“What is it?”
“Um, nope, forget it. I changed my mind.”
“Beau, you can ask me anything.”
I didn’t speak, and she groaned.
“I keep thinking it will get less frustrating, not hearing your thoughts. But it just gets worse and worse.”
“It’s bad enough that you eavesdrop on my sleep-talking,” I muttered.
“Please tell me?” she murmured, her velvet voice taking on that mesmerizing intensity that I never could resist.
I tried. I shook my head.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it’s something much worse than it is,” she threatened.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said, then locked my teeth.
“Please?” Again in that hypnotic voice.
I sighed. “You won’t get… offended?”
“Of course not.”
I took a deep breath. “Well… so, obviously, I don’t know a lot that’s true about vampires”—the word slipped out accidentally, I was just thinking so hard about how to ask my question, and then I realized what I’d said and I froze.
“Yes?”
She sounded normal, like the word didn’t mean anything.
I exhaled in relief.
“Okay, I mean, I just know the things you’ve told me, and it seems like we’re pretty… different. Physically. You look human—only better—but you don’t eat or sleep, you know. You don’t need the same things.”
“Debatable on some levels, but there are definitely truths in what you’re saying. What’s your question?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Ask me.”
I blurted it all out in a rush. “So I’m just an ordinary human guy, and you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I am just… overwhelmed by you, and a part of that, naturally, is that I’m insanely attracted to you, which I’m sure you can’t have helped but notice, what with your being, like, super aware of my circulatory system, but what I don’t know is, if it’s like that for you. Or is it like sleeping and eating, which you don’t need and I do—though I don’t want them nearly as much as I want you? You said that Eleanor and Royal go off and live like a married couple, but does that even mean the same thing for vampires? And this question is totally offside, completely not first date appropriate, and I’m sorry and you don’t have to answer.”
I sucked in a huge breath.
“Hmm… I would have said this was our second date.”
“You’re right.”
She laughed. “Are you asking me about sex, Beau?”
My face got hot again. “Yes. I shouldn’t have.”
She laughed again. “I did climb into your bed, Beau. I believe that makes this line of inquiry quite understandable.”
“You still don’t have to answer.”
“I told you that you could ask me anything.” She paused, and then her voice was different. Kind of formal, like a teacher lecturing. “So… in the general sense—Sex and Vampires One-Oh-One. We all started out human, Beau, and most of those human desires are still there—just obscured behind more powerful desires. But we’re not thirsty all the time, and we tend to form… very strong bonds. Physical as well as emotional. Royal and Eleanor are just like any human couple who are attracted to each other, by which I mean, very, very annoying for those of us who have to live with them, and even more so for the one who can hear their minds.”
I laughed quietly, and she joined in.
“Awkward,” I murmured.
“You have no idea,” she said darkly, then sighed. “And now in the specific sense… Sex and Vampires One-Oh-Two, Beau and Edythe.” She sighed again, more slowly this time. “I don’t think… that would be possible for us.”
“Because I would have to get too… close?” I guessed.
“That would be a problem, but that’s not the main problem. Beau, you don’t know how… well, fragile you are. I don’t mean that as an insult to your manliness, anyone human is fragile to me. I have to mind my actions every moment that we’re together so that I don’t hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, simply by accident.”
I thought about the first few times that she’d touched me, how cautiously she’d moved, how much it had seemed to frighten her. How she would ask me to move my hand, rather than just pulling hers out from under it…
Now she put her palm against my cheek.
“If I were too hasty… if I were at all distracted, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don’t realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I’m with you.”
If her life were in my hands that way, would I have already killed her? I cringed at the thought.
“I think I could be very distracted by you,” she murmured.
“I am never not distracted by you.”
“Can I ask you something now—something potentially offensive?”
“It’s your turn.”
“Do you have any experience with sex and humans?”
I was a little surprised that my face didn’t go hot again. It felt natural to tell her everything. “Not even a little bit. This is all firsts for me. I told you, I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even close.”