Johann (Vampire's Mate Book 4), page 12
Roman arched a dark brow, his focus shifting from Jay to Alexei. “Pardon me?”
“I’m Alexei, his human boyfriend.” Alexei glanced down at Jay as he said it, worried maybe he’d misread the meaning behind Jay’s blanket permission to kiss in public earlier, but Jay was beaming at him, clearly delighted by the possessive declaration.
Good enough for Alexei. After all, if he was going to stake his claim, why not start with Jay’s intimidating vampire friend who looked at Alexei like he was an annoying bug to be squashed under his expensive Italian loafers?
Lucky for all of them, Alexei was used to cold, murderous-looking men sizing him up and finding him wanting. He could handle it well enough with mobsters. He supposed he ought to be able to handle it with vampires as well.
Jay turned that beaming smile to Roman, seemingly undeterred by the cold reception. “Yes, my human boyfriend. Isn’t that nice, Roman?”
Alexei could have sworn for a second there was something close to fondness in Roman’s gaze as he stared back at Jay, but the next moment, his eyes were cold again, and he turned his attention to the dog at his feet. “Settle, mutt,” he ordered the animal, who was wiggling and whining and trying to get Jay’s attention. The blue-gray dog immediately sat, muzzle shut obediently.
“That’s Ferdy,” Jay explained to Alexei. He gestured to the dog. “Ferdy, this is Alexei. My human boyfriend.”
Ferdy cocked his head, and Alexei had the momentary, insane thought the dog was actually listening to Jay’s words. Roman only stepped aside from the door, sighing a little, like Jay introducing people formally to his pet was an everyday sort of occurrence. “Everyone is in the kitchen.”
“Everyone” meant three other people. Vampires all, Jay had told Alexei. There was the strange blond one from the day before; a muscled, all-American-looking guy who towered over him, holding on to his hand; and a third, dark-haired one with pretty brown eyes, who looked vaguely related to the second.
They were each ridiculously good-looking. Maybe there was also a vampire modeling agency somewhere?
Jay gasped in apparent surprise as they entered the kitchen. “Soren. You’re here early.”
Soren grinned that wide, creepy grin. “Didn’t want to miss a moment, Jaybird.”
Introductions were made, Jay emphasizing the word boyfriend three separate times, to Alexei’s satisfaction, and then Soren stepped toward Alexei with a goblet—an actual fucking goblet—of ruby-red liquid in his hand. “Can I offer you a drink, human?”
Alexei couldn’t help it: he hesitated. There was that eerie fucking smile again.
The third guy—Danny, the nurse—made a sound of distress. “Soren. You’re being creepy on purpose.” He made an apologetic face at Alexei. “It’s just red wine, I promise. No blood at the table.”
“Me, creepy?” Soren’s manic grin fell, and his lower lip pushed out in an exaggerated pout. “Cutie, you wound me. I never get to play it up with humans.” He waved a hand in Alexei’s direction. “He already knows. Let me have my fun.”
“Not at the expense of our guest.”
The big guy, Gabe, grabbed Soren by the waist, tugging him back against his front. “Come here, brat. Behave.” He then looked Alexei over in that way buff guys sometimes did when they realized Alexei was bigger than them and they didn’t like that fact one bit.
Alexei did his best not to glower back, trying to keep his face in some semblance of a neutral expression. It wouldn’t do to alienate Jay’s friends at the very first meeting, not when the word boyfriend was being thrown about so wonderfully.
Soren relaxed back in Gabe’s arms with a sigh, looking to Alexei, then to Jay, and arching a brow. “I should lend you my heeled boots, Jaybird. Your human is going to get a crick in his neck trying to kiss you.”
Alexei huffed a reluctant laugh, but Jay shot Alexei a concerned look, his brow furrowed. “Does it hurt your neck, kissing me?” Before Alexei could even answer, Jay was patting his arm soothingly. “Poor human. Next time, just pick me up.” He turned to the rest of the room. “He’s very strong for a human. He can toss me around no problem.”
A variety of expressions went around the room at that statement: Soren looked delighted, Gabe horrified, Danny embarrassed, and Roman completely neutral.
Alexei shrugged.
There was an awkward silence after that, Alexei doing his very best to hold in the urge to ask everyone to pull out their fangs because—other than Soren’s creepy vibes and suspicious goblet—no one was acting like a vampire, and that in itself was kind of freaking him out.
Surprisingly, it was Roman who came to his rescue. “I am concerned I perhaps added too much garlic to the sauce for the chicken. Jay tells us you are versed in the culinary arts, Alexei. Perhaps you can try it?”
With those words, it hit Alexei for the first time how good the kitchen smelled. He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Oh. Well, I’m not really. I only know a few Russian recipes. But my palate isn’t bad.”
When Roman didn’t rescind the offer, Alexei tasted the sauce. Fucking delicious. And it was kind of hard to tell, but he thought the vampire seemed pleased enough by his praise when he told him so.
That seemed to set everyone else in motion, Danny pulling Jay into the other room to help set the table while Soren and Gabe let the dog out into the backyard.
Alexei, left alone with the intimidating vampire, cleared his throat, feeling once again unspeakably awkward. “So…garlic?”
Roman shrugged a shoulder. “A myth, of which there are many. Sunlight is irritating to our eyes but not deadly. An invitation to a human’s home is not necessary to enter. Mirrors and photos depict us just fine. A stake to the heart would only earn you an enraged vampire at your heels.”
“Beheading or fire,” Alexei murmured.
Roman turned to Jay, who had come back into the kitchen and was rummaging for glassware in the cabinet. “Johann.”
Jay didn’t even turn from his search. “What? He’s not going to hurt us. Are you, Alexei?”
“No. No, of course not.”
Gabe—and when had he and the dog come back from the backyard?—glared at Alexei from his spot at the door. “What are your intentions toward Jay?”
Roman scoffed, stirring his sauce. “Did you not hear? He is the boyfriend.”
Danny, among them once more because apparently no one could stay out of the kitchen for more than thirty fucking seconds, smiled happily at Roman. “Remember when you were my boyfriend?”
“I prefer husband. Lover. Mate,” Roman declared, turning from the stove to kiss him soundly, and from the way Danny looked so flushed and happy afterward, the guy couldn’t be made completely of ice.
Alexei’s ears perked up. There was that word again. “Mate? You two are mates?”
No one answered him right away, but everyone was looking at him with strange intensity. Looking at them, Alexei realized, as Jay had come to stand at his side, a stack of glasses in his hands.
“So Jay…told you about those?” Danny finally asked hesitantly.
“You have two mated pairs in this room, mobster,” Soren said, that intense grin once more on his face.
Alexei startled a bit at that “mobster,” but he couldn’t dwell too hard on his past being outed when he had a room full of vampires and a head full of questions. “Oh. Okay. How…I don’t understand quite how they work. How do you know you’ve found your mate?”
Alexei had no fucking clue if this was polite predinner conversation to have with a vampire crew or not, but he wanted to know, and no one seemed about to bare their fangs and tear his throat out in anger or anything.
Jay for his part was now ignoring the conversation completely. He’d set his glasses aside and had his attention focused on the cattle dog at their feet.
“A pull,” Roman answered, eyes boring into Alexei’s. “An intense, unshakable draw to another. My demon wanted him, and I just…knew.”
“Your demon?” Alexei asked. Maybe Roman was—what—some kind of supervamp?
“His beastie,” Jay answered from his crouch on the kitchen floor, his voice strangely flat. “The vampire part inside him. The part you see when my fangs are out.”
“Ah. Okay.” Alexei would come back to that later. “And how are they…chosen? What makes someone mate material?”
Was Alexei’s desperation—his fucking obsession with being bound to Jay in whatever way possible—coming through in his questions? Probably. It was hard to care, though, when he was actually getting answers.
“We don’t really know,” Soren answered, his gaze fixed on Jay and Ferdy. “Fate, they say. Can’t really argue with that. Roman and I ended up in Hyde Park, of all places, and our mates were just…here.”
Alexei tried to wrap his head around the likelihood of that. “But you’ve both been alive for centuries? Like Jay?”
Soren and Roman both nodded.
“So the odds of two of you finding your mates here…”
“Oh yes,” Soren giggled a little wildly, seemingly at some joke of his own. “Two of us.”
Danny cleared his throat. “Shall we eat?”
twelve
Alexei
Dinner wasn’t nearly as awkward as Alexei had feared.
With the minor inquisition—What are your intentions? Who’s mated to fucking who?—out of the way, it seemed like the group was content to proceed with the night as usual, chatting with one another easily.
Jay—seated next to Alexei at the dining room table—was quieter than Alexei had come to expect when it was just the two of them in a room, but he seemed content enough, gazing at his friends happily, eating more food than his small frame should ever be able to accommodate.
No one seemed to expect Alexei to talk much, which suited him just fine, especially with such an incredible meal before him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so well, weirdly enough (were there vampire cooking show hosts as well?).
Although, Alexei still had…questions.
Mate. Mates. Mated pairs. Fated mates.
How did one go from being a boyfriend to being a mate? It was incredibly fucking important that Alexei find out, preferably yesterday. But the fate part of it was throwing him for a loop. Did that mean Jay had a mate out there already? Was Alexei just…filler? Prepping Jay, giving him a taste of sex and romance, only for someone else to take him away permanently further down the line?
Alexei hated the idea, so much so that his generally steel-lined stomach started churning well before they got to dessert. Why the fuck couldn’t he be Jay’s mate? He’d be the most devoted mate there ever was, given the chance.
And no, the irony didn’t escape him. The fact that he’d only just recently risked it all, blown up his entire life to be free of family obligation, to avoid a future of permanent fealty to his brother. Only to be ready, less than two months later, to swear eternal devotion to the pint-size barista with a traumatic past and very specific dietary needs.
Alexei couldn’t find it in himself to care though. Because Ivan? Ivan was a toxic, power-obsessed asshole of the highest level, molded to be so by their complete dick of a father. And Jay? Jay was everything good and right and wonderful, somehow remaining so even after centuries of horrific influence.
So yes, Alexei would be fucking thrilled to be mated to Jay.
But Jay would have told him, wouldn’t he, if that were the case? The little guy was an open book, a large-print picture book at that. He didn’t exactly seem the type to keep many secrets at all, let alone a massive one like a fated, vampiric bond with each other.
One big question did make its way out of Alexei during the first real lull in the conversation, his practical side unable to keep holding it in. “What will you all do ten or twenty years from now? When none of you age?”
It was Danny who answered his question, after sharing a look with Roman. “We’ll leave,” he said simply. “All together. Find somewhere remote to spend some decades, until enough time has passed to join society again. Somewhere new though, obviously. A different country most likely.”
Alexei looked to Jay, who was helping himself to a fifth portion of chicken. “And…you’ll go as well?”
Jay flushed, shifting in his chair. “I’m not— Well…”
“Of course you will,” Danny protested, his voice infused with a sincere warmth. “You and, um, well…any companions you might have. Luc and Jamie will come too, I think.”
Alexei had no idea who those two were, but the other three vampires around the table—Jay excluded—started protesting immediately.
Danny only shook his head, a stubborn set to his features. “They’re our friends. We’re putting petty differences aside in the future. For the future.”
“Gabe’s broken arm—”
“Your murder—”
Alexei took a large sip of wine. Maybe life around vampires was more violent than he had originally thought.
He wondered if Jay had an opinion about the two potential additions to their getaway crew, but Jay ignored the argument, declaring a complete non sequitur instead. “I’d like to make a snow angel, I think.”
Everyone stopped talking, all of them looking at him with varying degrees of fond indulgence, but no one was actually stepping the fuck up for his suggestion. So Alexei did. “I’ll make one with you, kotyonok.”
Even with Alexei’s coat on for once, the cold night air was biting, but it was hard to care when Jay was so clearly delighted by the prospect of playing in the thick snow blanketing Danny and Roman’s backyard, bouncing on his toes on the deck like it was Christmas morning.
Alexei, slightly more sedate, stood next to him with his hands in his pockets, hoping his lack of gloves wasn’t going to lead to his fingers falling off. “Do you know how to make one, or do you want me to show you?”
“Of course I know how. You just flop like this—” Jay stepped off the deck and did exactly as he said, flopping onto his back “—and then you move your arms and legs like this—” He stretched his limbs out like a starfish, grinning like a loon all the while.
Alexei’s chest ached with a strange sort of pressure at the sight, as if it was too full of emotion for him to even begin to bear. He knew he wasn’t much to offer anyone, let alone an immortal being. Alexei was a runaway ghost, without a present or a future. He wasn’t particularly kind, or good, or fun, or funny. But in the face of Jay’s sweet delight, sprawling about in the snow, Alexei thought maybe he could offer something at least. He could be a companion. A witness. To help Jay enjoy the simple pleasures he’d been clearly denied for so long.
Jay loved the outdoors? Alexei would live in a forest cave with him, if he asked. Jay wanted to be around people? Alexei could handle that, if it was for Jay. He’d let Jay do all the talking, all the inadvertent charming, and it wouldn’t be so bad. Jay wanted a messy house? They’d make blanket forts, have a million pets, destroy their kitchen with culinary experiments. Alexei could be enough. He could try. He would try.
Until Jay’s better half came along and ruined it all, at least.
And wasn’t that a kick to the fucking gut? But even if they weren’t fated, Alexei could stay at Jay’s side until then, couldn’t he? Until Jay found the right person to tether him. It wasn’t like Alexei was going to deny him that, when it came down to it. Not if the alternative was insanity or death for his perfect, sweet vampire.
Jay, seeming to take Alexei’s silence as reticence, peered up at him cautiously from his spot on the snowy ground. “Have you ever made one before?”
“No, kotyonok.” Alexei made his way off the deck. “I wasn’t much for the outdoors when I was a kid. Or maybe I would have been, but I wasn’t given much of a chance. Not much of a childhood, really.”
Jay nodded solemnly and lifted his gaze to the stars above them. “I had a good childhood, I think. I do remember being very sad when my parents died. But my aunt and uncle had a farm, and they took me in. I liked it. The chores. The animals.”
Alexei could picture it so perfectly, sweet Jay tending to the cows, running barefoot in the fields. “And that’s where Vee found you?”
“Yes.” Jay’s face fell. “And then my life was very different.”
Out of a desire to bring that joyful smile back to Jay’s face more than anything else, Alexei flopped onto his back in the snow and spread his arms and legs about. He looked to the side to see Jay peering up out of his Jay-sized hole in the snow, gray eyes once again lit up with happiness. It took so fucking little to make him smile. “See?” Jay beamed. “Isn’t this nice?”
“So nice, kitten.” It was miserably fucking cold and wet was what it was, but that didn’t make Jay any less right.
“I’ve always liked the snow,” Jay mused, flopping again onto his back. “I wonder what else I might like? It’s weird… I’ve been alive for so long, and we’d move about so often, but it was always to the same kinds of places. Different variations on remote European countrysides. There’s so much of the world I haven’t seen, except for through books or movies. I went to the desert for the very first time this year. I poked a cactus, just to feel it.” Jay held up his pointer finger, as if in demonstration.
“Didn’t that hurt?” It was certainly hurting Alexei, this absentminded confession of all Jay had never been given, never been allowed.
“Oh yes.” Jay smiled up at the night sky. “But it was a reminder. That it was…real.”
It was suddenly completely unacceptable that Alexei didn’t have Jay in his arms. “Hey,” he said softly. “I’m a little lonely over here.”
“You are?” Jay scrambled up out of his snow angel immediately, clambering on top of Alexei’s supine form, settling his round bottom on Alexei’s stomach. “Better?”
“Almost.” Alexei tapped at his own lips with one ice-cold finger. “Need a kiss, I think.”
Jay leaned down eagerly to oblige, his frozen lips still managing to warm Alexei from the inside, out.
