“Sixteen,” I answer. “Our father took both Damien and me for our first kills.”

Ariana shakes her head lightly. “And you were okay with it?”

I shrug. “Like I said, it’s the way I was raised.”

“How old are you now?” she asks, and I’m taking it as a very good sign that she’s trying to get to know me better.

“Thirty-one.”

Her eyes widen. “Wow, that’s eight years older than me. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

“Why?” I ask, narrowing my eyes on her.

“That’s a big age gap, Demitri. The guys I’ve dated were my age.”

There’s a burst of anger in my chest, and I grumble, “The guys you’ve dated?”

“Ah… yeah.”

“How many?” I demand.

A slight frown forms on her forehead. “Three.”

Then I remember she’s only slept with one other guy, and it makes my anger rocket through my chest.

“You’re upset?” Ariana asks, her eyes searching my face as she tries to read my mood.

“Of course I’m fucking upset. No man wants to know how many men his woman has been with,” I practically bark. “It’s enough to send me on a killing spree.”

Her eyes grow huge, and she turns her body to face me while she quickly explains, “It was nothing. The longest relationship I had was three months. They didn’t mean anything.”

I pin her with my eyes. “You cared enough to give one of those men your virginity.”

Ariana smiles awkwardly. “It was more an experiment on my part. I just wanted to know what doing the deed was like.”

“And?”

She pulls a disgruntled face, and shaking her head, she looks back to the lake. “Nothing memorable.”

It makes me feel a hell of a lot better hearing the fucker didn’t measure up to her expectations.

“And you?” Ariana asks. Her teeth tug nervously at her bottom lip, then she continues, “How many girlfriends have you had?”

I shrug. “None.”

“Huh?” Her eyes snap back to me. “That’s impossible.” When I just shrug again, she gasps, “So what? You just have one-night-stands?”

“Something like that,” I answer with a chuckle at her shocked reaction.

Confusion washes over Ariana’s features. “But… then why are you so insistent on a relationship between us?”

I lift my hand and wrap my fingers around the back of her neck. Leaning toward her, I answer honestly, “Because you’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted.”

“Why me?” she breathes, the atmosphere between us beginning to fill with tension.

I brush my thumb against her soft skin and stare deep into her eyes. “Because I worry about you. Before we met, I never cared about a woman. With Winter, I felt some pity when she lost her family. With Haley, I was more upset that a woman got beaten. But I never actually cared what happened to them.”

I shift my hand to her chin and brush my thumb over her lips. “You’re the only woman who’s made me feel a fuck-ton of emotions. Everything from anger to possessiveness.”