The severity of his glare is softened by the smile on his face. “I don’t starve my captives at all. You’re the one who decided to go on a hunger strike. Or did you forget that little detail?”
“Shut up and pass me the noodles.”
He suppresses a smile and passes the bright blue bowl. The smell wafts up to my nostrils and I breathe it in.
“There’s nothing better than food.”
“Except sex,” Kian corrects.
I frown. “Not in my experience.”
“Then you haven’t been doing it right.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Or maybe sex doesn’t really factor into my life.”
He shakes his head sadly. “That’s a pity,” he says. “Sex can be transformative.”
“Can it?” I ask sarcastically.
“It is the most natural thing we can do with our bodies. It’s a connector, a form of wordless communication. An experience that can be wholly freeing. If you do it right.”
I feel my muscles tense. But it’s not discomfort, it feels almost like… anticipation. “Yeah, well, I’ve never felt that before. Not even close.”
“You should try it sometime,” he says without a trace of innuendo.
“Guess I’ll have to find the right man.”
“Good luck.”
I search his eyes for a spark of something, but there’s nothing. He’s not trying to goad or embarrass me. He’s just answering my questions.
“Are you trying to duck out on answering me?” I venture.
He smiles. “Ask again. I’ve forgotten it.”
“Why have you never wanted to get married?”
He’s silent for a few seconds, as though he’s mulling over the answer. “Marriage has never appealed to me. The idea of being with one woman for the rest of my life seems… limiting.”
I frown. “You don’t seem like a man who cares about limits.”
“Meaning what?” he asks rhetorically. “Because I’m okay with murder, you assume infidelity would be nothing for me?”
“In a word, yes.”
He gives me a long-suffering sigh. “Did it ever cross your mind that the men I kill, I kill for a reason?” he asks. “I don’t just go around killing people to make a point. Only those who deserve to die.”
“But who are you to make that call?”
“No one,” he responds immediately. “But I have the power and the will to see things through. I’ve saved hundreds of women and young girls from abuse and rape. The average man would not be able to do that. Because he doesn’t have the resources or the stomach to do what needs to be done. Sometimes…”
“Sometimes what?”
He fixes me with a skewering stare. It’s equal parts sad and defiant. And when he speaks, his voice is a harsh, mournful rasp that makes the hair on my arms stand on end. “Sometimes, if you want to kill a monster, you need to become one yourself.”
His words ring in the silence. So much meaning packed into them that I don’t even know where to start.
I frown. “Aisling told me about my father’s… investments,” I say quietly. “Is it true?”