“Hovoriť piate cez deviate,” he said.
“What?”
“Hovoriť piate cez deviate. It means speak from five over nines, which is an idiom for when someone tells a story but they ramble too much and jump from topic to topic. I was translating something and I couldn’t understand what it was about until I understood what was happening around it, through context. It made me think of you and it was what I was going to write in my letter. How translation is the art of forgiveness, because it means understanding the context.”
“That’s neat. See? You’re a great translator. You’re good at everything you do. And I just want to be around.”
Sully kissed him, hard and fast. Chaz placed his hand on Sully’s chin as if he was holding him together. Or us together. Or both. Sully shuddered into the kiss, and soon he kissed down to Chaz’s neck, his chest, and his thighs. The pulse points. Where his blood and heartbeat were the strongest.
“That was my way of saying yes,” Sully said. “I want a home with you.”
Chaz’s smile was weak, but it was there. “Good. Come here.”
Sully straddled him. He shucked off his shirt and worked on removing both of their boxers. His moments were fast, frantic, as if the moment would slip through both of their fingers. He needed to preserve it like the final ending sequence so he could keep it forever. When Chaz’s hands met his own, he seemed to understand the need but slowed him down. Each touch was a promise that Sully thought he heard whispered in his dreams the night before.
I’m here, I’m here. I will stay. I love you more each day.
When Sully brought his lips to Chaz, he was softer. Sweetness bloomed between them. Sully grasped the back of Chaz’s neck and tasted all of him. When that wasn’t enough, Sully rubbed their erections together in his hands. Their breath became choppy. Skin flushed. Soon Sully traced his tongue over Chaz’s ear.
“Bite me,” Sully whispered.
“What?”
“Bite me. Not to turn—please don’t turn me. But I want you to taste me.”
Chaz nodded, seeming to understand. But he didn’t move to bite him. Sully picked up his fingers and dragged them across his neck. He held them over his jugular, where the heartbeat was the strongest. “I trust you to stop when you’re done. I trust you not to bite your mouth and turn me.”
Chaz nodded again, swallowing hard. “You trust me?”
“Yeah. Do you trust yourself?”
Chaz considered it a long, long time. When he moved to speak again, his teeth were crowning. The action didn’t fill Sully with fear anymore. Declan had been a fiend, the kind that tore in and did whatever he wanted. For once, the bad person died in the end of the story. The other monster, Chaz, wasn’t a monster at all. And Sully would let Chaz inside him, close enough to kill.
Because Chaz would never, ever hurt him.
“Lie down,” Chaz said. “I can work better that way.”
Sully turned onto his back, the chill of the room making his nipples hard as he did. Chaz flicked his gaze over his body, assessing all of him. They were both half-hard from making out, but they ignored their desire. This was about tenderness more than anything. Chaz straddled Sully’s thighs. He asked a dozen questions, making sure Sully could still breathe and that he was comfortable.
“Just go,” Sully said. “Go.”
Chaz tilted Sully’s head to expose his neck. He breathed over the spot under Sully’s ear near his jawline. When Chaz licked the skin, a tingle rushed through Sully. Numbing agent, disinfectant. When Chaz pricked him, it was sharp. Not painful but sudden. Sully let out a gasp but remained still. He became so aware of every last cell in his body, shaping and changing and flowing out of him. He thought of the charts he’d seen all night, the science that never made sense. He could feel it now. The words and jargon had new meaning.
Seconds later, Chaz pulled away. He looked back down at Sully, his teeth and lips a hue darker. He licked them once and they were all clean. His teeth were normal.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Sully said. A little woozy but okay. “How much did you take? That was fast, right?”
“Not a lot. Like two swallows.”
“Is that enough?”
Chaz smiled and nodded. “More than enough. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Good.” Sully propped himself up on his elbows, his wooziness disappearing. Nothing changed inside him. He didn’t feel sick. He knew he wasn’t a vampire now; he was just missing some blood, something his body would soon replace. He’d be as good as new in no time.
“That’s it, huh?”
“Well, I can close the wound on your neck. I didn’t quite get it all before.”
When Sully nodded, Chaz kissed his skin. At least it felt like kissing. His mouth and tongue were soft and sweet. There was some pressure, and then Chaz pulled away.
“And that’s it.”
“Huh.” Sully touched the side of his neck. It was soft and tender, basically like a hickey. Not life altering but good. “I think I liked that.”
“Me too. You won’t be a vampire. You won’t even show up on my blood screen since you’re human. Our blood doesn’t mesh.”
“But Trinity is, right? On your blood screen thing?”
“Yes.”
“And Nat is?”
“Yes,” Chaz said, though he seemed sad. “Why?”
“I’m just thinking it all over. Unless you turn me into a vampire, I’ll never be a part of your blood that way.”
“You are, though. You are a part of me.” Chaz brought Sully’s hand to his mouth, kissing every fingertip. “You’re all of me. You’re my home.”
“Don’t oversell it now,” Sully said, chuckling. But he felt the words like a punch to his gut. They were real. They were a part of each other. “I think it’s better this way.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re not going to stay together because our blood tells us to. We choose. Each and every day, we choose to be together.”
Chaz smiled. “I choose you.”
“I choose you.” Sully’s smile matched Chaz’s until they were kissing again. Longer and deeper than before. He tastes like me, he tastes like me, Sully repeated, then followed up with He is mine, he is mine, he is mine. Sully wanted to laugh. The operas he read rotted his brain. Like the sun-sickness did to Chaz. Sully was in a loving relationship with a vampire. It was so, so strange.
But he liked it. That was the final thing he knew for sure. He wouldn’t trade this strangeness for the world.
Sully spread his legs as their lips crashed together. Chaz sank between them and peppered Sully with kiss after long kiss. When he reached Sully’s hip bones, Sully tangled his hands in Chaz’s hair. Chaz found his cock, hard and aching, and traced his tongue along the crown before taking all of him inside. Sully shuddered and moaned. It didn’t even occur to Sully that they weren’t using protection until Chaz scrambled for condoms across the bed, moaning and touching his cock as he looked for them.
“Check my jeans. I always have one.”
Chaz laughed as he found it and pulled it out. He kissed Sully’s neck and whispered, “Always prepared.”
Sully pulled him back down for another hard kiss, biting his bottom lip. He spread his legs again as Chaz put on the condom. Sully grabbed a bottle of lotion from the hotel’s nightstand and used to it to finger himself. This was good. Very good. Sully knew his body and how to get it to perform well. But he also knew the language of Chaz’s body, how particular he was and how he licked his lips when he was serious. Sully had a job, but he also knew what he loved. And that was Chaz. In any language, it was going to be Chaz.
“You ready?” Chaz asked. He hovered beside Sully, waiting and watching for him to give a sign to go forward.
Sully wrapped his legs tighter around Chaz, bringing him into his body and their lips together again. There was no past or present. The balance of the future hung on the edge of something unspoken, like an unconjugated verb.
/> “Yes,” Sully answered. “For everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” he confirmed and kissed Chaz again.
Epilogue
THE SMELL of cake was in the air. Red velvet of course. Chaz wasn’t sure if Jack had really delivered on his promise to bring the cake or if Imogen had busted out the cake mix with Nat. Either option sounded amazing. Music hummed from the other side of the large white door, making Chaz wonder if anyone had heard him ring the bell thirty seconds ago.
“Maybe you should knock?” Sully said. “It’s a big party. So maybe they cut to the celebration early.”
Chaz knocked. No footsteps. He reached for his cell phone, only to remember there was no service out here. Texting Imogen to answer the door for his own damn party was out of the question. Chaz raised his hand to knock again when Tansy opened up. She held a young girl with a shock of white hair and a onesie to match.
“You made it!”
“Of course we did. Kind of a big deal.”
“Yeah, but sometimes celebrations are best when had alone.” She winked as she reached out her free arm for a hug from Chaz, then Sully.
“So who is this?” Chaz asked. “Juniper or….”
“Delilah! Juniper is sleeping, though I don’t know for how long.” Tansy beamed at the mention of her recently adopted daughters. “Come in, though. Sorry it’s taken us so long.”
They stepped inside and hung up their coats while Tansy bounced Delilah over her shoulder. Chaz held out the bottle of wine he’d brought and Tansy gestured to the kitchen.
“Everything else is in there. So are a bunch of people who have been asking about you all day, and your cake. Your friend Jack arrived an hour early.”
“An hour? That’s a record for him.”
“It’s fine. He didn’t want to get lost, and now he and Nat are best friends. He’s showing him his cat pictures.” She smiled and swayed Delilah again. “I have to change this one, so let me say all the proper introductions and party talk in a bit. Imogen will take over for me.”
Tansy disappeared up the long staircase in Gabe and Nat’s home. The hallway was already filled with balloons and party streamers.
“They really are treating this like a birthday,” Sully said. “Which is still really odd to me.”
“It’s about freedom more than a birthday.”
Chaz walked through the front hallway toward the kitchen, bouncing as he did. His movements were more to do with nerves than excitement.
A week ago, Athena and he won the case against Vanessa, thereby establishing that vampires and all supernatural creatures could be victims. Vanessa and her lawyer were now supposed to press charges against the person who turned her, and the courts system would be sent into another tailspin as they learned to adjust. The entire law would be rewritten, and anyone who had suffered under its previous negligence would hopefully be rewarded reparations.
After they were ushered out of the court, they’d been met with TV crews. Some from the news but many from the Citizen’s Brigade as well. As Athena stated in one of those interviews, it would be a long, long road of atonement before real, substantial changes would be made. Chaz could now move on with his life, and though he would never be a cop again, Chaz had been looking into being a PI. It seemed fitting, especially since Imogen would now be sending him on regular detective missions as they prepared for the next stage of their legalization process.
“I get the reference for the party,” Sully said, referring to a huge streamer that declared Happy Birthday in neon writing. “The parties Divine Interventions gave you when you left. But I thought you hated them?”
“I did. Because freedom didn’t actually mean freedom then. It meant a new kind of prison. Now, though… everything’s changing. And I want a party for that.”
“Good. I respect partying,” Sully said, squeezing Chaz’s hand as he teased. Sully was still working at Artie’s renovated building, but he was also hosting education classes in her basement for new people who came through. He was starting to love that role more, and Chaz liked watching him get excited about teaching.
“Imogen told me something last week,” Chaz said. “After the trial and the cameras cornered her.”
“Oh? What was it?”
“That when you’re free, it’s your duty to find people who are not and help them get to where you are.”
“Oh, Atlas,” Sully said. They hung back in the hallway still filled with balloons, enjoying the private space before their victory would become a full-blown party. “That’s a lot on your shoulders.”
“Exactly. I said that back to her. And she told me that Atlas was a myth, so he does that work. People need one another in order to keep going, and that involves families. Parties. It involves a lot more than just one person, or even two.”
Sully took a long time to consider this. Chaz knew that wasn’t because he didn’t believe him; his silence, like so many of his silences, was probably due to nerves. Sully would meet Nat for the first time today, face-to-face.
“Okay, I see the need for parties. Just forgive me if I’m not 100 percent sure what to do at one I’m not working at.”
“Oh, don’t even worry. I’m still not sure what the hell I’m doing either.”
Sully laughed and kissed Chaz quickly. By the time they made it into the living room, the TV was playing the same interview with Imogen from the trial. A new reporter for the Citizen’s Brigade named Maxine Dream held the mic to Imogen and appeared genuinely interested as she spoke.
“We are very excited about this win for the legal status of victims. All victims are victims no matter who they are now or who they were in the past. So let’s hope that our survivors can move on and find better lives, and those growing up now will no longer be subjected to unnecessary labeling. From here, change will happen.”
“Oh, our modern-day saint,” Gabe said. He stood in front of the TV in the living room and nudged Imogen, who sat close by on a couch. Gabe brought her head close for a friendly kiss on the cheek. She squirmed but eventually let him embrace her. When Blossom ran over, Imogen picked her up and combed her fingers through the flowers in her hair.
Nat turned down the TV when a commercial for a cleaner came on. He glanced at the crowd and turned to Jack, who stood next to him, but then seemed to notice Chaz and Sully lingering in the doorway.
“Hi,” Nat said.
Everyone noticed Chaz. The feeling of being on display made his skin itch. Oh no. I should have known. I hate parties, I hate parties, I hate—
“Hey,” Nat said again, in the voice he’d used to calm Chaz down years ago. “How are you?”
“Good. A little tired, but I brought wine.”
“Sounds great!” Athena said. “I know it’s been oh so long since I’ve seen you but pour me a glass. Catch me up. How have you been enjoying that freedom?”
Athena walked over and swept Chaz into the kitchen to get a corkscrew. He talked to her easily, and when the conversation became too stilted, she changed the topic like a pro. Artie and her other sisters came over soon after, talking quickly as they ate cheese and crackers with Chaz. Even Gabe joined them at one point and congratulated him on his win.
“How’s that jaw, by the way?”
“I’m fine. Lived, obviously.”
“I am sorry,” Gabe said. “Nat told me I’d feel better if I apologized more. So is this sufficient?”
Gabe’s shit-eating grin put Chaz at ease. He was toying with Chaz, but Chaz knew that meant Gabe liked him.
“You know what? I’d say we’re even.” Chaz glanced around, searching for Nat again. He wanted more out of their meeting than a quick hi. He saw him with Sully, chatting away near the stereo that pumped music from a band called Never Lose Your Flames into the room. From the passionate way they gestured with their hands as they talked, it seemed like they were both fans.
“So how do you feel?” Imogen said, coming by the kitchen counter to get a refill of her glass. “Yo
u’re the man of the hour.”
“I’m not, though. It’s all of you.” Chaz gestured to everyone at the counter. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
“I’ll take that compliment,” Gabe said.
“Same here.” Athena raised her glass. After they clinked their glasses, Nat and Sully came over, followed by Tansy. “Hey. What are we missing?”
“Nothing much. We’re just being praised like the amazing people we are,” Gabe said. “But I think we’re going to serve cake soon. How does that sound?”
“Great. It sounds really great,” Chaz said. Sully slid an arm around his waist and leaned his head against his shoulder. Gabe stood next to Nat, their poses mirrored. The goddesses all hung around in a circle, followed by Jack and Tansy with Blossom close by. As Imogen placed the cake in front of Chaz on the counter, she added candles. Nat lit them, and every eye turned to Chaz.
“What are you going to wish for?” Imogen asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
Sully squeezed Chaz’s side. Several options rolled around in his mind. He and Sully could get a new house, move away, run around in Mexico, and have a happily ever after. Or they could stay right where they were, in an apartment in downtown Toronto where they could see the city at night and Chaz could help people get to where he was. And Chaz could go to parties without feeling like his life was about to change afterward.
Maybe that would be the wish. Less nerves at parties. Always have good hair. Or that nothing will ever change from the way it is right now.
“Come on,” Gabe said. “Or I’ll make the wish.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Chaz took in a deep breath and blew.
More from Francis Gideon
A New Canadiana Novel
Cop-turned-bounty-hunter Gabe Dominguez is hired to capture firestarter Nat Wyatt. For a dragon-shifter like Gabe, apprehending Nat is easy, but transporting him involves more time, energy, and blood loss than he envisioned. An attack from a band of fairies, an out-of-control forest fire, and a showdown at an auction don’t faze Gabe, but Nat’s innocence might stop him entirely.
Black Market Blood Page 41