Page 60 of Ophelia's Vampire

I fold my arms over my chest. “What’s there to talk about?”

Cas drops his arm from the doorway and takes a step into the room. Then another. He stops on the opposite side of the island from me.

“I can think of quite a few things I’d like to talk about.”

Swallowing hard, I shake my head. “I think we just needed to… get it out of our systems, you know?”

“Get it out of our systems?” he says slowly, turning the words over in that low, rich accent of his like they’re some sort of puzzle to be solved.

“Yeah. Get it out of our systems. There’s obviously some kind of weird… chemistry that happens. When you bite me. And maybe we just got a little caught up in it the other night outside the Raven. And last night when you… well. Anyway. We got it out of our systems.”

I’m well-aware that I’m talking out of my ass, digging my own metaphorical grave a little deeper with each embarrassing syllable, but I can’t make myself stop.

Besides, he left first. He could have stayed and given us time to talk this all out this morning, but he didn’t.

Which is good. It is.

He made it clear where we stand, and I have no problem with it. Absolutely none.

I push ahead, beyond ready to be done with the conversation. “So now that it’s… out, things can go back to the way they were, yeah? Just us… working this case together.”

“Is that what you want?”

Is it?

My body and my blood and the bite on my neck that’s gotten strangely warm and tingly ever since he stepped into the room are all screaminghell no, but I don’t listen to those traitors.

“It is.”

For a few long seconds, Cas is utterly still. His crimson eyes bore holes into me as they rove over my face, my… neck. I almost imagine they darken as they do, but it must be a trick of the light, and I don’t have much time to examine it before he nods.

“If that’s what you prefer, Ophelia.”

My stomach drops, and an immediate protest lodges itself just at the tip of my tongue, but I make myself swallow it back.

“Good,” I say instead. “Glad that’s settled.”

Another long, weighted moment passes between us, and I wonder what protests or arguments he’s making himself swallow, too.

My denial’s not deep enough for me to ignore the intense scrutiny in his gaze, all the silent calculations as he decides whether or not he wants to play this my way.

I hold my breath, my flimsy justifications and mental gymnastics hanging by a thread.

I hope he’s stronger than I am.

Because if he’s not, if he presses the issue, if he gets any closer, I’m not sure all those paper-thin excuses are going to hold.

Finally breaking eye contact, Cas looks disparagingly at my pizza and grunts—a rough, inelegant sound I wouldn’t have guessed he was capable of making. “You should eat something with more iron. And water. Have you had enough water today?”

He stalks over to the fridge and jerks open the doors, searching its contents.

I just gape at him.

Is he… is he trying to play nurse right now? Doctor me up after he nearly sucked me dry last night?

My cheeks flame. “I’m fine. I’ve been fine all day. I went for a run this morning and—”

“You went for a run?” His head whips around, and the glower he’s wearing could melt the paint off the walls. “After what I—what we—after what happened last night, you went for arun?”

---