Page 10 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
Vincent tried not to cringe. The idea that vampires were inherently more dangerous than humans just because they were stronger and faster and had fangs that could pass on their affliction was so rampant, even among humans like Wesley—humans who believed vampires deserved equal rights, or at least compassionate treatment—that the joke stung. “That doesn’t prove you aren’t a serial killer. Or a fetishist.”
Wesley blanched a little. Definitely no fire there, then. Or perhaps hewassecretly a vampire serial killer; Vincent was sure some of them were charming and good-looking and extraordinarily enthusiastic about their victims. They were also noticeably less likely to get caught or imprisoned. Murdering a vampire was technically still murder, at least in most states, but it was also far more commonly excused as self-defense, or the god-awful justification ofI panicked when I realized what they were, like that hadn’t also been used as a defense for the biased killings of fully human people in the past.
Still, Vincent didn’t think he had to worry about that level of bigotry from Wesley.
He cringed as a thought hit him. “It can’t be anything that would reveal I’m a vampire to the rest of the neighborhood, either.” It was hard enough getting jobs as a pale, dirty pretend-human who refused to work during the day; he didn’t need the sympathetic people who took pity on him to suddenly cave to the great opinions of society if he could no longer deny what he was. “You haven’t told anyone else about me, right?”
“Absolutely not!” Wes grimaced. “Well, yes, I talked to my friend Kendall a bit, but she lives three hundred miles away and there’s a twenty-three percent chance that she thinks I’m making the whole thing up.”
This was such a terrible idea.
“Come on. It’ll be fun.” Wesley smiled, and he reached for Vincent, slowly, his palm flat like an offering.
Vincent let him, let Wesley pat his grungy jacket and squeeze his shoulder gently. He felt like putty inside. A half-melted chocolate puddle, transfixed by a single tender touch. It shamed him and burned like tears behind his eyes. This was, definitely, such a terrible idea. But he needed it, so desperately. “Fine.” He didn’t mean for it to sound like a growl, but that’s how it came out, soft and drawn. “Hit me with your spiciest noodles.”
7
WESLEY
Wes tried not to stumble over his own feet as he fled deeper into the kitchen. This had all been going so well; he’d lured Vincent inside, stopped him from running immediately back out, and had the brilliant idea to suggest this wager, which upon his win, he’d ask the vampire to come to Vitalis-Barron with him under the premise of a prank. Except then Vincent had called him a fetishist, and his voice had gone husky and breathless, and for some damned reason Wesley’s body had decided the best response was to touch the vampire’s shoulder. Wes was pretty sure those things hadn’t happened in that order but at this point all he could quite remember was the weird chest-fluttering lightheadedness that had come over him, tightening his lungs and drawing up every unhelpful memory of Vincent’s bite.
The vampire definitely had some kind of thrall over him. That was it. That was definitely also why this house-invader and serial assaulter seemed like a genuinely sweet and shy person. It didn’t matter how Vincent appeared from the outside, his nightly actions were far worse than anything Wesley was doing. And turning him over to the mega pharmaceutical company currently killing its research patients was the first step in taking down that company and stopping those deaths.
A step that started with spicy ramen.
Wesley threw open the nearest cupboard door—not even the one he needed—just to put a shield between his face and Vincent. He shifted his mother’s ancient collection of traveling mugs like there might be noodles hidden behind one of them, buying himself a few more moments to calm down. Except that Vincent, the same Vincent who had previously looked like he was one bad startle from flying out the door, somehow decided that was the perfect moment to creep up behind him.
“Oh,” he said, his breath a hair too close to Wesley’s neck for Wes to maintain any peace of mind. “That’s a lot of travel mugs.”
“Family tradition!” Wes grabbed two at random and darted around Vincent to set them on the counter. One had a fancy lattice of gilded vines on it, and the other displayed the worn-out image of a popular animated warrior-princess.
Vincent’s left brow lifted ever so slightly at the sight of them. “You have a family tradition of eating ramen in travel mugs?”
“Only when it’s extra spicy ramen,” Wes bullshitted like his life depended on it and not just his sense of dignity and his fraying sexuality and ability to fuck over an evil pharmaceutical company. He flicked the kettle back on and dug through the cupboard—the right one this time—for another ramen packet. Their wrappers seemed extra-defiant tonight, and the squares of noodles wouldn’t fit in the travel mugs until he snapped them in half with his fists.
He decided that struggling with the spice packets was too much catastrophe for one day and began opening them with the scissors when Vincent butted in.
“Do either of those have garlic in them?”
Wes froze. “You’re serious?”
“I have an allergy.” The center of Vincent’s cheeks tinted red. It made him look… well, Wes didn’t want to consider that. All the ways that Vincent could potentially flush had nothing to do with Wes. Unless one of them would get the vampire to come to Vitalis-Barron with him.
“Alright then, no garlic for Vinny the Vampire.” He tugged the ramen wrapper back out of the trash and fingered down its ingredient list. “Garlic powder. It doesn’t say which packet. No problem, we’ll make our own hotness.”
“We’ll what?”
“Hotness.” Wesley grinned. He flung himself full force into gutting the kitchen, forming an array of hot sauce and extra spicy salsa along the counter in various shades of red and green and brown. A final bottle peeked out from the shelf above the fridge, but Wes could barely tap it with his fingertips. He popped onto the nearest counter and reached across. Somehow Vincent ended up below him, his hand wrapping the bottle’s base beneath Wesley’s. As their skin brushed, Wes shivered.
He yanked back in a fluster. His foot slipped off the edge of the counter. For an instant, he thought he might be able to steady himself, hovering in the space between gravity and youthful immortality, but the world came crashing back in, and his body weight with it. As he fell, Vincent seemed to teleport, arm reaching above the fridge one moment, then scooping under Wes the next. He settled Wes onto the ground equally fast, leaving him swaying there with his heart pounding a thousand miles a minute.
Wes clutched the counter to steady himself. It was just the rush of the fall. Not the momentary feeling of Vincent’s arms, the physical presence of him pressing into Wesley’s space, his little sound of distress as Wes’s mass settled onto him, before he’d immediately let go. Wes forced himself to smile, like getting gracefully caught by vampires was perfectly ordinary for him. “Nice save.”
Vincent’s gaze snapped to his neck, then moved down his chest. His throat bobbed. It seemed to be doing that a lot. “Thanks.”
Wes accepted the hot sauce bottle from Vincent’s without touching the vampire, and quickly motioned to the accumulation on the counter. “Help me check those for garlic?”
As Vincent sorted through the bottles, putting half to one side and half to the other, Wes continued scooting around the kitchen. He poured the water onto the ramen and shoveled down bites of salad, avoiding looking at Vincent as much as possible. One at a time, he helped the vampire dose both noodle-filled travel mugs with a fairly equal amount of every permitted hot substance.
