“Huh?” His mind went to Lydia and Avery, and he nearly reached for his phone, when Mercer followed up.
“Your first dates. You get blood from them, and then you ghost them. You hypocrite.” His mouth was quirked as he said it, the final word gentled by laughter.
Rahil’s cheeks burned. One-night stands weren’t uncommon, not on the apps he used, but the idea of doing that to Mercer—and the knowledge that he would have, had Merc not been the one to ghost him first—seemed ludicrous and insensitive. Mercer was worth so much more than a single evening.
So much more than anything Rahil could give.
“I mean…” Rahil struggled to find words that didn’t paint himself as either the villain or the victim. Therehadto be more categories of person than that. “It was a useful way to acquire blood from consenting individuals, but I wasn’t looking for a… for a family. That was all.” He couldn’t meet Mercer’s gaze as he said it.
“I understand,” Mercer said, his voice weak. Rough. “With Lydia, even just the thought of bringing one person into a space we’ve shared with no one else for so long… It’s almost unthinkable.”
Rahil noted thealmost, and his heart blistered. It was nothisalmost, but he yearned for it anyway.
“You’d mentioned your own kids yesterday?” Mercer asked. “Where are they now?”
Rahil had expected the question, expected to flinch and laugh, but the gentle ache in his chest and the desire to lean closer to Mercer, take comfort in the shape of his knee, the warmth of his skin—that he’d not expected in the slightest. “In the same cemetery as Leah, beside their mother.”
“God. I’m sorry, I should have—”
“It’s fine. It was—”My fault, he nearly said, but Mercer didn’t need to hearthattoo. “It happened a while ago. Well, one of them, anyway. The other feels as though I lost him years before I actually did. The last time he and I spoke, my ex-wife was on her deathbed, and our relationship had been all but nonexistent for the decade prior.”
“You had two… two boys?”
“Yes.” Rahil swallowed down the lump that threatened to rise. He should have been better at this; it had been a long time—long since he’d seen either of them, at least. But it had been just as long since he’d spoken of this loss with another person. “Jonah and Matt. Very white names. Blame my wife, and her English grandfather I suppose; he was a Matthew, too.” He said it affectionately. It had seemed like the right choice for the cultural climate of the time. To many people, it still did, and he couldn’t blame them for it.
The little chuckle that got out of Mercer was worth more than gold. Even unholy gold. Despite the pressure in his chest and the tightness behind his jaw, Rahil smiled.
“You had Jonah, Matt, and… have I forgotten your wife’s name?”
“Shefali.” He didn’t bother correcting Mercer—not ex, not late, just… wife. In a way, it worked. However far they moved from having known each other, he would still love her for what she had been to him. They were as impermanent as anything could possibly be, yet their ghosts were eternal. “Her name comes from the jasmine flower. I used to plant them everywhere I could. She pretended she hated them.”
“I can picture it.” Mercer chuckled, but it turned into a wince. He rubbed his fingers into the space behind his ears, working down along his neck. As though it were some kind of vampiric lingerie, the shield of his hands suddenly made Rahil’s hunger come alive again. This was not the time, he told it. But perhaps it could be time enough for something else.
Rahil set Leah’s project to the side, shifting onto his knees. He pointed to Mercer’s hands. “Does that help?”
“Hm? Rubbing?” Mercer groaned softly. “Yeah, for the moment. It’s just a band-aid.”
“May I?” Rahil held out both his palms as an offering. “I’ve been told I have very good fingers. And I promise not to take advantage of your glorious neck proximity.” He winked, hoping the joke wasn’t too much. After Mercer’s hesitancy around a potential bite, he worried…
“Please,” Mercer grumbled. “As though you could possibly intimidate me. Ihaveseen you tied up, you know. And begging.”
All the blood rushed from Rahil’s head to exactly the wrong place and he couldn’t even fault it. He was sure Mercer could tell, too. “We could always do that instead.”
“My unholy gold counts on it, yes.” Merc snorted, but there was a humorous quirk to his lips as he patted the bed beside him.
A thrill ran up Rahil’s spine, then right back down again, settling low and aching as he climbed onto the mattress. He had to keep reminding himself that this was purely a medicinal act, as platonic as any touching of skin atop a bed could possibly be. But it was atop Mercer’s bed, and it was Mercer’s skin he was sliding his fingertips over, Mercer’s hair that was so soft beneath his touch. Rahil slipped into place behind his just-a-friend, counting to three to calm himself and ensure he’d properly repressed his hunger before he began to massage.
For the first minute, the world was just him and Mercer, his thoughts honed on the ways Merc’s body responded to the pressure—gentle noises and relaxing shifts and uncomfortable flinches all guiding Rahil’s hands. He forced himself not to think of what other ways he could invoke a similar pleasure. Therewereadvantages tonotbeing bound.
Advantages that were also supplied to his fangs.
In specifically not imagining every sexual route his hands could take, every moan and grunt and expression of bliss he might invoke, his mind detoured instead to the heaviness of his fangs, the thirst still roiling in his gut.
Mercer’s neck was so long and thick, the pound of his blood beneath the skin a steady, confident thrum. The taste taunted him. It would be easy to lean in now, to press lips to skin, then just a prick of teeth—let his venom drown Mercer’s migraine in soft bliss for a while. Let him feel as good as he deserved to, after all that he’d been doing to care for his daughter on his own.
Rahil wouldn’t, of course: consent was a bondage of its own, and as much as it galled him, it was just as sexy as the physical cords he’d let Mercer wrap him in so many times.
But he could still imagine.
