His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

Chapter 10: Inner Beasts

I was surprised to find the front door of Elyria's apartment unlocked; I was even more surprised to find Elyria alone inside, sitting quietly on the couch with a book in her hands. She leaned against the far arm, her knees bent to put one foot beneath her and one foot beside her. I thought she looked elegant, peaceful, sort of like a young debutante of the Victorian era who thirsted to escape her repressive lifestyle through the contents of some fictional romance, but I knew I was reading too much into it. She wasn't repressed, and she wasn't a Victorian's idea of elegant. She was just Elyria, dressed in a pair of black panties that barely covered her ass and a tight-fitting cami that showed a good inch of her stomach.

"What are you doing here, Eli?" she asked, her amethyst eyes drifting from the clean white pages of her book to my face, which I was sure sported some evidence of my earlier thoughts. I wiped it clean as best I could and closed the door quietly behind me.

"Should I not be here?" I asked in return, even as I kicked off my black leather shoes in the small space beside the door.

She shrugged, and I noticed that her shoulders looked exceptionally bony beneath the thin straps of her top. "It doesn't matter to me where you go. I just expected you to go home to get some rest."

"I can rest here," I said as I moved to sit beside her on the couch. I leaned against the opposite arm, as far from her as I could get without looking as if I were trying to put space between us. I didn't want her to smell Bethany on me, didn't want her to smell the wolfish blood on my breath when I spoke.

She shrugged again, returning her eyes to the book she held in her slender fingers. "You're more than welcome to try, but you can't blame me for any annoyances that Kyrianna may cause for you."

"Where is Kyrianna, anyway?" I asked, glancing around the dark living room and half expecting to see her asleep in a chair or staring at me from a corner.

"Asleep in the bedroom," Elyria sighed. "She came home, ranted about how mean you were, then stormed off. I wanted to use the bed eventually, but with the way she sleeps..." She sighed again, and I remembered how often I'd walked into the bedroom to find Kyrianna sprawled across the bed like she had to take up every inch of it she could.

"Why don't you just sleep on the couch?" I asked, and she turned a page with the soft swish of paper against skin.

"I'd planned to, but I found this book lying on the coffee table, and I haven't been able to stop reading it since." She appeared to be about three-quarters of the way through it, and I cocked an eyebrow. She couldn't have been reading for more than an hour or so. How the hell had she made it that far? "It's comical, really, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be taken seriously."

"What is it?"

She looked at me and said, "Twilight."

"Isn't that the one where the vampires sparkle?" I asked, and I immediately felt ashamed for knowing that.

"Yes; hence, the hilarity." Yet she turned her attention back to it and flipped another page, her eyes trailing along each line with a disturbing quickness. "Would you like me to move to the chair so that you can get some sleep on the couch?"

"How about you put the book down and sleep with me?" I suggested. A wry smile gave my lips the slightest curve when she looked at me with a hint of surprise to her usually passive eyes.

"I don't think there's room for both of us," she said, though she closed the book with a soft thump.

"I'm sure there is," I said, and slid an arm around her shoulders to pull her against my chest. Her head resting on my arm, she gazed quizzically up at me, but I only smiled. "See? I'm sure we can sleep like this."