“You just need to learn to tune them out. I’ll walk you through everything. We can go to the woods at the pack house. I’ll teach you how to differentiate smells. It should help you with shutting them out, too. Same with sounds. It’s a process.” Rian was on the case.
Another fifteen minutes later, Luca started to look a bit fidgety. It was barely noticeable, and I could see he wasn’t aware of it himself. The rest of us were, though, and Rian made eye contact with me.
I collected all the trash from breakfast. “Hey Luca? I’m going to take this to the kitchen. Do you need a bite? I can detour to the couch.”
His gaze snapped to me, and again, that flicker of the predator our sweet musician had turned into flared up. He frowned, then seemed to take stock of himself.
“Uh… yeah. I think that’s a good idea.”
Rian checked his cell phone for the time and nodded. “Do you need me to come with you?” he asked, and I liked that he was giving Luca the agency.
He shook his head. “I think I’m good if Max is there.” His gaze flicked to my brother and again, an emotion I couldn’t recognize flitted across his features.
“That sounds good to me.” I got to my feet.
I got rid of the trash and then sat next to Luca on the couch. Max was on his other side, his hand on Luca’s thigh.
“Do your best to take only what you need,” Rian called out from the porch.
To Luca’s credit, he didn’t scoff or roll his eyes. Instead, he looked at me and swallowed hard. “I’ll try my best, okay?”
“I trust you,” I said, realizing just how much truth that sentence held.
Max’s gaze snapped to mine, and his eyes widened. He realized the significance of my statement.
“Neck of wrist?” I asked. “I’m fine with either.”
“Wrist, maybe? I want to practice that for the future. I wouldn’t want to drink from a donor’s neck.”
There were some apps for vampires and people who wanted to donate blood for them. There was an actual government-sponsored one called DonorMatch that was official and very safe. Then there were those others that, apparently, were filled with people who wanted to live a bit more dangerously and/or use the feeding as the aphrodisiac it could be.
I held out my wrist and Luca took it carefully, finding the spot Rian had showed him on Max last night. When he finally bit through, I hissed at the sensation, but then the blissed out feeling rolled over me. It reminded me vaguely of the one time I’d tried heroin.
My body reacted, because it was supposed to, and because I found Luca attractive. When he stopped the bite about five seconds before I would’ve asked him to, he looked dazed, too.
“That was… good,” he murmured. Then his eyes widened a little. “Wait. The hot and heady scent. That’s arousal, isn’t it?”
I let my head drop forward and groaned. Luca chuckled. Then he sputtered out a laugh.
“Well, well….” The teasing tone was obvious, as was the reason for it as soon as I looked at my brother on his other side. Max was blushing like crazy.
Chapter Four
Luca
Arousal. Rian had coached me through how it would be on the other side of that before he turned me. I’d known how it felt being bitten, of course, but doing the biting when the other person was getting aroused? Yeah, a whole other deal.
It happened with everyone, so it could make those donor apps complicated. That’s why Rian had his regular donor, a human woman named Acacia, who just wanted to help and keep everything purely friendly. Not that Rian needed her help much these days, given that he had his own werewolf to feed from.
The unofficial apps were apparently just meat markets, so to speak. The thought of those made me shiver a little with disgust, if I was honest. But luckily I had no need for any of the apps right now, at least. Not when I had two wolves happy to make sure I stayed fed.
Between the two of them, they could probably sustain me indefinitely with how their bodies replenished faster, especially once I got the initial adjustment period over with. Later down the line, I would have to feed maybe every other, or even every third, day. Just not yet.
I reached behind me to grab Max’s hand he’d pulled from my thigh. There was no shame in arousal. Even if it wasn’t him I was feeding from, I knew he was attracted to me and he practically felt his brother’s emotions. It wasn’t a stretch he’d be a bit squirmy in the moment.
“Thank you,” I told Ben. “That helped.”
He was a little affected still, so I smiled. Then I curled up against him from the side and pulled Max’s arm so that he would get close to me, too.
