He is not a man that craves fear, though it can often be side effect of his ministrations it’s not what he desires. Her fear is only a layer in her scent, a thread in the tapestry, something he expects and does nothing to discourage but he isn’t trying to frighten, he just is they way he is.
Her dark face tips up to search for him and Tunnel meets her gaze with his cool grey eyes. She doesn’t offer him much in the way of words but he is already well aware that nothing had been chasing her. But his deep rumble drops words against her necks as she looks away from him. “What do you think you saw?” He asks, and her lips smooth against her neck after all, tasting the salt of her sweat, breathing against her skin like a lover though his touch lacks any tender consideration. He raises his head again, tension twisting through his low command. “Tell me.”
She fails to run, too tired or too afraid to try and this is acceptable. He would have given chase and she wouldn’t be having this pleasant conversation with him, not now and not when she’d been caught. Maybe she will still run, or maybe some other time she will run and they can see what happens. Because there will be other times. She has asked who he is and he will not let her forget. She looks him in the face as she does so, and so he looks back, black-masked face undefined in the low light. ”Tunnel. Who are you?” He is almost polite in the asking, but there is a void in his tone where kindness would live. After speaking Tunnel turns back to his persistent invasion of her space, not yet properly inspired to make her understand just what she has run into. He likes that she is so dark. Like Shroud, like the places beneath the trees where he waits. She can be a place in which he waits, forever living in her stuttering little heart.
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves
as though we were drowning inside our hearts
@[Briseis]
