Page 40 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
Oh.Oh. The thought was small and bright and it settled quickly into a contented warmth. His little swan had searched and found himself, the same way Andres had, and there was a beauty and bond in that Andres could find nowhere else. He was a wonder, a monument to his own godhood. Andres wanted him all the more for it.
“I…” Shane started, then flushed, turning his face away.
“My Cygnus,” Andres breathed. He lifted his hands to the scars, slow enough that when Shane flinched back, he could move like a wave with the motion, steady but gentle. The tips of his fingers drew over the sliver of the line he could see, then his thumb followed as he cupped Shane’s sides, staring up at him once again. “You’re magnificent.”
Shane’s eyes gleamed. His lower lip quivered.
“So very magnificent,” Andres repeated, because it was true. But if Shane was like him—if he’d strived for so long to find the styles that showed his soul and not merely his body—Andres worried. He’d picked what he’d known would look good on Shane, taking inspiration from the thin, loose scarves and flowing cardigans he commonly wore in his videos, but Andres had never actuallyasked. “Did I overstep with the design? If this makes you feel too feminine—”
“No,” Shane interjected. “It’s princely, truly. I feel like me.”
Andres stood, and as he did, Shane—his magnificent, starlit Cygnus—leaned into him, wrapping both arms around Andres with a tender sound.
“Thank you.”
Andres was too shocked to reply. His arms knew better than his brain, though, because they drew naturally around Shane, holding him close like he was meant to be there. “You’re mine,” he finally managed.
Shane trembled at that, and Andres swore—swore—he held tighter.
From beyond the curtain came the vague sounds of new arrivals, and the butler lifting their voice. “Let me check if the couple before you has finished yet.”
“I think that means we should go in,” Shane whispered, like they were criminals up to mischief.
Andres supposed thiswasa type of con, after all, if only because their target seemed determined not to let them approach in any other way. He brushed his fingers over the delicate chain that hung down Shane’s chest. “If you’re overwhelmed or uncomfortable, tell me. We can always—”
The laugh that Shane cut him off with was so sharp and frazzled it grated. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
Andres tried not to as they handed off their regular clothing to the host and were directed to the double doors at the far side of the hall. It felt like so much more was riding on this night than just a conversation with a Vitalis-Barron escapee, every one of his terrible fantasies begging him either to take the leap or let go forever.
His breath caught as he pushed the doors open.
The lighting was dim still, electric candles hidden behind wall chalices and set into candelabras. Across the ceiling hung strings of tiny fairy lights, arranged in what Andres swore were real constellations, even if the only ones he personally knew were Orion and now Cygnus. They gave a sophistication and sensuality to the already gorgeous array of old-fashioned lounge furniture: sofas and loveseats, chairs draped in silks and little end-tables filled with bundled flowers and tinydiscarded appetizer plates. The room sprawled, its seating clearly arranged to inspire close connections, with paper and wooden screens and potted plants artfully assembled to create the feeling of rooms in a space where it seemed the only truly separate chambers were a series of doors along two walls. Curtains shimmered over a half a dozen of those entrances, revealing glimpses of private, shadowy spaces, while further down it seemed their doors opened to more intimate parlor settings like those in the main space, blocked by silk ribbons that likely signified reservations.
It was a brilliant design, mobile enough for the constant moving that kept them secret, but with plenty of solid and detailed pieces to make the place feel truly grounded in its own ethereal way: a gothic castle, not pulled from time but from fantasy. Though Andres suspected it would have been far less a sight without the people occupying it.
The space was already full of low, sensual talk and sharp laughter. A few more vampires dressed like butlers walked with platters of bite-sized appetizers, while six humans in the same dark velvet—though noticeably less of it—moved behind them, filling tiny shot glass-sized goblets with a splash of dark red liquid. With the aroma of so many tapped veins already wafting through the room, it took Andres a moment to spot the tube the human servers were pouring from… how it slipped beneath the band on their wrists and vanished.
Their own blood, offered to the vampiric participants like a taste test.
A terrible, selfish part of him leapt at the concept, not for want of it—not while he had the blood source he desired most already standing at his side—but at the idea of having the necessity he’d spent his adult life lying and stealing and charming for presented on demand, like a gift. But it probably wasn’t a gift, he reminded himself. Even if the humans smiledas they offered it, laughed at the languid touches some of the vampires gave their hands and seemed to bask beneath the obvious looks their bared skin received.
As Andres scanned the room of suits and dresses, frills and lace and overwhelming jewelry, he found nearly half of the two-dozen vampiric occupants had a human of their own, lounging at their feet or curled obediently in their lap. Most wore even gauzier, more revealing pieces than Shane’s, with their own collars or cuffs—though few as lovely, Andres noted with a bizarre burst of pride. Bizarre and mildly unwarranted, considering that Shane had only come with him for the chance to talk to Tara.
And Andres shouldn’t havewantedto compare himself to these people anyway. Not their smirks or their possessive touches or the way their humans melted against them, submissive and vulnerable and so obviouslytheirs. He should have been checking on Shane, who could only be far more aghast at all of this than Andres.
But when Shane’s hand slid against Andres’s, it wasn’t with fear or trembling, but a thoughtful pressure. He glowed beneath the lights, a quirk to his lips and his eyes wide and alive. His fingers drew up and down Andres’s wrist in an absentminded motion, steadier than Andres and just as eager.
For the life of him, Andres couldn’t figure outwhy.
He didn’t have much time to think on it, because a blonde, pale-skinned vampire in a suit of blue flowers with full blooms spilling off his jacket collar meandered over from a group that was clearly appraising Andres and his human. Despite how young he looked, Andres was certain he had to be at least forty, a depth to his eyes and a few laugh lines around his lips.
“New to my home, are you?” he asked with a purr. “It’s a pleasure to have you here; I’m Master Valentine.”
Valentine. Andres almost snorted. That had to be some kind of stage-name. “Pleasure,” he replied.
Valentine’s gaze meandered over Shane, half-veiled behind lashes that sparkled with gold mascara. “You’ve brought someone delicious with you, I see.”
The obvious attention made a sharp heat stir in Andres’s chest. He wrapped an arm along Shane’s back, barely touching him, but sending a signal all the same. “He is. And he’s rather special to me.”
