When he pulls back, she is bereft, shivering anew for an entirely different reason this time; a wounded chick she is, she feels it in the gut and she yearns toward him, a flower toward the sun, but something in her demeanor shifts, and she begins closing herself off. Where once she subconsciously stretched her lean body for him to admire, it withdraws back into a posture that is vaguely defensive. So her admission had stricken him with a sort of disgust-- she senses it, either otherworldly or in his chilliness. It stings; she had opened to him under the sway of his power, his dominance, his animal magnetism, but as weaknesses are wont to do it made her complacent. He charmed the recklessness in her, aided by this awful disease that made him glow like a fallen angel. She bites down hard on the inside of her cheek; the tangy, coppery taste of blood fills her mouth, but miraculously the only change in her expression is the slight narrowing of her eyes, two half-moon of imperial purple slits lost in the veil of darkness.

Despite the room to strike, she does not. There is no aggression in her bearing, only the wariness she first greeted him with, minus the cheekiness.  She was by no means a pacifist, but her inclination was not toward that of a violent nature, even if it thrilled her to see in others. Gifted, but burdened with empathy; her eyes soften as they regard him calmly, listening to his answer. His words made her ache all over again; they didn't sound like something so trifling as a fickle want, but an oath, his vision of the destiny laid before him--only to him it wouldn't be destiny, would it? He would carve his own path, she was sure, with nothing so intangible as the concept of divine foretell to his credit. "I cannot argue there," she begins, after she is positive he is done, "What about both?"

It's a question unlikely to be answered, for he, with agonizing slowness, slips back around behind her and pushes his hard ridged chest against her rump. She jolts in place from the sensation and excitement, the heat pooling inside of her belly, telling her to push back the curve of her ear to fit so perfectly against him in a nameless language spoken by all the living, breathing, shitting, breeding, dying creatures of this world. Did she want him? Yes! A thousand times yes. It made her weak. Whatever he wanted, it didn't matter--she would let him have it. No, he'd take it, regardless. But if she just gave in, she knew in that time however long it may be she could numb to her mind. From the sickness, the fear, the hatred, the open memory. He would take her old familiar pain, her only constant, and replace it something new, brighter, hotter, hot enough to melt away her flesh and all its burden. Strip her to the most primal, the most basic, her only need, her only want, to consume and be consumed by him.

A heavy pang of doubt sinks down into her, cooling the flame of her desire. She'd been hurt before, most by the loss of someone she could not have been closer to. If she ripped open her heart any more it would be easy pickings for a vulture like him--what if she fell further into his molten, commanding gaze? What if she drowned? He would hurt her one way or another, but that isn't what scared her the most; what if she'd come crawling back for more? He would break her to dust if she let him. Sudden rage fueled by her illness ignites her paranoia and its a hot iron lance splitting apart her dreamy seduction. She sees it for what it is; with a sudden tensing of her well-exercised muscles she lashes out at him, trying to land a crushing back-kick into his knee. Whether or not she succeeds, she quickly distances herself from him. "I need to go," she growls and breaks off, running into the night like a wraith with a speed that would give the devil pause.

Even if she did not like to fight, there was nothing in heaven or earth that was not a tool for her to use.

"Talk."