“Laptop.” His voice broke on the word. “Did you—”
No point in denying it now. “Yes.”
“Um,” he said. He licked his lips, and—look, after finding that article on the computer, it wasn’t my fault that my eyes fell reflexively to his mouth. “Listen—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I said very quickly. “I said you could use my laptop and . . . it’s none of my business what you use it for. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he said, his fingertips flexing a little on my arms. “It’s your laptop. You don’t need my permission to use it. I’d meant to put that article away before you came home, but I got caught up in preparing the food, and . . .” His eyes dropped to the floor. “I must have forgotten.”
We stood like that for a long moment, his hands still on my arms. The soup was still bubbling away on the stove, but we both ignored it. It felt like I was supposed to say something—something to defuse the situation, probably—only I wasn’t certain what it should be.
So I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Are you . . . curious about kissing?”
Probably a stupid question, given what I’d found on my laptop. But he looked surprised all the same. His eyes snapped to mine. “What makes you think that?”
I huffed a laugh. “Your browser history.”
I could all but see the wheels in his mind turning as he cast about for how to reply. But after an interminable moment he seemed to regain some of his composure.
He stepped a little closer to me. At the heated look he gave me, all rational thought fled.
“I know about kissing, Cassie.”
He sounded genuinely affronted, and I cringed at what I’d just implied—even as my knees went weak at the implication of what he’d just said. He’d been alive—or, his equivalent of alive—for hundreds of years. He’d probably kissed hundreds of people. Maybe thousands.
In fact—he was probably really good at kissing.
“I’m sure you do,” I said, too flustered to look at his face anymore. My gaze drifted down to his ridiculous apron. This Guy Rubs His Own Meat. I flushed deeper with the awkwardness of this entire situation. How was any of this happening? “It’s just . . . well. That website.” I paused. “You can see why I might think that—”
“Right, right,” he said, impatiently, waving a dismissive hand. “I understand what it must look like. But I swear, my only reason for reading that was . . . that is to say, I just wanted to see if . . .”
He trailed off.
He dropped his grip on my arms and ran an agitated hand through his hair.
I peered at him. “You just wanted to see if . . . ?”
His expression was unreadable. “I just wanted to see if anything . . . significant . . . had changed.”
What? “You wanted to see if . . . anything had changed?”
He nodded. “Yes. It has been a while, since I . . .” He shook his head and shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. “Over the years there have been . . . trends in this area, you see. What is desirable in a kiss in one era may not be pleasurable in another.”
Oh.
Oh.
“And you’re curious about what those trends are right now?”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
I had no reason to think his curiosity about modern kissing trends was anything but purely intellectual. He was curious about a lot of things in the twenty-first century—everything ranging from urban sewage systems to Midwestern politics. But something about the way he was now steadfastly looking at everything in the room but me made my heart knock hard against my rib cage—and gave me the courage to admit something very stupid.
“I’m curious, too.”
His eyes snapped to mine. “What?”
Operating on pure nerve, I clarified. “I’ve never kissed a vampire before.” I didn’t have to admit that I’d wondered what it would be like to kiss him specifically, right? “So I’m curious about what it’s like.” At the thunderstruck look on his face I added, “Purely from an intellectual standpoint.”
A beat. “Of course.”
“For science, honestly.”
“Science.”
“Comparison purposes.”
“What other purpose could there be?”
We stood there in the kitchen for what felt like entire minutes, just staring at each other. The soup was still bubbling on the stove. It sort of smelled like it was burning at this point. I didn’t care.