i feel like i'm chief keef in 2012

cook hated weeks like this. weeks that felt never ending, as if it was something inescapable. every passing day felt worse than the last and cook didn’t know how much longer until he would find himself in hot water with louie or some other dealer. he hated what he now did for a living, but what else was out there for him? after slaughtering the man who killed his best friend and taking the few years in prison, cook felt he didn't have much of a choice given his blank resume and lack of a higher education. before working under louie, cook worked a dead-end job at a petrol station which is where he ended up being recruited from. he was lured over the idea of a better salary, more flexibility, and the security that came with working with louie who was known at the time as manchester’s most untouchable drug lord.

cook was now 2 years deep into this job, and while the highs were high, the lows were very low with the worst thing being when someone broke into his car and stole drugs worth thousands of pounds. however, the best thing that happened to him was meeting you. he had met you during a drug run when one of your friends needed a little something before a party both of you were going to, and you only came along because you needed the ride and to keep your friend safe. you remember cook meeting your friend outside a run down flat and quickly exchanging the money and drugs to each other’s hands. you were honestly uncomfortable during this interaction so you stood a little bit behind your friend as they casually chatted each other up. cook titled his head to see past your friend and was eyeing you up, you weren’t even paying attention to him.

“you gonna introduce me to your friend there?”, he said as he continued to look at you, more so admiring the way you looked. he could have easily mistaken you as some model type girl, and he was into that. your friend quickly looks back at you, “oh my gosh, yeah that’s my fucking girl. we’ve been friends for about 3-ish years now? she doesn’t do drugs if that’s what you’re thinking, cook.” ‘cook?’ you thought, what kind of name is that? a coverup name?

now you and cook are making eye contact. under the dim light of the building, you can clearly see he isn’t as sketchy as you previously imagined. he was actually handsome. too handsome to just be selling drugs. you step forward as to not seem rude because even though he was a drug dealer, you felt inclined to be kind. “mm pleasure to meet ‘ya…?” he holds out his hand waiting for you to shake it. you finish his sentence with your name as you put your freshly manicured hand into his and give it a shy shake. his hand is cold from being outside, and you can feel how tense he is.

your friend wraps up their conversation with cook and begins walking back to the car that was still on and running. you only look back once to see cook still looking at you, and you give him a small smile as a way of saying bye. he nods his head up boyishly in return. charming, you thought.

ever since that tiny interaction, cook hadn’t thought about much else. he had found your instagram through your friend and immediately requested to follow. he knew there was a chance you would decline his request, and he would respect that but a small part of him would keep trying anyway. eventually, you did accept his request and he spent a whole night looking at every post, every story, every comment, and every follower on your account. he DM’ed you the next day, and you two immediately hit it off. it started casual at first with drinks at a pub and dinner dates until it became him coming over to your place and making you cum nonstop until sunrise. he hadn’t felt this kind of love before — not since effy. some days, cook would find himself in his freshly cleaned flat with dinner already made after coming home from a long day of dealing, he almost couldn’t believe how he was deserving of this after everything he’s done and been through. you were always there for cook no matter what, especially when he was having bad days.

cook was having a horrible week and you knew it, it was evident in his behaviour that he was overworked and overwhelmed from the amount of jobs louie was assigning him. you understood there wasn’t much to help ease the burden of his demanding job, so you did what you could. it was 10pm on a thursday evening when cook got home and was clearly stressed out from the day he just had. he dropped all his stuff at the door sluggishly and joined you on the couch near his TV quietly playing some random reality show you were watching to pass the time. you were already in your pyjamas and ready for bed.

“hi baby, i’ve been missing you”, you coo softly as you smoothed a hand through his cropped hair, and he leans into your touch without being aware of it. he holds the demeanour of a kicked puppy.

“m’sorry i’m late, some bloke didn’t ‘ave the money for the drugs he requested…and i’m behind on my weekly quota so louie had me-” you interrupted his rambling with a soft kiss to his lips, no longer wanting him to relive his shitty day. cook raises his hand to hold the back of your head, and you slowly start to climb over him so that you are now straddling him. as you begin to deepen the kiss, you grind yourself into his lap which earns a small groan from cook, moving his hands down to your hips. you make out with him for what feels like a whole minute before you pull away from his lips slightly, continuing to slowly rub yourself over his jeans.

“cook…i can tell you’re stressed and.. i want to be helpful to you….”, you mutter inbetween kisses. his eyes shift between your eyes and your lips. “what d’you mean?’, he says almost whispering. “i mean that… if you’re angry or upset, i can always help you.. release it..” cook holds your hips in place so that you stop moving. you continue, “i want to fuck the stress out of you..” cook looks away for a moment, genuinely contemplating if he should take you up on your offer but the ache he begins to feel beneath his boxers tell him his answer. he looks back at you and nods viciously while forcing his lips back onto yours, clearly ready to let go of all the stress he was carrying. you eventually pull away again to quickly slide off your pyjama pants and underwear, and remove cook’s belt and undo his jeans. he’s already hard as a rock and pre-cum was starting to dribble out. you situate yourself on his lap again and begin to slowly sink down onto his cock, moaning into the side of his neck.

“fuckin’ hell, babe” he grunts out as he grips the sides of your ass for dear life. you start bouncing on his cock as fast as you can with your hands holding his shoulders for balance, earning a few groans and whimpers from cook. “is that good baby? you like that?” you say almost incoherently as you begin to lose your breath from riding him so fast. cook nods his head immediately, “f-feels fuckin’ amazing, i love it” he mumbles as he watches your breasts bounce every time you slam down on his cock.

almost as quickly as you started, your hips began to stutter from exhaustion. “mm-please…switch now” you mumble out of breath, cook nods and gestures you to get up so he can stand. you lay back down on the couch with your ass arched up in the air and your face buried into the cushions as cook peels his shirt off and throws it behind him. he puts both knees down on the couch and pulls you closer to him, steadying himself with one hand on the back cushion and one hand gripping the fat of your ass. he aligns himself with your dripping pussy and pushes himself through your folds, bumping the head of his cock into your swollen clit. without wasting time, he buries his cock inside you and begins thrusting as if he’s using a fleshlight. this is what cook needed all along; a rough fuck that could erase all his thoughts and all the stresses of his job. you cry out from the suddenness of his thrusts as he digs his rough fingers into the soft skin of your hips, guaranteed to leave bruises later.

“c-cook..s’too much oh!” you whimper loudly, but your voice is barely audible over the sounds of skin slapping and the couch creaking. he curses brokenly under his breath, “i know babe, i know it’s a lot.. i fuckin’ need this. i need you creamin’ on me cock like a good girl” he manages to breathe out as his thrusts deepen. you start to feel yourself unravel, unable to control the whimpers and cries that leave your lips every few seconds. the way cook is fucking you is obscene — he was taking out all his pent up anger and stress of his day—his week—his life—onto your pussy and god did it feel euphoric, to be pounded as hard as you were. when you had told him you wanted to be helpful, you really meant it. he slowed down slightly as he slid one hand between the front of your legs towards your clit which was now throbbing and waiting to be touched. “oohh fuucckk!”, you moaned loudly into your elbow. you felt yourself tighten your grip on his cock as your eyes rolled back slightly. he began to rub your clit in tight circles while his thrusts got meaner and meaner by the second.

“m’gonna cum cook…please d-don’t stop it feels so good” you were getting closer and closer to your orgasm with every thrust, it was approaching like a freight train and you knew cook felt the same. “m’not—shit—stoppin’—not when you’re grippin’ me like tha’”. the way the couch creaked beneath you could’ve been heard throughout the entire hallway of his floor, it was unmistakable what the two of you were doing.

your orgasm hit soon after, and a blinding wave of pleasure climbed throughout your body — you don’t think you’ve ever came that hard in your life. a gush of slick coated cook’s pelvis and dripped to the cushion beneath you as cook’s orgasm followed suit. his breath hitches—letting out a whimper, a broken curse, and an unintelligible praise towards you. you felt him release his warm cum inside you, shooting out in waves that leave you feeling full of him. your knees slip on the cushion as your body gives out during the aftershocks, falling onto your front and desperately attempting to catch your breath while cook did the same.

using his forearm, he wiped the beading sweat at his forehead. if anyone saw him now they would’ve thought he just ran a marathon from the amount of sweat coating him and his cheeks dusted with a light pink hue. he watches you beneath him catching your breath as his cum slowly but surely begins to spill out of your wrecked pussy. he smoothes a hand over your trembling body and leans down to fill the spot next to you, you turn to face him. he brings his hand up to caress the back of your head and you kiss his lips gently, huffing out a small laugh at his exhausted appearance.

“was that alright? i hope i didn’t hurt you..” he mumbles earnestly, realizing he could’ve injured you in some way. “i’m okay baby, don’t worry. how are you feeling?” you reply honestly. “m’sound” he laughs a little as the stress that once occupied every nerve in his body now evaporated like smoke. cook knew this feeling would not last for very long as the week wasn’t over and done with just yet, but he let’s himself enjoy this moment with you.

you notice cook’s mind wandering off, and press another gentle kiss to his lips to ground him once more. “everything’s gonna be okay, cook. i’m always gonna be here for you whether your day is good or bad…you hear me? i love you” he stares into your eyes for a moment, not wanting to be overly vulnerable. “love you so much more” he whispers with a smile and kisses you once more.

-

The gymnasium still smelled faintly of chlorine and rubber mats, even after nearly three decades of incense, smoke, and bodies passing through it.

The banners others had hung, bright silks scavenged from theatres and dance schools, fluttered lazily from the rafters, turning the place into something between a shrine and a weird version of home.

You’d been here only a few months, but people already spoke your name like you’d always belonged. Jimmy Jones had found you amongst a herd of infected, the last one standing amongst both human and not.

They called you feral at first, a jest and a title in one, and you took it with grace. That is until someone, Jimmy, named you Angel instead, a light in the dark so he claimed. The name stuck, your old one long since forgotten.

The Jim­my's, men and women alike moved through the space in their riot of colour. Tracksuits in neon blues, reds and yellows, all stitched and restitched until they were more patch than original. They laughed loudly, touched freely, lived like the world hadn’t ended all those years ago.

And at the centre of it all, always unmistakable, was Sir Jimmy Crystal himself.

Clean hair, his purple tracksuit immaculate compared to the state of the others. Gold rings flashing when he gestured, necklaces clinking, the upside down cross always being the one to catch your eye the most.

He carried himself like a god amongst man. You never complained, never spoke up about the way he chose to live - not when he gave you a roof over your head when any others in the world would've cast you out.

He had noticed you immediately when you joined. Not hungrily, not like the others did at first, but attentively. Watching the way you walked the perimeters on watch, the way you moved during supply runs.

Calm. Capable. Never complaining. Never behind schedule, and always with a smile.

To say he enjoyed his groups new arrival was an understatement. Jimmy had asked you within the first week if you would like to join a place among his wives, with him.

It had been framed like it was a blessing. Not everyone was asked such a thing after all, this was a privilege others would kill for.

Hot meals every day whenever you wanted. Your own bedroom, a common room with the other wives that others couldn't touch. Hot water. Clean water.

Time with him if he asked for yours - always consensually. He would never force himself on anyone, there was no need to. For any wife who was preoccupied or on their monthly, there were 4 more eager others to take their place.

You had said no almost too quickly, like the very thought hadn't crossed your mind. Truthfully, it hadn't - you didn't know your new leader well enough to justify such an offer.

Sure, the women in his harem seemed all well and truly cared for - dressed to the nines in clothes from the before.

But you were content, comfortable with supporting yourself the same way you had been in your twenty something years of life. There were friendships sparked amongst the Jimmy’s, a sibling like relationship amongst the main group.

You didn't mind sleeping in a room with the others, you enjoyed the ache that lingered in your thighs after a long run beyond the walls. You liked being useful.

Being free.

Jimmy wasn't mad at your refusal. No, he had merely smiled, wide and unbothered. He had nodded with a lilt of his lips, kissing the knuckles on the back of your hand. "Nae bother, the offer will always be there."

It wasn't until you got sick - really sick - that the cracks began to show. Fevers stole your strength, your supply runs were given to others, rations were missed.

The other Jimmy's tried sharing their portions, tried encouraging you to leave your little room and get some sun - but it didn't matter. A flu without medicine was a death sentence nowadays, and it was sheer luck that you had pulled through with nothing of the sort.

You knew you wouldn't be so lucky again.

There was no embarrassment, no mockery or taunts. When you asked him if the offer was still on the table, Jimmy didn't hesitate. "For you? Always."

He was delighted, even laughing in disbelief that the one who got away had actually come back to him, much to the dismay of his five other wives.

You had been moved into your own room not even hours later - with a door that locked, a real bed on a frame, a bathroom with a working basin and shower. You weren't sure what this room had been before the virus took over, but you didn't question either.

The blond wig on your head had been taken from you, leaving you with your real hair, wild and free. Gone were the colourful tracksuits, now just black dresses, skin tight and short. They stared at you from their space in your new closet, and you sat on your new bed, your light green suit still bunched in your hands.

Someone helped bathe you properly, shampoo and conditioner massaged into your scalp, every little nook and cranny on your body and been wiped and cleaned to perfection.

The others saw the scars on your body, saw the evidence of your survival before Jones had found you, and they praised you for them.

Praised you for being strong before finding salvation.

The groan Jimmy had emitted when he first laid eyes on you, all dolled up, was enough to make you beam. Rarely did something so trivial like your appearance worry you, but knowing you alone in just a simple dress was enough to make your usually humorous leader lose his self control? Within mere seconds of entering his room?

It was a confidence boost you never knew you needed.

Your first time with Jimmy was surprising to you. The other wives talked, mentioned how he was set in his ways and knew what he liked. It was true, he liked it on top or from behind - but what surprised you the most was how thoughtful he was through it all.

Vocal, communicative, gentle when he wanted to be, rougher when you wanted it. What surprised you even further, was that he wasn't done with you until you both had finished.

He never finished inside, only on your stomach or on your back - something you were more than okay with.

Eventually, you got bored. Sure, your nights with Jimmy were eventful - a full belly and an orgasm. But to say you hated sitting around on your ass until you were summoned was the understatement of the century.

Within two weeks of your new arrangement, you started adorning your colourful tracksuit and joining your friends again on supply runs. You started taking watch shifts until dusk greeted your senses.

Still disappeared days beyond the walls and returned with blood under your nails and mud on your boots.

Your rations were given to the others, much to everyone's shock. You still shared Jimmy's bed when he requested, other nights you were back in your old room for what felt like a sleepover, throwing jokes amongst your friends.

When you were with him, you never clung. Never begged for more, never tried to compete for the others for his attention. The other wives paid you no mind, busy with orbiting the blond man like moths to a flame.

Their ringed hands wrapped around his arms or chest, laughter at every word that left his lips, jealously spewed and masked just enough to look like devotion.

You didn't orbit at all, and at first he hadn't even noticed. It wasn't until he had called for you on a night you weren't scheduled that he had learnt you had started running again.

He watched from his lifeguard throne as you entered the main hall with Jimmy Ink and Jimmy Shite, a light green tracksuit on your body instead of the tight fitting dress he had picked solely just for you. You were beaming from ear to ear, looking like just any other member of his cult - minus the blond wig the others were encouraged to wear.

You were... Happy.

Eager to be working. When Jimmy discovered you weren't even working for your own rations, he was intrigued.

He had called your name from his podium, his eyes crinkling as he crooked his finger in your direction. You obeyed instantly, your smile never wavering as you said goodbye to the others and damn near skipped over to your husband.

"Jimmy," You were slightly out of breath, looking up at him from where he sat. "Everything okay?"

"Interesting outfit ye got on there," He leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he tilts his head. "Been running have we?"

You were confused now. You were certain Jimmy was aware that you had began working again. "Aye, Ink, Shite and I just came back from that old repo joint, found some scrap for the generators,"

He just stared blankly, his expression void. Your hand rests against the tower as you adjust the way you're standing, your teeth beginning to gnaw at the inside of your cheek. "Is there a problem with that?'

"Hm? Oh no, not at all," He hums, but clicks his tongue, his elbows moving as he fixes his own posture. "Just… You're still my wife, yes?"

Your eyebrows furrow at his question. "Last I checked I am, that is… if you want me to be?“

"I do," He answers quickly. "I’m just a little stumped y’know? The whole point of this little agreement of ours was that you don't have to do any of this," He waves his hand in your direction, to the colourful suit and weapon in your hand. "Yer aware of that right? You’re basically working for free out there.” You nod with a bright expression. "Aye, but I quite like doing this whole marriage thing like this, I like the space,” You admit, now balancing on the heels of your feet as you shrug. "Not that I don't like everything you're giving me - I do, I just..." "Just?"

"I'm bored." The words come out before you can stop them, and your nose scrunches as you see Jimmy taken aback.

"Bored?" He repeats.

"I’m sorry, no - uh, that wasn't the right word," You quickly correct yourself. "I'm just not used to sitting around everyday you know? I like being outside, being with the others I mean, s’what I’m used too."

Jimmy's expression changes again, and a small exhale leaves his lips at your revelation. You continue, feeling like there was a strong chance you had insulted him. “I can stop… If ye want me too.”

“Do you want to?”

You didn’t hesitate to shake your head. “Never.”

His mouth opens again to speak, to ask if you would join him tonight when someone else calls your name.

Your head turns, seeing that Shite wanted your weapon for inventory intake. You look back up to Jimmy who just stares in disbelief, seeing the way you couldn't wait to be away from his presence.

He's about to ask again if you would change your night for him, but ultimately decides against it when he sees the way you were still buzzing from your time outside. Instead, he crooks his finger again before pointing to his cheek. "How about a kiss then? Before you go.”

You were more than happy to oblige, climbing the steps to his throne and pressing a delicate peck to his cheek as one of his hands rest on your hip to keep you steady.

You pull away, and Jimmy just looks at you in the eyes. Your smile was infectious, and you looked at him like there was nothing wrong in the world.

Not like the others. You didn’t look at him like he was divinity itself.

He was just a man. You knew that. So did he.

The blond shocks you both when he leans forward once more, pressing a softer kiss to your lips this time. You reciprocated, a small noise leaving your chest at the action. Rarely did Jimmy kiss his wives on the mouth, opting for a mere forehead or cheek. "Off ye go then."

He helps you down with one hand, his eyes never wavering as you leave the large room and him to his thoughts.

For once in his life, Jimmy felt challenged.

-

The common room was louder than you liked most days, which was why you were rarely in it. Too many voices, not enough colour, and not enough friendly faces to warrant your time.

That afternoon however, the rain had trapped mostly everyone inside, and you had claimed a corner lounge near a window. Your heels were kicked off, feet tucked beneath you, a battered paperbacked copy of some Jane Austen story open in your hands.

Another perk of being Jimmy's. The abundance of books you didn't have to scavenge or ration for.

Around you, the other wives lounged around in attire like yours - legs draped over armrests, laughter ringing sharp. Josie braided Lou's hair, Isobel watched some old tv with treats in her hand, Blair and Elsie swapped stories about their last nights with Jimmy.

You were halfway through a paragraph when the room shifted.

Not silence, no, never silence, but attention. The others immediately sat upright, their attention no longer on whatever had taken their time. Jimmy Crystal had entered like he always did, as if the space belonged to him by divine right.

Which rightfully, it did.

His presence rolled through the room in a visible wave, straightened backs, widened smiles, hands reaching for him as they cooed his name. Calling him Sir, asking if he was bored, if he was wanted anything.

He was on a mission however, his eyes finding where you were lounging almost immediately. He crossed the room without hesitation, bypassing the multiple hands that tugged at his sleeves. He stops just behind you, close enough that you can smell the signature musk that was undeniable him.

You feel his fingers before you see them - light, familiar, sliding along the side of your neck. Thumbs brushing your pulse.

He tilts his head as he tilts yours on a little angle, applying a gentle touch to a pressure point in your skin. He smiles, examining you like you were a work of art that he couldn't figure out.

"Comfy?" He purrs, not hiding the way his eyes trail over your body in it’s tight dress.

You don't look up from your book, nodding as you feel the way he continues massaging at your skin. "Very, quite a good book too, y’should read it when I’m finished."

A few of the others laughed, eager to see how the interaction between you two acted out. The other wives enjoyed it - adamant that your lack of attention on your leader would cause him to boot you out sooner or later.

His hand lingered, tracing the line where your neck met your shoulder. Not possessive, just curious. Testing - sweet in its own way. Jimmy hums in agreement at your offer.

“You hiding away in here today?” He asks almost softly, like he knew you were but still wanted to give you the room to speak. “I’ve barely seen you this week.”

You finally glanced up at him, calm as ever, peering up at him through your lashes. “I spent a couple days with Jimmima and Jimmy Jimmy in outpost 3, figured we needed to get the crops before it pished any harder."

He smiled, pleased you’d looked at him at all, nodding at your useful answer. "S'right, Ink mentioned something of the sort," His fingers still wound their way over your neck, stopping by the necklace that held one of his rings.

It was parked between your cleavage, much to his delight, and he fiddled with the piece of jewellery that claimed you as his. "Thought maybe I'd come steal you for dinner later, something different. My room, 'course."

It wasn’t your night. You weren't expected for another three days actually. Everyone in the room knew that, especially him.

You marked your page carefully before closing the book as you blink slowly. "I'd love too, but I have night watch with Fox tonight," Through out it all, you still smiled. "Thank you though, really.”

His brows lifted. Just slightly.

“Nonsense, you've not seen me for some time now,” He said easily, waving a free hand whilst the other stilled on your chest, just teasingly above your breast. “I can have Shite cover, let you have the night off, you’ve earned it.”

You shook your head, polite, almost apologetic. "I'm alright Jimmy, but I'll see you Saturday yeah?” Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, you continued. “I'm sure Josie or Lou might be thrilled with your company tonight instead?”

The room went very still. Josie straightened instantly. Lou practically bounced. A few others leaned forward, hungry for the invitation and chance at being chosen on their night off.

Jimmy looked at them. Really looked.

Then back at you.

Something flickered behind his eyes, confusion, then something sharper. Something darker. He laughed, a short and surprised sound. “No,” He said, a bit too quickly. “Not them, not tonight.”

The others masked their disappointment poorly, but no one dared question it.

Jimmy stepped back from you, hands dropping to his sides. “Enjoy your book Angel,” He said, voice light again - back to its usual joking tone. “Have fun on yer uh, run.”

"Night watch." You corrected him, already reopening your book as you sink back into the lounge.

"...Night watch." He repeats with a dull laugh, leaving the room without another glance, gold chains chiming faintly as the doors swung shut behind him.

The noise returned in a rush. Elsie berates you for your carelessness, Lou asking if perhaps her dress wasn't sitting right. You ignored them all, counting down on the clock until you could dress back into your usual tracksuit and out of the useless dress you felt suffocated in daily.

Unbeknownst to you, Jimmy sat on the edge of his four posted bed, staring at his hands. He replayed the moment over and over.

The way you’d thanked him.

The way you didn’t hesitate to say no.

The way you’d offered someone else, like his attention was a resource to be managed, not a gift to be craved.

The others begged. Pouted. Fought for him like he was scraps.

But you? You were fucking scheduling him. You put him on a roster.

He laughed softly to himself, rubbing at the stubble on his face.

“Christ.” He muttered to himself. Thoughts of all sorts lodged deep inside him.

Was he getting bad in bed? Were the gifts not enough?

Were the luxuries he provided lacklustre?

He was uncomfortable.

Not because you didn’t want him - no, he could live with that.

It was that you didn’t need him.

And for a man who had built a kingdom on devotion, that was far more terrifying than any rejection.

The challenge soon festers into something more, and you were completely none the wiser.

A month had passed, and nothing changed.

Which, for Sir Jimmy Crystal, meant everything had.

You still came to him on your scheduled nights. Still slept in your own bedroom the rest of the time. Still took first call on supply runs, still volunteered for watches beyond the walls where the air felt cleaner and the danger was inevitable.

The difference was Jimmy.

He found any reason to see you constantly now. A breakfast that would turn into lunch. A “quick word” that became an afternoon spent talking about the old world - music, movies, the way Scotland used to feel before infected and alphas forced everyone inside and the world went dark.

He liked that you listened without fawning, that you challenged him without trying to make him look stupid.

And you liked him too. You couldn't deny that.

There was genuine laughter between the meals. Real conversation between the sex. Moments where he dropped the performance and just sat with you, barefoot and naked in his room, gold rings abandoned on the bedside table, his tiara on your head when he wanted to hear you laugh.

Still, you refused to call it love.

He knew it. Felt it in the way you still left his warm bed without hesitation, in the way you never lingered unless he actually asked.

He was falling for you anyway, asking for the others less and less.

-

The planning room had once been a referees office. Now it held maps pinned with scavenged knives and pen markings layered over one another like the army itself had created it.

You stood with the others, arms crossed, listening as Jimmy paced. Dressed in the signature outfit of a wife, you tried to ignore the way you stood out like a sore thumb - which was saying something in a room full of velvet and nylon tracksuits.

“They’re completely stocked,” He said, tapping the map sharply with his pointer finger. “Jones saw a few generators, even an infirmary. We hit them hard, fast. All of us during peak. Overwhelm them before they can even say otherwise.”

A murmur of agreement followed out of habit more than conviction.

You frowned. You had scouted that compound with a few of the others just last week. They were raiders, so you didn't feel guilty about doing onto them what they did to others.

Still, you knew such a plan wouldn't work. Before you could stop yourself, the words slipped out, flat, unvarnished.

“No."

The room froze.

You blinked once, already regretting the bluntness but not the sentiment. "They've got some big guys manning the front and back gates," You continue, words steadying.

"If we rush them head on, we lose more people than necessary. I think we should uh," You look around, seeing everyone's eyes on you, including that of your husbands.

Ink urges you on, her eyes gleaming with words unsaid. "I think we should go over the walls at night, aye - cut them down from their towers and take what we need and get out."

Silence stretched.

Then someone nodded. Another and another. Fox muttered agreement under his breath. Even the most loyal looked relieved to have an alternative that didn’t involve bodies.

Jimmy stopped pacing.

For a moment, you thought he might explode.

Instead, he smiled, slowly, the corners of his lips not quite reaching his eyes. "“Night raid eh?” He said. “Less risk, alrighty then Angel, we do it your way.”

Everyone relaxed at once, grateful for his acceptance. The meeting broke shortly after, plans shifting seamlessly to your suggestion.

Some pat you on the back for your suggestion, thankful someone was paying attention to the dangers the others put themselves in.

Jimmy just watches from where he rests against the table, his fingers strumming against the hardwood as he took you in.

"Everyone out," He orders without a second thought, waiting for his disciples to flee before he tuts, catching your wrist before you can follow after them. His touch wasn't rough, but it was firm enough to make his intent clear. "Naw you, you can stay."

The door closed behind the last of them.

He doesn't raise his voice, but the look in his eye was anything but soft. It was displeasure, frustration and the most noticeable of all - embarrassment.

Embarrassment at being bested by a wife.

Embarrassment at his own people not liking his judgement.

He wasn't mad at you by any means, no, far from it. But it was clear Jimmy was tired of the lack of respect you seemed to show him alongside all of the luxuries he provided.

He knew it was his ego speaking, his own self esteem taking a hit at your lack of interest in him.

"You know," He drawls out, his voice a silk lined menace. "I do enjoy this little back 'n forth we got goin' on, really... I do," He watches you carefully, watches the way your eyes dart from the hand on your wrist to his eyes.

"But I am growing rather weary of the appropriate deference for my rather, large role in your very comfortable life."

You just eye him head on. He expected a tremble, maybe a quick apology and forgiveness, but instead you just lowly shrugged. "You wanted me first, did you forget that?”

Jimmy laughs loudly at this, agreeing quickly with a sharp nod, a grin large on his features. "I could never forget, Aye, very much so - still do, nothing's changed there... Just, I feel like we need to reestablish something 'ere."

"Reestablish?" You repeat.

"Go to my room," He says softly in return, ignoring your question, the casualness of such an order not lost on you.

It should've caused some fear.

Should've sparked something inside akin to regret. But it didn't, you saw right through his words. "On my bed. Nothing on, kneeling or hands 'n knees - am not a picky man."

"Jimm-"

He stepped closer, leaning in so his lips brushed your ear. "And I will meet you there when I feel like it too. Whether that’s five minutes from now, or five hours, not sure yet," He presses a kiss to your neck, inhaling your scent. "I want the anticipation, the very eagerness of it all to set in, understand? You don’t move from that spot.”

You met his gaze again, unflinching. Whilst his features were stern, smug and proud - you could see it in his eyes, the out he was still offering. Even through what looked and sounded like a clear order, he would never take what wasn't offered to him freely.

He pulled back when he hears you mutter a yes sir, smiling softly down at you with his own mutter of a good girl, tapping your cheek softly.

The shift from punishment to praise was jarring.

"You've no idea how much ye pain me," he whispered, a genuine, possessive heat in his eyes. "But you’ve no idea how much I enjoy it either."

He turned his back on you, already pouring over the finalised plan of the raid. You knew he wanted to savour the feeling of you waiting, helpless, for him, at his mercy for when he was ready.

You took exactly two steps toward the door before he called you by your real name, not Angel. The very sound caught you off guard, and Jimmy just chuckles at the evident shock. "Go on now, be a good little wife."

He didn't miss the way your thighs squeezed together, the way you now avoided his gaze. You knew he would see the heat that clouded your gaze.

Instead you nodded, leaving the room before you could say something that might set him off further.

That alone sent something sharp through him.

-

You had barely been kneeling on the end of his bed before his footsteps approached.

Your heels were discarded to the floor, your dress and underwear beside it. Bare to the world, hands on your thighs and dripping with the burning need that came from such a vulnerable position.

Ten minutes. Not even that.

He shut the door behind him, leaning against it for a second like he’d been holding his breath.

"Cannae admit I didn't last very long," He admitted lightly, his eyes trailing all over where you were kneeling. "Didn't want too, how could I with such a beauty in my bed?" You didn't respond, choosing to look at him with your head on an angle. He crossed the room, stopping in front of you with a large exhale as he sees just how pretty you looked like this.

His hands immediately reach out to hold onto the cheeks of your face, angling your head so you looked up at him from below. "My brave girl, that was quite the stunt before, y'know that?"

Still, you didn't speak, and Jimmy's eye twitches at your lack of rebuttal. "Say something."

"Is that was this is about?" You finally murmur against his palms, rubbing your cheeks against his skin. "You've got me like this because I spoke up?"

One of his thumbs brushes down over you lip before it dips to your collarbone. Even like this, naked beneath him, skin hot and pussy leaking, you still had him wrapped around your finger.

Jimmy swears he's never been harder.

His usual baggy slacks provided no relief to the strain beneath his boxers, and he doesn't miss the way your eyes dart down to the sight before back to his blue eyes.

He was in charge. He was in charge.

He knew then that he didn't need your worship.

After the whole Louie fiasco, Cook decided that he wasn’t going back to Manchester. Cook was gonna do what he does best: keep running.

And that’s exactly what he did.

Now, he’s doing the same thing he was doing in Manchester—running drugs. Except now he’s in London, bigger scale. He’s working in some shitty corner store, ringing people out or secretly selling the weed the store had when someone asked for it.

“Alright, that’s half an ounce.” Cook murmured as he moved out the back of the store, a baggie of weed in hand. He leaned forward against the counter. “That’s—seventy three pounds.”

The customer paused as if he thought Cook was taking the piss, “Seventy three?” He was an older gentleman with excessive hair gel and an unnecessarily tight shirt and pants on. A proper douche.

Cook just waited as he stared at him, absentmindedly playing with the bag.

The man scoffed but still opened his wallet, thumbing through his notes before holding out the proper amount.

Cook stood up straight again, grabbing the money from the man and tossing the bag towards him, “Cheers.” The man said something under his breath that Cook didn’t hear as he opened the door, the bell on the top of it jingling before stopping as he shut the door.

It was quiet, aside from the music playing inside the store. He took a breath in, moving to riffle through the money the man handed him before opening the register to put the notes inside.

The bell jingled again.

“Sorry, we’re about to close.” Cook continued sorting out the money.

“Cookie!”

He finally glances up at that and sees one of his mates Jonathan walk in.

He gives a short nod, “Jonno.”

Jonathan moves to the counter, leaning down against the surface. He’s got that look on his face, that Jonno look. Which means he’s definitely got some bullshit to say. “Look, mate, you won’t believe this shit—” He’s already laughing as he continues, “‘ve got a new job, and I’m the luckiest man alive.”

His eyes flick back up towards Jonno, “Yeah?” He closes the register, “Where?”

“Y’know that place a few streets down? Shakers?”

Cook pauses, furrows his eyebrows, “..That strip joint?”

A wide smile spreads across Jonno’s face as he snaps. “Bingo.”

For a moment, Cook’s silent.

He lets out a short laugh, “You’re kidding.” But Jonathan’s already shaking his head, “Nah, mate, ‘m dead serious.” He leans in a little closer, “Look, the owner’s not just running some trashy strip joint. He’s in the drug business, and ‘m dealing for him. He wants more dealers so..” He gestures between the two of them.

Cook blinks, shaking his head with a scoff, “..Nah, nah man. ‘M alright.”

He did not want to get involved with another drug lord—he’d learned his lesson and seriously couldn’t afford to repeat mistakes he’s already made.

Jonno’s smile faltered at Cooks words, he made a face, “What? Why not?”

He shrugged, “Because I’m not doing that shit again, ‘m not.”

“Cook!”

“No.”

“You’ll make what, ten? No, five—okay, like, three times the amount of money you make here.” His voice took on a more convincing tone, “Cook, come on, you know I wouldn’t fuck you over.”

Cook took in a deep sigh, running a hand over his face. He didn’t know if he fully believed him on that, but something made him blurt out, “Alright, fuck it.”

Jonno’s smile was even bigger than it had been before, “Really?”

He nodded with a light scoff, “Yeah, yeah I guess.”

Jonathan clapped, “Let’s make some fuckin’ money then.”

Cook felt like the music was pulsing through his brain.

Shakers was dark besides the pink and purple strobe lights that flickered sporadically. It was pretty packed inside, men were sitting in booths with girls, or sitting at the bar, or in front of the three main poles where three topless girls were already dancing. The strong smell of perfume and sweat lingered as Cook moved deeper into the club with Jonathan.

He brushed past a few girls walking past holding the hands of men they were taking into private rooms, he kept his eyes forward as he followed Jonno.

If Cook had gotten this job a few years earlier, he would’ve already had one dancer on his arm and another between his legs. But he wasn’t like that anymore, not really.

His thoughts were interrupted when he got shoulder checked.

That’s when he turned and saw you.

You were in a sparkly bra and thong, the clingy material leaving little to the imagination as you passed by him, looking back once with a smile. For a moment the bumping music stopped, and all he heard was the click of your heels as you walked away. The strong smell of your fruity perfume lingered, instinctively he inhaled.

He was broken out of whatever daze you put him in when Jonno finally pushed open a door, inside sat the guy he was telling Cook about—Danny, the owner the club.

He was slouched back in his chair thumbing through notes, his big calloused hands sorting them in separate piles. He was a big guy, balding at the top of his head with prominent wrinkles on his face—so, what cook wasn’t expecting.

He didn’t look up at the two of them, continuing to do what he was doing as he took a drag of the cigarette he had sitting in the ashtray.

Cook glanced over at his mate, waiting for him to say something.

Jonno cleared his throat, gesturing with a smile. “Danny, Dan, Dan the man. Hey.”

He finally looked over at the two of them, not amused in the slightest. He took one look at Cook. “You don’t work ‘ere.”

“Nah nah, this is my friend James I was telling you about. Remember?”

Danny’s eyes went back to Jonathan. He sniffed, “..So you’re just goin’ about telling people about my business, is that it?”

And for a moment, Jonno looked panicked. “No—no, sir I was just—” he swallowed, “..Cook won’t spill.”

“He won’t, huh?” He sat up a little straighter in the chair, taking another deep inhale of the cigarette. This time, he really took in Cook’s appearance, the trainers, his button up t-shirt hidden beneath his jacket, “You with the cops?”

Cook shrugged, “Don’t think so.”

Danny hummed at that, taking a final drag of the cigarette before putting it out, “..Alright, I trust Jonno a little bit.” He quickly pointed a finger, shaking it for good measure, “But if you two screw me over, I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”

“Won’t let you down, Danny. Promise.” Jonathan said with a smile.

Surprisingly, Cook doesn’t hate working at Shakers.

He was doing what he did best, except not just with weed like at the corner store—more, powdery substances. The men that came into the club? Fucking lived for the shit, Cook wouldn’t try it, maybe he would’ve in the past, but now? He was trying to stay alive. So, he continued just selling it to any man who asked, or gave it to the dancers when their high-spenders asked for it.

The dancers were all pretty nice to him. Not to be cocky—but Cook knew he was a pretty boy, knew girls liked him, and his cock. But he didn’t try anything with any of them, ‘cause one: it’s not a priority right now, and two: he didn’t want to get his balls cut off by Danny.

He wasnt necessarily interested in any of the dancers, except you. You both always seem to end up around eachother anyways.

Cook was leaning against the bar, absentmindedly tapping his hand against the counter to the beat of the music playing, watching some of the girls on stage. Then heard that familiar clicking and chewing of gum.

You were walking towards him, hips swaying with every step in another little set on—something pink and lacy, tits and ass practically hanging out, but that was the point wasn’t it?

“Hey Cookie.” You said teasingly as you leaned in close beside him, brushing some of your hair over your shoulder, “..Guy over there wants to have some fun.”

He looked over to see the man in question. Some posh twat with an expensive watch on and a half chud already in his pants. He grabbed a baggie full of something powdery, putting it in your hand. His hand brushed against your manicured fingernails. “Good luck with that one then.”

“Thanks.” You murmured, your glosses lips pulling up into a smile.

He gave a short nod, “Mhm.”

He’s seen you on stage, the way the attention is immediately on you as soon as you walk up to that pole, batting your eyelashes and smiling at the men holding money out. It wasn’t that type of smile, it felt genuine, reserved for him, almost.

He also could’ve sworn you looked him up and down.

But he couldn’t think about it too much because you were already walking away with the man, grabbing his hand and taking him to the private rooms. Cook’s eyes instinctively went down to your ass, before he seemed to realize what he was doing and straightened up. Focus Cook. You want to keep your balls.

Apparently that’s not enough to stop him, because for the first time in a long time, he’s going after a girl.

Cook’s good with women, alright? He’s had enough experience with them to know the signs of when a girl wants a piece of the Cookie Monster. He was ninety nine percent sure you wanted him back. The looks, the touching, the eye fucking.

It was late when he was walking out of the club, the big sign outside flickering faintly. That was when he saw you and stopped. The real you for the first time.

You were in just a dress covered up by a jacket, your purse in your hands. You were bare faced, none of that glittery eyeshadow that you wore on stage. “..Where are you going?”

Was this a set up?

He slowly started moving towards you again, his hands in his pockets, “To my car, that you’re in front of.”

You were quiet for a moment as you chewed your gum, a slow, side-to side movement. “..’ve got some leftovers from that guy.” Inside your bra you pulled out the little baggie, a small amount of the powdery substance was still inside. “..Wanna have some?”

Cook contemplated for a moment, before shaking his head, “Nah, not really.” He sniffed, putting his hands in his pockets, “Don’t really mess with that stuff.” Anymore.

Your perfectly shaped eyebrows raised, “Pussy?”

He felt himself smile faintly as he shook his head, “Stuff kills, don’t it?”

You smiled back at him, “..Well, if y’dont want to it—” You tucked the baggie back into your bra, letting the silence linger for a moment. You looked him up at down, your eyes lowered.

Gave him the look, another sign you wanna shag.

“Maybe we could..” A shrug. “..Have fun in your car instead?” A tilt of your head.

Oh yeah, Cook is in.

“Oh yes—fuckin’ ride my cock, just like that—” His back is pressed flat against the backseat of his car as you bounce frantically up and down on his cock, his body jolting back and forth against the seat.

“Yeah? You like that? Oh my god—fuck!” You tried laugh, but it quickly breaks off into a moan as his cock presses deep inside your pussy. It’s hot in the car, your damp hair beginning to stick to your face and back as you moved your hands to rest on his chest, dragging yourself over his cock.

“Fuckin’ right I do, god—” He responds back through clenched teeth, listening to the wet slap of skin against skin. His eyes shut for a moment before reopening to watch his cock disappear inside of you. “Been waiting for this since, shit—I saw you.” He manages to push himself up into a sitting position, keeping you on his lap as his hands move under your ass, helping you slam down onto him.

“Yeah? Thinking about my pussy?” You smiled, grabbing his face between your manicured fingers as he nodded his head, “Yeah.”

“Thinking about what it felt like?” You kept moving, your voice becoming more breathless as that knot built in your stomach.

“Yes.”

“What it tastes like?” Your tongue slid over his ear and he whimpered, “Oh fuck, yes.”

You stopped after a moment, your legs burning. “Fuck your cock into me, come on, baby.” You managed to choke out, and he did, holding you up as he started to sloppily ram into you from underneath and you screamed.

“Oh my god, yes! Keep going, don’t you stop—don’t you fucking stop, or I will kill you.” You crashed your lips against his, your mouths barely meeting as you moved wildly on top of him, your cherry flavored lipgloss smearing all over your faces. His pubic hair brushed against your clit with everytime you pressed your hips down against his.

Cook’s brain was fried at this point, all he could do was focus on shoving his cock in and out of your tight pussy, he was mumbling at this point, “Please cum on my cock, please—I want it, want you squeezing me please.”

“Yeah? You want me to cum?” He was nodding as he looked at you, pounding into you faster as he blabbered on. Your hand was already moving down to your clit, frantically circling the bundle of nerves, “Oh, you’re gonna make me cum, you’re gonna make me cum on your cock—Fuck!” Your whole body shook as you felt yourself gush around his cock, your vision going white as your pussy clenched around him.

His cock twitched inside of your pulsing walls, his movements growing faster as he tried to reach his own orgasm, “Fuck—grab my balls, grab my balls—”

And you did, your hand reaching between the two of you to massage the heavy weight of them, and that was all it took before he cried out, stilling inside of you as thick spurts of his cum coated your inners walls.

He immediately slumped back against your chest, your sweat slicked bodies pressing close together in his small car as you ran your fingers through his hair—instinctively, his mouth came down to press open mouthed kisses against your shoulder. He was softening inside of you.

It was quiet as you both caught your breath, before he blinked, seeming to realize he came inside of you, “..Oh, shit—‘m sorry, wasn’t even thinking.”

“No—it’s fine, it’s fine.” You were able to mumble out, pushing yourself up to brush back your sweat slick hair out of your face. You smiled. “Cookie.”

“Hm?”

“You have my gum.”

“Oh.” He finally seemed to realize he did infact have the small wad of bubblegum inside his mouth, “D’you want it back?”

The hush in your bedroom has a body of its own tonight, something warm and close and faintly oppressive, as though the dark settles into the corners hours ago and waits there with patient attention for you to notice it. 

Summer presses itself against the house from every side, laying its damp palms over the roof and the porch and the thin-paned windows until even the air inside feels used, breathed through too many times, heavy with old wood, drying lavender, and the ghost of candle smoke that never fully leaves your room no matter how often you open the sash. 

Beyond the screen, the night stretches wide and black over the fields, full of cicadas and distant frogs and the occasional rustle of something small moving through the grass, yet none of it disturbs the stillness gathered around your bed.

You sit cross-legged atop the quilt with your nightgown loose around your knees and your grandmother’s saucer resting in your lap. Its white glaze crazed with age, its shallow center holding a pinch of rosemary, a few bruised mugwort leaves, and the little stub of candle you press into place with your thumb earlier that evening. 

Wax has already softened beneath the flame and runs in pale streams over the china, pooling around the herbs until the scent rising from it turns sharp and green and just bitter enough to stir old memories from wherever they go when daylight is still around. The candlelight reaches only what lies close enough to claim and leaves the rest to shadow. It glows over your hairbrush on the dresser, your folded stockings on the chair, the Bible on the nightstand with its ribbon marker hanging limp over the edge, and most of all over the photograph you take down from the hallway and bring in here without fully admitting to yourself why.

She looks small in photographs, your great-great-grandmother, though everyone in the family who still speaks of her insists that she carries a presence large enough to fill whatever room she enters. 

Perhaps photographs are poor at carrying certain things across time. They give you the dark dress buttoned high at the throat, the severe line of her mouth, the hard intelligence in her eyes, and the suggestion of a woman who trains herself never to flinch in public, yet they cannot hold the stories clinging to her name, and it is those stories, rather than the image itself, that keep drawing your attention back across the room. 

Your great-great-grandmother, daughter of a woman who read signs in smoke and tea leaves and churchyard dirt; mother of the son she loved until grief hollowed her out after he died; and the woman from whom your own uneasy inheritance comes. 

The gift never belongs to every woman in the family, which only makes it more ominous when it appears. 

It skips daughters and granddaughters, lies quiet in one branch and flares up in another, turning up in children who never ask for it and elders who pray it will pass them by. With your great-great-grandmother, it came strong. With you, it comes stronger than anyone seems comfortable naming out loud.

You have been called touched, blessed, sensitive, and once, by an aunt who does not care whether you cry over it, poorly guarded. None of them are wrong. There has always been something loose at the edge of your sleep, some part of you that does not remain neatly in place once your eyes close. 

When you were little, it was dismissed as imagination, though imagination didn't explain the drowned calf you dreamt of three days before it surfaced in the neighbor’s pond. Nor the image of your cousin’s split lip that arrived an hour before he stumbled up the front walk after a bar fight in town. Nor the morning you woke with your heart beating like a frantic bird and begged your mother not to let your father take the west road because the bridge will give, only for the county men to shut it down by noon. 

By the time you were old enough to understand that other people do not move through sleep the way you do, dream-walking had already become a private fact of your life, something you practiced in secret and spoke of only to the women who shared enough blood with you to believe it.

It was your grandmother who finally gave it a name, and your grandmother who told you that naming a thing never makes it smaller, only easier to recognize when it begins circling your life. 

She was the one who explained that there are ways of settling yourself before a walk, ways of quieting the mind until it loosens from the body without tearing, ways of protecting the doorway you make when you reach too far into memory or grief or longing. 

It was she who told you the story of your great-great-grandmother properly, not the softened Sunday version spoken for children, but the one that had survived because the women in your family had never fully agreed to let it die. 

Your great-great-grandmother had lost her son and never recovered from it, not in any ordinary sense. Grief took up residence in her house and sharpened the gift in her until sorrow and sight became almost the same thing. She began dream-walking farther than she ever should have, searching for the boy she had buried, believing with the stubbornness of a brokenhearted mother that love could reach where death had put its hand. 

Then, one night, she sat down to call for him and opened herself too wide. By dawn the front door stood open, one lamp had burst on the floorboards, the bedclothes were half dragged to the floor, and there was blood dried down the front of her nightdress. Nobody ever made a proper earthly sense of it. 

What remained, passed carefully between kin and spoken low after dark, was the certainty that she had called across the veil and something else had heard first.

You lived with that story so long that it no longer feels like a tale handed down but an inherited bruise, something tender lodged beneath the skin of the family. 

Tonight it tugs at you with more force than usual. 

Perhaps it is curiosity, that reckless urge that has always lived at the center of your gift, the need to look directly at what other people cross themselves and turn away from. Perhaps it is loneliness, or that peculiar ache that sometimes comes over you after sundown, when the house quiets and every unanswered thing in your bloodline seems to draw close. 

Whatever the reason, you find yourself here in your room with the photograph, the saucer, the candle, and the old half-sacred, half-foolish ritual your grandmother warns you never to attempt in a state of longing.

You let your hands settle loose on your knees and lower your eyes until the candlelight turns red through your lashes. Beneath your fingertips, the saucer holds a little heat. The fan overhead moves too slowly to help much, though it lifts a damp strand of hair at your neck and lets it fall again. 

You breathe until the room begins to lose its hard edges, not visibly at first—but inwardly, as though the distinction between one thing and another softens somewhere beneath thought. 

The rosemary smell deepens. The sounds outside stretch thinner and farther apart. Your body remains where it is, cross-legged on the bed in your narrow room with the window cracked and the wick burning low. Though, another part of you—the part that has always proved difficult to keep tethered—begins to slip free with the same familiar yielding that comes whenever you walk too close to the edge.

It never feels like falling in the common sense of the word. There is no drop, no shock, nothing so clumsy. It feels more like stepping backward into dark water and discovering depth already waiting for you, cool and soundless and ready to take your weight the moment you stop insisting on keeping it.

When the vision opens, it does so with such quiet certainty that for a moment you cannot tell whether you have gone elsewhere or whether the world itself has shifted beneath your feet and let an older one rise through. 

Moonlight lies over a yard you have never seen waking and know at once. The house ahead is narrow and weathered, its porch leaning, one weak lantern burning near the window and throwing more shadow than comfort. Oak branches bend over the roof. Tall grass moves in slow dark ripples. 

There’s such exactness in every detail that invention becomes impossible. 

This is not the loose wandering texture of an ordinary dream. This is memory, inheritance, vision—whatever name belongs to the place where what happens refuses to remain buried.

It is your great-great-grandmother’s house, her yard, her last night.

And the knowledge of it settles into you before you can resist.

A pressure comes over you almost at once, low in the body and sharp as warning. 

Before you see another soul in the yard, you feel the presence of something hidden just beyond sight, something patient enough that waiting does not seem like effort to it, only habit. The grass bends. The branches stir. Nothing in the ordinary shape of the night announces danger—but the sense of being watched moves over your skin with terrible intimacy, close as breath against the nape of your neck. 

You turn toward the tree line and find nothing you can name there, though that only makes the certainty worse.

Then the porch boards give a faint groan, and she steps out with a shawl around her shoulders despite the heat, a candle in one hand and a shallow dish in the other. 

Even from where you stand, you can see it in the hollows under her cheekbones, the tension at her mouth, the bruised darkness beneath her eyes. She moves with the steady, exhausted resolve of a woman who spends too many nights arguing with the same pain and finally chooses action over obedience to fear. 

The dream draws you closer without asking permission, and then you’re inside the room with her, standing in a space small enough for sorrow to fill completely.

The bed sits neat against the wall. A washstand holds a basin, a pitcher, a comb. On a hook near the door hangs a man’s coat kept too carefully for a house no longer occupied by the one who wears it. 

She kneels beside the bed and arranges the contents of the dish with reverent, practiced fingers while her mouth moves in a low stream of prayer and plea. Not nonsense or fever talk, but the braided old language of women who learn to ask heaven and memory for the same impossible mercy. 

When she speaks her son’s name, the room seems to draw inward around it.

You want to call out to her then, to tell her to stop before the door opens any wider, but dream-walking never offers intervention, only witness, and witness can be crueler than helplessness because it leaves you standing still long enough to understand what is coming.

The candle flame thins and bows until the wick shines red through its weak gold halo. The curtain at the window stirs though no wind enters. The boards under the bed give a soft complaining sound. 

Your grandmother goes still. 

It’s a small stillness, the held breath of someone who has lived with sight long enough to recognize the moment a thing answers back.

Fear crosses her face then, and not because she lacks faith. Faith never keeps knowledge from entering a woman whole.

The shadow beneath the bed thickens slowly, deepening until it ceases to resemble ordinary dark and begins to suggest an opening, a seam in the room from which a figure might emerge. 

A hand appears first, pale at the knuckles, the fingers long and rough rather than elegant. Then the slope of a shoulder, the line of a bowed head, the full shape of a man easing up out of the shadow with a smoothness so unnatural it makes your stomach draw tight.

He doesn't look like some villain dragged up from a storybook grave. 

That would be easier to understand, easier to set apart from the ordinary world. 

He looks, instead, like a man who might come off a road at dusk and ask after work or water, the danger in him hidden under the plainness of his body until you notice how wrong every stillness around him feels. 

His hair is dark and damp, pushed back in places and fallen over his forehead in others, not arranged so much as roughened by the night. A pale face lifts into the candlelight, open enough in its structure that another expression might make him look almost approachable. A faint rasp of stubble shadows his jaw and upper lip. His mouth is broad and wet at the corners, too soft in shape for what it is about to do. He wears an ordinary shirt with the collar loosened, sleeves rolled to the forearms, the stripped-down plainness of a workingman at the end of a long day, and that plainness makes the sight of him worse, because there is no theatrical distance in him, nothing to warn the eye that it has left the realm of men until you meet those eyes and find the cold, washed blue of them fixed on your great-great-grandmother with patient appetite.

When he smiles, it comes with false warmth, almost companionable, the smile of a stranger too ready to charm himself welcome.

“So that is who you sought,” he says, and his voice is low and lovely and wrong, touched by an accent the dream cannot place cleanly, only old enough to make every syllable sound drawn from someplace far from these fields and older than the church at the crossroads. “Poor grieving thing.”

He bends his face to her with obscene tenderness, inhaling her fear as though it has perfume in it. His mouth brushes her cheek. His spit shines wet on her skin. He turns his head slightly, listening, and in one horrible moment you understand that he hears you too, not just her but you across the years, you in your borrowed witnessing place, blood-bound to the woman beneath him.

You take a step back without meaning to. Not because he sees movement in the ordinary sense, but because recognition has already crossed the distance between you. 

Your grandmother begins to scream in earnest then, and the dream breaks into violence. 

You see his hand knot in her braid and wrench her head back. You see the white baring of his teeth. When he bites into her throat, it is with the closeness of a kiss turned sacrament and slaughter all at once. 

Blood goes everywhere in a rush too fast for the mind to prepare for, sheeting down the front of her nightdress, spattering his cheek, pattering onto the quilt and the floorboards and the overturned dish where rosemary drifts in red. His throat works as he drinks. His eyes close. A sound leaves him then that has no business being so soft, a sigh almost, full of relief so profound it feels blasphemous to witness.

You try to wrench yourself free of the vision, but nothing happens.

Your grandmother’s hands beat weakly against his shoulders. Her legs kick once against the side of the bed. Her face goes slack with shock and pain and some final incomprehension that perhaps this, of all things, is what answers a mother’s call. 

He pulls back only enough to look at her while she dies. Blood slicks his mouth and chin. Saliva and crimson mingle there, stringing from his lower lip to her torn skin. He watches the light leave her with the absorbed fascination of a man studying a sunrise.

Then he turns his head again, and this time there is no mistaking it. He is looking directly at you.

Recognition comes instantly and completely, as though your blood has already spoken your name to him. Across the years, across your great-great-grandmother’s last terror, across the raw passage the vision opens through the family line. He finds you standing there and knows exactly what you are.

You try—again—to pull yourself out of the dream, but it holds long enough for his expression to shift, just slightly, that false warmth deepening into something more terrible. 

The room lurches. Your grandmother’s body sags. The candle flame thins to a furious wire of light.

Then you are coming up out of the vision with your back arched against the mattress and your breath broken in your throat, panic climbing through you faster than waking can settle the world into sense.

The fan moves overhead in its slow, useless turn. The saucer sits crooked on the quilt. The candle has burned nearly to nothing. The photograph leans dark on the dresser. 

Everything ought to be familiar enough to anchor you, yet the weight pressing into your hips reaches you before thought does, and the certainty of another body above your own arrives all at once.

He’s there, braced over you with one hand beside your head and the other around your wrist, not squeezing hard enough to bruise, only holding with easy certainty, and he looks even more dangerously ordinary at close range than he does in the vision. 

Moonlight from the open window slips over one side of his face and catches in the damp disorder of his dark hair. The blue of his eyes looks washed out in the low light, almost gray until they shift and turn colder. Stubble darkens his jaw. The line of his mouth is generous and human and glistening wet. He wears the same plain loosened shirt, sleeves shoved carelessly to the forearms, as though he has come in off some muddy road rather than through the torn edge of a dream. 

He looks like a man somebody might trust too soon.

“You called for me,” he says, and his voice in the close hush of the room carries the same unplaceable oldness you hear before, though now there is something crueler in it. Just a conversational softness that makes the words worse rather than better. 

Fear moves through you so sharply that it clears the last remnants of sleep from your blood. 

You try to pull your wrist free, but his fingers only tighten enough to tell you how little effort it costs him to keep you still. The damp patch on your nightgown cools against your skin. Another thread of drool gathers on his lower lip as he leans closer, breathing you in as though the scent of terror and sweat and rosemary becomes something irresistible.

“I didn’t call you,” you whisper, though the lie comes weak and frayed.

A smile ghosts across his mouth. “Did you not?” His gaze travels over your face with minute attention, lingering at your eyes, your mouth, the pulse moving too quickly at your throat. “You opened yourself. You went wanderin’. You stood in a dead woman’s room and watched with all your little soul laid bare. That is a call, darlin’, whether you mean it as one or not.”

The endearment lands with the intimacy of a trespass. He speaks to you like a man already acquainted with the shape of your fear.

You pull against him harder this time. The bed frame knocks faintly against the wall. He doesn't budge. Up close you can see the fine damp at his temples and the way his nostrils flare each time he breathes you in. His attention keeps slipping to your throat, to the base of it, to the place where the neckline of your nightgown has gone translucent with his saliva.

“I saw what you did to her,” you say, and the words come unsteady.

His expression alters at that with a slow considering pleasure, like he is delighted to discover that the old story reaches you with its horror intact. 

He lowers his face until his mouth hovers near your ear. His breath is cool in a way no living breath should be.

“Yes,” he says quietly, then lowers himself nearer, that cool breath skimming your cheek. “I figured you did.”

The simplicity of it hollows you out. 

He confesses the way he might admit to weather, casual and untroubled, as though what happens to your grandmother long ago ceases to be tragedy and settles into memory so familiar it no longer deserves ceremony.

“You shouldn’t have gone rummaging among the dead,” he goes on, the corners of his mouth tilting just enough to suggest humor. “They answer poorly, more often than not.”

That false ease in him is almost worse than open menace. It is the friendliness of something that does not feel the need to hide its teeth because it already has you under it.

“Why are you here?” The question trembles out of you before pride can stop it.

His tongue slips over his lower lip, collecting what remains there. It is a shockingly human gesture, almost thoughtful. “Because you reach beyond the veil, and I am what answers.” He raises his head again, studying you in the weak moonlight. “Because I remember your blood for a very long time. Because gifts such as yours are bright things, and bright things are visible from very far off when the dark is hungry enough.”

The room seems to draw inward around his words. You feel every place where the old house fails to keep the night outside, the cracked pane at the window, the gap beneath the door, the unlatched world.

You think suddenly, wildly, of your grandmother rising from her ritual too late, finding that grief opens what prayer cannot close.

His eyes drift shut for a moment. He breathes in against your throat, and a shudder goes through him so pronounced you can feel it where his weight rests over your hips. His mouth brushes the damp fabric at your chest, not quite a kiss, not quite a taste. When he speaks again, his voice has roughened.

“You’re sweeter than she was.”

Your stomach turns over.

He must’ve felt the motion beneath him because he gives a low, almost soothing sound that belongs nowhere near a predator’s mouth. “Don’t look so bothered by it. Your terror ain’t all that I smell.”

Humiliation strikes hotter than fear. 

You turn your face sharply toward the wall, but he catches your chin with one cool hand and brings you back. 

“Look at me,” he says softly.

Up close, his features are all the more unsettling for their lack of excess.

“You women,” he says, almost to himself, “always opening doors and then grieving what enters.”

The words send a chill clean through you. “Get off me.”

He smiles again. “I might. In a little while.”

His head dips. The tip of his nose trails slowly along the side of your throat. 

You flinch when his tongue touches the place just beneath your jaw. The sensation is shockingly wet, unhurried, exploratory. He tastes you as though confirming what his hunger already knows. By the time he reaches the pulse at the base of your neck, your breath has gone shallow enough to hurt.

His mouth opens there, not biting yet, merely resting. Drool warms your skin. You feel the shape of his teeth with exquisite clarity.

“Please,” you whisper, though you no longer know what the plea is asking for: mercy, delay, waking, a different lineage, a sealed door two generations back.

He makes that quiet sound again, almost affectionate, and lifts his face enough for you to see the new sheen in his eyes. 

In the blue there’s red now, faint at first, then deepening from the center outward until each iris looks lit from behind by banked coals. 

“You should not have wandered so far tonight,” he says.

His hand releases your chin and travels downward with infuriating patience, over the damp lace at your collar, along the trembling line of your throat, between your breasts, pausing where the nightgown clings. 

Your whole body goes rigid. The old cotton has grown nearly transparent where his drool soaks it.

His palm presses there, broad and cool, over the frantic beat of your heart. He watches your face while he does it, not the movement of his hand. He watches every reaction, every involuntary tremor and tightening breath—your fear itself is a language he intends to master.

“You carry the sight like a fresh wound,” he murmurs. “No one teaches you how to close yourself after.”

You would deny that too if you could think around the path of his hand. 

He glides lower, deliberate enough that anticipation becomes its own injury, and stops just above the knot of your gathered nightgown at the waist. 

Your body betrays you then with a convulsive shiver. 

“There,” he says under his breath, more to your body than to you. “There you are.”

Shame and terror and something darker twist together until you cannot separate them.

He has not done enough to earn the heat rising through you, and yet your flesh begins to answer danger with a confusion older than sense. His pupils widen further. A fresh line of drool slips from the corner of his mouth and falls against your collarbone.

His fingers curl in the fabric at your waist, bunching it slowly. The old nightgown pulls tight over your knees, your thighs, the vulnerable length of you laid out beneath him. He seems to take a dreadful pleasure in each inch of surrender the moment forces from you: each breath you fail to steady, each futile shift beneath the imprisoning weight of him.

“No,” you manage, though it comes out breath-torn.

“Not no,” he says gently. “Not after a call like that.”

Before you can gather enough air to protest again, he bends and puts his mouth to yours.

His lips are cool, wet, and devastatingly slow, parting against yours with such patient certainty that for one stunned instant your body forgets fear in order to register detail, the silk-slick drag of spit, the faint metallic trace of old blood, the shape of his mouth, beautiful and monstrous in equal measure. 

He kisses as if feeding and prayer were once the same art where he comes from. 

When you turn your face away, he follows. When your lips press shut, he tastes the seam of them until panic forces you to gasp and gives him the opening he wants.

The sound that escapes him then is low and hungry enough to make the bed tremble beneath you.

He savors your first helpless breath against his tongue, the involuntary yielding of your mouth, the way your body arches under him only to recoil from its own response. By the time he lifts his head, your lips are wet with him. 

“You see?” he says, not unkindly. “You call for an answer, and now you’re listenin’.”

You hate him for making the room feel altered around the shape of his words, as though everything before this moment is merely the narrow vestibule to some deeper chamber of your life. 

The candle in the dish has long guttered out, but the dark does not feel complete. His eyes provide their own terrible light. Each glance from them brushing over your skin like heat from a hidden coal.

He slips one hand beneath the pillow and finds the little cross you keep there out of habit more than belief. 

When he holds it up between two fingers, the chain dangling, your breath catches. He examines it with interest, then lets it fall onto the bed beside your head.

“That is not what keeps me out,” he says.

Your pulse stumbles harder. “What does?”

He leans close enough that his face is inches from yours, shutting out the rest of the room. “You.”

The answer chills you more than any threat. 

For all the old stories about thresholds and charms and spoken permissions, the truest gate is never the house at all. It is your reaching, your call, your gaze meeting his over a dying woman’s body in the bent shape of a dream. 

The word hangs between you like a hook already sunk, and his mouth returns to yours before the echo of it can fade. 

This kiss is deeper, slower, a purposeful claiming. His tongue slides in with the same unhurried patience he has shown every other inch of you, tasting the faint rosemary still clinging to your lips from the ritual. He licks into you like he is learning the shape of your fear and the first reluctant bloom of heat beneath it. 

His free hand finally moves. It slips beneath the hem of your nightgown and drags up the inside of your thigh, fingertips rough with calluses tracing sweat-damp skin until the thin cotton bunches uselessly around your waist. 

You’re bare underneath—nothing but the humid summer air and the slick heat already gathering between your legs. Panic spikes sharp and sudden in your chest. Your thighs clamp together instinctively, trying to trap his wrist, but he’s stronger—so much stronger—and he simply pries them apart again with a low, amused sound.

“No—wait—” The words tumble out breathy and cracked as his palm cups your cunt fully, two thick fingers gliding through the slick seam of you without warning, parting you open.

The sound that leaves you is half sob, half gasp, and you buck hard under him, one hand shoving at his shoulder, nails digging into the fabric of his shirt.

“Shh,” he murmurs into your mouth, swallowing the protest before it can grow. “Let me feel how sweetly you called.”

He strokes you slowly at first, parting your slick lips with the broad pads of his fingers, spreading the shamefully abundant arousal that has leaked out despite every ounce of fear still clawing through you. His middle finger finds your clit—swollen, throbbing—and circles it with lazy  pressure, then presses down just hard enough to make your hips twitch.

Suddenly, two fingers push inside you at once, and your cunt clenches around the sudden stretch and he groans quietly, the sound vibrating against your lips. He curls them slowly, searching, pressing firm against that spongy spot until your hips jerk.

He doesn't thrust yet. He simply holds them deep, scissoring gently, opening you while his thumb keeps working your clit in slow, wet circles.

“Look at you,” he whispers, pulling back just far enough to look at you. “Already drippin’ for the thing that killed your blood. Does that shame taste as good on your tongue as it does on mine?”

You turn your face sharply away, but he follows, licking a broad, filthy stripe up the side of your throat, collecting the salt of your sweat, then does it again, slower, teeth grazing the tendon.

His fingers begin to move—long, dragging strokes in and out, curling each time. 

The wet sounds are loud in the quiet room: the slow squelch of his fingers fucking you open, the slick slide of his thumb over your swollen clit, the helpless little gasps you cannot swallow down.

“Feel that,” he whispers, voice rough and pleased, mouth brushing your ear. “You hate how good it feels, don’t you, sweetheart?”

He adds a third finger, stretching you wider, the burn sharper now as your walls part around the thick intrusion. You gasp, back arching, and he swallows the sound with another deep kiss.

He keeps you pinned like that, one hand still holding your wrist above your head, the other thrusting into you.

His stubble scrapes your jaw as he kisses down your throat, sucking a bruise into the soft skin just below your ear. His eyes stay fixed on your face the whole time, drinking in every flutter of your lashes, every bitten-off whimper, every involuntary roll of your hips as you chase the pressure building low in your belly.

Your thighs are trembling now, spread wide and glistening with your own slick. The muscles in your stomach clench visibly with every curl of his fingers. He watches it all, that smile curving his mouth like he’s proud of the way your body betrays you.

He keeps the rhythm devastatingly slow, drawing it out until you’re whimpering, until your cunt is making wet, filthy noises with every thrust, until the pressure coils so tight you feel like you might shatter. 

Only then does he pull his fingers out completely, leaving you empty and clenching around nothing, a string of your arousal stretching between his fingers and your dripping hole before it breaks.

“You’re trying so hard to stay still. It’s sweet,” he murmurs, wet fingers trailing along the inside of your thigh while you shake your head frantically and try to close your legs again.

You shiver at the contact, eyes squeezing shut as he shifts above you.

He sits back on his heels, eyes dragging over your ruined state: nightgown shoved up around your ribs, breasts heaving with every ragged breath, nipples tight against the thin fabric, thighs spread obscenely wide and shining with slick. 

His own cock strains against his trousers, a thick, heavy bulge that twitches visibly when he finally opens his fly.

He frees himself with one hand, and his cock springs out—thick, flushed dark at the head, veins standing out along the heavy shaft, already leaking a steady bead of pre-cum that drips down the underside. It’s obscenely hard, curving slightly upward, the head glossy and swollen. He strokes himself once, twice, smearing the slick over the entire length while he watches your face, that patient hunger burning in his glowing eyes.

“On your back, just like this,” he says, voice low and rough.

He hooks your knees over his elbows and folds you open wider, spreading your thighs until your cunt is completely exposed—puffy, dripping, clit swollen and glistening. The blunt, leaking head of his cock nudges your entrance, hot and heavy against your cooler, soaked folds. He pushes in with one long, inexorable stroke.

Inch after thick inch sinks into you, stretching your walls wide around his girth. The burn is intense, your cunt fluttering and clenching as he fills you completely, bottoming out with his hips pressed flush against your ass. 

He stays buried deep for a long moment, letting you feel every throb, every vein, the way his cock pulses inside you like it belongs there.

“Fuck,” he groans, the sound low and guttural. 

He starts to move then—slow at first, dragging almost all the way out so you feel the thick head catch on your entrance before slamming back in to the hilt. 

The slap of his hips meeting your ass fills the room, loud and rhythmic. He fucks you deeper, harder, the angle perfect so every stroke drags over that sensitive spot inside you while the base of his cock grinds against your swollen clit.

His hands grip your thighs hard enough to leave marks, holding you open while he pounds into you. Sweat glistens on his chest where his shirt hangs open, dark hair damp at the temples, face catching the moonlight as his head tips back for a moment in pleasure. 

You give weak kicks of your heels against his back—but every movement only drives him deeper and makes your cunt clench tighter around him.

He leans down, mouth finding yours again in a hungry kiss. “You feel that?” he rasps against your lips, voice wrecked. 

The pace turns punishing. Long, brutal strokes that make the bed creak and knock against the wall.

Your thighs shake uncontrollably, cunt clenching and fluttering around his cock as the pressure builds again, hotter and sharper this time. He feels it, and his smile turns feral against your mouth.

“Come on, darlin’. Let me feel you fall apart on my cock. Squeeze me just like that—fuck, yes.”

The orgasm crashes over you without mercy, your cunt clamping down hard around his thick length in rhythmic, pulsing waves. He fucks you through it, never slowing, hips snapping harder while he groans low and filthy at the way your walls milk him.

Only when your shaking starts to ease does he chase his own release. 

His thrusts turn short and brutal as he drives as deep as he can. His cock throbs inside you, swelling even thicker, and with a low, guttural groan that vibrates through your whole body, he comes.

Thick, hot pulses of cum flood your cunt—endless, heavy ropes that you can feel leaking out around his cock with every shallow thrust he gives to push it deeper.

You push weakly at his chest one last time, but he keeps moving through it, slow and lazy now, grinding his hips in circles to fuck every last drop into you, making sure it stays deep inside.

When he finally stills he stays buried to the hilt, chest pressed to yours, cock still twitching with aftershocks inside your cunt. A thick trickle of his release leaks out around where you’re stretched so obscenely around him, dripping down your ass in warm, sticky trails.

His chest stays flush to yours, sweat-slick skin sliding together, the fabric of his shirt rasping against your nipples through the bunched nightgown. His eyes drift half-lidded over your face, a smile deepening as he feels the way your body keeps clenching around him, milking the last drops he’s already given you. 

One of his hands slides up your side, possessive and slow, fingers digging into the soft give of your waist, then higher, until his palm cups the side of your throat. His thumb strokes along the frantic jump of your pulse.

“You feel so good like this,” he murmurs, voice low and rough, lips brushing the shell of your ear. “All ruined. Full of me.”

He rolls his hips in a slow, lazy grind, stirring his cum deeper inside you. Your breath hitches, a broken little sound you can’t swallow down. He chuckles softly against your skin—warm, almost affectionate—and then his mouth moves lower.

His lips part over the tender spot where your neck meets your shoulder, the same place he tasted earlier with nothing but teasing licks. His breath ghosts hot and cool at once over your skin, and then his jaw opens wider, unhinging just enough to bare his teeth.

You feel the blunt scrape of his teeth first—human enough to feel intimate—then the sharp, serrated points denting the soft flesh, pressing harder until the skin splits with a faint wet pop.

He bites.

The pain is sudden and blinding, a white-hot explosion.

His teeth sink in with a brutal, meaty crunch, punching straight through skin and muscle like a knife through ripe fruit. The jagged edges tear deeper as he clamps down, ripping a ragged, gaping wound that splits muscle fibers and nicks the artery beneath.

Blood explodes into his mouth instantly—hot and coppery—pulsing out in violent, rhythmic jets with every frantic beat of your heart. It floods over his tongue in heavy gushes, spilling from the corners of his lips in bright red rivulets that run down his chin and drip onto your chest in warm, sticky splatters.

He groans deep in his chest, the sound guttural, vibrating straight into the torn meat of your neck as he locks his jaw tighter, grinding his teeth deeper into the wound to widen it.

The pull is savage, greedy, like he’s trying to drink you down to the bone. He sucks hard—violent, rhythmic pulls that make the torn edges of your flesh flutter and gape wider with every tug.

His tongue flattens against the ragged, pulsing hole he’s made, lapping and slurping up the hot rush of blood with wet, filthy sounds that fill the room like an animal feeding.

It pours down your collarbone in thick, glossy sheets, soaking the front of your nightgown instantly, turning the pale cotton dark and heavy as it clings to your breasts. It runs in warm rivers between your bodies, smearing across his chest where his shirt hangs open, mixing with the sweat and the cum still leaking from where he’s buried inside you. The metallic smell is overwhelming, sharp and iron-heavy in the humid air.

Your whole body seizes violently beneath him.

The agony blooms outward in white-hot, shattering waves, radiating down your arm and up into your skull until your vision sparks with black stars. It crashes against the lingering aftershocks of your orgasm, twisting pleasure and pain together so viciously you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins—your cunt still fluttering and milking his cock even as your neck feels like it’s being torn apart.

You convulse, back arching hard off the mattress, legs kicking uselessly against his hips as fresh blood sprays across the pillow and the headboard with every frantic pump of your heart.

He works his mouth against the wound like a starving man, sucking harder, deeper, swallowing loud and greedy with audible, wet gulps that make your stomach turn even as your body betrays you again.

His cock throbs inside you in time with every pull at your throat, like the taste of your blood is making him hard all over again.

You feel your vision starting to tunnel, the edges going dark and fuzzy. Your hands scrabble weakly at his shoulders, nails clawing bloody furrows down his back through his shirt, but he only moans louder into the gaping bite and thrusts once more, grinding the head of his cock against that spot deep inside you while he drinks.

The scream builds in your chest, raw and terrified, clawing its way up your throat past the blood and the pain and the unbearable fullness of him still buried inside you. 

You finally find the air for it, shooting upright in bed with a scream that tears out of you like it’s being ripped from your lungs.

The sound dies in the empty room the instant your eyes fly open. 

Your heart is hammering so hard it feels like it might crack your ribs. Sweat soaks your nightgown, plastering the thin cotton to your breasts and stomach, and between your legs you are shamefully, impossibly wet—thighs slick, the quilt beneath you damp and warm. 

You’re alone. 

The fan turns lazily overhead. The candle in the saucer has burned itself out hours ago, leaving only a stub of blackened wick. Moonlight still spills through the open window, silver and ordinary and completely harmless.

You press both hands over your mouth, trying to muffle the next sob that wants to escape. Tears spill hot and fast down your cheeks, dripping off your chin onto the quilt. Your throat burns like it’s been torn open, but when your trembling fingers fly up to check, the skin is smooth. 

“It was a dream,” you whisper, voice cracked and shaking. “Just a dream. Just a nightmare. He’s not here. None of it was real.”

You repeat it again, slower, like the words might anchor you if you say them enough times. 

Your hands drop to clutch at the quilt, knuckles blanching, trying to steady the wild tremble running through every limb. 

The room smells only of rosemary and old wood and the faint, distant night air drifting through the screen. Nothing else. No cool breath on your skin. No weight pinning you down. No thick, leaking heat still deep inside you.

You draw in a ragged breath, then another, forcing your shoulders to drop, forcing your racing heart to slow. Tears keep slipping down your face anyway, silent now, as you stare at the dark photograph on the dresser across the room.

“It was just a dream,” you tell the empty air one last time, barely more than a breath.

But even as you say it, the phantom ache between your legs refuses to fade—the slick, full feeling of being used and filled still clings to your body like a memory that hasn’t quite realized it was never real.