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Unfortunately, when he came back, matters were not much improved. Minty freshness, sure, but underneath was a hint of something darker, something rotten. I could bear to let him kiss me, but it was still more turnoff than turn-on.
I tried to hide it, but I guess I didn’t do a good job. He pulled away from the clinch, took my hands, and guided me to the sofa.
“I’m so sorry.” He was angled in a strange way, trying to compromise between wanting to look at me and not wanting to breathe on me. “This has not happened in over a century. I was so excited about our date…”
I barely suppressed a giggle. He was leading into the same speech one ex used to give about his little personal problem, which had nothing to do with bad breath or immortality, but eventually led to my giving up on the relationship. I can be understanding with an occasional problem with getting a little overexcited, but every damn time we get together? Not so much.
“I understand,” I said instinctively. It was what I always said to Steve when his hair trigger kicked in.
Although in this case I really didn’t. Gaston was so excited about seeing me that he forgot to brush his teeth for two weeks? That would sound beyond weird from anyone, and especially from someone as fastidious as he was.
“No, I do not believe you do. It is part of being what I am. What animates this body of mine, that so long ago should have been in its grave, is the energy of my symbiote. If the symbiote does not get blood and sex daily, it weakens. And you were away. What you smell is the sorry state of my body. I hunger for you, ma chère. My symbiote hungers for you as well. But the result of my hunger is not so attractive, I fear. It will heal itself once I let it have what it needs, but that waits upon you.”
“Wait a minute! You haven’t seen me in what, seventeen days, and you haven’t fed the whole time?”
Another expressive shrug. I’d say he practiced them in the mirror, but he couldn’t see his reflection.
“I have fed, a bit. I took blood here and there, though I have not had much appetite. But I have not had sex, and so I weaken. I had not been fully honest with you about my needs when we talked, that I must share sexual pleasure with someone else each day to stay healthy. I had not told you that there were other women in my life, women who are content being…what is the modern expression?—a booty call. And when the time came, I couldn’t. I thought of you and I couldn’t.”
“You starved yourself to be faithful to me when we haven’t even slept together yet? That…that’s so sweet.”
Forget being a cynical New Yorker. (Okay, I may put on the pose with the best of them, but you notice I’m not writing hard-edged, urban chick lit. I write romances—sexy, mushy, over-the-top romances with happy endings—for a living. How cynical can I really be?)
I felt tears well in my eyes.
He squeezed my hands, started to lean forward toward me. Then he remembered the bad breath and backed off.
He smiled weakly. “I have read the books you write. You believe in true love. I do not think that love has served you well, but you’re not like many women I’ve met lately, unwilling to believe it might happen to you. You may be willing to settle for a good time with a friend, but I think deep down you want more.”
I nodded mutely.
“It is perhaps too soon to speak of love, but I care for you, and I think you care for me—and I, too, still believe in romance, even after two centuries of taking pleasure where I can, just to stay alive. When our feelings for each other are so new and fragile, I could not risk them by being with someone else. I care too much for you.”
I found my voice again. “But if I’m understanding you right, for you that’s like not eating for two weeks because I wasn’t around to go out to dinner with you! That’s crazy.”
“Non, c’est l’amour.”
Even my rusty French could translate that.
I admit it, I got all teary.
If he’d showed his usual sweet-breathed, debonair self and told me he loved me, I’d have read him for a player telling a lady what he figured she wanted to hear and just laughed.
But seeing him like this, coming about as close to dying for love, or at least lust, as I ever hope to see someone do, made it different.
Made me trust.
I still wasn’t going to kiss him on the lips, but that left a lot of other good places.
I leaned in to him, ran my hands over his chest. I do love a man with sensitive nipples, and he had them, because they puckered under that light touch, making little points inside his silk shirt. I unbuttoned the shirt, planting kisses at each bit of newly bared skin. His skin was cool, but not weirdly so, as if he’d just come in from outside on a winter day and was chilled through. When the shirt was open, I pushed it off his shoulders and sat back for a second to enjoy the view.
Oh, yeah. One hot, technically dead guy.
When I reached for his jeans, though, he pushed me back onto the couch. “Oh, no,” he whispered (not too close to my face). “Let me see you.”
Inspired, I looked at my less than spacious couch and said, “How about we adjourn to the bedroom?”
I’d never been happy before that I have a typical Manhattan postage-stamp apartment, but it meant the bedroom was just a few steps away.
