His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

Chapter 10: Inner Beasts

"Why are you so smiley today?" she asked, trying halfheartedly to push herself away from my chest, though I held her there. I opened my mouth to answer, but her nose suddenly twitched, and I quickly squeezed my lips together. "What is that smell on your breath?"

Oh, shit. Playfulness always led me straight to stupidity. I really needed to stop that. "It's nothing," I assured her, carefully turning my face away as I pretended to scan the room again, my arm slipping away from her shoulders. "I just decided to feed while I was out."

"Who did you feed on?" she asked, her voice filled with suspicion and a barely concealed rage. She took my face in her hand, squeezing my cheeks together as she tried to pry my mouth open. I fought her, but her grip proved to be too strong, she too determined, and she nearly shoved her nose into my mouth when she finally overcame me. "It wasn't a human, so who was it?" she barked once she'd gotten a whiff, though she didn't release my face.

I shoved her away with much more force than I'd intended, and she hit the other arm of the couch with a grunt. Her book slid from her lap to the floor, but she didn't even seem to notice. "You wouldn't be asking like that if you didn't already know," I snapped as I gently rubbed my cheeks where she'd squeezed them.

"You smell like her," she nearly screamed, "and not just your breath!"

"Why are you getting so worked up over this?" I asked in a grumble, crossing my arms over my chest.

"You had sex with her, didn't you?" she asked, and the anger in her face was stunning. "You had sex with that werewolf whore!"

"So?" I asked, my voice barely staying even. I tried to keep myself composed, now, just to spite her. "We're not a couple. You have no say in who I feed from or who I sleep with."

She lurched to her feet, fists clenched, and I was sure that she was going to strike me. "We just had a discussion about our feelings," she said, her voice cracking halfway through. "You know that I...You know..."

"I don't know anything, actually," I said as I calmly rose to my feet. "You refuse to tell me."

"And that makes it okay to fuck a werewolf?" She glowered up at me, her fists curling tighter and tighter, but she didn't strike as I'd expected.

"We're not a couple," I repeated in that annoyingly casual tone. "You have no say in who I feed from or who I sleep with."

She glared up at me for a moment longer, looking like she wanted to speak, like she was going to speak, only to say nothing in the end. She shoved me so hard that I fell onto the couch, then she stormed past me and out of the front door of the apartment.

"Elyria, you're in your underwear," I called after her, but her only reply to my words was a slam of the door. She was gone.

With a sigh, I leaned forward on the couch and put my head in my hands. When had I become such a dick? When had I begun to care so little about others?

Oh, yeah. The second I became a vampire.

I made a soft noise of frustration and flopped on the couch, my head falling to rest upon the arm Elyria had been using. It still smelled of her, I noticed, but I did my best to push any thought of her from my mind. I closed my eyes and tried my damnedest to fall asleep.

-?-

When Bethany answered the door, Elyria didn't know how to react. Did she deck her? Grab her by her hair and start clawing at her face? Punch her in the boob? No, no. She took a much more dignified route. She slapped her – hard.

"What the fuck, you bitch?" the werewolf shouted, reaching for her reddened cheek, but Elyria grabbed her by the front of her T-shirt before she could do anything to ease the sting.