Page 38 of The HalloQueen

“Oui. I wish I remembered my mother. I know that she was very special to me. I feel like she died badly, as if we were attacked or something, but things were just so different then.” He shrugged easily, “who knows, maybe that’s how I died too.”

“So you’re like…400 years old?”

“Around that, maybe 500? I think Monique once said I was born in 1584 - but I don’t know how she came about that number, and I don’t remember if she thought that was when I was born or if that was when I changed.”

“Is Monique one of your partners that left?” I asked.

“Yes. She was incredibly important to me. I loved her very much.”

“Do you think she's dead?”

He pressed his lips against my forehead and shrugged, “I do not know where she went or what she’s doing. As I said before, she and our partner Yusuf left together and I have been alone since. But last I’d heard they’re alive.”

“So, basically what you’re saying is that I’m such a beast in the sack that sex with me was better than sex with two people at the same time who had a gajillion years of practice?” I teased, hoping to lighten the sadness radiating off him.

That got a smile, “don’t let it go to your head.”

“How long were you guys a family?”

“Since before the revolution.”

“American or French?”

“French.” He laid on his back and sighed, “it was all a very long time ago.”

“If you were together since before the French Revolution that means you were together like 200 years, Tommy.”

“Oui. As I said, I loved them very much.”

“And they just left.”

He nodded slowly, “Oui.”

“That’s awful,” Feeling him wilt like an abandoned puppy left at the pound, I asked, “have you been with anyone since they left?”

“Not like this. Not like that.”

I grunted in acknowledgment and laid my cheek against his chest and my leg over his, “I’m sorry they’re gone.”

“I am too, but they never told me why - that’s what bothers me most. I can’t fix something if I don’t know what the problem is.”

I felt him graze at my emotions again, almost in asking, and I nodded, letting him in. I showed him my genuine sadness for him, my elation over the mind-melting orgasm, and the comfort I felt in his arms. I didn’t know what attribute he had that could make somebody snap badly enough to leave after 200 years, but I did know that at that moment, I was happy.

“Thank you,” he said softly, “your emotions are so…interesting.”

“It didn’t help you with them?”

“No, we can’t harvest emotions from someone who also harvests emotional energy, and even if you could, who is to say if it would be their feelings or whoever they just fed from.” He said it so nonchalantly that I huffed a small laugh.

“You talk about eating people so…easily.”

“It’s my life,amour, it’s no different to me than you ordering a pizza.”

“Except I don’t kill the pizza man.”

“Neither do I, but I will often steal his high - you know how many delivery guys are stoned out of their minds?”

I laughed loudly and he rubbed his hand up and down my back, “why don’t you rest, Bels? You had a long day - do you want me to go?”

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