Chapter 17
seventeen
DARIUS
My raging uncertainty kept my typical apathy at bay as I watched my mate peel out of the parking lot in one of my vehicles.
What the fuck had I done wrong?
I dropped back into my car and grabbed my phone. I wanted to find Mer and get her take on it, but considering that her mate was my mate's brother, I couldn't involve her. Not when the topic was sex.
Kat and Rae seemed to have hit it off, friendship-wise, and I wasn't about to fuck with that by going to ask her and Callum for advice.
That left me with one option.
The phone rang as I waited for Liv to answer.
She didn't.
It went to voicemail.
I checked the app we all used to track each other's locations. She and Niall were at their house, so I headed over there.
She called me back right before I got there. "Hey, what's up?"
"I'm about two minutes away from your house. I need advice."
"What kind of advice?"
"The relationship kind."
"Issues with Rae again already?"
"Don't say it like that."
"I wasn't saying it any particular way," Liv countered. "Callum said she's great."
"He did not."
"He said Kat has decided they're going to be best friends already, so he basically did."
"They get along really well," I admitted, pulling into the driveway. “See you in a minute."
I ended the call and strode up to the front door.
My emotions were still all over the place, wrestling the apathy that hung over me. I wanted to call Rae and check in with her already, and it had only been ten minutes.
The door was locked, so I typed the code in and opened it. I found Liv in her kitchen, making lunch.
"Hey!" she called out. "Take a seat. It's fridge cleanout day."
Shit.
Rae hadn't eaten.
I couldn't send food, either.
I sent her a quick message.
Don't forget to grab lunch
She didn't respond.
That was… good. She was driving. No response meant she was driving safely.
Or just ignoring me.
I was going to hope for the former.
"What happened with Rae?" Liv checked.
"It's a long story."
She flashed me a look over her shoulder. "You came for advice but aren't going to tell me the story? How is that supposed to work?"
I grimaced.
Rae was going to kill me if she found out I was talking about this, but if someone didn't help me figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do, I could lose her. Which was worse than her murdering me.
Maybe I could tell the story without telling the full story.
"We were in the car earlier, after she showed up at the café."
I explained the thing with the website Callum had apparently killed. Liv already knew about it, probably because she was Callum’s best friend.
“So she showed up at the café because she couldn't handle being away from you anymore,” Liv said.
"Right."
"That seems like a good sign.”
I nodded. "Yeah."
"And you were sitting in the car afterward, because..."
"She doesn't do well around big groups of people, and she needed a minute to chill. Drinking my blood helps snap her out of it."
"Oh right, she's a vampire. I almost forgot. Those gnarly scars you gave yourself are really hard to notice," Liv drawled.
I grabbed a banana off the countertop and threw it at her. She dodged it, and when it bounced off the stone backsplash, she picked it up and peeled it.
"Where's Niall? You're pissier than usual."
Liv sighed. "He's painting. Inspiration struck a few days ago, and it was the first time he's wanted to paint something other than me in multiple years. I'm forcing myself to give him space, and making him eat food."
My eyebrows lifted.
If Liv was giving him space, she really wanted him to enjoy painting. They never gave each other space.
"And Niall's on board with the space?"
She made a noncommittal noise. "When he notices my magic getting pissy, he comes out and gets mad at me for not going to find him. But I still want him to get to experience the obsession that comes with his artist mode, you know?"
"Yeah. I get it. I'm trying to give Rae space in all kinds of fucking ways."
"Is that why you need advice?"
"No. I was getting to that, but you kept interrupting me with sarcasm and questions."
"Fine. Get to it."
"She bit me, we talked, and she basically asked me to fuck her. I turned her down, and she sort of... panicked. She drove off. Said she's packing her old apartment."
"Isn't her old apartment way out in the asshole of the Shadow District?"
"Yeah. It's about a two-hour drive."
"Didn't she just learn to drive?"
"Yup."
"Did she take one of your sports cars?"
"Mmhm."
"And you just let her go?" Liv shot me a look that said I was insane. "First off, that's a safety hazard. Secondly... what the fuck, Darius? Why would she even panic about you not being in the mood for sex?"
I grimaced.
Only telling part of the story wasn't working.
"I was in the mood. I'm always in the mood. It's more complicated than that," I said.
"Uncomplicate it, then. I swear, you're harder to get information out of than Merrily."
"Rae has never had sex before. No one had ever even given her an orgasm. She doesn't let people close in any way. She's asked me to fuck her a few times when things are getting hot between us, but I haven't come up with a way to make her first time good enough."
Liv abandoned the food on her stove, turning and staring at me.
"The situation is delicate," I said defensively. "And we spent long enough driving around together for me to be mostly confident she's going to be safe in the car."
"You refused to fuck your mate when she directly asked you to, even though you clearly wanted to and were in the mood? And you were surprised when she basically ran away afterward?"
I blinked.
Guess I hadn't really thought about it that way.
Liv let out a slow breath. "This is way above my pay grade." She grabbed her phone off the countertop and pressed a few buttons. It started ringing, and she put it on speaker.
"Hey, Liv." Mer's voice was calm, and upbeat. She'd never sounded that happy before she was with Darke.
"Hey. Dare's here for advice on the Rae situation, and I don't know what to do with him. Your turn."
"I'm not really a neutral enough party to give advice," Mer said apologetically. "I don't want to take sides, and—"
"Just pretend it's not Dare and Rae. I'll call them... Steve and Karen," Liv put in.
"Fine."
I opened my mouth to tell her what had happened, but Liv beat me to it.
"Karen has never had sex before. Steve is perhaps the most experienced male in all the city," Liv announced.
I groaned.
Merrily coughed to hide a laugh.
"Steve and Karen have been working their way up to full-on penetration, starting with hand stuff and mouth stuff," Liv said. "Karen said she was ready to graduate to the big leagues of full-out cock-in-vag sex, about… five days ago?" She glanced at me.
"Four," I said grudgingly.
"Oh god," Mer muttered.
"Steve, feeling like it wasn't quite special enough, turned her down politely."
"Oh god," Mer groaned.
"This happened a few more times until it came to a pinnacle today, sitting in Steve's car, outside a café. After Karen risked her own comfort and sanity by coming to visit Steve in his workplace."
"Karen makes Steve work there," I grumbled.
"That's unrelated." Liv pointed to me. "Karen straight-up tells Steve she wants him, and Steve rejects her. When Karen takes a day to herself, driving all the way across the city alone, Steve lets her go because he still hasn't come up with something special enough."
Merrily sighed. "Darius."
"I know it sounds bad," I said, "But she's never been with anyone else, and I don't know how to make sure it's good enough for her."
"You're self-conscious of your sexual compatibility?"
"I've never fucked someone I actually cared about."
"I get it, but rejecting her wasn't the way to go," Mer said. "The best thing you can do is let her choose. If what she wants for her first time is to fuck you in your car, and you want it too, give her what she wants."
"She would probably appreciate a conversation about it," Liv said pointedly. "You need to make sure she understands that you weren't rejecting her because you don't want her."
"She knows I want her, and she doesn't like to talk about that shit."
"Emotions, you mean?" Merrily checked.
"Yes."
Liv sighed dramatically. "Of course fate paired you with someone who's even more allergic to feelings than you are."
"I'm not allergic to them. I just prefer not to acknowledge them," I said.
"How's that working out for you, Steve?" she shot back.
"Alright, I get it. I'll come up with something."
"I'll ask Grayson to keep an eye on her location while she's in the Shadow District," Mer added. "They track each other like we do."
"If someone was willing to have an uncomfortable conversation, Darius could keep an eye on her location himself," Liv pointed out.
"I get it," I grumbled. "I'll try to deal with the feelings."
"How are things going other than that?" Merrily asked.
They pestered me with questions while Liv finished up cooking and dished out the food. We ended the call, and she disappeared down the hallway, toward Niall's studio. I ate while she was gone, knowing she could be back in anywhere from one minute to an hour.
Niall emerged with her less than ten minutes later. He had paint streaks on his skin in various places, and wasn't wearing anything but a pair of gray sweats.
"Hey, man," he said, dragging Liv onto his lap in the chair next to mine.
Fuck, I wished Rae was with me.
"Hey. You're back in painting mode, I hear."
Niall grinned. "Yeah, It's been fun." He grabbed his fork. "How's Rae?"
"Don't get him started," Liv grumbled. "You don't want to hear the story about what just happened between them."
"Apparently, I fucked up."
Niall snorted.
I gave him a summary. He agreed with Mer and Liv, unsurprisingly.
I brainstormed a way to fix things while we hung out, itching for an excuse to text my mate again.