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His jaw worked. When he finally looked at me his eyes were dark and bottomless, and I saw the whole thing at once: the hunger, the shame, the terror, and under all of it, something that looked so much like longing it made my knees ache.

“Because every time I try,” he said, “all I can think of is you.”

I let that sit.

“Your scent,” Maksim continued. “The way you laughed on the ice. The pulse in your throat when you said my name in the tunnel. I go to the Sable and I sit down across from Tamsin, and she is my friend, and she is kind, and I look at her and I feel nothing. Worse. I feel wrong. As though I am being unfaithful to something I do not even have.” A dry, awful laugh. “So I sit. And I leave. And I starve.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

His eyebrows went up.

“Seriously.” I stepped closer. “You’re going to pass out on the ice in front of nine thousand people because you have feelings? That’s not noble, ice prince. That’s a Tuesday afternoon TV plot.”

“It is not so simple.”

“Then explain it.”

“I—” He stopped. Something moved across his face. He looked at me for a long moment, and then, gently, so gently, he reached out and took my wrist. His hand was cold and steady, and it didn’t grip. It rested there. He could have crushed my bones. He barely touched me.

“The bond makes everything more,” he said. “Hunger. Wanting. Fear. Right now, every instinct in me is screaming at me to take you. To bite you. To make you mine in every way it is possible for a creature like me to do it.” He said it evenly, without heat, like a man reading an account of someone else’s crime. “It is not a metaphor. It is a physical drive. It is a hand around the throat of everything I am.”

My pulse was going wild under his fingers. He could feel it. I saw him feel it.

“And if I feed on someone else,” he said, “it will give me back just enough strength to fight that. To be gentle. To wait. But I cannot make myself do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is you I am hungry for.”

The corridor was very quiet. Somewhere far off, an ice machine dropped a load of cubes.

And I heard myself say, “So feed on me.”

I meant it. That was the scary part. It just came out, easy and true, like I’d been saving it up.

His hand fell away as though I’d burned him.

“No.”

“Why not? You said it yourself. It’s me you want.”

“ No. “ He took a step back, and another, until he hit the wall. He looked, for the first time since I’d known him, genuinely afraid. “You do not understand what you are offering.”

“So explain.”

“If I bite you now, starved, with the bond pulling at me, I will not be able to stop.” His voice cracked. “I would not be choosing to take too much. That is not the danger. The danger is that there would be no choosing at all. I have seen it. Vampires who fed while starving on the one they loved. They wake, and there is a body, and they do not remember deciding.” His hands were shaking. “I will not, Lex. I will not be the man who does that to you. Not for anything. Not if you beg.”

“I’m not begging.”

“You are offering. It is worse.”

I stood there. He stood there. The air between us was so thick I could’ve cut it with a stick.

I’ve been in a lot of fights. I’ve had my nose broken four times and my orbital bone twice, and I know what it feels like to be hit by something bigger than you. But I’d never had anyone refuse me something because they were scared of hurting me.

It broke something open in my chest. A little door. I hadn’t known it was there.

“Okay,” I said, and I heard my voice come out quieter than I’d planned. “Fine. Then go to Tamsin. Tonight. Right now. You’re taking care of it.”