Finding Obsidian

27 - Ugh, Millennials

"Haltie?" I blurted unthinkingly.

The pitch-dark eyes hovering over me closed in irritation. "Been spending some time with Rokim, have you?" came a cold voice, washing over me and eliciting an involuntary shudder.

Dazed, I tried to blink my sleepiness away. "Uh, yeah," I replied, not thinking totally straight. "I mean, we slept together last night."

Rian's eyes widened slightly. As I watched them fill with black fire, I realized what I'd said. 

Shit.

"What did you say?" he ground out ominously, his voice glacial.

"Uh . . ." I scrambled quickly, trying to backtrack. "It wasn't like that. Lisa was there too."

"What?"

I closed my eyes in disbelief, cursing my own ineptitude. I needed a muzzle or something. How had they not invented an automatic voice filter yet?

Every damn year, this godforsaken day seemed to top itself, making sure each subsequent time was worse than the last. Apparently, this year the devils had sent me their king: Rian.

"I just mean," I said slowly, forcing myself to wake up, "that they slept over last night. Platonically. Just sleeping." 

In the same bed. That voice in my head chose this moment to make an appearance—wonderful. Then again, he doesn't need to know that.

He glanced away, running a hand through his sleek charcoal locks. I noticed that it wasn't falling freely over his forehead like it usually did. Instead, it was slicked back tastefully. 

In fact, all of him looked particularly tasteful—he was dressed in the same elegant getup as the day before, at the practice ball.

He also smelled really, really good.

I swung my legs off the mattress, the last traces of sleep leaving me. "What time is it?" I asked.

"Eleven o'clock."

I gasped. "Eleven p.m.?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, calm down. It's eleven a.m." He shook his head, and a few tantalizing strands of hair slipped away and fell to their normal place on his forehead. "Always so dramatic," he muttered under his breath.

I ignored the jab, instead letting out a sigh of relief. Oversleeping and missing the Evaluators' Ball was the last thing I needed. 

Relaxed now—or as relaxed as I could be with a hot demon two feet from my bed—I turned to Rian, looking him up and down. "Wait," I said confusedly. "The ball starts at seven. Why are you dressed already?"

He shrugged. "I like to be prepared."

I only snorted in response. My feet hit the floor, and I patted his rather muscled arm—even though I couldn't see it, the thought of that tattoo made my mouth water—as I padded across the room to my closet. "You need to lighten up a little."

And you need to stop feeling him up every chance you get.

I ignored that insufferable voice and instead opened my closet door, tying my hair in a messy bun. "Why are you even here, anyways?" I called over my shoulder, looking around for the bag with my dress in it.

"Prof asked us to run a couple errands," he answered indifferently. I groaned as I located the bag on the closet's top shelf, where I literally never put anything because I was too short to reach it. Rokim or Lisa must have stuck it there by mistake.