He braced himself to move, to vanish before she would even have the ability to say another word, but her story did keep him still for a moment, and he turned to face her as she told him about the vampire that she had once known. He felt compassion for her, because he too knew what it was like to be hurt by vampires, to want to hunt them down. But Desmond had experienced the satisfaction of destroying the one that had inspired his wrath, and he knew that little would come of it. Revenge was a hollow empty thing, the only comfort in it was knowing that those who hurt you could never do such things again. And that, Desmond believed, was what Balthazar had believed to be at the heart of being a Hunter. To kill only to stop something from ever happening again, not to give someone a lust for revenge or sate their desire to move on.
Desmond's eyes floated to the scar that she slowly showed him, and he frowned a little. He held no such external scars for the ordeal that he had been through. There were times that he wished that he did. For a visible scar let the world know that a person had been hurt, they had overcome something great, they had a reason to be standoffish, or to keep people at a distance. But being unscarred made him approachable, he seemed like something unflawed, which was a terrible misperception about him. "I am sorry for what happened to you. In another life I used to hunt vampires that would hurt people." Desmond said softly. He did not say what he did to the vampires, it didn't really seem like it needed to be voiced.
"I do not want to hurt you, Raina. But the love you are looking for is not here." he said softly, knowing those words would indeed cut to the bone. They were not meant to, but honesty was a terrible double edged sword. He did not meet her gaze for a moment, then forced himself to look into her eyes, expecting to see pain there. "And in that way, my intention to do no harm fails, even if I do not leave a visible scar." Desmond said softly.
She was touching his wrist at that point, and Desmond breathed in slowly as he felt her skin against his own, looking down at her, with a soft shake of his head. "During the daytime, things are easier, when I do not have to deal with the burdens of what I am quite as intensely as I do during the night. It is a simple thing for you to tell me to stay, but you do not realize that even though I can resist my cravings for blood, you are drawn to me because of what I am like you would be to any other dhampir you got close to. And because of what I am I am drawn to... lust... for you, the way that I would another female as beautiful as you..." Desmond whispered softly, feeling guilty for the words. "The heart has very little to do with it." he said solemnly, sadly.
"I am sorry." he whispered, as he stepped back to break from her grip lightly, and then in a blur of motion his body seemed to stretch, a streak of black against the night for a moment before he was gone.