“I seldom fed from mortals. They complicated things too much.”
My heart, as usual, contracted at the oblique reference to his deceased love.
“When I did, I tried to keep the contact at a minimum. It was better for everyone’s sake.”
“Did you . . . er . . . did you . . . you know . . . have sex with everyone you drank from?” I asked, driven by a horrible spurt of jealousy I badly wanted to pretend wasn’t there.
His lips softened into a slight curve. “I told you once before that feeding, to a Dark One, is an intimate act that sometimes involves other aspects of intimacy. It is seldom planned, but sometimes happens.”
Damn him. I ground my teeth a little as we approached the town, trying to cope with my unreasonable need to demand to know just how many times he’d given in to that particular impulse.
You’re jealous, he said with a hint of surprise.
Shut up, I muttered, glaring out of the window at the blackness . I’ve had boyfriends, too, you know.
I know.
Startled, I looked at him.
Alec would have mentioned it if you’d been a virgin.
My mouth dropped open in horror. “You talked to Alec about me? About . . . sex with me?”
“He brought it up,” he answered, negotiating an exit into the town, consulting the GPS unit briefly before taking the appropriate turn.
“You talked about me?” Heat washed upward from my chest. I felt perilously close to tears or a nervous breakdown. I just couldn’t decide which.
“He told me about spending the night with you.” He glanced at me, frowning slightly as we came into a street filled with people streaming into a nightclub. “I didn’t ask for specifics, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I caught the echo in his mind. “You didn’t have to, did you? He told you everything. Everything! Oh, my God, he told you about me insisting on the light being off?”
“He said you were very modest.”
I could feel Kristoff desperately trying to shove thoughts back out of the way so I couldn’t pick through them, but I pounced on a mental image that made my skin burn. “Oh, my God! He told you he didn’t . . . that we didn’t . . . Oh, my God!”
“You’re making too much of this. Alec and I have always discussed women, although I do not go into specifics as he does.”
“Oh, really? And did you tell him all about you and Angelica?” The words were off my tongue before I could stop myself, but I regretted them the instant I heard them.
Kristoff’s jaw tightened. He kept his gaze grimly on the people milling around as he inched through them. “No.”
The familiar stab of anguish I was coming to think of as Angelica pain lanced my chest. Of course he didn’t talk to Alec about her. She was special. She was the woman he’d chosen to spend his life with, not one who had been thrust on him by circumstances and fate.
Unreasonable and unwanted tears pricked the back of my eyes. “Did you tell him about us?”
“No.” He shot me another swift glance. “Would it make you feel any better to know I was pleased when he told me that he had not engaged in anything other than oral sex with you?”
“You were?” I asked, looking at him despite my embarrassment. “Really? Why?”
He nodded, a slightly chagrined expression on his face. “I’ve been told in the past that I can be overly possessive where women are concerned. You had expressed your preference for Alec, and I accepted that, but I could not help but be pleased that he did not possess you completely.”
I didn’t quite know what to say to that, other than to acknowledge my own little kernel of happiness that he, too, could be jealous. “Possessive, hmm?”
His lips turned downward, his eyes steadfastly on the street before us. “It is not unknown for Dark Ones.”
“Given what I’ve seen,” I said, thinking of the vampires I’d met, “I’d say that is a fair statement. I have to admit that I kind of like it.”
One of his lovely sable eyebrows rose. “I thought women did not like possessiveness.”
“A little of it can be nice,” I said with a little smile to myself. “Too much is obnoxious, but a little . . . It makes us feel wanted.”
He said nothing as he pulled into a parking lot next to what looked like a government building, but allowed me to feel the need that always seemed to be simmering within him.
I was a bit surprised to find my body answering his with a little hum of excitement. “Do you need, for lack of a better phrase, topping off?” I asked as we sat together in the warm, intimate darkness of the car.