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  Matt sat back on his heels, staring at the candlelight reflecting in the stainless steel of Daniel's simple urn. Unbidden, further memory of the night of Daniel's death overcame him.

  Hardly thinking, Matt slammed into gear and off the road. His trusty Jeep tore across a grassy area and onto another dark, winding road. Matt wasn't sure how he did it without overturning the Jeep, but he drove as fast as he could out of the park. He didn't stop, running a bunch of red lights, until he reached his parking space in the side lot of his building.

  Part of him felt guilty for leaving Daniel behind. But most of him knew that it was far too late. Daniel was dead. There was nothing he could do for him.

  Matt made it to the apartment, bolted the door behind him, and turned on every light in the place before sinking to the floor, back pressed into the corner of the bedroom, eyes focused on the front door through the open bedroom door.

  The knock came maybe ten minutes later.

  "Open the door, beautiful,” called the voice. The same voice. Shit! How had the monster found him? Daniel's wallet? Daniel's memories? How many of the vampire legends were true?

  "Open the door."

  Matt wracked his brain. Wood! He needed a wooden stake. What the hell did they have that was wood?

  "Open the door.” The voice was sweet. Compelling. Soothing. It made Matt hesitate, made him want to comply.

  But he resisted, cherishing the cold, hard reality of fear. He kept in his mind the painful image of Daniel's corpse in that monster's arms, and he dashed from the bedroom into the kitchen.

  "You want to come to me."

  Tuning out the voice, Matt opened one of the drawers and drew out a wooden spoon. With strength he didn't know he had, he cracked it, creating a slim wooden stiletto from the handle. Would it be enough?

  "Open the door, Matthew."

  Matt crumpled to the linoleum, moaning piteously. The thing knew his name!

  "Open the door, Matthew, and let me in. Let me in, sweet."

  Matt clutched the two halves of the spoon, keeping the thought of Daniel in his head as he listened hard for any sign of the door opening. Daniel, the man he loved. Daniel, who was dead. Daniel.

  He never knew how long the vampire taunted him that night. He still wasn't really sure what time he'd left the park. But it had to have been a few hours. It had stayed at his door, trying to coax him into opening it, teaching him by example the truth of the legend that vampires couldn't cross your threshold unless you invited them in. By the time it had left, he was exhausted enough to pass out for a few hours on his kitchen floor.

  Blinking, Matt tipped his head back to stare at the wall above the candles and the framed picture. During the first few months after Daniel's death, he hadn't stepped outside his apartment at all. He lived on his savings and a little that Daniel had, surprisingly, stashed away, with Matt named as beneficiary. The money had lasted for five months, during which time Matt spoke to no one. His friends from school gave up on him. But then, he and Daniel really hadn't been all that close to anyone else. His family had disowned him before Daniel had experienced a similar fate with his parents, so his parents and sister never knew. They probably still didn't know. Matt spent countless hours on the Internet, digging up all he could about vampires, disappointed when he could never distinguish what was fact and what was fantasy or myth. To this day, the only true facts he knew about vampires were that they existed and that they couldn't get inside his apartment without some kind of invitation on his part. Bereft, confused, scared, he had become the biggest online game junkie the world had ever seen for a while, happy to lose himself in fictitious worlds.

  Until Wolfe.

  Matt let his gaze drop back to Daniel's picture. “You'd like him,” he said aloud. “Would you approve of me being with him? If I could?"

  Silly question, really. He'd known Daniel well enough to know that he would hate that Matt had lived in seclusion for as long as he had. Although, Daniel could not have predicted a death at the hands of a vampire.

  Standing, leaving the candles lit, Matt dressed. It was nearly noon. He'd need to get some work done soon. The arrangement with Wolfe allowed Matt to keep odd hours, going to bed at dawn, rising mid-afternoon for work.

  So odd, he thought, donning his jeans. Not for the first time he wondered why Wolfe put up with his strange behavior. Except for the phone call the previous day, Wolfe had never questioned why Matt didn't go out. Their conversations had always been friendly, but when they weren't about business, they tended to stay on safer, less personal topics.

  Still wondering, Matt wandered into the next room. His computers hummed gently from the desk and extension that took up most of the wall, but he ignored them for the moment in favor of food. Opening the refrigerator, he stared at the meager contents. “Geez,” he muttered, pushing aside a few mostly empty take-out containers. “Time to order food.” Thank God for grocery stores that not only took internet orders, but delivered.

  His cell phone rang as he started to compose a list. His heart picked up pace as he crossed back into the living room to lift the phone from the desk.

  "Hi."

  "Hi.” Wolfe sounded cheerful, which dispelled some of the dread in Matt's chest. Perhaps the other man wouldn't hold their previous conversation against him. “I've been thinking about what we talked about yesterday."

  Matt's heart sank as he dropped onto his ratty but comfortable old couch. “Oh?"

  "Let's go to lunch."

  His mouth dropped open. “Really?"

  "Yes. It'll have to be a late one. I'm not sure I could pick you up before three. Is that all right?"

  "You don't have to pick me up. I can meet you somewhere."

  Pause. “So it's just the night that gets you?"

  Ice gripped Matt's heart. He didn't know how to reply to that.

  "No matter. I'll pick you up. Is three okay? Matt? Hello?"

  Shock kept him from thinking straight. “Yeah. Okay."

  "Great. I took a glance at the app this morning, by the way. Brilliant, as expected. Well done!"

  "Thanks."

  "Thank you. Okay, gotta run. See you soon."

  "Bye.” But Wolfe was already gone. Matt swallowed as he set down the phone.

  He was going to see Wolfe!

  * * * *

  After the shock of the phone call and invitation released him, Matt jumped into action.

  "There's no way I'm getting any work done today,” he muttered as he gathered jeans and shirts from the laundry corner of his bedroom. “Wolfe will just have to understand that.” Although it should be fine. The project he'd turned in the previous day had taken up the majority of his time for nearly a year now. He was due a little break.

  He had shoved some clothes into the mini washer that sat in the corner of his kitchen and started the cycle before he realized that he couldn't take a shower and do laundry at the same time. Cursing, he decided to figure out what to wear with his jeans. Or maybe he could wear some of the dress slacks he hadn't had on in ages, They had to still be in the back of the closet.

  It was a measure of his excitement that he didn't dwell on finding a bunch of Daniel's clothes hanging toward the back of the walk-in closet. Seeing them stopped him, but he slid right on by. “You'd be happy for me,” he said aloud to the memory of his lover. “I know you would. And, God, I know you'd think he was gorgeous.” The thought of the overreaction Daniel would have had to Wolfe's hair alone made him smile.

  He pulled a number of items out of the closet, but after a half hour of trying them on, he decided to stick to jeans. The dress slacks still fit, but they were too dressy for lunch, and the casual slacks he'd bought back in school in preparation for job interviews were in bad shape. Jeans would have to do. Wolfe wouldn't take him anywhere really ritzy, would he? He contemplated calling back to ask but didn't want to look anxious or stupid.

  Decision made, he shoved the jeans into the dryer and hurried to the bathroom for a shower.

  He alrea
dy had a hard-on by the time he got shampoo in his hair, and it hadn't gone away by the time he'd rinsed the conditioner out. Just the thought of Wolfe had his blood pumping in a way it hadn't since Daniel. There was no avoiding it. The simple prospect of sitting at a table with Wolfe—watching him talk, watching him eat, listening to that sinful, sexy voice without the filter of the phone—had him almost ready to come.

  So he lingered with the soap, slicking his bare skin, imagining his hands might be Wolfe's as they traced the planes of his chest and the belly he kept flat by religious use of the rowing machine and treadmill in the next room. He slipped his palms over the meat of his ass, massaging his cheeks, kneading them apart so he could slide soapy fingers up his crack. Touching his own hole made him shiver and made his cock jerk. He was a bottom through and through—a fact Daniel had delighted in reminding him of and he'd delighted in being reminded of. He loved being fucked more than fucking, more even than getting a blow-job, although it was a close call there.

  Indulging himself, he bent over under the heated spray of water. Balancing with one palm flat on the tiles before him, he soaped up the fingers of his other hand again and reached back to thoroughly finger himself. He did that sometimes, when the urge to have sex got particularly bad. He had a dildo that he'd use, but that was in the bedroom and his fingers would do just as well right now. He teased himself, exploring, probing, finding the spots that he knew all too well and pressing them. He did it with his eyes closed, imagining his fingers were Wolfe's, fantasizing that the man stood behind him, making him crazy before he took what would have to be a gorgeous cock and pushed it into Matt's body.

  The thought of that hit Matt hard, hard enough to send him to his knees in the bathtub so he could free his other hand to grip his dick. Eyes closed, water streaming over his flushed chest and shoulders, he pleasured himself back and front until his balls drew up and shot out heavy spurts of semen to mix with the water swirling down the drain.

  He knelt, stunned, as the orgasm washed from him, leaving his muscles sated and loose. “Probably better you did that,” he told himself just before pushing to his feet. If he'd been that pent up when Wolfe arrived, he probably wouldn't have been able to keep his hands to himself.

  He was therefore stunned when, about twenty minutes later, he stood before the bathroom mirror blow drying his past shoulder-length hair and found that his dick was perking up again. Of course, he was thinking of Wolfe, wondering if the man would love his hair as much as Daniel had, wondering if he'd want to sink his fingers into it and use the hold to yank Matt's head back. God, he used to love it when Daniel did that!

  "You're fucking hopeless,” he told his reflection as he set down the hair dryer.

  He studied himself in the mirror. Small and skinny, that's how he'd always thought of himself. At five foot six, he was used to most men towering over him. His hair was long and brown, the color of dark chocolate, matching his eyes. The eyes that he'd always thought were far too big. It made him look younger and more innocent than he'd ever felt, but other men seemed to like the look, so who was he to complain? His shoulders and chest were nothing to drool over, although he had developed some tone thanks to the rowing machine. He was rather proud of his flat belly and the muscles in his thighs. Nothing huge, but there was some muscle there. The cock that wouldn't stay down wasn't large but wasn't small either, just the right size to sink into someone's mouth and a little down his throat.

  "Oh, yeah, that helped,” he groaned at himself.

  Back in the bedroom, he discovered it was two thirty. Too late to jerk off. For all he knew, Wolfe might be early. He'd just have to hope the hard-on went away.

  As he dressed in the jeans still warm from the dryer, he caught sight of the lit candles in the corner.

  Reverently, he knelt on the pillow. “It's just lunch, right?” he asked the picture. “It's not like he's even interested. He's never even seen me."

  He smiled at the instant recollection of any number of a dozen compliments Daniel had showered on him in praise of his looks, his wit, and his personality. Daniel hadn't liked it when he cut himself down. “I do miss you,” he whispered, lightly caressing the curved side of the urn. As he snuffed out each of the candles, he realized that the loss seemed even less, growing softer with time. “I'll never forget you, but I have to get on with my life."

  Of course, there was still the matter of the vampires.

  He stood in the middle of the bedroom, staring at nothing, his erection wilting at the thought. Even if Wolfe is interested, so what? Is he going to want a guy who won't go out of his apartment at night? He'll probably write you off as a nutcase.

  "So you'll just have to work on going out,” he told himself firmly as he pulled on his dress shirt and buttoned it up. “You need to get over it and live some kind of life.” Muttering encouraging words to himself, he sat on the bed to drag on socks and shoes.

  By the time he told himself to stop worrying about it and just take things as they came, he looked up and saw the clock.

  Three thirty.

  Where was Wolfe?

  His phone rang about ten minutes later.

  "I'm sorry,” said Wolfe, “Harold Jenkins from Baeler Corp. just called and demanded to talk to me.” He sounded exasperated. “We're about to get on a conference call with his CIO and CFO. I'm going to be late."

  Disappointment squeezed Matt's heart, but he fought it out of his voice. “Hey, it happens. We can do this another time."

  "No. I'll just be a little later. I'd rather make this quick. I'll call you when they let me go."

  By the time five o'clock came around, Matt was in a fine funk. Wolfe hadn't called. He expected the other man to call and cancel at any moment, if he called at all. So sure was he, in fact, that he'd ditched the dress shirt for a T-shirt and switched the jeans for drawstring pants.

  Barefoot, he stood at the window in his living room, watching the night take over from the day, imagining his hopes dispelling with the gold of the sunlight. He'd found the night so frightening for so long, but tonight it was more depressing.

  A knock on the door startled him.

  "Matt, it's me.” Wolfe! “Open up."

  Matt stared, frozen. Inky twilight had almost given up the ghost to night's dark, and it could have been that color—or lack of it—that kept him rooted to the spot. His door had not opened except in the full light of day for so very long.

  "Matt!” Knock again. “I know you're in there."

  Matt found himself at the door, staring at the blank wooden panel. On the other side stood a man he very much wanted to know better. Fear paralyzed him.

  "Matt!"

  "What are you doing here?” Matt's voice, when he found it, was rusty and soft.

  Wolfe heard him anyway, his voice tempering. “I came to apologize."

  "You didn't need to do that."

  "I brought food. You like Italian? I've got this pasta with garlic sausage that's simply marvelous. You have to try it."

  Matt placed both trembling palms on the door, noting the contrast of the pale skin of his hand and the dark wood panel.

  "Matt."

  "I...” His jaw worked as he tried to force reason over fear. Wolfe was here.

  "Matt?"

  "I...” Heaving a sigh, he rested his forehead on the door between his palms. “I can't."

  "Why not?” Wolfe's voice sounded so close. Impossibly close considering there was a wooden barrier between them. Matt could almost imagine the breeze of its passage on his neck.

  He sighed again, closing his eyes. Coward. “I can't let you in."

  "Matt.” Low, sultry. The very sound oozed down Matt's spine to pool hot, like lava, in his belly. He pressed up against the door, trying to get closer. “Open the door."

  His hand dropped to caress the knob. Only the lock kept him from turning it fully. “I can't."

  "Why?"

  The knob won't turn. He shook his head, even though Wolfe couldn't see it. That wasn't right. There was
another reason. “I can't."

  "Matt.” Slow, reasonable, with that delicious purr. How did he do that in one syllable? “Open the door. Talk to me."

  Vampires. Can't open the door. “No."

  "Tell me why."

  Wolfe isn't a vampire, what's the harm? “You won't believe me."

  "Matthew—” His full name sounded so seductive through that voice. “—there's something that keeps you holed up every night. I'd very much like to know what it is."

  He rolled his forehead on the stained wood, his hand gripping the doorknob. Warm gratitude flooded his chest. Not since his last friend had tried in the month after Daniel's death had anyone wanted to know what was wrong with him. No one had cared.

  He so very much wanted this man to care.

  His fingers toyed with the lock.

  "Open the door, Matt, and talk to me. Whatever it is, I'll believe you. I promise."

  He said garlic sausage. Is the myth about vampires and garlic true? Wait, what are you thinking? You've talked to him during the day. He's no vampire.

  He turned the lock, hearing the soft scrape of metal on metal in the hushed blue twilight. Slowly, he stepped back, staring at his hands: one on the knob, one still splayed over the panel at eye level. I can do this. It's just Wolfe at my door. Just Wolfe.

  He twisted the knob and took another step back to let the door slowly open.

  Lust stole his breath. Lit only by the twilight and the night lamps that illuminated the street below, Wolfe was every bit as gorgeous as the pictures promised—and then some. Tall. His sharp chin would rest easily on top of Matt's head if they embraced. If he did that, the silky, curly black hair that fairly floated loose about his head and shoulders would drift down to caress Matt's cheeks. Sharp, sculpted black brows swept up sharply from the bridge of his narrow nose toward his temples. His pale cheekbones followed a parallel line. The eyes between them were by far the most amazing, impossible green that Matt had ever seen. How could he see that color so very clearly in this lighting? He stared, captivated by them and the thick, curled lashes that surrounded them.