Page 34 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
He collapsed there, still half coughing, half crying, and all laughing. “You know if you explain the reference it doesn’t count anymore.”
“If I don’t explain the reference people might not get it.” Vincent snorted, but his lips still quirked at the corners. He pulled back and reclaimed his seat. The withdrawal of his touch left Wes tingling hot and cold in his wake.
They were just staring at each other now, Wesley realized, two sloppy smiles and empty bowls. Vincent looked away first. Then he took the edges of his chair and scooted it toward Wes. He leaned one elbow against the table. A few tangles of his hair fell across his forehead and he pushed them back. Wesley’s eyes tracked the motion, then slid down, across Vincent’s eyebrows, over the curve of his cheekbones, to his mouth. Two little fangs pressed against his upper lip, their delicate tips appearing as he breathed.
Wesley ached, from his core to his groin, every available piece of him straining for things he knew he couldn’t—shouldn’t—have. He had betrayed Vincent. He had almost brought him to a place that had been the death of people before and of vampires most of all. He wasn’t allowed to want this, not the thought of Vincent’s mouth on his neck or Vincent’s hands in his hair or any of the feelings that came with it, not the ones in his dick and definitely not the ones in his heart.
Wes had to tell him.
Then, if Vincent still wanted his blood, he could have it. He could bleed it out of Wes into a mug and drink it that way, if denying Wes the feeling of his mouth and fangs would make it better. He could drain it from him until his heart stopped if that was justice enough. But he deserved to know. Yet, as he leaned toward Wes, brows tight and lips parted, Wesley’s resolve died instantly. Panic replaced it.
He stood up, scooting his chair back in the process. “I wager that you’ve never crashed a party before. Or stolen a boat. Or eaten loaded French fries on the top of that big skyscraper on Fourth and Sapphire.” He didn’t know how Vincent had reacted because he couldn’t look, already turning to jog toward the coat that currently lived on his stair banister. “Come on, the night’s young, we’re young, we should do something.”
He didn’t hear Vincent stand, or the sound of him approaching, but suddenly he was beside Wesley, both arms wrapped around himself as he shrugged. “I haven’t done… Well, I haven’t donemuch. So yeah, I’m down.”
Wesley shimmied into his jacket with a grin. “Dude, we’re going to do so fucking much tonight it’ll give you a concussion.”
“Can I please at least be conscious at the end?” Vincent winced as he said it.
Wesley laughed and clapped him on the back. “I wager you one terrible ballad that I can drink more Lake Monster shots at the Fishnettery than you.”
“What’s the Fishnettery?”
“Vinny.” Wesley paused just long enough to blink at him. “Vinny, you’re killing me. You were raised in this city and you’re gay and you don’t know the Fishnettery?”
This time Vincent’s flinch was a more palpable thing, his expression going tight.
Wesley backpedaled. “Sorry. I know not everyone gets to have the um, the queer experience?”
That just seemed to put something bitter in Vincent’s mouth, and he bit the corner of his lip before letting it out again. “That’s not the only kind of queer experience, you know.”
“No. No, I know. Fuck, I’m sorry. I just—” How could he already be making so many different kinds of messes in one evening when it was only half past seven. “Maybe I should phrase this better. Vincent Barnes, do you want to go to a very gay, weird ass micro-brewery crab-shack combo, get covered in glitter, and down alcohol that tastes a bit like three layers of food coloring and leaves your tongue a weird purple for a week? My treat.”
“Yeah, that…” Vincent’s expression softened. “That sounds kind of fun, actually.”
“Brilliant.” Wesley exhaled in relief and threw the front door open. Distraction, here they came. “First stop, shots. Second stop, everywhere else.”
5
Wesley lost the Lake Monster shot contest by a whopping five shots.
“You just really don’t know when to stop putting stuff in your mouth,” he said as Vincent slammed the last one down.
The vampire had looked at him so strangely then, fangs puckering gently at his lips and his throat bobbing. Their only salvation had been the incredibly hot, dark-haired man with dangling earrings and a leather jacket who’d tried to flirt with Wesley at that exact moment. Wesley had managed to chat a name and a drink out of him—Andres and an old fashioned—before he’d taken a second look at Vincent and the corners of his eyes had tightened.
He growled a quick, “If I’d known his blood was claimed, I wouldn’t have wasted my time,” and vanished back into the crowd.
“Oh god, he was a vampire,” Vincent hissed, leaning so close his mouth brushed Wesley’s ear, sending a shiver down Wes’s entire spine and some places Kendall would have made jokes about.
“Fuck.” Wes laughed shakily. “I think you just saved my life.”
Vincent grinned at him. “I had an anterior motivation.”
“Ulterior motive.”
“Same difference.”
They emerged covered in a little less glitter than Wesley had promised—a smear across Wes’s cheek and a fluff of it in Vincent’s hair—but with tongues so eggplant purple that Vincent groaned about it getting into his fangs. Wesley sang his loser’s ballad in an unhinged, off-key voice that was ten times worse than his natural one. He kept it up all the way to the boardwalk of shimmering lights and laughing people, until he spotted a wedding reception in an elegantly remodeled warehouse that looked out at the water.
