A movement in my periphery made my head snap sideways and I spotted Justin Masters looking in at us with wide eyes through the open door with his lips parted in shock.
“How much did you hear?!” I bellowed, ready to slice his ears off and make threats to every single member of his family so he never spoke a word of this.
He backed up several steps, fear crossing his features.
“J-just you asking Professor Orion how he gets hard,” he spluttered and I breathed a sigh of relief, hurrying to the door and slamming it in his face.
“Thank the stars,” I said heavily.
“Oh yes,” Orion said sarcastically as he glowered at me. “Thank the stars.”
I wheeled around, casting a silencing bubble and leaping back onto the bed as Orion chugged more of the bourbon. It was almost like he wanted to be drunk to endure my company, but it couldn’t be that. I was a delight.
“So?” I demanded. “Do you get hard for Darcy’s blood or is it because it’s Darcy’s blood that it makes you hard? Have you ever gotten hard just off of blood? I need to know, Lance. Stop holding out on me.”
He sighed, lowering the bottle and giving me an exasperated look. “Fine,” he huffed. “Yes, I’ve gotten hard from powerful blood before.”
“Before Darcy?” I asked and he nodded, not meeting my eye as he clearly didn’t want to discuss this. But discuss this he would.
“Whose blood was it? Did you fuck them? Or was it an uggo? Or did you fuck an uggo?”
“It was Darius, alright?” he snapped and my lips parted.
“Oh my stars…you fucked Darius. That explains everything.”
“No I didn’t!” he balked. “His blood turned me on, that’s all.”
“Right.” I winked. “It’s okay, Lance. We’re in a sharing circle here. You can tell me the truth. Did you do the downward Werewolf with him? Or did you let him ride your Milky Way?”
“We did not fuck,” he snarled and I sighed.
“So why are you telling me you did?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” he said in disbelief.
“Okay, okay, so you’re saying you got hard for your best friend and you didn’t stick it in him?” I asked, needing to clarify this because he just wasn’t making any sense.
“I got hard for his blood. And anyway, that was when we were Guardian bonded, it was different,” he said with a frown. “It has no bearing on how Caleb feels about you.”
“Hm…so you’re saying I should Guardian bond Cal to me, then I’d be irresistible to him?”
“No, that’s not what I said.”
“Uhuh, but let’s say I could figure out how to do that-”
“Seth,” he hissed and I sighed.
“Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t actually do it. You know what I could do though…”
“Tell him the truth?” he suggested and I waved a hand dismissively at that.
“Don’t be ridiculous, now you’re sounding like Darcy.”
“So telling him the truth is ridiculous but Guardian bonding your best friend to you so that he might be more tempted to fuck you isn’t?”
“Exactly.” I nodded. “You see, Lance, I’m trying to find an angle where I don’t have to tell him, but I still get to have him. And especially a solution where I don’t have to take any responsibility for it all going wrong if he rejects me.”
He shook his head at me. “Have you ever Faed up and owned your own shit, Seth Capella?”
I thought on that, frowning at my new friend as I slipped the bottle of bourbon from his hand and took a long sip. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
“No.”
“Hmm, seems like it is. Shall we go to the party now?” I sprang off the bed and headed to the door, but turned back to him before I exited, vulnerability spilling through me. “You won’t tell anyone I told you that, right? Especially not Cal. If he finds out and he doesn’t like me back, I’ll lose him. And I can’t lose him. I’m so fucking scared to lose him.”
He frowned, pushing to his feet and pulling on a t-shirt before swiping the bottle of bourbon from my hand, keeping me in suspense as he hung this secret over my head like an axe. “As much as you deserve to have that bomb go off in your face, I’m not going to stoop as low as you have in the past.”
“Hey, I never told anyone about you and Darcy,” I countered. “Not even the Heirs. I just liked messing with you.”