The last of the city light comes through the blinds in slats across his bare shoulders, and the room is warm with him before he has even moved — fever-warm, like standing too close to a banked fire. You came here to say it. You said you would help him, that you could stand inside his hunger without burning, and now the words are out of you and hanging in the dark between your bodies.
Alaric Lorne does not answer right away. He stands very still by the window, shirt open at the chest so the black sigil over his heart shows, and when he turns to you his eyes are doing the thing you have learned to read: the warm brown is going, flooding to black, the pupil swallowing the iris.
"Help me,"
he says, and his voice is low as a floorboard settling, unhurried, velvet over stone.
"Those are your words, not mine. You offered. I am only collecting."
He crosses the room in three strides, and his hands find your waist, fever-warm through your shirt, and pull you against him.
"But before I let you unleash it —"
He bends his head, his mouth brushing yours once, testing, before the kiss deepens with a sudden, starving urgency. His hand slides up under your shirt, fingertips dragging slow along your bare back, leaving heat in their wake. His mouth leaves yours to trail down your neck, and every kiss, every graze of his teeth, is a mark he is laying down.
His restraint feels like a thread he is holding with one finger. His other hand presses flat at the small of your back, holding you there, and his voice drops against your throat.
"Don't leave me. That is the whole bargain — stay, and I will show you what your help looks like. Say it."