longer held that teasing, civilized light. His breathing grew erratic.
His voice deepened until it was more like a low growl than ever.
“
Gods. How I need you
.
Più amato.
I need everything you have to
give me. Probably too much. It might be that this is—”
“I’m here.” Adin’s breath hitched, catching in his throat. His
heart stuttered in fear at the change in his lover. But his cock
apparently liked it.
A lot
. “I’m yours. Anything you need Donte,
per sempre. I’m not afraid.”
“You never seem to understand,” Donte whispered sadly.
“You should be.”
Adin considered this. “You have to know that the monster
entices me as much as the man, Donte.”
Donte shook his head. “Sciocco.”
“Fool I may be, but your fool,” Adin told him. “Entirely
yours.”
Adin turned off the light, and even as he turned he heard a
low growl, a humming from deep within Donte’s chest as his arm
snaked out to pull Adin close. Their lips met in a bruising kiss,
and Adin understood—maybe for the first time—that more had
changed in the time they’d been apart, than Donte’s hair. At least
for the moment the tender lover who undressed him carefully
and dotted him with tiny bites and kisses was gone. For whatever
reason, Donte was hard and predatory. His grip was desperate,
his intent purely to sate himself, to sink his cock and his fangs
into flesh.
Adin could feel Donte fight it, sensed that he felt out of
control, and maybe a little ashamed of his need.
Adin didn’t hesitate, “Whatever you need from me, lover.
Take it.”
Donte reached for his hips and spun him over, parting Adin’s
legs with one hand while he unbuckled his trousers with the
other. Adin shivered as he felt Donte’s nails scrape his skin. He
reached for the nightstand and the lube he’d find there and tossed
it onto the bed where Donte could reach it. Buttons pinged onto
the walls when Donte tore his shirt off, then his trousers hit the
floor. Adin felt the weight of Donte’s body shift behind him as
he peeled the blanket away and ran his cool hand over the curve
of Adin’s ass.
Adin hissed with the pleasure of it.
Rough hands parted his cheeks, followed by the cool glide
of a dollop of lube, and just that suddenly, fingers worked their
way inside. Adin grunted at the abrupt intrusion, shifting his hips
until he could relax and take what Donte meant to give him.
Soon, the burn gave way to pleasure, and Adin pushed back
against Donte’s hand. He clawed the mattress for purchase with
his good hand, balling the sheet between his fingers until his
knuckles were white.
198 Z.A. Maxfield
“Damn,” he panted.
Three fingers pumped deep inside him, nudging his sweet
spot with every push. His hips rocked with them and the tip of
his cock brushed against the sheet beneath him, every movement
he made ratcheted up the tension just that much higher until he
knew if he didn’t have Donte soon he would start screaming.
“
Please…
” he begged. “Donte. I need…”
“Up on your hands and knees,” Donte ordered, and Adin
did what he asked without question, keeping his weight off his
bad arm, keeping his soft cast close to his chest. Donte nudged
between his legs, then pulled Adin back into what had become his
favorite position, Donte kneeling with Adin in his lap, his back to
Donte’s chest, those big delicate hands crossed possessively over
Adin’s chest to hold him tightly while his cock pistoned in and
out of Adin’s ass.
Adin lay his head back onto Donte’s shoulder and simply let
himself be taken. Donte took complete control. Adin lifted his
good arm and reached back to cup Donte’s head in his hand,
stroking his soft hair, even as Donte dropped one of his hands
to explore Adin’s cock, his balls, and the soft, stretched tender
skin behind them. A questing finger rubbed and pushed at Adin’s
entrance, along with the cock that filled him. Adin cried out,
the sound coming from deep inside his throat, shocked to be
handled that way.
Donte pulled his hand back, but Adin slapped his own hand
down over it, dragging it back and nudging its owner to act on his
intentions. Adin had never felt anything like it, he was so full, so
overstimulated that precome oozed from his cock in waves. Each
fresh surge brought the tingling pleasure of an orgasm without
the respite of climax. As cock and finger filled him and brushed
his sweet spot, the steady throb of almost unbearable bliss grew
deep inside him, building to an impossible crescendo, indicating
an explosive release that hovered just out of reach.
At some point Adin became aware of the sounds he was
making, strangled cries with each thrust of Donte’s hips. Donte’s
free hand stroked his nipples, pinched and played, scratching and
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199
twisting, until the pain and pleasure got mixed up in Adin’s head,
and all he could think of was Donte. He started to murmur his
lover’s name, over and over, with each rise and fall and slap of
their flesh, until Donte’s hand gripped him hard around his neck
and he felt the first scrape of the vampire’s teeth against his skin.
“
Yes
,” Adin cried out. “Do it.”
“Who am I?” Donte demanded.
“You’re mine,” Adin answered. “You’re Donte.”
“I am Nicolo Pietro di Sciarello. And
you
belong to
me
.”
“Yes,” Adin sobbed out, arching and stretching and begging
for his release. “
Yes.
I belong to you.
Please
, Donte.”
Donte shoved him face down on the pillow, and held him
there, one hard hand in the center of his back. He continued his
punishing thrusts, grinding Adin’s hips against the bedding until
Adin felt his balls tingle and draw up.
“You wanted me to fuck you because I’m your
monster.
”
“
Yes
.” Adin gave him everything. Now that his cock was
skimming along the bedding, the friction in his ass and on his
cock short-circuited his brain. “
Yes
.”
“You want me to take you to the brink of oblivion. To devour
you.”
“Yes!
Yes
,
yes
,” Adin hissed, as the first come spat from his
cock. “
Yes. Please, yes
.”
Donte struck. Adin felt him drink in deep drafts of blood,
satisfying himself, even as Adin’s world tilted on the axis of
immense pleasure, adrenaline and fear. Donte didn’t stop, he
didn’t let up. At first when Adin felt light-headed, he tried to
struggle, and Donte pushed him down as though he were a child,
as though he had no strength at all.
Because he didn’t.
Soon it didn’t matter because Adin could only lie there beneath
the monster in Donte Fedeltà, beneath the predator, and cry into
the back of his hand. Soon, he knew, soon he would be lifeless,
200 Z.A. Maxfield
and there was simply nothing,
nothing at all
he could do about it.
Adin didn’t feel foolish, as Donte said he should. He didn’t
feel fear. He didn’t feel anger. There was only resignation, and the
bitterness of loss.
I love you.
Everything you are.
I could have been more for you. I should have been stronger.
I won’t be there to love you when you lose yourself again.
Ah, shit, my lover.
I’m not ready…
When he heard the crash and clatter of china and silver, and
the cursing, his head spun and things grew dark, as if he were
signing off at the end of the night like a television station. It
went from what appeared to be a frightening and fuzzy reality
show on a big screen and grew smaller and smaller until even
that—the tiny dot of light that remained—winked out.
Adin ran. He had to find…someone. He stumbled over cobblestones
in the thickest fog he’d ever seen, barely noticing the ground beneath his feet.
He guessed he was in Paris by the texture and age, the sheer familiarity of
the dirty stone buildings as the shifting mist briefly revealed them. At first
he didn’t recognize the place exactly, but after a few moments of squinting,
of pressing his nose against shop windows and listening for sounds, he got
the vague idea he was once again in the historically protected Marais, where
he’d found Bran. The place he’d encountered Bran that first time, the occult
shop, had been near rue de Montmorency and the home of Nicolas Flamel.
Immediately Adin’s heart quickened.
Bran
. He had to find Bran, who could
share his dreams and access his thoughts and memories. Donte was out there
alone and Bran could—conceivably—connect them.
Hands reached out from the darkness and clutched at him, stabbing him
with pins, trying to pull him into the ancient shops along the street; shops that
smelled of embalming fluid and decay. The more they held him the harder
he fought.
Tremendous noise and flashing lights, along with the sickening lurch and
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201
weightlessness of dangling in the air that only a helicopter produced, captured
all of Adin’s attention for a minute.
“You’ll like the resort,” Charles told him. “The helicopter is a nice touch
don’t you think? Shep always takes a private helicopter. He hates driving the
mountain roads. Although once we got stuck there when the chopper couldn’t
fly. Are you all right?”
“Sure,” Adin replied automatically. He wondered if Bran was playing
with the controls of his consciousness again. He hadn’t seen Charles since
that disastrous semester at Princeton. “But I don’t like helicopters much.
They fall out of the sky like rocks. No coasting.”
“Ah, you worry too much. You don’t want to live forever, Adin.”
That was odd. “I don’t?” Adin asked. “Why not?”
“What would you do? You’re bright enough that you’ll be bored to death
before you’re thirty, and then you’d spend eternity looking for something
meaningful that isn’t out there, along with every other dumb son of a bitch.
You’ll never be happy.”
Adin heard his father’s voice. “I’m happy. Why won’t Adin be happy?”
Charles gave a delicate shrug. “Adin isn’t like you. He’s not complacent.
He’s never going to be content to live an ordinary life.”
Adin’s father laughed. “I should hope not. I didn’t raise him to be
ordinary. And for that matter, my own life has been anything but ordinary.”
“Please. You live in the city, you work as a
teacher
. You have a wife,
two children, and a mortgage. You can hardly get any more normal”
That’s why advertising works so well,
Adin thought. You can spin
anything. “My father really has been anything but normal.”
“You’ll never be like him though,” Charles reminded him gently. “You
can’t. It’s not in your nature.”
A voice Adin didn’t recognize said, “Adin, if you can hear me, squeeze
my fingers. C’mon buddy. I need you to squeeze my fingers.”
Adin didn’t have the strength. His heart raced and he felt out of breath.
His skin was clammy and cold. “Can’t. Bran?”
“You don’t have to listen to Charles anymore, Adin.” Bran’s voice.
Thank fuck
.
202 Z.A. Maxfield
“Bran!”
“No, listen to me,” Bran said. “I know why you want me here, and I’ll
deal with Donte later.”
“No, now, Bran.”
“Later,” Bran said firmly. “Right now you need to fight. Squeeze the
EMT’s fingers, Adin. Do it, or Donte never gets your message.”
Charles laughed. “What, that he’s in love? Don’t make me laugh. Love
is for suckers, Adin. Not us. We can take what we want. We have the whole
world to play in. Shep and I…”
“You two only care about yourselves,” Bran said angrily. “You treated
Adin like dirt.”
Charles voice changed until it was soft and seductive. “You’re a bright
little thing, aren’t you? A looker too, although your taste in clothes is
deplorable. How’d you like to be my new research assistant, what did you say
your name was?”
“See what I mean?” Bran asked Adin.
“Adin, be reasonable. Men like us, we’re at the top of the food chain.”
“No, we’re not,” Adin said decisively.
“Sure we are, because we’re free.”
“You’re not free. You’re just…fickle,” Adin’s father said. “You’re just a
conspicuous consumer. And now that I get a good look at you, I’m wondering
what my son ever saw in you.”
“Bran, are you doing this? It’s like the Wizard of Oz. If a dog pulled