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“What do you mean?”
“The poor lass is miserable. Those toffs have no idea how to treat a kid. They dress her up, and they tell her off all the time. She’s not allowed ice cream, for God’s sake.”
“So you agree. She would be better with her father.”
Jesse stared at the fire. “This is unbelievable.”
“Why?”
“So many reasons,” Jesse said. “You drink blood, for one thing.”
“Donated blood only,” Emory murmured in a low voice. “To the very letter of the law.”
“And you really think that’s not gonna mess her up? Donated or not, her ‘daddy’ drinks human blood.”
“We have no more choice about feeding to survive than you do.”
“Then what about the immortality shit, huh?” Jesse said. “You’re gonna live forever. She won’t.”
He smiled. “I’m not going to live forever.”
“You know what I mean,” Jesse said with an impatient gesture. “How can you have a relationship with a kid, with anyone, when they grow, and you never change?”
Emory examined him closely. His face was serious. “I willalwaysbe there for Dimity.Always. Both her mother and her father, everything she needs, for her whole life. She will never be left alone in this world. Wouldn’t you have liked that, Jesse?” he asked quietly. “Wouldn’t you have liked to still have both parents in your life?”
Jesse’s chest ached. “I think I’ve gotten on okay, considering.”
Emory was quiet. Jesse’s mind was not. He stared at the fire until he was able to loosen his hands around the glass. He sipped carefully. It tasted like smoke and apricots. It warmed him down to his belly, made his blood tingle in his veins. The quiet in the room was starting to permeate his flesh and still his nerves. But the questions still circled in his head.
“Haven’t you thought about what it will be like when she…you know, dies?”
Emory was quiet so long that Jesse looked up. The baron was gazing at him with grave intensity in his dark eyes. “The memories will sustain me.”
“That’s it?”
“Memories are all my kind ever really have, in the end.”
“What’s that like?” Jesse asked quietly.
“That depends on the memory.”
Chapter Nine
Something had changed in Emory’s eyes. Jesse’s skin tightened. The hairs rose on his arms and the back of his neck.
Emory’s lips parted. They were shining from his drink. His pupils had dilated.
“Would you like me to touch you again?”
Jesse clutched the glass. “I…”
“You can tell me, Jesse,” he breathed, setting his glass aside and sliding up the sofa toward him. “You can ask me for anything.”
“I…I don’t get this,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “Do you want…want to eat me, is that it?”
Emory looked shocked then laughed a low, rumbling laugh. “Not in the way you think.” Before Jesse could respond, Emory had put his hand on Jesse’s leg, bent his head and run his tongue up Jesse’s neck. Jesse gasped, dropping the glass. Emory’s hand was cool but strong. His breath was hot. He nipped Jesse’s earlobe, making a noise low in his throat. Jesse whimpered, reason fleeing as swiftly as smoke blown in the wind.
He arched against Emory’s body, straining for friction against his hardening cock. Emory let out another low sound and grasped Jesse’s hip to hold him still as he mouthed at his jaw.
