I tried to ignore the chill that accompanied the thought.
“No doubt they would,” Rans agreed, his face darkening.
He seemed to shake himself free of his unpleasant thoughts. A moment later, he snagged an asparagus spear from my plate, sniffed it delicately, and wrinkled his nose before reaching over to pop it into my mouth. I tried to tell myself that the careless gesture only turned me on because I was still drained of animus after letting him feed from me so deeply earlier. Speaking of which...
“We both need to feed from someone besides each other,” I said once I’d swallowed the morsel. “Nigellus wasn’t fucking around when he drained you. No offense, but you still look like a corpse even after feeding from me earlier, and I kind of feel like one.”
“You’re not wrong about that.” Rans’ expression grew intent. “And there’s another thing you should probably know about me. In the normal course of things, I only feed when it’s necessary. If I feed more frequently, I become more powerful—though still no match for a demon, I’m sorry to say.”
I blinked at him. “Okay—that’s interesting. I’d assumed you were... maxed out, I guess you’d say, as long as you weren’t drained or injured.”
“No,” he said. “Not even close. I’ve made an attempt to stay reasonably well fed since things heated up with the Fae in St. Louis, but I haven’t exactly been juicing like a Russian weight lifter trying to make the Olympic team. It didn’t really seem necessary at the time, though you can bet I was kicking myself in the arse for it after that scene at the fetish club.”
Huh. Interesting. “Then you should definitely channel your inner Dracula for a bit,” I told him. “The way things have been going lately, you never know when an extra boost might come in handy.”
He slanted an unimpressed look in my direction. “Hmm. I should have known the Dracula jokes would make an appearance eventually. At the moment, though, I’m almost more interested in exploring your power capacity. I don’t know that we’ve ever come close to stuffing you completely full.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Was that some kind of succubus sex joke?”
He smirked at me, but I still got the impression he had to reach for the humor. “You’re the one who said it, not me. Clearly at least one of us has a filthy mind.”
“At least one of us, yes,” I agreed, stabbing the last bite of potato with my fork and using it to point at him. “All right. I’m game. I didn’t really get a chance to tell you the details before, but I was eventually able to get out of Hell under my own steam. It took weeks of trying, though, and I was... uh... feeding. A lot.”
I stuffed the food in my mouth and looked away from his gaze, feeling suddenly off-balance even though I was the one who’d brought it up. When I set the fork down, a hand covered mine.
“Zorah. I sent you away,” he said, very softly. “And I knew perfectly well at the time that you didn’t understand why... yet I didn’t try to correct your misapprehensions. Not to put too fine a point on it—you could have fucked every titheling in Hell twice over, and it still would have been no more than I deserved.”
My eyes flew back to him. “No! Rans, I didn’t fuck anyone. But... well... I did kiss a girl.”
A tiny, indulgent smile tugged at his lips. “Oh? And did you like it? Someone should write a song, if so—it’d sell millions.”
A weak breath of laughter escaped me. “No, I didn’t particularly. Mind you, she wasn’t really inclined that way either. But she was a good friend to me while I was there. She helped me put on a show for the younger men in the village. And... well... they certainly seemed to like it. That’s how I was getting power while I was there—soft porn displays and public voyeurism. I even did a scantily clad yoga routine in the central square once.”
Rans chuckled—a low, barely audible sound. He lifted my limp hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the knuckles that tingled all the way up my arm.
“You really are extraordinary, you know. I’m only sorry more people didn’t tell you so over the course of your life.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “Well... perhaps I’ll have a chance someday to meet your friend who’s not bisexually inclined, so I can thank her.”
The tension in my shoulders relaxed. “I hope so. Someday.”
He laid my hand back on the table, but his blue eyes still held mine intently. “Since it appears we’re both getting a second chance at this thing, let me be crystal clear. The idea of you being intimate with someone else gives me a nearly overwhelming urge to do terrible things to them involving fangs and copious amounts of gore. But I’d rather stand by and watch you fuck a thousand men than see you go hungry because I couldn’t provide you with the strength you need to protect yourself. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
I swallowed against the thickness in my throat. “I think so. It’s like... if I picture you standing behind some gorgeous woman with your arms around her and your teeth fastened to her throat, I see red. But I don’t begrudge you the blood you need to live. I mean—it’s not like I’m jealous of Len because you fed from him. That was totally different than when you feed from me.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I should hope it was. And your charming ex-coworker did explicitly threaten to punch me in the jaw if I pulled a Bella Lugosi seduction routine on his
