[i]“The food can wait.”[/i]

Four words, so simple. Four words and everything changed. Or so it seemed to Siya as she was flooded, simply flooded with sensation. She’d been leading Atticus to the food table, waning him to eat, worried she’d taken too much from him because of his stumble. Then he stopped her with those four words. She paused mid-step and looked up at him inquiringly, her eyes widening as she saw what it was he had done. The pupils in her blue eyes grew, the black swallowing all color as she watched, her breath coming in a hitch as he turned towards her. Time slowed. 

His large hands cupped her porcelain cheeks with the perfect amount of force, the nerves in her skin flaring into life where he touched and still the black in her eyes progressed until there was nothing left but blackness and need as she stared up into his glowing red eyes. She might have made a sound, a soft needful whimper, she wasn’t aware if she did, the only thing she heard was the roaring of need in her ears and the hypnotic thud of his heartbeat. Then his mouth, his crimson mouth, wet with his blood pressed against hers and she was lost. Drowning.

The taste of him was like nothing she had ever had alive or undead. Blood alone was so much more than mere sustenance to her that none of the words she would have used to describe food as a mortal worked. Blood was life, blood was all. On top of that conundrum, his blood surpassed everything. If darkness had a taste, if lust and life and need had a taste it would be that of his blood. The second it touched her tongue nothing else mattered but that she have more of it. All her shyness about feeding in public fell away. All her shame at how feeding stirred her, bringing up appetites that had nothing to do with sustenance vanished in a sudden, overwhelming need. 

Her hands slid up his sides, up over the dizzyingly broad swell of his shoulders to circle his neck. She could feel the ink demons on his skin moving and writhing under her touch. She could feel their need just as she could feel his and it made her swoon. Her knees gave out and only the strong grip of tiny hands on his neck plus his own touch kept her upright. But that didn’t matter, what need had she of feet? Without thought she lifted her feet, her strong dancer’s legs bracing themselves on his hips as she to him like a burr, like a tick as she fed at his mouth. Forgetting everything, even the coworkers all around her as she fell into a need that was something more than a need for mere sustenance.