Page 75 of Caelum

Dre needed to watch his back.

“Eve?” This time it was Eren who spoke. She didn’t move. Still hadn’t since the first time I’d seen her standing in the doorway.

That preternatural stillness had mygouillesurging to the surface as arousal hit me hard. Everything about her was geared to mess with my head.

We’d already had several indications that she was dominant. Not onlyfrom the strength of her attack on Reed, but our souls bounced off hers—meaning we didn’t try to dominate her as we might have done if she’d been weak-spirited.

It made sense to think of her as easy prey because she was quiet and innocent from the way she’d been reared. But she wasn’t.

That much was evident now, and mygouilleresponded in kind.

I surged to my feet and headed over to her, hands raised as I cautiously approached her. “Eve? You rely on bags of blood, but that’s not healthy. We’re encouraged to take directly from the vein.”

It was a testament to just how special her circumstances were that Nicholas, the principal, and Lori, the housemistress who looked after the boarder rooms in the part of Caelum where Eve lived, were still allowing her to feed from the bags. They kept us barely nourished on our Vampire days, and it was imperative that she switch over to the vein soon.

Not that I was about to tell the pissed Sin Eater that right at that moment.

Her gaze flickered to me at last as some of my words began to penetrate the thick shell that overtook us when we were in this mode.

“Hurt. Him?” she rasped unevenly, and I saw a flicker in her eyes that made me think she was coming back to us.

Knowing that this had to be one of the first times she’d responded like this, I empathized with her fatigue. It took a shit ton out of us when our souls overwhelmed us.

“No,” I comforted. “It’s natural for us.”

She shook her head. So slowly that it was painful to behold, but I knew to her, it would feel like she was whipping it back and forth. “Not. Natural.”

I made a fist with my hand. “All is well,” I reassured her, lying through my teeth at the same time.

I wasn’t surprised when she cut Eren a look and knew that he nodded because some of the tension dissipated from her shoulders.

“Don’t. Like.”

“That much is evident,” Dre rasped. “Am I allowed to continue feeding now?”

“Fucking douche,” Stefan spat.

I closed my eyes, predicting what was about to happen before it did.

In less than a second, I was shoved out of the way like I didn’t weigh over two hundred pounds, and Eve leaped over the sofa, every ounce of her Sin Eater backing her, as she hurled herself at the man she thought was attacking her mate. The mate she didn’t even know she’d Chosen.

Fuck, could this get more confusing?

Dre’s eyes flickered in surprise—the dick had a habit of underestimating her—before he was rammed back into the floor with a thud that had even me wincing as every single one of his bones connected with the hardwood.

When her hands went to his throat, he began to scrabble at her hold, but she wasn’t budging.

Stefan rushed to his knees and peered down at them both on the ground, but none of us tried to help Dre. Not when he deserved the punishment Eve needed to give him.

If she took things up a notch, then we’d put a halt on things, but maybe losing some oxygen would get Dre to smarten up. The bastard seriously needed to get with the program.

She’d pinned Dre to the ground and her pelvis was flush with his belly in a way that made me think of her on top of me. Holding me in a similar way but without the intent to murder on her mind.

When Eren elbowed me in the side, I grunted and stared down at my hard-on. He glowered at me. “Stop that. You think she’ll calm down with your hormones in the air?”

Because he wasn’t wrong, I thought of the nightmares that kept me awake at night, nightmares that were based on reality.

As expected, remembering being exorcised made my cock sink to half-mast.

---