The massive table with a sitting for thirty people in the dining room was full of delicious meals that could take your breath away. Even if she hadn't been hungry, Hope would still have eaten as much as possible. She felt like a ravenous wolf that found a group of deer. Her eyes gleamed with lust, and her mouth was full of saliva. Hope started eating straight from the trays. She was alone at the table anyway.

"You don't see that every day," she heard a loud, slightly amused voice behind her. Hope didn't bother to turn around because she already knew very well those vocal modulations, calming and scaring at the same time. Drake approached and looked over her shoulder at the tray from which the food was rapidly disappearing.

Hope ignored him. After a few minutes, when she finished the tray and prepared to shoot the next tray in front of her, she decided to answer because she had a few seconds to catch her breath. "I think you are the one in need of some lessons with Bernard. It's not nice to interrupt someone when they eat or look inside their plate."

This food beast sitting in front of him amused Drake thoroughly. "Not even when the person doesn't have a plate, but a tray?"

"Especially then!" the girl replied and started the second tray. It looked like she wouldn't notice him too soon, but she was eating pretty quickly with both hands, so Drake decided to watch the whole show amused.

When Hope finished two more trays and three carafes of water, Drake felt he still wanted to have fun. "I see that you have evolved a lot with your manners and high society etiquette. There will be a serious conversation between Bernard and me about this. "

The girl wiped her mouth elegantly with the napkin as if she were a different person than the one she was when she devoured the trays. "The lessons are over because he has nothing to teach me."

Drake raised an eyebrow in question. "Is that so? I wouldn't say that…."

Hope interrupted him to make her point. "You can know many things, but you don't have to apply them all. If you truly want to live, do what you enjoy, do what represents you, even if you know it's better otherwise. That is my motto in life. "

Hope could feel Drake's bloodlust seeping through the room, making her skin crease. "That advice is not a very good one for me. If I listened to it, the whole world would burn to the ground," he whispered. All of a sudden, the mess hall seemed a place taken out straight from hell.

Drake didn't understand how those words escaped from his lips, slipping his thoughts out loud. He recovered quickly, calmed himself as much as possible, and continued. "By the way, where's Bernard?"

"When he realized he had nothing to teach me, he got up and left," Hope replied without a care in the world.

Drake rose to his feet, overturning his chair. His face darkened with murderous intent, and his bloodlust grew. "Did that individual dare to leave without my consent? He won't live to see tomorrow!"

Hope was in awe. His bloodlust made him look even more handsome, and his face was not just a mask anymore. She compared him with a dark god, who came into this realm for vengeance.

Drake went for the door, probably to go after Bernard. Hope got up from her chair and grabbed his wrist. A growling sound accompanied Drake's voice. "I think your sense of danger is pretty messed up, my little toy! No one touches me without my prior consent and lives to tell the story."

Hope smiled and chuckled briefly. "Only a lonely and bored creature could say that. You don't impress or scare me. Today is my day, and I plan to take advantage of the remaining half of it. Or is this threatening creature in front of me a liar and a coward?"

Hope thought that would make him even angrier, but the man's thirst for blood began to dissipate. Looking into those sharp deer brown eyes relaxed him, leaving behind his anger and criminal intentions. A deep sigh escaped his lips. Drake turned to her and grabbed her by both hands. "Tell me then, what do you so desperately want to do to me today?"

Hope froze because she still didn't know what she wanted. As a matter of fact, she had a desire for him to recognize her as his mistress and be at her feet. A part of her whispered she would have liked it even if the roles were reversed, but she buried this part deep and hoped to smother it.

Hope's problem wasn't that she was out of ideas. Actually, she had so many that they were tangled in her head, forcing her to separate those that would be impossible for her to adapt in such a short period or those foolish enough that she wouldn't want to say them out loud. She suddenly thought of something that might help her, or so it seemed to her at that moment, and she let it out. "Never have I ever, the drinking game!"

Her mind started to race as she realized that the idea might not have been so fantastic. It doesn't even sound so good once she said it. Drake was staring blankly, dumbfounded. He couldn't understand why she had chosen this and why she had fought so fiercely for a childish game.

"How could you possibly think you can hold your liquor better than I, little toy?" Drake smirked, coming back to his old self again.

Hope winked seductively with a sultry smile. "The answer may be yes, it may be no, we will find out tonight. Whoever wins the game doesn't matter; it's just about who wins the bet."

For a few moments, Drake let his attention be captured by her charming smile and the way she winked at him. Hope continued, however, immediately after. "Eating well allows you to stay on your feet for longer. I had my fill, "she said, tapping her belly hard.

As Drake sighed to himself, he became pensive. How could this girl be so sexy and seductive in one moment, and then, in the next, she can be vulgar and utterly devoid of any good taste?