Page 12 of Imprisoned with the Vampire King

Really quiet.

"Are you thinking again?" I finally asked, and he swatted my leg lightly. Almost playfully. I liked it, oddly enough.

"Maybe. Who is Shiv to you?"

"That's a long, shitty story that I have no interest in telling."

"Is he an ex?" he asked.

"No. A family member."

Dante nodded, as if that told him enough. "We should sleep. The clock in the dayroom said it was getting late. I don't know what time it is in Rumor, but we live by that clock here."

Rumor was the name of the magical city above the prison.

"What's the dayroom?"

"The open area where everyone interacts during the day. At night, the prison forces us into the cells, and the doors lock. You should know that."

Right.

I had set that up.

It had just been a really long time since I did. The details were escaping me.

"You'll be stronger if you feed from me before you go to sleep, right?" I asked.

"I drank from you too recently. Biting you again isn't a good idea."

"That lasted half a second. There's no way you actually took any blood."

"We'll figure it out in the morning," Dante said vaguely.

"We'll figure it out right now." I turned toward him, lifting my knee up onto the small, hard mattress as I turned toward him and gestured between us. "Do you actually want to do this? Making us look like a thing so we can get you guys out of here?"

"What I want and what's safe for you are two entirely separate things." His expression gave away no emotions, positively or negatively.

"Do you always worry about people more than you should?"

"Do you always ask personal questions?"

"Not usually."

"I worry about the people I feed on. It's a demon thing. Culture. Expectation. Moral requirement. Whatever you want to call it."

"I'm a willing victim."

"If you call yourself a victim again, this isn't happening." He gestured between us like I had.

"Let's just forget it. You can keep starving. I'll find someone else to fuck me."

"A lot of people in this prison won't try to make it good for you," Dante warned. "I'll find you some options, and⁠—"

I put a hand over his mouth. "Stop talking."

I waited a second before pulling my hand away. He was glaring at me when I did, but he didn't say anything else about it immediately.

Turning a little more, I draped my legs over his lap and lowered my back to the mattress, staring up at the ceiling.