Rosko, Mandy - Night and Day (Siren Publishing Classic ManLove) (10 page)

When he was released, Silus fell back on Cedric’s plain sheets. Cedric thought he looked perfect there as he climbed up to lay with him. He pulled his lover close and kissed Silus’s neck. He did not suckle and lick, but gave him just gentle, chaste kisses because he liked how the other man tasted on his lips and the sounds of his breathing as his chest rose and fell, calming himself once again.

Then a hard knock sounded on Cedric’s door.

They both froze, panicked eyes staring at each other. “Who is it?” Cedric called.

“Your mother,” Cecelia said, her tone not at all happy. The door handle jiggled, and she rapped again, harder, when her access was denied. “Open the door this
moment
.”

Cedric all but jumped off Silus. The vampire buttoned his trousers as Cedric practically shoved him into his adjoining bathroom, with Silus fighting him the whole way.

Cedric put a finger to his lips to signal quiet, and then, as gently as possible, pulled the door shut on his lover.

The door to his room banged again as his mother slammed her hand against the wood. “You will open this door
now
, Cedric!”

“Coming!”

What the hell was she even doing here? Thank God Silus had locked the door. He only hoped his appearance didn’t look too ruffled for her as he unlocked and opened the door.

Cecelia stepped inside, sending him a glare as she surveyed his room, her floral summer dress swirling as she did. Ben sheepishly entered with her. He looked at Cedric apologetically, and Cedric knew his friend had tried to buy him some time before she came. Poor guy was probably panicking worse than Cedric right now.

“Mother, what can I do for you?” he asked, trying for casual, though even to him his voice sounded a tad high pitched. No way his father told her he’d been talking about canceling the wedding. He wasn’t that unlucky.

“I came to ask if you would visit Dacielle in her room, and after your guard so rudely attempted to put me off”—This time she glared at Ben, who cleared his throat and shifted his feet—“I began hearing noises in here.”

Cedric blushed. Shit. God damn it. Shit! She’d heard him and Silus.

“Where is she?”

That both shocked and calmed him. “What?”

Cecelia moved to his closet and opened the doors wide to step inside. The lights within automatically turned on for her. Though it was a walk-in closet, it wasn’t like anyone could hide in it. All it held was hangers for his good shirts and racks for his shoes and ties. “The woman you have in here. I know you are not much interested in Dacielle at the moment, but that’s no excuse for you to bring women into our home days before your wedding.”

Seemingly satisfied that his closet was empty of people, she stepped out and closed the doors. But her face remained determined. She was on a mission.

“Mom, I promise you, I don’t have a woman in here.” One hundred percent truth, but she still kept that look on her face.

“It’s as I said, Lady Cecelia,” Ben said. “He is alone.”

She pointed her long pink fingernail at him. “You stay quiet. I did not ask you anything, and it smells of sex in here.”

Oh,
God
.

Cecelia tilted her head to stare at his rumpled bed, and then her gold eyes went to the spot beneath it. She seemed to be judging whether or not it was proper for her to get on her knees to check when she pointed at Ben again and waved to the bed.

Taking the hint, Ben lowered himself to look under for her without so much as a sigh.

“Mom, there’s no one under my bed,” Cedric said through his teeth, though he wished he’d been smart enough to stick Silus under there. Ben would have lied for them. Whether Silus would want to humiliate himself by hiding under a bed like a teenager, was another matter entirely.

“Well?” she demanded of Ben, who got back to his feet.

“Just an old pair of sneakers.”

She hmphed and moved to his bathroom.

Cedric panicked and grabbed her arm. “Mom, give me a break, I’m not hiding anyone.”

Her tone was low. “Release my arm.”

He did so immediately. “This is completely disrespecting my privacy. You know that, right?”

“It does not matter.” She pushed open the door and flicked on the light. The bathroom was immaculate, all the way down to how he arranged his toiletries on the gleaming countertop, and most importantly, empty. But the shower stall was closed, and inside, through the frosted glass, he could see a dark shadow where Silus hid.

Oh Jesus, Cedric was going to have a heart attack. “Mom, no!”

He ran for her just as she slid open the glass doors, revealing the towel he’d hung there when he’d showered earlier that day.

He released a hard breath. Fuck. Him.

“What is the matter with you?” his mother demanded hotly.

Cedric could only stare at the towel with stupid fixation. Where was Silus?

Eventually he remembered to answer his mother. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with me except your need to search my rooms.”

A glitter of regret entered her eyes. Looking around and seeing no one in the bathroom with them, she sighed. “I apologize, but I just heard …” Her cheeks turned a bright pink. “Oh! You really are alone in here.”

“Yes,” he said.

She squeezed passed him. “I am sorry. I apologize. You and Dacielle haven’t—of course you would need—” She stopped herself and went to his door, turning to look at him one last time.

“I’ll leave you to your privacy from now on.”

Mortified, Cedric noted the rosiness in her cheeks and the fluster in her voice, and he realized what she thought he’d been doing. “Mother!”

“Good night.” She shut the door and was gone as quickly as she had come. He could just imagine her running down the halls to get as far away from him as possible.

He and Benny stood there silently, staring at each other, and then a low chuckle sounded from the bathroom. Cedric spun his head as the wide open door moved just a little bit, and Silus stepped out from hiding behind it.

Cedric couldn’t believe it. “You were hiding behind the door that whole time?”

“The window in here is too small for me to get through.”

Ben shook his head. “I’ll leave you two alone. Lock the door behind me again. It scared the shit out of me when she tried getting in on her own.”

Ben vanished from sight, and Cedric ran to and locked the door. So much for nobody ever visiting him. His heart was still thumping from the scare. He was such an idiot. His mother had been in his room for all of two minutes, but it had been two minutes too many.

Silus came to stand behind him. He swore if the vamp said anything, laughed at him, Cedric was going to fry him like bacon.

Instead, long, pale fingers went to his shoulders. Strong thumbs began working and circling his tense muscles. “’Tis over, calm yourself. I can scent you from all the way across the room.”

“If she’d found you—”

“She did not. We are still safe.”

It wasn’t the
we
he was concerned so much about as it was Silus. If his mother had found him and she’d been startled, she could have brightened herself so much that it would probably have killed him, regardless of how used to light he was getting.

His own mother, a woman who was otherwise harmless and weighed maybe ninety-five pounds, was still capable of taking out a full grown and healthy vampire.

Having that almost happen was a realization of how dangerous what they were doing was.

“Why did you fight me when I was trying to hide you?” Cedric asked. He struggled to keep his eyes open as Silus’s hands moved lower down his back, still pressing and prodding through his shirt. If he kept going lower, Cedric was going to get hard again, which he didn’t think possible considering the mood killer they’d just had.

“Because I had wanted to go out your patio door.”

Cedric’s eyes snapped wide. He turned and looked at Silus over his shoulder. The vampire was giving him a weird look.

The patio door, where nighttime and safety would have surely been for a vampire. More safety than a closed off bathroom, anyway. “Oh, shit.”

Silus put his hands under Cedric’s shirt to keep doing what he was doing, only with skin on skin. “Indeed.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry, I guess for a second I forgot you were a vampire, you know?” He laughed, a short, shallow laugh. “Jesus, I’m surprised you’re even still here. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want. I’ll be okay.”

“I want to stay.” Silus started pulling him back to the bed.

Shocked, Cedric allowed himself to be led. Now, with the threat of interruption a thing that for sure didn’t need to be worried about—with his mother thinking she’d caught him masturbating, he doubted she’d allow anyone else into his wing of the house—it seemed they could lay together again in relative peace.

But Silus didn’t attempt to take off his clothes. They kissed and held each other, that was all.

* * * *

 
Eventually they had sex. They had hours of alone time, talking and kissing, so when Cedric had lightened up again, both literally and figuratively, and felt playful once more, Silus made no complaints about having him.

The entire house was asleep when they stopped, and the sun would be up in a little over an hour. It was no big deal for Cedric to hide a lover in his room at night when no one noticed, but Silus’s family kept opposite hours. They would be aware that he’d been missing and want to know where he’d gone.

Still, Cedric wished Silus didn’t have to leave. He held the other man close, occasionally pressing his lips to that cool chest to comfort himself.

Silus pushed aside messy stray locks of golden hair, which had become all moppy during their activities.

Cedric’s gold eyes flashed as he stared into them. “What made you decide to come here instead of just meeting me?” he asked. It definitely would have been the safer option, all things considered.

Silus’s eyes widened a little before he scowled. The blush on his face suggested he was scowling at himself. “Your guard came to me and said you did not wish to meet with me and had instead changed the location.” He sighed. “I had panicked and decided to come and find you.”

Immense pleasure hummed through Cedric’s blood.

“You should not do that.”

“What? Do what?”

“Blush like that,” Silus said, his grin becoming wicked. “It makes it easy to smell your blood, and I already know how it tastes.”

He hadn’t tasted it yet tonight, but Cedric couldn’t help it. He blushed harder. “Well, since you know how it tastes, and I know what it
does
to you, what does it matter?”

Silus chuckled a little and tossed away the sheet covering them, revealing that long, naked body. Instead of taking him up on his offer, he started collecting his clothes. “You could teach the blackest of nights how to darken.”

Cedric’s lips quirked as he watched Silus gather his trousers. “You could teach the sun how to shine.”

They’d just insulted each other, yet both were endearing phrases to their own respective races.

Cedric lifted himself from the bed, leaving the space he and Silus had made all warm and toasty. “Too mushy.”

He’d just gotten a new pair of jeans over his hips—Silus had destroyed the last pair getting them off—when Silus spoke. “I intend to tell my parents of us.”

Cedric stopped reaching for his turtleneck, which had been thrown on the floor, and stood straight to face him.

Despite the sexiness of looking at his half dressed lover, there was a serious expression on Silus’s face that couldn’t be ignored even for lust.

“Tell them about us? Not just that you have a lover, but a…?”

Silus nodded. “A sun sprite lover. A mate, if you will,” he added, though he gave Cedric another one of those knowing looks. “But it is still different from the werewolf meaning of it.”

“Uh-huh,” Cedric said. “Mate.” The word sounded good on his tongue. He wanted to keep on saying it.

Only one thing to do if he wanted to keep doing that. “It’s not enough telling my parents that I don’t want to marry, they have to know about you too.” He sighed. “It’ll ruin them, and not just financially. They made a bargain. I’m expected to keep it, but I just can’t do it.”

Silus went to embrace him. It felt good holding each other like that when their chests were still bare, nice skin to skin. Glowing, Cedric put his nose in Silus’s dark hair and inhaled deeply.

He smelled like fresh night air.

“I know of what you speak. The longing to be a good son to one’s father. I lied to my father for you. I have never done such a thing, and I never will again because I will tell him of you.”

“You’d do that for me?” Cedric couldn’t keep the buzz of excitement out of him.

“Stop that, I can smell you again.” Silus pressed a kiss at the pulsing spot of Cedric’s neck, but he did no more. Cedric figured he wanted another taste, but that kind of orgasmic high—the one that put him out of commission for several minutes—in enemy territory wasn’t a good move. “I will sit down with my parents and explain to them that I have claimed you. It will not make them happy, nor will it be met with approval, but it will be done. I am one hundred years of age. I no longer require their blessing in my choice.”