London Loves Ch. 11

"Don't cause trouble, Ray. Not tonight," the older man implored him in a low tone.

"Don't worry, babe," Gabe growled. "If he starts something I'll finish it for him."

"You wish." Rayne said the two small words in a coldly malevolent tone. His smile had fangs. "I'm stronger than last time, Gabriel. This time it'll be a straight fight. And you won't find me such a pushover."

The tension level in the room suddenly leaped so high Xavier felt it wrap around him like a living thing, making him wince and choking off his air as he was caught between the two of them. He didn't dare say anything now for fear the slightest provocation would set that tension off like a powder keg.

Dominic was less restrained. He caught Rayne's hand in both of his, bringing the vampire around to face him.

"Please!" he repeated earnestly. "I have a ritual in five days and I really need my wing-man. In one piece."

Rayne's pale eyes travelled over his face slowly, as if he could memorise Dominic that way. He smiled at last, a quiet little twitch of the lips that acknowledged his friend's desires.

"Don't worry, we'll be on our best behaviour," he murmured at last. His gaze travelled to the dark, hostile eyes of the watchful Roma and he added; "Won't we, sweetheart?"

Gabriel got to his feet and walked out through the darkened winter garden in stony silence. In his wake, Rayne seemed to deflate slightly as if some tension flowed out of his body with the were's departure. He turned back to Xavier and offered a humourless smile.

"See, I can play nice."

Xavier let out a shaky breath he hadn't even known he was holding and slumped in his chair. He wasn't sure what had just happened exactly, but he'd sensed something and it left him feeling drained and achingly tired now. He looked up at Rayne with confused and worried eyes.

"How long you been there?" Xav asked as it occurred to him to wonder how much of their conversation Rayne had overheard.

"Why? You got a guilty conscience?" Rayne bent and kissed the top of his head to show that he wasn't entirely serious. He still looked tired though, as if the show of power had taken more out of him than he would admit to. "Really, I only just came down."

He glanced at Dominic; "Is Gabe genuinely that screwed up about me being here? We'll go back to London if we're fucking with your chi, Dom."

"You're a good boy, Ray," Dominic cupped his face and kissed him softly on his cool, smooth forehead. "And I wouldn't dream of being such a terrible host. It's just the full moon. He's always spiky around about this time of the month. And he'll get it out of his system, the usual way."

Lord Warren smiled grimly at them. Rayne made a noise somewhere between a snort and a sigh. "I'm stepping on his Alpha Male toes. Shit! Dunno why I can't just roll over and beg for him, heh! It would make life a lot easier. Not like I'm insecure about myself, is it?"

He winked at Xavier rather more playfully, still glowing from their unbelievable session earlier. Xav was looking very sated and pleased with himself as well. Some of the worry left his eyes and he reached a hand up to gently tug Rayne down into his lap for a snuggle.

"I hope you guys can get it out of your systems soon," Xavier chuckled darkly. "Preferably before you both start pee-ing on my leg to mark your territory or something!"

"No worries," Rayne perched on his knee with a more purposeful grin. "You're my bitch, sunshine!"

He snatched a quick kiss. Xavier poked him in the ribs.

"Mm, I'll try an' remember that next time I'm making you scream and moan," he grinned.

Rayne shivered with pleasure but he glanced across at Dominic as he laughed; "You see what I have to put up with. You give them an inch..."

Lord Warren perched on a chair at one corner of the table, looking across at them with a fond, tolerant smile.

"Time was that you wouldn't give a single millimetre," he remarked. "I like the new, improved version. Xavier, I think you're good for him."

"Shhh, Dom!" Xav said in mock alarm. "You'll totally ruin my plans for domestication."

"Domestication? Christ!" Rayne murmured. "I've got Arden trying to rape me, or eat me, and Sunshine here trying to tame me like a fuckin' guinea pig. I can't win, can I?"

"No, you can't. So you might as well save yourself some trouble and just give in to me. I promise you won't regret a minute," Xavier said, placing a warm kiss at the nape of Rayne's neck.

Watching the pair of them snuggling like kittens created a sensation of warm and fuzzy well-being somewhere in the depths of their host's kind heart. Dominic Warren had watched over Rayne for more than fifteen years, since he was first Turned, and came to the High Priest in despair, looking for a way to end his existence.

Since that time he had seen Rayne grow in strength and self-belief but he had never quite lost the niggling worry that one day someone would bring him news of the vampire's True Death. The self-destructive streak in him was very stubborn, but Dominic believed that he had seen a mellowing in Rayne since he met Xavier. Maybe, finally, this time someone had come into his life who could make a difference.

"Xavier, darling, how do you do it?" he sighed, resting his chin in the cup of one hand as he observed them dreamily. "Rayne never listens to anyone. He's famous for it. How do you make him do that?"

Xavier had his arms wrapped loosely around Rayne's waist and his cheek rested on his shoulder blade. It was a frivolous question but Xavier's tone was on the serious side when he answered, "I don't make him do anything, Dom."

It was maybe more of an answer than Xavier realised. The joking about domestication aside, he didn't try to make Rayne do anything. He didn't want to box him in, chain him, change him, make him into something else, as so many people that entered into relationships did with their partner. Rayne made him happy, made him crazy, pissed him off no end at times, and for all that he loved Rayne the way he was, even when he wanted to tear his hair out with frustration.

Maybe it was just that they understood each other. Their pasts were so eerily similar in many regards. Whatever it was, Xavier had never known anyone that made him feel quite the way that Rayne did.

"I'm not that different, Dom." Rayne Wylde glanced speculatively at his friend. He trusted Dominic not to feed him bullshit. The old queen teased him endlessly but he always told it straight when it was important. "Am I?"

Lord Warren nodded his head slowly. "I can see it. Gabriel can see it. You're no angel, I doubt that will ever happen. But you've got a mellow side that I've never seen before."

"It's always been there," the singer protested, looking a little bit awkward now. "Maybe you just weren't looking so hard."

"Even your aura is less spiky," Dominic said with a smile.

"You're not going to let this go, are you?" Rayne snuggled into Xavier's arms enjoying the warmth and even enjoying the banter to a degree. He did feel at ease with Xavier, it was true. But had it changed him so much that other people noticed it? That was a conundrum for sure. He glanced at Xav curiously now. "What about you? Do you think I'm different?"

Xavier smiled at him and lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. "Maybe a little bit, but I don't think it has much to do with me," he said.

Rayne had died after all, like for real died, crossed into some place not in this world and then found his way back. That had to change a person.

"Hmmm..." Rayne looked thoughtful now. His gaze had moved into that faraway place that it sometimes went and his eyes darkened slightly as if the observation provoked a memory he was not prepared to face. "I guess if the change is an improvement I can learn to live with that."

Dominic deftly moved the subject on to waters less deep and the three of them spent the rest of the evening chatting amiably. Gabriel did not return, and that both relieved and bothered Xavier. The relief was for obvious reasons, but it did make him feel bad that they seemed to have chased him away. Dominic didn't seem overly concerned though and they talked and drank wine until Xavier started yawning and Rayne took him back upstairs to bed; this time to sleep.



Xavier slipped down into dreams quite easily once they were back under the light, fluffy duvet on their wide, comfortable mattress. The day had genuinely worn him out and he still was not fully healed after his ordeal in London. His vampire lover lay curled around him for over an hour, listening to the gentle sounds of his breathing and enjoying the steady pulse of his heartbeat. He smelled too enticing though. If Rayne had less willpower it would have been all too easy to bite him again and drink his fill. He held back.

At around two thirty in the morning, he extricated himself gently and pulled on his jeans and a loose, zip-up top, then padded downstairs to the winter garden for a smoke. The house was quiet and in total darkness but Rayne did not need the lights on to see his surroundings. The external doors were closed but not locked and he let himself out into the moonlight.

Dominic had not been wrong earlier, the moon was almost full and he bathed in the cool, silver blanket of light, almost bright enough that even a mortal would be able to find his way easily. What a mortal would not see was the aura trail of a frustrated werewolf, dark and slippery as blood, as it wound across the silvered gardens below and disappeared through the gateway they had followed into the woods this afternoon. Rayne contemplated it in grim silence, then stubbed out his cigarette and followed it beyond the garden wall and away beneath the canopy of the densely growing trees.

His pulse was racing as he felt the darkness wrap around him once more, the moonlight reduced to mere razor shell strips of illumination as it lanced down through the leaves and branches overhead. His adrenaline too was high, though not out of fear. The time had long since passed when he feared what a were could do to him, certainly this were. No, his blood ran fast in his veins out of a feeling of delicious anticipation.

"Where are you, Mr Wolf?" he crooned low, as he prowled the woodland pathways, breathing in the cold, loamy scent of the wilderness and the hot, rank traces of flesh, fur and lupine sweat. "I know you're close. Why don't you show yourself? Scared I'll pull your tail?"

He drew to a halt in a small clearing near to the brook where he and Xavier had left the path yesterday. Now he unzipped his hooded jacket and slid it off, arching his back, letting the moonlight throw silver stripes across his bared torso and the faint, white scars that webbed his flesh there. His fingers moved to the buttons of his jeans and as they did, he heard a rustling and a soft crack somewhere just behind his left ear.

Rayne turned at once and his sharp eyes caught the blur of darker shadow as it moved through the very edge of the tree line, vanishing behind a bank of scrub set away from the trail. His breathing quickened automatically and his pupils widened and darkened hungrily. Without looking down he unfastened one button, whispering; "Come on then. Show Xavier he was right. Come and get what we both know you want, Wolfie. Then maybe we can settle down and stop being so fuckin' snippy with one another, yeah?"

When there was no response from the bushes where the shadow lurked, Rayne drew an impatient breath and stepped closer. His fingers worked on the second button as he reached the border of the trail and edged closer to the undergrowth. Then he stopped.

It was quiet; much too quiet, as if even the trees were holding their breath. He had a fleeting sensation of something moving, but not beyond the bushes. Moving behind him!

This time he did not even manage to turn before the full force of the black wolf struck into him from the other side of the trail.

"How the fu...?" Rayne managed to yelp, and then it slammed into his back and the pair of them tumbled headlong into the undergrowth, rolling and snarling as they went down in a tangle of flailing limbs and broken twigs.

Rayne threw himself into the roll. The undergrowth whipped across his back and sides like a cat-o-nine-tails but he pushed the sharp burn of pain down as he turned under his assailant, fangs extended in a defensive snarl. Gabe growled back in his face as he slammed the little vampire down on his back in the shrubbery and came in for a bite. Rayne's knee jerked up hard and fast between his legs and Gabriel took evasive action.

Rayne was impressed. He was a fast mover. Any mere mortal would have been curled around his nuts by now but Gabe was up and off him, panting and snarling. Though he still moved like a human, the were was all dark fur and flashing fangs. His eyes glistened like wet coal in the darkness as he came in again, slightly to the side, curving like a sliced shot, aiming for the throat. The vampire rolled hard and he slammed down on bare earth with a grunted curse. They came up on all fours simultaneously, Gabriel shaking his heavy, white-streaked, sable mane. Rayne's eyes gleamed ice-green in the moonlight.

"Too slow!" he hissed furiously.

Gabriel's taloned paw slapped him across the face from out of nowhere and put him on the floor. The werewolf cracked a lupine grin, tongue lolling.

"Too fuckin' clever by 'alf!"

Rayne tried to roll out of trouble again but the blow to the head disoriented him. It took fractionally longer to spot and right himself. A mortal would be comatose and bleeding from the ears but he did at least manage to stagger to his hands and knees before Gabriel barged into him and hurled him down on his back again. This time manacles of muscle and claw curled around his wrists, pinning him to the ground. The werewolf crouched over him, huffing rapidly as he stared down on his captive.

"I let you 'ave that one," Rayne told him, meeting that colourless glare with a bone-freezing glower of his own.

"Get out of it then." Gabriel laughed coarsely. "I'm gonna have you, Wylde. I'm gonna make you howl like a bitch tonight."

"I didn't howl for you last time," Rayne reminded him tersely. "What's so different now?"

Gabe's head came down and he swiped his rough, searching tongue slowly up his captive's bared chest, then licked his neck almost playfully, like a pet dog.

"Stop that!" Rayne struggled with him but his lack of a good feed was counting in his opponent's favour tonight. He knew that Gabriel was a match for him physically. He had more height and a longer reach, and he was not quite so hungry. The were could at least enjoy ordinary food. "I'm not... Christ, Gabriel! Stop fucking licking me, will you!"

"Admit you want me and I'll stop," Gabe rumbled softly.

Rayne's eyes widened in a defensive glare. "You fuckwit!"

"I weren't sure last time. It weren't like you could get yerself out of it," the were pointed out. "Those tricksy bastards 'ad us by the short and curlies. We was stuck in that well and there wasn't no way out. And you was a lot weaker than you are tonight. Which leads me to think that maybe if you didn't want it, you could have thrown me off by now."

Rayne shuddered at the memory. Last time he had taken a break at Dominic's place he'd been drawn into some business that his host's coven had been pursuing. People with preternatural gifts, people like himself and... yes... like Gabriel had been disappearing. And the pair of them had almost been caught in the trap. Except that when their captors lured them into the same trap, via different entrances, they hoped the vampire and the werewolf would fight to the death for their entertainment.

What actually happened on the night of the full moon was almost certainly not what they had expected.

"I let you do that to me because the other option was getting my fucking head ripped off," Rayne hissed at him vehemently.

"But you liked it," Gabriel grinned down on him infuriatingly.

"No... I think you'll find the word you're looking for is... tolerated!" Rayne scowled back at the were, still fighting the powerful talons that held him pinned by the wrists to the dirt beneath his naked back.

"So that's why you shot your load for me, more than once?" Gabriel teased, licking him more slowly, drawing the rough surface of his tongue in an incessant line up the vampire's heaving sternum and across his left collarbone to his exposed neck.

Rayne bucked and struggled under him, conscious of the tingle of heat low down in his loins, stirred up now by the memories and Gabriel's persistent tongue.

"Cut. It. Out!" he yelped. "Like I... ahhh... Jesus! Like I had any other choice when you'd been boning my arse for about twelve hours! You think my prostate has a mind of its own, huh?"

"I know it does!" his assailant chuckled. "Ahhh, Wylde. You can pretend all you like that you didn't want it, but these tell a different story."

He let go of Rayne's wrists so fast that the vampire took a moment to acknowledge that he was loose. By that time, Gabriel was running the backs of his claws slowly over the moonlit, silver scars on his heaving flanks. Rayne's eyes travelled down to the physical evidence of that night spent under Henning Szarbo in his SM club in Paris, then back up to Gabriel's pensive stare, faster than a mortal could blink.

"That... that was different," he faltered.

"Yep. It was. Because you asked for this," Gabriel acknowledged.

"You fucker! Did Dominic tell you?" Rayne's hands slapped up against Gabriel's thickly furred chest and he shoved the wolf back from him a couple of inches.

"He told me enough. Told me that you were almost dead in a were bar in France and the bloke what did it to you said you never asked him to stop." Gabriel's eyes turned a shade darker, virtually black against the pale moonlight. "Even I'd not stoop so low, Wylde. I don't like your kind, but I'm not into vampire snuff."

"Henning didn't kill me," Rayne said atonally, his long pale fingers curling in the dense black fur of his opponent's chest. "We fucked, and he set his claws in me and made me bleed but yeah, I asked for that. I didn't ask him to end it for me and he wasn't the one that staked me."

Gabe looked at the scars again, shaking his head.

"What the fuck was he? Tiger? Some massive fucker!" he exclaimed incredulously.

"He was... don't laugh at this... he was a bear," Rayne said in a neutral tone still.

Gabe kept his face straight but he murmured; "Stands to figure!"

"Shut up!"

"So you had the urge to bottom and you needed some fucker that could top you proper," Gabe summarised neatly. "Time was that you'd never even think of not being on top, Wylde. What's going on in your pretty dead head?"

"Leave it!" Rayne warned him, though he accepted that he was in no shape or position to make demands of any kind right now.

"Uh-huh," Gabriel shook his head. "Not gonna leave it now. You've brought me too far, Wylde. Why you givin' it up when you'd never let no one so much as slip you a finger before?"

"You don't know anything about me so stop trying to pretend you do," Rayne managed to wriggle out from under him this time.

Gabriel let him get halfway back to the path before he pounced and dragged the small, cold, scentless creature back under him, falling onto Rayne with a crunch that might have meant permanently broken ribs for anyone human. Rayne made a small, involuntary noise, but he didn't protest. The were moved his hot, furry body slowly against his naked back, growling low in his throat at the sensations aroused by having Rayne half naked under him.

"Tell me what you want," he rumbled hungrily.

"You know what I want." Rayne closed his eyes. His body was overwhelmed by the soft, thick fur that surged against his skin. He soaked up the heat of Gabriel's body and inhaled the powerful, musk scent of horny wolf that emanated from his captor's slowly bucking groin. "Just... do it, will you!"