Bonded

Tyler was losing his mind. That was the only explanation for the things that kept happening to him. He’d just about dismissed that first night as some sort of drunken hallucination brought on by loneliness and the five beers he’d drunk. Nothing happened the next day, so he thought he was all right, except that he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that the crazy dude from the beach was still hovering nearby, somewhere on the edge of his perception.



Then the phantom kisses started.



Every evening when he got home from work, he sat alone in his apartment with the TV off, fearing, and hoping, that the ghost would reappear. Thank god it never happened while he was at work. The ghost only came at night.



After a couple late nights of ghostly caresses, Tyler decided staying inside all the time was unhealthy. The surf was still high, thanks to the lingering winter storm, but Tyler couldn’t talk himself into his wetsuit. He hadn’t been to the market for a couple days. That was a great excuse to eat dinner out. Since it was raining, he didn’t walk to his favorite vegetarian café. Instead, he went to the diner down the block.



The waitress with the tinsel in her ponytail looked too sad when Tyler asked for a table for one. She showed him to a booth big enough for six people and took away the extra place settings.



Whenever the restaurant door opened, he could hear the rain splattering on the sidewalk. He watched the condensation roll down the side of his iced tea and puddle on the table.

He hoped the vegetarian special of the day wasn’t a big bowl of pasta with a few mushrooms sprinkled on top. Sighing, he slumped against the padded booth.



A kiss pressed under his ear, followed by sucking on his earlobe.



Tyler yelped and slapped his ear. The couple across the aisle looked at him. He smiled weakly. “I thought I saw a mosquito.”



Invisible hands slid over his thighs. He knew exactly where they were going. He bolted from the booth. The hands were tugging at his pants. No, not his pants. Some other pants, but he could feel the tug. He grasped his belt buckle with one hand and reached for his wallet with the other. The phantom pants were yanked down. Hyperventilating, Tyler ran out of the restaurant and into the rain, hoping the ghost wouldn’t follow.



**



Brandr shoved Jamie away. “Stop, just stop.” His heart, which didn’t beat, was pounding wildly inside his chest. He pulled up his pants, ran out of the living room and slammed his bedroom door closed. He wanted to keep running. Instead, he dragged his furniture over to the door to block it. The panic was slowly subsiding.



What the hell was wrong with him?



He kept feeling things, and he hated it. Most of the time, it was like a faint background noise that he could ignore, but whenever Kyle, Jamie, or Henry kissed him, fear flooded his senses. The closer they got to sex, the stronger the feeling.



He sat on his bed and hugged a pillow. It had to stop. He couldn’t live like that. He had a book to write, blood to suck, and the boys were getting upset that he ran away every time they wanted to play.



If he was going to stop this new, horrible turn his life had taken, he had to figure out how it started. He thought back. Everything had been normal a week ago. The boys were driving him nuts, the house was a mess, and he was worried about his deadline. Then he’d driven down to the beach to clear his mind. Later that night, he’d cried. Something between those two points in time had changed everything.



Maybe it was that man he’d taken blood from. Maybe the guy had some weird virus that affected vampire brains. Brandr almost had himself convinced that he needed to visit that house again and find out about the man he’d fed from, but something niggled at his mind. He’d ignored it at the time, but he’d felt another emotion earlier that evening. Right after he’d tripped over the parking meter, before the humiliation set in, he’d felt a rush of confusion, fear, and anger.



Brandr smacked his forehead. His nose. The blood. The human licking his bottom lip. Then the fear. He’d bared his fangs to a human without clouding the human’s mind. And the human had swallowed his blood. Oh fuck. What had he done?



He had to find that human.