I scowled at him. "Stop mothering me. Besides, cake isn't sustenance."
"It is impossible for me to mother you when I am male," he replied evenly, but there was a hint of humor glinting in the depths of his eyes, and, as usual, it did strange things to my pulse rate—which only emphasized just how irrational I really was. He added, "And is not chocolate one of the five essential food groups?"
I rolled my eyes. "You, reaper, need to stop believing everything you read in my thoughts."
He merely raised an eyebrow. "If it is not essential, why do you have it so often?"
I studied him for a moment, wondering if he was still teasing me or not. "Because it's like love and sex—it's just something a woman has to have." I paused, but couldn't resist asking, "What about you? Is there anything in your life that you'd consider essential?"
"Valdis," he said immediately.
"Valdis is your sword." A demon-forged sword with a whole lot of power and a voice and mind of her own, granted, but still a sword. I had a similar one sitting at my back, but Amaya was shadow-wreathed, and no one would ever see her—not until her black blade pierced their flesh, anyway. "Swords don't count."
"Then it would be duty," he said.
I snorted. "It's a sad statement about the reaper community that duty is considered a far higher priority than love and laughter."
"It is natural our priorities are different considering our beings are completely different in design."
I frowned. "Aren't you even curious as to why we humans consider love, sex, and chocolate so vital to our existence?"
"No." He paused. "Which does not preclude the possibility that I have experienced at least one of those options."
"I wasn't talking about the reaper version of love and sex."
"Neither was I," he said, amusement teasing his lips.
I stared at him for several seconds, completely dumbstruck. No, he surely couldn't mean…