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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.

You sat on your porch in the late evening sunlight, sipping your sweet tea and listening to the soft song of the crickets all around you as they settled in for the night. It wouldn’t be long now. He was fairly consistent; true, if he needed to feed, he’d be a little longer. Crawling up to your door, well into the night, covered in drying blood, claws still showing, fangs barely hidden. Other nights, he’d stroll up right after the sun dipped below the horizon, looking like a true gentleman– clean, composed, in control. You couldn’t tell which version of him you would get on any given night. And that was part of what made it so exciting.

It had gone on this way for months. The sun starts to set. He comes to your door. The two of you fool around– sometimes. Other nights, you didn’t fool around so much as…play games. Oh, you knew what he was. No question about that. There was just something so delicious in denying him. Keeping him on your porch like a hungry dog, begging and crawling and clawing to get in. Knowing that, no matter how desperately he whined or how violently he dug his nails into the floorboards, he could not enter without your permission. He hung on your every word, waiting to hear those two little words that beckoned him in, inviting him to worship at your altar. It was deliciously fun, riling him up, tearing through his humanity, before letting him in. But sometimes…sometimes you just let him sit there. All night. Whimpering. Starving. Deranged. Just for fun.

The sun was just starting to kiss the edge of the horizon. You glanced from the setting sun back towards the parting of trees that opened from your long driveway into the clearing around your house. He would be here soon. You could feel it. 

The soft sound of creaking wood catches your attention.

You glance at the clock above your kitchen cabinets. 9:47pm. He’s later than you anticipated.

You freeze. Listen. You can hear him shifting his weight from one foot to the other, the boards of your porch sighing underneath him. You hear his breath, soft and sweet, before–

“Sweetheart. Ya there?”

You don’t say anything. He knows you’re inside. Hell, he could smell a human being from miles away. It gives you an idea.

You quietly walk over to your old recliner and silently lower yourself into the chair. On the ground just next to the chair is where you keep your sewing kit. While you were no expert, life in the Delta necessitated a few basic sewing skills. Thorns snagging at your dress, threadbare patches blooming in pieces of clothing passed down through the generations. But tonight, you don’t reach for any thread– just a needle. You can still hear Remmick breathing just outside your front door, confusedly listening to you move around inside. You take the sewing needle and quickly, painlessly, jab it into your left index finger. Outside, you hear his breath catch in his throat, a sound like he was being strangled.

Wordlessly, you creep towards the door. You wrap your hand around the doorknob, twist, and pull. He’s standing there, as if he had just had his forehead pressed to the door. Eyes wild, fangs barely peeking out from behind his lips. Those lips twist into a stupid, happy grin.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Just, uh, come ‘round to see ya.” 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, didn’t hear ya. I seem to have made a little bit of a mess.”

You hold your finger up in the tiny space there is between you. It’s beaded with blood, the tiniest bit starting to drip down the side of your finger.

“Oh, uh,” he stutters, eyes now transfixed on your wound. “I could…help ya, y’know…clean that up.”

He’s staring at the blood inching its way down your finger. You’re staring at his eyes, pupils blown huge, black and gaping. You’ve got him.

“Oh, no, that’s okay. I wouldn’t want to make ya clean up after me.”

Slowly, deliberately, you lift your finger to your mouth. You lick up the stripe of blood running down the length of your finger before taking your fingertip in your mouth, sucking lightly. His face twists with pain, like he’s just been kicked in the stomach. You gently release your finger, examining the tiny injury, no longer dripping red.

“All better,” you smile wickedly. Your heart is already thumping hard in your chest. You’re certain he can hear it– it’s the one secret you wish you could keep from him. Telling him how badly you want him, even as you torture him, sweet and slow.

“Let me in, sugar.” And so it begins. Your favorite game. “Let me in, please?”

“I don’t know…townsfolk always whisperin’ about somethin’ out there in the dark. Somethin’ evil.”

“Oh yeah? Why don’t you let me in, I’ll show you how evil I can be.” 

The grin returns to his face, but you can tell it takes effort this time. His hair is damp, sticking to his temples with sweat. He’s clean of blood, so you know he hasn’t fed tonight. But he’s covered in sweat and dirt, the gentle kiss of the Mississippi heat. 

“I don’t know…” you tease. Blood starts to swell from the prick in your finger again. You gently rest your hand on the doorframe, noting the way his cocky grin fades as his eyes follow your hand.

“C’mon, baby, let me in. Let me be good to you,” he murmurs, his composure hanging on by a thread.

Wordlessly, you take a step back into your house and grab hold of the door. You go to shut it before–

“Wait.”

Slowly, he sinks to his knees, your porch groaning underneath his weight.

“Please, I don’t want to play like this tonight, baby. Please.”

His eyes stare up at you, still huge, still black. Not a trace of his usual blue left. But no hint of that reflective red yet, either. Hm.

You slowly lower yourself to your knees, eye level with him, never breaking eye contact. His breathing comes in quick, ragged breaths. You lean back, slowly sitting on the floor, right in front of the threshold. The invisible line keeping him away from you, like an electric fence, sizzles under the weight of his want. You raise your left foot to the doorframe, sending your nightgown down towards your hips. Your right knee is crossed in front of you, the last obstacle between the two of you. His hands fly to the outside of the doorframe, connecting with such force that you feel the shock wave travel through your foot and up the length of your leg. 

“Play? Who’s playin’?” you drawl, with a sweetness that you know only intoxicates him more. You notice a bead of drool at the corner of his mouth. 

“C’mon, sugar, lemme– let me in now, please.” He stumbles over his words. Fucking pathetic.

“You want to come in?”

He’s almost shaking. He nods his head slowly, eyes never leaving your center, as if he could make you move your leg just by focusing hard enough. A wicked idea flashes through your brain. As if sensing it, his inquisitive, almost fearful, eyes dart up to meet yours. You smile slowly, baring your teeth to him as you sink back onto your elbows. You drop your head back, exposing your neck to the incoming cool of the night air. He’s breathing through his mouth, raw and ragged, as if he can’t get enough oxygen into his lungs.

“Pl-please…please…” The word almost sounds like a prayer on his tongue, something uttered over and over, falling on deaf ears.

You let yourself sink so you’re lying completely on the floor. You move your right knee, torturously slow, until you’re entirely exposed to him. You hear a sound, a strangled choking sound, like an animal caught in a trap. Slowly, you bring your hand down between your legs.

“No, no, please, baby, please, let me in, I’ll be so good to you, please, don’t do this, don’t–” his begging is cut off by the gentle sigh that escapes you, and the tortured cry that rises from him in turn. You drag your fingers between your folds while he writhes on the ground, just inches from you. His hands snap from the doorframe to the ground with a loud crack. His forehead kisses the ground as if he’s a sinner begging for forgiveness. You just smile.

You delicately toy with yourself, just out of his grasp. Your eyes roll back in your head as your fingers rub your clit. And the whole time, he’s crying for you.

“PLEASE, baby, I can’t take it no more. Please let me in,” he begs, face still connected to the floor. He sounds wounded, as if you shot him. The raw need in his voice just fuels your fire. You quicken your movements, working towards your release. Your moans, quick and breathy, sting in his ears. 

“You want to come in here?” you coo quietly. Affectionate. As if you’re considering it.

He lifts his head to look at you. There’s a string of drool connecting his lips to a small puddle on the porch. He looks like a wreck. Sweat, dirt, heat, drool, desire. Sickening. Delicious.

His eyes gleam red in the darkness.

“Yes,” he rasps. “Yes, please.” 

He sounds like a man who’s crawled on hands and knees through the desert, only to be met with a mirage. You grin. His fangs are protruding, like they’re too big in his mouth. His claws are out, and you can see the scratches he’s made on the porch, like a dog locked in a room trying to dig its way under the door. Seeing him like this, undone. A monster, a killer, completely at your mercy.

You drop your head back again as you finish. Your ecstasy washes over you in waves. A choked moan escapes him– half desire, half agony. When you finally come back down, you sit up slowly in the doorway. He doesn’t have any more words. He just sits, stares, pants. You bring your fingers, still wet with your slick, to rest gently on the inside of the doorframe. He presses his cheek against the outside, that invisible line keeping him back by barely a centimeter. His tongue gently grazes over his fangs, his eyes locked on your fingers.

“Please, darlin’, let me clean ya up. Please, I’ll, I’ll be gentle. No teeth. I’ll be good. I promise.”

“You’re pathetic, Remmick.”

Finally hearing your name from his lips, he groans, eyes screwed shut, in that limbo between torture and pleasure.

“I know,” he sighs. “Fuck, I know. Just…please, I gotta taste ya. Please. Just this, just your fingers, just one taste. You’re killin’ me sweetheart, please.” 

You almost pity him. You would pity him, you think, if it wasn’t so divine seeing him beg.

You push yourself up to your knees, eye level with him once more, your noses almost touching. The invisible line. The electric fence. 

“Goodnight, Remmick.” Your breath blows gentle and sweet and cruel across his face. His features contort in torment as you bring yourself to your feet.

“No, no, please, sugar, please don’t lea–”

Click. You cut him off as you close the door. You cross the floor towards your bedroom, tired and still a little wound up. You swear you can hear him gently sobbing as you tangle in the cotton sheets.

Beautiful sunset.

The oranges, yellows, reds and pinks, all mixing together as if on a painter’s palette. It’s one of your favorite things about living outside of town: this view. Nothing for miles. Just the woods, the creek, the sun, hell, you didn’t even mind the critters. Raccoons, possums, foxes, deer…but your favorite one walks on two legs and whispers your name like it could save him.

You take another sip of your sweet tea when you hear a twig snap off in the growing darkness between the trees. You grin to yourself. He had a tendency to do that. If he showed up late and you decided to torture him, he would be at your door the next day the second the sun disappeared from the sky. Like he was atoning. Like you’d forgive him for making you wait. Putting on a show now, you lift the cool glass up to your temple. The cold condensation dissolves across your skin, bringing at least a little relief in the Mississippi heat. You move the glass down to your neck, letting the ice cold water drip down your neck to the space between your breasts. The woods fall silent. Unnaturally silent, like every living thing has vanished from the dense forest that surrounds your house. 

You glance back towards the setting sun. You stand and cross back into the house, letting the screen door slam behind you.

There’s a gentle knock at the door. 8:24pm. That’s more like it.

You don’t move. Don’t even breathe. The knock comes again. You hear him under his breath:

“Shit.” 

You can’t help the grin that creeps across your face.

“Baby. It’s me. Let me in?”

He shifts from one foot to the other, the porch creaking under him. He sighs, antsy and frustrated.

“Please, darlin’. Don’t make me keep doin’ this.”

The pain in his voice makes your insides melt. You slink over to the door and gently pull it open.

“Make you do what?”

He’s neat, composed. Light blue button up tucked neatly into his trousers. Suspenders taught over his shoulders. Gold chain barely visible at his throat. No trace of the inhuman mess he was last night. At least, not in his clothes. Not in his body. But the suffering in his eyes tells you everything. 

His voice is barely above a whisper.

“Please don’t make me beg.”

“Fine,” you sigh playfully. “I won’t make you.” He’s eyeing the grin on your face.

“But you will anyway,” you whisper, your cruelty crackling through the space between you. “You’ll beg and cry and drool like the filthy animal you are.”

Instantly, he falls to his knees, groaning. He looks up at you through those long eyelashes. You can already see the outline of his cock pressing against his trousers. 

“Please, darlin’, I’ll do anything you ask–”

“You will?” you cut him off sharply.

He nods his head with such ferocity you’re almost worried he’ll pull something in his neck. Suddenly, you find a new way to play the game.

“Yes ma’am, anything you ask, just say the word and–”

“Take your suspenders down.”

He reaches up to his right shoulder and gently, slowly, pulls the strap off his shoulder, letting it fall to the floor at his side. He does the same with the left.

“Good. Unbutton your shirt.” Your commanding surprises even you. You’ve never played with him like this before, but something about it lights you aflame. Seeing him do everything you instruct, with the reverence of a dog obeying its master. He fumbles with the top button, despite his claws still being sheathed for now. Just the shape of his hands, his once-human-hands, shaking at the buttons, shaking from need.

His shirt unbuttoned, you stare at him, looking him up and down, while his eyes bore into your skull. When your eyes fall back to his, you can see the question in them. He’s asking you, silently: please?

“Tell me what you want.”

He leans forward, bracing himself on all fours.

“Please, baby, let me in. Just wanna come inside, be with ya, feel ya, anything you want, please.” He presses his forehead to the floorboards, reverent.

“No. Tell me what you want to do.”

“Wanna…” he’s struggling to catch his breath. “Wanna lick that pussy so good you’ll lose your voice. Drink every drop of ya. Wanna feel that pussy, so tight, so warm, on my cock, over and over again, all night, give you so many orgasms you lose count, forget your name…please, sugar. Wanna make you mine. Wanna be yours.”

He slowly raises his head to look up at you. He looks like a fucking mess, eyes almost entirely black, sweat and dirt caking his face. There’s thick ropes of drool dripping down his chin, collecting in a dark puddle on your porch.

“What’s that?” you ask harshly.

“Oh, I–”

“Lick it up.”

He stares up at you for a second, uncertain. Finally, he lowers his head to the porch in front of him. He holds your gaze as he sticks his tongue out and slowly laps up his drool.

“Good boy.”

He presses his eyes closed involuntarily, humming in pleasure at the praise.

You smile.

“Come…”

His eyes snap open, all attention on you. His breath hitches in his throat. The sound almost makes you laugh.

“...here.”

His eyes flutter closed and the breath falls out of him, his hope immediately extinguished. Still, he crawls, on his knees, as close as he can to the threshold. You dart your hand out as quickly as you can, giving him no time to react. You snatch his gold chain under one finger and pull it towards you, as close as the laws of…what? Physics? God? The Devil? Whatever force kept that electric fence up. You pull him as close as he could possibly be without being shocked. Your finger and the chain on one side of the fence, the tight skin of his throat on the other.

He gasps, a divine cocktail of shock and desperation.

“You want to come inside?” you tease. He nods again. “Words,” you spit sharply.

“YES. Yes, ma’am, please.” He's starting to sweat, little beads of moisture dotting his forehead. “Just wanna please you. Please. Let me taste you, darlin’, I promise, I can make it so good for you, just let me–”

You give his chain a sharp tug to shut him up. He cries out.

“I don’t let animals into my house, Remmick.” 

He drops his head. You feel something wet drip onto your finger. A teardrop falls from his eye to your hand.

“Please.” He shivers, voice almost completely inaudible. The volume reserved for sinners talking directly to their god. “I’ll be good.”

“My, my, my…sweat, drool, and now tears? You’d make a mess all over my floors.” You drop his chain and slowly start to wrap your hand around his throat. His head shoots back and his eyes roll into the back of his head with a moan so vile and animalistic you silently thank whatever God there might be that your closest neighbors live miles away. 

You smile. As your fingers close around his throat, he hisses and pulls away. He stares up at you, hurt. The burn on his neck sizzles softly in the damp night air. His gaze darts to your hand. 

“Oh, you are evil, ain’tcha? Sweet little girl like you, thought ya had e’rybody fooled.” 

“What? You don’t like ‘em?” You coyly show him your hand, fingers adorned with silver rings.

“Fuck, sweetie.” He’s rubbing at his neck, now almost entirely healed. The tiny amount of silver in your rings isn’t enough to do much damage, you know– just enough to get his attention. “You tryna kill me?”

“Maybe,” you coo softly, the sweetness evaporating any lingering trace of his shock.

“Please, baby, let me in. Let me fuck ya proper. Like you deserve. Please. Wanna see those thighs around my head, over my shoulders, fuck, wanna see–wanna see you…” His eyes flutter closed again, like even the image he was conjuring in his head would be enough to make him cum right there.

“Tell me.” Your tone is even. Not mean, not kind. Part of you wants to hear him out.

He leans back on his haunches, his face is wet with sweat and tears. 

“I’d take you right here on the floor. Bury my face between your legs. Make you cum more times ‘n you can count and thank you for each one, fuck, whatever you want, I’d do it all night. Then I’d come crawlin’ back tomorrow night, beggin’ you to let me do it all over again. Please, sugar, just say it. Just let me in. Can’t stand these fuckin’ games no more.” 

“You know,” you say, crouching down in front of him, still behind the door frame, “when I first moved in here, e’rybody told me about the big bad monster lurkin’ in the woods.”

His eyes meet yours then, huge, sad, pathetic. You can still see a hint of the iris, just barely, the tiniest ring of blue surrounding the endless black of his pupils. 

“They said it only came out at night, and the only way to protect yourself was to stay inside. Garlic. Silver. Sunlight. A stake–” you press your palm flat against his chest, feeling his heart thunder beneath his ribs “--right to the heart.”

His eyes roll back and he moans, obscene and filthy and desperate. Before he can think to snatch your wrist and yank you out onto the porch with him, you pull your hand back behind the threshold. You rise to your feet, standing over him.

“And now here he is, the Big Bad Wolf, on his knees, slobbering at my door like a dog. Ain’t that somethin’?”

He stares up at you, almost like he knows what comes next.

“Please,” he whispers, pitiful. You smile wide.

“Goodnight, Remmick.”

Click.

The next night, he doesn’t even bother knocking. Doesn’t bother announcing himself. He just sits, cross-legged, on your porch, staring up at your door as if he could will it open with his mind. What he doesn’t know is that you’re sitting just on the other side of the door, a mirror image of his desperation. You don’t know how long you sit like that. Silent, just listening to the soft sound of the cricket song and his gentle, even breathing behind the door. Finally, you give in. You reach up and twist the knob, torturously slow. The door creaks open.

“Hey sugar.”

He looks rough. Not to the untrained eye, of course; his shirt is clean, tucked in, his hair fairly neat, even his boots look pretty clean. But you see deeper than that. The slightly sunken look around his eyes that tells you he hasn’t fed in days. The subtle hollowness that carves out his cheekbones, collarbone, even settles around his knuckles, when he’s gone too long without blood. The hungry glint in his eyes that he can’t help, like an animal looking for its next kill.

“You look like shit.”

“Aw hell, come on now, cut a fella some slack. I tried my best for ya, sweetheart.” His voice sounds the way his clothes look–a façade, a too-perfect, lighthearted sound, disguising something darker underneath.

“When was the last time ya fed?”

His eyes drop to the floorboards below him.

“Remmick. Look at me.”

His eyes shoot up to meet yours, that hungry look winning out above the pretenses. His voice drops, too, into something dark and sickly sweet.

“Five days ago.”

“Then what the hell ya doin’ here?” Your voice, barbed and venomous, cuts straight to his heart. “Go find ya some poor bastard to drain ‘stead of wastin’ my time.”

“I can’t, baby. Can’t do nothin’ else. I walk in circles all night, and I keep endin’ up down this road, endin’ up here. Please, sugar, all I’m askin’ for is–”

You let your head roll to one side, pulling the skin of your neck tight over your veins. His sentence stops in his throat as he watches you, swallowing thickly. His eyes have the dull, hypnotized look of hyperfixation as he stares at your neck.

“All you’re askin’ for is…what?”

“Please. Let me in.” His voice is low, but not quiet.

“Why should I?” You drawl, knowing he’s hanging onto your every word.

“I’ll be anything ya want me to be, please. I’ll be so good to you. I’ll be wicked. I’ll–”

His words catch in his throat again as you, on all fours, crawl closer towards the door.

“Y’know, I went to church this mornin’,” you tease. “Preacher said somethin’ interesting. He said…you dance with the devil…one day, he’ll follow ya home.”

Remmick’s breath, coming in short, ragged gasps, inches from your face, was the only sound flooding your senses.

“That what you are, pretty boy? You the devil?”

His eyes dart down to your mouth and back up to your eyes, his pupils blown huge and black.

“Yes, ma’am.” His voice is half whisper, half confession. “Yes. I am the Devil.”

“That’s what I thought.” You stand slowly, gripping the door frame for support. You leave the door open, but cross the floor into your kitchen, always aware of his eyes on you. 

You reach for the smallest paring knife that lives in the knife block sitting atop your counter. His eyes don’t leave you for a second, but now, from the darkness, you see his shiny red pupils reflected back at you. You smile. The Devil at your door, begging to do unholy things to you. At your mercy.

You cross back to the door and stand over him, knife in hand. His hair, sweaty, sticking to his temples, looks almost black in the darkness. 

The quiet in the air lingers between the two of you. You want him so badly it aches. You want to torment him, to make him cry again, to stand above him while he worships the ground beneath your feet. Your heart hammers in your chest, and you can feel it thundering in your neck. He notices.

Slowly, you begin to undo the buttons at the lacy neckline of your nightgown. Drool begins to drip down his chin as he stares at you. 

“Don’t make a mess all over my porch, now.” 

He mindlessly wipes at his chin with the back of his hand, wetting the cuff of his sleeve. Done with the buttons, you drop your nightgown around your ankles. A choked sound gets stuck in his throat. You take a step out of the nightgown, kicking the garment to the side.

“Please, baby. Please, I’m dyin’ out here. I can be anything you want. I’ll follow you around on a leash, goddamn it, just don’t make me sit out here no longer.” His begging hits your ears like a symphony. You bring the knife up to your chest and gently press the tip of it between your breasts. 

He whines like a dying thing. A strangled, agonized sound,that, again, makes you grateful for the secluded location of your house.

You drag the blade down, slicing one clean line between your cleavage, just deep enough to break the skin and draw blood, just enough to sting. 

“Preacher said the best way to ward off the devil was to wear a cross,” you say innocently.

You bring the blade back up. You carve one shorter, perpendicular line through the first. A cross. A mark. A brand. Beading with drops of blood, collecting and trickling down your chest, across your stomach, towards your heat.

You don’t know when it happened, but his claws are out now. Long, caked in dirt, and scratching at the boards of your porch like a bad dog. The sound of the wood shredding under his claws makes you grin, sweet and sadistic. He pulls his head up, like just the effort of that simple movement is enough to drain all the life out of him. He braces himself with his hands on the doorframe. His eyes glow red, tears pricking at the corners. His fangs poke out of his mouth, sharp and wet with saliva. Drool slicks his chin and foams at the corner of his mouth. This is the monster. This is what you wanted.

Then, quietly, so quietly you almost think your mind might be inventing it, he whispers:

“Please, mo chuisle. Let me in.”

You sink slowly to your knees in front of him. He’s not looking into your eyes anymore. He’s staring at your blood, red, hot, and wet, dripping freely just inches from his mouth.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Want you to let me in, please–”

“No. That’s what you want to happen. What do you want?” 

“You. I want you.” His voice is ragged. Broken. Like he’s been screaming at the top of his lungs for his whole life. “Please, please, I don’t know any other way to ask, to beg, to scream, to cry for you sugar, please–”

You cut him off when you press your hands to the door frame, just on the other side of where his are. You’re palm to palm, almost, in this half-formed way, dancing along the electric fence. You bring your forehead to the invisible line, so you’re face to face with him, taking in the sight of him unravelled before you. 

“You want me?” you whisper cruelly.

“Yes,” he says through shaking breaths.

“Come get me, then.”

It’s all he needs. His hands fly to your waist as he topples you over. He presses his tongue to the blood that’s dripped down to your stomach, working his way up to your chest. When he reaches the incision, he sucks and laps at the cut. At the spot where the two cuts meet, the center of the cross, he presses a kiss, soft and gentle to your sternum. It makes you gasp.

“Gonna treat you so good, darlin’. Gonna make you forget your own fuckin’ name,” he rasps against your chest. You rake your nails across his back, careful not to let yourself touch him too much–not yet.

When he’s done sucking the blood from your chest, he begins to leave a trail of kisses back down your stomach. Sitting back on his knees, he grabs your thighs and traces his claws across the flesh, making you shiver. He hoists your legs just enough to nestle himself in between them, pressing a gentle kiss to the inside of your left knee. 

“Dreamed of this every night, every fuckin’ night, you slammin’ that door in my face. Kept dreaming of this. Of you.” He works his way up the inside of your thigh, kissing and licking your skin. “Taste so fuckin’ good.”

“If you think that’s good, I got somethin’ I think you’re really gonna enjoy,” you drawl, deliberately grinding your hips upwards in a small circle, catching his attention.

He growls. Like a fucking animal standing over its kill. It almost makes you sob. The pure, electric feeling of his desire.

He licks one slow stripe up your center, making you cry out.

“Sweet girl. You think you were the only one playin’? I could smell you every night, every night you shut that door in my face. Could smell this sweet little pussy cryin’ for me.”

His grip on your legs tightens as he picks up the pace. Lapping and kissing at your core, he devours you like you’re water in the desert. What was that saying? Something about well-fed sinners and famished saints?

He presses one thumb to your clit and your head begins to spin. The only sounds in the heavy air are the crickets, your gasps, and the obscene noises coming from where the two of you are connected. He slowly rubs circles on your clit, not even coming up for breath as he does. Your fingers tangle in his dark curls. He hits a particularly sensitive spot and you jerk him back by his hair.

“Ah, ah, easy, sugar. Not gonna hurt ya. Not unless ya ask real nice.” The smile he gives you is enough to nearly send you over the edge. Your drying blood at the corner of his lips. His fangs covered in your slick. His chin wet with– well, it was impossible now to tell where his drool ended and your juices began. You shove his head back down with a huff and he just chuckles, attaching himself to your cunt once more. When he opens his mouth, you can feel the tips of his fangs ghost over your clit, over and over, as he devours you.

Electricity lights up your entire body, starting in your core and sizzling through your limbs. You grip his hair as if it’s the only thing tethering you to Earth. Your legs twitch around his head, and Remmick? He just continues lapping you up, desperate, as if you might kick him back out onto the porch the second your orgasm passes.

When your breathing finally returns to normal, he’s over you, his hands on either side of your head, his chain dangling in your face. 

“How was that? Was it good?”

You stare up into his face, so desperate to please you. His eyes are wild, his chin still wet. 

“So good. Such a good boy for me,” you coo, melting him instantly. He hums in pleasure. You bring your hands back to his hair, and he leans into your touch, letting you play with his sweaty locks. You scratch behind his ear and his head drops in ecstasy. You trace a finger over the top button of his shirt.

“Ain’t you hot? All these clothes on…?”

He growls again, animalistic and raw. He sits up and rips his suspenders from his shoulders, letting them hang down around his sides in that way he knows you like. He goes to unbutton his shirt, but his claws make the dexterous movement impossible. You sit up, still under him. Gently, you place your fingers over his. You trace the length of one of his claws with your fingertip gingerly. He rests his forehead against yours, sweat mixing on your skin, your breath hot and mingling between you two as you delicately undo the buttons on his shirt.

“The Devil ever had anyone be gentle with him?” you whisper, almost afraid to break the silence.

“No,” he whispers.

You tug the shirt from his shoulders. He finishes the job and tosses it aside. He grabs at his tank top, torn and already soaked with sweat, and adds it to the pile of clothes that will, hopefully, go neglected until morning. His chest heaves with every labored breath, the gold chain glinting and reflecting in the moonlight. You rake your nails down his chest, making him drop his head back again. He groans again, loud, lewd, and lustful. 

A grin creeps across your face. When your fingers reach his waistband, you flatten your palms against his stomach and drag them back up towards his chest, pressing firmly against the taut skin, slick with sweat.

“FUCK, baby, shit!” 

He curses and snaps his head forward. When he does, you grab his jaw between your fingertips and hold him still, forcing him to look at you. The skin on his chest sizzles quietly.

“You’re a little fuckin’ sadist, ain’tcha?” he spits, somewhere between furious and turned on. You press the silver ring on your finger to his jaw in response. He hisses and bares his fangs before you shove his face to the side.

“Fuck. Fuck, sugar, I–” he breathes, still recovering. You stare down at the burns that are streaked down his chest, your hunger growing. You want to run your tongue over the burned skin.

“Let me…let me feel you darlin’. Please,” he gasps. It makes you smile. He’s still begging.

“Didn’t realize you needed permission to enter down there, too,” you tease. He doesn’t waste any more time. His hands fly to his trousers, undoing the button and zip as you lie back. You see him then, long and hard and already weeping for you. The feeling of him lining himself up makes your breath catch in your throat. 

He pushes in gently, like he’s still asking permission for every inch of closeness. When he’s finally inside, his eyes, red and gleaming, roll back into his head. “Ah–ahh, feel so fuckin’ good sugar. Feel like you were made for me.”

“Ya gonna gab all night or ya gonna fuck me like you promised?”

He laughs, the vibrations sinking in all the way to your bones, as he begins to move.

“Gonna make you cum so many times you lose count. Gonna fuck you so good you’ll be stumbling for days.”

And fuck, you think he might be right. He’s stretching you, hitting deeper than he ever has before, hitting a spot that’s making your cheeks flush and your head spin. Pleasure builds in your center as you reach up for him.

“Ah, ah. Keep those hands to yourself, pretty girl,” he scolds. You chuckle.

“Afraid of a little silver?” you coax.

He stills inside of you. You whimper, frustrated.

“That’s what I thought. Keep those hands to yourself and that pretty little mouth in line, and I’ll fuck ya like the good girl you are,” he promises. You groan under him, but whether it’s from pleasure or defeat, even you don’t know.

He resumes his pace, relentlessly ramming into you. You turn your head to the side. You see his right hand, bracing against the floor next to your head. You stick your tongue out and lick one clean stripe from his wrist up his forearm, as far as you can reach. He moans above you.

“Fuck, ‘s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout sugar,” he croons. “So good to me.”

He leans down over you until his forehead is pressed against your collarbone.

“Let me taste you, darlin’, please. Haven’t fed in days, let me be full, let me have you, please…” He pulls back just enough so you can feel his hot breath on your neck, desperate. “I’ll be gentle, I promise, won’t bite too hard. Please.”

Before you can speak, he leans into your neck. 

“Remmick–”

He recoils from you as quickly as if he was bit by a snake.

“FUCK!”

You can see the burn searing on his chin in the shape of a cross. He looks down at your neck to see the only thing you’re wearing– a silver cross on a silver chain. You smile up at him wickedly.

“I guess there’s somethin’ to be said about askin’ permission, huh?” you whisper. His glare looks like he’s contemplating ripping your throat out with his teeth. 

“You really want me dead, huh?” he asks hotly.

“Maybe just a little bit,” you retort through a devilish grin. 

Then, his gaze softens. He looks down at the necklace and back at you.

“Will you take it off?” he asks weakly. “Please. Wanna taste you…please?”

You reach up and grab the cross, playing with it daintily between your fingers. His eyes follow your every move. You could toy with him like this forever. Finally, you firmly grip the cross and tug. The chain snaps behind your head, and you toss the silver aside. You smile up at him.

He sighs, a sound of pure bliss, and falls back down to your chest, resuming his rhythm one more time. His breath is hot in the crook of your neck. You feel his fangs ghosting over your throat, his lips brushing against your pulse point. Then, something wet and dripping. He’s drooling all over you, thin, warm, wet ropes of his spit dribbling onto your neck. You tangle your fingers in his hair and yank him back so you can see his face.

The creature looking back at you barely looks human. His eyes, wide and red, darkness lurking behind them. His fangs, spilling out of his mouth as if they’re too big for his jaw. Drool all over his chin.

“What?” he growls, frustrated from being interrupted.

“Just wanna see you like this,” you whisper.

“Like what?” “Like the goddamn animal you are. Like the desperate, whiny, pathetic creature that keeps comin’ to my door. Like the Devil that’s lovin’ me so good it’s sendin’ me to Hell.”

It sends him over the edge. He snarls and bites down on your neck, hard. He thrusts up into you with similar ferocity. The pain, the pleasure, all building in you, sending heat through your body. He reaches down with one hand and drags the tip of one claw across your clit. You’re seeing stars.

“Oh God–” you moan, your orgasm rocking through you.

“No God here, darlin’, ‘member?” he teases, darkness in his voice. “Just the Devil, fillin’ you up this good.”

You have no idea how much blood he drains from you. Enough to make you lightheaded, even as you come down from your high. He follows you soon after, detaching from your neck and rutting into you, chasing his own release. You feel it a second later, hot spurts of warmth shooting inside of you. You claw at his back, anchoring your nails into his flesh, certain that he’ll have marks there for at least a few days, accelerated healing be damned. You can feel him go soft inside of you, but he doesn’t pull out. He stays there, above you, panting, eyes still wild, chin dripping with your blood. A drop falls from his fangs to your chest. He leans down, still holding eye contact, and slowly, obscenely, presses his tongue to your skin, licking it up, making you shudder.

“Thank you,” he whispers, face buried in your chest. “Taste so good when you’re cummin’, heart fuckin’ beatin’ for me, pussy hangin’ onto me, fuck, baby, thank you, thank you…”

You hum in response. He picks his head up, looking at you desperately.

“Was that good? Was I good?” he asks, still craving your approval. You laugh, your hands flying up to cover your face. He stares down at the silver rings still decorating your fingers. You reach for his face and he instinctively pulls back.

“Oh,” you say gently. As much as you love torturing him, all you want right now is to touch him, sweet and soft. “You want me to take these off?”

He nods wordlessly, eyes huge, looking like a wounded thing.

“Why don’t you take them off?” you coo. “Those teeth oughta be good for more’n just this.” Your fingers graze over the bite on your neck. It’s oddly smaller than you expected. 

You raise one finger. Slowly, he opens his jaw and takes your finger in his mouth, careful not to graze the metal. He bites down, his fangs gripping your ring, and pulls your hand back by the wrist, gently working the ring off your finger. When it’s completely free, he turns and spits, sending the silver clattering across the floor. He does this a second time, and a third, until you can feel him start to get hard inside of you again. You smile up at him.

“Good boy,” you praise as he works on the fourth ring. His eyes gently flutter shut. 

When he’s successfully removed all the silver from your body, you grab his face between your hands. Your foreheads pressed together, breath leaving his mouth and entering yours. You press a kiss to his mouth, wet and sloppy, tasting yourself all over him– the sweet, coppery taste of slick and blood. His hands ghost all over you, as if he’s trying to memorize your body so he can reconstruct it the next time you shut him out.

He starts to move again, gripping your hips and pressing into you. He takes your hand and places it over your lower stomach, pressing gently.

“Feel me? Right here? Fuckin’ tight, fuckin’ sweet, fuck sweetheart, you have no idea what you do to me.” His voice is dripping with lust and something else, something like gratitude.

You feel him hitting you slow and steady and deep, and the sinful sound of him fucking his own cum deeper into your pussy makes you feel faint.

“Please don’t make me go. I’ll stay here, I’ll be your dog, your animal, walk me around on a leash, leave my water in a bowl on the floor, please, I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t make me leave, sugar. Can’t stand it, please.” He sounds close to tears. Your eyes glance up to his face, contorted somewhere between pleasure and agony.

“Remmick,” you say, forcing his eyes open, making him look at you. “You gonna keep grovelling, or ya gonna fuck me like ya mean it?”

A wicked grin illuminates his face. He picks up his rhythm. You have a feeling your back is going to be giving you hell for a little while.

You wake in the morning, and there he is. You don’t remember how late it was when you both finally tumbled into the bed. He looks peaceful. You’re struck with something– not sympathy, not pity, something else. A feeling, deep in your chest, seeing him lying there. Looking…human.

You roll over and check the alarm clock on your nightstand. 1:37pm. Damn. Well, you suppose, to be expected after a long night. The curtains are drawn in your bedroom. On instinct, you swing your feet down to the floor, pull your robe around you, and cross to the window to open them. You grab the two pieces of fabric and pause.

The only thing between him and sudden death. You. The only thing keeping him from frying alive. You. The only thing taking enough pity on him to let him keep sleeping. You.

You cross out of the room and shut the door quietly, sealing in the darkness. In the kitchen, you pour yourself a glass of water and gulp it down. You prepare your coffee, filling the old iron pot with water and setting it on the stove. You turn the heat on as you wander across the room, opening the curtains at each window, letting daylight stream into the room. It’s like something from a postcard, you think, the warm afternoon sun, the gentle underscore of birdsong, the familiar and comforting smell of fresh coffee. The pot whistles on the stove and you take it off the heat, pouring yourself a cup. You hear a stirring from the bedroom. A delicious idea takes root in your mind.

You quietly pad across the floor to the bedroom door. Gingerly, you turn the knob, and throw the door open. Sunlight bathes across the first few feet of the floor, but doesn’t reach the bed.

He screams. Screams with true terror in his voice.

“Mornin’ darlin’!” you crow. “I made coffee, if you want any.”

His eyes, terror-stricken but slowly adjusting to the sudden light, peek up at you from the sheets. It’s odd, seeing him during the day. It’s like two separate pieces of yourself colliding at once. You turn from the door, leaving it open, and jaunt back into the sunlight of the kitchen.

“You gonna stay in bed all day?” you call. When you stick your head back into the bedroom, he’s out of the bed, on all fours, on the floor. He’s as close to the patch of light on the floor as he possibly can be without catching any of it. You chuckle darkly and turn to sit on the couch, in full view of the bedroom door. 

You lean back on the couch, coffee steaming from your mug on the coffee table. Your robe falls open just a bit at your chest. You see his eyes, not yet red, but gleaming in the darkness. You let your hand fall between your legs and let your head fall back against the couch, soaking in the afternoon sunlight.

“Please, sugar. No more games.”

Remmick nudges the bedroom door open, his eyes flickering in the dim lighting, red simmering in the blue-gray like the last embers of a dying fire. It’s strange how instantly something within him is calmed at the sight of you, something deep and possessive and maybe even predatory that finally quiets when it realizes you’re still here. Your form is tucked beneath the sheets, blissfully warm and cozy and utterly perfect. He sees a book tossed aside to the corner of the bed, like you’d tried to stay awake for him but ultimately gave up and fell asleep. He can hear your gentle breaths, the quiet thrum of your heart that taunts him.

His steps are near silent when he makes his way over to you. You lay on your stomach, a pillow hugged between both arms, your pretty mouth parted just slightly. You look serene in sleep, an angel come down to earth just for a devil like him. Remmick reaches forward, brushing a stray curl from your face with a tenderness most would think impossible for himself—with his hands that have taken too many lives to count, that are stained with blood every night. But with you they’re gentle, able to rediscover a mushy part of him that was buried centuries ago.

Your eyebrows pinch and you mumble indistinctly when his chilled hand rests on your cheek, relishing in the feeling of your soft skin beneath his calloused palm. He’s a little warmer tonight though, with fresh blood still flowing through him, but it’s never enough to completely chase off the cold bite of death. He leans down to pepper kisses across your face, steadily moving to your neck where he pauses, his blunt teeth teasing along your jugular and inhaling your scent like it’s a lifeline.

Under his attention is how you finally wake, shaken from meaningless dreams by frigid fingers and loving kisses. You smile lazily, stretching your arms and twisting so you’re on your back to face him. You paw at him, pulling him in with no resistance—he’d happily follow your touch wherever you wanted him to go. Your lips meet briefly, a pleased noise rumbling from him before you pull away. “You’re back.” You say, sleep still edging your words. You breathe him in contentedly, your fingers coming up to run through his short hair. He still has that signature metallic tang on him despite his efforts to clean up before coming home. “Was worried ‘bout you.”

“Aw darlin’, you ain’t have to do that. You know I’ll always come back to ya.” Remmick says, his deep voice sending a pleasant shiver down your spine. One of his hands rests above the covers on your waist now, the weight of it comforting and familiar. He huffs, shaking his head. “Shit, thought ‘bout ya all night.”

It’s true, he really was thinking about you the whole time—something he finds himself doing a lot recently. He thinks about you from the moment he leaves your house because of the undeniable call of his hunger, all the way to when he finally returns hours later. He’ll think about wishing he could stay around when your eyes start to droop and the mortal need for sleep takes you away, when you subconsciously curl into him searching for warmth that isn’t there. He hates having to move you off of him so he can go, so he can step out into the unforgiving darkness of night in search of a life to steal. You do make the cutest little noises though, something like a disgruntled cat’s. He’ll tuck you in real nice and kiss you sweetly to make sure you don’t miss him too much, and so he can seal the image in his memory to keep him motivated—a reminder of what he gets to come home to.

“You were gone for so long.” You say with a small pout, holding his face in your hands, his light stubble tickling your palms. The gold ring you wear glints in the darkness, a twin to his own.

He tilts his head so his lips connect with your hand, nuzzling into your touch that he always seems to crave. “Just got caught up with some things s’all.” He’d cut it close tonight, the sun appearing like a reckoning seconds after he’d shut the door. “I’m here now, darlin’.”

You smile at that, pulling him in again to kiss him, enjoying the taste of him. There’s always something metallic hiding beneath every bit of him, something too old for your mind to comprehend, something otherworldly. For most it would be unnerving and terrifying but for you, that’s just your husband, your Remmick. You’d accepted that when you agreed to marry him about three years ago, opening your arms and home to him and every unnatural part that came with him.

It was two years before that when you’d actually met him, the memory always sitting clear in your mind like it happened yesterday.

You’d spent the whole day baking—cookies, pies, cobblers, tarts… the list went on as you prepared for the market happening in town the next morning. You prided yourself on your baked goods, and people always bought you out. The whole house smelled of your efforts, the scent carrying out the open windows and into the trees beyond. You hadn’t heard it at first, the whispers in the leaves, the way all the animals went silent, the world seeming to hold its breath for just a moment. You’d been too busy singing a song you knew by heart as you were prone to do whenever working in the kitchen. (Remmick has told you countless times how much he adores your voice, he says it’s like a fine wine).

You were rotating the food left to cool on the windowsill when you saw him, standing out there by the tree line, watching you with eyes that at first gave you the willies. “Hey there,” you’d called, watching as he flinched at the sound of your voice, “what brings ya over?”

He’d taken a few curious steps towards the house, letting you get a better look at him. Worn button up loosely tucked into high waisted trousers, a white tank hidden beneath, suspenders over the shoulders, old boots, and a banjo slung across his back. He looked like a man who traveled often, never staying in one place long enough to learn the style of it. His face looked kind, set with strong features on stocky shoulders that suggested he was no stranger to hard work. His short black hair was messy but in a presentable way, curled bangs sitting on his forehead. Still, you knew there was something deeper about him that was off, that didn’t belong in your realm of living.

His hands were loosely in his pockets and he shrugged. “Smelled somethin’ mighty sweet, heard somethin’ even sweeter. You got a beautiful voice, darlin’.” He’d given you a close-lipped smile, one that made his eyes crinkle at the edges. His southern drawl was thick like syrup, coated across every word with something mixed in that you couldn’t quite place.

“Oh, I‘ve got years of church choir to thank for that.” You’d joked. You’d tilted your head. “Would you like to try anything, sir? I could always use a taste tester.”

He’d hesitated for a moment longer than would be normal, as if debating something serious in his mind, before shaking his head. He chuckled. “Nah, I’m tryin’ to cut back.”

“Aw, that’s a shame. If you change your mind, I’ll be at the market tomorrow. Feel free to stop by.” You’d said. He’d smiled back at you in a way that suggested he knew something you didn’t, told you that you wouldn’t be seeing him at the market or any day after that.

As soon as the sun went down though, he continued appearing in your backyard. He never stayed long at first, only sticking around to strike up a brief conversation. You’d learned his name, Remmick, and he had learned yours. Your name was always soft on his tongue, like he needed to be careful with something precious. He listened to you talk like you spoke the gospel, reverence in those blue-gray eyes as he never missed a word. In turn he would tell you stories of a time long ago, weaving vibrant imagery that made you feel as if you were standing in the green fields of a country far away. It confirmed things about him that you already suspected, like how he wasn’t from here at all, that he came from something hundreds or maybe even thousands of years old.

You’d sit on your little porch swing while he’d remain in the grass leaning against the railing, never truly breaching the line of your home. The night was warm and muggy, and there was a lull in your conversation, causing your gaze to travel to the banjo he continued to carry with him. “You any good on that thing?” You’d asked with a nod towards it.

Remmick huffed. “I like to think I am.”

You smirked. “Play me somethin’.”

He’d given you that signature smile. “Well, can’t deny a pretty thing like you, can I?”

He was always quick to flatter you, and you had to admit it was getting to you a little, something foreign fluttering in your chest. He’d swung the instrument around, resting it in deft hands and idly strumming a string or two as he thought about what to play. He’d then struck the first few chords and you quickly realized you recognized the song, it being one your family had shared together for years. You couldn’t help but sing along, shutting your eyes and letting yourself feel the music within as your body swayed. It meant that you missed the way Remmick looked at you, like you were heaven come to earth, adoration and reverence burning in his eyes like the hottest fire. That was the moment something clicked into place for him, that cemented his need to have you in whatever way he could.

He was downright obsessed with you. He couldn’t stay away from you and your sweet voice, your mouth watering smell, your entire being that seemed to be kissed by the sun. He knew he’d do anything to stay in your warmth, in your blessing. He kept coming by night after night, staying as long as his hunger allowed or until you couldn’t stop yawning and finally headed to bed with a sleepy goodnight. Part of him wished to follow you inside, thinking of how easy it’d be to take you in the carnal way he secretly desired, to lock you to him for eternity, but Remmick always held back, another part of him not wanting to ruin what you have. After all, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a civil conversation with someone that didn’t end with their blood smeared along his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been shown such simple kindness, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so human.

You didn’t know how much time passed like that, with easy talks and shared songs into the late hours when everybody else would be asleep. You always kept your physical distance, as did he, like some unspoken understanding. The emotional distance was another story, something that was shortening by the day. Feelings were blooming into something out of control, mixing with your desire in order to make a sickly concoction.

You both knew you were onto him, onto the fact he was something unnatural and ancient, but you never bothered to bring it up. You’d heard enough stories from your momma about things like him, you understood how dangerous they were but… you couldn’t find it in yourself to chase him off. You’d grown too fond of him, of his stupid smile and charming words, his endless stories and soothing voice. He felt much the same and yet… you were at some kind of mutual standstill, neither of you quite knowing what to do with it.

Until the one night he didn’t show up.

You’d waited. You’d sat on the porch with furrowed brows and downturned lips, disappointment sitting heavy behind your heart. Had he gotten bored of you? Decided to disappear without a word? You’d supposed it wasn’t a shock, it happened to you all the time. You gave him an hour before you sighed in defeat, heading back inside so the bugs didn’t eat you alive for nothing. You tried to ignore the hurt you felt, knowing it was useless to feel it over someone—something—like him. He didn’t owe you anything, hell, you were lucky he hadn’t killed you. Maybe it was some kind of sign. You’d gone to bed just as thunder rumbled outside, lightning flickering between the clouds.

You were woken hours later by a knock on your back door. You’d grumbled and wrapped a robe around yourself, trudging down the hall and to the kitchen, eyeing the silhouette hidden behind the mesh screen. There was something whispering to not open it, to protect yourself and just crawl right back into bed. You noticed the silence that had settled around your home, the one that made the frogs quiet and the crickets cease their songs, the one always followed by a familiar figure. You knew something was off, could feel it in your bones, but it didn’t stop you from opening that door.

You’d gasped so sharply that it hurt, your body stumbling back a step. Remmick stood there, blood covering his front half, his eyes gleaming a deep red that reflected in the same way an animal’s did. The whole way he carried himself was different, more predatory and deadly, poised to kill at a moments notice. His clothes were disshelved, his bangs plastered to his forehead from sweat. The wind carried the smell of him to you, ancient earth and leather tainted with the iron of blood. He opened his mouth and you saw the teeth sharpened to fangs, coated with his meal.

He smiled at you, and it was no longer one that made your heart flutter. It sent a cold shiver down your spine. “You gon’ let me in, darlin’? Or just keep starin’?”

He liked the way you looked at him then, like everything finally snapped into place for you. Mixed with your fear was a kind of defiance, like you were trying to tell yourself not to be frightened. He liked you seeing him for what he truly was, liked knowing you still wouldn’t cower. It’s what made you step aside and say those simple words, even though you knew your momma was surely rolling in her grave at your stupidity.

Something heavy shifted when he stepped inside your home. Something that told you it could never be undone and you’d have to bear the consequences, but you found that you didn’t care. “So that’s what you are,” you muttered, “a vampire.” You’d heard of them before from your momma, you knew how to kill one. You were pretty sure there was even some kind of emergency kit hidden in a closet somewhere.

Remmick chuckled low and dark, shaking his head. “You knew this whole time and you ain’t ever run or scream or cry…” He smirked, triumphant. “I knew you was somethin’ special, darlin’.”

He sat in a chair at your dining table like it belonged to him, his eyes traveling around your home as he swallowed down every bit of information he could glean about you. The floral designs on the dish cloths, portraits hung on the walls, keepsakes littering empty spaces, and a thick recipe book sitting on the counter—all of it a testament to you, the woman he didn’t stop thinking about night after night. Your scent was so heavy in your home it made it feel like he was breathing in a drug every time he inhaled and fuck- he couldn’t get enough. He wanted it to live inside him, he wanted you to make your home in his veins, in the space between his ribs. He wanted you with him forever.

He watched with a predator’s gaze as you filled a bowl with water, desperate to do something to keep yourself busy. It was brave of you to keep your back to him, but it was like you knew he wouldn’t do anything unless you asked. He’d get on his knees for you if you wanted, he’d beg just to hear his name fall from your lips.

You grabbed one of your pretty little dish rags, setting it and the bowl next to him while you sat in front of him, so close your knees almost touched. He could tell how much you were trying to hide your fear from your expression but he still saw it in your furrowed brows and pressed lips and your eyes that were just a bit too wide. “I’m scarin’ ya.” He said it like a fact, one without room for dispute. His fierce red irises bore into yours, seeing everything you wanted to hide. You went to protest, your trembling mouth opening before he shushed you. “Don’t lie. I can smell it.” It was potent and intoxicating, seeping from your pores and making drool threaten to fall down his chin.

“I ain’t scared of you.” You said with a false confidence. You dipped the rag into the warm water and suddenly grabbed his face in one hand as if to prove it, shocking the both of you with your boldness. Remmick visibly shuddered under your touch, his eyes fluttering briefly and a small noise coming from him, even as your fingers dug into the plush of his cheeks. Oh, how long he’d waited to feel your hands on him, the warmth of your humanity, the softness of your skin. He couldn’t believe he’d gone this long without it, without something that was clearly so vital to his very existence. He knew then he could never go another day without touching you.

“Don’t want you makin’ a mess in my house.” You muttered like an excuse, dragging the rag across his upper lip and moving down, taking the blood with it. He was more than willing to relax into your ministrations, letting you clean him as if he was a child. Nobody had ever done it for him before, after all. He watched you all the while—the crease between your brows, the determined curve of your mouth, studying every detail and committing it to memory.

“I ain’t a stranger to blood, you know. My daddy used to be a doctor.” You began after a good few minutes, talking to keep yourself distracted from the reality of your situation. Remmick didn’t mind of course, he loved your voice more than life itself. His attention immediately shifted towards the sound like a dog with its ears perked.

“Used to?” He’d asked.

“He died in the war. Momma went soon after, they basically said heartbreak caused her stroke n’ killed her.” Your head shook. “She really loved that man to death. Couldn’t blame her, he was the kindest soul you’d ever meet. Always helpin’ the poor and needy, bringing ‘em into the house to heal ‘em when they couldn’t afford their bills. He’d make me help sometimes, getting fresh water and whatnot. That’s why you ain’t nothin’ special.”

“How sweet of ya.” Remmick teased, his fangs showing with his uneven smile.

You’d ignored him, rubbing the cloth along his collarbones and across the gold chain he wore, clearly beginning to discolor from age. The water in the bowl had long since turned red, your dishrag officially ruined but it was the least of your concerns (and Remmick had gotten you a new one later on).

When you’d deemed him clean enough, you moved to get up and dump the bloody water before his large, cold hand latched onto your wrist, stopping you abruptly. It was like the tension was pulled taught as a bowstring at that moment, some small seedling of doubt in you saying he was about to kill you while he just stared at where your bodies were connected. It was slow and purposeful when Remmick brought your hand up to his mouth and ran his lips along your palm, breathing you in, tasting you with darts of his tongue. You felt the flush crawl up the back of your neck and across your cheeks, watching as he nuzzled into your hand, looking at you with those wide red eyes, every reminder of the last couple months together hanging there. Every shared story, every vulnerability, every song sung together.

“I need ya, sweet thing, shoot- I’ve needed ya since that first day. I’ll treat ya nice and good, I swear it on my dead heart.” Remmick said to you, his words thick, heavy, and gravelly with his desire. “You’ll never want for nothin’, darlin’, I’ll give ya everythin’, I promise. Please, baby, let me prove it to ya-“

He continued to kiss along your arm, so determined to show you the truth behind his words, to make you give in to him with murmured pleas and prayers. He relished in the taste of you, his breaths growing labored from his excitement. You stopped him with your hands on either side of his face to pull him back, his lips parted and shiny with spit, his eyes still glowing red but full of unbridled desire for you. You already knew your answer, had known it the whole time. You were so tired of being alone, so tired of searching for someone, anyone, to love you and understand you. You didn’t care that the only one who did was a monster in the body of a man—there was something about it that made it even sweeter.

So you’d agreed.

There was only a second of pause, like Remmick was processing it, those simple words that tilted his entire world, before he was on you. He kissed you with such ferocity, such possession, his hands roaming all over you, gripping you so tightly you had no choice but to submit to him. He’d swept you up with ease, carrying you into your bedroom where he’d fucked you stupid until the sun rose, pulling more orgasms from you than you thought possible, pinning you beneath his sweat soaked body and filling you again and again, whispering his thanks and devotions the entire time. You’d slept through the whole day after that with Remmick cradling you against his cooled body, encasing you in his arms like he was afraid you’d take it all back if he let go.

That was how you fell into the routine of your relationship. He’d spend the light hours tucked away inside the safety of your house while you went about your day, then he’d leave most nights in search of food before coming back hours later and fucking you senseless, exhilarated from both the hunt and seeing you again. Remmick made you feel more loved and protected than you ever had before, always saying praises and promises into your skin like a prayer you’d hear in church, always giving you everything he had to offer. He’d sometimes even bring you gifts after his hunts, little things he knew you’d like. Fresh berries he stole from a garden or farm, beautiful flowers to go right on the table, a book or two he was able to snag off somebody.

It went on like this for months, and then it became a year, then two, until Remmick couldn’t take it anymore and he decided he needed you in a way that was deeper than what he’d been indulging in. It didn’t mean you getting bit, no, not yet, it meant you got presented with a pretty gold ring that matched his own. He asked you to marry him on a warm summers night, when fireflies were dancing outside and the critters of the moon were singing their songs. You’d said yes without hesitation, flinging your arms around him and kissing him until you both ran out of breath. You’d spent the rest of the moon hours dancing and singing and making love, too full of joy to do much else.

It was the best way for Remmick to have you forever, for every other man to know you belonged to him. He knew that one day he would bite you, he would drain the life from your body, he’d taste the sweet nectar of your blood that he so craved, he’d make you just like him and truly keep you for eternity. But that day wasn’t coming anytime soon.

He refused to be greedy just this once, deciding he wasn’t ready to take away your love of sunny days and the warmth of your skin, the thrum of a pulse in your veins. He wasn’t ready to ruin the simple pleasures of being a human being. But he knew he could never stand to lose you to something as menial as old age, or stand by and let some tragedy befall you. Biting you is like his sick way of protecting you, of showing you his love and devotion, even if you don’t know it yet, even if it takes you time to understand. It’d happen no matter what, he knew, but he’d let you enjoy those bright days in ignorance a little while longer.

Remmick can smell it on you now, the hours you’d spent in the sun earlier today, selling your baked goods at the market. The coldness within his bones seeks out your heat, desperate to bask in it and take it for his own. You give him a pleased hum as he grips your waist, blankets being moved aside to reveal your body to him. You’re pliant in his hold, always eager to give in, always eager to let him take control. It’s nice when you can step outside of yourself and just be, something you’ve only been able to do with him.

You can tell that he’s softer this time, his touch more reverent, something about it full of more longing like he’s memorizing every bit of you. He holds you like a man making love to his wife, not a monster clutching his possession so nobody else takes it. His mouth on yours is sensual, a twin to the hands beneath your nightdress, steadily bunching the material up your body so the air kisses along your flesh and leaves goosebumps in its wake.

“Shit, darlin’, yer too perfect.” Remmick mutters, nearly breathless as he looks down at you, your supple curves, the expanse of your breasts and stomach that nearly has him drooling—not from hunger, but from pure want- no, pure need for you. Even after all this time, his attention still makes you squirm, your thighs squeezing together subconsciously. His eyes track the movement like a predator, the burning hue of red steadily consuming his irises once more.

One of his hands moves lower, parting your legs with ease and running his fingers along your clothed cunt. He hums to himself, feeling the way your wetness has dampened your underwear. “Missed me, huh?” He says, his crooked teeth showing in his smirk. He loves that all you can do is nod, a pathetic little noise coming from you. The scent of your arousal hits him like a truck, a guttural groan tearing from his chest as it seems to ignite his blood with desire. You smell so goddamn sweet, like the ripest fruit sitting ready for him to take and sink his teeth into.

Your underwear is moved aside and you jolt at that first contact, his fingers dragging up through your folds and collecting your slick. You whimper as he buries his face in the crook of your neck again, a deep groan coming from him with his inhale. As his thumb rolls your clit, his other hand comes up to knead a breast beneath his palm, the cold metal of his ring nipping at your skin. You can feel the way Remmick’s chest heaves against you, his desperate breaths fanning across your throat between his open-mouthed kisses.

You gasp when two fingers sink into your heat, your hands coming to scrabble at his shoulders. You always take him easily, your body attuned to him alone, like he’s branded into your very essence. It drives him crazy. “Fuck, Remmick-“ You whine, arching into his touch. He responds instantly to you saying his name; a harsher squeeze to your breast, a little show of his teeth against your neck, his hips rutting against you in search of friction. His name coming from you is like touching two wires together, sending sparks through his rotten veins. He’d happily walk into the sun as long as your voice is the last thing he hears.

You writhe under his weight, pleasure running like a wildfire beneath your skin. He devours every moan, whine, and gasp he pulls out of you, his erection painful in his pants from his lust and need. His fingers draw in and out of your cunt in smooth motions, pressing against the spots that have you keening, scissoring you open while your slick coats his palm. His thumb traces quick circles over your clit, listening to the way your body sings for him. He knows you’re close, your noises raising in pitch, your nails digging into his back, your pussy clenching around his fingers. 

“C’mon darlin’, give it to me.” Remmick encourages, lifting just enough to look at your face, your expression twisted with pleasure. Tears edging the corners of your eyes, your pretty mouth dropped open, your cheeks flushed. Your hands rest of either side of his jaw, drawing him in and kissing him deeply as your orgasm crashes over you. He groans appreciatively while you moan into his mouth, shudders wracking your body. He rides you through your orgasm, steadily bringing you down from that high as he practically engulfs you with his muscled form like he needs there to not be a singular inch of space between you. “My sweet girl.” He whispers against your mouth, a string of spit connecting you, his eyes ablaze with his desire.

As your underwear is tossed to some unknown corner, he fumbles with the buckle of his belt, shoving it aside to finally free his aching cock, precum beading at the tip. He runs his slick-covered hand along his length, happily coating himself in your release. He gives a sound halfway between a hum and a moan. “Fuck, darlin’, I need ya…” He practically gasps against your collarbones, his cock slipping between your folds, collecting the remainder of your cum. “Need ya so bad.”

You both moan in tandem when he at last thrusts into you, his hips flush to yours and filling you so completely in the way he’s done countless times before. His hand suddenly finds yours, your fingers intertwining and gripping on to the other so tightly it’s like you’re scared they’ll disappear if you let go. He draws out to the tip only to then slam back in, ecstasy simmering in his veins now that he can take you. He bites your skin between his blunt teeth, teasing that goldmine of ambrosia waiting just beneath, calling to him. He’s dreamt of the day he can finally drink from you, can finally have more than just the few drops that bubble to the surface from a cut or him biting too hard. He pushes those thoughts away now, not daring to tempt his appetite and instead focusing on the way your pussy holds onto him like a vice.

Your free hand comes up to card through his sweat-soaked hair, his short bangs plastered to his forehead. You grip at the strands for purchase as he sets an unrelenting, steady pace, his desperate pleas and vows to you a constant in your ear. You know for a fact no man’s ever loved you the way he does, no man’s ever been this desperate for you, so willing to get on his knees just for you to look at him. You welcomed him in, gave him something to hold on to and call his own, some place to belong—and he’ll spend the rest of his eternity showing you his gratitude.

You moan loud after a particularly harsh thrust, his grip on you tightening as he hits that sweet spot inside of you, the one that knocks the breath from your lungs and has you seeing stars. “So beautiful, sweet girl, y’sound so nice.” Remmick pants, his drool that’s begun to fall smearing along your skin. “Feel so good, so fuckin’ tight fer me.”

You practically chant his name mixed with a slew of curses, voice punctuated by his rutting into you. He has you pinned to the mattress, his muscles flexing against you with his efforts, making sure you stay right where he wants you. He licks up your neck, tasting the saltiness of your sweat, inhaling the drug that is your scent, heightened by your pleasure and mixed with something intoxicating. His groan falls off into a whine, mind overridden by his adoration for you and his lust, chasing the release he can feel building.

He knows it’s the same for you, he can feel your flutters around his cock, that knot within you growing to the point of soon coming undone. His free hand releases your hip to find your clit, rubbing jerky, uneven circles over the sensitive bud while you writhe in an attempt to get away from the overload of pleasure. Remmick never gives you the chance, your body tensing as that second orgasm crashes over you like an angry wave, your noises becoming broken and breathless.

Remmick’s eyes nearly roll back from the way your pussy grips his cock, his forehead falling to your chest as he tries to laugh and fails. “Shit, suckin’ me in. Fuck, sweet thing- I can’t-“ He manages one last thrust before he cums deep inside you, his words breaking off with a wail, your walls painted white with his spend.

You both lay there for a moment, motionless in the aftermath of release, combined sweat covering your bodies and your hands still locked together. You and him shudder when his cock slips out of you, your shared cum beginning to seep from you in his absence.

Remmick is the first to regain himself, as always, his lips leaving gentle kisses on the space between your breasts and up your throat and jaw before reaching your mouth. He kisses you sweetly, then pulling back to bring your hand to his lips, leaving a gentle kiss on your knuckles, on your wedding ring. “My perfect girl.” He murmurs. “So good to me.”

You smile tiredly, your arms slinging across his shoulders. “Could say the same to you.” You tease. You then sigh contentedly, bringing him in and encouraging him to lay on your chest. “I love you, Remmick, I hope you know that.”

Those three words, so simple and yet so damning, always make him stop. He has to run them over in his mind, like he doesn’t believe they can actually be said to a thing like him. His hold on your hips tightens, his face nuzzling into you as if to hide from that phrase. “‘Course I do. Love you too, darlin’.” He mumbles, the words still foreign on his old tongue. Your smile softens, your fingers running soothingly through his hair. You pull the covers back up around you both, encasing him in the warmth that he lacks.

Outside, you can hear the familiar early morning sounds of the South; the birds chirping, the bugs buzzing in their swarms, and the occasional car sputtering by. The world wakes up beyond your reinforced curtains, basking in the sunlight that Remmick so violently hides away from. He knows that in a few hours you’ll go out and join them, greeting your neighbors and sharing recent news, playing a game of normalcy so nobody asks too many questions about the husband they’ve never seen.