Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Emotion was something Vice had been taught to suppress and dismiss.
As a vampire, pain was only a remnant of the human body's warning system for survival. Pain meant nothing to a creature that recovered from any wound save for the destruction of the brain. Some injuries healed on their own in an instant, others needed blood, but very little was life threatening to the power and durability vampire's possessed. Through the course of rigorous, torturous training, Vice no longer responded to the illusion of physical pain.
Anger was a futile emotion, serving only to dim the senses and impair cognition, giving away his location if it peaked his power. Love, now love was truly treacherous. It gave the strongest of men a weakness that could bring them to their knees, and it impaired intelligent decision under duress. It changed people, softened them, drove them to do things they'd never imagined. It also lit a passion that led to obsession if left unchecked.
Of that emotion, Vice was guilty.
The broad shoulders of Wren Sol had gotten wider by an increment after he'd accepted Talamayas as his soul bound. The power of his master had imbued the mage with a sturdier body, one more resilient, with greater endurance, and shallow dark magic parallel to Talamayas. Vice traced the dip in those powerful shoulders, learning every line of his new master's body as Wren lowered himself between Talamayas' legs.
Some might think Vice creepy if they knew he was standing here watching Talamayas wrap his tan-skinned hand in Wren's ruffled, red hair to push his face further down, but it wasn't like such activity was arousing to him. It certainly was for Talamayas. His master's fangs lengthened, and Talamayas opened his lips for a low moan of pleasure as he thrust his hips forward, Wren gripping his thighs to meet the pressure.
Vice had been at Talamayas side since he was newly changed, nearly fifty years now, and embarrassment and nervousness were not emotions he felt anymore. Two men moving against each other, one sweating as he strained his muscles and the other gasping to inhale the essence of the other was just mechanical. It was another facet of Talamayas Sol's life that he experienced alongside the man.
Talamayas knew he was here.
He always did.
The blood flowing inside of Vice had originated within Talamayas' body, and it fueled him, gave him life, made him stronger, and connected him with Talamayas in a way no other could experience. That was the result of Vice's warped change, the need to feed on vampire blood. For fifty years he'd stood at Talamayas side, invisible, but always close enough to touch or breathe him in. Vice wasn't a guard so much as he was Talamayas, as extension of his soul, a second take on any decision he made, the eyes that watched his back, the arms that carried his will, the keeper of everything Talamayas had ever seen or experienced.
Talamayas had changed over the years, and Vice couldn't say he liked or disliked it. He'd been taught to feel neither. What Talamayas did was just that, nothing he objected to nor commended. It just was. The arch of Talamayas' hips and the grunt of pleasure as he gripped Wren's hair and locked him in place, his fangs straining with the desire for blood as he dropped his head back onto the pillows, the shudder that rolled down his body as he released himself into Wren's lips, and the glow of ecstasy in his crimson eyes that neared Talamayas' expression of agony so closely that it was indistinguishable.
