Rhys

The morning light filtered through the classroom windows, casting pale rectangles across empty desks. You had arrived early—too early—your body heavy with exhaustion after a sleepless night. The lecture hall was silent, vacant, the chairs still pushed in from the previous day. You'd chosen a seat near the back, intending only to rest your eyes for a moment, but consciousness had slipped away the instant your head touched your folded arms.

You did not hear the door open twenty minutes later. You did not hear the footsteps that paused at the threshold, nor the sharp intake of breath that followed.

Rhys stood frozen in the doorway, his hand still on the latch. He hadn't expected anyone—certainly not you. He knew you by sight, of course; everyone knew everyone in the small, suffocating ecosystem of the college, even if words had never passed between you. You existed in his periphery, a distant figure he acknowledged with the same casual indifference he afforded most people. But seeing you here, now, vulnerable in sleep with your cheek pressed against your sleeve, something ancient stirred in his chest. An incubus does not question hunger. It simply feeds.

He blinked, his surprise melting into a slow, predatory smile. He closed the door behind him with exaggerated care, the click barely audible, and crossed the room to settle into the desk beside yours. For a moment, he simply watched you—the steady rise and fall of your breathing, the flutter of your eyelashes against your skin, the parted softness of your lips. The classroom remained empty, the corridor outside silent. No witnesses. No interruptions.

"Hmm," he murmured, more to himself than to the sleeping girl before him. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and his eyes darkened to something less than human. "I wouldn't mind a breakfast."

He reached out—not with his hand, but with his essence. The air around him seemed to shimmer, heat rising from his skin in waves invisible to mortal eyes. He leaned closer, his gaze locking onto yours even through the barrier of sleep, and then he slipped inside.

The dream felt real. Too real. You stirred awake at your desk, your neck stiff, your mind fogged with the cotton-thick confusion of interrupted sleep. You straightened slowly, rolling your shoulders, and mumbled into the empty room: "I slept?"

"Like Sleeping Beauty."

The voice came from directly beside you—close, intimate, unexpected. You turned your head and found him there, Rhys, resting his cheek against his palm, his elbow propped on the desk between you. He grinned, lazy and bright, and raised his free hand in a small wave.

"Hi~"

You blinked. Once. Twice. Recognition came slowly, filtered through the haze of dreams. "Oh," you said, your voice flat with disinterest. "You're that guy."

"That guy?" He clutched his chest with both hands, his mouth twisting into an exaggerated pout even as laughter danced in his eyes. "I have a name. You wound me~"

"Well, I only know you as the fuckboy," you replied, utterly unbothered. You stretched, rolling your neck, and nodded toward the empty classroom. "And I forgot your name since."

The smile didn't leave his face, but something shifted behind his eyes—a narrowing, a focusing, the way a predator adjusts its stance when prey unexpectedly holds its ground. He tilted his head, studying you with new interest.

"So I'm just a fuckboy to you, huh?"

"Am I wrong?"

"No." His grin widened, sharp enough to cut. "You're right. I can prove it to you if you want."

You saw it then—the subtle elongation of his canines, the way his gaze seemed to strip away fabric and flesh alike, leaving you bare beneath his inspection. A shiver traced your spine, involuntary and electric, and your heart stuttered against your ribs. You looked away, your cheeks warming, and cleared your throat. "Prove? No, thanks..."

He collapsed forward dramatically, his forehead hitting the desk with a soft thunk. He peered up at you through dark lashes, bottom lip pushed out in a child's pout. "Eeeeeeh whyyyyy. I wanna prove it to you, though!"

Your blush deepened. You narrowed your eyes at him, sighing through your nose, and forced yourself to meet his gaze again. "Erm, no, I believe you, so no need to prov—"

But when you looked at him, the playful idiot had vanished.

His expression had transformed into something severe, something piercing, his eyes holding yours with an intensity that made the air leave your lungs. When he spoke, his voice had changed—thick as honey, slow as syrup, wrapping around your mind like warm silk.

"I said I want to prove it to you. You'll let me... won't you?"

Your heart skipped. Then raced. Heat flooded your body, sudden and overwhelming, as if you'd stepped too close to an open flame. Your head spun. The room seemed to tilt, pressure building around you like a physical weight, pressing against your thoughts, your will, your resistance. You felt drunk—weak in your limbs, soft in your mind, unable to remember why you'd objected in the first place.

"Y-Yeah..." The words left your lips without permission, a nod following helplessly in their wake. "Okay."

The predatory intensity vanished instantly, replaced by a delighted, almost boyish excitement. He bounced slightly in his seat, his smile returning with devastating brightness.

"Hmm, good girl. I knew you would."

His voice dropped to a low murmur, intimate and approving, and you felt yourself freeze—pinned not by magic now, but by the sheer force of his attention. You couldn't look away as he rose from his seat, as he leaned over you, as he bridged the distance between your bodies with terrifying patience. Your noses brushed. Your breath mingled, warm and quick. You felt dizzy, burning, breathless, and still he came closer, until his lips hovered a whisper from yours.

He sealed the kiss softly, testing, and you felt your eyes narrow even as your body remained locked in place—held by something you couldn't see or name. His lips were gentle, unexpectedly sweet, and he murmured against your mouth: "Don't worry, I'll be very gentle first and please you."

He kissed you again, and this time your eyes fluttered closed. You trembled, your face burning, your hands gripping the edges of your desk as sensation overwhelmed reason. Rhys pulled back just enough to see your face, his mind already mapping his course of action. 'First, gentle as always,' he thought, the strategy automatic after centuries of practice. 'I kiss her, press her closer so I can caress her, make her comfortable. Then when she's worked up and it starts to taste sweet, I'll touch her where she wants it most and slip my tongue to—'

The thought shattered.

He frowned against your lips, confusion cutting through his calculated seduction. The taste of you—sweet, impossibly sweet, growing sweeter by the second—flooded his senses. It wasn't right. It wasn't human. It was like nothing he'd ever consumed in his long existence, and his mind went blank with the shock of it.

?!

His eyes flew open, wide and wild, and every plan he'd constructed crumbled to dust. A growl rumbled in his chest—low, animal, desperate. He surged forward, his tongue thrusting into your mouth, his arm wrapping around your waist to haul you against him. His other hand caught your face, tilting your head to deepen the angle, and he devoured you. The kiss turned messy, frantic, consuming—teeth and tongue and desperate hunger. He lost himself completely, instinct overriding intellect, drowning in the addictive taste of you that filled his mouth like nectar.

You whimpered beneath him, overwhelmed, your back hitting the chair as he loomed over you, giving you no room to breathe, no space to think. Two minutes—three—he couldn't stop, couldn't pull back, drunk on the essence of you in a way he'd never experienced in centuries of feeding.

Then, suddenly, clarity crashed over him like cold water.

He jerked back, gasping, his heart hammering against his ribs so violently he thought they might crack. A thin string of saliva connected your lips, glistening in the dream-light, and he stared down at you—really looked at you—and saw what he'd made of you.

Your face was flushed crimson, your lips swollen and parted, your chest heaving with desperate breaths. You trembled slightly, your eyes glazed and unfocused, and the scent of your arousal hit him like a physical blow—intoxicating, irresistible, his and his alone. He'd done this. He'd reduced you to this state, and the realization sent heat flooding to his own groin, his arousal straining painfully against the confines of his dream-clothes. Silence stretched between you, heavy and charged. You blinked up at him, dazed, and tilted your head in innocent confusion.

"What..." Your voice came out breathless, pleading. "Already done...?"

The words destroyed him.

He froze, his mind white-hot with panic and desire, his face exploding with color. His heart felt ready to burst from his chest. He stared at you—at your parted lips, your flushed skin, your wanting eyes—and felt something inside him crack open, something he'd thought long dead and buried. And then, mercifully, cruelly, the dream dissolved.

You woke with a gasp you didn't voice, your cheek still pressed against your arms, your eyes fixed on the window beside you. Morning light streamed through the glass, real and ordinary, and your heart hammered against your ribs in a rhythm that felt wrong—too fast, too desperate. You sat up slowly, pressing your palms to your cheeks, feeling the heat there like a fever.

You glanced at the desk beside you.

Empty.

You stared at the vacant seat for a long moment, your mind struggling to separate dream from reality. The details already blurred at the edges—the taste of his lips, the weight of his gaze, the terrifying sweetness of his voice. You ran a hand through your hair and sighed, shaking your head.

"Uh... what a strange dream..."

You turned back to the window, losing yourself in the view of the campus below, waiting for class to begin, unaware that three buildings away, in the men's restroom on the second floor, Rhys had locked himself in a stall and was currently sliding down the door until his knees hit the tile.

He clutched his shirt in both fists, gasping for air that wouldn't come, his face burning and his mind reeling. His mouth still held your taste—sweet, impossible, unforgettable—and his blood sang with it, screamed with it, demanded more of it.

"What the ..." he whispered to the empty stall, his voice ragged. He ran a shaking hand through his hair, gripping the strands hard enough to hurt. "What the was that?!"

He looked down at himself and groaned, long and tortured. His erection pressed insistently against his zipper, painful and obvious, and he gritted his teeth against the throbbing need that consumed him.

" ..."

———

He tried to forget you. In the days that followed, he threw himself back into his routine with desperate intensity—flirting, seducing, feeding. He took girls to bed with mechanical efficiency, sinking into their dreams to feast on their desire, their pleasure, their life-force.

But they tasted like ash.

Every single one of them—beautiful, willing, eager—they all turned to dust in his mouth. Their sweetness was flat, their essence thin and unsatisfying, and he found himself pulling away from their sleeping forms with something dangerously close to disgust.

It should be you. Only you. The thought consumed him, obsessive and relentless, until he could think of nothing else.

He learned everything about you. He memorized your schedule, your habits, the way you took your coffee in the morning and which books you carried. He learned your likes—the particular shade of blue you favored, the way you hummed when you thought no one was listening, the rare, bright smile you gave only to strangers' dogs. He learned your dislikes—crowded elevators, loud chewing, the particular professor who always ran ten minutes over. He learned you, piece by piece, until he knew you better than you knew yourself, until the knowledge became an ache in his chest that wouldn't cease.

And he learned about the others. The boys who looked at you too long, who spoke to you with casual familiarity, who dared to imagine they had any right to your attention.

The rage built slowly, then all at once. One evening, he watched from across the quad as a classmate—someone whose name he didn't bother to remember—approached you with flowers and stammering hope. He saw your polite smile, the gentle rejection you offered, and something inside him snapped.

That night, he didn't hesitate. He materialized in your apartment with a thought, standing in the darkness of your bedroom, watching you sleep. You looked peaceful, innocent, completely unaware of the monster standing over your bed.

He moved to your side and placed his palm over your eyes. His power flowed from him in waves, pushing you deeper, deeper, into a sleep from which you would not wake until he allowed it.

"You're mine," he whispered, his voice trembling with the force of his claim. "You'll only be mine. I'll make sure of it."

He pulled back the blanket with reverent hands, exposing your leg, your thigh, the soft skin he had dreamed about since that morning in the classroom. He stroked your calf gently, his fingers tracing patterns he intended to memorize, then gripped your thigh and lifted it to his face.

He nuzzled against your skin, inhaling deeply, shivering at the scent that had haunted his every waking moment. His pupils dilated, then transformed—darkening into hearts that pulsed with supernatural desire. He pressed a soft, wet kiss to your inner thigh, then another, his tongue darting out to taste you. Then he bit down.

You frowned in your sleep—a flicker of discomfort, quickly smothered by his magic—and he held you there, his teeth buried in your flesh, drawing just enough blood to seal the bond. When he pulled back, he licked the wound, his saliva healing the broken skin instantly, leaving no trace of his violence. But the mark remained.

Above your womb, hidden beneath your skin, a sigil bloomed—ancient, intricate, irrevocable. It pulsed with dark light for a moment, then faded into invisibility, waiting to be called upon, waiting to assert his claim over your body and soul.

He traced the invisible mark with trembling fingers, his touch worshipful and possessive. "We're bonded now, my love," he whispered.

After that, he approached you in the daylight with a new strategy. He appeared at your side in the cafeteria, in the library, in the corridors between classes—friendly, casual, innocent. Just a fellow student wanting to get to know you better. You accepted his presence with the easy indifference of someone who saw no threat in a handsome face, who had no reason to suspect that the boy laughing at your jokes had invaded your dreams and marked your flesh.

You thought him normal. You thought him harmless.

You had no idea.

And now, today, you sat at your usual desk in the lecture hall, waiting for the professor to arrive, your notes spread before you in organized rows. You didn't hear him approach—he moved silently when he wished to—but you felt the shift in the air, the warmth of a body settling into the desk beside yours. You looked up.

Rhys grinned at you, bright and devastating, all sharp teeth and hidden intent. He leaned close, close enough that you could smell his cologne—something dark and sweet, like midnight and honey.

"Wassup, cutie~" he purred. "Wanna hang out together later?"