“I don’t know. Has he?” Now I was uncertain. Sure, there was the hunger I sensed in Stefan, but that had more to do with what I was than who I was, didn’t it? And yes, he’d made a comment or two that could have been construed as flirting, but I hadn’t taken them seriously for reasons that seemed pretty damn obvious to me. “Cooper, we come from different worlds. Different centuries. He’s a freakin’ medieval knight, for God’s sake!”

“Aye,” he agreed. “And some days, he feels the weight of six hundred years’ worth of immortality, six hundred years of being Outcast, six hundred years of hunger. He feels the cut of every betrayal, everyone who turned against him, called him a ghoul, called him a monster, called him unnatural. He feels the loss of every loved one who succumbed to age and death, while he went on and on; sometimes dying, only to be thrown back into the feckin’ mortal coil in no more time than it takes your heart to beat once.”

I had a feeling Cooper wasn’t just talking about Stefan.

“But you know what?” he continued, gazing steadily at me. “Some days he feels just like the regular old boyo he used to be before heaven and hell slammed the door in his face. Some days, all he wants to do is have a laugh with his mates, drink poteen, and steal kisses from a pretty lass without creeping into her soul along the way. And those days? Those are the loneliest days of all.”

I doubted that was the sort of regular old boyo Stefan Ludovic had been, but I got the point. “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

Cooper looked away. “You’re suited, is all I’m saying. You being a bit of a tempest and all. You’d have a good run. And he’d take care of you when it was over.”

“Excuse me?”

“When it was over,” Cooper said patiently. “You’re . . . what? Mid-twenties? You’d have at least ten years.” Looking back at me, he grinned. “Maybe longer these days, eh? You’ll be what they’re callin’ a cougar in your forties.”

My mouth had fallen open. I closed it. Well, duh. Of course it would end that way. How else could it end? Even Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore couldn’t make it work, and an immortality gap was a hell of a lot bigger than an age difference. And I didn’t doubt that Stefan would take good care of me in my dotage. More and more, I was realizing he had a highly developed sense of honor.

“Thanks,” I said to Cooper. “But I think I’d rather spend my life with someone I can grow old with.”

“Or of course,” he said in a casual tone, “you could always invoke your birthright and bargain for immortality.”