Page 89 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
As Shane’s messages to Nat went unanswered, he debated asking Clementine for Anthony’s contact information, but in the end, it was Anthony who reached out.
Anthony Hilker
Natalie has returned none of my communications since the gala and she appears not to be home. This is unlike her, and it scares me. If you know where she is, or whether she is safe, I would be grateful for whatever information you can provide. Thank you.
Shane had no information he could safely give him but the confirmation that Nat wasn’t responding to his messages either, and the address he’d last seen her at. He felt nauseous sending it, and for the next few hours he could do nothing but curl up against Andres’s side and remind himself that she’d made this choice too.
“Keep him safe.”
If that was her final wish, it was one Shane knew he’d uphold to his grave.
He would keep Andres safe, and he would do what he could to keep every other vampire in the city safe as well. That it involved bringing down the workplace who’d fired Natalie, and treatedtheir human employee’s deaths with little more regard then they did their vampiric test subjects, made him pretty sure at this point she’d have been happy for that too.
So between feeding Andres and feeding himself, Shane began spending his hours curled at his sleeping vampire’s side with his laptop propped between them, every little pained whimper Andres made spurring him on.
It was on the fifth day of this, Shane’s emotions running dry from the constant highs and lows of love and fear, that Andres finally turned a corner. The tension and trembling that had radiated through their body in alternating waves broke, and Shane was stroking their hair tenderly when they burst awake with a shout.
“Shane!”
“I’m here.” Shane drew Andres’s hand to his lips, kissing them first on their knuckles before leaning in to press his lips to their temple, wrapping them up as slowly and gently as he could.
The flinch he expected never came. Andres slumped into his arms, holding onto him like he was life itself, and every tear they cried seemed to wash away the horrors, leaving both of them shining in the starlight.
34
ANDRES
The pain was made real only when it finally split, casting Andres from a hellish realm of nightmares into a tattered body in a bed, aching all the way through his bones. His head pounded and his thoughts moved slowly, tugged in and out of the darkness. They had coalesced finally on one image: his Shane, bleeding.Dying.
But then Shane had been there, holding him, whispering to him, so alive that Andres could do nothing but cry into his shoulder with relief. They were together, and they’d made it through. This time, Phaethon and Cygnus both lived. Andres managed to hold that thought as he drifted back off, falling into a sleep that felt, for once, restful.
When he woke again, his head a little clearer and his stomach growling softly, he managed to prop himself up on his pillows while Shane went for food. It was loud downstairs, but he recognized at least two of the voices as Maddox and Valentine. How long had they been here?
The thought of them in his house while he recovered brought a wave of nausea and anxiety, so like his reactions to being reached for that he had to force himself to breathe and sit with the feeling, turning it over from all directions. These people—the caring, jovial people who’d come to show their support—had power over him, he realized; power he hadn’t given them, aninherent authority that came from staying in his house while he hovered between life and death.
Shane had taken that power too, donned it like a piece of his own soul.
Andres felt himself recoil from that as well, and he gave the reaction the hugest, ugliest middle finger he could. Shane was incredible. What he’d done for Andres—what everyone who’d come through his doors as he’d lain helpless had done for him—was born of love. There had been people in Andres’s past whom he should have let himself yank back from, yank straight out of their lives the moment he could, but they were notthesepeople.
These were people who would be gentle with him.
Shane returned with a plate of tortilla casserole, setting it on Andres’s nightstand and climbing onto the bed like he knew just how much he belonged there. “How are you feeling?”
“As though I’ve been turned into a vampire all over again.” Andres’s voice came out so hoarse that he had to clear it in the middle. “I don’t think I know my own body anymore.” It was like a void had opened between the shell of his skin and the hollow of his soul, empty nerves and a deep ache that wasn’t exactly pain, but it wasn’tnotpain either, a liminal thing that screamed constantly in the back of his mind. But he was alive, and Shane was sitting with him, facing him, their thighs pressed together and Shane’s hand on his knee, stroking so tenderly that it made Andres almost feel like he existed.
Shane looked concerned, but his smile was still bright, overflowing with love. “We can relearn your body together.”
It could have been a statement of lust, but instead there was a sweetness to it, so soft and romantic that it filled Andres with a warmth like the sunshine of Shane’s blood-scent. He fiddled with the sleeve of Shane’s shirt, tracing his fingers along the back of Shane’s hand. “When I have the strength again…”
The little smirk that twisted into Shane’s lips was delicious, somehow both submissive and insistent all at once. “Your physical prowess is not what makes me yours. Besides, you need only command me to please you, and I’ll obey.”
Thatwasdeliberately sensual, but beneath the careful words, Andres could see what else Shane was offering him: to relax and have his needs tended to, even if he couldn’t reciprocate or take control. And as much as he loved the control, the dominance, the way Shane would shudder under his touch and whimper for him, he thought he might grow to lovethistoo.
“I know you will, pet,” he whispered. His hands were still unsteady, but he managed to trail his fingers over Shane’s jaw and onto his throat, following his vein not for the need of blood—he could feel how utterly sated Shane had kept Andres while he was unconscious—but because he could.
As his fingers drew over Shane’s neck though, they caught a faint ridge he hadn’t expected. Andres leaned in curiously, trying to get close enough that his terrible vision righted itself, but as he did, Shane pulled back.
He pressed his palm to the place Andres had touched.
