“You thought a dead rat on the balcony was anice gesture?”
“He’s a cat. That’s what they do. It’s a gift.”
“What’s the return policy on it?” I mused, making Thallor snort in response.
I looked up at him, smirking at the mess of noodles he’d made, which simply served to make him scowl at me.
After getting up and wiping away the mess, Thallor sat back down, settling into the seat and going back to eating quietly. I could feel his eyes on me without looking up. Heat of the noodles aside, there was something in the intensity of his stare that stoked the embers inside of me.
“And your day?”That’s a first.
“You’re asking about my day?” I looked up at him tentatively, taking in the way he watched me. I couldn’t tell if he actually cared or if he was just being polite. Either way, it was a serious improvement on any conversation we’d had over the last two weeks. It felt normal. It feltnice.
“Do you always answer a question with a question?”
I rolled my eyes at him.
“Um, nothing much to report really.” Once I’d taken a few mouthfuls, I glanced up at him again, with the fork halfway to my mouth. “University is as soul sucking as they say.”
“Isn’t university typically a time when young people socialise and engage in more debaucherous endeavours like drinking too much and having meaningless sex?” He didn’t even look up. He said it so matter-of-factly with no clear awareness of the commotion his comment had just made, deep within my chest.
I sputtered slightly, letting out a noise halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “Yeah, right. If that were the case, my lifewould be a little more likeThe Don’s Daughterand a little less ‘watching old movies’and ‘summoning demons.’”
Thallor looked up, our eyes finding each other immediately. For all the arguments, death stares, and insults that had passed between us, the blush I saw painted across his face was as surprising as it was satisfying.
“You’ve…read it?” he asked, disbelief and pure unfiltered betrayal etched so clearly on his face. “I thought you said you didn’t know what it was about.”
“Oh, Idon’t,” I shrugged, “but Esme did say it was three chillis.” Explaining who Isaac and Esme were to Thallor had been an odd experience. Mostly because he had been entirely uninterested in hearing about two humans he didn’t know. But given that they were the only two people I ever spent any extended time with, given that they were the two people I referenced or mentioned most often, it had just been easier to introduce them (verbally, of course–I would never introduce them in real life) as important characters in my life.
Thallor’s brows furrowed as he looked at me. “Three…?”
“Chillis. Like chili peppers.” I tapped at his ramen bowl as if that would make what I was saying any easier to understand. “It’s a spice rating system. For books. Well, the sex scenes in books,” I added as I inadvertently continued to dig my own humiliation-induced grave. “Three basically equates to the sex scenes being extra sexy.”
“You gave me a book with three chillis?”
“I did. But the verdict is still out, you’ll have to let me know what you think,” I continued, fully committing to my inquiry and fighting the tugging at the corner of my lips. “Or do you think three chillis is overselling it?”
He looked up at me slowly, like he was considering every word I’d just said, contemplating whether I was the stupidest person alive.The verdict is still outon that, too.
“As a demon, my measures of intimacy are completely different.”
“Different how?”
“The book is a little tame,” he said as he finished off his bowl of ramen, before standing up slowly and making his way over to the sink. “And the miscommunication is infuriating. I like to be more direct when I want something.”
And just like that, I was burning up. My body felt like it was alight with the heat coursing through my veins. I suddenly felt like I had accidentally swapped the ramen packets and was suffering the aftereffects ofXtreme Chicken!
I continued to glance down at my bowl, hoping it would swallow me and the vibrant splotches of pink on my cheeks whole. I was so caught up in my thoughts and mulling over what that could have meant when the smell of smoke stopped my train of thought dead in its tracks. Thallor placed his hand on the breakfast bar in front of me from over my shoulder, fingers sprawled out, a vein coursing up the side of his forearm. “On the topic of being direct, I want to knowwhyyou decided to give me that book in the first place.” His voice was low and raspy as his warm breath prickled at the side of my neck.
I was seconds from making a sound I couldn’t recover from. A full-bodywhimperthreatened to escape me as he casually grabbed my bowl, before carrying it to the sink like nothing had happened.
“Oh no. No, no. Not like that,” I groaned. “I know you could never be interested in me like that.”
He didn’t say anything. He just kept rinsing the bowls. And I tried to stop my body from going into an embarrassment-induced cardiac arrest.
“Listen, okay, I knew it was spicy because Esme told me it was. But she said it had an exciting plot too. I just wanted you to have options to stay entertained if you were going to stay here awhile,” I rambled on, red-faced as I gestured vaguely, hoping to find my reasoning and the end of my sentence along the way. No matter how hard I flailed, the words refused to assemble as I descended further into humiliation. “I just wanted to do something nice. I wanted you to stop glaring at me every time I opened my mouth. Which, in hindsight, has not worked out in my favour.”
I stopped talking when he turned off the tap and slowly turned to face me, drying his hands with a dish towel. “You gave me an erotic romance novel as a gesture of goodwill?” His expression was flat and unreadable, but I could have sworn I could hear the smile in his voice.
