Page 108 of Envious Of Fire
“Where the hell would I go anyway?” Mikey returns in his muffled voice. Then come the crunching sounds of Mikey lyingatop the stones, presumably getting as comfortable as he can manage. The sounds include a couple of muffled curse words and a miserable groan.
Drake turns his face slightly. “We should probably get a bit of rest, too.”
“Yeah,” agrees Kyle mildly, closing his eyes.
Silence passes.
Kyle feels a hand touch his waist, slowly sliding down his hip, then grazing the side of his ass. “Drake,” he says warningly.
“Just finding somewhere comfortable to put my hands.”
“Put them in your pockets, then.”
“Can I put them in yours?”
“No.”
“It’d be easier. Like this.” Drake slides his hands into the back pockets of Kyle’s jeans. “See? Put yours in mine. Then our bodies would be supporting each other as we rest.”
“I’m not—” Kyle sighs. To be fair, his arms are dangling in the miniscule amount of open space by their sides. He slides his hands blindly around Drake’s hips, around to his ass, searching for his back pockets. He seems to have trouble finding them.
Drake turns his face more. “Enjoying yourself back there?”
“Can’t find your pockets.”
“Keep feeling around. My cheeks could use a massage.”
Kyle rolls his eyes, drops his hands away. “Never mind.”
“Hey, hey, just teasing.” Drake’s nose is near Kyle’s ear, his every breath like a gentle ocean wave. Kyle feels soft lips on the side of his neck, right where it’s most tender. “God, this is so …sotempting.”
“Don’t make me thrust you out of this hole into the sun.”
“I love when you talk dirty.”
“I’m serious, Drake. I’m not here to fuck around.”
Drake’s lips pucker in the slightest, almost like a kiss. Kyle simply bears it. What else can he do? They’re sandwiched byhard, unrelenting stone, sardines in the tin can of earth itself. He feels each and every squirm of Drake’s body. He feels the pulsing of Drake’s cock against his own through the tightly-pressed-together crotches of their jeans. Their hearts beat as one with their chests squeezed together. It is as deeply intimate a situation as Kyle fears he’ll ever find himself in.
Only it’s not with Elias.
And the more turned on Drake becomes, the more it flows stubbornly straight into Kyle’s system via the Reach, confusing him worse and worse by the second. Is Kyle turned on at all by this situation? Or is it all Drake? Can he even separate their feelings any more than he can separate their bodies?
“The vampire appetite slows,” says Drake, “and after time, you come to need less and less blood.”
The words stir Kyle, seeming to come out of nowhere. He frowns in the dark. “What do you mean?”
“You might’ve been wondering,” he says. “I know that you came to the Devil’s Mouth for answers. My brother told me all that happened when he found you at your house. It makes total sense that you sought us out. You want to know more. I can tell you everything down here, you know. Hey, does your neck feel stiff yet? You can rest your chin on my shoulder.”
Kyle resents the offer for half a second. Then he realizes he has few options anyway, and decides to give in, resting his head on Drake’s soft and available shoulder.
“But needing less blood doesn’t equate … drinking less.” A tiny sigh flies from Drake’s lips, touching Kyle’s ear. “Because the most dangerous aspect of a vampire, especially after they’ve lived for a very long time, is when they … become bored. Soon, the act of killing becomes a sport. There’s something so terrible about time passing, about how everything in your long life becomes … unstimulating, uninspiring … and so, so tedious … I’ve seen it. Drinking becomes less about the blood, less aboutour survival, less about power … It just becomes … fun.”
The first thing Kyle thinks about is La-La. The detached, almost psychotic grin that wouldn’t wipe off the vampire’s face. The playful way he brandished that katana, as if his only intent to lop off a head is to marvel at how prettily blood can spray from an artery, like an artful red water fountain.
Boredom, the most dangerous aspect of immortality.
From which the worst terrors imaginable are spawned.
