Chapter 15

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

We continued driving through the scenic nothingness of the country until the sun had finished planting itself under the horizon. The flickering, neon lights of a motel beckoned us, promising clean beds and free cable for a reasonable price. It was the sort of small dive that was too far away from anything for it to be too dangerous, but just isolated enough that if someone did decide to murder you, they’d never be found again. We made sure to take the bag filled with weapons into the room.

For some reason, probably Zane’s fault, Barnaby did not want to share a room with us, even though it was promised he’d have a bed to himself. Since Zane didn’t sleep, his plan was to sit and read a book all night like usual, or go do whatever vampire shit he normally did while I slept. Barns decided that he wanted nothing to do with either of us and grabbed his own room.

I had my suspicions that my midnight gas activities had been discussed behind my back.

The weariness of the drive as well as the past few days had settled into the marrow of my bones the moment I sat on the somewhat comfortable motel mattress. Spiraling floral patterns covered the dark, brick-colored blanket, the smell of industrial laundry detergent puffed up when I flopped my weight onto it. My phone buzzed at me for attention, but I didn’t want to be tempted to open Sias’s text message again.

We should talk .

I knew what that meant. I knew what the future held, and I couldn’t bring myself to make it reality just yet. I didn’t want to face a world that didn’t hold the promise of Sias’s hands on my skin again, his voice in my ear, or the way his hair felt between my fingers. I missed him; missed his touch, the smell of amber and tobacco when he pulled me into his warm, intoxicating charm magic. I was starving for him, for someone to hold me, want me.

And I just couldn’t deal with that loss while also battling the terror of what might be waiting for us at this creepy-as-hell cemetery. Earlier that morning I had forgotten about the fight and I had almost called him to let him know what we were up to. I wanted to hear his take on all of it, what he would think of us trying to break into a grave to look at an old painting to find a hidden Death Goddess key.

I had no doubt he’d have some opinions.

I wanted to hear his voice again.

The knot in my chest twisted at a faded memory of his voice rumbling, the way his lips looked when he smirked at me.

Gods, I was miserable.

Miserable and deeply confused about some things. One of which being the goddamn vampire who had outed me as a farting disaster in front of a gas station attendant.

“You’re still mad about the hot dog.”

I checked my blocker tech around my neck and turned to call him a bastard but lost my steam.

You know what was really annoying? More annoying than the fact that he was an asshole, constantly grumpy, and sometimes let wild vampires bite me?

He had those dimples right above his ass. You know the ones. The little pockets of sex that live just above the juicy bits of a round ass. Zane had those. I knew this, because he was standing with his back to me, changing shirts for some arbitrary reason. His jeans sat low, his back muscles moving as he dug through his duffel, hair falling into place after he raked his fingers through it to get it out of his face?—

And there it was.

The spark.

The tiny, almost non-existent little pop of electricity right at the base of my chest where all my lusty feelings lived before torpedoing downstairs.

Zane looked good.

Zane.

The vampire.

Looked good .

I had officially crossed a line with myself, cartwheeled into a realm I didn’t think possible and landed right on a landmine of existential crisis.

I didn’t handle it well.

“I’m taking a shower,” I yelled to the room, slapping my thighs with my hands to announce the finality of the situation. “Then I’m going to bed, and I will not be answering any questions.”

“Why would I ask you questions?” Zane asked as he tugged a shirt on.

“I said no questions!”

“You’re losing it, hunter.” Zane’s voice was lost as I shut the motel bathroom door with a little too much force. My reflection stared back at me with a look of manic anger that was settling over my body. How very dare my hormones send me down such a dark path. Yes, I was lonely. Yes, my heart was in a state of cracking in half, but that did not give my dick permission to go rogue.

I had gone through too much too quickly, so I was clearly going insane.

Zane was undead, a corpse born of the void, and a manifestation of evil and darkness. I was not crushing on him, because that was gross and fucked up.

The only pieces of hope I could cling to was that it wasn’t the first time I had made…questionable…hookup choices while I was in a stressed state. Right off the top of my head, I could think of at least three, one of which was the boyfriend of a gang leader .

So, yeah. I’m a horny disaster when I’m stressed out.

But getting the lusty sparks for Zane was still not okay.

The only cure for the stress sex cravings was to get it out of my system, which I fully planned on handling myself, thankyouverymuch.

It wasn’t until I was already stripped down and hard as a rock that my mind allowed a non-sexual thought to weasel its way to the front of the line: I had promised Barnaby that I’d get him some sex energy soon. Had I not already promised and knew that he was getting hunger pains about my lack of a sex life, I would have said “to hell with it” and gone about my shame-shower solo sex.

But because I was such a nice guy and felt like a bastard for the whole money thing, I had to make the very awkward walk out of the bathroom to retrieve the sex energy-absorbing crystal in my goddamn duffel bag.

The large, hotel-provided towel was not the softest thing on the planet, especially when sensitive parts were being extra sensitive, but it kept me covered enough not to give anything scandalous away. Zane was lounging on his bed when I emerged, and even though I refused to look at him when I waltzed over to my bag like nothing soul shattering was happening in my mind, I could feel his bloody red eyes on me.

It made things worse.

Why, you ask? I don’t fucking know. I didn’t want him to know what was happening under that overly bleached towel, but feeling his eyes on me was like a call to action for my dick. I had to adjust the towel a bit to make sure nothing was peeking through the curtain, if you get my drift.

Horny. Disaster. When. Stressed.

With the crystal in hand, I made my escape back to the bathroom and practically dived into the safety of the shower.

Steam quickly filled the room as the shower blasted water onto the tiles, the frail fabric protecting the floor from the ricochet billowing from the heat. The water pressure wasn’t fantastic, but it was strong enough to be pleasant as I climbed in, dipping my head under the stream to try and cool off. My body was demanding attention, mind fogged over with primal signals that needed tending to.

I thanked the Saint and whatever Gods wanted to take credit for Dex being a tech wizard. My waterproofed emotional blocker helped me not feel as guilty as I let my mind take some concepts and run wild.

For my own sanity and self-preservation, I focused on how it felt when I gave Zane my blood, and not so much on Zane himself. Just bringing forward the memories of how my body buzzed with electricity when my blood hit Zane’s tongue helped get the engine running, but my mind wasn’t in the mood to stay in its lane. Each time I held on to the physical feelings associated with letting Zane drink my blood, my mind was quick to remind me of the other parts of the ritual I had repressed.

Like Zane’s hooded eyes looking up at me, my fingers gripped in his hair that was so damn soft. The weight of his hands on my hips was a particular hit with my imagination, and I cussed at how absolutely fucked it was that I was into it.

I shouldn’t be that turned on by a vampire touching me—a damn vampire Thrall of all fucking things—but Gods help me it was hitting all the buttons. The cascading water over my body was delicious, my muscles tensing as I worked on releasing the tension coiling through me.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve had both hands busy in the shower, one holding a sex energy-absorbing crystal for my landlord while the other was busy summoning the energy from my cock. But it was the first time I had felt such an intense pull of lust that I had to bite my knuckle to stay quiet. My body was on fire, liberated by the permission to sexually fantasize about the most taboo thing imaginable.

Sex with a vampire.

I had to let myself indulge, to shake away the guilt and just let it ride. It was just me, all to myself, and no one would ever know about my moment of weakness.

It was just once. Just one time.

I was going to make the most of it, so I let the shackles of shame get tossed away and gave my disaster horniness a free pass to get weird.

And boy, did it not disappoint.

My body was a quaking mess of mounting desire as I sank into the fantasy: warm hands on my hips, the feeling of long hair in my grip, how thick that ridge was under me when I was sitting in his lap, the buzzing high of untethered blood magic shared between us.

I thought the memory of his lower back dimples would be the thing that finally pushed me past the finish line.

That would have almost been respectable, understandable, something I wasn’t remotely bothered by. Everyone enjoys good dimples, especially ones that accentuate a very well-sculpted ass.

While fantasizing about Zane’s body was all well and good, and was working out very well for me, I let my guard down a little too much. My mind was traveling into the darker, less acknowledged folds of my brain, and it tapped into something I wasn’t ready for. As I rocked my hips to the rhythm of my stroking, biting back the groans I so desperately wanted to let loose, something resurfaced in a flash of pure, deviant desire.

Bloodstained teeth.

Zane’s bloodstained teeth.

I remembered how I felt when I saw my blood on his fangs, his lips parted as I yanked his head back to look at me. I hadn’t wanted to accept what that had felt like. It was scary and horrible, a deep fear that lived in the tender parts of myself I kept locked away. It scared the shit out of me to think about another vampire hurting me, sinking their teeth into my skin, pushing me to the point of death.

But not Zane.

Seeing my blood on his teeth had done something to me, rearranged my wiring and tangled them into knots of confusion.

In a flash of something I couldn’t quite unpack, I imagined Zane fucking me.

And biting me .

I felt a wave of heat so paralyzing I lost my breath, my body locking with pleasure so profound I would have screamed for the Saint if I’d the ability to speak. My heart knocked, my toes curled; everything debauched and wicked that had been swirling in my mind faded into a haze of fireworks, and I happily drifted away in a void of orgasmic ecstasy.

I don’t know how long I stood under the stream of water while my body continued to pulse, but I was eventually able to pull in enough air to whimper as I rode out the last bit of the wave. The tiles were cool against my brow as I leaned my head on them, my legs sending dancing waves of lightning between my toes and my hips.

There was a lot to unpack with that shower jerk-off. A lot of things to sort through. Like a whole damn repressed cache of internalized trauma that had somehow leaked into sex fantasies.

I’d jerked off to the idea of a vampire biting me. That’s not terrifying at all.

Not only a vampire, but the vampire, the only one I knew. I guess technically my vampire, if we wanted to get into it. Which didn’t help, I’ll have you know. That made my stomach feel weird. And my dick jump a little, which was a feat in itself because he was very tired.

With the bliss fading and reality creeping in with the cooling shower water, I eased my grip on the crystal in my hand to make sure it had caught the essence of my little sexcapade.

It blinked with waves of pastel fire with drops of smoke mixed in. That was definitely new.

So was the two inches of bony handle that was sticking out of my goddamn chest.

Great. So now the weird rod that burst out of my chest when I did blood stuff with Zane also came out for a cheeky peek when I was masturbating. That was so great. Loved that for me.

With the shower cooling and my mind starting to fire on all cylinders again, I did a quick scrub down while I gave my chest time to reabsorb the stick. I was fortunate enough that the steam from the previous hot water kept the bathroom warm while I toweled off, because the damn water was ice when I was finally done.

I was able to dress and hide the sex crystal in my pocket—for some reason the idea of Zane seeing the color of my fantasy trapped in the crystal freaked me out—but I wasn’t able to get the really disturbing thing under control.

The stick didn’t recede like before. It didn’t budge.

It stayed poking out just an inch and a half or so, but had decided without my consent to just…remain peeking out of my skin where my sternum lived. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what the hell it wanted from me.

It was just…stuck like that.

A small testament to my very, very filthy mind.

“Of course,” I muttered to myself, tossing a shirt on to cover my shame. The guy staring back through the fog in the mirror didn’t look as exhausted anymore. My handsome reflection was rosy-cheeked and satisfied, if only a little concerned. I did feel pretty great after releasing the tension, though it had cost me some chest real estate. And probably some weird dreams in my future.

I crept out of the bathroom pretending like everything was fine, strolling over to my bed like I wasn’t deeply questioning everything about myself. To my surprise, the room was empty. Where Zane had been lounging was abandoned, only his book remaining. A wave of relief settled over me for a heartbeat, followed by a curiosity I couldn’t control.

Had he…felt anything?

No, right?

I touched my emotional blocker and glanced down to make sure the little light was on and the switch was in place. Everything was fine.

So why was the vampire missing?

I tossed my shoes back on and leaned out of the room, sweeping up and down the walkway to see if I could spot him. Zane was MIA, but Barnaby was walking in my direction with a pamphlet in hand, browsing over the selection of takeout food that was nearby.

“Have you seen Zane?” I asked when he got into earshot.

“He went for a walk. Said his head was hurting him.”

“I didn’t think vampires actually got headaches,” I mused.

“Well, if anyone could give him one, it’s you.” Barnaby paused near his neighboring door and blinked at me. “Did you fill the intimacy crystal?”

“What? Oh. Yeah.” I tugged it out of my pocket. “How did you know?”

“I could sense it.” He held out his hand for it, the pamphlet of physical food forgotten. The crystal was passed along, the colors swirling like a tornado. “Gods, Dallas. What did you do? Actually—” he shook his head quickly. “Don’t answer that. I have no passion to know any details.”

“Is it…different somehow?” I couldn’t help but ask, stomach clenching as Barnaby huffed a laugh.

“Have you ever seen one with these colors before? It looks like liquid sunsets, and it feels… strong. ” Barnaby inhaled slowly like he was about to dive underwater, his palm neon with the colors as he began to pull the energy from it.

The storm of pastels took over his black irises, his gaze alive with the evidence of my secret passion for a few seconds before fading back to normal.

He blinked a few times to let the magic settle, burping a little from the indulgence.

Then Barnaby aimed his gaze on me, the weight of all of his opinions harnessed in one simple word.

“Oh.”

Heat trailed up my neck and attacked my cheeks, my chest tightening like a vise.

“What?”

“It’s none of my business,” he said quickly.

“That ‘Oh’ was loaded. You said a thousand words with Oh .”

“Who you sleep with is none of my business! I’m just…surprised is all. I thought you hated vampires.”

“I didn’t—” I began with a yell, my outrage bursting out of my throat before I remembered to whisper. “I didn’t sleep with anyone. That was a solo endeavor energy charge.”

The surprise on Barnaby’s face could have been seen from space.

“Dallas, this crystal is filled with a supercharge of sexual energy with a kiss of black magic. It’s the best-tasting thing I’ve ever had, and you’re telling me you did this with your mind ?” He had stepped close to me, like we were discussing nuclear launch codes outside of a roadside motel.

“You need to relax.”

Barnaby’s volume was starting to grow in his excitement. “I will not. You know how rare vampire energy is in the first place? If you could do this with just fantasizing about Zane?—”

“ Shut up , Barns,” I hissed through my teeth, scanning everywhere for Zane. “I’m going to tie you up and leave you here if you don’t chill out.”

“Fine. I’m chilled. An iceberg.” He smoothed his hair back with one hand and exhaled in a rush of satisfied relief. “I haven’t felt this healthy in a while. I could go for a jog.”

“Great. Jog away from me then. I’m starting to think you’re the thing giving everyone headaches.”

A bubbly laugh lifted from Barnaby that was too haute to be from joy.

“I don’t think it was me that gave him the headache. Not with the energy you were producing.” He turned tail and ran into his room when I wheeled back around to him. I wasn’t going to hit him, but I was really considering pushing him down out of principle.