A Rhythm That Guides part 1

It was happening again.

Lately, in his afternoon lecture class, he was getting a painful empty feeling in his lower stomach. He wasn’t eating as much as he used to during his lunch break so that could have explained the empty feeling.

But the throbbing between his legs was making Sasuke consider that perhaps, something else was going on.

The lecture would barely be halfway through the hour and Sasuke was finding himself adjusting himself in his seat to discreetly hide the rising tent in his pants.

Luckily he sat in the back row, but it was getting ridiculous how often it was happening.

Nearing twenty and in the beginning stages of adulthood, Sasuke realized—a little later than he should have considering how obvious it was—what exactly was to blame for his predicament.

Or more specifically, who.

Turning in his seat, Sasuke created more space between himself and the girl sitting just a single space down the row from him.

Sasuke had been affectionately labeled a late bloomer by his mother when his father had expressed concern in his disinterest in humans of either gender.

“He’s going to have to feed eventually,” his father had grunted, not at all pleased when his mother pointed out the decrease in his consumption of human food she regularly made to feed him and herself.

“Meal times will be lonely once I’m the only one that needs to eat,” she had grumbled, taking his half eaten dishes away.

Sasuke wished he took after his human lineage instead. It would have been so much easier if he didn’t have to worry about how he was going to be getting his meals for the rest of his life on top of all of his course work.

Sighing to himself, he turned a page in his notebook and continued taking notes. He would just have to suffer through the ache.

.

.

Bending over slightly, Sasuke picked up his sports drink from the bottom of the vending machine. He could do without the sweetness of it but he desperately needed to replenish his electrolytes.

As soon as his class had ended he fled the lecture hall and put as much distance as possible between him and the source of his problems. He knew he would start to hunger for a different energy source but it made it all the worse that temptation sat with only a space between them.

When the new semester had started, Sasuke did what he always did: he found the seat farthest away from other students. It wasn’t that he disliked other people. He just didn’t want any distractions.

Sasuke had always been like that, studious to a fault. At first it was to impress his father, but he learned later on that he quite enjoyed having his name at the top of the board with all of the exam scores. He moved away from trying to make his father pay more attention to him and worked to make himself happy.

And his road to happiness required a degree in engineering.

He knew he could have picked another school, one that catered more to those of his kind, but he didn’t want to go to just any school he wanted to go to the school. Even if that meant attending a school with a high human population.

I have so many regrets now, he thought as he took a big swig of his sports drink.

Sasuke wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sighed. He was going to have to stop by a canteen for snacks if he was going to survive the rest of his day.

Eating usually sustained him for a few hours. It did nothing to fill the empty feeling in stomach but it allowed him to focus more on his lectures and labs until he could get home and try to sleep away the ache.

At least that’s what he hoped would happen. It was getting harder and harder to quell the hunger.

.

.

Sakura buried her nose into her textbook, pretending to be deep into her reading. Peering over the top she caught hold of heated dark brown eyes and quickly averted her gaze back to her textbook.

What did I do? She wailed inwardly and mentally flipped through the past few days searching for the offensive thing she may have done.

She couldn’t recall a single moment that she had even spoken to her classmate. Why was he so angry with her?

He probably figured me out…

Although she had never spoken to him, Sakura couldn’t help how smitten she had become over her classmate.

Uchiha Sasuke was a quiet boy. He didn’t seem to be a part of any of the circles and mostly kept to himself and his studies. If she didn’t see him in class, she would usually find him in the library or in the computer labs.

Sakura mostly made her own lunches and snuck them into her bag when she went to the library but when she visited the cafeteria she would find him grabbing some onigiri to go. She wondered how he kept going with their long days if he only ate rice and snacks. Humans couldn’t live off of sports drinks.

Sakura had been considering joining a study group but had been procrastinating. She had started to drift from a circle she had joined in a previous semester because of an extremely flirtatious upperclassman.

He was too touchy for her comfort but it was mostly the fact that he took any opportunity he could to complain about Uchiha Sasuke.

I guess an incubus wouldn’t like to share the attention.

Sakura shrugged off his comments and made sure there were at least two of her human upperclassmen in the same room. They were already used to the circle hopping incubi and succubi that used the campus as their hunting grounds and usually helped the underclassmen steer clear of them when they weren’t interested.

She guessed, in a way,  it made sense why the incubus upperclassman felt threatened.

Uchiha Sasuke was quiet and polite but mostly he was really attractive. And it helped that he didn’t flirt with anything that moved.

An herbivore maybe? Sakura had joked to herself once.

Well now her quiet classmate was glaring daggers at her and she had no idea why.

And yet he is still beautiful while angry. The gods are so unfair.

Sakura kept her head down and she waited for the professor to arrive. She hoped he got there soon.

.

.

It was irritating how dangerous a blush could be.

Haruno Sakura was fair in coloring with pale skin that colored easily.

Sasuke had wondered if she was a regional dryad when he first saw her hair and eye color. Humans had a tendency to dye their hair but her eyebrows and pale, untouched lashes proved her to be a natural rose gold haired person. There was a chance of her being descended from a cherry blossom tree nymph.

But she was obviously human—or at least too far down the family tree from any possible nymph—without him having to ask.

“Is this computer taken?” Sakura asked, pink dusting the apples of her cheeks.

Glittering sea foam green eyes cast to the side shyly and the biting of a plump lower lip was just a reminder that Haruno Sakura was an above average beauty, even when compared to incubus standards.

It would be difficult to find a tastier looking meal.

What the fuck?

Disregarding that passing thought, Sasuke looked around the room for an available computer station. Even if there wasn’t one she could still switch computers with someone that wasn’t working yet.

“You should find a different computer,” he snapped when she reached for the chair. He gripped the top of the seat’s back and attempted to stare her down.

Pale green eyes went wide and the trembling of her lower lip made Sasuke’s stomach drop. He instantly regretted his behavior despite the fact that he needed her as far away from him as possible. Sasuke opened his mouth to ease the situation when, with more strength than he had expected, Sakura yanked the chair out from under his hand.

“Unfortunately for the both of us, this is the only available computer station,” she said hotly, face flushing red. She sat down and propped her textbook up so that she could reference it for notes.

A side effect of his awakening incubus nature was a heightened awareness of the emotions of different creatures. Sasuke could feel her irritation and her anger rolling off of her in hot waves. Her anger did nothing to quell the ache in his lower abdomen. Instead, heat pooled lower and a familiar twitching had him exhaling deeply through his nose.

“Shisui likes to get Izumi angry on purpose,” Itachi━who had lucked out and had taken after their human mother━━had explained once when he and his spouses were visiting. “Something about more flavoring.  He never gets me angry like that but then again, I’m more likely to withhold if angered. It affects him more.”

It was something that he had absolutely no interest in knowing about his older brother and his in-laws but it had explained a lot about Shisui’s behavior on certain days. Shisui was like his father, faithful. It was a strange trait for an incubus but it was one that ran in the Uchiha family. They married their partner━or partners like in Shisui’s case━and fed from them exclusively. It was interesting to watch how Shisui and his spouses functioned in comparison to his more traditional father.

But at the moment he was just irritated to know he shared a similarity with Shisui of all people.

The sound of fingers pounding down on the keyboard next to him lightened to a steady stream of light tapping. Sasuke chanced a glance from his peripheral vision at his neighbor.

Something glittery caught his eye when Sakura tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The shorter strand curled around her ear and revealed a trio of silver studs along her lobe. His eyes trailed from her ears to her cheeks, the color had faded out as her temper cooled.

Her eyes squinted, a crease forming between pale brows as she contemplated her next keyboard strokes. Eyes drifting from the wrinkle between her eyebrows, Sasuke eyed the way she bit her lower lip at the right corner.

As she worked the scent of desire had diminished from her direction. Her anger hadn’t quelled it but her focus on her assignment had overcome the secondary feeling. It drifted to a quiet buzz, the way a few humans got when they were near someone they were innocently attracted to.

Sakura continued to work, not bothering to try and chat with him, like she always did in their shared lectures. That was the part Sasuke never understood. She never bothered him outside of handing him the exit slip for their lectures or to get around his seat.

And yet her existence was hard to ignore.

She wasn’t the only human at their university that was attracted to him. He wasn’t oblivious to the stares and to what people assumed was subtle brushing against his body.

So why exactly was she such a problem?

Sakura sighed and pushed her keyboard away from her. The action caused her propped textbook to slide upwards  against the monitor and system unit and fold in on itself.

“Oh, shoot!” Sakura hissed under her breath as the book began to fall. She fumbled with it as it slipped off of the desk.

He hadn’t intended to reach for the textbook. It was mostly reflex that had him making a grab for it. It hadn’t even occurred to him until after it was safely in his hands that catching the book would give away the fact that he had been paying far more attention than he should have been. He shouldn’t have been paying any attention at all.

“Thank you,” Sakura murmured as he handed back the book. Her face did the thing again where it colored easily, pink spreading across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

Great.

Sasuke sucked in some air to try and distract himself from the heat pooling in his groin. It wouldn’t do for his hunger to manifest itself as a lump in his jeans.

Quickly logging out, Sasuke grabbed his belongings and made a swift exit.

He needed to get as far away from her and her dangerous blushes as possible.

.

.

It was odd. He could still taste the slices of tomatoes his mother had chopped up. They slid across his tongue, still tangy and cool from having just been taken out from the refrigerator, every bit as tasty as it always was but it didn’t hit his stomach the same way.

“Is everything alright?” Mikoto stopped in her stirring as she eyed the way Sasuke’s mouth twisted and he pushed away the plate of his favorite fruit.

“I ate like three tomatoes worth of slices and I’m still hungry.”

“Oh.” Mikoto looked down at the pot on the stove and frowned. “Should I make more or…?”

“I don’t think it would matter if I ate more or not at this point.”

Sasuke’s jaw clenched as the ache in his stomach stung sharply. He was running out of time.

He had hoped he would never have to deal with this problem. His older brother Itachi never did—he turned out to be human, no matter the fact that he was almost perfect in everything he did, he was human through and through.

Sasuke had figured if his brother ended up being human then he would get passed over as well. Unfortunately, genetics weren’t on his side on this one.

Clearing his bowl and wiping down his spot at the kitchen table Sasuke bid his mother goodnight, calling it in for the night.

Without bothering to turn on the lights for his bedroom he peeled off his shirt and kicked off his house slippers before collapsing onto his bed. He yanked his duvet out from under him and pulled it over his head.

“I don’t even want to touch anyone like that,” he sighed.

As soon as he had the thought, his mind flashed him an image of pink hair and red blushes clashing with jade colored eyes.

I’m not entertaining that.

Sasuke curled into a ball and clutched a pillow to his chest. Maybe tomorrow he would be less hungry.

.

.

It was like he hadn’t eaten in days.

There was nothing that could have distracted him from the pain in his lower stomach. It was pride that had him struggling to get to class. That and an exam later on in the day that he couldn’t afford to miss.

Traveling by train was a hassle due to the amount of attention he was attracting.

“Never let yourself starve,” Shisui had warned him weeks ago when the signs of transition were revealing themselves. “Your body will go into starvation mode and release pheromones that attract nearby humans that you can feed on. That may sound helpful, but it gets chaotic in public spaces.”

Sasuke was forced to exit the train five stations away from the university station and call a taxi company that specialized in otherworldly patrons. A pair of high school girls were inching closer and one middle aged man had already brushed his back against Sasuke’s chest much too often to be blamed on the rocking of the train car.

He wouldn’t survive the rush of travelers that would hop on the train at the central station.

“You don’t look good, kid.” A single horned demon cab driver turned in his seat to look back at him. “I could drop you off somewhere you can get easy prey.”

What, did he have a sign on his forehead that read “Starving Incubus?”

“Take me to K Uni,” Sasuke growled out more forcefully.

Incubus physiological issues weren’t going to get in his way of passing the semester with top marks.

The demon gave him a disapproving look before pulling away from the curb. He muttered something derogatory that Sasuke chose to ignore.

Sasuke was dropped off as close as possible to the building he needed to get to but it still wasn’t enough. He weaved through campus, taking the least crowded hallways to get to his destination.

“Fuck.”

Sasuke ducked under a stairwell and slid down against the wall to the floor. The hunger pains were getting worse.

Exhaling deeply through his nose, Sasuke resigned himself to missing his two lectures for the day and then braving his way to his exam. He would just have to hide out. Luckily he was in a part of the building no one used, choosing instead to use the staircase and elevators on the opposite side of the building than the ones that faced the cafeteria.

Unzipping his jeans to make more room for himself without actually whipping his penis out Sasuke sighed out, grateful for the few centimeters of relief.

Sasuke rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm. Unlike erections from his youth, he was having difficulty willing his current predicament away with meditation. It wasn’t arousal, it was hunger. And it wasn’t going to be going away just because he wanted it to.

Closing his eyes, Sasuke leaned his head back and tried to focus on the cool cement wall behind him.

“Uchiha-kun?”

Oh, no. No. No. No!

“Uchiha-kun are you, okay?”

Of course Haruno Sakura would be the one person that chose to walk in a secluded part of the building. Of course it would be the last person he wanted to see him in such a state.

“Do you…need assistance?”

Or maybe…she was the perfect person to find him?

“Uchiha-kun, do you need me to get someone? Or something?”

Her voice was warm and full of concern and just so inviting. The tone promised she would do anything to help him. Anything.

Opening his eyes, Sasuke let out a groan. This just wasn’t his day.

Sakura squatted so that she was eye level with him and tossed her bag on the ground. The hem of her blue button down shirt dress rode up her thigh, revealing more of her legs than he had seen before.

“You look a bit feverish…” she mumbled, placing a cool hand against his forehead before sliding the back of it against his cheek. “You’re really—“

Her sentence was caught off when she gasped. Her skin was so cool and he was so hot that he had leaned into her touch and pressed a kiss to her wrist.

“Um, Uchiha-kun?” Sakura squeaked and Sasuke took advantage of her shock to take hold of her hand and press an open mouthed kiss to the inside of her wrist and dragged his lips up her palm.

He wasn’t sure of what he was doing, but something inside him was telling him to take her slim fingers into his mouth and nibble at the tips.

“Uchiha-kun…?”

Already in his presence for too long, Sakura’s green eyes glazed over and she was beginning to pant. Sliding his left hand up her thigh over her dress, Sasuke gripped her hip gently and tugged her so that she would fall on to his lap.

Sakura’s breath hitched when Sasuke pressed his forehead to hers. His glasses slid down the bridge of his nose and lightly tapped against her face. Nudging her nose with his, Sasuke pressed his lips against hers, guiding her into opening up for him with hesitant movements. Sakura returned his kiss, running her tongue along the seam of his mouth.

Every sigh and moan lightened the ache in his stomach. Sasuke rolled his tongue against Sakura’s and brushed the underside of her right breast, gently strumming his fingers against her ribs.

“Mmh!” Sakura made a sound of surprise as he gave a small breast an experimental squeeze.

Sasuke groped around with his thumb, circling a hardened peak through the cloth of her dress. Sakura grunted in frustration as he avoided the places she longed for him to touch.

Irritation rolled off of her in waves as she bit down on Sasuke’s lip, tugging it as she pulled away from him. Sasuke couldn’t help the upturn of his lips as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and puffed out an exhale to blow hair out of her face.

The more frustrated she got the more her arousal spiked. Her body was demanding release and as much as Sasuke’s hunger clouded mind wanted to give it to her, there was another part that wanted to prolong the moment.

Since the start of the semester, Haruno Sakura had been a nuisance. Every shared lecture she would distract him with her not so subtle glances and the smell of fresh linens and apples whenever she passed him to get to her seat.

So he wasn’t in any particular mood to just get it over with.

Slowly, as not to frighten her off, he slid his hand up her thigh under her dress. He pulled her in closer by cupping the back of her neck and thumbed smoothing circles along her jaw.

Sasuke was sure lack of experience would cause him to stumble, but apparently being an incubus did have its perks. His heightened senses guided him and he was sure he was moving exactly the way Sakura wanted him to. Not a single intake of air or moan was hidden from him.

“Oh!” Sakura buried her face in the crook of his neck as his fingers slipped into the front of her cotton boyshorts.

With two fingers he lightly traced the velvet soft nether lips and hummed in delight at the way Sakura trembled at the slight touch. He wondered how much of it was the exposure to his incubus pheromones and how much of it was her own sensitivity.

Stroking inward, Sasuke groaned at the moisture pooling between her legs. His stomach clenched, cramping with a sudden pang of pain. He slipped his middle finger inside and curled it, feeling her walls and stretching her a bit. He pumped slowly, keeping alert for any signs of distress, and then with his thumb circled around a curious, knobby bit of flesh right above her entrance.

It was almost instant the reaction he got out of Sakura. She gasped and curled inward on herself, clutching his shoulders.

“Please…” she begged, swiveling her hips hesitantly. “Please, oh, please!”

Sasuke gave in and pressed his thumb directly on her clit, massaging it and rubbing circles, adding pressure to it and listening to the change in pitches of Sakura’s moans. Slipping in his ring finger as well had Sakura letting out a strangled cry. Sasuke paused, worried that he had hurt her when she whimpered.

But then Sakura grinded her hips against his hand and he resumed pumping his fingers and twirling his thumb in the way she seemed to enjoy.

“Hm!”

Sakura caught him off guard by taking his face in her hands and lifting his face up to hers. Their teeth clanged together from her eagerness, but Sasuke allowed her to relax and settle into a languid meshing of lips all on her own.

A moan rolled into his mouth and it caused a delightful shiver to run down his spine. Sasuke increased the pace of his pumping fingers and the rubbing of his thumb, coaxing more of Sakura’s little moans. He shuddered when one particular moan of hers hit at the same time the walls of her core fluttered and clenched around his fingers.

That was good…

Sasuke pulled his fingers out, smirking at the dejected whimper that fell from Sakura’s lips. He slipped the fingers that had just been inside of her gathering her fluids and sucked on them. His stomach growled, needing more.

Sasuke laid Sakura down on the linoleum floor and tugged on her panties, dragging them down from her legs. He kept an eye on her face for any signs of protest but instead what he got was Sakura shimmying her hips to assist in helping him peel away her undergarments.

“Huh?” Sakura blinked her unfocused eyes as Sasuke adjusted their positions so that her upper body was lying on the ground and her legs were lifted onto his shoulders. “What are you━?”

She cried out in shock as he cupped the pert rounds of her backside and pulled her up to his mouth. Sasuke let out a breathy chuckle before flattening his tongue against her core and giving it one long lick upwards, flicking her clit at the end of the stroke.

Sasuke groaned, pressing open mouthed kisses to her core as Sakura covered her mouth with her hands to reign in her moans.

No matter how hard she tried to keep quiet and hide her reactions, Sasuke felt them all as they warmed his lower stomach, easing the ache he had been suffering through for weeks.

I wouldn’t have been avoiding this if I knew how good it felt to feed.

Sasuke wrapped his lips around the bundle of nerves that caused the most delight and sucked on it. He adjusted his hold on her to slide his right hand around so he could slip his fingers back inside and thrust them in and out in tandem with the oral attention he was giving her clit.

It didn’t take long for Sakura to tense up, thighs squeezing together around Sasuke’s head as she held on tight to her orgasm. Sasuke licked languidly at her core, letting her ride it out as long as possible.

The better she felt the less empty his stomach felt. The only problem was the throbbing between his legs.

Sasuke laid Sakura back down on the floor. Her dress bunched up around her hips, showing off her bare pale legs and the tuft of glistening pink curls at the peak of her thighs.

She was so pink everywhere. Her hair, her flushed face, even down below she was just so pink.

Sakura peered up at him from beneath wet, pale lashes. Her chest rose with each harsh pant as she tried to settle down her breathing. Sasuke was just about to call it off—perhaps he had reached the limit as to how much Sakura could take at once—when she lifted the hem of her dress further up, dragging it to bunch up at the cinched section below her breasts.

Swallowing hard, Sasuke sat up on his knees and tugged his jeans lower on his hips.

“Holy…” Sakura shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s not going to fit.”

It was a part of the incubus anatomy that Sasuke hadn’t considered causing him any issues before. Sakura was petite, much smaller than he was. The size difference would be a challenge.

Especially considering incubi had much, much larger members than humans.

“It’s going to be fine,” he assured her, kneeling in front of her.

He spread her legs wider and pulled her up so that she was propped on his lap. It was a move that had his cock brushing the entrance of her core and he groaned at the heat radiating from her.

Sasuke pressed the head of his cock and watched Sakura’s eyes as they widened when he inched further in.

Sakura whimpered as he stretched her further. Even with all of the foreplay earlier, Sasuke was still much too big for comfort. Sasuke soothed her by stroking her thigh. Sakura reached up and took his hand in hers and intertwined their fingers.

“Keep,” She panted, “going.”

Gripping her hip with his other hand, Sasuke steadied her as he pulled out and thrust back in. He kept his thrusts shallow, hoping to get her accustomed to having him inside of her.

“Oh!” Sakura tightened her hold on his hand when he sank further in, finally able to slip past the tight passage of her core.

It’s still not much inside though…

Sakura arched her back, clearly ecstatic at the new sensation as Sasuke picked up the pace. Her face was no longer pinched in discomfort, much to Sasuke’s relief.

But maybe it would be better if I…

Sasuke slipped out and Sakura sobbed at the loss of his girth inside of her. He knew that his pheromones and body fluids acted as an aphrodisiac but he didn’t realize that humans could become so desperate once they came in contact.

Sasuke turned Sakura over so that she was lying down on her stomach. Realizing what he was up to, Sakura braced herself on her forearms and arched her back so that her ass was in the air.

Sitting up on his knees, Sasuke took his cock in his hand and guided himself back into Sakura’s wet heat.

He groaned aloud at the feeling as he sank even deeper than he was able to before. He waited for a moment as Sakura got used to the new position. A high pitched cry had gotten caught in her throat as he had stretched her out once more but it had turned into a moan as he slipped further inside.

Using a two handed grip on her hips to anchor himself, Sasuke pulled out and drove back in. His pace was slow but the thrusts were harsh and deep as he soaked in the blissful energy radiating from Sakura.

Sasuke began to increase his pace when a door opened up from a floor above them. A loud set of girls had flung the door open and were giggling to each other as they made their way down the stairs.

He instantly halted his movements and strained to listen to where the people were heading. He was reluctant to pull out; partially because he was almost well fed, partially because Sakura had turned her head to look back at him, face scrunched up in a pout, silently pleading for another release.

He was pleased to hear their voices carrying upwards, going in the opposite direction of where he and Sakura were hiding on the first level.

A sigh of relief caught in his throat and choked him as Sakura began to push back against him, grinding her hips.

“Oi,” Sasuke chastised, tightening his hold on her hips to still her grinding. They still weren’t in the clear until he heard them exit the stairwell through one of the doors.

Sakura whined low in her throat but settled when he leaned over her and pressed a kiss to her nape. She sighed dreamily as he continued to lavish her with sweet attention. He trailed more down her spine until he heard the clanging of a door shutting.

As soon as they were alone again, he pulled out and rammed back in. He couldn’t drag it out any longer or he would risk them almost getting caught again.

Snaking a hand around Sakura’s hip and down between her thighs, he reached for her clit and pinched it. Sakura squealed and the walls of her core clamped down on his cock. He rubbed it in a pace to match his thrusting.

Sakura mewled in delight as he swiveled his hips, grinding deeply. One good thrust and she came undone once again. Reluctantly, Sasuke pulled out at the last possible moment, ejaculating on the back of her thighs.

He could only compare the decision to pull out to the feeling of someone swiping away the last bite of one’s favorite dish before they could get to it but it would have been unwise to come inside of her without knowing if she were on any birth control.

He moaned softly as the last drops of cum oozed from the slit of his cock’s head. The act was so messy despite how pleasurable it was. It wasn’t going to be fun trying to clean up.

“Haruno,” Sasuke tried to get Sakura’s attention. She was face down on the linoleum, arms having finally given out from under her. “Haruno?”

Sasuke shook her shoulder and when he got no reaction he flipped her over onto her back. Her eyes were shut and her chest rose slowly with each breath she took.

Haruno Sakura had passed out right after her climax. Considering his starved state, he had drained her of more life force than was necessary.

Sighing to himself, Sasuke took out his handkerchief and got to work on wiping his ejaculant from where it was dripping on her legs.

So fucking messy.

.

.

Blinking her eyes open, Sakura yawned before turning her face into the comforting warmth she was leaning against.

A small cough drew her attention up to the face of her classmate Uchiha Sasuke.

“You missed two lecture blocks.”

Sakura narrowed her eyes at him. He had just fucked her until she was unconscious and that was what he wanted to inform her of?

“You’re an incubus.”

If the abnormally large size of his penis wasn’t a dead giveaway, his eyes had shifted colors and glowed red when he had sucked his fingers clean of her fluids. When had they shifted back to dark brown? She had no clue. She had been knocked out by the sudden draining of energy he had consumed.

Sasuke glared at her before averting his gaze. He stared at the wall and muttered, “Unfortunately.”

Sakura took note of how he cradled her in his lap, his cardigan sweater covering her. She watched as he avoided looking at her even as his ears burned hot pink.

He was still Uchiha Sasuke despite everything.

“This might be a weird time to mention it, but I like you. A lot.” The pink on his ears spread down his neck. “And I usually have more stamina than that. I’m not kidding, Uchiha-kun. I was in my high school’s track club.”

Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled deeply.

“How about you start with calling me by my first name and we’ll work from there?”

“I can do that.” Sakura squirmed in his lap, making herself comfortable. She was still exhausted from earlier despite taking almost a three hour nap.

Ah, shit.

“I had an exam during one of those blocks.”

“Shit. I have one in half an hour.”

Sakura burst out laughing as the color drained from his face. He really was still the same Uchiha Sasuke she had been sitting next to all semester.

“At least you won’t be hungry, huh?”

“Real funny…”