So that was it for today’s chattiness. Seth blew out a breath, hunching back over Riley’s nails. “Yeah, yeah.”
It wouldn’t be the first friendship of Seth’s with an undercurrent of mutual attraction. He’d maintained plenty of those over the years, actually. Some of them he’d acted on, some he hadn’t. Ithadn’t ruined things either way. Seth wasn’t the kind of guy people pined over when the deed was done.
This one, though, he wouldn’t act on. He couldn’t. Absolutely not.
Right?
Right.
Seth finished Riley’s pinkie with a nod of satisfaction, grabbing Riley’s other hand to give it the same treatment. He let go of the tangle of his thoughts and settled in to do hisfriend’smanicure.
6
RILEY
Riley was doing so, so well.
He’d been taking it slow and steady, building a rapport with regular visits to the bakery. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that screamed,Creature of the night come to mate you for eternity.
Sitting in a warm bakery for hours on end while reading a good book? Totally normal. Not visiting too often, keeping it to every few days? Super casual and completely human.
And yes, maybe showing up before official opening hours like a stray cat was alittleunusual, but Riley couldn’t help it—he liked the quiet time before the other humans arrived. He liked to breathe Seth in and catch his little furrows of concentration as he set up his cash register for the day.
It kept the voice calmer too. It was a covetous fucking maniac when it came to their mate, and it would prefer Seth only ever looked at them. It helped to feed it with some moments of alone time before they were surrounded with human customers.
The voice didn’t like it—the customers in their space, the shift in Seth’s attention when serving someone else—but it wasn’t stupid either. It had learned, over the last few weeks, that the more it behaved, the more the two of them got to see their mate. Because for every day at the bakery that it ranted and raved and tried to push Riley into sinking his teeth into Seth’s perfect neck, Riley sequestered them one day longer in the forest.
And oooohhh, it fuckinghatedthat.
But too bad. Slow. Steady. That was Riley’s mantra. There would be no exchange of blood, no bite marks that bonded them forever—not until Seth chose it himself. Eyes open, heart full. Hopefully. Maybe. Pretty fucking please.
Stuck in the woods to protect himself and those around him, Riley hadn’t ever had a boyfriend, or even a real friend beyond the den of vampires in Colorado he only knew because of his moms. And now that he’d found someone he wanted, he wasn’t going to let the voice fuck it up and ruin it like it had ruined everything else in Riley’s life.
It had stolen his childhood, it had stolen his birth mother. It wasnotgoing to steal his chance to date Seth for real.
And yeah, maybe Riley’s “slow and steady” approach wouldn’t have worked if Seth wasn’t the type of warm, kindhearted person who couldn’t seem to turn a lost soul away. And of course, Riley basically inviting himself over to Seth’s house for lunch today was probablytwosteps forward instead of just the one.
But holy shit. So worth it. Because getting into Seth’s home was like the secret key, and Riley hadn’t even known it. There was something to the fact that it was Seth’s safe space, to the way he was so attached to the little things he’d surrounded himself with. He kept showing them to Riley—his photos, his self-care tools, the personal touches he’d added to his home. It was like he couldn’t quite help himself, even if Riley coming over hadn’t been his idea.
First Seth had done Riley’s nails, and then he’d taken off theirface masks, and they’d both put some weird serums on. And then Seth had wanted to show Riley his favorite ASMR videos. He claimed Riley would have a good voice for it, if he ever wanted a side hustle.
Riley didn’t have amainhustle, even, but he didn’t know a chill way to say that, thanks to his undead adoptive mothers, he was independently wealthy and never had to work a day in his long life if he didn’t want to.
That was the least of Riley’s secrets, anyway.
And now, after a short tour of Seth’s backyard, they were sitting cross-legged together on the couch again, watching video after video. Riley’s inner voice was surprisingly calm and complacent, although he could feel it coiled within him, vibrating with the thrill of being so close to their mate.
Seth leaned forward to click another link on the laptop, which he’d placed in front of them on the coffee table. The videos were odd—a young creator who talked in a whisper voice while pretending to do their makeup, or acting as if they were performing a doctor’s check-up on the audience, only dressed as a mer-person for some reason. Still, Riley had to admit they were soothing.
And yet Seth’s pulse was jumping, and Riley couldn’t stop staring at it, that hint of movement under Seth’s soft skin.
Riley liked that Seth—who was so self-assured with every other human—got a little nervous around him. He didn’t know what that said about Riley, how much he liked it, but he did.
Riley liked the way that pretty pulse sped up when he was around. And he liked the little hitches in Seth’s breath he didn’t seem to be aware he was making when Riley moved closer to him.
Riley wanted more of it—that nervousness, that heightened awareness. He wanted to see what other sounds he could get out of sweet Seth if he tried. He wanted to know just how fast he could get that tender heart to beat for him.
Maybe that was what attraction was like for everyone, or maybe it was the predator’s instinct inside him acting out, wanting to startle their perfect prey. Riley didn’t know.
