Page 35 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Andres felt alive like never before. Gently, he drew two fingers along the back of Shane’s wrist. He slipped them between skin and fabric, nudging at Shane’s pulse. “Give me your hand, my little swan.”
The shudder that ran through Shane was immaculate. He obeyed, sliding his wrist into Andres’s grip, letting Andres pull his arm across the console, making him stretch and bow until he was forced to look up to see Andres. Even then, Shane held Andres’s gaze, afraid, clearly… but not of him.
Andres laced his fingers over the backs of Shane’s and held it to his heart, bringing their pulses as close as they could come, imagining he could feel them settling into the same rhythm. He could hear Shane’s, beating through his neck in a soft but rapid thud-thud, calling to him. He grinned. “Your other hand, too.”
Shane made an indignant sound, but he peeled his fingers off his neck, holding them out almost sullenly. He was the most beautiful creature Andres had ever seen, in his simple burgundy shirt with the split in the collar unbuttoned, his hair half up, and his lips quavering, his gaze so fixed on Andres that he seemed enraptured, enthralled, owned. He was Andres’s, if only for that moment.
Andres drew Shane’s other hand away from his body as well. He lifted it to his lips, kissing his fingers gently, one side then the other. With each turn he slid a fang just a hair into the flesh, presenting Shane with a burst of venom, building it with every new love nip. Shane’s tightness eased away in a series of hums and whines, and he sprawled across the center console, resting his head on the steering wheel as he gazed up.
Andres flipped his wrist over, pressing his nose to the soft underside. Sunshine. Of all the ways he could describe it, even held to his mouth, Shane’s scent was still best summed up by that single word, the feeling of basking in a warmth beyondoneself, beautiful and loving and reckless all at once. “You are an impeccable mystery,” he whispered.
Shane responded with an almost delirious, “Uh-huh.”
When Andres sank in his fangs and took his first, perfect taste of Shane’s blood that night, Shane moaned like he’d been, not just fearing this moment, but waiting for it. Wanting it. Andres hadn’t hurt him after all.
The thought made his heart soar and plummet all at once. He could keep this up, this and this alone. No fantasies of chains or demands of obedience, not once their excursion to Tara’s work was complete. He could be content with just this—just his fangs in Shane’s flesh, and the little happy sounds Shane was making.
Andres licked the wound closed, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go, cupping Shane’s wrist gently. Shane reached for him, sliding a hand along his jaw. Andres didn’t pull away, not until Shane slipped two fingers under his mask and tried to lift.
“No,” he said, slow and gentle.
Shane stilled, lounging against the wheel with the lamplight on his face as he stared up into Andres’s darkness searchingly. He glided his thumb over Andres’s cheek. “This isn’t just for the drama,” he concluded, so awfully brilliant and terribly genuine. “Do you not trust me to see you? After I’ve obeyed you in everything… do you still think I’d turn you in?”
“If you wished to be free of me, I could never have stopped you.” He saw on Shane’s face the truth that his swan had always known that, and felt for a moment, a little lighter, a little free. Then the feeling collapsed into reality. “But I still don’t want you to look under the mask. I’m afraid you won’t feel the same about the person beneath as you do with me.”
“So this is permanent?” For all the vague and empty tones Shane had taken that night, Andres could hear the displeasure in this one with a certainty that scared him.
“Be patient, my little swan.”
Until when, he didn’t know. How quickly would this all fall apart once he revealed to Shane that the vampire making him shudder was his harmless disaster of a friend after all? He still wanted—needed—that thrill and tension, all the more now that he had confirmation that his little swan wanted the gentle coercion and the venom that Andres was giving.
But the way Shane’s attention went to his phone as soon as he was out of the car made Andres’s heart leap once, then again at the little buzz of his own cell after.
It was such a lovely contrast to the unread melodramatic message from Maul that sat below it, and despite everything he’d just told Shane, a part of him forgot he couldn’t simply text himplease be safeandsee you soon <3as Shane unlocked his apartment door; forgot so thoroughly that he was halfway through typing the message before he realized what he’d done.
His chest ached with each backspace.
15
SHANE
Shane could still feel the lingering tingles of venom in his fingers and the curves they’d traced of his vampire’s face, like the slope of his bones had tried to imprint themselves there. It didn’t matter to him that the car had been so dark he could barely make out his vampire against the shadows. He wanted to see beneath the mask, to see the person who’d been making him come undone, who’d convinced his body it was safe and persuaded his heart to stay despite the danger. The anonymity had felt thrilling in the beginning, but he wanted depth now.
Still, his vampire wasn’t comfortable enough with the idea.
“I’m afraid you won’t feel the same about the person beneath as you do with me.”
What the fuck did that mean? Did he think Shane would find him visually undesirable? Did his appearance not fit what he thought a tall, menacing and sensual vampire’s should?
The final option was the only one that gave Shane the slightest bit of hesitation: maybe his vampire didn’t want Shane to see who he was, because Shane already knew him, and disliked him. A celebrity he’d interviewed in the past, perhaps. An old coworker he’d forgotten. Someone he’d run into at a bar…
Sometimes, when his voice slipped out of its sultry growl for a moment, Shane thought it sounded weirdly familiar. He’d makea rated list later. Andres would get a kick out of that—and it was probably time he shared the existence of his vampire with more than just Nat, for his own safety, if nothing else.
Before he’d pulled away, his vampire had asked for Shane’s clothing measurements, and Shane’s mind had flashed through a strange array of fantasies, then to thoughts of the upcoming Vitalis-Barron gala, before realizing he was probably ordering them outfits for Tara’s work. At least he hadn’t demanded to take the measurements himself.At least, orif only? Shane couldn’t decide as he drew the measuring tape across his body, envisioning his vampire’s fingers skimming the same places.
Shane wrote his results down, slipped the paper beneath the doormat, and returned to his computer to record what little he’d learned tonight—most of it theories about kink in the vampire community. Even if he wasn’t writing theWar on Bloodarticle yet, he wanted to record as much information on the vampiric existence as he could. No matter how strongly his vampire believed that what was happening with Vitalis-Barron could be viewed as a singular event, its existence was interconnected with the rest of vampire society. Shane would prove that, even if that meant finishing the damn article and shoving it in his vampire’s face.
In the meantime, he accepted a new set of obnoxious review pieces for ChatterDash, one of which had a grammatical error in the keyword phrase they mandated he include in it, then checked his glucose levels and took his nightly insulin. He’d have to pick up more soon—another trip to the pharmacy, another payment he wished he could have been spending on anything else. He wondered if he tasted any different to his vampire with the rising and falling of his blood sugar.
