Page 59 of Bound in Blood
“Next time,” Logan repeated, sleepily, as Marco shifted them both downward. He vaguely registered a pillow being fluffed under his head. Fingers being curled around his hip bone. A Marco-scented mass pressing against his back.
“We’ll hold you to it,” Mateo promised, pressing a kiss to Logan’s forehead.
The sun came up somewhere outside, and Logan got the best sleep of his fucking life.
Chapter
Nineteen
ONE WEEK LATER
MATEO
It was raining.
The kind of rain that was cold and biting. The kind that threatened to become snow, but wasn’t quite there. Mateo, for one, was just glad he wasn’t human, so the worst of the chill wouldn’t affect him.
Water slicked down the back alley walls in long, lazy streams, pooling near the storm drain as he and Marco watched from the shadows, waiting for… well, Mateo wasn’t sure what.
The baby faced feral to wander up to them with an apology and a promise to never hurt anyone again?
Not likely.
Mateo shifted his weight, rolling his shoulders beneath the collar of his coat. The rain may not have been freezing, but it was starting to soak through the fabric in a way that bordered on uncomfortable. Mateo might have been becoming too domestic, because in that moment all his stupid mind supplied was ‘At least Logan is inside and doesn’t have to deal with this.’
“I hate this city,” he muttered aloud, not really directed at anything.
“No, you don’t. You hate being wet,” Marco replied, just behind him, voice low and even.
“Same thing. It rains like half the year here,” Mateo grumbled, knowing full well he sounded a bit like a child having a tantrum. “I don’t know how the book vampires handle living in Washington.”
“Well, for starters, they’re not real.” Marco poked at Mateo’s shoulder. “And we need to focus.”
Mateo sighed and rolled his eyes, though it didn’t have quite the same bite when Marco was right. It never did.
They fell quiet again. The sound of rain filled the space between them. It pattered against the trash cans and the dumpster beside them, trickled down the rooflines, hissed as it hit the still-warm bricks. The alley smelled like wet cardboard and old grease, and Mateo hated that he could identify that scent now.
“How long do you think we wait before calling it?” he asked eventually, his voice quieter now. “Midnight? One?”
“Logan doesn’t get off work until nearly three,” Marco reminded him. “And you used to be much better at doing the whole quiet-stalking-through-back-alleys thing when we were human.”
“What can I say? Immortality has made me impatient.” Mateo blew out a breath. “He’s probably not even here. If he’s got any sort of conscience like Logan says, he’s probably run far, far away by now.”
They moved deeper into the alley, boots barely making a sound against the wet pavement. Even after all these years, Mateo still marveled at how easily they could vanish into the dark now. As boys, they used to cross the street when alleys looked like this. Now they were the ones people should probably cross the street to avoid.
Mateo huffed a quiet laugh, mostly to himself.
Marco caught it anyway. “What?”
“Just think it’s interesting how full circle this has all become.” He shook his head, blinking water from his lashes. “Howwe’rethe ones stalking people in alleys now.”
“Interesting isn’t the word I’d use,” Marco replied. “Ironic,maybe. Like if there is a god, they’ve got a sick sense of humor.”
“Fratellino,if you believe in a god after all we’ve been through, I can’t help you.”
The rain had slowed slightly as they rounded another corner, somewhere between Vik’s bar and Logan’s old apartment, but it was still steady enough to curtain their vision. A haze of streetlight flickered over the slick pavement. Somewhere in the distance, a car passed, tires hissing along wet asphalt.
“It hasn’t been all bad,” Marco argued finally. “Mostly bad, yes. But there have been good things.”
