The Green's Hill Novellas (15 page)

They were brown.

“No,” Marcus growled, still keeping his guard up. “I was an accident, like you. My car tumbled down a hill, and Gina remembered me and convinced Adrian to bring me over. Don’t you see? I was a risk; they didn’t know I’d love it here. They just didn’t want to see me dead.”

Phillip’s body was still vibrating, but his feeding face had almost completely receded—only the lengthened canines remained.

“I’m always hungry,” he said, his voice as small as a child’s. “I’m never out of control, and I can’t control my hunger. I can’t live like this.”

Marcus dropped his voice but not his guard. “Keep your teeth out,” he commanded, and Phillip didn’t look startled at all as he complied.

Marcus sank to his knees on the bed, a big California-sized king, and knee-walked awkwardly to the middle of the bare mattress. He held his wrist out in front of him, like an offering from a stern master.

Phillip dropped to his knees in a surprising goddamned hurry and took it.

He was delicate with his teeth, and the pain was… exquisite. Marcus tilted his head back and remembered to breathe, breathe, breathe even though he didn’t need to breathe, not at all, and that oxygen was making his blood rush, and
everything
tingled, and his cock… damn… it was swelling, aching, pushing against the button fly of his jeans.

Phillip stopped suckling for a moment and looked at him. Marcus met his eyes and realized that he was almost somnolent with bloodlust satiation and dreamy with passion. “You like this,” Phillip breathed.

“It’s good,” Marcus said simply. “If you’re gentle, careful, most creatures here like it. Just don’t be an asshole, you know?”

Black blood welled sluggishly through the holes as he spoke, and Phillip kept his eyes locked with Marcus’s as he bent his head and suckled tamely from it.

Marcus’s hips jerked, and Phillip looked at him sharply. “Lap at my wounds,” Marcus hissed, “and they will close.”

Phillip did as he asked and watched in wonder as it worked.

“That happens for everyone, not just vampires,” Marcus said, in his element. “Now take off your pants.”

Abruptly Phillip’s eyes were red again. “I’m not a fag!”

“That’s not even a word here!” Marcus snapped. “What you do in bed like this—do you
want
to do it to a woman? Do you?”

“I’m not a monster!” That almost sounded hurt, and Marcus risked getting close enough to touch Phillip’s hair with his broad peasant’s hand. It had grown out since that night on the slopes and wasn’t as chicly cut anymore.

“We want you to keep thinking that,” he said gently. “The women can take it, you know. They do—when their bodies snap back like they do after the change, they can take it as rough as we do. But we can’t take it. Adrian only brings good people here. Good men. There’s a thing inside us that would break if we hurt a woman like that. But men, even if we weren’t attracted in the first place, it feels less—less violent when we’re with a man.”

“Do they send women in to the women?” Phillip asked, pushing unconsciously against Marcus’s hand, and Marcus had to smile. He was very curious, and very smart. He really would be good company when this was over.

“Yes,” Marcus told him, grinning a little.

Phillip took a completely unnecessary breath and shivered all over. “That’s really hot,” he said, slowly unbuttoning his fly.

Marcus nodded, because he’d gotten to see some of that, and damn if it wasn’t. “Oh yeah….” He shuddered.

“What should I do now?” Phillip had unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them off his lean hips. He knelt there in his bloodstained white T-shirt and nothing else. Marcus blinked. He almost said, “Whatever you want to,” but he hesitated too long, and Phillip said, almost desperately, “I’m still hungry. My stomach is full, but I feel so empty. God, Marcus, I might not be such an asshole if I was just… I don’t know. Full!”

And Marcus had a revelation. Phillip had always topped, invaded, thrust—all of the vampires seemed to need to do that. It reassured them to be in control. But Phillip wasn’t in control now, when he was apparently in control in his natural state. He needed to know there were boundaries, limits, a place for him. He needed someone
else
to be in control. He was frightened and starving and confused, and he maybe just simply needed.

“Come here.”

Phillip moved closer, and Marcus gathered the hem of his T-shirt in his hands. He pulled the thing off and started to touch the other man. Just touch him. It was sexual, of course, because there had been feeding, but the touch was giving, not needing. Marcus gave reassurance, pleasure, gentleness, and… control.

Phillip groaned under his hands, and Marcus moved behind him, kissing his shoulders, palming the curve of his lower back. He applied a little bit of pressure, to see if there would be resistance, and there was none. None at all. Phillip went over willingly, a naked, muscular man facedown on the mattress, waiting, trusting that Marcus, who wasn’t a leader at all, would make it all better, would lead him to safety.

Marcus did his best. He kissed the back of Phillip’s neck, his ears, down his spine, and although he’d never done this before—deliberately seduced another man—he found that the cues a male lover gave were the same as with women. When Phillip groaned, Marcus was doing it right. When he writhed, Marcus was
really
doing it right.

Marcus reached beneath that taut, muscular body and pulled Phillip up to his hands and knees. He had better access there to interesting toys—Phillip’s nipples, which made him groan, the flat plane of his stomach, which made him gasp, and then, there it was, every boy’s favorite playground.

Phillip’s cock was amazing, long, and thick, with a curve and a flared head, and Marcus wanted it. Not like he had in the ravenous days when he’d last done this, but in a very personal way.
God
did he want to touch that with his mouth.

“Roll over,” he commanded roughly, and Phillip said, “No.”

“What?”

“I can’t….” He couldn’t finish the sentence, and Marcus’s heart sank a little. Phillip wanted it, but apparently he didn’t want to face it. Well, sensual and consensual, right?

“Okay,” Marcus conceded, and he reached around, grabbed Phillip’s cock, and squeezed hard. Phillip groaned and buried his face in the mattress, so Marcus did it again.

“God!”

“You want my fist but not my mouth?” Marcus taunted. “Stupid asshole.”

“
God!
”
Phillip groaned again, and Marcus rather enjoyed torturing him. Hey, changeling or not, the guy had been making the lives of everyone in the hill just fucking miserable. A little turnabout—even in play—was just all that was fair.

Marcus opened his mouth over the tight, flexing muscles of Phillip’s ass cheek and suckled hard, letting his fangs graze the tender skin while Phillip groaned underneath him and thrust into his hand.

“God, please!” he begged.

Marcus pulled one last time and released him with a pop, knowing he was leaving a hickey on vampire-white skin and not caring. (It would be gone in a second, for one.)

“Goddess, no,” he said, feeling childishly pleased.

“
God, I’m fucking begging you!
”
Phillip snarled, and Marcus gave that diamond-hard ass a light swat before releasing Phillip’s cock and parting the clenching cheeks.

“And I’m telling you you’re not ready,” Marcus retorted. He licked his finger and started rubbing at Phillip’s entrance, massaging gently until the tight little knot of it relaxed.

“Who cares about ready?” Phillip whined, and Marcus took pity on him and started to explain, making sure his breath dusted Phillip’s very exposed, very intimate parts as he continued to massage.

“I do, idiot. Think it’s any fun for me if you’re dry?” He licked his finger again and massaged some more. Phillip relaxed enough for that finger to just… slip… right on in, and Phillip keened as Marcus wriggled farther.

“Don’t care,” Phillip graveled, and Marcus twisted his finger a little harder.

“Too bad. You wanted to use and abuse me. You had your chance—I even greased myself up for you, just so you could fuck me raw.” It was true, and Marcus still had lube running down his crease, teasing and, quite frankly, imbuing every moment of foreplay with some serious wriggle-your-ass-right-out-of-your-jeans tension.

Phillip’s body tensed, like he was going to argue, and Marcus added a second finger, relaxing when he felt the man go boneless and willing and pliant.

“I’m hungry,” he begged pitifully, and Marcus knew,
knew
that he was talking about feeling empty, lost, afraid, and that having someone inside him, steering, taking care of him, was what he craved,
had
craved since his awakening. No one wanted to do this to a new vampire, especially one who hadn’t come over consensually, but Marcus had known Phillip, no matter how briefly, before he’d died. Marcus was the only one with a feeling for how his heart had beat before, and only Marcus could do this.

“I’ll fill you,” he promised darkly, scissoring his two fingers until Phillip howled and grunted into the mattress. “I’ll fill you, but I’m not going to hurt you, you hear me?”

“Auuughhh!”

“You hear me, right?”

“Yes! God, yes!”

Marcus got up on his knees and shoved his jeans down, almost whimpering himself with the relief of the pressure. He took a gentle moment and stroked Phillip’s back, his flanks, the backs of his thighs. His cock was aching and dripping, and Phillip was screaming and begging, and Marcus wanted to savor this moment—he wasn’t sure if he and Phillip would ever get another one like it.

He positioned himself and thrust slowly home—or that was his intention. Phillip threw himself backward, slamming his ass into Marcus’s hips and making him see stars, even as Phillip screamed, “
Yeeeeesssssss!
” into the bedding.

“
Fuck!
”
Marcus growled, throwing his hips forward. Phillip grunted, and Marcus placed a heavy hand in the center of his shoulders while he piston-thrust his pelvis in a blur of irritation and lust. “Fucking try and take it from me? Don’t think so, asshole, don’t think so, goddammit. You gave it to me, you wiggled your hot little ass, and it’s mine, and it’s mine and don’t fucking move. Do you hear me?
Don’t fucking move!
”

Marcus was ranting and fucking with his feeding face on. His blood was up, and for the first time since he’d changed into a vampire, he was fucking without deliberate gentleness or any consciousness of his improved strength or stamina. Dammit, the guy had begged for it, and he’d goddamned well just lie there and fucking take it, and fucking take it and take it and take it until Marcus saw him spurting his toenails out his cock onto the fucking mattress!

Marcus grabbed Phillip’s hips, gave a particularly vicious thrust, and heard Phillip grunt beneath him. Then he realized that while he’d been ranting, Phillip had been babbling too, and he shut up and kept fucking and listened, because Phillip’s gibbering and begging just made him hotter.

“
God, yes, please… oh please… that’s right… fuck me harder… so tight… it’s so tight and it burns… burns good… please don’t stop… filling me up… please don’t stop… need… need… please… God please… fuck me, just keep, don’t stop, Marcus, please, I’m gonna fucking come just whatever you do just
don’t stop fucking me! Auuughhh!
”

That last was because Marcus was too close to coming to listen to that anymore, so he reached around, grabbed Phillip’s cock, and yanked, yanked hard and squeezed, and did it again and again while he kept thrusting. Phillip suddenly stiffened and quivered, convulsing around Marcus’s cock as he screamed and came in icy ropes over his stomach and Marcus’s tightened fist and forearm.

Marcus pulled his hand away and smacked Phillip smartly across the ass before pumping in once, twice, then raising his hand to taste Phillip’s spend, which exploded across his tongue like ambrosia, and listening to his begging, almost incoherent, sobbing cries some more and….

Coming. Coming so hard his eyes rolled back and his toes curled and he saw spots and stars and those other things that humans saw when they forgot to breathe, but he saw because it felt like he was about to spurt his balls out his cock along with everything in them.

Phillip howled beneath him and collapsed in a twitching mass of sobbing moans, and Marcus fell on top of him, still buried in his body. They stayed there, twitching and calming, until Marcus began to shrink, and he fell limply out of Phillip. He rolled slightly, and Phillip made perhaps the saddest sound of protest Marcus had ever heard.

He’d dominated the man in bed, but he wouldn’t make him beg now—not now, not after they’d been naked and raw with each other to the point of vulnerability and pain.

“C’mere,” he muttered and stretched out his arm beneath his head while rolling to the side, all the better to pull Phillip toward him. Phillip scooted with a little sigh, and Marcus rooted on the ground next to the mattress and found a rumpled blanket that he threw over their cool, still bodies as they stopped shivering in the aftermath. They wouldn’t get cold, no, but blankets never stopped being comfort.

Phillip stayed facing away from him, and Marcus wanted to sigh, but he didn’t. What did he expect? The guy had obviously been the same as Marcus—rabidly and rigidly straight—until his life took a turn for the undeath. Marcus wasn’t going to force affection that Phillip didn’t feel. Instead, he played the grown-up again and stroked Phillip’s coarse, straight, dark hair tenderly, the way Adrian or Green would, and breathed softly into the hollow of his neck and shoulder.

“If you just tell us what you need,” he said quietly, “we’ll give it to you. I swear, Phillip, you can be happy here. There are people who want to make you happy here, including me. We just need to know what you want. I’m sorry you lost your life—all the parts of it you miss. But that doesn’t mean what you have here now can’t be good too, okay?”

There had been a service for the four people lost in the avalanche who hadn’t been recovered. Phillip had been among those named, and Green and Adrian had been relieved. Just as predators had supposedly made off with Marcus’s carcass, Mother Nature’s own viciousness seemed to have taken care of Phillip’s death as well. But Marcus knew the loneliness of seeing your family move on without you when you were still there on the planet, still holding them there in your heart.