Page 8 of Cassian

“Okay. So.” Blake cleared his throat. “He bit you in that alley. Drank your blood, maybe. You passed out after he slipped you something.”

“I wasalreadypassing out when he fed me whatever,” Cass corrected.

“Okay, you werealreadypassing out. Then you woke up in his room, unharmed as far as you could tell. And you started…craving me.”

Cass nodded, his head brushing against Blake’s soft T-shirt. “Yep.”

He felt more than heard Blake’s sigh, his whole body seeming to expand with the motion. “Okay. All right. Do you remember how to get to his hotel room?”

Cass frowned in thought. “I think so.”

“And do you think you can make your face…um…go back to how it was?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “I don’t know,” Cass admitted.

Blake leaned back, enough to look Cass in the eye. “How did you change it in the first place?”

“I have no idea!” Cass’s frustration came out in a whine. “I was just…thirsty. And you smelled so good, and I got all excited. And I just changed.”

It had been a little stranger than that, what with this new presence inside him, one that itched to come out when Blake was near. But Cass didn’t want to freak Blake out any more than he needed to, so he kept that little bit to himself for now.

“Okay, so… Try to relax again.” Blake petted Cass’s hair, apparently thinking that was the key to relaxing him.

It did honestly feel pretty nice. So Cass tried. But Blake still smelled really good. And Cass was still kind of horny even though he’d just come ten minutes ago. So he tried to bargain inside his own head instead.

Hey…thing inside me. You can chill out now. We aren’t thirsty anymore. We drank, and we’re all good. So go back to where you came from.

Maybe he was crazy trying to negotiate with some intangible presence, but it wasn’t long before Cass heard what almost sounded like a weird inner grumble and then felt a shift.

He held a hand up to his teeth, feeling around his incisors. They felt normal again.

And Blake was beaming down at him, like Cass had just aced some impossible exam. “Good job, buddy. Really good job. Now let’s go talk to this creep.”

“Excuse me?” Cass frowned up at him, irritated by either the “buddy” or the suggestion itself; he wasn’t actually sure.

“For all we know, he slipped you some never-heard-of party drug that…makes you crave blood and get all horny or…fuck, I don’t know.” Blake stopped at Cass’s pitiful look, rubbing at his shoulder in some semblance of reassurance. “He’ll have answers, won’t he?”

“Maybe…”

The truth was Cass didn’t want Blake anywhere near the creep from last night. But Blake was looking so hopeful that they’d find some sort of solution. And he still wasn’t running, was he? He was staying by Cass’s side. So Cass pulled on his metaphorical big-boy pants and stood up, straightening his button-down. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s do this.”

They pulled up to the hotel some twenty minutes later, walking into the lobby like they both belonged there. No one tried to stop them or ask for a room key, so Cass headed straight for the elevators, pressing what he was 90 percent sure was the right button. He didn’t tell Blake that while he remembered which floor he’d been on, he didn’t remember the room number itself.

It was just… He could sort of track the guy’s scent? And that felt too weird to admit out loud.

Maybe-Arthur hadn’t smelled good in the way Blake did, but it had still been distinctive—kind of metallic, even. A scent Cass was learning to associate with blood.

When he found what he hoped was the right room, he paused in spite of himself, and Blake ended up knocking on the door for him, more forcefully than Cass would have. And then he stood real close, right next to Cass, with his arms crossed like some kind of club bouncer.

He was trying to be intimidating. Succeeding, really, as far as Cass was concerned, given his muscular frame and impressive height. It was protective. Sweet, even. He’d been nothingbutsweet since the moment Cass had barged into the room, practically accosting him with the force of his horniness.

It honestly made Cass want to throw his head back and groan. Becausewhydid Blake have to be so sweet all the time? If the world worked the way it was supposed to, he should have been, like, some absent-mindedly cruel jock type. That would have been easy enough to ignore, no matter how good-looking he was. But how the hell was Cass going to get over this crush now, when he knew the husky groan Blake let out when he came, the way his eyes grew hot and heavy with lust when he was turned on?

And hehadbeen turned on. By Cass, against all odds. so maybe he wasn’t 100 percent, all-the-way, for-sure straight. Maybe there was a little wiggle room where Cass could slip in and be held and called “baby” in that soft way.

Maybe—

The hotel door opened, and there was the man from last night, smirking at Cass like he’d been expecting him. “You came back. I knew you woul—” He seemed to finally notice that Cass had a shadow, doing a little a double take at Blake’s impressive glare before smirking again. “And you brought a snack for us.”

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