Took scrubbed his hand through his hair, blood sticky as gel under his fingers, and turned around. He looked at the lean, dark sprawl of man, muscle, and bone wrapped in Kevlar-reinforced leather and buckles propped against his rented doorframe. He’d cropped his hair short, gone from shoulder-length to a shaved-up-at-the-sides undercut that drew attention to the gray at his temples. His shoulders were solid and wide with heavy muscle that he’d worked for at some time. There were few other signs of age—his gray eyes were unlined, his jawline still tight and closely shaved—but it was enough to set him apart. Most dhampirs were turned in their late teens or early twenties, before years and sun darkened their hair and thickened their skin from rice-paper pallor. Madoc had been a grown man when his blood finally caught up with him. Humans thought him pale and elegant, but among his own, he was a crow of a man.
“I fucked up,” Took admitted, his voice harsh in his throat as he tried to make it sound like his professional pride was all that was on the line. “I got sloppy. I didn’t watch Gatlin’s back, and I probably got him killed. We both know it.”
Madoc didn’t look like he was fooled. It wasn’t a lie either, so he let it go.
“We do,” he agreed with Took instead. “What I want to know is why.”
“Ten minutes,” Took bargained.
Madoc thought about it for a moment and then shrugged his surrender. “Ten minutes,” he said as he strolled into the room. There was only one chair. Madoc put it back on its feet and folded his body into it.
“I can wait,” he said.
Took considered a protest, but he was done. He shrugged instead and headed into the bathroom. A shove closed the door behind him, and he took in the mess the deputies had made of his toiletries. Every bottle and tube had been opened, emptied, and tossed into the sink. His soap had been roughly quartered with a knife. He suspected if he rearranged the uneven chunks he’d find they carved a cross into it.
He stripped, grabbed a chunk of soap, and climbed into the shower. A flick of his hand turned the tap on and the water battered down against his scalp and his shoulder. He lathered the soap and briskly scrubbed himself down. His hands were impersonal by habit until he curled his fingers around his cock and lingered on the jut of the half-erect shaft.
The scrape of lust had caught him by surprise earlier in the jail cell. It had been hot and tight and… familiar. Ever since he woke up with fangs, Took’s old map of his desires and hungers wasn’t dependable anymore. His go-to fantasies, the hard-wired type he always went for, were cordoned off and his wants detoured to darker places… deeper places. Lust came quicker, affection slower.
Maybe it was normal—Took had a shit couple of years under his belt; that had to have an impact—but it scared him that it might not be. Worst-case scenario, it might just be the start of… something.
But he’d never been comfortable with the way he wanted Madoc, and he still wasn’t. It had been hard enough to work with vampires, to walk out of a trap house with black blood on his boots and horrors in his head and crack a joke with a monster who wore a badge. That wasn’t something he’d learned at his father’s knee. And he’d never quite wrapped his head around the fact that he wanted to crawl all over one of the undead.
It had put him on edge then, and it put him on edge now. That was almost reassuring… but not enough for Took to be comfortable with jerking off in the shower while Madoc listened. He flicked the water to cold. It didn’t have quite the same impact as when his blood had been above room temperature, but it still shocked his cock out of its high hopes.
Took leaned forward and braced his hands against the wet white tiles. He let the water chill his shoulders and run down over his ass while he counted off Madoc’s patience.
A fist thumped the door. “You don’t even sweat anymore,” Madoc growled his complaint. “How long does it take to get clean?”
The water swirled thick rivulets of gray ichor around Took’s feet until it was sucked down the drain. Madoc had made it to nearly two minutes. He’d learned patience while Took was… taken. Took licked the water off his lips and pushed himself upright.
“I thought the need for constant entertainment was something my generation came up with?” he shot back as he turned off the shower. “Read a book or something.”
Madoc laughed with a low, throaty roll of humor that gave Took’s cock a boost of enthusiasm. “You think the Borgias were big fans of delayed gratification? That the Drakul squirreled brides away for a rainy day?”
“I think they could wait ten minutes.”
“You sorely underestimate them.”
Took turned his back to the mirror and looked over his shoulder. The explosion had lain his back open. It was a stripe of raw meat with blistered edges that ran from one shoulder to the other. In the hours since, the edges had barely scabbed, never mind stitched back together. He twisted his arm behind him and poked carefully at the wound. It had hurt earlier, but it seemed like that had worn off. Some vampires would have healed already, but he’d take not being in pain as the next best thing.
“Yeah,” Took said quietly as he grabbed the shirt. The cotton smelled of latex and cigarettes from some deputy’s fingers. He grimaced and shrugged it on anyhow. “Sometimes I do that.”
THE NICKELand Dimer had the aggressively kitschy charm of somewhere that might cover its overhead with local business but needed tourist bucks to make a profit. Last time Took had been with Gatlin and the place had been packed with families having breakfast. They’d had coffee at the counter—it didn’t do much for Took anymore, but he couldn’t quite give up the ritual of addiction—poured by a waitress with big hair and a bigger smile who’d upsold the PumperNickel pie and called them both sweetie.
That was twenty-four hours ago. Things had changed.
“Sign in the window,” the chef, a big, bearded man with a stained apron who probably intimidated most people, said as he glared at Took. “You read it? No heartbeat, no service. You can just fuck on back to your coffin, pal.”
Took picked up his menu and unfolded it. He looked over the top of it at Madoc.
“It was your idea to come here,” he pointed out.
Madoc pulled a badge out of the pocket of his uniform. The silver stake and stylized fangs glittered against the gold shield. The chef scowled as he took it in.
“Your sign’s illegal,” Madoc said as he tucked the badge back out of sight. “So if I were you, I’d take our order and then go take it down before a passing VINE agent runs you in.”
The chef hesitated. He rubbed the back of his neck, and his eyes cut nervously from Madoc to the cluster of rough, grim-faced locals at the end of the bar. Mud was dried on their jeans, and most of them had silver-shod stakes tucked in their boots and belts.
