Trick or…Trick
Lucien
Luc let himself be led down the dark, winding hallway to the bar’s basement by an eager Jamie.
He did his best not to sneer at the tacky decorations on the walls, but Jamie sensed his derision anyway, judging by his husky chuckle. “Lighten up, monster. It’s all just for fun.”
Luc flicked the wings of a plastic bat as they hurried past and let his lip curl after all. “Can’t it be fun and tasteful?”
Jamie laughed again as they broke out onto the underground dance floor. The basement was done up in full tacky, festive hideousness, all orange flashing lights and machine-made smoke and people writhing half-naked in costumes.
Jamie tugged Luc closer to him, sliding warm lips by his ear to murmur, “No, you snob. The tackiness is the fun.”
Luc rolled his eyes, a habit he’d caught from his mate.
Halloween.
It wasn’t a tradition Luc had been raised on, obviously, but it was one his Jamie seemed to delight in with twice his usual effervescence.
Enough so that he’d made plans with Colin and his two idiots to meet them in Phoenix for a night of revelry, since he’d decided Tucson’s gay scene was too small for their purposes.
“We need real crowds,” he’d declared in Monique’s dive bar, waving a shot glass in the air. “Real costumes and a real party. Everyone dressed up to filth and practically fucking on the dance floor.”
Who was Luc to argue?
As if he could deny Jamie anything, anyway.
And he hadn’t minded an excuse to rent a room at an obscenely expensive hotel for the night.
One in which the other three were supposedly also staying, but they hadn’t had a chance to meet up with them ahead of time—he and Jamie had been too busy preparing their costumes, a task that Luc had not realized he’d enjoy as much as he had.
Jamie now pulled Luc through the crowd toward the bar—they passed bare-chested pirates, bare-chested firemen, drag versions of Old Hollywood starlets—and Luc took a moment to appreciate his mate’s…attire.
They’d dressed as a vampire and his victim. A surprise when Jamie had told him—Luc had expected him to want something more dramatic, more playful. But then Jamie had shared the specifics, and Luc had been all for it.
Luc’s side of it was easy—he was wearing tight black jeans, a black button-down tucked in, and a long black jacket that reached down to his knees.
His black eyes and fangs were out, and Jamie had affixed some sort of Halloween makeup to his forehead to heighten the monstrous effect.
For some reason, Jamie had also made him shave, and his hair was gelled, spiked toward the front in an offensively ugly style.
Whatever. The idiotic coif was worth it for Luc’s part in Jamie’s costume.
Jamie—the victim—had wanted to be covered in bloody bites, which had involved Luc sinking his teeth into him over and over, drinking his fill and then letting the blood spill over onto his mate’s tawny skin.
Luc had fucked him while he’d done it, slow and thorough and hungry, and Jamie had murmured sweet filth all the while, directing Luc where to bite next with eager hands tugging at his hair.
The bites themselves had healed, of course, but Jamie had affixed more Halloween makeup to replicate them after his blood had dried. He had some frilly white shirt torn and unbuttoned to reveal his slim, bare chest, and jeans so low-slung they should have been illegal.
In short, he looked beyond tempting, especially with the cinnamon scent of his dried vampire blood trailing him in the air.
Luc wanted to kiss his neck. To bite and consume every inch of him, even more thoroughly than what he’d managed in the hotel.
Perfect and delicious and ours, his monster crooned, a refrain it had been repeating since their costume preparations.
Perhaps Jamie would let Luc suck him off in some dark corner soon. Or the reverse—Luc wasn’t feeling picky.
But apparently that would have to wait, as Jamie started to veer toward the end of the bar, where Colin and the twins were already waiting, to Luc’s immense annoyance.
Poutain de merde, couldn’t they have had the decency to not show up?
Colin was dressed all in black, a pair of matching black ears sticking out of his pastel-pink hair, with whiskers painted on his face. The twins were shirtless, like much of the bar’s patrons, their heads wrapped in leather muzzles, with collars and leashes leading straight to Colin’s hand.
Fox sniffed the air as Jamie and Luc approached. “Is that real blood?” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Fucking unsanitary.”
Jamie flipped him off cheerfully. “I’m a vampire, dickhead. It’s not like anyone can catch anything from my blood. Sorry not sorry for being authentic.”
Colin ignored their bickering, looking over Jamie’s costume and then Luc’s. His lips twitched when he finished his perusal. “Holy shit. You’re Ang—”
“A vampire,” Jamie cut in quickly, a mischievous grin aimed at his friend. “Just a vampire.”
“Boring as fuck,” Dane drawled, baring his teeth under the muzzle when Luc growled at him for the insolence.
Jamie and Colin exchanged another look, but Luc didn’t attempt to interpret it. He was too busy trying to catalog the lust coming through the bond on Jamie’s end, the shock of it that had bloomed when he’d seen the twins’ costumes.
Luc would wait for them to leave before he brought it up. He knew Jamie didn’t have the hots for those two ignorant assholes, so it had to be something else.
“What are you three supposed to be?” he asked instead.
Colin pointed to himself with his usual flat affect. “Black cat.” He pointed to the twins. “My junkyard dogs.”
Luc stared a moment longer, but no further explanation was forthcoming. “It’s a nonsense costume,” he pointed out.
Colin smirked, sipping at his beer. “It makes sense to me.”
Fox stepped closer to his mate, cutting off their conversation as he loomed over him, his voice veering into a whine. “Stop yapping with the enemy. I want to drink someone wasted, get my booze on.”
“He’s not the enemy,” Colin told him with an eye roll. “We’re in the same den.”
But he let himself be dragged off, the twins somehow leading him, despite the leashes he was holding.
Good riddance.
Luc wrapped an arm around Jamie’s chest, pulling his mate’s back to his front. He bit at his earlobe, watching the goose bumps break out on Jamie’s skin. “Want to tell me why you’re lusting after the twins?”
Jamie tilted his head back to look at him with wide-eyed innocence. “Who, me?” When Luc only growled, long and low, his expression sharpened into a wicked grin. “It’s not them. It’s the accessories.”
Luc took a moment to process that. Then he darted out a hand, catching the arm of a passing partygoer, one wearing a studded collar to go with whatever the scantily clad costume of his was supposed to be.
Luc laced compulsion into his voice. “The collar. Give it to me.”
He grabbed it from his mesmerized victim, shooing him off and affixing it to his own throat, arching a brow at Jamie, who’d whirled out of his arms for a better look.
Jamie smirked at him. “It doesn’t go with your costume.” But he hooked two fingers into it anyway, tugging Luc in for a filthy kiss. “So good to me, monster,” he crooned against Luc’s lips. “Giving me any little thing I ask for.”
He tasted like cigarettes and candy corn, and Luc couldn’t help swiping his tongue in for another sample. “Always.”
“Including a dance?” Jamie asked, endearingly hopeful.
“Of course, mon amour.” It wasn’t a hard ask.
Luc liked this kind of dancing, which mostly involved Jamie grinding his ass against Luc’s denim-clad dick over and over, letting Luc slide his hands greedily over his chest and waist, making a mess of all the dried blood they’d so painstakingly painted him with.
With each sway of his hips, Jamie led them closer to Colin, Fox, and Dane. Fox had evidently found someone inebriated to drink from, because he was noticeably looser, swaying to the music as he pawed at Colin, kissing him messily while Dane held their mate up for him.
Jamie eyed them with exaggerated hunger. “I wouldn’t want to fuck the twins,” he mused, as if continuing their earlier discussion. “Colin, on the other hand…”
Luc gripped Jamie’s hips with painful force, even as he laughed softly in his ear. His mate was being ridiculously obvious. “I know what you’re doing, little menace.”
Jamie bit at his lower lip. “Appreciating my sweet friend?”
That wasn’t it at all. Jamie had a fondness for Colin, no doubt. Even some real appreciation for his old friend’s sex appeal, however mysterious that appeal might be to Luc.
But he had other motives for this little act. And frankly, it explained some of Jamie’s twitchy energy tonight, beyond his excitement for the holiday.
Luc’s flower wanted to play.
Luc’s cock jerked at the thought, and he ran his nose along Jamie’s throat, breathing in his ear, “You don’t have to wake the monster to fuck me. Just ask nicely, ma fleur.”
“Oh, fuck yes,” Jamie moaned.
He didn’t ask at all, immediately dragging Luc to a back door he’d apparently been eyeing, kicking it open to a small side street, dark and dingy.
Luc had shelled out a small fortune for their expensive hotel, and Jamie still wanted to fuck him in some dim alleyway.
Ah, well.
Jamie launched himself at Luc, kissing him furiously, devouring him with the same ferocity Luc had brought to biting every inch of his skin.
When he broke for air, he batted dark lashes at Luc, demanding almost sweetly, if not for the hand pawing at Luc’s clothed cock, “Let my monster out for a minute.”
It was easy, these days—no longer a battle between Luc and it. Luc had only to step aside for a moment, letting the creature out long enough to grab one of Jamie’s feverish kisses for its own, biting at their mate’s lower lip with sharp fangs and sucking at the sweet blood that followed.
“Love you,” Jamie murmured, his lips shiny with blood and spit, and the beast preened its pleasure.