It's the memory of her heel digging into his thigh that shapes his next impulse, not that he's nearly as impervious to damage this time around. He's not worried that she'll try. They're flowing on a different current. He nips a final kiss, swift and just a little sharp before slipping from his seat on the sofa to his knees before her. It puts him below eye level.

He takes her heel in hand and lifts her foot to chest height to remove the shoe with slow deliberation and toss it aside. Both hands press up beneath her dress skirt to follow the silky path of stocking, careful not to catch on the roughness of calluses. At the top of the stocking he halts his upward progress to feel for the fastenings to let them loose.

Half closing his eyes, he concentrates. It's harder than when he was the demon. It had instincts he does not, yet with the aid of the vials and remembered experience, he shares the strong thud of his heart with her, how it feels against the cage of his sternum, how it feels to be hard, potent, and encased in too tight trousers, to have breath catching in anticipation.

With the release of the stocking comes a slide of fingers back down again and a slow unfurling of the thin fabric. Her skirt stays down, forcing him to go by feeling alone and only imagine how her leg looks in the incremental exposure. He's all but trembling with urgency, and yet. And yet...

Just as that night, he wishes for nothing to be too easy. Waiting sharpens the blade.