Chapter 9
NINE
The crowd loves blood. Don’t let it be yours.
LUCA
“You should have let her pick you.”
I groan and drag my hand over my eyes.
Alistair won’t let it go. Even though he agreed in the arena, he’s been fixated ever since.
“I should be last,” I say for the fifteenth time. “This is my home realm. I can handle the cold. Ciprian can’t.”
“I can’t handle the cold either.”
“Which is why you’re with me and Malach. If I’m shifted, he can carry you to safety. Celine can do the same with Ciprian.”
Alistair balls his hands at his sides.
I sigh. “You pointed at him too, Ali. Why are you freaking out now?”
He sinks down on his cot, shoulders curling until his perfect posture is nowhere in sight. “I don’t know where they are. I can’t think about anything else.”
I narrow my eyes at him. We’re all upset, but his excuse is too easy. “Is that all? What’s really bothering you?”
“I’m useless here,” Alistair whispers.
I frown. “That’s not true. We need your brain to escape.”
I turn to Malach for help.
He nods. “I’m not reputed as a strategist.”
“And you’re good in a fight,” I remind Alistair.
“Not against monsters like these,” he spits the words, each syllable exploding out of him and slamming into me.
Monsters like these. He means monsters like me.
He doesn’t have to say it. I know it’s true. The basilisk: poisonous, deadly, wild, other. Alistair finally realized we aren’t the same kind of terrible. It was bound to happen. Basilisks aren’t even accepted among other shifters, for fuck’s sake.
I roll over on my cot, effectively ending the discussion. I can’t help him with this. He’s going to have to soothe himself this time.
I wake abruptly as my cot dips. A hulking shape hovers over me, and I’m bracing to attack when I recognize Alistair.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you alright?”
“Fuck me,” he growls.
“What?” My brain is half asleep. His face is mostly shadow, partially lit by the embers of the fire, but he’s practically straddling me. I’m not against it, but this can’t be the best time. “The bed isn’t stable and Malach—”
“That’s not what I—bollocks, I’m trying to check on you, Luca. I-I hurt you earlier.”
I yawn, the hazy relief of sleep tugging at me as I try to adjust to the fact that my bed isn’t being invaded by a horny vampire but a guilty one. “And you want to talk about it now?”
“Your expression,” he whispers. “It reminded me of your face when Celine didn’t say she loved you back.”
“Gods,” I groan. “Thanks for that reminder.”
“Be serious, please.” Alistair curls behind me on the narrow cot.
His breath is warm against my neck. “I couldn’t sleep because .
. . shit, Luca, I’m tired of hurting people I wouldn’t hesitate to kill for.
I messed up with Celine and Casanell, and I’ll be damned if I do it with you too.
I’m not asking you to fuck me, I’m asking you to put yourself first and not consider me at all. ”
I shiver. He’s intense, even now. Still, the Alistair who crawled into bed with me isn’t polished and menacing—he’s just a guy who matters to me. And he’s admitting his faults.
“Ali . . .”
“What did I do?” he demands. His lips graze the shell of my ear, and it feels so good it’s difficult to focus on what he’s saying. “I need to know, so I never bloody do it again.”
“It’s hard to explain,” I admit.
“Is it? Or are you trying to spare my feelings?”
I open my mouth, then shut it again. Am I trying to protect him or myself?
“The monsters. They’re like me. I’m one of them, hated and feared. You think I don’t know that everyone in the universe wishes creatures like us only lived in their nightmares? If you put it to a vote, we wouldn’t exist, and maybe that would be for the—”
Alistair grabs my chin and kisses me, nipping roughly at my lower lip. “Cut that out.”
“You told me to tell you what was wrong,” I mutter, the sting of my own words reminding me of the emotions I fell asleep with hours ago.
Alistair kisses me again, and this time I taste his frustration.
“Am I annoying you?” I whisper, yanking his fingers off my chin and dragging them to my hair instead. I’m outside my body. Disconnected from myself in a way that scares me.
“You are,” he growls. I arch into his lips as he drags them over the sensitive skin of my neck. “You’re not a monster, Luca. Not like them.”
I hiss and pull away from him. “Don’t pretend you didn’t see me shift. Fangs dripping venom, murder eyes attached to a huge, freakish snake?”
“That wrapped itself around Celine like a Luca-shaped bunker? Yes, I noticed.”
“I could have crushed her!”
“Sure.” Alistair yanks me back against his chest. “Then why didn’t you?”
I see red. Turning to face him, I wrap my fingers around his throat. “Why would you say that? I love her. She’s everything to me. If I lived a million lives, I would rather die in every single one than hurt her even once.”
“Exactly.” Ali’s throat bobs against my palm. I’m out of control. Slipping. Becoming it, the possessive, angry beast that I fear. I need time to think. Time to calm down, but he’s not giving me any room. “If you’re such a monster, why don’t you snap my neck?” Alistair taunts.
I yank my hand away from his neck. I can’t risk hurting him while I’m barely in control.
Ali leans in closer, trapping my hand between our bodies until it’s half braced against his collarbone. “Why would you pull away, love?” he asks. “I’m right here. You had me in your grasp.”
“Stop it. I wouldn’t—fuck you,” I snap. “Just because I don’t want to kill my girlfriend and my boyfriend doesn’t mean I’m not a monster.”
Alistair goes impossibly still. “What was that?”
“I don’t want to kill you!”
“I already knew that.” Ali buries his face in my neck and sucks in a ragged breath. “What did you call me? That was new information.”
A sledgehammer made of pure embarrassment hits me. Why did he have to wake me up to talk? And what the fuck is wrong with me? I told Celine I loved her before she was ready, and here I am telling Alistair he belongs to me when we’ve never discussed what we are to each other.
“That’s not what I meant,” I sputter, desperately clinging to my last shred of dignity. It’s flapping in the breeze like laundry on a line.
“Don’t take it back.” Alistair nips at my neck, and I gasp as he growls. “I liked it.”
“Pause,” I say, pulling away from his lips and fangs so he can’t distract me. “You want to be my boyfriend?”
“Are you asking?”
“What? No?”
“You’re confused.”
“Yeah.” I suck in a ragged breath. “Because you’re confusing me. You woke me up to interrogate me about feelings. I’m not sure how we got here.”
“At the risk of sounding like a smartass, I’m pretty sure feelings are exactly what got us here.” His voice is less confident now. Raspier.
Do I have feelings for him?
Finally, a question I know the answer to.
I find Alistair’s lips in the dark and kiss him softly. Blood rushes to my cheeks. His arms wrap around me, tightening until we’re almost as tangled up as two people can get. It’s not enough. My tongue traces the seam of his lips, then the kiss turns messy. Hungry.
I slide the hand trapped between us down and cup him through his pants.
He thrusts into my palm, and I smile into our kiss.
I like that he’s hard for me—gasping into my mouth and no one else’s.
I like that he lost sleep over the expression on my face when he talked about monsters. Godsdammit, I like him. A lot.
“Do you need blood?” I slide my fingers into his sweatpants and curl them around his cock.
He groans. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine.” I roll my thumb over the tip of his dick, collecting the bead of pre-cum and spreading it around. “I asked if you needed my blood.”
“Always.” Alistair kisses me with bruising force, and my bottom lip splits. “I always need your blood. I-I—dammit, Luca, I need you.” His confession is intense. Everything is with Alistair, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You have me,” I groan, tilting my neck to the side. “So bite me. Because you need to be strong. And because I’m fucking aching to have your fangs inside me again.”
For a second neither of us moves, then needle-sharp fangs sink into my skin.
The pain is gone before I can even think the word ouch.
Then it’s only pleasure. Alistair’s body rubbing against mine.
His cock in my hand, skin grinding against skin as he chases his pleasure.
And the absolute fucking euphoria of his bite.
He’s a drug I’ll never get enough of.
I let myself zone out.
We’re not locked in a one-room log cabin in the monster realm anymore.
We’re home in the Fringes, tangled up in bed together. Celine’s soft curves pressed between us, her red hair wrapped around my fist.
Alistair isn’t worried about being useless. I don’t feel like a monster.
We talk about our future because we want to, not because we’re scared we’ll never get another chance.
Tension gathers low in my belly, coiling tighter by the second. I don’t want it to snap yet. I don’t want this to be over. It’s a life preserver made of rightness floating in a sea of wrong. “Come for me,” Alistair growls. “Come for me now, Luca.”
I’m not strong enough to fight us both.
Arching into his body, I explode. Spots of black dot my vision as every muscle in my body tightens, then relaxes.
Ali spasms in my hand, soaking my fingers with cum. He pulls his fangs out of my neck and seals the puncture wounds with a warm, rough lick that echoes in my cock.
The sensation of being home slips away. I try to hold on to it, but I’ve never been good at playing pretend. My mental grip is as slippery as my cum-soaked fingers.
I pull my hand out of his pants, and the weight of reality returns.
Alistair buries his face in the crook of my shoulder and sighs. “We’ll get out of here, Luca. Together. I believe that, and you and that monster inside of you are a big part of the reason I have hope. Remember that the next time you decide to feel like shit about who you are.”
He tenses to get up, but I wrap my arms around him and mutter, “No.”
“No?” His voice is confident again, warm honey rolling off a spoon.
“Stay,” I whisper.
Alistair doesn’t give me a chance to be vulnerable. His body relaxes against mine, slowly at first, then all at once—like he just let go of something huge. I want to ask him what it was, but exhaustion is clawing at me again.
“Always,” he says.
I yawn, and my thoughts get cloudy. He promised to stay, and I want to believe him. Most of me does. Unfortunately, we’re not in control. All I can do is hope that nothing happens to turn Alistair’s promise into a lie.