I shrugged. “I did just invite you to live with me,” I said truthfully.
His face was peaceful. “You did, didn’t you?” he asked softly. “Shall I go get my things?” he asked.
I nodded. “Anything else you’d like to add, since we’re in catharsis mode?”
“Let’s start really living your life. I want you to go after a full-time teaching position, because you talk about it in your sleep you want it so bad. Let’s clean up your past, the things you talk about that are holding you back. I think you may end up looking at my offer differently,” he said, voice nearly bursting with affection.
I blushed, embarrassed. I thought I was doing such a good job at keeping the skeletons neatly arranged in my closet, but in reality they were bursting out when I looked away.
“Ready to shake on that, Gentry?” I asked, reluctant.
He positively glowed. “Yes, Mistress,” he said, pulling me in for a soft kiss. “You know I have a hard time telling you no.”
“I like giving you a hard time,” I said, giving him a swift spank to the bum. “Fresh boy. Go get your things.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cerise
He plopped the single box in the center of my living room floor.
“That’s it?”
He shrugged. “That’s it.”
“You own an entire complex down the Banke and all you’re bringing here is this single box of stuff? No artwork or anything?”
“Breanna and Steven can keep the rest. I don’t hang on to things long. If I had kept everything I had ever bought, I’d need a home the size of Buckingham Palace. All I need is right here,” he said, taking my hand and planting a soft, cool kiss on my wrist. “And as for the art, I’d like to maybe make the guest room into a studio, considering how often you inspire me.”
I walked up to the box out of curiosity and sifted around. A few clothes, some books, and a garden spade. I held that last item up. “Planning on digging up the petunias?”
He laughed and took it from me carefully. “That is the only item I have that belonged to my parents,” he explained gently. “They were very simple people. Maybe that’s why I don’t need more than a box of worldly goods.”
“I thought your parents were Renaissance vampires. Paintings, extravagance, and the like. Or did they have some crazy over-the-top garden?”
“My biological parents were farmers,” he said, fingering the garden tool with reverence. “They sold me to vampires.”
I clamped my mouth with my hand and sunk down to the couch, horrified by this revelation. And horrified at his reaction to it. “How,” I asked, eyes watering, “how can you speak of them kindly after they did something like that?”
His gaze clouded and his expression was unreadable. “They were only looking out for me,” he explained. “It was the beginning of the Great Depression, and caring for a precocious—and ravenous—five-year-old boy was too much of a burden. And nothing was left of their farms but dust.”
I shook my head. “But to sell you to vampires!?”
“I spoke too strongly. A rich couple passed them one day. My parents were on the side of the road, begging for food for me. The couple explained how they were unable to have a child of their own, and despite all the luxuries the world had provided them, the only thing they wanted was impossible.”
“Which was true,” I whispered, understanding.