How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager (Guides for Dating Vampires, #1)

by D.N. Bryn

It would be the swish of dark fabric spilling through the window, eyes tracking along his sleeping form, the shift of the bed as a monster joined him. Something hungry coming for him, because it wanted him. Because it needed him. A gentle breath on his neck, shivering down his spine. Fingers touching his hair, winding into it, holding him in place.

“You have blood on that hand.” Wesley pulled the arm back. “Oh shit, is that a vampire faux pas or something?” Vincent couldn’t find a courteous way to say no it just makes me want to suck on your fingers so he opted for, “I’m Vincent.”

I want you to let me grip your hair as I suck on your neck, I want you to fight me just a little so your body presses into mine, I want you to run your hands over your skin and tug at your clothing and see how long I can hold myself back from biting you

“Let’s fall in love with some vampires.” At that moment, there was nothing Vincent wanted Wesley to do more.

Because if my existence starts hurting anyone but myself, then maybe I don’t deserve to exist at all.”

Vincent found his desires now involved slamming Wes into walls for reasons that had nothing to do with starvation and everything to do with the fact that the sound he’d made as Vincent had grabbed him had left something throbbing and a little undone inside Vincent.

Vincent gave him a parody of a scowl. “Don’t you know it’s rude to mock a vampire’s equipment?” “Oh, come on, they’re adorable. So small and sharp.” “You can stop teasing me now, I get it,” Vincent grumbled lightheartedly. But when he looked closer at Wesley, the man didn’t seem to be teasing at all. “No, I mean it. They’re cute.” Wes appeared almost flustered, the softest hint of red on his cheeks. He didn’t meet Vincent’s eyes, wrapping his arms around the container of blood like he was trying to hug himself. If Vincent hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Wes was serious. Serious that he found Vincent’s fangs cute.

I don’t want to die, he’d meant to say, I just met you, things just started to get better.

If Vincent was going to die in someone’s arms, at least he had Wesley.

Wes pressed his forehead to Vincent’s chest, his breath still ragged as he wrapped his fingers through the vampire’s limp ones, hands shaking and fluttering. “I’m going to get you out of this,” he whispered, sealing the feeling in words. “I wager my life that you’re going to keep yours.”

Wesley tried to reposition his hold on the vampire with a grunt. The shift brought Vincent’s head toward his, and the vampire curled into his embrace almost instinctively, slotting his face against Wesley’s neck.

Vincent thought Wes was helping him. But of course he would. Why else would Wesley have loaded his unconscious body into a car, after playing video games with him, laughing with him, messaging with him like it was his job, finding blood for him, caring about him? Why would it occur to someone as genuine and good hearted as Vincent that all of that had just been a scam?

Because there was no way in heaven or hell or anything in between that Wesley Smith Garcia was ever letting Vitalis-Barron get their hands on his vampire.

his vampire 😭😭😭

“Pull your fangs in,” he hissed, “Before someone else sees.” Vincent flushed. He covered his mouth as he retracted them. He hadn’t even realized they’d been out in the first place, but thinking of biting Wesley, of dragging his fangs over Wesley’s lower lip and sucking the wound closed as he gasped… those thoughts must have slipped them free. Were trying to slip them free now. Fuck.

This seclusion hit Wes in a blow, both stronger and somehow different from the privacy of his own home. It made him want to slip his arm through Vincent’s and lean his head on the vampire’s shoulder and whisper all the desires that had been aching within him—the craving for Vincent’s mouth on his neck and his hands dragging down the front of Wesley’s pants, but something more than that too. For the promise of just this, again: to sit in the dark, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, passing back and forth their drink in silence and simply existing together.

Even if he’d had other reasons at the time, and now all that remained was his craving for Vincent’s mouth on his skin and his desire to give the vampire something as important and personal as he could, to start making up for everything he couldn’t risk telling him.

It should have been terrifying; it should have felt too vulnerable, Wes’s entire life pounding through veins, so exposed that a vampire could drain it away without a second thought. But this wasn’t just any vampire: it was Vincent. And being vulnerable for Vincent wasn’t frightening. It was freeing.

“I should go,” Vincent said. No, he shouldn’t. Wes didn’t want him to. He wanted Vincent to stay and be safe and happy and know that there was someone who cared about him, as a weird shy kid or a vampire or anything else he was or ever would be.

If Vincent had to be here loving Wes and wanting him every night for the foreseeable future, then it would be less painful to walk into the sun.

And he wanted to give Vincent everything he possibly could for as long as the vampire would let him.

With Vincent, he could just be.

“Of course. I’d do anything for you, Vinny.”

Before the full word could slip free, Vincent’s mouth covered it up, his fingers gripping into Wesley’s hair. He kissed like he’d been thinking of this every moment since they’d met, kissed like they were two objects destined to come together from the start of the universe, the earth finally plunging into the sun. Wes’s mind turned to stardust and his bones to light. And Wesley Smith Garcia kissed his vampire back.

“This is why I didn’t tell you,” Vincent whispered. “Why?” His tone was miserable. “Because I’d want you to be safe and happy? Because I’d want to take care of you?”

Wesley didn’t just smell like Wesley anymore. He smelled like home.

SOBBING

He would know him anywhere: in the pitch black, at the end of the world, by the sound of his breath and the way Wes’s heart tuned to it.

“Yeah, that was my house. And that vampire you’ve hurt? That’s someone I love.”

Wes said, and he sounded so thoroughly broken that Vincent couldn’t bear to look at him in case what he saw there really was Wes’s raw and bleeding heart, because if he did, he was fairly certain he’d have to find a way to heal it, even if it meant cutting himself back open to do so.

Definitely a prize for man doesn’t break cover despite wanting to look back at the vampire he’s madly in love with one last time.

Vincent was back in that cell still, waiting for him. There would be time to mourn later. Right now he needed to finish this and save his vampire.

Waiting. He was waiting. For Wesley. Well, Wesley was here, and he was going to set the world on fire before he let anyone hurt his vampire again.

Instead of backing away, Wes stepped forward, squinting into the room with his hand outstretched. “I won’t leave without you, Vinny.”

Wesley pressed his lips to Vincent’s head as the vampire slept.

As he passed the couch where Vincent slept, expression so loose and peaceful that it made Wes’s chest ache, he knew this was the right choice: to protect Vincent. To keep one vampire safe and happy, even if he couldn’t give that to all of them.

But if Vincent was safe, then that was all Wes could ask for.

Maybe it was just a part of him now, the way his thirst for blood and allergy to garlic were. The way his love for Wesley always would be.

You are already enough, exactly as you are, and you deserved so much better than me. Wes

He breathed in and out again and forced himself to take another step away from the place he cared about most in the world, and the person he cared for even more than that.

Vincent swayed, half his body tipping back toward the front door. “You know, this is the first place that’s felt like a home to me in a long time. In forever, really. But since you’ve been gone, it’s just a house again.”

Wesley didn’t tell his legs to move, but neither did he tell his lungs to breathe or his heart to beat. They did so because they were born to, and he was born to run into Vincent’s arms. He crashed against the vampire, stumbling Vincent backwards into the shade. Vincent wrapped him up.

Vincent wanted him. Vincent had maybe even wanted him all along. It felt as though the color had returned to a world that had slowly been going gray, his future transforming from a monotonous trudge to a beautiful adventure just by the knowledge that throughout the ups and downs, he could have Vincent’s hand in his.

Vincent shifted to keep him pinned, smirking as he licked a drop of blood off of the corner of his lips. “You had enough of me yet?” “God, never,” Wesley breathed. And he was absolutely certain he would never, ever have had enough of Vincent.

“Though,” he admitted, softer, pressing his lips to the line he’d dragged with his fang. “Mostly I just love how desperate you are. Like you want me as much as I want you.”

Wesley was here, not just for the moment, but for an age—maybe even forever.

If he could have committed to being Vincent’s prey forever, and his everything else too, he’d have agreed in an instant.

He had never felt so wanted in his life, nor so safe.