Which reminds me…
“Why don’t you ever cook for yourself?” I ask.
He looks up from the sauce he’s stirring. “What’s the point?”
“I know you get sustenance from blood, but food still tastes good, right?”
He shrugs.
“And I would feel a lot better if I wasn’t eating alone every night with you staring at me,” I say, folding my arms over my chest.
“I like staring at you. Watching you enjoy the food I make you.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure. But it’s not great for me. I’m sure I look like a slob.”
“Never,” he says, without looking up from his work. “You’re always lovely.”
I suppress the urge to squirm under his flattery. “Come on, please, for me? Try some tonight. You can add my blood to the sauce. It’s the right color already. And… the thing about vampires and garlic is a myth, right?”
He looks up at me, one corner of his mouth curling. “I truly cannot believe how many humans fell for that particular lie from the Solomon Court. Why wouldgarlic, of all things—”
“Don’t try and distract me,” I say, though in truth I amverytempted to hear more about the idea that Solomon intentionally spread false information about vampire weaknesses. “The point is that you’ll have no problem joining me for dinner.”
His lips twitch. “If you insist…”
“I do.”
* * *
Claude still watches me eat the first few bites of my meal, waiting for me to make the usual appreciative noises. Then he grabs his own blood-infused pasta with an elegant little twirl of his fork and hesitates before taking a bite.
Surprise blooms across his face. He chews thoughtfully, and swallows.
I watch him, eyebrows raised. “Well?”
He looks down at his plate. A smile slowly spreads across his face, not one of his amused smirks but something broad and joyous that takes me by surprise. “Iamstill a good cook,” he proclaims.
I force an eyeroll, trying to ignore the butterflies causing a ruckus in my stomach. That smile. My God. “You’re insufferable,” I mutter. “But, yes. You are.”
There’s something comfortable about eating together at the dinner table. Almost like we’re a normal couple—or a couple at all, though I chastise myself at the thought. Because we’re not that. I don’t knowwhatwe are, but that much I know.
“Thank you,” he says at the end of the meal, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.
“For what? You’re the one who made the meal.”
“For insisting,” he says. “For thinking of me.”
My stomach does another flip, and then sinks way down, as I drop my gaze to my plate.
Oh, no.
I thought that avoiding sex was the secret to keeping my heart safe in this arrangement. But… it isn’t, is it? It’s too late already.
Our inability to be intimate—well,moreintimate than we already have—isn’t doing anything to protect me. It might just be making it worse. Giving me this idealized view of Claude.
Maybe it’s better if we just… get it out of our systems.
Heat rolls slowly through me as I think of the idea. As I let myselfimagineit. Surely Claude wouldn’t be entirely opposed to it, after what we already did today. He just needs a little push to realize that I’m fine with it, too, despite my insistence on the contract.
