Blood Claim by Laura Mykles (free e books to read .txt) 📕

never seen him do before, and his left hand was exposed. Corbin—Cory, his brain provided because Luke had always hated the name Cory had chosen—didn't stir, not even when Luke ran his hand down Cory's arm. It was absolutely dark in the room; Luke's eyes didn't even have a speck of light to see with, but he felt where Cory's slightly chilly skin was, and the burn on Cory's hand ached for both of them.

The rivets from the iron were colder white circles in the already cool scar tissue. Cory had done it to himself back when he was a human teenager. There had been no great tragedy in Cory's life, just a con artist father who cared if he was there or not only as long as he was useful. As soon as Cory was old enough, the old man would drag him along on his short cons. Most of his marks didn't believe such a caring father could be up to no good, and he'd taken full advantage of that. Poor Cory learned quickly that his father loved him only on the little trips that they took, and his disgust at the stupidity of people was born. The jobs hadn't lasted, of course, and eventually his father was arrested and sent to jail. Cory had been sent to live with his aunt. The woman had taken the court's maintenance money and then didn't maintain anything. Cory spent the next few years in and out of juvie. But he conned his social worker the same way his father conned his marks, and the stays were never too long.

Cory had just turned eighteen and the money stopped coming that his aunt had put him on a bus with a one-way ticket. He'd come to Calgary with a freshly ruined hand, and the normal jostling of the bus had just about killed him after some older men had rolled him in the washroom for his pain meds. That much Luke knew.

He extrapolated the rest. Cory didn't talk about it, but there were nights when he would listen to Luke speak and would provide one-word answers that built the story up in bits and pieces. It had to have been a vampire. Cory hadn't shown any surprise when Luke came out to him, as it were. The old scars on his neck were a dead giveaway, regardless.

The vampire, whoever it had been, had wanted Cory. Luke had only been compelled once, and he remembered how horrified he had been to have absolutely no control. For a teenager like Cory, it would have been hell.

And the hold had been a strong one. It must have been someone quite powerful. Cory hadn't just touched the iron. Oh, no. He'd held it to his flesh, and even as he felt the burn spreading into his hand, the need to obey had still been there. He'd passed out, and only then had the spell been broken.

It had wounded him in more ways than physically. His aunt had taken him to the hospital, where they not only treated the wound itself; they had him committed for an obvious self-inflicted injury. Cory had never forgiven for her signing the papers that had locked him up however temporarily when that thing had hunted him. When they released him, she had put him on a bus with an extra roll of bandages, a bottle of rattling pills that hadn't made it past the first stop off the bus, and a battered, duct-taped suitcase which hadn't lasted past the second.

Luke had never seen a wound that had come over on a vampire after they woke up in their new life, but this mark had.

But they'd been making it work. Cory still accused him of wanting his master to return, but the longer they were together, the less true that was. And even when they did fight, the make-up sex blew Luke's mind and cock. But then they'd come out of a pub in September. The autumn heatwave had finally broken, making Luke wish he'd brought his jacket in with him. He was about to jokingly offer to bring the car around for Cory, who always took the chill worse than he did, but Cory, for an instant, didn't appear to hear him. He'd turned away, facing north, and for a second, Luke saw real fear in Cory's face.

Then the argument started. It led to a fight, then almost a full brawl, and as much as Luke wanted to disengage, there was no way to avoid the expert way Cory mashed each and every one of his buttons.

"I wish you had gone with anyone besides me,” he told Cory, who only pulled his hand back under the covers and turned his back to Luke.

The message was loud and clear. Luke sighed and went back to sleep himself.

He woke up alone in bed, but Cory was nearby. Luke dressed in the dark and left the room. The tantalizing smell of coffee filled the first floor; he'd forgotten Cory was such an early riser. He remembered in time that Cory made it stronger than he liked, yet another thing they argued about, but this time he just added tap water before taking his mug outside with him.

Cory was by the pond, watching the fish. They weren't koi; Luke found those just a little pretentious. They were just goldfish, grown huge in the freedom Luke had allowed them.

"Where's Joe?” Cory asked, instead of a hello. He was dressed in his jeans and a flannel shirt of Luke's. It had been packed away with the rest of Luke's winter-weight clothes, so Cory must have gone hunting for it.

"He went to the fish pond in the sky, Cory,” Luke said. “Sorry."

Cory had picked out Joe and Billy himself years ago. Billy was still in the pond. He was the largest, most cantankerous of all nine, and as Luke spoke, Billy himself surfaced with a flash of orange and then swam out of sight, to even their inhuman