“C’mon,” he encouraged. “I know you’ve got one eating away at you. You wanted to ask it earlier and wouldn’t let yourself.”
Maeve frowned. “If you can read me so easily, then why don’t you just answer it?”
“Because someone’s got to teach you how to communicate with words.”
She frowned deeper.
“Ask me.”
She huffed a sigh, hating that she cared, that she was curious about him at all in that way. “How many have you been with?”
Reeve pretended like the question completely blindsided him.
“Quit that,” she whined, turning her back on him once more to look over the water. “You knew what it was.”
He moved behind her in a flash that her senses didn’t register until his chest brushed against her shoulders.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked, his voice dropping.
She whipped around, pressing back into the railing. “It’s just I would assume the total is much greater than mine.”
Reeve nodded, placing his hands on either side of the railing and caging her in. “I have been in this world for three hundred years, of course it is.”
Maeve swallowed. “And?”
Reeve shook his head and clicked his tongue three times. “You want the answer? You won’t like it.”
“I want the answer,” she confirmed, keeping her voice casual.
Reeve sighed and hung his head.
“You’ve promised to be honest with me,” she reminded him.
He nodded in agreement that indeed he had. “I’ve lost count.”
Maeve’s shoulders fell, and she let out a sound of complete disbelief. “That’s not possible.”
“I’ve been alive a long time,” he hummed. “It’s no different than losing count of how many times I’ve done countless other things.”
“It’s very different,” she argued.
“It’s very different to you because you’re brand new,” he said, offering her a dazzling smile.
Maeve smiled back at the sentiment.
“We can have this conversation again in a hundred years, and then you can tell me if you remember how many times you ate dessert in the past eighty of them.”
Maeve laughed, truly laughed, content and warmth spreading through her body, forgetting Mal’s immortal promise that he had forever to lord over her. “Fair enough.”
“I felt you this morning,” he said, changing the subject matter completely, “in my armory. You can handle a larger siphon with the Dread Ring on your finger.”
Maeve nodded and noted that there was both gratitude and regret in his voice as she looked back and forth between his eyes.
“That’s good,” he said. “You’re going to need all the help you can get.”
He pushed off the railing and continued across the bridge, Maeve following soon after as he continued their tour.
Chapter 35
