He did his best not to sneer at the tacky decorations on the walls, but Jamie sensed his derision anyway, judging by his husky chuckle. “Lighten up, monster. It’s all just for fun.”
Luc flicked the wings of a plastic bat as they hurried past and let his lip curl after all. “Can’t it be funandtasteful?”
Jamie laughed again as they broke out onto the underground dance floor. The basement was done up in full tacky, festive hideousness, all orange flashing lights and machine-made smoke and people writhing half-naked in costumes.
Jamie tugged Luc closer to him, sliding warm lips by his ear to murmur, “No, you snob. The tackinessisthe fun.”
Luc rolled his eyes, a habit he’d caught from his mate.
Halloween.
It wasn’t a tradition Luc had been raised on, obviously, but it was one his Jamie seemed to delight in with twice his usual effervescence. Enough so that he’d made plans with Colin andhis two idiots to meet them in Phoenix for a night of revelry, since he’d decided Tucson’s gay scene was too small for their purposes.
“We need real crowds,” he’d declared in Monique’s dive bar, waving a shot glass in the air. “Real costumes and a real party. Everyone dressed up to filth and practically fucking on the dance floor.”
Who was Luc to argue?
As if he could deny Jamie anything, anyway.
And he hadn’t minded an excuse to rent a room at an obscenely expensive hotel for the night. One in which the other three were supposedly also staying, but they hadn’t had a chance to meet up with them ahead of time—he and Jamie had been too busy preparing their costumes, a task that Luc had not realized he’d enjoy as much as he had.
Jamie now pulled Luc through the crowd toward the bar—they passed bare-chested pirates, bare-chested firemen, drag versions of Old Hollywood starlets—and Luc took a moment to appreciate his mate’s…attire.
They’d dressed as a vampire and his victim. A surprise when Jamie had told him—Luc had expected him to want something more dramatic, more playful. But then Jamie had shared the specifics, and Luc had been all for it.
Luc’s side of it was easy—he was wearing tight black jeans, a black button-down tucked in, and a long black jacket that reached down to his knees. His black eyes and fangs were out, and Jamie had affixed some sort of Halloween makeup to his forehead to heighten the monstrous effect. For some reason, Jamie had also made him shave, and his hair was gelled, spiked toward the front in an offensively ugly style.
Whatever. The idiotic coif was worth it for Luc’s part in Jamie’s costume.
Jamie—the victim—had wanted to becoveredin bloody bites, which had involved Luc sinking his teeth into him over and over, drinking his fill and then letting the blood spill over onto his mate’s tawny skin. Luc had fucked him while he’d done it, slow and thorough and hungry, and Jamie had murmured sweet filth all the while, directing Luc where to bite next with eager hands tugging at his hair.
The bites themselves had healed, of course, but Jamie had affixed more Halloween makeup to replicate them after his blood had dried. He had some frilly white shirt torn and unbuttoned to reveal his slim, bare chest, and jeans so low-slung they should have been illegal.
In short, he looked beyond tempting, especially with the cinnamon scent of his dried vampire blood trailing him in the air.
Luc wanted to kiss his neck. To bite and consume every inch of him, even more thoroughly than what he’d managed in the hotel.
Perfect and delicious and ours, his monster crooned, a refrain it had been repeating since their costume preparations.
Perhaps Jamie would let Luc suck him off in some dark corner soon. Or the reverse—Luc wasn’t feeling picky.
But apparently that would have to wait, as Jamie started to veer toward the end of the bar, where Colin and the twins were already waiting, to Luc’s immense annoyance.
Poutain de merde, couldn’t they have had the decency to not show up?
Colin was dressed all in black, a pair of matching black ears sticking out of his pastel-pink hair, with whiskers painted on his face. The twins were shirtless, like much of the bar’s patrons, their heads wrapped in leather muzzles, with collars and leashes leading straight to Colin’s hand.
Fox sniffed the air as Jamie and Luc approached. “Is that real blood?” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Fucking unsanitary.”
Jamie flipped him off cheerfully. “I’m a vampire, dickhead. It’s not like anyone can catch anything from my blood. Sorry not sorry for being authentic.”
Colin ignored their bickering, looking over Jamie’s costume and then Luc’s. His lips twitched when he finished his perusal. “Holy shit. You’re Ang—”
“A vampire,” Jamie cut in quickly, a mischievous grin aimed at his friend. “Just a vampire.”
“Boring as fuck,” Dane drawled, baring his teeth under the muzzle when Luc growled at him for the insolence.
Jamie and Colin exchanged another look, but Luc didn’t attempt to interpret it. He was too busy trying to catalog the lust coming through the bond on Jamie’s end, the shock of it that had bloomed when he’d seen the twins’ costumes.
