Dead Man Stalking (Blood and Bone Book 1) Read online

  It didn’t work, but then it never did. He’d sparred with Madoc to get better, not to win, and that had been without the distraction of sharp-fanged kisses and hands eager for his ass and his thighs.

  Not as much of a distraction anyhow.

  Either way, it always ended the same—with Took pinned to the ground, although Madoc usually went with his forearm across Took’s throat instead of pinning his wrists to the floor.

  “If you paid attention to right now and not the inside of your head,” Madoc said as he straddled Took’s hips, “maybe you wouldn’t end up here.”

  Took grinned at him. “Maybe I wanted to.”

  Madoc leaned down and teased a featherlight kiss over Took’s mouth. “You could have been here a lot sooner.”

  It was nearly dawn, but the dusky grays were close enough to press in against the windows. Took could feel the pressure of everything he should have considered before he kissed Madoc push in against his ears.

  “Who isn’t here now?” he asked.

  Madoc rewarded him for that with a kiss that pressed Took’s head back against the floor. He slid his tongue neatly between Took’s extended fangs. The twinge of that in his jaw felt different with Madoc’s weight on him, not the usual dry socket burn but an almost pleasant ache that throbbed to the need in his balls.

  “I want you to fuck me in your bed,” Madoc rasped as he finally raised his head. He tightened his grip on Took’s wrists, and the pressure of his fingers was enough to make the bones ache as Took reflexively tried to move. The image in his head—the long, hard sprawl of Madoc’s body, the clench of his shoulders, and the sheath of him around Took’s cock—made Took absently lick his fangs. The heady, sweet drip of ichor down his throat made him squirm with wanting more… although exactly what he wanted wasn’t clear. Madoc kissed him hungrily and shuddered as he caught the taste. “I want to bend you over that desk and fuck you.”

  Took’s groan was a low, raw noise in his throat. His cock rubbed against the rough denim of his zipper as he helplessly lifted his hips off the ground.

  “What do you want?” Madoc asked. He shifted his weight back so his ass pressed firmly against Took’s groin, the pressure of lean, firm muscle enough to drag another groan out of Took. “What do you want, Took?”

  “You,” Took admitted. “Any way I can get you.”

  Madoc flinched back for a second, a flutter of pain briefly, sharply, visible on his face. A cold little bit of Took filed that reaction away for later, for analysis. He hated that part sometimes, useful as it could be, but he lost track of the thought as Madoc let go of his arms and sat back.

  “Then you get to fuck me.” He dragged the borrowed T-shirt up over his head and tossed it away. His mouth curled in a sly, almost shy, smile as he looked down at Took. “See if you can do a better job than you did trying to pin me.”

  His stomach was still laced with faded pink scars from earlier, but the almost-evisceration had already smoothed down to not much more than a tint of red and a seed of scar tissue. The bullets had shredded the smoky ink that Madoc had worked into his ribs. The skeletal dragon was splintered, and the smoky lines scattered across white flesh. When he had time, Madoc would get it excised and re-inked. He always did, no matter how many times he denied he was a cardinal anymore. Still, for now, the ruined ink almost felt like Madoc was off-duty, a once-a-decade dose of freedom.

  Took ran his fingers over the exposed skin. He traced the web of scar tissue over Madoc’s lean stomach and up across his ribs. Between the faintly rough stripes of pink, Madoc’s skin was warmer than Took expected, a little over room temperature, and smooth as silk.

  “What if I’d wanted to be fucked?” Took asked.

  Madoc hooked his fingers in the neck of Took’s old T-shirt and pulled him into a quick, hard kiss.

  “Next time,” he murmured as he nibbled the curve of Took’s mouth. “Now, are you going to take me to bed or not?”

  “We could stay here,” Took said. “No one will see.”

  Madoc rolled to his feet in one easy motion and held his hand out. After a second, Took grabbed it and let himself be dragged to his feet. Madoc promptly reeled him back in until they were pressed together again.

  “I am old enough that fucking on the floor isn’t a novelty,” he rasped into Took’s ear. “And I want to leave my smell on your sheets, in the air. Whatever you do tomorrow, Luke, you won’t forget that I was here, that you asked me in, that you begged me to stay.”

  Took sucked in a ragged breath. He didn’t need the oxygen, but somehow he still needed the pressure of air in his lungs as he tried not to get flustered. The rough words could have been a promise or a threat, and Took didn’t care. Heat pulled heavily in his groin, like hot sand, and he turned his face into Madoc’s throat. A kiss turned into an almost-bite as he scraped his teeth down over tendons and the soft spot where Madoc’s pulse used to live. The blunt pressure made Madoc shudder and clench his jaw.

  “Told. I told you to stay,” Took said. “And I have never forgotten a single thing about you, Madoc.”

  “Always the profiler,” Madoc said, almost affectionately.

  Took didn’t correct him. It would take too long and be too real. Instead he hooked his hand in the waistband of Madoc’s trousers and dragged him toward the stairs.

  SNACK HISSED like a kettle and shot out from under the bed as Madoc landed on it. Most of the time Snack’s ownership of the room, of the whole top floor, went unchallenged. He swatted Took’s leg on the way past, hard enough to sting even through denim, and disappeared out into the hall.

  “I don’t think that cat likes me,” Madoc said as he stretched out on the sheets, his weight braced on his elbow.

  His skin was nearly as pale as the linen, the darkness of his hair and scattered tattoo stark against all that pallor. The idea that the long sprawl of dangerous muscle, the hard bulge of his cock under the zip of his trousers, was there for Took, seemed like as much of a trap as a cat’s exposed fluffy belly… and was just as worth it to stick your hand into.

  “I don’t think she’s the one who needs to,” Took pointed out. “So I can do anything I like to you?”

  Madoc laughed and tilted his head back, his dark hair loose and his throat bared in one lean, tempting line.

  “One tip I will give you on the vampiric life,” he said. “Never say yes to a question like that. Exactly what did you have in mind?”

  It was the moment to ask what Madoc expected. Took didn’t. As far as VINE was concerned, his ability to patch things together into a believable behavioral whole was all he had left going for him.

  “I thought you hated spoilers?”

  Madoc raised an eyebrow. “Big kinky talk and nothing to back it up, huh?”

  It shouldn’t be possible for a vampire to flush, but Took could feel the heat at the top of his ears. He scrubbed his hand through his hair and realized it was still damp at the back.

  “Bite me,” he muttered.

  Madoc smiled at him widely enough to show all his teeth. The tips of his fangs dimpled the lush curve of his lower lip, and his dark eyes were hot. “That I can do.”

  The thought made Took’s scars burn. He might have locked away most of the memories of what happened that year, but his nerves remembered the slice of fangs and the acid of the curse as it worked into his bones.

  The memory flicked like a lightbulb, sharp-edged and hungry. He wasn’t sure when it was—sometime when Madoc had still wanted to tease a rise out of the rigid new boy from California—but he knew where. It was the loft in Philadelphia that provided a waypoint between the office and wherever the various Biters called home. Madoc had stumbled in that nearly-morning with his latest lover, a pretty boy with sleepy amber eyes, stories about his job as a docent, and no boundaries.

  Madoc’s hand was pale against the black-leather-covered thigh, a trickle of spilled blood vivid against his pale jaw. His tongue flicked out to lave the boy’s throat in a slow, wet swipe that dragged a raw s
ound of surrender from his lover and made Took shift with discomfort. The distaste he expected—the sneer he caught behind his teeth bitter as cigarette smoke—but the quick rise of lust caught him off guard.

  “So much better,” Madoc purred against the pale, flawless column of throat, “tapped fresh.”

  Madoc’s jaw tightened, his lover moaned in abandon, and as they tangled around each other, Took realized they’d forgotten all about the undeclared game of chicken.

  He ceded the win anyhow as he looked away.

  “If you’re good,” he said.

  Madoc’s eyes were unreadable as he ran his hand down his chest to the broad black belt cinched around his lean waist. “Goodness isn’t something associated with my name,” he said as he tugged the leather strap loose. “Would you accept wicked?”

  “Like I said,” Took admitted raggedly as lust jolted through him. “Anything.”

  Took grabbed the hem of his T-shirt to haul it over his head and then hesitated with it hitched halfway up his stomach. The scars were the least of his problems usually. They’d fade eventually, and sometimes, when the world demanded he buck up, it was oddly reassuring to have the journal of everything bad etched into his skin. This was the first time they’d made him feel self-conscious with the sharp wish that he’d done this before he was broken.

  Even if it had been even more of a bad idea when he had something to lose.

  “I’ve seen the scars,” Madoc said. “I saw you before the scars. If they bothered me, do you think I’d be here?”

  “Pity?” Took joked bitterly as he dragged off his T-shirt. Scars stitched across his torso and arms. They were worse where he had let the sun get to them—thick knots of white tissue that ringed his neck, and tight, divoted skin on his forearms—and had faded to shiny welts across his shoulders and the hard plane of his stomach.

  “Maybe you aren’t such a good profiler after all,” Madoc said. He hitched his hips up off the bed and pushed his thick, black cotton trousers down over heavy thighs. His cock jutted up eagerly from his groin, the skin drawn tight over the thick, curved shaft of it and the head dark and shiny with come. He wrapped his fingers around it and dragged his fist from base to head in one slow movement. “Get over here and fuck me. Or did you decide you just wanted to watch and feel sorry for yourself?”

  Took laughed with a harsh bark of real humor that caught him off guard.

  “I have reason,” he pointed out as he scrambled out of his jeans. Whatever legendary grace the Anakim were meant to embody escaped him as he tripped over his own clothes. His cock bobbed awkwardly as he caught his balance. It was so hard and ready that the warm, still air on it made him ache. There were scars on Took’s thighs too, but the clots of keloid in the back of his knee and the crease of his groin had been the first to fade.

  “Who doesn’t?” Madoc said as he kicked his trousers all the way off. “Ask any priest and they’ll tell you we were put here to suffer. You, on the other hand, get to fuck me, and not everyone can say that.”

  “So I should just cheer up?”

  Madoc shrugged and sprawled back on the bed. “That’s up to you,” he said. His fingers tightened roughly around his cock, and he hissed in air between his teeth. The muscles in his thighs clenched, and it took him a moment to drag words back over his tongue. “You don’t have to cheer up to get it up. On the other hand, you have a limited time to get up me.”

  “I didn’t realize we were on a deadline,” Took said dryly as he crawled onto the bed. He ran his hands up Madoc’s thighs, from his knees to his lean hips. The skin was soft under his thumbs as he explored the taut skin. Between the vee of his wrists, Madoc lazily stroked his cock. “Is it a soft or a hard one?”

  Madoc’s laugh trembled against Took’s palms.

  “You are definitely rusty,” he said as he let go of his cock. Pale and heavy, it tilted up toward his flat stomach as Madoc reached up to cup his fingers around the back of Took’s neck. The smell of sex was ripe on his skin. “Come here.”

  He pulled Took down on top of him and into a sharp, hungry kiss. Took groaned helplessly into Madoc’s mouth at the nip of fangs and the rough rub of Madoc’s thigh against his balls.

  Pleasure hitched ragged along his nerves, rerouted around the congestion spots where scar tissue was thick, and Took ground his cock against Madoc’s hip. He pulled away from the kiss and explored Madoc’s body with his mouth and hands. The long planes of it were familiar enough from his old fantasies, the breadth of his shoulders and the tight curve of ass estimated from his leathers and the brief, rough clinches when they sparred.

  This close, this naked, there was more to find. His nipples were pale but flushed under Took’s lips and between his fingers into tight pink buds that made Madoc groan and dig his fingers into Took’s hair. There was a scatter of silver in his chest hair, bright and distinct against the dark scruff, and it curled and matted under Took’s tongue. When Took slid his hand down to Madoc’s cock, it was heavy and thick around, and Took’s thumb rubbed roughly over the base made Madoc swear between clenched teeth and buck his hips up off the mattress.

  His navel was pierced too, with a slim iron ingot laced vertically through the dimpled skin.

  Took traced a circle around it with his fingertips. “I didn’t think piercings worked on… us.”

  He touched the bar with his fingertip and hissed in surprise at the unexpected sting of it. Madoc caught his hand and pulled it up to his lips to kiss the small hurt away and then scrape his teeth over the pads.

  “They don’t,” Madoc said. “It’s different. A gift from the old, dead bastard that fathered me.”

  Madoc was a dhampir with no acknowledged kin, a cardinal whose recorded life began the day he swore to the Haza. Took knew he should ask, draw out the nodule of information while Madoc was in the mood to talk. Instead he shivered as Madoc sucked on his fingers and then pushed Took over on his back so he could return the favor. He kissed his way down to Took’s stomach, his tongue and lips attentive to every old knot of scar tissue as though he wanted to map them—until he reached Took’s cock.

  “Now I know your parents were religious,” he said as he pressed a kiss to the wet head. The flick of his tongue made Took squirm, and Madoc pushed his hips down to hold him in place. “Does it really decrease sensation?”

  Took was used to the question. Even on the West Coast, circumcision wasn’t common. It was practiced by Jews, Muslim, and a very few of the more passionate Christian sects. If your cock was docked, it meant your parents really thought it mattered to the divine. From what Took understood, his Dad had just wanted to sell it to a witch, but he tended to let people believe the religious angle.

  He swallowed hard as Madoc worked his tongue under the glans and flicked it over the tight thread of skin there. Pleasure knotted in Took’s balls and pushed at his muscles, and the need to move twitched under his skin.

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” Took rasped out. “But maybe you should try a bit harder. Just in case.”

  Madoc chuckled—a breath against Took’s cock—and wrapped his mouth around Took’s cock. The cool blades of his fangs grazed the tender skin as he worked his tongue over the underside of the shaft.

  Took wanted to groan. The sound was caught roughly in his throat, but he’d forgotten how to breathe as Madoc’s mouth took in the length of him. It was wet and slick, it was Madoc, and the twisted threads of pleasure, pain, and stale fear twisted in his gut until it felt almost sweet. The sharp tip of Madoc’s fang caught the base of his cock with a scratch that flicked a weird, dark pleasure up his spine and finally knocked the ragged moan of need from his throat.

  With his tongue, Madoc traced the small injury as though he needed to memorize it, dark hair soft against Took’s thighs, and Took could barely remember his name….

  “Sit up,” Madoc told him finally as he lifted his head. He licked a smear of dark blood from his lower lip as he leaned back on one arm, his elbow braced against the mattress, and wai
ted. “On your knees.”

  Took had the notion that just because he got to fuck Madoc, that didn’t mean he was the one in charge. He would have complained, but the clip of order in Madoc’s voice latched on to that dark pleasure that still lodged in his spine….

  He swallowed hard and did as he was told. The mattress gave under his knees as he sat up, and his cock protested the sudden lack of attention. It was smeared with black blood, slick and shiny against tight skin, and Took felt….

  A faded revulsion that poked at the back of his brain, and a hot tremble of raw hunger that made him ignore it. He could worry about what that all meant later.

  Madoc crawled into Took’s lap and straddled him. His cock pressed hard against Took’s as he leaned in for a kiss, one hand cupped around the nape of Took’s neck. His mouth slashed down on Took’s in a kiss that bruised lips and scraped teeth. The care he’d taken earlier was gone, and he laid his tongue open against Took’s fangs.

  Instinct made Took recoil. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  Madoc’s hand tightened on the back of his neck. “Don’t be.” This time the kiss was slow and wet, a spill of blood into Took’s mouth that was sweet and sharp as honey whiskey. It coated his tongue and slid down his throat, the back-of-the-throat parch that he’d gotten used to suddenly quenched.

  He groaned in the back of his throat and gripped Madoc’s ass in both hands to pull him closer. The need to be in Madoc made him ache, the muscles in his jaw and thighs clenched and ready. He couldn’t resist the pale, taut line of Madoc’s throat, and from Madoc’s jaw to his collarbone, he chewed bruised kisses that faded even as he bit. It frustrated something in the pit of his soul that wanted to leave a mark. What was the point of fangs, it wanted to know, if he didn’t bite down, pierce the film of skin, and drink it dry. The need was a thick, heady compulsion—lust with an edge of violence—and it would have scared him if Madoc had left any room for it. Instead he mouthed encouragement between kisses, his voice more smoke than silk as lust roughed his words, and ground himself hard against Took’s stomach.