Page 50 of Even Vampires Bleed (Even Ever After #2)

Cassiopé

I don’t even know how I ended up with my hands on his shoulders, massaging him.

It’s like my brain got short-circuited. One moment I was sitting next to him and the next my hands were untying the knots made of muscles of his back.

And out went my sanity.

I’d love to say that it’s because of the bloodlust that I’m acting this weirdly, but it might not be just that.

There is a reason I stayed away as far as I could from him.

It’s like my heart refuses to compute the fact that it’s not the same man I spent my days and nights with. My brain knows for sure, but my stupid heart keeps trying to take over, and that’s how I end up massaging him.

At least, my heart had enough sense to avoid straddling his hips, because if the way he jumped away when the oven alarm rang is any indication, my heart was in for disappointment.

I just need to steel myself and stop letting the idiot take over again.

Easier said than done, right?

I get up and crouch next to Léandre as I look through the opening of the oven’s door .

“Seems like it,” I say as I try to get up again.

Try is the key word here. Because all I do is lose my balance and bring Léandre with me as I grab anything—his shorts—to stay upright.

I monumentally fail, and we end up sprawled on the ground until I realize that I didn’t grab his shorts—or not just his shorts—and take my hand back as if I’ve been burned.

In my defense, it was very, very warm.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I say as I push away from him and avoid looking him in the eye. I don’t want to see the indifference that is surely there.

Instead, I keep apologizing as if I’m a broken record and get a cloth to remove the Hachis Parmentier out from the oven.

I drop it unceremoniously on the cooking plate, and then, when my face is finally schooled—it was all panic and blushing—I finally look at Léandre.

He’s still sitting on the ground, laughing silently.

“What?” I ask.

“You should have seen your face,” he tells me. “It was like you had never touched a cock and upon discovery, you decided it was the worst thing in the world.”

He’s laughing out loud now, and I don’t know how I should feel anymore.

Disinterested? I was ready for it. Amused? Not at all.

“It’s alright if it was the first time for you, Little Firefly,” he says with a cocky smile.

“I’ve touched penises before,” I bite back.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make yourself ridiculous.

Why did I say penis in the first place when he was obviously being dirty on purpose? And why did I sound like a petulant child ?

Except… It’s probably better to sound like a petulant child than to tell him that his is one of those penises I’ve touched—and enjoyed—in the past.

“Cock,” he says. “This is a cock. Penis sounds so clinical.” He shakes his head before adding, “Really, if you never touched one, and you are very nice and promise not to squish it, I’ll let you touch it again.”

He adds a wink at the end and gets up to set the table with plates and cutlery, as if he didn’t just shake my world in the douchiest way.

Except all I can hear in what he just said is the fact that he might not be against my hands being on him.

Cassiopé, you’re stranded in the middle of the forest, with no one around for kilometers. You’re his best bet at getting some. Of course, he’s going to want you to touch him. Duh.

I can’t start imagining that he wants my hands on him, or I might not recover.

I don’t answer his taunting and grab glasses and fill a reusable water bottle from the sink to put on the table near the plates instead.

Then I bring back the Hachis and put a heavy quantity on his plate. After the show I was privy today in the clearing, I have no doubt he needs the calories.

“I hope you’ll like it,” I say as I serve myself and then sit.

The rest of the meal continues mostly in silence, cut by Léandre’s groans of pleasure—yes, I know those—so I have no doubt he liked my food.

After everything is finished—and by that I mean Léandre took seconds and went to the point that he almost licked the cooking container—Léandre gets up, piles up the dishes and goes to the sink.

Because you guessed it… there is no dishwasher in this tiny hole in the forest.

“You cooked, I’ll clean,” he says. I want to argue because, really, we cooked together, but by the way he’s looking at me, I know he won’t change his mind. So, instead I go in the room, take out my bed sheets and proceed to bring them back to the living room.