by Joey W. Hill
But as he thought of what Cai had said, he made a mental note to shift before he fully fell asleep. When the vampire woke, that armor would be back in place, with the attendant barbed sense of humor. Rand didn’t put it past him to try and stick himself up Rand’s wolf ass just to piss him off. And then Rand would bite his dick off.
What does it matter? Cai’s thoughts were slurred, sleepy. It’s still you in there, right?
Yes, but the wolf…it’s a sanctuary, of sorts. A haven from everything. That feels like an invasion. Using a battering ram on a door that hasn’t been opened to you.
Cai snickered against his back. “You compared my dick to a battering ram. I feel so virile and manly.”
Rand let out an exasperated huff. And bit back a mental smile.
Armor it might be, but damned entertaining armor.
Twilight closed in. As a shifter, Rand was more nocturnal, often sleeping during the day and hunting at night, so his sleep patterns worked well with a vampire’s. Though as he woke, he found himself wondering about the servants in the kitchen who’d obviously anticipated a busy few hours taking care of business for their Masters and Mistresses while the vampires slept. Maybe third marked servants had less need for sleep. What other changes would he notice? Would all of them be the same for a shifter, someone not fully human?
I know precious little about servants, so couldn’t tell you. Guess we’ll find out. But it’s the best protection I can give you for where we’re going.
The vampire’s arm slid further around his chest. He muffled a warm chuckle against Rand’s back as he threaded his fingers through his chest hair. “Even as human, you’re still furry.” His hips crowded up against Rand’s bare ass, testing. “Keep yourself lubed up around me, wolf. Saves us both some time.”
“Or maybe you should let me handle your needs a different way.” Rand turned and pushed Cai to his back, earning a heavy-lidded look hard to interpret. The vampire stretched, a distracting work of art as his arms, legs and torso rippled, arched and spread, then he was back to a resting pose, his fingers laced behind his head.
Rand turned his gaze to his target, the heavy wakeup erection resting on Cai’s belly, his testicles an appealing cushion for the thick base. His body had the smooth perfection of a Grecian statue, a marked contrast to Rand’s thick pelt of chest hair, the layer of dark threads on legs and arms, the thatch between his legs. It didn’t seem to bother the vampire, though.
“Why would it?” Cai unlaced one hand to reach up and coil it in Rand’s loose, long hair, stroking and gripping at once. Bringing him down with a tug. “I love all your hair. I want your mouth, wolf. I want it now.”
Rand resisted. He’d always been the one in charge, even with Dylef. Being treated as the bottom, it wasn’t that he disliked it; it unsettled him how easy it was for him to embrace it with Cai. As if he deferred to him as the alpha of their two-man pack, which was usually something that had to be earned. Not taken, as Grey had tried to do it.
Cai’s gaze drifted to Rand’s mouth. “I dreamed of that mouth on my cock. My hand in your hair like this, tightening, pushing you down, watching all those muscles in your ass and back flex as you were bent over me. I was dreaming how I’d take you afterward. Just fuck you good and hard, so when we go upstairs and start this circus, my come will be in your ass, my scent all over your body.”
He propped himself up on his elbows, his expression becoming something more serious.
“I don’t have your need to belong,” he said abruptly. “Grief’s kept you a lone wolf, not your nature. You’ve just been alone too long, Rand. You need a pack, and I’m pretty much what you’ve got. I stumbled across your path. That’s all.”
Rand frowned, but Cai shook his head before he could say anything. “Sorry as hell for that and, if we both don’t end up dead, I hope something better comes along for you. But I can make some parts of it not so bad. Like this. So put your fucking mouth on me. Don’t make me get rough.”
Rand was caught between lust, humor and annoyance, all of which came with a surge of adrenaline at the vampire’s deliberate challenge to turn things in a different direction.
He wouldn’t mind fighting it out with the vampire, see who ended up with top dibs, but maybe not this morning. For one thing, the furniture in this room looked expensive. For another, Cai had already pissed Greenwald off a couple times, and Lyssa at least once. He’d been lucky to leave his audience with her with both testicles.
“Yeah, she’s one scary bitch,” Cai noted. “Hot as hell, too. Jacob’s one lucky blood bank. Rand.”
The one word wasn’t like a command. It was one, and Rand obeyed, because his mouth was begging for the taste of the handsome male, particularly after that unconsciously provocative stretch. He closed his mouth around the broad head and worked his way down the shaft. He might not have a wolf’s tongue in this form, but he’d learned a lot about its versatility, and some of that could be translated to a human mouth. Cai approved, if his sucked-in breath and sudden thrust were any indication. It was a different kind of full body stretching, giving himself to pleasure, and he took Rand with him.
His hand flexed in Rand’s hair, pushing him down deeper on him, as he’d warned. Rand relaxed his throat, let it happen, taking him all, and kept working his tongue over him. He liked the taste of the vampire, salt and earth. Heat. He spread his hands over Cai’s abdomen and chest, the narrow line of his hips. Reaching between his legs, nudging them further apart with his knuckles, he cupped and rolled his testicles, stroked and probed at his ass, and earned a muttered, reverent curse. He dampened his fingertips on Cai’s pre-come and played between his cheeks at the rim, adding to the sensations.
“Going to fuck you through this mattress,” Cai growled. “Suck me.”
Rand complied with a thorough enjoyment. It was nice, having regular access to another male, to satisfy his need to give and take. This felt like both. Cai had initially tensed when he was caressing his chest and stomach, his hips, but as Rand kept doing it, he relaxed into the stroking, gravitating toward it. The male was very sexually adept, but he acted as if all those skills had been honed toward driving the pleasure of his chosen partner, not seeking any intimacy in return during sex. Just sexual gratification centered on his cock and ass.
Which was a waste, because exploring the male’s body, watching how it responded to the lightest tough, was a gift.
Rand didn’t think Cai was in his head right now; he was riding too high on the physical wave of lust. But confirming Rand’s thoughts, Cai brushed his hands away too soon, guiding them back to his cock and balls.
It deflated some of his own desire, but not enough he couldn’t give Cai what he’d promised. Rand sucked him all the way to the edge and drew satisfaction from the anticipation of bringing the vampire release.
Cai had different plans. Before Rand could forestall him, he’d moved with vampire speed, exercising brutal strength to switch their positions. He put Rand on his stomach on the bed, thrust his hand between his thighs and took a firm grip on his balls. He used that hold to make Rand lift his hips off the mattress. Using the lubrication that Rand’s mouth had left on him, Cai drove in. It wasn’t quite enough lubrication, so the thrust wasn’t entirely pleasurable, but he realized Cai intended that.
He covered Rand, pushing him down flat on the bed when he was all the way in, his lips at Rand’s ear. “Next time I tell you to keep yourself lubed for me, you’ll remember. And if I wake up and want to fuck you, that’s not a negotiation where you get to suck me off instead of giving me your ass. Got it?”
Rand’s first instinct was to fight him. Something had Cai’s ire up and was making him drill in the point, literally and figuratively, and Rand bristled at it.
But despite his ability to remind the vampire he wasn’t with a human he could overpower, Rand found his feet knocked out from beneath him by something he didn’t expect. An overpowering wave of physical and emotional response from Cai.
The vampire
had a body meant for sex, and knew how to use it. But beneath that, what had driven the nightmare, the rage in the study, and that moment at the sink, when the vampire had stared sightlessly at the mirror, reached out with hard, edgy need. It found an answer in Rand, deep down where his own aggressive, erotic cravings recognized something in Cai’s approach that could coat past wounds and losses, paint the way to a different level of connection between their bodies.
And what a connection. When he was forceful, intending to underscore who was on top here, Cai could be damn well irresistible. Plus, he knew what he was doing on the mechanical end of things, hitting just the right rhythm, friction and placement with that capable dick of his. Rand’s balls were tingling from the impact of Cai’s slapping against them. The vampire knocked Rand’s legs out wider, leaving his hips only inches off the bed, just enough to achieve the right angle. It rubbed Rand’s cock against the bed linens and oh hell, that friction.
“You want to come, don’t you? Prove who your ass belongs to.”
He’d wrap a rubber band around his cock rather than confirm that statement. Cai chuckled darkly and reached between them to caress Rand’s balls. Taking a firm grip on Rand’s dick, he tugged it as Rand bucked beneath him.
Okay, now was the time the wolf needed to come out. Rand shoved himself up, one hand clamping on the head board. Cai moved with him, wrapping his hand around Rand’s throat. He sank his fangs into the pumping artery, sealing his lips over the spot. The vampire slid his arm around Rand’s chest to hold him up, his cock buried deep in Rand’s ass as he fed.
No, not just fed. Rand stiffened as Cai released something into his blood. Something that charged and burned, sizzled. It reached out to all four limbs, but it was when it hit his brain that the real fireworks began. It unleashed a wave of emotions, formless, as if waiting for something to bring them clarity, something that made him crave blood. Cai’s blood.
The third mark. He was giving him the third mark.
Cai eased them both to the covers, lying full upon Rand. His breath caressed Rand’s neck as he held his mouth there another few moments for a gentler sucking. When he withdrew his fangs, he lifted enough to do something that jostled their coupled bodies. He held out his wrist before Rand’s face, and Rand saw the movement had been caused by the force of Cai’s strike on his own wrist. Blood oozed out of the two puncture wounds.
“Drink. That will close the third mark loop and link us.”
Rand didn’t have to stop and think. He’d made his decision. Though the vampire would deny he’d said it exactly that way, Rand knew it would maximize their chances to help Dovia against already impossible odds, so there was nothing left to debate. Rand closed his mouth over the vampire’s wrist, gripping it with his own hand to steady the connection.
Three swallows of blood, and the whole world changed.
Chapter Nine
Cai had seemed so matter-of-fact about it. Because of that, Rand hadn’t expected anything much different from the second mark. This was…
He’d gone rigid in Cai’s arms, no matter that his cock was still throbbing with impending climax, and having Cai deep in his ass was a burning pleasure. This overruled that. It was as if his cells were being remade, every one of them bound to a matching one with the male flush against his back, bearing him down against the mattress.
The second mark had put Cai’s thoughts in his mind, an adjustment to mental privacy, but wolf communication was as much intuition and body language as it was speaking, so it hadn’t been a big leap. This was way beyond that.
Rand could actually feel the vampire descending through all the levels of his mind, deeper, even deeper, penetrating everything. Beyond the mind, and way into the heart and soul. He was walking straight into those rooms, able to throw any door open without Rand’s say-so. He’d told Cai that being fucked as a wolf would be like invading a sanctuary? This nowhere-to-hide, child-like but undeniable fear, caused the type of panic Rand didn’t experience too often.
Cai’s arm had tightened around him, making it worse. Rand withdrew on every level. Or tried. He was thrashing. “Let me go…can’t breathe.”
Cai fortunately listened, pulling out and moving back, giving Rand room to scramble free of the bed. He was disoriented, having trouble making sense of anything. His mind was split in two. Nothing sacred or private any more. He was like a cut open fish, still flopping on a bank, in agony. He hit something, maybe a side table, sent it crashing, and knocked over something else that shattered. A vague burning, like glass cutting into his feet. He didn’t care. He was trying to escape, and he knew one sure way to do that.
No, Rand, don’t…
He shifted, but the disarray of his mind made it one of the worst shifts of his life, as if his bones were being broken and remade. A cry became a howl of agony and he was writhing, thrashing on the floor, caught between human and wolf. Fuck, it was a Split, increasing his terror. It happened sometimes, to wolves caught up in a trauma where they were unable to keep their wits about them. It could become permanent.
Permanent and fatal, because there was no way to exist with a foot physically in each plane.
Help…
“Rand, I’m here. Calm down. Breathe. You’re not stuck, goddamn it. You’re just worked up. Just breathe.” Cai scrambled to his side, his own mind in chaos, still trying to manage all the images and connections with the shifter, while simultaneously trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Well, to do that, he’d need to know what the fuck he was doing, right? And obviously, he hadn’t. Some of this stuff, like opening and closing his mind to the shifter to communicate, had been easy as falling asleep, no instructions needed, making him believe the vampire-servant thing was ninety-nine percent common sense and instinct. But this…
Oh, God, the shifter was…he was part man, part animal, a macabre, monstrous mess of human and wolf body parts writhing on the floor. Fuck, what could he do? Cai didn’t know who he could trust here, and he’d…what the hell had he been thinking?
He whirled at a knock, but the one knocking didn’t bother to wait before he entered. It was Jacob, Lady Lyssa’s servant. He took in the scene at a glance and came swiftly across the room, though was sensible enough to stop a few feet back when Rand threw his head back and snarled. Rand’s mind was being swallowed by his wolf, the human part still caught up in the marking change, trying to sort it out.
“How can I help?” Jacob asked. He wasn’t deferential the way most servants Cai had met were, but he was honest and direct, which Cai appreciated. Rand didn’t have time for him to weigh trust pros and cons.
“I’m not sure. I was third marking him. Least, I think I was. I’ve never done it before, and I don’t know much about human servants, making them, having them…” Cai broke off at Jacob’s startled look. “I never witnessed…I was just told the basics. Take blood, release serum, give blood. He’s a shifter, I don’t know… There was something in his mind about Splitting, this in-between state. He’s frightened. I don’t know how to help.”
“Okay.” Jacob moved to the upended side table, found the house phone where it had fallen behind the bed, and picked it up, punching in a number. “Debra, Jacob here. Are you in? Just landed? Good. We’ve got an emergency. Not sure what we’ll be needing, but Brian’s probably the best bet to figure it out.”
He gave the unseen woman details based on some of what Cai had told him, and added info that Cai hadn’t. “Think it might have been an unprepped third marking. Going to have my lady come help talk him through it, but it’d be good to have you as backup in case I’m wrong.” He paused. “Tell Brian not to wet himself, but the servant is a wolf shifter. Yeah, they really exist. We’re keeping that knowledge classified.”
At a later time, Cai would be impressed by how calm the servant remained, with a thrashing half-man, half-wolf on the floor in obvious distress. But Cai was going to lose his fucking mind if someone didn’t do something. Now.
Jacob hung up and returned to Cai’s side. “My l
ady’s on her way.”
“What? I…” Cai had shot his mouth off to her earlier. That was different, when he’d been making a point driven by his emotions and what-the-fuck attitude toward almost everything. In a heartbeat, he positioned himself over Rand. The mutated male was tearing Cai’s heart out. He’d subsided into a painful whimpering, eyes glassy. He had three wolf legs and one human one, and the jerking of human and animal limbs in a mindless mimic of attempted flight was killing Cai. He’d done this.
“If she’s coming here to take a stripe off my ass or do something terrible to him, she’ll have to take me apart piece by piece to do it.”
“I believe something terrible was already done to him,” Lyssa said coolly, stepping inside the door and closing it behind her. “By an inexperienced vampire who should have asked questions rather than hiding behind his ego and pride.”
Cai swallowed, his fists half clenched. Jacob straightened, his expression saying he was about to warn Cai to stand down, but Lyssa took care of that herself. She crossed the room, wearing a hunter green dress that flowed over her curves and moved with the same rippling appeal as her dark hair, loose on her shoulders. Unbound, it reached her waist. She was barefoot and dropped to her heels next to Rand, so close to Cai her shoulder pressed against his knee. He noticed Jacob shift closer, a protective gesture. He wanted Cai to move back, but Cai wasn’t doing it. Yeah, he’d fucked this up, but that didn’t mean he’d abandon Rand.
“Your shifter is not going to come to harm from me,” Lyssa said. “Put your hand where mine is.”
She laid it on Rand’s chest, a curious patchwork of wolf fur and human chest hair. The ribs on the right side were spread in a strange, unsettling way, as if about to split from the skin. He understood why Rand’s mind was a red haze of spiraling chaos and pain. His was in danger of going the same way if he couldn’t fucking help him. Lyssa’s calmness helped, he couldn’t deny it, but the tightness around her mouth, and close way she was studying what was happening to Rand, didn’t assure a good outcome.