He groaned, shoved Phillip’s cock to the back of his throat, and devoured, and when Phillip apparently forgot that he wanted Marcus in control and grabbed his hair and pulled, Marcus chuckled, staying resolutely forward and swallowing, letting his throat work on the head of that lovely purple cock.
“Auuuughhhhh!” It was a snarl, a cry, a howl, and a plea, and Marcus loved him. He’d do anything he possibly could to make Phillip happy.
He suckled hard and then very gently allowed his fang to graze the length of cock in his mouth. Phillip made that sound again, that tortured, sexual pleading. Marcus chuckled, and Phillip made it again.
Marcus tucked his teeth in then and sucked some more, stroking with his hand, swirling his tongue, and every now and then allowing the most delicate touch of fang. He’d been imagining what this act would be like since that first night in the vault, when Phillip hadn’t wanted anything to do with it, and he was going to make Phillip crave it. The next time Phillip was with a girl or even Green, Marcus wanted him to remember the feel of Marcus’s mouth on his cock and think that maybe Marcus could do this better.
Phillip made that sound again, and Marcus was suddenly so hard he hurt. He pulled back enough to talk, smacking his cheeks lightly with that drooling cock as he spoke. “I’m hard again. You know what that means?”
“Yes… please….”
“Please what?”
“Make me come…. God, Marcus. Please make me come….”
“Is that all you want?” He punctuated that with a thrust of his head and a pull into his mouth and moved his hand to Phillip’s cleft, playing with his entrance in the sloppy mess that was pooling there.
“Please… please, Marcus. Please….”
As much as Phillip liked him to be in control, the truth was, Marcus could deny him nothing.
He thrust his fingers into Phillip’s backside and swallowed Phillip’s cock to the back of his throat. Phillip let out a cry that could probably be heard all the way through the hill and spurted come. Marcus let it coat his tongue before swallowing, because oh
shit
did it taste good. It was like blood but better. Like elf blood maybe, or shape-shifter blood with a chocolate chaser. And Phillip’s hands clenching in his hair were an aphrodisiac, making him want, making him yearn… making him hot.
Marcus cleaned Phillip off with a gentle slurp and thrust his hips into the bed. He rolled over and tried to exert that command that worked with no one else but this man.
“You think we’re done here?” he growled.
“Please no,” Phillip whispered, and before Marcus could even issue an order, he’d pulled his jeans completely off and rolled over to his hands and knees.
He was already prepped and ready, and as Marcus positioned himself behind Phillip and got ready to thrust home and lose his mind, he had a second to think that maybe, if they did this again, they could do it face-to-face.
It was the last sane thought he had for quite a while.
Phillip was a screamer, and Marcus made him
scream,
loud enough to shake the floorboards in an agony of ecstasy, and Marcus growled behind him. Phillip collapsed, flat against the bedding, groaning and laughing in aftermath.
Marcus collapsed on top of him, smoothing his hair back from his high widow’s peak, kissing the back of his neck, and wishing he was human enough to sweat. Phillip moved into the caress, and Marcus was relieved. He could touch him now with sweetness. The weight of his crush seemed a little less, a little easier to bear.
Then Phillip said, “Now
this
is the way to spend time between girls!” and the weight crushed Marcus against his lover’s back, pushed his face hard into Phillip’s neck, and crushed faint crimson trickles from his eyes, which he wiped on the comforter before he turned to his side again.
Phillip stayed turned away, even though he snuggled into Marcus’s spoon.
“This is nice,” he said softly. “I like this with you. I don’t usually like it. Maybe it’s because I know we’re roommates. You don’t really break up with your roommate, do you, not in this place?”
“No,” Marcus promised. “No breaking up. Not here.”
No monogamy either. No pledges. No undying devotion. But no breaking up. Marcus could exist with that, right?
It was a crush, right?
YEAH, SURE
it was a crush. It was a crush that lasted twenty ageless goddamned years!
Grace the vampire became, unexpectedly, Adrian’s second. Marcus and Phillip weren’t sure how it happened. One minute, they were Adrian’s two most trusted men—something about the way they had come over, their self-assurance in their human roles, their maturity, made them good bets as vampires. They were stable, when those who came over because they were too lost to make it as humans often were not.
But if Marcus and Phillip had been stable as bachelors, then Grace—the stay-at-home mom with the lifelong lover/husband, the trucker’s mouth, the wicked sense of humor, and the passion for cooking even when she couldn’t eat what she cooked—was the solid granite that made up the bedrock of Green’s hill.
The first time Marcus met her had been outside the vault, about a week after Phillip had blithely cemented their relationship as backup fuck buddies once and for all. (Grace had set a record—a week in the vault and then three days in Green’s bedroom, pouring her heart out, talking books, movies, and politics, and very probably learning about making love as a sacrament in the place of things like cooking and cleaning and keeping a good home. Adrian sent in shape-shifters to keep her fed, and she was so gentle—and so unconsciously sensual, without demanding anything in the way of sex—that Grace became the first vampire to send the newly changed shape-shifters to as well.)
But that night Marcus had been both cautiously optimistic and incredibly despondent. They were fucking each other’s brains out—it was
awesome.
But Phillip also kept reminding him that he was looking for a girl. In fact, he’d even expressed some hope that he could hook up with Grace.
Marcus had taken one look at her and known she wasn’t Phillip’s type, but she might have been
his
type back when they were alive.
She’d been cooking, ordering sprites and other fey about with the ease of natural leadership, and the two of them came wandering out of their bedroom in the darkling after Marcus had made Phillip scream once again. She’d taken one look at them, Phillip suave and cool, Marcus undemanding and casual, looked at Marcus again sharply, and said, “Have you thought of gagging him? It would do wonders for your privacy in there!”
Phillip had widened his eyes and retorted, “I’m sure you’ve done your share of screaming, sweetheart!”
Marcus smacked him upside the head like a little kid. “Mind your manners,” he said sharply. “She’s a lady.”
Grace had smiled, her freckled cheeks scrunching up into a fabulous, charming smile, and Phillip looked at his toes, dazzled and abashed.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I was embarrassed.”
Grace shrugged. “Are you shitting me? In this place? If you don’t know everyone’s business, you’re not paying attention. I’m sure you guys know all about
me,
am I right?”
And Marcus, feeling like maybe Phillip needed a little bit of defending and a gentle lesson at the same time, said, “I know you stay outside the hill long past when it’s safe.”
Grace looked away. “That’s very astute, young man,” she said, and if she had been alive, she would have blushed.
Marcus looked at Phillip’s face and saw a hunger there, the same aching loneliness that Grace faced daily—that, had he known it, Marcus had existed with since he’d first awakened at Green’s hill.
“It gets better,” Marcus said. “We find friends. We get used to people. It won’t just be Adrian and Green—you’ll start to feel at home.”
Phillip hazarded a glance at Marcus’s face, and Marcus made sure his eyes were there to meet Phillip’s. “He’s right,” Phillip agreed, and Marcus smiled, pleased.
Grace nodded. “That’s a real nice welcome,” she said graciously. “Adrian told me to have you give him a buzz—” She tapped her temple. “—when you came out. He wanted to visit the places the new shifters hang out. He’s got some kids he’s thinking about bringing over and wanted your opinions.”
Phillip shrugged. “I don’t know why he asks me. Marcus has the better eye.”
Marcus looked at him in honest admiration. “You can be more ruthless than I can. It’s a good thing—you’re looking out for Adrian when you do that. We need it.”
Phillip rolled his eyes. “You’re killing me with all this gushy shit.” He gave Marcus a casual smack in the arm. “Here—I’m going to go to the shifter’s room and see who’s up for feeding. Talk to Adrian and then come get me.”
Marcus nodded. Apparently his need to say a few words to Grace was practically radiating out his pores. “Could you scare someone up for me?” he asked. “I’m
starving
.”
Phillip waggled his eyebrows and said, “A good workout will do that to you!” before disappearing.
He rounded the corner down the hall, and Marcus turned his still-smiling face to their new recruit—and apparently their new second-in-command, based on her easy way of distributing Adrian’s orders and general authority. He was going to ask if Adrian had said something else or if Green was available—because
fuck
did he need to talk to someone about this steady, terrible weight pushing on his shoulders, and Green and Adrian did that for their people—but Grace beat him to the punch.
“He’s not ready to know yet,” she said with some confidence. Then she looked over at one of the dryads, who was dumping something into the pot, and said, “I know you don’t like the chicken flavor, sweetheart, but I already made vegetable stock for you guys. This is for the shifters, and they need their soup to taste like meat, okay?”
“He’s not ready to know what?” Marcus asked, but he didn’t need to get in her head and do the universal vampire mind meld to know what she was talking about.
She caught his eyes and pulled one side of her wide, generous mouth up in a sympathetic smile. “He doesn’t need to know it’s more than a lust thing. The whole hill can hear you two, but you don’t make that much noise when your heart’s involved. He starts being quiet, you can start talking to him like it’s real.”
Marcus just regarded her through eyes he knew were liquid brown with hurt.
She gave a sympathetic grimace. “I’m always open to talk,” she said, and he nodded.
“Me too. In case, you know, you get tempted to stay out too long.”
Grace shrugged. “Can’t stay out too long now! I’ve got children again.”
Marcus was confused, even as he wandered down to the shape-shifter room. (It was actually modeled like a human dive bar—it was one of the most boisterous places in the hill!) Then he saw Phillip.
Phillip was in the corner chatting up one of the newer shape-shifters. She was in her early twenties and softly beautiful, and it looked very much like they were going to go in a corner and feed very soon.
Marcus watched as Phillip smiled lazily at her and dragged a knuckle down her cheekbone, and his enhanced, supersonic vampire hearing picked up, “And if you like being dinner, sweetheart, maybe when we get back before dawn, you can be dessert!”
Of course. Marcus’s heart crashed to his knees. Then Phillip looked up at him and gave a wholly triumphant, boyish grin, inviting Marcus to share in his victory over the female species.
Marcus summoned up a real smile somewhere from the shards of his heart and gave his buddy the thumbs-up. Adrian’s voice buzzed suddenly in his head.
“Sorry, boyo. He’s not ready yet. You know he’s not ready yet.”
“It’s just a crush.”
Even Marcus was getting tired of the sound of that lie, but Adrian loved him unconditionally.
“Of course it is, mate. It’ll get better. You know it
.
”
Wasn’t it love, to lie boldly in the rubble of your friend’s dreams?
And then Marcus found a laugh welling up in his throat, hot and bitter, but it would sustain him for the next twenty years. Of
course
Grace had children to look after now. He and Phillip were playing the oldest schoolyard game in the book….
Catch me if you can.
THEY PLAYED
that game successfully for nearly twenty years.
Every time, they got a little bit closer to the permanent snare, and every time, Phillip darted away at the last fucking gasp. They would see other people for a while, it would end, and then there Phillip would be, in Marcus’s bed, begging for that thing they had, only them, the thing that let Phillip be tender and giving, that thing that let Phillip trust and that bound Marcus tighter to him with every kiss.
After ten years, Phillip let Marcus inside him when they were face-to-face, kissing, nuzzling, closing his eyes, whimpering instead of screaming, and turning toward Marcus in the aftermath, stroking his skin as he calmed down from what was turning into a greater, stronger, more terrifying sexual peak.
That was almost worse than when he had turned away, but Marcus treasured every touch when it came, so he couldn’t quibble or argue.
They found an equilibrium, of sorts, in their painful game. Marcus had a few girls who were always up for the ride when Phillip went chatting up another girl, and who were willing to break up on command when Phillip was between women.
They were the ones who gave Marcus the most hope.
Girls talk—boys don’t. The girls told Marcus that Phillip was starting to pick fights, spurious fights, silly fights, to break up over.
“It’s like he misses you,” said Leah. Leah was an
awesome
fuck buddy. She slept with
everyone,
had no pretenses to monogamy, but didn’t mind hooking up with Marcus and putting on a good show, just because he was kind to her.
“I doubt it,” Marcus said dryly. As long as they’d been doing this dance, he’d learned some humor about it—and some honesty. It wasn’t a crush anymore; it was dumb-fucking unrequited love. He could live with it, or he could move out of his room, or he could meet the dawn, but he wasn’t going to make the world miserable because he was a fool.