DeVante's Coven (30 page)

Reed stood back and admired his handiwork as he pushed his jeans off and shed his shirt.

Daniel took his breath away, his eyelids heavy with desire, lips parted, pink tongue darting out to wet his lips as Reed watched. Knees parted and cock straining upward. Tongue and twitching cock the only movement in the boy’s body. His fair skin glowed against the black sheets of the bed, black cuffs and collar stark against his translucence.

“You were made for this,” he said to Daniel, and heard the awe in his own voice.

Reed retrieved his camera. He couldn’t help himself. As he snapped pictures he realized he probably should have asked Daniel’s permission. Daniel watched Reed with heavy-lidded eyes. Reed thought that Daniel’s lips even curved into a small smile for one quick instant, and for half a second Reed wondered which one of them really had the power here tonight.

He took a few more shots with the camera and then set it aside, stretching out on the bed on his right side, facing Daniel, feathering fingers over the boy’s smooth torso, slowly, watching the muscles roll and dance beneath Daniel’s skin.

“How can you be so fucking perfect?’ he wondered aloud, and Daniel smiled.

The boy handled a gentle flogging like a pro, writhing and whimpering as an answer to every soft thud of the flogger tails. And then he’d handled a not-so-gentle fucking, with gasps and groans and moans that propelled Reed right into his own fantasies.

Then he’d unbound Daniel and curled his body around the boy and dozed for a bit.

And now Reed sat beside the bed in a straight-backed chair watching Daniel sleep, considering how Daniel might react when Reed wouldn’t let him flee with the dawn. Last night Reed had removed Daniel’s collar before falling asleep himself, and Daniel left sometime before morning, as he always did. It was the one rule DeVante had, Daniel claimed, that he be tucked in his bed before the sun rose.

But Reed wanted Daniel for his own, all of him, and decided it was time to break DeVante’s rule. If there was some kind of fallout, Reed was prepared to take Daniel in, care for him. Keep him.

He waited. Daniel’s body started violently and he twisted to look at the clock. It was a few minutes after two in the morning. His eyes roved the room until he found Reed sitting next to the bed.

“What are you doing?” Daniel asked.

He wasn’t supposed to ask questions, but Reed answered him anyway.

“Watching you sleep. That question just bought you ten lashes.” When he earned fifty, Reed would give them to him all at once, watch Daniel’s skin redden, watch him writhe and cry and surrender.

Daniel dropped his eyes.

“I have to go.” The words passed his lips in the faintest whisper possible, as if Daniel had to say them yet still wanted to remain submissive.

“No. I am keeping you today.”

Daniel didn’t move, but his voice, still soft, was filled with panic. “I can’t.” Reed saw sweat bead on Daniel’s forehead, his hair actually growing damp before Reed’s very eyes. “I… I can’t.”

“It’s not up to you, Daniel. As long as you wear the collar you do as I say. I will no longer tolerate your morning escape.”

Daniel shook his head. He hadn’t moved off the bed, but he turned eyes rolling with desperate fear on Reed. Reed wanted to join him on the bed, wrap his arms around Daniel’s slim youth, and protect him for all time.

“No!” Daniel cried it out, voice no longer soft, but high-pitched and frantic. “I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t. Please, Reed, please release me.”

Reed’s resolve melted, enough to join Daniel on the bed; he smoothed his fingers over the wet skin of Daniel’s face, shh-ed him, and tried to hold him, but Daniel resisted, tears flowing. Daniel pulled back, squeezed his eyes tightly closed then opened them again, and took a deep shuddering breath. He stared full into Reed’s face.

He said the words Reed never expected in a million years to hear.

“September, Reed. I call September.”

And then he scooped his clothes from the floor and fled, down the iron stairs almost faster than Reed could see him go, not even pausing to dress.

Reed sank back on the bed, mystified. Whatever consequences faced Daniel for not going home were too great for them to face together? He thought they were getting somewhere, inside and outside of the game. He was beginning to view Daniel as a permanent fixture in his life, and wanted him there, and in fact envisioned them having a whole life together. Which was why he asked Daniel to stay. Having a life together meant having daytime hours, too. He never expected his request would elicit Daniel’s safe word.

***

Daniel walked around the block fifty times, trying to think what to do. Reed had no idea what he was asking. Staying past dawn would relinquish all of Daniel’s secrets, and Daniel didn’t know what would happen then. He was terrified that he would lose Reed. Either that Reed couldn’t handle Daniel’s truth, or that DeVante would kill him. Or worse, force Daniel to kill Reed himself. And Daniel felt like he was nothing without Reed, that Reed’s death would also be his own. But he could never really belong to Reed and still keep his secret. He could never surrender completely.

And that’s what Reed was asking him to do. Give up everything he was and ever would be to Reed’s will. Let go his very soul, his essence… his everything.

Surrender completely.

He walked for an hour, agonized with indecision, then decided he would do it. He wanted Reed, wanted him for all eternity, and that meant the truth had to come out.

He had been using all his vampire gifts these past days purely to block the array of noise his senses allowed him to receive. But he opened them, now, centered himself, and made himself silent. He let himself back into Reed’s apartment. He could hear Reed doing something down the hall in the den. Daniel shed his clothes, and folded them into a pile on the couch while trying to kill his anxiety. Deep breath in. Long breath out. It’ll be okay.

He told himself things would change anyway, they always do, and he might as well face the changes head on. He was still wearing the collar. Surrender completely. Then he knelt, naked except for the collar, on the floor facing the hallway.

The wait seemed interminable, but then he heard Reed’s footsteps. It had been difficult to keep his cock hard through his nervousness as he waited; but once Reed came into the room, Daniel’s cock leapt to attention of its own accord. Daniel kept his eyes on the floor, heard Reed let out a long, tired sigh. And then a sharp intake of breath.

“Daniel. Look at me.”

Daniel raised his eyes to look at the most beautiful man he had ever seen, dressed for work already, in a charcoal Armani suit, over a pressed and crisp burgundy button down shirt that Daniel knew would be wrinkled and softened by the end of the day. The monochromatic tie blended perfectly against the shirt. Sexy, confident, commanding. Everything Daniel would have made him to be if he were merely a figment of his imagination. His everything.

Reed walked a circle around Daniel, and Daniel twisted his head around to look at Reed looking at him. Reed lowered a hand to pet Daniel’s hair, stroke his cheek. “I thought you were never coming back.”

***

Reed circled Daniel, stripping off his tie and brushing it against Daniel’s erection before letting it settle to the floor in front of Daniel’s thighs. “What a spectacular display you are, Daniel,” Reed murmured. “But something’s missing. Stand up.”

The boy stood, and Reed rifled his fingers through his perfect, pretty blond hair, mussing it, and let one hand trail over Daniel’s shoulder to his back, pulling their bodies close. He held Daniel’s chin between the thumb and fingers of his other hand and turned Daniel’s face up for a soft, chaste kiss and felt a tremor run through the boy.

Then he took Daniel’s head in both his hands and smashed their lips together, hard, bruising, biting, his tongue pressing inside Daniel’s mouth to taste him. He inhaled at the same time, breathing in deep the scent of this beautiful boy, a combination of lavender and spice and hot tumultuous sex. Daniel’s arms wrapped around Reed, bracing himself against Reed’s body to stay upright, and Reed pulled back to nip again at Daniel’s lips and throat, his shoulder blade, marking him with his teeth. His fingers twisted into Daniel’s hair, holding him captive, hurting, he knew, just enough.

He didn’t want to stop, wanted to drop to the floor and pull Daniel with him and keep kissing him, biting him until the boy begged Reed not only to fuck him, but to keep him forever. Instead he willed his mouth away from Daniel’s skin and pushed Daniel a step back.

He bade the boy to kneel, and Daniel obeyed, licking his bruised lips, eyes toward the floor, maybe looking at the drop of fluid that seeped from the slit of his dick.

Now Daniel looked a pretty mess, the perfect wanton slave; lips swollen and red, eyes glazed, cock dripping. “That’s better. Now you have the ‘fuck me’ look.”

***

Daniel felt his insides tumble and fall in response to the gentleness of Reed’s first kiss. But then the kiss deepened and Daniel’s whole body fell into it, clinging to him, needing to be devoured. And just when Daniel thought they were getting close to a race to the loft, Reed pushed him away and told him to kneel again.

He settled into his submissive pose and Reed’s black leather shoe, sophisticated, understated, entered his line of vision a moment before the toe of it snugged up beneath Daniel’s balls, the pressure making Daniel hold his breath. “Spread your knees wider,” Reed commanded, and Daniel did. “More,” was Reed’s response, and the pressure beneath Daniel’s balls increased. Daniel gasped out loud and struggled to spread his thighs further apart. He felt the tightness of protesting muscles and knew before long they would be screaming, his whole body trembling to maintain the stance.

“You need to tell me why staying terrifies you. You need to tell me everything. I will listen, young Daniel, I will. But first I’m going to fuck you within an inch of your life.”

Daniel’s belly tightened. Reed was going to punish him for calling September, for using the safe word. He supposed he should have expected it. He made the choice, after all, to put on the collar and wait for Reed in a submissive pose.

He could have chosen to come knocking on the door, and doing so would have put this meeting on equal terms. Adult terms, even. But Daniel loved these games, loved Reed’s perfect mastery over him, and how Reed knew so well how to play him. And if he was going to give Reed his daytime sleep—his biggest vulnerability—it had to begin on
these
terms, with this kind of trust.

***

Reed had been planning to go into work early, because he was too much reeling with shock over Daniel’s exit to possibly sleep. But then Daniel told him a crazy story that made absolutely no sense, and now Reed thought he might not go into work at all.

Daniel had insisted he would sleep on the floor of the windowless office room. He’d curled up on his side and hadn’t so much as twitched. It was as anticlimactic as Daniel had assured him it would be. Reed had been sitting with Daniel for an hour, and nothing at all happened.

Now and then he paced above Daniel, staring down at him, corpse-like still, a thin blanket covering his nude body, a white pillow beneath his head. Daniel had laughed as he asked for the items. “I won’t know or care if I don’t have them.” He’d shrugged. “It’s a silly comfort.”

At one point, still early in the morning, Reed squatted beside Daniel, tried to see if he was even breathing. He couldn’t tell. When he touched Daniel’s skin, the boy felt cooler than he should be, causing Reed to drape another blanket over him. Reed didn’t know what to think, only that he must be too tired to think at all, so he pushed off his socks and curled his own body around Daniel’s back.

Even though he’d been up all night, sleep was slow to come. He relived the moment of panic that asking Daniel to stay might make him leave forever. Reed couldn’t even begin to puzzle it out. He’d met DeVante just a short time ago, and while the man had an undeniable ability to fill a room to stifling with his mere presence, he seemed quite benevolent towards Daniel. He’d made it clear that he expected Daniel to make his own life choices. Like the continual after-hours party. Like being with Reed.

Reed thought at least this day would give him more clues to work with.

It was unfathomable, the things Daniel warned Reed about, should Reed still want him to stay past dawn; Daniel needed to be kept out of the sun or he would die. His earnestness on this proved to Reed that Daniel believed it, no matter how impossible it seemed.

The deep sleep itself was certainly unusual. Yes, Daniel had warned him it would be this way. And yes, the reality of it was stranger than fiction. Reed wondered if Daniel had some kind of metabolic disorder, or dysfunction in the brain? What would account for Daniel’s bizarre stillness, his inability to remain awake past sunrise. How the hell could the sun rising make someone sleep? Reed would have thought it was ridiculous if he hadn’t seen it happen. It was disconcerting, to say the least. And ultimately only brought more questions than answers.

His mind spun with more and more questions, and it was afternoon before he, too, slept.

A loud crashing noise startled Reed awake, and before he could even question what it might be, the office door flew open with such force one of the hinges was torn from the doorframe and the door listed like… well, like a broken door.

“What the—?” Reed scrambled to his feet to face an intruder.

In the space of a blink DeVante had gathered Daniel from the floor, blankets and all, holding him effortlessly, as though he were nothing more than a twig. His voice filled the small room like thunder.
“How dare you?”