Page 76 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

His gaze stopped bouncing around and fixed on mine. In the garden gloom, his dark eyes caught the starlight, pupils widening. His breathing changed, slowing, going deeper. Was there something happening here that I needed to be aware of as a very mortal human being who happened to be vampire prey?

He scooped me up by the back of the neck and pulled me into a savage kiss.

I should have been surprised. But somewhere in all this chaos, I’d almost expected it. Needed it, even. Needed to feel him close, to know he was okay. A whole lot of feelings rushed through my body and brain, and after being numb to all of it, the sharp clarity had my heart pounding and lungs breathless.

I clutched his wet shirt, pulled him closer, and let his kiss steal the breath right out of me.

Our wet clothes squelched.

So help me, I wanted to climb him like a pole right there. Wanted to back him into the nearest wall and stop thinking for once in my life. It didn’t make a lick of sense, with every smart part of my brain screaming “run,” but all I could think about was getting my hands under his shirt.

The need had teeth. It chewed through the fear and the good sense and everything else until there was just Theo. The heat of him, the taste of him, my whole body leaning in like it had finally found the one thing it had been missing and wasn’t about to let go just because we were being hunted.

I wanted to ruin him. Wanted to get his belt open and my knees on the ground and find out every sound he made when I had him under my hands and in my mouth. I wanted his fingers in my hair and his back arched off a mattress, and hours, not the stolen thirty seconds we had on the run. My whole body had a plan, and the plan was filthy and detailed and absolutely the worst possible thing to be drawing up now. I could feel exactly how wild it would get between us if we ever got the chance, like a storm about to break. All teeth and grip and zero patience.

And under all that feeling, the real knowledge hit home. He’d seen me now. All of it. He’d looked right into the worst of me a moment ago, the bad wiring I’d spent two years pretending I’d fixed, and he’d kissed me anyway. Maybe because of the dark. Like the rot was the part he wanted. Like I didn’t have to be good Owen or quiet Owen or any version of myself that fit through a normal door. He wanted the actual me. Warts and worse. And somewhere under all that wanting I started to understand that I wanted him back the same way, the whole glittering disaster of him. The mood swings, the drama, the passing out, the family toxicity. All of it.

He broke the kiss.

His cheek brushed mine, his lips brushed my ear when he breathlessly said, “I want you in ways that aren’t healthy for either of us.”

Health was overrated anyway.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Uh yeah, your timing is real bad, though.” I still had him clutched close, afraid to let him go, but over his shoulder, I spotted a small army of shadows making their jerking, disjointed way toward us. “The garden is awake.”

Theo turned, gallantly shoving me behind him as though I was the one who always needed saving, not him. We were going to have to talk about that if we survived the possessed garden.

Jeremy Briar’s bushes had come alive and were forming a half circle in the dark.

“Are those evil topiaries?” Theo asked.

“Yeah.”

I’d known the garden was messed up when it had me walking in circles, but this was a whole different level of horror show.

“I am not paid enough for this.”

The ground trembled. Roots burst from the soil, lashing toward us like whips. Apparently, murder topiaries weren’t enough, we had to have underground murder root worms now too.

“Run!” I bolted.

Theo sprinted alongside me.

We headed toward Witherborne Mansion, or so I’d thought, but the more we ran, the less sense our surroundings made. The massive palm trees that had stood like a barrier between the two properties had moved. The fence and low wall weren’t where they should have been.

A split opened in the path up ahead. Roots burst from the ground on the right. I veered left. Theo narrowly dodged a lashing root as he ran after me. And there was the box house, lit up and rising out of the darkness like an ugly airport terminal building.

“What the fuck?” Theo slowed. “That’s behind us.”

I turned. The path behind us had closed up. There was no going back, not unless we wanted to fight with a wall of bushes and thrashing roots that moved below the earth like snakes through grass.

We were being herded back toward the house. Jeremy didn’t need to come after us. His garden was doing it for him.

“You got anymore salt?” Theo asked, voice cracking with concern.

“I left it by the pool.”