Page 13 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
“I’m so sorry.”
Wesley managed to pull himself together enough to sit up, his abs protesting as he kept accidently bursting back into a fresh round of chuckling. “You want a toothbrush or something? Maybe that would help?”
“I just drank more milk than is humanly possible. I don’t think a rub of minty freshness will fix this.” Vincent cringed. “I really am sorry.”
Wesley waved him off with a hand flap and a grin. “It happens, dude, you’re cool.”
“Actually, it seems I’m hot.” The very corner of Vincent’s mouth quirked, and he bit the lip on that side, his exposed fang tucking into the still lightly swollen flesh. “You know, from the hot sauce.”
Wesley’s body protested that statement with a pinch in his gut and a rush in his head. Vincent was hot.
Oh god.
Vincentwashot.
It was a slightly off-brand hotness, with an odd mixture of dainty and rugged, a little tired around the eyes and unkempt in the hair, but beneath all that grunge, Wes swore there was something to Vincent that drew in the eye the more time you spent with him and turned the little subtle motions of his lips into something delicious. And those lips had just been on Wesley’s neck, if only for a moment. That was it, that was still the cause of this nonsense. It was all rooted in the weirdly fantastic sensation of that first bloodsucking, now just mixing up his other feelings for Vincent. Other feelings, like how determined he was to get to the bottom of his mother’s murder and how Vincent was nothing more than a means to that end. Even if he happened to be hot.
Vincent’s brows tugged together and his distracting smile faded. “You’re still bleeding a little.” He stood, pillow clutched in his hands. He shuffled it between them once before seeming to realize he didn’t need it and dropped it back onto the couch. “Do you have bandages?”
Wesley pulled his hand away from his neck to check and—yeah, definitely still bleeding, slow but steady. As he watched, a thin trickle pooled into the collar of his t-shirt. So much for keeping this one clean. “Downstairs bathroom, under the sink.”
“Right.” Vincent hopped over the back of the couch like it was nothing and headed across the foyer. He floundered for a moment around the room’s eternally creaky floor panel before stepping over it entirely.
Wes’s head spun just a little as he tried to follow, and he plopped himself back down on the couch. He patted at the wound to check it again. Somehow it was oozing more now. “Am I supposed to feel faint?”
“You’re not bleeding that much.” Vincent called from the bathroom. “But the fact that you’ve stopped applying pressure every ten seconds can’t help.”
Wes glared across the hall at its open door, the vampire moving around behind it. “How do you know I’m doing that?”
“I can smell your blood stronger every time you shift your hand. It’s kind of frustrating actually. You should stop.”
There was a hint of something desperate in Vincent’s voice, and it shivered its way through Wesley. He pressed his fingers firmly to the wound just to spite the part of him that wanted to see what Vincent would do if he didn’t. And because the more his head spun the worse he felt. “If you were drinking this blood, would I still be so lightheaded?”
“No, because as I said, your body’s just being a dramatic goofball over the concept of it. You have plenty of blood still.” Vincent sped back from the bathroom, a little blur that vaulted the back of the couch and settled at Wesley’s side. The floor didn’t creak at all this time. He opened the box of bandages, sifting through them as he explained, “Even if I did feed enough for that, it feels more like the kind of faint you might get while happily drunk or high. Except instead of drugs or alcohol, it’s the venom in my fangs that takes away all the panic your brain is supposed to associate with it. It makes it feel nice, almost. Soft and cozy.”
“How do you know? I thought you only snacked on people in their sleep?”
“It’s not like I never got bit before I turned.” Vincent carefully tore three little packages of gauze open, his eyes firmly fixed on his own fingers.
“Oh.” It hit Wes a little more squarely then: this vampire who came sneaking into people’s homes and stealing their blood hadn’t merely been the human kid who lived in a house down the street once, but had matured into an adult like that, too, entirely human one day and then a vampire the next. Where in that timeline had he grown comfortable with assaulting people while they slept? What drove such a drastic shift to become something so monstrous? Wesley almost wanted to ask, but he knew the answer didn’t matter. Vincent had been doing it. That was bad enough. “Wait, go back to the part where you have venom.”
“It’s not harmful. It’s just a substance in my fangs that calms the, uh, the human.” Vincent’s nose wrinkled. “But it has an intoxicating effect, and it’s produced by my body to be injected, so it’s still a kind of venom, I guess.” He folded the gauze strips.
Wesley reached for them, but Vincent had already leaned in, twisting a bit to look at the side of Wes’s neck. He seemed tenser the closer he came, his whole body poised and concentrated. Maybe it was all the blood. If he had been able to smell the difference between Wes holding the wound closed and letting it hemorrhage from all the way in the bathroom, then how much stronger was the scent here, his nose a foot away from where it seeped between Wes’s fingers, his mouth so close to Wes’s neck? How many times had Vincent’s throat bobbed since he’d sat down?
But his focus didn’t slip for a moment as he drew back Wesley’s fingers, his hand gentle around Wes’s blood stained-one, a little rougher and more calloused. He pressed the gauze to the wound, applying pressure as he fiddled free a bandage. His skin was warm where it brushed Wes’s neck. Alive.
Wes had known he was. Vampires weren’t actually as undead as they looked, with their own slightly darkened blood still flowing through them, and despite the myths of immortality they did still age and eventually die like other people, even if the wrinkles and aching joints never quite caught up with them. But it still felt wrong. Too human. Not that Wesley had anything against vampires in general, it just seemed that they shouldn’t be so… so normal. A lump twisted in his gut. He untangled it with an awkward laugh that made Vincent squeak and realign his gauze. “So no garlic and no sunlight. But you don’t turn into a bat, right?”
“I wish.” Vincent sounded wistful.
Vincent, who had chosen to become a vampire. It didn’t matter if he had been less monstrous once and his skin still felt like the skin of a person and the way he patted the bandage into place was more tender than most nurses. He had still chosen a life where he broke into people’s homes nightly.
“The blood on your shirt is tormenting me a little. You might want to change it.”
“Right, thanks. Kendall’s usually the one who tells me to do my laundry. I can’t smell for shit so if she didn’t throw things at me in college I’d wear the same shirt for weeks.” Wes grimaced. “I probably have the scent equivalent ofI’m a tasty mealpainted all over my shoulder again.”
Vincent cringed, nodding slightly. “Pretty much.”
