"D-do you not like being touched?" Tara whispered, unsure when she was staring down a rock–a graceful rock, with beautiful flowing jet hair, gentle eyes, and a face that looked nice even with no emotion, but a boulder nonetheless.

"With my... situation, I am not often touched nor was I much before, but..." A menacing curl of his lips showed his fangs clearly and they were definitely twice as long. "Your touch is pleasant."

Pleasant rolling so smoothly off his lips sounded more like orgasmic in her ears, and she was trying really hard to act like a normal person half naked in front of the hottest man alive. Jesse's eyes flicked to her chest for just the barest of seconds, but before she could even put words to the heat in her face, his gaze fell.

"Here," he said, and Tara wasn't sure what he meant until his fingers flipped open the first button on his ivory dress shirt.

Tara's eyes stretched out of their sockets as Jesse removed his shirt, undoing buttons down to his groan in an arduously slow trail before he pealed the rich white fabric off his muscled arms. She clenched her lips so she didn't whistle from the smooth curve of his tanned muscles as he handed his shirt over. Tara accepted it mechanically, so entranced by the exposed man meat ahead of her that meaning in the action had yet to process.

"You want me to wear this?" Tara croaked after her brain restarted, having to control herself when she almost licked her lips again. There was just too much dark skin in front of her, all beautifully unmarred and rippling with muscle.

"I would enjoy dressing you, if you are too nervous to do so yourself." The curve of Jesse's lips made her feel like he was teasing her more than offering, but the heat in his eyes said otherwise.

"I bet you would," Tara rasped, yanking the shirt closer to her chest. "You've done enough. I can do this."

Tara said it, but her hands trembled as Jesse watched her slip her arms into the sleeves. His stupid smirk as she fumbled with all of the buttons was not helping at all, and she had to use all of them just to get the shirt to stay on her. There was no way her slender body compared to the breadth of his shoulders, and she had to roll up the sleeves and tuck the shirt in around the waist of her pants just to make it look viable.

By the time she finished, her brain was back in lala land as she tried to figure out why he was panting in front of her. That, he hadn't done since she'd fantasized about him on top of her, and while she was flustered and attracted to him, she wouldn't call her thoughts inappropriate yet. It was getting there as he stood in front of her with a hand in his waistband, pulling it down so low she could see the dip between his leg and groin.

"I like you wrapped in my clothes and scent," Jesse said huskily as he continued to inhale her like cheap crack that needed to be done in excess to get the right high.

"You want to wear my blouse too?" she teased, but her smile fell away as he looked over to it on the sink in assessment.

"It won't fit, but if it smells like you, I'd love to rub it on my skin." The words were so suggestive when they only referred to her shirt, and Tara couldn't help the thought of him rubbing her all over him. A low growl slipped from his lips that had her clenching her thighs together, and she had to hop off the sink before he spread her legs and took her right there.

After telling Matt that she had self-control, this was not the time to be banging the man who took all of it away in the bathroom. Whether or not she felt anything for Jesse was none of Matt's business, but she at least needed to have the prudence to keep it out of the office. Thinking of Matt killed her arousal, and she fell hard. It silenced Jesse to a statue, and she turned to make sure he was still alive.

"Did I bother you?" Jesse asked quietly, worriedly, as if it were possible for him to turn her off.

"No. Just Matt's stupid words getting to me," Tara said with a long sigh, leaning back against the sink.

If Jesse was bothered by her rollercoaster attraction to him, he didn't show it, though he backed into the wall opposite the sink to lean. One couldn't call it so much leaning when he looked like a posed Calvin Klein model as he crossed his arms and lifted his chin to look down at her. With his lips closed, her brain was wracking again on his fangs.

"Um..." Tara swallowed a few times to find words, and he patiently remained silently focused on her. "Are you... hungry?"

Jesse's eyes flared near cerulean as they darkened in hue and glowed. Cool. Vampires had flashlight eyes.

"I am not," Jesse said, his normally sweet and smooth voice tighter and clearly strained over something. "Why do you ask?" Genuine confusion laced his voice, and Tara rubbed her hands as she resisted the urge to fidget.

"Your...uh...fangs...they..." Tara's sank her head into her neck as if she could hide it, unable to finish speaking as Jesse's focus on her changed. The man said he wasn't hungry, but she felt more like food than she ever had, like a predator had just shifted her from an object in the distance to prey. "They just got longer while we were speaking," she spit the rest out at once before lifting her hands to defensively hold them in front of her.

"Oh." A smile spread on Jesse's lips, and he chuckled.

"You did it once before in the interviews, but you didn't really explain why they did that. I just figured from movies and what not that it happened when you... fed." Tara spoke more calmly once Jesse's bare tense muscles relaxed, but she still squeaked out the last word.

"I assure you I feed sufficiently before interacting with large groups of humans. There are many willing donors in the Fleur house. Being hungry around humans who know little about us would be unprofessional and cruel, considering."

Tara narrowed her eyes when he completely avoided her question. Jesse was a hawk and noticed, uncrossing his arms and slipping them in his pockets before he moved. Vampires seemed incapable of taking slow human steps, and Tara had to breathe in through her mouth and out her nose as he leaned so close to her that his lips tickled her ear. Bent down to speak and with his hand tucked in at his side, his body curled around and held her captive with only an inch of air to rush between her warmth and his ice.

"The meaning then was the same as now," Jesse said into her ear, nudging her face to the side and throwing her hair behind her shoulder as he lowered his nose to the inward curve of her neck. "Food is food, but the fruit hardest to reach is the sweetest."

Jesse's lips touched the side of her neck, and Tara slipped her hands back to grip the sink as his essence swallowed her. The feeling had been tepid since she's been around mages and Jesse, but magic lingered around them, and the closer they got, the more it buzzed. It was like the zap she got when an undead touched her, except it was warm and heavy with Jesse, like a weighted blanket.

It molded her into warm putty, and she breathed him in as he lifted his face just in front of hers. The man pinned her with his eyes, direct and near demanding as he lifted her chin and hovered his lips so perilously close to hers that her heartbeat decided there was best to pulse. Tara wanted to lift her lips, to touch his and let him devour her, but god damn she was still at work.

"Well," Tara rasped, giving up and licking her lips. As before, the man watched her with parted lips and a small smile that had the room spinning. "I can't go back to work if you maul me like a bear, but if you want to..." Tara licked her lips again like they were coated in sugar, and she was definitely breathing through her nose to keep from hyperventilating.

"Tara," Jesse said before she could finish her broken jigsaw puzzle of a thought. "I don't expect you to offer your blood, but if you do so, I won't decline." Jesse eased her fingers off the sink counter, and she relinquished her hand to his care. Lifting it to his lips, Jesse kissed the outside of her knuckles before flipping her palm up. "Just a few drops here would be bliss," Jesse purred as her kissed the tips of her fore and middle finger.

Tara's heart was pounding clear out of her chest, but with the way Jesse could smell her mood like a bloodhound on a pheasant, he knew she wasn't afraid. Most of it was anticipation, but a healthy portion was desire to have his body rubbing against hers, as he'd said. All of her wanted what he did.

"Taste me then," Tara whispered, watching Jesse's expression for every small response he'd have to her words.

Jesse's parted lips opened wider, and he turned his neck and stretched his jaw as if resisting the urge to drag her closer and sink his fangs into her neck. A low growl shook her body as he closed the last step between them, and pressed his body up against hers.

"If you give me your blood, Tara, I will never stop coming back," Jesse warned as if that were some kind of threat.

Oh no a hot man desperate for her.

"I mean it," Jesse said, concern dipping his eyebrows and closing his lips into a timorous frown. "I will want you, to see you, to touch you, to court you, to possess you. If you are even uncertain whether that would be burdensome, I would advise you to caution. Vampires are clingy, and drinking the blood of someone we want is more intimate than tossing around in the sheets for pleasure."

Tossing around in the... Tara was surprised he ears didn't steam. With those stacked arms, she was sure he could do a lot of tossing around literally and figuratively. Having a half-naked man pressed to her while she wore his shirt took a significant amount of her inhibition, and she made her choice. Using her free hand, she slid her fingers over his cool shoulder and pulled herself just that much closer to speak into his ear this time.

"I want you to want me," Tara said, her lips grazing the cool skin of his ear.

Jesse's hands threaded through her hair and pulled it back so hard that it arched her chin, exposing her neck, and Jesse planted his lips on it like a viper striking for a kill. They were warm from pressing against her skin previously, and she couldn't control her hands as they reached into his hair as well. Sleek ink slid through her fingers, and he nudged a knee between her thighs before she could clench them and keep this work formal. The pressure against her had her sight spinning, and she arched into him with a whine that neared a futile plea for this to be her bed.

"You are dangerous." Jesse lifted his face and growled into her lips.

"Oh right. Me. I'm the threat here," Tara said, laughter pouring out of her as she prayed for some sanity. No man had ever done this to her, breathed life into what was her dismal hell of crushed dreams and the reality of journalism.

"You are. Come here," Jesse slid a hand around her neck and tucked her face into his neck. "It's stranger if you watch."

Jesse pet her hair as he lifted her hand and kissed her palm. His lips trailing kisses up her hand and fingers had her blood pumping, and she pressed her own lips to the bare skin at her lips. A hiss of breath escaped Jesse as she nibbled his collarbone, but she needed the distraction as his tongue ran up her fingertip.

Jesse readied the skin as if it were dough that had to be kneaded before it could but put in the hot oven of his mouth, rolling her finger tip on his fangs and nibbling on it. It desensitized the skin for sure, but as he did so, his remaining leg joined his knee and spread her own open against the sink. The gentle but hungry movement of him grinding against her sent a sweet feeling through her entire body that nearly numbed his fang slipping into the flesh of her finger.

It was just a few drops, as he'd said, just him dipping her finger into his mouth and sucking on it before releasing it back to the open air. There, his glazed azure eyes met hers, and he licked her index finger one last time before nearly shoving it back into her chest and taking a step away.

Tara gave him his space as he covered his mouth with his hand, using the time to lean back into the sink and breathe some air. Someone might think it a tad strange that he'd pushed her away, but for Jesse it had to be like just tasting a bowl of ice cream and having to leave the rest of it untouched. Any normal person would want more.

"Are you frightened?" Jesse asked abruptly, and Tara snapped her eyes down from the ceiling lights. "You are trembling," Jesse clarified.

Tara snorted, her shaky hands near killing her as she had to pull herself back up on the sink. She was trembling because she was on the cusp on an orgasm from a rock hard erection that had rhythmically stroked her but abandoned ship too soon.

"No Jesse, I'm not afraid." Tara chuckled her sexual frustration into the air. "I want things we can't have in the women's bathroom at my job. I've been in here way too long." Tara turned around and opened the first aid cabinet to grab a tiny Band-Aid. Sticking it on her finger, she tucked her arms behind her back, and threw the most sheepish smile she'd ever shown a man.

"I've overstayed my welcome," Jesse said with a small smile of his own.

"Nothing I didn't enjoy," Tara said, fiddling with her fingers as his smile widened. "I have to get to work, but I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, and the next day, and every one after that, Tara Viewford."

A knock on the bathroom door made her jump and drewher attention for all of a second, but by the time she glanced back, Jesse wasgone. Thanks to him, she didn't look like she'd been crying, but ruffled andsexed wasn't much better. Throwing some cold water on her face, she gathered upher wet shirt and headed for the door. Maybe she could get some work done ifshe could remove the image of Jesse's perfectly sculpted muscles pressed upagainst her for long enough to breathe.

Word Count: 2602