hello there !

“Welcome home.”

Leon’s voice is plump with sarcasm as he pushes open the door. It slings wide with a shrill creak, the stiff hinges croaking from disuse. You barely have a moment to forget to laugh when he cracks another one of his jokes. 

“Don’t happen to have any WD40 on ‘ya?” He snarks. It makes you wonder if it’s a coping mechanism–the way the quips roll off his tongue, one after another–a shield to protect the gummy meat beneath the big, strong shell. 

He did lead you to safety after all, and though you consider it reparations for saving his life, it wouldn’t hurt to humor him a little. He looks so pathetic, standing there, waiting for a reaction. 

A forced smile–one that doesn’t meet your eyes. “Oh shoot, I knew there was something I forgot.” 

He exhales a strained sigh, his shoulders dipping an inch, like he’s relieved you finally gave in, because if you hadn’t, that would mean he really did do something wrong, and that would hurt more than the sting of you not finding him funny. 

“Well, here it is.”

You blink hard, pupils flaring to adjust to the dismal darkness enshrouding the cabin. Plaid curtains undrawn, lights–if there are any at all–shut off, the only illumination breaking into the space being the white sheets of snow blanketing the ground outside. 

Now that shelter has been found, the freezing fluff plummeting from the sky doesn’t look all that daunting. In fact, if your legs weren’t still numb from sludging through it for three miles, you’d be tempted to run out and play in it, make a snow angel or two, throw a few balls compacted so tight they’d fly like bullets…right at the man who got you into this situation in the first place. 

If he had just gone with you when you told him to, both of you would be on a jet back to D.C. by now, and you’d be spending the night in your own bed, in your pajamas, under a cozy blanket of your choosing.

An abandoned Umbrella facility–abandoned on the surface, that is. Inside the rotting corpse of steel buttresses and termite-gnawed wood, the building was still being used to house servers and data depicting their next moves to destroy the planet, one virus at a time. 

Kennedy and his partner, Agent Reed were supposed to go in, extract the codes, load them onto a USB, and get the hell out of dodge. Except, Agent Reed was served a minor head injury on their last assignment together, and was out of commission. You volunteered to take his place. It would make you look better after all, less like a newbie who didn’t know her left from her right, and more like a real agent, ready to be put to good use. 

The only set back was supposed to be the weather, not the fact that the facility was armored with mangled beats ready to attack once the wrong sequence of numbers was entered into the security system too many times. Apparently, three was the magic number. 

“Home sweet home.”

You cut your eyes at him in clear warning. If he makes one more joke, you’re going to stop being polite and tell him how you really feel.

“I’m kidding,” he says, throwing his hands up in defense. “Kidding. Just until the snow stops.” His eyes find your face and he winces at your unamused expression. “Or at least until the roads clear and someone can come and extract us.” A shorter time-frame–one that’s small enough for you to swallow. 

“Come inside,” he ushers with the wave of his hand. “You’re letting all the cold in.” 

Too little too late, you think. The cabin is an ice box. A Siberian chill nips at your feet as you make quick work of unlacing your boots and kicking them off by the closed door behind you. Socks soaked, the wet wool encases your feet in a tomb that promises hypothermia if you don’t yank them off soon and place your frozen toes by a fire…maybe in the fire. Waterproof, they said. 

The long-disconnected comms device in his ear comes out. His wool cap is tossed down, a hand coming up to fluff his flattened hair. 

“Take your clothes off–just the top layers,” Leon commands softly, already yanking the sopping leather jacket off his back, throwing it onto the raw oak table beside him, along with the long-sleeved compression shirt beneath it. There’s nothing playful in his voice now, all business. The seriousness of his tone gets you to move, mirroring the man in front of you as he works the metal buckle of his belt, the button and zipper of his tactical pants. He strips down, standing in nothing other than a pair of DSO-issued thermals, the waffle fabric, slightly damp, sticking to his form, covering his body from ankle to wrist. 

He notices that your long-sleeve is soaked through, the wet fabric transparent against your abdomen, highlighting every line and bump of muscle. “That has to go too, sorry.” 

“What?” 

“No time to be modest. You’re asking to freeze to death if you keep it on.” 

By some merciful being in the stars, your pants are dry, lest you have to drop those too. You’re left standing in your knit thermal pants and a sports bra, that also, thankfully, is somewhat dry. Leon doesn’t seem to mind or care, quickly turning around to search the cabin for supplies. 

“Fuck,” you bite between sivers that roll through your body. Chillbumps rise beneath the waves of ice that travel through your veins like river Cocytus, lighting your limbs on fire–a white-hot fire, blue-tipped and deceitful. “It’s freezing in here.” 

Leon glances over his shoulder. He’s crouched by the fireplace, loading cylinders of chopped wood onto the grate, fishing a box of matches from a metal lockbox by the brick surround. “Sorry. I’m going as fast as I can here.” 

“It’s alright,” you say, biting your bottom lip in an effort to quell the uncontrollable tremble of your chin. “Take your time.” 

And just like that, the wood ignites beneath the flicker of the match. The heat radiating from the hearth is slow to warm the room, quick to illuminate it. Finally, you’re able to get a better look at the cabin, all the fixtures, less utilitarian and Spartan in their design than you imagined the furnishings of a safe house to be. You pictured steel benches and scratchy blankets woven with threads of plastic fishing line. 

There’s a bed beside the fireplace, a mattress cradled by an old mahogany headboard and footboard, engraved with swirling flourishes. It’s made up with flannel linens and two stuffed pillows encased in plaid cotton, a pattern akin to the one on the curtains. 

“Come sit down,” he says in a cautious command. He’s sitting by the fireplace, patting an open spot next to him. 

You settle yourself onto a pelt that once belonged to whichever animal has the warmest fur. Fox or bear or wolf. You’re not completely sure, just grateful. 

The hearth glows orange, casting the room in a glow reminiscent of juice-bearing tangerines in the summer, of burning sunsets that melt into the horizon of the sea, of sticky peaches.  

“Here you go.” 

So caught up in the hypnotic fire, its flames dancing in front of you, you nearly squeal, and definitely jump, when Leon approaches from behind, handing you two packs of charcoal and iron, shaken to activation. They warm your palms. 

You didn’t even realize he had left your side. 

“You’re so tense,” he states. “Relax.” 

Gulping hard, you remind yourself to breathe as he reclaims his seat beside you, bringing his knees into his chest. “Sorry, I guess I’m still a little shaken up. I’m not used to those…things…the way you are.” 

“No worries. Can’t say it gets any easier, though.” He smiles and it makes you melt in a way the heat from the fire can’t. You take the time to really study his features, not sure you ever have before, not that you’ve had the time or the proximity. When he’s not swept away on assignments, he’s rarely roaming the halls of headquarters, rarely lingering in conference rooms, never to be seen serving himself a cup of burnt coffee in the break area.

“Good to know.” 

His white-blonde hair takes on the color of the blaze. Blue eyes sharpen as they gaze back at you, trying to decipher the intensity with which you stare. He cocks his head, the dimple of his chin smoothing as he pulls in his bottom lip. 

“Everything okay?”

“Oh, sure,” you reply with a shrug. Bad idea. A band of muscle in your shoulder catches and you wince. “Just my shoulder. I think I tweaked it today…not like it was doing well before that, though.” 

He hums in agreement, or observation, or understanding. 

You lean forward into the fireplace, hoping the flames will singe the nerves that keep you jolting at every breeze and change in the air. Its flickering tongues warm your wind-burnt cheeks, the frozen button of your nose, your chapped lips. 

Leon grows unusually quiet, and before you can respond to your observation, a pair of hands lightly graze your shoulders. You jump again beneath a set of fingers, sturdy and sprawled across your trapezius muscles.  

“Let me.” It’s more like a question, begging for permission. You nod in silent allowance, and Leon’s hands begin to knead the decade-old knots in your shoulders. Your nose wrinkles, your lips purse, face contorting into a grimace until the initial pain blurs into relief.   

An embarrassingly lewd sound escapes you, and you whole-heartedly expect him to laugh and give you a hard time for it, but he doesn’t. He just lets you feel the release in whichever way you need. Cupping a hand over your mouth, you prevent any other shameful gasps or groans from fleeing from the safe space behind your teeth. 

“You really missed your calling, Leon,” you spit out through labored breaths, finally trusting yourself to speak. 

No response, just an unbroken channel of concentration from his palms to your shoulders. He works the muscles on either side of your spine with his thumbs, the tight knot at the nap of your neck. Then, he retreats, and the absence of his hands on your body makes you physically ache. 

“Wha–” 

“Give me your feet?” 

“W–what? No.” 

He finds a spot beside you once more, leaning back on the heels of his palms, too smug of a smirk on his face. “Fine then.” 

After a moment, and once you realize he’s not joking this time, you relent. “Fine,” you sigh with a roll of your eyes, shifting on your seat, kicking your legs out at him. He catches one foot in his hand with the swift reflex of a man that can aim, shoot, and kill with his eyes closed. 

The pads of his fingers dig into your heel, the ball of flesh beneath your blistered toes. They knead and massage, pressing deep circles into the center of your foot, tenderizing calloused flesh.  

You close your eyes, staticky constellations flickering behind your lids like the lights of a city’s skyline. Maybe you groan again, you wouldn’t know. The pleasure is all too loud in your ears, thumping like a heartbeat on a monitor.

“Do you like that?” He asks in a low gruff. The timbre of his voice sets your soul ablaze. 

You’d be amiss to ignore the sexual undertones of this situation, the honeyed words he speaks, his hands hot on your skin. So, so eager to please. Your cheeks flush sanguine at the realization, beads of sweat pooling at your hairline, your brow. Maybe you’re sitting too close to the fire after all.  

Before you can take another second to read further into Leon’s touch, he pulls you by the ankles until your seat is all the way at his knees and you’re on your back, staring up at the plastered ceiling, broken up by wooden beams. There’s no time to resist, not that you’d want to anyway. No, no. You want this. You want him. A moan escapes you, a sound belonging to someone far too willing and not at all hesitant for what’s about to happen next. 

“Too tense,” he coos, clicking his tongue in disapproval. You rise up on your elbows to see Leon tugging at his shirt as though he’s about to dive into a pool. Gawking at the sight, you’re unaware that your jaw has fallen slack until Leon looks up at you and laughs breathily. “Like what you see?” He says with raised brows. 

“Mhm,” you hum, taking in the curves of his biceps, the corded muscle that lies beneath pale skin, glistening white under the sheen moonlight that seeps through the windows. The veins in his forearms throb as he flexes, holding himself up as he hovers over you, planting peckish kisses up and down your abdomen, a love bite at the curve of your waist. 

He murmurs sweet nothings against your flesh. Praising your beauty, your scent, your skin, and you melt under each one, a puddle of putty on the rug. Your fingers find his shoulder, balled and strong, and you dig, leaving half-moon indentations in the sinewy muscle. He shirks beneath the touch, chuckling. 

“Ouch,” he says with mirthy sweetness, feigning pain, as if someone whose entire body has the muscle mass of one of his thighs could do any real damage to him. 

“Sorry,” you squeak, reclining all the way down onto the floor so he can come up further, his hands cradling your head as he licks the line of your lips, from corner to corner, to cupid’s bow and back down again. 

Allowing him entrance, you open your mouth slightly, giving an inch as he takes a mile, thickening his whole tongue past your teeth, inviting yours into a waltz. He tastes like mint and ash. 

The two of you kiss for what feels like hours, but was realistically only a few minutes. His hands skim your body, fingertips traipsing up and down your arms, your sides, one groping your breast through the fabric of your bra. His brows furrow when he realizes there’s a stretch of fabric in his way, and he grips the elastic band above your rips, peeling it away from your skin. You shirk beneath the lack of a barrier between you, just skin on skin leaving you far too exposed. 

Once he whimpers at the sight of you bare before him, all embarrassment and shame leave your body in one cleansing breath. The tip of his tongue makes pardon from your mouth and licks its way down your neck, your décolletage, to your nipples, lapping the hardened bud. You could deny the effect he has on your bodily functions, blaming it on the cold air sweeping through the cabin, but you’d be lying. The windows are fogged with condensation from the juxtaposed temperatures of the cabin and the blizzard outside it, and your brow is soaked with sweat. You’re burning up beneath him, yet you’re shivering under every touch. 

“Should we take this to the bedroom?” He rasps, voice tight and strained. His breath is hot at your ear. It tickles.

In an effort to keep up with his quips, you chirp, “You mean the mattress that’s two feet away?” You feel him nod against your cheek, his lips still warm and gentle at your jaw. He nips at the tendon beneath your lobe, a sensitive spot that leaves you breathless. “O–oh okay,” you agree weakly, all inhibitions thrown out the door the moment he reaches a hand down to cup your throbbing cunt teasingly before he removes it. 

Leon sweeps you up into his arms as he stands up from kneeling, his bare feet slapping the hardwood beneath them. You stay lying across his crooked forearms while he makes the trek to the mattress, plopping you onto it. The springs bounce beneath your weight. 

“Hips up.” 

He needn't tell you twice. You buck your pelvis upward, allowing him room to grab the band of your thermal bottoms, yanking them down your thighs in a swift swoop, tossing them somewhere on the floor. The only fabric left on your body is a thin pair of plain panties, soaked, but not from the storm. Leon licks his lips at the sight of the damp patch on the cotton gusset, so obscene a gesture you think he might be kidding. That’s before he drops to his knees, pushing yours apart. 

You yelp at the sudden suction of his mouth on your clit, already a squirming mess beneath his mouth, hips bucking, thighs squeezing against his head. He presses your knees apart again until the sides of your thighs meet the crisp fabric of the patchwork quilt. A silent command to keep yourself open for him. 

His tongue widens, lapping at your bud like a kitten at a bowl of milk. The sounds are disgusting, wet and sloppy, as they reverberate against the cabin walls, announcing your climb to pleasure. 

Moaning his name, he takes it as an order to not stop what he’s doing for anything. In fact, he takes it as an order to do more. He pulls back for just a moment, long enough to make you whine for his return, slicking ring and middle with spit. He teases the tip of his fingers at your entrance, already primed with slick arousal, just circling and flicking until your head comes up and your face just looks so pretty and pathetic, he can’t resist. 

He dives back in, this time working your pussy with his fingers, crooking them at the knuckle, waiting to hear your moans quicken so he knows he’s hit the spot. It doesn’t take you long to cry out for him, confirming his suspicions that he’s found your sweet spot, the button behind your pelvis that makes your abdomen tense and contract, your walls clench around him. 

“That’s a good girl,” he groans against your clit, the vibrations exiling your soul from your body. “You’re so close, huh? I can feel it.” 

Your hand finds his hair, fingers weaving through icy blonde strands, pressing him closer to you. He growls in pleasure beneath the pinch. 

“Let go for me.” 

And you do. 

His tongue–those lithe fingers–works you through your climax, continuing to lap and suck like there’s still work to do. He doesn’t stop until your desperate cries begin to wane, replaced by labored breathing and mumbles of gratitude. He smiles against your clit before giving it a kiss, so tender and soft like the wings of a butterfly flapping against your hand, or the light flicker of eyelashes on your cheek. 

Crawling onto the bed to meet you, Leon wears a proud grin. You take a moment to study the features of his face, now under a different light–one of affection and attraction, a n

“Are you alright?” He asks. The glossy look in his baby blue eyes is nothing short of sincere as he draws tight circles on your leg, holding them tight to his side. 

You giggle. “More than alright. You really know how to use your hands, Leon.”

The corners of his mouth rise into a grin as he props himself up on his elbow, eyes still glued to your shape, drinking you in–every inch, every curve, every freckle. His chest rises and falls with each breath he takes. You study the metronomic rhythm. 

“So are we going to…” your voice trails off into timid nothingness. You can’t even bear to look at him for fear of turning red, but you force yourself to. “Have sex?

He laughs, the sing-songy sound jubilant amid the dour, wood-paneled walls. “Yeah, yeah, we will,” he assures. “Just let me catch my breath, ‘kay? I put in a lot of work down there.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it.” A wink. “That was just as much for me as it was for you.” 

Before you can respond, though  you’re not sure what you’d have even said in response to such a raw admission, Leon’s mouth finds yours, once again sucking and nibbling at your bottom lip, tongue swiping across your teeth. The two of you kiss for a while, exchanging moans back and forth, hands finding the curves and dips of each other’s bodies. His skin is smooth, though striped with scars, some transparent and long-healed, others pink and freshly won. 

“Please, Leon,” you plead against his lips. 

“What do you want, baby?” His hands stay tangled in your hair as you tip him onto his back, climbing atop his lap, thighs encasing his hips beneath you. 

“I want you. Now. Inside me.” 

He chuckles mirthily into your mouth. “I can do that.” Hands moving to the band of his pants, he tugs them down along with his briefs, freeing the erection that has pained him since you stripped down to your bra. He tried to quash the mean dog of lust nipping at his heels. Your shirt was soaked. You would have faced countless degrees of hypothermia if you had stayed clothed. He was a man, after all, and whether or not you had to strip out of necessity, you were a beautiful, half-clothed woman standing in front of him, and his body did the rest. 

“Inside,” you repeat in a half-moan, half-gasp, fingernails clawing at the sinewy muscles of his biceps, too perfectly sculpted to belong to any human. 

“Yes ma’am.” 

Suddenly you’re on your back, Leon hovering above you, his eyes focused on the cock he’s pumping with his hand. It’s long and thin, like the neck of a swan. You have half a mind to tell him how beautiful he is. Such a pretty man. He fists himself until fully stiff, and you can’t help but watch as he lines himself up with your slit and slides the first of many inches inside. 

Leon groans, throwing his head back. It’s been a while. 

“Fuck, baby,” he hisses, retreating for fears he might actually finish on the spot. “Just give me a moment.” 

After two seconds too long, he enters you once again, the walls of your pussy stretching to accommodate his girth. “Please, Leon,” you whine. “All of it.” 

“Okay, okay,” he obliges, thrusting all the way into you, eliciting several cries of desperation and ecstasy, sounds too pornographic to be shared between two co-workers. 

A few swears are huffed under his breath as he presses down on the backs of your thighs, bringing your knees into your chests, using the leverage to angle himself deeper inside. Every time he draws back an inch, the throbbing vein on the underside of his cock slides against a spot you didn’t even know could sense so clearly. It’s your turn to swear, a string of curses leaving your lips. He catches them with his mouth, coming back down to you. 

“Harder, Leon. Please. F-fuck me.” 

“Any harder and this isn’t going to last long, baby, and I wanna take my time with you,” he says, every couple words punctuated with heavy breaths. Pulling back, he looks down at you with crooked brows.  “Will you let me do that?” 

All you’re able to do is nod, giving him a tight smile in an attempt to hide your disappointment. 

“Thank you,” he replies with such sweet sincerity it makes your stomach jump. 

A couple more thrusts and you can feel the coil tightening behind your abdomen, a tell-tale sign of guaranteed wreckage. Those muscles tense and release, over and over, the sensation growing stronger by the second. You shiver beneath the pulsations, electric shocks vibrating beneath your skin. 

“You’re still so cold, baby.” 

You laugh through another wave of shivers, your teeth chattering, deciding not to correct the misinterpretation. “Then you should warm me up.” 

He pulls his lower lip in between his front teeth, sucking, nodding. “You’re right.” He thrusts himself back into you, all the way, to reach beside your head for one of the lit candles on the bedside table. 

“W–what are you doing?” 

A wicked grin appears on his face. “Warming you up.” He tips the candle over your chest–sticky beeswax rolled into a pillar–lining up the mouth so the molten wax can pour down onto your sternum, dripping down the valley between your breasts toward your collarbone. It burns so good, eliciting staccato gasps and whines from your lips as you shiver beneath the paradoxical chill, so hot it’s cold. 

He moves the candle to pour more down the line of your stomach, all the way down to your navel. It dries like splatters of milky acrylic on a canvas. 

Your back arches off the mattress, your skin aflame beneath the sensation of something so oddly intimate. His hand comes down to massage the wax deeper into your skin like it’s an anointing oil. Then, with the same hand, he presses down on your stomach as he dives back into your gushing cunt, heavy palm making sure both walls feel each and every thrust. 

“Come with me, Leon,” you beg, pulling him down to you, chests glued together with spit and sweat, and the molten wax splashed up and down your torso. He groans into your ear, burrowing his head into the crook of your neck. “I’m so close.” A promise. A warning. 

“Keep clenching me like that,” he commands in a deep growl. Who would you be to deny him? “Goog girl, that’s it, baby.” His hand comes up to your jaw, fingers splayed across your cheek. “Open up.” 

You part your lips slightly, just enough for him to spit a glob of saliva down your throat. You willingly swallow, desiring to have every part of him inside you. His lips meet yours again before he detaches to send an ursine growl into the air, tossing his head back in euphoric pleasure. 

He fucks you through your second orgasm like a man determined, pistoning into you until the very last moment, when your climax grips him so tight, he can’t help but spill into you, giving you every last drop. 

When he finally rolls over, only because you begrudgingly admitted you couldn't breathe, Leon looks over at you, capturing your gaze. His eyes are bright beneath the glow of the fire, of the candles, the snow falling relentlessly outside the window. Oceanic blues sprinkled with flickers of gold. You’re utterly entranced. 

For a few minutes, the two of you just stare at each other, committing the other’s features to memory, neither one wanting to forget a single single freckle or dimple. And finally, for a rare moment, neither of you are cursing the storm that trapped you here. 

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.

Snow had already begun to swallow the sound of the world when you fell.

The impact had not been graceful.

Angels were not meant to fall.

Your body struck the frozen earth like something that had been violently torn from the sky. Bone shuddered beneath your skin. Your wings collapsed beneath you in a tangle of white and darkened feathers.

For a long moment, you could not breathe.

Then sensation returned.

Cold like knives sliding beneath your skin.

Pain followed, sharp, invasive, everywhere at once. Every nerve that Heaven had once quieted awakened with brutal enthusiasm.

Your lungs burned with the effort of air.

Your heart pounded wildly.

You had never felt your own body like this before.

You lay in the snow beneath towering fir trees. The clouds swallowed the stars above you. The forest seemed endless.

For the first time since your creation…

You were alone.

Your fingers twitched against the frozen ground.

Slowly, painfully, you forced yourself upright.

Your wings dragged heavily behind you as you staggered forward. They were enormous, nearly three meters from root to tip, but now they felt wrong on your body, like broken limbs that refused to obey you. Feathers scraped against ice and mud, leaving trails in the snow behind you.

Your halo no longer floated above your head.

It sat in your hands.

Cracked. Dim.

You walked.

You did not know how long.

Time felt different now. Hours passed or perhaps only minutes. The forest eventually thinned until the dark line of a road appeared beneath your bare feet.

Streetlamps flickered weakly through falling snow. Your wings scraped along the pavement. Your skin trembled violently with cold. Your breath came in small, ragged clouds.

Your gaze lifted.

And you saw a house.

Two stories of dark brick. Every window glowed softly from within.

It stood apart from the other homes.

Beautiful.

Wrong.

The moment you looked at it, something deep inside your ruined grace stirred.

You walked toward it anyway.

Like a wounded bird returning to an unfamiliar nest.

By the time you reached the garden, your legs trembled so violently you nearly collapsed. Your wings dragged through the snow behind you, feathers dirty and heavy.

You stopped beneath one of the windows.

Inside, warm golden light flickered.

You should have left.

You knew you should have left.

But instead, you stood there in the darkness, staring through the glass.

A man moved within the room.

Tall.

Precise.

Composed in a way that made your chest tighten with something unfamiliar. He poured himself a glass of deep red wine.

Your breath fogged against the glass.

You couldn't look away.

Then…

His head lifted.

Slowly.

As if he had heard something that did not exist.

His eyes found yours through the frost-covered window.

And he did not flinch.

Your fingers tightened around your broken halo.

Inside the house, the man placed his glass down. His movements were unhurried, almost graceful as he approached the window.

When he stood before you, the light revealed his face clearly.

Calm. Thoughtful. And something darker, buried very deep behind his eyes.

Without breaking eye contact he opened the window.

Cold air slipped between you.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke.

You felt your heart hammering painfully inside your chest. The sound alone felt overwhelming. Angels were not meant to hear their own hearts.

Then, quietly, you spoke.

“Hannibal… Lecter.”

The name left your mouth like instinct.

Angels knew such things, and even if divinity was slipping from you, it stuck out to you.

His soul was…

Rotten.

Beautifully rotten.

A slow blink passed over his dark eyes.

He studied you with unsettling patience.

You watched him.

“You speak my name,” he said softly.

His voice was velvet, soft soothing against your trembling form.

“And yet… we have never met.”

His gaze drifted down your wings, massive things now dragged through dirt and blood-streaked snow.

“Are you lost?”

You nodded slowly.

The movement felt heavy.

“I am.”

Your voice sounded smaller than you remembered it ever being.

Your fingers tightened unconsciously around the halo.

“I cannot go home.”

The words felt like glass inside your throat. A faint crack echoed through the halo in your hands.

You gasped softly.

Another fracture had split across the halo’s surface.

You held it closer to your chest immediately, as if your pure warmth might heal it.

“I am far from it.”

For a moment, Hannibal said nothing.

His gaze lowered to the broken ring.

Then his eyes returned to you, curious in a way.

“You fell from Heaven?”

Your answer came instantly.

“No.”

Too quickly. Too defensive.

You turned away from him before he could ask anything more.

Your legs finally gave out beneath you as you stepped further into the garden. The cold grass bit through your skin as you collapsed into the snow.

Your wings shifted weakly.

One of them unfolded partially, feathers scattering into the white ground beneath you. Some were stained with blood from the violence of your fall.

With a tired motion, you pulled the wing over your body like a blanket.

Your breathing slowed.

Below you, the snow welcomed you into its cold embrace.

Above you, the night continued to fall.

Hannibal stood at the window watching.

For several seconds, he did not move.

An angel.

Collapsed in his garden like a dying bird.

He felt no pity.

But fascination.

That bloomed immediately.

The surgeon in him saw injury.

The artist saw ruin.

And something darker wondered what an angel might taste like.

He left the window.

Moments later, the back door opened.

Cold air rushed inside as Hannibal stepped out into the snow, coat hastily thrown over his shoulders. His footsteps were quiet as he approached you.

His voice was soft.

Almost gentle. As he towered above you.

“You’re freezing.”

Your eyes peeked over the edge of your wing.

The feathers trembled slightly with every shallow breath you take.

You watched him.

“No,” you whispered again.

Your voice was weaker now. Thinner. As if the cold is slowly stealing pieces of it.

Angels were never meant to shiver.

Angels were never meant to feel the cold gnawing into bone.

But your body trembled anyway as your divinity left you, too far from home.

With a quiet, pained gasp, you dragged your wing fully over yourself again, burying your body beneath the damaged feathers like a wounded creature hiding in its own plumage.

Your breath stuttered.

The torn flesh in your wing stretched and sent pain right through you.

Hannibal saw it now.

The rip.

A thin but unmistakable tear through the soft layers of feathers.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

Fascinating.

You claim not to feel the cold.

Yet pain…

Pain speaks a language every creature understands.

Without asking, he reached toward you.

Slowly.

Two long fingers hovered beside the wound, careful not to touch the torn skin just yet. He pressed gently into the surrounding feathers instead.

You flinched instantly.

Your wing snapped close with a rustle of feathers, hiding the wound.

“Don’t– touch me.” you hissed.

A wounded animal’s warning.

Hannibal withdrew his hand at once.

Not offended or irritated.

Only… observing.

Interesting.

“The wound requires cleaning.”

His gaze flicks briefly toward the warm glow of the house behind him before returning to your dark, wary eyes.

You shake your head immediately.

“It doesn’t…”

Your voice cracked slightly as you clung to the last bit of hope that your divinity was not lost.

Angels healed.

You always healed.

Before Heaven took everything from you.

Your body curled tighter against itself as another wave of pain rolled through you. With every passing second, the strange heaviness of your human flesh became more apparent.

Your heart was too loud.

Your lungs burned.

Your muscles ached.

Pain was no longer something you merely understood.

Now it lived inside you.

You gasped softly.

A small whimper escaped your throat before you could stop it.

You tried so desperately to push yourself upright, but your arms trembled violently beneath your weight. Your wings twitched uselessly behind you. Nothing about this body obeyed you the way it should.

Hannibal saw it.

The failed movement.

The awkward struggle.

Angels, he had always imagined, would move like poetry.

You moved like something broken.

Something that had forgotten how its own body works.

A living thing whose flesh was betraying it.

He made a decision.

Before you coil protest again, he slid one arm carefully beneath your shoulders and another behind your knees.

Then he lifted you, almost effortlessly.

If it weren’t for the wings.

They were heavy.

Shockingly heavy. The weight nearly equal to your own body.

You did not fight him this time.

Fear flickered in your chest, but something else rose beside it.

Something strange.

Something almost familiar.

Your halo pulsed faintly in your trembling hands.

The light was weaker now.

Dim.

Fading.

You clutched it tighter against your feather-covered chest as a small sob caught in your throat.

“Please… no…”

Hannibal paused, not because you resisted him.

Because of that.

The plea.

His eyes lowered to the object you cradled so desperately.

The halo.

Its glow flickering like a dying star.

He studied your face.

Tears clinging to your lashes.

Your lips trembled.

Angels cry.

Apparently.

“What is happening to it?”

You pressed the ring harder against yourself. As if you could push it back into your soul.

“I’m dying,” you whispered, even if it wasn’t entirely true.

But it is the closest word your mind could find.

Angels were not meant to feel like this.

The pounding heart.

The aching muscles.

The unbearable weight of sensation flooding every nerve.

You had once felt human pain only through empathy.

Now it belonged to you.

And it was unbearable.

Hannibal exhaled softly.

You were not dying.

Not yet.

He carried you through the open door of the house.

The heat from the fireplace made your body shudder harder due to the sudden contrast.

Carefully, almost delicately, Hannibal lowered you onto a plush couch near the fire.

Your wings spilled across the cushions, feathers scattered softly across the dark fabric.

For a moment he simply stands there.

Watching.

Assessing.

The wound.

Your trembling body.