Page 33 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
But now Shane had gone paler and paler, his breathing shallow and his body stiff, clearly afraid in a way he’d condensed into tiny trembles and whimpers before now, and as much as Andres loved him vulnerable, he did not lovethis. He hated this, in fact.
He’d never meant to hurt Shane. Andres had added that last piece in—despite the growing cost—because he’d thought it might give Shane something new to bear in place of the old memory. Something to prove that his life didn’t belong to Maul,or to any of the vampires who’d tried to take it. Except that instead, Andres supposed, it just seemed like he was putting even more claim on Shane himself.
And Shane clearly didn’t want that.
Andres wrapped his arms across his stomach, taking a slight step back. “We, uh, we don’t need this one, it’s fine.” He was sounding like unsexy Andres, like the dork who spent an entire night testing out different kinds of nail polish just to miss the closure of the bar he’d been planning to wear it to. “We’ll stick with the first three we measured for. The wrists, at least. Perhaps we’ll hold off on the choker if—”
“No.”
It took Andres a moment to truly internalize Shane’s objection, and a moment longer to answer with a parroted, “No?”
Shane’s throat bobbed, and despite everything, Andres couldn’t help tracking the movement with his gaze, his attention settling on the pulse that he’d pressed his fangs into so many times already. His little swan trembled once, glancing down. And that should have been Andres’s cue to back off. To listen to the rational, ethical side of his brain screaming at him that what he was doing to Shane had been a mistake long before his little swan’s face had gone pale and his tension mounted.
Instead he found himself sliding his fingers ever so delicately around the center of Shane’s neck, slowly closing them, giving no pressure, only the barest sensation of skin on skin. He waited for the quiet inhale, the tiny tremble, but then came what he did not expect: Shane leaned against him, his eyes closing, and very slowly, he tipped his head back.
His voice so rough it was barely his own, Andres amended, “We’ll take the choker after all.”
Despite the relative peace that wrapped up their meeting, Shane walked like he was trying to outpace a monster far faster than Andres, his jacket bundled against his chest and his arms tight. “You make me go through all those measurements and then don’t even let meseethe design after?” he complained. “I have a right to veto what I don’t like!”
Beneath his grumbling, he seemed to be masking something as closely as Andres concealed his own face, and Andres fought down the lingering suspicion that perhaps he had frightened Shane more than he was willing to let on. He’d said yes to the collar to appease Andres, obviously, though whether he was doing so out of affection or fear, Andres couldn’t tell. With the way he was still shuddering—so gloriously, but shuddering nonetheless—beneath Andres’s touch, Andres was growing worried it might have been the second. “As though I would ever pick you something that didn’t compliment your loveliness perfectly,” he replied, opening the driver’s door. “Besides, is thisnothow presents normally work?”
Shane scowled and slid into the passenger’s seat.
It was hard to tell whether the rust on his cheeks was a blush, with the greyscale of Andres’s vampiric night vision fighting the dim lighting from the porch. And his contacts were annoying him again. He tried not to rub the edges of his eyes beneath the mask as he climbed into the car.
The engine felt a little too loud in their silence. Andres had already turned onto the next street when Shane finally asked, his voice small and hard, like he was fighting to hold it in place, “Do you expect me to wear them all the time?”
“Wear—what?” The wheel suddenly felt slick in Andres’s grip.All the time.Wear them. Oh fuck. No wonder Shane was on edge.
The guilt that bloomed in Andres’s gut came almost as fast as a vision of just that: Shane lounging in his bed in nothing but the chains, laughing in his kitchen with the ornate pieces sparkling against his lounge-wear, having them hidden beneath his clothes as he shopped, feeling the constant reminder that he belonged to Andres. Buthedidn’t—it was just his blood Andres had bought, and that hadn’t even come with consent.
“They’re for infiltrating Tara’s work,” he clarified. God, he really was a monster. “I told you that?”
Shane made a sound that was impossible to pinpoint, flat and hollow and a little something else. Relief? Annoyance? Discomfort? “But you said—” He swallowed the words, breathing in and out, and started again. “You said that Mercer is making what we’ll need to access Tara’s work,andother things. And then you measured me for acollar. I assumed…”
“Ah.” Andres groaned. “In my defense, that was an accurate and literal description. Mercerdoesmake things besides the jewelry we’ll need for Tara’s work. Though, I, um, apologize for scaring you. It was not my intent.”
“I see.” Shane stared out the windshield, his gaze unfocused. “Do tell, where the fuck are we going that you need me in a collar and cuffs to get in?”
Andres had the impulse to drag a hand through his hair, but the cords of his mask were still wrapped around the back. “It’s kind of embarrassing.” He laughed bitterly. “And you’re going to hate it.”
“Try me?” This time, Shane seemedalmostas curious as he was horrified.
Well, Andres was about to change that. “So, ah, apparently at this underground theatre-dining experience where TaraWilliams works, the vampire attendees dress their humans in fancy chains like blood slaves and feed on them as though they’re the old gothic predators from the movies. It seems to be more or less a consensual ordeal, though how eager any of these humans could truly be, or how honorable the vampires, I don’t know.”
Sure enough, Shane’s hollow tone returned. “Well… fuck.”
It made Andres want to reach across the center console and pull him close, to tell him that he was safe, safe from anything he didn’t want to do or any act he wasn’t willing to give. But it was already a lie, wasn’t it? Andres had broken that for his own desires multiple times—perhaps every night, every night he asked for Shane’s neck and let him bear it while shuddering, still too afraid to admit that if Shane told him to stop, he would do so in a heartbeat. “You don’t have to…”
“No, I can—” Shane paused, his throat bobbing, and he started again. “I want to talk to Tara. If this is how we do it, then we do it.”
“I’ll be gentle.” He could promise that, at least. “Whatever we have to do, I’ll be gentle with you.”
“I know,” was all Shane responded with, his gaze out the front window, arms curled against his chest.
Andres wanted, desperately, to change the subject, but he struggled to find a conversation starter that Shane hadn’t already told the Andres from the Fishnettery over text. There were so many things that he wanted to ask, too, so much depth he wanted to build off. But the masked him had none of that friendship with Shane, only poetic musings and the ability to make him wilt.
And, apparently, to put him in chains.
