So it is more the stories than the emotion itself, perhaps? Or maybe they are both necessary components. It seems a damnably inconvenient hunger to have, to Jean-Claude, though if he is accustomed to better control over it and a job that lets him see it fed, perhaps it is not so bad.

He laces his fingers together placidly over his stomach, at ease. "Perhaps both. I have spent hundreds of years with the Council, mon ami, the oldest, most vicious and most powerful vampires there are. You will not have heard these stories before - there are no humans that survive them to speak, and I am the first of my kind to welcome public attention.

"If you want stories of fear and pain, that you have not heard before - " Jean-Claude chuckles, a vibrant sound with a resonance behind it. "Those sworn to me here have even more, that they would not say without my approval. I would not be surprised if you could sense it. Like a rare vintage."

It's a comfortable, familiar position for him, to more or less bargain with the currency they have. Jean-Claude isn't cavalier about offering anything, and indeed he hasn't made any offers beyond his own so far, but one does open a negotiation by persuading the other you have something they want. And it seems Jonathan is like any other vampire, in that what he most craves might be novelty.