Page 18 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
The mask had been a good idea.
The mask, the stealth, the whispering in his little swan’s ear while never quite letting him get a proper look—Andres could feel the way Shane’s body responded to it all, his breath quick and his senses honed. His posture screamed prey-thing, so attuned to the knowledge that Andres was a vampire that he doubted Shane could have mistaken him for the crying fool at the Fishnettery even without half of his face covered.
And, if Andres was honest with himself, he’d been loving every moment of this. The feeling of Shane shuddering against him, his verbal sparring followed by his physical submission, the way he’d let Andres spread out his arm and rub at the defenseless crook he seemed so bent on hiding. And he’dwhimpered. His vulnerability quickened something in Andres’s chest.
He vowed to treasure it. To protect it. His little swan was his now, after all.
“So you’ll take my blood whether I agree to this or not?”
Andres would never dare—he’d told Shane there were lines he wouldn’t cross, and that was one of them. Just as he’d never truly consider stealing Shane—his or not—back to his bed and setting him up like a king in chains, even if for the last twelve hours he had been unable to stoppicturingit. He’d drawn hisfingertips along the base of his beautiful Cygnus’s neck and envisioned how his pet swan might look with a collar, how he might whimper and melt and slowly yield beneath tender kisses.
They werejustfantasies.
Andres would never dare. He was not the kind of monster who did such things. Only, it seemed, the kind who thought they were sensual in the first place.
He had already felt the tension return to Shane, like his little swan was feeding off Andres’s own guilt and doubts, when Maul’s familiar orange Mustang rolled into the front of the alley. Andres had always badgered him for driving something so outrageous when their jobs were built on secrecy, but now he thanked the universe for making his boss such a prick, because he recognized the vehicle quickly enough to push Shane into the building before the headlights could turn toward them.
There was no time to get Shane out of the building unnoticed.
“Into the closet, my little swan,” Andres ordered, gentle and hushed but a demand nonetheless.
Shane didn’t immediately move, and Andres pressed a hand to the back of his neck, directing him across the room. It must have been too dark for his human eyes because he fumbled, missing the knob entirely. Andres opened it for him. The small nook smelt of mold and rot, and Shane stiffened against his guiding. Outside, the roar of Maul’s engine shut off, then his headlights.
“Go,” Andres growled as forcefully as he could manage without cruelty.
Shane breathed out and, slowly, stepped into the closet.
Andres rewarded him with a quick kiss on the temple, just a gentle brush of lips as he cupped the back of his Cygnus’s head, and murmured, “Stay quiet. I’ll retrieve you when it’s safe.” When Shane still didn’t respond, Andres tipped his chin up, “Do you understand, pet?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Andres closed the door on him.
Light spilled from the crack between it and the floor—Shane’s phone screen—and Andres’ heart stuttered. He could be texting his friend to confirm he was safe, or just as easily dialing for help, freeing himself from Andres permanently. Then the closet went dark once more. Everything was quiet; no car engine, no 911 operator, not even the gentle sound of Shane’s breath.
From down the alley came Maul’s footsteps.
Andres felt his skin chill at the sound of Maul’s distinctive stride, and he tugged off his mask, slipping it beneath his jacket and into the back of his waistband like a secret weapon.
Maul’s brow barely rose as he entered, taking in Andres for half a moment before his eyes narrowed. “What bringsyouhere?”
“I was wondering the same of you,” Andres countered. He shifted his voice instinctively, just as dark as the sensual predator who’d slipped in behind his little swan, but with a dry edge in place of the sultry. Still the persona of a vampire, just with a slightly different intent, the feigned dominance hiding any morsel of weakness Maul might chip away at, even as he monitored every word to keep from overstepping to the point of angering his boss. “I thought you were making a point not to bring that flashy monster to a sales spot twice in a row.”
The resurrection of the long-standing argument made Maul huff, but the suspicion didn’t leave his gaze. “Max spotted a human who looked like the blood bag you bought off me last night, and you haven’t been answering your phone.”
Fuck, he’d put Maul’s number on mute to get a few hours of peace last night and clearly hadn’t remembered to turn his notifications back on. At least Maul had decided not to come down on him for it. Andres shrugged. “I was going to poke around his place, see if I can’t stage it to look like he up andleft, but he lost his keys somewhere here. I have him contained, though, never fear. Clearly Max can’t tell petite blonds apart.” Petite blonds with scattered freckles and bowed lips and thick lashes, whose waves of hair brushed against his long neck like a veil and soft skin trembled under Andres’s touch.
Dammit, even with Shane tucked out of sight and Maul scowling a few yards away, riling his nerves and frustrating his senses, Andres’s mind still couldn’t let go of his little swan.
He tried to wipe the thoughts aside for later, but Maul’s next question just stirred them into a frenzy instead.
“Contained? You’re sure you locked the cage when you left?”
“Chains are more my style.” Specifically collars, if Andres’s incessant fantasies were to be trusted. “He’s wilted across my bed right now. Probably still half-conscious.” He swore he heard asoundfrom the closet at that, though Maul seemed not to notice. Still, Andres should probably not have been getting quite so descriptive. He didn’t want to scare Shane into making that 911 call after all.
The fictional display of power must have contented Maul though, because he switched topics. “What progress are you making with the Vitalis-Barron investigation? I thought something would have come of that by now.”
This was worse, somehow. At least salaciously fictionalizing his little swan’s captivity had its perks—mainly that his mind had free rein to imagine just what a life with Shane chained to his bedpost would be like—but he had no interest in sharing how few developments he’d made on the Vitalis-Barron front, especially when a negative update always led to Maul swinging his sights back toward their other competition: the new Jose’s Blood Bank.
