Deep Deception (18 page)

“
Donte
.” Adin sat beside him. “You have to remember what you need. Surely you could have found a willing partner? How do you go about that?”

“I just… It doesn’t matter. I never thought I’d be weakened this quickly. It’s a humbling thing.”

“May I?” Adin indicated the reading light next to the bed. “I need to look at you.”

“Of course, caro. What a silly thing to ask.”

Adin turned on the light and peered closely at Donte’s face. His first glimpse stunned him. He fingered the new and very visible shock of silver in the waves of hair that fell over Donte’s eye and said, in awe, “
Look at you.
”

Donte pulled his head back from Adin’s grasp. “It’s not so big a change, is it?”

Adin searched Donte’s face for a clue to why his voice seemed uncertain. “Of course it’s not. It’s…glorious. You’re beautiful. You’re like a god. You know that, right?” Adin’s eyes stung. “I’ll never tire of looking at you. I thought I’d never see you again, and my heart just shattered.”

“I’m so sorry, caro.” Donte drew him into his arms so tenderly that Adin gave in to his tears. Donte stroked his hair. “This is a case where the cure was worse than the disease, I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean?”

Donte’s arms tightened. “To heal me, it required that I be…nearly reborn. Not an outdoor feast, I’m afraid.”

Adin chuckled. “A picnic?”

“Yes. Not a picnic, as the saying goes.”

Adin drew back. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I had to be given the blood of another vampire, caro. A transfusion that made me nearly as feral as I was when I was newly made. For a while I lost myself entirely.”

“Oh, Donte.” Adin shivered again at how close he’d come to losing his lover.

“I still don’t feel quite… I stayed away because…” Donte shook his head.

Adin’s anxiety mounted. “Why?”

Donte seemed to measure his words carefully. “Although I tried to hide how sick I was from you, it became clear when Madame arrived that I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. It was the only way. But it might have killed me. I might have been unable to recover whatever thin veneer of civilization keeps me from harming people.”

“How could you hide something like that from me?” Adin thumped his chest. “I’m your lover. I’m your
partner
. I had a right to know.”

“Of course you did.” Donte pulled him in close again. “By the time I realized the problem, it was much too late to deal with it rationally.”

“But how could you not tell me you were ill in the first place? You must have felt—”

“I only wanted to protect you and Bran. We made a promise to protect the boy and I wanted to honor that. To be honest, I thought I could find a way to neutralize whatever threat he posed to me long before—”

“You
knew
.” Adin sagged against Donte. “Bran said he thought you realized that he was the cause of your illness, and you didn’t tell me because—”

“I was trying to solve a problem, caro. To create a positive outcome for both of us. I never dreamed it could put me in such danger. I’m afraid I’d begun to believe my own hype. It appears I’m not entirely invincible after all.”

“You should have told me, Donte. You should have explained the situation and let me make a decision. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe. Nothing I wouldn’t give up to ensure that.”

Donte was silent as he contemplated that. “You’ve never had to make a life or death decision, have you?”

Adin shook his head. “Not really, no.”

“Turning Santos…that was a situation in which I had no time to think. He can hate me for it but I carried Auselmo in my heart and I couldn’t bear for that living reminder of him…” Donte closed his eyes. “Sometimes with the very best of intentions we commit the worst offenses.”

“Donte.” Adin gripped him tighter.

“I thought I could spare you that. I thought I had time.”

“Some choices need to be shared.”

“I see that now. Forgive me, caro.” Donte pressed his face into Adin’s neck and nuzzled the skin there. He nipped at it, tonguing the delicate skin.

Adin arched a brow. “You still see me as an impetuous child.”

“I don’t right now. You smell delicious.” Donte groaned, going from sad to seductive with one desperate sentence. His eyes no longer held that teasing, civilized light. His breathing grew erratic. His voice deepened until it was more like a low growl than ever. “Gods. How I need you. Più amato.
I need everything you have to give me. Probably too much. It might be that this is—”

“I’m here.” Adin’s breath hitched, catching in his throat. His heart stuttered in fear at the change in his lover. But his cock apparently liked it. A lot. “I’m yours. Anything you need Donte, per sempre. I’m not afraid.”

“You never seem to understand,” Donte whispered sadly. “You
should
be.”

Adin considered this. “You have to know that the monster entices me as much as the man, Donte.”

Donte shook his head. “Sciocco.”

“Fool I may be, but your fool,” Adin told him. “Entirely yours.”

Chapter Nineteen

As Adin turned off the light he heard a low growl, a sound that welled from deep down inside Donte’s chest as his arm snaked out to pull Adin close.

Their lips met in a bruising kiss, and Adin understood—maybe for the first time—that more had changed in the time they’d been apart than Donte’s hair. At least for the moment the tender lover who undressed him carefully and dotted him with tiny bites and kisses was gone. Donte was hard and predatory now. His grip was desperate, his intent purely to sate himself, to sink his cock and his fangs into Adin’s flesh.

Donte fought it tangibly. As if he felt out of control, and was ashamed of his need.

“Take me.” Adin didn’t hesitate. “Whatever you need from me, lover. Take it.”

Donte reached for his hips and spun him over, parting Adin’s legs with one hand while he unbuckled his trousers with the other. Adin shivered as Donte’s nails scraped his skin.

He reached for the nightstand and the lube he’d find there, tossing it onto the bed where Donte could reach it. Buttons pinged onto the walls when Donte tore his shirt off, then his trousers hit the floor. The weight of Donte’s body shifted behind him as he ran his cool hand over the curve of Adin’s ass.

Adin hissed with the pleasure of it.

Rough hands parted his cheeks, followed by the cool glide of a dollop of lube, and just that suddenly, fingers worked their way inside.

Adin grunted at the abrupt intrusion, shifting his hips until he could relax and take what Donte meant to give him. Soon, the burn gave way to pleasure, and Adin pushed back against Donte’s hand, clawing the mattress with his good hand, balling the sheet between his fingers until his knuckles were white.

“Damn,” he panted.

Three fingers pumped deep inside him, nudging his sweet spot with every push. His hips rocked with them and the tip of his cock brushed against the sheet beneath him. Every movement ratcheted up the tension just that much higher. He knew if he didn’t have Donte soon he would start screaming.

“
Please…
” he begged. “Donte. I need…”

“Up on your hands and knees,” Donte ordered, and Adin did what he asked without question, keeping his weight off his bad arm, keeping his soft cast close to his chest. Donte nudged between his legs, then pulled Adin back into what had become his favorite position, Donte kneeling with Adin in his lap, his back to Donte’s chest, those big delicate hands crossed possessively over Adin’s chest to hold him tightly while his cock pistoned in and out of Adin’s ass.

Adin lay his head back on Donte’s shoulder and simply let himself be taken. Controlled. Adin reached back to cup Donte’s head in his good hand, stroking his soft hair, even as Donte explored Adin’s cock, his balls, and the soft, stretched tender skin behind them. A questing finger rubbed and pushed at Adin’s entrance, along with the cock that filled him. Adin cried out, the sound coming from deep inside his throat, shocked to be handled that way.

Donte pulled his hand back, but Adin slapped his own hand down over it, dragging it back and nudging its owner to act on his intentions.

Adin had never felt anything like it, he was so full, so overstimulated that precome surged from his cock. Each fresh pulse brought the tingling pleasure of an orgasm without the respite of climax.

Cock and finger filled him and brushed his sweet spot. The steady throb of almost unbearable bliss grew deep inside him, building to an impossible crescendo, indicating an explosive release that hovered just out of reach.

At some point Adin became aware of the sounds he made—awkward strangled cries with each thrust of Donte’s hips. Donte’s free hand stroked his nipples, pinched hard and played, scratching and twisting, until the pain and pleasure got mixed up in Adin’s head, until all he could think of was Donte.

He started to murmur his lover’s name, with each rise and fall and slap of their flesh, until Donte’s hand gripped him hard around his neck and he felt the first scrape of the vampire’s teeth against his skin.

“
Yes
,” Adin cried out. “Do it.”

“Who am I?” Donte demanded.

“You’re mine,” Adin answered. “You’re Donte.”

“I am Nicolo Pietro di Sciarello. And
you
belong to
me
.”

“Yes,” Adin sobbed, arching and stretching and begging for his release. “
Yes.
I belong to you. Please, Donte.
Please
.”

Donte shoved him facedown on the pillow and held him there, one hard hand in the center of his back. He continued those nearly punishing thrusts, grinding Adin’s hips against the bedding until Adin felt his balls tingle and draw up.

“You need me to fuck you. I’m your
monster.
”

“
Yes
.” Adin gave him everything. Now that his cock was skimming along the bedding, the friction in his ass and on his cock short-circuited his brain. “
Yes
.”

“You want me to take you to the brink of oblivion. To devour you.”

“Yes!
Yes
,
yes
,” Adin hissed as the first come spat from his cock. “
Yes. Please, yes
.”

Donte struck. Adin felt him drink in deep drafts of blood, satisfying himself, even as Adin’s world tilted on the axis of immense pleasure, adrenaline and fear.

But Donte didn’t stop, he didn’t let up. Adin felt light-headed and he started struggling against the hold Donte had on him. Donte shoved him down again and again, as though he were a child. As though Adin had no strength at all.

Because he didn’t.

Then it didn’t matter because Adin could only lie there beneath the monster in Donte Fedeltà, beneath the predator, and cry into the back of his hand. Soon, he knew, soon he would be lifeless, and there was simply nothing,
nothing at all
he could do about it.

Adin didn’t feel foolish, as Donte said he should. He didn’t feel fear. He didn’t even feel anger.

There was only resignation, and the bitterness of loss.

I love you, Donte. I love everything you are. I could have been more for you. I should have been stronger. I won’t be there to love you when you lose yourself again. Ah, shit, lover…

I’m not ready…

When he heard the crash and clatter of china and silver, and the cursing, his head spun and things grew dark, as if he were signing off at the end of the night like a show on an old-school black-and-white television. From a frightening, fuzzy monster movie the picture grew smaller and dimmer until even that—the tiny dot of light that remained—winked out.

Adin ran. He had to find…someone. He stumbled over cobblestones in the thickest fog he’d ever seen, barely noticing the ground beneath his feet. He guessed he was in Paris by the texture and the age of the buildings, the sheer familiarity of the dirty stone as the shifting mist briefly revealed them.

At first he didn’t recognize the place exactly, but after a few moments of squinting, of pressing his nose against shop windows and listening for sounds, he got the vague idea he was once again in the historically protected Marais, where he’d found Bran.

The occult shop where he’d encountered Bran that first time had been near rue de Montmorency and the home of Nicolas Flamel. Immediately Adin’s heart quickened.
Bran.
He had to find Bran, who could share his dreams and access his thoughts and memories.

Donte was out there alone and Bran could—conceivably—connect them.

Hands reached out from the darkness and clutched at him, stabbing him with pins, trying to pull him into the ancient shops along the street; shops that smelled of embalming fluid and decay. The more they held him the harder he fought. Tremendous noise and flashing lights—along with the sickening lurch and weightlessness of dangling in the air that only a helicopter produced—captured all of Adin’s attention for a minute.

“You’ll like the resort,” Charles once told him. “The helicopter is a nice touch, don’t you think? Shep always takes a private helicopter. He hates driving the mountain roads, although once, we got stuck at the resort because the chopper couldn’t fly. Are you all right?”

“Sure,” Adin replied automatically. He wondered if Bran was playing with the controls of his consciousness again. He hadn’t seen Charles since that disastrous semester at Princeton. “But I don’t like helicopters much. They fall out of the sky like rocks. No coasting.”

“Ah, you worry too much. You don’t want to live forever, Adin.”

That was odd.
“I don’t?” Adin asked. “Why not?”

“What would you do? You’re bright enough that you’ll be bored to death before you’re thirty, and then you’d spend eternity looking for something meaningful that isn’t out there, along with every other dumb son of a bitch. You’ll never be happy.”

Adin father’s voice reached him in the darkness, “I’m happy. Why won’t Adin be happy?”

Charles gave a delicate shrug. “Adin isn’t like you. He’s not complacent. He’s never going to be content to live an ordinary life.”

Adin’s father laughed. “I should hope not. I didn’t raise him to be ordinary. And for that matter, my own life has been anything but ordinary.”

“Please,” Charles mocked. “You live in the city, you work as a teacher. You have a wife, two children and a mortgage. You can hardly get any more normal.”

That’s why advertising works so well,
Adin thought.
You can spin anything.
“My father really has been anything but normal.”

“You’ll never be like him though,” Charles reminded him gently. “You can’t. It’s not in your nature.”

A voice Adin didn’t recognize said, “Adin, if you can hear me, squeeze my fingers. C’mon, buddy. I need you to squeeze my fingers.”

Adin didn’t have the strength. His heart raced and he felt out of breath. His skin was clammy and cold. “Can’t. Bran?”

“You don’t have to listen to Charles anymore, Adin.”
Bran’s voice. Thank fuck.

“Bran! Donte…”

“No, listen to me,” Bran said. “I know why you want me here, and I’ll deal with Donte later.”

“No, now, Bran.”

“Later,” Bran said firmly. “Right now you need to fight. Squeeze the EMT’s fingers, Adin. Do it, or Donte never gets your message.”

Charles laughed. “What, that he’s in love? Don’t make me laugh. Love is for sentimental suckers, Adin. Not us. We can take what we want. We have the whole world to play in. Shep and I—”

“You two only care about yourselves,” Bran said angrily. “You treated Adin like shite.”

Charles’s voice changed until it was soft and seductive. “You’re a bright little thing, aren’t you? A looker too, although your taste in clothes is deplorable. How’d you like to be my new research assistant? What did you say your name was?”

“See what I mean?” Bran asked Adin.

“Adin, be reasonable.” Charles again. “Men like us, we’re at the top of the food chain.”

“No, we’re not,” Adin said decisively.
This, he knew firsthand.

“Sure we are, because we’re free.”

“You’re not free. You’re just…fickle,” Adin’s father said. “You’re just a conspicuous consumer. And now that I get a good look at you, I’m wondering what my son ever saw in you.”

“Bran, are you doing this? It’s like the Wizard of Oz. If a dog pulled back the curtain would you be working the controls?” Adin listened for an answer. “Bran?”

Silence. For some reason Adin began to worry. It was as if they’d left him in a room all alone. The voices had disappeared, all the sounds, the traffic, the helicopter, the EMT’s voices were gone as if they’d never existed.

“Bran?” Adin asked more urgently. “Bran, where are you? Where is everyone?”

“Bran’s busy.”
Santos’s voice.

“Perfect,” Adin muttered. “Another country heard from.”

“Here, take this.” Adin felt lips press down on his, dark and seductive. They knew what they were doing and soon a tongue stroked over his mouth. Adin parted his lips, surprised by the pleasure of it. Fluid pushed through to gush past his teeth and over his tongue.

Lots of it.

Adin gagged and coughed as a hand came down over his mouth, preventing him from expelling the awful, coppery warm liquid.

“Swallow.”

Adin blinked, and when his vision cleared Donte stood over him.

Adin shook his head and tried to say the word, “No.”

Donte hissed the word again, his other hand coming down over Adin’s nose. “Swallow if you wish to breathe again.”

Adin had no choice, he gagged the foul liquid down before his body forced him to breathe in. “What the fuck? Donte?”

Donte’s face seemed to dissolve, and instead, Santos’s face smiled down at him.

“Happy Easter, Adin,” Santos told him, his eyes like dark holes that framed single pinpoints of light. “The oldest and most arcane mystery of all.”

He smiled in a nearly fatherly way and disappeared.

Everyone was gone. Everything was silent.

“Bran?” Adin called out. “Bran?”

No one answered.

When Adin next woke, the first thing he saw was Edward. He opened his mouth to say something, but found himself unable to use his dry mouth and scratchy throat. He jerked his head minutely and got Edward’s attention that way. The man practically leaped to bring him soothing hands and ice chips.

“God, Adin.” Edward’s eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He clasped Adin’s good hand gently. Adin tried to acknowledge him in some way but couldn’t seem to make his body move.

“Thank God.”

Adin looked up dully, reminded of all the times Edward had been there for him. His throat hurt just to look at him. His face crumpled, but no tears would come.

“Now…” Edward soothed. “There’s no need for that. You’re going to be fine, baby.”

A shape detached from the wall on the far side of the room and swept out the door.
Shit.
Donte. He probably blamed himself and that would make him harder than ever to deal with. Adin turned panicked eyes toward Edward, willing him to go after Donte and bring him back.

“Let him be.” Edward glanced back at the door. He gave Adin another ice chip to suck on. “He should have known better than to come to you in that condition. What the hell did he think was going to happen if he—”