“What if I’d wanted to be fucked?” Took asked.
Madoc hooked his fingers in the neck of Took’s old T-shirt and pulled him into a quick, hard kiss.
“Next time,” he murmured as he nibbled the curve of Took’s mouth. “Now, are you going to take me to bed or not?”
“We could stay here,” Took said. “No one will see.”
Madoc rolled to his feet in one easy motion and held his hand out. After a second, Took grabbed it and let himself be dragged to his feet. Madoc promptly reeled him back in until they were pressed together again.
“I am old enough that fucking on the floor isn’t a novelty,” he rasped into Took’s ear. “And I want to leave my smell on your sheets, in the air. Whatever you do tomorrow, Luke, you won’t forget that I was here, that you asked me in, that you begged me to stay.”
Took sucked in a ragged breath. He didn’t need the oxygen, but somehow he still needed the pressure of air in his lungs as he tried not to get flustered. The rough words could have been a promise or a threat, and Took didn’t care. Heat pulled heavily in his groin, like hot sand, and he turned his face into Madoc’s throat. A kiss turned into an almost-bite as he scraped his teeth down over tendons and the soft spot where Madoc’s pulse used to live. The blunt pressure made Madoc shudder and clench his jaw.
“Told. I told you to stay,” Took said. “And I have never forgotten a single thing about you, Madoc.”
“Always the profiler,” Madoc said, almost affectionately.
Took didn’t correct him. It would take too long and be too real. Instead he hooked his hand in the waistband of Madoc’s trousers and dragged him toward the stairs.
SNACK HISSEDlike a kettle and shot out from under the bed as Madoc landed on it. Most of the time Snack’s ownership of the room, of the whole top floor, went unchallenged. He swatted Took’s leg on the way past, hard enough to sting even through denim, and disappeared out into the hall.
“I don’t think that cat likes me,” Madoc said as he stretched out on the sheets, his weight braced on his elbow.
His skin was nearly as pale as the linen, the darkness of his hair and scattered tattoo stark against all that pallor. The idea that the long sprawl of dangerous muscle, the hard bulge of his cock under the zip of his trousers, was there for Took, seemed like as much of a trap as a cat’s exposed fluffy belly… and was just as worth it to stick your hand into.
“I don’t think she’s the one who needs to,” Took pointed out. “So I can do anything I like to you?”
Madoc laughed and tilted his head back, his dark hair loose and his throat bared in one lean, tempting line.
“One tip I will give you on the vampiric life,” he said. “Never say yes to a question like that. Exactly what did you have in mind?”
It was the moment to ask what Madoc expected. Took didn’t. As far as VINE was concerned, his ability to patch things together into a believable behavioral whole was all he had left going for him.
“I thought you hated spoilers?”
Madoc raised an eyebrow. “Big kinky talk and nothing to back it up, huh?”
It shouldn’t be possible for a vampire to flush, but Took could feel the heat at the top of his ears. He scrubbed his hand through his hair and realized it was still damp at the back.
“Bite me,” he muttered.
Madoc smiled at him widely enough to show all his teeth. The tips of his fangs dimpled the lush curve of his lower lip, and his dark eyes were hot. “That I can do.”
The thought made Took’s scars burn. He might have locked away most of the memories of what happened that year, but his nerves remembered the slice of fangs and the acid of the curse as it worked into his bones.
The memory flicked like a lightbulb, sharp-edged and hungry. He wasn’t sure when it was—sometime when Madoc had still wanted to tease a rise out of the rigid new boy from California—but he knew where. It was the loft in Philadelphia that provided a waypoint between the office and wherever the various Biters called home. Madoc had stumbled in that nearly-morning with his latest lover, a pretty boy with sleepy amber eyes, stories about his job as a docent, and no boundaries.
Madoc’s hand was pale against the black-leather-covered thigh, a trickle of spilled blood vivid against his pale jaw. His tongue flicked out to lave the boy’s throat in a slow, wet swipe that dragged a raw sound of surrender from his lover and made Took shift with discomfort. The distaste he expected—the sneer he caught behind his teeth bitter as cigarette smoke—but the quick rise of lust caught him off guard.
“So much better,” Madoc purred against the pale, flawless column of throat, “tapped fresh.”
Madoc’s jaw tightened, his lover moaned in abandon, and as they tangled around each other, Took realized they’d forgotten all about the undeclared game of chicken.
He ceded the win anyhow as he looked away.
“If you’re good,” he said.
Madoc’s eyes were unreadable as he ran his hand down his chest to the broad black belt cinched around his lean waist. “Goodness isn’t something associated with my name,” he said as he tugged the leather strap loose. “Would you accept wicked?”
