Chapter 3
AARON
Iwished Timothy had looked at least slightly less beautiful than the last time I saw him. But unfortunately, my vampire senses betrayed me.
My new eyes soaked in every perfect detail in high definition.
Not a single pore visible, not one hair out of place unless he wanted it to be.
Each angle of his East Asian features carved by a divine hand, the symmetry of his face was the kind of perfection artists spend lifetimes trying to capture.
Even the air around him seemed clearer, more vibrant.
It seemed I was seeing reality itself bend slightly to accommodate his divine presence.
It made me want to stick my fingers in his perfectly tousled, gelled hair and mess it up, just to see his cheeks heat with red.
The full, dark lashes slanting down over his eyes were so full they’d make any woman envious.
And while his lips were thin, a sign he was caught in deep thought, I still remembered them turning pliant and soft under my mouth.
Standing this close, the scent of sandalwood and his skin filled my senses, and I was transported back to his bedroom. Back to when I breathed him in while tracing my tongue along his throat, as his hand encircled my hard length, as my every dream and desire played out in real time.
Calm down, cowboy, I sternly reminded myself. These tight pants won’t cover up a stiffy all that well.
The black dog at Timothy’s side pushed its head under his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice the nudge.
When did Mr. Control Freak himself get a cute pooch?
“You should see your face,” I said with the satisfaction of being able to surprise a god.
“Holy shit, Aaron,” Miranda said, also dumbfounded with shock.
I ran my fingers through my hair, deliberately relaxing my shoulders, pretending to play it cool.
But how could I really be chill about this?
Not while the god I fell head over heels with years ago stood a couple feet from me, looking perfectly coiffed, but with an expression of someone who’d slapped him across the face with a dead fish.
Miranda slammed into me in a full-body hug. I stiffened on instinct, because the Miranda I remembered barely tolerated pats on the back. Before I got my arms to cooperate, she pulled away and drove a fist into my shoulder. Hard.
“Ow,” I said for effect because it felt more like the impact of a gnat. My strength was beyond anything I’d imagined it could be now.
“You're back in town and you don’t text me, you jackass?” Miranda tilted her chin up with barely veiled accusation.
A smile played at my lips, but it fell short. My focus shifted without permission, pulled past Miranda to the presence looming behind her.
Timothy’s expression had slowly but surely morphed from utter surprise to shock.
A subtle but important difference. One can only be short-lived, while the other can far outlast the first reaction.
He knew what I was. Of course, he would.
Gods and Sekhors, or what was more modernly called vampires, used to bond in ancient times. Or rather, Sekhors were enslaved by the gods.
I did my best not to shy away, not to cringe in guilt or shame. I had nothing to be guilty about. I didn’t owe him anything.
Even so, an ache I’d carried at the center of my chest spread and intensified under his scrutiny.
“I’ve been...busy,” I said to Miranda by way of explanation.
“And what the hell is wrong with you? Doing a crazy stunt like that? Have you completely lost your surfer boy mind? You could have died.”
“No, he couldn’t.”
The answer came from Timothy. His words cold and stiff despite his innately charming British accent.
My shoulders tightened at the tone, though I tried not to let it show.
The ache in my chest twisted like a knife, plunging deeper into me.
The pressure of Timothy’s piercing gaze made it hard to focus on anything else.
The air felt thick between us, stretching each second as I grappled with the unspoken truth that he knew what I was now.
A surge of anxiety washed over me, leaving me acutely aware of my own unnaturalness in this moment, and I struggled to maintain my cool under his scrutiny.
“What are you talking about?” Miranda scoffed. “You of all people should tell him not to do stupid, dangerous shit.”
Timothy’s jaw flexed ever so slightly.
He might as well have punched me in the gut.
Miranda’s gaze volleyed between us, her brows screwed up with confusion. “What am I missing?”
“Shall you tell her, or would you like me to?”
I could have broken frozen chunks of ice off Timothy’s words.
I ran my tongue along my teeth and shot an easy smile at Miranda. “I’ve gone through some changes since I’ve last seen you.”
“What, like puberty?” She guffawed at her own joke, before she stilled. Her gaze caught on my smile.
Specifically, my teeth. More particularly at my elongated vampire incisors.
The humor slid right out of her expression. Her face went taut, eyes widening as her breath caught. “Aaron, how...when?”
A hand clapped my shoulder. “Ah, I see you’ve met my main attraction.”
Seth’s cultured voice slithered into my ears and wrapped around my throat like an invisible hand. I tried to maintain a smile, but it faded despite my best efforts.
“Set,” Timothy said, using Seth’s ancient name even as his eyes fastened to Seth’s grip on my shoulder.
Miranda raised her blade, her posture stiffening, eyes narrowed.
It was only then that Timothy stepped forward. “What do you mean, this is your main attraction?”
“Well, you saw the show, didn’t you?” Seth asked. “Aaron is spectacular, and he’s drawing droves of people to my hotel. I’m making him into a star.” His hand moved from my shoulder to a possessive hold on the back of my neck.
I’d spent the last few months doing exactly what Seth wanted and hating him for how well he understood me.
He dangled heights and speed as bait and I took it every time, running Sinopolis rooftops, dropping from ledges that would have shattered my human bones, landing clean and laughing before the rush even faded.
The world was bigger, now that I was a vampire.
Stronger legs. Faster reflexes. No fear of the fall.
I chased the thrill willingly, then looked up to find the leash still wrapped around my throat, the contracts and terms and cameras waiting to claim the moment.
The rush was mine. The show piece wasn’t. It made me feel...used.
There was no squelching the shame this time. I stared at Timothy, watching his reaction. Willing him to understand why I didn’t come find him after I’d been turned into a vampire.
His face went through a series of minute changes—first, a tightening around his eyes, then a barely perceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth, followed by a slight flaring of his nostrils.
To anyone else, he might have appeared impassive, but I could read the devastation in those subtle shifts like a book written in a language only I understood.
“He’s yours.” Timothy’s words came out soft but flat, and my guts cliff dove right out of my stomach and smashed into the ground.
The disappointment, the pain that flashed over his features was what kept me away. Like the coward I was. Barely perceptible to anyone else, but I could read him. I always could.
It was gone in a moment, replaced with his placid face of business.
“Yes, my Sekhor, Aaron,” Seth said, grinning at me. “He and I are blood-bonded.”
Miranda’s eyes widened, sword dropping to her side as she clearly needed a minute, or twenty, to comprehend what Timothy had gleaned far quicker.
He was always too clever for his own good.
“He’s been most...useful,” Seth said, fingers massaging the back of my neck in encouragement. Then as if finally noting the tension, Seth stopped. “Though I get the sense you’ve all been acquainted before.”
He dropped his hand, waiting for any of us to answer. A long, loaded, three beats passed.
Danger crept up my spine with warning prickles at the idea of letting Seth know too much. The god was all flash and swagger on the outside, but I knew he was always planning, leveraging, manipulating.
“Yes, he used to work for Grim at Sinopolis,” Timothy supplied, as official as ever. I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. His business-like manner was so stiff, I wondered if he hadn’t turned into a robot version of himself in the last few minutes.
“Yeah,” I brushed my fingers through my hair. “I worked at Perkatory cafe for a couple years.”
And stayed far longer than I did anywhere else because of a certain dark-haired man who took his cappuccinos with extra foam.
“Is that so?” Seth said slowly.
He looked between us, as if trying to guess what wasn’t being said. A dark eagerness flickered in his eyes, and I shifted my weight, fighting the urge to bolt.
Then Seth laughed as if he’d heard some great joke. “Well, isn’t it a very, very small world?”
Timothy’s gaze burned into me until my heart fluttered and flipped like a snowboarder. “The smallest.”