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

by D.N. Bryn

an angry naked fireman with an ax? Vincent hadn’t realized it was possible to have horny nightmares, but after the fireman encounter he didn’t sleep through the day for a month.

He was here, breaking into people’s homes while they slept, because not doing so would mean starvation and eventually death. He was not here to creepily think about how wonderful they smelled while staring at their perfect cheekbones and the gentle flutter of their long lashes and… oh god he was still fawning over this complete stranger.

“You, Wesley, want to be in love with what you do. You want it to give you fluttery heart feelings and raise your dick at night. Which is why you need a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. You have so many options! At this very moment, you could be out falling in love with literally anyone.” “That’s literally not what bisexuality means and you know it,” Wes grumbled.

“I’m not here every night,” except it definitely came from the mouth of someone quite a lot less stable and far more breathless than him. The man’s lips quirked. “Seeing other humans, are you?” Vincent wanted to die. If someone could come stake him right there, he’d probably say thank you and have a nice day after.

That was what dreams were for—getting you horny in circumstances that made your waking self reevaluate your sanity.

LordOfTheWin Dude the vampire was REAL call me asap. KendallCanoodles Did you just wake up? LordOfTheWin I told you a vampire has literally been biting me at night and you want to know about my circadian rhythm?

Vincent blinked, trying to dislodge the vision of all the things he could ask Wesley to do—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—all things that had dwelt in his dreams the last few days, but which he would never, ever speak aloud as long as he lived.

“Do either of those have garlic in them?” Wes froze. “You’re serious?” “I have an allergy.” The center of Vincent’s cheeks tinted red. It made him look… well, Wes didn’t want to consider that. All the ways that Vincent could potentially flush had nothing to do with Wes.

But there was the vampire, mug tipped over his mouth as he drank the last of his hot sauce broth. He lowered it, panting in great sharp breaths, his cheeks bright red and his eyes wild. They barely seemed to focus on Wesley, locking and then slipping away and then locking again. “Did I… win?” he huffed. “Fuck,” was all Wes could say to that. He held out the milk.

He shouldn’t have been concerned about this vampire who’d broken into his house to drink his blood in the first place. Except when he phrased it like that, his brain flashed up what it might be like for a vampire to consensually slip into his room and wake him with tiny nibbles as they tenderly pinned him down, their fingers tight in his hair, maybe their other hand slipping between his thighs—

The way he looked at Wesley for just a moment, Wes felt like a kind of prey. A very good kind of prey.

that made Vincent squeak and realign his gauze. “So no garlic and no sunlight. But you don’t turn into a bat, right?” “I wish.” Vincent sounded wistful.

“Are you asking me if I want to suck on your bloody t-shirt?” Wes made a face. “It does sound gross when you phrase it like that.” He pulled the shirt away and crossed to the foyer, instinctively stepping over the creaky spot in the flooring. Behind him, Vincent shifted, then groaned. “No, wait, I never said I didn’t want it!”

“Did I ruin all your monstrously vampiric plans?” “Absolutely all of them.” He could not believe he was saying this, but somehow the words were coming out of his mouth anyway, spurred on by the shirt he was now wringing between his hands. “Frankly, all my pastimes involve my mouth. I should have my opposable thumb permit taken away.” Wes looked like he was about to say something, then promptly shut up.

Wesley Smith Garcia had managed to pack his catalog with over ten different vampire-focused games, most of them role-play heavy, which was more than Vincent had known existed in the mainstream. He tracked back through them with a cackle. “You are a fetishist.” Wesley looked a bit like he wanted to die. “I am not! I developed a perfectly healthy interest in vampires after I found out one of them had been biting me in my sleep.”

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

The whole time the vampire fought his natural instincts to feed from the player character’s scraped chin and fuck them in a pushy, almost threatened kind of way that didn’t seem quite consensual to Vincent. “That’s not realistic,” Vincent reassured Wes. “The feeding instinct, a bit, but it’s not like every time I smell blood I also have to have sex with the person.” “I know. I mean, I figured, since you haven’t tried to, you know, bodice rip me or something.”

“You can’t—you can’t take me to a hospital,” he said, words still a little slurred. “No insurance.” “Oh,” was all Wesley could manage. 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? Particularly, when not all of it was.

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.

Second, I don’t know if he’s gay. And third, I’m not into him, so one and two don’t even matter. KendallCanoodles You’re a river in Egypt.

“You’ve been cheating on me! I knew it. I bet he has bigger fangs, huh? More intoxicating venom?” Never, Wesley wanted to say, there’s no one I could ever crave the way I crave you,

he tried to kiss Wesley Smith Garcia. Except, as it turned out, impulse and alcohol had equal potential to create and destroy. Instead of meeting Wes’s lips with his own, he found the man’s nose with the tip of a fang. Wes jerked back, cursing. “Ah fuck, was that you? Ah—” And he sneezed. Vincent bolted to his feet. “Sorry, god, I’m sorry! Are you bleeding, should I—”

I like you, Wesley Smith Garcia, and I need to know you see me as a person, even if you don’t like me back. He wanted to say that, he wanted so badly just to be out with it, but it caught in his throat, a tight, terrifying bundle that seemed so wrong for this moment, both of them sopping and shivering and scared.

As he lowered the towel from his hair, Wes caught sight of a series of short scars along the inside of his left arm. His brain stalled on them, leaving him to stare a moment longer than he should have as he tried to place their meaning. Oh. Oh, fuck. “If my existence starts hurting anyone but myself, then maybe I don’t deserve to exist at all.”

I was so low at the time, and the vampire I’d been seeing brought a couple of vamp friends with him for this basement party that I barely even remember. They’d all been biting me on and off, and I’m pretty sure I ended up in a supply closet or a laundry room or something with one of them by the time I started passing out. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then, and I don’t know if they even realized what was happening to me, or cared enough to pay that kind of attention. I was in a bad place, and I might have chosen to turn if they’d asked, but I didn’t really get that option, you know?”

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.

“Maybe I like it when my prey fights back.” He dragged one fang down the side of Wesley’s cheek, taking care not to nick him with the venom building at the tip until the very last second. “It makes it all the more thrilling when I finally ravage you.”