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He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think so.” He suddenly looked young, and not sure at all.

I hugged him, and he hugged me back. “God, Nathaniel, God, we were already low on daytime feeds. What am I going to do?” I let some of that panic out in my voice.

He squeezed me tighter. “We’ll work something out. I’m sorry, I got mad about Requiem. It’s just . . .”

“That everyone gets me, and you don’t,” I said.

He nodded. Then drew back enough to smile at me, that wonderful smile. He took my hand and placed it on the side of his neck. I felt the marks of my teeth under my fingertips. “This was good, Anita. This was exactly what I wanted in that moment, exactly.”

I had to smile back at him, but the smile didn’t last. “What time is it?”

Jason answered, “Ten o’clock.”

Great. Less than two hours of sleep. Out loud I said, “I fed on you at about two in the morning, which means it’s only been eight hours. Eight hours is too soon, Nathaniel.”

He looked at me, and there was a fierceness there, a determination. “Make love to me, Anita. Make love to me, and then you can feed on someone else. But you’re right, I am tired of watching everyone get there before me.” He was on his knees, and he touched my arms, not quite clutching at me, not quite holding me. “Make love to me, and I won’t have a reason to be jealous.”

“I’ll still be having to have sex with other men,” I said. “Why won’t you be jealous?”

“Because I’ll know that you want to make love to me, and you have to have sex with them.”

My head was beginning to hurt. Nathaniel often made me feel out of my depth. I loved him, and wanted him, but, hell, I didn’t know what to say to him. “If it was you in other women’s beds, I’d be jealous, no matter the why.”

He blushed. “Would you really be jealous of me?”

“I wasn’t entirely happy watching you get pawed at the club, so yeah, I think it would bother me.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“That I’m jealous of other women around you?”

He nodded.

“You’ve had girlfriends be jealous of you before,” I said.

He shook his head. “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”

I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. I knew he wouldn’t lie about it, but I just found it hard to believe. “You’ve been in pornographic movies. You’ve—”

“Been a prostitute,” he finished for me, and his eyes never flinched.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, but . . .”

“Fucking isn’t dating, Anita. Fucking for money really isn’t dating.”

“But . . .” I said.

He touched my lips with his fingers. “Hush,” he said, “you are the first girlfriend I’ve ever had.”

I stared at him with a sort of soft horror growing in my mind. I was his first girlfriend? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. How can you do porn and be a prostitute and not date? Some of the confusion must have shown on my face, because he smiled and touched the side of my face. The bandage had come off and he traced the healing scratches that Barbara Brown had given me.

“I told you, you’re the first person who ever wanted me, for me. Not because of the way I looked and what I could do with my body. You love me without sex. You let me take care of you. You let me organize your kitchen.”

“You cook in it more than I do,” I said.

He smiled, and his eyes were gentle, as if I were the child and he was so much older than I was. “That’s it, Anita. You let me buy the tea set, even though I know you think it’s sort of silly.”

“You like the tea set,” I said.

He nodded. “You do things not because you want them or enjoy them, but because it makes me happy. I’ve had people buy me jewelry, clothes, weekends in great hotels and spas, but no one ever let me buy what I wanted with their money, only what they thought I wanted. Let me remake their schedule. Let me make a place for me in their life.” He cupped my face between his hands. “Maybe girlfriend isn’t the right word, but I think any other word I could think of will make you run away, and I don’t want that.”

My lips were suddenly dry.

“Make love to me,” he whispered and started to lean