STORY EXCERPT

Jonas closed his eyes and breathed deeply several times before turning to relock the door. “I’m trying to help you, Nicholas.”

“Then help me get my mate back. They took him. They took the man I love, and no one will help me get him back.” Jonas was tall, broad in the shoulders, and had muscles to spare. If anyone could help, it was the vampire standing across the room from him. Even the stubborn set of his square jaw said he was a force to be reckoned with.

“You don’t love him.” Jonas slid off his jacket and hung it on the hook by the door. “You met him one time. Everything you’re feeling is because of the curse the witch placed on you. We’ve talked about this.”

Yes, they’d talked about it, but Nicholas didn’t believe a word of it. They were lying to him—trying to trick him because they wanted Malakai for themselves. “What about my coven? What are they doing without me?”

“Elder Cortez is taking responsibility for the Olympia Coven until you are better.” Jonas removed two bags of blood from the fridge, poured them into cups, and placed them in the microwave.

“I don’t need to get better. There is nothing wrong with me besides the fact that everyone is trying to keep Malakai away from me.”

The microwave dinged, and Jonas turned back to remove the cups. “I’m not going to argue with you anymore. Malakai is not your mate. You barely even know him.” Setting the cups down on the kitchen table, Jonas plopped down in one of the seats, and sighed. “Do you remember when we used to go skinny-dipping in the summer?”

Nicholas frowned at the subject change. Jonas was trying to distract him, but it wouldn’t work. “We never did anything like that.”

Jonas mirrored his frown and cocked his head to the side. “What about that time we went to Vegas, and you got so drunk you puked in that woman’s handbag?”

“What? Jonas, why are you making these things up?”

Rising from his chair, Jonas stalked toward him slowly. “The time I was stabbed with a gold blade? I almost died, and you sat with me the entire time.”

Nicholas shook his head. While garlic, holy water, crucifixes, and silver were purely Hollywood fiction of how to kill a vampire, there were other things that proved quite lethal to them. Silver, steel, or whatever—being stabbed hurt like hell, but they could heal from it. Gold, however, was toxic to their systems.

A stake through the heart would kill anyone, whether it be human, shifter, or vampire. It didn’t even have to be through the heart. Vampires could bleed to death if the wound didn’t heal quickly enough.

Nicholas couldn’t remember Jonas ever being stabbed with gold, though. What kind of game was he playing? “This isn’t funny anymore, Jonas.”

“I don’t find it very humorous, either. You said we’re friends, right? Tell me what you remember. We’ve known each other for hundreds of years. Tell me what you remember about us.”

“You’re my guard. We’re friends. You want to make me unhappy by keeping me away from my mate.” Nicholas closed his mouth as his eyebrows drew together. “Why did I just say that?” It was true, but that hadn’t been what he’d wanted to say, and it didn’t answer Jonas’s question at all. Strangely, he couldn’t remember anything else about Jonas or any time spent with him. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I remember?”

Jonas smiled sadly and shook his head as he fisted his hands on his hips. “I’ve been trying to tell you for months now. That fucking bitch, Natalie Halstead, cast a spell so that you’d become infatuated with the first person you saw. That person was Malakai.”

“No.” Nicholas took a step back and waved a hand in front of him. “You’re lying. You’re trying to trick me and make me doubt my feelings for Malakai. She said you would do this.”

Jonas arched both eyebrows. “Who said that?”

“I…” Nicholas’s brow furrowed as he concentrated. “I don’t know.”

“Then let me help you remember.” Jonas sounded almost pleading as he advanced toward Nicholas again. “Let me help you.”

Stumbling backward, Nicholas shook his head frantically. “This is wrong. Something’s wrong.”

“I know, Nicky,” Jonas cooed. “You don’t have to be scared. We can fix this.” He paused in his steps and held his hand out. “Trust me.”

“W–What did you call me?” The name stirred something inside of him and made his heart flutter, though not uncomfortably. No one ever called him anything but Nicholas or Leader McCarthy. So, why did the nickname sound so familiar coming from Jonas?

“Please, Nicky.” Jonas took a step closer with his hand still outstretched. “Trust me.”

Something tickled at the fringes of his memory, but it disappeared before Nicholas could grasp it. Just a moment ago, he’d been so sure that he knew exactly what was going on, but now he felt confused and…afraid. He didn’t much care for either feeling. “Jonas?”

“We’re going to make this right, but I need your help. Don’t make me beg.”

Tentatively, Nicholas reached out and placed his hand in Jonas’s. What choice did he have? He had questions, and Jonas was the only one who could give him answers. That didn’t mean he implicitly trusted the man, though. That stupid nickname was making him weak. “I’m in.” He squeezed Jonas’s hand before releasing it. “But don’t call me Nicky.”

ADULT EXCERPT

He didn’t know if it was a plea or a warning, but his name sounded so sweet on Jonas’s lips. “Say it again.” One hand released Jonas’s hair and traveled down his back to cup his firm ass. “Say it again.”

“Nicky,” Jonas breathed, barely more than a whisper.

“That’s it,” Nicholas cooed. Insinuating a hand between them, he fumbled with Jonas’s fly until he was able to part the fabric and extract his lover’s leaking prick. They both groaned when Nicholas wrapped his fingers around the thick, hard flesh and dipped his thumb into the weeping slit.

Jonas jerked and shuddered in his arms, a needy, desperate mewling pouring from his parted lips. Nicholas scraped his incisors down the damp skin of his mate’s neck, hard enough to make Jonas moan, but not enough to break the skin.

“No biting.”

There was no need for the reminder, though. While his body, heart, and mind all yearned to cement the bond between them, the tiny voice of reason at the back of his head pitched a fit at doing anything to endanger the well-being of his mate. “Carne nudo revelabis,” he murmured, smiling when their clothes vanished and Jonas gasped in surprise. “Is my witchy hoodoo still too much for you?”

“If you can magick us up some slick, I’ll never say another word against it.” Jonas squirmed on top of him, molding their nude, heated bodies together as his hands roamed over every inch of flesh he could reach. “Hurry, Nicky.”

Nicholas could do better than produce a bottle of lube, though. “Cedite mihi. Relevare modo. Oblita doloris. Tantum delectatio manet.”

“Oh, my God!” Jonas humped against him harder as his eyes rolled back in his head and the cords in his neck strained. “What are you doing to me?”

“Do you like it?”

“It feels amazing. It’s like I can feel you inside me. I can definitely get into this magic thing.” His fingers dug into Nicholas’s shoulders, and he rocked his body, creating a mind-numbing, delicious friction between their pulsing cocks.

“I won’t always use magic,” Nicholas assured his lover. “I want to take my time with you.” His head dropped back and he growled when Jonas gave a hard swivel of his hips. “Next time.”

“I’ve wanted you for too long, Nicky. Fuck the foreplay and get to the good stuff.”

“You’re playing with fire, babe. When I get inside you, it’s going to be hard and fast.” Nicholas didn’t wait for an answer before flipping them over and pressing Jonas into the floor beneath him. “This is your last chance to say no.”

“Fuck me, damn it!”

Well, it wasn’t poetry, but it was all the affirmation that Nicholas needed. Pushing Jonas’s knees toward his chest, Nicholas skimmed two fingers along his lover’s crease, right to the slick and loosened star he sought. Claiming his mate’s mouth in a heated duel of tongues, lips, and teeth, he inserted both fingers and pumped in and out of Jonas’s silky channel.

If he practiced a bit more, he could get good at this magic thing. Jonas’s hole was well stretched and slippery with lubrication, allowing his digits a smooth glide without resistance. Confident that he wouldn’t hurt his partner, Nicholas took both of Jonas’s arms and stretched them over the Enforcer’s head, pinning his wrists with one hand. “Don’t move,” he ordered in a low, feral growl.

Lining up the engorged crown of his cock with Jonas’s hole, he teased the muscles with minute nudges, loving the way they relaxed and opened to allow him entrance.

“Stop teasing me.” Jonas groaned and arched his back, pulling against the hold Nicholas had on his wrists. His dick flexed and jerked, bouncing against his lower abdomen and coating it in clear drops of pre-cum.

It wasn’t candlelight and slow music. It wasn’t rose petals on silk sheets. Hell, they didn’t even have a bed. Still, as he impaled Jonas on his hard length, encasing himself to the root inside his mate’s velvet-lined tunnel, the moment was perfect simply because of the man beneath him.

Jonas threw his head back and cried out as his inner walls constricted around Nicholas’s cock like a vise. The heat, the snug hold, the sweat that glistened over Jonas’s hard, muscled body—the sights, the smells, the erotic sounds—it finally existed outside of Nicholas’s dreams. The hard concrete floor of the holding cell wasn’t a room at the Ritz, nor was it a fumbled and hurried encounter in the dark of night by a muddy pond.

Pulling out until only the crown remained to stretch Jonas’s entrance around the flared ridge, Nicholas waited for his lover to meet his eyes before surging back in hard and fast. A clawing, aching, and overwhelming need burned inside of him, driving his hips in lightning-fast strokes as he plunged into Jonas’s welcoming body over and over.

He could see his mate—touch him, truly feel him—without the fear of being caught and punished. Instead of keeping half of his attention focused on the world around them and any signs of encroaching danger, he was free to focus solely on the flex of Jonas’s muscles, the way his hips jerked up to meet each one of Nicholas’s demanding thrusts, and the sweet sounds of his mate’s pleasure.

Looping one arm under Jonas’s knee, Nicholas lifted his leg, opening his mate to deeper penetration. It still wasn’t enough, though. His cock swelled and pulsed inside Jonas’s hold. His sac tightened, his balls ached, and a deep rumble began in his chest as electricity shot through his body and pooled in his belly.

“Close,” Jonas grunted. He tried to free his hands, but Nicholas held them firmly in his grip. “Please. Touch me. Fuck!”

“Look at me,” Nicholas demanded, leaning over his lover until their noses almost touched. “Open your eyes and look at me, Jonas.”