Hannibal's head tilted to one side. "You think it would take so much time to know you?"
He didn't bring up the idea of gut instincts or initial judgments and the ideas behind those being the most accurate. How such things were backed with science and fact. She'd know that.
But most, she'd know that he didn't really need such things.
"You came to me, Doctor Cameron. Wished to get to know me. Did you think that it would be a one sided conversation? That it would not include things from your past? You claim to have read and seen, yet you seem surprised that I would find your past so alluring. I don't have your advantages, now do I? There is no book on Allison Cameron. There is no movie about her life and the horrors within. There is only the woman, sitting before me. My own little puzzle to figure out for this moment. Yet you are angry with the idea that I would try to dissect your personality and your needs upon our first visit. That is my job as your boss, is it not? If I think that anything you've been through might interfere with what we do in this department, would it not behest me to remove you from the position?"
He blinked slowly. The anger was almost as delicious as the fear had been. In a different way, of course. But the heart beating. The heat of the skin. It made Hannibal wonder what it would be like with Lestat's senses.
"How can you know so much about me and still be offended at the way I operate? It's rather like asking the lion to spare the gazelle it watches. You would do no such thing, yet you tell me to become your friend and let your past linger in the air as a delicious perfume."
There was a small clicking of his tongue. A very light and almost inaudible thing. Ashamed of you it would say to the recesses of her mind. What could he do with her if she thought he was ashamed, and she needed to correct that.