Page 55 of Envious Of Fire
Kyle narrows his eyes.
“What?” Elias chuckles. “You only keep me around for my blood, right? Fuck that guy. He doesn’t have to understand what we have, what we are.” The firm and muscular flesh of Elias’s arm presses against Kyle’s lips. “Bite.”
With a rush of sexual pleasure below and the echo of Elias’s desire back into Kyle, it’s difficult to resist anything. He wants it as badly as Elias does, even despite the circumstances, which seem to get worse no matter their efforts.
Lazarus’s face appears before Kyle, with maddened eyes, needle-thin pupils, his long pale hand pressed to Kyle’s face—“Drink,” Lazarus demands, just as he did before, and Kyle gulps his fill with a dark and terrible pleasure.
Suddenly Kyle’s hands fly to his face, covering his eyes.
Elias stops at once. “Kyle?”
“Sorry,” he groans behind his hands. “Sorry, babe … my … my mind is just … I can’t …”
“I get it. I’m … I’m sorry.” Elias slides off of Kyle at once, sits next to him on the bed, gently caresses the side of Kyle’s face. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay,” Kyle insists, words muffled behind his hands. “I just need … I think I just need a minute, just a minute to calm down, or to get out of my own head, or—”
“No, Kyle. Don’t force yourself.” Elias lies next to Kyle at once, puts an arm around him again, rubs him. “We don’t have to do anything tonight. I … I guess I wasn’t the only one who was attacked by that fangy asshole. You need time, too.” Elias kisses Kyle’s cheek, his ear, then rests his head by Kyle’s on the pillow. “I pushed you too much. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t be sorry,” says Kyle, unsure if he’stelling Elias or himself, “we’ll be fine, totally fine.”
“I know we will be,” agrees Elias softly, then not much else is said as the men lie there cuddled next to each other. After a while passes, Elias suggests a shower, Kyle agrees, and the two rise from the bed together and head for the bathroom to clean up. “We can try another night,” says Elias after their shower as they cuddle for sleep. Kyle nods, whispers, “Another night,” then nothing more is said as the dark blue of morning pushes through the curtains.
But the next night, Kyle stays in the park even longer, with his wary eyes scanning the area like a radar, ready for any sign of danger. And this is after another strange night at the bar with even less customers. Is he becoming bad for business, too?
“Nope, I’m fine,” said the café owner earlier, arms crossed on the counter, eyes on the TV, “Becks got me earlier.” And when Kyle went to Cade’s office, she was still too obsessed with her research to hear Kyle’s worries. “Now doesshelook like me?” she asked, yet another photo of a possible relative brought up on her laptop, a side-by-side. “I think I can see it in her eyes, maybe, kinda, sort of. Am I reaching? Does it seem like I’m reaching? Ugh, I’m totally reaching. Wanna hang with me for a while? Leland’s been wanting to practice bartending lately, he can take over. He gets so restless in the kitchen.” And Kyle only stared back at her, not daring to ask if there wasanotherreason Leland’s taking over, too stuck in his mood. He just nodded, dropped into a chair, then listened to Cade explain how she is almost, totally, not quite, but most certainly convinced she may have a relation to some famous “Norwood Coven”. Kyle couldn’t follow her all that well, his mind too crowded, his emotions everywhere.
Nothing feels good. Nothing feels comfortable anymore.
Everything is wrong.
When Elias holds him in bed later that same night after abrief make-out session that involved a bit of frustrated groping, Kyle feels Elias’s racing heart, the gentle grind of Elias’s legs upon his own, and picks up every subtle hint that Elias is more than ready whenever Kyle is. Yet still, there is no desire in Kyle to bite Elias tonight or initiate any further activity.
Is the desire gone completely, giving way to fear?
Who is he anymore?
What is happening?
“Vampire,” murmurs Kyle into the silence, long after Elias has fallen asleep, testing the word. “Vampire.” He keeps trying to see if it will ever feel natural to utter, if it will someday stop feeling wrong. He wonders if Tristan has ever let himself say it.
Vampire.
It’s Saturday night at the bar, now four days since Lazarus appeared, four long nights of no further threat, and Kyle can’t stop thinking about the cheery, hopeful smile on Elias’s face as he kissed him goodbye on his way out the door for work. “The deck isn’t coming along as fast as we wanted, I know,” Elias had said, “but good things always take time, and before you know it, we’ll be relaxed outside on a pair of rusty lawn chairs, protected from the sun, in the middle of the day, just like a pair of boring, normal people.” Kyle lingered at the door a second longer than usual imagining that concept: being a boring, normal person. It followed him on the way to work, when he peered down every alley and checked every out-of-place shadow. A boring, normal person. Elias’s cheery smile, acting like some wall between their happy-ever-after and the nightmare that won’t let them go.
“It’s important we find out everything we can about our true selves,” says Cade at the bar after making a comment about how “totally deadsville” it is for a Saturday. “I may be concluding jack shit about jack shit, but it sure feels like an adventure each time I explore my family tree. I may have landed a number I can call tomorrow morning, see if I can’t connect a couple puzzle pieces.”
Kyle is eyeing a table in the back, where Jeremy and Layna are playing some card game, slapping heart after diamond after club after spade onto the table, now and then laughing, now and then playfully arguing over who won which round. They’re the other reason Cade stepped out of her office—the unspoken third reason being a particular song that came on the jukebox and pulled her out from under the pile on her desk.
“Do you … ever grow curious, Kyle?” she asks, her voice a touch quieter. “About … y’know … others like you?”
Kyle meets her eyes. Cade may be the only other person in this town who could understand a fraction of how he feels.
“I still regret saying all that the other night,” she mumbles.
Kyle’s brow creases. “About what?”
“My vision. The burning house and all that. It wassoout of line. I know,” she says quickly, lifting a hand, “you encouraged me anyway, told me not to give up, shared about that deranged fortune teller you went to one Halloween with your brother and friend as kids … and I am amazed, sure, that she got some facts right, two out of three isn’t bad, if we don’t want to assume it was all just a bunch of self-fulfilling prophesy and manifestation with a bit of luck … but … I just want to say, I’m sorry. It was insensitive of me. Yes, I’m one of those types, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I let the words out of my mouth.”
