Page 7 of All Night Long

“Worse here. You guys don’t know the meaning of the word sick, but I have you for a boss and you get it.”

Gray grabbed some papers from his desk. “Humans are more fragile than us.”

“Fragile? Interesting word there. I know we’re not as strong, but we’re not fragile. Maybe you are ill after all—”

“I told you I was.”

“—though you don’t look it.” Key arched an eyebrow at Gray and looked him over.

Gray coughed. “Sick. See?”

The other eyebrow arched up. “Right,” Key drawled the word.

Gray grinned, then walked over to his desk back at his apartment and dropped the papers on it. Pulling the chair out, he sat and spent a minute logging into all the systems. Lucky for him, he could remote work, but at some point he would have to actually go to work and then his secret would be out.

“Fuck.”

Yeah, that was the word for today and probably tomorrow, too. And who knows how long after that?

“Fuck.”

What was worse was he was stuck. He had a human mate and nothing he could do would break the bond now that it was in place. Only death would release him and he wanted to carry on living. And you know what was even worser than that? Was worser a word? Fuck it. Who cared? The worse thing was that he couldn’t fuck around. Nope. His dick was tied to his mate. His human mate, who wouldn’t have the same limitation placed on him.

Sure, it would feel off if his human mate fucked someone else, but he could still do it. Not like Gray. His dick was for his human mate only now, and he couldn’t even remember his name. Why would he have bothered to remember it when a human was only good enough to feed on and fuck?

“Fuck.”

Life had screwed him over, and now Gray had to find a way to live with it. At least he could masturbate, but fisting his own dick would get boring quickly and he didn’t want to whack off and never fuck a man’s ass again.

“Fuck.”

He dropped his head into his hands, then growled when his phone rang. Seeing Kelvin’s name on the screen, he rolled his eyes. Fucking telepathy. Shit. Telepathy. Could his mate ‘hear’ him? Did he actually give a shit if he could?

“What?”

“Sick, are you?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Grumpy, yeah, sick no. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“You lie for shit.”

Gray stared at the phone. “That makes no sense.”

“You can’t lie to me. I’ve known you too long.” The phone buzzed, and Gray closed his eyes when Kelvin appeared next to him.

“Please make yourself at home.”

“I will, thanks.” Kelvin stood next to him, watching him. “What’s going on?”

Gray debated ignoring the question, but if any vampire could understand the predicament he was in, it was Kelvin. “Met some human in a bar. We fucked. I bit him and bam. Mated.” Kelvin stared at him for a full five seconds, then burst out laughing. “Not funny.”

“Oh it is. It really fucking is because every one of us knows your dislike for humans. Not hatred. I don’t think it’s that and you treat Key well, but we all know you would have to give it some serious consideration before helping a human if one needed it.”

“I run you guys. I help humans every single fucking day.”