Page 34 of Wolfgang

Wolfe was here.

“How did you know to come get me?” Eric asked, his gaze locked onto Wolfe’s side profile as the other vampire steered them into their house’s driveway. No, nottheirhouse.Wolfe’shouse.

He had only the vaguest recollection of them leaving the hospital itself. Fuzzy images of fluorescent hallways, a blurry memory of Danny taking his work phone to give to Gabe in the parking lot. They’d passed some kid in the hallway—and really, who was letting their kid wander around the hospital unsupervised?—who’d looked weirdly horrified, which didn’t bode well for what Eric must have looked like.

But mostly what he remembered of the last fifteen minutes was the strong, comforting presence of Wolfe’s hand gripping his upper arm to guide him out, coupled with the terrifying looks the vampire had given to anyone who seemed the slightest bit likely to get in their way.

Eric had asked the question partly because he was curious—had Wolfe simply tired of giving him the pretense of freedom?—but mostly because he wasn’t ready to go in yet, to admit fully that he’d taken one meager shot at independence and ended up falling flat on his fanged face.

“I felt your distress.” Wolfe kept his eyes straight ahead, on the house in front of them. “I’d been feeling it since the moment you left, of course, but about an hour ago, it started to…peak. So I called your nurse friend and I came.”

Eric stared at him, at those sharp cheekbones, that aristocratic profile.

Wolfe said it like it was so simple. Eric had needed him, so he had come, without Eric even having to ask. No begging, not this time.

A memory came to Eric then. A two-week leadership camp he’d been shuttled off to between his sophomore and junior years of high school. A few days in and he’d started having nausea and abdominal pain. The nurse had told him he was only homesick, so he’d called his mother instead. Told her he needed to come home, to go to the doctor. She’d refused. She’d refused for three straight days. What he’d actually needed, according to her, was that camp on his college applications. The pain had finally grown to such an intensity that the camp nurse sent him to the ER. It had been appendicitis. All the surgical consents had had to be signed over the phone because his mother couldn’t “just drop everything and be there in an hour.”

He’d woken up in recovery alone.

“Why this sadness, pet? You wish I had not come?”

Eric refocused his eyes to see Wolfe had turned to look at him, his head cocked.

He didn’t know what to say. Hewishedhe regretted Wolfe coming to pick him up, wished he weren’t grateful to the very person who’d put him in this position in the first place. The fatigue he’d been feeling ever since he’d woken up was heavier than ever.

If this was what being a vampire felt like, then frankly, it sucked.

Eric pressed a palm against his forehead. “What am I going to do? We can’t be apart for half a day.”

Wolfe seemed to debate with himself for a minute, a strange stillness taking over his face. Then he sighed, shaking his head softly. “As lovely as it would be to have you thinking you need me so desperately, I’m afraid it won’t always be like this. You’re newly turned; we’re…at odds. It’s all very unstable.”

Unstable was right. “So what do we do?”

Wolfe arched a brow. “We bond.”

He said it so simply, like it was the easiest thing. Like Eric had any experience at all building a relationship that lasted for more than a few hurried, sweaty hours. “How?”

“How does any new relationship grow?” Wolfe waved a hand in the air. “Time spent together, conversation.” His eyes gleamed with a wicked glint. “Sex.”

A shock of arousal hit Eric in the belly, the fog of his fatigue shredding apart in an instant. Just like that, he was hardening in his scrubs.

What the fuck?

The unexpected arousal to such a simple word made him petulant again. “But I need to work,” he insisted.

Wolfe’s jaw ticked. “As I told you before, you don’t.”

“But Iwantto work?” It came out like a question.

Wolfe narrowed his eyes at him, obviously latching onto the uncertainty embedded in Eric’s insistence, before leaning across the console, unbuckling Eric’s seat belt. “Our first conversation to be had, then. Which we will have inside, in the comfort of our home.”

Again, he said it so simply.Ourhome.

And Eric just…followed him inside. Docile as a lamb. He watched as Wolfe selected (afterverycareful consideration, picking up and then replacing bottle after bottle) a suitable wine, fetched two long-stemmed glasses, and ushered him up to what Eric had started to think of as his bedroom.

Wolfe set the wine and glasses down on the bedside table, sat on the edge of the bed, and patted the spot beside him. “Sit, darling.”

Eric sat.

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