Kilian pulled Stephen close. He was exhausted, and reality was still fractured around him in ways that he was too tired to comprehend. When Kilian was drifting away, Stephen threw his leg across Kilian’s thighs. If it hadn’t been for all of the blood and pain, it would have almost been domestic.
Chapter Nine
Stephen’s languagelesson took place in a small office decorated like the set of a commercial for a fancy law firm. Books lined the walls and one half of the room was taken up by an enormous desk with carved legs. In contrast, the tutor wore a T-shirt proclaimingNerds Rule the Worldwith Andy Warhol inspired pictures of a dozen scientists and computer pioneers. He looked as if he should have been hanging out on a college campus drinking coffee, not sitting behind a fancy desk in a hidden Army base in the Arctic Circle.
Kilian kept his attention focused on his phone. He had limited network access and no live search engine, but the base had a huge range of games. Apparently boredom was the real enemy around here. Kilian wondered how many of the base personnel cured their boredom the way Kilian and Stephen had three times the previous night. Kilian’s dick was sore, but he felt better than he had in fucking years.
Even better, Stephen had woken this morning with a clear-eyed charm that lacked the sadistic tones of the demon.
The tutor laughed and then said something so fast that Kilian couldn’t tell where one word stopped and another started. It was all mushed together with sounds that Kilian couldn’t have made out if someone paid him. Polish sounded difficult.
Stephen, however, seemed engrossed in conversation with the tutor. From the curious glances the tutor kept shooting his way, Kilian suspected the conversation had something to do with him. That was fine. There was no rule against sex. With as many supernatural creatures as the Army employed, any fraternization rule would’ve gone exactly nowhere. However, his gut churned a bit. Maybe the guilt was making his large breakfast back up. Or not. Either way, he didn’t need his sex life dissected as part of a foreign language assignment.
That felt too close to what Silas had done by filing reports on Kilian’s sex life. And last night... Silas would have failed Kilian. It had been too wild, too uncontrolled. Yet this morning, there had been something young and vulnerable in Stephen’s expression. The demon had lost ground. Ironically, that had made Kilian feel even guiltier because it was as if their sex had been a mission objective. That was not how Kilian saw it.
Kilian shifted in his seat and rubbed his sternum. Breakfast was not sitting right. Hollow pain sat in his stomach. As far as Kilian knew, vampires couldn’t have allergies, but he might need to check into that theory because the discomfort was growing.
The tutor said something, and Stephen laughed with abandon. When Stephen turned to look at Kilian, his bright smile lit up his whole face, but the second he made eye contact, the smile vanished. “Are you okay?”
Kilian rubbed his sternum. “Something I ate is settling wrong.”
“You don’t look good.”
“I don’t feel good, so that seems fair,” Kilian said. The pressure was growing, and he was starting to feel alarmed. The pain wasn’t as sharp as when some inconsiderate person blessed him, but it had the same penetrating quality.
Stephen came over and crouched next to Kilian’s chair, one hand resting on the chair and the other on Kilian’s knee. “Do vampires get sick?”
“Historically? No.”
Stephen’s eyebrows went up. “Are you planning on breaking precedent on that?”
“Possibly?” Kilian tried to burp, but the sensation of air and pressure was caught in his chest, just under his ribs. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe I’m reacting to something.” If they were on sacred ground, or ground sacred to a Christian church anyway, that might explain his growing discomfort. His sire had chosen to be laid to rest under an altar specifically because Christian symbols repressed the supernatural powers the first Judas vamps had stolen from Judas Iscariot. However, if that was the case, Kilian didn’t know why he hadn’t reacted on day one.
“Maybe we should head back to the room.” Stephen tugged on Kilian’s arm.
“You are not cutting this lesson short so that you can go and have sex,” the tutor snapped, his collegiate chill vanished.
