Page 1 of Clay White
Chapter One
I knew what he was as soon as I saw him. He’d likely fool the fresh meat, the half-zonked kids who writhed around us. To them he was just a smoking-hot guy, a few years older, whose pale eyes reflected oddly in the dancing light of the disco ball. But I knew what he really was.
I went to him anyway.
He must have seen the truth of me too. It wasn’t just that I had some years on the boys around me; a few other men in the club were also old enough to remember MySpace and flip phones. But I’m… rough around the edges. I can scrub myself clean, shave the dark stubble from my face, and tame my curls into something respectable. I can wear jeans that are not threadbare and frayed at the seams, a shirt still crisp with the manufacturer’s starch. But I can’t do anything about the tension that sits so deeply in my muscles that it’ll be there after I die. Or the hardness in my gaze. I can make my lips curl upward, but I’m only baring my teeth. It’ll look more like a sneer than a smile.
He saw all this, but he didn’t move away.
Instead he cocked his head slightly and parted his lips, revealing the slightest flash of fang. And he held out his hand, palm upward. Inviting me.
That surprised me. I expected him to run away, or maybe to attack. Yet there he stood, asking me to dance.
My legs carried me toward him, and my left hand—without my volition—rose to clasp his. He pulled me close enough to smell his odor of old smoke and copper pennies. My right hand proved just as willful as its mate and found purchase just above his tautly denimed ass.
I don’t know what music was playing. No doubt something fast, mostly rhythmic with very little melody, the meaningless lyrics lost beneath the pounding electronic beat. We ignored the music, swaying in time to nothing but my heartbeat. He was graceful, dammit. They all are, as if they’ve forgotten altogether the meaty drag of a mortal body, as if gravity has no more influence than do the passing years.
I had been a clumsy boy, always tripping over feet that had grown bigger overnight, always dropping things from fingers that were slower than my mind. My father beat me for it and called me stupid, but the whippings didn’t make me more agile—just scarred and enraged. When I grew up and joined the Bureau, I worked hard to learn control of my body. Long, sweaty months of punishing work, and eventually I could wield weapons with deadly force and accuracy or, if need be, use my fists and feet and bulk as handily as any demon. But I still couldn’t dance worth a damn. This vampire’s facile movements made me angry, even as he managed to pull me along in his shadow.
“You’re tall,” he said, as if he’d just noticed. He was too, but at six foot five, I had a few inches on him. He had to crane his neck to whisper in my ear. “And strong.”
“I eat my Wheaties.”
His laughter was a rumble against my chest. “And you’re not wearing any of those awful colognes. Good.” He had a very faint accent, one I couldn’t place. Something European, I supposed. His skin looked as if it had been light even when he was human, and his hair might have bordered on ginger in the sunlight. I wondered how long it had been since he’d seen the day. Fuck, it might have been weeks sinceI’dbeen out between dawn and dusk. I’d become a nightwalker too.
The song ended and another began, indistinguishable from the first. Boys gyrated around us, but we were an island. He was slimmer than I am, his tight jeans and tighter T-shirt accentuating his lean frame. His mouth would have seemed too wide if it hadn’t been balanced by a long nose and flared cheekbones, and I wondered whether he groomed his eyebrows or if the arches were naturally perfect. I could feel his strength through his hands, one on my hip and the other midway up my back. I wanted to lean my full weight against him because I knew he could hold me.
Halfway through the third song—or maybe it was the fourth—he pulled me closer. Now we fit so closely together that his hard cock fit into the hollow near my hip. I was hard too. Aching. Had been since he first touched me.
We rocked against each other in a slow pantomime of sex, his cool breaths as jagged as my own. “What’s your name, agent?” he asked me.
“I’m no agent,” I growled.
He huffed, unbelieving, but I wasn’t lying. It had been three months since I left the Bureau— Fuck. Since the Bureau left me.
My body must have stiffened, because he stroked my back as if I were a nervous pony. “I’m Marek,” he said. “I use many names, but I’d like you to know my real one. The one my father gave me.” I couldn’t tell if his tone was mocking or wistful.
I wanted him to know my real name as well. I’d always figured a certain honesty was owed between hunter and prey. “Clayton White.”
“Do your friends call you Clay?”
I shrugged in his embrace. They might if I had any. The other agents had just called me White. A color rather than an identity.
Marek undulated against me and sniffed at my neck, and my right hand slid slightly lower to grip his tight ass. The fabric of his jeans was thin enough that I could have torn it if I’d tried.
Two boys bumped into us. They were pretty, one dark and the other blond, each of them delicate enough to snap barehanded. They smiled in hormonal, pharmaceutical bliss and spun away.
“So much more freedom than when I was their age,” Marek said. “I never touched another man while I was alive. Or woman. I died a virgin. Such a waste.”
“Not even the vamp who turned you?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Not even. I was intended simply as a meal. Accidents happen.”
Again his tone was light, but there might have been an undercurrent of sorrow. I didn’t want to acknowledge the answering twinge in my own heart. My parents had needed a shotgun wedding, and my father never forgave me for it.
“How old were you?” I asked, not intending to. It seemed I had little control of myself tonight.
“Twenty-four. Old for a virgin, even in my time. I’ll bet you didn’t make it through high school untouched.”
