Chapter Twenty
When I emerge from my room again, the house smells of butter and garlic. My nose leads me to the kitchen, where Claude is hard at work on another meal that is too big for me to eat. A ludicrous amount of spaghetti fills a pot, while tomato sauce simmers on the stove.
I expect it to be awkward between us, but when Claude shoots me a glance and a crooked smile, I relax against the counter. This is normal, I tell myself in an attempt to calm my racing heart. Most valentines do more with their patrons than we just did in the shower.
Yet I’m surprised by how much I’m craving more. Not just sex, but… affection. Touch. I have an urge to walk over and run my fingers through Claude’s still-mussed curls, to massage the muscles of his neck and shoulders the same way he did for me in the shower.
But that way lies danger. I know that. I’m the one who insisted on the intimacy clause, and I have to remember that I did it for a reason. I may have been momentarily overtaken by desire today, but I’m not here to fall in love. Even falling in lust feels like teetering on the edge of a steep cliff.
I’m not going to let this year ruin my future.
I clear my throat, trying to pull myself out of my thoughts. “Anything I can do to help?”
“No, no,” he says, waving me away, as I expected. “You’re welcome to go wait in the dining room.”
I sigh, hopping up to sit on the edge of the counter. “I’d rather not.” Sitting here and watching him cook without doing anything feels awkward, but not as awkward as waiting alone in the dining room. Especially because the meal he’s making is for me, and only me.
Which reminds me…
“Why don’t you ever cook for yourself?” I ask.
He looks up from the sauce he’s stirring. “What’s the point?”
“I know you get sustenance from blood, but food still tastes good, right?”
He shrugs.
“And I would feel a lot better if I wasn’t eating alone every night with you staring at me,” I say, folding my arms over my chest.
“I like staring at you. Watching you enjoy the food I make you.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure. But it’s not great for me. I’m sure I look like a slob.”
“Never,” he says, without looking up from his work. “You’re always lovely.”
I suppress the urge to squirm under his flattery. “Come on, please, for me? Try some tonight. You can add my blood to the sauce. It’s the right color already. And… the thing about vampires and garlic is a myth, right?”
He looks up at me, one corner of his mouth curling. “I truly cannot believe how many humans fell for that particular lie from the Solomon Court. Why would garlic, of all things—”
“Don’t try and distract me,” I say, though in truth I am very tempted to hear more about the idea that Solomon intentionally spread false information about vampire weaknesses. “The point is that you’ll have no problem joining me for dinner.”
His lips twitch. “If you insist…”
“I do.”
* * *
Claude still watches me eat the first few bites of my meal, waiting for me to make the usual appreciative noises. Then he grabs his own blood-infused pasta with an elegant little twirl of his fork and hesitates before taking a bite.
Surprise blooms across his face. He chews thoughtfully, and swallows.
I watch him, eyebrows raised. “Well?”
He looks down at his plate. A smile slowly spreads across his face, not one of his amused smirks but something broad and joyous that takes me by surprise. “I am still a good cook,” he proclaims.
I force an eyeroll, trying to ignore the butterflies causing a ruckus in my stomach. That smile. My God. “You’re insufferable,” I mutter. “But, yes. You are.”
There’s something comfortable about eating together at the dinner table. Almost like we’re a normal couple—or a couple at all, though I chastise myself at the thought. Because we’re not that. I don’t know what we are, but that much I know.
“Thank you,” he says at the end of the meal, dabbing at his lips with a napkin.
“For what? You’re the one who made the meal.”
“For insisting,” he says. “For thinking of me.”
My stomach does another flip, and then sinks way down, as I drop my gaze to my plate.
Oh, no.
I thought that avoiding sex was the secret to keeping my heart safe in this arrangement. But… it isn’t, is it? It’s too late already.
Our inability to be intimate—well, more intimate than we already have—isn’t doing anything to protect me. It might just be making it worse. Giving me this idealized view of Claude.
Maybe it’s better if we just… get it out of our systems.
Heat rolls slowly through me as I think of the idea. As I let myself imagine it. Surely Claude wouldn’t be entirely opposed to it, after what we already did today. He just needs a little push to realize that I’m fine with it, too, despite my insistence on the contract.
When I drag my eyes up from my plate, Claude is staring at me across the table, his brow furrowed.
“That’s a wicked look,” he says. “What are you scheming up over there?”
I smile, take another bite of food, and shrug oh-so-innocently. “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing at all.”