She screamed, but Lyall silenced her with a firm hand around her mouth before even the faintest sound could actually escape her. She grabbed for the curtains but he dragged her away, holding her tight around the stomach as she wrestled and kicked.

Rowan continued to yell against his palm, and he chuckled, the sound somewhere close to her ear. “With how loud you’re being, it’s almost like you want to get me caught.” He twisted around and pushed her against the wall next to her window, one hand pinning her arm down, the other held tight over her lips. “If you can promise me you’ll stop yelling, I’ll let you go.”

She managed to take a breath through her nose to calm herself, her eyes tightly shut. It took her a moment to will her heart down from palpitations, but when she settled her breathing a little, he kept to his word and removed himself, taking a step back to give her space.

Released, Rowan finally opened her eyes, and her shoulder blade hit the wall as she retreated. She hadn’t been willing to believe he was there when she heard his voice; it was foolish, but a part of her would have preferred it being just the phantom of his memory haunting her. She couldn’t pretend otherwise now though, as he stood there, the burning ice of his eyes staring her down through the low light of her bedroom.

“I’m sorry if I scared you.” The apology seemed genuine, gentle, but the animal was in his gaze. She’d noticed immediately, even through the shadows. His pupils dilated wide and black, possessed. It had been a long time since he looked at her quite like that.

“What are you doing here?”

She voiced her first thought, then as the shock dissipated her mind ran wild with the possible answers. What was the only reason he would still be around? What would matter to him enough to risk coming back? And then she remembered, his threat to the others before leaving. The bitterness that never failed to leave him, even when he was starving and broken and had given up. He had unfinished business with those doctors. With her.

“Are you here to kill me?”

Lyall raised an eyebrow, legitimately surprised by her first reaction. Then, his expression slid into something playful, even though it looked more sinister than anything with his eyes so black.

“Give me some credit, Rowan. I don’t play with my food.”

He stepped forward, and in reaction, she flinched, pressing herself into the wall further. He stop sharply, like her fear wounded him, and leaned away again, onto his heels. With the silence stretching between him, his eyes dragged down to her collarbone. “Your heart is racing.”

It was. It pounded so hard Rowan felt like she was having a heart attack, the silence only amplified the beats, deafening in her ears. She knew she had to settle it, that it was dangerous to keep letting it pulse violently out of control in her chest, but she couldn’t focus on slow breathing or calming mantras anymore. All there was were questions.

“How did you even find me?”

“It wasn’t hard when I was still covered in your blood,” he explained, forcing his eyes to the ground to avoid staring at her, maybe to keep her from being even more frightened. Despite his wild, black eyes, he seemed calm, tamed, and under control. But Rowan couldn’t be sure. His shoulders were tense, like he was holding something back. “I saw the men outside, so I went to your neighbor’s first. I thought it would be smart to clean myself up, get some fresh clothes, be a little less conspicuous.”

Her mouth dropped open as she thought about the family next door, the mother and father, and their teenage son who was taller than Lyall, fresh faced and friendly. She looked over him for the first time since he arrived, seeing the jeans and black long sleeve shirt he now wore instead of scrubs. The oversized waistband hung too low on his hips, and the wide shoulders of the shirt didn’t quite fit right on his thin frame; minor details that others might overlook, but Rowan recognized immediately as signs the clothes didn’t belong to him. Where did he take them from though? The boy’s closet, or off his body?

“Did you—”

“No one was home.” At first, he sounded like he was almost offended she would even think he’d do something so horrible, but then pulled the defensiveness back as he realized his previous behavior didn’t suggest any other outcome. “I cleaned myself up, took what I needed, and left.”

“How did you get in my house?”

Lyall chuckled. “You really shouldn’t leave your back door unlocked, you have no idea what kind of psychos could just waltz right in.” He carded his hands through his damp hair awkwardly as he glanced up with his joke, smiling a little at first then letting it fall when he saw it had done nothing to her horrified expression. “Bad joke. Sorry.”

Rowan stared for a while longer, her back forced against the wall as far from him as possible. In normal clothes, with clean hair, and no blood on his face or under his nails, he seemed almost normal. His smile was less wicked when his skin was not stained in red, but no amount of normalness could distract her from the predatory look that possessed his vision. She didn’t want to know the answer to the next question, but she had to, because the possible answers were what immobilized her.

“Why are you here?”

He closed his eyes, and Rowan watched as he clenched his fingers into a fist by his side. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

Her exhale was unsteady, her heart in her throat, choking her as she forced out her trembling reply to his silence. “If you’re going to kill me, I wish you would just do it.”

“I’m not here to kill you.”

His voice was strained as he ran a hand through his hair again, his body language too stiff, too controlled. He seemed genuine though, despite the hunger possessing his eyes. Actually, the way he responded, sounded almost like her suspicion was wounding.

“Then why are you here? Why would you leave me like you did just to come back? I don’t understand. Is this another one of your games? Are you just torturing me?” Her confusion and anger came out in her tone, shaking and rising in volume with each word.

“Please… Lower your voice.” Lyall warned, his eyes darting around as he listened to the men outside, and Cameron downstairs, to make sure they hadn’t heard.

Rowan took in a deep breath to level her shaking words. She spoke again, volume lowered but still pained. “I sacrificed everything to help you. And you just left, like it was nothing.”

“I thought it would be easier if I gave you a reason to hate me,” he countered in a quiet voice, his being far less confronting. It was almost timid, as if he was nervous that speaking would make her blow up.

It did.

“So why are you back? You got what you wanted from me. You’re free. Why couldn’t you stay gone with your stupid virus and let me hate you?”

She stepped away from the wall, towards him, forgetting all together why she was even scared of him in the first place. She didn’t see the hunger in his eyes, didn’t remember him tearing open William and drinking down his blood like water. All she knew was she’d let him hurt her, and now she wanted him to hurt also.

She advanced on him, a terrifying one hundred and ten pounds of feeble human being, but there was a ferocity behind her that made her feel powerful despite her disadvantage. The angry tears in her eyes blurred her vision just enough to make him look like the monster she needed him to be, a demon that used her up and left her alone, left her behind. She hit him as hard as she could, on his chest, and then his stomach and collar, knowing it was doing nothing but needing desperately to feel something after going so numb.

When Rowan finally did feel something, it was all at once. Her explosive anger dissolved into stifled sobs as her chest swelled in pain, tears escaping from her angry eyes and running down her face, muttering incoherently about how much she hated him. Hated him for all the times he scared her breathless, messed with her head, fed her lies. Hated him for making her care.

She hit him until her punches became weak shoves, sending her wobbling on her feet rather than moving him. She hit him until she couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes anymore, and she swung at the air as much as she was at him. She hit him until he stopped her, grabbing her thin wrist and fending off her struggling until she couldn’t fight anymore, collapsing into his hold on her, her fisted fingers now curled around his shirt instead.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to think anymore. I don’t know what was real. You weren’t supposed to come back. Coming back means… It means…”

It was the feeling of his heart that made Rowan realize how close they were. They’d never been so close for her to have noticed. Not like this at least. Without anyone spying from behind a glass wall. Just the two of them, in the dark, her own heart pounding wildly in her chest, mimicking the rhythm of his as it raced in his ribcage, under her palm. It was his fingers, electric digits loosening from her wrist and trailing slow up the skin of her arm, that made her realize they’d never touched like this. Not without it being part of a show. A mask.

Except for once, his hand tangled with hers on the floor, making her realize for the first time how tangible he was. How real he was. How real this was. The touch that made her think maybe he was more than just the hunger in his eyes.

His touch, trailing static up her neck, thumbs swiping at the tears on her face, pulling her head back from his chest. Rowan let out the breath she had been holding, her shoulders sinking in relieved tension, not realizing how badly she’d been aching for this. Letting her eyes open again to finally look up at him, she admitted defeat to the words she tried so hard to keep out of her head all night.

If he came back, maybe it meant he came back for her.

Through the gleam of her wet lashes, she met his possessed, black-hole pupils, sucking her exhale from her lungs, instant panic washing over her like ice cold water. She was wrong. He hadn’t come back for her. He’d come back for a last meal. The look in his eyes said so.

She stiffened, and so did he, pushing closer so she found the wall again, the fingers cradled around her jaw reaching up into her hair and pulling her head back further, stretching her neck long. Rowan gasped, finding strength again to grip at his wrists, her voice shaking as she managed out a whispered beg.

“Lyall, pleas—”

But he interrupted with his lips, taking hers with hungry intention, and the grip in her hair that Rowan had been resisting ending up being the only thing keeping her on her feet.

Catching herself on his shirt after her knees buckled, Rowan attempted a noise of protest, but it dissolved in her throat and came out as something much closer to pleasure, sagging her eyes shut in surrender.

Rowan wasn’t sure when things begun building to this moment. When her fear turned into desire. When the uncomfortable crawl under her skin had shifted to a burn. How long had she ached with this need? Was it when he first whispered in her ear and brought a chill instead of a tremor of fear? Was it in the dark, a glass wall between them, when all she wanted to do was reach out and for once touch his warm flesh and not the cold barrier between them?

Whenever it started, Rowan didn’t have the sense to stop it now. Lyall pushed to part her lips, a desperate exhale to her mouth that breathed life back into her shocked body, intoxicating her with the taste of his tongue; metallic and pain and a certain indescribable wildness, leaving her hungry for more. So she reached, leaned closer, begged for some grounding for her suddenly spinning head, and instead of steadying her, he took her legs away completely, leading them up around his hips to pin her between himself and the wall, deepening his kiss when she gasped at the new closeness of their bodies.

This was foolish. Dangerous. Selfish. She knew it, and was only reminded when he parted from her lips to catch a breath, and it was clear in his roving eyes, still wide and black with the same starvation he arrived with as they jumped over the details of her face. Her instinct told her to push him away, but her fingers gripped at the fabric of the sweater that wasn’t his.

“You’re too hungry...” she said, unable to manage more than a weak, whispered protest.

He gave a breathy laugh, countering her words by pushing closer, punishing her for letting some sense filter through her foggy brain. “I’m hungry, but not for your blood.” She felt the words against her lips before he took them again.

She didn’t question it anymore. Because his fingers — the ones he strangled her with, painted blood across her face, tangled in hers — they traced fire along her bare skin now. At her thighs, along her hips, up under her shirt. His lips — stained red more often than not — whispered along the length of her throat, teasing the tender flesh with the same teeth she’d watched tear open a man, causing a hot assault of goosebumps down her arms. Those wide, black pupils, that had only ever looked at her like something he would eventually devour, begged her permission to do just that.

Is this what the virus was like? Ravenous, insatiable, primal. Rowan imagined in that moment she had an idea of what it was like to be him. To be starved of something she hadn’t realized she needed. To lose herself to the dangerous and demanding thing twisting hot and hungry inside of her. To give in.

Rowan’s fingers fumbled with the fever in her belly, with the need to be closer, pushing those too-loose jeans from his hips as he dared to unwrap her too. He shoved her freshly stripped spine flush to the frigid wall in another kiss, steady hands snaking across newly exposed skin, stealing her breath, setting a fire in her as he pressed their bodies tight together, closer, closer, until he smothered her cry with searing lips.