Heading to the bathroom, he peeled off his sodden shirt, leaving his skin sticky with brew. He turned on the shower as cold as the water could get, then stepped under the cascade.
Cas was no longer an easily beguiled pup—so why did that pull toward Mirceo remain? It’d even intensified! Other vampires had attempted to enthrall him over the years and failed.
But then, none of them had been a Dacian.
Infinite times, Cas had lain in his bed in Poly, replaying that last night in Dacia. He’d relived the madness that had overtaken him, the primal lust that had forced him to pin down his friend and grind his cock against the vampire’s till they’d both come. Use me, demon—
“I could wash your back for you.” Mirceo?
Baring his fangs, Cas snapped, “How did you find me in here?”
“Not important,” Mirceo said, keeping his gaze raised. “I have a pressing matter to discuss with you. If you don’t like what I have to say, then you can still head off on your ridiculous penance trip, whiling away your years in hell.”
Cas gave a bitter laugh. “That so?” Ready to leave this outpost for good, he continued to wash. “There’s nothing for us to discuss. Nothing.”
“Aren’t you even curious what I might say?”
“No,” he lied. In the small bathroom, Mirceo’s scent inundated him, lighting up his mind. His shaft was getting harder than it’d been since the last time Mirceo had fucked with Cas’s head.
“You don’t seem to be in any particular hurry to leave this realm.” Lowering his voice, Mirceo said, “It’s been weeks since you abandoned me. That’s long enough.” He eased closer to the shower. “Deep down you know it is. You’re vacillating about your journey, aren’t you, sweetheart? Is something anchoring you here, hmm? Perhaps you are hesitant to venture so far from me?”
Cas leaned out of the shower stall to meet Mirceo’s eyes. “You arrogant asshole. I’m just returning to this realm. I’ve been gone for more than five hundred years. Five centuries without a thought of you.”
EIGHT
BOOM . . . . . . BOOM . . . . . BOOM . . . . BOOM . . .
Mirceo’s heart pounded again. Then again. And again. The demon has blooded me.
As horrifying as his walking-dead existence had been, this reawakening was miraculous! His lungs expanded for breath, his shaft filling with blood. He knew from others that he would soon grow mindless to lose his seed with his mate.
Mirceo could scarcely think over these new changes, but had Caspion just said he’d already gone, then returned? “Allow me a moment to get this straight.” He struggled to keep his eyes up, to not follow the water sluicing down the rugged planes of Caspion’s body. If Mirceo glanced down, he might lose all control and fall upon this demon. “Though only weeks have passed here, you’ve been away for half a millennium?”
Caspion’s answer was a sneer.
“I see.” They’d been around the same age before. Though the immortal demon would look no older, Caspion now had fifty decades on Mirceo. How extraordinary. “Any reason you chose now to return? Because you hit your limit of missing me?”
“I’ve returned because I’ve collected bounties and made kills for centuries. Now I’m strong enough and rich enough to do and have anything I want.”
Sexy demon! This new, hard-edged darkness only fueled Mirceo’s desire.
When Caspion turned off the shower, Mirceo traced to collect a towel, offering it. Eyes up! “Could I have been so mistaken about your attraction to me?” he asked, knowing he hadn’t been. Right now chemistry sparked between them.
So how had Mirceo’s mate lived without him for so long?
The demon snatched the towel out of his hands. “You were utterly mistaken about me.”
Mirceo could tell he was lying. A first. Unfortunately, Caspion hailed from an archaic realm of demons who held outdated views about same-sex relationships. Mirceo had predicted some resistance.
After all, Caspion had grown up an orphan, longing all of his life for just two things: respect and a family. A male mate would bring Caspion no offspring—and in the demonarchy of the backward Deathly Ones—nothing but shame.
Though Caspion had never judged Mirceo for bedding males, those kinds of views had to be what was holding the demon back from their obvious yearning for each other.
What other obstacle could there possibly be?
Caspion began drying off, corded muscles flexing beneath his tanned skin. Eyes up! Up! Not looking was an impossible feat when Caspion’s prodigious member was semihard, swaying with his movements. Veined, with a rose-colored crown, it jutted proudly from the golden hair at the base of the demon’s root. My fair, golden Adonis.
Mirceo’s fangs throbbed for that flesh, and his new breaths went shallow. He again asked himself a question he’d long pondered: How to seduce the demon?
Caspion knotted the towel around his waist. “Begone from my sight, leechling.”
Leechling? My mate is an older male now. “If you truly want me gone, then make it worth my while. Spend one night with me.” He’d always topped with other males, but considering how dominant Caspion was, Mirceo figured he’d be falling on that sword, as it were. “If you still want nothing to do with me, I vow to the Lore I’ll never bother you again,” he said, taking a huge risk. A vow to the Lore was an unbreakable one.
“I will never fuck you, vampire. I’m not built that way.”
With each new beat of his heart, Mirceo grew harder and more impatient with Caspion’s stubborn beliefs. If Mirceo’s mate was the demon, the reverse was likely true as well.
Mirceo believed Caspion would lose his demon seal deep within a vampire’s body. Mine. “Still believe your fated one will be female? Yet you didn’t find her in our . . . five hundred years apart?”
“I know demons who waited millennia. It will happen for me.”
Oh, it has. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, sweetheart.” Mirceo’s breaths had grown ragged. His chest felt like it’d explode, his control in shreds. “I won’t be able to fight fair.” He would use any means necessary, any weapon at his disposal. He licked a fang as a memory from their month together arose.
In one orgy, Caspion and Mirceo had watched in drunken amazement as a Horde vampire delivered frenzied orgasms to one partner after another—with naught but his bloodied fangs.
Mirceo murmured to Caspion, “Gods I wish biting was no longer taboo. I ache to experience it. I’d risk the memories for just one taste of flesh.”
Caspion couldn’t seem to look away from the scene, had grown stiff as steel. “No one can resist him.”
Mirceo whispered in his ear, “I should drink you thus. I bet I could make you come before I took my fill.”
Having to clear his throat, Caspion joked, “If you handled my horns at the same time, I might not even stop you.”
Now Mirceo thought: Sounds like a plan. His first bite.
Caspion narrowed his eyes. “Fighting fair? What are you talking about?”
To take the demon’s warm wine at last . . . Mirceo teleported behind him, seizing his horns with both hands to yank Caspion’s head back. Bronzed skin gloved Mirceo’s throbbing fangs as he pierced the demon’s neck. “Uhn!”