HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 71

Chapter Seventy One

The rain fully stopped by the time I went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Echo had decided to stay in the bedroom and browse MeTube for videos, having been exhausted by our escapades last night and just now in the shower. I was relieved by his choice, honestly... I hadn't really thought about it in the spur of the moment, but he could have had a seizure.

A protective flush washed over me.

I just wanted him to take it easy for a bit.

I was a bit disconnected from myself as I cooked pancakes, staring off into space with my ears limp and my whole body just kinda... not there. My groin still tingled in a way I wasn't familiar with, a weird combination of muted lust and post-coital satisfaction that had me feeling dazed.

The sizzle of the food was the only thing that really kept me functioning.

I mean, everything literally felt different to me. My body, my insides, my thought process, it was all jumbled up like I'd done something so bad that it had somehow wound up feeling good... something I shouldn't have done but hadn't, for a second, regretted because it felt wonderful in every way. Like Eve, in the Garden of Eden, when she'd taken the apple and bit into it.

The vampire resting just down the hall was officially my boyfriend.

Boyfriend... the word felt alien to me, like it wasn't all that real, like it hadn't sunken in just yet how our dynamic had changed. It excited me, because it was new, and I couldn't help but wonder what I was supposed to do now that I was going steady.

How did people usually behave when they were in a relationship? Was it just the addition of sex thrown into something that was already there? I frowned and shook my head, absently flipping the hissing pancakes. That ideology, to me, sounded more like being friends with benefits.

I sighed dreamily, rubbing my neck, pondering things as the hiss grew louder. My apartment was well furnished, but had been done so tastefully and without clutter. In such an open space the sound of cooking food found room to grow, reverberate, echo back on me.

I sighed, closing my eyes for a second, quietly relishing in the feelings coursing through me.

Standing here in the kitchen was surreal. I almost questioned whether or not this was real. Being stuck in a dream or hypnotized by Jasper was a hell of a lot more likely than the alternative, that I was actually here the morning after making love with someone for the first time all night.

My chest swelled and I grinned a slow grin, remembering his face as phantom shocks of our actions rippled between my legs. I shuddered, goosebumps rising on my arms, because my flashbacks were just as intense as ever, I could remember every breath, every sound, every movement and touch and taste as if I were still living through the experience. Every bead of sweat that formed on his body, every time his eyes locked with mine, his toes, curling...

Fingers clawing into me...

And then, I saw Kat's face in my head, and then Huang's, and my mood evaporated. I looked down at the bubbling golden batter forming my breakfast, pensive, because rejection wasn't enjoyable on either end. Furthermore, I was an asshole, because I'd known she liked me and hadn't bothered telling her that I liked Echo before moving forward with him.

Granted, I hadn't really been expecting things to turn out the way they did last night, but...

No. But nothing.

I huffed through my nose and turned the stove off, carefully using the spatula to put the last pancake onto the towering pile of thirty I'd already made, and after putting six on another plate I procured from the cabinet, I drizzled some liquid butter from the fridge on top and then put syrup onto both plates. I gripped them carefully and swiveled, heading for the front door.