Page 16 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Through his earpiece, Nat seemed to be having a similar crisis. “Fuck, Shane, who is that?” She sounded genuinely panicked. “Talk to me, dammit.”
As she spoke, the vampire swept his fingers over Shane’s temple, brushing back his hair. Gently, he plucked out the earpiece. “What’s this?”
Shane looked over his shoulder, catching a flash of gala mask before his vampire moved to the other side. His breath came warm against Shane’s neck, and for a moment Shane felt pinned, surrounded, suffocating like the night before. But this was just one vampire—justhisvampire—his guiding touch on Shane’s back so light that it could have been a breeze. Shane swallowed and tried not to sound like his soul was about to leave his body. “If you’d please hand that back, that call is my life insurance.” He held his palm flat, arms still mostly wrapped against his chest.
“Huh.”
In the twilight, he could vaguely see his vampire twirling the device out of the corner of his eye, a pale hand and darkly painted nails.
“Smart. Not smart enough, if you think you’re coming here for Maul. But smart.” His vampire ignored Shane’s outstretched hand, brushing back his hair once more to tenderly press the earpiece in place. Despite the fear still coursing through him, Shane swore it was the most sensual thing anyone had everdone with a piece of technology in his life. And he even owned one of those vibrators that linked to his phone. If his last boyfriend had known how to use it with half this finesse and confidence, Shane might have still been dating the man. Though why the hell he was thinking of that now of all times—
Nat shouted through the returned earpiece, “Shane, my god, if you’re dying—”
“It’s fine, everything’s fine,” he interrupted her. “I’m just beingterrorizedby the vampire who saved me last night.” He let a little snark sink into his voice, leaning back swiftly enough to bump his tormentor’s chest.
The vampire laughed. “You might want to hang up. Or don’t. Perhaps you like a little exhibitionism.”
Shane’s muscles tensed. Their kiss from months back still lingered on his lips and the memory of his vampire’s fingers on his skin last night made him tingle, but his stomach twisted at the thought of his vampire pushing for more, without being granted it first—of his nails digging into Shane’s scalp and his fangs forced through flesh the way Maul’s goons had, no slow buildup or soothing venom, his roving hands finding places Shane wasn’t ready for him to touch…
His vampire made a little broken noise of distressed embarrassment that sounded strangely familiar. “I’m just going to bite you, my little swan, tender as your lovely neck deserves,” he said, his tone somehow equally as seductive as it was reassuring. “I only take what’s owed me.”
What’sowedhim. “Why would I oweyouanything?”
“Phone first,” he replied.
Shane hesitated. How much did he trust his vampire? Not at all and, after the care he’d shown last night, also entirely. He would only discover which of those feelings was correct if he stayed. Hesitantly, he held up his phone. His vampire’s fingers slid over his.
“Hello, Shane’s friend,” the vampire said, chin tucked against Shane’s temple on the earpiece’s side. “I promise that I will return him to you shortly.”
“It’s all right. He can protect me,” Shane added with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. “I’ll call you back when we’re finished.”
The line went quiet for the moment, before Nat hissed, “Oh my god, Shane, don’t tell me you’re going tofuckthis creep?”
How the hell she’d picked up on the very erotic way Shane’s entire body was reacting right nowover the phone, Shane could not fathom, but at least he was fairly certain she couldn’t magically make out the flush burning in his cheeks as he answered. “I’mnot.”
She didn’t sound like she believed him. “You’re just as bad as my boyfriend.”
God, he had to get off this call. “Talk to you soon.”
“Sooner than him,” she grumbled.
Shane pressed the end call button. His vampire immediately let him take back the phone.
Shane released a breath. His nerves lingered, tickling along his skin and highlighting each brush of his vampire’s hands against him, but giving in—and being rewarded for his trust with the immediate return of his phone—released much of his fear. It shouldn’t have, he knew. It was the same positive reinforcement that turned feral animals into pets. But he could reason to himself that if his trust had paid off once, it would pay off again. “You said I owe you blood?”
He tried to turn, but his vampire moved behind him once more, too fast for his eyes to catch in the dimness. As he did, he drew fingers across Shane’s shoulder that sent another shudder through him… one not altogether unpleasant. “I thought I implied you were to keep still,” his vampire chided, teasingly. “Are you so disinclined to do as you’re told?”
“When I don’t know why I’m being told to do so, yes, very much,” Shane retorted, though he had the sinking suspicion perhaps that was a lie. Whatever they were doing now seemed to have set his every nerve on fire as though his body was made for it.
“You’ll obey because you’re mine,” his vampire whispered into his ear, a single finger tracing along the collar of Shane’s jacket. “Bought and paid for, as of this morning. I traded Maul ten thousand dollars for all the blood your body will ever produce. I own that which gives you life.”
Shane’s heart sank. “That’s why you saved me. So you have a meal.”
“No.” The reply came fast, soft, his vampire’s tone so changed that he almost sounded like a person—sounded strangely like… But then his mouth brushed Shane’s ear, a tremble running through the vampire so strong that Shane could feel it in the hand he’d rested on Shane’s bicep, and all Shane could think about was lips pressing to his on that gala balcony and firm arms carrying him home last night. “I saved you because I didn’t want you to die. Maul had no fucking right to drain you.” Now he sounded dark, but in a new way, black as vengeance and the void. “I needed you to live, and this was all I could think to do, all Maul would respect. If I was anyone else, asking anything else, he probably wouldn’t have even allowed this.”
“Why would he accept it fromyou?”
“I bring him his blood, so he gives me leniency over what happens to it.”
