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Rand could handle the vampire being an asshole. What he wouldn't tolerate was him lying. And he was lying his ass off.
Rand offered a short, curt nod. "Fine then." Holding Cai's gaze, he closed the distance between them. Dropped to his knees in front of the vampire. "Why don't you start with my mouth? I'll get you started again."
Cai stared at him. "You can't pretend you don't need more. You don't want this. I'm not what you need. You need a family."
Rand rose, coming toe-to-toe with him. "What the fuck do you think you and I are?"
The vehemence struck Cai in the chest, opened a window he didn't want to look through. The view was murky to him, but Rand could apparently see through it clearly. Which meant the wolf was delusional.
Two and a half fucking weeks. Cai had lasted two fucking weeks before he couldn't stand it any longer. Admittedly, Rand had probably accelerated the timeline with his stunt tonight, but who was Cai kidding? He could have held out maybe another week. Tops. And Rand was continuing to talk, saying things that were so terrifying, Cai should be running.
"You may not have sought that, but I don't believe you don't want it. I'm offering it to you, freely, willingly, to figure out where it will take us. You're the bravest and stupidest male I've ever met, because you back down from nothing." Rand's gaze flashed. "After all the things you've faced, I can't believe you'll back down from this."
Cai gripped Rand's shoulder, digging in. Part reproof, part warning, but the second he made the contact, it became about more than that. He didn't want to fucking let go. They were standing so close, barely two feet between them. His wolf was as immodestly naked as he often was, but Cai was the one who felt stripped.
"Doesn't matter," Cai said. "I don't know how to love someone."
"Bullshit." Rand said it evenly, without malice. "You took off because you wanted what was best for me. You were willing to give up your own happiness for it."
"Well, happiness is a strong word," Cai pointed out. "And I abandoned you at a vampire stronghold and left you to find your way home."
"I did. I just had to come to Atlanta to bring home back to me."
Too much. Way too much. Cai should have kept it on the footing of him busting Rand's ass in all sorts of obscene, unspeakably delicious ways for being at Club Atlantis. Not allowing the conversation to go in this direction. He had no idea where to go from here with it. He was going to get hot and hard again soon, which meant he'd say stupid things. Even now, he wanted the wolf under him, but there were other things causing problems. Like that strangling thing, and apparently shrapnel had exploded inside his chest.
"Don't talk anymore," Cai said. He moved away. Not a retreat, but to deliberately establish distance. Rand ignored his words and followed him. There was a big-ass rock in front of Cai and a big-ass wolf behind him. One who would not shut up.
"You took care of me," Rand continued. "Helped me want to live again. Yes, because that was what you wanted, but later on more was driving it than that. Because it bothered me, you even stopped cursing as much, for a second or two. Though you took it out on me in other ways. Swear jar, my ass. Literally."
Cai huffed a chuckle, but he stared at the rock, wondering what it would be like to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming stone, incapable of feeling anything, so nothing would ever hurt. So something, anything, would finally stop fucking hurting.
Can't fight what you can't change. Hurts. Just want to stop...hurting.
Cai suddenly recalled his wolf's thought, all that time ago. In the same heartbeat, he knew the truth. The meaning of those words to Cai, as much as the wolf's fine ass, was why Cai had refused to let him die.
Cai. Rand closed the distance between them. Didn't touch, but was so close. So fucking close.
"If you leave them to stay with me," Cai said bitterly, "it will always be because you settled, gave up the family idea. I'll be less. I'll feel that. Fucking pathetic, but there it is."
A sudden heavy silence. Cai wished he hadn't said it. He could feel the wolf's eyes upon him and, as usual, they would be seeing too much. He should just turn around, deliver on his threat. Fuck Rand a dozen more times, until the wolf would be crawling away from him, barely able to walk, finally understanding just how much Cai wanted and could take from him, without giving enough back.
Cai stiffened when Rand placed his mouth on the sun-like scar beside his shoulder blade. He tasted flesh with tongue and caressing lips as his hands slid down Cai's back. Fanning them out to grip Cai's waist, Rand dipped his thumbs inside the waistband of the jeans, caressing the upper rise of Cai's buttocks.
"I thought the last two weeks at Fane's were hard on me," Rand murmured. "Every day hurt more and more. The nights; they were pure torture. But it was worse for you. You were alone. I didn't think about that."
Cai tried to jerk away from the contact. Rand moved with him, earning a hiss and answering it with a growl.
"It's no different between vampire and servant than it is in a pack," the wolf said. "I give up my choices to my alpha, because I trust that he'll care for me. Isn't that what a servant does with his Master?"
Cai turned his head, startled, and Rand met him, eye to intense eye. "You remember me saying I'd tell you sometime, how an alpha wolf approaches another alpha?"
"Yeah. I remember."
Rand nudged Cai forward so he was closer to the large rock. Then the shifter put a palm against it by Cai's shoulder, leaning forward so he could bring his mouth to the vampire's collar bone from behind. Rand tilted his head, nudging at Cai's jaw until he lifted it.
"The alpha adopts some of the same submissive body language as other wolves," Rand said in a husky voice. "So the other alpha knows he's not interested in a fight. He nips at his chin and throat."
Rand continued the demonstration, using teeth, mouth and tongue to arouse. "And to make the point, the wolf might go down on his belly and avert his gaze."
"Why do I expect you wouldn't do the averting gaze part?" Cai managed.
Rand half-chuckled. "It's not a capitulation. Just an acknowledgment of what I'm willing to give."
Cai's pulse accelerated as Rand's capable hands slid over his ass and thighs when he dropped to a kneeling position behind Cai. The shifter was too close for Cai to turn, unless Cai swung a leg over his head. He would have done that, but Rand had reached around him and slipped the button of his jeans, taking them back down off his ass.
"You're right. A vampire's body can take a hell of a lot of punishment and still be beautiful," Rand said. "But in this case, I think that's because of the male inside."
Cai's fingers dug into the rock, a harsh noise breaking from his throat when Rand parted his buttocks and licked his rim, reaching beneath him to caress his testicles.
The vampire could try to change their position. But Rand made sure it felt too damn good for Cai to work on the thought. Let me please you, Master.
Cai stilled at the mental address, his breath rasping. "I'm still going to fuck you through a wall," he promised, a hoarse threat.
Okay. Rand continued to play with his ass with a heated, wet tongue. Cai's hips flexed, his cock pressing in a humping rhythm against the rock as that oh-too-fucking-good-to-describe feeling rocketed through him. He opened his mind further, let Rand have the gift of knowing what he was doing to him. In return, Rand's heart cracked open.
I want to be inside you, Master. Let me fill you. Let me fill up everything.
Yeah, he hadn't won the war, but Cai was here, and he'd finally said by implication what Rand had suspected was true. Cai had never asked for a family, for a pack, but he wanted, needed one. Everything that Rand had learned about Cai over the past few weeks, and everything that Cai knew about him, had tangled up into a big knotted ball that would likely never get unknotted. Rand was okay with that. They'd continue to fight it out, and that might take a couple decades. Or longer, if Rand stayed with him, as his servant.
Cai went even more still, a clue he was listening in. Good. But Rand di
dn't want things to go wrong if Cai got stuck on that, so he renewed his efforts, closing his hand around Cai's cock to pump it. Hadn't they just done this, a matter of minutes before? Didn't seem to matter. The vampire was already stiffening. The same response gripped Rand when Cai lifted his hips, grinding his muscular ass in Rand's face, wanting more of his tongue. Cai left furrows on the stone with his fingernails.
"Fuck, hell...fuck me, wolf."
Rand still had the lube within reach, and he one-handed it on himself while he kept after Cai's ass, using the long fingers of his other hand to keep the vampire open to him.
When Rand rose to his feet and pressed against the vampire's back, he savored their bodies straining, tight against one another. Cai's head tilted. His eyes were closed.
"Just drill it. Fuck, it can hurt. I just want you all the way in."
