Remember that,” he groaned. “And tell everyone you know.

She wished he’d stop touching her. Not because she didn’t like it but because she liked it far too much. It made her hunger for things that could never be hers. And if someone went hungry for too long, they started to starve. Started to hurt.

Love, he thought as he held her to his heart, was an agony beyond compare.

Where did you learn your charm—the gulag?

Oh yeah, that’s the one who kept watching me as if she was waiting for me to grow fangs and try to eat her. I couldn’t help it—I used my claws to scratch my nose. Her eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

Go on,” he said in a low tone that was a dare. “Keep on poking the hungry wolf, see how naked it gets you.

Once, he'd used it in song, but the songs in his heart had gone silent long ago, and he knew that one day so would his voice. A man with nothing inside him eventually had nothing to say.