He looked back at me and smiled wickedly, mood shifting yet again.
"How do I explain the unexplainable... ?" he mused. "And without frightening you again... hmmm." Without seeming to think about it,275 he placed his hand back in mine; I held it tightly in both of my own hands. His eyes moved to our hands.
"That's amazing pleasant, the warmth." He sighed.
A moment passed as he assembled his thoughts, vampiric super-brain working overtime to explain something that had never been explained before to the likes of mere humanity.
"You know how everyone enjoys different flavors?" he began. "Some people love chocolate ice cream, others prefer strawberry?"
"What?"
"Sorry about the food analogy—it's how I think of you."
I smiled. He smiled back.
"You see, every person smells like a different kind of food, is a different essential dish. If you locked a starving man in a room full of hamburgers and hot dogs, he'd gladly partake. But he could resist, if he wished to, if he were a recovering fatty. Now let's say you placed in that room a bowl of fried miniature hamburgers and hot dogs—and the room filled with their aromas, scents perfectly complimentary—how do you think he would fare then?"
We sat silently, looking into each other's eyes—me, trying to read his thoughts. I didn't know what he was getting at but was pretty sure he did.
He broke the silence first.
"Maybe that's not the right comparison. Maybe it would be too easy to turn down. Perhaps I should have made our food chap a heroin addict instead."
"So what you're saying is, I'm your brand of heroin?" I teased, trying to lighten the mood.
275. Vampiric speed-thinking.