Page 29 of Little Fangs

“Have you—” I said, stroking the side of his face, getting him to look back at me. “Thought about going to a dentist?”

He frowned, the muscle between his brows twitching. “I haven’t—I’ve—”

“Sorry, you’ve only just been let free.”

“Exactly.”

“Then we’ll take you to a—a cosmetic dentist. I see ads for them all the time on TV,” I told him. “They’ll be able to do something about them.”

“But I’m a—”

“Somewhere in town,” I added before he could express his fear for seeing someone who didn’t know he was a vampire. “There’s got to be someone. I’ll ask around tomorrow. I know the dentist I go to in town is great, but I don’t know if they deal with your type of people.”

He giggled. “Do you mean gay people?”

We laughed together. I pulled him into my arms, squeezed him right there like I would burst him. In the entire time he’d been against my body, my dick had stayed chubbed. It had probably been getting thicker and thicker since the shower. Through the intimacy of biting and drinking my blood, which was perhaps more intimate than anything our naked bodies could achieve rubbing against each other.

* * *

We ate dinner together on our laps in the living room. Micah was exhausted from the day, and I was exhausted from trying to understand how someone could lock him away from people for so long. He’d told me in whispers that the only people he ever saw were the people who worked for Ludmila, and the men he called brothers, the men who we’d waited on arriving at night. But they never came.

Micah sucked a blood bag dry while I had chicken parm and noodles. He had a bite of mine, careful not to overdo it again. We were both learning. I was learning more, understanding how little of life Micah had lived and experienced.

We did jigsaw puzzles on the living room floor together while cartoons played on the TV. Micah was dressed in one of the comfy fur-lined onesies. He kept his new teddy in his lap, and Misty walked around us like some type of foreman on a construction site—overseeing the puzzle and Micah’s relationship with that teddy he so coveted.

The advert came on for the dentist, and the jingle immediately grabbed my attention while Micah was swiping his fingers around the puzzle box, searching for edges. The ad talked about all the cosmetic procedures they did, then the word hit my ears.

“Composite bonding,” I said, snapping my fingers. “I remember kids were getting fangs done for Halloween. Human kids, I should say.”

“Huh?” he said, lifting his head, then turning it to see the ad finish on the TV. “I hope they were human. The Council would kill you for turning a kid.”

“That’s what we’ll get you,” I said. “They’ll just extend them so you can—well, do what you do.”

His face did that thing where it wasn’t sure what to say, something else I was beginning to understand about him. Nobody had cared for him in this way before, and his face said he was suspicious, but then trusting—he was, after all, a vampire, and I was just a human who he could break.

“You think it’ll work?” he whispered.

“I do. I’ll go into town tomorrow and see, but it’ll work.”

He flashed a smile, then looked back at the puzzle box. “Okay. I don’t know if I’m ready to go back into town again. So many people.”

I’d been right. The people he’d met and seen . . . it was too much for him. “That’s alright. I’ll go alone. I’ll see if I can get you some more of those onesies. They’re like a union suit.”

“Very different,” he said, snorting. “These are—” He hunched his shoulders in. “Just much more comfortable.” He raised his head, looking at me. “You’re not gonna go to the house, are you?”

“What? No.” I’d thought it. “You’re not reading my mind, are you?”

Micah’s soft eyes turned sharp as he looked at me. “No. I’m not psychic. I’m just listening to your heart. And I don’t want you to go there. We’ll give it a couple of days then go together. I’ve still got to map the place out.”

I’d seen the way those three men had been when they came to the property, the way they looked like they could tear a body limb from limb, the feral hunger in their eyes, like car high beams in a distance, visible through a fog, telling you to beware.

“I promise,” I told him.

“If they hurt you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“They’re not going to hurt me.” Those UV bulbs weren’t only installed in the front and back of the cabin, I’d loaded them in torches too. They could also be turned on from the inside, but Micah knew it was safer to be indoors when it was dark—maybe from his own experience, but also because that’s where I was.

It was late when we finished the puzzle. No missing pieces this time, although Misty had tried to hide a few in her fur from she’d lay down at Micah’s side where he’d collected a handful of edge pieces.