Page 17 of Pining for the Prince
“No. I’m a fucking delight, and you know it. Let’s face it, the house was payment for the job for Tobias—and this place is yours. I figure you owe me for helping fix it up.”
Gwil hadn’t thought about it on those terms. As far as he knew, apart from the places he took his dates and him crashing at Gwil’s place, Hyax didn’t live somewhere in the human world, preferring to return to the fae realm—but maybe he’d been wrong.
“Did you want the house? I can sign over the residential bits, and I take the office. It’ll be a trudge from my current place but it’d be fairer I suppose. Then you can link into the ley line easier.”
Hyax rolled his eyes. “I don’t need you to do that, but I wouldn’t mind having somewhere I could use as an official base in the human realm rather than staying with random friends.”
“You mean we’d share. Like flatmates?”
“Unless you have an objection?” Hyax wandered over to another door, and it opened into a sizeable second bedroom. “I could take this one, the house is plenty big enough for the two of us to have our own space when we need it.”
Hyax sounded uncertain. He should say no, it could be a huge mistake. Hyax was already a constant visitor to his flat, and that had been enough to make his pining pathetic, living with himwould only make it worse. But there was no way he could refuse, not without looking like a monumental arsehole, although to protect himself there’d need to be ground rules.
“You’re always at my place. Might as well make it official. But we’ll need to agree on a few things so we don’t kill each other.”
Hyax’s answering smile was beautiful. “Don’t worry. I won’t mess with your blood stocks, and I’ll even help with Midnight. The litter tray is all yours… cat shit is non-negotiable.”
“I was thinking more about visitors.” He’d take all the hairballs and kitty puke in the world rather than having to see a parade of Hyax’s freshly banged boytoys around the place.
Hyax cocked his head to one side. “What do you mean by that? We both have friends. I wouldn’t think having guests would bother you.”
Surely Hyax wasn’t that obtuse? “I was thinking more about the temporary liaison type. Probably best if we didn’t bring people back here.”
“Are you regularlyentertaining?” Hyax’s question came out strangulated.
“Erm… no… well…”
Hyax smiled. It made Gwil want to do unspeakable things to him. “Then we’ve no issue.”
“I… okay.” He’d not expected Hyax to be thinking it’d be him bringing home partners, of the two of them Hyax was the one dating regularly.
Before he could press the issue Hyax asked, “What about feeding? I joked about your blood stocks, but you do have other options.”
“I do live-feed occasionally.” Few times a year at most, if he could be bothered. “But I don’t tend to do that at home.”
“Do you fuck them after you’ve fed?”
“What? No. There’s a service I use, and I don’t fuck my food.” He wrinkled his nose. “That’s disgusting.”
Hyax laughed. “Sorry, I misunderstood. Maybe I should have said when you become a sire for someone.”
Siring was completely different to general feeding and didn’t have to have a sexual element, and in his experience it was best it didn’t. “I don’t do that anymore.”
Hyax’s brow crumpled. “Why not?”
“Those who want to be turned can be clingy and weird, and there are plenty of other vampires who are much better suited to dealing with them. Besides, the sexual element isn’t mandatory and, even when it does happen, it can be short-lived like I had with Solivatus, or you can attach more permanently. It’s a bit complicated.” He really didn’t want to discuss those aspects at the moment. To some of his kin, it was the best part of being a vampire. He’d turned a handful of humans when he was younger but the idea no longer appealed. Not after the last one…
“Sounds like a conversation for when we're both the wrong side of sober.” Hyax opened another door and grimaced. “I assume you’d like to get rid of the floor-to-ceiling leopard print.”
“Fucking hell! What were they thinking?”
“It feels like it had human occupiers prior to you, so I suspect the ley lines affected them and brought out the extremes of their creativity.”
As far as he was aware ley lines didn’t impact humans to a great extent unless they were very powerful and the human had a touch of supernatural in their genes. “Then the power of these must be significant.”
Hyax smirked, and his grin was sexy. “Oh, yeah, it feels really good.”
“But you’ll be able to get the place liveable fairly soon?” He hoped so. “It’s not long before the solstice and Christmas, and I tend to like to hunker down at home for the holidays.”
