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She shook her head, her ears buzzing like they were filled with bees. “Years.”
“Years,” he agreed.
“I am angry with you,” she said, her heart thundering hard. “Because this is not stupid. Not foolish. But I do not want it.”
“I didn’t want to come here in the first place, but you brought me. If you bring a lion into your house, you cannot be angry when he goes on the hunt, can you?”
She sat there, her scalp and cheeks burning with shame.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Sex,” she responded.
“A topic you seem invested in.”
Her face was like fire now. “Well, you asked me for marriage, and that means it matters. Is what they say about you true?”
“Who, and what?”
“The papers. They say you’re very wicked. That you...that you have an insatiable appetite for women. In a sexual sense.”
“I understood what you meant.”
“Well, I find that I’m curious. If it is true.”
“No.”
Her stomach felt something strange. It was a lot like disappointment, though it shouldn’t have been. “Oh.”
“I’m not insatiable. I suppose, if you ask some, I’m wicked. But...insatiable implies a bit more passion than perhaps I feel.”
“You are not passionate?”
He looked down the table. “You’re hungry, yes?”
“Yes, I am hungry. Maybe five times a day. I eat small amounts at a time typically.”
“Sex is another appetite,” he said.
The words were flat, and practically spoken. And she did not think they should make her stomach go tight.
“When I am hungry, I eat. When I want a woman, I seek one out. I do not see the point in denying hungers. But I’m not a glutton.”
“Hmm,” she mulled. “Perhaps I am.”
“Do you think?”
She looked at her plate of food, which was half-demolished. And she looked at what remained. “Yes. I think I might be. I have been denied, and this is all here. And I want it all. Everything I have missed.”
“You think it will be the same with other things?”
“I’m beginning to wonder.” She frowned. “Will you have love affairs?”
“I do not intend that we should be beholden to only each other,” he said. “Be as gluttonous as you wish.”
“So, you would have me take lovers, then?”
“Eat your food, Annick.”
