Blood Wine (The Blood Bond Series Book 2) Page 2

  “So, fucking hot,” Michael said, his eyes roaming Symon’s body. “A twink in leather and attitude.”

  “Twink? I’m six hundred and fourteen years old and I can fucking end you.” He wouldn’t, of course, but Michael didn’t know that.

  “And waste a perfectly good drink? I don’t think so.”

  Symon shrugged. “There’s not exactly a shortage of humans out there.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t all taste like sunshine after a spring rain.”

  “How do you…?” Realization hit Symon like a brick to the head. He sank down onto the sofa. “You invaded my mind while I was feeding. What happened to manners, huh?”

  “Whoa. That was so not my fault. One minute you were nuzzling my neck and the next your teeth were slicing into me. I didn’t have time to—”

  “To what?”

  “Nope,” Michael said, sliding over to Symon's side of the sofa. “Talking. Yeah, no.” He flicked Symon’s shirt buttons open. “You got what you wanted. My turn.” He spread the shirt open, lowered his head.

  “What are you doing?” His mouth on Symon, Michael didn’t answer, didn’t even look up. Symon hooked his fingers into Michael’s hair, yanked his head up. “Not interested.”

  “Liar. You picked me up, remember?” Michael said, tossing a leg over Symon, straddling him. “You’re interested.” He reached behind Symon’s head, tugged the elastic out of his hair, and watched the blond spill over his shoulders.

  With a lap full of Michael, with Michael’s hands sifting through his hair, and his lips grazing his jaw, Symon decided he might be interested. Little bit. “It’s the dimple.”

  “Yeah?” Michael sat back on Symon’s thighs, flashed a smile. “This one?”

  Symon ate the smile off Michael’s face. With teeth and tongue, he took, and Michael gave. He clenched his fingers in Michael’s hair, and Michael moaned for him.

  “Bed?” Michael asked, dragging his mouth off Symon’s. “Floor?”

  Symon set his hands at Michael’s hips, intending to shift him off his lap. It was an ingrained habit, hiding his strength, but Michael knew what he was. He didn’t have to pretend with this human. He stood, Michael wrapped around him, and started for the bedroom.

  “Eat a lot of spinach?” Michael asked, hooking an arm around Symon’s shoulders.

  “No.”

  “Show off,” Michael said, his lips at Symon’s ear.

  Symon wasn’t showing off. He was being himself and the novelty of that was intoxicating. Tonight, he could step out from behind the veil of deceit that had become a second skin. He didn’t have to pretend to be anything other than what he was.

  “This,” Symon said, tossing Michael on the bed. “Is showing off.” He pushed six hundred years of power into stripping and leapt onto the bed knowing that to Michael’s human eyes it would look like he’d materialized out of thin air.

  Michael skidded backwards on the sheets, fell off the side of the bed. Laughter exploded out of Symon, taking him by surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed out loud like this. It felt odd but…not dead, so not dead.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Michael said, climbing back into bed. “What the fuck was that? You going to walk on water next?”

  Still laughing, Symon stretched out on his back, and grinned at his prey. “Why walk when you can fly?”

  Michael went still for a heartbeat and Symon thought he’d bought it, but no. Michael’s head tilted a fraction, his dark hair falling over his forehead. His eyes narrowed, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. “Asshole.”

  “Busted. I can’t fly, but I’m fast and every decade or so I get faster. I’m thinking one day…” Symon sent his hand up, imitating a plane taking off. “No more airport security checks, no more airports. Luggage is going to be a—What?” he asked, interrupting himself.

  Michael stared at Symon’s body, more precisely, at Symon’s skin. He ran a hand over Symon’s hip, down his thigh. “Whoa, you’re…”

  “Yeah.”

  “White. Like paper white, marshmallow white. You practically glow, you know like—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  Michael looked up at the ceiling fixture and back at Symon. “Here,” he said, tracing a line on the right side of Symon’s chest. “The light hits you just right and you—”

  “Do not—”

  “Sparkle—"

  Symon swept Michael’s arm out from under him, tumbled the man onto his back. With Michael’s laughter spilling around them, Symon took in the human spread across the hotel’s duvet.

  Michael’s sweater had ridden up, exposing a treasure trail of dark swirls. Symon trailed a finger through the swirls, followed them down to where they disappeared under the edge of Michael’s jeans. He dipped two fingers under the waistband, played them along the edge of Michael’s briefs. Back and forth, a teasing touch that both promised and withheld pleasure. Under the faded denim, Michael’s cock hardened, and Symon shifted onto his knees. One hand on Michael, he stroked his own cock with the other. Light grazing touches that tortured them both.

  His eyes locked on Symon’s cock, Michael’s lips parted, his tongue coming out to moisten them. The certainty that Michael was imagining Symon’s prick between his lips, Symon’s taste on his tongue, had Symon pumping himself faster. He fisted his own length, swept his thumb over the crown, and Michael followed every move. Symon snuck the hand playing along the line of Michael’s briefs under the black cotton, pulled on the curls nestled above his cock, and Michael’s hips came off the bed. He sent his hand lower, wrapped it around Michael’s cock as best he could in the tight confines of briefs and jeans. It would be easier to unzip Michael, push denim and cotton out of the way, but Symon didn’t want to make this easy. Michael’s blown pupils and writhing hips said he didn’t want that either.

  Like everything else about tonight, this too was an exception for Symon. He didn’t spend time with prey, not like this. He ate, he fucked, he left. He didn’t wonder about what they liked or how they liked it. He didn’t watch their body language for clues as to what made them burn. He didn’t listen to their gasps and moans, only wanting to push them higher, harder.

  Symon didn’t do any of these things and yet, he was doing them now. He tightened his grip around Michael’s length, and Michael humped the empty air, his eyes hungry on Symon’s cock. “Symon.”

  The need in Michael’s voice tightened Symon’s balls, made his cock drip. In a blur of speed, he climbed on top of Michael shifted backwards until his cock hung over Michael’s mouth.

  Michael swallowed him down, took his cock as if he’d been starved for it, and Symon rewarded his prey by shoving himself down the man’s throat. Michael ran his hands up the back of Symon’s thighs, palmed his ass. He nudged his thumbs along Symon’s crease, played them over his hole. Symon popped the snap on Michael’s jeans, slid his zipper down, and fished Michael’s cock out lowering his head to—

  Michael’s tongue dipped into his slit, his thumbs spread his hole open, a dynamic duo of sensation that had Symon shooting down Michael’s throat. He collapsed onto the mattress, thankful that breathing was more of a choice than a necessity for vampires, because he didn’t think he could manage it for a while. After tremors still short-circuiting his brain, Symon reached for Michael’s unattended cock, and found it curled atop a thatch of cum-streaked curls.

  “Damn,” he said, lifting Michael’s deflated dick on the tip of one finger. “I’m good.”

  Chapter 3

  “YOU’RE GOOD?” MICHAEL retorted. “I’m the one with the dislocated jaw.”

  “And you fucking loved it.” Symon swiped a drop of cum off Michael’s cock, held the glistening evidence out to him on the tip of one finger. “Exhibit A.”

  “Uh-huh,” Michael said, watching as Symon popped the finger into his mouth, sucked it clean. “Or, you know, just throwing it out there, maybe you’re not a cock God. Maybe I have a hair-trigger and any little thing gets me off.”


  In a slide of muscle and curl of leg, Symon sat up, prodded at his own back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the dagger,” Symon said, sending Michael a wounded look. “Any little thing. Nice.”

  Michael laughed and rolling onto his side, propped himself up on one elbow. “Or, maybe I’ve wanted your cock in my mouth since you slid onto that bar stool in the lounge,” he said, hooking a hand around Symon’s ankle, sliding it up his leg. “And you tasted so fucking good I lost it like some teenager. Hot, right?”

  Michael was embarrassed, Symon got that, so he kept the preening to himself, but yeah, he’d done that. Made Dimple Man shoot his load with nary a hand or mouth on him. Not bad for a six-hundred-year-old dead guy.

  Couldn’t make him forget you chewed on him though, could you?

  Symon stopped pinning medals on his chest, because, yeah, while Michael’s body might be susceptible to Symon, his mind had a will of its own. The man was a challenge, and a puzzle, and that was…interesting. He took Michael’s hand in his, turned it wrist-side up, and licked at the delicate skin covering blue veins. Felt the beat of the man’s life force against his lips.

  “This is some weird vampire thing, right?”

  “We’re part blood-hound,” Symon said, biting the tip of Michael’s middle finger.

  “Hey.” Laughter in his voice, on his face, Michael pulled his hand away. “Down boy.”

  Shock held Symon still. Still in the way that only the old vampires can do still. Dead still.

  What the fuck was he doing? Lying here, talking to his meal, playing with his food like this was what, a date?

  With the accumulated speed and strength of his six centuries, Symon flipped Michael over, pressed him face down into the mattress. “I am Vampire,” he said, locking Michael’s arms at the small of his back. “You are prey. Clear?” He wasn’t sure who needed the reminder more, Michael or himself.

  Michael lifted his head off the duvet, looked back at Symon. “Clear that you’re an arrogant, bigoted, racist asshole? Yeah, got it. Fido.”

  That last word was a gauntlet tossed at Symon’s feet. Michael’s eyes were all about want, his mouth a sly twitch of a smile taunting Symon. The combination of challenge and plea in Michael’s expression punched blood into Symon’s cock.

  Dating, humans and vampires strolling hand in hand in the local mall? Pure fantasy, but fucking? Fucking Symon could do. One hand a manacle around Michael’s wrists, Symon raised Michael’s arms behind his back. Raised them high enough to be uncomfortable, held them there. “This is how it works, human. You do what I tell you to do.”

  Symon would bet his favourite, mint-in-box, G.I. Joe collectible action figure that Michael liked a little submission with his sex, but just to be sure he shoved his free hand between Michael’s legs. Dimple Man’s prick was a nice weight in Symon’s hand, already plumping up for round two. Yeah, his prey was into authoritarian.

  “On your knees,” Symon ordered, hearing the arousal in his own voice, and not trying to hide it.

  Michael struggled to obey. With his arms behind his back, his wrists locked in Symon’s grip, there was a lot of awkward shuffling, but Dimple Man didn’t give up.

  Maybe this guy could be more than a protein shake.

  The thought came out of nowhere and Symon tossed it into the waste basket already heaped with Etienne’s constant laments that prey were people too. Etienne being the only human Symon had ever upgraded from prey to lover.

  Two hundred years ago, he’d plucked a young man off a Montreal dock, fresh food for a long voyage. During the endless weeks of the ocean crossing, boredom set in and Symon found himself seeking out his prey for more than blood. He passed the tedious nights at sea playing cards with his captive, teaching him to play chess and speak English. By the time the ship docked in London, Etienne had become a part of Symon’s life. As both friend and lover, he had been at Symon’s side for ninety years.

  Forever and always blood of Symon’s blood.

  Etienne being the one exception, Symon didn’t make a habit of playing with his food, and Michael was food. Albeit food that came in a cute take-out bag, all dark curls and long legs. Food that knew what Symon was. Food that looked at him with eyes that said, ‘make me’.

  Michael, managing to get one leg under him, levered himself up onto his knees. Face flushed from his fight with the mattress, he flashed Symon a grin that was all dimple and pride.

  With his fly undone and his cock on display, Michael looked debauched and delicious. A sight that would wake a dead man, and Symon would know. He released Michael’s wrists, and mirroring his position, knelt facing him. “You always do what you’re told?” he asked, wrapping a hand around Michael’s dick.

  “When the guy telling me looks like you, oh yeah. Small and sassy, it’s my kryptonite.”

  At five feet, eight inches, Symon was short by twenty-first century standards. Along with his forever-seventeen face, his less than impressive height worked to his advantage. Humans added up young, pretty, short, and got harmless. Symon wasn’t about to correct their math.

  “You always play dictator with your hook-ups?”

  Play with them? Symon barely talked to them. Not that they were hook-ups in the accepted sense, they were dinner. “No.”

  “So, I’m special, huh?” Michael said, arms sliding around Symon.

  He was different, Symon would give him that.

  Prey had long since ceased to be any sort of challenge for Symon. They were a buffet that sustained him. Pretty, but interchangeable. Some were more attractive than others, some tasted better, but basically, they were all the same. Michael, however, was unique. He derailed Symon’s expectations at every turn. He hadn’t been this curious about anyone in a long time.

  His eyes on Michael’s face, Symon worked the man’s cock, watched Michael’s lips fall open, and his eyes go dark. “You going to lose it again?”

  “Shut up,” Michael muttered, taking Symon’s cock in hand.

  They pumped together, their hands knocking into each other until Michael brushed Symon’s hand away and slid their cocks together, working them both. He had the hands for it, Symon thought, dropping his head on Michael’s shoulder. Wide through the palm with long fingers, Michael's hands could have been designed to fist their cocks as one. Their combined pre-cum turned the drag of Michael’s hand into a glide and the slide of skin-on-skin got even better. Symon slipped his hands under Michael’s sweater, explored the curves of his back. He nudged his face into Michael’s neck, opened his mouth over the pulse beating under his ear. The throb of blood under his lips lit him up, pushed him to the end of his control. He moaned against Michael’s skin, needing. Michael grabbed Symon’s ass, fingers digging in, and Symon gave it up. Michael followed him over the edge, Symon’s name on his lips.

  They tumbled onto the mattress, waited out the percussion of their thundering hearts. Symon dragged a pillowcase off a pillow, wiped himself off, and tossed it to Michael. He tucked the naked pillow under his neck, watched Michael swipe at his cock. “You religious or something?”

  “What?” Michael asked, tossing the pillowcase on the floor. “No, why?”

  “Body issues, skin grafts, bad tattoo?” Symon suggested, gesturing at Michael’s clothes. “You’re still dressed.”

  Michael laughed, pulled his sweater over his head. “Better?” he asked, leaning back on his arms, biceps tightening under skin that carried a permanent tan.

  No tattoos, no nipple rings, Michael’s chest was its own decoration. Flat planes and smooth muscles bisected by a thin line of dark hair. His skin tone said Italy or Spain, maybe Greece. The light grey eyes were unexpected in the Mediterranean mix of DNA, as unique as the man himself.

  “Up,” Symon ordered, waving Michael off the bed. “Off,” he added, pointing to Michael’s jeans.

  Michael kicked his boots off, set his hands on the waistband of the jeans hanging off his hips. “Sorry, I’m not as fast as you
.” He slid one hand down his thigh, not quite touching his cock, and that sly smile edged his lips. “Only human.”

  Symon grinned, piled pillows at his back. “Slow is good.”

  “Yeah?” Michael asked, returning the grin. He tucked his thumbs under the waistband of his jeans, eased them over his hips. The jeans fell and Michael turned his back to Symon. Black briefs framed his ass, hugged his thighs. Thighs thick with muscle and dusted with dark hair. With all the speed of a tortoise slogging through a pool of mud, Michael bent over, tugged off his socks and started to straighten up—

  “No.” Symon leapt for the end of the bed, his pile of pillows scattering over the duvet. “Don’t move.” Hands on Michael’s hips, he dragged his prey backwards to stand between his legs. He peeled the black cotton down, pried Michael’s ass cheeks apart and licked over his hole.

  “Oh, fuck.” Michael’s soft whisper, more sigh than words, popped a smile onto Symon’s face. He leaned in again, licked over and around the tight ring of muscle. Michael breathed out sounds that meant yes, and more, and don’t stop. Symon ghosted a breath over Michael’s dark centre and the man swayed under his hands. He curled his tongue, plunged inside. His mouth on Michael, Symon slipped a hand between his legs. At the first gentle tug on his balls Michael hissed and swore, pushing back into Symon’s hands. He didn’t have to say anything else; his body spoke for him.