Alasdair’s shout was loud, his orgasm explosive, and the scrape of his brave human’s teeth down the length of his throat had his come filling his tight little hole—just as Leo had requested. He couldn’t remember a release such as this in a long time.
Silence filled the room. It was so heavy and thick that it was suffocating as Alasdair remained nestled inside Leo, half hard.
“Let me go,” Leo pleaded, so softly Alasdair barely heard him.
“Stamata,” he demanded, lifting his head to stare into the eyes that had captured him the first time he’d seen them. “Stop asking for what I can’t give.”
“Why? Why can’t you give it? Just vanish us out of here. You’ve done it before.”
Alasdair blinked down at him, shocked that, for one second, he’d contemplated doing that. “What you want. It can never be. This… You… You have been given to me, but only for a short time—” Alasdair stopped talking as Leo grabbed his arms and pulled himself up so their lips touched.
His tongue traced over his top lip, and when a shudder racked through Alasdair’s body, Leo asked, “Why? Why can’t I be like all the others? And be yours? I know you want that also.”
He did want that. Fuck, and he’d never wanted it before.
He could see himself with this human. He could see many nights in his bed, many years with him as his yielding. But he couldn’t have it.
Not ever.
“You are a threat to me. I cannot have you close. I shouldn’t have had you at all.”
“No,” Leo denied adamantly. “I’m not a threat. I’m just me.”
“Yes. And your blood—it will kill me. You can kill me. I’m over two thousand years old. Think about that, Leonidas.”
Leo shoved at his shoulders, but it was no use. He couldn’t dislodge him.
“I don’t understand any of this,” he said, his eyes flashing with confused anger. “Not you, not these dreams, and not the stupid fucking voice telling me I was created for some higher purpose. I didn’t want any of this.”
“What voice?” Alasdair demanded, pushing him back to the bed. He pinned him there with his unyielding grip, and Leo moaned when the cock inside him shifted.
“I don’t know,” he grit out between clenched teeth.
“There’s a lot you don’t know, file mou.” Alasdair’s eyes moved to the tongue that darted out to moisten Leo’s lower lip.
“I know. But I’m not lying. At the end of the last vision I had, someone told me I was created to end you. Me? Which is ridiculous. Don’t you see? If I were a threat, why would I tell you all of this? I thought I was just a normal human—”
“Obviously, you were wrong.”
“Maybe,” Leo whispered, turning his head to the side. “Maybe I was.”
Alasdair rolled his hips over Leo’s, and the whimper that left him was full of mournful pleasure.
Leo was giving in. He had no more denials to give.
His human had finally accepted his fate.
Alasdair ran his tongue along the vein in Leo’s neck. The easiest way to do this was a clean break. Painless, really, and over in a mere second.
It was time. He knew he had to do it.
And better to do it now while the rush of endorphins had Leo completely satiated. Then he heard it: the final soft plea from the man underneath him.
“Let me go, Alasdair.”
“I can’t. He will never let it be.”
He knew that Leo understood exactly whom he meant. He’d seen his bond with Vasilios firsthand.
“And he decides?”
“He decides this.”
“Because?”
The air around them seemed to crackle under the force of the presence entering it, and that could only mean one thing—Vasilios—who was now standing by the side of the bed.
Blood stained his hands and his arms, and his shirt was torn and close to rags as the Ancient ran his eyes down their entwined bodies. When they came back to rest on their faces, his top lip tightened, revealing the fangs that had been used on hapless victims centuries over.
“Because you are a crack in our foundation, human. A weakness in our bond. Our very existence. Alasdair knows it, and so do I,” he answered right before he lunged for the two of them.
“WAIT!” THE REQUEST that came out of Alasdair sounded more like a demand.
Leo’s arousal turned to fear as the vampire who’d been over and inside him tensed and got in between him and his maker.
Vasilios was poised, on the brink of attack, and his sinister sneer made it clear he was ready to kill—him specifically.
“I do not wait. Not for you. Not for anyone, Alasdair. Do not forget whom you are addressing. Move off of him. Time is up.”
Like a large cat sizing up its opponent, Alasdair slowly began to move. He crawled over him and shifted until he was upright and on his knees, directly between him and Vasilios. His muscled back and tight, rounded ass shouldn’t have caught his eye in that moment, but after what they’d been doing, it was hard not to look.
On the edge of the bed, Alasdair bowed his head and stated calmly, “You said I had until dawn. The sun has not yet risen.”
“I have since had time to change my mind. Move aside, Alasdair.”
Leo reached for the sheets and pulled them up over his exposed body.
“I will not. You gave me your word.”
“And now, I am taking it back,” Vasilios barked.
Leo’s eyes flicked to the male standing before Alasdair, and he knew that, should Vasilios want to, he could remove Alasdair from his path.
The tension in the room was born of defiance and disbelief and, on his part, abject fear. If Alasdair didn’t get through to Vasilios, he would be dead.
And soon.
“Going back on your word is something you have not done in nearly two thousand years. What has changed?”
“Isadora. Her presence is quickly dissipating. Diomêdês can barely get a read. She was taken from the same place you took him. By a dark-haired male who knows him. He is connected, and we can’t afford to waste time while you fuck him out of your system. So step aside, agori.”
Leo’s mind whirled at the words he was hearing.
The same place they took me from? A male? Dark hair…
Elias.
And suddenly, he had a plan. One that might help save his life, and perhaps the woman's—Isadora.
“Use me,” Leo suggested. The two words had flown out of his mouth before he’d thought better of them.
When Alasdair slowly turned his head to look down at him, Leo scrambled to his knees, the sheet falling to cover his lap but otherwise baring his naked body.
“I can help you. I know where Elias works. I know where he lives. I can help your friend.”
“She is of our blood, human. Not just a friend.”
Leo shrank back from those words and the hate in Vasilios’s eyes.
He was terrifying.
“Keep quiet,” Alasdair said. His tone was low, but the command was clear, and though every instinct told him that being silent would be smart, Leo couldn’t help the drive to fight for his own survival.
“I’ve been having dreams,” he rushed on, looking around Alasdair’s large shoulder.