Chloe grins as well, nudging my shoulder.
“Not bad for a beginner,” she says.
“You’re certainly off to a good start. I’d recommend coming in here a couple days throughout the week, just to build up your endurance and stamina. I lock up at eleven, just so you know.”
I push some strands behind my ear, my ponytail practically dripping with sweat.
I’ve never considered myself a physical person. Father had a gym and training course, of course, but those were for the knights and soldiers in our employ, not for us. Ptaris had a gym in his quarters, and I’m sure if I wouldhave asked him, he would have let me use it. Although, the thought of Ptaris makes me feel conflicted, given everything I know now.
About him. And my father.
It shouldn’t bother me. And in truth, it’s not the fact that my fatherclaimedhim that bothers me at all. It’s the fact that I simply didn’t know—that neither of them trusted me enough to tell me the truth.
I am not obtuse, I know how most vampires feel about those who desire the same sex. Even though our kingdom is a bit more progressive than our Castorian rivals, there is still an air of disdain attached to the idea. But my father could have changed that, could he not? If he and Ptaris had come forth about their bond, they could have shown our kingdom and the realm that such a bond was not one to be feared, butcelebrated.My father loved my mother dearly, that I know.
And her death always felt like a haunting ghost on its own. But he had Ptaris. His best friend and a man I grew up with, looking at as if he was a second father, and sometimes a first, depending on the situation.
Certainly, if there was a person to lay law and change perceptions on the matter it would have been a king in power.
But I suppose it could have backfired, too. Perhaps others would have seen it as a sign of weakness, a chip in his armor—a reason to remove him from the throne. I don’t know. I can’t be certain what would have happened, so I tell myself it’s best not to think about it.
“You girls go on up and hit the showers; you workedyour asses off today,” Trent says, flashing Chloe a surreptitious smile.
I look between them, as Adrien’s words settle on me.
Don’t listen to her, her brain’s been rotted by all the dick.
My cheeks flush as I wonder if Trent’s smile is more than what it seems.
“Yes, we did,” Chloe says as she tugs my hand, and I realize I’ve been standing here like a bold-faced statue, caught in my head once again.
I seem to be doing that a lot lately.
Getting lost in my thoughts, my surroundings…
I follow Chloe with ease, my sweat starting to chill on my skin. The locker room isn’t particularly full, our class is small, about ten or so vampires and vampiresses.
But the steam fills the room as if there are far more of us than what there actually are.
Chloe undresses next to me, just as she had this morning when we’d arrived. I steal a glance, if only because I’ve never seen another vampiress undressed like this, until this morning and then I’d been rushed because I had been talking to Adrien longer than I should have.
I note the curves of her breasts and hips, the flatness of her stomach. Her pale flesh glistens as she removes her sports bra and her panties, and I do the same.
Vampiresses are alluring by nature, meant to be objects of desire for both humans and their vampirecounterparts. But there is a sort of goddess-like beauty, almost a timelessness too.
“How old are you?” I ask.
She casts me a sly grin. “Twenty-three. You?”
“I will be twenty-one in three months.”
“Awww, you're just a baby bat, aren’t ya?” she says with a chuckle, turning to give me an ample view of her backside. She chats and talks as if we are still clothed, and I’m not sure if that makes me comfortable or uncomfortable. A little of both, perhaps.
Fear culminates inside of me as I realize she is the first person to see me naked.
Well, outside of my doctors and my governess, of course, when I was a child, but…
I suddenly feel quite vulnerable. I don’t look like Chloe. I’m short, my arms and legs are not as thin and my breasts are staunchly larger than Chloe’s, and hers look far more proportionate than mine, in my opinion.
