Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Noah
It’s been three weeks, and I still can’t close my eyes without seeing shirtless Andrew in my head and remembering how his bare back felt under my hands when I impulsively—foolishly?—hugged him.
Of course, it doesn’t help that he has a habit of walking around the apartment bare chested. For someone who’s so into clothes, he doesn’t wear them as much as he should. And why is his body so nicely defined, anyway? His stupid expensive clothes hide a lot .
I’ve been thinking about his body way too much.
Like, lying awake at night in that gorgeously comfortable huge bed, imagining all the ways he could use that body.
It’s criminal how long it takes me to fall asleep—because while vampire hearing isn’t quite as good as shifter, it’s still good enough that he’d hear if I beat one out, and while he might not feel embarrassment, I don’t know if I could handle looking him in the eye knowing he listened to me masturbate.
Maybe if I invited him to watch? That could be hot.
Like… really hot. Whew. Uh, but there’s always the possibility that he’d say no, and then I’d be back to dying of embarrassment.
Although, what sexually active single guy says no to watching someone jerk it?
Even if nothing more is on the table, it’s fun to watch.
Holy fuck, how did I go down this rabbit hole?
Right, thinking of Andrew while lying in bed and not being able to do anything about it.
The real shame of it is the lost sleep, because since I moved in, I’ve been sleeping better than I have in years.
I don’t know if it’s the bed or the knowledge that Andrew’s wards are top-notch or what, but when I finally do manage to get to sleep, I don’t wake up until morning.
If I’m having nightmares, they’re polite enough to disperse before I can remember them.
It’s amazing. Sleep is amazing. I recommend it. Five stars.
Things have been good for me lately. Even with the threat of Tish looming, I feel more secure and confident in my life than I have since before the abduction.
Work is no longer tedious—the research David has me doing is fascinating.
He showed me some online archives that he needed to get special permission for me to access, then put me in touch with librarians and archivists from all around the world who are seriously hardcore at finding information.
I think they’re excited that David and I are exploring a “new” avenue of historic research.
Nobody’s really looked into human magic use before, what with being focused on their own species, but they’re all academics and so the fact that I’m doing this makes me worthy of respect in their eyes, if that makes sense.
And I’m finding some pretty cool stuff. We’ve been able to confirm that human magic use wasn’t ritualized until after the species wars, which is a pretty big deal.
Humans back then could likely use magic the way I do—with focus and will.
This is, like, revolutionary information.
It also appears that David’s theory about the magic not allowing itself to be used to directly cause harm is true, but I’m still struggling to prove that.
The easiest way to do it would be for me to try to hurt someone using the magic, but I feel really gross about that idea—not that Percy and David would approve it anyway. Talk about unethical.
There’re pictures of a section of carvings from a wall in a crypt somewhere that I’m convinced have more information, but they haven’t been translated yet, and David and I are worried that if we try to find a translator and push it up their to-do list, we’ll attract too much attention to what we’re doing.
It’s a balance between finding what we need and not terrifying the community by revealing that humans can do magic and a human is researching ways to make it easier.
With that in mind, I’ve been compiling a lexicon of common pictographs and hieroglyphs for my own reference, so I can at least recognize when something might be relevant.
It’s a lot cooler than I ever thought it would be, and I’m thinking I might look into taking some language courses.
It can’t hurt to be multilingual, can it?
Although the languages I’m most interested in right now are dead ones, and I think learning those would involve an advanced college degree rather than an evening course at a local community center.
Plus, all my free time right now is being spent on training to use the magic.
Which, seriously, you gotta try. It’s fucking awesome.
I can handle fireballs now without wearing myself out too quickly.
That helps in making me safer from any attack by Tish, too—if I can lob a few fireballs at my assailants, I have a better chance of getting away.
Or if they do manage to kidnap me, I can just burn the whole place to the ground…
once I figure out how to protect myself from the flames, because those fuckers hurt.
It’s still a work in progress. But hey, I’ve also discovered I can use the magic to dull pain from minor burns!
I’m getting pretty good at most telekinesis, and I’ve also got a grip on simple wards.
That’s a lot tougher, because the way David and other sorcerers do it just doesn’t work for me.
Anything complex that requires me to “set and forget” seems to fall apart pretty quickly.
We’ve had to rely on the information from David’s Wiccan friend for the basics and extrapolate from that, which makes it slow going.
But the more I use this ability, the more I find myself able to do, so it’s a muscle I’m flexing as often as possible.
Andrew’s been helping a lot. Don’t get me wrong, he still pisses me off on the regular, but now I know he’s doing it on purpose, because when I need him to be supportive or focused, he is.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the centuries-old vampire actually can act like an adult.
I mean, he’s one of the most highly placed and respected people in the community of species, literally responsible for keeping all species safe from discovery by humans and thus potential obliteration.
I guess when you’re older than clocks, you get sick of always acting like a mature adult.
He’s still a dick, but it wouldn’t hurt for me to cut him some slack, right?
Okay, fine. Yes, I want to do dirty things to him and I’m trying to rationalize that with the fact that I’m not sure if I like him as a…
I was going to say “human being,” but he’s not human.
Oh my god, I want to fuck a vampire. Who’s hundreds of years older than me.
My life has become one of those teen movies the girls at my high school used to get all weird over.
All that’s left for me to do is get all dramatic and introspect—
Like I’m being right now. Fuck. My. Life. I’m a teenybopper vampire lover.
I stare at the bedroom ceiling and wonder how it came to this.
Yep. Still doing it. Dramatic and introspective. Ugh.
I throw back the covers and haul myself out of bed.
I’ve spent too long this morning trying to decide if it’s okay to sexually proposition someone I think I dislike.
I feel like there’s a moral imperative to say no, I should at least not hate someone I’m going to fuck, but honestly, my sense of morality might be on the fritz, because I don’t care that much.
It’s more that part of me thinks I should care. I don’t want to be morally broken.
I freeze halfway across the threshold to the bathroom. Could this be an aftereffect of my abduction? Did being held captive screw with my sense of right and wrong?
Nah. If that was the case, I’d have murdered Andrew months ago.
Even though the memory of breaking his nose gives me warm feelings, I don’t think I could actually kill him just for being annoying.
Hell, even the thought of experimenting on him with my new ability is gross—although that doesn’t include “accidentally” hitting him with things while practicing telekinesis.
Or the time I created a ward right in front of him while he was walking, and he actually bounced off it.
Man, that shit was funny. But I couldn’t use him as a test subject to see if the magic would allow me to use it to hurt people, no matter whether I hate him or not.
I get in the shower and turn on the water, letting the initial cold blast force me to focus. Because I need to ask myself A Serious Question. Do I really hate Andrew?
I hate Tish. Loathe him with every fiber of my being. Hate him for what he did to me. Hate him for what he did to everyone else he experimented on. Hate him for what he’s trying to do to this community and society. What I feel for Andrew, even before lust crept in, is nothing like that.
Andrew… Well, he annoys me. But he annoys a lot of people.
He goes out of his way to tease and torment and wind people up until they just want to smack him.
But I’ve never seen him actually hurt anyone, not in a way that caused lasting damage—not like Tish.
Andrew will pick at your stupid fears—like when I was terrified Gideon would eat me—but he’ll stand between you and the real bullies.
And I can’t lie, these last few weeks, he’s proven himself to be a… friend?
What else do you call it when you share meals and conversation with someone and they help you develop skills?
Can you be friends with someone and still think fondly of breaking their nose?
Can you think fondly of breaking someone’s nose and still want to have sex with them?
I stick my head under the stream of hot water. I guess the answer’s yes on both counts. Does that make me a freak?
Sighing—and then coughing and spluttering as I end up with a mouthful of water—I push the thought aside and concentrate on what’s important: jacking off.