Aurelian looked down at the proffered palm, then up into Sam's face. "Are you sure?" Sam nodded. "Do you trust me?"
"Yes," Sam whispered. "Yes. With my life."
Aurelian wrapped strong cool fingers around Sam's wrist and pulled his hand close, brought it up to his face and inhaled. Sam's blood smelled warm and salty and coppery and sweet and very faintly iodiney, overlaid with the sharp tang of fear and the heavy scent of desire. Oh, it had been so long, too long....
He pressed his lips against broken skin, felt human blood on his tongue - living and freely given - and drank.
The cut wasn't deep, but it was long, and that was enough.
With the first taste an electric spark woke at the base of Aurelian's skull and shot down his spine, pulling him straight and illuminating his insides. Everything in him came to life. A heartbeat not his own pulsed in his throat and pounded in his ears. His skin tingled, every square inch of it, even between his toes and especially along the length of his cock, and it felt the way his fingertips used to feel when he spread them in front of a fire after having been out in the cold, that prickly sensation of slowly freezing flesh warming back to life as the blood coursed through it.
It made him feel alive, but more alive than he had ever felt when he WAS alive.
Sam might have said something, Aurelian couldn't hear over the rushing in his ears. But there was only so much he could drink here; he could feel the cut wanting to close.
So he licked it slowly, felt the edges knit together, and then without warning sank his fangs into the base of Sam's thumb, where muscle rose over bone and the veins were close to the surface. The boy's startled yelp collapsed - that was the only word for it - into a gasping moan, and Aurelian's focus suddenly sharpened and narrowed to exactly two points: his mouth on Sam's hand, and Sam's fingers cupping his balls, finding them through the cotton of his pajama bottoms.
And now it was Aurelian's turn to moan, unheard against Sam's skin. Sam's captive hand flexed, fingers curling against the vampire's forehead, and Aurelian could almost read the boy's thoughts - not afraid so much as curious, and yearning, and so full of want it hurt him.
By god and all his angels, Aurelian thought, and by all the demons below, I could drink until there was nothing left.
That was the one single thing that scared him. He was not afraid of his own death - he'd lived too long and seen too many men die, by his own hand and by others' - but he was afraid of this, afraid of how easy it would be to kill this boy who loved him, this boy he loved, and to kill him in pleasure.
And Sam knew it, Aurelian could taste it in his blood, could smell it on him. He knew it, he feared it, and he wanted it. His free hand found the opening in Aurelian's pajamas, and warm, sweaty, very human fingers closed around Aurelian's erection, and stroked in time with the rhythmic suction of Aurelian's mouth, which matched the beating of Sam's heart.
Like a metronome, like clockwork but alive, Aurelian's mouth and Sam's hand moved in tandem and in silence until Aurelian could hardly think. His mouth and throat flooded with Sam's blood as he came with a force that seemed to shake the bed, if not the entire house. His jaws relaxed, his fangs retracted, and he gently licked the puncture wounds closed. Sam's wrist bent, tilting Aurelian's head so he looked up at the boy. Sam's face was flushed - Aurelian could see even in the dim light - his mouth open, his breath ragged, his hair damp with sweat against his forehead. His eyes were hot and fierce. Aurelian smiled.
"That," he said softly, "is what I wanted to keep from you."
"And I gave it to you," Sam said. "Now give it to me."
