Chapter 15 Peter
Peter
Peter blinked a few times since his eye was still itchy. Theo was lying beneath him and would be dead to the world for at least the next few hours.
Peter had the healthy instinct to just stay where he was, in bed with Theo, but it wouldn’t do.
As his first order of business, he moved Theo to the center of the bed and rested his head on the pillows before cleaning him up with a wet cloth, then wrapping him in the sheets and tucking him in properly.
Once he was sure Theo was safely sleeping, Peter got dressed. He didn’t pick a suit for this, but dug out a set of all-black clothes he kept at the back of his closet and a black cap to hide his hair.
Then he opened the far window of his bedroom. There were handholds there, hidden in the brickwork. Peter had put them there, and he could’ve used this secret exit to get out of the house even with both his eyes gone.
The bird noises back in the house had grown very faint, but that meant nothing. Bernard might still be lingering like a shit stain after a violent wedgie, and if so, Peter was greatly looking forward to doing some cleaning.
As his feet and fingers found the nearly invisible indents and bulges in the wall, he considered what a true and majestic bother all this was. I should not be made to leave Theodore alone in bed. It’s poor form.
But leaving Theo’s attacker and stalker without punishment wouldn’t have been right either. Peter really had meant to get creative once he could rip pieces off Bernard, but at this stage, he was willing to be quick about taking out the trash so long as the trash was oozing fluids.
On the ground, Peter stuck to the shadows. His complexion, especially without a balaclava, was too light for much sneakiness, and he smelled of blood, so there was no hiding from another vampire.
Peter didn’t want to hide, not really. Theo’s scream of orgasmic pleasure should’ve been easy enough for a stalking vampire to hear, and while Peter did smell of blood, that wasn’t the only scent clinging to him.
I have Theo’s lust all over me too, his pleasure.
Hoping Bernard was feeling vengeful and envious, Peter rounded the side of the house and went to the back.
One of the crows sat in a small crabapple tree, its beady eyes blinking in confusion.
Bernard had abandoned his mind control then.
Peter smelled the other vampire on the air, but he didn’t feel that heightened awareness that told him someone was watching and readying an attack.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Peter singsonged into the night, but the night remained silent. The crow cawed once. “Nevermore,” Peter told it.
Peter hoped he was wrong about his suspicion that Bernard had left. He circled the house twice. Other than claw marks and some cracked bricks right next to the kitchen window, there was no sign of anyone having been there.
It seemed as though Bernard had raged and attempted to punch the wall when the warding had kept him from breaking in through the kitchen. Peter rolled his eyes at the idea. Violence against things was silly and exceedingly undignified. It was also a waste of perfectly good violence.
Peter went to the back of the house and went inside through the patio door.
The conservatory was a later addition to the building, and while Peter didn’t have a maid, he did employ a gardener—although the brownie was difficult to pay since she was adamant about owing Peter for some out-of-the-box lawyering he’d done for her a while back.
He’d put on the balaclava back then, but had lost it during the…
negotiations. I really need to replace it.
The brownie kept a lot of plant life in the conservatory, even if Peter hardly used the space. As he walked through the nightshades and the lilies, the ferns and the blooming begonias, Peter wondered if Theo might enjoy the room. Peter made a mental note to show him and ask.
I could put a desk in here, make sure the Wi-Fi is decent. It’s pretty bright, but he might like it.
Five stairs led up to the back door, which opened onto the foyer, and Peter braced himself for confused crows making a mess of things. But the foyer, apart from a few feathers, was not in too much disarray.
Peter tsked. “He’s even incompetent at soiling his enemy’s personal space.”
When Peter had used animals to attack, he’d always made sure to have them empty their bowels all over the place, because psychology was at least half a battle’s worth of pleasure.
Bernard’s crows hadn’t crapped everywhere, and the sole crow still left in the house—presumably the one whose mate was still out in the crabapple tree—sat sadly cawing on the back of a kitchen chair.
Peter helped it outside and watched them reunite with their partner before flying off into the night, then he rushed upstairs to check Theo was still sleeping.
He was, his breathing steady and low. Peter watched him for almost a minute before examining his bedroom door. The birds had left marks all over it, along with more feathers, and it would need to be sanded down and repainted.
Peter returned to Theo and sat on the bed to watch him again. Theo’s black hair was spilled around him like an overturned inkwell, and Peter ran his hand over it. Seeing the young man in his bed made him feel painfully gooey on the inside.
He sighed. I’m not a gooey person. This shouldn’t be happening.
Not that Peter was going to do anything about it, but he really had to think about how that change in the consistency of his heart would affect his life.
Falling in love really was a gods-forsaken bother.
Peter showered in a downstairs bedroom so as not to wake Theo with the noise.
He hated washing Theo’s lovely scent off him, but the blood and eyeball juice simply had to go.
Before Peter set about cleaning the house, he found his phone and called Sage.
It rang for a while before the witch picked up.
“The fuck you want, Peter? ’S th’ middle of the fuckin’ night,” Sage said, his words slurred.
“So it is. I need you to come by and check the warding on my house, repair a few bricks, a broken window, a door maybe. Nothing major.”
There was some grumbling. “Can it fucking wait until the fucking a.m.?”
Peter walked to the staircase and looked up toward the room in which Theo was sleeping like a princess bedded on feathers, not a pea in sight.
“Possibly. So long as it’s the first thing you deign to do once you begin your workday.”
“Godsdamn, Peter. Call a witch at a reasonable hour and tell them that. I’ll drop by your place in a few hours. The pup’s doing well, by the way, and thank you for asking.”
The pup in question was a young werewolf Peter had extricated from a bad situation involving a pack of loups-garous on behalf of the werewolf’s older sister.
Since the young wolf had the gift of magic—unusual for a shifter but not unheard of—and hadn’t wanted to connect with his family, Peter had dropped him at Sage’s door.
“Good to hear. I hope you managed to house train him. Heavens know he needed someone to do that.”
“Peter, you’re an ass, but I’ll still do your warding.” Sage huffed. “I’m going back to sleep now. Don’t ever call me in the middle of the fucking night again unless something’s on fire.”
Sage hung up.
With nothing more to do for the night, Peter went about cleaning up the feathers and broken glass before he finally went back to Theo. He looks good sleeping in my bed. It’s his rightful place.
If Peter had his way, Theo would never sleep anywhere else again.