Vampire Mated is an M/M+ instalove, why choose novella scheduled to release October 15th in the anthology Vampires In Denver. Additional partners will be added with each book. If vampires make you shiver, this anthology is for you! This novella will serialize for free on the blog Wednesday/Friday leading up to the release, but future chapters will be behind a password only available on my newsletter. Sign up and get a free copy of The Dragon Heir’s Omega, an M/M/M instalove novella with dragon shifters.

Chapter One

Nico breathed hard as he pushed himself off the rug and back to his feet. His legs quivered unsteadily. He didn’t have enough energy for the next jump, but he reached his hands up to the ceiling and went up on his toes with as much force as he could wring from his thighs.

His watch beeped a warning at him. Heart rate over 120.

He collapsed gratefully on the couch as he panted for air and tried to shake the agony out of his legs. Nico didn’t need any fancy equipment or weights for his workout routine. Ten burpies left him shaky and lightheaded, even when he cut out the pushup part of the sequence and just did the jumps.

Nico sucked in a big breath and let it out, holding his own wrist steady to squint at his watch. Heart still holding at 118. He lay there for another several minutes, occasionally shaking out his legs, until he didn’t feel on the edge of passing out anymore.

A normal person didn’t even hit 100 doing a couple of burpies at a slow pace, but Nico had long ago come to terms with the fact that fate had dealt him a critical failure on his genetics roll. One he couldn’t even pester his parents for answers about since his father was a mystery and his mother dropped him into foster care before he could really remember. Four or five years old.

A four-year-old doesn’t ask about the family medical history.

There was something hinky with his immune system. An auto-immune disorder of some kind that the free general practitioner his work insurance paid for couldn’t identify on her own.

Nico didn’t blame her. She wasn’t a specialist and Nico had no way to pay for tests beyond the normal ones that said his blood type was A Negative and his iron levels were nominal.

Whatever was wrong with him, exercise helped. It wiped him out for a few minutes, but it seemed to keep the chronic pain manageable and even though he had to take a lot of breaks when his heart tried to launch into space, the exercise also helped stabilize muscles and bones that didn’t like to stay in place.

The watch reported an easy 98 bpm and Nico carefully stood up from the couch. He paused once he was on his feet, fingers touching the couch arm, as his vision tunneled in from the edges for a moment, then opened again as his heart caught up with the fact that he was upright.

He raked his hand through his hair to get the strands out of his eyes and tried to remember the next set of steps. He needed a glass of water. He hadn’t done enough work to break a sweat, so he didn’t need a shower.

Nico’s phone chimed from the side table tucked against the couch arm and he glanced at the alarm—one of many in a sequence that helped him keep to a schedule—ah. Lunch time.

That was another weird thing Nico attributed to his bizarre health problems: he never felt hungry. In fact, Nico’s first sign of hunger was usually lightheadedness. If he ignored that by accident things only got worse: nausea, severe fatigue, a sharp increase in pain.

In short, the alarm was a preventative measure. As long as Nico stayed on the schedule, he could mitigate the worst of his symptoms. Most days he was good about staying on the schedule.

He moved to the kitchen, a small dinette situation immediately behind his couch, with the apartment door bracketing the other end. He scanned through his meal options in the fridge, not really feeling into any of them but knowing he had to eat something.

He’d had a roommate a year ago, now. Alex. He’d been an on-again off-again boyfriend. Having someone else in the apartment helped a lot. Nico didn’t really understand why. Alex didn’t make sure he ate or help him work out. But just the presence of another person in the apartment made it easier for him to get off the couch to obey an alarm.

Without someone else here, Nico sometimes struggled for reasons he couldn’t explain. Tasks like running the vacuum across his two-bedroom apartment became insurmountable for days or weeks. Sticking to a schedule helped, but suddenly the schedule itself wasn’t enough to keep Nico on track.

Nico slid a Tupperware of chicken and roasted veg into the microwave. It didn’t sound great today, but maybe the smell of it would wake up his stomach. That worked sometimes.

He sighed. Shook out his leg. His left hip complained when he woke up this morning, a sure sign that he’d dislocated it in his sleep and popped it back in, probably while rolling over. The workout was meant to strengthen the muscles in his hips and back with time, but it wouldn’t fix today’s pain. He should grab a painkiller to have with lunch.

He checked his heart rate. 83. Nice, coming down smoothly. Nico moved around the table.

He was halfway to the bedroom when his front door slammed open with the violent force of a SWAT breaching team.

Nico nearly had a heart attack on the spot. He jumped hard and crashed against the back of his couch. He almost tipped over it. His breath came short and quick, his heart slamming in his chest like it had with the workout. His watch helpfully beeped at him. Heart rate over 120.

He stared at the man looming in the doorway in shock. Nico recognized him.

The man was something like six and a half feet tall, with broad linebacker shoulders. His eyes glowed red, like he was wearing contacts for clubbing, but the black shirt and slacks that hung off his pale skin were torn, ripped, and stained with something equally dark.

His name was Dimitri.

Nico had met him at a club six months ago, now, where he’d been polished and suave. Very sexy. And very interested in some of Nico’s… more violent kinks. Nico didn’t tend to indulge in his kinky side. Alex had been a vanilla guy, not even into spanking. But Dimitri had zeroed in on Nico on the dance floor like the guy already knew how compatible they were in the bedroom.

He’d bitten Nico in the middle of the music and left a hickey that lasted days. Nico had to walk home with a mess in his pants. He’d been craving Dimitri ever since.

“Dimitri?” Nico asked when the back-lit shape in his doorway didn’t move.

Dimitri twitched at his name, his eyes focusing sharply on Nico.

No, not on Nico, on his throat.

After that heady meeting on the dance floor, Dimitri had shown up only a few times. All of them had been viciously hot. The kind of wild sex Nico only heard about men boasting of around the club.

Dimitri had a focused interest in biting and blood. He had at least six teeth filed or capped to look like fangs. He was tall enough to pin Nico down, fuck him, and bite his neck and shoulders at the same time.

Seeing him standing in the doorway was odd, but Nico couldn’t deny he responded to the dark and predator vibe. It pushed all of his buttons in all the right ways. Being stalked and hunted like prey, bitten and bathed in his own blood, being possessed by someone strong and precise enough to handle the way his illness impacted him.

Dimitri had done all of the above without ever explaining much about himself. Nico was, obviously, smitten by the mystery man.

Nico couldn’t even begin to guess why he was here at all.

Nico took a step forward. Dimitri slumped a little in the doorway, his arms hanging forward. His mouth opened and he panted through it, the filed canine teeth gleaming in Nico’s kitchen light.

His eyes twitched again, to Nico’s chest, then back up to his throat. Nico thought he saw Dimitri’s pupils expand. The effect in his pale, drawn, face looked like death.

Was he high on something? Tweaking out and seeing things, maybe?

Before Nico could decide if an ambulance was in order, Dimitri lunged at him. The door slammed shut so hard it rattled the apartment. Dimitri crossed the distance between them in half a blink. Nico saw only a flash of fangs.

He was crushed backward over the couch. Dimitri sank his fangs into Nico’s neck, deep and without any of his usual foreplay. He sucked at Nico’s neck like he was feeding on blood. The pain was incredible, slicing right through the dull ache in Nico’s hip. Dimitri growled and it wasn’t a sexy sound. It was the sound an animal claiming its next meal.

Nico struggled. He tried to get his knee or foot up to kick Dimitri off. Pushed against his incredible strength. Gasped through the pain even when it stole his breath. He couldn’t even scream.

Dimitri didn’t tolerate any wiggling. He said nothing, the sounds coming from his mouth devolving further into animal snarls while he fed. When Nico managed to get a knee between them, Dimitri simply yanked Nico up off the couch and dragged him onto the floor instead, where he could pin Nico’s hips with his own and plunge his teeth into the other side of Nico’s neck.

Nico’s watch beeped twice, a small sound he heard at the edge of his awareness. Heart rate over 180. Unconsciousness imminent.

If he’d been standing, he would lay down on the couch or, if necessary, right on the floor.

He imagined he could feel the blood squirting out of his neck, his poor heart racing even harder to maintain pressure against the leak. It smeared under his shoulder on the fake-wood floor. He reached a hand up, already feeling cold in his fingers, and tried to put pressure on, like that might help with Dimitri still chewing at the other side of him like Nico was so much meat. Blood flowed between his fingers. Hot. Wet. His hand slid around.

There were a lot of ways Nico imagined he might go one day. Attacked by a one-night stand (ok, 3 or 4-night stand) like Nico was a walking blood-bag was not one of them.

He could tell his thoughts were wandering around. He was pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing. And idly, he wondered if Dimitri was getting off on this?

It wasn’t anything like the nights they’d shared, but if he was high on something weird, maybe Dimitri thought he was having the best night of his life.

Nico shoved his hand—the one not trying to stem the blood flow from his neck—between their bodies. Dimitri’s muscles were all tense from head to toe, so he got a nice impression of abs when he yanked the shirt up. Nico didn’t try to undo the button on Dimitri’s slacks, just shoved his hand down seeking Dimitri’s familiar, fat cock.

The man was hard as a rock. His dick strained in Nico’s palm like Dimitri had been edged for the last week. Nico reached deeper and raked his fingers under Dimitri’s stiff, tight balls. Whatever he thought he was doing, Dimitri was on the very edge.

Nico hoped climax would knock some sense into him. And if it didn’t…. Well at least one of them would enjoy this.

He wrapped his hand around Dimitri’s cock and dragged down. He wasn’t sure if his grip had any force to it anymore. He was losing sensation in his toes, too. Even watching the ceiling was getting harder. He was so tired.

Why was he fighting this again? He needed a rest. Just a nap. Then Dimitri could explain what was going on. He’d owe Nico after this. At least two more one-night stands to make up for the mess he’d made.

Nico just needed to close his eyes for a minute…

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