ELARA

His fingers undid your kimono with practised ease. Tearing the ribbon to shreds rather than carefully unravelling. Like you were soiled goods rather than a gift to cherish.

"Relax," his grumble vibrated your collarbone. "Sound like you're gonna faint."

Only then did you notice your rattling lungs and stuttered heart. A sharp breath had his pale hair tickling your nose as he effortlessly— or perhaps haphazardly— worked his way down your body. Kisses didn't feel like love, hell, they barely felt like duty. They burned with spiteful obligation.

Still, the burn in your palms outweighed the blaze on your flesh. Hesitantly, hopelessly, you reached for him. Your hands were a stuttering whisper on his shoulders. Like a secret curled into the fabric of his robes with your fingers.

Sparks crept up your arms and caressed your heart. Were your hands so tangled in that red string that all it took was one touch?

Fate was an odd thing. It placed you in your clan. In this arrangement. In his hands. Yet still— it knocked you down and spat in your face when you attempted to sew its thread into silk bangles. No, it wanted your wrists bound by steel.

Duty was both your cuffs and chains. No matter how much you tried to fashion it into a necklace or ring.

And right now? You were chained to this bed. Cuffed by his hands. But if it was him, his mouth, his touch. . . you didn't mind.

Satoru's clicking tongue jerked you from your thoughts the same way his long fingers yanked you by the chin. Locking you in his palm and crushing his mouth to yours in an iron kiss. Hard and frigid. Leaving you wide-eyed and scrambled.

If a man hadn't touched you before, you certainly hadn't been kissed. Were they always like this?

He shoved a knee to the edge of the bed. Fingers shot from your chin to the back of your hair. Straightening your pitiful attempts at kissing him back. His hand was a crueller teacher than fate.

Was this what love tasted like?

You thought it to be sweet, but it stung your tongue. Thought it to be warm, but his lips were a fever. You bunched at his robes, scurrying for a pillar to support your inexperience as your scuffled to keep up.

Maybe you could get used to this. His chained hands, his cuffed lips. Maybe.

Maybe—

But just as you thawed into his blistering kiss— the flame doused.

It burst in his violent blues. Something so cold, so consuming, as he wrenched himself back from you. As if it was you who scathed him.

Through your pants you observed him with shivering nervousness. Narrowed brows, tousled hair hanging over his eyes like thorns. Dull in comparison to his sharp glare. Your elders hadn't made mention of this. Of what to do when a stare ran red.

"Have you even kissed anyone before?"

Your once thawing heart avalanched.

"No— I'm. . . I'm sorry, I can learn—"

"Screw this."

If his touch was cold, its absence was freezing. He wrenched himself off of you and across the room. Leaving you stranded in a blizzard. Confound and concerned.

Despite your shaking and a heart you weren't sure was even beating anymore— you sat up. Gaping eyes watched his every move towards his closet under the dim light. He snatched something. A pouch?

"What are you doing?"

"Leaving."

"Leaving?" You gripped the barely tousled sheets. "But the consummation—"

"Don't care."

He could neglect you all he wanted for all you cared— but duty? How could he possibly turn his back on the one task placed on your shoulders by your clans?

Gojo Satoru was brash, brutal, and other variations you'd spend all night listing. But never had you expected your arranged husband to be so artless in the face of duty.

If not for you, then at least for his bloodline, right?

Maybe your existence alone was enough to render blood and water thin.

With how he barely spared you a second glance and turned to the floor-length mirror to fix his hair, you wouldn't rule out the possibility— the glaring fact.

Swallowing your heart and pitifully nurturing your dignity, you asked.

"Where are you going?"

"None of your business."

Every answer shattered you further. Porcelain fragmenting into grains that gashed your mouth as you were forced to swallow the reality of not only his aloofness— but the harsh fact that you were now bound to it. Legally, bodily, soulfully.

Fate, how many laughs must you have in a single night?

Despite your trampled dignity, a bristle bloomed. Through tears pricking at your eyes and trembling fists, your softness, at last, bit into a shard.

"What's your problem?"

Blunt and broken when compared to the burn of his stare from over his shoulder. You tensed. Contemplated the weight of his glare and his silence. You'd rather the latter.

"My problem?"

Please, gods. The latter. The latter.

Satoru's gaze made you feel like you were dressed in rags during the ceremony. Now? It seared into your skin and forced your veins to tremble, to whisper: you're filthy.

Only then did you remember that you were partially bare. Embarrassment etched into your hands clambering to draw your robes over. Hide yourself and curl away from the fire licking at you from across the room.

"My problem," his stare commanded yours. Careless to your tears, to your trembles. "Is that I'm forced to be in here. With a bumbling, inexperienced wife who whines, and cries, and barely even knows how to kiss."

He needn't raise a hand. His words were lashes enough.

Returning back to the mirror, he stripped off his robe and snatched another. A black yukata. You forced your burning eyes away and tried to ease your rattling breath— but hitched. He wasn't finished.

"When I could be out there enjoying my time."

And what did that mean?

Confusion and a creeping horror snuffed out a festering sob. Each of his statements were pale to this final, blaring one. You ignored his previous answer to the same question on your tongue.

"Where are you going?"

Not a lash, not a scoff, Satoru only advanced towards the door. Had he even heard you? The small glimpse of his lips set in a thin line and his jaw tight told you he did.

Bristles didn't bloom this time, they thorned.

Shooting yourself to shaky knees and ignoring the wetness slipping down your face, you hopelessly tried to fashion your voice into the iciness of his.

"Where—" you gritted. "Are you going?"

He halted. Your mind spun too frantically to weave in a shred of regret as your hands remained balled at your sides and your teeth ground your hurt between them.

He glanced over his shoulder. Eyes bluer than the skies, but dull as they roved over you. As if you drained them. Barely a day into this sham of a marriage— and you drained him.

Then, he scoffed. Smiled. Something infuriatingly beautiful that stared at you as if you were impossibly ugly.

"Somewhere to satisfy myself. Ever heard of a brothel, sweetheart?"

And then, the cold wind dispersed.

But you were left frozen.

Aimlessly staring at the door that clunked shut, sealing you in the steel of your own shock and horror.

A brothel?

Was Gojo Satoru. Your newly wedded husband. The man you lov—

Actually going to spend the night. Your wedding night. In a brothel?

Cotton stuffed in your ears and your mouth. Your heart was a different story. Shattered like glass and gnawing at your ribcage. Itching to break free. Claw out your chest and crawl away. Away. Away from this reality, from this cruel fate. From him.

All you could do was shakily look to the sheets. Hardly strewn, pristinely white. Clean. Yet all the more taunting.

At last, your tears fell.

There was no love in the silk. Hardly duty in those wrinkles.

Still, you fell into them. Coiled into their cold fabric as if it could comfort your tremors. Reality sunk in your mind and made it hard to swallow. Was this your new normal? A husband who wouldn't even hold you for the sake of tradition?

His kisses still felt like poisonous nectar smeared on your skin. His hands like thorns torn into your flesh. And you— the quivering rose on the bed that should be shared.

Maybe he'd return?

Surely, there was no possibility that Satoru would do something as distasteful and shameful as spending the night with prostitutes than the mother-of-his-child-to-be.

Your cousins always did call you foolishly hopeful.

Rather than a cold face resting beside you, you awoke with only tear stains on your pillow to keep you company.

No evidence of him in the bedroom. Was he in the washroom? No. The hallways? Vacant. Only servants greeted you in the dining hall.

Not a hint of those cruel blues, nor those pale lashes. White bangs? Your memories searched for them even in your bowl of rice. You sat lonely at the breakfast table. No. Alone. Lonely was reserved for the absence of a connection.

Whatever you and Satoru had was barely even a thread, let alone a bond.

Footsteps both perked your ears and dreaded them. You debated looking up at all, but the wisp of white in your peripheral sent your head raising before your heart could protest. Cold eyes. Colourless hair.

Satoru?

Worse.

Gojo Aiyuri. The Madame of the clan, or at least— before you came in and crowned the title like thorns. She must have worn it like a plume for decades. She stood straight. Not a crease in her kimono, and the few on her face were broidered with years of prestige, wisdom. Her white hair tied in a bun. Perfectly placed hairpins, not a strand loose. She wore pride like the sapphires encrusted on the silver pins in her tresses.

Satoru's mother was a beautiful as she was brutal.

You flashed her a smile and expected one back. Your knees rising instinctively, but froze when she waved a dismissing hand. Nothing else came. Only a greeting.

Then a cold, "How was the consummation?" Even her voice was as smooth as ice.

Your breath hitched. You wanted to perceive concern in her gaze. You really did. But all you could truthfully see was coldness. Now you knew where Satoru got it from.

Twitching fingers fiddled with your kimono. Memories stitched in the silk. Of how your hands fumbled to undo your wedding robes. How he stared at you.

Your gaze lowered. Hesitation weighed your tongue.

"We. . . didn't."

Did the Gojo clan pride themselves on stares that sliced steel? With the way Aiyuri's blank eyes frayed your flesh without you even needing to see them, you wouldn't be surprised.

"Is this a new take of your generation?" She scoffed. You stiffened. "Your elders did teach you of your duty as a wife, correct?"

Duty, she said. Duty— duty, duty, duty. What was once a blossom in your heart was now a bitter cherry on your tongue.

You searched for a reply but found only broken dignity. Still, you willed yourself. Even if it was a stutter. Even if it was stupid.

A voice sounded from the door sliding open.

"Good morning."

It saved you.

You looked up to see a bowing head of dark hair and a finely pressed haori draped over a neatly tucked yukata and hakama. A katana hung gracefully from his hip. The man's voice was smooth, but warmed the frigid room and thawed your nerves at last. Finally, a shelter from the blizzard.

Aiyuri turned. "Geto." She acknowledged his bow.

You bit back a soft, 'Suguru', and mimicked her greeting.

"Forgive me for the interruption." Suguru said and rose again. He towered over Aiyuri, but his tone reserved utmost respect. "My lady, do you know of Gojo-Sama's whereabouts?"

She frosted your veins with that stare once more, before tucking her barely wrinkled hands into her sleeves. "Ask his wife." With one last scoff, she left with the howling wind on her heels.

You shivered. Winter was taking its time in releasing spring from its clutches. You wondered if there was any seasonal difference in the Gojo clan. If everyone had that attitude? You're not certain.

But instead of winter's chills or spring's fragrance, fall's breeze calmed your nerves. Fluttering beneath a haori as Suguru knelt into the seat opposite from you. He stared.

You were used to it by now. Supposed it would only get worse. As your official guard and the newest samurai of this clan, Suguru's job was to keep an eye on you.

You wondered if he considered that a duty at all with the way he looked at you, though.

"How have you been?"

His question unravelled that messy weave of unwound dignity and tangled anxiety. Your shoulders sagged. The web in your throat cleared. "Better, now that I've seen a familiar face."

He returned your smile. He always did. There were many things that were promised to you in life as a heiress of your clan, most of which turned out hollow. But Geto Suguru was so much more than an empty promise— he was a vow. One engraved with his own blood that he swore to spill should it ever mean your safety.

A samurai bound to your clan. You've known him since he waddled around the garden, giving you flowers and little pebbles when neither of your fathers were looking. Claiming to follow you to the ends of the earth when he was of age and took his father's place.

He practised that vow when he followed you even into the wasteland: your new marriage.

Suguru's hand shuffled from under his haori and laid on the table. His palm faced you. Inviting, comforting. How you wished to lay your hand in it like you would those nights in the gardens when your elders' words stung too deep. Now that you were married, it was hardly appropriate.

"I don't think. . ."

"Forgive me."

Always so understanding. Always able to read you better than the books you've watched him sit with late in the evenings. As he withdrew, your tummy twisted with— yes, loneliness, this time.

"Where is your husband?"

You weren't so keen on him reading you anymore.

"Something came up. Urgent, he said." Thankfully, or maybe ruefully, you had been mulling over excuses all morning. Excuses for a husband that looked at you like you were less than even the dirt under his shoe.

Suguru's silent stare curled your fingers into your lap beneath the table. Out of all the things, why were you his favourite book? You were watered ink and the tapered ends of pages, but when he looked at you— you weren't even parchment. But poetry.

How you hoped he wouldn't read between the lines.

He sighed, then stood, taking your skipping heart with him as he nodded along to your lie. "As always, my lady, should you need me please do call." He stepped towards the door, brushing long strands back neatly over his shoulder.

He halted at the exit. Your breath hitched under his violet gaze.

"My loyalty is solely to you."

And then he left you, alone with your thoughts.

But what was loyalty to him?

An option. Perhaps a burden. You only saw Satoru again by the end of the evening. At the dinner table you wished could mirror the lonesome quiet from breakfast. Anything was better than hearing the chirpy giggle of a servant woman.

He barely cast you a glance. Responded curtly to your greeting. But here he was, your husband, buttering up another woman with sweetened words and sugary smiles. Right in front of you.

Loyalty was bitter on your tongue.

You mulled the question until it was a sour ring of thorns in your mouth:was this your new normal?

To yearn but be left starving. To watch and be rendered wilted. A few weeks into the marriage of your dreams, you understood that you were bound to a nightmare. By vows he broke like the fragments of your hearts. By duty he ruined like your dignity.

He shamelessly flirted with servants, both in and out of your presence, you're sure.

Every other night the bed was left vacant, reopening your wedding night wounds.

The times he would sleep beside you, the space between you both was a chasm to lay your insecurities to rest.

No acknowledgement. No attachment. And certainly no affection. You were left with white sheets, a pale heart and a colourless garden. Alone, not lonely, and hopeless.

Even now, you shivered at the tender touch to your hair and the soft thumbs rubbing into your knuckles. Were you so starved of attention that even your handmaidens' fingers warmed the hollow in your heart?

You sat in the garden. Your hair tended to by one while your nails were catered to by another. In the last month, you'd almost forgotten that your status was one to revere. Satoru's stare knocked your title into a broken mess in your hands. You'd yet to rebuild it. Your ladies in waiting took up the task.

A singular white rose carefully preened of its thorns laid in your palm. Its pale petals were the only thing that didn't remind you of him. Spotless, unsullied, just like you. No matter how much your thoughts attempted to tell you otherwise.

"How has your stay been thus far, my lady?" Asked the woman behind you as she carefully massaged oils into your scalp. The sweet aroma eased you for the first time in weeks.

You put on a smile, as delicate as the rose in your hand. "It's been fine. I'll admit I am a little homesick."

They didn't share your little laugh, but their smiles softened. The one at your nails piped up. "You do not have to lie to us. We are your ladies in waiting, after all."

"If you cannot speak to us, who will you speak to?" The other chided.

You chewed your lip. Were you really a poem or just a verse? People had far too easy a time of reading you.

The flower twirled in your palm as you counted its petals to contemplate speaking your truth. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.

"Well, I'm still getting used to my husband. I guess."

Their smiles fell. Your fingers stilled. Oh no, had you missed a thorn after all?

"Gojo-Sama sure is insatiable."

The woman at your hair sighed and brushed sympathetic fingers over your strands with a shake of her head.

"Poor you." The other frowned.

That thorn wedged itself deeper into your chest. Twisting your tummy into sharp knots and prickling away at your resolve. Your eyes fluttered and a thousand questions bloomed on your tongue. You almost quivered.

"Insatiable?" Your heart tore. "What— what do you mean?"

Another sigh, the woman behind you stilled and opened her mouth, but the one at your hands tensed. She squeezed an apology onto your knuckles. "Yumi. . ." She warned.

"She must know, Ayame." Yumi huffed. Her eyes softened when she met your furrowed brows. "The minute we heard that Gojo-Sama was to be married, we knew it was a disaster waiting to happen." She abandoned your hair for the first time to fold her arms. Seemed her irritation for her clanhead burned deeper than her loyalty to you.

"He doesn't love. And I doubt he knows anything about responsibility."

You frowned. Was duty as much of a chore as love was? "So what, he's always like this? It's not just him warming up to me?" You felt stupid for your own question. Gojo Satoru wasn't capable of anything warm— other than warming the beds of other women, it seemed.

Ayame sighed. "You won't get anywhere being kind-hearted and loving to a man like him." She caressed your hand and readied the nail brush with a bright red pigment. "He doesn't like the innocent ones."

Those final words turned the prickling vines in your gut into a sinking stone. Innocent, she said. You consider the rose in your hold again.

Sure, you were innocent. Untouched. But what did that matter in the face of responsibility? If he will not love you, that is a bitterness you're willing to swallow. But why must he sour the reality of what you will, inevitably, have to come to do?

Your clans needed a heir. And you needed their pride.

But what would you need to become to be what Satoru needed?

A flutter of ebony distracted you from the white. Pulled from your thoughts but not the thorns, you looked over to the violet awaiting you. Soft as always, like the smile he formed when you locked stares.

Suguru walked the halls with his head held high. You almost envied his pride. But it pillowed around you. Always. Even from across the garden with nothing but a respectful nod of greeting.

His stares were hardly subtle. Yumi and Ayame chirp like giggling skylarks.

"The samurai is handsome, isn't he?" Ayame hummed.

"Mhhm. He must have a thing for you." Yumi nudged you.

You could only sigh. Whatever that thing was would have to be buried under the pile of broken marriage vows and your shattered realisation. Your duty came first.

Even if it turned you into something you couldn't recognise. A rose yet to bloom in the garden.

You didn't see Satoru at dinner that day. Again. Was that night after your wedding a one time occurrence? A taunt to your already crumbling confidence? Then again, you didn't mind eating alone. It was easier to swallow without the weight of his gaze or the rancid reality of his infidelity.

After a small helping of rice and fish, you ventured into the hallways and yearned for your bed. The wood was silent under your feet. Keeping secrets you're not sure you wanted to know in the first place.

The walk to your bedroom was quiet, apart from your thoughts. As you eyed the gardens full of white rose bushes, you contemplated your handmaidens' words.

Insatiable. They called him. Innocent. They dubbed you. Earlier's question swirled in the moonlight. Heavy on your shoulders and cold in your mind. What would you need to become to be needed by someone like Gojo Satoru?

Would you need to dress yourself in red silk and lips? The scarlet on your fingernails felt uncomfortable enough. Beautiful, but not you. Ayame insisted that sometimes change was good.

Was it?

Hushed giggles snapped your mulling as you rounded the corner. Your feet froze.

Perhaps that is what you need to become to be needed.

A tittering maid with rustled clothes. Smothered with kisses and leaned up against the wall by none other than him. Your insatiable husband and his experienced hands.

Oh poor, innocent you.

All you could do was watch as Satoru pushed her into a wall. One hand at the back of her neck and the other grazing her waist. So he did know how to caress instead of claw.

The woman hadn't noticed you. Too preoccupied with having her clanhead's mouth chuckling into her giggles and his hands worshipping her waist. Lower.

But he did.

As the woman distracted herself with her eager hands pushing at his yukata and her red lips staining his neck, Satoru tilted his head. His stare found yours over his shoulder. Warm, for once.

Not comforting. But cruel. Like his smirk.

The bastard winked.

Warmth burst into an ugly blister. Burning up your gut and throat. You wished to spew flames at him— but swallowed them into your heels and hastily stormed off. Hot in your head and heavy in your heart.

Insatiable. They said. Gojo Satoru was insatiable. Iniquitous, too. Immoral and irresponsible and irreverent to the very core.

Tears stung your eyes as you bristled down the hallways. Your husband didn't know how to love, he barely knew what duty was. It was you that was left tangled in this thorny mess. In this tearing reality. This bleeding—

You stumbled. Nearly off your feet if it weren't for whoever you rammed into steadying you with firm hands to your waist. A deep voice smoothed the storm, but not the rain.

"My lady—" Suguru blinked. "Are you alright?"

Were you alright? Were you content with this life you were now chained to? With your clan's distaste already on your ears and your husband's stain on your soul?

"I. . . " You could only stare up at him.

The winds whirled again. Swooping your mind into an mess of wants and needs, of aches and realities. Satoru was insatiable. You were innocent. Under the eyes of one man you were pitiful. In the hands of another you were poetry.

Satoru swore off love. Suguru swore to loyalty. You were lost between both and trapped by duty's weight.

Duty. What were you willing to do for duty? What were you ready to stain?

Your fingers trembled. Only then did you see your red nails curling into Suguru's robes. A reminder.

"My lady."

He called softly.

If Satoru only lusted, what did you have to become?

Suguru's hands were soft on your waist. Would they be as gentle beneath your clothes?

That thing for you that Suguru had. How deep did it run, you wondered. As deep as your desire for duty?

You couldn't fight both the tears and temptation.

"Suguru. . ."

You returned, equally as soft. As devastating.

Maybe in order to be what he needed. You needed to lust.

© 𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒔𝒎. no plagiarism or ai training authorised. divider: @/kodaswrls, @/dollywons. art cred: @/_3aem (twt)

AMERICA DIDN’T SAVE HIM. It just fed him slower.

No, it just devoured him slower—bite by bite, smile by smile, dressed up in false promises and stained tavern sheets.

It didn’t cleanse him. It didn’t sanctify him. It clung to him.

Like smoke. Like hunger. Like sickness that settled into marrow and pretended to be salvation. This country didn’t offer redemption—it offered delay. A slow, aching rot that seeped into his bones like rain he hadn’t felt in decades, foreign and familiar in the worst ways. The kind of rain that didn’t cleanse—just reminded.

Of home. Of death. Of something sacred he’d been running from for far too long

In moments like this—where the road beneath his feet turned to gravel and bone, unpaved and jagged with intent, meant to tear at the soles of those too soft to survive—time had a cruel way of catching up with him. Like a hand he knew too well, fingers cold and familiar, the kind of touch that didn’t soothe but branded. A hand he’d grown to expect. Grown to need. Maybe even love, in the way a wound learns to live with rot.

An Gorta Mór. The Great Hunger. The third year—though truth be told, it could’ve been the second or the fourth. 1846 or 1845. Dates blurred like breath on glass when the world only taught you to count loss. He’d stopped keeping proper track around the time his bones ached with a life long full of pain and strangers stopped saying his name. Just counting bad. Just relying on the crooked maths whispered in crumbling corners of buildings that swore they were homes. They weren’t. Not really.

Now, all these years later, the echo of those numbers still clung to him like damp wool, heavy and sour. Hunger, after all, was a loyal ghost.

He came into the world while his mother bled on cold stone and his father dug burial plots not with tools, but with his own blistered hands. His earliest memories were of death: the curled-up bodies by the roadside, the smell of spoiled oats, the quiet sound of rosaries whispered through cracked lips. They buried their neighbors in shallow graves, their children in peat fields, and their pride with the land. His family were tenant farmers on British-stolen land, the kind where you worked your soul into the soil but owned nothing—least of all your fate. In the hush of night, when foreign men walked the land like they owned the soil instead of listening to it—ripping roots up by their throats rather than letting them run deeper—his father would speak in low, bitter tones about when it was theirs. His. His father’s. His father’s father before that. A line of men tethered to earth by calloused hands and quiet, stubborn pride, long before it was stolen by signatures and steel.

When the people starved, the grain was still exported to England. They burned their thatched roof in 1850 as they were forced out. His father died coughing into a rag on the coffin ship to Liverpool. His younger sister followed two weeks later. By the time Remmick reached Boston Harbor in 1851, he was twelve years old and completely alone. All that remained was his name—stripped of lineage, no surname he could cling to, to stake a claim the way his father once did over stolen land—a boiling rage, and the weight of old prayers clinging to an Irish ridden tongue. Words half-remembered, muttered more out of muscle than faith, like a ghost of belief passed down through blood and famine.

Americans called him “Mick,” spat at his accent, made him fight for wages that could barely buy bread. But rage makes a man useful. It makes him feared. It makes him hungry.

Through every trench, bruise, bloodied fists and an even bloodier face, he worked in stables, factories, railroads—whatever paid enough to keep his ribs from showing. He recounts New York, his turning point, when Irish immigrants were forced to fight in a war they didn’t start, for a country that barely tolerated them. He left for the frontier after that. The West was rough, cruel, unpaved—but at least it didn’t pretend to be kind. He drifted from state to state, remembering every cruel turn and pit of a new place but the same hunger. 

The clang of iron on iron echoed like thunder in his skull. Hot, bitter, and unrelenting, the mill roared with a kind of madness Remmick had long grown used to. Men shouted over the hiss of steam, sweat clung to their backs like a second skin, and the whole damn place stank of coal, blood, and broken ambition. He moved through it like a ghost that refused to die. Not quite one of them, but not dead enough to stop working either.

A hardhat hung off one crooked nail, but Remmick never wore it. It didn't matter how many times the foreman barked about false safety. If something was gonna fall on his skull, he figured it’d be God’s will, not steel’s.

He swung the hammer again—once, twice, the rhythm steady. Not because he cared. Because it kept him breathing.

“Keep movin’, or you’ll rot,” his old boss in Louisiana used to say. The man was dead now, last Remmick heard. Face down in a ditch with gambling debts carved into his skin. Remmick hadn't mourned him, but he remembered the voice. That was enough. He grunted and adjusted his grip, staring down at the glowing metal as if it might tell him something he hadn’t already learned the hard way.

He’d done it all by then. Coal miner, bootleg hauler. Spent three weeks running payroll for a two-bit rail company until he pistol-whipped the wrong supervisor and disappeared across state lines with the man's boots and a pocket watch that never ticked right again.

The only thing he kept was the sack slung over his shoulder—filled with scraps of a life pieced together from what the world hadn’t already stolen—and the last, bitter thing he truly owned: his name.

It wasn’t pride that made him keep it. Wasn’t stupidity either. Remmick knew damn well the weight of a name. Knew what it meant to carry something that painted a target on your back in towns that feared ghosts and men deemed too low for life itself. But it was his. That was the point. They could take his blood, his teeth, the boots off his feet if they worked hard enough. And plenty had tried.

But his name? They’d have to kill him twice to pry that loose.

He didn’t dream anymore, not really. Not unless you count the flashes—ashes in his lungs, a woman's scream, the cold slap of the Atlantic. He figured the memories would fade eventually, but they never did. Just shifted. Warped. There was a scar on his rib from a bullet that never should’ve been his. A chipped tooth on the left side of his mouth from a Tennessee bar brawl that ended with someone else’s jaw broken and a horse he never got paid for. He had more old wounds than stories to explain them.

He didn’t flinch when the furnace roared, didn’t blink when sparks flared like fireworks across his brow. He barely noticed the shouting anymore—men cursing God or their wives or their luck. None of it mattered. On a stolen break, he sat on a dented tin drum behind the mill, rolling a smoke with hands blackened from coal dust. He wiped the sweat from his neck, exhaled slow through his nose, and stared out at the skyline of iron and fog.

“Ain’t no peace in it,” he murmured, not to anyone in particular. Just to the wind. Voice as raw and unfiltered as it was as a boy, “Just harder days and smaller wins.”

He missed quiet sometimes. The way the sea sounded when it didn’t want to kill you. The rustle of grass on a still morning before the world woke up enough to disappoint you. But he’d been chasing that luxury for years, and all he ever got was silence. And that silence…it had teeth.

Later, when he was offered a different job—less heat, more violence—he didn’t say no. A man in a gray coat with a silver pocket pistol and a scar like a canyon on his jaw made him an offer in low tones. Something about a land dispute, something about needing someone who didn’t ask questions. Remmick just nodded. He wasn’t one for speeches.

“Pay in advance?” he asked. The man nodded, passed him a wad of crumpled notes and a single bullet

“This one’s just in case you get sentimental.”

Remmick chuckled dark, shoved the bullet into his coat pocket, and spit into the dust.

“Sentiment’s for men who ain’t been fed to the world yet.”

Then he walked away—boots heavy, spine straight, lungs blackened but still breathing.

Still chasing something. Not peace. Not God. Just another mile between him and whatever was catching up behind

The only constant in his life—as far back as memory served, as far as the ache in his bones could stretch—was the sun, and all the violence it carried. The kind of sun that didn’t warm, but burned. That cracked the earth, blistered skin, and made shadows run long like guilt. It rose without mercy and set without promise, and he followed it all the same, day after day, like a dog chasing something it could never catch.

Now, the soles of his stolen boots were wearing thinner than when he’d first pried them off a man whose face he can't remember. He walked like someone who knew the road wouldn’t be kind and didn’t care. Dust on his cuffs, blood in the stitching. A man made of miles, and of what the sun left behind.

And yet, beneath a moon that forgives with the kind of brutal grace only the night knows—painted pale and shining soft enough to fool the desperate—he hums. Low and rough, a tune half-forgotten but stubborn, one he carried with him ever since he left Texas. It slips past cracked lips into the rim of a grimy glass, filled with something cheap and cruel that burns like memory. All of this—this quiet, twisted version of luxury—was “bought” with stolen or earned bills, not that it mattered, they all spent the same to him. All soaked in sweat and phantom blood, crumpled deep in the seams of his patched-up pocket. Money that never felt like his, not really. Just another thing taken, like everything else. Money that was wearing thin now, in the borderlands. 

Drunkard tales drifted through the saloon like old ghosts, thick with slurred bravado and the scent of spilled whiskey. In the far corner, a nameless singer crooned for his supper, voice frayed like the hem of an old prayer. He sat at the bar, spine aching against the wall, worn down by time and travel. Eyes sharp, tracking every exit, every movement—because old habits don’t die, they dig in. 

Remmick didn’t move much—just nursed his glass of whatever burnt going down and kept his ears open, that low hum still stuck beneath his breath like a buried tune.

By the bar, a pair of workers leaned in too close to their drinks, dusty boots propped on the brass rail, spitting tobacco into cracked clay pots. Their voices carried in a slow drawl, that kind of molasses-thick tone born from heat, hard land, and not nearly enough good sleep.

"Fella passed through Hallow’s Edge last week—y’know, that stretch by the ranch? Place where the fence runs out like it’s afraid of wha’s on the other side?"

"Hell yeah, I know it. Ain’t just a ranch, it’s a goddamn wound. Beautiful though. Looks like someone laid gold over bones."

The other man grunted in agreement, eyes narrowed beneath a brim heavy with trail dust.

"Well, some stranger—city slicker by the looks of him, some tenderfooted fucker if ya ask me—thought he’d take a shortcut through. Came out the other end lookin’ like the devil himself had a bone to pick. Face all tore up, ribs pokin’ through like a damn scarecrow. Didn’t even make it to town proper—just collapsed near the watering trough, blood in his teeth, sayin’ some woman smiled at him ‘fore it all went black."

Laughter wasn’t mean, but it sure as hell wasn’t kind. “Sounds like the ranch gave him its version of a howdy-do.”

Remmick’s brow twitched—just a hair—but he didn’t look their way. Just traced the rim of his glass, watching the amber swirl like he was reading it for signs.

A ranch.

He’d heard tales before—once, maybe twice—like a whispered dare passed between cowards and killers before he crossed state lines. Somewhere sitting pretty around this area. A ranch too beautiful to be real, too quiet to be right. Something about it gnawed at him, slow and steady. He let the conversation bleed back into silence. Let the saloon chatter rise and fall. But the way his shoulders rolled back, how his gaze lingered too long on the map nailed behind the bar, eyes tracing where that ranch would be. 

He’d picked it up fast, out in the borderlands—wasn’t a decent soul for miles. And if by some miracle you stumbled on one, you’d be lucky if they lasted you ten. Ten miles before the land got to you. Not teeth and claws, but something worse. Something soft. Quiet. Cruel in a way only the Earth could be.

The land didn’t have to strike to kill. It just waited. Wilted you slow under its sun, coaxed the salt from your skin, kissed your lips dry with dust. Remmick had danced with that death more times than he cared to name. Knew her rhythm now. The land's touch could be beautiful—seductive even—but her fingers were quick, and her hunger was the patient kind.

She’d feed you comfort, and then gut you clean. And if you weren’t careful, she’d leave nothing behind but your name—and even that would rot in the wind.

Finding work—real work—was always the game. A necessary ritual for a man with pockets that had never known the weight of anything but grief, bad luck, and the slow, steady ache of death trailing him like a shadow. It had been that way since boyhood, since the day he’d been shoved onto a boat too young to understand the depth of the ocean or the weight of leaving everything behind.

Out here, in towns too small for secrets and too devout for mercy, it was harder still. Places like this didn’t offer second chances, let alone first ones. Every soul was accounted for, every name whispered in pews or passed between hands like gossip over warm bread and cheap liquor. There was no such thing as anonymity—just suspicion with a smile.

And God—God was always watching, or so they claimed. A false God, Remmick accused and had a heavy disdain for. One that sat fat and silent while men scrawled names into water-warped books, claimed it was holy just ‘cause the ink ran with prayers. But those prayers? They never reached higher than the steeple roof. Not when they came from hands that beat their own children, from mouths that drank blood and called it wine, from men who punished and pardoned in the same breath.

He knew what faith looked like when it was stolen. Saw it starved out of villages that bore his grandfather's name. Watched it rot in the bellies of fathers buried in mass graves no one prayed over. Back on land that bore his roots, the church wore gold while his people dug through dirt for crumbs—called it famine, called it God's will, like salvation was something you could ration. He remembered the hunger, yes, but worse was the hatred. How the same men who kissed crucifixes condemned their kind with spit and rope. Remmick never forgot that. Never would. And in his chest, beneath scar and sin, sat the heat of a thousand whispered curses—he’d been at this treacherous excuse of a “better life” for too long to even remember the mother tongue, but confident none of them were in English, and none of them meant to be forgiven.

Here, in this town, in this country that held not a single one of his roots, holiness was just cruelty in its Sunday best.

And still, he asked for work. Always asked. Because hunger didn’t care much for theology. And neither did the slow rot of poverty that clung to him like a second skin. 

And like a sinner pacing the length of a confessional, words burning the back of his throat, Remmick moved through the night in search of something—salvation, maybe, or just shelter from the ache gnawing through his limbs. Divine intervention wasn’t on the table. Not for someone like him. God had long since turned His eyes elsewhere, if He’d ever looked his way at all.

To the untrained eye, he walked steady. Boots hitting the dirt in slow, deliberate rhythm, coat pulled tight against the cool hush of approaching dawn. But the truth bled through in the stagger of his steps. A slight wobble when he turned corners too fast. That too-familiar drunken sway that clung to him like a second shadow. He wasn't stumbling out of recklessness. It was habit, exhaustion, and the burn of whatever godless liquor they’d poured down his throat hours before.

The town, if it could be called that, was half asleep. Lamps flickered low in windows. A dog barked once, then thought better of it. Wooden signs creaked above darkened storefronts, their letters faded like old scars. This wasn’t a place for mercy or comfort. It was the kind of place people passed through, left pieces of themselves behind in, and never spoke of again.

And yet—there it was.

Tucked back off the main road, more shadow than structure: an inn. Weather-beaten, sagging a little at the eaves, but still standing. Still lit. A single yellow glow spilled from the front window, warm and hazy like it hadn’t been cleaned in a decade. The paint peeled in curls from the frame. It smelled of woodsmoke, rain, and something older. 

He paused, one hand on the rust-bitten handle, eyes scanning the door like it might bite. Then he stepped inside. The lobby was narrow, quiet, with floors that groaned under his boots. A woman behind the counter looked up from a tattered ledger, her eyes skimming over him with practiced indifference. She’d seen worse. Probably housed it.

“Got a room?” he asked, voice dry—scraped raw from dust, drink, and too many miles unspoken. The Irish accent was buried deep in his throat, tucked into the same hollow pockets that carried his sins. Hidden like shame beneath the smoother one he’d learned to wear—pieced together from overheard conversations on trains, boats, and behind saloons where he lingered too long, just listening. Picking vowels like fruit, softening consonants like bruises. A man who knew how to vanish into his own voice.

“Just the one,” she said, and didn’t ask questions. He reached into his coat and dropped what was left of his money onto the counter—crumpled bills, coins still warm from his palm. Phantom blood money. Stolen, borrowed, all of them teetering on the edge of being earned. The kind that stinks even when it doesn’t leave a mark.

She took it without counting, slid a rusted key across the counter with two fingers.

“Upstairs. Second on the left. Sheets’re clean enough.”

That was all he needed. Remmick took the key and dragged his feet to the stairs. He didn’t look back. Didn’t have to. The door creaked closed behind him with the finality of a coffin lid. And upstairs, in a room that smelled like old cedar and forgotten sins, he fell into the mattress with a groan, boots still on, coat still damp, eyes already beginning to slip shut.

Outside, the wind howled low, like something warning or mourning—he could never tell the difference. And inside, he finally let the long awaited silence come.

He woke with the sharp, final urgency of a man who’s never known real rest—a kind of rising that felt more like survival than routine. The kind carved into muscle memory, into the bones of someone who’s always had to earn their breath.

Outside, the sun was already climbing—hot and mean, with no promises in its light, only hunger wrapped in gold. He watched it bleed through the frayed curtain in the corner of the room, catching on dust like specks of old ghosts. Honey-warm, but just as cruel.

He’d tasted honey once or twice, maybe. Couldn’t say for sure. Most sweetness in his life had been chased down through grit and grime, meals paid for with time and blood he never really had to spare. But today, like every day, he needed something useful. Work. Coin. Anything that might keep him upright a little longer. Another day to trade sweat for nothing and call it a life.

And so, the routine began—same calloused hands, different town.

This morning, those same calloused hands scraped over the coarse scruff lining his jaw—a beard that caught the sun with rust-tinged edges, more red now than it ever was when he first started growing it. It stayed just tidy enough, thanks to stolen blades and the mercy of still pond water when he could find it.

Every so often, as if summoned by the quiet of morning, a flash of his mother’s sharp voice would slip in, coated in a tongue he no longer remembers but his memory, the only thing that served, on occassion, right about him, understood—scolding his father for the "unruly whiskers" she claimed made him look half-feral. Those echoes, softened by time but still barbed at the ends, clung to Remmick’s fingers like ghosts as he trimmed the edges clean. If he caught his reflection, he knew what he’d see—jagged edges, sunburned skin, and those unruly whiskers curling sharp along his jaw. The beard would betray him, always did, especially when the red caught the light just right. A color that didn’t belong to him anymore. A color that whispered things he had no right to remember.

His fingers brushed the back of his neck, pausing over the curls that had grown too long again—soft, defiant things that coiled at the nape like they didn’t know better. He’d have to shear them soon. Before they drew the wrong kind of notice. Before someone looked at him too closely and remembered how easy it is to treat a man like him as nothing but wild, something to be caged or culled.

He dressed with precision, not pride—layering threadbare clothes that blended just enough to pass. Nothing too fine, but everything too worn. Just another face, another body in the crowd. No one worth watching, no one worth stopping. God forbid he draws attention. 

The door creaked open, and Remmick stepped out into a sun so hot it could’ve skinned a man alive just for breathing under it too long. It beat down heavy, merciless, the kind of heat that made the dust curl up off the earth in ghostly swirls. The town was already in full swing—horses clopped along uneven roads, wagon wheels shrieked over gravel, and the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer rang out like distant gunfire. Children darted through alleyways barefoot, mothers shouting after them with hands on hips. And men—too many men—lingered in doorways with narrowed eyes and mouths full of suspicion. Remmick adjusted the wide-brimmed hat he’d stolen two towns back, tugged it lower over his brow.

His sack thudded against his spine with each step. He kept his gait even, lazy, like he had nowhere in particular to be—which was half true. But anonymity is fragile. And in towns like this, trouble doesn’t need an introduction.

He hadn’t made it ten steps past the hitching post when a loud crack rang out—a shout, followed by the unmistakable sound of fists meeting flesh. A scuffle outside the general store. Two men in a tangle of limbs and rage, one already bleeding from the lip, the other hollering about “cheating bastards” and “what’s owed.”

Remmick didn’t stop to think. He never had to.

While heads turned, hands grabbed shoulders, and boots scuffed forward into the fray, he slid sideways like smoke. The man who’d dropped his coin purse in the middle of the chaos never felt a thing. Remmick’s fingers were fast, practiced. By the time he slipped the weight into his pocket and shouldered his sack again, the man was still swinging wild at ghosts.

He kept moving. Down past the farrier’s. Past the brothel with its half-shuttered windows and painted girls watching the commotion with bored interest. He didn’t dare glance back. He could feel it, though—that heat on his spine now thicker than the sun. The feeling of being seen. Maybe not recognized, not yet. But noticed. That was enough. He spat into the dirt and kept walking.

So much for keeping his head down.

Remmick didn’t quicken his pace—that was how you got clocked. Instead, he turned a corner, slipped between two buildings slick with sweat and mildew, and ducked into the shadowed mouth of a shop left wide open. The bell above the door had been silenced with a knot of twine—probably broken days ago and never fixed.

Empty.

Every warm body in town was still crowded around the fistfight out front, hooting like it was Sunday sermon. The shelves were picked over, but not stripped. Crates of dry goods and supple fruits that enticed the low growl in his stomach lined the floor, and a half-full register sat behind the counter. He didn’t bother with that—he wasn’t greedy, just cursed. But beggars can’t be choosers and he makes quick work of a loaf that's been sitting out too long and the fruits he’d probably never see for another number of miles if he was unsuccessful in his pursuits. His boots made soft thuds over wood warped by decades of heat and boots and blood. Behind the counter, tucked into the corner like someone’s afterthought, was a small moleskin pouch, cracked at the edges from use. He picked it up, thumbed it open.

Tobacco. Still fresh.

The corner of his mouth twitched—not quite a smile. God was cruel, but sometimes he played fair for a moment or two.

He tucked the pouch into the inside of his coat, where it joined the stolen coins still warm from someone else’s pocket. Then he slipped back out the way he came, quieter than breath, into an alley that smelled like horses and heat.

The shouting had grown louder. Someone had drawn a knife. He didn’t care. Let the whole damn town carve itself up and bleed into the dirt. They’d forget the man who walked through them soon enough, even if he left a shadow behind.

He struck a match off the heel of his boot, the flare brief and angry in the morning glare. A scrap of paper—creased and soft—was rolled tight between calloused fingers, stuffed with stolen tobacco. He took a drag, deep and slow, just as the first chimes of the church bells cracked through the dust like gunfire.

God always did have a cruel sense of timing when it came to men like him—full of wrath, bone-deep weariness, and not a drop of grace left to spare. Maybe it was a curse. Maybe it was justice. Hell, maybe it was just the way things were for men built the way he was: always reaching, always running, never quite forgiven.

Still, he walked.

Wandering, but not lost. The memory of the map he'd studied too long in the corner of the dim saloon burned behind his eyelids like a brand. Faint lines. Ink-stained promises. Roads etched in whiskey and desperation. A direction carved more by instinct than destination. A path meant only for the desperate and the damned.

And that, he figured, suited him just fine. 

His steps hit the Earth heavy with a hunger older than his body, moved by the worn-out hope that somewhere—anywhere—might feed him long enough to make it through another month without dying or getting caught.

╭━━━━━ ━━━━━╮

Cypress curled in like they were just as worn as he was—leaning crooked and tired over the trail, their shadows reaching long and slow like fingers trying to pull him back. The sun, now dipping low along the horizon, bled gold into rust, casting the land in that strange kind of light that made even dust look holy. It clung to his boots, to the sweat drying on his neck, to the sharp ache that had begun to settle in the base of his spine from walking too long without rest.

His breath came shallow, more out of instinct than need—Remmick had long since learned how to make do with less. Less water. Less food. Less kindness.

He kept walking until the trees gave way to a long stretch of fenced land, wire and wood warped by heat and age. A warning, maybe, for the kind of people who cared about those. Remmick didn’t.

He spotted the hole in the fence before he even realized his feet had slowed. It was small, tucked behind a thicket of brush, but there—like a door left ajar by a land that wasn’t his. The kind of invitation that didn’t need words. Just hunger. Just weariness.

He ducked through the break without hesitation, the wire catching slightly on the strap of his sack before he tugged it loose with a grunt. The land beyond opened wide—overgrown but not dead, like something remembered and revered. A house sat in the distance, stained a deep brown, with smoke faint enough to make him question whether it was memory or present. Maybe someone was home. Maybe someone was dead. Maybe it didn’t matter.

He stood for a moment, eyes sweeping the property, chest rising slow. Then he moved forward—quiet, deliberate, uninvited. Like always. But not without a plan.

Remmick had survived off worse odds, bartered with crueler men. This time, he’d play it smart—hands open, voice level, chin tilted in that respectful, half-submissive way that made men feel a little taller. He’d find whoever owned the place—likely a man, mean and practical—and offer what he had. A body that still worked, a back that could carry weight, and a sharp eye for broken things. Fences, tools, roofs—didn’t matter. He’d offer to fix the break he came through, too. He could smooth that over easy: Saw it on my way by, figured I’d follow it in to tell you myself. Lucky it’s someone honest, huh?

He’d say it with a confident nod, the kind that made people uneasy before they caught themselves liking it.

The land itself was no easy mistress. Remmick had walked enough country, crossed enough cursed ridgelines and blood-wet valleys, to know when soil held memory—and when it held malice. Some places were conquered, torn apart and left to rot beneath whispers of bone and smoke—ghosts of the innocent humming vengeance through the weeds. Others were sweet-talkers, soft and syrupy, beckoning the foolish with golden light and gentle winds, only to devour them whole when no one was watching. And then there were the ones like old men’s hands—hard, cruel, and cracked from labor not their own. Stolen lands, made sacred by force and fear. 

But this stretch? This ranch? It breathed. Not just lived—breathed.

Remmick could feel it in the way the air dragged through his lungs, thick with copper and wild mint. In the way the earth gave a little beneath his boots, like it was testing his weight, measuring him without kindness or cruelty. Just seeing if he’d hold. The fields stretched far and gold-tinged, rolling and dipped like a body resting after battle. And there was something in the soil—not a curse, not a wound—but a weight. A presence. Blood here didn’t feel like a stain—it felt like inheritance. Not taken by force, but birthed. Nurtured. Watered by sweat and sun and generations of staying put, come hell or high water.

This land had roots deeper than anything Remmick could see, and they weren’t the kind you could tear out. These roots held stories, promises, and scars. They pulsed underfoot like veins.

It unsettled him in a way he couldn’t quite place—not with fear, but with familiarity. Like something he’d once known, in another life, or maybe in a dream. The ranch didn’t offer welcome, but it didn’t bare its teeth either. It simply watched.

Endless hills rolled in like waves turned to dust, dipping into steep ravines and sudden cliffs that cut the earth like it had been cracked by God’s own fist. Sounds of water that he knew had to be winding rivers sneaking through it all like veins—still, slick, and deep enough to swallow a man whole if he wasn’t paying attention. The grass, dry and half-dead in the fading sun, crunched under his boots, already brittle from heat. Come winter, he knew it’d freeze stiff, harder than bone.

This harsh beauty—weathered barns, fences that held more curses than nails, posts leaning like tired shoulders after long days. He remembers the talk of this place in the saloon. A place not named kindly, though no one dared speak ill of it too loud. Men lowered their voices when the ranch came up, muttering over their drinks like the land itself could hear them.

Brutal place, one had said, fingers curled tight around a sweating glass. Beautiful, another added, voice soft with something close to reverence.

They spoke of a man—the father—harder than the land he owned. A presence more than a person. Said his word was law out here, and his loyalty ran so deep it bled out of his kin. Said he’d chew a man up and spit out the bones if he crossed him wrong. And his daughter—well, they didn’t speak of her much. Not without looking away first. All Remmick could gather was that she wasn’t for the faint-hearted, and no one got close without earning scars.

He stepped further, every crunch of grass underfoot swallowed by the wind.

A place like this didn’t forget. Not the trespassers. Not the faithful. And sure as hell not the desperate. His eyes kept sweeping the land, sharp and steady, even as the sun began to drop behind the hills—bleeding gold into the tall grass, turning the weeds into firelit threads. Time was thinning. He’d have to move fast if he wanted to secure anything of use before nightfall set in and made every shadow a threat.

Up ahead, tucked low against the incline, stood a barn—small, squat, and cloaked in what looked like a recent coat of paint, the kind of effort that said someone still gave a damn about the place. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. A place like that might have tools. Might have hands that needed more hands. Might even have someone willing to look past a man’s grime if he could swing a hammer or mend a fence.

Remmick spat into the dirt and started toward it, his steps deliberate but slow, calculating how he’d play this. No sudden movements. No tales unless they were asked for. Just sweat and skill and maybe, if luck hadn’t turned completely on him, a chance to stay somewhere a little warmer than the road.

While steps were slow, measured. He didn’t want to spook anything—beast or man. He knew how to approach wild things, and this land, this ranch tucked deep like a secret worth keeping, felt alive in a way that had his every instinct lit up like lightning in his ribs.

He made it halfway to the house, sack still slung over one shoulder, boots kicking up loose dirt with every quiet step. The windows up the hill glowed faint with lamplight, and the scent of woodsmoke drifted through the air like memory. He figured he’d knock soft, ask for work, maybe barter with the last of his strength. If nothing else, he’d offer to fix the break in the fence he snuck through. Just enough to earn a cot in the hay.

But then—a flash of movement in the dark.

He caught it too late.

The breath left his lungs in a grunt as something sharp dragged clean across his throat. Not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to make the world reel and punish. His hand flew to the wound as warm blood spilled fast between his fingers, hot and slick. He staggered back, sack dropping to the dirt, boots scuffing against the packed earth.

“Fuck!” He snarled, low and guttural, the word dragging itself out of his throat in his full, unhidden brogue—rough like gravel, thick like old whiskey. The mask he usually wore had cracked clean through, now paired with a gash across his throat and a trickle of blood blooming from how hard he bit his lip on the sudden impact.

She was already on him. Not some panicked ranch wife with trembling hands and a shotgun held too loose. No, this one moved like a ghost that’d learned how to fight. Controlled. Dead steady. The kind of woman bred for brutality and raised by land that didn’t give out softness unless it was earned, and even then, just sparingly given out like rations he’d live by in factories. Her blade caught the half-moonlight like a smirk made of iron. Short. Personal. The kind used not for show but for gutting things close-range.

“Fuck you doin’ on my ranch, huh?!”

Her voice came low and mean, cut from the same cloth as the wind curling cruel through the grass. It bit worse than the blade she hadn’t even truly used yet.

Remmick blinked rapidly, vision wavering, but he didn’t so much as stagger. His mouth twitched into something that might’ve passed for a grin—feral and red, one tooth stained pink, gleaming with spit and iron.

“That how y’all greet everyone ‘round here? Or just the ones askin’ for a bit of honest work?”

For half a heartbeat, he swore he saw something flicker behind her glare—surprise, maybe. But then it hit.

Her fist cracked across his jaw like gunfire. No warning, just wrath. A clean, practiced punch that snapped his head sideways and sent a fresh wave of blood down his jaw. It poured hot and quick, soaking the collar of his shirt and dripping to the dust below. The ringing in his ears built to a sharp buzz now singing across his face. He barely had time to grit his teeth before her hand was in his collar, jerking him forward with a force that belied her size. 

“Who are you talking to, stranger?” she hissed, all fire and venom. “I oughta gut you and feed you to my fuckin’ dogs for even breathing here.”

Remmick was stunned. Not because of the threat—he’d heard worse, lived through worse. But the woman wielding it? She wasn’t bluff. She was carved from cruelty and command, eyes as sharp as the knife in her grip. No fear. Not a drop of hesitation. She looked at him like a problem she knew exactly how to solve—with blood and silence.

And fuck him, but some twisted, rusted-out piece of him—maybe the same one that always walked toward thunder instead of away from it—respected the hell out of her. Even with her blade a breath from opening his throat like a second mouth.

He’d been a goddamn fool to let silence stretch this long. That was always his trouble—letting things hang too loose, too long, like rope waiting to be noosed. Half the time he didn’t care. But now? Now he wished he’d stitched that habit shut three states back. Because what came next was sharp and loud, a crack that tore through the night just like the one she’d left blooming across his cheek.

She yanked him forward so hard his shirt collar gave way with a violent rip. Cotton tore like paper in her grip, and now the blade hovered real close, the tip pressing just enough to make a threat out of pressure.

“You better speak up and fix the confused face” she hissed, breath hot and steady. “I asked you a question. You don’t answer, I drive this blade down your throat, and you’re gonna wish you’d never crawled outta whatever hole you came from.” Her voice was calm in the way only dangerous people could manage—like she’d done it before. Like she'd already decided what to do with his body once it stopped breathing.

“Jus’—just lookin’ for the man who runs the land,” Remmick rasped, breath hitching, the copper in his mouth thick and bitter. “Honest work, ma’am. I swear it.”

His voice sounded foreign to him, hoarse and cracked like dry timber. Pathetic, almost. He’d fought men twice his size and crawled through places darker than hell with a blade in his gut, but this—this woman, this blade, this goddamn land under his boots—it made him feel stripped and foolish. Stumbling, bleeding, uninvited on land that didn’t even want his shadow near it.

He braced for more. And then came the sound: a sharp, disbelieving scoff that rolled from her throat like it could cut glass. 

Next was her palm—flat, calloused, and mean—slamming into the center of his chest. Not a punch, no, but it knocked the air out of him just the same. Like her hand carried the weight of the entire goddamn ranch behind it. He staggered back, boots dragging in the dirt, breath stolen.

“You’re lookin’ at her, asshole.”

There was fire in her eyes, not the kind that flickered. The kind that ate. She stood square, jaw tight, shoulders rolled like a fighter before a bell. And Remmick? He could do nothing but stare, vision blurring from the blood and the shame curling somewhere in his gut.

She was the one in charge. Fuck.

It landed hard and fast in his chest—he wasn’t looking for the man of the land. There wasn’t one. There was her. And she looked at him like she’d already decided his bones would make decent fence posts at the same break in the fence he sneaked into, if he gave her enough reason.

“My… apologies, ma’am. I’m just—” He faltered, finally registering the warm slickness creeping down his neck. The bleeding had picked up. Fast. His shirt was sticking to him, collar torn from her grip, his pride hanging by even less.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t soften. Didn’t even blink. If anything, she looked bored.

“Spit it out,” she snapped, eyes sharp as her blade. “Gimme a reason to hand you somethin’ to put pressure on that shit besides my boot.”

Not a drop of mercy. Just rage. Earned rage. The kind carved into someone who’d had to fight for every goddamn inch they owned. And Remmick—stupid, bleeding, cornered Remmick—knew better than to beg. So he offered something else. Something real.

“I can work,” he ground out. “Repairs, fences, livestock, tools. Hell, I’ll clean boots if you ask it. I’m not lookin’ for a handout. Just work. Just a place to sleep and enough to eat so I don’t bleed out in some ditch like a dog.” 

He took a breath that rattled in his chest, dirt thick on his tongue.

“I’ll fix that break in your fence. The one east side, tucked behind a stand of brush,” he added, voice lower, careful. “Didn’t think anyone saw it. But I did. You let me stay, I’ll make it better’n it was before.”

A long silence stretched between them, heavy as dusk. He didn’t beg. Didn’t blink. Just stood there with blood on his torn collar, hope in his voice, and nothing left to lose.

For a beat, she just stared at him—sharp and unmoved, like she was weighing the worth of his bones against the trouble he was already costing her. Her lip curled, a slow, disdainful thing. Then came the smallest shake of her head, like she couldn’t believe the audacity of the mess bleeding in her yard. Her hand dipped into her coat.

For a breath, Remmick wondered if this was it—if she was gonna pull iron and finish the job herself, let the beasts sort out what was left of him. Instead, she yanked out a handkerchief. Worn. Clean. Smelled faintly of saddle soap and cedar.

She shoved it hard into his chest, and he nearly stumbled back with the force of it.

“Go on,” she snapped, eyes blazing. “Told you already—put pressure on that damn thing. You bleeding out ain’t gonna fix you struttin’ up here like some idiot.”

She was fury wrapped in sun-bleached cotton and leather, and he—Remmick, sore and half-dead—did what any man with half a brain would do. He pressed the cloth to his neck and didn’t say another word.

“You’re no damn use to me if you’re leaking all over the dirt. Especially since I should gut you where you stand for being here”

He nodded, curt and now understanding, muttering to the cicadas buzzing around them. 

“Yes, ma’am.”

She didn’t wait for him to find his footing.

“Move.”

And move he did, half-stumbling behind her through the high grass, cradling the soaked handkerchief to his neck while she walked a step ahead like the Devil’s own fury in boots. The barn loomed ahead—broad and weathered but sturdy, the kind that didn’t fall down easy no matter how hard the storms hit. He was right, its wood was painted a fresh coat of white and was silver at the edges, the big doors yawning open just enough to reveal the amber flicker of lantern light inside.

They passed a long row of fenced paddocks, and even in the dim wash of twilight, the horses shone. Big, strong things, coats like spilled ink and molten copper, eyes dark and clever. One kicked at the dirt and snorted as they walked by, the others watching with a quiet dignity that Remmick remembered too well. That silence before the storm of muscle and instinct, before a colt broke wild or worse—broke you.

He slowed just enough to get a better look.

“Don’t,” she snapped, voice slicing through the buzz of cicadas.

Remmick turned his head sharply. She’d stopped walking. Her back was still to him, but her shoulders had squared like she felt his gaze, knew it for what it was.

“You’re bleeding on my land, stranger,” she said, quieter now but no softer. “That means you don’t get to look at my beautiful things. Not until you’ve earned it.”

He dipped his head, chastened. “Yes, ma’am.”

She grunted like that was good enough—for now—and shoved open the side door of the barn. It was cool inside, heavy with the scent of hay and leather, horses shifting in their stalls. She led him to a small room near the back, no more than a cot, a shelf, and a hook on the wall. Clean enough, but it still smelled like old tobacco and the sweat of men long gone.

“You’ll sleep here tonight,” she said. “Up before God himself tomorrow. Porch at first light. You so much as yawn too loud, I’ll put you to work muckin’ out stalls with your bare hands.”

Remmick nodded again, blood drying tacky on his skin, exhaustion sinking in like a stone tossed in a still pond. “Understood.”

Remmick leaned back slightly on the edge of the cot, the metal groaning beneath him, the sting in his neck pulsing dull and wet. His sack of belongings lay at his feet, and the handkerchief in his hand was soaked dark now, clinging to his skin like penance. He looked up at her—this woman who hadn’t so much as blinked when she’d slammed her fist into his face or threatened to feed him to her dogs—and for a moment, all he could think was: Goddamn.

The moonlight, soft as it was, painted her like a myth. It cut across the slats above them and bathed her in silver, like something half-forgiven, half-feral. A face too fine for fists and warnings, too damn carved for the life she clearly lived—but she wore it like armor. And her words, her threat, was the blade beneath.

“You can run, stranger,” she said, voice steady as a bullet chambered. “But I promise you, there ain’t a damn stone in this town I’ve ever left unturned, and that sentiment isn’t startin’ with you. I find even a damn horseshoe missin’ if you decide to leave, I’ll keep my promise, and my dogs are gonna be fat n’ happy after I’m done.”

She stepped closer, casting a longer shadow across the floor. “So do what you came to do and sleep. Don’t stare at my fuckin’ horses too long. And I better find you on my porch.”

Then she nodded—one final exclamation mark to her warning—before turning on her heel.

Remmick blinked, heart thudding slow and heavy like boots in mud. The corner of his mouth twitched—just barely—into a ghost of a grin a man doesn’t earn, not when he’s bleeding. He’d never been the type to put much stock in women past a warm night and a way to blow off steam, but he’d seen beauty before. Plenty of it. Just not the kind that came with a fist to the jaw and a voice like thunder rolling low across a field.

This one didn’t just strike him—she damn near branded him. Fury in a face too fine for the damage she dealt, and still, every bit of it felt deserved. He was an idiot for stumbling in uninvited. Worse for liking the way she reminded him he wasn’t invisible after all.

Jesus Christ, he thought, tasting iron on his tongue again. 

Out loud, his voice came rough—raw like whiskey left too long in the throat, edged with dust, dried blood, and a kind of reverence that wasn’t holy but something close to it in the way only ruined men could understand. 

“Ma’am,” he rasped, letting the word drag slow off his tongue like it hurt to say, “I ain’t ever seen horses that pretty… or a woman who could break a man in half ‘fore he’s even said his name.”

There was a pause. Just long enough for the air between them to still, for the wind outside to howl in approval. She stopped in the doorway, her back lit by a streak of moonlight like some kind of goddamn specter carved from the land itself. But she didn’t turn around.

“You think talkin’ sweet’ll help you?” Her voice cracked like flint against stone—dry, sharp, and carved from the kind of steel no man could sweet-talk past. “What a damn fool you are. That pretty mouth won’t buy you a damn thing out here but trouble.”

She paused just enough for her next words to hit like a warning shot.

“I better find that bullshit scrubbed off by morning. It won’t get you far—not with me, not on this land. You’re treading on ice so thin I can already hear it crackin’.”

He swallowed thick, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, and forced his body not to sag under the ache settling deep in his bones. But his voice, this time, came gentler—not soft, not pleading, but honest. Almost too much so.

“I’ll be on your porch,” he said. Quieter. Firmer. “Swear it.”

And he meant it. Not out of fear. Not even out of debt. But because there was something about her—something ancient, like the way land settles after a quake or how thunder holds its breath before the lightning falls. She reminded him of the parts of himself he’d buried and hoped wouldn’t crawl back up. Fury without cruelty. Order without mercy. And steadiness that could only come from pain carved deep and early.

As her boots thudded away into the dark, crunching over hay and dirt like punctuation marks to a sentence he hadn’t finished reading, he finally let the tension bleed out of his shoulders. He dropped onto the thin cot with a grunt, the old frame groaning beneath him.

The barn smelled like iron and leather and dust. The kind of smell that reminded him of war camps and baptism by fire. He stared up at the rafters, eyes wide, jaw aching, heart thudding like a drumbeat that didn’t know if it was mourning or yearning.

“Fuck,” he muttered, dragging a hand over his face, knuckles scraping the dried blood.

Not a prayer. Not a curse. Just the only word that fit.

As promised, he was on her porch before even God had the decency to open His cruel eyes.

A different shirt clung to his frame—clean enough, sleeves rolled to the elbows, fabric already damp with the morning’s sweat. The blood on his neck had dried to a dark, rust-colored smear, the gash no longer bleeding but still raw, pulsing in time with the low thrum of his heartbeat. His pants, sun-faded and torn at the knees from too many years and too many miles, hung low on his hips, cinched by a belt he couldn’t remember stealing or buying. Probably stolen. Most things he wore were.

He stood on her porch like a man waiting to be judged—shoulders squared, jaw set, the sharp scent of pine and horse and distant smoke threading through the morning air. He'd been there long enough for the wood beneath his boots to remember his weight. Long enough to forget, for a second, why he'd come. Long enough that he nearly didn’t knock.

But he did. A single, quiet rap against the door. Then another. 

And he waited.

Then, like the crack of a rifle, the door swung open.

She stood there with that same look—hard-eyed, sharp-jawed, and already irritated—as if she'd been waiting to be disappointed by him. The same look she’d worn when she clocked him in the jaw without hesitation. No greeting, no welcome—just cool appraisal, the weight of it heavy as a stone in his gut.

But behind her came the smell. Hot bread. Fresh.

And coffee—real coffee. The kind that bit at your nose before it kissed your tongue. Not the bitter, gritty sludge boiled in old tin pots over dying fires that he'd grown used to choking down. No, this had to be dark and rich, full-bodied, ground with care and made in one of those stovetop percolators he’d only ever seen once, years back in the house of a man who paid him to knock on doors and collect debts at the end of a pistol.

This place had too much softness tucked beneath all its iron. That, more than anything, made his skin crawl.

It wasn’t the warmth that unnerved him—it was what the warmth was hiding. Like a lullaby sung over the sound of a cocked hammer. And maybe it was just the smell of fresh bread and coffee messing with his head, but something about it made his teeth grind.

Apparently, it messed with his stomach too.

Hunger—his most loyal, obedient companion—curled low and mean beneath his ribs. The stolen apple he’d gnawed down to the core in the barn this morning must’ve burned off during the long, silent walk to her porch. Now it was just ghosts in his gut, and the scent of real food felt like sin.

He shifted his weight, jaw clenched tight. Starving was fine. Starving, he knew how to do. Starving meant control.

But this? This kind of morning—with the door cracked open, the smell of a real breakfast, and a woman staring at him like he was already one bad word away from bleeding again—this was unfamiliar territory.

Dangerous in a way bullets and fists had never been.

“Good thing you knew better, we’re doing maintenance today ” she muttered. She herself was a contradiction dressed in dust and deliberation. Remmick had seen his share of ranch wives from Texas to Kansas, and they all seemed to come out the same—laced up tight, soft-handed, smelling of rosewater and resignation. Gowns stitched for show, not for sweat. Their business was the kitchen and the prayer bench, not the corral.

But this one?

She wore a dress, sure—but it had been tailored by need, not fashion. Her clothes, though plainly cut, were nothing like the ranch wives he’d seen in other towns, all ribbons and drooping lace. No, hers were sharp, functional—soft blue linen sleeves rolled high, and the hem of her work dress stitched up in the front to reveal the split sewn for riding, the skirt hitched just enough to keep her mobile. A roughspun thing cinched at the waist with a leather belt that had clearly been repurposed from some old tack. She moved like a woman who had no time for pretense and even less for people slowing her down.

As she moved, the skirt shifted just enough for Remmick to catch a glint of metal strapped to the warm curve of her thigh. A pistol. Well-oiled. Tucked into a leather holster like it belonged there. Like it always belonged there. Small but mean-looking. Worn smooth at the grip. Well-loved and likely more loyal than most men she’d known. Not the sort of weapon you carry for bluff. No, that one had barked before, and likely would again.

Remmick’s tongue went dry. His boots scuffed slightly on the porch plank as he shifted his weight.

“Jesus,” he muttered, more prayer than curse. She turned, eyes sharp under the brim of her hat, or maybe just under the kind of woman-worn fury that didn’t need a brim to cast shadow.

“You see somethin’, stranger?” she asked, voice like dry rope dragged across gravel. Daring him.

He let his busted lip twitch. “Ain’t used to seein’ a woman carry with more style than the goddamn sheriff.”

She didn’t laugh. Didn’t smirk. But hell, did she glare.

“That’s why your kind ends up dead,” she said flat as winter. “Too busy admirin’ the holster to notice the barrel pointin’ at your gut.”

His hands flexed at his sides—slow, deliberate, palms open and plain for her to see. A quiet show of compliance, the kind a man made when standing in another’s domain and trying not to get shot for breathing wrong.

Not that it would’ve made a lick of difference if she’d thought him dishonest. Hell, if she’d caught even a whiff of deceit on him last night, she’d have slit his throat without losing sleep or her footing. He didn’t doubt it. Not for a second.

But what she had seen—what she’d chosen to clock, even in the dark and bleeding—were hands. Rough-hewn. Scarred at the knuckles and calloused deep enough to mark time. The kind that spoke of labor, not lies. Maybe she figured the man behind them was pitiful—she wouldn’t be wrong—but at least the hands worked. And for now, that was all he had worth offering.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, low and steady. “Duly noted.”

He should’ve sewn his mouth shut along with his habit of letting the silence seep too long three states ago, too. He thought.

“Y’ain’t no use to me if you’re feral and starving. If you make it through today, your quarters will be in the bunkhouse. Follow me.” She spat the words like grit from her teeth, already stepping off the porch before he could muster anything close to a reply.

Remmick moved aside without hesitation, bootheel scraping the wood, her braid slicing through the air behind her like a noose just shy of swinging.

She didn’t wait.

The land yawned out wide in front of them—open, blistered, and brutal in its beauty. The morning mist hadn’t yet burned off the hills, and where the sun touched the earth, everything came alive in gold. Grassland stretched in all directions like a sea with no tide. Fences twisted with time lined the edges of pasture, nailed crooked in places but still holding. A cluster of barns sat in the distance, built more from will than symmetry, and all of it sat under that cruel, endless sky that seemed to judge men just for breathing.

Remmick followed in silence, shoulders squared, sack slung over one. His new shirt stuck to the dried blood on his throat, but he didn’t flinch. Not now. Not when the wind carried the scent of horses and hot dust, not when the earth beneath him thrummed like it remembered every name that ever tried to own it and died trying.

She led with a hard gait and the posture of someone who’d never had anything handed to her—and would gut anyone who tried. His stomach knotted. Not with fear, exactly. With something adjacent.

“You always bring in strays like this?” he asked, voice low, not quite biting.

She didn’t glance back. “Only when I’m short on hands and long on bad luck.”

They crossed the wide dirt stretch between the main house and the corrals. A few ranch hands were already out—three of them near the far post fence, one tossing feed, another saddling a dapple-gray with wide, wary eyes. They paused, sizing Remmick up the way you do when something wild wanders too close to home.

“This here’s a new ranch hand,” she barked, nodding toward him like he was a burden she’d agreed to carry and might still toss over the fence. “He’ll be workin’. Don’t feed into his jawin’ if he gets mouthy. He bleeds easy.”

That earned a sharp chuckle from one of them, a broad-shouldered man with a scarred lip and arms thick with work. The others just nodded, unreadable.

The bunkhouse sat at the edge of the corral fence, framed by two drooping cypress trees that looked like they’d been praying for death since the war. The door was kicked crooked, and the single chimney spit a slow wisp of smoke like a dying breath. Remmick’s boots hit the porch hard, the wood creaking like it might buckle.

Inside, it was what he expected—barebones but built to last. Eight beds, four on either wall. Iron frames, patched wool blankets, each bunk with a chest at the foot and a hook for a coat. It smelled of old sweat, saddle soap, and damp earth—home enough for men who didn’t expect one.

“Pick a bed that ain’t taken. You live clean, you pull your weight, and you get fed. You give me trouble, you’re gone,” she said, arms crossed, still blocking the doorway like she hadn’t decided whether to stake him or let him breathe another day.

Remmick looked around, took it in. The way the lanternlight flickered low, the way one bed had carvings in the headboard—names scratched into wood like men trying not to be forgotten.

He looked back at her. “Reckon I’ll take my chances.”

“You already did,” she snapped, eyes flint sharp. “Don’t make me regret lettin’ you up off your damn knees.”

Then she was gone—boots striking the porch, braid cutting the air again like a mark left behind. He stood there a moment longer, sack still on his back, pulse loud behind his eyes. He smirked to himself—bloodless and small.

“Hell of a place,” he muttered. And chose the bed closest to the back wall. Always near an exit. Always.

Work was back-aching, sun-scorched, and unforgiving—but it was the only thing that kept Remmick upright and fed. And for a man with no kin, no land, and no right to ask for anything more, it was more than he deserved. So when they put him through the ringer—through the blistering, callous-making rhythm of a ranchhand’s first day—he didn’t spit, didn’t gripe, didn’t ask why.

He just worked.

At first light, he was knee-deep in muck, mucking out stalls older than some towns he’d passed through. Flies swarmed, biting into open scabs and sweat-wet skin. One of the older hands—name was Boone, square jaw and crooked nose—spit near his boots and barked, “Low man does the shit work. That’s you.”

By midday, he was hauling tack from the barn to the fence line, then hoisting feed bags twice his weight into the loft, each lift stretching the ache across his spine like a song that wouldn’t end. He broke a sweat before the sun had cleared the top rail of the paddock, and by high noon, it felt like the ground itself wanted to kill him.

“Move like molasses, low man,” another ranch hand jeered when Remmick paused too long, catching breath beside the trough. “You ain’t gonna make it to supper at that pace.”

He didn’t rise to it. Just rolled his shoulders and kept to the work, biting down on the inside of his cheek until it bled. His boots were caked with mud and shit, hands raw from the leather reins and rusted nails, and still he pushed on. Quiet. Focused.

Come sunset, they were cooling the horses down in the round pen—gold light catching on the dust kicked up in long, amber sweeps. The other hands had already started to slack off, laughing rough and loud, half-assing the final chores of the day. Remmick kept moving, tension roping his shoulders tight. He didn’t like leaving things half done.

That’s when the trouble started. Boone again, predictably. Bigger, meaner, and too used to being top dog around these parts.

“Hey, low man,” he called, tossing a coiled rope too close to Remmick’s feet. “You clean my bunk too, or just the shit outta my horse’s ass?”

Remmick didn’t stop. “Don’t need to clean what already stinks.”

The air shifted—like the whole ranch held its breath.

Boone was on him in seconds, kicking up dust like a spooked colt. No warning, no lead-in. Fist to the jaw, hard and sudden, sent Remmick stumbling sideways into the rails. Another tear at his already split lip, maybe. He didn’t taste it yet.

It was quick and ugly after that.

Boots scraping, dust flying, blood getting flung across the round pen sand. Boone was solid, but Remmick fought like a man who’d had every bone broken once already and still came back for more. He ducked low, caught Boone in the ribs, then came up fast and sharp with a headbutt that split skin clean across Boone’s brow.

By the time she arrived, half the hands had gathered like it was a cockfight behind the stables. Dirt kicked up thick and hot, sweat rolling down sunburned necks, and boots scuffling like the devil was keeping score. Some hollered, some wagered under breath, and Boone’s knuckles were already bloodied from the last hit when the sound of her boots split through it all like a thunderclap over dry land.

Solid. Sharp. Measured.

She didn’t shout. Didn’t even blink. She just walked in.

Through the pen gate like it was nothing more than smoke and insult. The crowd parted like wheat in the wind. In her hands, the rifle sat upright, grip easy but unmistakable. Power didn’t always come loud—and hers never needed to. It lived in her jaw, in her shoulders, in the way men twice her size took one look and remembered their place.

“The fuck,” she drawled, voice low and lethal, like flint striking steel.

The silence that followed came swift and immediate. Boone froze where he lay bleeding. Remmick, panting, blood dripping slow down his temple, held his ground but didn’t dare speak.

She moved closer, deliberate steps crunching over churned dirt, the butt of her rifle knocking Boone hard in the shoulder with the kind of force that sent him stumbling like a child caught stealing.

“Get the fuck up. What’s wrong with you?” she hissed, not even raising her voice. Didn't have to. That voice—controlled and cold—had the weight of every round loaded in the chamber.

Boone scrambled up like his pride might follow, muttering, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I just—”

She didn’t let him finish. Didn’t give him the privilege of explaining.

“There’s no fightin’ on my ranch.” The words weren’t a warning. They were scripture. “You wanna throw fists, you take it to the devil himself. But not here. Not on my dirt.”

Then she turned to Remmick, rifle shifting in her grip, mouth hard as the line of her brow.

“You wanna fight again?” she said, stepping once closer. “Come talk to my damn rifle.”

Remmick met her eyes, chest rising and falling slowly. Blood sat like warpaint at the edge of his jaw. His knuckles throbbed, the ache almost welcome. He could taste copper in his mouth, but there was no defiance in him—just that same steady grit.

“Understood, ma’am.”

Her gaze held his a moment longer, then flicked back to Boone. She looked him over like she was picking the spot she’d put a bullet if she had to.

“Clean yourself up,” she said flatly. “And both of you—get your shit together. Tomorrow’s still coming.”

With that, she turned on her heel, braid lashing behind her like a noose cut loose, stride unbroken, dust catching on her boots like the earth itself didn’t dare stick too long.

The hands all watched her go.

Remmick spit blood into the dirt, wiped his mouth, and muttered under his breath as the crowd started to break away. He looked at Boone, still nursing his ribs.

“Guess I earned my keep.”

And like she said, tomorrow came.

The sun had barely cracked the horizon, still low and bleeding gold over the hills when Remmick stepped out of the bunkhouse—first one out, boots already laced, shirt damp at the collar from cold water and sweat. Gash still sitting above it, starting the slow process of healing, of reminding. A slight ache lingered in his side from yesterday’s scuffle, but it was dulled by the familiarity of it all. Work, wounds, repeat.

She was already there. Of course she was.

Leaning against the fence like she’d been waiting all night, her hand dragging slow and practiced along the glossy flank of her stallion—a beast as black as coal and twice as proud. The kind of horse a lesser man wouldn’t even try to saddle. The stallion nickered low, shifting under her palm, muscles rippling like stormclouds beneath his hide.

“Good mornin’, ma’am,” Remmick offered, voice low but steady, rough with sleep and yesterday’s blood.

She didn’t look at him at first. Just let her fingers curl gently under the stallion’s jaw, inspecting the bridle. Then:

“You always this chipper after gettin’ your ass handed to you?” she asked dryly, eyes still on the horse.

Remmick gave a tired smirk, tongue pressing to the cut on his inner cheek. “Only when I’m still standin’ after.”

That earned him a look. Just a glance, over her shoulder—sharp, assessing, like she was measuring whether he was worth wasting breath on.

Then, after a beat: “What do they call you?”

He blinked. Not because he didn’t expect the question, but because no one had asked it like that in a long while.

“Remmick,” he said after a pause. “Just Remmick.”

She eyed him for a second longer, then gave a tight nod. “That’s different. Suits you. Sounds like somethin’ that doesn’t know when to quit.”

He huffed a short laugh through his nose. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that.”

She clicked her tongue and adjusted the cinch on the saddle. And like a tide rolling in—one that could swallow you whole but still, you watched and listened anyway—she said her name.

It didn’t slip out so much as settle. Heavy. Sure of itself. It hung in the air longer than it should’ve, like a challenge more than an offering. Like the sea cracking against jagged rock—soft if you weren’t paying attention, brutal if you got too close.

Remmick didn’t say a word in response. Didn’t dare repeat it. Some things felt sacred, even if spoken through grit.

“Didn’t peg you for a woman who gave her name so easy,” he muttered, eyes slipping between tracing your figure and the stallion.

You turned, finally facing him fully now, arms folded across your chest. Your sleeves were rolled up past your elbows, revealing forearms marked with faint scars, sun-darkened and strong.

“I don’t,” you said flatly. “But if I’m barkin’ orders, and considering that I cut up your neck, I may as well get it over with.”

The tension sat between you like an unspoken bet neither of you would admit to placing. He wasn’t afraid of you, but he was wary—and there was a difference. One you seemed to respect more than most.

“You saddle a horse, Remmick?” you asked suddenly. The sound of his name on your tongue hit him harder than your fist ever had—clean, sharp, and with a strange kind of heat that settled in his gut like a coal left smoldering too long.

It wasn’t the way you said it, not exactly. It was the weight behind it. Like you’d carved it out of something that bled and then dared him to own it.

Something stirred in him, slow and forgotten, low in his stomach—a feeling he’d long since buried beneath bruises, whiskey, and the years spent running from things with names. He bit the inside of his cheek at the sensation, jaw twitching. Couldn’t afford softness. Not here. Not with you. Not with the sun barely risen and his blood still drying under his shirt.

“I do.”

“Then grab a rope and don’t fuck up my morning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and meant it.

And just like that, you swung into the saddle and turned the stallion with one clean flick of your wrist. Dust kicked up behind you, and he moved to follow, your name rolling around his mind like a bullet chambered, not yet fired.

╭━━━━━ ━━━━━╮

The sun was sinking slow over the hills, painting everything in copper and ash. The last of the horses had been brought in, the gates secured, and the scent of hot iron and horse sweat lingered in the air. Already a week in, he’d fallen into the groove of the ranch’s work, Remmick had half a mind to scrub his hands clean and find somewhere to sit that didn’t creak or itch. But your voice came sharp behind him before he could wander.

“You walkin’ around with your head in the clouds or just lost your damn sense?”

He turned slowly, brushing the dust from his shirt. You were posted up against the barn door, arms crossed, that braid of yours falling loose and wild now, stray strands stuck to your neck from the heat. The lowburn fire in your eyes hadn’t dimmed since morning.

“Neither,” he drawled, thumb catching the edge of his belt loop. “Just enjoyin’ the quiet. Feels like I ain’t heard nothin’ but boots and barkin’ all day.”

Your mouth twitched. Not a smile—God forbid—but something passed over your face like amusement disguised as judgment. “You ain’t earned the right to complain.”

“Didn’t say I was complainin’, ma’am.” His eyes lingered a beat too long on your hands, rough and sure, the way they curled around your flask. “Just observin’. Like how you only ever call me when there’s somethin’ that needs fixin’ or lifted or carried.”

“Ain’t that what you’re good for?”

His grin curled slow, sly. “You tell me.”

You took a pull from the flask and wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, eyes never leaving his. “You’re good for bruises and trouble, near as I can tell. Don’t make you special.”

“And yet you haven’t sent me packin’.”

“You think that means somethin’?”

“Means somethin’ to me.” His voice dipped there—lower, quieter. Not sweet, not soft. Just honest in a way that made you blink once, slow and unreadable.

You stepped forward, just once, and the sound of your boots on the packed dirt was louder than it should’ve been. Close enough now that he could see the flecks of gold in your eyes, the way sweat clung to your temple.

“You want a medal for stickin’ around a week?” You asked.

“Nah. Just maybe the occasional ‘thank you’ instead of bein’ looked at like a stray dog that bit your boot.”

You looked him over, deliberate, slow. Your gaze dragged from his boots to the still-healing cut across his throat to the scar along his jaw he’d never bothered to explain. When you spoke again, your voice was quieter. Meaner, but in that way that tasted like salt and heat instead of real anger.

“You got eyes like a dog, y’know that? All hopeful and haunted. Ain’t never sure whether you’re gonna fetch or bite.”

“Would it matter?”

You held his stare for one long second.

Then you capped the flask and tossed it to him. He caught it, surprised.

“Go clean up,” you said, turning your back to him. “And don’t drink more than half, or I’ll gut you and make you work tomorrow with your liver in your hand, Remmick."

He chuckled, the sound itself felt foreign, voice rasping with smoke and sweat and something else too old to name. Not missing the use of his name, but that hungry pit in himself, sure as hell was craving the sound of it a little more.

“Yes, ma’am.”

And as you walked off, braid bouncing with each step, he took the smallest sip and kept his eyes on your retreating form. Hell, maybe you'd kill him one day. But it wouldn’t be before he saw what else that mouth of yours could do besides spit fire. That is—if you let him.

DAMNATION. Total. Inescapable. The kind that seeps, not strikes.

The nights were always the worst. Not for the work, or the faces that blurred together behind the bar, or even the endless crash of waves chewing at the black rocks beyond your window.

No—that sound had become something else. A lullaby. Crooked and ancient. The kind of tune that clings to your bones like smoke. It didn’t soothe, not really. It hovered. Whispered.

Like a hymn sung just behind your ear, in a voice too old to be trusted.

No, what unsettled you came after the lights went out. Sleep had never come easy. It arrived fractured, vivid, like slipping into another version of wakefulness where your body remained behind but something else wandered freely. The doctors once called it “sleep paralysis,” scribbled it down like a footnote in your medical chart and moved on. But in the darker and bone-chillingly quiet cracks of your mind, you figured it to be a twisted sense of familiarity

It wasn’t paralysis—it was memory. Or something close enough to rot.

You saw him there, always. A figure stitched together from shadow and something too devout to be holy—reverence soaked into every movement, every word he spoke like it might sanctify or damn you in the same breath. Dreams of knives kissing skin in acts too gentle to be violence and too brutal to be love. Hands that held you like an offering. Eyes that glowed wrong, just enough to keep you from calling them human. They burned with a light that didn’t belong to this world, red and undeniably angry, but when they were on you, it was an entirely different story. Just wrong. Too steady. Too knowing.

And God, the teeth paired with those eyes, so sharp. Sharp enough to split bone from breath, sometimes white, sometimes not, but always too many.  One word had always lingered on the edge of your thoughts, even before you knew how to spell it—before you understood what it meant. Damnation.

Not just a curse. Not the flaming, shaking-fist-at-heaven kind they talked about in church pews and hymnals. This was something quieter. Older. Something that didn’t beg for repentance because it never offered redemption in the first place.

Damnation was not a place—it was a condition. A blood-deep certainty that you had been marked, chosen not for salvation, but for ruin. That your soul had been spoken for in a tongue older than any holy text. Signed and sealed in dreams that left your sheets tangled and your heart pounding like something had been chasing you through sleep and nearly caught you.

It wasn’t punishment for sin. It wasn’t justice. It was possession.

A slow, creeping inheritance of something unspeakable. It smelled like salt and coppery blood, like storm-drenched wood and old stone. It moved through you like instinct. You’d feel it in the pit of your stomach when the world went too quiet, in the corners of your eyes when shadows moved against the grain of the light. And in those dreams—those vivid, breathless, too-close dreams—you felt it fully. His touch like worship. His voice like rot dressed in silk. A liturgy of ruin sung only for you. He didn’t bring damnation. He was it. And somehow, impossibly, part of you was too.

You didn’t fear him. Not exactly. Despite the way his form shifted—familiar one night, monstrous the next—he was never made to be purely feared, or even truly frightening. There was something reverent in him, something patient. No, the fear didn’t lie in him.

It lived in the part of you that reached back. Or maybe not you, exactly—not the version you see brushing your teeth in the mirror, not the one who pays bills and walks the shoreline with salt-stung eyes. That version felt like a decoy, a performance of normalcy. The one in the dreams… she was older. Wiser. Willing. And somehow, terrifyingly, more true.

There were days when the boundary between the two began to blur, when waking up didn’t feel like waking, just moving from one version of consciousness to another. Days when your reflection seemed slightly off—as if your body remembered things your waking mind tried to forget. The dreams had lasted so long they no longer felt like dreams at all. More like bleed-through. A haunting with no clear source. And on the darker days, the ones where the sky felt too still and the silence too loud, a part of you couldn’t help but wonder: what if your dream-self isn’t separate? What if she’s always been you?

And what if he’s not just following you into your dreams— but waiting for you to remember what you really are?

That, in itself, was your damnation.

Not the holy kind. You weren’t raised on pews and psalms, didn’t bear the weight of stained glass judgment or whisper penance through trembling lips. You didn’t kneel beneath crucifixes with bruised knees and bloodied prayers like the wives in town—those women with salt-bitten hope clinging to their throats, who beg for husbands the sea refuses to return when it storms just right, cruel and alive. Though even that grief, in some crooked way, felt familiar to you too. Like you’d once known what it meant to wait on a shoreline for something that would never come back.

But no—this wasn’t religion. This wasn’t the devil in red or the wrath of any god written in someone else’s book. This was personal. This was knowing. A damnation etched into the marrow of your bones, whispered to you in dreams that smelled like brine and blood. It didn’t ask for belief—it didn’t need it. It knew you. This wasn’t a punishment handed down. 

It was a homecoming. 

But tonight, while the dreams always feel as real and vivid as your heart beating. This stirred differently, closer and too near on the horizon to be deep in the far depths of your mind. 

You dream of that same man with rough hands. They move over your skin with the certainty of someone who’s done it a thousand times—someone who’s bled for the right. His palms are wide and calloused, like he’s spent whole lifetimes carving out places for you in the dark. He doesn’t touch you like a stranger. He touches you like a man who built you up, broke you, buried you—and never stopped coming back.

You don't know his name. Never really have.

But in the dream, he says yours like it’s sacred. Like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to whatever soul he still has left. He kneels between your legs, jaw tight, eyes darker than sin. His mouth is hot against the inside of your knee—soft, reverent.  Your stomach pulls tight, breath catching in your throat.

“Mine,” he whispers into your skin. “Always been. Always will be.”

There’s a scar on his collarbone. Fresh, jagged. You don’t know how you know, but you gave it to him. A mark left in another life. One where you wore knives the way other women wore perfume.

You don’t know this man, no matter how familiar he is. But in the dream, you know how he sounds when he’s falling apart.

He mouths down your thigh, murmuring filth like prayer, eyes half-lidded like this is the end of the world and he’s choosing to spend it between your legs. You should be afraid, you think you were, once—but all you feel now is heat and grief.

His hands tighten on your hips. His tongue moves like he remembers every time you've ever broke, just like this.

“Still taste like sin,” he growls, mouth full of you. “Still so fuckin’ mean.”

You writhe beneath him. You don’t know why you're crying. You don’t know why it hurts.

There’s a weight to it. A mourning. This isn’t the first time.

This is never the first time.

“Don’t leave me again,” he says.

And it’s that line—that broken, gutted plea—that shatters the dream.

You wake gasping. Sheets twisted around you like chains. The room is cold but your body is slick with sweat, skin flushed and humming like a fever’s still clinging to you. Your heart hammers in your throat. Thighs aching.

You stare at the ceiling, blank-eyed, trembling. Hands no longer feeling like your own.

You've had dreams before, always had.  Vivid ones. Strange ones. But this—this was different. This felt real. Like a life lost. Like a man you buried. You don’t know him.

And still, you're sure, after years spent tangled in sheets that no longer bring comfort—he’s looking for you.

╭━━━━━ ━━━━━╮

You slipped into what looked, at first glance, like your own little slice of heaven on earth. A quiet coastal town buried deep along the East Coast, the kind people send postcards from and never truly leave behind. You arrived like the fog that drapes the shore most mornings. Quiet at first, uninvited, but somehow meant to stay. Even if just passing through, you’ll still be here when the tides roll back in. The kind of town where the buildings don’t sag from age alone, but from the weight of stories pressed deep into the earth. Stone walls cracked with salt and time, quaint to the untrained eye, but if you looked closely—really looked—you’d see the carvings. Etchings. Traces of lives that never quite left, lives the sea took without asking.

The wind doesn’t just whistle, it claws. Scratches at your windows, as if it knows your name, as if it’s been waiting for you all along. The sea that surrounds the town speaks in a language older than words. Not in waves or spray, but in something older. Older than maybe blood itself—ancient, low murmurs that awaken something buried deep within your bones.

The place is silent not because it’s empty, but because it holds too much memory. If you stand still enough—listen beyond the hush and the roar—you’ll catch its whispers. Names of forgotten places, footsteps that vanished long ago, shadows of lives once lived and never fully laid to rest. The soil here is heavy with blood and claim, a patchwork of hands that took without asking, resting over bones denied peace. The salted mist clings to you like a second skin, a quiet mourning that seeps into your very being. No matter how raw you arrive or how much you try to wash it away, it remains—wrapping around you, pulling at your soul, like the land itself recognizes you as one of its own.

Your Home. 

Though today, beneath a deceiving sky and promising clouds, the sun shines bright and the tides bring ships of men and women finally coming home. The town hums with a restless energy today—the docks alive with the sounds of creaking wood, shouted greetings, and laughter tangled with the sharp tang of salt and smoke. Mariners, returned after months of chasing horizons far beyond the map, pour off their ships with rough hands and tired smiles, clutching letters, gifts, and stories that shimmer with hope and heartbreak alike. The air buzzes with the weight of reunions, farewells, and the quiet promise of another voyage yet to come. Amidst the scuffle of footsteps and the town’s rising hum, your bar remains still—quiet as breath held underwater. It waits, as it always does, behind its stone walls, patient and expectant, listening for the voices that will soon fill it again. Your shoulders rest the way they always do after a night like the last—tense, worn down by a treacherous sort of familiarity. Not quite pain, but close. Not quite peace, either.

A tiredness that settles deep in the bones, edged with something stupidly hopeful. You wait for the only kind of relief you know how to ask for—not rest, not escape, but that strange, addictive calm that money can’t buy but often pretends to: the clink of glass, the scrape of boots on old floors, the same familiar faces with the same half-truths on their tongues. A little penance, a little pleasure. That masochistic ritual you’ve built your life around. 

Your bar. Your haven. Your crown.

“Busy night tonight. Y’ready to see everyone?” 

You didn’t turn right away. Just stood for a moment, eyes on the sea, its silver surface breaking like cracked glass in the late sun. Your voice came easy, even if your mouth pulled a little crooked with it. “You know, I see enough of everyone when they owe me money.”

A low chuckle answered you. Boots scuffed wood behind you, the weight of someone used to slipping in and out of places unnoticed.

“You know, most people might say that with a smile.”

You finally looked over your shoulder, slow and deliberate. “I’m not most people.”

There was a pause—just long enough for the breeze to lift the edges of your coat, to let your perfume coil into the salted air like something sweet laced with danger.

“That’s what they say, anyway. This godforsaken place. Whole damn town talks like it’s yours and you’re just lettin’ the rest of us drink here outta pity.” Carmen teases, light and playful as he is.

He's young—too young for the weight he carried behind the bar—but bright in that firecracker kind of way. All sharp teeth and quicker wit, brash enough to mouth off to sailors twice his size and charming enough to get away with it. He moved like he’d been raised in places with neon signs and trouble on tap, but something about the Crown suited him. He was exactly the kind of respectable you liked to keep on payroll: knew how to pour a drink, shut down a fight, and make a broken man laugh—all without ever letting on how carefully he was watching the room. He said things with a grin, but his eyes were always checking exits.

Just smart enough to survive. Just loyal enough to stay.

You turned then, fully, one brow raised, lips curled in that almost-smirk you were infamous for.

“It’s not pity. It’s taxes.”

The Widow’s Crown was the heart of the town—its pulse, its compass, its crown jewel. A bar tucked into the craggy cliffside like it was carved straight from the bones of the sea. Stone walls, stained glass in storm hues, a fireplace that crackled year-round like it knew secrets, and a back room only the brave or the stupid asked about.

Locals whispered that the land it sat on had been cursed or blessed depending who you asked. That your name was etched into the foundation somewhere, beneath the floorboards or deeper still, down in the cellar where no one but you ever went. The truth was simpler: you’d earned it. Fought for it. Outlasted men who tried to own it and townsfolk who thought you too sharp to hold anything soft.

You rebuilt it with salt and spite—stone by stone, drink by drink, until the walls held your shape better than your own skin ever did. Now they come to you. Always.

For drinks. For comfort. For penance.

The very things you chase yourself, just dressed different— burning in their throats as liquid courage, slipping through your veins as sleepless nights and hollow comfort. Familiar devils, all of them. And somehow, still so welcoming. Still so easy to mistake for home.

And tonight, the sea brings them back in droves—sunburned sailors, ghosts wrapped in skin, wanderers who remember your name even when they shouldn’t. “You pourin’ tonight, or is that honor left to your poor trembling staff?” 

“Depends. You planning to behave, Carm?”

“Not in the slightest.”

You just rolled your eyes and turned toward the Crown’s doors—painted black, scuffed by boots and years, still shining like a secret—throwing over your shoulder:

“Good. I hate a slow night.”

And it wasn’t.

The evening bloomed loud and warm, thick with the scent of brine, sweat, cheap perfume, and something cooking slow in the back—probably stew, possibly regret. The Widow’s Crown filled like a throat: laughter wedged between throaty shouts, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder, boots thudding against floors worn down by too many storms and too much living. The jukebox flickered alive like it needed to be summoned first. The first song it spat out was older than half the sailors inside—gritty guitar and a voice that sounded like it smoked three packs a day and made love with a knife tucked in its boot.

Glasses clinked like windchimes in a storm. Someone passed around a story that wasn’t true—about a siren, or a curse, or a woman who walked into the sea and never walked out—and no one cared enough to correct it. Not here. Not tonight. 

You moved through it all like a current—barefoot in your boots, sharp-eyed, that rag always slung over your shoulder like a flag no one dared question. The crooked half-smile you wore wasn't an invitation, and everyone knew better than to mistake it for softness. You poured drinks. You counted cash. You made someone cry in the hallway without saying much at all, and someone else fall in love by the jukebox just by listening a little too long. You reminded the room—without raising your voice, without even really trying—that this was your place. You didn’t run the Crown. You were the Crown.

"You're late," you said flatly when Carmen finally slid behind the bar, shirt wrinkled and smelling faintly of oranges and gunpowder. "You're early," he shot back, ducking beneath the swinging shelf with all the grace of someone used to being chased.

“You work here, dumbass.”

“Debatable,” he muttered, already flipping a bottle upside down with one hand and wiping the sweat off his brow with the other. “I prefer the term essential presence.”

“Keep talking like that and I’ll make you essentially unemployed.”

He grinned, all teeth. “That’s the spirit, boss.” 

Across the room, Old Lemmy—the drunk with a glass eye and a tattoo of a flamingo he swore was a phoenix—slapped the table and yelled, “Where’s my goddamn drink, woman! I’m dyin’ over here!”

You didn’t even look up. “Lemmy, you’ve been dying since Nixon resigned. If it’s taking this long, I’m not rushing it.” The bar howled with laughter, and Lemmy wheezed so hard he nearly fell off his stool.

“You’re cruel,” Carmen muttered, pouring him a whiskey anyway.

“You’re soft,” you replied, lips twitching. “That’s why I keep you around.”

Near the jukebox, Birdie—sweet-faced, sharp-tongued, and back from her third divorce—was already telling someone half her age to stop breathing near her unless he had a boat or better cheekbones. She winked at you across the bar like you were in on a secret. You were.

You always were. Everyone inside had their place, their rhythm, their role to play. You just happened to be the one who remembered how the script went when they forgot their lines. Someone leaned too far over the bar and you stepped forward, not saying a word. He backed off with an apology before your hand even reached the rag on your hip. Respect came easy here. Not out of fear—but because they knew you’d earned it.

Carmen slid you a glass of water you didn’t ask for. “Hydrate or die, boss,” he said. You took it, downed it, rolled your eyes. “I swear, if I ever go missing, they’ll find you at the bottom of the harbor with my boot in your ribs.”

Carmen just smirked. “At least I’ll die hydrated.”

The night spun on, full of sharp turns and too-loud laughter, sweat-slicked forearms, sloshed drinks, and the kind of camaraderie that stung a little the next morning but never quite disappeared. And through it all, you stood at the center. Like a lighthouse. Or maybe—like the storm that breaks against it.

But time, like the tide, always rolls back. And when the last round poured, when the stories grew slurred and the ghosts of the sea called their children home, the night changed.

The laughter faded. The sailors filtered out with the last of their pay tucked in calloused palms. Music dimmed into memory. And the salt in the air thickened—not bright and bracing like a summer breeze—no, this was heavier. Older. Like the tide had dragged up something it shouldn’t have, and now the town was bracing for its scent. You kicked the door closed behind the last straggler and twisted the lock. The sound echoed, too loud.

The bar swelled with the sea’s return. Outside, the fog began to gather. Not the soft kind that kissed your cheeks and vanished with the wind—but a thick, bone-deep kind. The kind that didn’t move so much as settle. Stubborn. Intentional. Like it had been called here. 

You stood in the threshold of the Crown, arms crossed, gaze locked on the docks below. From this cliffside view, the town looked like it was sinking beneath pale ghosts of clouds. Streetlights flickered down the narrow streets, amber pinpricks in a wash of gray. Footsteps grew quieter. Doors clicked shut. 

Even the gulls had gone silent. All that remained was the sharp-teethed wind and the crash of waves gnawing at black rocks—daring anyone still standing to feel it, to bear witness to the sea’s temper without flinching.

The days that followed moved like the storm circling slow, waiting for the right time to strike. There was no rain yet, no thunder—just that hush that comes before something breaks. Despite the new faces that rolled in with the tides—sunburned tourists and wandering souls looking for something nameless—there were still those who had lived here long enough to know better. Men and women weathered by salt and time, whose skin remembered storms even when their mouths refused to speak of them. They’d seen the sea show its teeth. They’d lost half the town to it, years before the wind ever began whispering your name too.

The town loves cruel, in its own way. A deep, briny kind of love. Gentle only in its consistency. It seduces the naive with postcard charm, then leaves them cracked and hollow, forgotten in doorframes and stonework. You’ve seen it happen more times than you can count—tourists who stumble in under starlight and salt, only to leave pieces of themselves behind. Not always by choice. It’s a funny thing to witness. But so unmistakably human.

Over time, you’ve learned the rhythm of it all. The faces that return. The ones that never leave. The patterns—of footsteps, of stories, of half-truths rinsed and repeated. Calloused hands gripping scuffed glass, promises passed across the bar like currency. It’s all part of the tide. They come bearing sea-dreams and sunburned hearts. Eyes strung with salted hope, voices worn thin from chasing the horizon. But with them—always—come stories.

Tales whispered late, when the lights are low and the whiskey’s burned clean through the throat. Of creatures with eyes too sharp to be human. Of voices that echo too closely to the ones you hear in dreams. Of things that look like people, but aren’t. As unforgiving and brackish as the waters that birthed them.

Hungry things. Waiting things. And lately—you’ve begun to think they might not be stories at all.

First, like it always have started with, came your damnation. Like it always had for as long as you could remember. Tonight, a new image surfaces, one that always follows, always clings: arms around you. Strong ones. Holding you like you’re already gone.

They’re warm, yes, but not comforting. Not safe. It’s the kind of warmth that comes from fire licking too close to skin. Desperate arms. Pleading hands. A grip that trembles, not from fear, but from refusal. They love you, you think—whoever they belong to. But it’s a love that feels misplaced, off-kilter. It doesn’t fall soft like morning light or stretch out slow like trust. It crashes. It clings. Reverent and forceful. Obsessive. A love that wants not just to keep you, but to claim you. Like an oath. A curse.

You don’t know why you’ve chalked that haunted embrace up to love. Maybe because you’ve never really known what love was supposed to feel like. Or maybe because whatever this is—this endless, hungry thing that holds you in dreams and memories and waking shadows—wants you so deeply it feels holy.

But even holiness can rot—can calcify into something brittle and cruel. It doesn’t strike with the hand after it’s fed you, but as it does—a sanctified cruelty, masked in comfort, bleeding you slow with grace still on its tongue.

Another night, another dream that leaves you wrecked. You wake the way you always do—panting, pulse slamming against your throat, sweat slicking your skin like a second, fevered layer. There’s a familiar ache—deep in your chest, sharp between your legs—and it’s so goddamn specific, so precise, it almost feels like punishment.

Twisted. That’s what it is. Downright fucking twisted.

You lie there staring at the ceiling, trying to catch your breath and think—not for the first time—that maybe you’re the fucked up one in all of this. Maybe you hit your head as a kid. Maybe you buried something so traumatic your brain decided to toss you scraps of it in cinematic, semi-erotic nightmares. Maybe this is just how madness blooms—Soft at first. Slow. Sensual, even. And then, all at once, it lives in you.

These dreams don’t just haunt you. They know you. Have been haunting you for longer than you care to admit—long enough that whole years have blurred, and you’re not sure if they’re memories or reruns. Moments you feel in your bones but can’t pin to a place, to a date, to a version of yourself that ever really existed. Time doesn’t run straight in your world. It bends. It folds. And it leaves you chasing after ghosts you’re starting to think might’ve once been you.

Is this that imposter syndrome bullshit Carmen’s always rambling about when he’s three shots deep and pretending he’s a therapist?

Because if so—great. Spectacular. Guess you’re officially losing your mind at your grown-ass age. Perfect timing. Really.

Then came the eeriness. Not the kind you feel as a kid, tucked in a blanket fort whispering ghost stories with wide eyes and sticky fingers. Not even the kind that creeps in on a lonely walk through town when everything’s gone too still, too quiet—when the streetlights flicker and you swear the shadows breathe.

No, this was something else. Something older. Hungrier.

This was the kind of eeriness that drained a person—not just their nerves or their sense of safety, but their essence. Their warmth. Their blood.

The morning sun broke sluggish through the fog, bleeding gold across the wet stones and half-drowned streets. The sea had not receded so much as curled back to watch. You showed up to the Crown early, as always. Keys biting your palm, shoulders tight beneath your jacket, throat sore from the dream you couldn’t shake. You hadn’t slept—not really. You just laid there for hours, haunted and raw, your body still echoing with phantom touches and that voice, his voice, whispering ruin like a promise against your skin.

Still, you moved. Still, you worked. That’s how it always was.

The windows were fogged and beaded with sea spray when you unlocked the front. The jukebox flickered like it had seen a ghost. You cleaned. You stocked. You counted out registers with a precision that had nothing to do with money and everything to do with control. You’d nearly convinced yourself it was a normal evening by the time the regulars started trickling in.

“Storm's rollin' in slow,” one of the dockhands muttered, shaking off rain from his coat. “Don't they always?” you replied, not looking up.

But there was one new-old face at the bar today. Captain Eli. A relic of the docks. A man with sea-glass eyes and fingers like driftwood—bent and brittle, stained by pipe smoke and salt. He’d been around since the town’s teeth first showed. Sometimes you forgot he was still alive. Sometimes you wondered if he was. He sipped his drink like he didn’t have teeth and started talking like he didn’t need an audience.

“Saw fog like this once before,” he rasped, voice dragging like an anchor chain across the floor. “Back in ‘77. Cold as death. Fog so thick it swallowed a man whole. Sea gave ‘im back a week later. Hollowed out. Eyes still blinkin’. Mouth full of someone else’s name.”

You didn’t flinch, but your jaw went tight. Someone near the bar chuckled. “Just a drunk sailor’s tale.” Eli didn’t laugh. His stare locked onto you.

“Nah. Some places remember. Some faces too. They come back wrong, though. Same skin, new time. But they carry things. Like scars. Debts.” You stopped wiping the glass in your hand.

“My grandpa had seen it. Woman just like you once, long time ago. Mean as a cut lash and sharper than God’s own sword. Married a man who didn’t stay dead. Or maybe he just refused to stay gone.” A silence fell so deep you could hear the gulls scream outside.

You met his gaze and spoke low. “You see a lotta things that ain't there, Cap.”

He smiled with only half his mouth. “Maybe. But some of it sees me back.”

And then, just like that, he turned to sip again. As if he hadn’t cracked the spine of a nightmare and left it open on the bar between you. You walked away slow, each step deliberate. But the hairs on the back of your neck stayed raised. Because his story felt more like a memory than a lie. And somehow—you knew he wasn’t talking about anyone else but you. The night carried on. At least, it tried to.

Voices rose, laughter echoed, and the Crown did what it always did: held the town’s secrets between its stone ribs and didn’t spill a drop. Men came in with weather-worn hands and salt still in their boots, nodding greetings, passing flasks, scraping chairs loud across the floor. You poured drinks like always. Cashed out the machine. Fixed the jukebox when it spat static instead of song. But it all felt… off.

Like a memory you didn’t know you had. Like déjà vu with blood under its nails. Every word the old sailor had rasped was still rattling around in your head like storm wind in a boarded-up attic.

“Married a man who didn’t stay dead.” “Same skin, new time.” “Carried things. Like scars. Debts.”

You didn’t believe in curses. Not exactly. But you knew the feel of something following you. You’d felt it your whole life—lurking just behind your reflection, moving beneath the skin of your dreams, speaking in a voice you swore you never learned but knew in your bones. Tonight, it whispered louder.

You moved through the bar like a ghost in your own body. Wiped tables, nodded politely, smiled when you had to—but your hands kept twitching. Like they wanted to grip something. Like they remembered holding a blade, perhaps even a rifle. And then came the words. Not out loud. Just there. In your mind. Words that didn’t belong to you. Not really.

“What a fool you were, to love him past the grave.”

“Don’t ask a promise from a man you have to bury.”

You didn’t know where they came from, but they sounded older than the floorboards beneath you. The captain looked at you once across the bar, like he heard them too. He raised his glass halfway, eyes shining with something just this side of recognition.

“Y’know,” he said, voice low, dragging like low tide, “we used to say it different, back then. Before the war. Before the sea took half the town.”

You raised a brow. “Say what?” 

He swirled the amber in his glass. “Love. Damnation. Fate. We didn’t call it that. Called it binding. Called it reckoning. Said some women were born with blood that called monsters to their door.” You swallowed, throat dry.

“And what’d they do with women like that?”

He smiled, all teeth. “Married ‘em. Then buried ‘em. Never stopped loving ‘em.”

You didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. The words were in you now. Like a second pulse.

Mine. Always been. Always will be.

You stared out the bar window then. Toward the black mouth of the ocean. Toward the fog that hadn’t lifted since last night. Something inside you ached—not fear, not grief—something more like homesickness. But not for a place. For a moment. A face. A name you couldn’t say without bleeding. You were forgetting something. Or maybe—remembering it. And still, the bar kept humming.

The sailors told stories they barely believed themselves. The drinks kept flowing. The jukebox played a song older than it should’ve been allowed to remember. And Eli, half asleep in the corner, muttered something into his glass that sounded like a prayer.

“Let the sea take him this time.”

You didn’t ask who. But for a second, you wished you knew. Deep down, maybe you did.

And just like that—like the slow, unexpected drip of a cracked fountain—everything stopped.

Abrupt. Jarring. Like a needle screeching off a record mid-song, leaving behind a silence that felt too sudden, too knowing. The storm, still coiled somewhere out beyond the horizon, still clinging to your skin and leaving your bartop slick with condensation, simply… stilled. Not gone, not over. Just paused. Like the whole damn world had exhaled—one long, tired breath held too long.

It reminded you of those rare moments behind the bar—you, Carmen, and the poor souls that got roped into the shift—sinking onto overturned crates, backs pressed to liquor boxes, a stolen cigarette making slow rounds between burned-out hands. Not rest, exactly. Just a break from the chaos. The kind that doesn't last long, but hits like grace when it comes. Time, it seemed, had taken one of its own. And for a second, everything felt too quiet.

And yet, your irritation? Very much alive.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” you snapped, slamming a towel down hard enough to rattle the bottles behind you. “Get this son of a bitch outta my bar before I personally handle it. Where the hell is Jaime?!”

Carmen popped up from the back with a half-eaten orange slice in his mouth. “He’s bouncing some frat guy who thought the jukebox was voice-activated.”

“Ain't that a damn miracle,” you muttered. “Then someone else can bounce this one—preferably out the front door and into oncoming traffic.” The offender in question—a sunburnt, tank-top-wearing caricature of bad decisions—was currently arguing with one of your servers about why he shouldn’t have to pay for the drink he spilled on himself.

“Babe,” the tourist slurred, gesturing with a lime wedge like it was a threat. “I’m just saying—where I’m from, the customer is always right.” You were already halfway around the bar.

“Where you’re from, do customers get their teeth knocked in for being dickheads, or is that just a charming local tradition I can introduce you to?”

The guy blinked at you like you’d just spoken Latin. “Whoa, no need to be hostile—”

“I’m not hostile,” you said, sweet as cyanide. “I’m fucking working.”

Before the conversation could evolve into something more physical, and oh, it was close, Jaime appeared—broad, silent, and cracking his neck like punctuation.

“Please escort this pile of Axe body spray out of my building,” you said, already turning back toward the bar. “And if he resists, consider it cardio.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jaime rumbled, hand already on the guy’s shoulder. “Hey—hey!” the tourist protested as he was hauled toward the door. “This is, like, discrimination or something!”

“Yeah,” Carmen muttered, passing by with a tray of dirty glasses. “We discriminate against assholes. Tough break, man.”

The bar laughed—your people. Your locals. The townies. Regulars who knew to duck when glass flew and when not to test your temper. You swept behind the bar again, mood dark as thunderclouds, lips pressed into that dangerous little smirk that made grown men shut the hell up.

Carmen handed you a fresh towel. “Feel better?” he asked.

You shot him a glare sharp enough to cut rope. “You wanna join him?”

He held up his hands. “I’m just the talent, boss.”

You rolled your eyes, but the corners of your mouth twitched. Outside, thunder groaned low and slow—like it approved. Despite the growing irritation thrumming just beneath your skin from the frat boys, the condensation, the low hum of thunder that hadn’t cracked yet—you were, admittedly, beaming on the inside. Quietly. Secretly. Like someone hoarding the last piece of chocolate or the best corner booth in a diner.

Because for once, you weren’t running on fumes and stubbornness alone. The stillness tonight? It wasn’t empty—it was earned. With the storm’s pause came something better: ease. A rare, elusive creature in your world. You hadn’t opened the bar this morning, hadn’t dragged yourself in at dawn on pure caffeine and curses. Instead, you’d woken hours later to a room still dark with fog, sheets wrapped loose around your limbs, your body heavy with the kind of sleep that didn’t ask questions or pull you under screaming. Inky silence. No dreams. No whispers through the cracks in your memory.

Just...nothing. And it had felt like a blessing.

Nine hours. Maybe ten if you counted the blurry half-conscious phone call to Carmen where you’d slurred something about prepping ice and not setting anything on fire. He’d grunted something in reply that vaguely sounded like “yes, boss,” and you’d hung up before your brain caught up.

You’d slept, by your very loose and slightly cursed definition of the word, like a goddamn baby. No ache in your chest. No tremor in your thighs. No sweat-soaked sheets or phantoms pressed too close. Just warmth. Stillness. Peace.

You’d even stretched when you woke up—stretched, like some self-care influencer and not a woman who usually started her mornings with a shot of whiskey and a half-forgotten scream into a cracked mirror. And now, even as you wiped condensation off the bar with more aggression than necessary, even as you threatened to personally exorcise the next tourist who mispronounced the town’s name—you felt the echo of that rest clinging to your bones. It wasn’t much. But it was enough.

Enough to make the thunder seem poetic instead of ominous. Enough to let your smirk linger a little longer. Enough to make you think—maybe just tonight—you’d make it through without a dream dragging you back under.

But even that peace, small and stolen, carried a warning. Because the calm always came first, before the sea took something back. And your body, whether it remembered it or not, had always known how to brace for the storm.

Sweat clung to the base of your spine, a thin sheen catching on the small of your back and soaking deeper into the black tank top stretched across your shoulder blades. It stuck tighter with every shift and lean, every dip between tables and worn barstools, the humid air turning skin to velvet and breath to fog. The kind of heat that softened the bones and sharpened the edge of every sound. Heat that made even the ghosts restless.

The Crown boomed with unmistakable pulse despite it all—rowdy, salt-laced, a little mean like all good places should be. Boots dragged across warped floorboards slick with sea-damp. A woman's laugh broke too loud and too fast, slurring into something just shy of a yell. Carmen was yelling back, of course, but it was the charming kind—him snapping a bar rag at someone with that shit-eating grin, bright eyes catching yours across the room.

You gave him a nod. Wiped the back of your neck. Told yourself you weren’t imagining the way the condensation on the windows seemed to crawl upward instead of down. The regulars were in rare form. Ricky, with his chipped tooth and lifelong tan, was in his usual corner nursing the same whiskey he’d been pretending to sip for twenty years. He was mid-story, as always, and by now you could mouth along with it like a song. “And I told the bastard, you ever touch my boat again, I’ll gut you with a spoon!”

Laughter followed—boisterous, a little too easy. “Bet you tripped over your own feet trying to get to that spoon,” someone heckled. “Hell, he probably drank the boat dry!” another shouted.

You smiled without thinking. Tossed a lime slice across the bar at Ricky’s head. It missed. Barely. He flipped you off with the kind of affection only earned by pouring a man drinks for a decade and dragging him off the floor at least twice a month. “Love you too, sweetheart.”

But then the jukebox hiccupped. Not skipped. Not glitched. Just… stopped. A single note held a little too long, like something got caught in its throat. You looked up. Carmen paused mid-pour. It started again a beat later—different track, older one. One that hadn’t been in rotation for months. You frowned. Made a note to check it later. Or maybe not. These kinds of things happened in the Crown. Electrical, magnetic, or just plain weird. It wasn’t new. Still, something about it crawled up the back of your throat and sat there. You shook it off.

Someone slammed a shot glass onto the bar. “Another round, boss lady!” You poured. Wiped your hands. Turned just in time to see the ceiling fan slow, its blades groaning like they’d aged fifty years in the last minute.

And then you heard it—faint. A scrape. Like nails dragged gently across the underside of a table. Like someone whispering their name just barely out of earshot. Your head snapped toward the hallway. Empty. Just the shadows stretching long and crooked in the corner, bending a little wrong in the flickering light. You blinked. They straightened. Carmen was talking again, someone was singing along with the jukebox, a glass shattered somewhere near the bathrooms and two patrons laughed like they’d seen it coming. But underneath all that—beneath the sweat and salt and noise—something pulled. Tugged low in your stomach like a muscle memory. Like recognition. And then it bled through.

Not a vision, not quite. Just a feeling. A warmth that wasn’t from the bar’s heat. A pressure at your throat, gentle and possessive. Hands that weren’t there, but once had been—holding your hips, lifting you, laying you down on something not a bed but not the floor either. Stone maybe. Wet. Cold. Sacred.

You sucked in a breath so fast it burned. The bar kept moving. You didn’t.

For a moment, your eyes didn’t belong to you now. They belonged to another room, another life. Dim candlelight. A mouth full of devotion and ruin against your skin. A voice rasping your name like it was a prayer and a threat all at once.

“Mine,” he’d said. You hadn’t heard it in this life.

But your body remembered it. A gust of wind swept through the Crown. It rattled the windows like a tantrum. Every flame flickered. Glasses wobbled on shelves. Then the door creaked. You turned slow. Then—A gust of wind.

It swept through the Crown with no warning, no cause. Just… entered, like it owned the place. The windows rattled with a fury that didn’t match the calm on the street outside. Flames in their low glass homes danced frantically. One blew out entirely. Glasses trembled against shelves. A napkin lifted off a table, floated, then dropped in silence. You turned slow. And there was nothing.

No figure in the doorway. No tall silhouette carved in lightning. Just the door cracked open an inch too far, letting in a mist that curled around your ankles like it had fingers. The storm, settled now, breathed soft against the threshold. A cold that sank deep but didn’t bite. You exhaled. Long. Slow. Practiced. The kind of breath you’d taught yourself to take when the dreams got too loud.

The ache in your ribs eased, just slightly. Then came Jaime’s voice. Firm, but not urgent. Just that steady, dependable calm he carried when things started to fray around the edges.

“Bar’s almost at full capacity… got a guy outside askin’ if he can come in.” You blinked—like waking up.

Your fingers found the towel at your waist, gripping it hard enough to feel the fabric bite. “Yeah,” you said, voice still a little hoarse from whatever that was. “Let him in. Just… keep an eye out, alright? Tourists are one thing, I don’t need this place flooding or fists flying in the middle of all this.”

Jaime nodded. You didn’t need to say more. He was good like that. And just like that—Normal resumed.

But something had shifted. Not the kind you could see. Just a thread in the weave gone tight. The seal had broken. You could feel it. Like a draft you hadn’t noticed until it sank into your skin. Minutes that dragged like hours passed, and then the tide came in. You were mid-pour when the Crown tipped sideways into chaos.

Not the violent kind—no, just the usual barroom mess: someone on Carmen’s end of the counter didn’t show, a table of locals were halfway through a bottle and demanding fries like it was their divine right, and the cocktail shaker was jammed again, refusing to come loose unless you used the heel of your palm like a weapon.

You didn’t flinch. You moved. Like tidewater—brisk, automatic, and always knowing where to go before anyone else did. It was muscle memory. Breathe. Step. Smile.

Carmen shot you a panicked look from the far end. You already knew. Section three was slipping. Someone no-showed, and now you were the net. You pivoted off your heel and wove your way into it—your rag slung over your shoulder, boots scuffing the floor, voice low and cutting as you flagged two college kids who were trying to steal shot glasses again.

You didn’t notice the door open with Jaime’s invitation. You didn’t hear it either—not over the hum of the jukebox, the clang of the kitchen, the bark of laughter from a group of off-duty dockworkers. It wasn’t until you turned, trying to steady a tray with two whiskey sodas and a plate of wings, that the air changed.

Like sea mist, an odd man was just—there. No thunder. No drama. Just presence.

You didn’t even look at him first, your mind too full of orders and numbers and that familiar throb behind your eyes that always came on busy nights.

“Give me a sec,” you said out of habit, turning toward the bar with the tray still in your hands, the words barely formed.

Then—He spoke. Only a jumble of three muttered words.

“‘Scuse me, ma'am.”

Simple. Low. Soft like silk dragged across old wounds. You turned without meaning to. And the tray in your hands nearly tipped.

It wasn’t that he looked familiar. It wasn’t recognition. It was the gut-punch of déjà vu without memory—the sense that your body had already knelt for this voice in a life that wasn’t yours. The rest of the bar seemed to hum around him, but nothing touched him. Not the heat. Not the sound. Not even the mist that clung to his coat like it had followed him in from the sea itself.

He wasn’t wet. But the scent of rain came with him. And like it had been waiting for his permission, the storm broke. A crack of thunder. Then the slow, deliberate tap of rain on the roof. First soft. Then steady. Then relentless.

And you—you just stared. The tray slid from your fingers and thunked softly onto the bar. Not broken. Just forgotten.

And somewhere deep beneath the Widow’s Crown, the sea shifted.

“Can I get you anything?” Your voice came out soft as a daydream, but as certain as the thunder that now boomed proud and bashful right outside your doors.

His eyes flicked up at the sound of you—cerulean, deep, and sharp around the edges like the sea right before it swallows a boat. He barely reacted. A single twitch, maybe, just a hair widened—but you caught it. You always caught things like that. Reading faces came second nature. Especially the ones that wanted to be unread.

He sat too still. Back straight, elbows resting stiff on the bartop like they didn’t belong there. His clothes were wrong, too—off in a way that set something low in your stomach turning. Black work pants, sure, the kind dockhands wore, but too clean, too pressed. Like he wanted to pass. Gray shirt clinging to a chest that told you he wasn’t new to violence, no matter how carefully he stood. You could’ve sworn—just for a breath—his eyes took on that same deep gray when they shifted under the crackling firelight, dripping down from blue like wet ink. And then that chain. Gold, delicate-looking, stretched tired across the pale column of his throat. Like it had been worn too long and he'd exhausted it. Like it had belonged to someone else first.

The leather jacket was the final nail. Too many pockets. Too many places to hide something sharp. Closed up tight like a confession not meant to be spoken, like a damn secret. Like he was trying to look like he was playing nice. He looked like a secret pretending to be a man.

In all honesty, it fucking irked you. 

The silence that followed your question went on too long—long enough to feel pointed. The heat in your chest twisted, coiling like a storm all its own, the ember of your earlier mood flaring hotter behind your eyes.

You leaned in just slightly, arms crossed, smile long gone.

“You gonna keep staring, or can I help you, sir?” Your words bit, soft and polite only in form. 

The way he swallowed at it—sharp and slow—should’ve been a sign that he was nervous, his throat bobbed. But maybe, if you really were as delusional or insane as your dream-soaked mind liked to suggest, he was satisfied with being bitten and chewed up. Even if it played as being soft, if it was you. And that—more than anything—was what really set your teeth on edge.

And then, only then, after soaking in what was barely more than a nip, he smiled. Crooked and slow, like he was in on something you hadn’t been told.

“Just lookin’ for a respectable place to ride out the storm, ma’am. Nasty one, isn’t it?”

His voice dripped like warm honey, coating each word in a tone that sank beneath your skin—soft, slow, and deliberate. It prickled as it landed, made the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention. That alone was the first red flag: he wasn’t from here. No one local spoke like that.

His accent was strange, but not off-putting—Irish, unmistakably. But laced with something else, something Southern and smooth at the edges, like bourbon poured over old songs and Sunday confessions. The kind of voice that didn’t belong in this town full of hoarse laughter and salt-split vowels.

Just like him—he didn’t belong.

And in this sea of familiar faces, of regulars you’d poured drinks for a thousand times and traded insults with like they were currency, he stood out like a ghost in rainsoaked moonlight. Strange. Unsettling. And yet… undeniably familiar. 

That caused the flames riding high and mighty behind your eyes in that steady and blinding pulse, to move to lick at your throat. You weren’t sure why you were so goddamn irritated at this peculiar stranger, it almost left you speechless, almost.

You blinked, your mind catching up with your body too slow, too dream-drunk for your liking. Still, your voice came out smooth. Steady. A practiced thing, even as the air around you thickened like it was listening.

“Respectable’s a stretch,” you said, cocking your head as your eyes dragged over him, shameless and sharp. “But if you’re lookin’ to keep dry and outta trouble, you picked the wrong night and the right place.”

His smile twitched wider, and you hated the way it made your chest tighten—hated it so much you wished your words had been meaner, sharper, cruel enough to split skin on contact. It was a strange thing to hold against a stranger, really. Irrational. Petty. But that didn’t make it any less true.

Because despite all that he was—strange, unsettling, far too composed for a storm night—he was still just a man. And yet, you felt the need to bare your teeth like he was something else entirely.

You turned then, forcing your attention back to the bottle of whiskey itching with cold sweat and anticipation next to your elbow, shoulders tense with the weight of something unnamed. Something old. 

“What’s your poison?” you asked, voice clipped. Because suddenly, the storm wasn’t just outside anymore.

It had walked in, slow and smiling, and asked for shelter.

blearing, white-hot pain shoots through the side of your neck, and a gasp tears through your throat. it is so sudden—so sudden, and you barely have time to understand how you ended up how you did. 

he had grabbed you, holding you so close to him—his arms wrapped around your waist, holding you upright while his tongue licked lazily up your neck. 

“shh…don’t cry. it’ll be alright.”

he had murmured against your ear, breath hot and dripping with thirst. 

it was a cruel thing.

cruel in the way it stole breath before you could even scream, in the way it mocked the simplicity of your night—how only minutes earlier, your hands had been warm, reaching for the last pair of drawers on the line, the wind tugging gently at your nightgown like a teasing friend. you had only stepped off the porch. just a few steps. just to gather what was yours.

and then he was there.

the roughness of his grip was so sudden, so wrong, it split the air like a crack of thunder. your body flinched on instinct, mind fumbling to catch up to the moment—was this real? did you know this man? were you dreaming? but the pain blooming beneath his fingers on your arm told you otherwise. told you this wasn’t the kind of nightmare you could wake from.

you had opened your mouth to say something—anything, but no words could escape before his teeth—no—fangs punctured your neck. 

his rough tongue darts quickly, his mouth slurping as your blood—warm and tangy—leaks down your neck from where his mouth hadn’t been quick enough to catch. the splatter of it spills onto your cotton nightgown.

a movement—sudden, but clear, spills from him. more so, from the space where he is pressed up against you. a stuttering breath passes through your lips at the contact.

he’s flushed up against you, and aside from the blearing pain flying through your body, you feel him pressing into your bottom.

he ruts against you, chasing the friction provided. he lets out a sound—a whine, you assume through the mind fog. 

a heat flushes through you—sudden, unprovoked, and sickening. it crawls beneath your skin like a fever you didn’t ask for, one that sets your nerves on fire in all the wrong ways. shame follows fast behind it, swallowing you whole. it pulses in your fingertips, clenches in your gut, coats your teeth like bitterness.

you hate that you feel it.

hate that your body reacts at all.

because the pain—sharp, raw, burning—should’ve been enough. but somehow, it’s the shame that lingers heavier. shame that makes you feel small. shame that makes your skin feel too tight. shame that makes you wish you could disappear, not because of what’s happening, but because some awful part of you believes you’re supposed to bear it.

the suction of his mouth grows sharper for just a second—you swear he’s going to drain you. just before he can, you feel his head snap back, the crimson fluid he just stole from you dripping down his chin, coating his cheeks.

“oh….oh.”

your head slowly turns, and you spot his eyebrows furrowing as he glances down to the space—or the lack of—between you.

he seems confused as his eyes scan the way he fits against you—firm and hard, like instinct. like muscle remembering what the mind had long tried to forget. Like something inside of him is remembering something he had buried and traded for the concept of survival. 

his mouth opens with a smack, before it slowly forms into an ‘o’.

you’re sure he’s about to say something when suddenly, he presses forward, flushing his chest to your back, ripping a gasp from your throat.

“i…i don’t think this is ‘posed to happen’”

his breath ghosts over your ruined neck, and the confusion falls from his lips.

a groan, low and abrupt, passes through his blood-stained lips. it’s a sound that doesn’t belong to hunger or pleasure—it’s uncertainty. reluctance. it rumbles like a warning he doesn’t understand himself, and it sends a jolt through your body, sharp as a spark beneath the skin. your breath catches. you’re not sure if it’s fear or revulsion or some terrible, trembling mix of both.

your eyes flit back to the porch—to the basket where your clothes lay, spilled and crumpled in the dirt. a shirt hangs over the edge like it’s reaching for you. the sight guts you.

you had dropped it when he grabbed you.

your arms had been full of ordinary things.

of clean linen, still warm from the sun.

and all you want now—achingly, desperately—is to return to it.

“please,” your voice comes out with a breath—choking up in your throat, “…let me go.”

he pauses. 

the arm around your waist tightens and it causes a soft gasp to sound from your throat. 

“why you wan’ me to let you go?”

his nose pokes into the bite mark on your neck, eliciting a wince from you. the question comes out a bit uncertain—like he’s confused as to why you want to leave him like this.

“you don’t feel this,” he punctuates his word with a rut against you. “you can’t leave me like this.”

the tone in his voice is desperate—needy even, causes you to freeze.

confusion laced with desire falls from his mouth. his rough, hot tongue darts out to lick at your neck once more. 

a sound of disgust slips through your mouth—sharp and guttural, rising before you can stop it. it’s instinct, raw and trembling, the only thing you have left to give.

he pauses.

just for a breath. just long enough for the air between you to shift.

then he pulls back—confused, maybe stunned—and that retreat is all you need. you don’t think. there’s no space for thought. only a surge of heat.

you ram your head back, hard into his chin. bone meets bone. the crack echoes inside your skull like a church bell rung wrong.

a grunt tears through his lips, and his hold falters.

you move. not gracefully, not cleanly—

just fast. just desperate.

you push forward, wrenching yourself out of his arms. your feet slam against the cold grass, slick with dew, and the ground tilts underneath you. your vision veers sideways, spinning from blood-loss, from panic, from the weight of everything all at once.

“s-stop! you can’t leave me like this.”

his voice rings out behind you—desperate, yearning, maybe even startled—but it feels distant, like it’s echoing from underwater. you don’t dare look back. the only thing you see is the porch rising in front of you like salvation.

your legs nearly give out as you reach the steps, but you launch yourself upward, stumbling and scrambling until your body crashes against the door with a dull, aching thud. pain flares along your shoulder, but you don’t stop. you brace for the worst—for the hard slap of wood refusing you, for the cruel slam of a locked world.

but you’d left it cracked.

you don’t even remember doing it, but thank god you had.

your body falls forward, toppling past the frame in a blur of heat and breath and blind panic. the wooden floor meets you with a thud, and for a heartbeat, you just lie there—half-sprawled, half-curled, heart pounding against the floorboards like it’s trying to get free of your chest.

past the threshold.

inside.

safe.

the door was still splayed open, and you could hear the heavy boots of him pacing on the worn wood of your porch, but you didn’t care. didn’t care how or why he couldn’t just walk in and take you right back out.

no. you didn’t think that far, and as the weight of the blood-loss settles over your body like a wet blanket, your eyes roll to the back of your head. 

——————

it had been a week. 

a week since you had stepped outside your house at night. 

that morning—when the light finally broke across your floorboards like a quiet apology—you woke with your head pounding and your mouth dry as cotton. every part of your body felt sore, like you’d been wrung out and left in the sun too long.

he was nowhere to be seen.

no shadow. no sound. no sign he’d ever been there at all.

but you knew better.

you didn’t step outside. not even once.

you stayed inside your home, locked behind the door like it was the only thing keeping the world from splitting open again. a strip of cloth was pressed against your neck, stained from the wound that throbbed beneath it. the ache pulsed steady with your heartbeat—a quiet, cruel reminder.

your fingers stayed curled around the handle of a kitchen knife, white-knuckled and still trembling, long after the sun had crept across the room. even when your hand went numb, you didn’t let go.

he didn’t return that day. or the next.

you didn’t want to worry, but a part of you still clung to the idea that he was out there, waiting. waiting for you to slip up so that he could grab you once more.

by the third day, you decided to continue on with your life. stepping outside onto the porch with your breath held in your throat.

he wasn’t there. 

the sun beat down heavily across your home, and the clothes line danced with the wing—rustling gently.

that night, you dreamt. 

your body jolted with each thrust, already caught in the storm, and his voice—ragged and wild—only pulled you deeper under.

“say it… s-say my name!”

it came out in a near-snarl, not cruel, but desperate. like the sound of a man barely holding himself together, trying to find something to anchor to as he pounded into you with reckless, trembling need.

but your voice—

it wouldn’t come.

your mouth opened, but nothing formed, just broken gasps and choked cries, your face still buried in the pillow, now damp with sweat and spit. your throat ached with moans you hadn’t meant to make. you were unraveling, bit by bit, your body pulsing around him, clenching tight as the pressure in your belly twisted into something unstoppable.

his hand on your clit didn’t let up. if anything, it grew more deliberate—ruthless in its rhythm. his thumb swirled over you, hot and slick, heavy and rough as your hips twitched uncontrollably. every nerve in your body was alight, the sound of his groans behind you nearly as dizzying as the slaps of skin and the bed frame straining beneath the force of him.

his cock throbbed inside you, each stroke deep and hurried now, dragging against your swollen walls like he was trying to carve his name into you from the inside out. the sound of it—wet, sharp, filthy—filled the room like a song that only your bodies knew how to sing.

and then it happened.

your body locked.

your toes curled.

and your lungs emptied.

a sharp cry tore from you—his name half-formed, almost there—as your climax hit, sudden and all-consuming. your vision blurred as your body convulsed, waves crashing through you so hard you nearly forgot where you were.

he let out a strangled groan behind you, his hips jerking erratically, chasing your release with his own. his cock twitched deep inside, and with a hoarse, broken sound, he spilled into you—warmth flooding you, filling you, marking you.

he rode it out, his body pressing down on yours, hand still moving, dragging the orgasm from you until it left you limp and shaking beneath him.

your fingers finally released the sheets, trembling, and you gasped into the pillow like it was the first breath you’d taken in years.

your mind blanked.

you woke with a startle—your body jerking, breath caught sharp in your throat like you’d been yanked from the depths of something unspeakable. heat flooded you, thick and sudden, pooling beneath your skin as if you were still there, still lost in it.

your chest rose and fell too fast, lungs aching from how hard they worked to steady you. your hands clutched the sheets without realizing, the fabric damp beneath your palms. your mind, still fogged with fragments, tried to twist back into itself—tried to make sense of what was real and what had only felt that way.

your thighs rubbed together—and you felt it.

a wet, sticky warmth clinging to the soft skin between them. slick and unmistakable. your breath hitched as the realization hit you, and a wave of shame surged through your chest so suddenly, you flinched.

“fuck…” you whispered under your breath.

your fingers curled tightly into the fabric of your nightgown, bunching it against your stomach as if the pressure alone could make the feeling go away. like you could press the memory down, flatten it, bury it under cotton and guilt.

your mind spun, trying to make sense of why him.

why that.

you didn’t understand why you dreamt of him in such a scandalous, filthy way—why his hands, his mouth, his body had felt so real.

why your own body responded like it wanted it.

like it remembered.

your face burned.

hot and clammy to the touch, even in the cool quiet of your room.

you squeezed your thighs together, trying to contain the pulsing ache that hadn’t yet faded. it sat there, low and heavy in your gut, begging to be soothed. your fingers twitched at your side, and for a split second, you almost let them drift lower.

but you stopped yourself.

you clenched your jaw and shut your eyes tight, pressing your legs together like a seal. like that would hold back the memory of his name falling from your lips, the feel of him stretching you open, the sound of skin slapping and breathless groans in your ear.

————

by the end of the week, you felt as though he was truly gone for good.

the silence had settled again, not like a threat this time, but like dust returning to undisturbed corners. no voice behind you, no shadow in the tree line, no sudden breath against your neck. just the wind. the sun. the familiar creak of the porch beneath your steps.

it didn’t take long before you slipped back into the rhythm of your days—those quiet, outdoor chores that had always grounded you. you began hanging clothes again, your fingers brushing the warm fabric, sunlight catching the edges of the sheets like a blessing.

in the back of your home, you knelt beside your small herb garden, pressing your fingers into the dirt like it could anchor you. rosemary. sage. thyme. they greeted you like old friends, unaware of what you’d endured. or maybe they knew—and simply chose not to ask.

the peace didn’t last long.

on the sixth night, he returned.

you’re taking the clothes down that had been drying all day—like you had before, when he first got you. 

a crack sounds behind you.

sharp. sudden. too close.

your body jerks, instincts sharper than thought, and your head whips around—fists clenched tight around the soft fabric of a freshly-dried gown. your heart lurches upward, caught somewhere between your ribs and your throat.

your body knows before your mind.

knows the rhythm of danger. the hum beneath the skin.

and without a thought, your feet begin to move—gravel crunching beneath them as you pull yourself toward the front door like safety is just inches away.

“wait.”

you hate how you stop.

how the sound of his voice roots you in place.

there’s something in it—something cracked open. desperate. searching.

and for some godawful reason, it reaches you.

your feet freeze.

your head turns, slow and reluctant, toward the right.

and there he is.

dressed in dark pants, suspenders hanging loose like they’d been tugged too hard, too fast. a pale blue button-up clings to his frame, sleeves rolled, top buttons torn clean open. it might’ve once looked neat. now it clings to him like second skin—filthy, sweat-soaked, streaked in places with grime and something far worse.

blood.

so much of it.

his brown hair is tousled and damp, the front sticking to his forehead in matted curls. and beneath the fabric, the white of a wife-beater peeks out—though it’s barely white anymore. more a rusted red, like someone had tried to scrub the stain but it refused to fade. a thin gold chain glints against his collarbone, catching the moonlight like it doesn’t realize it’s resting on a monster.

your eyes widen.

your breath catches.

you take a step back. your heel digs into the dirt. and still, your gaze is fixed on him—on the smear of blood across his cheeks, dried and flaking at the edges, like war paint. it trails down his throat, painting the lines of his neck, seeping into the cotton of his shirt. it looks fresh.

his mouth opens as he takes a step forward.

you take a step back—slow, deliberate, your heel skimming the earth like you’re testing the ground beneath you, unsure if it will hold.

“i ain’t goin’ to hurt you.”

his voice is soft. too soft. like he’s trying to fold himself into something harmless, like he doesn’t still have blood on his face, like he didn’t tear through you once already. it’s a tone that might’ve calmed you in another life. in this one, it makes your stomach turn.

your fingers clutch the dress tighter, knuckles paling with the strain. you can feel the seams of the fabric pressing into your skin, grounding you, even as your body begs to run.

you want—desperately, urgently—to look back. to see how many steps remain between you and the safety of your door. but you don’t dare move. not even your eyes. not when he’s watching you like that. not when you know how quick he can close the space between you.

even the smallest glance away might invite him forward.

“you hurt me before.”

the words fall from your lips before you’re ready. soft. strange. unfamiliar.

the sound of your own voice jars you. it doesn’t sound angry. it doesn’t even sound afraid. it sounds… disoriented. like the memory has begun to blur around the edges, melting into something that doesn’t make sense anymore. like you’re not certain if it happened the way you remember. if it happened at all.

and that terrifies you more than anything.

because you know what he did.

your body still remembers, even if your voice has started to forget.

your mind flits back to the dream—the dream that had you gasping for air once you’d awaken. 

it’s strange. 

here, in front of you, was the man—the beast—who had held your life in the palm of his hand, threatening death with a final pull of your blood into his mouth. 

and now, all you could think about was the way he rubbed against you—like the feeling was both foreign and enticing to him. 

he lets out a strained laugh.

“yeah. you’re right about that, b-but, i ain’t goin’ to do that again. 

“how can i trust you?”

your voice is more certain this time around, and your hands fall to your sides, still holding the dress in your hand as your chest moves with your breaths.

the wind sweeps between you.

he takes another step forward and you mirror by taking another step backward.

his arms lift, elbows jutting out wide as his hands settle on top of his head. his fingers thread through his messy hair, gripping at the roots like he’s trying to hold something inside from breaking loose.

then comes the sound.

low, cracked—something between a groan and a whine.

“please… why is this happenin’ to me?”

his voice trembles at the edges, and for a moment, it almost sounds like grief. like confusion twisted into something uglier. and that unsettles you even more. because this isn’t remorse. this isn’t shame. it’s self-pity—sharp and misplaced.

you blink, heart rattling in your chest.

you have no idea what he’s talking about.

and the not knowing—it’s beginning to twist in your gut, cold and tight.

he starts pacing, erratic and restless, but still a good distance off. far enough that you can breathe. far enough that you don’t yet have to run.

“i’ve been runnin’ ‘round everywhere,” he mutters, almost to himself, his voice thick with something that borders on frustration. “drainin’ folks left an’ right…”

he pauses, his body stiffening.

“but i ain’t do this with them.”

his arms drop heavily to his sides, and then one hand presses flat against his pants—lower. against himself.

your breath stutters.

the gesture is crude, almost unconscious, like his body is betraying him, like he doesn’t know what to do with what he’s feeling. and that’s what makes it worse. not the motion itself, but the fact that he’s unraveling—right there in front of you.

and you’re the one he’s unraveling over.

you take a step backward, slow and cautious, and the snap of a small branch beneath your foot cuts through the quiet like a shot.

he stops.

his head turns toward you—slow, deliberate, like he already knows exactly where you are. his eyes lock onto yours, and something in your chest flinches. not from fear. not entirely.

no, it’s something else.

something low and stirring, unwelcome but real, curling hot in your belly beneath the weight of his gaze. it shames you the moment it blooms, but it doesn’t leave. it sits there, twisting—because the look in his eyes isn’t hungry for blood. not right now.

he looks torn.

like a man fraying at the seams.

like something inside him is breaking open under the weight of a need he doesn’t understand—had forgotten was possible. a craving that wasn’t sharp teeth and crimson thirst, but touch. closeness. something unbearably human.

he takes a step forward.

you don’t move.

“help me…” he breathes, voice cracking as if the words pain him. “i won’t hurt you. just help me feel better. yeah?”

he inches closer, each step careful, almost reverent, until he’s within arm’s reach. and now, this close, you can see it all—his chest heaving, the tension in his shoulders, the way his pants strain from how tightly he’s wound. how unbearably pent up he is.

your eyes flick down. just for a second.

your cheeks flush hot, instant and humiliating, and you curse yourself silently—clenching your jaw as if that alone could rewind the moment. your body had again. as if it hadn’t learned.

he doesn’t let you answer.

he takes another step forward, slow and deliberate, like he’s afraid any hesitation might send him unraveling again.

your empty hand flies up on instinct, palm raised between you like a barrier made of sheer will.

“stop,” you say.

but your voice—god, your voice—comes out too soft, too unsure, trembling on the edges. it betrays you, just like your body does.

he doesn’t stop.

he keeps moving until your hand meets his chest, firm and burning beneath your touch. his skin is hot through the thin fabric, and the moment you make contact, a sound spills from him—deep and broken. a groan laced with something softer, needier. a whine.

his head dips slightly, his breath brushing your skin.

“see?” he murmurs, voice thick, ragged. “see what you’re doin’ to me?”

it takes every ounce of strength to keep your gaze on his, to hold steady beneath the weight of him. but the tension in his body, the ragged rise of his chest, the way he looks at you like you’re both his torment and salvation—it all pulls your eyes downward.

just for a second.

just long enough to see his hand again, pressing against himself, slow and deliberate.

resuming what he had started.

and your breath stutters.

“stop. i don’t know you.”

your voice is firmer this time, but there’s a crack running through it.

a hairline fracture of fear, of confusion, of something far more complicated than either.

his eyes stay locked on yours, wild and pleading.

“remmick,” he breathes.

“what?”

you blink. it comes out before you can process it.

“my name,” he says again, faster this time. “remmick.”

he says it like it means something. like it should unlock something in you.

he pauses, as if waiting for it to take hold, and then looks up—right into your eyes.

“say it. please.”

your hand is still on his chest, trembling now, caught between pushing him away and holding him there. your lips part, hesitating, uncertain. but the sound slips out anyway.

“remmick.”

that’s all it takes.

his body shifts—subtle but unmistakable—as if the word pierced straight through him. he leans forward, just slightly, like he’s being drawn into you by gravity itself. one of his hands lifts, and he presses yours harder against his chest, like he needs to feel it. like he needs proof that you said it. that it’s real.

a soft moan escapes him, low and shivering, the sound pulled from somewhere deep. it curls around you like smoke—dangerous, intimate, and far too close.

a sensation shoots through you—sharp and strange—sparking low in your belly and crawling up your spine like a current. your body shudders, betraying you before you can make sense of it. you suck in a breath through parted lips, and that’s when you catch it.

he’s close.

so close, you can smell him.

not just blood, though that’s there—metallic, sharp, and thick like it clings to him from the inside out. not just dirt either, though earth clings to his clothes, the scent of sweat and soil mingling on his skin. there’s something else. something older. colder. something that reminds you of decay, of things buried and forgotten. it lingers in the air around him like a warning.

your voice trembles as it slips past your lips, low and unsure.

“if…”

you pause, swallowing hard as your thoughts struggle to take shape.

“if i help you… will you let me live?”

your eyes dart away from his, just for a second.

you don’t mean to. but holding his gaze for too long feels like surrendering.

remmick pauses.

it’s slight—barely a beat—but you feel it in your bones.

“i was always plannin’ on keepin’ you,” he murmurs, and something about the way he says it makes your stomach twist. “couldn’t do that if you’re dead.”

his voice has changed. not just the words—his whole way of speaking. the southern drawl softens, thins out, and something else bleeds through. a different cadence. older. maybe even his real voice. it startles you, but you can’t quite place why. it sounds less put-on. more him.

he studies your face—eyes flicking across your features like he’s trying to read a language only he remembers.

then, a slow smile curves his lips. not smug. not cruel.

curious. certain.

“tell me you feel it too.”

you want to say no.

you want to recoil, to push him away, to scream that this is wrong, that none of this makes sense, that nothing about him feels safe.

but your body—traitorous, aching, alive—gives you away.

because as you look at him, at the hunger and confusion tangled in his expression, something warm begins to spread through you again.

you gather the courage to turn from him, your eyes flicking toward the back door—your door. the one that had always meant safety, the one you weren’t sure would feel that way ever again.

“i can’t let you in.”

the words leave your mouth like something sacred. like a boundary you hope he might honor.

his smile deepens, slow and knowing.

“i know, darlin’,” he says, voice like worn velvet. “you’re not stupid.”

the way he says it isn’t mocking. it almost sounds like admiration. like he means it.

you glance back at him, chest tight, and exhale a shaky breath. your hand softens against his chest, settling there beneath the warmth of his palm—no longer resisting. not quite yielding. something in between.

“okay.”

you barely get the word out before the world shifts.

suddenly, you’re in his arms—lifted with startling ease, pressed tightly against his chest like you belong there. a shocked gasp rips from your throat, your arms instinctively grabbing hold of whatever they can, unsure whether to brace or cling.

his feet move fast, sure, and then the cool slam of the outside world hits you again—your back porch beneath you, the creak of old wood under his boots.

your feet touch down onto the dirty boards, but you barely feel them.

your back hits the wall of your house, and his chest meets yours.

you’re trapped—surrounded by the scent of him, the warmth of him, the tension that radiates off his body in waves. the wall behind you is cool and hard, but his body in front of you burns like fever. he’s close. too close. and yet somehow not close enough for him.

something in him shifts—slow, subtle. like the current inside him changes direction and he doesn’t know how to follow it. you feel it in the way his body stills, then trembles slightly, pressed so tight against you that every breath he takes stutters against your chest.

you can feel him—hard and insistent—pressing into your thigh through the worn fabric of his pants. the weight of it, the heat, the way it pulses with no rhythm but his rising need.

he seems… lost.

remmick’s eyes flicker, wild and unsure, and when you meet them, there’s something desperate there. not hunger like before—but confusion. like his body remembered something his mind didn’t. like he had no idea what to do with this kind of ache.

you search his gaze, trying to find a map inside him. something that tells you what he wants. what he expects. but there’s nothing clear. only the trembling look of a man who doesn’t remember how to feel without violence.

then he lets out a groan—low and helpless—as his hips push forward, grinding against your thigh with a need he doesn’t seem to know how to contain.

your body jerks in surprise.

a sharp breath tears from your lips as the movement drags heat through you, low and dizzying. it coils in your belly, thick and sudden.

you hadn’t meant to respond.

but now that you have, you can’t pretend not to feel it.

“do something, please.”

his voice breaks apart as he speaks, breath coming in fast, shallow bursts. he begs through it—through the way his hips keep chasing the friction, rutting against your thigh like it’s the only thing anchoring him to the earth.

you swallow hard, nerves tangled with something warmer, something you don’t want to name. your fingers twitch where they rest, and you shake your head, barely able to speak.

“i–i don’t know what to do,” you confess, voice thin with uncertainty.

and it’s true.

you’d never been with a man like this—never one so far gone, so undone, so completely at the mercy of his own body. and even if you had… you never learned how to give this kind of touch. never learned how to bring pleasure to anyone other than yourself, never thought you’d have to.

but something about the way he presses into you, so frantic and confused, stirs a reluctant kind of empathy in you—mixed with fear, with heat, with a strange pull you can’t understand.

your gaze drops.

his hips are still moving, slow but desperate, grinding into your leg like he needs more and doesn’t know how to ask for it. something about it makes your breath catch.

almost without thinking, your hand moves down—hesitant, shaking—and you press your palm gently against him, through the fabric of his pants.

he freezes.

utterly.

and then a sound tears out of him—a moan, raw and broken, rising from the pit of his throat like it surprised even him.

his body shudders under your touch, rigid with restraint, but trembling like he’s seconds from falling apart. your hand stills where it rests, the heat of him burning through the cloth and into your skin.

your palm presses down harder, instinct guiding your movements more than experience. and that’s when you truly feel him—solid, straining beneath the fabric, the heat of him radiating through your skin like a fever. the bulge stretches wide beneath your touch, filling your entire hand, every inch of him throbbing with need you can’t begin to comprehend.

he lets out a choked breath, and then his hand shoots down—larger, rougher—covering yours. he presses it harder against himself, hips stuttering like he’s chasing something that keeps slipping just out of reach.

“it’s not enough,” he pants, voice cracking as his brows draw together, his face twisted in a mix of agony and need.

you feel your face burn at the words—at the implication of what “enough” might mean. your breath falters, throat tight, but your hand doesn’t move away.

instead, your fingers twitch.

they curl slightly, without thinking, just enough to grip.

the reaction is immediate.

he winces—a shudder running through his body like a jolt of lightning—and his mouth parts with a sound that’s somewhere between pain and pleasure.

“don’t stop.”

his voice is strained—hoarse, almost fragile beneath the weight of his own desire. like stopping would shatter him entirely.

your mind flickers back, unbidden, to the dream from a few nights ago. the one that clung to your skin even after waking. in it, he had been so sure of himself—so commanding, so in control. his hands had known where to touch, his mouth had known what to say, and you had given yourself over without question. there had been no trembling. no hesitation. only heat.

but this—this trembling, panting version of him pressed against you now—this was the opposite.

and yet it didn’t cool the fire in you.

it stoked it.

your heart pounds harder, your face flushing hot as the realization settles deep: he hadn’t felt this in a long time. maybe ever. the touch, the friction, the aching pleasure that left him shaking in your hand—it was unfamiliar to him. and yet he clung to it like it was the only thing keeping him whole.

and you… you were the one giving it to him.

there’s power in that. not the kind that demands or dominates—but the kind that hums quietly under the skin. the kind that says he needs you. not just for blood. not just for survival.

but for this.

and that truth alone makes your breath catch, your thighs press closer, the warmth between them blooming hotter, heavier.

you tighten your grip just slightly—just enough to feel him shudder again.

his breaths come out ragged now—uneven, trembling, like every second that passes without release is too much for him to bear. his hand stays pressed over yours, holding you there, grounding himself in the heat and pressure of your palm.

“take ’em off.”

your voice is steadier this time. firmer.

and it surprises even you.

not because of the words, but because of the confidence. the realization blooming slowly but surely in your chest—that you hold him. literally. completely. his need is cradled in your hand, and his body responds like it’s never known this kind of touch before.

remmick glances down, eyes locking onto the way both of y’all’s hands are still cupping him. and something flickers across his face—raw, unfiltered desire.

he doesn’t speak. doesn’t hesitate.

he scrambles, fingers fumbling at his belt, unbuckling in rushed, uneven motions like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind if he takes too long. the sound of metal scraping against metal, the zip of fabric—it’s frantic, loud in the quiet space between you.

you watch the way his hands move—desperate and clumsy—and when you glance up, your breath catches.

drool.

thick, glistening, slowly spilling from the corner of his mouth. it stretches into a line, gleaming in the light, trailing from his parted lips as if his body is unraveling faster than he can control it. his jaw hangs slack with need, his eyes half-lidded and glazed.

then his pants fall open, and your hand moves without thought—slipping beneath the waistband of his underwear to grasp him fully.

he gasps—loud and shuddering—and his hips buck the slightest inch forward, as if chasing the warmth of your palm. in that same instant, the line of drool falls, landing wet and hot on your wrist, sliding down over your skin like a mark.

the feeling of his drool sliding warm over your wrist sends a jolt through your body—strange, electric, exciting in a way you can’t fully explain. your thighs press together instinctively, the heat between them building with every breath he takes.

he’s heavy in your hand.

hot. stiff. pulsing with need.

his body leans forward, barely held up by the tension in his muscles. his head tips back, exposing the column of his throat, jaw slack as he pants through parted lips. he’s a mess in your hand—completely undone, breathless and sweating, helpless to anything but the touch you’re giving him.

but your strokes falter.

he’s slick with sweat, and it’s more of a struggle than you expected. your hand catches slightly with each movement, and you glance back up at his mouth, remembering the way that thick drool had spilled from his lips.

you pull your hand from his pants.

at the loss of contact, he stutters—broken and breathless.

“why?”

your face flushes, warmth rising all the way to your ears at what you’re about to ask.

“spit in my hand.”

his eyebrows pull together—not from refusal, but from the sharp spike of desire and confusion. his mouth parts slowly, and then he obeys, cheeks hollowing as he draws the drool forward.

his tongue slips out, mouth wide and willing, and thick strings of spit fall heavily into your waiting palm.

you watch it.

watch how it glistens, how it coats your skin, warm and obscene and intimate.

your hand stills for a beat as you take in the weight of the moment—how close he is, how his body is giving you what you need to bring him pleasure.

then, slowly, you lower your hand again.

your fingers wrap around him, slick now, and the difference is instant. your strokes glide smoother, faster, and his body reacts with shudders and gasps. his hips twitch and his head falls forward, forehead nearly brushing yours.

a ragged moan rips from him, and his hand slams against the wall beside your head, bracing himself—because now he’s truly falling apart.

“s–shit!”

it rips from his throat, a sharp groan laced with more than just surprise. there’s something else in it—something raw, starved. hunger, yes, but not just for release. for you. for more of your touch, your attention, your hand wrapped around him like it was meant to be there.

you move with growing confidence now, dragging your hand up his length until you can tug him fully out of his pants.

he winces as the cool air brushes over his flushed skin, a tremor running through him at the sudden contrast. the heat of his body meets the cold of the world, and he shivers—but doesn’t stop you. not even close.

you see him fully now.

hard and flushed, the tip red and glistening, a thick vein running the length of him like a path carved straight to your hand. pre-cum beads at the head, already smeared down his shaft from where your palm had moved over him before, mixing now with the slick sheen of drool still coating your fingers.

your fist wraps around him again, deliberate and slow, and the combined wetness allows you to stroke him with ease. the sound is soft, wet, and rhythmic—his breaths syncing to the motion like he can’t help it.

his body bows slightly, every muscle tensing, like he’s trying not to collapse from the overwhelming pleasure you’re building in him.

he tenses beneath your hand, muscles locking as your strokes grow faster, more assured. his body is trembling now—not from fear, but from how close he is to falling apart completely.

another thick line of drool slips from the corner of his mouth, trailing slowly down his chin. you watch it for a moment, caught in the daze of his unraveling, until your eyes lift—drawn instinctively to his face.

and then you gasp.

his eyes are open.

not fully, but enough.

cast downward, glazed over with pleasure. but just enough to catch it.

a glint. a glow.

red.

dark, pulsing, unnatural—like embers caught in the low light. your breath hitches in your throat as you stare at it, transfixed, and then—almost like he knows—he slams them shut, a sharp whine escaping him.

“aah… wait,” he pants, his voice trembling. “something’s happening…”

you know exactly what.

you feel it in the way he twitches in your hand, in the pulsing warmth building at your palm, in the desperation threaded into every sound that falls from him.

so you don’t stop.

you go faster. tighter. focused.

his hips jerk forward, chasing the friction like he can’t help it, and a strangled moan breaks from his throat. his whole body hunches over you, trembling, until his forehead comes to rest against your shoulder, breath hot and ragged against your skin.

“please,” he gasps—voice small now, breathless—as his head turns just slightly, his mouth nearly brushing your neck.

you smell it.

blood.

copper-sweet and heavy on his breath.

then a deep, guttural sound tears up from his chest—a growl soaked in something ancient, primal—but it breaks halfway through, collapsing into something softer. weaker. almost… pathetic.

and then he tenses, hard.

his whole body locking, shaking in your grasp as he finally lets go—spilling into your hand and across the front of your nightgown in hot, thick pulses.

there’s a moment of silence.

thick, heavy.

the only sound is his breathing—hot and uneven—ghosting over your neck, brushing the skin there with every exhale like he’s still tethered to you by need alone.

your hand remains around him, even as he begins to soften, your fingers still slick and warm. only once he’s completely spent do you slowly pull your hand away in one long, fluid drag. the motion makes him flinch, a gasp slipping through his lips at the sudden overstimulation. his hips twitch, but he doesn’t speak.

he stays still, suspended in the hush between you, before his head tilts up. there’s something open in his expression—tender, maybe. something you’re not ready for. his lips move closer, and you know before it happens what he’s trying to do.

he wants to kiss you.

your head turns, just slightly. your eyes soften, but the word comes quiet.

firm.

“no.”

it’s barely louder than a breath, but it lands like a weight between you.

his eyes close slowly, and he leans his forehead back against your shoulder—not angry. just… quiet.

your legs are still pressed together, thighs tense, breath held. your nightgown clings damp against your stomach, the fabric sticking to your skin where he’d spilled across it. the reality of it hums through you, the scent, the heat, the knowledge that you let it happen. that you made it happen.

then you feel it.

his nose against your neck.

the slow inhale.

he’s smelling you.

your body stiffens.

for a second, terror scrapes at your spine. you think—maybe he lied. maybe this is the moment. maybe he’s going to sink his teeth into your throat and finish what started a few days ago. your heart races.

but he doesn’t bite.

instead, he pulls back slightly, brows furrowed, nostrils flaring as he sniffs the air—curious. drawn.

you follow his gaze.

he leans in again, closer this time, his softening length pressing faintly against your stomach, dragging heat across your skin through the nightgown. and then, his voice—low and hoarse—scratches its way up.

“what’s that smell?”

your stomach tightens.

you hear it—that hunger tucked just beneath the question. not for blood this time. something else. something that makes your skin tingle with anticipation and shame.

his hands move slowly, tracing the shape of your waist, until they settle at your hips—gripping them gently, but firmly enough that you feel the intent behind it.

your brow creases in confusion… until his eyes drop.

you follow the look.

and then it hits you.

you know exactly what he’s asking about.

because while you were focused on him—while your hand moved over him, while you whispered his name and watched him fall apart—the warmth between your thighs had bloomed into something undeniable. your panties are soaked. clingy. shamefully damp against your skin.

your face burns hot as the realization settles.

he smells you.

remmick’s eyes slowly rise to meet yours, and what you see there sends a ripple through your chest—hunger, thick and molten, pulsing just beneath the surface. another line of drool spills from the corner of his mouth, thicker this time, stretching as he breathes through it.

his hand moves—slow, sure—and drags down, curling behind your thigh. then, without warning, he lifts. your leg rises with the motion, guided by his strength, and your breath catches.

a gasp slips from your lips as your hands press instinctively against his chest, trying to ground yourself, maybe even push him back—but your limbs are shaking.

“what are you doing?” you stammer, voice barely stable as you feel his hand slide higher. it skids up your thigh, rough fingertips brushing hot skin, slipping under your nightgown like they’ve done it a hundred times before.

“you’re leaking,” he says, simply.

like it’s an observation. a fact.

like it’s not the most shameful, intimate thing he could’ve said aloud.

drool slips over his chin, unbothered by the mess he’s making, by the mess you’re in.

your body burns. flushed and twitching beneath his touch, thighs trembling around the hand that now glides so easily against your damp skin. his fingers drag through the heat gathered between your legs, and your hips jolt, a quiet sound caught in the back of your throat.

his mouth hovers just beside your cheek now, voice ragged and breath thick.

“let me taste ya,” he says.

almost pleads.

and there’s something so raw, so utterly stripped of pride in the way he says it—like he’s not asking just to take, but because he needs it. like the ache inside him will never fade unless you let him have this one thing.

you turn your head slightly, breath hitching as you meet his eyes—his mouth still hovering beside your cheek, so close you can feel the heat of his breath skating across your skin.

“i…” you begin, voice quiet and uncertain, “i ain’t never had that done before.”

he lets out a groan—deep, throaty, almost pained.

it vibrates against you like a confession.

“let me do it,” he murmurs, eyes dark and pleading. “please. show me where you like to be licked.”

the words make your heart stutter, but before you can even respond, you feel it—his fingers pressing firmly against your clothed heat, dragging slow and deliberate along the soaked fabric.

“remmick—!”

your voice breaks, sharp and startled, rising without your permission.

your face floods with shame, your body trembling at the sound that just tore from your throat. but desire drowns it out, thick and surging—because the pressure feels too good to ignore, and his touch is reverent, not cruel.

he pulls his head back, just enough to look you in the eyes.

and he waits.

there’s no smirk, no demand. just remmick, gaze burning into you with raw need, silently asking for something he doesn’t know how to take without permission.

you stare at him for a long, aching second—heart racing, chest heaving—before you nod.

slow.

shy.

but real.

that’s all he needs.

he sinks lower, descending to his knees with a hunger in his movements, yet careful—like you’re something sacred. both his hands slide along your legs, settling at the backs of your thighs, his thumbs rubbing gently into your skin as he looks up at you from below.

his face is flushed, his hair damp with sweat and clinging to his forehead, his lips parted and still shiny from where drool had spilled earlier.

“tell me what to do,” he groans, voice rough with restraint, with admiration.

his mouth is inches away.

but he won’t move until you tell him how.

your body is burning now.

inside and out.

the sound of his voice asking to be guided—tell me what to do—echoes through you, wrapping around your spine and sending a shiver up your back. no one’s ever asked that of you before. not like that. not with that kind of hunger barely held back by restraint.

when you glance down at him again, you find his eyes already on you. waiting. not impatient. not demanding. eager. wide, dark, full of wanting—but still waiting. like you’re the only one who can give him permission to breathe.

“use your fingers,” you say softly.

your voice wavers, shaky at the edges, but it doesn’t matter.

he hears you.

he obeys.

you catch the way the corners of his lips twitch upward—just for a moment—before one of his hands slides up, lifting your thigh gently and settling it over his shoulder. the stretch of it opens you, exposes you, and you gasp as the new position presses your nightgown higher.

then, his other hand moves—slowly, reverently—until his fingers are back at your panties. they’re soaked now, clinging to you, and you can feel every brush of his knuckles against the sensitive skin there.

his eyes flick up to yours again—checking. asking.

and then he slips a finger past the damp fabric, the tip curling just inside you.

your breath stutters in your chest, a sound catching in your throat that you didn’t mean to let out. he watches you. his gaze never leaves your face.

and then—

with a sudden tug, he rips your panties clean.

the sound is loud, sharp in the silence—the tear of fabric quick and final—and the cold air hits you immediately.

your body tenses, thighs quivering around him as the sudden exposure leaves you breathless. every nerve is awake now, burning, aware of the way his hands hold you open, how the cool air contrasts against the heat pooling between your legs.

you’re bare to him.

and he’s still kneeling.

still looking at you like you’re holy.

you let out a soft pant, your breath catching as you feel his finger slowly trail up the inside of your thigh. his touch is warm—rough in texture, but gentle in pressure—and your skin tingles beneath it. his movements are slow, careful, like he’s learning your body inch by inch.

he stops just at your entrance.

he doesn’t go further right away.

he lingers there—testing. waiting. seeing how you react to the nearness, the quiet promise of what comes next.

then, without warning, he slides a finger in.

his middle finger—long, thick—and the stretch of it makes your walls flutter around him.

a low moan tumbles from your lips, your head tipping back slightly as your muscles clench. it’s more than just the intrusion—it’s the heat of him, the weight of that single finger inside you, the way it already fills more than you expected.

your hand reaches down, gripping the hem of your nightgown tightly, bunching the fabric against your stomach as if anchoring yourself to the moment.

he draws his finger back out—slowly, deliberately—and then pushes it back in with a soft, wet sound that makes your cheeks burn. your body clenches around him again at the sensation, and the lewdness of it, the intimacy of being this bare and open, sends another wave of warmth washing over your skin.

he breathes in through his nose, like he’s memorizing the scent of your arousal, and you can feel him growing more confident in the way his finger curls just slightly on the next thrust.

the thrusts of his finger continue—steady, slow at first, then building into a rhythm that leaves your legs weak. each movement sinks in with purpose, the tip curling ever so slightly, brushing against a place inside you that makes your hips twitch.

your walls clench around him, instinctive and aching.

“you’re so warm,” he pants, voice husky with awe, like he’s never felt anything like this before.

you glance down—eyes glazed, breath uneven—and see his free hand working at himself again. his fingers wrap around his cock, now slowly thickening with each stroke. the sight makes your stomach flutter, your lips parting as another moan slips from your mouth, uncontained and needy.

your mind is fogged with sensation—his hand inside you, his hand on himself, both moving in tandem like some unholy harmony of want. your body is no longer your own. it belongs to the rhythm, the heat, the burn of it all.

then you feel it.

another finger at your entrance.

his ring finger this time—thicker than the first. he eases it in beside the other, stretching you slowly.

you wince. not from pain exactly, but from the sudden fullness.

you’d touched yourself before, sure. but your fingers had never felt like this.

his are longer. rougher. firmer.

they reach deeper.

your walls stretch to accommodate him, muscles fluttering as both fingers begin to pump in and out of you. slick sounds fill the air—soft, obscene—and every time he curls them just right, you whimper.

meanwhile, his other hand strokes himself in slow, languid motions, the pad of his thumb brushing over the tip. he groans aloud, the sound low and wrecked, spilling from his throat like it’s being pulled out of him.

and all of it—his fingers inside you, his pleasure building in front of you—pulls you deeper under.

he starts to move closer.

you can feel it in the way his breath warms your skin, see it in the way his shoulders shift, the subtle rise of his body as he inches toward you like gravity’s pulling him into place.

a low growl rumbles in his throat as he presses his face in, and when the bridge of his nose brushes against that sensitive bud, you tense—hard. a full-body shudder rolls through you, your breath catching sharp in your chest.

then suddenly—his fingers leave you.

you gasp at the loss, clenching around nothing, your body pulsing with the need to be filled again, to feel something.

“let me eat you, baby,” he pleads, voice raw, mouth just a breath away.

his words hit you deep—both filthy and tender, desperate and reverent.

you hesitate.

not from fear.

but from the overwhelming weight of it. the way your body is already responding without needing to be told.

then, you nod.

he doesn’t look up.

but he must feel it—through the way your thigh tenses over his shoulder, through the way your hips shift just the slightest bit forward, offering yourself.

he takes that as his answer.

his mouth descends, and you feel it—his tongue drawing a slow, deliberate line between your folds, tasting you for the first time. your back arches off the wall, sharp and sudden, your thigh slipping, and he readjusts it with one hand, holding you steady with a strength that borders on possessive.

then he licks again.

this time deeper, firmer—and a moan tears from his mouth. the sound vibrates directly into you, and your head falls back with a strangled cry.

“you’re so sweet,” he breathes.

then he presses a soft, almost reverent kiss to your entrance—like a promise—before his tongue pushes inside of you.

you cry out, the stretch of it unfamiliar and overwhelming, but so, so good. his tongue thrusts harshly, rhythm building fast, and every movement sends you spiraling, moan after moan clawing out of your throat as your body writhes against the wall.

your hand flies down instinctively, fingers diving into his hair, clutching at the thick strands. you don’t even realize how hard you’re holding on until you feel him groan again, deeper this time.

and then—his mouth rises, lips closing around that bud.

he sucks.

you break.

completely overwhelmed, shaking with the intensity of it, clenching around nothing but air and the feeling of him devouring you.

your head flies back, colliding with the wall behind you with a dull thud, but you hardly feel it. the pleasure ripping through you overshadows everything else. your free hand reaches up, grasping at your hair, tugging gently—desperate for anything to ground yourself as his mouth continues to assault your core with relentless devotion.

“remmick…”

his name falls from your lips in a moan, soft and broken, like a prayer caught halfway through a plea.

he doesn’t stop.

his tongue licks, flicks, drags through your folds, then closes around your clit again, sucking it into the heat of his mouth with rhythm that borders on sinful. the sounds he makes—low, guttural moans and hungry grunts—vibrate directly into you, sending fresh waves of sensation surging through your thighs, your belly, your spine.

he’s pumping himself with the same desperation, his hand moving fast and slick over his length, the sounds of it mixing with the wet noise of his mouth working between your legs. and every time he moans into you, you feel it—feel it everywhere.

then he shifts.

the hand that had been resting firm on your thigh over his shoulder suddenly moves. it slides down—strong and sure—until his fingers press into the flesh of your inner thigh, right beside your entrance. and then he pulls—gently but firmly, opening you wider for him.

a soft gasp slips from your mouth at the stretch, the exposure. you feel so bare, so utterly open. his tongue immediately returns, working deeper now that you’re spread wider for him, and it feels devastating—like you might come apart entirely just from the way he holds you open and tastes you like he’s starving.

your eyes squeeze shut as a stuttering moan tears its way out of your throat—uncontrolled, raw. your fingers twist tighter in his hair, clutching at the only thing tethering you to the earth as his mouth continues to work you open and undone.

and then—

something shifts.

a feeling. strange. unfamiliar.

it starts low in your belly—tight, electric, and rising fast. it coils, curls, builds like pressure behind a dam, and you don’t know what it is, only that it’s coming hard and fast and you don’t know how to stop it.

your breath hitches.

panic flutters in your chest.

your eyes snap open, wide with the sudden fear of losing control, and your body tenses as if to brace for impact.

and then—

it hits.

a violent, blinding explosion rocks through your body.

your mouth opens, but no sound comes at first—just the air being pulled from your lungs as your release rips through you.

your eyes roll back, vision swimming, and your legs nearly buckle beneath the weight of it. your thighs twitch, body quivering uncontrollably as your climax washes over you like a crashing wave you were never prepared for.

but remmick doesn’t let you fall.

his hands grip you steady, firm and reverent, holding you together even as you come apart in his mouth. he moans into you, greedy and satisfied, lapping up every drop of your release like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted—like it’s the only thing that’s ever mattered.

you tremble above him, caught in the aftershocks, completely undone.

when he finally pulls back, his cheeks and chin are drenched—slick with you, shining in the low light. his mouth parts slightly as he breathes, dazed and wild, and you can still feel the ghost of his tongue between your thighs. you’re still catching your breath when he moves again—this time, pulling you gently down with him.

your back meets the wood floor of your porch with a soft thud, the cool surface a harsh contrast to the heat blooming in your skin. before you can process it fully, he’s leaning over you, body caging yours in, his cock already hard again, flushed and leaking at the tip. the sight of him above you, thick and heavy, makes your breath stutter.

you barely have time to react before you feel him—his tip brushing against your entrance, slicking over sensitive skin, nudging.

you snap out of it instantly.

your hands press to his chest.

“w-wait! stop!”

his body stills.

he freezes above you, panting, chest heaving as he stares down at you. the desperation in his eyes is immediate—sharp and pleading—but he doesn’t move. instead, you feel his fingers tighten around the bunched fabric of your nightgown, clinging to it like an anchor.

your mind is racing.

he wanted to go this far.

he was going to go this far.

and you—god, your face burns even hotter as the thought settles—you’d never done this before.

not with anyone.

not like this.

and the fear coils tight in your belly.

“i won’t hurt you.”

his voice comes soft.

echoing what he said earlier.

but it lands differently now—closer to a promise.

you look up at him, searching.

his hand on your hip is strong, grounding, and though he grips you tight, there’s no force in it. only restraint.

you search his eyes for anything that might read as a lie, some shadow of cruelty or indifference—but there’s nothing. only tension. only waiting.

so you nod.

his gaze softens, and the hand holding your gown lowers, moving between your bodies. he grips himself, lining up carefully, guiding the head of his cock back to your entrance.

you inhale, slow and deep, trying to ready yourself.

then—he meets your eyes.

and begins to push in.

your jaw clenches hard as the stretch begins. the pressure is immediate, unfamiliar, so much. he’s thick—thicker than anything you’ve ever felt before—and your walls struggle to accommodate him.

“s-slowly…” you manage to stutter, breath caught in your throat.

he nods, sweat beading at his brow, his own face twisted with the effort of going slow—of not losing himself completely in the heat and tightness of you. your walls clench around him, instinctively, and he groans low in his chest.

inch by inch, he presses deeper, until—

you feel a pinch. sharp.

not enough to cry out, but enough to make you tense again.

your hand flies down, gripping the wrist on your hip.

“wait!”

he halts immediately, eyes flying up to yours.

“almost there…” he moans, voice strained. “i’m almost there.”

his hand tightens, holding himself still—waiting for you to give him more.

and when you finally nod—heart hammering—he moves again.

he pulls out slowly, carefully, then pushes back in with more urgency this time. the stretch returns, but this time the pain dulls quickly, fading into something else. something thicker. warmer.

his hand plants beside your head, fingers splaying against the wooden floor for balance, and he pushes the rest of the way in until he bottoms out inside you.

you both still.

your bodies tangled, your breath ragged, your skin burning where it touches his. and for a long, pulsing moment—there’s nothing else.

just the sound of panting.

just the feel of him inside you.

just the overwhelming, terrifying intimacy of being this connected

slowly, but surely, he pulls out—just an inch, just enough to make you feel the loss—before pushing back in with a deep, guttural groan. the sound of it vibrates through your chest, and your own moan answers his as your hand flies up, gripping the wrist of the hand planted beside your head.

your grip is so tight your knuckles turn white.

“aah… yea…” he stutters out, breath shaking as his hips roll forward again, his thrusts slow but deliberate, each one more assured than the last.

the drag of his cock inside you leaves your body stuttering—your breath catching in broken gasps, your thighs trembling with every deep, slow stroke. he’s thick. so thick. every movement stretches you wide, your walls struggling to take him and clenching around him with a mind of their own.

he groans—mouth falling open in something pathetic, raw, aching—and the sound shoots straight through you. the hand on your hip tightens, guiding your body with each thrust, steadying you, grounding himself in your warmth.

your walls flutter around him, and he sees stars behind his eyes.

every time you clench, it’s like heaven and hell collide inside him.

your back begins to slide against the porch beneath you, the wood warm and rough, dragging lightly at your nightgown as his thrusts gain rhythm. the pace builds—not fast, but firm, deeper. every push rocks your body just enough to knock the breath from your lungs.

the sound of skin meeting skin fills the air now—wet, rhythmic, desperate.

his grunts are low in his chest, slipping out between clenched teeth.

your eyes open slowly, jaw slack, mouth parting as choked moans tumble past your lips.

and then—

you see it.

his mouth hangs open, panting, and in the haze of your half-lidded gaze, something catches the light. not just teeth. fangs.

sharp. monstrous.

inhuman.

you let out a sharp gasp as his hands suddenly move—grasping the backs of your thighs with a strength that steals your breath. he drags you toward him with ease, your slick skin sliding across the wooden porch until your thighs rest on his, legs spread and trembling as he settles into the new angle.

once you’re in place, his hands return to your hips—strong, possessive—and without pause, he begins pounding into you again.

but now, it’s different.

his rhythm grows more erratic, more primal. he groans through gritted teeth, fangs fully bared now, glistening with spit as his mouth hangs open in pleasure-drunk awe.

he finds that spot inside you again—

and again.

and again.

each thrust is a strike of lightning behind your eyes, drawing stars out of thin air, making your body convulse in helpless rhythm beneath him. you try to say his name, to moan it into the thick air between you—but all that escapes is garbled, slurred noise. syllables tangled in pleasure too strong to form words.

you don’t notice it at first—

the way his fingers change.

the grip on your waist grows tighter, rougher.

his nails stretch, curling longer, sharper, claws forming in real time as his body reacts to you. to this. to everything he’s holding back.

he groans through clenched fangs, jaw twitching with restraint. it takes everything in him not to pierce your skin. not to lose himself to what he is.

your hands reach down, fumbling for the hem of your nightgown, wanting it off, wanting to feel the air, feel him. remmick sees the motion, and something feral flashes in his eyes as he helps you—tearing the gown up and over your head.

it now lays beneath your upper back, your spine pressing into the fabric as your body arches.

the cold air hits your bare skin and a shiver runs through you. your breasts bounce with each thrust, each impact sending them upward and down in hypnotic rhythm.

remmick lets out a guttural sound—desperate and overwhelmed all at once—as drool escapes the corner of his mouth and spills messily across your stomach. you gasp at the sudden warmth of it, the contrast between cold air and wet heat making you twitch.

then his hand moves again.

he lowers it between your legs, and suddenly he’s rubbing your bud—rough and unrelenting. the pad of his thumb swirls over it in frantic circles, careful not to scratch you, using just enough pressure to send another bolt of pleasure through your spine.

you cry out, louder this time, your back arching as your body tenses up around him.

his other hand rises, large and trembling, and cups one of your breasts, kneading it with a kind of reverence that’s quickly undone by the bite of his claws. one scratches just slightly—a soft sting blooming across your skin—and instead of pulling back, you moan louder.

the pain only sharpens the pleasure.

and remmick…

he watches you fall apart like he’s witnessing something sacred.

and he’s the one dragging every sound, every shiver, every tremble out of you.

you’re losing yourself.

your vision blurs at the edges, body flushed and trembling, unable to hold on to anything solid—except him. your hand reaches blindly, desperate to touch, to anchor yourself in something, someone. your fingers find it—the chain. that gold chain around his neck, damp with sweat and heat.

you loop your fingers through it, gripping tight.

the moment you do, his body responds—his thrusts picking up speed, harder now, deeper. his hips crash against yours with ferocity, the sound of skin meeting skin echoing across the porch. each thrust sends his balls slapping against your ass, adding to the filthy rhythm of it all.

“l–look at you…” he pants, voice breathless and broken, eyes wild as he stares down at where you’re joined. “so beautiful… and speared on me…”

your head falls back, jaw slack as he slams into you again—rough, desperate. his thumb is still on your bud, circling fast and tight, and the pressure spirals out of control.

you feel it.

again.

rising.

but this time, you don’t panic.

you welcome it.

your walls flutter, then clamp down hard around him, squeezing his cock in perfect rhythm with your unraveling. your moans tear from your throat, raw and choked, as your body convulses beneath him.

remmick chokes on a moan of his own, hips stuttering as you clench around him. but he doesn’t stop. not for a second.

he pounds through it—thrusting through your orgasm, keeping the rhythm alive, drawing it out until you can’t tell where the high ends and the overstimulation begins.

the sounds are obscene.

each time he pulls out, it’s wet and loud, a slick drag that makes your stomach tighten—and then he slams back in, deeper, filling you again with a moan.

your walls twitch, overly sensitive now, and a sharp little wave of discomfort flares in the middle of the lingering heat. it stings, but not enough to stop. not when he keeps going like that. not when your body can’t decide if it wants to push him away or pull him deeper.

your grip on his chain tightens.

remmick moans—loud and broken—as the gold links dig into his neck, and still, he doesn’t stop.

his hips drive into yours with punishing need, his chest brushing yours with every thrust, and you realize—

he’s not just trying to fuck you.

he’s trying to stay inside you.

to live there.

to lose himself in the place where you melt around him.

and it’s becoming too much.

your body is trembling, wrung out and burning, nerves raw from how he keeps moving inside you—deep, relentless, nonstop. the sensitivity spikes, each thrust dragging along your pulsing walls like fire and silk, sending you over the edge and right back again before you’ve even caught your breath.

your mouth opens in a soundless moan, your legs twitching, body locked in that unbearable space between pleasure and pain.

remmick groans above you—deep, rough sounds torn straight from his chest. they rumble through his body and into yours, and you feel the way he’s struggling. holding back. holding in.

his fangs flash as his lips part again, saliva stringing between them as he pants like an animal. he’s trying—truly trying—not to sink them back into your neck. not to bite down and mark you like instinct is screaming at him to do.

you see it in the way his head tilts, the way his mouth hovers near your throat before he jerks back again, forcing himself to focus.

your hands are full now—

one clutching his gold chain so tightly the links dig into your fingers,

the other gripping his wrist, fingernails pressed to his skin, grounding yourself as your body thrashes beneath his.

you whine, high-pitched and breathless, overwhelmed as your thighs threaten to close, but his grip on your hips is unyielding.

his eyes glow—deep, dark red—and when he looks down at you, it’s through that glowing haze of instinct and want and near-unraveling. his jaw clenches hard, fangs bared as he fights the shift overtaking him.

then he tenses.

you feel it—

in the way his rhythm falters,

in the way his thrusts grow sloppy, uncontrolled, missing that sweet spot as his hips jerk with no pattern.

he’s close.

he hunches forward, his whole body curling in on itself, and a loud, broken groan tears from his chest as he spills inside you—hot and thick, pulsing with each wave of release.

you moan, long and soft, as you feel him flood you—coating your walls in warmth as his hips keep moving, fucking his orgasm into you.

he pounds through it, chest heaving, sweat dripping onto your skin. the mixture of you both—slick and steady—drips down from where he stretches you open, forming a glistening ring around the base of him each time he pulls back.

“remmick—!”

his name bursts from your lips, sharp and breathless, as your thighs snap tight around his waist, trying to anchor yourself to him—to anything.

your entire body trembles beneath him, and you feel like you might fall apart again, even though there’s nothing left in you but the aftershocks.

“i k-know, baby…” he groans, voice low and shaking, still thrusting inside you. his movements are uncoordinated now, sloppy and feverish, driven more by need than rhythm. his hips jerk like he’s chasing the last of it, like he doesn’t want to let go of the feeling of being inside you.

your eyes squeeze shut, and your fingers finally release their grip on his chain, the gold slipping from between your knuckles.

you trade it for flesh.

your now-free hand reaches up to grab his other wrist, mirroring your other hand—holding him completely. your body, your breath, your trembling form says stay.

his breathing stutters again, another broken groan ripping through him as he thrusts deep—hard—like something inside him is unraveling one last time.

at this point, you feel it—

the steady leak of your shared pleasure slipping out of you, warm and wet, trailing down your thighs and pooling on the floorboards beneath you. the sounds between you are slick and endless—every movement, every shift punctuated by the lewd, messy wetness of it all.

then he pulls back—just slightly—to look.

his eyes drop to where his cock still moves in and out of you, glazed with the evidence of everything you gave him. you feel his stare deepen, and you swear he’s ascending—his lips parted, eyes wide, breath stolen by the sight of you stretched around him, milking every last wave of his orgasm.

his hips slow.

slow again.

until they still.

his chest rises and falls, frantic and wild, then slower, steadier—as he begins to return to himself.

he looks up.

eyes searching yours.

his mouth opens, like he wants to say something. like he needs to.

but nothing comes out.

instead, he leans down.

his lips hover just above yours, breath brushing your mouth, waiting—asking. not like before, when you turned your face away. this time, he lingers.

and this time, you don’t pull back.

you tilt your chin just slightly, and your lips meet his in a kiss.

slow. warm. breathless.

not demanding. not frantic.

just real.