He smiled when she repeated his hero name. There was both conflict and power in him, yes, and he'd felt that connection as well, but he'd identified it as physical attraction. Tess had been more there than the others, more vivid, brighter.
Her admission to visiting his dream because she'd needed something stirred up the memory of his conversation with Sabrina - about how Tess could use something of his to influence him. She'd taken his seed and could've done her own rituals with it. The memory brought back a percentage of the violation he'd felt at the time. He frowned and pulled back, staring at her. Was this all one-sided? Was she playing him? He couldn't read anything in her expression other than heat.
"Did you use what you took from me in a spell?" he asked, wondering if he was under her influence now. It would certainly explain a lot; why he'd not wanted to fight her, why he'd felt dissatisfied living at the Parlor, why he'd left and come here and why they were together now.
He heard the sound of water from a tap falling into a sink, the scrape of a brush cleaning, the soft sound of glasses chinking lightly together as the bartender took care of the washing up and put the glasses away. Very few people were in this bar because they were here between busy periods. Still, they didn't have the place to themselves. He could hear the murmur of a couple of other conversations around him. He didn't bother looking at them, though.