Page 6 of The Stars and the Stage
Diego pulled back. “I see your flesh still remembers where I stabbed you.”
“I was the cause of that,” Maddox retorted, sure and fast. “You were never to blame, my lord.”
His confidence felt like a physical object that curled between Diego’s ribs and toyed with their heart.
Maddox unfastened his boots, his shoulder muscles flexing as he pulled them off, and peeled away his socks after. Slowly, he undid his belt. His hands went to the rim of his pants. The murmurs of the crowd reached a crescendo, before going silent to the gentle swish of his pants falling free of his lean, muscled legs. The boxers he wore underneath were silky as satin and twice as revealing, cradling fluidly around a package that looked like it had grown to fit the rest of him. Diego had to fight to tear their gaze from it.
They had both been relatively shameless in their youth—the whole school knew when they were fighting, when they were fucking, sometimeshowandwherethey were fucking too, and in the process seen nearly as much of them as they’d seen of each other—but as Maddox hooked one thumb under the elastic of his underwear, his attention fixing on Diego like a blazing inferno, something hot and tight within them panicked.
They stopped him with a sharp smile. “That will be sufficient.”
“For the moment anyway,” Lissette muttered. Her husband looked like he agreed.
“What would you have of me next?” Maddox’s voice was low and sultry, and while he stood there in nothing but his silky undergarment before all of Diego’s court, he acted as though they were the only two people in the room.
Diego would change that. “I’ll have your veins. And bring me a glass, Valentine… a glass for every vampire here, and anyone else who would like a taste of him.”
Maddox didn’t waiver. He held his arm out, watching Diego with a steady surety as they lifted their borrowed sword. They held the hilt in one hand and rested the blade between two fingers of their other to steady it as they carefully lowered it to the vein on the underside of Maddox’s wrist. They pressed down, watching as his skin tensed, then split. His blood spilled in a red rivulet across his wrist, the delicious scent of it wafting on the air, dusky and dry.
Diego fought the urge to lift the vein to their mouth and instead slipped one of the shot-sized crystal glasses Valentine offered under the stream. As it filled, the red darkened. Valentine helped them switch out the receptacle, holding the next in their place.
Diego approached Lissette. They held the first cup out to her with a flare of dramatics. “Drink of him and tell me whether his feigned loyalty is worth my trouble.”
Lissette lifted the glass to her lips. Her eyes closed, and she hummed with the kind of sincere delight that meant she could clearly smell what Diego did in Maddox’s blood. She drained the glass. “He tastes as exquisite as his extraordinary deference.”
The next vampire emerged behind her, followed quickly by another, each taking a long sip of their own cup before making some proclamation, whether to the taste or to Maddox’s honor or his past betrayal. All the while, Diego could feel Maddox’s attention fixed on them. It no longer burned, just warmed, soft and constant.
But Diego could see the toll that losing that much blood was taking on him. They swore they could hear his heart rate increase, and by the time they were through half their vampiric guests, he was blinking just to keep his focus on Diego steady.
“You grow weary already,” Diego taunted, but it felt a little cruel in their mouth. They reminded themself that he knew the safe words just the same as the rest of them, an easy way out if this grew too much. He was here of his own volition. If he suffered, that was his choice too.
Maddox took a deep breath and seemed to hold himself in place. “My heart may give out but so long as there’s a chance I might regain your trust, I will persist.”
“So be it,” Diego grumbled.
From out of the backstage, someone—probably Serina—produced a chair, and Valentine helped Maddox into it. Maddox squeezed his hand in thanks after, an act so strangely considerate that it disquieted Diego. If they hadn’t known Valentine’s preferences—or lack thereof—they’d have thought he looked flustered by it. His previously professional attention turned gentler. Diego wanted to tell him to stop, to not risk his own heart the way they had.
Maddox continued to bleed.
The whole room smelled of him now, the appetizing scent impossible to retreat from no matter how many circles Diego strode. They continued to watch him. He stared back, his face paled by the cupfuls spilled from his wrist. Diego tried not to worry. They didn’t know when their anger had faded, but all they felt now were the knots in their gut and the shallowness of Maddox’s breathing.
The next time they passed by him, they drew their hand along his chair and let their long nails absently flutter across his hair where it curled around the nape of his neck. “You can desist, if the challenge is too much. Return to your own kingdom in shame but alive.”
“I would rather bleed out at your feet.”
“Then you’re a fool,” Diego growled, leaning toward his ear, trying not to think of how near they were, of how wonderful he smelled, how the slope of his neck was fuller and stronger than the one they’d littered in kisses so many times as a teen. “Surrender, Prince Maddox.” Then softer, they added, “You have a safe word.”
He turned his face, his nose an inch from Diego’s and his breath hot on their lips. “I won’t surrender, not until you accept me, my starlight.” The pet name he used was the opposite of a traditional safe word—an acknowledgement of the risks and a request to continue—but Diego could see that the whole statement wasn’t a line or an act. It was just the truth, desperation and stubbornness written across his face.
The damn beautiful fool would die here if it came to that.
For Diego.
They felt struck through the heart, like the last ten years had been wiped away and they were watching the door bang closed behind a bleeding Maddox for the last time, not yet knowing it would be the end of them—the end of their relationship and the end of Diego’s life in San Salud. And here he’d come back, so strong and sure, willing to bleed for them. He had to have an ulterior motive, some reason why he’d come now, after all this time.
Diego didn’t trust him. But they realized they couldn’t keep hurting him either. Even if he had deserved it, once, even if a part of Diego still believed he deserved it now, he had laid himself at their feet, and kicking him suddenly felt cruel.
As the last cup filled, Maddox’s head began to loll. Diego caught it with a supportive hand to the back of his neck, trying to appear as aloof and skeptical as ever, and lifted his seeping wrist into the air. With the hand over his head, his bleeding slowed, a trickle of red still trailing down his bare arm.
