Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
The greatest challenge in the bedroom that Zack had ever faced was trying to figure out how to get his dick in Takashi while Roger was already in him. Usually by the time Zack was in the mood to go for what he wanted, he was in the middle of sex.
No one had ever shot him such a cocky, mind-blowingly hot smile as Takashi was currently giving him. No one had ever been mischief incarnate, daring him to be bossy and commanding. He’d daydreamed about getting people on their knees before—especially a jock from senior year who’d been giving him a hard time—but this wasn’t fantasy.
This was Takashi. Looking up at him. His desire wasn’t a pop-up in Zack’s mind anymore but billboard signs. No, a full-screen vid with noisy, sexy-groan-filled visuals. No, no, no, reading Takashi wasn’t that intangible. It was like Zack had opened a journal and could run his hand across the handwritten words. His lust had a weight, a touch to it, and not just the heaviness of Takashi’s hard-on.
Then the unsexiest of sensations crawled along Zack’s cheeks. The drying blood was starting to itch and flake. Don’t let it shake you , the Seamus voice whispered. Seize the night .
In his favorite book series, From the Grave , characters never had to worry about such bullshit things like dirty faces. But now that Zack had felt the dried blood, he longed to scratch it off his face. And because he’d been crying so long, there was a streak of blood on Takashi’s chest. Keep. Your. Cool. Zackery. You can be a sexy mastermind. Just don’t do what you normally do . He took a deep breath, then stroked Takashi’s jaw slowly. “I am going to wash my face. You are going to see if this weirdly lush prison cell happens to have lube.”
Takashi laughed lightly. “All right.”
Zack nipped at Takashi’s bottom lip and then dashed away to the bathroom. Habit had him shutting the door for privacy. Finding a washcloth and using the sink for hot water was no problem.
His actions were giving him distance from the moment on the bed with Takashi. Roger had always made confidence look easy, even when he was shaken to his core. Zack wasn’t anything like him. He couldn’t saunter across a room and make people weak in the knees. He had no idea how to saunter. I am the least sexy thing alive .
Dead, technically , his rational mind provided.
Zack buried his face in the washcloth he’d been using to clean his face and let out a frustrated groan. Fine. I am the least sexy dead thing .
Ehhhh …
Least sexy vampire . All right?
Why must you be so hard on yourself ? the Seamus voice asked. Relax before you cause yourself a migraine .
Great. Now the evil voice in my head is coming up with reasonable suggestions . Zack groaned again. Then he shook his head and finished cleaning up his face.
Maybe he should call off the whole sex thing. There was no way he could do this.
Except …
Ah …
Holy fuck, did he want to try. Takashi was interested in Zack—not Roger, then Zack or Zack on the way to Roger. He hadn’t withdrawn or scrunched up his face when he saw Zack naked in the past. Just now, he’d comforted him and been there for him because they were boyfriends. And Zack could fuck his boyfriend. Especially since his boyfriend had dared him to.
Yeah. Yeah. I got this .
He’d donned a pair of black flannel pajamas for bed, and his tears had soaked into the collar of it. That was unattractive. He pulled the shirt off and dropped it into the hamper. Then he wiped up the bloody tear trail that had crept down and dried on his chest. After a second’s hesitation, he shucked off his pajama pants, leaving just his black briefs on.
The only thing Zack wished he had was the necklace Takashi had given him for his birthday. He’d been wearing the white-gold dagger necklace in his last mortal fight. Did Seamus have it? It hadn’t snapped off in the fight, had it?
A matter Zack would solve later. He grabbed a fresh washcloth, soaked it in warm water, wrung out a bulk of the moisture, and then opened the door to the bedroom.
Takashi sat on the end of the bed, completely naked. The sheer cockiness of his smile was turning Zack on as much as his lean gymnast’s muscular tone. He’d raked his fingers through his black hair to resettle it, and he was propping himself up with his arms as he leaned backward.
He was putting on a show, trying for sexy. He was sexy, but that silent insecurity Zack had noticed in him at other times was written on the page Zack could read in his mind. The older, gorgeous, world-traveled ambassador was still nervous that Zack might not like what he saw.
I am going to blow his mind . Zack straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin just a little, and strode across the room toward him.
“I did find a cabinet in your closet.” Takashi glanced down at the array of items on the bed beside him. “I pulled out a few things.”
The wide butt plug caught Zack’s attention first. A flicker of self-doubt crossed his mind. Wasn’t his own body enough to make Takashi come? Well, duh. But this stuff could be fun . Alongside it was a roll of bondage tape, a set of leather cuffs, an adjustable chest harness, a blindfold, two different lubes, and a studded paddle. Zack thought the studs were stainless steel, but he ran his finger across one and hissed as it burned him. Silver.
Zack had had long summer days waiting for something to research and a whole empty house he was trying to forget about, so he’d spent an inordinate amount of time on porn. It helped him explore some of his cravings. His urges weren’t always vanilla. He’d gone down more than a few rabbit holes of BDSM sites, particularly featuring vampires and other supernaturals. He’d seen all these toys in action but never used them.
The Cal voice started to speak up. It was forming some kind of insult.
But Takashi wouldn’t have brought any of this out if he thought Zack couldn’t handle using them.
Takashi slid forward, and his leg brushed against Zack’s. “If it’s too much?—”
“Wrapping my head around it,” Zack murmured. He ran his finger between the studs on the paddle. “You want me to dominate you.”
“Only if you’d like to,” Takashi said softly.
Takashi’s tiny flicker of the fear of rejection grew. I wonder how deep it goes. Did that mortal boy who broke his heart cause it? Zack met Takashi’s gaze and brushed his thumb over his lips. He could fall into the grooves of that fear and chase it downward. He could find its source. Find out how much it really did shake and shape Takashi.
Takashi closed his eyes. “I can feel you pushing.”
“I’m exploring my new ability. Sorry if I went too deep. I’m trying not to.” A vampire’s abilities were a kind of magic. The principles had to be the same. Belief and willpower were the crux of using them, and they’d be the cornerstone of controlling them. So he pulled back his mental image of delving into a groove until he was tracing the shape of a word on paper again. “Is that better?”
“Much,” Takashi sighed. He nodded at the toys on the bed. “You could experiment with that power while using these.”
“How?”
“Here.” Takashi took Zack’s hand and pressed it to his chest, over his heart.
Reading the page became easier. Some of his desires were written in large block letters but in marker, so they had no real depth to them. The writing wasn’t exactly words or images, at least not yet.
“Many emotions come down to a twist of fear or desire. Understanding the intricacies of how they interact takes practice,” Takashi said.
“All magic does,” Zack whispered.
“Yes.”
The ink and writing were living things, moving and slithering. They had an impression to them, and that gave them substance. Like grains of sand becoming a river . Zack frowned. “But I hardly know what any of these mean.”
“Because you’re young. Your mind will have an easier time correlating what it’s sensing with emotions you’re familiar with.”
“So if you had the desire to crawl into a hole and never see anyone ever again, I’d be able to grasp that,” Zack joked.
“Don’t stress on figuring out the specifics. Start with the basics.” Takashi laid his hand over Zack’s. “Call me the most humiliating thing you could think of.”
Uh, me? Zack’s mind unhelpfully supplied. But he didn’t voice that, not even as a joke. Takashi had such a serene, peaceful patience about him. Zack had to respect that and take him seriously. “You are a filthy, cock-hungry, little fang-humping twink.”
The mental ink swirled and settled into a large NO .
Zack tilted his head to the side. “We can feel the opposite of desire?”
“Disgust is the desire for something to end,” Takashi said. “We should probably unpack why that was your go-to insult.”
“Not right now.” Zack slid forward. If Takashi disliked that kind of talk that fiercely, maybe praise was what he enjoyed. Zack lowered his voice, trying for a husky quality. “I am so grateful to have such a deliciously hot teacher like you. I only hope you’re this patient when I’m sliding my dick into your amazing ass because I am going to draw this out until you are begging me to come.”
A longing rolled upward from Takashi as he leaned his head back. “Feel that?”
“Yeah.”
“Know what that is?”
The shapes had a complexity to them that slid past his grasp like a camera backing out of focus, but Zack saw the gist of its meaning. “You want more.”
“I do.” Takashi grinned at him. “Don’t worry about the specifics. Master ‘stop’ and ‘more’ first.”
“All right,” Zack said. “Promise you’ll vocalize if I’m pushing too far or too hard.”
“Of course.” Takashi put his finger on Zack’s lips. “Promise these are the only parts of your mouth I’ll feel. Losing you to a blood frenzy would ruin the mood.”
“Good point.” Zack nuzzled Takashi but refrained from kissing him. “No mouth would be better. Now, I really want to see how that harness looks on you.”
Takashi picked up the harness and began to slide it on. “That can be arranged.”
But he still had the smear of bloody tears on his chest from where Zack had cried up against him. Zack blurted out, “Wait.”
And Takashi paused.
Having someone listen to him shouldn’t have felt like a novel concept. Zack had asked others to do stuff for him before. When he’d been recovering, his days had been a series of requesting help or having people fetch stuff for him.
This was different. Zack let the weight of Takashi’s trust in him settle the nerves threatening to climb. What have I ever chosen for myself? Him. This . For once in his life, he had both feet on the ground, and his head wasn’t clouded with a thousand worries that were going to drive him insane. Slowly, he brought the warm washcloth to Takashi’s chest and methodically cleaned the dried tears off.
Then he stepped back and threw the washcloth toward the bathroom. It sailed across the room, through the open door, and splatted against the far wall. Uh. Right. Vampire strength. I really got to watch that . He cleared his throat. Immediately, a wave of embarrassment flooded his system, but he drew in a deep breath and quashed it. He was in charge. The tiny slipups weren’t major fuckups. Takashi was still radiating want. That was all that mattered.
“Put it on,” Zack ordered. His voice had an oomph to it that resonated deeper in his chest.
For a fraction of a wild second, he was certain Takashi was going to laugh and call the whole thing off.
Instead, the swirling mental inks that filtered through Zack’s mind scored the journal page he was reading. The force of the word practically opened a canyon, and Zack had to hold to the edge out of respect. BELONG .
That was a desire Zack knew inside and out, both sexually and not. Takashi’s want went deeper than sex, even though at the moment, it was charged with an energy that was far from platonic. And feeling it woke a rumbling predator in Zack’s soul. Craving blood was a necessity—a need that had to be obeyed in order to survive. What crept forward was a yearning that made something beyond mere existence possible. Following this impulse felt like thriving .
Power settled over him, coursed through him. There was nothing magical about it, at least not in the arcane fashion. Zack was shedding an ill-fitted persona. He could feel the bits of the gasping, scared boy who’d let Cal torment him, who’d let his cousins tie him up as part of a game, who’d tried to please his mother over and over and over, who had waited and waited and waited for his boyfriends to make a fucking plan—that scared boy didn’t deserve to be in this new chapter of his life.
Takashi finished putting on the harness. It went around his shoulders and had straps across his back and front. At the center of his chest was a metal ring, and there was another at the center of his back. When he was done, he shot Zack a sly grin, yet his desire to belong pulsed stronger. A lock of his dark hair hung over one of his eyes, lending him a rebellious look.
“I am going to get that answer out of you,” Zack said firmly. “You better make me work for it.”
Zack didn’t need his psychic ability to tell him that Takashi liked his new tone of voice. Takashi was sliding his hand to his dick, preparing to take himself in hand and stroke.
“None of that. In fact—” Zack stepped forward and grabbed Takashi by his wrist and the center of the harness. Using that hold, he pulled Takashi to his feet. Then he spun him around and pushed him down so that his ass hung off the end of the bed. The inky connection streamed more more more to him.
Knowing that what he was doing was right was an elixir he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. He roughly pulled Takashi’s arms behind his back and used the leather cuffs to secure his wrists. A stifled moan slipped out from between Takashi’s lips.
“Already vocal for me?” Zack asked. He stroked Takashi’s spine just above where his hands were bound up to the chest harness and back down. With his other hand, he grabbed the butt plug and teased the cleft of Takashi’s ass. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
Takashi snorted softly, which turned into a moan when Zack used his free hand to slowly spread his ass cheeks.
“Come on,” Zack murmured, “be a good boy and tell me why you’re so fucking hard for me already.”
But Takashi buried his face in the comforter. Zack’s attunement to that mental journal page had too many flittering emotions, yet he spotted that thin fear growing larger. Rejection.
Zack eased his hand away from Takashi’s ass and trailed his fingertips over and down to his legs instead. “I know you want to be good for me.”
The inks were settling into patterns of MORE and don’t reject me .
Still no words, though. Zack sighed softly in disappointment and took the paddle up. One side was free of the silver studs, which was useful. First, he grazed Takashi’s lower back and then his right cheek with the silver studs, barely letting them touch him.
“Why?” Zack asked lightly.
Takashi mumbled something against the comforter.
Zack’s voice threatened to stick in his throat. Was he doing something wrong? According to what he was picking up, he wasn’t. He let out a deep breath, the action calming, if unnecessary for living. Carefully, he ran the paddle up Takashi’s other cheek. The silver was leaving thin red track marks that healed almost as instantly as they were made.
Takashi turned his head to the side and said breathily, “Because you’re hot.”
The answer shouldn’t have surprised Zack. Shouldn’t have split open another layer of his heart. Of course his boyfriends thought he was hot. Roger had spent plenty of time telling him he was handsome. This wasn’t the first time Takashi had been horny around him.
But he wasn’t the same as he’d been. He’d been mutated into this thing —a vampire. Takashi had witnessed a panic attack overcome him, held him while he sobbed, and he was still offering himself up and professing his attraction.
I won’t disappoint him. Or me . Zack wasn’t sure he’d ever gotten so hard in his entire existence. He stroked his hand through Takashi’s hair and rested his hand at the base of his neck. As he let his thumb draw idle circles there, he drifted the paddle in the same slow circle around his ass. “That’s my good boy. Now, let’s see if I can get that other answer out of you.”