Page 50 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
If Vincent had to be here loving Wes and wanting him every night for the foreseeable future, then it would be less painful to walk into the sun.
Wesley settled on the floor in front of Vincent, looking just as worn and heart-aching as Vincent felt. “So what do we do then?”
“I don’t know.” If he didn’t take Wesley up on at least part of his offer, he’d probably have to leave the city to get someplace Babcock’s influence didn’t reach. But he didn’t want to leave. HewantedWesley. Vincent rubbed the underside of his left forearm. He only realized what lines he was tracing after Wesley’s gaze jumped to them.
Wes leaned toward him, his hands slipping over Vincent’s knees. “Vinny…”
Vincent pulled his fingers into a fist. The tender way Wes was looking up at him now seemed to shoot daggers through Vincent’s chest. “Wes.” Vincent leaned his elbows onto his knees, dropping his forehead into his palms. “I do want this to work, I do. But there’s something else...” He took a breath, preparing, and dragged his hands off his face.
Wesley was so close, his chin between Vincent’s knees like the damned energetic, too-kind golden retriever that he was, staring up at him with so much worry that Vincent thought his chest would cave in.
Without thinking, he slipped his fingers against the man’s cheek, hands still shaking, lungs tight and butterflies in his stomach and a rush around them as though his anxiety was centering them both in the center of a tornado. He lifted Wesley’s head, and Wes let him. “I know you’ve enjoyed what we’ve been doing, and I won’t ever judge you for just wanting to have some kinky fun, but I…”
The panic that was growing on Wesley’s face terrified the words right out of him.
He swallowed. He had to say it. If they were going to be more to each other than this simple friendship, then he couldn’t wrap his feelings up and bury them and expect them not to explode someday. “I—”
A banging came at the door.
Vincent startled back with nearly the same force as Wesley, his focus snapping toward the sound. It came again, three hard thumps like someone was trying to break the door down.
“This is an emergency!” a man shouted from beyond it.
A man who sounded an awful lot like Mr. Babcock.
Wesley’s eyes widened, darting from Vincent to the door before he burst up and sprinted across to the foyer. Vincent cursed under his breath. He almost scrambled after him, but Wesley must have noticed the panic on his face, because the man shooed him toward the kitchen, mouthing something that could have been,“Hide?”
Vincent’s stomach twisted. But if it was just Babcock out there, he wouldn’t be any threat to Wesley, a human. It was Vincent they were after. But how the fuck had Babcock found him? Had Babcock been following him this whole time?
He slipped into the kitchen as Wesley opened the door, pressing his back to the wall and tipping his head as though that might help him hear better through the pounding of his heart.
“Hello?” Wesley asked.
“Are you alright, sir?” That was definitely Babcock’s assistant, no doubt about it. “Is there anyone else in the house with you tonight?”
Wesley hesitated, but if his reply sounded off, Vincent thought it was only the usual amount ofwhy are you at my door asking thatconfusion. “No. What’s the emergency?”
“We’re sorry to bother you, sir,” Babcock said. “I’m Matthew from the Neighborhood Protection Agency. We have knowledge of a dangerous vampire breaking into your premises.”
“There’s no one here. I haven’t heard anything, at least.” Wesley managed to sound a convincing mixture of concerned and annoyed. He shuffled around, then grunted. “There aren’t any police alerts out. What’s this vampire done?”
Vincent’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Fuck. He pulled it out, about to turn it to mute—if the 5% battery didn’t die on him first—when he caught the message that had just come through.
LordOfTheWin
run
For once Vincent didn’t want to run from Babcock. The thought of leaving Wesley alone as this man intruded into his home was agonizing. The thought of leaving Wesley without telling him how he felt, after Wes had looked like Vincent was about to emotionally murder him, had to be some other level of hell entirely. But this was what Wesley needed from him, and Vincent trusted Wesley.
He was going to keep trusting him.
As he slid his phone away, his fingers brushed against something coin-shaped at the bottom of his pocket. But every one of Vincent’s pennies were accounted for multiple times over, stashed safely into his change baggy where there was no risk of losing any. His fingers shook with renewed vigor as he pulled out the bit of metal. It looked unassuming, dull and silver and lightweight.
Vincent realized what it could be—what it had to be—with mounting horror. Babcock had planted a tracker on him. That reshuffled the man around in his mind with agonizing speed. Babcock wasn’t just a typical bias-driven citizen, or even a more aggressive one, willing to remove a vampire from the city if they happened to cross his path, but someone who knew intimately what he was doing. Someone who’d done this before. What had Vincent been helping the man with for all those weeks?
Who had he helped hurt?
Fuck.
