Envious Of Fire (Kissing With Teeth #2)

29. Our Blood Boy.

—?—

The creaking of footsteps overhead is strangely comforting, as Kyle and Drake sit in the corner of the church basement, just an old folded-up curtain between their asses and the hard floor. In the middle of the room, an exhausted Cade pores over that sinister-looking book like an obsession. Jeremy and Layna have gone upstairs to presumably sleep on the pews, but there’s no telling if they’re actually able to sleep, despite being kept awake all night long. Someone was sent half an hour ago to bring back food for everyone.

Even if no one’s in the mood for eating.

Or resting. Or sleeping. Or feeling like their life isn’t about to come to a tragic end the moment the sun sets again.

“You really should sleep,” says Drake.

Kyle sighs. “Not a chance.”

“You’ve got circles under your eyes. You barely slept in our desert hole. I could feel you fidgeting all day.”

Kyle snorts. “You expected me to get any sleep while I was crammed inside a hole in the desert? Forced to stand the whole time? It was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I have ever had in my life. Over twelve hours of that torment.”

“You were leaning on me. It was like … a really long hug.”

Kyle sighs heavily, crosses his arms, and leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes.

He feels Drake’s head rest against his shoulder.

He decides not to care.

Cade curses under her breath at the table. Kyle tries not to notice. Then the sound of a page flipping. Another page. Then another sigh. Kyle keeps his eyes closed.

The floorboards above creak with footsteps again. It’s likely Chief Rojas or Mikey pacing around. Their presence comforts Kyle, makes him feel less alone.

Could they really be facing their final hours?

Could this really be Kyle’s last day alive?

Will all the vampires storm them from every direction the moment the sun falls beyond the horizon?

The basement door above opens, footsteps down the stairs, silence. “Spoke to my mom,” says Elias quietly to Cade. “Think you’re really on your own with that grimoire.”

Kyle opens his eyes at the sound of Elias’s voice. Elias looks alert, but his eyes are tired and strained. He’s wearing a tight, ribbed black tank top and jeans, which pull on Kyle’s eyes. He looks so damned good in those jeans.

Kyle peels his eyes off of them, looks up. “Elias?”

Elias looks at him. “Got any shuteye yet?”

Kyle shrugs, then is reminded of the extra weight on his shoulder that is Drake’s head, rolls his eyes. “Not really.”

Cade sighs, wipes her forehead irritably. “I’m about up to here with this stupid book. Half of it doesn’t make any sense, even perfectly legible to me as it is … Anything Layna or I try doesn’t work. I’m so afraid if something does work, it could go Freaky-Friday wrong. Do you realize there are spells in here that require the heart of a newborn baby? A newborn fucking baby . Some really messed-up stuff. One spell says it makes your sworn enemy go mad every time they look into a mirror.”

“Are all the spells so evil like that?” asks Kyle.

“There’s no order to them, either,” Cade goes on, “and not everything in here’s a spell. Mirror madness magic one page, a skincare regimen ritual the next, then a recipe for apple pie.” She spreads her hands, exasperated. “What the fuck?”

“You need to rest,” says Elias.

“How am I supposed to rest??” she asks, turning on Elias. “I’ve got all this responsibility on my shoulders to figure out how to use this ridiculous book to somehow protect this town or ward away vampires, whatever, and with every passing hour, we’re closer to not knowing a damned thing. Not to mention Jeremy still can’t speak and has a boner I can’t do fuck-all about because how am I— look, look here, over a thousand pages —how am I supposed to find an anti-Viagra spell?? And even if I do, how can I trust it won’t make Jeremy impotent for life or turn his penis into an earthworm??” Elias starts rubbing Cade’s back and shoulders. She lets out another long sigh, closes her eyes. “Sorry,” she mumbles, shaking her head, “sorry, sorry, I just have to get it out, I’m so tired, I’m losing my mind.”

“It’s okay,” says Elias, then glances over at Kyle again.

More specifically, Kyle and Drake, who look like they were caught cuddling in the corner of the room. Kyle smiles at Elias with sympathy, or empathy, or something that conveys a joint relation of suffering they’re all going through. Elias’s emotional makeup is surprisingly calm, his waters gently rippling in the breeze. He doesn’t quite smile back, but his eyes seem to try.

Then Drake says, “Really, I wish you all could know Laz.”

Kyle fidgets, glances to the side where Drake’s head rests. Elias stops rubbing Cade’s shoulders, staring their way. Even Cade looks up from the book, squints at Drake questioningly.

Drake, head still on Kyle’s shoulder, glances back at them. “I think it would help you understand.”

“What’s there to understand?” asks Elias bitterly. “He’s a vampire. His sole purpose is drinking blood.”

“But that’s too simple an understanding,” Drake complains, his voice nearly a pout. “You rob him of his human complexity. Never forget that,” he then adds, lifting a finger. “All of us, no matter what degree of vampire we are, all of us were once tiny, fragile, squishy human beings. All of us had lives. All of us have memories and wishes and dreams we never achieved. We aren’t ethereal beings dropped out of Heaven, or risen out of Hell, or conjured by demon magic. No offense,” he then says to Cade, who makes a face and spreads her hands, at a loss as to how that was in any way offensive to her. “Remembering that we were all human, that’s your biggest shield against us. We’re all the same deep down. The only thing vampires have against you is time.”

“Are you arriving at a point soon?” asks Elias. “Is this about to lead to a solution for how we keep them the fuck away?”

Drake picks at his fingernails as he stares ahead at nothing in particular, his mind wandering. “Before we first transformed, Laz and I, we looked a lot more alike. Most would say he was the more handsome brother. He got all the girls. Was popular. Never short a date to the dances. I was the quiet, weird, loner younger brother, overlooked in every way. But not to him. He always included me. He was a good big bro, looking out for his little bro.” His eyes drop to the floor. “When we became what we are and had to go into hiding … well, can you imagine what that might do to someone who was just a moment ago on top of the world? The only way he could cope was drinking as much blood as he could get his hands on. Or rather: as many necks as he could get his teeth on. And the more he drank, the stronger he became … and more formidable in the vampire world … and isn’t that just another popularity game in his eyes? I was the one who practiced restraint. I stayed more human. He … didn’t. It’s been difficult, watching the handsome brother I once knew slip more and more away … replaced with this freaky, tall man with long teeth and long unbreakable hair and … and long arms …” Drake closes his eyes. “I miss my old brother sometimes.”

Silence falls over the room, no one seeming to know what to say. Cade pats Elias’s hand, as Elias apparently got caught up in Drake’s story and forgot he was rubbing Cade’s back, having stopped. She rises from the chair, stretches, says to Elias, “I’m gonna go check on Layna,” then closes the book and tucks it under an arm. She faces Drake. “I hope whatever connection you have with your brother, that he hears you, that you can remind him of his humanity, his life, something, because I don’t think I have any kind of answer in this convoluted wad of pages here.” She nods at Kyle, smiling at him in the form of a wince, then sees her way up to the church hall.

After a moment, Elias apparently decides to go, too. “Get some rest, babe,” he says to Kyle, eyes lingering on the pair of them, then heads for the stairs.

And Kyle’s eyes can’t help but drop to Elias’s ass in those jeans as he walks away. Seriously, he looks so delicious in them.

Kyle sighs at himself. This basement is driving him nuts.

“I don’t want to get between you two,” says Drake.

Elias stops at the foot of the stairs, turns. “Huh?”

“I’m not into that, into breaking people up. The tug-of-war jealousy thing. Your boyfriend is just cute and attentive. And is the first humanlike vampire I’ve met in a long time, like me.”

“He’s not a vampire,” says Elias.

“A demipire. Semipire. Halfy-halfy. Whatever you want to call it. I’m more of a poly guy who doesn’t really adhere to the label, it’s just the most fitting for how I feel.”

“I’m not the jealous type.” Elias smirks. “I don’t own Kyle. He’s free to spend time with whomever he pleases.”

Despite not sensing any jealousy or sarcasm via the Reach, Kyle frowns at the way that’s worded. “Elias …”

“Can I say,” Drake goes on, “while I have your attention—and also I’ve been holding this back—that ever since I met you, Elias, I can see the attraction? It’s crazy deep. Soul -deep.”

Elias quirks an eyebrow. “What?”

“You’re like a boulder of passion.” Drake smiles. “That’s so hot. It may seem like Kyle has all the strength, being what he is, but you’ve got this … raging fire inside you, a drive to protect your loved ones at all costs. Like the drive is wired into you, as much a part of you as your limbs and your head. I find that to be not only something worth admiring, but incredibly sexy.”

Elias’s gaze flits to Kyle. “Why’s it seem like your new boy-toy friend’s hitting on me now?”

Kyle grimaces. “Boy-toy friend? Really?”

“All I’m saying,” Drake goes on, “is why choose? Kyle can be with both of us. We can all be together.” He peers at Kyle. “You said your boyfriend gets off on being bitten, right?”

Elias’s eyes grow. “You told him that?”

“Why don’t we make him our blood boy?” suggests Drake. “Y’know, pass him back and forth?”

It isn’t so much that Elias’s face has gone cherry red with a mixture of outrage and humiliation. It’s also that Kyle picks up an instant burst of excitement from within Elias, as if Drake just struck the sexual-fantasy nail on its sexual-fantasy head, before that excitement is quickly suppressed like a fire, Elias dowsing it with a deluge of anger at the mere suggestion.

But even that anger is consumed once again by the fire of passion. Soon, all Elias knows is confusion as he sputters for a response. “I can’t believe you told—I’m not just a—It isn’t—” He stares at the table, the odd contents that litter it. “I’m—”

“God, this is turning me on so fucking much,” says Drake, wide-eyed as he watches Elias, “the adorable way you’re trying to deny it. Can we do it now? If this is our last day alive, can we just have a quick little blood boy session? I don’t even want to drink that much, if at all. It’s more about the scene, less about the blood. Get what I mean?”

Kyle rises from the floor, comes up to Elias’s side. “Babe, it was just a—a quick mentioning of—He and I were getting to know each other, I was trying to talk him out of these ‘baiting tasks’ he goes on for Lazarus, and—” He sighs. “I didn’t mean to betray your confidence, I really didn’t. I feel so shitty.”

Elias closes his eyes and says nothing. Even his emotional landscape has closed up, all of it a vast, blank space—a lake with water so still, it looks like a hole into the sky.

Kyle has come to read Elias so well that he can tell when he’s trying not to be read. But Kyle knows he’s probably feeling betrayed right now. Humiliated. Demeaned.

“Drake doesn’t have bad intentions,” Kyle says, wonders if this isn’t totally the wrong direction to go, then goes anyway. “I can read him, remember? Can’t read full vampires like Lazarus, but I can read Drake. He’s just … a kind of unchecked cocktail of horniness and loneliness. He’s even feeling bad right now.”

“Just a little,” agrees Drake in a tiny voice. “Mostly wanting you to try out being a blood boy. I think you’ll like it.”

“You’re not helping,” Kyle throws over a shoulder, causing Drake to shrug and resume picking at his nails, then returns to Elias. “I didn’t mean to disrespect what we have.”

Elias closes his eyes.

Kyle feels a flicker of calm inside Elias that pierces through the stubborn nothingness. Then another flicker. Then a splash of something warm and happy, like love, compassion, empathy.

It’s confusing. “Babe?” Kyle tries again.

“Maybe he needs a trial run,” suggests Drake.

Kyle sighs. “Please, stop making this worse.”

“I don’t think I am.” Drake rises with grace from the floor, comes up to the foot of the stairs. Elias’s eyes are on him, wary. “Wanna know how it feels? To be a blood boy? Have you ever had any teeth in you other than Kyle’s? I’m gentle.”

“Drake,” warns Kyle.

Until he feels an unmistakable drumming of passion within Elias—a cautious, complicated, but certain desire in him—that causes his body to stay rooted to the spot, watching Drake with wary frustration, his jaw tight, his muscles stiff. Drake seems to sense whatever it is that Kyle does, because he reads it as an invitation. He takes Elias’s hand, studies it, then brings it to his lips, where he gives it a soft, experimental peck. Elias does not appear to object. Then Drake moves to the wrist. And then the forearm, up and up. Elias’s eyes are glued to him every second, his face nearly angry, eyebrows tugged together, his lips pursed. Drake does not look away from Elias as the trail of gentle kisses lead up his arm, up to his shoulder, then toward his neck.

That’s when Drake stops and peers at Kyle.

As if asking Kyle for permission, rather than Elias himself.

Or perhaps he knows he already has Elias’s permission.

It surprises them all when Kyle takes Elias’s other hand.

Elias’s eyes flash as he stares at his boyfriend, parts his lips, lets out a short, jagged breath.

Kyle places a kiss on the fingertips, then takes hold of his boyfriend’s arm with both hands, lifting it, then slowly draws a line of kisses up his forearm, across his bicep, reaches the other side of Elias’s neck.

Elias doesn’t move. Doesn’t protest. Every cell of his body vibrates with anticipation. But within him is a battle of what he should or shouldn’t allow, should or shouldn’t give in to.

Kyle brings his teeth to Elias’s neck. Drake does the same.

Kyle doesn’t need to see Drake to know when his teeth sink in. He feels it through Elias’s all-telling body and heart, how it gives away Elias’s secret thrill, the way he craves being objectified, being used, being turned into just a piece of meat, at the whim of others’ desires.

Kyle and Drake’s secret pleasure in tasting becomes Elias’s in being tasted.

Elias is against the wall by the stairs suddenly, sandwiched by Kyle and Drake, being bitten on either side of his neck. His eyes have rocked back as his breaths come shorter and quicker. His lips hang open, forgotten. Chasing an instinct, Kyle drags a hand down Elias’s firm, tensed body, down the material of his tight ribbed tank top, then his fingers curl under the crotch of Elias’s jeans, cupping his fast-hardening dick.

When he hears his man’s sighs turn vocal, he knows he’s struck gold and starts massaging him.

Then Kyle feels Drake’s fingers slide over his own, joining him in cupping Elias’s crotch. The two meet eyes across the landscape of Elias. “Is there enough for both of us?” asks Drake coyly, coming off the neck. “I think so,” agrees Kyle tentatively. The clear omission of asking Elias his own opinion only aids in exciting him more; he’s just a toy for Kyle and Drake to enjoy, and any pleasure he feels is entirely at their discretion.

Their fingers curl tighter over Elias’s crotch, rubbing him deeper, squeezing him and massaging him. Elias’s dick grows harder, flexing against their hands, desperate to come out.

As if coordinated, Drake and Kyle move their teeth to a new spot somewhere on either shoulder. Elias groans, hisses out some word no one understands, then another, as two sets of teeth sink in again. Soon, it isn’t just biting, but a combination of the men licking, biting, and sucking, over and over, and they aren’t always synchronized. Elias’s heart jumps each time a bite comes unexpectedly. Then he’s soothed by the lick of a tongue. Back and forth and back again, flames of Elias’s arousal burn and swell without end, an orchestra he can’t control, conducted by the unpredictable lips and teeth of Kyle and Drake.

Then his words take shape. “We can’t … We have to …” He doesn’t want it to stop. But obligation is starting to fight its way forward. “We can’t do this right now. We have to—”

Drake, who was busy on his bicep, retreats, gives the skin a lick, then presses his fingers to his own lips. “Got it,” he says through his fingertips. “Trial run: a success. Future blood boy session approved. Date and time, yet to be determined.”

Elias is too out of breath to answer, turns to Kyle, his eyes full of questions, confusion—and desire. All the struggles they had recently, walking the fine lines of safety and danger, to have biting and blood in the bedroom, or favor more classical sex …

Suddenly all of it seems possible.

Then a hint of a smile touches Elias’s lips as he continues to look into Kyle’s eyes. They are, both of them, at peace … a peace for which they’ve been long searching.

That’s when the basement door flies open again, and Cade comes scurrying halfway down the steps. “Guys, guys, I think I found it, I found something useful!” From upstairs, Layna calls out: “ I’m the one who found it! ” Cade grins. “My daughter found it. In the book. Right away, oddly enough … like it was waiting for her. We just need to secure a few things before nightfall.”

Elias refocuses at once, smoothing out his tank top. “What things? I can go out and get them.”

“I’ll come with,” Cade insists. “We need to surround all of Nowhere with a line of salt. Like a big, big circle.”

Kyle lifts his eyebrows. “That’s a fuck lot of salt.”

“And I think we’re gonna need to move all of this upstairs,” she adds with a gesture at the table. “We need full, unfettered access to the wind. Actual wind.”

“This town’s not in any short supply of that,” says Elias.

“Can you help me? Sorry, Kyle,” she then says, “but it’s a particularly hot and sunny day, and … and I don’t think …”

“I understand,” Kyle assures her, feeling helpless suddenly.

“Get your rest, though. Both of you guys,” she adds with a glance back at Drake. “We’ll surely need you when it’s night. If we want to do this,” she then says to Elias, “we’ve gotta go now. It’s a whole shopping list of things we need to do.”

“Got it,” says Elias.

Cade nods. “I’ll send Jeremy down to help bring up all this stuff.” Then she hesitates as she seems to just now realize the three of them are all gathered at the foot of the stairs. “Did I … interrupt something?”

“No,” state Kyle, Elias, and Drake all at once.

Cade blinks. “Okay.” And with that, she heads up the stairs.

Elias follows her partway, comes to a stop, then turns back to Kyle. “Stay safe down here, alright?” He glances at Drake, then surprisingly adds, “You too.”

Drake gives a thumbs up. Kyle nods. “Will do.”

Then Elias is out of the basement. Kyle lingers at the foot of the stairs for a while, lets out a sigh, then goes to the table to start cleaning things up for easy transport. Drake soon joins his efforts, putting things into bags and storing away items.

An hour later, the table is empty, and Kyle and Drake are back on the floor, sitting with a foot of distance between them, heads and backs leaned against the wall, trying to sleep.

Another hour, Kyle is lying down alone while Drake slowly paces the room. The floorboards above creak under footsteps as a muffled discussion goes on between Chief Rojas and Leland, who apparently got a “cryptic text” and came by to see if he can help with “whatever weird stuff” is going on. He is clearly out of the loop, and Chief Rojas does not intend to bring anyone else into it, not wanting to start a panic in the town.

In and out of sleep Kyle drifts. One moment, Drake is near him sleeping. The next, he’s sitting in the middle of the room and the fold-out table has been taken upstairs. Then Kyle has no idea what’s going on as he turns to face the wall, eyes closed.

But even down here, beneath the feet of his friends, Kyle’s sensitive ears pick up a lot. “You don’t have to stay,” says Chief Rojas somewhere above. “You aren’t from here, got no ties to this town. Why don’t you call your folks? I can get you a bus.” “No,” comes Mikey’s voice, soft despite its deepness. “I can’t be out there on my own, not even on a bus. Second the sun goes down, I’ll be found, he’s gonna come for me.” “I’ll have you escorted home,” says the chief. Mikey isn’t having it. “Salazo’s eyes are in my dreams, his ugly eyes. You can send ten officers to escort me, it wouldn’t be enough, they’d all turn up dead.”

The words stick with Kyle, even if he wasn’t truly listening.

Salazo’s big ugly eyes. Haunting Mikey.

Kyle keeps thinking of a grin—a twisted, scary grin on the most beautiful, porcelain face, turning every pretty child’s doll in the world into a piece of the nightmare. La-La’s grin. And the length of that sharp, curved blade he brandished so easily, ready for it to slice through air, slice through flesh, through any of Kyle’s bones that stood in the way, just for fun.

I’m going to kill someone you love someday .

Something dark enters Kyle’s heart.

He opens his eyes. Drake is gone. He’s alone.

Kyle sits up with a start. “Hello?”