Rahil was not easily embarrassed, with his stereotypical vampire dress and his flamboyantly cheesy flirting—and he could no longer count all the people who’d seen him naked. But here, now, he was oddly conscious of the way his low-cut shirt had fallen over one shoulder during his entangling, the ruffles fluttering around his dark nipples and the smooth surface of his abs visible, his long, unbound hair draping like a veil behind him. He was conscious of somethingelseas well.
“I know how this must look, but I swear it’s just a happy coincidence.” He tried to laugh at the end, but the knife Merc was still pointing at him turned the sound a bit too uncomfortable to be humorous.
“So, you’renotstalking me?” Merc sounded unconvinced. He stepped forward, and his blade lifted towards Rahil’s exposed chest.
Rahil wiggled on instinct, but the bindings only tightened again, the cords around his arm and one thigh growing painful. He forced himself to still, to just breathe. To not think about how close he was to death or how damn hot Merc was while threatening him. A tiny whimper still left him, something halfway between pathetic and turned on. “I really had no idea you lived here.”
He could feel the blade now, pressed against the base of his sternum with enough force that Rahil had to quiet his lungs, his whole body rigid. When Merc held his gaze, he thought he might fall into it. Fall and never get up again. “If you have come to threaten or steal from me…”
“I just needed out of the sun,” Rahil whispered, staring back like his life depended on it.
Merc grunted. He glared for another moment, then slowly withdrew the blade.
Rahil took his first full breath since the man had walked in. The comfort of it felt worse, somehow, than the depths of Merc’s attention. “Though if there was anyone worth stalking, it would be you.”
My god, had he just said that?
He had just said that.
Maybe hedeservedto die, actually.
Merc turned back towards him with the same stony ferocity as before, and it felt like the deep shadow of night falling over Rahil’s sun-poisoned skin.
Rahil swallowed. “I’d be so very grateful if you didn’t kill me.”
Thatfinally shocked a new reaction out of the man: confusion and then horror. Merc set the butcher’s knife on the bench below his assortment of equally terrifying looking tools and blades. “Why the hell would I kill you?”
Rahil raised a brow. He fought the urge to twist his arm where the cords now bit in overly tightly. “What else is this shed for, if not torturing unsuspecting vampires?”
Merc made a sound that might have been a laugh, gruff and tight and breathtaking. “I’m a craftsman. A metalsmith, primarily. A little carpentry, too, and some glass blowing when I get the chance.”
“Oh,” Rahil sassed, like he wasn’t tied up at a stranger’s mercy. “That’s a perfectly good reason to have a variety of sharp instruments all in a row.”
“Were you afraid I was going to stick one of them in you?”
“Depends on which end you plan to stick…” Rahildefinitelydeserved to die. If his family’s god was not preparing to smite him at that very moment, there was clearly no justice in the world.
Merc seemed to take it infinitesimally better, lifting one stoic brow at him. “You really are justlikethis?”
“A stupid, irrevocable flirt with no brain-to-mouth filter? Yes.” If nothing else, he would die how he lived: a terror. “And you are really just hot. Well, notjusthot. I could offer many other synonyms.”
The effect of the statement on Merc was to raise his other brow. Then he lowered both. “At least that’s settled,” he said.
“Does that mean you’ll fuck me?” He knew the answer, but it was still worth a shot.
Merc sighed. “R. BabyCock—is that really your name?”
“It’s Rahil. Rahil Zaman.”
The gaze Merc leveled on him was magnificent, his voice low and both his hands holding firmly to the counter behind him as he leaned toward Rahil. “Rahil Zaman,” Merc said, “what I plan to do with you isabsolutely nothing.”
That was worse than death, Rahil decided. “I’m all for bondage and denial, but a couple of these ropes are a little tight.” He wiggled his arm for emphasis despite knowing that would only worsen the problem. Or maybehewas the problem. He wasalwaysthe problem.
“You did that to yourself,” Merc confirmed and turned his attention to his phone.
Rahil whimpered pathetically, because he could.
Merc lifted his brows, not looking up. “Oh, hush. I’m fixing it.”
