It was rich and warm, and my mouth began to water all over again.
“Are you hungry now, Sparky?”
“Why the fuck do you keep calling me that?” I murmured, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I liked it. God help me. And if it was some ridiculous reason, I didn’t want him to tell me.
He just snorted, and the bed dipped under his weight as he carefully climbed over the covers and settled beside me, his body between the pillows and the wall. “This shouldn’t be too hot. I’ll put the tray on your lap, okay?”
I straightened my legs, and the heavy weight of a tea tray that couldn’t possibly be mine landed on my thighs. I explored the edges with my fingers—it was definitely wood and covered in some kind of lacquer. On it was a plate, and I could feel something like oblong pieces of something bouncy—like meat. And beneath that, rice.
“Fork?”
He pressed something into my hand, and I felt it with my thumb.
“A fucking spoon? I’m not a toddler.”
“It’s rice. Eat it with a spoon,” he ordered.
I shuddered and took a huge scoop and shoved it into my face. I was trying to be obnoxious, but the moment the flavors hit my tongue, all my antagonism melted away. “Holy fuck, why is this so good?”
“Because my mother taught me to cook it,” he said very softly.
I swallowed the bite down thickly, then took another. “Did she die?”
He laughed. “No. She’s in Athens right now with my sister-in-law. Her mother is very sick, and my mom used to be a nurse when we were very little.”
Well, fuck. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Worse things have happened.”
I set the spoon down and picked up one of the meat pieces. “Is it okay to do it like this, or do I need to keep spoon-feeding myself, Sir?”
He cleared his throat. “That’s not what I want.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about the way I was feeding myself, but I sat in silence and waited for him to say literally anything else. And then he did.
“Jonah.”
Fuck, the way my name sounded on his lips and tongue. “Alexio.”
He sighed and leaned in. “Eat. Please.”
Oh shit. Hewasworried about me. I could hear it so distinctly it was almost painful. I immediately took a bite, and the gnawing ache in my stomach began to ease up a little. I couldn’t help my satisfied sigh as I ate one bite, then two, and then a third.
My head finally began to clear a little. “Are you Greek? Is that what language you were singing in?”
He shifted in the sheets. “Ah. You could hear that?”
“That’s kind of my thing,” I told him. “People think it’s a superpower, but it’s just my brain wired to rely on hearing since I can’t see anything.”
“At all, right?”
I turned my head to face him as I grabbed the spoon and ate another mouthful of rice. “You keep asking me that. You really don’t know?”
“No, and every time I asked, you mocked me for it.”
“Sorry,” I said, not sure if I meant it or not. Using the hand that hadn’t been all over the meat, I flicked one of my eyes, and I felt him jolt beside me, swearing under his breath. “Prosthetics,” I told him. “And before you panic and get weird, I was born like this. I mean, with no eyes. Obviously not with fake eyes.”
His sigh trembled. “Obviously.” He swallowed thickly. “And your brother?”
