Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
It feels amazing, to truly give in.
Wrong somehow, too.
Decades of Tristan’s cardinal rule, broken. Blood on Kyle’s tongue, willing blood from a willing human, feeding a part of Kyle’s soul that has starved for far too long.
A part of his soul that bursts to life from just a single drop.
But isn’t that the point? To detach from his past? To let go of everything? The letter is gone. The ring, too.
Nothing holds Kyle back anymore.
Long after Elias is asleep on the couch again, Kyle perches on the piano bench like a bird, mixed feelings tumbling around inside. Some happy, some confused, some uncertain. He keeps reliving the sex they just had. Each time he bit Elias. The burst of excitement inside him that was both his own and Elias’s. The blood he tasted, every drop. The come he tasted. Elias’s dick, his own, and the way his mind could connect their sexualities, feeling every stroke of pleasure twice. He sucks the tips of his fingers, as if in search of one last morsel of Elias on them.
“No,” he whispers to himself at last, decided. “We can’t do this again. This was the last time.”
But another night comes.
And another night, Elias answers the door, strips off all of his clothes, and asks the deadly question: “Where do you want to taste me tonight?”
Kyle bites his own lip, enduring an impossible struggle.
And loses.
Minutes later, Kyle has Elias pinned to the floor, where his face is buried between Elias’s muscular legs. He bites the inner thigh, and Elias squirms with overwhelming arousal. Kyle feels it all again, connected to Elias, feeding on both their pleasures.
He knows when he bites too hard.
He knows when he doesn’t bite hard enough.
Kyle is getting better at reading the emotions, far better.
When Elias comes, Kyle does too, the pleasure flooding his system too powerfully for any person of any amount of stamina to dream of holding back.
And again, Elias is asleep on the couch.
And again, Kyle gnaws on his fingers from atop the piano bench, trembling in the happy afterglow of sex and blood. His eyes narrow as he listens to Elias sleep. His heart still races.
“Okay,” he says, miserable, happy. “Actual last time.”
It’s another late night at the bar. Is it Tuesday or Sunday? Kyle struggles to keep track lately, the days flying by. With no kitchen orders, Leland is out front complaining about the cute girl he likes who works at the corner store and won’t give him the time of day. Kyle pats him on the back while gazing out at the near-empty bar, not really listening. Instead, he’s imagining what it’d be like if Elias was free to visit here, kicking back in the booth, watching Kyle with his deep, intense eyes across the way while sipping on a glass of whatever. He would tease him all night, straight-faced, sometimes touching his ear, his neck, or cupping his crotch with a hand, now and then giving Kyle a casual wink, as if wondering which body part he’ll let Kyle nip on tonight. The fantasy drives him wild.
But that can’t happen. No one can know about Elias, whose identity apparently needs as much hiding as Kyle’s does.
“Fucking nicked myself, too,” whines Leland as he lifts a finger to the light.
Kyle’s eyes snap to Leland’s finger.
A perfect, plump drop of bright red perches at the end like a shimmering ruby in the dim bar lighting.
Like a cable attached between that blood drop and Kyle’s mouth, he feels it pull taut, reeling him in, reaching for him.
“Fucking clumsy-ass hands,” mumbles Leland, oblivious. “I need to bubble-wrap myself around here. Like a dang toddler.”
Kyle grabs hold of Leland’s hand right then.
He sees it.
He smells it.
He wants it.
“Uh … Henry …?”
The sound of his false name brings him back. Kyle looks at Leland, wide-eyed, to find Leland staring back, stunned.
Kyle clears his throat. “You, uh … need to put a Band-Aid on this.” He’s still gripping Leland’s hand, that bead of blood taunting him. Why won’t he let go? “Better do it before you … you get blood in someone’s fries or something.”
Leland frowns. “Whose fries?”
Kyle glances at the bar, reminded anew how empty it is.
And how Elias isn’t actually sitting in a booth in the back.
Kyle abruptly lets go of Leland’s hand, scowling. “I’ll get the first aid. Stay here, you big baby.” He heads to the back, leaving a blinking Leland at the counter, confused.
That night when Kyle comes home, he nearly tackles Elias to the floor, no sense of restraint left.
“Will you fuck me while you bite me?” asks Elias that night on the couch. Kyle has already bitten him in six different places. “I want to feel you inside me when we—”
“Be careful to tempt the demon any more than you already have,” hisses Kyle in Elias’s ear.