Page 7 of Feed Your Fiends

“You think nothing’s left for you. Ballet is questionable, like Beaulieu. Jaime hasn’t visited, and you’re being discharged tomorrow, so you have nowhere to go. So what? You thought you could leave for good and abandon me?”

I glare up at him, utterly lost for words. That is until they come speeding up my throat and past my lips with sheer venom. “Leave you?Leave you?!There is no you for me to leave. You’re already dead to me.”

“Dove—”

“Your second death will be when you’re back in the ground. Back beneath the earth’s crust that you’ve crawled out of instead of your mother’s cunt. Or maybe they’re the same. The passageway for fiends—”

“Dove!” he snaps, his fingers clenching around my throat so hard that he cuts off the rest of my vitriolic words.

Gripping me tighter until I sputter, he brings me closer to his bent form until our foreheads touch. The contact ignites the pain still radiating tenfold in every fibre of my being. But I don’t flinch. I glare back into those voids glaring down at me.

What?Is bringing up his deceased mother somehow too much for him? He has no problem mentioning mine. He just did, and guess what? She’s dead to me, too.

My raw, chapped throat suddenly isn’t so chafed as a wet gurgle bubbles into my mouth. His fingers twitch and readjust, but he doesn’t let go as my stomach contracts. As my lips part to—

“Spit it in my mouth.Please,” he rasps, his eyelids drifting halfway shut as he licks his lips in anticipation.

We’re so close that his tongue swipes my lower lip, and I recoil so hard and fast that he loses his grip on my neck as I fall back onto the pillows.

More pain tears through me as I swipe the back of my hand against my lips to wipe away his touch. The same hand with the fucking IV needle that crushes further into my vein upon the contact.

Please.Gant never begged, and that little plea catches me off guard as he stares down at me with a mad desperation I’ve never seen before. And I never want to see it again because I’d already fallen for him. I’d already broken.

Was it not enough for him the first time? Does he want to turn my fragments into pulverised powder?

“Please,” he whispers. “I miss your taste.”

The audacity!

I swallow the wad of saliva into my gut, denying him. “You’re sick,” I whisper, the hoarseness back. “Absolutely fucked in the head to even come here.”

His eyelids lift a fraction in lament as he tears his gaze from my lips. “I know you don’t want to see me. I know you barred me from the visitor’s list.”

Why did I think that’d work? Supernatural creatures can walk through walls.

“And yet here you are anyway. Ignoring my wants because yours are more important.”

He swallows. “Me being here despite your wishes isn’t a want. It’s a need. I need to explain—”

“You need to return to the underworld. Your mission here is done.”

“Dove—”

“Don’t. Fucking. Call. Me. Dove!” I shriek, a wave of manic energy rushing over me. “Get out, or I’ll scream bloody murder for the night nurse.”

Why hadn’t I already? Why had I tolerated his presence for this long?

“Go ahead,” he says, daring me before nodding at the closed door. “Scream and scream until your lungs bleed. They won’t come. They’ll think we’re having fun getting reconnected. Why do you think I haven’t gagged you already?”

My stomach flips.

“Why do you think I’m here despite the ban? And after hours.”

I grit my teeth as I follow his gaze to the door.

“I’ve always been here, Dove. Since the first night you were admitted. I played nice. I was a good boy, agreeing with the doctors not to visit unless you were unconscious or delirious. I didn’t want to add to the stress you were already undergoing.”

Stress?That’s an understatement.

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