CHAPTER 1: LIAM
Was Only Fangs a thing?Maybe if he could see a vampire O-face, Liam could go back to fantasising about them instead of fanatically searching the faces in the room for them.
Liam really hadn’t thought this night through. A Halloween party had seemed like a good idea. The perfect distraction from the myriad ways in which his life and the world as he knew it had fallen apart over the last month. First, he’d been caught in a nightclub bombing at The Sapphire. Then, he’d discovered the world was rife with creatures he’d thought were fiction when he’d been rescued from the panicked crowd. When he finally made it home, still in shock and covered in dust from the destroyed building, he’d walked in on his ex bouncing on someone else’s cock and immediately moved out. He’d just been finding his feet again, his extensive collection of dildos easily more satisfying than his ex, when earlier that afternoon, he’d been laid off from his shitty job.
The threat of pending homelessness if he couldn’t find another position should’ve been his immediate stress. That, or being back in a nightclub after the last one he’d visited exploded.It all paled in comparison to the knowledge that the world was stranger than he’d ever realised. No more supernatural creatures had turned up in his life since the bombing, but now that he was surrounded by sexy vampires, mummies, and pirates at the party, he couldn’t help but peer at them to try to figure out if they were humans in fancy dress orsomething else.He’d lost track of the number of times he’d startled when someone brushed past him, and he’d had to bite off an actualscreamwhen someone had grabbed his hand to try to pull him onto the dance floor.
The guy who’d tried to dance with him was wearing a long black cape and fangs. He didn’t look anything like the vampire who’d tried, and failed, to erase Liam’s memory when he’d been rescued from the supernatural attack, but maybe he was undercover? His memories of the vampire were pretty vague—just flashing silver eyes and pointed fangs.
In the aftermath of the bombing, Liam had just stood there nodding as the scary creature gave him a nasty headache while trying to tell him he actually hadn’t seen someone heal a deep gash to their limb right in front of him or turn into an honest-to-fuck wolf, and he certainly hadn’t been rescued by the vampire with superhuman strength because there was nothing to be rescued from on his perfectly ordinary night.
It had been easier to play along than to deal with whatever he and his friends from the ‘Supernatural Council’ would do if they realised their little mind trick hadn’t worked. He might not remember the face of the vampire, but he sure as fuck remembered the rest of it despite his efforts. A part of him had been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since.
Was the lady in the corner really covered in green body paint, or was she taking the opportunity Halloween presented to hidein plain sight? What about the dude sporting a bushy tail? Although now that he looked closer, the guy with the tail was walking a little too carefully, and Liam was pretty sure he recognised the appendage from one of his favourite online sex shops. The one he’d become an even more frequent patron of after swearing off men. He hadneedsafter all. Needs that multiple partners had told him were too much work, his ex being just the latest in a string of men with that complaint. It wasn’t his fault that he had a high sex drive. If they couldn’t keep up, that was on them.
“There you are!” his friend Grace called, shoving a cheap glass of bubbles in his face and sending his anxiety skyrocketing again. “Stop glaring at people and come dance.”
The term friend was really stretching it where Grace was concerned. They were colleagues, well, ex-colleagues now, and neighbours in the same shitty studio apartment block. Grace had hooked him up with the apartment right after Liam left his ex. The only thing the place had going for it was that it was affordable. At least it had been until they’d both been called into a meeting that afternoon to be laid off. He suspected neither of them had the savings to stay there much longer if they didn’t find new jobs quickly.
“I think I’m just going to head home,” Liam said, grabbing the drink and chugging it as fast as possible. He needed to get out of the crowded bar where there were far too many reminders of the vampire and douchebag men haunting his memories.
It was only as he swallowed that he realised the sparkling wine had been too-generously mixed with something stronger—brandy, maybe? Gross. Knocking it back had not been the best move on his part. Especially on an empty stomach, and the cheap drinks they’d pre-gamed before they left. On the plusside, the immediate floaty sensation from the alcohol meant he stopped jumping whenever anyone got within two feet of him.
“Whatever. I’m gonna go find myself a sugar daddy,” Grace said, before promptly disappearing into the crowd and proving his point that she could not be categorised as a friend.
Fuck. Did he even have any friends anymore? The people he’d hung out with in college had moved on to other cities, and he hadn’t kept in touch. Although neither had they. He’d been working 60-hour weeks before he was laid off, and all his free time had gone to helping his parents fix up their house before they sold it to go spend their retirement on the high seas, cruising the world. How had he got to the age of thirty-three with nothing and no one to show for it? And how much fucking brandy had the bartender put in his drink?
Pushing off from the wall he’d somehow ended up leaning on, Liam placed his glass on the nearest surface and weaved his way through the throng of people toward the exit. The last thing he needed was to watch everyone around him living their fun lives that seemed so out of reach. Drunk Liam had an even higher sex drive than sober Liam, and he didn’t trust himself not to end up tied up in someone’s basement. It had happened before. It’s how he met his ex. The less said about that, the better.
A crisp autumn breeze smacked him in the face as he stepped outside, like the wind itself was trying to slap some sense into him. Were wind witches a thing? Did they spank like that? Shaking his head at his ridiculous thoughts, he made his way down the footpath, hoping the walk home would sober him up and already planning out which toy he was going to play with before he went to sleep. Usually, he wouldn’t have risked walking New Trinity’s streets alone so late, but his bank balancewas depressing enough already without adding the cost of a ride-share.
“Liam Barker?” a sharp voice called as he passed the alley next to the bar.
If he’d been a bit more with it, he would’ve run the other way. Instead, he stumbled closer. “Yeah? Do I know you?”
“You need to come with me.”
Liam snickered, his mind still somewhere in the gutter and too out of it to register the danger. “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink first?”
The man who stepped out of the shadows was something from Liam’s filthiest dreams. The ones that had him googling ‘werewolf porn’ after his run-in last month. He wasn’t a werewolf, though. No, he was something else entirely. Tall and lithe, with a white, collared shirt tailored to emphasise his toned muscles, the guy had deep purple hair—long enough to wrap your fingers in—that draped down high cheekbones to form the perfect frame for his features.
He also had horns. And a tail. A tail that was lashing back and forth like he was pissed.
“I think you’ve had enough. I’m not even doing anything, and you’re hard. Fuck, you’re delicious,” the guy said, his nostrils flaring as he breathed in deep, a new vitality filling his features. He sounded more annoyed than horny, though.
Blinking up at a face sculpted from sin, Liam’s mouth opened in a gasp of surprise as he saw the guy’s eyes were a bright, glowing purple with pupils slit like a cat’s. He was also wearing the cutest, sluttiest little glasses he’d ever seen. It had to bea costume, right? Contacts and hand-crafted prosthetics? Even the real-life vampire had looked mostly human—human but creepy AF. This guy wasn’t creepy. He was walking sex.
“Mmm… I’ve changed my mind. No drink required,” Liam said, stumbling as he stepped closer. He’d never been so horny. And that was saying alot.
He would have cursed his clumsiness in front of the hot guy, but he landed with both hands on his muscled pecs, so he couldn’t be too sad. Were those nipple piercings he could feel under his fingers? How intriguing. Nuzzling his nose into the guy’s chest where the top of his shirt was unbuttoned, he drew in a deep breath of his fiery scent that made him even more lightheaded. Groaning, he let his tongue slip out to brush his skin, needing a taste. Liam’s hips jerked forward as a low growl from above rumbled against his tongue. His every sense engaged in overwhelming need as a salty, smoky flavour burst across his tongue, and he couldn’t help but hump at the solid thigh now pressed between his legs.
“For fuck’s sake. You’re going to makemedrunk on your desire. Stop groping me and follow,” the guy snapped, his voice strained with tenuous control as he pushed ineffectually at Liam despite the fact that he could probably throw him across the room and onto a bed with one hand. What a delightful thought.
Liam whined, gripping the guy’s shirt before he could walk away, alcohol and desire messing with his inhibitions. “I don’t wanna. You said I need tocome.”
“Fine. Now, hush,” his captor hissed, hoisting Liam into a fireman’s carry as a storm of sudden climax raced through his body and consciousness slipped away from him.
CHAPTER 2: LIAM