Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Silence falls over the room, no one seeming to know what to say. Cade pats Elias’s hand, as Elias apparently got caught up in Drake’s story and forgot he was rubbing Cade’s back, having stopped. She rises from the chair, stretches, says to Elias, “I’m gonna go check on Layna,” then closes the book and tucks it under an arm. She faces Drake. “I hope whatever connection you have with your brother, that he hears you, that you can remind him of his humanity, his life, something, because I don’t think I have any kind of answer in this convoluted wad of pages here.” She nods at Kyle, smiling at him in the form of a wince, then sees her way up to the church hall.
After a moment, Elias apparently decides to go, too. “Get some rest, babe,” he says to Kyle, eyes lingering on the pair of them, then heads for the stairs.
And Kyle’s eyes can’t help but drop to Elias’s ass in those jeans as he walks away. Seriously, he looks so delicious in them.
Kyle sighs at himself. This basement is driving him nuts.
“I don’t want to get between you two,” says Drake.
Elias stops at the foot of the stairs, turns. “Huh?”
“I’m not into that, into breaking people up. The tug-of-war jealousy thing. Your boyfriend is just cute and attentive. And is the first humanlike vampire I’ve met in a long time, like me.”
“He’s not a vampire,” says Elias.
“A demipire. Semipire. Halfy-halfy. Whatever you want to call it. I’m more of a poly guy who doesn’t really adhere to the label, it’s just the most fitting for how I feel.”
“I’m not the jealous type.” Elias smirks. “I don’t own Kyle. He’s free to spend time with whomever he pleases.”
Despite not sensing any jealousy or sarcasm via the Reach, Kyle frowns at the way that’s worded. “Elias …”
“Can I say,” Drake goes on, “while I have your attention—and also I’ve been holding this back—that ever since I met you, Elias, I can see the attraction? It’s crazy deep. Soul-deep.”
Elias quirks an eyebrow. “What?”
“You’re like a boulder of passion.” Drake smiles. “That’s so hot. It may seem like Kyle has all the strength, being what he is, but you’ve got this … raging fire inside you, a drive to protect your loved ones at all costs. Like the drive is wired into you, as much a part of you as your limbs and your head. I find that to be not only something worth admiring, but incredibly sexy.”
Elias’s gaze flits to Kyle. “Why’s it seem like your new boy-toy friend’s hitting on me now?”
Kyle grimaces. “Boy-toy friend? Really?”
“All I’m saying,” Drake goes on, “is why choose? Kyle can be with both of us. We can all be together.” He peers at Kyle. “You said your boyfriend gets off on being bitten, right?”
Elias’s eyes grow. “You told him that?”
“Why don’t we make him our blood boy?” suggests Drake. “Y’know, pass him back and forth?”
It isn’t so much that Elias’s face has gone cherry red with a mixture of outrage and humiliation. It’s also that Kyle picks up an instant burst of excitement from within Elias, as if Drake just struck the sexual-fantasy nail on its sexual-fantasy head, before that excitement is quickly suppressed like a fire, Elias dowsing it with a deluge of anger at the mere suggestion.
But even that anger is consumed once again by the fire of passion. Soon, all Elias knows is confusion as he sputters for a response. “I can’t believe you told—I’m not just a—It isn’t—” He stares at the table, the odd contents that litter it. “I’m—”
“God, this is turning me on so fucking much,” says Drake, wide-eyed as he watches Elias, “the adorable way you’re trying to deny it. Can we do it now? If this is our last day alive, can we just have a quick little blood boy session? I don’t even want to drink that much, if at all. It’s more about the scene, less about the blood. Get what I mean?”
Kyle rises from the floor, comes up to Elias’s side. “Babe, it was just a—a quick mentioning of—He and I were getting to know each other, I was trying to talk him out of these ‘baiting tasks’ he goes on for Lazarus, and—” He sighs. “I didn’t mean to betray your confidence, I really didn’t. I feel so shitty.”
Elias closes his eyes and says nothing. Even his emotional landscape has closed up, all of it a vast, blank space—a lake with water so still, it looks like a hole into the sky.
Kyle has come to read Elias so well that he can tell when he’s trying not to be read. But Kyle knows he’s probably feeling betrayed right now. Humiliated. Demeaned.
“Drake doesn’t have bad intentions,” Kyle says, wonders if this isn’t totally the wrong direction to go, then goes anyway. “I can read him, remember? Can’t read full vampires like Lazarus, but I can read Drake. He’s just … a kind of unchecked cocktail of horniness and loneliness. He’s even feeling bad right now.”