Page 7 of Cassian

And now Blake was still staring. It seemed kind of pointed. Which was probably fair.

But it was enough to give a guy certain misgivings. “Do I look weird?” Cass asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“You have my blood on your mouth.” Blake sounded more confused than horrified, so that was probably good. And he wasn’t pushing Cass off his lap, which was a major win.

Cass licked at his lips, trying to get off the excess blood. He should probably be trying to wipe it off—that would have been more sanitary—but he didn’t want to waste it. It just tasted sogood. Like… Like… Like the hot chocolate Cass’s mom had used to make around the holidays, before she’d passed away, if that hot chocolate hadn’t tasted like chocolate, but copper and salt and something indescribablyBlake.

So maybe it didn’t taste like hot chocolate at all.

“Your eyes,” Blake murmured, scanning Cass’s face. “Yourteeth.”

Cass couldn’t help it—he squirmed a little. It was just, Blake was stillstaring, in that same intense way. And he was so handsome, his green eyes all sort of heavy-lidded from leftover lust or whatever, his tanned cheeks spotted with color. It was distracting. It made Cass’s skin itch again. Like he wanted to bite him again. Or be bitten. Or maybe see if that big cock could fit in his mouth.

I said begone, horny thoughts.

Cass tried to focus on the matter at hand. He’d done something weird, even weirder than jumping his roommate like some horned-up beast. And it wasn’t like he could see his own eyes, but he lifted a hand to see what Blake meant about his teeth.Oh. His incisors were definitely longer. Sharper.

No wonder Blake’s neck had been like butter.

“Oh!” Cass held up his finger. He’d poked it accidentally, and a bead of blood was welling up. He licked it off. It didn’t taste nearly as good as Blake’s.

But then that was it. No more beads of blood appeared. Like Cass’s finger hadn’t been poked at all.

“It’s healed.” Cass tilted his head, studying the side of Blake’s neck. “Your bite has too. I think I licked it all better.”

That seemed to be the final straw for Blake, in terms of the weirdness of the morning. He shook his head forcefully, like he was clearing it of some fog, his black hair whirling around his face with the motion. “All right,” he bit out. “So maybe we should put our dicks away and talk about what exactly happened to you last night.”

Cass pouted a bit at that, even though it was probably a good idea. He just really liked being on Blake’s lap. And he liked having their dicks touching, even if they were soft and covered with drying cum now. It was still…intimate.

Blake narrowed his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that, baby. You just drank my blood like a fucking milkshake. We need to talk.”

Cass perked up again at that.Baby. It wasn’t the first time Blake had called him that either. Maybe he wouldn’t be banned from the lap forever. “I’ll get a washcloth,” he offered, hopping off Blake and rushing into the bathroom.

He was wetting the washcloth in the sink when he finally looked up and saw what Blake had been talking about: Cass’s eyes were all black. Like, no pale-blue irises, no whites to them at all. Freaky fucking demon eyes. “What the fuck” was right. It was a miracle Blake hadn’t shoved him off and run out of the room.

Cass bared his teeth at his reflection. And it was exactly what it had felt like—he had a pair of legitimate fangs.

So now would probably be a good time to panic, right? Except… Blake was here. And he wasn’t running, even though Cass sort of looked like a literal monster. He wanted to talk it over, even. They were going to sort it out somehow.

Cass took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then winked at his terrifying reflection, just to see. “We’re going to fix this,” he whispered. “It’s going to be fine.”

He dashed back into the room with the wet washcloths, and they both cleaned themselves up. Cass was even supergood and barely sneaked a peek at his semiexposed roommate. (Not that he hadn’t gotten a good, long look earlier.)

When they were somewhat presentable, Blake sat down on the edge of one of the hotel beds, the one that was all mussed up like someone had been fighting their own sheet all night. Had he brought someone here last night? But no, Cass could only smell Blake in the room. And he didn’t really want to focus on how freaky it was that he could tell that by scent alone, so he pushed it out of his mind.

Cass considered sitting on the other bed, but that seemed…wrong. And it would be too weird to climb up onto Blake’s lap again, right? He couldn’t bring himself to go too far away though. Something in him still felt like it needed to be very, very close to Blake.

He sat next to Blake on the foot of the used bed.

It wasn’t good enough.

So Cass sidled closer, trying to get near enough that their arms brushed, without seeming too obvious about it.

Blake let out a huff of a laugh, immediately catching on. “Needy little thing today, aren’t you?” But he sounded more fond than frustrated. And then he did the best thingever. He put his arm around Cass’s shoulders and tucked him in close. “Tell me everything that happened last night.”

Cass did another one of his slow, deep breaths—his therapist would be so freaking proud—and then he did. Blake listened carefully. He always had, though, even when Cass was going off about something that was probably mind-numbingly boring to anyone else, like the world-building details of one of his favorite video games.

He tightened his hold ever so slightly when Cass got to the part about agreeing to go home with the guy, but he never interrupted. Not until Cass had filled him in on every detail up to returning to the hotel room and jumping his bones.

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