Generally he followed a system, start small with people. When you started small with them you could hide the need and so long as people didn’t realize in the front conscious part of their brain how important blood really was things were much easier. Small allowed plausible deniability that things were just a game, the monsters are not truly real but we can pretend and enjoy. Even though he knew now he was coming to someone who knew what to expect Gabe had decided to keep to the system. As starving and uncomfortable as he was with the arrangement staying small was best.
But Ricky wasn’t in denial, no, he could feel that in her sense of power. He couldn’t bring himself to stop at the small marker in her heart beat where he would have stopped, a marker where she would have the least residual effects. He didn’t even stop at the second marker instead he pushed all the way to the third. Realistically he could have taken more, his system was overly cautious, with good reason. Panic might be triggered if you went past the third marker, even if it wasn’t people had to be cared for more since he didn’t come with a fast regeneration mechanism. He healed, and the wounds he made would heal faster than a normal wound but was far from instantaneous. Most people didn’t realize the difference.
He clamped one hand around her arm just below the elbow, cutting off blood circulation before he pulled himself out of the stream of her blood. Hopefully she wasn’t one to bruise easily, his own innate caution returned as soon as he wasn’t completely overridden by her emotions. The pressure wasn’t meant to hurt, at least not any worse than a tourniquet, and simply prevented the spread of blood until he could retrieve a compress. He retrieved a compress, opening the hygienic wrapper with a single hand and his teeth before he could press it onto the spot where a little more blood was already welling up. He wasn’t sure what the protocols were so he simply held her arm. He reduced the pressure at her elbow and focused he pressure just where he had wounded her.