Page 79 of The Human’s Heart

I kissed his chest again. “Let me know when you’re ready to shower.”

“I think I’ll just wait you out, that way, when one of our family members stops by, like they always do, you’ll have to answer the door with cum in your hair.”

I laughed and smacked his chest. “No way. I’m taking a shower no matter who’s at the door.”

He hugged me tighter. “I’m definitely taking one with you… and maybe you can drink from me again.”

I snorted. “No more tonight.”

“But—”

“Nope. Not until you start that supplement or whatever it is. A potion or something?”

He sighed. “Yeah. Fine. Let’s go take a shower, change the sheets, and then we can go to bed naked.”

That made me grin. “Sounds like a plan, babe.”

Chapter 24

Zaos

When I walked out of my bedroom the next day, I expected to find Hugo out in the living room since he hadn’t been in bed. I didn’t expect to find Uncle Toby on the couch and Uncle Thay in the kitchen.

Which, if I would’ve been paying attention to my surroundings, I would’ve smelt or felt them there, but when I was home, especially on coven land, I let my guard down… perhaps too much.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stared at them, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. Uncle Thay sent me a smile, but I was sure he was trying not to laugh. I rolled my eyes at him, and then he did chuckle as he went back to… whatever he was doing in there.

“Dinner—or breakfast to you—will be done in a few minutes,” he called over. “It’s breakfast food.”

Oh, he was cooking. Right. Made sense.

“Thanks,” I said with a yawn.

Being on Hugo’s nighttime schedule was kinda kicking my butt a little. Probably because I was juggling work again, so I was half on his schedule and half on my regular schedule. I was going to have to talk to the hospital and ask them to put me on nights, and when school started, hopefully I could take some super early morning classes that I could take right after work, then come home and sleep. Or maybe the other way around—taking some night classes, then going to work or whatever.

I was pretty sure either of those would work… maybe.

It would take some doing, and Hugo and I were figuring it out. We’d talked about it, and since he had all those sun charms, he was going to try either staying up longer after the sun came up or waking up early. That way he could meet me halfway, so to speak, since I, unfortunately, had to be on a somewhat regular schedule because of school. Plus, we wanted to, you know, hang out with other people when they were actually awake, so there was that.

But that was a worry for another day.

Right now, I was more curious about what Uncle Toby was talking to Hugo about in the living room.

I joined them, dropping down onto the couch beside my viramore. He reached over and set a hand on my thigh without even looking at me, and I grinned at the side of his face as I covered his hand with my own.

“What’s going on?” I asked after a moment.

Uncle Toby said, “Since Hugo’s drinking from you now, you need to take a supplement.”

“Uh… right. We talked about that.” I could feel myself blushing when I thought about Hugo drinking from my neck, and then from my thigh. Mmm. It had been sooooo fucking good.

Hugo squeezed my thigh, and I knew he was telling me to stop thinking about it. He was right. This was so not the time.

I shook myself out and faced my uncle. “What supplement is it?”

“It’s a potion so you make more blood. You need enough blood to sustain yourself and Hugo now. While he’ll still need my blood for at least a few more months, he’ll slowly move to taking blood from only you, likely with an occasional blood bag here and there.”

“Is it safe?” Hugo asked. “Won’t making all that extra blood, like, make him sick or something?”