They found their senses again. Eventually. Cleared their weighted, cotton-filled heads with hungry, panting breaths after collapsing together on Rowan’s mattress, tangled limbs and tired, heavy eyes. It was another million seconds before they spoke, though, Rowan preferring to listen to the steady, echoing pound of her heart in her ears as it came down from its peak.

When she finally broke the silence, with a moan in her throat that sounded more like a purr of pleasure, Lyall let his lips curl up into an exhausted, but noticeably wicked grin.

“Who exactly did you say was too hungry?” he asked, peeking at her from the corner of his eye with a pointed look, his pupils still dilated in the low light but significantly less possessed.

She gave a sheepish laugh in response, rolling over to her side to bury her flushed face into her sheets as she responded. “If that’s all you came back for, why didn’t you just say so?”

Rowan bit at her lip when he responded with a playfully dangerous noise in his throat, rolling over also to bring his nose to her hair. “That wasn’t part of the plan.” He paused for a moment, humming lips at her hairline when she shift closer, then added on a slightly more somber note, “None of this was really part of the plan. Coming back.”

The angry ache in her heart drowned out by her desire came raging back. She tried to not let it take over though, and the sound of his smooth breathing helped a little. She waited a moment before responding, “Why… why did you come back?” She would have been alright, left behind to hate him.

Now though, the thought of him leaving again pressed down on her chest, heavy and suffocating.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, Lyall stretched the silence until Rowan shifted to gaze up at him, catching a flash of shame across his face as he finally answered. “I didn’t know where else to go. I was so hungry.”

Rowan frowned hard, replying with a tone sharper than she intended. “Did you only come back for my blo—”

Immediately he protested, shaking his head and bringing hands up to circle her jaw, leading her eyes up to his. “No, that wasn’t it.” Still, the answer seemed weak, like there was something more he wasn’t saying, leaving Rowan with her throat tight.

“Why didn’t you just kil—” She stopped, that word sticking in her throat and forcing her to think of one less terrible to say. “Why didn’t you just feed on someone?”

He’d sighed at her question, shifting closer so his forehead met hers, and she felt it contort in struggle, trying to find the words. Instead, he kissed her first, smooth and sultry, nearly making her forget what they were talking about all together. It was only when he offered a response to her lips that she remembered they’d been having a conversation.

“I didn’t want to. I knew I didn’t want blood.”

Rowan sighed to his lips, trying to understand, the heat he left in her skull making it more difficult. “You’re starving, Lyall. You need to eat.”

He kissed her again to silence her, before giving a firm growl against her lips, like a warning not to argue again. “I am starving. But it feels good to refuse the hunger.”

She didn’t speak again, instead shaking her head to beg for elaboration. He sighed, raising himself up to sit and run a hand through his hair. Rowan shifted to follow, leaning her shoulder to his but staying quiet as he took a moment to sort through his thoughts.

“Being locked up in that room was the first time in my life I’ve been forced to control the hunger. I thought I was choosing to kill people, because it was always so satisfying, because I always wanted to. I just, accepted that as my truth. But in that room, for once I wanted something else more than I wanted to feed the hunger. I just wanted out, and you gave me an opportunity to get out. I just had to do the one thing I’d never had to do before. Control my hunger.”

He’d gotten somber with his explanation, the air thickening between them, so Rowan tried to tease to lighten the topic. She brushed her shoulder against his, her lips to his skin in a tender gesture before joking, “It didn’t seem very difficult. You played with me the moment I walked into that room the first time. I felt like a mouse being batted around by a cat.”

Lyall laughed a little, denial on his tone even as his lips curled up. Perhaps deciding it had been too long since he’d instilled a little terror in her bones, he leaned closer to sigh to her ear, “I was still so hungry that day, I had every intention of making you my last meal if I wanted it badly enough.”

His lips stretched into a wicked grin when Rowan exhaled, fighting her hand away when she went to shove him, catching her around the nape of her neck and teasing his lips away from her ear and along her jaw until her sharpened edges softened. If she thought he was persuasive when there was glass between them, now she was like putty in his fingers.

He continued when Rowan settled again thanks to his wordless cohersion. “I refused myself the satisfaction of killing for once, though. And it made me feel… More powerful than ever. Every time you visited, I pushed myself a little further, at your expense. I didn’t lie when I said I used you, for my own personal experiment, and I’m sorry. But I also learned so much about myself. How it felt to be that hungry, to really experience it for the first time, and control it. The more I was able to control it, the less consuming the hunger felt. I mean, I had a guard right there in my hands, completely ready to give in, but I managed to stop. And it felt amazing to stop. It felt like I was completely in control finally, not the virus.

“But then after escaping today, the hunger hit me so hard. It was all I could think about. I could take anyone, anywhere, anytime, and no one could stop me, and I was starving. I didn’t want to give in again so soon, but it felt like it was taking over.”

Rowan hummed with understanding, banishing his need to continue, and offer a reluctant surrender. “You have to eat sometime, Lyall, or else it will take over eventually. I can give yo—”

“No!” This time, his tone was a little more than just teasing after his outburst, immediately cutting Rowan’s words short in her throat. His sharp eyes lowered right away though, softening in regret as he added. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t want to. Not yet. I didn’t come back for your blood, Rowan. I just knew I needed something… A distraction. It was always so easy to control the hunger around you.”

She let the silence sit for a moment to allow the tension to simmer off the air, before giving another little noise in her throat, trying to bring some playfulness back into the moment.

“I distract you?” she asked, while shifting a little closer so she could return his earlier teasing, bringing her lips to the tender skin under his ear, grinning when he leaned his head ever so slightly to encourage her to continue. She paused instead, to add another consideration. “I’m not entirely sure what it was about me you found so distracting.”

The pleasant noise she could sense building in his throat turned into another warning growl. “I can think of a few things,” he said, letting her taunt for a moment longer before being unable to keep himself from retaliating.

She fought, but Lyall had her pinned under him without much effort, Rowan covering her mouth to stifle a uncharacteristically feminine fit of giggles. Once on her back, he replaced her hand with his lips, tasting, tugging, teasing her laughter down, until it dissolved into begging, mercy noises against his teeth.

Finally giving her some air by roaming his torture down to her neck instead, Rowan offered some taunting of her own through her breathless lungs. “How’s the appetite now?” If it wasn’t for her pounding heart and hot, foggy head, she’d maybe be slightly more concerned about his grinning lips against her throat.

“I’m not sure,” he whispered wickedly, and when she stifled a giggle he held her down more firmly and buried his face deeper into her neck and inhaling, forcing her to bite her tongue to keep the laughter at bay. Tickling her ear with another breath, he added, “I might need a little more distracting, you smell terribly tempting right now.”

“That’s just what you say to all your snacks.” Rowan joked, squirming under his roaming hands, forcing him to pin hers down above her head to settle her wrestling. Continuing his torture, Lyall returned his lips to her skin, down from her neck to her collarbone, only making the rise and fall of her chest even more difficult to settle.

When he inhaled her scent again, it was after Rowan had been wooed away from her wild giggles and dragged down into hot desire again. He hummed with the draw of her scent, but instead of a teasing comment, he groaned against her skin this time.

“Seriously, why do you smell like that?”

The words did not completely filter through the fog in her head at first, lost in the wonderful fire of his lips on her flesh. It was his fingers tangled with hers, gripping tighter, nearing the point of uncomfortable, that finally had her giving a curious noise. “Smell like what?”

He released her hands and instead wrapped an arm around her waist firmly as she questioned him, arching her up off the bed to hold her against him, her heavy, dizzy head falling back and exposing her neck further. Rowan heard him give a pleasurable groan, like he was extremely satisfied with the sight he’d just presented himself, but the sound of it soured as a note of frustration slipped in when he inhaled again.

When he answered her, his voice dropped noticeably from tauntingly husky to breathy and strained. “Like… Like you’d taste as good as the sex felt.”

Something about his tone and his hand gripping the fabric of her shirt at her spine sobered Rowan up a little, and she tried to work through her lingering afterglow to figure out what would be driving him so crazy. A plausible answer hit her immediately, as she reminded herself of all the other things he could smell on her, like the adrenaline during the escape, the antiviral when it dirtied her veins, pinpointing her blood type itself by the particular fragrance. It remained very possible that if he could smell all those things, he could probably also smell hormones, like the ones produced during certain pleasurable activities.

“It’s... It’s the endorphins. Lyall.”

Rowan twisted in his grasp, putting her hands on his shoulders, up into his hair to try and drag his eyes up to hers. The concern that started seeping into her hit hard as she saw his eyes, wide and dark again as they had been when he arrived. There was no mistaking that this time the look was blood-lust.

Rowan swallowed, careful to try and keep the panic from consuming her. “Lyall, you have to let go of me, okay?” She moved her hands to push firmly on his chest, encouraging him away, but knowing her resistance would do nothing if he didn’t cooperate.

He did as he was told, removing his arm from around her and pulling away a fraction, letting his eyes shut tightly, trying to shake off the hunger threatening him like he’d done several times before. Rowan thought to slip away from under him, but she also worried that moving would distract him, make it difficult to focus on pulling the hunger back, so she held as still as she could, willing her heart to rest for just a moment so he could get through his second of weakness. He’d get it under control again. He always did.

He exhaled when he opened his eyes again, like a sigh of relief, and Rowan allowed herself to breathe again too, only to have the air stolen from her lungs when his dark gaze locked on her, Lyall completely gone from his eyes and replaced with something ravenous.

Rowan’s instincts reacted immediately, rushing to get herself away, but he was so much faster, pinning her down with little effort. She didn’t want to scream, but the fear boiled up inside and came out in a panicked yell, which was silenced with a firm hand over her mouth before it even broke the air. Lyall put a finger to his lips to shush her, the wicked blood-lust reading clearly in his wide, glossy stare. Even though she knew no one would hear, she screamed against his hand, tears filling her eyes.

She twisted her body and threw out her arms, doing whatever she could to keep that dark gaze from locking onto her exposed neck. She knew that, much like the predator he often resembled, the moment he found a target it would be his.

He snarled at her struggle, causing her to sob soundlessly, but she continued to shove and hit him until he grabbed one of her wrists with his free hand to cease her fight. Unfortunately, in her panic to save her throat, Rowan forgot that it wasn’t the only part of her body currently exposed and filled with acceptable veins. Now, with a vice grip around her wrist, there was nothing she could do but surrender as he found his target: the smooth, white plane of her forearm.