Chapter 25
Charlie dreamed he was back home, in his childhood bedroom. Everything was the same—posters on the wall, school papers on his desk, bed neatly made. It was dark outside, and the house was still.
Lorenzo was there with him, though he wasn’t sure where.
He stood up from his desk chair, and he could feel Lorenzo emerging from the shadows behind him.
He walked over to his childhood closet, pressing at the uneven paint on the door, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as Lorenzo drew closer.
He felt a soft touch at his waist—Lorenzo’s hands, taking hold of him and pushing him gently forward.
He kept going until Charlie was pressed against the wall, his hands splayed, with Lorenzo all along his back.
He breathed heavily against the wallpaper, and felt Lorenzo’s hands wandering, still with that firm pressure keeping him in place.
And all the while Lorenzo leaned closer, his lips drawing nearer and nearer to the pulse pounding in his throat.
“Tell me to stop,” Lorenzo said into his ear, whisper-soft.
Don’t stop, Charlie wanted to say. Did say? The dream was thick with his own hazy longing, and he couldn’t tell if he’d said the words or just thought them.
But Lorenzo heard. He fisted a hand in Charlie’s hair, tugged his head to the side, and leaned in, fangs bared.
Charlie woke up all at once, still panting. He glanced at his phone—it was barely past ten. He was at Lorenzo’s place, and he couldn’t believe he’d nodded off so early—it was the beginning of the day for Lorenzo.
He looked over at him, propped up in bed with a book open on his stomach, smiling at Charlie softly. “You woke up.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said roughly, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry about that—I guess I’m still not fully adjusted to the nocturnal lifestyle.”
“It’s okay,” Lorenzo said. And he was smiling at Charlie so warmly, and the dream was still coursing through Charlie’s veins, so he sat up, pushed the book off Lorenzo’s lap, and kissed him.
Lorenzo laughed into the kiss, though he returned it. “Hello.”
“Hi,” Charlie said, pushing his hands under Lorenzo’s soft shirt.
“What has you in such an amorous mood?” Lorenzo asked.
Charlie pulled back, his mind full of visions of Lorenzo’s teeth sinking into his neck. “Uh, I . . . I dreamed about you,” he said.
He’d expected Lorenzo to be flattered or excited, but instead his expression dimmed. “What’s wrong?” Charlie asked.
Lorenzo sat up straighter in bed and pushed Charlie away from him—not cruelly, but more like he had something on his mind. “I have to tell you something,” he said.
He looked sick to his stomach. Charlie’s heart skipped a beat. “Okay,” he said, hesitant.
“I mean—you should know this, for your thesis,” Lorenzo rambled, and Charlie tried to ignore the icy flush of guilt that swept over his skin.
Lorenzo sighed and said, “Vampires can . . . enter humans’ dreams.”
This was not what Charlie had been expecting to hear at all. “Okay,” he said doubtfully. “I— What does that mean?”
“It means . . . we can travel through the ether and actually . . . be in your dreams, just as if we were entering a room with you in it,” Lorenzo said. “Except the room is . . . your mind. Or, your dream.”
Charlie was still confused. “Okay,” he said again.
Lorenzo lifted his eyes to Charlie’s, looking like a kicked dog. “So, when we first ran into each other a few months ago, I—I really wanted you to leave me alone, at first,” he said. “And . . . I thought maybe if I scared you off . . .”
It took Charlie a second, but then he remembered—the nightmare of a dark alley that had become something stranger. Tighter. Hotter. “That was you?” he demanded. “In the—like—actually you?”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said miserably. “I’m sorry.”
Charlie clambered off the bed, pacing back and forth. He couldn’t deny that this knowledge felt a bit—well, a bit like being violated. If what Lorenzo was saying was true, that would mean that Lorenzo had been inside his mind. “That’s . . . what the hell!”
“I know!” Lorenzo said, gazing at him, stricken. “I know.”
Charlie stopped pacing and narrowed his eyes at Lorenzo. “That was a sexy dream.”
Through the haze of guilt and worry, a slight sheepish grin crept onto Lorenzo’s face. “I know.”
Charlie sat heavily in the chair by his desk and opened his laptop, typing furiously. After a moment, Lorenzo asked hesitantly, “What are you doing?”
“Like you said,” Charlie said, in a petulantly flat tone. “Gotta get this all down.”
“Are you,” Lorenzo asked. “Mad?”
Charlie finished writing and glanced at his desktop behind the blank page he’d opened to jot this all down—at a folder full of his finished columns. All at once, any lingering traces of shock or anger seeped away, and he shut his laptop. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”
“I’m really sorry,” Lorenzo said, sitting up on his knees in bed.
Charlie sat down on the bed next to him. “It’s fine,” he said with a sigh. “Thank you for telling me, though.”
Lorenzo bit his lip, and he looked so concerned, so guilty, that Charlie couldn’t help but touch him. He put a palm on his thigh, feeling the tension in Lorenzo’s muscles ease a bit the instant he made contact. “I guess it’s just a . . . weird . . . somewhat intrusive way of flirting,” he said.
That sheepishness came back into Lorenzo’s eyes. “You were the one flirting with me,” he said. “I went there to scare you. Your subconscious made it all . . . sexy.”
Charlie found himself grinning. “Yeah, well, you’re pretty sexy.”
“I haven’t done it at all since,” Lorenzo added, as if this had just occurred to him. “Your dream just now, that was all you.”
Heat stole over Charlie’s skin at the memory; Lorenzo surrounding him, his hands on his waist, on his shoulders; his lips at his neck, fangs breaking the fragile skin of his throat.
Lorenzo saw him blush, his eyes tracking his face closely. “What were you dreaming about?”
Tell me to stop. Charlie’s heart hammered wildly. He couldn’t tell Lorenzo. Sweet, trusting Lorenzo, who’d made it clear that a bite was meaningful for him, not something he’d do with a casual partner.
And definitely not one who was lying to him.
He glanced at Lorenzo’s lips, his hands, the curve of his neck and shoulder. What had he said? When a vampire drank from a human, that human stayed with them forever. His neck throbbed at the thought.
It was an act of intimacy and vulnerability. He couldn’t let Lorenzo do that, not with him.
No matter how much he wanted it.
“Charlie?” Lorenzo asked, his big brown eyes sharp and concerned.
Tell me to stop.
“I dr—I dreamed about you biting me,” Charlie breathed.
Lorenzo’s eyes darkened. He shuffled slightly in the blankets to face him. “Do you want me to?”
Charlie felt like he was falling, drawn toward Lorenzo as inexorably as if by gravity. “I—I would,” he managed.
Lorenzo kissed him as he added, “I mean, you don’t—you don’t have to.
” They fell backward onto the bed together, Charlie’s fingers tangled in Lorenzo’s hair, as Lorenzo pressed lush kisses to his chin, his collarbone, his temple, his neck.
Charlie gasped out, drowning in sensation, and said again, “O-only if you want to.”
“I want you,” Lorenzo said, panting against his skin. “I always want you.”
He pulled at Charlie’s clothes eagerly, kissing Charlie all up his arms and along his collarbone and chest but coming back often to kiss him properly, like he craved the taste of Charlie’s lips and the symmetry of their bodies like this.
Charlie felt like he was bubbling over, like with every item of clothing Lorenzo peeled away he was unraveling just a bit more, heat-flushed and reckless.
“Please,” he whispered against Lorenzo’s skin, burning up.
When Charlie was naked, Lorenzo pulled back and gave him a long, considering, hungry look.
Charlie shivered. Whatever Lorenzo read in his face, he seemed to come to some kind of decision, and Charlie caught his breath at the dark confidence in his gaze.
But when he bent down, it wasn’t toward Charlie’s neck, but to his chest, where he kissed him again, hot and slow.
Charlie squirmed, grinding his hips up against Lorenzo’s.
Lorenzo trailed his mouth down Charlie’s stomach, then pushed his left thigh up and out with one big hand. Charlie jerked his head up from the pillow. “Are you going to bite me there?”
Lorenzo just flicked a dark look up at him, ducking his head down to kiss Charlie gently right on his glans.
Charlie gasped, and Lorenzo swirled his tongue and lowered down, at just the right angle for Charlie to catch the flash of his fangs as they scraped his cock wetly.
He whimpered as his neck snapped, his head hitting the pillow.
But despite the excellence of Lorenzo’s mouth on him, it continued to be just that—Lorenzo’s lips and cheeks and tongue, with only the occasional, dull scrape of teeth—not at all the bite (or location of the bite) Charlie had wanted.
He realized quickly that Lorenzo was doing it on purpose—he could feel him smiling, feel the way Lorenzo was toying with him.
He knew this wasn’t where Charlie wanted his mouth, but Charlie couldn’t muster the strength to ask him to stop, not when Lorenzo felt like that—wet and deep and perfect, as he hummed contentedly to himself.
So Charlie panted and squirmed, making a fool of himself but too far gone to care.
He was so dazed that he missed it when Lorenzo grabbed the lube, but his thumb was slick and cool when it slid inside.
Charlie moaned and ground back against Lorenzo, his shoulders slick under Charlie’s grasping hands.
He was on fire, frantic; already so close just from the wild heat between them, the knowledge that Lorenzo wanted him, wanted this, and the fact that he’d finally stopped resisting.