Ironically, earlier, when approaching Earl, Phaedra had almost used the exact same line in reference to the pudgy cattle wrangler. But since Earl hadn't required any actual prodding, and all Phaedra had done was tell him he'd have a nice evening, she hadn't said anything.
She definitely got the reference.
Part of Phaedra expected Peter to blink, or to look away, almost every time she looked him in the eye. It was what people did. It was the thing she'd come to expect. Harry would have looked her in the eye, if he could have avoided a soulgaze.
The more she sat here looking at Peter, the more that term seemed to make a lot of sense, and the more sympathy Phaedra had for Harry. Wherever he was now.
She didn't like what she'd had to do here to make her point, but she knew she'd made it. She was realizing Peter didn't say a lot, but Phaedra had had centuries to learn visual cues, body language... and beyond that, she was a predator.
She knew a lot about what the human body did. Or the almost human body in this case. The way he was breathing... she wasn't sure if he was grabbing her to steady himself or for some other reason.
That reason that seemed to just hang there, up there above their heads, with that star-filled sky.
Peter didn't take his hand away, and Phaedra didn't say anything about it. Good at reading people or not, she'd definitely learned not to assume, and she was still behaving, not reading thoughts.
Isn't much there for you to read...
Well, that was total bullshit.
One side of her mouth began the smile, but it didn't fully get there. "It's tempting."
She was curious about a lot. About Letha, and what had happened. About whoever this other vampire was, or upir, since he kept using that word. About what it was like to be a wolf. Why he turned against the moon. How Nicolai had died.