Leo
Mama and I sat there at the table, not looking at each other, listening to the entire conversation between Viktor and Altair. Altair might not know how good werewolf hearing was, but Viktor had no such excuse.
He was acting like I was some kind of kid, just waiting to be the victim of Altair’s evil schemes.
Like Altair was sitting around twirling a waxed mustache, plotting to tie me to some railroad tracks if I didn’t sign over the deed to my ranch.
Then Altair said the thing I thought would stick in my mind forever.
“So. Have. I.”
A second later, he marched through the kitchen as though he were on a mission. He barely stopped for a second to tell Mama and me good evening, then headed right up to my old bedroom, where I heard him thump down onto the bed.
So have I.
It wasn’t a claim that he knew what damage he was capable of.
It was a statement that he’d been through horrible things.
He’d had another vampire’s rage taken out on him, not the other way around.
He wasn’t agreeing that he was a monster, he was crying out that he had been a victim, only he didn’t know how to say that.
He didn’t like to think of himself as a victim, because who did? Not even Viktor, even though he was the most victimized person I knew. Or at least, he had been before I met Altair.
I suspected that he and Altair were in precisely the same situation on that: neither would be able to comprehend themselves as a victim, so they just burrowed deep into their feelings and tried to protect that hard shell they’d built up as armor instead of dealing with what had happened.
Funnily enough, Mama was the one who spoke up. “The humans who know wolves exist think we’re out of control monsters,” she said quietly, when Viktor came in.
He froze. Not for a second, or searching for some response, but just . . . froze. Stood there in the doorway staring at her, like it was a shock she’d spoken at all, let alone pointed out a problem with his determination that Altair was a beast.
When he didn’t move, she turned to look at him.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t defend your family—that’s always the right thing to do.
Just . . . don’t put Altair into a little box because you think all of ‘his kind’ go there.
Let him either put himself there or choose not to.
That’s up to him, not us, don’t you think? ”
He pursed his lips, chastened, but not finished with his bias against Altair. “You’ve never met one of his kind before, Mama.”
She patted the table in front of his seat, nodding. “I have not. Tell me, how many have you met?”
Hesitantly, like she might change her mind and pull the chair away from him, Viktor came and sat down between us. “Just one,” he admitted after a while. “But it was enough.”
“And if you’d only ever met one wolf in your life, and that wolf was, oh, Grant? What would you think of wolves as a species?”
He didn’t have an answer for that, just a long sigh. Probably because he knew she was right. Heck, I hadn’t even thought about that. I’d just been accepting Altair as he presented himself, not thinking about how his behavior represented all vampire-kind.
That was easy for me, since I’d never met a vampire before. Unlike my brother, and also, unlike Altair.
And maybe Altair would be the first person to say that vampires had great potential to be monsters, given how he’d responded to Viktor behind the house.
It sounded like Altair had equally bad experiences with vampires as Viktor had, after all.
But Mama was right too. Why assume that just because a few vampires were bad, that meant they all were?
It wasn’t just bad logic; it was morally wrong to assign blame for things someone else had done. Every person deserved the right to be judged on their own merits or lack thereof.
We ate in mostly silence, Viktor clearly considering Mama’s words, while she acted like everything was fine.
Viktor actually thinking gave me hope, though.
Sure, maybe he was being an asshole, but that didn’t mean that he was always and only going to be an asshole to Altair.
Maybe he would realize he was being unfair and change his mind.
He was my brother, and his opinion mattered to me, even if right now I thought that opinion was shit.
All of dinner passed in silence, and then we helped Mama with the dishes, before all going our separate ways, to our rooms. Or, well, me going to Aleks’s old room.
It wasn’t awful, but it smelled wrong, and I sure wasn’t going to be able to sleep there.
That, though, got me thinking. I sat there in Aleks’s bed, staring at the ceiling, while the whole house went dark and quiet. While I listened to Mama dress for sleep, and then go to bed.
And then, finally, after eleven, Viktor started snoring softly.
So I slid out of bed, as quiet as possible, and into the hallway. I avoided the one creaky board in the middle, and kept to the wall. Annoying that such a new house had a creaky board, but I supposed wood was wood, regardless of age.
I got to my old room and remembered telling Altair that the door had a lock.
It still did. If he’d locked it, I didn’t really have any place to question that. More than that, I’d have to knock, which would wake Viktor, and that would ruin the whole point of sneaking over.
But when I wrapped my hand around the knob and turned, it went smoothly. No lock.
Altair was already sitting up in bed looking at the door when I got it open. His relief at seeing me was nice, but also sad, because clearly part of him had been expecting my brother with murder on his mind.
Still, he didn’t say a word. Seemed to understand as much as I did that silence was imperative. He reached a hand out toward me, and I went to him.
His smile was sunshine even in the dark, though it was small and a little sad. I ignored that and crawled my way onto the bed and across to him. Then I lifted his hand to my lips, kissing his wrist.
When I met his eye again, there was a question on his face.
In answer, I lifted my own wrist toward him.
He knew I’d liked it. Or maybe he’d just been trying to piss off Viktor.
Either way, I wasn’t going to try to hide it.
I did fucking like it. It was hot. And vampires wouldn’t have been the stars of so many romances if I were the only one who thought so, would they?
He took my hand in his, this time so much more softly and reverently than before. Like I was offering him something more than just sustenance.
And I supposed I was.
The bite wasn’t tentative or timid, and just like the previous time, the sensation shot through me like an electric jolt. My dick was the first part to take note, because dammit, it was fucking hot.
I tried to breathe steadily, but it became harder and harder. Just like my cock.
This time, though, Altair met my eye. He’d been holding my wrist to his mouth with both hands, but now he let one of them fall away. Gently, he reached down to run his palm over the front of my sleep pants. My aching cock, that hardened even further under his soft ministrations.
I had to bite my lip to keep from groaning aloud, but we had to keep quiet if we didn’t want to add my annoying brother to this equation. And I definitely did not.
I considered our position, though. For years, Altair had been held by the witches, who took and took and never considered giving anything. Yes, that meant my offering blood was immediately different, but I didn’t just want to be different in one way. I wanted to be their opposite.
So when he pulled his fangs out of my wrist, leaving me just a tiny bit unsteady, I took that opportunity to fall back onto the bed on my back.
Then I reached for him, but didn’t move him without his permission.
If he wanted me, then he could have me, but I wasn’t going to demand what wasn’t on offer.
Altair had no such hesitation. Apparently, if I was on offer, he was taking.
The moment I held my hands out as though to accept him, he climbed right on top of me, something fierce and passionate in his eyes as he settled his ass right on top of my dick, wriggling around a bit to find a position he liked.
Or maybe to torment me a bit, given the wicked grin he offered at my stifled moan.
The snoring in Viktor’s room broke for a moment, and I held up a hand, listening for it to resume. When it did, I dropped my hand. He looked amused, but didn’t make a noise. He leaned all the way down, till his lips were pressed right against my ear. “Nervous?”
“Not at all,” I answered back, and I hoped he could feel the sincerity in it.
I wasn’t frightened of Altair in the least. Sure, because I was in my own home surrounded by people who would die to protect me, but also .
. . because I simply wasn’t afraid of Altair.
He’d shared too much of himself, been too open and too caring for him to only be interested in getting me alone and draining me dry.
Unless he was looking for a rather different way to drain me.
He grinned again, then slid downward, yanking my sleep pants with him as he went, then tossing them carelessly to the end of the bed before sitting across my shins and staring at my cock like it was a brand-new thing.
Well, I supposed it kind of was. Maybe he’d seen a cock before, but it hadn’t been mine.
However it might compare to others he’d seen, he appeared pleased enough with it.
Especially since a moment later, he was diving down to suck it into his mouth.
I wondered for a moment if he’d bite me there, but instead, he grazed it lightly with his teeth.
A tease. Not really a threat, because he knew.
He knew I thought him biting was hot as hell, so he was using that to his advantage.
Smart man.
But then he just sucked me down, all the way to the root, and I had to shove my own wrist in my mouth to keep from making any noise.
Fuck, how was it possible for anyone to be so good at that?
I breathed hard and fast into the back of my wrist, trying not to let out so much as a peep, but he just kept going.
Kept sucking, licking, and . . . oh fuck, he didn’t need to breathe.
He could just keep that up indefinitely.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I tapped his shoulder, hard and fast, trying to let him know without words that I wasn’t going to last if he kept going like that. He seemed to understand, because slowly, he pulled off me.
Fuck me, he was so beautiful. His hair hung around his face like a dark halo, and his grin was lascivious, almost decadent, as he stripped out of the sweats he’d borrowed from me, tossing them to either side before resettling himself on top of me again.
He reached behind himself, and I desperately wanted to be on the other side of the room, so I could see his own nimble fingers slide inside his hole, prepping him for . . .
And there it was. He took just a few moments to stretch himself open before he started sliding down onto my cock, nothing to slick the way but his own saliva, and it was obscenely perfect.
The tight muscle, the smooth glide, the slow, inexorable way he just kept going, inch by inch, until he was seated fully on my cock.
Then he squeezed, and I almost died right then and there, my vision whiting out for a moment at the sheer perfection of it all.
He grabbed my hands in his, and shoved them hard into the bed, like maybe he needed that reminder of who was in charge. I didn’t push back even a little, because I was perfectly happy with him taking control. I didn’t need to be the boss of him.
All I ever needed was his ass, squeezing my cock like his life depended on it. Then he started bouncing on it, and I thought that might be the end for me. Nothing would ever be so incredible again.
Nothing could ever compare.
He rode me in silence, nothing but my ragged breath to punctuate the slide of skin on skin, as my whole being seemed to churn and boil right there in my own bed. It was all I could do not to shift and run, because the sensation was so fucking much I could barely handle it.
He started to breathe too, in short, sharp gasps, his eyes snapping shut, and his hand lowered to stroke his cock with quick motions.
It was only a few more seconds until he started to spill over my chest, his whole body heaving with the orgasm.
He clapped his own hand over his mouth to keep from crying out, but I couldn’t be bothered to worry about that anymore.
Not with him tightening around me with his own orgasm. All I could feel, all I could see, all I could think of, was Altair, filling every one of my senses and finally overflowing as my own orgasm crested inside me, and I filled him up completely, arching up into his body as I released.
Then I collapsed back to the bed, breathing hard, and he fell atop me, a sated smile on his beautiful lips.
I held him, stroking his hair, until both of us fell asleep, still naked and sticky, and neither of us seeming to care a single bit.