Entoma's eyes could not widen, and her entire body froze at the sudden, bold gesture. But before she could say anything, Inta did.

"If you tell me to let go… I'll let go. If you tell me to leave, I'll leave." He said breathlessly, "I don't know what lies ahead… not for me, not for you… but I… I wasn't happy when you were gone. I wasn't happy when you weren't happy. I missed you…" Inta admitted, looking down at the young demon maid, he gave her a fragile, shaky smile of his own.

"Being around you makes me happy… and I-I hope, being around me makes you happy too, isn't that the point of… whatever we were doing?" He asked, flailing for words the eloquent professor could not find.

"Idiot." Entoma finally said, "I'm a heteromorphic being, you're a vampire, what can there possibly be out of that?"

"Happiness?" He replied to her question with a question of his own. "Company, companionship, and… who can say? The University works with the race changing projects headed by Lord Demiurge and Lady Vanysa. Anything might come of that, if that is what you're wondering about."

Entoma had been glad she could not blush before, but never more than in that instant. Both his answers set her heart ablaze.

"Still, you're an idiot… I wanted to say…" She grabbed his body and yanked him into an embrace. "My kind does not 'kiss' as others do, but every part of me tells me that there is nothing better than the tightest embrace."

Inta wondered very briefly if she would be tightening her embrace enough to snap his bones, but the pressure felt, even if a bit painful, good. Like a slow building pressure or the most comforting and relaxing of rough massages over his flesh.

"Why didn't you wait for me to speak?" She looked up at him and asked with a sudden curiosity. "How could you know I wouldn't tear your face off for that kiss?"

"Because, if you wanted me gone, you only had to say nothing, and there was only one reason you would ask me to stay…" Inta said with a boyish smile, trapped in the limbs that would not let him go and held him quite forcibly grinding him against her, arms and legs dug against his body in various places, and she cocked her head, bemused or so it seemed, by his answer.

"Bold, very bold, Professor Inta. But are you prepared to take responsibility for your boldness?" Entoma asked.

Unlike Entoma, Inta could blush, and he did turn slightly red in the face at the way she said it.

"So then, I was right?" He asked, again answering her question with one of his own.

"Yes and no?" She answered. "I was second guessing myself because I didn't think I was ready. Now I know, there is no ready. I either try or get nowhere. Doing this today," she removed one limb from him to gesture to the empty room at his back, "confirmed that at last. If I wait, I'll never get there… and I-I- you do make me happy. Seeing you unhappy, seeing you hurt, I couldn't be happy then."

She stopped talking when, secure or not, he placed his lips to the outer shell again.

"That is very- very distracting." Entoma said, her crimson eyes held fast to his own.

"Good." He replied, "There is a time and a place for everything in life, and this kind of talk is best preserved for later."

"And what kind of… talk, is best for now?" Entoma presented the question to him, and the vampire blood caster, infuriatingly, did it again.

He answered her question with a question, "What is my body telling you… what is yours telling you… there's only one answer…" He whispered and gasped, "And it has only one other question with it."

Entoma felt his breath, hot and hungry caressing her face.

But his last words left her more than a little confused.

"I… what question is that?" She asked of him, letting his hands go free and allowing them to wander over her.

"Do we go to your place, or mine?" He asked with a teasing little grin that didn't fade even a little, though he grunted a bit as she tightened her legs around him and pressed him harder against himself.

"I have no experience with this… though I do have… my body was designed to, except for some things, perfectly mimic that of a human girl, I don't know what to do." Entoma's own sense of nervousness roared back as yet another new thing presented itself in a way she had not expected it to.

"Nobody has any experience until they do things they don't have experience with." Inta reassured her gently, putting one sharp finger tip on the little bump of a nose she had on her face.

"I'm hardly the most experienced… but working out how it's going to work, or if, or what we do… that's part of the journey, isn't it? And I want to make that journey with you, or at least… I'd like to try." Inta said it passionately and slowly her hold over him began to relax.

Entoma's blazing heart heated up her entire body beyond all reason, 'Is this what it is, this isn't like with Bertra, or with Harold… is this what I've been… after?' She asked herself the question and held out her hand to him.

He took it, and out loud she said, "We'll go to my home, don't worry, my web won't bind you, I'll make sure of it."

"Maybe I wouldn't mind if it did?" Inta tossed the teasing question at her, and then headed toward the door.

"Pervert." She said and reached for her mask, he stopped when she did.

Her hand didn't move, it hovered over the mimic mask that let her present the face of a young girl and not the face of a monster.

"With it, or without it," he said, "You're you, and that's all I want."

Entoma let go of him for a moment, picked up the mask, and went to her desk, she yanked open the tan wooden drawer, placed it delicately within, and with equal delicateness closed the drawer again.

She returned to Inta and took his hand, "Are we going?" She asked when he didn't take another step.

"Are you comfortable?" He asked her and sidled up so that he was directly at her side.

She looked up to him and said immediately…

"Yes. I don't need it."

And they walked out of the empty room without another moment's pause.