It can all wait. We find this fae, and then I will think about it all again.
Grant wakes before me, sometime in the day, and he is quiet enough that I do not wake until an hour or so before the sun goes down. He is sitting over on the stool, silently looking at something on his phone, and I take a moment to really take him in.
His dark hair is messy from sleep, falling in his eyes, but he hasn’t pushed it aside, so he doesn’t care. The T-shirt he has been sleeping in is a few sizes too big, falling down one shoulder and exposing the line of his collarbone. My mouth waters. I want more than sex. I will always want more from him. But right now the urge to touch him seizes me, and I know better.
“You’re awake!” Grant says, and his grin makes me swallow hard.
“Yes. How long have you been up?”
He shrugs. The T-shirt slips a little lower. “An hour or so, I guess. Didn’t sleep well.”
I sigh and get out of bed. “You need to feed.”
Grant groans. I pick up my towel—I need to shower before I dress, but I will not have him go hungry. “You could have done so before I awoke.” I put blood bags in the fridge when we first arrived. Grant has never fed from anyone but me; turns can feed from their sires, and it is the best way to teach control in the first few tumultuous years of their vampirism.
We have not done that for some time. It is too close. Too intimate. The blood bags more than suffice.
“I’m not even hungry.”
That matters not, even if, like every time I hear them, the words make me frown. There is no satiation for a vampire soyoung. Everything is about hunger. Were Grant at thirty or forty years turned, I might be more inclined to think nothing of it.
Heneedsblood. We all do when we are first turned. Even after the initial turning, there are so many changes taking place, so many adjustments… It all takes time.
I turn a glare on him. “Eat, Grant. I am not asking.”
He huffs and sets his phone down before he takes the bag out of the small fridge. “Fine. Happy?”
I cross my arms over my chest and watch. I will wait all night if I have to. I am not risking him getting close to Jakob without having every advantage at his disposal.
Grant glares back at me, but eventually, he tears into the bag and drinks. It takes him a few minutes to finish it all, and there is no ravenous hunger of a vampire in him, not in the way there should be.
I push the knot of worry aside. Fifteen years, and there is nothing wrong with him. This is just how he is. And I do not wish to unravel that mystery because once everything has been revealed, it is out in the light for anyone to uncover.
“I really wasn’t hungry,” Grant protests when he’s done. “I know to eat when I am.”
Except I do not remember him ever asking for blood. He has never complained of hunger clawing at his insides. His eyes have never glowed from the sheer overwhelm of it.
“I am certain you do. But I will have us going into tonight with every advantage at our disposal.”
Grant nods. He does not truly believe me, but that matters less to me now that he is fed. I leave him out in the bedroom and let myself into the bathroom. My shower is quick and efficient, and when I step back out again, a towel wrapped around my waist, I find Grant staring at his laid-out clothes, clearly deciding what to wear.
He glances up at me, and his eyes go wide. He presses his lips together, cheeks going pink, and I sigh and reach for my bag. There is little else I can do. We truly have no privacy, no matter how much either of us would like to think otherwise.
“I need something just as attention-grabbing as last night,” Grant says, staring resolutely down at his clothes. He turns a baleful gaze on me. “Can you help?”
Part of me does not want to, even as I know I would give Grant anything he ever wanted. I place the shirt I am holding gently back down and take a step closer to the bed. Grant swallows hard, but I will dress in a moment, once this is done.
“What do you feel most comfortable in?” The more comfortable he is, the more confident he will appear.
Grant purses his lips and picks up a coral-coloured satin shirt. It resembles the one he is currently wearing, aside from the fabric and the fact that it is long-sleeved. I nod, then choose another mesh top for underneath and a pair of trousers that, while not tailored, might pass for it underneath the club lights.
“They’re very…” Grant frowns, trailing off.
“Very what?”
“Modest?”
I huff. “The strategy we have in mind is for you to have the upper hand, is it not?”
