On Your Knees, Prospect (Kings of Hell MC 3)

As weeks passed from his death, Vars was becoming increasingly melancholic about the future. The other members of the club accepted him and wanted him around, but none of them—even the ones who’d taken on pacts of their own—truly understood what lay ahead of Vars. Beast was to organize parties, and Knight needed to feed blood to Baal once a month. Tonight being a new moon, he had a fight scheduled later, and he’d loudly complained about the shittiness of having to perform those duties on the night of the wedding. But what was the risk of Knight having his nose broken or the inconvenience of having to live by a schedule to Vars’s perspective of eternal existence?

With Jake, none of that mattered.

A sudden scratch made him look back, but the empty doorway had nothing to communicate, so he closed his eyes as the smoke burned his mouth. Maybe as a man no longer touched by time, he needed the kind of anchor that would pull him right back into reality, and Jake—with his sweet submission and in such clear need of care—was like an answer to a question Vars hadn’t even consciously asked.

When he was with Jake, the world stopped spinning, and became simple again.

Arms wrapped around him, and he smiled, savoring his tobbacco.

“What is it, kid?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.

His stomach turned into ice when instead of leather and motor oil he smelled aftershave, the kind that had depth and made the wallet bleed. The ice then turned into spikes that sank deeper into the flesh of Vars’s gut. He didn’t even know when the cigar dropped from his hand, but he could no longer breathe, overcome with the sense of struggle against thick liquid.

“Missed me?” Damon whispered right before planting a kiss on Vars’s lips and pressing him against the window frame. His gaze—twin icicles framed by the perfect features of a statue—drilled into Vars, already making his soul bleed.

All plans that Vars had made, bracing for this moment to come from the minute Jake had told him what he’d done, now fell apart like a game of Jenga.

His instinct was to immediately push back, but the sudden shock of pain at the base of his skull, where Damon grabbed him, ended up with an uncomfortable twist. Vast was only able to step away because Damon didn’t try to hold him still.

Air was escaping Vars as if Damon had secretly punctured his lung, and with his throat contracting, he struggled to keep his cool, instead raising his arms to create a barrier between the two of them.

“Get lost.”

Damon sighed as if it was him who was dealing with a nuisance, but at least he crossed his arms on his chest, not making another attempt to touch Vars. “Oh, come on. We’ve had our differences, but isn’t it a miracle that we can meet again?”

Vars sucked in air into his constricted chest, focused on the steel of Damon’s eyes, preparing his rigid body to fend off the rabid attack that was surely coming. Damon was a wild animal that only abided by the laws of society for the fun of it, to make the hunt for prey more interesting, and now he was once again excited to play with his food.

Vars reached under his suit jacket, but his legs went soft when he found the hidden holster empty. He was facing a jaguar without means of protection.

At a silent tsking noise, he looked up to see his firearm in Damon’s hand.

“A creature of habit. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and all that, right?” Damon asked with a laugh that sounded like a jar of sharp pins shaking in an unstable hand.

Vars shook his head. “What are you doing here? This is a private function, and we both moved on.”

“You have, clearly. Who’s ‘kid’, huh? Haven’t we promised each other to be exclusive?” Damon hissed, stepping closer, as if he’d forgotten not only that he’d cheated on Vars in the past, but also literally killed him. Those deceptively strong hands had squeezed Vars’s throat, pushed him under the surface of water, and wouldn’t let go until liquid turned into fire in Vars’s lungs and he could no longer breathe.

Unable to keep his hands steady, Vars backed away against the wall, still keeping his arms at the front of his body. “I-I’m pretty sure death cancels out any vows. There’s no longer a ‘we’. Go find someone else to torment.”

Damon groaned and pushed down his hood, releasing all that pretty blond hair that had deceptively attracted Vars the first time they’d met. Instead of freshly cut wheat and sunshine, it now reminded him of a nest of angry wasps.

“So you did die. For a moment there I thought that maybe I made a mistake. And yet here we are again. Don’t you think it’s destiny?” His smile was only missing sharp fangs.