look at the date and the time, Elias,” Paris said, pointing to each.
As the pieces of the puzzle Paris was pointing to started to fit together, Elias’s chest tightened. Each date Leo had written down was a Friday. As was the day he had gone missing. Add to that the times he’d been having the dreams.
Elias remembered that the police had said that all the clocks in Leo’s house had been stopped on 4:13 a.m.