Page 106 of Even Vampires Bleed
I can’t have him staying out of the bedroom for hours or there is a chance I’ll actually fall asleep, which would ruin my plan.
“Give me a minute. I’m coming,” he replies and some weight lifts from my shoulders.
I walk to the bedroom and open the wardrobe. I filled it with my own clothes the first day I woke up here, and I know there are extra pillows and blankets here, even one of those long pillows that you’re supposed to put behind all the others against the headboard. That’s the one I’m getting now, because I still need Léandre to believe I’m going to stay in bed once he joins me here.
After my reactions last time, there is no way he’ll believe I don’t have a sneaky plan to leave him the bed. So I’m installing the pillow in the middle.
It’ll act as a barrier between us. At least for the time I’ll spend there, which—hopefully—won’t be long.
When he arrives in the room, Léandre gives a nod of approval at my makeshift barrier and starts removing his shorts.
“What are you doing?” I ask, and I know I can’t hide the alarm in my voice. If he sleeps naked, it’s going to be so much harder for me.
Léandre’s hands stop mid-thigh.
“You saw me this morning, Firefly. I sleep in boxer shorts.”
“You can’t do that,” I tell him, and even to myself, I sound petulant.
“You’ll survive,” he tells me flippantly. “You massaged my back for half an hour this morning, and you survived. This time there is a pillow between us—you put it there—so not a centimeter of my skin will touch yours.”
He raises an eyebrow, as if daring me to contradict him.
I don’t even need to fake my outrage at what he just said, because I do believe he’s making it difficult, and yet I stay quiet.
I can’t deny it. I survived this morning and telling him that my sanity was a thread away from breaking is not something I want him to know—ever.
Instead, I walk to my side of the bed—yes, that’s the one he put me on when I got hurt—and slip under the bedsheet.
I wait for the bed to dip on the other side.
“Good night, Léandre,” I tell him with a yawn.
“Good night, Firefly,” he says before adding, “I kept the shirt on if it makes you feel better.”
And with those last words he turns off the sun charged light on his nightstand.
56
Cassiopé
I’m a fool.
I’m also burning.
And I can only blame myself for my idiocy and maybe also for my neediness.
I can hear that Léandre is still asleep.
Yes, “still” asleep, because I was supposed to stay awake and leave, and I waited. I waited, and all I could hear was Léandre’s heart beating wildly. He wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t sleeping at all. And I tried to stay awake as long as I could, but sleep won.
The past nights filled with wild dreams that made me exhausted, won.
And I fell asleep before him.
It would be okay if it stopped there.
I wouldn’t be happy my plan failed, but I could get over it.
