In Good Company 2

 He heard the water running for a long time. When Genevieve emerged, she had clearly scrubbed herself of all blood and sweat in the sink and slicked her ginger hair back from her face. She looked disarmingly younger that way, and her eyes seemed large and apprehensive. Smoke-blue, they were, the whites like a robin's egg. Her color was high from washing herself up. 

"You don't have to worry, you know About her biting you."

"I wouldn't anyway. But I think I understand how it works."

"You. Do?"

"From what you've told me, it's because she's born were--possessing certain heritable traits. And then was exposed to an additional trigger--an infection? I don't know what your community knows about it, but my guess would be a retrovirus that works sort of ...symbiotically? Which wouldn't affect me so long as I'm not...susceptible."

"And you're sure you're not?' He bit his lips together watching her. 

"I heal from near-death wounds, I don't get sick, I can't get pregnant, and mosquitos don't mess with me. Bees or hornets either. Gnats disperse. I don't know what that's about." 

She was just uncanny, was what it was. 

"You've nothing to worry about."

"Rent. Paying off loans. Worries, I've got. From you though?" She took a deep dodgy breath. "I am not scared. What happened, happened. And you're were, and....."

"The last time I spoke to a scientist about it, he treated it like a curse."

"Well, maybe we've come a long way since then." She seemed to think about that. "Whenever that was." 

That might have been before her parents were born, if she looked her age. He didn't know why he leaned in and showed her the other side of him. The full effect, the one that broke stupid men just following orders and clever men full of ideology. The full gaping maw, red glowing eyes, pulse-accelerating pheromonal thing. The thing he hadn't shown in a long time. 

"What do you think?"

And--he couldn't even hear her heart. She looked at him, clinically. Looking at how his eyes moved, and up into his mouth, absurdly fascinated. At how. He was. Genuinely not bothered. Shocked by himself, he quipped, "If that is so interesting--imagine seeing me naked."

She placed her hands on his shoulders and in the most patient, level tone replied, "Actually, I thought I would like to. But not for science." 

Everything became so quiet he could hear the penny drop. Was he that out of practice?  He mentally reviewed their interactions and even the knowledge that she'd been asking around after him in a new light. She hadn't been investigating him: the awkward girl was, under the worst of circumstances, trying to chat him up!

And it was surprising, and seemed also not surprising, and she wasn't afraid of him at all, but herself for being so direct, and her hands slipped from his shoulders, and she was backtracking, "I'm sorry, I was..."

He responded, taking her face in his hands. "The misunderstanding was mine. And I want to correct it." And he closed his mouth on hers because she did not need to keep talking.