#vampire!stack

Raindrops pattered against the giant stained-glass window of Ivy & Canvas, the eclectic art gallery and studio tucked in the heart of the French Quarter. Muted ribbons of color streaked across the cedarwood floor, giving it an ironic watercolor effect. Mona, the towering monstera and Naomi’s pride and joy, stood beside the easel that held a long-abandoned oil pastel piece. She’d claimed it as her own, and Naomi hadn’t bothered to redirect her. 

Deep in the heart of the studio, Naomi was elbows deep in mahogany and gold paint. She was currently working on a piece that she could only describe as Black Boy Joy. It was of a black boy, around 19 or 20, with fluffy curls that covered his eyes and a wide smile decorated with gold grillz. She was placing the finishing touches on his Afro pick when the bell over the door rang out, signaling the entrance of a potential buyer. 

“Be with you in a moment,” her voice sang from the distance.

“Take ya time, Tinkerbell,” the man’s deep baritone cooed. “I ain’t in no rush.”

The pet name pulled a wide smile across her face as she dropped the paintbrush back into the cup of used water. She rubbed her hands on her apron before coming out into the main gallery.

“Elias Moore. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? And in the daylight hours, no less.”

He flashed that million-dollar smile, golden fangs catching the overhead light ever so slightly.

“It’s rainin’ out, but I stayed tucked in the shadows just in case the overcast wasn’t enough. Plus, last time I tried to come see ya after dark, you had closed early on me.”

“Yeah… Mother Nature had me going through it. I’m sorry, ‘Lias.”

He blushed slightly at the shortening of his name. 

“It’s all good, baby doll. I ain’t mad about it.”

“I was about to close briefly for lunch. Wanna vibe with me?”

“Always. You one of the few humans worth being around.”

Naomi nodded, walking over to flip the sign on the door. She led Stack to her studio, tossing him the crochet monstera leaf pillow he’d unofficially claimed as his own. 

“I got something for you,” she said, pulling a glass bottle from the fridge. 

“Oooh, new sample?” Elias asked with a wide grin. 

“Mmhm, fresh from Cali. My plug calls it Vita Noctis. It’s a hybrid blend of O-Neg and AB. She said it’s real smooth.”

He took the bottle with a raised eyebrow before removing the cap. He sniffed it twice before taking a sip. 

“Mmm. Best one yet. I really fucks with this.”

“Yaaay, Tinkerbell do good?”

“Tinkerbell did very good. ‘Preciate ya, lil fairy.”

“No problem. Gotta take care of my best client. This place is thriving because of you.”

“Nah, this place is thriving because of your talent.”

“And your generous donations.”

“Semantics. What’s that you working on?” He asked, gesturing to the canvas. 

“I call it Black Boy Joy. I’m almost done with it.”

“It’s dope. The grillz are my favorite part.”

“Mine too,” Naomi nods, sitting back down in front of the easel. The pair settled into a comfortable silence, Naomi painting while Elias got lost in his thoughts. An hour passed before Naomi broke the silence.

“You’re mighty quiet over there,” she noted, putting the finishing touches on the canvas. Elias’s eyes met hers as he absentmindedly cuddled the pillow to his chest.

“Just thinkin’.”

“About?”

Elias twirled the bottle in his hands, watching the dark liquid coat the sides of the bottle. 

“My brother. Our birthdays comin’ up, and for whatever reason, he's been on my mind heavy this year. Probably cuz my birthday is the same day our daddy was murdered.”

“You never told me your dad was murdered.”

“Yeh.. Ironically enough, my brother was the one who killed him.”

“OH!”

Stack chuckled, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. 

“He was defendin’ me. Our daddy was an abusive drunk, and I was his favorite target. I got stuck in our mom’s birth canal and, unfortunately, she died shortly after they got me out. He blamed me for it and never missed an opportunity to remind me that I took the love of his life from him. Though Elijah and I were twins, I was born at 12:07 am, November 1st. Elijah’s birthday went smooth, no hiccups, but my birthday was a different story. We had turned 17, and all I’d been talking ‘bout was a red Stella Grand guitar like Charley Patton had. I loved music growin’ up, partially cuz of our daddy. Wanted to make some of my own until that day. He got me a pair of socks instead of my guitar, an’ when my reaction wasn’t what he felt it should’ve been, he took that as an opportunity to remind me of my place. Beat me unconscious that night. By the time I came to, Elijah was halfway done burying him.”

Naomi placed a calming hand on his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Elias.”

“It’s all good. I know he ain’t mean it.”

His voice was more somber than she had ever heard it, a clear indication that he was more troubled than he was leading on. 

“You said your brother died the same night you did, right?”

“Technically, the next morning. He got into a shootout with the Klan outside our juke. Burying him was the hardest thing I think I’ve ever done. Felt like I was burying myself, and in a sense, I was. The last time I seen my brother was the last time I seen the sun. Literally and figuratively.”

“What did he look like?” she asked, grabbing her sketchpad.

“Like me,” he replied with a chuckle. “But older. More serious. He never smiled, unless he was with Annie. He loved him some Annie. He said the best thing about him was me, but I think the best thing about him was Annie. She calmed him. Made him forget about the harshness of the world, even if it was just for a little while.”

Naomi nodded, carefully outlining the piece. 

“Annie was his wife?”

“Annie was his everything. Mine too, if I’m being honest. That woman was magical in every sense of the word, and at first, I hated their bond. Mostly cuz I wanted it to myself. When they got married, I felt like she took my brother from me, and I resented her for a good minute, especially after little Elizabeth was born. It was stupid and childish, but it’s how I felt. We made up, though. And she accepted me as her little brother too, even though she knew at one point I wanted more.”

Naomi let him talk as she sketched. She let her mind envision Annie and her regalness. Her smooth, chocolate skin and curvaceous build. Then she envisioned Elijah, or Smoke, as Elias often referred to him. The muscle. Strong chiseled jaw line and grey tweed suit perfectly tailored to his frame. She smiled to herself as the sketch took shape before walking over to the easel.

“Inspiration struck?” Elias inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“It sure did. And I think this might be my best piece yet. Stop by tomorrow, and I’ll show it to you.”

“Daaaamn, I thought we was vibin’, Tink. Now I gotta leave?”

“It’s nothing personal, ‘Lias. This one is just really, really special and I need to give it my undivided attention.”

“Aight, aight. I can take a hint. It’s supposed to be sunny all day tomorrow, so I’ll be back after dark. Don’t close early on me this time.”

“You have my word.”

The gallery had been closed for nearly an hour, but Naomi was still pacing.

The canvas sat in the center of the studio beneath a linen sheet, the overhead light casting it in almost a halo-like glow. Every few minutes, Naomi stopped in front of it, lifted the corner of the cloth just enough to peek, then dropped it again like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“You already know what it look like,” she muttered to herself.

Still, she checked again.

Everything looked exactly the way it did when she finished. Smoke sat with his broad shoulders, Annie behind him like an ethereal guardian. Naomi exhaled slowly and let the sheet fall back into place.

The whole thing had come to her in a rush while Elias was rambling the night before. She hadn’t slept or eaten, too eager to commit the vision to canvas before it escaped her. The moment Elias started talking about them, the way his voice softened when he said Annie’s name, the way he described Smoke like a man remembering his idol; all of it had planted something deep in her chest.

The visual poured out of her like memory, which was strange considering the memories weren’t hers. She wiped a stray streak of cobalt blue from her wrist and glanced toward the gallery doors. A moment later, the bell over the door chimed. Naomi smiled before she even turned around.

“You just couldn’t wait, huh?” she giggled as Elias crossed the threshold of the gallery. The clock had just struck 7 pm, and the last streaks of sunlight had finally given way to the moon and all her quiet glory. 

“You said to come back tomorrow. It’s tomorrow,” he smirked. 

“It is indeed tomorrow,” Naomi nodded, leading him back to the studio. “Close your eyes,” she instructed as they got closer to the covered canvas. Elias obeyed, his smile stretching wider with each step. 

“Did you paint me, lil fairy?” he asked with a sly grin. 

“Kinda,” she replied, taking her position next to the easel. “Ready?”

“Show me somethin’.”

Naomi took a grounding breath before pulling the sheet from the canvas. 

“Okay. Open.”

Elias opened his eyes, and time stopped. He didn’t breathe for a long while; he just stared. His eyes immediately went to Smoke’s hands. Folded the same way he used to sit when he was listening to somebody talk.

He felt his throat tighten. Then his eyes lifted.

It had been ninety-three years. Ninety-three years since he’d seen his twin and the love of their lives, yet here they were immortalized in paint. 

Smoke sat in an old wooden chair. His gray tweed trousers were crossed at the knee, the fabric sharply tailored against his frame. A haint blue shirt stretched beneath a matching tweed vest, the color contrasting beautifully with his mahogany skin. His hands were folded loosely, his fingers interlocked as if he were in thought. His expression was typical Smoke: steady, yet distant. The face of a man who had seen and fought his fair share of demons and survived to tell the tale.

Behind him stood Annie, her presence commanding just as much of the piece as Smoke’s. Her hand rested gently on his shoulder in a calm, yet protective way. Her dress was a muted blue to contrast Smoke’s undershirt. Around her waist lay a dark belt that held small pouches and charms, all the tools a conjure woman needed. Beside them sat a small wooden table, bearing evidence of a ritual that had possibly taken place. Candles of varying shapes and colors burned, wax melting in uneven streaks down their sides. A few glass bottles and bowls rested nearby, their contents shadowed by the flickering candlelight. It was as if she’d been there the whole time. Like she’d been right there with them the day their lives changed forever, capturing every essence of who they were onto the canvas.

“H-How—,” Elias tried, fighting back tears. “You got it right. With no reference, no nothing. You got it right.”

Before she could react, he pulled her into the tightest hug. Instinctively, she stroked his back and allowed him to release all of what he needed to in the moment.

“Thank you, Naomi,” he choked. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

“It’s not quite the sun,” she whispered against his chest. “But it’s close.”

“Where do I sign?”

The words left her mouth calm and clean, like she’d been expecting this all along. And to a degree, she had. In her idolization of vampires and all things occult, she’d secretly yearned for the day when a vampire, witch, or hell, even the devil, cornered her and offered her fame in exchange for some piece of her life. And with how her life’s cards had been dealt, she was more than willing to sign herself away to the highest bidder.

Stack’s face remained serious as he reached for a slim leather folio beside the chair. He opened it carefully, like the leather kept a memory of every hand that ever asked it for more.

“Here,” he replied quietly.

The pages inside were the color of toasted cream and thick enough to drink ink without bleeding. Eden expected stiff legalese. There was some of that, but the language wound through it like a river, older than any lawyer would admit. He held the folio low enough for her to read and took a step back, giving her the room to decide in full light.

Eden read every line. She heard her father’s voice in the back of her mind, counting clauses, looking for traps. She read it once through, then again more slowly. The parchment was smooth beneath her fingertips, cool at first but warming with touch. The ink shimmered faintly. Not like gold, but something alive, soft and breathing. When she tilted the page, the script shifted color, deep violet one moment, indigo the next.

Stack stood a few feet away, silent, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. The firelight carved his features into patience itself, that same stillness she had come to recognize—the kind that felt ancient and deliberate. He wasn’t watching her mouth move as she read. He was watching her pulse.

“Exclusive Donor Agreement,” she murmured, her voice barely above a breath. “One lunar cycle. Renewal by consent.”

Her thumb brushed the signature line, empty and waiting. The faintest hum stirred in her chest.

When she reached the third section, three promises sealed within the term, each a doorway rather than a chain, her breath caught.

“Well, that’s poetic,” she said, looking up.

“Poetry is older than law. Easier to remember, too,” he smirked.

Eden lowered her gaze again. The ink seemed to move as she read, curling slightly at the edges, as if testing the air between them. The closing line was written in by different hands, finer, neater, like a woman’s. She traced it slowly with her fingertip.

What is taken in desire must one day return in devotion.

“Who wrote this?” she inquired, throat tight.

Stack hesitated briefly before answering. “Someone who understood the cost of wanting.”

The cost of wanting.

The words played on a loop in Eden’s mind for a beat. She studied Stack in the candlelight. He looked almost human this way. Barefoot, bare-chested beneath the open collar of his shirt, the fair scar at his jaw catching the glow. But his eyes. His eyes are what betrayed him. They carried centuries of memories, desires, and dreams, both achieved and lost.

“Do you trust me enough to sign?” he asked, voice softer than he’d intended.

“I do,” she replied quietly. “But I want to add something.”

“Say it.”

“If this is a doorway,” she said, “then I walk through it on my own terms. Not as your donor. As your equal.”

Something flickered across his face. Surprise, then something softer. Reverence, maybe. He stepped closer. 

“Then write it.”

Eden took the pen from him. It was bone white with specks of tarnished gold. The ink bled dark and smooth as she pressed its point to the page. 

“Wait,” Stack said, catching her hand in his before she pressed the pen to the page. “You have to say it first.”

Eden lifted her chin and spoke into the warm quiet of the room. “I know what I ask. I know what I give. I consent.”

Stack nodded, letting her hand go. She signed her full name beneath the line. Eden Noelle Taylor. And below that, her terms:

No chains. No shadows. Only choice. 

Her letters sat deep and glossy. When she pressed her thumb to the page, a single drop brightened and sank into the paper like a seed into wet ground. Stack signed second. Elias Moore, elegant and unreadable. He did not crowd her, did not ask for a hand or a kiss or anything he had not already been given. He only set a small velvet box on the table and opened it toward her.

Inside lay a thin ring made of something that looked like gold and not gold at once. Not a lover’s ring. Not a collar. A single band etched with a fine pattern of ivy and serpents, so faint it seemed to swim when the light caught it. He did not lift it out.

“This is not mine,” he said. “It belongs to the vow. You can wear it when you sing, or not at all. It will do nothing flashy. It will only remember what you said.”

Eden touched the ring with one finger. Heat pulsed through the metal and into her skin like a thread being tugged. She pulled back and exhaled.

“I want it,” she said. “But not tonight.”

“As you wish.”

He closed the folio, tied it with a ribbon that looked old and clean, and set it aside. For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The world held its breath.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now I keep my part,” he said. “No hunger. No touch. Your body knows the difference between a promise and a shove.”

He led her back through the hall and out into the courtyard. The night had thickened. The string lights hummed softly above the citrus trees. He reached into the pocket of his loose pants and placed something cool in her palm without closing her fingers around it.

A coin, old and bright along one edge where it had been rubbed for years. The profile was strange. The language around it stranger. When she lifted it to the light, the air prickled the fine hairs along her arms. The coin smelled faintly of pepper and rain. It prickled her palm, like it wanted to memorize her.

“Hold it,” he said. “Only for a minute.”

Eden felt her throat warm. The pulse under her tongue steadied then rose by the smallest degree, as if the coin remembered a rhythm she had not learned yet. She looked at him over the soft shine of her palm.

“What will it cost me?”

“Nothing while it is in my hand,” he said. “Everything once it is in yours.”

She put it back without speaking. He nodded, placed it in his pocket again, and the night loosened around them. Somewhere in a neighbor’s yard, wind bells chimed a single low note.

Back inside, he poured her water with slices of lemon and a sprig of mint. No wine this time. No taste of iron. He handed her the glass like it was an ordinary night in an ordinary home and rested a hip against the edge of the table.

“It’s done,” he said quietly. “You’re bound for one moon.”

Eden’s heart thrummed against her throat.

Bound. 

One word that meant everything after this would be the echo of the choice she’d made.

“Do you know what you’ve agreed to?” he asked.

Eden paused for a bit before answering.

“Everything I asked for.”

A smile stretched across his face, slow and dangerously tender.

“Then I’ll make sure you get it, Eden Taylor.”

The air between them thickened, candlelight swelling until it felt like the whole room leaned toward her. Eden’s pulse kept its own rhythm, steady and defiantly alive. This wasn’t a surrender, but rather an ascension.

“You better, Stack,” she sassed back.

“Please,” he cooed, stepping towards her. “Call me Elias.”

“Elias,” she said, testing the name on her lips. “I like it.”

He smiled softly before speaking again.

“Go home,” he said. “Sing tomorrow. Let me work.”

“You do not want to hear me first?”

“I already am,” he said. “I have been since you stepped over my threshold.”

He placed a gentle hand on the small of her back as he led her to the door. She stepped out into the heat and felt the night lean closer to listen. By the time she reached the Camry, her phone buzzed. She sat in the driver’s seat with the door still open and read the screen.

Frenchmen. Nine fifteen. We can slide your track into a feature block if you can be here. You want it?

She stared a long second at the timestamp. She had not sent a request. She had not begged. She looked back at the house. The porch light burned quietly. The curtains did not move.

Her fingers were steady when she answered.

Yes.

Eden woke before the sun.

Though the city hadn’t yet come to life, the air was already heavy, pressed close against the windows like it knew what had happened the night before. She lay still for a moment, eyes open to the gray half-light, waiting for the world to steady around her. But it didn’t. Not really.

Everything felt sharper. The fan’s slow turn. The rustle of curtains. The pulse moving through her wrists. Even the silence had texture. She could hear the faint buzz of a mosquito against the glass, the steady rhythm of her own breath, the sound of something new inside her that wasn’t quite heartbeat and wasn’t quite thought.

She pushed herself upright. Her throat wasn’t dry. Her skin didn’t ache. But she could still feel the warmth of Stack’s hand where it had lingered against hers. The taste of the minty, lemon water sat on her tongue like a memory, threaded through with something that didn’t belong to the living.

The clock on her dresser read 5:22 a.m. She should’ve felt exhausted. Instead, she felt awake in a way that frightened her.

She moved through her apartment like she was trespassing in her own life. The lights flicked on too bright, the floorboards cool under her feet. She caught her reflection in the mirror above the sink and froze. Her eyes looked different. Not glowing, not red, but clear, almost lucid. Like the color had deepened somehow, like something behind them had finally turned toward her.

She pressed a hand to her chest. Her pulse answered back, low and steady, like a drum she’d forgotten the rhythm to. It thrummed beneath her palm, slow but sure, the sound of something ancient finding its voice again. The air around her seemed to bend in time with it, soft and electric, as if her body were learning a new language made of breath and blood. For the first time in a long while, she didn’t feel hollow. She felt full. Alive in the way fire is alive, quiet but consuming. She felt reborn.

The rest of the morning passed in fragments. Shower. Coffee. Silence. Every movement felt threaded with that same strange hum, like the night before had folded itself into her body, and no amount of water or daylight could wash it out. When she sat down at her small kitchen table, she found herself pulling her notebook close. The one she hadn’t touched since before Stack. The one still open to an empty page.

She stared at it, waiting for the usual hesitation to come. The self-doubt. The second-guessing. But it didn’t. Her fingers found the pen, and words spilled faster than her mind could catch them.

They came like breath. Like water. Not the soft, longing verses she’d been writing before—the ones about want and ache and quiet hunger. This was something else. Bigger. Wilder. It rose up through her throat like it had been buried there all along, waiting for a name.

The lyrics poured out in loops and spirals:

You pulled me in like smoke through my skin, Said my name like a hymn in a hurricane. Now every breath feels like confession, And every word tastes like your name.

I swore I’d walk away clean, But your touch still hums in my bloodstream. Baby, what did you do to me? I keep trying to breathe you free.I let the spell stay,

Didn’t even try to break it. You’re the sin I crave, And I’m too gone to fake it. If loving you’s the price I pay, Then let the spell stay.

She didn’t stop to edit. Didn’t cross anything out. The song just… happened. When she finally leaned back, the sun had crept higher and her coffee had gone cold. She tested the melody on her tongue, and her voice carried through the apartment like it belonged to someone else. It was richer, deeper. Her voice but swollen with something new. It filled the kitchen like smoke, curling around the corners and pressing against the glass of the window. The note carried so far, she half-expected someone outside to stop walking and look up.

Eden exhaled, her lips trembling around the last note. That’s when her phone buzzed. A missed call and voicemail from last night, she didn’t realize she’d gotten. She wiped her hand on her shorts before pressing play.

“Eden, it’s your father. I tried you last night. No answer. Look, I heard from Mrs. Dupree that you were on Frenchmen again. I’m not calling to argue, but I do want to remind you this… hobby has a shelf life. 

You are talented, yes, but talent doesn’t pay rent on time, and it doesn’t come with health insurance. I have an associate willing to let you shadow at the firm for a few weeks. Real experience. A reference. Something solid to put on a resume instead of… open mics. 

Also, your landlord called the house line asking for an emergency contact. That is not acceptable. If you’re short again, you need to tell me before strangers do. I am not a bank, Eden, and I will not underwrite a fantasy. Call me back this afternoon. If you want my help, we can discuss conditions. If you don’t, then at least do me the courtesy of confirming you’re safe. 

And please, don’t spend another dollar on studio time this month. Be practical. Alright. Call me.”

Eden’s eyes rolled, hard. She hadn’t been late this month, nor had she called and asked him for any more money. With what Stack had given her, she had almost pulled herself above water—maybe for the first time in her adult life.

She let the voicemail finish, then deleted it. Her thumb hovered over the screen, debating whether or not to call him back, before flipping the phone facedown on the table. The silence that followed was almost holy.

For the first time, her father’s voice didn’t sound like authority. It sounded small. Ordinary. Like something that belonged to the life she had just left behind.

She drew a slow breath, the hum in her chest deepening. The kind that felt like power wearing the disguise of peace.

That’s when her phone buzzed again.

You still down for the set tonight?

The same number from Frenchmen from last night. Her thumb hovered. She thought about everything Elias had shown her. The applause, the lights, her name whispered in a hundred mouths. Her fingers typed back without hesitation.

Yes. I’ll be there.

By noon, the city had come alive. Humidity clung to her skin like honey as she walked down Chartres and then Iberville, her notebook tucked snugly under her arm. The Camry’s engine ticked softly behind her, still warm from the drive. Everywhere she looked, something shimmered. The brass band on the corner gleamed with sweat and rhythm. Streetlamps buzzed with lazy gold halos. Even the air around her felt charged, like it recognized her now.

The Sugar Séance smelled extra sweet. Eden hadn’t planned to come; her body just moved. Guided by some quiet pull beneath her ribs. The same way it had the last time she visited. The doorbell chimed low when she stepped inside, the sound curling through the syrup-thick air like smoke. Candied light spilled through the lace-draped windows, glinting off glass jars of pastel sweets and shimmering powders. The shop seemed to breathe around her, every shelf and curtain humming faintly, as if the sweetness itself had a heartbeat.

Oriana was already waiting behind the counter, bare feet planted on the creaking wood floor, a tray of cooling pralines beside her. She didn’t look surprised to see Eden, though she never did.

“Well, well, well,” she said, drawing the word out like honey, “look who’s glowing.”

Eden chuckled softly. “Glowing? I barely slept a wink.”

“Mhm.” Oriana leaned her elbows against the counter, gold-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose. “That ain’t exhaustion, Suga. That’s transformation.”

Eden hesitated. “You mean—”

“I mean exactly what you think I mean.” Oriana straightened, her bangles jingling as she reached for a glass jar with pale blue candies shaped like teardrops. “You been touched by something old and powerful. You wearing it in your aura like perfume.”

Eden blinked, unsure how to respond. “It wasn’t—”

“Sin?” Oriana smiled faintly. “Baby, everything sacred feels like sin at first.”

The words nearly knocked the wind out of Eden. She looked away, pretending to study the jars neatly lining the shelves. Sugared violets, rock candy, praline bark tied in lace. The air was thicker now, like molasses, each breath dragging the scent of bourbon vanilla and smoke through her lungs.

“I feel different,” Eden said finally. “Like I can hear things. Feel things. Like the city’s breathing with me.”

“That’s ‘cause it is,” Oriana said softly. “When you feed the soul, the body starts to listen. That man of yours woke something in you. Don’t mean he owns it, though.”

Eden looked up sharply. “He’s not—”

“I know what he is.” Oriana’s tone was gentle, but there was something ancient in her eyes now, something that flickered between mischief and warning. “And I know what you’re becoming, too. The trick is learning how to hold the gift without letting it hollow you out.”

Eden’s pulse stuttered. “What if I don’t want to stop it?”

Oriana grinned then, wide and knowing. “Then don’t.”

She turned back to her counter, scooping a handful of the blue candies into a small paper pouch. “But if you’re gonna walk that line, you’ll need a little balance.” She tied the pouch with twine and pressed it into Eden’s palm.

“What is it?”

“Dream sugar,” Oriana said. “Boiled with jasmine, sea salt, and just a drop of clove oil. Keeps the visions from tearing at the edges. Makes the magic go down smooth.”

Eden rolled the pouch in her hand. The warmth of it seeped into her skin. “And if I take too much?”

Oriana’s eyes glittered. “Then you might see yourself the way he does. And that’s not always a bad thing.”

Silence settled between them again, not awkward, but heavy with meaning. The kind that filled a room and made even the chimes hold their breath.

Eden finally looked up. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, baby,” Oriana said, returning to her pralines. “Thank whatever river carried you here. Just promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“When the doors start opening,” Oriana said without looking up, “don’t forget which ones you walked through first. Magic always keeps its receipts.”

Eden smiled faintly, her throat tight. “I’ll remember.”

“Good girl,” Oriana murmured, a slow grin spreading across her face. “Now go make the world listen.”

Eden stepped back into the sun, the candy pouch warm against her palm and the words ringing in her chest like prophecy. The city felt alive around her. The air humming, her pulse syncing with the streetcars and birds and faraway music. For once, she didn’t question it.

She just let it happen.

She lingered on the sidewalk just outside the shop for a beat, the scent of the fresh pralines stuck in her nostrils. She twirled the pouch in her hands once, then twice, before pulling out one of the candied teardrops. It glittered faintly, even in shadow. Pale blue and translucent, like something pulled from the bottom of a clear river. She slipped it onto her tongue.

The taste hit slow. Cool at first, like rain on metal, then warm. A slow bloom of salt and sugar and something she couldn’t name. Her pulse synced with it. The hum she’d felt since last night deepened, spreading from her throat to her fingertips. The edges of the world softened, and for the first time, the noise in her head went quiet.

She sat in her car for a while after that, the pouch resting on her lap, her reflection faint in the rearview mirror. Her eyes caught the sunlight and shimmered gold for half a second, like something ancient had rolled over inside them. She smiled at her own reflection, not out of vanity, but recognition. She looked like someone who finally knew her own rhythm.

By late afternoon, the city had turned to amber. Heat clung to the air, and the smell of rain drifted in from somewhere upriver. Eden moved through her apartment like she was dreaming, packing her things with deliberate slowness. Lip gloss. Hair pick. Notebook. The pouch from Oriana, tucked carefully into her purse.

When she stood before the mirror, the woman staring back didn’t look nervous. She looked like a secret finally ready to be told. The black satin dress clung to her curves like devotion, soft and fluid, catching the lamplight in slow, molten ripples. The neckline dipped low, a quiet dare, while the hem brushed her calves with every breath. A slit up one thigh revealed just enough when she moved, not too much, not by accident. Her curls were gathered high, the rest falling in loose spirals that grazed her shoulders, glinting under the gold light.

A thin chain circled her throat, her single gold ring flashing each time her hand adjusted the strap on her shoulder. Her lips gleamed with clear gloss, and her eyes — wide, deep, deliberate — carried a new kind of steadiness. A quiet burn. She didn’t look like a woman preparing for a stage. She looked like one who had already been claimed by something larger than applause.

She unwrapped another piece of dream sugar, let it melt on her tongue, and hummed under her breath. The song came back instantly, the one she’d written that morning. The melody rolled smooth and easy now, no second-guessing, no hesitation. She sang to the rhythm of her own heartbeat, the sound low and golden, like something that belonged to the city itself.

As she locked the door and stepped out into the evening, the streets shimmered faintly. Streetlights blinked awake one by one, and the air smelled of wet concrete and jasmine. She slipped into her car, the engine purring like something pleased to see her. The dashboard lights cast a soft gold glow across her skin as she adjusted the mirror and set her hands on the wheel.

The city unfurled around her. Windows lit, doors open, laughter spilling into the night. Frenchmen waited a few blocks ahead, alive and electric; its music already bleeding into the humid air. Eden drove slow, steady, every red light humming in time with the rhythm under her skin.

When she rolled down her window, the sound of brass and blues swelled through the night, brushing against her pulse like a promise. And somewhere far off, carried on the wind like perfume, she swore she heard Oriana’s voice — soft, amused, certain:

“Go make the world listen, suga.”

The sky over Frenchmen Street had turned the color of spilled wine, violet deepening into indigo, the street lamps hazed in gold. Music spilled from every corner, horns and bass and laughter weaving together until the whole block pulsed like a living thing. The air was damp with heat and cigarette smoke, a sweetness underneath it all that only New Orleans could carry.

Eden parked a few streets away and walked the rest of the distance, the paper pouch of Dream Sugar still warm in her purse. Each step felt tethered to something unseen, her heels clicking soft against the uneven pavement, the hum beneath her skin matching the rhythm of drums in the distance. Her nerves didn’t rise like they usually did before a show. Instead, there was calm. Like she was right where she belonged.

She passed a man selling painted masks, a tarot reader with her cards spread over a lace cloth, a little boy drumming on overturned buckets. When she dropped a dollar in his case, he grinned wide.

“You gon’ sing tonight, ain’t you?”

Eden smiled. “How you know that?”

He shrugged. “You walk like the stage already yours.”

Inside the venue, the air was cooler but just as thick. The walls glowed red beneath string lights. The floorboards were sticky with beer and spilled dreams. Musicians tuned their instruments at the back, their laughter low and nervous. Eden’s name was scribbled in chalk on the board by the door. She touched the letters like they might vanish.

At the small vanity near the side curtain, she unwrapped a third piece of dream sugar. It was sweeter this time. The kind of sweetness that made her eyes close. She could feel it sliding through her veins, wrapping around her ribs, steadying her pulse. The mirror caught her reflection, and for a heartbeat she saw two versions of herself layered together: the girl who used to sing in empty bars for tips, and the woman who now hummed with something old and luminous. Both of them smiled.

“Five minutes,” someone called from the stage.

She nodded, though her voice didn’t come. Her throat thrummed instead, low and ready. She took a breath, stepped into the hallway, and the music swelled ahead of her like a tide. 

“Give it up for Eden Taylor!” the emcee called from the stage, pulling polite claps from the crowd. 

Eden smiled, stepping into the light. The heat from the stage lamps kissed her shoulders, and she didn’t flinch. The mic stand leaned forward, like it recognized her. She gripped it, closed her eyes, and let the room fall silent. The first note came soft, almost a whisper. Smoky and low, threaded with ache. Then it grew. Her voice moved through the space like riverwater, winding around tables, sliding up walls, catching light where it could. She didn’t think about Stack, but he was there, woven between the notes like an unspoken chord. Every syllable shimmered with the memory of him — of hunger and honey, of the pulse that had taught her to breathe differently.

The lyrics of “I Let the Spell Stay” spilled out of her like prophecy:

You pulled me in like smoke through my skin, Said my name like a hymn in a hurricane. Now every breath feels like confession, And every word tastes like your name

The crowd had gone still. Even the bartender froze mid-pour. The air itself seemed to tilt toward her. She didn’t force it. She didn’t have to. The song lived in her now, thrumming beneath her tongue, glowing through her fingertips. And that’s when she felt it. The way the hair on her arms prickled. The slight chill in the air. She glanced to the back for a breath. Not long enough to distract. Long enough to confirm he was real. He looked exactly as he had in the house. Unfussed. Whole. Watching like the act of watching required the discipline of a vow. For a moment, she wanted to be afraid of how much it meant. The fear did not come. Something steadier did.

I swore I’d walk away clean, But your touch still hums in my bloodstream.

She sang the line and felt her skin warm. A thrill ran along the surface of her arms and did not stop at her wrists. It kept going, up through her chest, around the place where the hum had been living all day. The crowd was with her now, the kind of togetherness that made a room feel like a church with no priest.

“Baby, what did you do to me? I keep trying to breathe you free.”

She opened her eyes at the refrain.

If loving you’s the price I pay, Then let the spell stay.

For a breath, the room disappeared. The chaise. The heat of lamps turned low. The press of a mouth that knew the difference between taking and keeping. She could feel where his hands had been steady at her thighs, the calm of him, the absence of rush. The memory poured through her like warmed wine and did not unsteady her. It took root and gave something back.

“Now I see you in the dark like light, every time I close my eyes.”

She closed them now and saw him anyway.

Her voice broke open on the last note, not from strain, but from release. The sound hung in the air long after she’d stopped singing, like the room didn’t want to let it go.

“I let the spell stay.”

The note hung, then settled with the kind of quiet that belongs to endings that are not endings at all. Eden opened her eyes and found him as if they had agreed to it, as if the stage knew how to steer light. He did not smile. He did not look away. For a handful of seconds, the room existed around a line drawn between them.

Stack’s POV

He had not meant to come early. He told himself he would take a quiet place in the back, observe without intruding, let the hour do its work. But the bond tugged at him with a patient hand, one that did not yank so much as invite. He followed without argument. Distance was a courtesy he granted the living, not a shield he hid behind. Inside, the room was a red hush. String lights. Table candles in jelly jars. A chalkboard with names scrawled in tilting white letters. But only one mattered. 

Eden Taylor.

He took a seat near the back wall, away from the door, where he could read the room the way he read a long ledger. The crowd was loose at the edges, talking with the easy cadence of a warm night. A guitarist packed away a case. A poet drank water like it was ritual. Stack set his hands in his pockets and listened to the room choose its next breath.

Her turn approached. The bond noticed before he did. It was not hunger, not exactly. Hunger had edges. This was something rounder, a tide that rolled forward, promising the shore. He glanced at the stage and watched the host lean into the mic.

“Give it up for Eden Taylor!”

Clapping, small at first, then generous. She walked out from behind the curtain, and the room seemed to sit up. When she drew the first note, the room changed shape. He had heard a thousand singers. He had stood in rooms that trembled with voices the world called immortal. None of it felt like this.

Her sound was a warm blade. It slipped beneath noise and cut everything free that did not belong. Conversation stopped. Glass caught on glass and stilled. Even the door held still in its hinges.

He felt it where the bond lived. A pressure against the sternum, a ripple through the gut, as if the muscle of him remembered a heartbeat he had not owned in decades. It was not painful. It was not comfortable. It was a reminder. The hum inside him found her pitch and held. He had intended to hold himself at a distance, to be the kind of witness who leaves no mark. The bond did not permit it. It did not ask questions. It laid a hand over his sternum and pressed.

When she hit the first chorus, he felt her throat open. He felt the air in his own lungs respond. He did not need air, but he took it. He inhaled with her. The sensation slid through him like heat through glass. The last time he had felt this kind of answering, the year had started with a nineteen and ended with a thirty-two.

He stood very still. The chain at his collarbone warmed beneath the shirt. The gold at his tooth picked up a sliver of candle and held it. People around him leaned in as if drawn by a tide they did not care to name. The word ‘stay’ went through him like rain on hot stone. He did not hear it so much as wear it. He had been measured by a thousand vows. He knew what words could do when someone spoke them with their whole mouth and meant it.

Stay.

The binding took her voice and built a bridge with it. He felt where it anchored in him and did not resist. Resistance was the tool of the frightened. He was not frightened. He was accounted for.

Her tone carried heat without smoke. It made promise feel like a gift rather than a debt. When the crowd exhaled, he allowed himself a small breath and let the sensation settle. The last of the chorus rose over their heads, and he saw two women at the bar press their fingers to their throats without seeming to know they had done it. He watched the line enter her and exit as song. He had given the truth of his appetite to a few who could bear it, fewer who could honor it. He had not seen it turned into art in his name. Not like this.

Around him, the audience stood very still. The bartender had stopped polishing a glass. The host had his arms crossed over his chest like he had moved from host to witness without noticing. Someone at a table whispered a quiet holy and put a hand against their heart.

He tested the bond with the smallest pressure. She felt it. He saw the response in the angle of her chin. She did not falter. She steadied. Pride moved through him so cleanly it almost hurt.

Applause took a breath, then found itself. It moved from the front tables outward, a physical thing that pushed at his chest as it passed. He let it move through him. He did not clap. Some rituals belonged to the living. His acknowledgment would come another way. 

Then the noise returned, tables scraping, someone whooping from the back, a whistle that went too long. She stepped away from the mic like she had been holding her breath and was finally permitted to let it go.

Eden’s POV

Offstage, everything had depth. The air, the floor, the way people’s faces looked when they were not performing their faces. Compliments skimmed over her skin and did not land. A woman grabbed both her hands and told her she felt something in her bones. A man asked if she had a record. The host squeezed her shoulder and leaned in close.

“Whatever you did,” he said, “do it again.”

She smiled, thanked him, and felt the hum in her throat keep time with the room's new tempo. She wanted water. She wanted a quiet corner. What she wanted more than either stood three steps into the shadow of the hallway.

Stack waited there, posture easy, eyes clear. He did not announce himself. He did not need to. She moved like the current wanted her to reach that exact spot and no other.

Up close, he looked like midnight in a pressed shirt. His chain lay flat against his collarbone. The violet burn in his eyes was banked, not gone. He took her in without hurry, the way a man tastes a room before he says its name.

“Eden,” he said.

It was the first time he had said it here, in a place that belonged to her first. It felt like a small ceremony.

“You came,” she said, and her voice slipped into something hushed, as if still saving space for the last note.

“I wanted to hear what the city heard,” he said. “I’ve clearly been missing out.”

It was not a compliment. It was a record of fact. Something inside her steadied even further.

“Did you feel it?” she asked before she could decide whether to play coy.

He did not pretend misunderstanding. “Yes.”

“In the bond?”

“In the bond,” he said, and then, after a small pause, “and outside of it.”

The answer moved through her like a hand across silk. She leaned a shoulder to the wall, the painted plaster cool against her skin, and allowed herself to look directly at him. Her pulse slowed until she could feel the exact places it touched. Throat. Wrist. Behind the knee. He seemed to be listening to the same list.

“You are not a donor on that stage,” he said quietly. “You are a consequence.”

She almost laughed. “Of what?”

“Desire,” he said. “Yours first. Mine immediately after.”

She did laugh then, soft and startled, a sound that felt like it broke some small glass inside the moment and let more air in.

“You liked the song,” she said.

“I liked the truth of it,” he said. “Songs that lie don’t last.”

The hallway stretched narrow and warm around them. Footsteps went by. The door to the alley opened and shut. Somewhere in the room, a glass fell and did not break. He glanced at her mouth. Not as a man who is starving looks at a plate, but as a man who recognizes the instrument that can summon him with a single word.

There were things to ask. Did he mean to be at the warehouse tomorrow. What, exactly, the three promises in the contract would become. Whether the coin in the velvet bag had a story longer than the city. All of it could wait.

“I thought I knew what I was asking you for,” she said. “When I first came to you.”

“And now?”

“Now I think I was not asking,” she said. “I think I was answering something that had already started.”

He stood a little straighter, like the statement satisfied a measure he had been keeping.

“You are not wrong,” he said.

Rain tapped the metal lip of the back door, an easy, steady rhythm. The scent that followed it smelled clean, stitching itself through beer and wood and sweat until the night felt newly washed.

“Walk with me,” he said.

She nodded. He did not touch her. He did not need to.

They stepped into the alley. The rain was light, a silver comb through their hair, a quiet on their shoulders. Frenchmen Street pulsed at the mouth of the passageway, all horn and bright and voice, and the city felt like it had decided to step out of itself and watch them instead.

“Tell me how it felt,” he said.

She knew he meant the song. He also meant what had happened before the song, when he had put a new key in her hand and shown her a door she did not know existed.

“Like my throat finally belonged to me,” she said. “Like the air wanted to be here. Like the room was a body and I found its pulse.”

He considered this and seemed to place the words somewhere careful. 

“Good,” he said. “Hold onto that. The world will try to make you exchange your pulse for its applause. Do not trade.”

“What if I want both?”

He met her eyes. “Then you will take both,” he said. “But you will not confuse them.”

They reached the street and paused under the lip of a gallery roof where the rain could not quite reach. People passed close, eyes bright, hands linked, beads clacking softly against shirts. A woman in a white dress sang a line of a hymn to no one in particular, and three strangers joined her, the scraps of harmony floating away like small lanterns.

“You are changed,” he said finally, not as a warning, not as a test.

“So are you,” she said.

His mouth curved then, just enough to suggest the possibility of a smile. “You mistake acknowledgment for alteration,” he said. “I am what I am.”

She tipped her head and let her gaze run along the inarguable line of him. The unspoken song under her skin did not agree with his certainty. It suggested a small edit.

“You are what you are,” she said. “And you are also what I do to you.”

He did not flinch. He did not retreat. He let the sentence live between them. The bond warmed to it. He lifted his hand, not to touch her, but to place his knuckles lightly against the wet brick at her back, as if testing the strength of the wall that kept the night from closing all the way in.

“Perhaps,” he said.

They stood like that for a handful of rare seconds, the kind that are never long but always large. She felt the night take their measure and store it.

“You want to see me again,” she said. Not an answer. A calendar being written.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Soon,” he said, and the word did not sound coy. It sounded like a promise that had already set out and was only waiting for the hour to reach it.

She lifted her hand. It hovered. He watched it the way a man watches a flame, not out of fear but out of respect. She let her fingertips rest at the open collar of his shirt for the length of a breath, then kept going, smoothing one rain-dark curl at his temple that had fallen, leaving it tidy.

He did not move until she stepped away. Then he reached without crowding and set his fingertips, light as prayer, at the inside of her wrist, where the hum lived.

“Sing again soon,” he said. “For them.”

“And for you?” She should not have asked. She could not help it.

“For me too,” he said.

She nodded and drew her hand back. The place he had touched continued to speak.

He stepped into the rain and was gone in three strides, not vanishing, just becoming one more piece of night a person with ordinary eyes would fail to count.

Eden leaned against the post and let the rain drift to her, a soft scattering that found the warm skin at her throat and cooled it. She listened to the block, to the streetcars and the trumpet and the burst of laughter from the bar behind her. She thought of the song. She thought of what he had said, of what she had said, and of the word that had kept the room very still.

Stay.

She did not say it out loud. She did not need to. The city already had.

Eden woke up with glitter on her collarbone and an ache in her throat that wasn’t from singing.

The apartment was quiet except for the whir of the box fan in the window, pushing humid air around like it owed her something. Her phone buzzed once on the nightstand. A text from the DJ at Q93. He said he might spin her song again this weekend “if the vibes are right.” Eden didn’t bother replying. The first time was a favor. The second would cost her, and she didn’t have anything left to barter but herself. She was desperate, but not that desperate. 

At least not for him.

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, fingers brushing her neck out of habit. No bite marks. Not anymore. Just skin and memory. But she swore she could still feel the echo of it, warm and deep, like the ghost of a kiss pressed just below her jaw.

It had been a month since that night in the velvet hallway. Since Stack. Since the contract.

In that time, she’d won two open mic nights and damn near shut down the room last Friday with a cover of Aretha Franklin’s I Never Loved a Man that left one of the judges wiping his eyes. She could still see the way the spotlight kissed her cheekbones and danced off her new gold hoops, gleaming like they belonged on someone destined to be seen. There was something different in her voice now. Like smoke curling through velvet, deeper, richer. Folks kept asking what changed. What she was doing differently.

She told them honey and lemon. But that wasn’t the truth.

The truth was her reflection didn’t look the same anymore. Her skin had taken on this soft, sun-kissed glow that didn’t wash away, even when she hadn’t seen daylight in two days. Her curls held more definition, as if they remembered something her fingers didn’t. And her eyes—her eyes had gone a shade darker at the edges. Like she’d been let in on something sinful and couldn’t quite shake the knowledge of it.

She’d started leaning into the change, too. Wore deeper lipstick now. Plums and wines. Smoked out her liner like a girl who dreamed in noir. Last night, she’d hit the stage in high-waisted black pants and a vintage bustier that shimmered under the lights like oil on water. The crowd had eaten it up.

And when they cheered, when they clapped, when they lined up afterwards to tell her she had "it", all she could think about was the taste of iron and incense on her tongue. The heat that spread through her limbs when Stack fed. The way her body had gone quiet and alive at the same time, like every wire had finally connected.

She closed her eyes again. Let herself feel it. Just for a second.

Then she reached for her phone and scrolled through her messages until she landed on the one labeled simply:

STACK

She'd saved it once he confirmed that it was indeed his direct number and not some dial-up vampire hotline. 

Her fingers hovered.

Then typed.

u free tonight?

She hit send.

The message delivered. No reply. Just stillness.

Eden tossed the phone onto her nightstand and sat up, rubbing her arms as a chill crept across her skin. It was too early in the morning to be this on edge. Too early to be this distracted over a job. This was supposed to be simple. A transaction. Something she could compartmentalize.

She swung her legs over the bed and grabbed her notebook from the milk crate beside her mattress. It was soft with wear, pages curling at the edges and speckled with glitter and pen smudges. She flipped to a clean page, clicked her pen, and wrote the date in the corner like she always did. Then she sat there for a moment, the air thick around her.

“Write something,” she told herself. Anything.

Her pen moved before she could think. Like it had been possessed by the spirit of a lust-filled siren. 

"You pull the heat from my veins like summer I breathe slow, don’t even stutter Touch me like you own the thunder—"

She blinked. Paused. Stared at the words like they didn’t belong to her.

She turned the page and tried again.

"Bitten, but not broken Sipped slow, like devotion I come undone in motion—"

She let out a frustrated breath and dropped the notebook into her lap.

Everything she wrote lately came out sounding... intimate. Like a confession. The kind of lyrics you whisper against someone’s throat in a too-warm room. They didn’t sound like radio hits. They sounded like diary entries soaked in red wine and candle wax.

She’d never written like this before. Not until that night. Not until Stack.

She could still feel the weight of his eyes on her skin, even now. The slow, deliberate pressure of his hand guiding her wrist to sign. The way the room changed when he fed. How it breathed with her, or maybe through her.

She was supposed to feel used. Hollow. Ashamed.

Instead, she felt tuned.

Like he’d struck some chord in her, and it hadn’t stopped humming since.

Her phone buzzed again.

She grabbed it quick, heart jerking in her chest.

But it wasn’t him.

Just a missed call from a number she didn’t know, probably the collection agency again. They always called around this time, as if they knew she was weakest in the morning.

She slumped back against the pillows, notebook still open on her thighs. Her pen hung loose in her hand, ink staining the crease of her thumb.

This wasn’t normal.

None of this was normal.

But she didn’t want normal anymore.

She wanted more.

She shut the notebook and slid it under her bed like it was something dirty. Her fingers brushed against an old sock and a flyer from her first open mic night. She pulled the flyer out and stared at it. The ink was faded, but her name still glowed under the crinkled lamination. “Live Soul Sessions,” it read, with a blurry photo of her holding the mic too close to her face. Back then, she’d been nervous and hungry and certain she’d die if nobody clapped.

She still felt hungry. Just not in the same way.

Eden pushed herself off the bed and moved into the kitchenette, letting the cracked tile floor cool her feet. She grabbed a mug, rinsed it quick, and poured the last of her coffee. It was lukewarm and bitter, but it gave her something to do with her hands. Something human.

The dishes from last night sat in the sink, crusted over with the memory of boxed mac and cheese and too much hot sauce. She turned on the faucet, ran water over them, and scrubbed like the plates had done something to her. Her hands moved fast, furious almost, like if she cleaned hard enough, she could scrape off whatever had attached itself to her since that night.

But even in the silence, she felt it. That shimmer of heat behind her ears. The hum in her chest. Like something inside her had been rewired and she was too stubborn to admit it.

She checked her phone again.

Still nothing.

So she put on a record instead. One of her mom’s old Anita Baker joints, crackling under the needle just the way she liked it. The apartment filled with that low, honeyed voice, and for a moment, Eden let herself melt into the comfort of it. She swayed a little in front of the sink, mug in one hand, dish towel in the other. It was soft, like remembering something without having to name it.

But her reflection in the microwave door caught her off guard.

The girl looking back wasn’t the same one from that open mic flyer.

Her features had sharpened somehow. Or maybe deepened. Like someone had turned the contrast up on her soul. Her lips looked darker. Her collarbone more pronounced. Her eyes carried that slow, dangerous glint she used to envy in older women who wore perfume names like Poison and Opium.

She blinked and looked away.

The coffee had gone cold in her hand.

She dumped it and grabbed her keys.

Outside, the heat hit her like a quilt straight from the dryer. Thick, slow, and familiar. New Orleans in July never did anything quietly. Even the air had a personality.

She climbed into her Honda, cursed at the seatbelt, and turned the key. The car gave her a little fight, but it started. Barely. She turned the radio up and told herself she’d go to the store. Buy something cheap but filling. She’d light a candle. She’d clean the bathroom. She’d write something upbeat. She’d call her cousin back. She’d remember who she was before all this.

She made it all the way to the corner store before turning the car around.

The sun was dropping low by then, fat and gold against the skyline. The kind of light that made everything look too beautiful to last. Her hands trembled a little on the wheel as she passed the same intersections, the same cracked sidewalks, the same bus stop where someone was always asleep.

She didn’t know why she turned around. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the ache behind her ribs that hadn’t left since that night. Or maybe it was just the silence.

Stack never texted back.

Not that night. Not the next day. Not even the day after that.

A week passed. Seven long days where the air clung to her like regret. She washed her sheets, saged her room, even deleted the text thread so she wouldn’t keep checking. But her body remembered him in ways she couldn’t erase.

The dreams came first.

She would wake up tangled in her covers, mouth dry, thighs damp, breath sharp and shallow. In one dream, she sat across from him in that velvet room, and he fed from her wrist while jazz poured from an invisible speaker. In another, she walked barefoot through a hallway made entirely of blood, the floor warm and alive beneath her. Sometimes, she didn’t dream at all. Just jolted awake with the taste of copper on her tongue and the echo of his voice in her ear.

“Sweet girl.”

She hated how her stomach fluttered when she remembered that.

She tried to write through it. Picked up her notebook and her pink gel pen and forced out a few verses. Nothing worked. The lyrics came out wrong. Wet. Sticky. More moan than melody. She scribbled them out and started over. And again. And again.

By Thursday, she had a pile of ripped pages and still no rent money.

That morning, she stood in the kitchen staring down a box of pasta and half a jar of marinara. She boiled the noodles, burnt the garlic, and sat cross-legged on the couch eating out of the pot. Halfway through, her phone lit up with a call from her landlord.

She didn’t answer. He left a voicemail.

Her rent was three weeks past due. He was giving her until the fifteenth. After that, she was out.

She played the message three times, then deleted it.

That night, she curled up under the box fan and turned the radio to Q93. The DJ she met at her last open mic promised he’d spin her single again. He’d said it with a grin and two fingers on his heart, like he meant it.

She waited through five commercials and three back-to-back tracks.

Then he played someone else in the artist showcase.

Some local rapper with a cousin in Baton Rouge who handled promotion. Eden just sat there, frozen in the glow of the dial, hands limp in her lap, voice trapped behind her teeth.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t scream.

She got up, brushed her teeth, and poured the rest of her wine down the sink. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror looked paler than usual. Not sick, just dimmed. Like someone had pulled a layer of color out of her.

Back in bed, she stared at the ceiling for a long time.

Then reached for her phone.

Her fingers hovered over Stack’s name, still saved in her contacts even after she deleted the thread. She told herself she was being stupid. That she didn’t need him or his money. That she could figure this out on her own.

But she didn’t believe it.

Not really.

She opened a new message.

At first, she wrote nothing. Just stared at the blinking cursor like it might write itself.

Then, slowly, she typed:

Still hungry?

She hit send before she could change her mind.

The message marked “Delivered.”

She turned off the screen.

This time, she didn’t wait.

She got up and cleaned the apartment. Not because she expected company, but because the movement helped. She washed dishes, changed her sheets, swept the floor, and lit one of her emergency candles.

It smelled like fake vanilla and ambition.

The radio stayed off.

At 10:00, her phone buzzed.

One new message.

Always. Midnight. Same place. Wear red. I like you in red.

Her knees almost gave out.

She stared at the message so long the screen dimmed.

When she finally looked up, she didn’t feel like herself. Or maybe she felt like too much of herself. Like the version of Eden that had been buried beneath good manners and unpaid bills had finally clawed her way up.

She moved through the room with purpose now.

No hesitation.

She peeled off her tank top and stepped into the red slip dress she’d been saving for a different kind of night. The fabric was cool against her skin, soft as breath. She added a pair of gold hoops, pressed highlighter along her cheekbones, and smudged a little kohl under her eyes. Just enough to keep the softness from feeling sweet.

No perfume.

Just rose water and heat.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Not pretty. Not delicate.

Powerful.

Or maybe dangerous.

She didn’t smile.

She grabbed her keys and left.

Outside, the heat was thicker than it had been all day. The streets shimmered with steam, and the air smelled like wet stone and magnolia. Her car started on the first try, a small miracle.

She didn’t play music.

Didn’t think about the past week or the rent or the DJ or the way her body still ached in places she hadn’t touched.

All she thought about was the building. The velvet room. The sound of Stack’s voice and the weight of his hands.

And how this time, she would be ready.

Eden’s knuckles stayed white on the wheel for most of the drive. The sky had already gone dark, that inky New Orleans kind of dark where the clouds hung low and the streetlights flickered like they weren’t sure if they should stay on. The hum of the city softened into something less human the deeper she got into the Warehouse District. No jazz. No bounce music. Just the distant rattle of a passing streetcar and the heavy hush of a place that remembered too much.

She rolled the windows down halfway. The air smelled like hot pavement and something metallic. Her curls danced in the breeze, sticking to the sweat on her temple. Her signature hoops caught the light from a passing gas station and sent it scattering across her rearview.

She didn’t rush.

She wasn’t sure if it was nerves or knowing he would already be there, waiting, like before. Either way, she let the drive stretch. Let it press against her ribs until her chest felt tight enough to crack. She passed two closed daiquiri shops and a guy pushing a shopping cart full of clothes hangers. The familiar mess of the city she called home comforted her in a strange way. The way the broken things still moved.

She parked two streets down again. Her usual spot. The building didn’t look any different. Still tall, still quiet, still pretending to be nothing but old brick and dust. No red light above the door this time. No strange hum in the air. But the feeling was the same. Like walking into a secret you weren’t supposed to say out loud.

Eden stepped out of the car and let her heels click against the concrete like punctuation marks. Her dress clung to her in the breeze. It was sleeveless and just short enough to make her feel like she had something to barter with. Her skin looked richer in the moonlight, bronzed and kissed with shimmer. Her eyes, lined dark, held a weight she hadn’t had before.

This wasn’t the girl from a month ago.

This was someone who knew what it meant to let herself be touched by something unholy and come out aching for more.

The front door creaked open before she could knock. Of course it did.

She stepped inside, letting the velvet hush of the hallway wrap around her. The amber lights pulsed low along the floorboards, and her breath slowed to match their rhythm. This place didn’t just trap sound. It swallowed it. The click of her heels dulled as she moved, her hand brushing against the walls like muscle memory.

No maître d’.

No instructions.

Only the door at the end, carved and waiting.

She reached it and paused for the briefest moment, hand on the handle.

Then she opened it.

Stack was seated where he always seemed to be, lounging in that deep leather chair like it had grown from the floor just for him. Tonight, he wore slate, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled to reveal the gleam of a gold watch. The chain at his throat caught the lamplight, and the glow in his eyes burned low and violet.

He looked like desire bottled. Not wild, not soft, but controlled. Dangerous in the way that silk can be dangerous when it tightens.

“You came,” he said.

She stepped into the room fully and let the door shut behind her. “You responded this time.”

His eyes lingered on her, then dropped to her hands. She wasn’t holding anything, but somehow he still looked like he expected more. Or maybe less.

“You reached out before,” he said slowly. “I didn’t answer.”

“I noticed,” she said, voice cooler than she expected it to be.

A pause settled between them, long enough to mean something.

“Why?” she asked.

He stood then, not abruptly, just with the sort of grace that made every movement look deliberate. His shoes didn’t make a sound against the polished wood.

“I didn’t answer,” he said, “because you weren’t asking the right thing.”

“I was hungry,” she said.

“But not for me,” he replied.

That hit somewhere in her chest. She swallowed hard. “How would you know?”

Stack moved closer. His presence filled the room like incense. Not smoke. Something heavier. The scent of dark spices, old wood, and something that reminded her of fresh-turned earth after rain.

“I know the taste of someone who doesn’t know what they want yet,” he said softly.

“I wanted to feel good again,” she said. “That night… I felt more alive than I ever have.”

Stack studied her. “Alive is easy to fake. What about after? When the music ends. When the lights come back on.”

She didn’t answer. She looked away, suddenly ashamed of how much she had wanted this. Not just the feeding, but the attention. The hush of the room. The way her name sounded in his mouth.

He moved closer still. Now just a foot away. “What brought you back tonight?”

Eden didn’t speak for a long time. Then finally, she said, “My song didn’t play.”

Stack raised an eyebrow. “What song?”

“The one the DJ promised to spin. I stayed up and waited. Got dressed like a fool. Told my friends to tune in.” Her voice cracked, but she steadied it. “He played someone else.”

Stack nodded, as if that made perfect sense.

“And my landlord’s threatening to evict me,” she added. “So yeah, maybe I’m not here for the right reasons.”

“You’re here,” he said. “That’s enough.”

She felt something stir in her again. Not fear. Not hope.

Need.

“Will it feel the same?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “It’ll feel worse.”

Eden looked up at him. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

His smile was slow and private. “No. It’s supposed to prepare you.”

He stepped aside and gestured toward the chaise near the back of the room, where the velvet shadows seemed to lean in closer.

“Come,” he said.

Eden didn’t move right away.

Then she stepped forward, the weight in her chest matching the weight in her hips, her breath, her thoughts. Each step felt heavier, not in dread, but in knowing. This time, she wasn’t walking into the unknown.

She was choosing it.

And for the first time in weeks, the static in her chest began to clear.

The chaise waited in the corner of the room like a dare. All wine-colored velvet and low gold trim, as if it had been plucked from the parlor of some ghost-haunted mansion and set here just for her. The light above it was dim and warm, like it had been filtered through honey. Eden stepped closer, but didn’t sit.

Stack stayed beside her, close enough that she could feel the pull of him without touching. Like gravity had chosen a new center.

“I remember how you tasted,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “Bright with fear at first. Then smooth. Lingering. Like blood-orange soaked in red wine, left to bloom.”

Eden blinked once, then turned her face toward him. “That sounds… expensive.”

“It was,” he said. “But fear only feeds once.”

He walked slowly in front of her, not circling exactly, just shifting her axis. Watching. Waiting.

“I’m not scared tonight,” she said.

Stack nodded. “Then tell me where you want it.”

It wasn’t crude, the way he asked. Wasn’t even suggestive. But her breath still hitched at the question.

She looked down at her hands, then at her bare thighs, brown and smooth beneath the edge of her dress. She had rubbed coconut oil into them before leaving, like instinct. Not to be touched, but to be seen.

“I need more than last time,” she said. “Money-wise.”

His gaze didn’t change, but she could feel it wrap around her. Not greedy. Not impatient. Just... focused.

“So I want both thighs,” she said, lifting her chin.

Stack’s eyes narrowed, not in disapproval but in curiosity. “Ambitious.”

“Desperate,” she corrected.

A silence settled again, and Eden hated the part of her that liked it. The part that wanted to stretch this moment just to see how long she could stand inside it.

His voice softened. “You know it won’t be like the neck.”

“I know.”

“The thigh is slower. Deeper.”

“I can take it.”

Stack’s smile was faint and mildly seductive. “I don’t doubt that.”

He stepped back slightly and reached for a thin gold tray on the table. It was old, maybe antique, with a mirrored bottom and ornate handles. On it rested the same ink-dark parchment from last time, but with new lines.

New terms.

She scanned the top of the page. It read: Donor Consent — Dual Feeding Site.

The payout sat at the bottom, circled in crimson ink.

Eleven hundred dollars.

Eden’s throat tightened. That would cover rent. Groceries. Maybe even leave enough for a few hours of studio time or that silk dress she kept eyeing in the window of that little boutique on Magazine Street. Something that felt like a win.

She took the pen without hesitation and signed.

The ink bled smooth across the paper. As soon as she finished the last loop in her name, the lights shifted again. Not brighter. Just sharper, as if the room had taken a breath and was now holding it.

Stack stepped closer. “Do you want help undressing?”

The question wasn’t vulgar. It didn’t feel like a come-on. If anything, it felt... reverent. Like asking permission to enter a chapel.

“No,” Eden said, voice quieter now. “I got it.”

She slipped her fingers under the hem of her dress and pulled it up, bunching it at her hips as she lowered herself onto the velvet chaise. The fabric kissed her thighs with warmth. She adjusted until her knees parted slightly, one leg draped over the edge. She didn’t bother tugging the dress down. There wasn’t much point.

Her skin was already buzzing.

Stack knelt beside the chaise. He didn’t touch her yet. Just looked.

Eden’s breath caught in her throat.

The anticipation licked up her spine, hot and sweet.

Then her mind began to wander.

She saw his mouth on her thigh. Imagined the weight of his hand bracing her hip. The press of his breath before his fangs sank in. Her eyes fluttered closed, and suddenly she wasn’t in the room anymore.

She was somewhere darker.

Somewhere slower.

Stack was on his knees in the red-lit hallway of her dream, one hand sliding up the inside of her thigh while her blood painted his lips. She felt her back arch. Felt the way her pulse throbbed against his mouth. She wanted to call his name, but her tongue felt too thick. Her hands found the sharp lines of his taper, fingers brushing the neat part on the left side of his head, and she—

“Eden.”

Her eyes flew open.

Stack was watching her.

She blinked quickly, mouth parted, chest heaving slightly.

“Where were you just now?” he asked.

“I-I don’t know,” she said, voice shaky.

“Yes, you do,” he sneered.

Eden licked her lips. “I was daydreaming. Or maybe imagining.”

Stack leaned in, close enough that the warmth of his breath brushed her knee.

“Try not to drift this time,” he said. “Stay here with me.”

She nodded, heart pounding.

He brought his face close to her right thigh and pressed a single, deliberate kiss just above the curve of her knee. His lips were cool, not cold. Silken. The kind of kiss that made her toes curl against the velvet.

“I will warn you only once,” he murmured.

Eden tilted her head, watching him. “About what?”

His purple eyes lifted to meet hers.

“This is going to change you.”

Stack didn’t ask her if she was ready. He didn’t have to.

Eden laid back against the curve of the velvet chaise, the soft fabric pressing into her spine while the heavy air settled over her like a second skin. The room had grown impossibly quiet, the kind of silence that seemed to pulse at the edges. She could hear the sound of her own breath, shallow and slow, feel the rush of blood as it moved beneath her skin.

Stack remained grounded at her center, calm and unshaken. His expression stayed unreadable, though his eyes seemed to catch more light now, the violet gleam deepening like dusk settling over water. There was no greed in his gaze, no flicker of desire or pity—only focus. A quiet, almost ritual stillness that made the space around them feel heavier, as if something holy or forbidden was about to unfold.

He reached into the folds of his jacket and pulled out a small knife. It was a gold WWI trench blade, worn but well-kept, with a handle shaped like brass knuckles, dulled from years of use. Along the spine, the name “Moore” was etched in delicate script, nearly swallowed by the patina. It wasn’t flashy, but it carried weight. The kind of heirloom that didn’t need to explain itself to be respected.

Eden’s breath caught.

He saw it.

“I don’t always bite,” he said quietly, as if he were offering a lesson. “Some sites bleed better when they’re opened slowly.”

Eden didn’t speak. She couldn’t. Her throat had gone dry, but not from fear. From something closer to want. Not just the physical kind. This was deeper. Thicker. The same sensation she felt when her favorite melody hit just right, when a note trembled in her throat like it belonged there.

Stack set the blade aside and looked up at her. “May I?”

She nodded.

He began with her left thigh.

His hands slipped beneath her thigh, lifting it with quiet care. His touch was cool, steady, exacting. Not possessive or hesitant, just deliberate. He studied her skin like it was something rare, the kind of surface you didn’t just look at, but read. Every inch seemed to speak, and he listened.

Then he leaned in.

His lips brushed the inside of her thigh, feather-light. Her breath hitched again, but she stayed silent. His mouth found the spot where the vein pulsed strongest, and he pressed a kiss there, soft and steady. Then another, just above it.

Eden’s hands gripped the edge of the chaise.

She wasn’t expecting the gentleness. Or how it made her ache.

Stack’s tongue slid across her skin, cool and slow. He opened his mouth, and she felt the faint graze of a fang. Not a cut, not yet. Just the threat of it. Then came the sting.

The blade.

A thin line of fire, quick and sharp, bloomed across her thigh. She gasped through her teeth, not from pain, but from the sudden, vivid heat of it. Her blood responded immediately, rushing to meet the edge of the wound.

Stack’s mouth closed over it.

He drank.

It was nothing like last time.

This wasn’t a sip at the neck, casual and restrained. This was deeper. More intimate. His tongue moved with slow care, collecting every drop. The suction was soft but insistent, pulling her open from the inside out. Her breath grew ragged. Her thighs trembled slightly beneath his hands.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t look up.

He just drank, and the sound of it: soft, wet, rhythmic, sank into her bones.

Eden’s eyes fluttered shut.

In her mind, the room blurred. She felt heat bloom behind her eyelids. Her skin prickled. Her fingers dug into the velvet. Her hips shifted just slightly, chasing the pulse of his mouth without meaning to.

Then, just as her head began to tilt back, he stopped.

He moved to the other side.

The air between her thighs felt cool now, slick and exposed. She swallowed hard and opened her eyes. Stack caught her gaze just as he leaned toward her right leg.

He said nothing. He didn’t need to.

He knew.

He kissed the skin first, then licked, then bit.

This time, there was no blade.

His fangs pierced her slowly, deliberately. She moaned, louder than she meant to, and he steadied her with one hand at her hip. His grip wasn’t tight, just grounding.

The pull of his mouth returned, firmer now.

Eden tried to stay still, but her whole body had started to hum. A low vibration that pulsed in her belly and crawled up her throat. She bit the inside of her lip to stay quiet. Her vision swam with color. Not just red, but rose and plum and gold. Heat licked at the backs of her knees and wrapped itself around her spine.

Her head lolled to the side.

She felt weightless.

There was no room, no chair, no velvet.

Just his mouth, her skin, the sharp ache of being taken, and the strange bloom of pleasure it left behind.

Then it ended.

He pulled back slowly, lips wet, eyes half-lidded.

He wiped the corners of his mouth with the linen cloth, folding it once and tucking it away. His hands lingered at her thighs, gentle, grounding.

“You’re still with me?” he asked.

Eden nodded, barely. Her voice wouldn’t work.

Stack pressed both hands to her thighs, firm but tender, sealing the wounds with the pressure of his palms. The burn softened into something warm. Something molten. Her skin pulsed beneath his touch.

He didn’t say anything else.

Neither did she.

Not yet.

The only sound was her breath, and the way it didn’t quite belong to her anymore.

Her legs still tingled by the time she slipped the dress back down. The velvet chaise creaked softly beneath her as she rose, unsteady at first, then steadier with each breath. She felt loose. Warm in all the wrong places. Like her nerves had been unraveled and carefully strung back together in a different order.

Stack didn’t follow her to the door this time. He stood near the table, arms folded, watching her with that same quiet intensity. His mouth was clean, no trace of blood. Before she turned to leave, he nodded toward the envelope resting neatly on the corner of the table. Thick with cash. No words. No gesture. Just a silent exchange that said everything. The air between them felt heavier now. 

Eden didn’t trust herself to speak.

She gave him a nod, the kind that felt too small for everything that had just passed between them. He nodded back.

The hallway out felt longer. Or maybe her body just moved slower now, unsure of itself. Every step echoed down the velvet-lined walls, each one tethered to the phantom heat of his mouth.

When the cool night air hit her skin, it brought a shiver that didn’t belong to the temperature. The city still moved around her; drunk laughter on the sidewalk, the distant thump of bass from a passing car. But everything felt far away. Like she was still halfway in the room.

She climbed into the Honda and sank into the driver’s seat with a sigh. Her hands hovered on the wheel for a moment, fingers flexing. The engine coughed to life. She didn’t bother with the radio this time. Silence felt more honest.

The drive home was a blur of traffic lights and hazy streetlamps. Her thighs still pulsed faintly beneath her dress, not with pain, but with memory. Her whole body felt like a secret. Like she’d been cracked open and tasted, and now something inside her was lit.

She parked outside her building and sat for a while, the engine ticking softly as it cooled. She touched her lips without realizing it, then dragged her hand down to rest at the top of her thigh.

It wasn’t love, but something heavier. Slower. It curled low in her belly and didn’t care if it made sense.

She thought about how still he had been. How he moved with purpose, but never rushed. How he looked at her. Not like prey, not like a plaything, but like someone who already knew her limits better than she did.

Her phone buzzed in the passenger seat.

She jumped, heart lurching. For a moment, she didn’t want to look.

Then she did.

STACK:

“You taste different when you’re turned on.”

Eden stared at the screen.

Her breath caught.

No symbols. No small talk. Just the truth, tucked between two lines like a hand brushing the nape of her neck.

Her whole body warmed again, slow and thick. She didn’t respond right away. She just let it sit there, heavy in her palm, like proof.

He knew.

He felt it too.

And now, the game had changed.

New Orleans, 2005

Eden stared blankly at the digits on the weathered ATM.

$14.26.

All the money she had left from her work-study check that wouldn’t replenish for another week. Between rent, paying for studio time, and outfits for her upcoming shows, Eden had left herself broke and destitute yet again.

“Who told you to take the term ‘starving artist’ so literally?” she muttered to herself, tucking the receipt into the pocket of her tattered jean jacket.

She hadn’t eaten a real meal in two days. Just a gas station honey bun, half a bottle of warm Sprite, and whatever sleep could trick her body into thinking it was full. Her rust-colored Honda ran on a quarter tank and prayer, the engine coughing every time she turned the key. The inside smelled like jasmine body spray, fried hair, and quiet panic.

Fishing her Motorola Razr from the depths of her tote, she scrolled to the contact labeled “Pops.” She stared at it for a long moment, thumb hovering, before finally pressing CALL.

Three rings. A click.

“Yo,” came the gravelly voice on the other end. Always detached. Always mid-something more important.

“Hey,” Eden said, trying not to sound too pitiful. “You got like…twenty dollars I could borrow?”

A long pause. She could practically hear him blinking.

“Sorry, kiddo, I’m all tapped out.”

She knew it was a lie. He always said that. She could hear a game show buzzing faintly in the background, followed by the sound of beer cracking open. But she didn’t press it.

“It’s cool, Pops.” She cleared her throat, pushing down the lump forming there. “I’ll make something shake. I saw an ad for a babysitting gig in the Garden District, so I’ll try that.”

“Good,” he said, voice already drifting. “See? You ain’t gotta always be runnin’ after those stage lights. Just find somethin’ steady.”

She didn’t respond. Just hung up and slid the phone back into her purse like it was a loaded gun.

Back at her tiny studio apartment in Mid-City, Eden sat cross-legged on her futon, her open planner in her lap. A flyer for an open mic night at Tipitina’s was pinned above her bed with a pink glitter pushpin. She had two weeks to come up with a new track and scrape together the $80 she owed her producer for the beat she was using.

She opened her laptop, praying it would connect to the neighbor’s spotty Wi-Fi. While it loaded, she scribbled in the margins of her notebook:

“I ain’t tryna sing for scraps, I want velvet on my mic stand Moët in my vocal booth, not noodles from the nightstand…”

Cute. Maybe.

She clicked over to Craigslist. Typing “cash gigs” in the search bar had become second nature.

Dog walking. House cleaning. Foot modeling?

But then, something new. Something far from anything she’d seen listed before.

“DONOR OPPORTUNITY – NIGHT WORK. DISCREET. HIGH COMPENSATION. 21+ ONLY. Must be comfortable with blood. Text 504-9VAMPYR.”

Eden raised an eyebrow. 

“Blood?”

She clicked anyway.

The ad was vague but intriguing. It promised “stress-free, safe work” for “exclusive clientele.” It also mentioned “consent-based feeding arrangements,” which sounded... weirdly medical. Or criminal.

She almost exited the tab—but her mouse hovered over the last line:

“Neck: $300/hr. Wrist: $400/hr. Inner thigh: $550/hr. Discretion required.”

She burst out laughing, sharp and alone in her little apartment. “Yeah, okay. That’s definitely a scam. Probably run by some dude named Clarence with a fake fang kink.”

But something about it stuck. Along with her passion for music, she also had a passion for all things occult: vampires, black magic, and everything in between. She was the bayou bruja stereotype personified, save the fact that she didn’t actually know any spells.

Eden wasn’t sure what it was about this ad that had her so curious. Maybe it was the dollar signs flashing in her mind. Perhaps it was the way her stomach twisted with nerves and low-grade hunger. Or maybe it was the fact that being bitten on the thigh for rent money somehow felt less soul-crushing than waitressing at a chain diner where the manager hit on her.

She grabbed her phone and typed quickly.

Eden T. | Type O- | Available Nights

Then she added, like a joke she hoped the universe would get:

“I sing too, in case that’s relevant.”

She snickered to herself until the number responded, almost immediately.

504-9VAMPYR:

“Voice matters more than you know. You’re expected tonight. Come dressed in black. No perfume. Bring ID.”

Attached was a pin drop to an address in the Warehouse District. The kind of place that always looked abandoned from the outside but was crawling with secrets beneath the surface.

Eden stared at the screen. Then at her closet.

She had a mesh crop top, a fake leather skirt, and her beat-up Doc Martens. Close enough to black. She pulled them out with a sigh and laid them across her unmade bed. Her hands lingered on the hem of the skirt, suddenly wondering if she should shave. Then she laughed out loud, dry and humorless.

“Girl, if he’s a vampire, you think he cares about some stubble?” she mused, glancing down at her untamed bikini line.

She peeled off her hoodie and leggings and tugged on the outfit with practiced ease. The crop top rode up a little too high, showing off the silver belly ring she got impulsively after a poetry night and three Hennessy shots. She tightened the straps on her Docs and pulled her curls into a high puff, fluffing it just enough to look intentional.

Eyeliner came next. Heavy, winged, and slightly uneven, like it had been applied in a moving car or in the middle of a breakdown. She smudged a bit of charcoal shadow beneath her lower lashes for good measure, giving her eyes that soft, smoky bruised look, like she hadn’t slept in days but might still stab you if you stared too long.

A dusting of translucent powder dimmed the natural shine of her skin, but she let her freckles peek through. She dabbed a hint of burgundy gloss on her lips and pressed highlighter onto the high points of her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Just enough to glow under bad lighting.

She looked like something out of a Southern ghost story. Part beauty queen, part grieving widow. Like the kind of girl you'd see barefoot on a sagging porch in the heat of July, black veil over her eyes, sipping sweet tea that might just kill you.

She stepped back from the mirror and tilted her chin to the left.

She didn’t look like someone about to audition for a vampire sugar daddy.

She looked like someone who had nothing left to lose.

But that was the thing about having nothing. It made you bold. Eden didn’t feel fear. Not yet. What she felt was unavailable. Numb, on the edge of something primal. Like her instincts were holding their breath, waiting to see if she was about to step into a miracle… or a casket.

She grabbed the rose water mist from her nightstand, hesitated, then spritzed a light veil of it over her curls instead of her neck. Just a whisper of hydration and a ghost of a scent that faded almost instantly. The text had said no perfume, and she wasn’t trying to test boundaries with creatures who drank life juice for breakfast.

She grabbed her keys, slipped her phone into her bra, and stared down at her chipped black nail polish before muttering, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Then she locked the door behind her.

The drive to the Warehouse District felt longer than it was. The rust-colored Honda coughed once at a red light and stuttered like it was nervous, too. Eden slapped the dash like she was coaxing a stubborn mule.

“Not tonight, baby, c’mon…”

She turned up the radio, some old Destiny’s Child track with a beat strong enough to drown her thoughts. She sang along half-heartedly, mouthing the lyrics more than meaning them, her fingers drumming against the steering wheel like she was trying to tap the fear out of her bloodstream.

Her mind didn’t cooperate.

What if it’s a cult? What if they drain you and leave you in a ditch behind a daiquiri shop? What if it’s real?

She wasn’t sure which possibility scared her more.

She pulled up to the address just after midnight. The building loomed like it had been waiting for her. It was tall, industrial, and built from bones and bad decisions. The kind of place that still smelled faintly of sweat, rust, and prohibition. Like someone had converted a cotton mill into a nightclub and then forgotten to put up a sign.

All the windows were blacked out. No buzz of neon. No music. No movement. Just that single red light above the steel door, blinking slow and steady like a pulse. Or a warning.

Eden sat there for a second longer than she meant to, the engine idling as her hand hovered near the key. Her stomach flipped, hard and sudden. It was that same twist she felt before going on stage, before she opened her mouth and let the world judge her voice, her dream, her want.

That anticipatory ache. That leap of faith you had to take before a mic, a man, or a monster.

Then she got out.

The air hit her like a wet rag, thick with humidity, heavy with something else. Something older than the pavement beneath her boots. The breeze curled around her ankles and crept up her spine, stirring the hem of her skirt and making the back of her neck prickle.

There was a scent in the air, faint but unmistakable. Jasmine. Smoke. No, ash. Burnt incense. Like the end of a ritual.

She stepped forward, gravel crunching beneath her boots, the only sound in the stillness. No music. No voices. Just her breath and that red light, blinking above her like a slow countdown.

When she reached the door, it opened before she could knock.

Not with a creak. Not with a dramatic hiss. Just a smooth, effortless glide, like whoever or whatever was on the other side had been expecting her the whole time.

Eden paused in the threshold, heart thudding against her ribs like a warning bell. She glanced once over her shoulder, back at her Honda parked under the flickering streetlamp, its paint dull and flaking like old blood.

She could leave. She could run.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she squared her shoulders, tucked her gloss-smudged lips into a tight line, and stepped into the dark.

A man stood just inside. Pale. No older than thirty, if you could even put an age on someone like that. His black dress shirt was perfectly pressed, tucked into tailored pants that caught the low light like water. Silver chains shimmered across his collarbone, subtle and cold. White gloves on both hands, like he was either about to serve a five-course meal or prep a body for burial.

His eyes swept over her. Not sexual, not even curious. More like he was measuring her for something. A scan. Efficient, impersonal. She might as well have been a barcode.

“You’re Eden,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

“I am,” she replied, doing her best to keep her voice steady.

“Follow me.”

So she did.

The hallway was long and narrow, padded in deep red velvet that brushed against her shoulders every few steps. The walls breathed warmth, but the air stayed cool, scented faintly with clove, old paper, and something floral that had long since dried out. Dim amber sconces flickered along the path, casting warped shadows that stretched and curled with her movements. It didn’t feel like walking into a building. It felt like being swallowed.

Each step took her further from reality. Her dad’s voice in the car, still ringing with disappointment. The zeroes in her bank account. The half-finished demo she couldn’t afford to master. All of it fell away, like static detaching from a radio dial. She wasn’t sure if she was floating or sinking.

The man said nothing, just led her deeper.

Eventually, they reached a door. It looked ancient, carved with symbols she didn’t recognize. Something that felt older than language, older than the city itself. They pulsed faintly under the glow of the hallway lights, as if alive beneath the grain of the wood.

The man knocked once. A dull, heavy sound.

Then he turned the handle and pushed the door open. He didn’t go in. Just stepped aside and motioned for her to enter.

Eden hesitated. Only for a second. Long enough to feel her heart rise in her throat, thick and loud. Then she stepped over the threshold.

And the world changed.

The air inside was cooler, denser, but it didn’t chill her. It settled around her skin like silk. Everything glowed in shades of wine and shadow. Low lights glinting off crystal, velvet drapes billowing near tall windows sealed shut. Music played somewhere far away, too soft to follow but rich enough to taste.

It wasn’t a room. It was a scene. A set. A spell.

Her eyes adjusted slowly, drawn toward the figure seated at the far end.

And that was when she saw him.

Her eyes adjusted slowly, drawn to the figure at the far end of the room.

He sat like he owned more than just the building. Like he owned the hour, the tension, even the breath in her lungs. Leaning back in a high-backed leather chair, one leg crossed over the other, fingers resting loosely on the armrest, he looked every bit the gentleman devil.

He wore a deep burgundy suit that soaked up the light like velvet. It was tailored so sharply it could’ve drawn blood. Gold embroidery traced the lapels in delicate patterns, only catching the light when he moved. Serpents, maybe, or ivy, curling like secrets. A thick gold Cuban link chain sat heavy against his chest, and a matching pinky ring caught the lamplight when he lifted his hand to his jaw.

His skin was smooth, the kind of smooth that didn’t come from skincare, but from time. A warm brown, almost bronze, like whiskey left out in the sun. He looked like he could be in his late twenties, but Eden could feel the weight behind the stillness. The kind of quiet you feel in old houses or graveyards.

Then there were his eyes.

They held a faint glow, not glaring or artificial, but soft and strange, like candlelight burning behind thick purple glass. The color wasn’t the unsettling part; it was the depth. If she stared too long, she’d probably see everything he’d done and everything he wanted from her now.

And when he smiled—

It wasn’t wide. Just a small curl of his mouth, more on the left side, like he was letting her in on a secret she didn’t deserve to hear yet. That’s when she saw it. A gold open-faced grill on one of his fangs, subtle and gleaming. Not flashy or loud, just intentional. The kind of accessory that told you he’d been rich for longer than you’d been alive and had nothing left to prove.

Eden’s breath caught before she could stop it. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or fascination. Probably both.

He didn’t stand.

He didn’t need to.

His voice rolled out, low and velvet-smooth, the kind that made people lean in without realizing.

“Eden,” he said, her name sitting on his tongue like something rare and expensive.

She nodded once. “That’s me.”

His gaze flicked downward, taking in her boots, her skirt, the smudge of eyeliner she hadn’t meant to look perfect. He wasn’t judging her. He was gathering details, building a file in his mind.

“Pretty name,” he said. “Pretty girl.”

Her jaw tightened at the compliment. She’d heard it too many times before from broke boys and drunk strangers. But from him, it didn’t feel cheap. It felt like a warning.

“Thanks,” she replied, her voice quieter now.

Stack tilted his head just enough to shift the mood. Not much. Just enough to make her uneasy.

“I’m Elias Moore,” he said. “But folks around here call me Stack.”

“Stack,” she repeated.

He gave her that same half-smile.

“I like a girl who listens.”

Then he rose from his chair.

Not quickly. Not slow either. Just smoothly, like he didn’t have to try. He was taller than she expected, and his frame filled the room like music you couldn’t turn down. He moved with purpose, not just confidence, but certainty, like the floor had always been waiting for his footsteps.

When he stopped in front of her, close enough for her to feel the stillness coming off him, she realized he didn’t wear cologne. The flyer had warned against perfume, and he clearly followed the same rule. But still, there was a scent. Faint and warm, like sandalwood, old leather, maybe even dried jasmine crushed into parchment.

He raised a gloved hand.

“You can leave anytime you want,” he said. “But if you take one more step, you’re choosing not to.”

She looked at his hand. Elegant. Dead. Gold ring catching the light.

Her heart kicked hard in her chest.

She didn’t take his hand.

But she didn’t move away either.

His hand hovered in the space between them for another second before he let it fall.

Stack nodded toward a low velvet chair across from his own. “Sit if you want. Or stand. Some people feel safer that way.”

Eden moved without thinking, sliding into the seat like her knees might give out otherwise. Her palms were sweating, but she kept them in her lap. He didn’t look like the type who’d offer napkins.

The silence stretched, but it didn’t feel empty. It felt full of decisions. Stack poured two fingers of something amber into a crystal glass from a decanter by his elbow, then slid it across the table toward her. He didn’t pour himself one.

Eden stared at it. “Is it safe?”

Stack grinned, just a flash of gold and teeth. “Safer than most things you’ve done to chase a dream, I’d bet.”

She didn’t answer. Just stared down at the drink and finally lifted it, more out of pride than thirst. It burned, but not bad. Smooth like molasses with a bite at the end, like it knew you had secrets and didn’t mind.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Let’s talk about the job.”

Eden sat straighter. “Alright.”

“You know the basics,” Stack said. “You let someone feed. You get paid. How far you want to go is up to you.”

He tapped a long finger against the table, slow, like a metronome counting down something important.

“Neck’s three hundred an hour. Wrist’s fourhundred, thigh’s five-fifty. Shoulder anywhere else, we can negotiate. You can sign on as a regular, or keep it casual. We also offer exclusive arrangements. More private. More lucrative. More dangerous.”

Eden pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and nodded, pretending she wasn’t halfway to hyperventilating. Her mouth felt like cotton and her stomach wouldn’t stop fluttering. But her voice held steady.

“What’s the risk?”

Stack shrugged. “Some vampires don’t know when to stop. Some donors fall in love. Some folks just aren’t built for it. We vet both sides, but accidents happen. That’s why we sign oaths. Confidentiality. Consent. Boundaries.”

She stared at him for a moment. “And you? What do you do here? Besides sit in velvet and look... like that.”

He smiled again, but slower this time, like he appreciated the jab. “I run this place. I built it. I make sure the hungry don’t get sloppy, and the desperate don’t disappear. That’s my job.”

“And if I disappear anyway?”

Stack’s smile faded, not into anger, but into something quieter. He looked at her in that same scanning way from before. Like he was looking past the makeup, past the attitude, down into the parts of her she didn’t let people touch.

“You got people who’d come looking for you?”

Eden thought of her dad. His voice on the phone, always clipped when she brought up music or asked for help. She thought of her name on the caller ID and the way he probably paused before letting it go to voicemail.

“No,” she said. “Not really.”

Stack didn’t look surprised. “Then you’re the kind of girl this place was made for.”

The room settled into stillness again, thick as gumbo. The only sound was the soft buzz of something electrical and the faint thump of music far beneath them. Eden’s thoughts were running in circles, dragging every old warning and new curiosity with them.

She thought about her bank account. About the way her car shuddered when she turned the key. About the silk dress she wanted to wear for her next show that still sat in the consignment window with a tag she couldn’t afford.

She thought about her voice. That gift she was chasing like it owed her something. Every sacrifice. Every studio hour. Every burnt-out candle and scribbled lyric.

And then she thought about this room. This man. This offer that felt like it came from a door she didn’t know she’d already opened.

“What happens if I say yes?” she asked.

Stack’s eyes didn’t blink. “Then I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure you’re fed, rested, paid. Protected. You give me your time and a little of your blood. I give you everything else.”

“And if I want more?” she asked, softer now. “Not just money. I want freedom. A little power of my own.”

For the first time, something shifted in his face. Not surprise, but interest. Real interest.

“You’d be surprised what blood can buy,” he said. “Especially when it’s yours.”

Eden exhaled slow. She didn’t know if she believed him, but she wanted to. That scared her more than anything.

She looked down at her chipped nail polish, at the ring she kept on her pinky for good luck, then back up at him.

“I’ll try it,” she said. “Once.”

Stack nodded like he already knew. He stood again and reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded piece of parchment. Not paper. Parchment. The kind that smelled like it belonged in a museum. He laid it on the table with a small, weighted pen.

“Name, date, initials here and here. Once you sign, the room changes.”

Eden raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

Stack’s purple eyes gleamed. “You’ll see.”

She stared at the parchment. Her heart thumped a little faster now, but she didn’t hesitate.

She signed.

And the room breathed.

Not literally, but that’s how it felt. The wallpaper shifted, shadows deepened. Something behind her spine tingled, as if the walls were watching now.

Stack watched her, too. “You hungry?”

Eden blinked. “A little.”

He extended a hand. This time, she took it.

His hand was cool. Not cold like death, just cooler than it should’ve been. Like he hadn’t been touched by sun or sweat in years. Eden followed him through a second doorway that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She could’ve sworn that wall was solid when she walked in. Now it opened like a secret.

The new room was quieter. Darker, too, but not in a threatening way. It felt... sacred. The lighting came from candles tucked into glass sconces, their flames barely flickering. The walls were painted a deep garnet that made the space feel like it had been dipped in wine. Heavy curtains hung in the corners like they were hiding more than windows.

At the center of the room sat a low velvet couch and a wide leather chair shaped like a throne, but not gaudy. Worn in. Like someone had loved it for a long time. The air smelled faintly of clove and something richer, something warm. It wrapped around her like a robe.

“Sit wherever you’re comfortable,” Stack said, his voice lower now, closer to a whisper.

Eden moved to the couch. Her legs didn’t feel like her own anymore. The velvet was soft under her fingers, like the kind of fabric rich people bought without checking the price tag. She leaned back and took a breath.

Stack remained standing. He didn’t hover, didn’t crowd her. Just watched.

“I’m going to ask again,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

Eden nodded. “Yeah.”

He smiled, slower this time. Less show. More meaning.

“Good. Then we’ll make it clean.”

He walked over to a cabinet near the back of the room and pulled out a shallow silver bowl, etched with symbols she didn’t recognize. Then he lit a bundle of dried herbs and let the smoke curl into the corners. It didn’t choke the air, just warmed it, changed it. Eden felt something loosen in her chest. The fear didn’t vanish, but it dulled.

“This is how we start,” he said. “No one touches without consent. You say stop, I stop. You say no, we’re done. Say the word mercy if anything feels wrong.”

She nodded. “Mercy.”

“Good girl.”

The words should’ve felt patronizing. But they didn’t. They felt like a key turning in a door.

He set the bowl on a low table beside the couch, then took off his gloves. His hands were ringed in gold and the veins under his skin looked faintly violet, like there was something strange running through him.

“Where?”

Eden’s throat went dry.

She remembered the ad. Neck. Thigh. Wrist. Options like a damn menu. It sounded transactional until it was real. Until you had to say it out loud to someone who would actually do it.

She tilted her head, just slightly, exposing her throat.

“Neck,” she said. “Just there.”

Stack moved slowly, no rush in him. He came to sit beside her, close but careful, like she was a page in a holy book he wasn’t sure he had permission to read. He didn’t touch her at first. Just looked.

His eyes had that same violet glow, soft and low like candlelight. There was no hunger in them, not the way she’d imagined. No animal in the shadows. Just need, steady and patient.

He brushed her curls back with a single finger. His touch was deliberate. Reverent.

“You’ll feel pressure,” he said. “Then warmth.”

She nodded, even though her heart was hammering so hard she could barely hear her own breath.

He leaned in.

His mouth was cool against her skin, not open at first. Just resting there. Then she felt it. A brief, sharp ache, like a pinprick from a needle that knew where to go. Not pain exactly. More like being opened.

Then came the warmth. A slow pull that tugged at her chest and her belly and somewhere deeper. It was dizzying. She gripped the couch cushion beside her and let her eyes fall shut.

She thought it would feel like something being taken from her. But it didn’t. It felt like something shared. Something circular. Like her blood was telling a story and he was just listening, slow and careful, taking only what he needed.

When he pulled back, he let out a slow breath against her skin.

“That’s enough.”

Eden blinked her eyes open. Her limbs felt light, her mind foggy but soft, like she’d just come out of a warm bath.

He pressed a cool cloth to her neck, then leaned back to give her space.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She had to think about it. Then she smiled.

“Like I just got kissed by something dangerous.”

Stack chuckled, low and pleased. “That’s because you did.”

He stood and reached for a small black envelope on the side table. Inside was a stack of crisp bills. Cash. The real kind. Eden took it with fingers that still tingled.

“This is yours,” he said. “For tonight.”

She didn’t count it. She didn’t need to.

Stack looked down at her, head slightly tilted. “You ever want more, you know where to find me.”

Eden stood, a little shakier than she expected. She gathered her purse, her keys, her thoughts. Her neck still throbbed gently, but not in a bad way.

“Thank you,” she said, unsure if that was the right thing to say.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “And Eden?”

She turned.

His eyes were glowing again, soft but unreadable.

“You were made for this.”

She didn’t answer. She just walked out into the night, heart pounding, mouth dry, and mind racing. The street outside was the same as when she’d arrived. But she wasn’t.

Not anymore.

The rust-colored Honda didn’t shudder this time. It purred like it was just as stunned as she was.

Eden drove with the windows down, letting the thick New Orleans night wrap around her like a wet velvet shawl. The air was rich with honeysuckle, oil, and the ghost of a second line that had long since moved on. Her neck still buzzed, not with pain, but with presence. A lingering echo of fangs and breath and a moment that felt like it cracked something open inside her.

She rolled past the neon flicker of corner stores and daiquiri shops, the cracked sidewalks of uptown giving way to potholes and porch lights. Her thoughts moved as slowly as her car did. Heavy, syrupy things that stuck to the edges of her brain and refused to form full sentences.

She’d sold her blood. Just handed it over like a receipt. Signed her name on a scroll older than any contract she’d ever seen. Sat inches from a man with glowing eyes and a golden fang and said yes.

And yet… she didn’t feel wrong.

Her heartbeat was steady now, settled. Her limbs were loose and lazy, like her body knew something she didn’t. Like it had crossed a threshold and didn’t see a reason to go back.

At a red light, she glanced at the cash in her passenger seat. Real money. More than she’d made in a month of folding sweaters at the campus bookstore. Her fingers twitched with the urge to count it, to be sure, but something in her resisted. That wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was how she felt. And for once, it wasn’t desperate.

It was dangerous.

She parked outside her apartment just after two a.m., the same flickering streetlamp buzzing above her like always. Normally, she would’ve slumped inside, peeled off her shoes, microwaved something sad, and stared at her ceiling until sleep came to find her. But tonight she sat still in the car, engine off, listening to the sound of cicadas and the low rumble of the city that never really slept.

She touched her neck. There was no bandage. Just skin. Tender, yes, but smooth.

Like he’d never been there.

But he had. And her body remembered.

When she finally made it inside, Eden didn’t bother undressing. She collapsed onto her bed face-up, curls fanned across the pillow, clothes still sticking to her from the sweat of the night. She meant to scroll her phone, maybe check her email. Instead, sleep came hard and fast.

And with it, the dream.

She was back in the velvet room, but everything was softer. Louder. Redder. The walls pulsed like they had a heartbeat. Candles melted into puddles on the floor, filling the air with the smell of blood-orange and clove.

Stack stood across from her, suit jacket off now. The sleeves of his burgundy shirt rolled to the elbows. The gold on his wrist glinted in the candlelight, and his grill caught her eye when he smiled.

Not a smirk. Not cold.

This smile was hot and low and deliberate.

He crossed the room without a word, steps soundless, until his hands were on her waist. His touch wasn’t demanding. It was magnetic. Her body leaned in before her mind caught up.

“Still not scared?” he murmured.

His voice brushed her skin like silk and sin.

“No,” she said, or maybe just thought it. In dreams, it didn’t matter.

He pressed his forehead to hers, just long enough for her to feel the thrum of something ancient behind his skin. Then his lips traced the spot on her neck he’d bitten. Not kissing. Not quite.

Tasting.

She gasped.

And woke up breathless.

Her bedroom was dark and quiet. The fan whirred above her, and outside someone’s dog barked once, then stopped. Her skin was slick with sweat, but she didn’t feel hot.

She felt hollow. Wired. A little drunk on something that hadn’t happened.

She stared at the ceiling, heart pounding, and reached for her phone.

The screen lit her face in blue, and for a moment, she didn’t recognize herself. Her eyes were too sharp. Her lips too calm. She looked like someone with secrets. The kind of girl you warned people about.

Eden opened her messages and scrolled to the last number in her phone.

504-9VAMPYR.

She stared at it for a long minute, thumb hovering. Then she typed three words.

When’s the next?

She hit send. No emoji. No punctuation. Just intent.

The message delivered with a quiet chime.

And Eden leaned back in her bed, the dream still clinging to her skin like smoke.

She didn’t know what came next.

But she knew she wanted more.

Her phone buzzed again.

Tomorrow. Midnight. Same place. Wear red.

♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️♾️

Needed some Ricolas, stepped in CVS

Saw you in the corner, I was lookin' a mess

You didn’t notice Jason was instigatin'

I wanna bring you closer, tired of waitin'

Tired of waitin’, ooh

The forgotten AI speaker plays faintly in the background. The Bondage Sex & Cheerios playlist featuring Ari Lennox’s sultry voice was the perfect soundtrack to Lyric’s current task. Breathy moans slip past her lips as her burgundy curls stick to the back of her neck, damp with sweat and satisfaction. The air is thick with heat and the heady sweetness of her latest fragrance obsession: KAYALI Sparkling Lychee. The scent of juicy lychee, sweet vanilla, and sugared amber clings to her skin like the satin sheets tangled around her thighs, a testament to the work she’d been putting her body through for the last 30 minutes.

She exhales deeply, her fingers gliding down her stomach like they had a map to a hidden treasure. She needed this. A recalibration after surviving another week of being the smartest bitch in every room she entered.

Monday had been back-to-back labs. Tuesday, a grown man had cried over a broken grow light like it was a dead pet. By Friday, she’d survived two pop-up dispensary events, a tense meeting with her supplier, and a DM from a Tinder fling that read simply: “you up?”

She was not then.

But now she was. Wide awake. Lit up from the inside out, toes curling and jaw slack. Her breathing syncs with the pulse in her ears. She doesn’t rush the finish. This is a slow burn. A drawn-out love letter to herself written in soft gasps and low whimpers.

Said listen, baby, I know that I'm speedin' up this vibe

Is you gon' judge me if I fuck you 'fore I catch this flight?

No freakin' worries, I just want to get you comfortable

I need you now, but I don't wanna get your feelings broke

Her latest sex toy haul had proven successful. She’d finally given in to temptation and purchased the viral rose toy she’d seen all over Twitter. Its soft petals press snug against her clit, gently suckling her pearl with deadly percision. Not too much, not too little. Just enough vibration and focus to make her thighs tremble and her toes curl. She squirms against the sheets, hips grinding ever so slightly, like her body was trying to meet the toy halfway. Every nerve in her body buzzes like static.

She was right there. So close she could taste it, feel it rising in her like a heatwave. Her stomach clenches. Her spine arches. Her thighs start to shake. And then…

Let me tell you ‘bout this

Super fly, dirty, dirty

Third coast muddy water

Shawty pop that pussy if you wanna

Alexa springs to life without warning, her chirpy tone slicing through the air like a blade. Lyric groans dramatically, regretting every life choice that led her to this moment. The bass to Big K.R.I.T.’s Country Shit thumps hard like it knew what she’d been doing seconds ago.

“Bitch,” she mutters, dragging the back of her hand across her flushed chest as she sits up. Her mound still aches, lips swollen and begging. Her fingers hover over the screen like it is a landmine, and like an idiot, she answers.

“Whaaaaat?” she whines, voice thick, breathy, and unbothered by the fact that she is still glistening between her thighs.

Stack’s face fills the screen, lips twisted in a smug smirk. The glow of the streetlights cast him in shadow, but she could still make out his outfit. Signature maroon hoodie, gold chain, and that eternal ‘fuck-you’ confidence only 93 years of immortality could breed.

“Well hello to you too, Sunshine.” His tone drips with faux annoyance. The sound of heavy boots echoes through her speakers. He’s walking, eyes still that deep violet, evidence that he’d just finished feeding. “What took you so long to answer the phone?”

“I was busy.”

His smirk deepens as he climbs the steps to her building, moving like the night bent around him.

“Doing what?”

“Why?” she screeches, sliding a hand between her thighs in an effort to discreetly finish her mission. It wasn’t discreet enough.

“Babygirl if you was playing wit ya pussy just say that,” he teases, silver fangs glistening in the moonlight.

Lyric rolls her eyes so hard they nearly get stuck. “Goodnight, Elias.” She hovers her thumb over the red button, eager to return to her unfinished masterpiece of self-care.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he laughs, voice crackling with heat. He could see it. Her pouty lips, barely-there robe, the look of irritation and arousal bleeding together on her face. His dick throbs in his jeans. This woman would be the death of him, and he was already undead.

“I wrote something,” he says quickly, walking faster now, determined. “I want your opinion.”

Lyric’s interest flickers, but barely. Her thighs shift as her hand inches toward her rose toy, pink and blinking like a tiny little haloed demon.

“Can it wait until morning?” she pouts, grabbing the toy like it was a lifeline. “I really need to finish this.”

“It’s a poem,” he says, now right outside her apartment. “And it ends with me tongue deep in your soul.”

Her thumb freezes. He couldn’t be. Goddamn him.

“If you’re at my door, knock once and shut up.”

“If?” he grins. Then, black. A second later. Knock. Once. Just like she’d instructed. She stares at the door, toy still humming in her hand. This man was about to ruin her night. Again. And she was going to let him. Because sometimes self-care means letting the vampire in.

–

Do you think of me when you touch yourself?

The question is barely audible, but Lyric heard it loud and clear. Echoing in the back of her psyche like a never-ending song. She wants to curse herself for being here in this moment, trapped in his powerful gaze once more. She watches almost helplessly as he stalks towards her, fangs twinkling in the dimly lit space. He’s since ditched the hoodie, allowing her to stare at his bare, tattooed chest lustfully. His chest had always been one of her favorite things about him.

Do my words caress your mind the way my hands used to caress your body?

Committing every dip, curve, and dimple to memory

His voice is hypnotic, slowly luring her back into her most vulnerable state. He was the flame and she the moth, constantly drawing her into his aura, to use anyway he saw fit. 

I’ll ask again, do you think of me when you touch yourself?

Do your thighs still shake at the thought of me diving in

Plunging deeper and deeper into the abyss 

Exploring parts that you didn’t even know exist

Do you think I can still make you cum from just a kiss?

Do you?

Her eyes flutter closed, and she’s instantly transported back to their last sexual encounter. His body towering over hers, Cuban link chain thumping against his chest as his member thumped that sweet spot inside of her. 

“Stack..” 

Her moans were breathless as he continued to do the Lord’s work on her body. He looked down at her and flashed a devilish grin. 

“That’s not my name, Sunshine. Now say ‘ahh’.”

Do you still taste me on your tongue?

Does my essence linger on your senses?

Triggering earth-shattering orgasms as your mind replays all that I’ve done to you between those sheets

Her breath hitches, palms sweating the same way they did when he crossed her path for the very first time. He was different now. His once smooth, chestnut skin was now riddled with tattoos, a testament to how much he liked the way the times had changed. Instead of the slicked down do of old, he now sported a low, tapered fade. Immortality had been good to him.

“God he’s beautiful,” she muses to herself, finally opening her eyes to see him standing directly in front of her. 

Do you still scream my name as you bring yourself to completion time and time again?

Willing your fingers to work double time to make your love rain down the way I used to 

Do you?

He smiles and she freezes, knowing full well he meant what he’d said about being tongue deep in her soul when he was done. Before she could process the action, he catches her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face up until their eyes lock. 

“I asked you a question, Sunshine.”

Do you think of me when you touch yourself?

Her throat is dry and wanting. She doesn’t answer with words, instead, she kisses him like her body had been aching for this exact chaos. She bites his plump lower lip hard enough to taste a hint of copper. It was different, but she liked it. He groans. Loud. Animalistic. He walks her backwards until the backs of her knees hit the couch. She falls with a gasp, and he follows, kneeling between her thighs, spreading them like scripture.

Where you been baby?

Waited for you all day

Waited for you to use the key

That opens my place

My heart starts trembling

As I hear your footsteps pace

Lock opens, doorknob turns

There appears your face

Beyoncé’s siren-like voice coos from the speaker as Stack presses kiss after kiss to her inner thighs like he’s laying offering to his goddess’s altar. His grip is rough, possessive. One hand anchors her leg over his shoulder while the other is splayed possessively across her stomach, holding her still because he knows she’ll try to run once he gets started.

His tongue flicks against her skin in lazy, teasing circles, dragging hot trails over the sensitive crease where thigh meets pelvis. Her hips twitch, desperate for contact, but he just chuckles against her. The vibrations make her shiver. Her fingers clench the couch cushion behind her head.

And when he finally reaches her dripping center, tongue dipping into her like a starved dog, Lyric sees stars. Not metaphorical stars. Not cutesy cartoon ones. Real ones. Galaxies behind her eyes. Pulsars in her chest. A blinding cosmic explosion behind her ribs as his tongue circles her clit, slow and deliberate, like he’s drawing sigils for a spell only her body can complete.

Speechless, all I can say is

Yes (Yes), yes (Yes), yes (Yes)

All I can say is

Yes (Yes), yes (Yes), yes (Yes)

He groans into her, and her hips jerk.

“Fuck, Stack!”

Her voice cracks, high and breathy, one hand flying to the back of his head to push him deeper into her sex. He grabs her thighs tighter, grounding her, eating like she’s the last meal before a century-long famine. Her legs fall open wider, trembling. Her eyes roll back, mouth slack as his tongue works her with surgical precision, lapping, sucking, flicking until the coil in her belly is so tight it feels like she’s going to spontaneously combust.

Then, without warning, he does it. Stack sinks his fangs into the supple flesh of her thigh, eyes fluttering closed at the sweet taste of her blood on his tongue. Lyric explodes in his mouth, clutching his head with both hands like she’s drowning, legs shaking as her orgasm rips through her like lightning. He doesn’t stop. He slows down just enough to ride the wave with her, kissing her through the aftershocks like he’s sealing a promise in the mess between her thighs.

He stands, admiring the sight beneath him. Lyric lay on the couch, beautiful sable breasts heaving as she pants. Her soft curls now a mess of frizz atop her head. He licks his lips, relishing in the delicious cocktail her blood and cum made. He presses a soft kiss to her temple before taking her spot on the couch. He allows her to rest against his chest, rubbing his hands up and down her back to ground her.

“Still think of me when you touch yourself?” he asks again, voice low and smug.

She doesn’t answer. She’s already asleep. Dripping. Dreaming. And completely ruined.