“Do you wish to pay for this next time, little death, is that it?” I asked.
“I might just take you up on that offer,” he returned all too smoothly.
Of course.
With a final lick, Zayn patted my thigh, then collapsed half on top of me, half on Evira.
I reached out and stroked her stomach and she murmured peacefully.
A comfortable silence fell over us.
“Anyone else ravenously hungry now?” Evira asked a few moments later.
“Shit, yeah, I could eat,” Zayn breathed.
Winter gave a murmur of acknowledgement.
I could personally take it or leave it, but I did very much enjoy our conversations over a meal.
“Five more minutes,” I responded.
“Agreed,” Winter said, his eyes fluttering closed.
“Any more than that and it won’t be food I’m ravenous for,” Evira warned.
Zayn chuckled. “Look who’s become as insatiable as me.”
“Guess you boys bring it out in me.”
I smiled to myself. We certainly brought out a lot in each other.
And for me, they were things that I’d never imagined being possible.
In truth, it was utterly astounding.
And it had become everything to me.
11
~Zayn~
Win was confusing the shit out of me.
So much so that for the past few days, that oil painting on my dorm wall had been stuck on the image of me sitting on that damn stool with awhat-the-fucklook on my face.
And, no, I still hadn’t taken it down. It had actually proven helpful. I was using it sort of like a gauge to make sure I was keeping on top of things when it came to this whole emotional intelligence exploration thing that I’d been on lately. It was why things worked now for me with our foursome, because I was no longer burying so much and cutting myself off. I was listening, cataloguing, making improvements, trying to be a whole person, basically, not just the broken pieces of one.
And the painting reflectedrepressed emotions and needs. So keeping an eye on it helped me to see if there was anything slipping through that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding at bay and not addressing. Anything that could cause issues or build up inside me unhealthily, then impact our group.
The strange thing was that, in this particular case, it wasn’t me having an issue holding back unhealthy shit—it was Win.
Since we’d come back to Loxley after his abduction, he’d come to me every single day, sometimes even twice a day, wanting to feed. And while I’d assured him that I’d be there for him whenever he needed that—and, yeah, I did enjoy him doing that with me—it was the way it had started to go down that had me worried. Ever since the night after the kidnapping where he’d found me in his family’s den and told me he’d felt‘cold’.
There was a desperation to it now.
He’d even often beg halfway through and say things like, “Please don’t make me stop yet.” Or, “Just a little while longer, almost there.” And, “Deeper, please can I go deeper?”
The confusing part wasn’t even this alone—and that was obviously bad enough. It was that he seemed so stable and in control outside of that. In front of everyone else. Even in front of me, a few minutes after a feeding session. Like it had never happened.
