“So keep your yielding. And when you mark him later, know that I am the one who made you need the release. But don’t let his pretty face enchant you—you’ve always been so good about disposing of your food once you were done.”
The jarring reminder of who they were, and who he was, slammed into Leo with the force of a wrecking ball.
Mark me? Dispose of me? With those teeth? That does not sound pleasant.
“You have my word,” Alasdair murmured. “I’ll get what I need from him, and that shall be all.”
The words weren’t a promise of his imminent death, but they still did nothing to bring any comfort to Leo as the two figures vanished from sight.
“YOU HAVE CHANGED these past few weeks, Alasdair.”
The serious tone in Vasilios’s voice as they left Leo and reappeared outside the Adjudication Room had Alasdair bracing himself for whatever might follow. He already had a severe case of fucking blue balls after having been denied a release, and as he looked at Vasilios, he wanted nothing more than to be finished off by him—and his sire knew it.
“Always so sure. That was my agóri. A picture of contentment in who and what he is. But lately…” He paused, and his knowing eyes shifted to the wall Leo was behind. “Lately, you have changed.”
Alasdair bowed his head respectfully. And when Vasilios placed a finger under his chin, raising it, and moved in so they were a whisper apart, he caught Alasdair’s lips in a kiss designed to make him want to weep. He remembered a similar one from the night Vasilios had finally come to him. The night he’d made him his.
“What is so special about this one, Alasdair?”
Alasdair thought about that first night when he’d noticed Leo and tried to pinpoint what he’d felt the precise moment he’d seen him. But when Vasilios’s lips brushed over his again, nothing was in his mind but the male seducing him.
“You are so quiet lately. In your mind and your voice. As if you are hiding something from me. I don’t like you blocking me out. It troubles me.”
It troubled him too. But he had nothing to say. All he had were questions, and he wasn’t ready to share them yet. Or risk his life, for that matter, over a strange fixation with a human.
Vasilios moved his mouth over to his jaw and slowly kissed his way up towards his ear. Desire shot through him as those tantalizing lips continued to weave a spell over him, and his cock strained against the confines of his pants.
“Se thelo, file mou,” Vasilios rasped in his ear, and Alasdair’s hands clutched at the arms of his suit. “But you want the one in that room, don’t you?”
He thought about lying for a second, but when the tip of Vasilios’s tongue flicked over his lobe, all other thoughts left his mind.
“I am not averse to the thought of the both of you in my bed, Alasdair. Although I am not pleased with how taken you are by him. I believe that is something I need to think on before I allow him to join us. Until then, if you choose to dip your dick inside him, do it away from this lair. Away from where I have to hear you.”
The bite of jealousy in his sire’s words was evident. Alasdair had never before taken a yielding on, so the emotions running through both of them were new and…unfamiliar.
“I have not yet taken him as a yielding.”
“But you want to. Alasdair, with as long as we exist and thrive upon the Earth, it makes sense that we would need something different time and again. I understand that. What’s important is that you know whom you come back to. Whom you belong to. I’ve never had reason to be concerned in the past. You’ve never doubted this before. Are you doubting it now?”
Alasdair shook his head. “No. Of course not.”
Vasilios crossed his arms over his chest. “I hope not. You seem to be faltering of late. Do not forget: There are many degrees of closeness. Remember your promise the night you were turned. Remember your vow. That cannot change because something shiny has caught your eye. You and I, we live in a state of symbiosis. There’s intimate, and then there’s life. We are of the life variety. You live because of me, and I because of you. Try to remember that and things will remain pleasant for you.”
As Vasilios walked down the corridor, Alasdair watched him go. The male still had the ability to arouse and put him in his place all at the same time, and as he rounded the corner out of Alasdair’s view the words, If you forget whom you belong to, ómorfo mou agóri, things will be unbearable, lingered inside his mind.
Alasdair closed his eyes and tried to get his fucking head on straight. What was the matter with him? He needed to pull his shit together before he faced the human again.
ELIAS FONTANA, THE director of the National History Museum, glanced at the clock on the corner of his desk. It was a George III Walnut Bracket Clock, circa seventeenth century, one of his most prized possessions, and it currently read ten thirty p.m.
He scrubbed a palm over his face and stretched his neck from side to side in an effort to ease the tension knot that had formed there. For the past two years, he and his staff had worked nonstop to get their latest exhibit off the ground. He was tired and stressed, but they were now ready to unveil the exhibit: The Gods and Myths of Ancient Greece.
Any other time before an opening like this, Leo, Paris, and he would head over to The Dirty Dog to celebrate the long, arduous hours they’d put into creating a piece of history. At the same time, they’d commiserate over the social lives they’d neglected to do so. But the pub wasn’t in the cards tonight because one key person was missing—Leo.
Elias stood from behind his desk and placed his letter opener back on the inbox tray. He’d finally finished catching up on his mail after having neglected it for the past week, his mind having been preoccupied. He buttoned his suit jacket then switched off the lamp that sat opposite the clock and looked at the date displayed. It was the last day in October, and it’d been nearly two weeks since his friend and colleague had disappeared.
He’d known Leo for a little over ten years, ever since he’d walked into the offices at the university he’d worked at and asked for a course outline for his bachelor’s degree in archaeology. Elias remembered the fresh-faced kid like it was yesterday. He’d been young, seventeen at the most, while he himself had just celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday. Over the next four years, Elias had watched him become one of the brightest students he’d ever had the privilege of teaching.
Around the same time Leo had graduated, he’d finished his master’s degree in ancient history and moved on to pursue what he really wanted: to work in one of the top museums in the country. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that Leonidas Chapel walked back into his life and interviewed for a job as one of his curators.
Now, that man was missing.
Elias crossed the office to the door and took his coat off the antique rack in the corner. Then he folded it over his arm, and as he reached for the handle, the door was pushed open.
Standing in front of him was Paris Antoniou, the museum’s head registrar. His wild, sable-colored hair was tied the best he’d been able to manage at the nape of his neck, and he had a pencil stuck behind his ear. His black T-shirt with his favorite band’s logo across the front was covered in dust, and beneath the neckline was a quarter-sized hole. He had a white glove on one hand, and in the other, he was clutching a piece of paper in a death grip.