Temper

He wasn't holding a weapon or anything so conspicuous but his balled up fists looked ominous enough all on their own. It was a clear signal of the things he wasn't saying; you are walking into dangerous territory.

Keep laughing and see where it gets you. You are not dealing with your run of the mill, red-blooded man. As if Juri had tons of experience with even that.

Everything about Marino's body language warned Juri to shut her mouth and start apologizing and yet she just couldn't make herself do it. The harder she tried to get control of the giggles the worse they got until she honestly thought she was going to be sick.

Through it all, Marino stood there with those balled up fists and storms rolling across his face. When she was finally able to get some semblance of control over herself, she cleared her throat and tried not to meet his eye.

"Sorry," she said, her voice strained with the effort of maintaining control, "but you have to see how silly that sounds to me, right?"

"I don't, actually. I don't know what you're talking about," he answered stiffly.

His fist unclenched a little but not enough for anyone to confuse him for being relaxed. The look in his eyes wasn't any softer at all; if anything it was more murderous than it had been before.

Seeing that was enough to sober Juri up a little and the urge to laugh receded quickly. Not that she was feeling friendlier. Nothing close to that.

"It just seems a little stupid for you to be complaining about my grammar with everything going on. Don't you think so?" She challenged him.

It was a stupid question. Clearly, he didn't think. She suspected that to a man like Marino, grammar was always important, along with any number of other things denoting a person's propriety.

Now all of her humor was gone, immediately and completely replaced with a biting fury that threatened to be unforgivably dangerous if she couldn't keep it under control.

"Never mind," she shot back without giving him a chance to answer her question, "I don't think I need to hear your take on things, after all."

"If you say so," he said carefully.

She wanted to smack him in the face, tell him to stop being so damned proper. As far as she was concerned a man lost the right to his propriety the first time he went to an auction to buy himself a slave.

And now that she was on the subject, was she the only one he'd bought? Had she just happened to be his virginal experience in the trafficking of human lives?

Juri wasn't nearly old or experienced enough to claim an understanding of the way things like this worked, but she was also no fool. Marino wouldn't have been so cool and uninterested if she had been his first purpose.

His demeanor had been that of a woman making her bi-weekly run to the grocery store; just another thing to check off of the to-do list. She looked into his face now, couldn't help herself, searching for she didn't know what.

What she saw didn't do anything to make her feel more settled. What she saw was nothing; no emotion one way or the other. Even the faint evidence of anger was gone, his hands moving from his side to rest easily on the back of an extravagantly carved chair back.

"Did you need something?" Juri asked shortly, wishing she hadn't looked so directly into his eyes. There was something about those eyes; something capable of sucking a girl in.

"I thought you might need something, actually," he answered softly, almost tenderly.

The sound made her heart jump and flutter, and she hated it for the betrayal. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, then took a startled step backward.

What kind of an idiot made herself bleed in front of a vampire, for Christ's sake? An idiot who wasn't going to live long, she thought to herself bitterly, that was who.

"Yeah? What might that be?" She asked harshly.

It was a pitiful attempt at overcompensating for her own shortcomings, and she knew it, but she didn't care. She didn't care when he responded by looking almost wounded, either.

All she wanted was for him to stop talking so she could go back to her room and think. Barring productive thought, she only wanted to be left in peace.

"Just look at the table, please," he answered, his tone similar to that of a man trying very hard not to lose his patience with a petulant child.

She didn't want to look, wanted to avoid it, if just to spite him, but of course, she couldn't help herself. It was like being told not to put her palm on the stovetop because it was too hot to touch; she couldn't be told. She had to experience it for herself.

That had always been true when she was a kid, she remembered now. She'd lost that quality somewhere along the way, but it was back now and virtually impossible to ignore. She peered around his broad shoulders and saw what Marino had called her downstairs for; without thinking, she started laughing again.

"Breakfast? Are you serious?" She giggled breathlessly.

"I am, actually, yes," he responded with a frown, "I'm given to believe that toppers still require nourishment. Your behavior in this home to date would seem to support the theory further."

"Right, I actually know that, being that I'm one of those toppers you love to talk about so much. I mean are you serious about me wanting to sit here and eat?" She retorted, putting her hands on her hips and frowning in disbelief.

The thing about it was, now that the food was sitting right in front of her she couldn't deny that she was absolutely starving. It was true that she had been eating since arriving at her underwater home, but none of it could exactly be described as meals.

Her consumption had primarily consisted of slinking down to the massive kitchen when the house was silent and scavenging little pieces of things. What she saw now couldn't have been any more different.

The table, which was a comically long one, was covered with bowls and platters. There were plenty of things she didn't recognize, but that didn't matter a bit. All of it looked appetizing, and it smelled even better.

Her stomach growled loudly to punctuate the point, or perhaps to serve as a reminder of her current situation in case she felt like doing something stupid. Unfortunately for the stomach, Juri wasn't in the mood to listen.

"If you think I'm going to sit down and have a meal with you, you're out of your mind," she said softly, her eyes still fixated on the plates of food, "What's the deal? Are you like, trying to make friends or something?"

"I'm feeding you. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Sure, and this wouldn't have anything to do with our little encounter the other day, would it? Are you feeling guilty or something?" She pressed.

He was getting that supremely pissed off look again, and she understood that she was more than pressing her luck. She was playing chicken with it, and yet still she could not keep her mouth shut. It was like blunt-talking was some new, trendy disease for which she did not have the cure.

"You would do well to mind your tongue," Marino said slowly, measuring the weight of each word as he let it loose.

He was right. They both knew he was right. And Juri didn't care. She was deep in the middle of what she was coming to think of as her days of living dangerously fondly.

"Or what?" She dared, and willed her treacherous limbs not to shake.

Juri told herself that if Marino's temper at long last broke, she would be ready.