He handed me the jacket, interrupting my ogling.
"Thanks," I said again, sliding my arms into his buckskin jacket. It was cold—the way my jacket felt when I first picked it up in the morning, hanging in the drafty hallway. I shivered again. It smelled amazing.194 I inhaled, trying to identify the delicious scent.195 It didn't smell like cologne. The sleeves were much too long; I shoved them up to my shoulders so I could free my hands.
"That color blue looks lovely with your skin," he said, watching me. I was surprised; nobody had ever noticed that it perfectly matched my skin. I looked down, flushing, of course.
He pushed the fiddle basket toward me.
"Really, I'm not going into sh-shock," I protested.
"You should be—a normal person would be. You don't even look shaken, let alone stirred."196 He seemed unsettled. He stared into my eyes, and I saw how light his eyes were, lighter than I'd ever seen them, golden butterscotch.
"I feel very safe with you," I confessed, mesmerized into telling the truth again.
That displeased him; his alabaster brow furrowed.197 He shook his head, frowning.
"This is more complicated than I'd planned," he mumbled to himself.
I picked up a fiddlestick and began nibbling on the
194. It smelled of vampire.
195. Vampire.
196. A reference to Octopussy (1943), the penultimate entry in the James Bond series in which he lists all of his favorite drinks and how he likes them to be made.
197. Evidently, Fredward has white eyebrows.