Page 32 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Shane was pointedly aware of the smith watching them, looking so professional with his notepad and pen. He’d caved to his vampire in every one of their clandestine meetings, but having an onlooker changed the dynamic, or perhaps just sharpened it. Made it real.
Shane breathed out and tipped back his head.
The very tips of his vampire’s fangs pressed against his neck. From the edge of his vision Shane could see the smith leaning toward the spot with a flexible measuring tape. His muscles went stiff, something sharp and aggrieved rising up in his chest at the sight of someone—someone not his vampire—coming toward his throat, but his vampire’s fingers slid beneath Shane’s and his anxiety eased. Mercer was just human, just taking simple measurements that required barely the softest brush of the tape against Shane’s vulnerable throat. And Shane’s vampire wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.
Shane didn’t have to be told that. He’d lived it.
The smith must have still picked up on his insecurity, though, because he shifted back, instructing Shane’s vampire on how to take the measurements along Shane’s neck instead. For that alone, Shane wanted to trust him. To trust them both, despite the obfuscation and the power plays. Between his vampire’s touch and his soothing commands and Mercer’s professional scrutiny, Shane felt both appreciated and dominated. The sensation curled like a happy little fire through his torsoand rested, tingling, between his legs. It only grew with his mounting suspicion of what they were appraising him for.
His breath caught and he could feel his blush deepening, burning across his cheeks and down his neck. His head was still tipped back, his vampire’s fingers on his neck. As he flinched instinctively, his vampire slid into a gentle grip behind his jaw, steadying him.
“Just one more, my swan,” he whispered, his mouth pressed so deep into Shane’s hair that it could have been a kiss.
Shane’s body betrayed him, relaxing into his vampire’s chest like he belonged there—belonged to him—and he let himself be measured for the collar.
He was in shock—that had to be it. It would hit him soon, just howwrongthis all was, how much danger it surely meant he was in. Then, Shane would be afraid. Then, he’d run.
It hadn’t happened yet when his vampire nudged his head back up, helping straighten and turn it for a final measurement as he and Mercer discussed mobility and weight—“He has such a lovely neck, I wouldn’t want to clutter it.”
Mercer stepped back, motioning to Shane’s wrist with a casual, “May I?”
Shane stared at him, his whole body strangely alight. Shock. This was just shock.
“Can he measure your wrist, my swan?” his vampire murmured, hands running up and down Shane’s shoulders without really touching him. But heneededto be touched. God, he needed to be touched.
Shane grabbed his vampire’s arm, trying to tug his hand closer, to show him he was allowed this. With a sound so deep it seemed a sob, his vampire yanked free. The shock of it—the speed and strength—left a flutter of genuine fear in Shane’s chest for the first time that evening.
But then his vampire whispered again, this time pleadingly, “Cygnus?” He sounded so hesitant. So much like… someone else. “I’ll take your hand.”
Shane couldn’t put a face to that voice, though. He found himself nodding limply, offering over his wrist.
The smith looked questioning, pausing for a moment longer before beginning measurements for the cuff. These were quicker, culminating in an awkward amount of Shane’s vampire and the smith deciding just how far up Shane’s forearm the cuff should run and whether to include loops to his fingers. When Mercer commented on a bondage addition that could let his vampire pin those fingers to Shane’s palm, both Shane and his vampire responded with such definitive overlapping ‘no’s that it defused the tension that had been building between them. Mercer finished recording his notes on Shane’s wrist manacles—“ornamental cuffs,” he called them.
Chains then, but notrestraints. Whatever this was, his vampire expected Shane to accept and obey willingly.
Shane felt too many types of fire at once, the heat of his vampire’s gaze even behind the mask and the ache that went straight into his core, the indignation that his vampire was painting them as co-conspirators in this and the hunger to keep being his regardless, to hear his vampire sayyou’re minein a way that rewrote his existence without trampling his agency.
Shane wanted this, he realized with a chill so sharp and pure it felt like an orgasm. He wanted this, he was just pretty sure he didn’t want it quitelike this. That it was all happening around him without his initial agreement held a slimy aftertaste, the moment of waking from a nightmare to find he’d enjoyed something about the experience. And he didn’t wantthat, dammit.
Mercer cleared his throat. “You had mentioned something delicate to highlight the medium basilic vein—that’s the one inside the elbow.”
Fuck.
That vulnerable patch of skin was not something his vampire had demanded access to again. Shane’s flesh began to crawl there, the memory of the way he’d gone weak in the alley when his vampire had asked for it warring with the desire to tuck his arm tighter and crawl into himself. He started to do it too, his hands curling upward, and he hid the motion by pressing his palms to his face. His cheeks were beginning to burn, and he could already feel the way Andres would draw him apart for it, pull his trauma into little glittering pieces and build him something new from its ashes.
Andthat, he wanted, too.
As much as he hated himself for it, as much as he knew the knowledge that he’d given in would cling like grime to him later, Shane wanted, more than anything, to be undone.
14
ANDRES
Andres was tearing Shane apart.
He was a monster; he could feel the guilt and horror already lodging in his chest so thoroughly that he nearly told Mercer no then and there. They didn’t need this final piece. They didn’t need any of them, truthfully. They could wait outside the place Tara worked and catch her as she left, or they could break in through a window, grab her out of a dressing room, follow her home even—anything that didn’t involve going through the front doors.
He’d just wanted to dress Shane up and pretend his little swan really belonged to him for a night, wanted it so badly that he’d convinced himself to ignore his growing fear that Shane was simply putting up with his nightly feeding because he didn’t know how to deny him.
