The porch sits right on the edge of it, a little island of yellow lantern light with you cross-legged in your chair, enamel bowl in your lap, fingers slick with bean juice. Crickets grind away in the ditch, frogs answer from somewhere near the pond, and the heat that pressed on your skin all day finally lets go a little, turning soft and damp and heavy instead of mean.

Your daddy, Joe, stands out by the road with a cigarette, just that small orange coal drifting up and down whenever he draws on it.

He’s mostly shadow, hat brim pulled low, shoulders a dark cutout against the pale strip of dirt lane. The smoke hangs around him in thin gray strands, catching the lantern glow before the breeze worries it apart.

The wagon makes itself known before you see it.  A tired rattle carrying over the fields long and low, iron and wood complaining in a way that could belong to any old rig on any old night. 

The mule steps out of the dark first, ears flicking, hooves whispering in the dust, harness creaking, then the wagon-bed, then the man riding it, the whole shape of him hunched against the evening like the road’s been sitting on his back.

He climbs down slow, not careless, one boot testing the ground, then the other. He isn’t tall; not one of those long, scarecrow boys you see come through town sometimes. He’s put together closer to the earth than that, thick through the shoulders and arms, weight settled in the meat of him instead of stretched out. 

Shirt pulls across his chest where the fabric has been asked to hold too much too often, sleeves rolled to his forearms, muscle and old work written in the dust and veins there. Suspenders run straight over his torso, holding everything decent, but there’s something loose under the neatness, a restless set to the way he carries himself, like he’s got more energy than his frame knows what to do with.

His hat sits low enough to shade most of his face until he steps up nearer and the porch light reaches for him.

“Evenin’, Sir,” he says, voice a slow scrape, low and worn, like it’s been dragged over gravel and cigarettes for years. 

The vowels don’t belong to your county, not exactly, but he leans into them like he’s been practicing, trying to make them fit the dirt under his boots.

“Evenin’,” Joe, flicks ash toward the ditch without turning. “You Remmick?”

“Yes, sir.”

He takes off his hat then, presses it to his chest in a gesture that seems to be humble, and in that little bow you see the line of him clear. 

Hair dark and close-cropped, stubborn where it’s tried to wave up and been tamed with water and a hand. Jaw rough with stubble that looks more forgotten than stylish. 

There’s a hardness around his mouth, something that could tilt into a grin or a snarl with not much provocation either way.

When he straightens and lifts his eyes, they cut toward the porch, and you feel it right away when they land on you, as sure as if somebody laid a hand on your bare ankle.

A limp green bean hangs between your fingers, ends torn and wet.

His gaze drifts, following your calves where your skirt’s ridden up, running along the slope of your shins and the span of your knees pressed together, sliding up the line of your apron and the thin open V between your collar buttons where the night air pushes in against your skin. 

He looks like he’s reading you, not just seeing you, taking his time over every line.

You go still, sharp-aware of every place your dress touches your body and every place it doesn’t.

The bean pieces drop into the bowl as you lower your eyes to the boards. The porch wood is dark and warped from years of feet, knot-holes winking like little eyes in the dim.

You fix on those, on the small wet snaps and soft taps of beans piling against enamel. Anything that is not the feeling of a stranger’s stare walking up and down you like a man checking fence.

“Baby,” your father says, voice flat, cigarette smoke curling out on the word. “Say evenin’.”

You wipe your hands on your apron and stand, bare feet quiet on the boards. “Evenin’,” you say, polite as sunday, letting the rest of what you feel sink down where it won’t show on your face.

Remmick smiles like he hears it anyway. It isn’t wide or warm. Just a slow tug at one corner of his mouth, a small, crooked tilt that never quite reaches his eyes.

“Evenin’, miss,” he answers, and there’s a drag in that word miss, the s held just long enough to make it catch.

Miss, when he could have asked for your name, when any decent man might have. Your father hasn’t offered it yet, so you keep it closed up in your mouth.

“Girl oughta be in bed this hour,” Joe mutters, eyes on the yard, not on you. “Ain’t no call for her to be sittin’ out like some boy on watch. Night’s for men workin’, not for women gawkin’.”

The words land on your shoulders like an old coat, familiar weight, old smell.  You bite down on what you want to say and feel it burn on the way down.

“I’m finishin’ the beans,” you tell him instead, hands tightening on the bowl till the rim bites into your palms. You don’t bother trying to explain that the dark sits easier on your skin than the hard white noon does, that the night gives you a little space to stretch.

You can feel Remmick watching you still, not with that sloppy hunger you’ve seen from boys in town, all elbows and gawking.

This is like he’s comparing what he sees to something he’s held in his head a long time. 

“Don’t reckon there’s any harm in her gettin’ some air, Sir,” he says after a moment, pitched low, as if he’s offering reason and not meddling. “So long as she stays where you can see her.” He tips his head, and his eyes make another lazy path over you, unashamed. “World’s rough for a girl on her own.”

Your daddy snorts, jaw tightening just enough for you to notice. “You just worry ‘bout them fields, son. I didn’t hire you to advise on my girl.”

The almost-smile on Remmick’s mouth doesn’t quite leave. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I’ll give all my attention to what you’re payin’ me for.”

He keeps his words aimed at your father, but his gaze is not that obedient. It flicks back to you when he says attention, and there’s weight in it, promise, something that makes your skin prickle fine all over. Something in you bristles right back, lifts its head like a barn cat whose tail’s been stepped on.

You draw a breath and set the bowl against your hip. “Where you want him sleepin’?” you ask your father, eyes fixed out over the yard so you don’t have to meet either man’s stare straight on.

“In the old place.” Joe jerks his chin toward the smaller farmhouse slumped beyond the well—a squat little shape where the lamplight doesn’t reach, half-eaten by shadow. “Closer to the barn. Got a bed and a stove. Man don’t need more than that.”

Remmick turns to look at it, and the lantern light catches his eyes in a strange way, making them flash for an instant like there’s something slick behind them.

The little house sits there like it’s been waiting, windows dark, door shut up tight, roofline sagged just enough to look suspicious.

“That’ll do,” he says. “I’m a night sort myself. Easier workin’ when the sun’s gone and the air ain’t tryin’ to boil you clear through. Less trouble all around.”

He says it easy, like it’s about sweat and shade and nothing else, but you hear the way he shapes night in his mouth, the soft way he lets it roll off his tongue, and something in your belly curls up smaller and sharper.

“Heard you don’t care much for daylight,” Joe says, watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Remmick’s jaw shifts, a muscle ticking like it wants to answer on its own. He glances at you, quick and bright, before he looks down at his boots. “Sun don’t care much for me,” he finally drawls. “Burns me to char if I let it. Always been that way. Doctor said I got delicate skin.”

The word sits wrong in your ear as soon as it’s out, delicate, dangling over this stocky man with forearms roped up in tendon and dirt ground into his knuckles, hands that look like they were made to break things, not handle them gentle. 

It slips out of you before you can catch it, quiet and skeptical. “Delicate,” you repeat, eyes finding his without meaning to.

He catches that and settles into it like a cat into a warm spot. “You don’t think so, miss?” he asks, voice a touch softer now, gaze steady and unblinking.

You ought to let it pass. Ought to dip your head and let the men talk over you, let delicate lie between them like some joke you weren’t meant to get. 

Instead you hold his stare in the lantern glow, take your time looking back the same way he did to you, tracing the faint hollows under his eyes, the line of his nose, the mouth that looks used to biting down on words and maybe on other things too.

“No, sir,” you say finally, after a beat that stretches long. “You don’t look delicate at all.”

Something shifts behind his eyes at that, something pleased and sharp that makes your heart knock once, hard, against your ribs. The corner of his mouth tugs just a shade higher.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to live up to what you see,” he murmurs. “Would be a shame to disappoint you.”

Your daddy grinds his cigarette out under his heel, done with this line of talk. “You can unload what you got, then I’ll show you the place,” he says. “Got work waiting for nobody. You ain’t too tired from sittin’ on a wagon all day, are you?”

Remmick rolls one shoulder, hand rubbing the back of his neck. The stretch shifts his shirt over his back, pulls the fabric across solid muscle there.

You feel your breath snag for half a second and hate that it does.

“Wagon ain’t heavy,” he says. “I’ll get settled quick, then you can put me to whatever needs doin’.”

Joe nods and starts toward the dim outline of that little house, his boots crunching through the loose gravel near the well. The lantern light falls behind him with each step until he’s just another moving patch of dark.

Remmick lingers at the foot of the porch. He settles his hat back on his head, brim bringing his eyes into shadow again, but you can still feel them.

“You finish them beans,” he tells you, voice gone softer, aimed up at you like a secret. “Man works better with a full belly.”

There’s nothing in the words you could point to and call wrong, nothing on the surface you could carry to your father and hold up like proof.

Still, the way his gaze drifts down and back up as he says them leaves something slick and uneasy under your ribs. Heat crawls up your neck, hot in a way that has nothing to do with the air.

“I’ll see to what’s mine,” you say, gripping the bowl till your fingers ache. “Same as you should see to yours.”

His laugh is low, a rough little sound that lives in his chest and doesn’t quite make it to his teeth. He dips his head a fraction, like you’ve handed him a dare instead of brushing him off. “Oh, I intend to,” he replies. “You can count on it.”

Then he turns and walks after your father, stride easy, body moving with a loose sort of purpose. His shadow stretches out along the yard behind him, tossed strange and long by the lantern, then swallowed up as he and Joe move past the well. 

The small farmhouse waits ahead, black windows staring, door a darker cut in the wall. It looks, for one breath, like it’s swallowing the two men whole.

You stand there with the lantern hissing softly at your elbow and watch the dark take them. 

When the yard settles again, when their footsteps fade and the crickets creep back up to full volume, the space between the barn and the house does not feel the same. It’s as if something else has stepped into it and sat down, something you cannot see but can sense just the same, like a pressure change before a storm.

You sit again, bowl back in your lap, fingers finding another handful of beans by habit alone. The wet snap of them breaking sounds too loud in the hush, echoing in the hollow boards under your feet. 

Every few seconds, your eyes drag toward that low silhouette out past the well, toward the little house that is not empty anymore.

You tell yourself you’re only minding where your father put a stranger. 

The first night after he arrives, he walks the fence line while you wash dishes.

You hear his boots dragging through the loose gravel near the yard, then the softer sound of steps in the grass. 

The screen door hangs open to let the air move, lantern burning low over the sink. Your arms are wet to the elbow, suds creeping up your forearms as you scrub at a pan that’s older than you are. 

Out past your own reflection in the dark window, you catch a small shape of motion—the swing of a lantern out near the barn, then the shorter, solid outline of him moving along the fence, checking posts, rattling wire. 

He doesn’t look up at the house that you can tell, doesn’t lift the light toward you, just keeps on with that steady pace, head bent. 

Still, your shoulders hunch like you’ve been caught at something you haven’t done. The glass fogs a little with the breath you don’t remember letting out.

You tell yourself it’s good your father found a man willing to walk the property at night. That’s what you tell yourself as you rinse plates and stack them, as the little yellow circle of his lantern slides back and forth along the edge of your sight.

The second night you have to bring him his supper, because your father ‘forgets.’

It’s late by the time the last of the pots are scraped and put away, your back aching from standing, hair pasted to your neck. Joe leans back in his chair, radio humming low on the table, and says without looking up, “That boy eat?”

You still your hands on the dishrag. “Ain’t seen him at the table.”

“Damn it,” He grumbles, more at himself than you. “Told him come in if he heard me holler and I ain’t never thought to holler. Fix him a plate and take it down. Man don’t work right hungry.”

You swallow whatever you were about to say about whose job it is to feed farmhands, scrape together a plate from what’s left—two biscuits gone hard at the edges, a ladle of beans, a piece of ham with more bone than meat—and cover it with a clean cloth. 

The air outside hits your damp skin and feels cooler than it ought to. The night smells like dirt and hay and whatever’s blooming along the ditch. 

The smaller farmhouse sits out near the barn with a faint thread of light leaking around the edges of its curtain, not bright enough to spill onto the yard. You walk out there, skirt brushing your ankles, plate balanced careful in both hands.

You knock, knuckles soft on the wood. For a second there’s nothing, then the faint scrape of a chair, the hush of someone crossing a small room. 

The door opens only halfway. He fills the gap, shoulder and chest just there, heat and sweat.

“Evenin’,” he says, voice a little rough, like he hasn’t used it since sundown. “You lost?”

You hold the plate out, not stepping any closer than you have to. “Daddy forgot to call you in. Told me to bring your supper.”

His eyes go to your hands first, to the way your fingers wrap the rim of the plate, then to the food, then back up. 

He doesn’t reach right away; he lets the moment stretch, his gaze traveling from your wrists up your arms, lingering on the damp on your skin, on the few stray strands that have worked loose at your temple and stuck there. 

“That’s mighty kind,” he says at last, taking the plate so slow his fingers brush yours. 

They’re not as rough as you expected, just warm and solid, the pads of them catching against your knuckles. “Hope he didn’t drag you out here from your bed on account of me.”

“I wasn’t in bed,” you answer, because lying feels worse than telling him anything true. “Kitchen don’t clean itself.”

He makes a small noise at that, somewhere between agreement and amusement. “No, ma’am. World’d fall apart if it weren’t for everything women do men don’t think about. Least he can do is call me in for a plate now and then instead of sending you.”

You don’t like that it sounds almost gentle, that there’s no clear edge you can grab onto and call wrong.

You nod once and start to turn away, wanting the room behind that door to stay his business and not have to wonder what’s in it.

“Miss?” he says, and you stop even though you don’t want to. “You tell your daddy I’m obliged. To him and to you.”

You keep your eyes on the yard. “He’ll hear you tomorrow.”

“Maybe I like the thought of you carryin’ my thanks,” he says, voice dipping lower.

You don’t answer to that. You walk back toward the big house with your empty hands and you feel his eyes between your shoulder blades all the way to the porch steps.

Another night you pass him by accident at the pump.

You come around the corner of the house with a pail in each hand, too focused on not sloshing well water onto your skirt to notice him right off. 

He’s just there suddenly in the lantern’s edge, sleeves rolled high, suspenders hanging loose at his hips, hair damp with sweat or water; you can’t tell which. 

The pump squeaks once as he lets go of the handle. Moonlight catches the wet on his forearms, the curve of muscle there, the scar that runs pale along his left wrist like a rope burn that never faded.

You stop short, pails swinging. “Didn’t know you were usin’ it,” you say. “I’ll wait.”

He tips his head, that same little crooked half-smile thinking about showing up. “You scared I’m gonna dirty the water, standin’ too near?” His accent is thicker tonight, as if he’s tired of smoothing them for everybody’s sake.

“I ain’t scared,” you say. Your voice comes out flatter than you mean it to, which only makes him watch you harder. “Just got taught not to crowd folk when they’re at work.”

“And here I thought you were just bein’ polite,” he murmurs. He steps back from the pump, gives you room to pass. “Go on, then. Wouldn’t do to have Mr. Joe’s girl haulin’ from the ditch ‘cause I hogged the handle.”

You move past him, the damp of his skin ghosting near your elbow, the smell of iron and sweat and something like tobacco clinging to him. You set a pail under the spout and work the handle, arm moving in a practiced rhythm.

The pump groans, then warm water shudders up from below, splashing cold over your fingers when you misjudge the first rush.

His gaze sits on your hands again, on the bare forearms you didn’t bother covering because it’s night and there’s no sun to scold you. “You do all that yourself?” he asks. “Water, cookin’, everything inside?”

“Me and Mama,” you say, though your mother’s cough has been bad enough lately you both know it’s more you than her. “Daddy’s got the fields.”

“And now he’s got me,” Remmick says, watching your arm work. “Guess I’m supposed to make life easier ‘round here.”

“Then do it,” you answer, a little sharper than you meant. The second pail fills and you swing it away, careful not to splash your toes. “Don’t stand around talkin’ about it.”

For a heartbeat there’s quiet. Then he laughs, low and delighted. “There she is,” he says under his breath, as if he’s been waiting on that bite. 

When you glance over, he isn’t offended. He looks satisfied, eyes bright, lean mouth curled up. “You keep snappin’ at me like that, miss, I might start thinkin’ you’re sweet on me.”

“Or you might start thinkin’ wrong,” you shoot back, lifting both buckets. The weight drags at your shoulders, but you’d sooner drop in the yard than ask him to carry them.

He doesn't offer, just watches you walk away, and you can feel that as keenly as the pull of the water on your arms.

There are other little moments like that, small as splinters. Like, when you cross paths in the barn one evening when you go to check on a cow that lowed funny through your window. 

He’s already there when you reach the threshold, one hand on the animal’s neck, murmuring something soft and nonsense in her ear. 

She calms under his touch, sides heaving slow, eyes rolling less. The lantern hangs from a nail overhead, throwing golden light over the dust in the air, over his shoulders, over the cow’s hide. 

He glances up when he senses you, and for a blink his irises flash almost too light, as if the lantern’s in them and not above him. Then they’re ordinary again, a color you could name if you got close enough, and he’s saying, “She just didn’t like the thunder,” even though the sky’s been clear all day.

You lean on the stall rail, arms folded, watching his hand move in slow strokes along the cow’s neck. 

The steadiness of him with animals makes something twist in you, something like reluctant respect and something like fear, because if he can soothe two thousand pounds of nervous flesh with a voice and a touch, what could he do to yours if he ever decided to try.

On another night you fix a tear in one of his work shirts at the kitchen table because your father plops it there and says, “Stupid fool’s gonna walk around with his arm hangin’ out if someone don’t thread a needle.” 

You mutter that Remmick has two hands and surely they can manage a seam, but you fetch your sewing basket anyway. 

The fabric smells faintly of him, sweat and field and that odd metallic thread that’s been nagging at the back of your senses since he arrived. 

You push the needle through worn cotton and wonder how a man gets a rip that clean across the bicep, by snagging it on barbed wire or nail head, without a single bloodstain around the torn edge.

He shows up to collect it before you take it down yourself. Don’t know how he knows it’s ready, but he’s at the door not long after you knot the last stitch, hat in hand like he’s paying a call.

Your father’s gone out back to piss or smoke or both, your mother’s dozing in her chair, so it’s just you in the quiet kitchen with your fingers still sore from the work.

“You didn’t have to,” he says when you hand the folded shirt over. “Could’ve walked around indecent a day or two, see if anyone complained.”

“My father would,” you say. “Don’t like loose things on his land.”

He takes the shirt with his good arm, the other rolling his shoulder like it aches. The lantern throws his eyes into little warm coins. 

Some nights you only see him from a distance.

Through your bedroom window when you should be sleeping, you catch the sway of his lantern again and again, marking his rounds. In the moonlight, his stride is compact, efficient, not showy. 

He moves like someone who’s spent a long time walking alone, someone who knows better than to waste steps. He never seems to stumble, never misjudges a rut or loose stone.

You watch him slip between the barn and the smaller house, in and out of shadow, and you tell yourself you’re just making sure he’s where he should be, that you are only doing what your father would want.

You notice, too, the nights when the light in his window stays on longer than makes sense. Long after your father’s snores have settled and your mama’s breath has evened into sleep, after you’ve lain there staring at the ceiling until your eyes burn, that far-off square of yellow will still be sitting out there at the edge of your sight. 

Sometimes you think you see the shadow of him cross it, head bowed, shoulders hunched, moving back and forth in a tight little path, but when you squint it’s gone.

Once, you step out onto the porch for air and catch him already looking.

You don’t see him at first; you just feel that prickling awareness that has become his signature in your body. 

Then your eyes find him where he’s paused near the barn, one hand on the fence post, the other hanging loose at his side. No lantern this time, just moonlight on his face, flattening all the hard parts, making his eyes look too bright and his mouth too soft. 

He doesn’t look away when you notice him. He doesn’t call out or tip his hat in greeting. He just stands there in the dark, steady as another post, and lets you decide whether to step back inside or stay where the night can see both of you.

You stay a breath longer than you should, chest tight, heartbeat stepping up loud between your ears. Then you reach for the door, fingers curling around splintered wood, and it feels, for a strange second, like you’re the one retreating and he’s the one who lives here.

By the time a week has worked itself around, his presence has braided into the place.

The horse knows him, ears twitching toward his voice before dawn. The dogs have quit barking when his boots scrape the yard at dusk. Your father has stopped watching him like he might bolt and started calling for him when something heavy needs lifting. 

The small farmhouse doesn’t look so empty now; you’ve grown used to the idea of a man’s breath in there, a man’s boots by the door, a man’s shadow on the curtain.

You’re the one still wary, nerves still stretched thin every time you feel his eyes, even if nobody else in the house seems to notice how often that is. 

You catch him in little reflections—a sliver of him in the pump’s metal, in the window glass, in any surface that throws back light—and he’s always looking your way. 

Not always outright, not always rude, but always aware of you. Always clocking where you are in the yard, whether your sleeves are rolled, whether your hem rides high on your calf or hangs proper at your ankle.

You tell yourself it’s just because there’s not much else worth watching out here.

You don’t quite believe it.

Clouds bruise up toward the horizon, swallowing the moon a few bites at a time. You’re at the kitchen table with mending in your lap when you hear it—one sharp, panicked bawl from the barn that cuts straight through the hum of crickets and the low murmur of your father’s radio.

You’re on your feet before you think about it, thimble still shoved on your finger, needle stuck tight in a loop of thread. 

Your father says something about “damned horses spookin’ at their own shadows” but doesn’t move from his chair.

His back’s been bad all day; he’s been walking like every step hurts. Mama’s dozing, her breath a thin whistle. 

So you grab the lantern from its hook, light blooming up in a hot bloom that stings your eyes, and head out barefoot into the yard.

The grass is cool against your soles, damp from the thick air. The little farmhouse where Remmick sleeps has a strip of light at the curtain-bottom, but you don’t see him outside. The barn looms ahead, big and dark, door standing half-open like a mouth. Another low, fretful sound comes from inside, not as sharp as the first but enough to hurry you along.

“Easy now,” you call as you slip in, lantern held high. “Hush yourself, girl, I’m comin’.”

The barn swallows the outside sounds. In here it’s hay and dust and the soft shuffling of hooves, the rustle of wings up in the rafters. 

Your mare stamps once, snorting, eyes rolling white when the lantern light hits her. You cross the packed dirt quick, set the lantern on a hook so you’ve got both hands, and reach for her halter, stroking her long face.

“It’s just the weather actin’ strange,” you murmur, words more for yourself than her. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you.”

She settles a little under your voice, but her muscles are still tight, skin twitching under your palm.

You’re so focused on her that you don’t hear him until he’s already in the doorway.

“Somethin’ wrong?”

His voice slides through the gloom, low and rough. 

You jerk a little, head snapping toward the barn entrance. He’s just inside the threshold, lantern in his hand turned down low, throwing more shadow than light. Sleeves rolled, suspenders hooked proper tonight, hair damp at the temples like he’s just come in from a hard walk. 

“Lord,” you mutter, heart kicking hard. “You move too quiet. Thought you were a ghost.”

He lets out a short huff of a laugh. “Not yet.” The lantern swings by his knee as he steps inside, setting the hay shadows dancing. “Heard her fussin’. Figured I’d check before she took it into her head to kick through a stall.”

“She just spooked,” you say. “Storm brewin’ somewhere.”

He comes up nearer, close enough that you can see the sheen of sweat along his throat, the bead of something darker at the cuff of his shirt where it brushes his wrist. 

His gaze does a quick, automatic sweep of the stall—manger, bucket, the mare’s flanks, your hand on her halter—and then it hooks on you, like it always does, like there’s a string between his eyes and your skin.

“You shouldn’t come out here by yourself at night,” he says, quiet, not rebuking exactly but not gentle either. “Barn full of spooked stock, any one of ’em could knock you right off your feet. Ain’t proper for a girl to be runnin’ around after dark alone.”

“That girl’s got ears,” you answer, voice tight, stroking the mare’s neck to hide your own nerves. “She can hear you fussin’ without talkin’ over her head.”

His mouth does that little tilt again, amused. “Reckon she can,” he says. “Reckon she don’t listen half as good as she ought, neither.”

You’re just shaping a sharp reply when it happens.

Something cracks outside, a dry, sharp sound—maybe a limb breaking, maybe a board settling wrong, maybe thunder grumbling way off where the clouds are thickest. 

It doesn’t matter what it is. The mare flinches hard, shoulder slamming sideways. The stall rail shudders under the hit, and you’re standing too close, lantern throwing crazy shadows as the world jolts.

Your first instinct is to get out of the way. You jump back, skirts swishing, hand flying off the halter. You pivot toward the stall opening and catch—not air, not clear space, but the edge of an old nail head that’s been working itself loose from the post for years.

The sound of fabric tearing is loud as a gunshot in the barn.

It rips from just below your hip down the side of your thigh, a long, rude run that opens your dress like a mouth. 

Cool air hits bare skin where cotton should be.

You gasp, more from the exposure than pain, and slap your hand down, fingers clutching at the split to keep it from gaping wider.

For a heartbeat you stand frozen, lantern light swinging, breath shallow, your leg half-bared through the torn seam.

You don’t have a slip on under this dress, not a proper one. It’s too hot. You’ve got plain cotton drawers and a whole lot of skin, and you know without looking that the tear has gone high, high enough that if you weren’t grabbing it shut he’d be seeing places no man has any business looking at on you.

“You all right?” Remmick’s closer before you register him moving, his boots whispering over packed dirt. His lantern clanks against a beam as he hangs it up. He reaches for you by pure reflex, hands coming to your arms, steadying you where you’ve stumbled.

“I’m fine,” you snap, too quick, humiliation burning your face, neck, chest. “Let go.”

You twist away from his grip, turning your hip, trying to angle the torn side away from him. 

The dress shifts anyway, hem dragging through straw, and there’s a flash of thigh where your fingers don’t quite cover everything. You feel the rush of blood under your skin like you’ve been slapped.

His eyes drop before you can stop them.

It’s an instinct with him just like yours, hungry and automatic. His gaze hits the split, the glimpse of your leg, and sticks. Time slows down around that look. You see it happen, see the way his pupils widen, see the quick, sharp inhale he tries to hide.

“Jesus,” he breathes, almost soundless.

You yank the torn fabric tighter, the motion making the rip strain up higher, edge brushing the curve where your thigh meets your hip. Your whole body feels like a lantern flame, exposed and flickering. “Don’t you look,” you hiss, low and furious. “Turn around.”

One of his hands lifts, like he might actually offer to cover the tear for you, fingers curling as if they want to fit over the place you’re guarding. He stops himself, hand hovering for an awful second near your hip, close enough that you feel the heat of him even through the thin cotton. 

“Ain’t my fault you went tearin’ yourself open on every nail in the county,” he says, tone trying for light and landing somewhere rougher. 

His eyes drag up slow, from your knuckles clenched in the fabric, up the bare strip of thigh he already saw, up the shape of your waist and the heave of your chest. “Maybe you should let me look and make sure you didn’t cut that pretty skin to ribbons.”

The way he says pretty makes your stomach flip and your teeth set.

“I ain’t cut,” you spit. “And I sure as hell don’t need you inspectin’ me.”

He should look ashamed. Though, he doesn’t. There’s color high in his cheeks now, not from heat, not from work. His mouth’s gone a little slack, like he’s holding back words. His gaze keeps sneaking back to the place your hand guards, greedy, any time you aren’t staring right at him.

“If you say so,” he murmurs finally. “Wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

You hear the echo of his earlier lie in that word, delicate, and decide if you stay here another minute you might do something you can’t take back, like slap him or cry or both.

You shift your grip to catch more fabric, bunching the torn side up in your fist so nothing shows. It makes walking harder; you’re hobbling, half-skipping, desperate not to let the skirt fall. “You see to the mare,” you manage, chin up, eyes burning. “I’ll fix my dress.”

He steps back enough to let you pass. As you squeeze by him in the narrow space, your shoulder brushes his chest, your bare calf bumps the hard line of his boot. 

“Careful,” he says, voice quiet, right by your ear. “Would be a shame if the rest of that dress gave up and left you standin’ in nothin’ at all.”

You don’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. You duck your head and hurry out, every step measured so the torn seam doesn’t pull, one hand clamped between your thighs, lantern bumping at your knee. 

The night air on your exposed skin feels wrong, every stray breeze finding its way up under the rip.

You keep your eyes fixed on the glow of the house, on the square of the kitchen window, on anything that is not the barn behind you.

You slam the kitchen door with more force than you mean to, startling your mama awake, mumble something about a nail catching you and make straight for your room. You don’t light your own lamp; you don’t want to see what he saw. You stand there in the dark with your back to the door and your dress torn open under your hand, heart hammering, ears roaring, shame and something hotter and uglier twisting up together in your belly.

Down by the south fence, in the smaller farmhouse, Remmick sits on the edge of his narrow bed with the easy, humming satisfaction of a man who’s been saving something up.

He lit the lamp as soon as he stepped in, not out of any real need for light but because he likes the way it throws shadows, likes the way it paints dim gold over bare wood and gives him something soft to look at while his mind runs back over the evening. 

The room is small and warm from his own body heat, close enough that every breath feels shared with the walls. Old wood, dust, a curl of tobacco from the roll-up he finished outside, and under it all the ghost of you clinging to his clothes—soap and starch and sweat—make a thick little stew in the air.

He shrugged out of his shirt as soon as the door shut, tossing it over the chair without bothering to check if the seam you mended had held. 

The rip in the fabric is nothing next to the rip in your dress that he can’t stop savoring. He works the buttons of his trousers loose without hurry, fingers moving with the contented patience of a man about to sit down to a meal he’s been smelling all day.

He doesn’t try not to think of you. That would be a waste of a perfectly good night.

He leans back against the wall, boots kicked off, pants open at the fly, and lets the picture come as easy as breath. 

You in the barn with your hand clapped between your thighs, dress split wide, that slick little strip of thigh flashing when the cloth slipped. The way your eyes flared when you realized he’d seen, outrage and mortification and something bright under both. The sound of your voice when you told him not to look, like you already knew he was going to anyway.

“Hell,” he mutters, half laughing under his breath as his cock swells heavy against the thin barrier of his briefs. “Ain’t nothin’ on this earth I’d rather think on.”

His palm drifts down over his belly, fingers tracing a slow path to the bulge at his groin. Even that light touch makes him suck in air through his teeth. 

He presses his hand over the outline of himself, feeling the hot, solid weight of his cock straining upward, and a low, pleased sound curls up out of his chest. He palms it once, a lazy roll, enjoying the way it kicks against his fingers like it’s eager too, then he slides his hand inside.

Warm cotton gives way to hot skin. He wraps his fist around the thick base of himself and exhales like he’s been holding that breath since the barn, relief and hunger tangled up in it. His cock sits heavy in his grip, veins standing up, the head already wet where precum has gathered from how long he’s been walking around hard on the memory of you.

“Look at that,” he murmurs, voice low and rough, thumb smearing that slickness over the swollen tip. “Worked up over one little tear. You’d laugh yourself sick if you saw me now, wouldn’t you?”

The thought of you seeing him like this, spread out on his narrow bed with his trousers open and his cock standing full in his hand, only makes him harder. 

He drags his fist down slow, savoring the drag from head to base, then back up again, the friction sharp and sweet all at once. The first few strokes are measured, a man settling into a rhythm he plans to enjoy, not something hurried and guilty he has to choke down.

He lets his head tip back against the wall, eyes slipping shut so he can see you better behind his lids. 

Not the church version, not the good girl with the hem tugged just so and the buttons done up high. 

The barn version. Lantern light sliding over your bare thigh, the tremble in your fingers when you clutched at the rip, that split second when your hand wasn’t fast enough and he got the clean, unearned look he’s been replaying ever since.

“Shit,” he breathes, hand tightening, the slide of skin on skin picking up a little speed. 

He drags his fist down again, slower, getting a feel for every inch, for the way his cock swells harder in his grip with each pass. Arousal slicks his thumb, gathers at the crest of the head, and he spreads it with an easy, greedy little twist, working it around until the slide turns wet and smooth. 

His hips lift into his own hand without much prompting, body eager after nights of walking around with you on his tongue and in his teeth and under his nails.

“Bare leg,” he mutters, watching his hand move now, eyes half-lidded, lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks. “Goin’ about your business like you ain’t got that tucked up under your skirt. Like I ain’t seen it now.”

He remembers exactly how the tear opened, how the cotton gave and the seam surrendered, how your thigh flashed in the jumpy lantern light. 

That first raw glimpse lives in his chest like a hot coal. Skin smooth and soft-looking, the curve of muscle under it, the sweet thickness where it met your hip. 

He remembers your drawers too, plain white cotton clinging to you, riding that line between demure and lewd when the fabric shifted wrong.

His hand moves faster at that, instincts catching up with memory. He curls his fingers a little tighter, pulling from the heavy base up to the slick crown, milking a fresh bead of precum up with each stroke. 

“Bet you went home and stitched that dress up neat as a Sunday virtue,” he says, voice roughened by breath. “Head bowed, lips bit, pretendin’ that leg ain’t still there underneath, smooth as cream and just as soft. Bet you can’t stop thinkin’ about me seein’ it neither.”

He can picture you at your little table, lamp burning, needle in hand, fingers trembling just enough to make the thread snag. Your face hot, your mouth set, your thighs pressed together under the cloth as you sew shame into every stitch. He imagines you tugging that seam tight, that same hand that clutched the torn fabric now working the needle, every pull a memory of his eyes on you.

His free hand slides down his belly, fingers pressing over the flexing muscles there, holding them tight as he fucks up into his own fist. The bed creaks under him, wood complaining, but he doesn’t slow. He spreads his legs wider on the mattress, giving himself more room to move, and the extra slack lets his strokes lengthen, his hips roll, everything turning into a slow rhythm.

“You know what I see when I close my eyes?” he asks the ceiling quietly, dragging his thumb across the slit. “Not that pretty little mouth tellin’ me not to look. I see that hand of yours slip. I see that dress fall open just a little more.”

The picture in his mind sharpens: you, back against a stall post, hand too busy clutching at rough wood to hold your skirts closed, light catching on the full line of your thigh as the rip edges skid higher. 

He imagines the flap of cloth falling aside, full view of your leg from knee to hip, drawers pulled tight over the mound between your thighs, a faint darker patch where heat and sweat have gathered.

His cock throbs in his grip at that. He grits his teeth, pushes his palm down hard, and his hips jerk, chasing the pressure.

“Yeah,” he growls softly. “That’s it. Dress up around your waist, showin’ all that sweet flesh. You holdin’ on to that wood like it’s gonna save you, eyes full of righteous fury while your body’s tellin’ on you.”

His fingers slip lower on the stroke, pausing to cup his balls, rolling them in his palm, feeling the tight, heavy pull there. The sensation punches another sound out of him. He goes back to his cock with renewed urgency, arm working harder now, hand pumping.

He lets himself wander further than any real moment has gone. Lets the memory of that tear turn into something else, something he can taste.

He imagines stepping in close before you can bolt, one hand catching your wrist, the other gathering your torn skirt up and out of his way. Imagines your gasp, that little sharp intake he already knows, your bare thigh hitting his hip as he pins you to the stall. Your panties stretched tight over the soft swell of your cunt, his fingers pushing up against the dampening cloth, feeling how hot you are through the barrier.

“Pretend you don’t want it,” he murmurs, throat rasping. “Try to act like you ain’t gettin’ wet for me while you fuss.”

The words sound vulgar and right in his mouth. His cock swells at it, the head aching now, sensitive with every pass. He squeezes at the top, thumb pressing just under the crown, and his whole body shudders, pleasure rushing up his spine.

“Be a good girl,” he hears himself whispering to the woman in his head, the one pressed to barn wood with her dress in tatters. “Spread ’em for me, let me see what you’re hidin’.”

His hand flies now, finding a quick, dirty rhythm. His breath comes rough, each inhale catching, each exhale spilling out in curses and half-formed praises.

“You’d flush right up to your hairline,” he pants, head rolling against the wall. “Act all offended while your thighs tremble and that pretty thing between ’em throbs. Might even cry a little, wouldn’t you? All sweet and scared and soaked.”

The image of you crying—eyes bright, lashes wet, lips bitten—while your body betrays you sends him right to the edge. His balls draw up tight, cock jumping in his fist, veins standing out under his skin. Heat coils at the base of his spine, that familiar pull gathering everything in, ready to snap.

He spits into his hand for more slick, doesn’t even bother wiping his mouth. The added wetness turns his strokes into something obscene, the sound echoing in the small room. His forearm snaps, muscles burning, chasing the crest bearing down on him.

“Come on then,” he grits. “Show me.”

He imagines hooking a finger under the edge of your drawers and pulling the cotton aside. Imagines the first sight of you bare between your thighs, folds swollen, maybe already glistening, all that heat finally out in the lantern light instead of tucked away in shadows and good manners.

“That’s it,” he rasps, voice breaking, hips jerking harder into his fist. “Knew you’d be pretty there. Knew you’d be soft.”

The wave hits with no ceremony; it slams through him like a mule kick. His whole body locks, stomach clenching, heels digging into the thin mattress, head thumping dully against the wall. 

A groan tears out of him, rough and strangled, half-swallowed behind clenched teeth. His cock jerks in his hand, once, twice, then again, spilling hot over his fingers and across his stomach in thick, pulsing ropes.

He rides it out, hand still working, strokes shortening but not stopping, milking every last drop. Cum coats his knuckles, drips over his fist, slicking his grip until his palm slips on the softening length. 

“Fuck,” he breathes when he can breathe again, voice low and wrecked.

His strokes slow, then ease off altogether, fingers loosening their grip. 

For a moment he just sits there, chest rising and falling, wrist slick and heavy, cock giving a few last, half-hearted twitches in his hand. Sweat cools on his forehead, a bead sliding down along his temple.

He looks down at the mess on his belly, streaks shining in the lamplight, dripping off the side of his hand. There’s no disgust in the way he examines it; if anything, there’s pride. A crooked smile tugs at his mouth, lazy and satisfied.

“Look what you pulled out of me, and you weren’t even here,” he murmurs, more pleased than ashamed. 

He wipes his hand across his stomach, smearing instead of cleaning, fingers drawing idle patterns through the stickiness before he drags them off onto a wadded-up shirt at his side. 

The cotton takes the worst of it, darkening where it soaks, but he doesn’t fuss about the rest. Let it dry on his skin. Let it sit there as a reminder.

He tucks himself back into his briefs, though he doesn’t bother fastening his trousers all the way, leaving the fly gaping a little for air. 

His body feels loose and heavy now, bones sunk deep into the thin mattress. The edge is blunted, that sharp hunger dulled to a warm, low thrum, but it’s not gone.

He leans his head back and lets his eyes drift half-closed, the lamp still burning low. 

In the quiet, he can almost hear you tossing under your own quilt up the rise, feel the echo of your indignation, imagine the way your fingers might trace absent circles over the mended seam of your dress while you tell yourself you hate him.

He runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, savoring that thought as much as any touch.

“Gonna see it torn again,” he says softly, not quite a promise, not quite a threat. 

The lamp flickers, a tiny flame fighting sleep. Outside, crickets scream and something small scurries through the grass. 

The little house settles around him with soft creaks and sighs. He closes his eyes fully at last, the picture of your bare thigh and your furious face smoothing together into one sweet, ripe ache he’s already wondering how soon he can taste again.

Most nights Remmick does his rounds like he’s supposed to, lantern swinging at his knee, gate latches checked, fence wire plucked and listened to like strings. 

But once he knows the map of the place in his bones, once he has counted every post and measured every path, his feet start wandering off the straight lines your daddy would like him to walk. 

He learns where the shadows fall thickest under the pecan tree by the side yard, where the dark under the eaves hides a man from anyone glancing out through lamplight. 

He learns just how far back he can stand and still see into the kitchen window when you’re up late, sleeves rolled, forearms wet to the elbow, talking to your mama while you scrub a pan. 

He learns that when you think everybody’s settled, you lean your hip against the counter and tilt your head a little while you dry your hands, and that little shift of weight does things to your dress you’d never let it do in town.

He finds out you like the back porch at night even more than you like it at dusk. That when the work is done and your parents are loud in their sleep, you slip out with a glass or a cup and sit with your legs stretched, ankles crossed, toes tracing idle circles on the board beneath them. 

From the fence line he can see the shine of lamplight on your bare shins when your hem rides up, can see the loose, tired way you soften back into the chair. 

He watches you tilt your face toward the dark yard like you’re asking it questions it hasn’t answered yet, listens to the little sounds you make—half-sighs, half-hums—that never show up when anyone else is awake. 

He leans on a post with a cigarette hanging from his fingers and looks until he’s had his fill, no hurry in him, nothing but a lazy, steady satisfaction in knowing you have no idea.

He learns your bedroom window, too. Where it sits in relation to the oak, how far up the slope he has to stand to see its square of light. 

The first time he notices the curtain isn’t quite shut, it’s by accident; he’s walking back late, boots slow on the path, when a slice of movement catches his eye. 

Curtain gapping, lamp turned low, you moving around your room in that soft circle people make before bed. 

He stops in the shadow of the tree without even thinking, shoulder to rough bark, the leaves above him murmuring in a wind that doesn’t get down into the yard. 

From there he can see you in fragments—an arm as you reach up to unbutton, a brief glimpse of the side of your neck, the line of your shoulder as fabric slips. 

He tells himself he’ll move when you’re done, that he’s only making sure you got in safe. He stays until the lamp goes out.

The night he sees you in the bath, there’s not even that thin excuse.

It’s late enough the frogs have worn down to a sleepy chorus and the crickets sound drunk. A low, warm fog sits over the fields, pressing scents in close: damp earth, animals settled in their pens, soap drifting thin from the open kitchen window where somebody forgot to latch it right. 

He’s finished his rounds early, all the work of the night sitting behind him instead of ahead, and he feels that restless itch under his skin again, that soft, prowling urge that has nothing to do with fences and everything to do with you.

The house is a square of softer dark against the sky, only a couple of windows holding light. 

He knows which is which now without having to think about it. Kitchen, front room, your parents’ room. The little back room off the side where the big galvanized tub sits when somebody’s been lucky enough to haul enough water. 

Tonight it’s that one glowing gentle behind its thin cotton curtain, lantern hanging somewhere just out of sight, making the fabric look like a pale, breathing thing.

He circles wide, slipping along the edge of the yard where the grass meets the packed dirt of the lane, where the shadows from the trees throw him one more thin cloak. 

The bath window is low, glass fogged a little from steam. The curtain is drawn but not all the way, left a thumb’s width open on one side—enough for light to leak out in a narrow spill. Enough, if a man stepped in close and angled himself just right, to see inside.

He comes up under the sill, breath slow, boots quiet, and lays his palm flat against the siding to steady himself. The boards are cool and rough under his fingers. He leans his shoulder into them and tilts his head, lining his eye up with that careless little gap.

Heat hits him first, a wet, sweet breath rolling out into the night. The lantern inside throws shadows high on the wall, flickering over the curve of the tub, over the length of you in it.

You’re sunk down in the water with your knees bent, one leg drawn up just enough for him to see the shape of it under the surface, the other stretched straighter, foot braced on the far side. 

The water glows around you, gone cloudy with soap, clinging in beads to your skin where it’s out of the tub. 

Your shoulders show above the rim, bare and slick, drops running down in slow trails. 

Steam curls off your chest, off the slopes of your breasts where they rise from the water, soft and heavy, nipples pebbled tight from the heat or the air or both. The lamplight loves them, catching on every curve, laying little gold crowns on each peak.

Your head is tipped back against the rolled towel you’ve wedged between neck and tin, eyes closed, lips parted just enough for breath. One arm drifts along the tub’s edge, fingers dragging lazy patterns through the thin scum of soap there, the other resting across your stomach.

He watches your ribs move with each inhale, the slight swell and fall of your belly under your palm.

You're so unaware of him that it feels almost holy.

He drinks it in like it’s what he came here for all along, no flinch in him, no apology. His gaze roams where it will. 

From the line of your throat down to the hollow between your collarbones, where a small puddle has gathered and overflowed in slow rivulets; down over the slick, shining hills of your breasts, the way they shift just a little with every breath, the way the waterline cuts across them. Lower, to where the curve of your stomach disappears under the opaque water, hinting at more, promising everything.

You shift, lifting one arm to drag the washcloth over your shoulder. The washcloth trails over the round of your shoulder, down the outside of your arm, across the swell of your breast, nipple tightening even more when the rough cloth skims past.

You don’t seem to notice the way your own body responds; you’re too busy chasing day-dirt away, lifting your arm to scrub your neck, tilting your head to give yourself better reach.

From his vantage, he sees everything. His hand tightens on the siding, knuckles going white, that buzzing hunger flaring up bright and hot behind his eyes.

He stares, not making a sound.

You work the cloth down your arm and set it aside, then slide both hands into the water, scooping and pouring over yourself. 

You lift your leg a little, knee rising higher, water spilling off in sheets, showing him the smooth length of your thigh all the way to the place where it vanishes back under the cloudy surface. The muscles there flex as you shift, your toes stretching, calf defined a moment before settling again. 

For a brief second, the water thins enough he can see the shadowed shape where your thighs meet, softened by the haze but there, real and mouth-watering.

His eyes go dark on it, pupils swallowing light. He leans in a fraction more, cheek almost touching the glass, breath fogging the edge of the pane where it meets the frame. 

Every small move you make sends little waves across your body, playing light over the parts he can see, hinting at the parts he can’t.

You sigh, the sound faint through the wall but clear. Your head tips a little to the side, cheek turning toward the window without quite facing it. 

One hand skims over your sternum, following the center line of your body until it disappears under the water. 

Your fingers paddle lazily there for a moment, moving along your own stomach, over the soft give of your lower belly. 

He imagines exactly where they’re drifting, what warm, slick places they’re brushing, even if you’re not thinking of it like that. Your face gives nothing away but relief, a tired little slackness, the expression of someone finally easing aches out of their bones.

“You ain’t got a clue,” he breathes, lips ghosting the words against the flaking clapboard. There’s satisfaction in it, not cruelty. “Bathin’ like Eve in a picture book with the curtain open and the devil on the outside lookin’ in.”

His hand, the one not braced on the wall, shifts restlessly by his side, brushing the front of his trousers. 

He doesn’t touch himself proper, not yet; this is looking time. He wants to be empty enough of the last time to fill up on this one entire. 

His fingers flex anyway, his palm pressing for a moment against the growing bulge, acknowledging it. His cock swells quick and eager, remembering the barn, welcoming the new fodder.

You lean forward to reach the soap, and the angle changes. 

For a breathless few seconds he gets the long line of your back, the way it curves from nape to waist, the hollow above your hips, the dimples that show when you move just so. Water slides off you in glittering trails, trickling down along your spine, pooling in the small of your back before spilling lower. 

As you sit back again, that same water slips over the round of your ass where it breaks the surface, catching the light along the curve, then vanishes under the cloudy bath.

He closes his eyes briefly, just to fix it, then opens them again. He doesn’t want to miss a thing.

You lather your hands, work the soap into your skin, fingers massaging into your shoulders, down along your collarbones. 

The more you scrub, the slipperier you become, water beading and running, foam clinging in thin streaks before melting away. 

When you finally slide your hands under the water, scrubbing lower, your elbows move in a rhythm that makes something low and obscene curl in his gut. 

He knows you’re only washing, just doing what needs doing, but to him it looks like a preview, looks like a rehearsal of things you haven’t yet learned to want.

He watches until the waterline creeps lower on the lantern as the bath cools and you sink down, chasing warmth. Watches as you finally let yourself relax fully, shoulders sliding under, just your face above the surface, eyes closed, breaths slow and even.

Only when you sit forward and reach for the towel hanging on the peg beside the tub does he ease back from the window. 

He knows if he lingers another second, if he sees you stand, water sheeting off every inch as you step out, he’ll plant roots under this sill and never leave. 

There will be other nights, he tells himself.

He peels himself off the wall, body humming, and slips back into the darker yard, breath still measured, strides easy. 

By the time he’s at the edge of the light, he has his lantern in hand again, held low, the picture of a man just passing through on his way to some small piece of work.

He doesn’t feel a lick of shame. What would be the use of it, when the memory of you in that tub is already lodged in his body like a polished stone, something he can roll under his tongue whenever he chooses. 

You’ll go to bed clean and soft, thinking maybe about chores and storms and the seam you mended this morning. 

He’ll go back to his little house with your wet skin behind his eyes and no confusion about what he plans to do with it.

The day’s been long, the kind that starts with a rooster and ends with your back feeling twice your age. 

By the time supper’s put away and the kitchen wiped down, your father’s in his chair with his boots off, socks so full of holes you don’t know why he bothers wearing them, radio mumbling low out of the corner. Your mother’s gone to bed early with a headache, door cracked just enough that you can hear her cough now and again.

You’re halfway through folding the dish towels when you remember.

Mama’s good jar of salve.

You can see it plain in your mind’s eye: small tin with the blue lid, the one she guards like treasure. 

She sent you looking for it just after dinner, when she noticed the raw place on your father’s wrist from rope burn and the darkening bruise on your own hip from where the stall rail caught you days ago. 

You’d gone to fetch more wood for the stove first, meaning to get the salve on your way back, and somehow it slipped right out of your head, chased off by smoke and scolding and the rush to get biscuits off the fire before they burned.

Your father’s already grumbled twice about the barn nail and told you if you’d been paying mind you wouldn’t have torn your dress, wouldn’t have bruises, wouldn’t have needed fussing. 

You can hear him in the morning if he finds that wrist still angry and your hip still tender. Can hear that disappointed click of his tongue.

You’d seen him hand the tin to Remmick earlier in the week, mumbling something about “keep this on hand, boy, in case you tear yourself up,” and watched the new hand tuck it into the pocket of his coat before heading down to the little farmhouse.

“That’s where it is,” you murmur, more to the quiet kitchen than to anyone. A little knot between your brows loosens when you place it. “Down there.”

You glance at the clock. It’s late enough the newsman’s gone off the air, early enough the world hasn’t quite tipped into the dead hours where the dark feels thickest. 

Outside the window, the yard is quiet, the barn a heavy shadow, the smaller house beyond it just a darker square against the field.

“Where’s that boy?” Your father mutters around his cigarette, not really expecting an answer. “Ain’t heard him come in for coffee. He out checkin’ fence or sleepin’ on my dime?”

“Out, I reckon,” you say, folding the last towel with a sharp little snap.

Truth is, you haven’t heard his boots either. You haven’t seen his lantern bob by the window. It’s been a soft, blank stretch of night, no sign of him.

You tell yourself that means he’s at the far end of the pasture or walking the ditch line. Exactly where he’s supposed to be.

“I’ll fetch Mama’s salve,” you add, already untying your apron, tucking it over the back of a chair. “She’ll want it first thing in the mornin’.”

Joe nods, smoke curling out of his nose. “Don’t you linger,” he says, not looking up. “Get what you need and bring your tail back in this house. I don’t want you down there visitin’ like it’s social hour.”

You bite back the urge to say you’d sooner visit the pig pen. “Yes, sir,” is what comes out instead.

The night air catches you on the porch, damp and soft, smelling of cooling dirt and a hint of something sweet blooming out by the fence. 

You step down barefoot, skirts whispering around your calves, the boards’ splinters familiar against your soles. The big house’s light spills just to the bottom of the steps, then gives up, letting the yard roll out into dark.

The little farmhouse sits a ways off, past the well, past the worn track where the wagon turns. All its windows are black. No orange seam under the curtain, no silhouette rising and falling against the glass. The barn is quiet too, doors thrown shut, only a thin line of moon-silver along the roof.

You latch onto the sight of that dark little house like proof. He’s not there. He’s out somewhere with a lantern and a bad attitude. 

You’ll be in and out before he knows you’ve even left your room.

You wrap that thought around yourself like a shawl and start across the yard.

The grass is cool and a little slick with dew under your feet, clinging between your toes. Crickets saw at the edges of things, frogs mutter down in the low spots. The well’s stone lip rises out of the ground like something old and patient; you ghost past it, keeping your eyes on the squat shadow of the farmhouse.

Up close, it looks smaller, somehow meaner. The door is shut, the porch bare save for his boots lined up neat off to one side. You take in that detail with a little flick of relief—boots off means man in bed, not loose in the yard—before another thought slides in behind it: or just inside.

You hesitate only a heartbeat.

The want to not get scolded in the morning, the want to have Mama’s salve where she can lay hands on it, outweighs the whisper of sense telling you this is foolish.

You lay your palm on the door and push.

It gives with a small, tired creak, the smell of the place rolling over you in a warm wave: wood, straw, tobacco, sweat, and that faint metallic thread you’ve started to think of as his alone. There’s a lamp turned low on the table just inside, wick pinched till the flame is barely more than a coal in a glass throat, enough to lay out the shapes of things and nothing more.

“Remmick?” you call, voice barely above a whisper, more habit than hope. When nothing answers—not a word, not a shift of boards—you let your breath out slow and step over the threshold.

The door eases halfway shut behind you, not latched. You don’t bother with it; you don’t plan to be here long enough to worry about what’s open and what isn’t. 

The room is small and spare, just like your daddy said it was. Bed against one wall, blanket rumpled from someone sitting, if not lying. Chair with a coat thrown over the back, shirt draped careless on top. Table with the lamp, a chipped cup, a folded knife. A shelf holding a few tin plates, a jar of coffee, the heel of a loaf.

You move quick but careful, eyes trying not to linger on the smaller things that say a man’s been living here—his belt coiled on the chair seat, his hat hanging from the peg, the empty space on the floor where his boots were. 

You head straight for the coat, remembering your father’s hand dropping the salve tin into its pocket.

You pinch the fabric between your fingers, easing it aside, but the weight you expect to tug at the hem isn’t there. The coat hangs light. You pat the pockets; they’re empty, save for a wadded rag and a stray button.

“Damn,” you breathe, annoyed, under your breath.

Maybe he moved it. Maybe he took it out so the tin wouldn’t fall and get lost when he shrugged the coat on.

You cast your eyes around the room, searching high shelves, low boxes, any place someone might set a small, important thing.

The table catches your attention next. You circle it, gaze skimming over the knife, the cup, the lamp. 

There, near the edge, half in shadow—a squat little tin no bigger than your palm, blue lid dulled with age.

You smile in spite of yourself and reach for it. “Got you,” you murmur, closing your fingers around the cool metal.

You pop the lid just enough to see the salve inside, pale and thick, smelling faintly of herbs and camphor, then press it back down with a soft click. The job’s done. Simple as that.

You turn, already thinking about the path back to the house, about slipping this into Mama’s hand and letting yourself be proud she won’t have to wonder where it is in the morning.

You don’t make it two steps.

There he is.

Standing in the doorway that leads to the small back room, shoulder braced against the frame like he’s been leaning there a while, like he grew right up out of the wood.

He’s shirtless, skin slicked faint with sweat, the rise and fall of his chest slow and easy. Suspenders hang loose against his hips, clipped to his trousers but fallen off his shoulders, framing the cut of his torso in dark lines. 

The lamp’s low light paints him in gold and shadow both, dipping into the hollow between his collarbones, skating over the plane of his stomach, catching on the trail of hair that runs down from his navel into the waistband of his pants. 

His arms cross over his chest, veins standing faint along the backs of his hands where they rest against his biceps.

His feet are bare. His eyes are not gentle.

“Find what you was lookin’ for?” he asks, voice soft, too soft, the scrape of it wrapping around the words like a touch.

Your heart gives one wild jump, slamming up against your ribs hard enough to hurt, then starts to run. 

You hadn’t heard him come in. Hadn’t heard the back door, hadn’t heard the floor protest, hadn’t heard anything but your own little fussing search and the tiny pop of the salve lid.

For a foolish second you think about hiding the tin, tucking it behind your back like a child caught in a pantry. You don’t. There’s nowhere to put it he wouldn’t see, and you refuse to give him the pleasure of watching you scramble.

Instead you hold it up just enough that he can see the blue lid glint in the lamplight. “My mama’s salve,” you say, surprised at how even your voice comes out. “Daddy gave it to you. He forgot where he put it. I came to fetch it.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t look at the tin for more than a passing glance. His attention stays on you, heavy as a hand between your shoulder blades. He rakes his gaze from your face down to the salve, then lower, slow as a man looking over a field he’s about to plow.

You suddenly know exactly how your dress is sitting—where the fabric pulls across your chest from turning too quick, where the skirt clings to your thighs from the damp in the grass, where your collar gapes just a breath more than it should because you didn’t bother with the top button in the heat. Your skin prickles under each place you picture his eyes touching.

“You always just walk yourself into a man’s house without knockin’?” he asks after a beat, one brow ticking up.

“This ain’t a house,” you reply, chin lifting a shade. “It’s a shack my father stuck you in so you’d be closer to the barn.”

Something like amusement flickers across his mouth. “Still mine for now,” he says. “Door was shut, wasn’t it?”

“You left the lamp on,” you shoot back. “Anybody with decent sense would take that as invitation in case of emergency.”

He uncrosses his arms then, letting them drop to his sides. The motion makes muscles jump in his chest, the lines of his shoulders shifting under skin. “And what’s the emergency, miss?” he asks. “That your mama’s medicine was sittin’ ten yards farther than you like it?”

His tone isn’t mocking. It isn’t kind either. It’s something in between, something testing. Like he’s poking at you with words just to feel where you’re soft.

You swallow, the salve tin suddenly heavy in your hand. “I said why I came,” you answer. “I’ll be goin’ now.”

You move to head toward the front door, the one you came in, but the room is small, and he doesn’t move. One pace brings you close enough to smell him. Another pace would put you near enough to brush him if you misjudged your route.

He shifts his weight to fill the doorway more fully, one hand lifting to rest on the frame to the side of him. It leaves his ribs bare, that patch of hair under his arm catching the lamplight. There’s a faint scar along his flank, pale against the warmth of his skin, old and ugly, like something tore him open once and he lived anyway.

“Seems a shame,” he says, looking at you. “You comin’ all this way just to snatch up a tin and run.”

Your pulse hammers harder. “It ain’t far.”

“For you,” he agrees. “For me it’s a long, lonely walk most nights. I might be grateful for a little company.”

“You got company,” you say, words a little sharper than you intend. “You got every cow, every dog, every fence post on this land. You don’t need me.”

He lets that roll over him like water off a duck’s back. “Maybe I’m tired of talkin’ to things that can’t talk back,” he murmurs. His eyes flick down to the salve again, then to your hand, to your wrist where your pulse beats visible in the hollow. “You tore yourself up any today, or you just borrowin’ this for show?”

“Bruise on my hip,” you admit before you can remind yourself you owe him nothing. The words come out stiff. “Ain’t your concern.”

“Everythin’ that happens on this farm’s my concern when it means workers showin’ up busted in the mornin’,” he says. “You do work, don’t you? Or are you just here to keep the place pretty.”

Heat flashes through you, quick and mean. “You've seen me work,” you say. “You've seen me at that pump, at that stove, out in the yard. Don’t you stand there half-dressed and ask if I do my share.”

His mouth twitches at half-dressed. He doesn’t bother to hide the way his gaze drops, quick, down the front of himself and back up, as if to say he knows exactly how much he’s wearing and how much you’re seeing. It’s deliberate, that small, shameless acknowledgement of his own body.

“Believe me,” he says, voice dropping lower, “I’ve seen you.”

The words land between you, heavy and thick. They mean more than they say. Every peek he’s stolen presses into the space they open up: your bare leg in the barn, your shoulders shining in the bath, your tired posture on the back porch, one strap slipping careless down your arm before you hitched it back up.

You don’t know about most of that. What you do know is enough to make your throat go dry.

“I ain’t supposed to be down here visitin’,” you say, trying to wrestle the conversation back onto some ground that feels steadier. “My father told you that when you got here. Told me too.”

His eyes gleam at the mention of your father, some dark amusement sparking there. “He told me to show you respect,” he says. “And I have. Haven’t laid a hand on you that you didn’t walk too close to yourself.”

Your mind trips over the memory of his fingers catching your arm in the barn, steadying you when your mare spooked. The way his hand hovered near your torn dress, heat just shy of your hip. The way he stood in the yard with his eyes on your mouth and called you miss like it was something he wanted to lick.

You draw yourself up as tall as you can manage in the little room, salve tin tight in your grip, refusing to yield the step he’s trying to take without moving his feet. “Then you’ll move,” you say, voice low but steady. “So I can go on home and keep livin’ my life with all that respect you’re so proud of.”

For a moment, you think he might laugh in your face. His lips part, teeth catching on his bottom lip, eyes glinting.

Instead he just looks at you.

It’s worse than if he’d laughed. He looks like a man deciding how honest he feels like being tonight. Like he’s weighing whether to keep playing at politeness or lay something sharper on the table between you.

The lamplight flickers, shadow jumping along his jaw as he tilts his head. “You walk out that door,” he says finally, nodding toward the porch, “and I’ll let you. I ain’t gonna drag you nowhere you don’t step first.”

Relief and something colder flick through you at the same time. “Good,” you start to say, but he isn’t done.

“But,” he adds, and that one little word lands heavy, “you come walkin’ into my place after dark again, all alone, dressed like that, lookin’ at me like you don’t know whether you wanna slap me or cry on me—well.” His gaze drops to your mouth and back. “That’s you steppin’. And I’ll take it as such.”

Your heart stutters, one hard misstep in its rhythm. “You overestimate yourself,” you snap, even as your fingers twitch on the tin.

He smiles then, slow and wolfish, the expression finally reaching his eyes in a way you haven’t seen yet. 

“We’ll see,” he says.

For a long, tight second, nobody moves. The walls feel closer, the air thicker, the lamplight too intimate. You hear the frogs outside, the creak of the house settling, the little wet sound of your own swallow. His bare chest rises and falls, steady, like he’s got all the time in the world.

Then he steps to the side.

The doorway opens up behind him, a narrow slice of night visible over his bare shoulder. It’s more space than you expected him to yield, less than you’d like.

You duck past, your shoulder nearly brushing his chest, the heat pouring off him making your skin prickle. You feel his eyes on the side of your face, on the line of your throat, on the way you have to hitch your skirt just a little to keep from tripping as you step over the threshold.

“Goodnight, miss,” he says softly, right by your ear, breath warm as it ghosts over your neck. “You be careful now. Dark’s full of things you don’t know about.”

You don’t trust your voice not to shake, so you don’t give him the satisfaction of hearing it. You just walk, bare feet hitting the packed earth hard, fingers biting into the salve tin so tight the metal cuts a little crescent into your palm.

Rough wood presses into your hips, edge digging a little where your nightgown’s ridden up, breath catching in short, shallow pulls because he’s got one big hand flat between your shoulder blades, holding you there, and the other is on your ass, fingers clawed into the thin cotton, bunching it up and away from your thighs. 

The lamp in the corner throws a low, mean light over the kitchen, just enough to show you the knot in the tabletop and the chipped plate someone left on the shelf, just enough to catch the shadow of his arm when it moves.

You came down here hot with it. Anger, mostly. 

At him for looking at you how he does, for crowding doorways and talking low in your ear. At yourself for feeling anything besides disgust when he does it. 

For weeks that feeling has sat under your skin like a burr under a saddle, rubbing everything raw—every brush of his eyes, every sly comment, every late-night glimpse of his lantern out in the yard when you should’ve been sleeping. 

Tonight it tipped over. Tonight you lay in your bed and stared at the ceiling and saw his bare chest in that little house instead, heard his voice saying we’ll see, felt your own body answer in a way that wouldn’t quit.

So you got up after the house went quiet, barefoot on the boards, heart in your throat. 

You didn’t bring a lamp. You told yourself you were just going to tell him off, to say plain that you didn’t want him looking, didn’t want him speaking to you sideways, didn’t want the innuendo and the smirks and the way he made you feel peeled without ever laying a proper hand on you. 

That was the story you wrapped yourself in as you crossed the yard, nightgown clinging to your knees.

He opened the door before you could knock, like he’d been standing right on the other side with his palm on the handle, listening.

You remember the way his eyes moved over you, slow, no shirt, just those loose trousers hanging low on his hips, lamp behind him making his shoulders look broad and his face unreadable. 

You remember his mouth forming your name, quiet and satisfied, like he’d been waiting to say it like this. 

You remember the way all that anger and want surged up together in your chest, wild and tangled, and how you said something too sharp, voice shaking, about him needing to keep his eyes to himself if he wanted to stay on your daddy’s land.

Now here you are with his hand on your back, pressing, holding you down exactly where you came—over his small scarred table in his small farmhouse kitchen—your own fingers gripping the edge in a white-knuckled clutch.

“Thought you weren’t supposed to be down here visitin’,” he drawls above you, breath warm near your ear, words rolling over your spine. “That what you told me?”

You glare at the knot in the wood like it did you personal harm. 

Your face is hot, your body even hotter, a slow, heavy throb deep between your thighs that started halfway across the yard and hasn’t done a thing but grow. 

“I ain’t visitin’,” you say, the words a little muffled by the way he’s got you folded. “I came to talk sense into you.”

His laugh is low and pleased, hand on your back sliding a little, fingers spreading, thumb settling along your spine. He presses down just enough to remind you who’s holding you where you are. 

“Is that what you call it,” he says, “showin’ up in your bed things after dark, sneakin’ through my door with your hands empty and your eyes wide? Talkin’ sense?”

His other hand cups your ass through the thin fabric, palm wide over you, squeezing like he’s testing a piece of fruit at the market. 

The nightgown has twisted up, hem caught high over your hips, leaving the bottom curve of you bare to his touch, only the cotton of your drawers between his fingers and your skin. 

Heat floods that spot, a sharp, shameful pulse that makes your breath catch.

“You been walkin’ around twitchy as a cat for days,” he goes on, hand kneading, thumb digging into the give of your flesh there. “Snappin’ at me, snappin’ at your daddy, gettin’ that look on your face every time you see me like you don’t know whether to spit or spit somethin’ else.”

“Shut up,” you hiss, mortified at how true it feels in your bones. 

You shift your hips, trying to wriggle away from that hand, and all it does is grind you back against his palm, soft cotton dragging over the swell of you, catching on the seam that runs right over the place you’re trying not to think about.

He makes a sound at that, low in his throat, rough and appreciative. “Yeah. There she is,” he says, words coming a little thicker now. “All that fire. You walked your own self down here, girl. Nobody dragged you.”

“I came to tell you to stop,” you manage, though the way your voice climbs at the end takes the bite out of it. His fingers curl, grab a little handful of your ass cheek through the cloth, and you feel the ache spike hotter. “Stop lookin’. Stop talkin’ like that. Stop—stop–”

“Stop makin’ you feel all twisted up?” he supplies, not unkind, just plain. 

His hand on your back softens, spreads, rubbing along your spine like he’s soothing a spooked animal even as the other keeps kneading at you. 

“Stop remindin’ you there’s more to be had in this world than hymns and beans and mendin’?”

You suck a breath in through your teeth. “You ain’t the only man alive,” you snap. “You ain’t special.”

His grip tightens, a hard squeeze that makes you gasp. “No,” he agrees easily. “But I’m the only one you marched down here to cuss out in your bare feet and nightclothes, so I’d say I’m doin’ something right.”

You hate how your body answers that, how something low in you liquefies at the thought of it, at the truth you don’t want to name. You hate the way your thighs press together of their own accord, seeking pressure, seeking relief, even as you hold yourself rigid under his hand.

He feels it. His palm slides down, fingers curling under the heavy curve of you, thumb dragging along the crease where your ass meets the top of your thigh. 

You’re hyper-aware of every inch, every callus on his skin, every place the old wood digs into your hips. When his hand moves inward, fingers bumping close to the center of you, you flinch.

“Don’t—” you start, panic and want knitting together, but the word thins out when his touch presses just a little firmer over the damp cotton there.

“You’re soaked,” he says softly, no mockery in it, just raw, hungry wonder. “Walked through my door mad as sin, all full of pretty speeches, and your cunt’s already cryin’ for somethin’ to hold on to.”

Shame scorches up your neck. “Don’t call it that,” you choke, mortified, the word hitting you deep and low and making everything worse.

He hums, thumb tracing a slow circle over that swell, pressing right where the cloth is clinging. The pressure is perfect, unbearable. 

“What you want me to call it, then?” he asks, voice brushing the shell of your ear now. 

“Your virtue? Your purity? That sweet spot between your legs that ain’t nobody touched?” His thumb moves again, firmer, and your hips jolt against your will. “’Cause I see it all over you, darlin’. You came here wantin’ me to stop, but your body came here wantin’ somethin’ else entirely.”

You shake your head, even as your toes curl, even as your lungs drag in another sharp breath that tastes like him and the lamp smoke and the hot, close air of this little house. 

“You’re—you’re foul,” you say, but it comes out thin, breathy. “You been lookin’ at me, watchin’ me, talkin’ to me like—”

“Like I know what to do with you,” he cuts in, a hint of impatience threading through his heat. “And I do. You think I don’t see what’s eatin’ at you every time you glance down at my hands, or my mouth, or lower?”

His fingers slide along the seam of your drawers, finding the little ridge where cloth meets cloth and pressing right there. 

It sends a jolt through you big enough you can’t muffle the small sound that drops out of your throat. 

His hand on your back pushes down, keeping you bent, letting you grind into that touch without rising off the table.

“Listen here,” he says, voice roughening, patience fraying. “You came. You’re here. You can tell me to stop and I will. I ain’t gonna take what you don’t hand me. But don’t stand there in my house, drippin’ on my floor, and try to lie about what you’re feelin’.”

The room seems to shrink around those words. 

You know he’s right. You also know how far you are from where you were supposed to be, from the girl who said she’d never let a man like him get close, from the girl who swore she’d keep herself intact till some tidy, respectable husband came along with a ring and a house and his hat in his hands.

You think about those men. Faces you’ve seen in church, in town, men who look at you when they think you’re not noticing with a hunger they don’t know what to do with. Men who’d apologize if their fingers brushed your wrist too long.

Then you think about this man, bare-chested behind you, hard and unashamed, his hand pressed between your shoulder blades, the other on you like you’re his to handle. 

You think about his eyes in the barn, on your torn dress. About the words he said in this very room, about stepping. About how you’ve been walking around with your jaw clenched and your thighs pressed together ever since.

“Tell me the truth,” he says, thumb pressing a little harder, his other fingers spread wide over the swell of you. “You want me to let go of you and send you back up that hill with your temper, you say it. I’ll move. You can go pray extra loud come Sunday.”

The lamp crackles softly, a tiny sound in the heavy dark.

“And if I don’t?” you hear yourself ask, voice small but steady. “If I say I don’t want you to move?”

His hand stills on your back for one beat, then both of them tighten—one pressing you down, one grabbing a handful of your ass like he’s staking a claim. A breath leaves him in a long, shuddery exhale that ghosts hot over your neck.

“Then I’m gonna take real good care of what you brought me,” he says, tone gone hoarse and thick, the restraint in it the only thing keeping you from shaking. “Gonna give you somethin’ to think about next time you lay awake in that bed of yours. Gonna fuck you on this table till you don’t remember what you came down here mad about.”

The word fuck lands hard in you, a punch and a promise all at once. 

You grip the edge of the wood like it’s all that’s keeping you upright, though you’re already bent, already braced.

“Say it,” he murmurs, leaning in until his chest brushes your back, bare skin hot where it touches the thin cotton. 

The admission sits in your throat like a hot stone. It feels enormous. It feels like stepping off a ledge.

“I want—” The word catches, but his thumb flicks over you again, sharp and sure, and your hips roll without permission, a little helpless grind that betrays every fight you’ve been waging with yourself. “I want you,” you gasp, shame and relief crashing together. “I want you to—to do somethin’ about it.”

He lets out a sound that’s almost a groan, almost a laugh, almost a curse, his body crowding you tighter, his weight a solid wall of heat at your back. “That’s my girl,” he says, and the possession in it makes your knees wobble, makes that core of you clench hard around nothing.

His hand leaves your back long enough to grab a fistful of your nightgown at the hem, yanking it up in one rough motion that leaves it bunched around your waist. 

Cool air hits your drawers, the bare backs of your thighs, the soft part just under your cheeks, and then his palm is there, skin to skin at last, cupping you hard. 

His fingers dig in, thumbs pressing outward, spreading you slightly, mapping the give.

“You’re shakin’,” he says, sounding pleased. “Ain’t even touched you proper yet.”

“You’re takin’ your time,” you manage, though the words shake too.

He chuckles, low. “First time’s never good when a man rushes,” he answers, matter-of-fact. “And I know you ain’t had nobody in you yet, feelin’ the way you do under my hand.”

Before you can answer, his fingers hook into the waistband of your drawers and tug. The fabric resists for a second, elastic biting into soft flesh, then slides down, dragging over your hips, over the swell of your ass, down the backs of your thighs until they tangle around your knees. 

He leaves them there, trapping your legs just enough you can’t kick or close up, just enough that you’re open and vulnerable and aware of it.

Cool air kisses you everywhere the cloth just left. 

You feel filthy, bare from waist to mid-thigh, bent over his table with your nightgown rucked up, your cunt exposed to the room, to him. It makes your head swim.

Then his hand is back, and there is no room for anything else.

He cups you from behind, fingers sliding through the slick heat of your folds, and you hear a sharp breath hitch out of him. “Oh, hell,” he says, reverent.

You make a broken, helpless sound that doesn’t sound like it belongs to you. 

No one’s ever been there before, not like this, not with fingers spreading you, rubbing through you, middle finger catching on that aching bud you’ve only ever touched in the dark with guilty hands. 

The sensation is lightning-bright, stabbing up your spine.

“Easy,” he murmurs, palm flattening across your low back again, his body curving over yours, caging you. “I got you. Gonna make it good for you before I stretch you around me. Don’t want you too scared to enjoy your first fuck.”

The way he says first fuck, like he’s staking a flag there, like he’s carving his name into it, makes something fierce flicker through you, a strange pride knotting up with the fear. 

You push back against his hand without meaning to, chasing more.

He feels it. “That’s it,” he encourages, fingers pressing deeper between your lips now. “Ask for what you want with that pretty body. Tell me where it hurts.”

“Everywhere,” you pant, honesty ripped out of you on a wave. “It hurts everywhere.”

He laughs, breath hot against your neck, mouth close enough you feel the shape of it. “That ain’t hurt, girl,” he says. “That’s need.” 

His fingers finally find your entrance, slick and hot and clutching, and he presses the pad of one inside, just the tip, testing. Your whole body clenches around that intrusion.

“You relax for me,” he tells you, tone sliding into something commanding. “Breathe.”

You suck in air, lungs burning. 

He slides the finger in a little further, thick and probing, opening you. 

The stretch is sharp, uncomfortable, but there’s an undercurrent of relief in it. He works it in and out slowly, letting you get used to the feel, letting your body learn the shape of him.

“That’s good,” he murmurs when he feels you soften around him, the praise lighting up something small and hungry in your chest. “See? You take my finger just fine. Gonna take my cock too when I’m done with you.”

He adds a second finger before you can brace, and this time the stretch makes you gasp loud, muscles clamping down. It burns, a deep, insistent ache, like you’re being pried open.

“Shh,” he soothes, his index finding that little bundle of nerves again, circling steady, sending sparks to chase the hurt. “I know. I know. We gotta loosen you up some or you’ll split yourself on me.”

The blunt truth of it makes you squeeze your eyes shut, face hot against your forearm. 

You can feel him behind you, solid, his chest glued to your back, his arm moving between your legs. When you manage to breathe past the initial shock, the burn eases, replaced by a full, pressurized feeling that fills your head with nothing but sensation.

He moves his fingers, slow at first, pumping them in and out of you in short strokes, stretching, coaxing. 

Your body starts to answer despite itself, hips rocking back in tiny motions, seeking that deep, sweet drag. 

Every thrust brushes against something inside you that makes your legs tremble, makes your breath hitch. 

“Listen to that,” he says, voice thick, and it takes you a second to realize he means the wet sound loud in the little kitchen as his fingers work in and out of you. “You hear yourself takin’ me in? That’s you wantin’ it.”

It’s filthy and true and you can’t deny it. 

There's a coil tightening low in your belly, every nerve in your body funneling to where his hand is. Your grip on the table edge goes slippery with sweat.

“Remmick,” you gasp, not even sure what you’re asking for, only that you’re strung too tight.

“There you go,” he groans, fingers driving a little deeper, curling just right.

It hits without much warning. One second you’re climbing, the next you’re over the edge, everything snapping. 

Your body seizes around his fingers, clenching so hard it almost hurts, that coil unspooling in a rush of pleasure so intense it blanks your mind.

A breathless moan tears up your throat. Your thighs shake, knees nearly buckling, if it weren’t for his hand on your back and the table under your palms you’d be on the floor.

“That’s it,” he groans, riding you through it, fingers still working, still moving until you’re whimpering, too sensitive, twitching with each little aftershock. 

You sag against the table when it finally lets you go, chest heaving, sweat cooling on your neck. He eases his fingers out of you slow, gentle for the first time since you walked in, his hand sliding up to rest on your hip. You can feel his other hand at your back again, rubbing small circles, keeping you grounded.

“First one’s always a little wild,” he says, sounding almost fond. “You doin’ all right?”

You nod, or try to. Your head feels full of cotton, floaty and heavy all at once. “I—” Your voice comes out hoarse. You clear your throat. “I’m fine.”

“You’re more than fine,” he says, and there’s a smile in it. “You’re perfect.” He shifts behind you, and that’s when you feel it, really feel it—his cock pressed up against the back of your thigh through the fabric of his trousers. 

He’s been hard this whole time, you realize dimly, all that while he was working you open. The blunt head drags over your skin when he adjusts, the thickness of him obvious even through cloth.

Your stomach flips, fear and anticipation knotting together. “You’re really—”

“Oh, I’m really.” He sounds almost amused. “You wanted me to take you on this table, remember?” 

His hand leaves your back and you hear the soft, familiar sound of a belt coming loose, a buckle clinking, the rasp of leather through belt loops. Then buttons, quick and practiced, fabric shifting.

You suck in a breath, every sense straining.

A moment later, something hot and slick—not his fingers this time—nudges against your entrance. He slides the head of his cock through your slick folds slowly, up and down, coating himself in you, bumping your clit on the downstroke, making you twitch.

“Jesus,” he mutters, more to himself than you. “You feel that? How you’re grabbin’ at me already and I ain’t even in?”

You do feel it, and it’s terrifying. Your body recognizes him as something it’s meant to hold, meant to take, even as your mind stumbles over the size of him, over what this means.

“I—wait,” you say, panic flaring for a second, the reality of it looming. “Remmick, I’m—”

“I know,” he says, and for once there’s no teasing in it. “You listen to me. It’s gonna burn at first, then it’s gonna feel like you never should’ve gone without it this long. You trust me?”

You hesitate. He feels it in the way your muscles tense around the head of him. His hand comes up, fingers wrapping loosely around your throat from behind, thumb tipping your chin just a little. The touch sends a different kind of shiver through you, sharp and grounding.

“I ain’t gonna break you,” he says quietly, close to your ear. “I want you comin’ back to this just as bad as I want you right now.” His hips roll just enough that the blunt tip presses hard against your opening. 

The hand at your throat, the tone in his voice, the memory of his fingers and the way your body just came apart on them thirty seconds ago—they all crash together, and you find yourself nodding before you know you’re doing it.

“Go,” you whisper, the word trembling, but there.

He makes a sound then that’s half-growl, half-groan, all man. His grip on your throat tightens just a hair, his other hand clamping down on your hip.

“That’s my girl,” he says again, rough with need. “Hold on.”

The head of him breaches you with more resistance than his fingers ever met. 

Your body tries to clamp down, to keep him out, muscles fighting the stretch. He doesn’t slam in, but he doesn’t baby you either. He works himself in slow, steady pressure, teeth gritted, hips driving forward inch by thick inch.

The burn is real. It’s sharp, like you’re being split open from the inside. You gasp, nails scraping at the wood, whole body bowing. For a second it’s too much.

“Breathe,” he grunts through his own strain, hand at your throat sliding up to your jaw, thumb pressing at your cheek. “Breathe through it. You’re takin’ me. Look at you. You’re takin’ me.”

He isn’t wrong. Beneath the pain, there’s this breathless awe—at the size of him, at the way your own body yields, at the feel of being filled in a way you never have before. 

You force yourself to inhale, exhale, again, again. Your muscles flutter around him, protesting, then slowly easing.

When the broadest part of his head passes the tight ring of your entrance, the rest slides in easier, still stretching, still burning, but less violently. 

He sinks deeper, stopping only when his hips are flush with your ass, his pelvis pressed to your backside, balls snugged up against your cunt. You can feel him everywhere, heavy and solid in your core, pulsing faintly.

“Christ,” he rasps, the words hot against your neck. “I can barely think straight. Sweet girl, you just swallowed every inch of me.”

You exhale shakily, overwhelmed. Full doesn’t begin to cover it. You feel stuffed, stretched to the point of coming apart, and yet under the ache, something else is already starting—a low, thick pleasure that moves like honey, spreading outward from where you’re joined.

He holds still for a long moment, breathing hard into your hair, chest rising and falling against your back. His hand at your hip rubs little circles, the one at your jaw softening its grip.

“You tell me when it stops hurtin’ so sharp,” he says. “I ain’t in no rush, even if my cock’s yellin’ otherwise.”

You try to focus. The worst of the burn ebbs, leaving a throbbing soreness, but the sense of him—deep, impossible, yours—is starting to bloom into something almost good.

“Move,” you whisper, surprising yourself. “Just a little.”

He laughs, breath short. “Greedy already,” he says. “Alright.”

He pulls back, just an inch, maybe two, dragging that thick length along your walls. The friction is intense, raw and tender and electric all at once. Then he pushes in again, slower, watching for any flinch. 

Your fingers dig into the table, but you don’t cry out, don’t tell him to stop. Your body clutches at him on the way out, sucks at him on the way back in.

He does it again. And again. Each shallow thrust smooths the hurt a little more, replaces it with deeper sensation. The initial sting fades into a deep, stretching fullness that makes your knees weak, that makes heat lick up your spine in waves.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, hand sliding from your jaw back down to your throat, wrapping around it more firmly this time, not cutting your air, just pinning you, reminding you where you are and who’s holding you. “Now we’re gettin’ somewhere.”

He lengthens his strokes, pulling back farther, pushing in harder. The wet slap of his hips meeting your ass starts up, quiet at first, then louder, the sound of skin on skin obscene in the still night. 

Every push drives him deeper, nudging at something inside you that makes your breath jump, that sends little shocks through your belly, like he’s bumping the edge of something tender and secret and his.

Your body has learned the shape of him, stretching you from the inside. 

You can feel every ridge, every vein, the way the fat head spears through the tight clutch of you and then disappears into that deep, hot place that was empty your whole life and now is nothing but him.

His hand at your throat tightens, just a little. Not enough to cut your air, but enough to make each breath a thing you have to pull for, chest heaving against the table edge. His palm is broad and warm, thumb resting under your jaw, fingers curved along the side of your neck. 

Every time his hips snap forward, that grip reminds you he’s there; it pins you in your own skin so you can’t float away from what’s happening, can’t pretend it’s anything but what it is: you getting fucked open on a man’s cock in his kitchen like you were meant for it.

Then his hand drops. It slides down the column of your throat, over the dip of your collarbone, fingers spreading wide as they drag lower, rough palm grazing the top swell of your breast through the thin cotton. 

He cups you from behind, big hand wrapping around the weight of it, lifting, squeezing. The nightgown bunches under his fingers as he kneads, thumb rolling over your nipple until it stiffens hard, the fabric rasping just enough to make you whine.

“There,” he mutters, voice gone thick, like he has to taste every part of you. “Knew these’d feel good in my hand.”

He squeezes once more, harder, the pressure sending a sharp line of sensation straight down to where he’s buried in you, your nipple trapped between his thumb and the heat of his palm. 

Your back arches, pushing more of your tit into his grip even as his cock grinds deeper. 

For a second you’re caught between the drag inside and the rough, greedy hold on your breast, pleasure ricocheting between the two.

Then his hand is moving again, leaving your aching nipple peaked under the cotton, skimming back up over your breastbone, returning to your throat like it owns the place. His fingers curl back into their collar around your neck, thumb settling under your jaw, holding you where he wants you while his hips keep driving.

“Listen to you,” he groans, and you realize he doesn’t just mean your voice—wrecked and breaking on every inhale—but the wet, filthy noise your body’s making, the slick drag of his cock pulling out of you, the obscene squelch when he pushes back in, the slap of his balls hitting the curve of your cunt. “You hear that? That’s this pussy lovin’ every inch I’m givin’ her.”

The word makes your stomach flutter and your cunt clench down around him so tight he curses, hips stuttering. 

There’s no room for modesty now; everything between your legs is wide awake and telling on you. 

Every time he pulls back, your inner muscles chase after him, hugging, clinging, like you’re frightened of losing that fullness, like your body’s praying he’ll push right back in—and he does, like he’s answering a call.

He adjusts his stance, feet shifting on the rough floor, and angle changes. The next thrust lands different, deeper, the thick head of him driving up and forward to grind against a spot inside you that makes your vision white out around the edges for a beat. 

You jolt, a strangled noise ripping out of you, fingers scraping along the tabletop as your whole body goes tense.

“There it is,” he pants, catching that reaction, chasing it. 

He does it again on purpose, hips rolling instead of just snapping, driving that same path, making sure he hits that spot with the crown every time. 

“You feel that? Right there? That’s what you been needin’, girl. That ache way up high you ain’t never had a name for.”

He's right on it now, relentless. 

Each stroke is a steady assault, steady enough your body starts to learn the pattern, tension building with every collision. The soreness from taking him the first time smooths into a deep, hot throb that wraps around the pleasure, one feeding the other. 

Your toes curl, your thighs tremble, your stomach ripples around the intrusion like you’re trying to swallow him even deeper.

He slides the hand from your hip back around your front, into the slick heat between your thighs, and finds your clit like he’s been doing it all his life. 

His fingers are slick with your own mess, rough pads moving in tight, ruthless circles over that swollen bud. It sends lightning directly up your spine, straight to the base of your skull. 

You choke on a sound that isn’t quite a word and jerk against his hand; his arm around your throat holds you in place.

“Goddamn, you’re twitchy,” he groans, grinding his hips down so the bone of him presses your ass, so his cock bruises into that soft spot inside while his fingers roll your clit. “You gonna fall apart on me again? You gonna let me feel you squeeze all over my cock proper this time?”

Your answer is a breathless, broken, “Please,” your voice ragged, half sob, half prayer. 

The table shudders under the force of his thrusts now, the legs complaining in small creaks that match the rhythm of his hips. The lamp flame jumps in its glass, throwing wild shadows against the wall—a tangle of your bent body and his frame hunched over you, shoulders rolling as he works inside you like he’s plowing up hard ground.

Spit slicks your lips; you realize at some point your mouth fell open and just forgot how to close, breath dragging in ragged, wet pulls. 

You couldn’t be bothered to care if you tried; everything is narrowed to the hot place his cock is sawing through and the bright, brutal pulses from his fingers on your clit.

He can feel you climbing, feel your body drawing in tight around him, feel your channel starting to flutter. He growls, low and guttural, the sound pressed against the back of your neck. “That’s it. That’s it, squeeze me.”

His hand at your throat tightens a hair more, narrowing the world to his breathing and yours, the rush of blood in your ears, the drag of wood under your palms. 

The smallest bit of pressure makes every sensation hit harder; your body goes light and heavy at the same time, limbs tingling, cock-deep pull inside you the only thing that feels solid.

He pistons into you now with a steadier, punishing rhythm, cock dragging from the fat base at your entrance all the way to that deep end that makes your belly flip, then back again. 

Your ass jiggles from each impact, flesh rippling under his grip. His fingers at your clit don’t falter.

You can hear yourself now, high and ruined, begging without even knowing what for. “Don’t stop—don’t—Remmick, don’t—oh—oh God—”

“Mhm, use my name,” he hisses, hips crashing into yours, the wet slap echoing off the close walls. “You say it when you can’t hold yourself together no more.”

He leans forward, the sweat on his skin slick against the thin cotton of your nightgown bunched at your waist. 

His mouth finds the side of your neck, teeth scraping over the delicate skin there, then biting down just hard enough to make you gasp. He sucks, draws blood closer to the surface in a hot sting that only makes your cunt flutter harder around him.

Between the choke of his hand, the sharp pinch of his teeth, the relentless grind of his cock, and the ruthless attention on your clit, you don’t stand a chance.

The orgasm slams into you hard enough your knees buckle, your body trying to curl in on itself while he holds you stretched over the table. 

Everything constricts at once—your throat around his hand, your belly around the deep ache, your cunt around his cock. You clamp down on him with startling force, walls seizing, milking, clutching like you’re trying to suck him straight out of his skin.

You cry out. There’s no pretty word for it. Sound rips out of you high and raw, your voice cracking on his name. 

Your vision goes fuzzy with white at the edges, the kitchen shrinking to the rough wood under your hands and the thick, unyielding length splitting you and the brutal roll of pleasure ripping through you in waves.

“Fuck—fuck,” he grunts at your ear, the feeling of you spasming around him cutting through every ounce of control he has left. “That’s it, that’s it, girl, grip me—Jesus—”

He doesn’t stop moving, not really; he grinds through it, forcing his cock to keep sliding, short, deep thrusts, using the vice of your orgasm to wring everything he can from you. 

You’re shaking all over, thighs trembling so hard your feet skid a little on the floor, toes digging uselessly for purchase. 

Another rush of slick gushes around him, soaking his cock, dripping down over his balls, sliding warm along the inside of your thighs.

Your body keeps clenching in pulses, the pleasure cresting and breaking over and over until it tips toward something sharp, too much. You whimper, the sound small and shredded. His hand leaves your clit finally, stroking shaking skin instead, but his hips don’t stop.

The rhythm goes ragged, less measured, more frantic. His thrusts turn into short, hard ruts, like his body’s the one begging now. His fingers flex around your throat, then loosen just a little, thumb stroking your jaw instead as his breathing unravels.

“Gonna fill you up,” he groans, voice pitched low and rough. “You want that? You want me shootin’ deep in you, huh? Want to feel me leakin’ out you all the way back up to that house?”

The words, filthy as they are, punch right through your oversensitivity and light up something molten in your gut. 

Your sore, flooded cunt tightens around him involuntarily at the thought of carrying him inside you, his spend rolling down your thighs later when you climb into your own bed. 

You can’t shape the answer into full words; what comes out is some strangled mess that sounds like y-yes and a choke.

“Yeah, you do,” he snarls like he heard it. “You greedy little thing, comin’ down here pretendin’ you just wanna talk when your cunt’s hungry as hell.”

He drives in hard, once, twice, three more times, each thrust bottoming him out, pelvis grinding against the round of your ass. 

The slap of his hips is loud now, sloppy, wetter, your combined mess making the impact slick.

Then his whole body locks.

His stomach clenches tight against your back, jaw clamped against the side of your neck. A sound tears out of him, not quite human, something between a growl and a groan. His cock jerks inside you, swelling even thicker for a heart-stopping second, and then you feel it—hot, heavy spurts of him spilling deep, pounding against your cervix, flooding that space that’s been empty your entire life with a hot, liquid fullness.

He curses low and hoarse on each pulse, hips rocking in tiny, helpless movements as he empties himself, his own climax dragged out by the way your slick, oversensitive walls keep squeezing and fluttering around him. Every time your cunt milks him, another rope of cum kicks out of him, painting you inside.

“God—damn—” he grits, shuddering, one hand sliding from your throat to slap down next to your own on the table, fingers splayed wide, knuckles white on the wood. “You feel that? Feel me givin’ it to you?”

You do. You feel all of it. Every pulse, every twitch, every deep throb of him lodged inside, filling you, staking a claim. Your whole body feels stuffed, weighty, like he’s poured something molten into your bones.

The shakes take him then. You feel them where his chest is plastered to your back, quivers running through him in waves as his orgasm tapers off. 

His cock softens a little inside you but doesn’t slip free; your swollen entrance and the spent thickness of him keep you plugged together. Each small movement sends a slow, slick ache radiating outward.

For a long moment neither of you says anything.

He slumps more of his weight onto you without meaning to, and you sag under it, cheek pressed to the tabletop, breaths coming in harsh, uneven pulls. 

Sweat has glued your nightgown to your ribs where it’s still covering your upper body; where it’s bunched around your waist, the fabric clings damp to your skin with a mixture of your own wetness and his.

Eventually, he finds his voice, though it’s wrecked, scraped raw at the edges. “Jesus,” he mutters, words ghosting hot over the shell of your ear. 

For the first time since he pushed into you, he eases his hips back.

You gasp, a little shocked moan slipping out as his softening cock drags along your raw walls. 

When his head slips past your entrance, your muscles clench on instinct, reluctant to let him go, but gravity wins. He slides free, leaving you empty in a way that feels sharp, unfinished, even with his cum already starting to seep down, warm, from inside you.

Something thick and wet trickles out immediately, a slow, viscous roll that slides over your swollen folds and down the curve of your inner thigh. You feel it clearly, a hot trail in the cooler air of the kitchen. The knowledge of what it is, whose it is, makes your face burn and your belly tighten all over again.

He sees it too.

“Look at that,” he says softly, voice full of rough, satisfied awe. 

His hand leaves yours and slides down, palm cupping the underside of your ass, thumb catching one of those white streaks, spreading it lazily over your sensitive skin. You flinch, a little gasp escaping before you can stop it.

“Too much?” he asks.

“A little,” you admit, breath still stuttering. 

He makes a pleased sound at that, thumb dragging one last lazy stripe through the mess before he rubs his hand off on his own thigh. 

He straightens slowly, the absence of his weight making you sway for a second. His hands, empty now, come to your waist, smoothing down the bunched nightgown. He tugs it back into place over your hips, hiding what he’s done as best cloth can hide it.

Then he crouches a little, fingers catching the waistband of your drawers. They’re still tangled around your knees, sticky with your slick. 

He coaxes them up, guiding the cotton over your tender flesh, covering your cunt, trapping his spend where it is. 

The pull of the fabric against your oversensitive skin makes you hiss and bite your lip, but it also feels lewd and intimate in a different way—his cum pressed up against you, soaked into the cloth that sits right over your entrance.

He knows exactly what he’s doing, sealing you up like that. It shows in the way his thumb lingers a second too long at the gusset, pressing lightly, as if to make sure the material is snug, as if to feel one more time that he’s right there even with clothes between you.

“Gonna be walkin’ home with your panties stickin’ to you and a piece of me tryin’ to leak right back out,” he murmurs, voice a dark purr. “You’ll be thinkin’ of me every step.”

You make a weak noise, somewhere between a protest and something softer. Your legs feel unsteady when he finally helps you pull them fully into place, when he urges you upright with hands at your waist. 

When you stand, it’s like your bones have gone wrong—heavy at the hips, light at the knees, a deep, interior throb that makes you aware of your own body in a way you’ve never been.

He turns you gently, so your hip leans back into the edge of the table instead of your chest, so you’re facing him. His hair is damp and rumpled, a curl fallen low over his forehead, chest and stomach slick with sweat. 

His gaze sweeps over you, taking in the mussed nightgown, the bite marks blossoming at your throat and shoulder where his teeth worried your skin, the slackness of your mouth, the glassy shine to your eyes. 

Confidence sits easy on him; he looks like a man who’s put in a long night’s work and is proud of the job he’s done.

“You’re gonna cuss me tomorrow,” he says, voice low and a little smug. “When you sit down. When you walk. But you ain’t gonna regret it.”

You swallow, throat thick, his words settling warm and heavy between your ribs.

“No,” you admit, even quieter than before, and there’s no sense lying now. “I don’t… regret it.”

His mouth curves. “Good.”

You look away, suddenly aware of the time, of the silence of the big house up the hill, of how your mama and daddy are sleeping through something that’s gone and rearranged their daughter from the inside out.

“I need to go,” you say, voice small but steadying. “Before my father wakes up for water, or Mama starts callin’ and finds my bed empty.”

His hands fall from your waist, though not without one last, slow sweep along the curve of you, like he’s committing it to memory. 

“Go on,” he says. “Before I talk you into layin’ down on that bed in there and not leavin’ till the rooster screams.”

Your body responds to the image with an exhausted throb, a clench around nothing. 

You push off the table and take a careful step. Your thighs rub, slick, the damp cotton of your drawers pulling against you; you feel a fresh little leak of him inside you, a warm ooze that soaks into the fabric and clings. It makes you stutter a little, the soreness set deep in your core.

Remmick watches the way you move, jaw flexing, something like pride and hunger both tightening his face. 

He reaches for his trousers, tucking himself away, but he doesn’t bother with a shirt yet, doesn’t bother pretending he’s anything but what he is: the man who just fucked you on his kitchen table and filled you til you’re walking crooked.

You make it to the door on legs that still shake. Your fingers land on the frame as you pull it open, the cool breath of the night spilling in. 

Before you step out, you glance back. His eyes are on you, unreadable now, dark and steady in the lamplight.

“You come down here again,” he says, voice quiet, sure, “don’t pretend you’re just here for salve or scoldin’. You knock on my door after dark, I know what you’re askin’ for.”

You hold his gaze, the soreness between your thighs, the fullness inside you, the ache in your muscles all speaking louder than any denial you could muster. 

His eyes follow you out into the dark, low and pleased, and as you cross the yard barefoot, nightgown brushing your knees, his cum warm and sticky between your legs, you know he’s standing there in that doorway shirtless, watching you go with no shame at all, already planning just how he’ll take you the next time you come scratching at his door.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d tell your father what plagued you. Beg him to take you to the preacher. Beg the preacher to free you from this torment. Beg the Lord to forgive you because you’ve been dreaming of sins.

And it felt so good.

Eventually, you let it in. Stood there at your door looking as if you’d seen a ghost.

There’s a warmth beside you in your bed now, tracing over your body and snaking towards your legs. It knows you like a second skin. Knows just where to touch, where to pull.

You feel me, don’t you?

Eyes dancing over the darkness of your room found nothing. No one.

It spreads to the curve of your thighs, reaching higher than you knew was right. Tendrils that slip past the nightgown that covers you, leaving you bare, but never cold. The warmth stays. Pressed to you so close that you almost believe its words.

You’re not alone.

Never alone. Not when you felt it reaching that inner depth, swirling around the center of you so deliciously.

You opened yourself to it. That gentle force that rocks your core until you’re left babbling back. “I feel you,” you whisper. “I want more.” It laughs back.

More, darlin’? Anything for an angel.

That pressure over your sweet bud strengthens, and it leaves you blooming. Flames of hell ignite across your skin. But it burns so delightfully. Your legs spread even further.

“Fuck,” you let out in a breath. Cursing like you never had before.

The burning turns into a searing. Iron branded on your skin. “I-I’m…”

I know. Let it out all over me. Let the Lord hear you.

You gasp at a sting near the base of your neck, a gentle nip into your skin. Jaw slacked open. Chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. A sense of heaven washing over you like a pulse as the sheets turned soaked beneath you.

The blanket tangled around your leg fluttered, but there was no turn of the air in your room. And you felt the warmth slowly disappear.

Ghostly fingers trailing down your skin until you were cold again. But still, you weren’t alone.

Let him send you down with me.

Your eyes shoot open. And suddenly, you’re sickened with clarity.

A nightmare. A dream. Everything you wanted felt so good to take, and in doing so, you’d surely damned your own soul.

You’re a woman possessed. Forget your father, and the preacher. No one could save you now from the demon that’d pulled you under. Water and guilt filling up your lungs.

You lay awake that night.

The moon bleeds silver light onto your floor boards. Your eyes turn red as you watch, waiting to feel another warmth again. But it never comes. You waited. So still you probably looked dead.

Deep down, there was something you’d never confess:

It was the most alive you ever felt.

The next morning, you wake with the memory of it and dried remnants of a slick between your legs. The smell of sweat in the air. The sound of a voice whispering into your ear forever etched into your mind.

You rise from your bed almost drunkenly. Intoxicated with sin. The ground doesn’t feel right underneath you, as if you’re floating an inch above it.

Something churns in your stomach. Rapid footsteps to the bathroom sink are still soft so as not to wake your father.

You lurch over the basin and gag, but nothing comes out.

The sink croaks as cold water spurts. You splash onto your skin, hoping to remove the remaining flush on your cheeks. Evidence of your crime.

And that’s when you see it. Staring at your crazed reflection in the mirror.

Upon your neck. Almost completely imperceptible.

Two minuscule bumps, red, warm, and tender to the touch. They could somewhat pass as mosquito bites, but you knew well of what it was. The devil had left his mark on you.

YOU DON’T SLEEP at night.

When the sun sets, it shuts its eye on your tranquility. And the demon threatens to appear again. You pull the covers to your chest and lay flat against your bed. You moved your bed to the corner. Lets you see all of the dark around you, not a spot to be missed.

Sometimes, you think it’s come. A slight breeze from the hall or a creak in the floor.

But it never did. No ghost harnessing itself to you.

Your eyes only drift shut at the earliest peek of dawn. You only wake when the air turns hot in the late morning.

The days remain the same. You run to the town to get groceries. You ride your bike past the bridge. You braid the choir girls’ hair.

The other young women in town are engaged, or already married. Swept away as soon as they were old enough. But you find peace in solitude. At least, you tell yourself you do.

You think nothing of the night two weeks ago.

And how it knew how to speak to you. How to feel you. How to provoke every part of you that you denied yourself.

It took you in a chokehold.

And you begged it to continue.

When the memories crept to the front of your mind, you pushed them back like it had never even happened. But you were denying yourself.

And for what? Glory?

What could be more glorious than the way that warmth opened you? The spirit of something beyond the world you knew—settling inside your heart, riddling you with curses and sinful reveries.

You sauntered through the front door somewhat like a ghost yourself. Stomach still full from an early supper. Sweat clinging hair to your skin.

Outside, half the sun casted a golden glow across the land. The boots on your feet were suddenly heavy as you passed the hall.

“Is that you?” Your father calls out.

You stop in your tracks. The radio plays a gravelly broadcast of a song your mother used to sing.

He sits in his armchair. He won’t let you leave until you’ve come and said goodnight. And promise to pray. “How was your walk?” He calls out once you stand in the doorway.

“Fine,” you say breathily. “The ferns are growing in double this year. And the honeysuckles smell sweeter.”

Your father hums. It’s silent for a long moment. You hope there’s nothing else to be said.

Until he speaks again.

“Are you alright?”

Maybe he really did know you better than you thought. Maybe he’d know this whole time of how you’d disgraced yourself. Ruined. Maybe he’d overheard you that night, realized it was lust laced in your voice.

Or maybe he could see the devil in your eyes right there as you glared at him in silence. “Of course, I am, daddy.” His face softens.

You haven’t called him that in years.

“Well…I just worry, is all.” He pats the armrest once. “You look like you ain’t slept a lick.”

A smile twitches across your mouth. The hair around your face is dry now, strung out in different directions.

You look like a mad woman.

Perhaps you are.

“I’m fine, daddy.” The song on the radio ends. “I promise.”

You turn back to the hall. Your father doesn’t speak another word.

The sky turns dark outside your window And the routine begins. Exchange the cotton dress you’d stolen from your mother’s wardrobe, untouched for years, with a nightgown hemmed with lace. Rinse your face—let the water into your eyes because you’re too afraid to close them.

Pull the covers to your chest. Lay like you’re on your deathbed. Waiting. For too long you watch the moonlight shift throughout the night.

But it wasn’t your fear keeping you awake.

It was the addicting taste of temptation. Of lust again. And it tasted of sweat, tears, and something ancient that you couldn’t place.

Your skin felt the air thicken first. Then, your heart.

And you heard it again.

Left you aching for more, didn’t I?

You would’ve gasped if your chest hadn’t suddenly locked in fear. Your eyes darted across the room.

Nothing. No gentle breeze.

Though the voice continued, you felt no warmth like before. You were alone.

“You’re in my fuckin’ head,” you whispered.

I’m everywhere inside you, lamb.

You thickly swallowed.

“Why come back?”

How couldn’t I? When you tasted so sweet?

Your bones turned to butter. Melting right back into the bed just like you had that night. The mere mention of what you’d felt…

Gonna have to do it yourself this time, sweetheart.

Eyes closed, your brows furrowed as you mindlessly slid your hand down your stomach, hovering just above your mound. “I don’t know how.”

Sure, you do. Just do as I say.

A beat. An invitation. One that you accepted.

Put your fingers where I had mine.

Your middle finger touched yourself first. Landed perfectly over that pearl. Your pulse throbbed into your hand as your fingers slid through your folds and gathered your slick.

“Oh- fu-uck,” your voice trailed off, determined to stay quiet again.

That’s it, angel. I’d have you screamin’ if I was there.

Without a command, you dug your palm into your clit. Bucked your hips involuntarily, leaving the springs underneath your mattress squeaking.

You heard its chuckle.

Ain’t that cute. Don’t even need my help, now.

“Don’t leave,” you pant quietly. Fingers rubbing over as much of you as possible.

You remember that night, don’t you?

What I did to you…how it felt.

You nodded. Your entire figure shook under your own touch. To be in control of your pleasure was an indescribable power. With your eyes shut, the memories still burned into your mind begin to guide your hands.

The tip of your finger prods your hole. Traces the velvety opening just past the brim, collecting a warm wetness that reaches your palm.

Taste it.

You hesitate. Put your fingers into the light and watch them glisten with your own sin.

Go ahead, dove.

Its words beckoned you like an inner calling. You do as you're told. You bring your hand to your mouth—still hesitant—before brushing over your tongue. Your lips involuntarily tighten around your finger. 

The flavor isn’t anything you’ve had before. A strange taste of what it meant to feel good. To defy what you’d been told was wrong. 

To be right. 

You didn’t care if it was sinning. And you didn’t care if this temptation was dragging you down. You want this pleasure forever, to feel it sink into your bones. 

Without command, you pressed your hand to your cunt again. The heat of the sun in your hold. You don’t hesitate anymore. Push not one, but two fingers inside. 

A moan—soft but deep like it came from the very core of you—escapes past your lips. Your other hand flies to cover your mouth. 

Well, if that ain’t the most heavenly thing I heard. 

So, you don’t stop. 

Instead, you huff heavy, muffled breaths into your palm as your other hand works inside you. The sound of your own slick nearly echoes across the room, even under your gown and blankets. 

Curl ‘em, just gently.  Want you to feel what I feel. 

You curl your fingers upward, your back arching at the pleasure. Your chest falls heavy as you try to breathe quietly. It chuckles at you. 

You close to it, ain’t you?

You rapidly nod. A subtle shake to your legs because you hardly imagine your hand as your own anymore. 

Say it. 

“I—” you sputter out, louder than you’d intended. You were desperate for that feeling again—the one that left you trembling in the dark and questioning your own sanity. 

You don’t feel crazy anymore. And if you are, then so be it. “I’m so fuckin’ close.”

Now, you’ll do as I say, yeah?

The voice has changed, and you only notice it now. It’s still the same deep tone that whispered sins to you like lullabies, but there’s a drawl—it matches yours. 

You nod again. “Y-Yes.” A heat builds up around your hand. It’s coming, and you softly smile at the thought of it. 

Then, stop, sweet girl. 

You don’t know how you obeyed. Pulling your hand away from you, instantly feeling empty despite the fire coursing through your blood. So close, and yet so far. The euphoric feeling ripped from you like a threat. 

“No!” Your other hand shoots straight to your mouth. You pray your father has drunk himself to sleep tonight. 

A low laugh. 

It’s alright, angel. 

“Please.” It comes out muffled through your palm. Your cheeks burn, a single, cold tear sliding down them. Your fingers inch towards your cunt again. 

Now, don’t go ruinin’ it, darlin’. Only one who’s gon’ have you shakin’ is me. 

The only thing ruined was your impending release. 

You do as I say. 

But you don’t listen anymore. 

Dig the heel of your palm into your cunt again. 

It continued to urge you, command you, to stop. But without the force of it upon your body this time, you saw no threat.

“I told you,” you say quietly. “You’re just in my head. A fuckin’ curse draggin’ me to hell. But I don’t care anymore.”

It makes a sound like a sneer. A test. A bit more temptation. Amused at the sight of you now grinding your hips into your own hand, chasing after that desperation again. 

Oh, sweet lamb.  I’ll do more to you than that. 

It coos as your brows furrow. Your veins are hit with waves of shock, leaving you whining into the sheets. A warmth runs over your hand—that feeling again. And this time, guilt doesn’t follow. No overwhelming chaos of regret to salvage what purity was left of you. 

You ignore it now. Laugh in a sweaty haze, drunk off of your release, as it whispers its goodbye. 

You’ll be beggin’, girl.  No one can save you now.  No one but me. 

YOU AREN’T AFRAID anymore. At night, you lay in bed with a craving for more, eyes glued to the window like it’ll will the ghost back. 

But it never comes. 

Three nights pass, and on each, you pull another orgasm with your own hands, the memory of its voice coaxing you through it. It’s not the same as having it speak to you, of folding under its will. 

Nevertheless, each night you fall asleep with a blush settled over your cheeks. You stay quiet. Your father doesn’t question you again. He only looks the other way when you walk by. If he knew what you’d been doing in the dark, he would’ve thrown you in hell himself. 

You suppose his silence is safe. 

And it all goes about the same. Ride your bike into town and near the bridge. Get groceries for dinner. Braid the choir girls’ hair. 

You aren’t followed anymore. Nothing lurks nearby. For the first time in weeks, you feel free. 

The most rotten and ruined part of you. It felt glorious. 

But your own hands weren’t enough to bring that spark back into you. Never like it did. It knew you better than you knew yourself. And since it had made no appearance since the night you defied it, you decided to take matters into your own hands. 

Charlie Maywell. 

A boy your age who worked down at the mechanics shop. He was rough and dirty and spoke with the grit of men twice his age. Most importantly, he was popular among widows. 

He was a whore, to put it bluntly. A sweet one. He never broke hearts or left them weeping in the middle of the night. 

He couldn’t hurt you.

It only takes a cigarette and honeysuckle rubbed over your wrists to convince him. You figure he hasn’t been with a girl his age in some time. 

Maybe that’s why he looks at you like you’re gold. 

He lifts your dress so delicately from your frame, eyes going wide when your tits hit the bare air. He doesn’t spend nearly as much time devoted to you as you would’ve hoped, but you’ll take what you can get. 

You would’ve preferred to be in a bed. Not pressed against some wall in a back alley where there’s a slight reek of trash. 

You gasp when he ruts into you. It isn’t the stretch you felt before, but you’re not empty anymore. Charlie lifts your leg over his arm and leans in, pressing you closer to the wall. 

“God, you feel good,” he says into your ear. It’s not right. It’s not the voice you’ve been imagining every night. The voice you were starting to miss. 

“Where can I—?” He looks down. It’d hardly been three minutes. 

You aren’t anywhere as close as him.

“You can do it on my leg. Just wait.” You close your eyes shut. Charlie’s hips stagger against yours in restraint, desperate to follow your command. 

Behind your shut lids, that night comes back to you like a reflection in the mirror. 

You remember its warmth, its force and power over you. How it dragged you underwater and dangled air in front of your face. Only to pull you back up with a breath of a new life. 

A taste for more. 

Charlie leans over you, the corner of his neck now surrounding you. Too close for your comfort. He groans, “I can’t…”

Your fingers dance over your mound again until they reach your clit. And you work yourself like you never have before. Furiously rubbing over your folds as his cock drilled into you. 

Your eyes open at your release. The same moment Charlie pulls from you. Drips all over your bare stomach, and you quickly wipe it off with your dress. 

His chest heaves. “Damn,” he lazily smiles, stepping away from you. 

You fix your skirt and politely smile. It’s shy, as if you hadn’t just felt the rawest part of him. 

You don’t speak to Charlie Maywell again. 

He’s there, outside the mechanics shop. Rolling a tire down the street. Fixing a neighbor’s engine. And every time you pass, he looks at you. Nods. You do the same, and that’s all it is. An unspoken agreement. 

And it still doesn’t return. No creak in the porch floorboards, no tapping at your window. No voice calling out to you like a starved man with eyes on a feast. 

Two days pass, and it becomes a little lonely. Your own hands can’t even satisfy your urges anymore. 

Instead, you sleep. Maybe it’s your body’s instinct of replenishing itself from the weeks you spent awake. But anytime a moment turns dull, or your core aches for something you can’t relieve, you shut your eyes. 

You don’t dream. It’s nothing but black settled over your surroundings like a cloak of ink. A constant shadow.

It looms. 

A HEAVY FOG hangs low above the ground in the morning. Gray like curling smoke. It lines the forest floor outside your window with a thick shield. There’s a veil of condensation over the grass, but you don’t remember it raining. 

Strangely, it’s the perfect day. You step one foot outside, stunned to feel the noticeable lack of humidity in the air. Even a gentle breeze. 

The middle of July, and the sun doesn’t glare down your neck as you ride into town. Your bike even splashes into a puddle. It’s refreshing against your legs that gently pedal.

The sun never comes out. Not a single piece of the sky peeking from the clouds. It looks like rain again, but you don’t go home. 

You go to the market. 

Buy the best-looking basket of strawberries. Some sweet cream and honey. The brown paper bag crinkles in your arms back to your bike. 

You smile and greet a few neighbors passing by, but the streets are nearly empty. It’s innately peaceful in a way you haven’t felt for a long time. 

But still. Something follows. 

Branches out around you, twisted with vines and thorns, piercing your skin until it draws blood. You occasionally slow to glance behind you, but there’s nothing. No one. 

You take a path down the woods. A paved road that you’ve ridden before. Above you, the trees create a thick canopy. Small droplets filter through the leaves and land lightly on your skin. 

The moment is sweet again. But you still can’t shake the haunting feeling of a breath down your neck. 

The only way you ground yourself is to the quiet flow of the stream nearby. A flow that soon turned into a gentle rush. The river. You hear the sound of your mother’s voice in your head. It’s a pleasant surprise from the ghostly one that’d been haunting you. 

She sings to you. 

Oh, brothers, let’s go down.  Let’s go down, come on down.  Come on, brothers, let’s go down, Down in the river to pray. 

Running your small hands inside hers through the water. The riverside, a sandy, muddy space between the water and forest. It gleams in the sun.

You approach the bridge and stop to turn back around on the path. Glance down at the river to see maybe a sliver of sun. But now, it only reflects the murky sky. 

And your mother’s voice suddenly stops. 

Replaced by another one. 

A rough one. Coughing and gasping. 

“H-Hey,” it calls out, hoarse but wet. A real voice. Not from a memory or a nightmare. 

You peer over the edge of the road. The land gently slopes down. At the bottom, where the bridge meets that patch of sand by the river, something rustles in the leaves. 

Slow, careful steps guide you down. The hem of your dress becomes wet from the low-lying fauna. 

A figure lays against the brick of the bridge. Below its feet is a trail of burrowed-out, disrupted sand. Like it’d been running and flailing in it. 

You’re careful not to slip on the leaves when you hear a soft gargle. 

“P-please,” it chokes out, and your feet now rush to the bottom. 

Once they touch the sand, they stop. Your body goes cold. Your own heart is motionless  in your chest from an overwhelming shock. You don’t hear the river anymore. Your lungs have suddenly forgotten how to breathe. 

Blood—an excessive amount—drapes over the sand. It runs down the brick wall, where the body leans. 

Charlie Maywell. 

He’s nearly unrecognizable from the red coated over his face. His work shirt damp with it, the ends of his hair at his chin crusted. And right underneath, his throat gleamed. Fresh. 

Raw. 

An open wound gushed blood onto his chest. The same one you had your head against two days ago. 

“Oh, God,” his jaw shakes when he sees it’s you. The flesh of his throat bobs with his cry. “P-please. You gotta help me.”

You don’t say anything. Not you as you can’t even take a breath. 

There’s too much red. And the stench of it hangs heavy in the air. It even follows the trail in the sand to the river. You’re suffocating. 

“Hey, hey,” he coughs out. Somehow, his words are still gentle. “It’s okay. You just gotta—” Charlie sputters. “C-cover it.” He takes his own palm and places it over the wound. 

His lips—the ones you’d kissed—shake. “Like this.”

But through the cracks between his fingers, the bleed seeps. It stains the fabric of his sleeve, and you watch the faintest remnant of hope fade from his eyes. 

“Please,” he cries. 

He’s begging you. He’s listening to his own heartbeat slow. 

Charlie shakes his head the best he can with a mangled neck. “N-no, please.” The blood coats his teeth and tongue. It drips down to his chin. “Don’t leave, p-please!”

His voice grows weaker. And you back away. Just a step. You watch his chest rise and fall, and then…nothing. His mouth parts open like a ghoul, eyes wide and lifeless. 

You scramble on both hands and feet back up the hill. The leaves slide under your palms. 

You reach for the side of the road like it’s an anchor. Pulling you back for air, gasping and clutching onto the asphalt. 

The bag of groceries falls to the side when you pull your bike up and swing your leg over the side. The basket of strawberries breaks open, and they tumble down the slope. Red running against the dirt. 

Blood seeping into the sand. It’s still there, in your mind, pooling around Charlie’s body like a sadistic grave. 

It’s darker now, the clouds now a deep, threatening, angry gray. And the far distance, in the wall of the trees that surrounds the road, two specks of red glow. They don’t move. 

They blink. 

Your feet move faster than your mind. You follow the path the way you came, wind whistling through your hair. It forces the tears welling up in your eyes to fall. The severity of it all threatens to hit you then. 

But you don’t let it. Not until you stumble into your bedroom, your bike left by the front door. 

You collapse onto the bed. The scent of fresh honeysuckle and sin is still strong. But even in the quiet of your house, Charlie’s voice rattles in your head. 

“Please.”

“Oh, God, no.”

It stays, even after your eyes drift shut.

YOU WAKE IN the afternoon once the shock dissipates from your system. It’s odd that your father hadn’t shaken you awake for breakfast, but when you saunter into the living room, it’s empty. 

He must’ve left for a good day’s work. 

Something lingers in the air. It follows you like a ghost. Reeks of death and everything wrong. 

You can still smell the blood as you splash your face with cold water. It does little to refresh your mind, because nothing could ever make you forget Charlie’s body by the river. 

His voice, begging. His eyes, pleading. His mouth, sputtering blood. 

You see it in your own reflection. For a split second, he’s there. Standing behind you, in a crack in the bathroom mirror.

You don't scream or gasp. If he’s there to take your soul, you won’t fight. 

There isn’t much to take anymore. 

The next second, he’s gone. A blink of an eye, and you’re alone again. 

You try to remember what that voice told you:

You’re not alone. 

And where was it now? Had you upset it? Had you scared it away? As the day before comes back to you in fragments, you remember the glow of red in the forest. 

Watching you like eyes. A predator stalking its prey. You wish it would just attack already. 

YOU WALK INTO town. It takes twice as long, but you can’t stand to look at your bicycle. The dirt road crunches under your boots. Most noticeably, yesterday’s unusual weather hasn’t disappeared.

No beam of hot sun on the back of your neck. No sweat dripping down your cheek. 

Just the strangely still air and the weight of fog. 

Although it feels like morning for you, the rest of the town continues about their day. The wives sort through the peaches and berries at the market. A clerk signs something off for a truck driver. Children play hopscotch and jump rope on the sidewalk. 

Everything is right. 

Until something cuts through the air. 

A wail—sharp and ear-piercing like it could shatter the windows—comes from outside the police station. All the eyes on the street turn towards it. You stop in your steps. 

Because just outside the station, parked on the side of the road, is an ambulance.

You don’t miss a beat. You know what—who—is inside of it. An ambulance is a way of hope, like there’s still a chance for poor Charlie Maywell. But you see it for what it is. 

A hearse. 

Your lower lip trembles. People on the street begin to murmur. 

A woman, with dark hair pinned up into a bun, runs from the station to the ambulance. She sobs as she tries to pull the doors open. She bangs on the windows with her fists. 

“Give me my son!” She shouts. A man wraps his arms around her. Pulls her back to the station. 

The story lives on to be a legend in the town. How Mrs. Maywell cried for her son in the street that strange gray afternoon. How her husband couldn’t hold her back. How they fell to their knees when they dragged poor Charlie’s body out.

Covered with nothing but a sheet. The slope of his nose piques under it, and below his head, is a horrific splotch of red. 

Your eyes dart around you—maybe your guilt is so strong that everyone knows. But the people don’t look at you. 

They watch, for a long time, as Mrs. Maywell cries. 

“They had to drag her back home.” Mr. Kline says at the bank the next day. Sorting the  bills in his hand like he wasn’t holding a thousand dollars.

Eventually, it comes out quick enough for the whole town to know. Charlie Maywell was ripped apart, mangled and mauled. A blood-soaked mess by the time the cops found him. Had his body rotted a few days more, he would’ve been unrecognizable. 

Your father only speaks of it once. Hunched over his radio, a beer in his hand. “No more walks. Or bike rides.”

You blink once. Guilt gleams over your eyes, but he can’t bring himself to look at you. You don’t know which one of you failed the other.

“Yes, daddy.”

You kiss the top of his forehead before bed. 

CHARLIE MAYWELL IS buried the following week. 

His casket—a big, dark-oak thing—is closed. Covered with white roses and wildflowers. The preacher stumbles over his words, cut off by quick sniffles and long breaths. 

At the front, near the altar, and closest to Charlie, sat his father. Alone in the pews with the whole town behind him. Eyes wide, stricken with horror at the floorboards like he’d just seen war.

And perhaps he had. 

Perhaps, in some way, you could’ve stopped it. Saved not only Charlie from his fate but his father from this grief. 

The choir girls sing. You can’t look at them. 

You can’t look at anything other than your hands in your lap. Even if they never had been dirtied, the blood was still on them. A stain of a nightmare come true. 

“Please!” 

Charlie’s voice still speaks to you like he’s just over your shoulder. His breath still fans against your skin. Then, it comes back to bite. 

“Please. You gotta help me.”

The nave shudders, and so do you. 

Mr. Maywell leads the walk to the cemetery, a full congregation behind him.  Every townsperson gathered to mourn. 

Apart from you, who slipped out the back door when the rest crowded at the front. You hid by the side of the church as their footsteps dragged against the sidewalk. 

Home is all there is. You walk down the path you know like the back of your hand. The town is tainted now. All of its buildings and people, veiled by a shadow. Forever corrupted by the death of poor Charlie Maywell. 

When you reach the porch steps, he is hardly at the back of your mind. 

“Don’t leave, please!”

Your palms fly to your ears; you’re drowning in his screams. You rush across the threshold, the screen door hissing behind you. Down the hall, past the kitchen to your room. 

It does little to offer comfort now. Your pristine white linens drip red until your mind stops deceiving you. 

With the door shut behind you, your back slides down against it until you crouch on the floor. You hug your knees to your chest. In it, your heart races and stammers. No amount of deep breaths or mind games can steady it. 

You trade your black cotton dress for your nightgown. The lace lining is something of purity and innocence. It’s wrong to wear it now.

You don’t sleep. You hardly ever close your eyes. The hours pass, and you lie awake with a heavy soul. You imagine them lowering the casket into the earth as Mr. Maywell weeps. 

Blood in the sand. Crusted over his skin and hair. His tears leaving two clean streaks through it. 

And you walked away. 

The memory is pressed into your soul now.

Outside your window, the clouds still blanket the sun and sky. You only realize the evening approaches when it all goes blue. The kind of blue that runs a shiver up your spine. 

You didn’t kill Charlie. 

You simply left him for dead. 

And you don’t try to decide which one is worse. In the end, a young man is dead, and you’re coated in his blood. No matter how many times you’ve scrubbed yourself clean. 

Eventually, you’ve sunken into the mattress so far you can feel the wooden beams underneath it. You rise and swing your feet over the side. 

There’s dried tears lining your face. You don’t remember crying. You stay there, sitting on the edge of your bed 

And then—the whistle in the wind. 

Distorted and hushed. But direct, like it was only meant for you. 

Sweet lamb. 

Your eyes widen. 

It’s been weeks since it left you. You’d told yourself it was gone for good. Bid farewell and never looked back. 

Yet here it was. 

Don’t be afraid.  Won’t you come outside?

It possesses you, or some dark corner of your mind that wants to give in. Your feet carry you down the hall and back to the screen door. 

You almost gasp. 

In the distance, far off across the dirt road where the trees loom over you, a figure stands. You can hardly make out his face through the mesh. The door hisses open as your bare feet step onto the porch. 

Slowly. Steadily. Watching him watch you. He’s still too far away, but you’ve never seen this man in town. 

The ground is dry and soft beneath your feet as you wander further from your house. Every bone in your body screams at you to go back, but his gaze hasn’t left your body since you appeared in the door.

You approach him close enough that you can see the faintest blue in his eyes. His hair is dark and tousled, falling in uneven strands like he carries the night with him.

The sight of you is something else—hair ruffled from bed, faint bags under your eyes, and a grayer complexion that only came with remorse.

“You poor thing,” he says, a tilted smile on his face. 

The sound of his voice floods you with clarity. Your knees almost buckle and your stomach twists because this man—whom you’ve never seen before—is more than familiar. 

He emanates an ambiance of warmth, one that you’ve felt before. The very one you ached for when it was gone. 

“It’s you.”

The words fall from your lips with a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. 

He doesn’t answer you. He doesn’t need to—you feel it in your bones that this man is your ghost. He simply turns on his heel and enters the forest. 

You wait for a moment. Frozen like you’re petrified, but strangely, you’re not afraid. 

He glances over his shoulder at your figure near the road. Furrows his brows and calls out, “Come on, now. Ain’t nothin’ in the dark besides me.”

And so you follow him. A generous space between the two of you. He doesn’t urge you to hurry. You don’t ask him to stop. The bottom of your nightgown, brown with dirt, brushes against your ankles. You step over fallen branches and roots. They threaten to scratch and pierce your soles, but you never flinch. 

You watch him. Treading through these woods like he knew them. And since you do know them, you know where he’s leading you. 

The riverside pokes through the gaps between the leaves. The ground turns into a steep decline, and you grasp onto nearby branches for support. 

He hears your steps slow and extends his hand to you, “Careful here.”

When you take his hand, the cold of skin runs through your own, spiking your blood and tracing your spine. He smiles at your surprise. 

You step over a fallen log and feel soft sand under your feet. Twilight now hangs over you, filtering the forest and the river in a deep blue. The water laps at the shore in small waves. 

You saunter towards it. He stays among the tree line, his eyes fixated on you. He waits for you to move. 

But you don’t. You stand there, watching how the rising moonlight illuminates the water. 

In your gown, you seem like the ghost now. 

He silently steps towards you until his hand can reach your sleeve, settling on your shoulder. “You almost look pure in this, dove,” he plays with the lace. “But I didn’t bring you here to be pure.”

Carefully, he bunches the gown and lifts it up to your hips. You instinctively raise your arms so he slides it off of you. The humid air melts against your skin. 

His fingers grace the side of your arm. They trail up the skin until they brush your jaw. 

“Christ,” he whispers when your eyes meet his.

Your lips part gently, but the words don’t come right away. “What are you?” 

He smiles at that. A hint of awe as his eyes drag down your figure. His other hand places itself lightly upon your waist. 

“What do you think?” He asks, his eyes quickly meeting yours before taking in your body again. “I thought I was just ‘n your fuckin’ head’.”

He mocks your ambitious words from that night weeks ago. 

You swallow thickly, unable to speak. 

He leans in closer and audibly inhales through his nose. He smells you. “Do I look like I’m in your head right now, sweetheart?”

Your eyes flutter shut for only a moment. The fabric of his shirt brushed against your bare chest. 

“Do I feel like I’m in your head?”

“No,” you breathe. You glance back at him to see his eyes fixated on your neck. He’s nearly caged you in his hold now, and you don’t fight it. 

“That’s right.” He nods once. 

His cheek touches yours when he smells you again. The grip on your waist grows tighter before his fingers grab your chin. 

“You do as I say, yeah?” 

You nod. Slipping into obedience like a dog. 

His hands shift your body towards the river, resting heavily on your shoulders. The water reaches your toes, cold and fresh. But when you look down at it, you can still see Charlie’s blood flowing along. 

“Walk in there, now,” his voice flows gently to your ear. “Don’t look back until you feel me there with ya.”

You don’t move right away. Not even with a gentle nudge of his hands. Hypnotized by the rippling glow of the water, you can feel him waiting. For you. 

“You said that no one can save me,” your voice is stronger now, nearly as solid as the rocks lining the river. “No one but you.”

You turn only slightly. He stands in the corner of your eye.

“Save me from what?”

He gently smirks. Not mockingly or even hungrily, but with adoration. A hint of excitement for what’s to come soon. 

“You’ll see.”

His hands on your shoulders prompt you towards the river again, and this time, you obey. The sand turns coarse as the water runs deeper. It bites at your skin with every step you take, but you don’t stop. 

Not when it chills your inner thighs. Not even when the surface of it reaches the curve of your breast. 

Behind you, back on the shore, you can hear something like a shuffling. Metal clinks. Quiet steps track through the sand for only a moment until a splash. 

And the entire river shifts. Afraid. 

The water is warmer now that you’re acclimated. You run your hands through it and feel it pulse between your fingers. 

Then, a breath. 

Hot but comforting at your neck. A warmth envelopes you again. 

And he chuckles. “Look at me.”

You turn. 

His skin is pale under the moonlight. It catches every sharp line of his torso, casting soft shadows in the dips between lean muscle. There’s a faint sheet of sweat over his collarbones that highlights the curve. His chest and broad shoulders are noticeably still, and you realize he isn’t breathing. 

Nor is his heart beating. 

“What are you?” You whisper like the Lord can hear you. Like it isn’t already too late for your soul. 

He cups water in his calloused hands and pours it over your exposed skin. You shiver, and he smiles. “Is that how you speak to strangers?”

One hand settles on your lower back.

“You’re not a stranger.”

“You’re right,” he hums, amused. The hand runs down to the curve of your ass, taking as much of it as he can into his palm.  “I’m not. A stranger wouldn’t know to do this.”

His other hand suddenly appeared at the roots of your hair. He clenched his fingers and pulled, tilting your head up at him. Baring your neck to the moon. 

You steady yourself with your hands on his chest, holding back a moan from slipping past your lips. 

“Easy, now,” he grins. “I won’t do nothing ya don’t like. I know that Maywell boy couldn’t please you, but I ain’t like him.”

A tear runs down your cheek. Your eyes widen in horror, but not shock. 

“You killed him,” your voice shakes. From both fear and from the weight of the truth you already knew. “Didn’t you?”

His eyes gaze into yours so softly it’s almost impossible to believe he could do such a thing. 

“I had to.”

“Why?”

He breathily chuckles like your naïveté like it’s adorable. “For you.”

Your brows furrow. “What?” Your lip curls in confusion. You begin to back away for air, but he’s caged you in now.

“You let me in that night. Remember it, sweet girl?” His lips are dangerously close to your skin. “Let me inside of you. Felt every inch of your soul. That’s a bond you can’t break. Couldn’t just let ya go after that, darlin’.”

Words don’t seem to come to you. You can hardly process a thought. His eyes hold yours, unblinking. “What?” You tremble. 

“You still don’t get it,” he chuckles. “I saved you.”

There’s a pause before you speak, but you don’t hesitate. “You didn’t save me,” you spit. 

His amused smile falters. 

And his clutch on your hair tightens as he pulls you down past the surface of the water. Cold rushes in past your lips and nose. It gasps around your skin. You breath is caught in something between heat, want, and fear. 

Fear that he could take your life. 

Want for him to take more. 

Because there’s something about him—ancient and unspoken—that unfurls the thought of an element beyond life and death. 

And whatever it is, it brings you relief. Solace for the darkness you’ve been carrying. Cleansed. 

When he pulls you up, you break the surface with a shattering gasp. Your hair, now soaked, sticks to your body like a mold. His face is inches away from yours, and there’s a red gleam to his eyes. 

There’s no reason to fight. Not when you can feel your soul succumbing to him. 

But you do. Your hands on his chest push him from you, startling him to release the grip on your hair. With your heart thumping faster than it ever has, you try to swim through the flow of the river. 

Something at the bottom scrapes your ankle. Despite the sting, you rush to the shore, where he laid out your white nightgown upon a smooth, flat rock. 

You’re close. Close enough that if you extend your arm, you can reach it. 

Until a force much stronger than you grabs at your leg. A grip that’ll surely bruise the skin. And then, another settled on your hips. 

His chest is warm pressed against your back. He locks you in his hold again, lips just barely brushing your ear. The sound of his sneer is something both evil and intimate. 

“Even the iron still fears the rot.”

It falls from his lips like poetry as he lets the smell of your blood absorb into his soul. His fingers latch themselves softly into your flesh. Behind you, something hard and heavy presses against your flesh.

He holds you steady, but your breath shakes. “I don’t fear you.”

The corner of his lips curl. You feel it on your shoulder. Then, a swift, clicking sound like blade against blade. His chest vibrates with his words. 

“You should.”

Two rows of unnaturally sharp teeth break past your skin. Slicing clean and deep. A jolt tears through your body, a confusing mixture of slight pain and intense pleasure. 

You instantly gasp, hands grabbing at his arms—but not for him to stop. 

You pull him closer. 

“Christ, that’s good,” he says almost drunkenly when he pulls from you for just a moment. He recognizes a moan come from you. “Of course, you like that. You know why?”

His tongue licks at the wound where blood flows. Digs his blunt nails into your side. 

“Because you’re mine. I made sure of it that first night.”

He groans low in his throat, starved yet restrained. His hold on your body grows tighter, hands splayed over your ribs. He drinks reverently. For the slightest taste of something sacred. 

He doesn’t make a mess. Only two small streaks of blood run down the space between your breasts. When he pulls away again, now for the last time, he sighs like a madman. 

Your strength is practically nothing against his. And you don’t even try to fight him as he walks you to the riverside where the large rock sits.

The water now rests just at your hips, leaving your skin to gleam under the moonlight

“I won’t drain you—not yet,” he says like a prayer into your neck, pressing kisses against your blood-stained skin. “Not until I fill up every inch of ya, just to leave you empty and beggin’ for more.”

A breath hitches in your throat. 

With secure arms, he turns you to him, his blood-covered lips trailing across your jaw. The rock slopes perfectly to align your back against it. It’s smooth and cold and wet as he slides you up.

Once you feel the lace of your nightgown underneath you, you clutch onto it like it’ll save you. 

He lurches towards you, grabbing you by the thighs and dragging you back to him. 

You’re pinned down by the hips, the nightgown being the only barrier between you and stone. But before he lowers himself, he grabs your bleeding ankle. 

A deep inhale through his nose, first. Then, he licks with his tongue flat against your skin. There’s hardly even a faint trace of blood left by the time he’s done. 

The night air is cool against you, but the warmth returns when you feel his breath against your slick. 

A single string of drool runs from the corner of his mouth.

His chin is still lathered in red—the same red that slowly runs down your body, curving around your breasts. 

“You been dreaming of me, sweetness?” He asks while leaving graceful kisses along your thighs. Trailing closer and closer. He doesn’t let you respond before he acts.

He licks. One bold stripe through your folds. 

His eyes burn into yours as he watches them lull into the back of your head.

You cry into the dead of night when he seals his lips to your bundle of nerves, his tongue still working to lap at you. Without thinking, your hand flies to his hair, digging into the roots. 

But you loosen your grip quickly. Afraid that you’d somehow hurt him. 

“Go ahead, dove. Show me how you want it.” Hesitantly, you use his dark curls to guide his head. He chuckles only once into you. “Fuckin’ filthy girl, usin’ my tongue to feel good.”

A moan croaks from you as you grip your nightgown beneath you.

“You don’t know how good you taste, honey.” The noises—slurps and licks and open-mouthed kisses—are obscene in the night air. 

You feel a fingertip, rough and wide, prod at your hole, circling the rim before plunging past your entrance. 

“Fuck, Remmick!”

He nods, pumping his finger quicker every second. “Could stay here all day tasting this sweet cunt.”

Another digit threatens to stretch your opening, and you roll your hips into his hand, pulling his head closer so the pressure on your clit blooms. Your thighs violently shake and squeeze around him when he adds a second finger. 

He growls, “Keep ‘em open, girl.” The roughness of his tone matches the pace of his fingers. “Eyes, too. Want you to watch me when I make you come all over my face.”

“Oh, God,” you whine when your eyes meet his. 

Because they now glow. Red. 

“He can’t hear you now, darlin’,” he smirks and pulls his mouth and fingers away from you. He takes them in his mouth and hums at the taste. “Not when you’re sinnin’ with me.”

Remmick rises. The blood on his face is nearly completely wiped away by something else that glistens in the moonlight–you.

His brows furrow at the sight of you, lips pursing like he’s looking at his own masterpiece. Red smears the inside of your thighs, the curve of your ass, even your mound. 

“Just absolutely filthy…” he whispers to himself. 

The skin of his knees digging into the rock under your nightgown. He lifts you like it’s nothing and drags your hips to where his cock hangs heavy and wide between his legs. 

Your jaw trembles as you stare at it. The tip is red and leaking as if he’s about to burst. He chuckles at your gaze. 

His hands, much larger than yours, just barely wrap around it. “Come here, pretty girl,” he says as he begins to stroke it with his palm. 

Something tight forms in your chest when you look down at the small space between you two—where he slides the tip through your glistening folds. He hisses and rubs it against your swollen clit. His head tilts back. 

“I’m gon’ ruin you,” he says towards the sky before looking back down at you. “And I’m gon’ be so gentle, you won’t even realize ‘til it’s done.”

The head of his cock pushes past your entrance once, and his hips retract. Only to push himself deeper. Then, again. And again. A tortuous cycle–taking every inch of his length until you feel the base of him flat against your clit. 

He groans when he’s fully inside. “Can feel you openin’ around me, angel. Slowly, but surely.”

You don’t make a sound. It’s almost impossible when you can barely take a breath. Your jaw hangs open, eyes fixated on where the two of you connect only to flutter closed when he begins to thrust. Tears collect and threaten to spill.

“Go ahead.” Remmick fills up every space inside of you in a way you’d never felt before. Not even that first night. “Cry, darlin’. Cry all you want, let the river wash it away.”

His hips buck for a moment like broken restraint. He bends down closer to your face to kiss a tear that slips down your cheek. His hands are firmly planted on your hips, and he uses the grip to lift you up just a little, opening your insides in a new angle.

You shiver when he reaches a new depth. It doesn’t seem possible for him to go any deeper. 

“There we go,” he smiles. He begins to move faster. Sharper. With more precision and vigor like he’s trying to find every spot inside of you. 

“I–” you try to say before he forces a moan from you. 

The pace quickens. With every thrust, Remmick draws himself from you nearly completely before shoving himself back inside. 

Your body is completely limp as he ruts into you, skin slapping to a delicious rhythm. 

“Miss me when I was away?” Remmick chuckles as he pants. Not once do his movements slow or falter. 

You nod rapidly, eyes squeezing shut because, even as he fucks you right there like he’d been doing it his whole life, the mere girth of him is still too much to bear. “You w-were gone for s-so long.”

“Oh, I know, darlin’,” Remmick half coos.

His hand grabs you by the chin, forcing you to look at him. Suddenly, his eyes turn dark. “Now, you see me, don’t you girl?”

You see him.

You feel him. It’s more than just a ghostly warmth leaving its trace in the night–he’s making his claim on you now. 

“Saw that poor boy by the bridge all bloodied up…” His hand drifts down to your neck, his fingers squeezing just enough to leave you searching for air. “Got you wonderin’ what kinda monster would do such a thing…”

With his hand around your throat, Remmick pulls you up closer to him.

“...What he could do to you.”

Your brows knit. That familiar burning starts in your thighs before pooling around your center.

The tip of him surely leaves bruises against your cervix. He licks at your neck again, right at the spot where he’d drank from you. Every thrust into you pulls another strangled sound from your lips. 

You look up at him, not in fear or anger–but desperation. You want more. The trees seem to breathe as they listen.

“P-please,” you manage to choke out. 

A chuckle rumbles deep from his chest. “Well, look at you,” he rolls his hips against yours. “Pleadin’ for me to give you more, yeah? You close, ain’t you?”

You nod.

“Bet you didn’t think anyone could make you feel so good bein’ split open,” he rests his forehead against yours. Your bodies sway along with the rapid pace he sets. “That boy sure as hell couldn’t.”

Your eyes go wide and, despite the waves of pleasure coursing through you and pulling you closer to the edge, you’re confused.

But Remmick smiles knowingly. 

“Oh, I seen it all, darlin’. He didn’t fuck you like this, did he. He didn’t have you writhin’ and beggin’ all over him.” Remmick’s eyes drift down at his cock spearing into you. “Hurts my heart to know you wasn’t enjoyin’ yourself. He didn’t deserve to see you like this–”

A beat.

“—In all your glory.”

His grip around your throat tightens. His eyes glow red. 

“Only I get you like this, ain’t that right, dove?” You nod and try to muster out a yes, but it comes out like an incoherent babble. His lips hover at your ear. “Say it.”

Your back arches from the rock. Something inside you twists and pulls and threatens to snap. 

“Y-you’re the o-only one…” Your senses are too heightened to control yourself anymore. And the way you look up at him with glassy, pleading eyes is enough. 

The pad of his thumb presses over your swollen clit for just a moment, and you burst. 

Your vision goes out as you see only black. You convulse against him like the only thing keeping you awake is the rhythm of your heart.

He stays buried inside of you, furiously rubbing over your bundle of nerves. “That’s it. That’s a good girl,” he praises you as if he wants more. 

And he takes it from you anyway. 

You hear him faintly whisper “Christ” to himself as he shoots his load into you.

His hips suddenly still while his release rushes through him. The grip on your throat loosens, and with the sudden surge of a full breath of air, you open your heavy eyes. 

Only to see how his abs glisten and shine with something other than water. Some droplets even soak your lower stomach.

You’d gushed all over him. 

“That’s right, angel,” he says with a breath. “That’s all you.”

Remmick runs two fingers through it, collecting as much as he can before guiding your mouth to them. You take them without hesitation. Wrap your lips around them, swirling your tongue to taste your own release. 

“Ain’t that sweet.” He chuckles.

His touch is different now. 

It’s still marked with something ancient and violent, but with you, he’s gentle. He carefully sits you up on the rock, but he doesn't pull himself from you. 

He stays buried almost as deep as possible, leaving a weight inside you. But is isn't a burden.

“There’s just one more thing to do, angel.”

You cock your head. “What do you mean?”

His fingers brush over the puncture wound on your neck. It’s beginning to bruise now. His gaze at it this time isn't with hunger or even lust.

There's a hint of awe. Some kind of longing like he'd truly been waiting for this moment.

“I fucked all the good outta you, and you still don’t understand," he hums a chuckle. His lips are only inches away from your throat, his hands splayed at your back to keep you up against him. 

You involuntarily tilt your head to the other side, baring your neck at him. He brushes your hair off your shoulder. His breath is warm on your skin with every word he speaks.

“You’re mine, darlin’. Always have been.” He wipes away any remaining tears. “Always will be.”

Your gasp echoes through the forest. It shakes the flowing river. His teeth pierce you again, this time with an excruciating, burning heat that leaves fire in your veins. It spreads through you like a promise.

Sealing your fate.

Your hands grasp at his shoulders, clawing at the skin. Not for him to stop, but merely to ground yourself as he drains you of nearly all sustenance. 

He growls and groans into you. The weight of his body pins you down to the rock. You’ve nowhere to run. You don’t try to, anyway. 

Your skin is ablaze. Every cell in your body seems to ignite. For a moment, in your agony-ridden state, you question if it will ever end. But eventually, the color fades from you.

And soon, so does the pain. 

“R-Remm…” you begin to say. It fades into a breath.

A last one.

You wake to the gentle stream of the river. The stars seem to be watching you amidst the dark void of the sky. Waiting. Anticipating to see a girl as sweet as you born into something new.

The breeze doesn’t blow against bare skin anymore. The sheer lace of your nightgown tickles your neck again—but when you look down, you notice that the hem is stained a marvelous red. Your stomach growls at the sight of it, and you realize then, you’ve never felt so hungry.

Nearly starved. 

It isn’t solid rock beneath you anymore, either. Instead, you lay upon the soft, lush grass, the sandy riverside only inches from your feet. 

He stands at the shore. Dressed neatly as if nothing even happened. 

You walk to him with gentle steps. The sand collects in between your toes. 

Once beside him, the water laps at your feet. He doesn’t immediately look at you. His gaze is fixated on the water, though you wonder if his mind is somewhere else.

The river runs gently. The moon whispers to the stars. Your own audience in the sky. You’ve become something of the night yourself. You can feel it in your bones. 

He’s unusually quiet. 

“I see you, now.” You say plainly.

He’s silent for a moment. Letting the words hang in the night air.

“You could see me since you watched that Maywell boy die,” he finally says. It’s soft, but he somewhat scoffs, low and heavy like the words are meant to be against himself.

“No…” You shake your head, still trying to grasp what you were trying to say.

It isn’t just Remmick standing beside you. And now, he isn’t the demon that’d haunted you and lured you in. It’s far more than that.

It’s the picture of war flashing before your eyes. Canons and blood and fire. Men begging for their lives with screams. It’s the image of disease, something twisted and cruel running rampant through its victims, their coughs echoing through your mind. Ballrooms, pubs, cities, and farmland. In all of them, one variable stays the same–him. With more lives lived than you can count. 

It’s the sight of him—the same as he is now—running through a field of tall grass. His eyes are wide in horror. The only thing running through his veins is fear. The sound of his screams bleeding into the night until he becomes the very monster he feared.

Drifting through the centuries as a ghost. Alone and forced to the darkness, never to be seen by the sun. Never to be seen by anyone, for that matter.

Until you.

You turn to him then. You picture that face—chiseled and aged not by nature, but by heartache—in the memories that now take up your mind. 

“I see you now.”

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