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shadowyfigure1207 · 21 hours ago

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The Hoodoo Apprentice

Summary: Amelia packed her things and took a train to Clarksdale Mississippi to reunite with an old friend, Annie. Annie promised she’d teach Amelia the art of Hoodoo. After a month, Smoke and Stack return with a plan to open a Juke Joint.

Warnings: SMUT

Part 5.2: had to break this one down as well! Look out for part six soon!

A feu follet was never meant to be alone for too long. Born of heat and want and light that lured men into wet places, her kind weren’t built for stillness or restraint. They were hunger in human skin. Need, shaped like a woman. Flame with a heartbeat.

When left untethered—without gaze, without touch, without the breath of another whispering want into their skin—a feu follet’s light didn’t dim. It grew brighter. Wilder. It flared and sparked until it scorched whatever it touched, including itself.

That’s what was happening to Amelia.

She couldn’t stop moving. Couldn’t sit still. Her skin felt too tight, her breath always just a little shallow. Lust curled in her belly like smoke, low and constant, rising in waves no matter what she did. It was erratic now—no longer soft, no longer sweet. Her light had grown too loud, and she could feel it leaking out of her: in the shimmer on her skin, in the sway of her hips, in the way even her shadow pulsed like a living thing.

Her fae had tasted too much—of longing, of lust, of power—and now it clawed through her veins unchecked. There was no one to feed it gently, to soothe it with a palm on her neck or a mouth against her thigh. No one to speak her name like prayer.

So it twisted.

And when a feu follet is left unfed, untethered, she begins to pull.

Draw.

Summon.

Because a starving fae doesn’t simply glow.

She consumes.

The garden behind Annie’s house buzzed with quiet life. Bees kissed the blossoms of okra and squash. Cicadas clung to tree bark, their slow chorus building in waves like the rhythm of a summer lullaby. The sun beat down heavy but not cruel, filtered through the drooping shade of a fig tree and tall rows of pokeweed and flowering basil.

Amelia moved barefoot through the grass, arms full of a gingham-lined basket. Inside: honey-drizzled biscuits, cold tea in a stoppered jug, fried chicken wrapped in wax paper, and slices of fresh melon. The blanket she’d spread out beneath the fig tree danced a little in the breeze—cream-colored, old, and soft from many washes. A pitcher of lemon balm tea sweated gently nearby, beads of condensation clinging to the glass like a second skin.

She smoothed her curls back and smiled as Pearline stepped through the garden gate, her lavender cotton dress glowing against her skin like summer caught in cloth. She clutched a small satchel, her nervousness blooming in the twist of her hands—but her eyes were wide, open, searching.

“You made it,” Amelia said, setting down the basket and straightening up.

Pearline smiled shyly, “Didn’t want to miss this.”

Amelia extended her hand and led her to the blanket, where they both sat with a grace born of habit—soft-spoken women used to holding their weight in silence. They poured tea, shared bites of chicken, let laughter settle like sugar between them.

Then the gate creaked open again.

A figure stepped through the garden’s edge—young, dark-skinned, shirt slightly open at the collar. Slender but built, with quiet strength in his shoulders and a bright, easy smile. His walk had a preacher’s poise but a bluesman’s sway.

Sammie Moore.

He had his father’s strong jaw and his mama’s eyes—almond-shaped and full of spirit. His voice, when he greeted them, was velvet and river-smooth.

“Afternoon, ladies.”

Pearline turned. Her breath caught just enough for Amelia to notice.

Sammie tipped his hat, then rested the neck of his old guitar against his thigh. The instrument was well-worn, with a patch of missing lacquer near the base where years of playing had stripped it down to the bone. Smoke and Stack had given him that guitar when he was just thirteen—Stack said it had once belonged to Charlie Patton, won in a card game outside Dockery. That was a lie.

The truth was it had belonged to their father—a violent man with a musician’s touch and a devil’s shadow. Stack had told the story different, because truth was heavier than Sammie needed.

“Brought this in case y’all wanted some music,” Sammie said, smiling Amelia’s way first, then letting his eyes land on Pearline. He lingered there.

Pearline’s cheeks burned. She pushed a curl behind her ear, lips parting slightly.

“We’d like that,” Amelia said, sensing something shift.

Sammie nodded and walked to the far side of the garden. He sat on the porch steps in the sun, started to tune his strings. A few light notes drifted out—lazy, golden, slow Delta blues—but his eyes kept flicking up toward the fig tree, where Pearline sat.

Amelia leaned close to her and whispered, teasing, “You alright?”

Pearline swallowed, still looking toward him, “I… don’t know. Somethin’ about him.”

Amelia smiled knowingly, “He got a voice that sound like he born prayin’ and sinnin’ at the same time.”

Pearline laughed, her nerves cracking just a little.

As Sammie plucked the first full phrase of a song—soft, aching, beautiful—Pearline glanced at Amelia, then back at him.

Their eyes locked across the garden.

And just like that, the air changed.

Pearline sipped the last of her tea and tucked her legs beneath her, eyes still drifting toward Sammie like her body hadn’t yet caught up with her thoughts.

“He…always look that good?” she asked softly, like a secret.

Amelia smiled over her biscuit, “Mmhm. He just don’t always know it. That boy been blessed and don’t even realize it’s spillin’ out his skin.”

Pearline glanced down at her lap, “It’s more than just looks. Somethin’ about him feel…warm. Like the kind of warm that sits in your chest. Like…I done seen him in a dream or somethin’, and now I’m tryin’ to remember why.”

Amelia looked at her gently, “Maybe you already knew him. Somewhere deeper than this.”

Pearline turned to her, eyes soft, curious, “You believe in that?”

Amelia nodded, sun catching the gold flecks in her eyes.

“More than I believe in almost anything.”

Before Pearline could reply, the side gate swung open with a creak and the low thud of boots hit the garden path.

Two shadows moved through the bright green of the garden.

Smoke was first—shirtless beneath a white tank, the fabric clinging damp to his chest and back. His shoulders rolled with slow power, arms thick and corded with muscle, glistening slightly from the sun. A pair of worn canvas work pants rode low on his hips, and his gaze was shaded by the tilt of his head.

Stack followed behind, relaxed in a deep grey vest with no undershirt, the dark fabric clinging to his chest. His hair was a little tousled, a lazy grin already in place. They each carried tools—Smoke a hammer and handsaw, Stack a roll of tar paper and nails.

They looked like they stepped out of heat and into heaven.

Amelia shifted slightly on the blanket, her breath hitching at the sight of them. She felt them before they even looked her way.

Stack’s eyes found her first.

And froze.

Amelia was seated with her back long and straight, skin glowing golden-brown from the sun, her legs tucked to the side beneath her thin, pale blue dress—the kind that caught every curve like it had been sewn for her alone. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun at the crown of her head, but loose curls had escaped, framing her face like wild vines. Her lips were glossy with the balm Annie had made her—sweet almond and clove oil—and her eyes were heavy-lidded with summer ease.

She looked like summer seduction, like a honey trap wrapped in silk and sunlight.

Stack’s throat worked as he tried not to stare.

Smoke’s eyes flicked from Pearline to Sammie to the women on the blanket. His jaw twitched.

Then he turned toward the shed.

“Sammie.”

The music stopped mid-note.

“Yeah, Smoke?”

“Time to put that down. Annie said this roof’s been bad since we left.”

Sammie cleared his throat, stood, and slung the guitar behind his back, “Right. Yes, sir.”

Stack chuckled under his breath, nudging Sammie with his elbow as they passed him on the way toward the old tin-roofed shed leaning near the back fence.

“You gettin’ soft, preacher boy. Gotta work first, flirt later.”

“I wasn’t—” Sammie started, but Stack was already grinning.

Amelia caught Stack’s glance as he passed. He slowed just a hair.

“Afternoon, ladies,” he said, voice thick and slick like sweet tea over ice.

Pearline flushed.

Amelia smiled, “Afternoon.”

Smoke didn’t say much. He just dipped his head once in greeting as he passed, but his eyes lingered on Amelia for a fraction too long.

He said nothing.

But his look said everything.

She watched them move—shoulders broad, hands already working, power in every step—and for a moment, the whole garden felt like a stage set for something ancient. Men building. Women blooming. Desire thick in the air like pollen.

And behind them, the shed stood waiting—its door half-hinged, shadowed inside, filled with tools and secrets.

The garden had quieted again, but the stillness between Amelia and Pearline wasn’t empty—it was thick. Pearline sat with her knees drawn up beneath her dress, fingers plucking absently at the hem, lips parted slightly like she was chewing on something she hadn’t decided to say.

Finally, she exhaled.

“Is it always like this?”

Amelia tilted her head, “Like what?”

Pearline glanced toward the shed, where Sammie was now hammering nails into the roof alongside Stack.

“When somebody sees you…really sees you. Like you ain’t got to say nothin’, and they still feel it?”

Amelia’s smile faded into something softer.

“Not always. Not often. But when it happens…” she reached over, brushing a stray curl from Pearline’s cheek, “it don’t ever leave you.”

Pearline nodded, breath catching.

“I felt like… like he reached back into me. Into some old part I forgot about. And for a second, I wasn’t scared of bein’ strange no more.”

Amelia stilled.

She felt it again—that hum.

That strange, shimmering pull that Pearline carried just beneath her skin. Sitting next to her felt like sitting too close to a live wire wrapped in silk. It wasn’t loud or flashing, but it was present. A vibration. A frequency. Familiar. Fae.

Her fingers tingled where they’d touched Pearline’s cheek.

She looked at her friend—not just at her, but into her—and felt her own magic whisper

She don’t what she is yet…but she’s blooming.

Pearline leaned into her slightly without realizing it, their arms brushing.

A pulse passed between them.

Pearline didn’t react.

But Amelia felt it. Like the air thickened. Like the garden leaned in closer. Her breath caught, and for a moment, she wondered what might happen if they were alone. If she kissed her. If she called to her in the old tongue.

But Pearline just smiled and looked away, unaware.

“I’m glad you invited me,” she said.

“I’m glad you came.”

Meanwhile, the air in the shed was thick with sawdust and heat. Smoke had stripped off his tank top, sweat dripping down the hard lines of his back as he hammered down a warped board in the roof frame. His muscles flexed with every strike, jaw tight.

Stack leaned against the inner wall, shirt still off, tying down a fresh roll of roofing paper, glancing out the open slats toward the garden.

He grinned faintly, “Sammie still tryin’ to pretend he wasn’t lookin’. But he damn near tripped when Pearline smiled at him.”

Smoke grunted, “He better keep his focus.”

“Mm.” Stack pressed the back of his wrist to his forehead, wiping sweat, “You seen Amelia today?”

Smoke didn’t answer right away. He drove in another nail, hard. The crack of it echoed through the shed.

Stack didn’t need his brother to speak. He saw the way Smoke’s eyes had lingered. The slow flare of his nostrils. The heat rolling off his skin that had nothing to do with the sun.

“She look like she stepped out the middle of a summer storm,” Stack said. “That dress? That mouth? She shinin’ like the garden built itself just to hold her.”

Smoke turned slightly, leaning the hammer against the wall. His chest heaved as he wiped sweat from his brow.

“She dangerous,” he muttered, “Too damn much.”

Stack’s grin deepened.

“And yet here we are. Sweatin’ in a shed while she got the whole garden leanin’ toward her.”

They both fell quiet for a moment, the sounds of nails and rhythm echoing over the soft drift of Sammie’s guitar, now laying forgotten beside the porch.

Outside, Amelia laughed.

Smoke’s head turned sharply toward the sound.

Stack didn’t miss it.

He just smiled, laid-back and low, voice like smoke curling in the dark, “She got us both actin’ like fools.”

Back in the garden, Amelia reached to brush a breadcrumb from Pearline’s lap, and their fingers touched—just briefly.

But the way Pearline looked at her when it happened…

Their eyes locked. Neither of them spoke. The air held still.

There was a soft hum between them again—like the garden itself was holding its breath.

Pearline leaned in, just a little. Her knee brushed against Amelia’s thigh.

And Amelia—without meaning to—leaned back.

The distance between them was no more than a breath.

If Pearline kissed her in that moment, Amelia would’ve let her.

She could smell her—sweet jasmine oil, soft sweat, and something faintly metallic beneath her skin that called to her in that ancient, secret tongue.

Pearline’s lips parted, as if she might say something.

But behind them…

A loud hammering stopped. The garden fell silent.

Amelia blinked.

They both turned their heads.

Smoke, Stack, and Sammie stood just outside the shed now, watching them from the shade. The light caught the sweat on their skin, their broad frames backlit by afternoon sun. All three of them had stopped working.

Smoke stood with his arms crossed over his bare chest, tank top hanging from his back pocket. His eyes were fixed on Amelia—sharp, unreadable, burning like coals left under a lidded pot.

She felt it immediately.

That heat. That pull.

His gaze crawled up her legs, past the soft cling of her dress, to the curve of her collarbone. Her skin flushed deeper. She looked away, pretending not to feel it, but the ache it left behind stayed.

Stack, on the other hand, didn’t even try to hide his smirk. He leaned against the frame of the shed, cocky and gleaming, arms loose, vest open. His gold tooth caught the light when he smiled.

“Well now,” he drawled, “Ain’t y’all lookin’ cozy out here. Garden must be sweeter than the pie.”

Pearline giggled behind her hand.

“Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on but shade and biscuits.” Ameila sassed.

Stack stepped forward, eyes on Amelia, “Then maybe I oughta come sit in that shade too. Ain’t fair for the flowers to be the only ones enjoyin’ all that sun on ya’ skin.”

Amelia rolled her eyes but couldn’t keep the smile from tugging her mouth, “You ain’t slick, Stack.”

He tilted his head, tongue licking his bottom lip. “Ain’t tryin’ to be. Just honest.”

Sammie stayed back, eyes flicking from Pearline to Amelia, unsure of whether to step forward or retreat. He looked like he wasn’t sure if he’d walked into a picnic or a spell.

Smoke said nothing.

But his gaze never left Amelia.

She could feel the weight of it, like a hand pressed gently to the small of her back. She adjusted her dress unconsciously, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin, every curve shaped by heat and cotton.

Pearline nudged her gently, whispering just loud enough for her to hear, “Your men look like they tryin’ to figure out who gon’ claim you first.”

Amelia choked on a laugh and elbowed her, “Shut up, girl.”

They both broke into giggles, turning their heads just enough to make the men guess what had been said.

Pearline raised her cup in salute, “Y’all can stop starin’. Ain’t no show here.”

Stack stepped back with a grin, “Coulda fooled me.”

Smoke finally moved—picking up a coil of rope from the grass and slinging it over his shoulder.

“Get back to work,” he muttered, low but firm.

Stack laughed, “Yessir, boss.”

Sammie picked up his hammer and gave one last look at Pearline—soft, sweet, like a man who’d just seen a miracle—before ducking back into the shade.

The sound of work resumed—faint hammering, low murmurs, the roll of gravel beneath boots.

But Amelia still felt it. Smoke’s eyes on her. Stack’s charm licking at her edges. And Pearline beside her, body radiating a light she didn’t even know she had. The garden was full of sweetness. But below the surface, something was ripening. And it wouldn’t stay quiet for long.

By the time Amelia stood and called the men over for lunch, the hammering had slowed to a lazy rhythm and sweat glistened across every broad chest in the yard. She carried the platter like it was something sacred—crispy fried chicken stacked high, buttered cornbread, sweet pickled onions, and cool slaw with specks of dill. The lemonade sat sweating in a thick glass pitcher, a halo of citrus hovering in the heat.

Smoke, Stack, and Sammie approached, stripping off gloves, wiping brows with the backs of their arms. The garden table had been pulled near the shade, and the scent of food curled around them like praise.

Amelia leaned slightly over to pour lemonade into tin cups, and Stack hummed low behind her.

“That dress keep doin’ the Lord’s work, princess,” he murmured, “If I die out here, bury me beneath this fig tree with a plate in one hand and your ass in the other.”

Amelia shot him a look over her shoulder. “You full of it.”

“I’d rather be full of you,” he said, grinning wide.

Pearline choked on her drink. Sammie covered his laugh with a cough.

Amelia rolled her eyes but couldn’t suppress her smile.

Stack caught her by the waist with one arm and tugged her gently onto his lap as he sank into the wooden chair. She landed with a little squeal, her body pressing against his chest, his hand splayed over her hip.

“Mmm,” he exhaled dramatically, tilting his head back. “That’s it. Done found religion.”

“Don’t start with me,” she said, but she didn’t move.

Smoke sat across from them at the head of the table, jaw tight, watching with a gaze that could cut granite. He didn’t speak. Just picked up his tin cup and drank slow, but Amelia felt his eyes like heat sliding up her thighs.

She glanced at him—just once—and their eyes locked.

That single second sucked all the sound from the garden. Her breath caught. His grip tightened around the cup. His nostrils flared slightly, jaw flexing hard enough to show his molars.

She knew that look. She felt it between her legs.

Smoke looked away first, but not before she saw the muscle in his thigh jump, his control fraying at the edges.

Sammie, oblivious, had pulled out his guitar again and sat cross-legged near Pearline on the blanket. His fingers strummed something soft—slow, swampy, with a gospel ache in the chord. Pearline leaned closer, her hand resting near his knee, her eyes half-lidded as the music wrapped around her like a shawl. She looked dazed. Entranced. Like she was listening with her whole soul.

“Where you learn to play like that?” she asked.

Sammie smiled slow, “Same place I learned to pray. From my daddy’s porch… and my mama’s ghost.”

Pearline blinked, quieted. They stayed like that—music and heat and hunger all around them.

After the meal, Amelia stood and stretched, “We’ll be inside,” she said, collecting cups.

Stack slapped her backside lightly as she passed. “Don’t go too far.”

Amelia gave him a look but let her fingers trail along his shoulder before slipping away with Pearline into the house.

The cool of the house wrapped around them like balm after the weight of the sun. Amelia set the empty pitcher in the sink, then led Pearline to her room. The light through the shutters was soft now, golden and thick with late afternoon peace.

Pearline sat on the bed, legs tucked beneath her, while Amelia rifled through the wooden box where Annie kept her hair products—shea butter, mango cream, castor oil, and a jar labeled “shine balm.”

“You ever had someone do your hair?” Pearline asked gently.

Amelia shook her head, “Not since my grandmère.”

Pearline smiled and patted the spot in front of her, “Come here.”

Amelia sat between her legs on the floor, heart hammering. Pearline began running her fingers gently through her curls, spritzing a little rosewater to bring them back to life, then smoothing the balm between her palms before defining each coil.

The touch was tender. Careful. Worshipful.

“You got hair like it was kissed by fire,” Pearline murmured, “Thick, but soft. Like it remember where it came from.”

Amelia’s breath caught. “And where’s that?”

Pearline didn’t answer. She just kept twisting curls.

Time folded in on itself.

They didn’t speak much after that. Just hands and hair. Breath and closeness. Then a knock at the doorframe.

It was Sammie.

“Pearline?” he asked gently, “If you ready, I can take you on home. Stack said I could borrow his automobile.”

Pearline stood, smoothing her dress. She turned to Amelia, brushing her thumb over her cheek.

“Thank you… for today.”

“You sure you wanna go?” Amelia asked, the words heavier than she meant them to be.

Pearline smiled, but her eyes said I don’t know.

Sammie waited at the door, looking shy but eager.

Pearline stepped out, and as they passed the porch, Stack gave Sammie a look—not threatening, just clear.

“Bring her back safe,” he said, “and bring my damn car back in one piece.”

“Yes sir,” Sammie said, with a little salute.

The screen door shut behind them.

And Amelia was left alone, lips still tingling from Pearline’s fingers, heart still beating to the rhythm of a song Sammie never finished playing.

The house had changed.

It wasn’t just the silence left behind after Pearline and Sammie drove off, or the way Annie’s absence curled in the corners like a breath held too long—it was something deeper. The walls felt stretched. The floorboards listened harder. Even the air felt warmer, as if her presence was taking up more space than it did before.

Am I stronger when she’s not here? Amelia wondered.

She stepped into the hallway barefoot, her curls now fully defined, swept to the side and cascading down her back like ink poured from a bottle. The balm Pearline had used caught the light, every coil shining with life. That same pale blue dress clung like it had been made from a wish—hugging her hips, draping over her breasts, slipping off one shoulder like it had grown tired of hiding her.

In the front, Smoke and Stack sat at the dining table with a half-played game of cards between them. An open bottle of white lightning sat beside a dented tin cup. Cigarette smoke curled in the air like ghosts.

They looked up as she entered.

Both men froze.

The cards slid from Stack’s fingers. Smoke stopped mid-drag, cigarette hovering just inches from his mouth. Neither said a word.

Amelia tilted her head, eyes soft with a smile, “Y’all look like you seen a ghost.”

Stack sat back in his chair and gave a low whistle, “If that’s what death look like, I’m ready.”

Smoke said nothing, but his eyes tracked her like prey—down her collarbone, the slick curve of her hip, the shine in her curls. His jaw clenched, and the cigarette sizzled softly between his fingers.

Amelia crossed the room and without asking, plucked Stack’s tin cup off the table.

“Careful now,” he warned, but she had already lifted it to her lips.

The liquor burned like fire—hot, rough, and wild. Her eyes widened, and she coughed hard, the taste ripping through her throat like molasses soaked in gunpowder.

Both men shot up from their chairs.

“Amelia!” Stack reached for her, hand firm on her back. “I told you—”

Smoke stepped forward too, but paused as Stack helped her. She waved them off between coughs, one tear sliding down her cheek as she sucked in air and laughed breathlessly.

“Y’all could’ve warned me it was brewed by the devil himself.”

Stack rubbed her back in slow circles, laughing, “Told you it was too strong, baby.”

Smoke stood a step back, watching, fists clenched. His eyes flicked between Stack’s hand and her shoulder.

Amelia caught it—felt it—and something twisted warm and dangerous in her stomach.

She straightened, licking her lips.

“Y’all playin’ spades?”

“Tryin’ to,” Stack muttered, pulling his chair back out, “But we lost track of what was what when you walked in here lookin’ like trouble wrapped in a ribbon.”

Amelia sat down in Annie’s empty chair.

That made it worse.

The absence was tangible now. The space Annie would’ve filled—laughing, rolling her eyes, checking the cards. Without her, the balance was off.

Amelia could feel it pulsing between the walls, under the floorboards, in Smoke’s pulse where he sat stiffly across from her. Her fae power felt closer to the skin now.

Hungrier. Thicker.

Like the boundary between herself and everything she touched had thinned.

Stack felt it too. He leaned back in his seat, watching her with an openness that made her chest ache.

Smoke lit another cigarette.

Stack broke the tension with a small sigh, “You think she’s alright out there?”

Smoke’s voice was low, “I know she can handle herself. That don’t mean I don’t worry.”

“She’s been doin’ this work longer than we been drinkin’,” Stack said gently.

“She’s alone,” Smoke snapped, then pulled back, “Ain’t no rootworker strong enough to fight what they don’t see comin’.”

Amelia reached across the table, resting her fingers lightly on Smoke’s wrist, “She’ll be alright,” she said, “She’s wrapped in protection. And she knew what was calling her.”

Smoke looked at her hand on him like it was glowing. Like it branded.

“You sure about that?” he asked.

She nodded slowly, sensing how tight he was under her touch, “I can feel it. In here.” She placed her other hand on her chest.

Something in Smoke’s expression broke just a little. He looked at her like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pull away or pull her into his lap and bury his face in her neck.

Stack saw it all and leaned back with a grin, folding his arms, “Lord. You gon’ burn both of us down before Annie even get back.”

Amelia smiled, curling her fingers around the tin cup again, “Then maybe y’all oughta stay out the kitchen.”

But none of them moved.

And in the stillness that followed, even the house held its breath—watching, waiting, glowing faintly with power that no one had named.

Yet.

After a while, Amelia left to her room. The screen door swung open again, loose on the hinge, and Smoke looked up from his seat at the table just as Sammie stepped inside—shirt half-tucked, collar wilted, hair not as groomed. He smelled faintly of honeysuckle and sweat. A scratch marked the side of his neck, half hidden beneath his collar.

“Returned ya’ car,” Sammie said, trying to sound easy, but his voice carried that post-confession thrum.

Stack stood from his chair, eyes narrowing like a brother who didn’t need to ask.

“You get her home safe?” he asked casually, though there was weight in his tone.

Sammie nodded, “Yes sir.”

Stack smirked. “Uh-huh. Let’s get you back ‘fore your daddy starts prayin’ circles ‘round your bed,” He grabbed his hat and gave Smoke a look, “You alright here?”

Smoke nodded, slow and silent. The muscles in his forearm tightened just slightly.

Then they were gone. The door shut behind them, and silence poured back into the house like molasses.

The quiet was too thick. Annie’s presence—her breath, her grounding voice, her laughter that used to curl around the edges of these rooms—was gone. In its place, something else had taken root.

Something softer. Something magical.

Smoke felt it the moment Amelia entered. She stepped lightly into the room, barefoot, curls freshly defined and glistening down her back like dark silk unraveling. She was wrapped in a linen towel—looking like sin—hugging her hips like it had memory. The fabric slipped lower in the front, showing some cleavage as she crossed the room. Her skin, caramel-kissed from the day’s sun, glowed like bronze smoothed by prayer. Her lips were slick with gloss, catching the low lamplight.

She didn’t have to say a word. Smoke looked up and forgot to breathe. It hit him low in the gut. That heat. That ache. A weight behind his zipper. The slow, dangerous hunger he thought he’d tamed. She walked past him and brushed his arm—casual, like a breeze—but her fingers left a tingle in his skin, like static after a lightning strike.

“You alright?” she asked, her voice soft as wet silk.

Smoke cleared his throat, “Feels… different in here.”

Amelia nodded. “I feel it too.”

He turned to her, watching the candlelight dance across her shoulder, “You feel stronger.”

Her lips curled, slow and knowing, “That a compliment?”

“It’s a warning,” he muttered.

She stepped closer, palm pressing gently against his forearm. Her touch was tender, but her eyes didn’t waver.

“You ain’t got to be scared of what you feel.”

Smoke blinked. But he didn’t pull away. Instead, Annie’s voice echoed in his head—low and loving, the last thing she whispered before she left:

Make sure she feels safe. Welcomed. Loved, if she needs it. You take care of her, Elijah. You hear me? Loved if she needs it.

The words clawed at his resolve. Amelia stepped back, her smile slow and velvet, “I’m gonna take a bath in the yard. That heat’s still sittin’ in my bones.”

Smoke swallowed hard, “You gon’ on and do that.”

Amelia turned and walked away, curls bouncing down her back, hips swaying in that dress like they were speaking in tongues. The screen door closed behind her and Smoke was left alone in the quiet, his chest rising too fast and fists clenched. He had his eyes already turning toward her bedroom. Ameila was too busy cleansing to focus. Smoke stood outside her bedroom door for a moment, hand on the knob.

Just breathing.

The house was dead quiet. No movement. No witness. He turned the handle and stepped inside. The air was thick with her—rosewater, sun-warmed skin, lemon balm, and something beneath it all that felt… ancient. Like crushed clover and riverlight. Like the shimmer that lives in the corners of your eye when you’re not sure if you’re awake or dreaming.

Her bed was half-made, quilt soft and rumpled. The pillow held the shape of her head. Her journal sat closed on the table beside a carved wooden comb. A few long strands of hair curled over its teeth.

Smoke ran his fingers across the wood. Then looked around.

He told himself he was here to find something. To understand her. To protect the house. But his eyes already knew what they were looking for. There, near the side of the bed, tucked halfway under the quilt—her bloomers.

White cotton. Thin. Wrinkled at the waistband. Still warm from wear.

His breath hitched.

He stepped closer.

Picked them up with two fingers first. Then slowly, gently, he cupped them in his hand. Soft. Still holding her shape. Faintly damp.

He brought them to his face and inhaled.

And everything else fell away.

Her scent flooded him—sweet, sharp, utterly female. Sweat and oil. Citrus and musk. And beneath it…that thing. That pulse. That shine he couldn’t name but craved like a man starved.

Smoke exhaled through his nose, lips parting.

“Goddamn…”

His hand tightened around the cotton. The bulge in his pants pressed heavy against the seam, straining. He was already hard. Aching. Embarrassed by how fast it had come. How natural.

“I just wanted to know more,” he whispered, not even convincing himself.

But he didn’t put them down.

Instead, he brought them to his nose again, eyes fluttering shut, moaning low in his throat as he breathed her in.

It wasn’t just desire. It was addiction.

He turned slowly, lowering to sit on the edge of her bed, the bloomers still clutched in one hand, his other sliding over the comforter she slept under.

“I can’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout you,” he muttered, voice low and cracked.

The room didn’t answer. But his body did. Hard. Heavy. Haunted. And outside, the bathwater rippled in the breeze, waiting for her.

Smoke didn’t mean to follow her.

Not with his feet.

But his body went before his mind could argue. Before his guilt could crawl back up and remind him whose house this was. The path along the side of the house was damp with summer dew, grass brushing his ankles as he moved slow. Careful. Silent.

The iron tub sat just past her open window, framed by the back porch columns and a row of yellowing daisies. The moon poured down over her skin like a spotlight drawn only for her.

Amelia.

Her back was to him—slick and golden under the silver light, curls piled high on her head, a few tendrils clinging to the back of her neck where the steam rose and kissed her skin. Water shimmered around her, moving in slow ripples where she’d shifted her thighs apart. Her knees peaked just above the surface, rounded and bare. Her breasts floated partially submerged, the slope of one visible as she reached lazily to the side, pouring a little water over her shoulder with a tin pail.

She moved like she had nowhere to be.

Like the night belonged to her.

And Smoke?

Smoke stopped breathing.

His hand slid into his pocket, fingers tightening around the fabric he hadn’t returned—her bloomers. The same soft cotton still damp with her heat. Her scent still clung to his fingers. To his mustache. He’d buried his face in them too long, too deep, and now her essence haunted every inhale. He reached up, rubbed two fingers across his upper lip. The scent hit him again—warm, salted sweetness. Her.

He groaned low in his throat.

His trousers were already too tight. His arousal pressed hard against the fabric, straining with each slow breath. From where he stood watching, Amelia shifted again. She lifted one leg, bare and glistening, and began to smooth soap over her skin in slow, languid circles. Her palm moved from ankle to thigh, over the full curve of her hip. Her head tilted back. Lips parted. She looked like something out of a fever dream.

Smoke pressed his palm to the wood siding of the house, breathing harder now. His other hand dropped lower. He opened his trousers.

And then he touched himself.

The first stroke made him shudder—deep and full, slow at first. His hand matched her movements. As she glided a sponge across her chest, he watched her breast rise from the water and disappear again.

He licked his lips, “Jesus,” he whispered.

But there was no saving here. No prayer. Just sweat, breath, and shame-laced hunger.

She turned slightly, a curl escaping its pin and clinging to the nape of her neck. Her profile caught the light—the gentle part of her lips, the soft bow, the tip of her nose catching silver. Her lashes fluttered.

She was moaning.

Not loud. Not performative. Just a hum. A sigh. Like the water pleased her. Like her own hands pleased her. Her moans—quiet and barely audible through the glass—were worse than sin. They were invitation.

Her lips curved into a smile.

A knowing one.

Smoke’s hand stilled.

For a split second, he couldn’t breathe.

He pulled back from the edge, panting, hand still on himself, her bloomers clenched in the other.

Did she know? Was she letting him watch? Or was she casting something without even trying?

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but her scent was still there. Embedded in his skin. Flooding his chest.

Owning him.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop.

Not tomorrow. Not ever.

He stepped back from the side of the house like a man walking out of a fever dream—slow, breath caught in his chest, harder than he’d ever admit, and ashamed of nothing except that it felt good. Too good. His legs felt heavy, his fingers tingling from gripping the wood too tight. His lip still tingled from where her scent lingered in his mustache, and his jaw clenched at the memory of it. Inside, the house was still.

Too still.

The wooden floor creaked beneath his boots like it recognized the shift in him. Smoke moved through the front in silence, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. His chest rose and fell too fast. His tank top clung damp to his spine, sweat born not of heat but of restraint worn raw.

He smelled like her.

It wasn’t just her bloomers still tucked in his pocket—it was the way the scent of her had crawled into his skin. Into the corners of his mouth. Into the lines of his palms. She was under his nails and in his breath. He sank into the worn leather chair by the hearth, spreading his knees wide, forearms resting on his thighs, head bowed.

The quiet pressed on him. It didn’t feel like a house anymore.

Not a home.

It felt like something watching him back.

His eyes flicked to the walls. The altar shelf. The herbs Annie had left hanging in the corner, bundled and dried. Smoke had never paid much mind to those details before. But now? Now they felt like eyes.

Like Annie knew.

Like the house knew.

You take care of her, Elijah. You make sure she feels safe. Loved, if she needs it…

He dragged both hands over his face. His fingertips dug into his scalp, into his beard.

And wasn’t that the truth?

Amelia had stepped into this house quiet as a whisper, soft-spoken and sweet-eyed—and now she was everywhere. In his dreams. On his skin. Beneath his tongue.

He’d watched her bathe like a man possessed. He hadn’t looked away once. He hadn’t wanted to.

“This ain’t right…” Smoke whispered, his voice low and hoarse in the dim.

But it wasn’t just lust anymore. It was something blooming. Something taking root. Something deep and dark and glowing. He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes. He tried to picture Annie. Her scent. Her hands. Her voice. But all he could see was Amelia’s wet skin, and the way her lips had curved when she turned her face toward where he stood.

She knew I was watchin’.

He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek.

Still, his body reacted. Still, he pulsed between his legs. Still, her name hovered just behind his teeth.

Smoke fixed his pants when he’d heard footsteps.

He didn’t hear her at first. But he felt her. The shift in the air. The faint thrum behind his ribs.

And then he looked up.

Amelia stood in the hallway, fresh from her bath.

Her skin shimmered with water, the hair that had fallen from her bun damp and curling against her neck. She wore nothing but a thin linen towel, wrapped loose around her—too thin, too light. The curve of her hip showed when she stepped into the lamp’s low glow. So did the tops of her breasts. Her feet were bare. Her silence louder than thunder. She looked at him—soft, unreadable—then crossed the room slow.

Smoke didn’t move.

His pulse climbed into his throat.

She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could see the droplets still clinging to her collarbone. She bent down—graceful, slow, deliberate—and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Not a peck. Not heat.

Just a promise.

Soft. Lingering.

When she pulled back, she whispered, “do you need anything?”

Her voice was silk dragged over coals.

“Your smoke pipe? Something strong to drink?”

Then her eyes drifted down.

To his lap.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

Smoke’s jaw locked.

Her scent hit him next—fresh soap, rosewater, and that same impossible sweetness that he’d started chasing through the house like a man gone mad. It was in the walls. In the sheets. On his hands. Her eyes found his again—wide, brown, but tonight the color shifted. Gold shimmered at the edges. Not bright. Not glowing.

But flickering.

Like a lantern had been lit behind her gaze.

Goddamn, he thought.

His throat worked around the dryness.

He swallowed hard, then forced out, “Nah, I’m good, darlin’.”

His voice cracked slightly.

He stood fast—too fast—and stepped past her. Didn’t touch her.

Didn’t trust himself to.

He could feel the heat she radiated against his side as he moved. In his pocket, the folded bloomers burned against his leg. He hadn’t returned them yet. Hadn’t been able to. He slipped into his room without looking back and closed the door. Smoke leaned against it like it might stop the ache inside him from spreading. Her kiss still warmed the corner of his mouth — light, innocent, but searing.

It hadn’t even been a real kiss. But now?

He could taste her.

That scent… Lord, that scent.

It was in his clothes. His hands. The folds of the goddamn bloomers still in his pocket. He pulled them out, slow, holding them in one hand. Soft white cotton. Slightly damp from where he’d clutched them too long earlier.

He brought them to his face.

And breathed.

Long. Deep. Full.

The scent of her—earthy, sweet, like warm skin and clean linen and something deeper, wilder—filled his lungs like a drug.

“Shit,” he muttered, voice already breaking, “I can’t…”

But he could.

And he would.

He sat on the edge of the bed, unbuckled his belt slow, as if trying to justify it to himself with every quiet motion. His hand found the bulge in his pants, already stiff and twitching. Smoke pressed the fabric of her bloomers to his face again, grinding his teeth as his other hand slipped under his waistband. The first touch of his palm to his length made his whole body shudder.

“Goddamn you, girl,” Smoke whispered, “What the fuck are you doin’ to me?”

Smoke released his big dick and it sat heavy in his hand and pulsating with need. He stroked slow at first, his eyes shut tight, the scent of her all over him. Smoke pictured her wet hair clinging to her neck. That towel sliding off her hips, inch by inch Her eyes shimmering gold when she looked at him. That sweet, wicked glance toward his lap

You need anything?

“Yeah, baby, I need you.”

Smoke finally opened his eyes to stare down at his dick. He scrunched his face and dragged his bottom lip between his teeth, golds glinting from the glow of the lamp light. His balls sat tight and fat over the waistband of his boxers. His dick stood firm and solid without his hand holding him steady. If he squinted hard enough, he could see the veins in his dick contract.

Smoke’s breath caught.

His thick fingers wrapped around his girth and then he started pumping. He used his free hand to open Amelia’s bloomers, placing the crotch in his mouth to suck on while he fisted his dick. He’d never done such a taboo thing. Sucking on bloomers. Tasting the day and her discharge. It was so sinful. But the way his dick felt. The way his pre cum beaded at the tip and spilled over like lava from a volcano, it felt too good to stop.

He imagined pushing that towel aside, burying his face between her thighs like he had in his dreams. He imagined her moaning for him again, trembling under his mouth, gasping into Annie’s lips like she’d done the other night.

His hand moved faster now.

The scent of her filled the room.

His back arched. Jaw clenched.

“Fuckkkk—Amelia—”

Smoke came hard, breath stolen from his chest, thighs shaking, cum shooting from his slit heavy and messily. He groaned into her bloomers, muffling the sound like it was something to be ashamed of. He stayed still for a long time. Chest heaving. Eyes glazed. Her name still caught in his throat.

When he finally stood, he looked at himself in the mirror — sweat-damp, wild-eyed, undone.

He folded the bloomers.

Didn’t return them.

He slid them back into the drawer of his nightstand, like a secret. Smoke cleaned himself off and undressed, skin on fire and dick twitching. It wanted to be fed pussy. Amelia’s pussy. He stared down at his long dick with it’s impressive girth and shook his head.

And when he lay down?

He didn’t sleep. He just stared at the ceiling, waiting for morning.

Dick bobbing beneath the quilt.

Waiting for her scent to come back through the hallway again.

Stack didn’t head straight home after leaving Sammie.

He meant to.

But then he saw Delta Slim and a few of the boys posted up outside Messenger’s Juke—passing a jar of white lightning and laughing loud enough to raise the dead. The kind of night howl you can hear from two fields over.

He pulled in without thinking.

Vest unbuttoned. Hat low. That grin that always got him in trouble already spreading.

“Y’all still breathin’?” he called as he stepped out, “Ain’t burned this place down yet?”

They welcomed him like kin.

He took a swig from the jar, let the heat settle behind his eyes.

Talked slick, too.

Talked about the new juke he and Smoke were building out on the east end — how it was gonna have real sound, real women, and no flatfoot standing guard at the door.

“Gon’ outshine this place so bad,” he slurred with a chuckle, “Messenger’ll be sellin’ moon pies out the back just to keep up.”

They roared with laughter.

Stack threw dice for a while, made a few dollars. Lost twice that.

But when the shine got heavy on his tongue and the night started spinning slow, he remembered her.

Amelia.

He made it back to Annie’s house with his vest swinging open and his slacks riding low on his hips. His collar was damp with sweat, and his hands smelled like tobacco and dice dust.

Inside, the house was quiet. Still. The lights were dim. A record had run out hours ago. He made his way down the hall—slow, loose—expecting to find her curled up in bed, silk-slick and waiting.

“Mm,” he muttered, licking his lips, “My little princess oughta be laid out with that glow I like. Legs open. Waitin’ for me to come home and do her right.”

He pushed open the door to her room, already smirking.

Empty.

He groaned. Low. Frustrated.

“Now where the hell…?”

He stepped back out, ran a hand through his hair.

Then he heard it.

Water.

A splash. Then a soft sound. A hum.

Not just any hum.

A song.

In a language he didn’t recognize—liquid, airy, and old.

“Aye li dan la limyè,

Santi mo kè, santi mo flanm

Tire ou vin, pa plenyen non,

Ou ka chayé difé an mwen.”

“Soufle pa soufle,

Tèt ou ka tonbé

Ant bra mwen,

Ou ka brile dousman…”

You in the light,

Feel my heart, feel my flame

Come closer, don’t complain,

You carry my fire now.

Breathe, don’t breathe,

Your head will fall

Into my arms,

Where you’ll burn slowly…

Stack moved through the back of the house, past Annie’s root garden, across the soft grass that led toward the shack.

And there, behind the trees…the pond glistened silver.

He stopped.

Caught his breath.

She was there.

Amelia sat at the edge of the pond, legs folded to one side, toes brushing the surface. She wore a thin, ivory-colored slip that clung in the wrong places—loose at one shoulder, sliding down her arm. Her curls hung long and defined, damp from the humidity, swaying down her back. The gold anklet he gave her—the one with the tiny A charm—caught the moonlight and flashed like flame.

She was singing. Soft. Rhythmic. It wasn’t English. Wasn’t French. It was older.

And the sound of it stirred the hair on Stack’s arms. She hummed the last line as the water stilled and the fireflies hovered around her. Her voice was a current, pulling the night into her chest. Stack watched her from behind the willow, stunned by the sound. It felt like the air bent toward her when she sang. Like even the pond was listening.

Fireflies hovered above her. Not random—drawn.

Hovering like they were listening.

And her skin?

She was glowing. Just a little. Just enough.

Like someone had kissed gold dust into her blood.

Stack leaned against a willow tree. He was Speechless for once. He watched her like she was a spell he couldn’t undo. His smirk faded. Replaced by something softer, deeper. Want, yes—but also wonder.

“I came home lookin’ for you,” he said finally, voice low, smooth, “Thought you’d be in bed. Maybe dreamin’ about me, keepin’ my side warm.”

Amelia didn’t startle.

She turned her head slightly, voice still distant, dreamy.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Mm,” Stack stepped forward, eyes dragging down her silhouette, “Well damn, baby. You look like a ghost out here. A real pretty one.”

She didn’t answer. She kept humming for a moment. Then stopped.

He approached slowly, circling behind her. Sat beside her on the bank, shoulder barely touching hers. He stared at her. Stack Couldn’t stop.

“You out here singin’ to the water like it’s gon’ carry your secrets off.”

“Maybe it will,” she whispered.

He chuckled. Quietly. Not mocking.

“You somethin’ else,” he said, watching the way her curls shifted in the breeze, “And I don’t even care what,” He looked at her, eyes heavy, “All I know is…I came back wantin’ a taste of you. But now I’m sittin’ here feelin’ like I don’t deserve it.”

She turned to him nice and slow.

And when their eyes met, the pond stilled.

She didn’t have to look at him to know.

The scent of moonshine and licorice clung to Stack’s breath. It curled around her like the breeze, low and heady. It wasn’t harsh—just warm, like he’d come from laughter and bad bets, the kind of night that ends with pockets light and heart full.

But beneath it, she caught something else.

Need. Not rough, not greedy. Just…quiet.

He sat close, too close now. His thigh brushed hers. His hand settled in the grass between them, fingers flexing like they weren’t sure what to reach for.

She turned to him, and their eyes met.

Even in the low moonlight, she saw the gleam in his gaze—half-drunken, half-devoted.

“You been drinkin’,” she said gently, not as a scold, just fact.

“Yeah,” he admitted, breath soft against her cheek, “Took a few sips. Played some bones. Told a few lies.” He smiled slow, “But I ain’t drunk, baby. Not like that.”

His fingers lifted, brushed a damp curl off her shoulder.

“Only thing got me twisted right now is you.”

He leaned in.

Not fast—reverent.

His mouth found the side of her neck, warm and slow.

He kissed her there.

Once.

Then again, lips open, breath curling against her skin like heat rising from the water.

“You smell like gold,” he whispered, “Like fire wantin’ to be touched.”

She exhaled, slow. Let her eyes flutter closed. He kissed lower. Along her shoulder. Down to her collarbone.

“I came lookin’ for you ‘cause I missed you,” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep and shine, “But now I see you like this…and I feel like I’m dreamin’. And baby…I don’t wanna wake up.”

She turned toward him. Fully now. The thin strap of her slip slid off her shoulder without her touching it.

The anklet he gave her glittered at her ankle, the A catching moonlight every time she shifted.

“You really mean all that?” she asked, barely above a breath.

“More than I mean anything.”

His hands rose to her face. He cupped her cheek. Stack looked at her like she was something he never meant to find but couldn’t walk away from now.

“You just let me kiss you one more time, girl,” he said, “and I swear…I’ma remember it the rest of my life.”

Stack’s thumb brushed her jaw as his eyes drank her in. She looked like a fever dream under the moon—slip clinging to her skin, shoulder bare, curls cascading like a storm down her back. That little gold A glinted at her ankle every time she shifted. He didn’t speak again. He didn’t need to. Stack’s lips found hers—slow, sure, and hot. Not forceful. Not greedy.

Just…needing her.

Like he’d been carrying the kiss in his mouth for days and could finally let it out.

Amelia sighed into him.

Her hands rose to his chest, fingers tracing the edge of his open vest, skimming over the damp cotton of his undershirt. His heart thudded beneath it—fast and full. She pressed her mouth more firmly to his, and he groaned—just a little, like the kiss was breaking something loose inside him. His hand slid down to her thigh, fingers brushing where the fabric clung, then lifting it gently to touch the soft skin underneath.

“You always this soft?” he whispered against her lips, “Or is it just for me?”

“Just you,” she murmured, not even sure it was a lie.

He kissed her again.

Deeper now.

His tongue slid against hers, slow and coaxing, and she opened for him with a quiet gasp. The fireflies drifted closer. The pond stilled. The night held its breath. Her fae pulsed beneath her skin—not glowing bright, but enough to make the gold in her eyes catch fire. His hand moved up her thigh, trailing heat. His other hand slid around her waist, pulling her into his lap.

She felt the hardness of him beneath her now. Seated between her pussy lips. Throbbing and hot with a gluttony for her.

And still—he moved slow. Like he meant to memorize her. Like this was prayer, not passion.

“You feel that?” he murmured, voice hoarse. “That’s what you do to me, princess.”

She nodded, breath shaky.

“Say it,” he said, hand gripping her hip, “Say you want me.”

“I want you,” she whispered, lips brushing his.

And in that moment, every part of her meant it.

Stack lifted her in his arms like she weighed nothing. Her slip slid up her thighs, caught at her waist. She didn’t stop it. Didn’t stop him. Her breath was on his neck, her skin damp with heat. Ameila sucked on Stack’s neck greedily, then she trailed her tongue to his right ear. Stack double-cuffed her ass beneath her slip, happy to find her bare. He crossed the mossy stretch of grass and brought her to the old tree stump by the water—smooth and wide, hollowed by time. A perfect place to worship something wild.

He sat and pulled her into his lap, her knees on either side of him. He felt her warmth over his hips. Her glow kissing his chest. His hands slid up her thighs, gripped her waist, pulled her down so that her center pressed right against his growing hardness.

She gasped.

He groaned.

Their foreheads touched.

“I’m about to fuck you in this paradise, princess…claim that sweet little pussy,” he whispered, voice wrecked.

“You think it’s yours to claim, Elias?” she whispered back, a smile at the corners of her mouth.

He kissed her again—harder now.

Mouth open, tongue tangled with hers, his hands moving under her slip, gripping her bare ass, squeezing, lifting. Amelia rocked against him, slow and aching.

His dick twitched beneath her. She reached down, unbuckling his belt with hands that shook only slightly, sliding his slacks open, freeing him. Amelia took him in her hand, gasping at the heat of him. A hot rod in her delicate hand.

“Oh my goodness,” she murmured, eyes catching on him—long, thick, full of heat.

“You gon’ take this dick out here?” he asked, voice like gravel, “Like an animal?”

“You already one,” she whispered, guiding him to her.

Amelia raised her hips and pointed his tip at her wet entrance. Stack raised up as he slid inside her slow. So slow he had to grip the stump behind him to stop from losing himself right there.

Her body opened for him—hot, tight, velvet-soft—like she was built to hold him.

“Fuck—” he breathed against her throat, “You feel like a spell…”

She moaned, low and sweet, riding him with slow, rolling hips. Each motion pulled a sound from him— raw and real. His hands tangled in her curls, his mouth on her breast, his teeth scraping her nipple through the slip.

She gasped. Ground down harder. He met her thrust for thrust now—the tree stump creaking beneath them.

The pond rippled.

The fireflies circled faster.

Her glow bloomed.

That soft gold beneath her skin burst to the surface— not too bright, just enough to make her look otherworldly. He stared up at her, panting, sweating, shaking.

“You ain’t human,” he said, voice breaking, “But I don’t give a fuck.”

She cupped his face, “Then take me like you mean it.”

He did.

Stack bucked into her harder, rougher, the stump thudding under them, his mouth on her shoulder, her name breaking from his lips.

“Fuck me, Elias, get up in this pussy!”

Stack wrapped an arm around her waist, dipped his hips, and ducked up into her fast and steady. Stack stared up at her all puppy eyed with a bite of his bottom lip. He sat back on the stump, hands on her hips, watching them connect over and over and over.

“All that dick just sankin’ in that pussy…you was built to fuck on Stack, huh?”

“Yes!” Amelia released a sharp moan, “Yesssss…”

“Lean forward,” Stack popped Amelia on the rump, “Let’s go.”

She leaned in and Stack drilled up into her. It was sharp, speedy, ferocious. Amelia balled his vest up in her fists. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, mouth unhinged, moans trapped in her throat.

“Got me goin’ crazy…fuck you doin’? You gon’ make me kill some nigga for lookin’ at you…breathing ya’ air…Amelia…”

She opened her eyes to stare down at him.

Stack flipped her over, her back against the stump, hair splayed out. He dug into her with his back hunched and necklace with his dog tag swinging in her face.

“Ask daddy to make this pussy cum. Do it right fuckin’ now.” Stack barked out.

“Daddy! Please! Can I cum?”

Stack leaned down, opened his mouth, and flicked tongues with her, slick with drool that filled Amelia’s mouth. She felt her fae glow brighter.

“You so…so nasty…” she moaned out.

Stack sucked on her nipples, pausing to savor. She ran her hand over his slick hair. Stack pulled out and got down to eat her. Her decorated ankle draped over his shoulder. She jolted with each suck and lick. Wherever she squirmed, Stack was right there. He made her button swollen and sensitive with his tongue saliva-slick before sucking on it.

“Unhhhnnn…”

Her eyes glowed and her thighs trembled.

“Fuck,” Stack resurfaced, face glistening, “Shit taste so damn good,” he licked again and groaned, “Gon’ make me lose my tongue in this shit…”

Amelia felt herself getting ready to climax. Stack did too. He focused his slurping over her entrance and twirled his tongue in it.

“Open that pussy up,” Stack popped Amelia on the side of her ass, “Stop fighting it, baby…”

Amelia released a lengthy moan. Her body quaked with her release. Stack didn’t wait for her to calm down. He was back in it like he never left. There was more lubrication. More slip. Like he was plunging into a body of water. Balls covered in it, slapping her with each deep stroke.

“Melia…baby…you ‘bout to make daddy cum...”

That shook her. He’d never cum inside her.

“Stack—”

He shut her up with deep strokes she could feel in her belly.

“I’m nutting…”

Amelia whimpered.

She came first—glowing gold, moaning loud, clawing at his chest. He came right after, gasping, cursing, burying his face in her neck as he pulled out, emptying all over her. He almost didn’t pull out.

And when they stilled, breath tangled, hearts pounding?

He held her tight in his lap.

Afraid to let go.

Regretting not filling her up.

Wanting to do it again so he could.

Amelia woke slow.

Her body ached. Not sharply, not painfully, but deep in her hips, her thighs, the backs of her knees. The kind of ache you don’t forget for a while.

Her lips still tingled.

So did the place behind her ear where Stack had kissed her and whispered he’d never felt anything like it.

She reached for him without thinking.

But the bed was cool.

He was gone.

She sat up slowly, slipped her legs over the edge of the bed, and took a deep breath.

The sunlight sliced through the curtain in soft gold slats.

She pressed her palm to her belly.

Closed her eyes.

Still full of him.

Still glowing.

She bathed quick—cool water, a touch of rose oil, a prayer under her breath to keep her skin steady, her magic still.

Then she dressed.

Something light. Flowy. Pretty—without looking like she tried too hard. Soft yellow cotton. Bare shoulders. A locket at her throat. Her curls were loose, still damp, falling around her cheeks.

She stepped into the kitchen with ballerina flats on her feet. Smoke sat at the table, back to the window, coffee in hand. The steam curled around his knuckles like a ghost.

He didn’t look up at first.

Didn’t need to.

He felt her.

Like he always did.

Amelia moved to the counter and opened the cabinet slow.

“You eaten yet?” she asked softly, without turning.

He shook his head once, “Just coffee.”

His voice was low. Rough. Barely there.

The silence after stretched long.

Thick with tension.

She could feel him looking at her now. Dragging his eyes down her back. Across her legs. She kept her face toward the shelf, fingers wrapped tight around the edge.

He knows.

He don’t know everything, but he knows something.

Smoke took another sip before setting the cup down slow. He watched the way her hips moved beneath the cotton. The way her skin glowed just faintly in the light.

She had Stack last night.

She’s still sore from it.

She’s still full of it.

He swallowed.

The coffee was bitter now.

“Shop openin’ today?” he asked finally.

“Mm-hm,” she nodded, keeping her voice light. “Got to mop and sweep, maybe burn a little cedar if the air stays heavy.”

“I’ll come with you,” Smoke said suddenly.

Amelia glanced over her shoulder.

“You don’t have to. I got it.”

“Didn’t ask if you got it,” he said, “Said I’m comin’.”

He stood, moved into the kitchen, and rinsed out his mug he set it in the sink with slow care. But he didn’t leave. Smoke lingered real close. Too close. Amelia’s hand brushed the counter, knuckles tightening slightly.

“Did…did Stack go back home?” she asked, casual as possible.

Smoke’s jaw ticked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Gone ‘fore I even got up. Most likely to change into fresh clothes after last night.”

He turned to face her.

Arms crossed. Voice low.

“Why you askin’? Your bed miss him?”

Amelia looked at him sharply.

Saw it then—the flicker in his eyes. The edge in his smile.

A slow, creeping jealousy that he didn’t name but couldn’t hide.

She tilted her head, her own lips curling into a sly, knowing smile.

That fae was biting back.

“Maybe it did,” she said, “Why? You missin’ it too?”

That earned her a scoff and a slow shake of his head.

But his eyes never left her face.

Or her body.

She moved to the stove and cracked four eggs into a skillet. The sizzle filled the room like a warning.

“You want breakfast or you just gonna stand there glarin’?”

Smoke walked back to the dining table and pulled the chair back out.

Sat down, elbows on the table, his gaze heavy on her back.

“Yeah. I’ll eat,” he finally spoke.

After cooking, Amelia brought him a plate—eggs, grits, a biscuit she’d reheated from yesterday, setting it down without fanfare. Smoke immediately tucked in, chewing his food like a starving man.

“You ain’t said thank you,” she muttered.

He swallowed his grits before licking his lips slow, “Didn’t know if it was meant to be a gift or a guilt offering,” he replied, eyes steady.

“Depends on how good it tastes.”

She grabbed a rag, turned toward the sink, and let her gaze trail over his bare chest—the rise of muscle, the ink on his shoulder, the faint shimmer of sweat still clinging to his collarbone.

She didn’t hide it.

But when he noticed, he smirked.

“You gon’ wash those dishes or just stare at me?” he asked, voice low and rough.

“You like being looked at,” she said, turning back with her smile tight, “Don’t play coy now.”

She washed the plate she used for cooking, slowly. The room felt smaller. Hotter.

“I’ll meet you at the shop,” she said once the last glass was set aside, “Let me open up, light the candles first.”

“I’ll be there,” Smoke said, pushing back from the table, “Soon as I throw some clothes on.”

She grabbed her satchel and her keys. Took one more glance at him—still shirtless, still watching her. He looked like trouble with too much memory in his eyes.

She didn’t say goodbye.

She just opened the door and stepped out into the sun.

The shop smelled like cedar and beeswax, smoke and lemon balm. Amelia moved slowly between the shelves, fingers trailing over labeled jars: mugwort, valerian, graveyard dirt. A blue floor wash cooled the worn floorboards beneath her bare feet. She’d opened the shutters wide to let in the light.

It was peaceful. Mostly.

Except for the way Smoke kept drifting in and out of the doorway—flannel shirt open and jeans low, a trail of sweat glistening down his torso.

He didn’t say much. He fed the chickens, tossed corn, slopped water for the goats and muttered under his breath about the heat. But every time he passed the open shop door, he looked in, and every time he looked in, he watched her. Watched the way her hips moved when she reached for bundles of sage. Watched the curve of her thighs under her dress when she bent to sweep salt from the corners.

She acted like she didn’t notice.

But she did.

She was lighting the last of the altar candles when he stepped into the doorway again, arms dusted with hay, hat pulled low.

“You doin’ alright in here?” he asked, voice low and thick with heat.

“Makin’ it,” she replied without turning.

“You hummin’ earlier.”

She didn’t answer.

He lingered longer that time, leaning in the doorway, one arm braced overhead, eyes on the low dip of her back as she knelt to tuck a small offering beneath the table.

“What’s that one for?” he asked.

“Protection,” she said softly, “In case anyone comes round who don’t mean well.”

She finally looked at him.

Eyes unreadable. Knowing.

“That mean me?”

“You tell me,” she said.

By midday, the shop was quiet again.

Smoke had disappeared somewhere behind the trees, and Amelia wiped her hands on a cloth and headed back toward the house to make lunch.

She passed the chickens. The goats. The porch.

But no sign of him.

Inside, the house was cool and dim. The front room empty.

She moved toward the kitchen…but something stopped her.

A sound.

Soft. A drawer closing.

Her room.

She stepped quietly to the door, pushed it open.

Smoke stood at her dresser.

One hand still on the handle, the other holding something pale and folded—her bloomers.

He turned, startled but not guilty.

He didn’t hide them.

Didn’t move.

Their eyes met.

Her breath caught.

Heat bloomed between them.

“I just came to put ‘em back,” he said, voice low.

“You already had your nose in ‘em,” she replied, not unkind, “Why return ’em now?”

Smoke blinked.

Something shifted in his chest.

A flicker of shame.

Then something darker.

Want.

“You mad?” he asked.

She took a step forward.

“No,” Another step, “I’m curious.”

He swallowed hard.

“’Bout what?”

She moved closer. Slow.

He could smell her now.

Soap. Skin. That sweet, unplaceable scent that made him hard in his sleep.

“’Bout what you was gonna do after.”

He didn’t answer.

He just watched her.

She reached out, took the bloomers from his hand, and let them fall to the floor between them.

Then she touched his chest.

Slow. Firm. Familiar.

“Was you thinkin’ about me when you did it?” she asked, voice silk-wrapped flame.

He nodded once.

“Every time.”

She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. She just stepped in close until her chest brushed his bare skin, until she could feel the tension humming beneath the muscle in his arms. Her eyes burned gold around the edges now —not bright, not glowing, but alive. She looked up at him through thick lashes, voice honey-slow:

“You like how I smell, don’t you?”

Smoke’s throat bobbed. His jaw flexed.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, “I do.”

Her hand slid from his chest to the back of his neck, fingernails dragging gently along the skin there.

“What part you like the most?” she whispered, tilting her head innocently and batting her lashes up at him, “My sheets? My bloomers? The part between my thighs?”

He groaned, low and guttural—a sound of desire and surrender.

Then her tone shifted. Just a shade sharper. Still soft, but with teeth.

“Annie likes how I smell too…Stack can’t get enough…So tell me…”

She leaned up, lips brushing the shell of his ear.

“You want it ’cause they had it…Or because you can’t stop dreamin’ about bein’ next?”

Smoke’s hand clenched at his side. His breath hitched.

She pulled back just enough to look him in the eye—to make sure he couldn’t look away.

“You can’t stand it, can you?” she whispered, “Knowin’ I left that bed smellin’ like him.”

“Amelia…” he warned, voice rough. Tense. Torn.

“And you still wanted me.”

Her hand slid between them now—slow—dragging her palm down the hard ridge rising beneath his waistband.

“You want me now.”

He did. God help him, he did. He was already rock hard, breath shaking, skin hot under her touch.

“Say it,” she whispered, “Tell me you want my scent on your fingers, on your tongue—everywhere.”

He grabbed her wrist suddenly—not rough, but firm.

“You need to stop talkin’ like that unless you ready to be fucked against this damn dresser.”

She smiled.

Slow.

Licked her bottom lip.

“Then do it.”

Amelia’s wrist was still in his grip, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned in closer, on her tip toes, her mouth just shy of brushing his. Her voice dropped to something syrupy, reckless, and dark with challenge.

“You gon’ keep pretendin’ you ain’t hard for me every time I breathe?”

She pulled one strap of her dress down with her free hand, then the other, letting the fabric fall low, exposing the soft swell of her breasts—warm and flushed from heat and hunger.

Smoke’s eyes dropped. His grip tightened.

“Annie told you to take care of me while she was gone,” Amelia whispered, “Said if I needed anything…”—she trailed her fingers over his chest—“you was the one to give it.”

She leaned closer, lips grazing his ear.

“Well I need you now, Big Smoke. And I’m tired of you fightin’ it.”

He exhaled hard. A curse. A prayer. A warning.

But she wasn’t done.

She slipped her dress lower, letting it fall in a pool at her ankles, leaving her bare beneath the light, her skin glowing like fire kissed with sugar. Her nipples were hard. Her thighs pressed. Her scent thickened the air between them.

“You didn’t have no problem fuckin’ me in Mound Bayou,” she said softly, taunting, “Bent me over that hotel bed and filled me with your thickness. Made me cry into Annie’s neck while you came so much, filling my mouth…fuckin’ me for hours.”

Smoke growled.

A low, broken sound from somewhere in his chest.

“Don’t you remember?” she whispered, “Don’t you wanna do it again?”

She stepped closer, brushing her bare body against him, her voice all sugar and sin.

“I need it again, Smoke. I need you again. Not the man pretendin’ to be noble. I need the one who made my knees shake last time.”

“You need to stop—” he hissed, jaw tight.

“No,” she snapped, eyes glowing now. “You need to stop actin’ like you don’t feel what I feel.”

She reached down and pressed her palm against his dickthrough the waistband of his jeans.

“You so damn hard for me, I can feel your pulse. You gon’ let it go to waste?”

Smoke let go of her wrist.

“I need Big Smoke. The one that knows how to fuck, not just babysit.”

Smoke grabbed her by the hips.

Lifted her like she weighed nothing and set her on top of the dresser, wood creaking beneath her bare thighs.

His eyes were wild now—full of guilt, lust, and the ache.

“You gonna fuck me like you did before? Right here? Against this dresser? You gon’ give it to me again—thick, hard, deep?”

“Amelia…” he warned, voice raw. “Don’t start nothin’ you can’t finish.”

“I can take it,” she whispered, rubbing herself against him now, bare and slick, “Took it before, remember? Took every inch of you. Gave you all my moans. All my mess.”

She looked him dead in the eye, voice dropping.

“You gon’ let me ride that dick like I did last time? Make you moan in my mouth and beg me not to stop?”

That was it.

Smoke snapped.

That last line broke him.

“You gon’ let me ride that dick like I did last time?Make you moan in my mouth and beg me not to stop?”

No more warnings. No more hesitation.

Smoke grabbed her by the hips, spun her around, and bent her over the dresser so fast her palms hit the wood with a gasp.

“You want Big Smoke?” he growled, chest pressed to her back, “You gon’ get every fuckin’ inch.”

She moaned, but it turned into a breathy whimper as he kicked her legs wider. His hand slid between her thighs, felt how ready she was—hot, slick, soaked.

“Goddamn, baby,” he muttered, lining himself up behind her, “You already dripping. You been waitin’ on this.”

“I told you,” she breathed, “I need it.”

He shoved his jeans and boxers down just enough and slammed into her in one smooth thrust. Amelia cried out—high and sharp—her hands gripping the edge of the dresser, the wood creaking beneath her.

“That what you wanted?” he hissed, voice ragged, “This what you been teasing me for?”

He pulled back and slammed into her again, harder.

“Say it.”

“Y-yes,” she gasped, “Yes, Smoke—just like that—”

His hands gripped her waist, dragging her back onto him with every thrust. The sound of their bodies colliding filled the room—wet, hard, relentless.

He fucked her like he’d been holding it in for years.

“Takin’ it so damn good,” he grunted. “My pretty little whore.”

Her whole body jolted at the word—a shiver rolling through her. He reached up, grabbed her hair, pulled her head back to whisper in her ear.

“Takin’ this dick like you starvin’ for it,” he growled, “Drippin’ all over me—greedy little bitch.”

She moaned loud, back arching, her ass slapping into him with every thrust.

“That right?” he snarled, “You like takin’ your this married dick, huh? Even after you been cryin’ on my wife’s pussy and ridin’ my brother’s?”

Amelia gasped—breath catching in her throat—but she didn’t deny it.

She loved it.

“Yeah,” he spat, “I know all about it. You love Annie’s sweet little cunt in ya’ mouth. Love Stack stretchin’ you open like you was made to take him.”

His voice turned cruel. Not hateful—just real. Honest in a way only filth could make him.

“And now here you are—soakin’ my dick like you ain’t satisfied ‘til you had the whole fuckin’ house.”

She cried out again, hips pushing back into him like she wanted every word carved into her spine.

“You got so much dick, Elijah,” Amelia spoke between moans, breathless, “you taking my pussy like Annie wanted…yesss…give me that dick…please fuck me with that big dick—”

“You mine right now. You hear me? You ain’t Stack’s. You ain’t Annie’s. You mine.”

Amelia threw it back on him, her fae on fire and eager for more. It loved the ferocity. The roughness. The tension boiling over like a witched brew.

“You nasty lil’ pretty-lookin’ whore,” he groaned, “You love this don’t you?”

“Yes,” she panted, “Yes, I love it—give it to me—”

“You love my wife’s pussy?”

“Yes!”

“My brother’s dick?”

“Yes, oh yes!—”

“And my dick right now?”

“Yes, Smoke—fuck—yes!”

His fingers dug into her hips. His teeth sank into her shoulder.

“You mine right now,” he hissed, “You hear me? Ain’t nobody else in this room. Just me inside you.”

“I feel you—everywhere—”

“Say it.”

“I’m yours,” she whimpered, “I’m your filthy girl—ride me like I need it—Yes,” she gasped. “I’m yours—right now—I’m yours—”

He shifted the angle, drove into her deeper, harder— until her moans turned to cries, her legs shook, and her eyes fluttered shut. Her glow rose up—faint but not visible—gold dust along her spine, fae magic blooming beneath his hands.

“You warm in my hands, baby,” he groaned, “You burnin’ for me.”

He slammed into her one final time, burying himself so deep her whole body arched. Ameila came—her scream echoing, his groan pressed into her shoulder, both of them shaking and gasping in the thick, heavy silence that followed.

He stayed inside her for a long moment. Dick twitching for more. One hand on her hip. The other braced on the dresser.

Their sweat mixing. Her glow fading soft. He had to hold off his nut.

“You gon’ talk reckless again,” he said finally, panting, “I suggest you do it after I recover.”

Amelia giggled breathlessly, her cheek pressed to the wood.

“You recovered enough to go again?”

Smoke groaned.

Smoke hooked an arm around her waist and lifted her up like she weighed nothing. Her legs dangled, trembling.

She gasped—breathless, dazed.

“W-what are you—”

“Said I wasn’t done wit’ you,” he growled, carrying her across the room.

He dropped her on the bed — not gentle — sheets catching her bare thighs, her hair spilling across the pillow. Before she could catch her breath, he flipped her onto her belly, hands dragging her hips up.

“Arch your back.”

She did—instantly, instinctively—ass in the air, face buried in the pillow.

“You know how to listen,” he rasped.

He climbed in behind her, one hand gripping her waist, the other spreading her thighs wider.

Then he slid back in.

All the way.

Deeper than before.

“Fuuuck,” she moaned, legs trembling again. “Smoke—Smoke, you—oh God—”

“Yeah, baby,” he groaned, burying himself to the hilt,“That’s that deep stroke you been missin’. Annie’s sweet mouth ain’t reachin’ where I’m hittin’ now.”

He fucked her slow but punishing—dragging every inch out, then slamming it back in so deep she cried out.

He reached down, grabbed her by the throat, pulled her head back so he could whisper in her ear:

“You gon’ remember this. Next time you lay up in my brother’s bed or ride my wife’s face, you gon’ feel me still inside you.”

She gasped—a sound that broke in her throat, her hands clutching at the sheets.

“You want me to stop?” he growled.

“No—don’t stop—fuck—don’t stop—”

“Say it again.”

“Don’t stop—please—don’t you dare fucking stop—”

His thrusts got harder. Deeper.

He arched her back even more—pushing her thighs wide open, big ass dick slamming up against the sweet spot inside her over and over.

Her body convulsed.

Her moans turned to sobs.

Her glow flared, gold licking across her skin in flashes.

“You gon’ come again?” he hissed, “all on this dick like a dirty little slut? Wit’ yo’ cute fuckin’ ass?”

“Yes—yes—yes—!”

And when she did, he followed—slamming deep, holding her in place, drilled her with two quick thrusts before he withdrew his hips, pouring out everything he’d been holding back for weeks. Smoke painted her backside like she was a canvas.

When it was over, he collapsed beside her, chest heaving, sweat slicked.

The room smelled like heat and sin.

Amelia curled into him—glowing, dazed, wrecked

“You still alive?” he muttered, voice gravel.

She giggled weakly.

“Barely.”

“Good.”

He dragged her closer, lips brushing her hair.

“Ain’t done yet.”

She barely had time to breathe before he flipped her over. Amelia landed on her back, legs splayed, body still twitching from the way he’d taken her.

But Smoke wasn’t done.

Not even close.

He spread her thighs wide and got between them like a man starving, like the taste of her was his last salvation.

“Your smell,” he growled, dragging his nose up the inside of her thigh, “It’s curlin’ up in my fuckin’ head. Got me lightheaded, baby. You got magic between your legs.”

She whimpered.

Her hands clawed at the sheets, gold light flickering again over her skin.

“You taste so fuckin’ good,” he groaned, mouth hovering right over her dripping center, “I could eat this sweet little pussy for the rest of my life.”

Then his tongue dragged through her folds—slow, thick, deep.

He moaned against her.

She arched up instantly, gasping.

“That’s it,” he whispered against her clit, lips wrapping around it like a kiss, “That’s what I been dreamin’ about. This pussy right here. You better finish in my fuckin’ mouth.”

His hands came up, pinned her thighs wide.

His eyes locked on hers.

His mouth never stopped moving.

Tongue circling. Flicking. Sucking. Groaning.

“Look at me,” he ordered, “When you come, you look at me.”

Her eyes fluttered.

He sucked harder.

“Don’t look away.”

His voice dropped.

“You hot for me again, baby. You gon’ cum hot on my tongue? Go ahead. Give Big Smoke what he wants.”

Amelia cried out, her entire body pulling taut.

Her thighs shook against his hands, gold sparks dancing up her belly, through her hair, down her calves.

She tried to close her legs.

He held them open.

“Don’t you run,” he growled, “Take it. Take it like a big girl. Cum in my mouth. Be a good girl and come for me—now.”

She shattered. Eyes locked on his. Back arched. Voice breaking.

“Smoke—Smoke—fuuuck—!”

He groaned deep in his throat as he licked her through it — every tremble, every pulse, his mouth soaked with her glow. He didn’t stop until she went limp. Until her hands fell from the sheets, her thighs twitching around his shoulders, her breath ragged and broken.

When he finally lifted his head, his face glistened, his lips swollen.

And his eyes?

Still locked on hers.

Smoke stood, still naked, sweat clinging to his chest.

He looked down at Amelia—spread across the bed, skin glowing soft, thighs slick, hair wild across the pillow.

He leaned over her, kissed her shoulder, then her temple.

“Clean yourself up,” he murmured, voice low, rough again, “Make it real good. Don’t need nobody else knowin’ how bad I fucked you.”

She didn’t answer.

Just smiled—lazy, flushed, wrecked.

He walked out, closing the door behind him like a secret.

@blackisy2k @thickeeparker @theereinawrites @angelin-dis-guise @thee-germanpeach @harleycativy @slut4smokemoore09 @readingaddict1290 @blackamericanprincessy @aristasworld @avoidthings @brownsugarcoffy @ziayamikaelson @kindofaintrovert @raysogroovy @overhere94 @joysofmyworld @an-ever-evolving-wanderer @starcrossedxwriter @marley1773 @bombshellbre95 @nybearsworld @brincessbarbie @kholdkill @honggihwa @tianna-blanche @wewantsumheaad @theethighpriestess @nearsightedbaddie @charmedthoughts @beaboutthataction @girlsneedlovingfanfics @cancerianprincess @candelalanegra22 @mrsknowitallll @dashhoney25 @pinkprincessluminary @chefjessypooh @sk1121-blog1 @contentfiend @kaystacks17 @bratzlele @kirayuki22 @bxrbie1 @blackerthings @angryflowerwitch @baddiegiii @syko-jpg @inkdrippeddreams

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shadowyfigure1207 · 22 hours ago

Text

The Blackline.

This is a sub-story about Stack’s Brothel in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1929. It will be within the same alternate timeline I plan to write when I explore Stack as a pimp. Exploring Smoke in the midst of it all.

Summary: The Blackline is a sultry, tale set in 1929 in the hidden quarters of Little Rock’s Black district, where flappers, vice, and hoodoo tangle in velvet-lit shadows. Violet, a timid Gullah Geechee girl with nowhere else to turn, finds herself working in a brothel run by the enigmatic Stack Moore—a pimp with charm, secrets, and a past steeped in sin. But it’s Stack’s older twin, Smoke, who consumes Violet’s thoughts. A war-worn man of few words, Smoke commands the room with silence alone.

Warnings: SMUT (building tension, soft dominance, Virgin!OC)

Part One.

There was a hum on Ninth Street that didn’t exist anywhere else in Little Rock.

Not in the white part of town with its strict corners and clean churches. Not along the cotton fields where sharecroppers bent their backs and begged the sun for mercy. But right here, between Gaines and Broadway, down near the old train tracks and past the Dreamland Ballroom. Black life pulsed like a second heartbeat beneath the city.

In 1929, Ninth Street was everything.

It was jazz sliding off trumpet bells, bootleg whiskey sweet as sin behind the curtain, girls in sequin dresses with rouge on their knees, and young men in sharkskin suits gambling rent money on backroom dice. It was barbershops and beauty parlors, Sunday suits and Saturday lust. It was survival. Black, brilliant, and dangerous.

This street had raised its own people.

It gave birth to musicians, conjure women, gamblers, preachers, and madams. And when the city turned its back on them, they turned to each other and built banks, clubs, undertakers, and juke joints from sawdust and spite.

But where there is rhythm, there is shadow.

And in that shadow lived a man named Elias “Stack” Moore.

Down a narrow alley off 9th, just past an old tailor’s sign faded into the brick, was a heavy red door with no name.

Folks called it The Blackline.

Not just because of how close it sat to the edge of everything respectable, but because crossing that threshold meant you were stepping into the soft belly of Black pleasure and vice. Nothing past that door was legal. Everything inside it was intoxicating.

To get in, you had to know the knock:

Three slow. Two fast.

Or the password:

“I got the blues but I ain’t broke yet.”

The inside glowed with low amber lamps and the heat of too many bodies. The walls were velvet red. The air was thick with jasmine oil, cigar smoke, and sweat. A gramophone crackled from the corner, slow jazz bleeding through the room like maple over a hot skillet.

Curtains hung heavy around each alcove, some whispering, some moaning, always shifting like silk being pulled from the skin. The floor creaked under heels, under knees, under lives slipping quietly into pleasure and forgetting.

The women here weren’t just working. they were art personified.

Dark-skinned goddesses with gold hoops and garters. Plump cuties with high cheekbones and wide backsides. Light-eyed country girls with long legs and sad stories. New flappers with pressed curls and voices like gin. All of them owned by no one: except Stack.

Stack ran The Blackline like a man who knew the cost of control.

He wasn’t loud like most pimps. He didn’t need to be. He watched everything, leaning in the corner with a cigarette between his fingers, or a drink in his hand, velvet coat open, fedora low and dapper over his brow. His eyes were sharp, mouth always curved in that half-smirk that meant he either wanted to fuck you or gut you, and sometimes it was both.

His girls respected him. Feared him. Some loved him, though they wouldn’t say it out loud. He didn’t beat his women. But he didn’t let them leave easy either. He fed them, clothed them, protected them from the white cops and the worse men who came knocking. And in return, they gave him their best—on the floor, in the backrooms, on their knees.

Stack wasn’t just a pimp. He was a businessman. A gambler. A bootlegger.

And he wasn’t alone.

They were born in heat and hunger, two Mississippi boys who came out the womb fists clenched, mirror images with mirrored scars.

Elias was the mouth, the mind.

Elijah “Smoke” Moore was the fire.

Stack ran the brothel, the books, and the girls. Smoke handled the bootlegging, the deals, and the dirty work. He was the enforcer, the bullet in the chamber, the one you didn’t see coming until your knees gave out.

Together, they built an empire on sin and silence.

People knew the Moore twins didn’t play. You crossed them, you didn’t just get beat—you vanished.

And yet…

Smoke had a way with women. A slow kind of seduction. A man who touched soft but fucked hard. Girls wanted him even when they didn’t know why.

Stack didn’t mind.

As long as the business kept running, the girls kept earning, and the city kept looking the other way, The Blackline stayed lit, and the Moore brothers stayed untouchable.

She didn’t belong here.

Not yet.

Not with her thrift-store shoes worn at the heel, her patched satin dress clinging too loose to her hips, or the scent of salt marsh and memory still clinging to her skin. Not with her innocence intact and her voice too soft to ask for anything out loud.

But Violet was desperate. And desperation was the only currency that mattered on Ninth Street after midnight.

The alley was narrow and damp, lit only by a flickering gas lamp and the far-off glow of the Dreamland Ballroom. Jazz bled through the brick walls like vapor, and somewhere in the distance, a woman laughed too loud.

The red door loomed before her.

She’d been told what to say by the older girl who’d found her crying behind the beauty shop two days earlier, the one with the silver eye and a split lip she wore like jewelry.

Three slow. Two fast.

“I got the blues but I ain’t broke yet.”

The peephole opened.

Two shadowed eyes looked her over, lingered on the bare knees below her hemline.

“You don’t look like you know what you doing,” the voice said.

“I can learn,” she replied, trying to keep her chin lifted.

The door creaked open.

And Violet stepped inside.

Heat wrapped around her like breath. The air was thick with perfume, pipe smoke, and the smell of sex so fresh it clung to the walls. Light came from low amber lamps, each corner flickering like a secret. Everything was red—the carpet, the drapes, the wallpaper—blood velvet and mahogany shadows. She could hear moans behind curtains. Laughter behind beads. Cards flipping. Shoes tapping. Skin slapping.

A woman walked past in nothing but a beaded bra and stockings, hips moving like a song no man could resist. A man in suspenders had his hand buried beneath the hem of another girl’s skirt, and no one batted an eye. The air tasted like cinnamon and heat. She felt it instantly—between her thighs, in her belly, behind her ribs.

She didn’t belong here. Not yet.

But something inside her, something deeper than fear, wanted to.

He saw her from across the room.

Stack leaned in his usual spot—against the far wall, velvet coat draped open, dark liquor in his hand. The room swam in bodies and fog, but his eyes landed on her like they’d been waiting for her arrival.

Young. Thin. Pretty in a way that wasn’t polished but raw. Something untouched. Her eyes were wide, posture tight, hands gripping the strap of a borrowed purse like it held a weapon.

He knew the look.

Fresh meat.

He stepped forward, smooth and slow, like the room parted just to let him walk.

“You lost, baby girl?” he asked, voice deep, syrupy.

Violet turned toward him, startled by the height of him, the sharpness of his jaw, the way his mouth didn’t smile even when his tone pretended to.

“No sir,” she whispered, “I’m lookin’ for work.”

He let his eyes drag down her body, slow.

“You ain’t been touched, have you?”

Her breath caught.

“No,” she said softly, “But I’m willin’. I just need a place to stay.”

Stack stepped closer, leaned in near her ear.

“‘Round here, baby…we don’t take what ain’t offered. But if you wanna give it, there’s a place for you upstairs.”

She swallowed hard.

He smelled like rum, spice, and danger. She felt like a match held to oil.

He straightened up and looked her over one more time.

“Name’s Stack. You remember that.”

Then he turned, nodded to one of the girls near the bar.

“Get her cleaned up. She sleep in the green room tonight. I’ll decide what to do with her come mornin’.”

And just like that, Violet was pulled into the velvet bloodstream of The Blackline.

Not as a worker. Not yet.

But as a girl the house would keep its eyes on.

The green room was small, no bigger than a boxcar berth, with peeling wallpaper and a single oil lamp that painted the cracked mirror gold. Violet sat on the edge of the old porcelain tub, steam rising in curls around her face. The bathwater was warm, not hot, the kind that clung to your skin like a whisper. Rose petals floated on the surface—leftover from another girl’s soak, but she didn’t mind.

It had been a long time since she’d felt anything soft.

She undressed slow, like it meant something. Like the silk slip she unfastened wasn’t secondhand. Like the stockings she peeled from her legs weren’t fraying at the toes. She laid them gently on the wooden chair. Her body looked thin under the lamplight. Not fragile—coiled, like something waiting to bloom.

Violet stepped into the water.

It wrapped around her like hands from the other side.

She exhaled, lowered herself in, and let her head fall back against the porcelain. Her eyes fluttered shut.

She thought of her grandmother.

Old Miss Luella. Thick hands, voice like saltwater and thunder, skin dark and smooth like polished shell. The woman who raised her on boiled root tea, haint blue, and Gullah prayers whispered to the wind.

“Your body is a gate, child. Not a gift. Not for free. And not to be feared.”

The memory of her voice wrapped around Violet now like arms.

She’d come here because she had nowhere else to go. But something inside her knew this was more than survival.

This was crossing a threshold.

She reached into her bag and pulled out her most precious thing.

a piece of lavender ribbon, worn and soft.

Her mother used to tie it around her wrist when she was scared.

Her grandmother would wrap it around her ankle and say, “No man can touch what’s guarded by memory.”

Now, Violet tied it around her throat.

Not tight. Just snug enough to feel.

It wasn’t just protection anymore.

It was a signal.

That she was hers first.

And whoever touched her after this…would have to be worthy.

She dried slow, humming a tune only her family would recognize. Her curls damp, cheeks feeling like brown velvet gone warm, the warmth of her body from the bath and the shade of her skin like café au lait. She stood in the cracked mirror, naked but not ashamed. There was still fear. But there was something else now too.

A quiet hunger.

Not just to survive…

But to become.

The room was warm with lamplight and perfume.

Not strong, just faint hints of amber, pressed powder, and lilac, the kind that clung to bedsheets long after a girl had gone. The velvet chaise against the wall sagged with familiar use, and lying across it, a cigarette in one hand and one heel kicked off, was Cordelia.

Cordelia Toussaint.

The girls just called her Delie. The men called her whatever she whispered in their ear.

She was thirty miles of legs and don’t-give-a-damn, eyes lined in coal, lips always painted in something dark like plum or wine. Her robe was silk and nearly see-through, the color of crushed garnet. One thigh peeked from the slit, golden and gleaming.

She didn’t flinch when Violet walked in.

Just raised one arched brow and looked her over.

“Mmm,” Cordelia hummed, “Ain’t you a delicate little thing.”

Violet froze in the doorway, arms wrapped tight across her front, “Sorry—I didn’t know anyone was—”

“I ain’t just ‘anyone,’ sugar. I’m the Queen of this floor,” Cordelia smiled slow, cigarette curling smoke toward the ceiling, “And this here,” she gestured to the piles of lace, satin, and beaded silk draped over the bed, “is your coronation.”

Violet stepped farther in, bare feet soft on the worn rug. The heat of the oil lamps made her skin glow, still damp from her bath. Her curls had puffed around her face, and her ribbon—lavender—was still tied around her neck.

Stack had sent up a box of clothes earlier. Beautiful ones. Too beautiful. Like someone else’s dreams.

“Stack got taste,” Cordelia said, eyeing the garments, “Or maybe he just sees somethin’ in you he don’t wanna say out loud.”

Violet looked down, fingers trailing over a lavender chemise trimmed in black lace, “I’ve never worn anything like this.”

“Well, try it on then. Ain’t nobody gonna bite. ‘Cept maybe me,” She grinned around her cigarette.

Violet turned her back, cheeks burning.

She slipped out of her plain cotton shift and stepped into a deep emerald set. It was a camisole that hugged her waist and barely reached the curve of her hips, paired with tap shorts that rode high.

When she turned around, Cordelia sat up, real slow.

“Well, well, well…” she purred, “Ain’t you a quiet little storm.”

Violet shifted, unsure, “It fits weird. I’m too skinny for it.”

Cordelia scoffed, “Skinny? No, baby. You just got all your weight where it counts.”

Her eyes dragged down Violet’s frame, deliberate.

“Those hips could rock a man stupid. And that little ass? That’s trouble. Small up top, soft down low. You built like a promise.”

Violet’s arms crossed her chest, trying not to blush harder, “You’re just sayin’ that.”

“No, honey. I only say what’s true.”

Cordelia stood then, barefoot, and came close. Close enough that Violet could smell the jasmine and smoke on her skin. She ran one fingertip over the satin strap at Violet’s shoulder.

“You ever had a woman look at you like this before?”

Violet swallowed, “No.”

“Well, Miss Vi, you better get used to it,” Cordelia stepped back and smiled, “‘Cause by the time Stack puts you on the floor, they all gon’ be lookin’.”

Violet sat on the edge of the bed now, legs crossed at the ankles, fingers tracing the hem of the tap shorts.

Cordelia had returned to the chaise, reclined with one arm draped behind her head, her cigarette replaced with a glass of dark wine that shimmered like rubies in the lamplight.

For a while, neither of them spoke. The room was thick with perfume and tension—not heavy, just tender, like when rain wants to fall but isn’t ready yet.

Then, softly, Violet asked, “Does it hurt?”

Cordelia didn’t turn her head. Just sipped her wine and let the question settle.

“When it’s your first?” she said finally.

Violet nodded.

Cordelia breathed slow through her nose.

“Sometimes. Depends on the man. Depends on how much you want it…or how much you pretend you do.”

Violet looked down, “And what about after that?” she asked, “After the first time?”

Cordelia set the glass down on the floor and finally turned toward her, one knee drawn up beneath her robe.

“After that?” she said, “You learn your own rhythm. What you can take. What you like. Where to let them touch. Where to keep to yourself,” She studied Violet for a long moment. Then added, “It don’t always feel like much. But sometimes…”

She trailed off.

“…Sometimes?” Violet whispered.

Cordelia smiled slowly.

“Sometimes, with the right one…it feels like your soul’s gettin’ kissed from the inside out.”

Violet’s breath caught. Her thighs pressed together instinctively.

Cordelia’s smile deepened, “Mmhm. You felt that, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Violet said, “I just—when I think about someone touchin’ me like that…I get warm. But I also feel scared. Like my body wants it, but the rest of me ain’t caught up yet.”

Cordelia nodded, “That’s natural. Your body been ready. It’s your heart that takes her time.”

She reached over and plucked a satin robe from the side of the bed. Rose-colored, soft, worn. She walked it over and draped it gently around Violet’s shoulders.

“You don’t gotta give nothin’ you ain’t ready to give,” she said softly, “Not to Stack. Not to Smoke. Not to nobody.”

Violet looked up at her, “Have you ever loved someone who paid you?”

Cordelia paused, just for a breath. Then said, “No. But I’ve loved how they made me feel. For a little while. That counts for somethin’, too.”

Violet pulled the robe tighter around her chest. “I don’t want to be just…a body.”

Cordelia tucked a curl behind her ear, “Then don’t be.”

She leaned in, kissed Violet’s cheek—soft, warm, and brief.

“Let ‘em touch your skin, sugar. But keep your name in your own mouth. Keep your soul in your back pocket.”

Violet had been at The Blackline for a week.

Long enough to learn which girls brought in the most coin. Long enough to know who Stack trusted with the money box. Long enough to stop flinching when the back curtain swayed with moans, and long enough to learn how to smile without meaning it.

She hadn’t let any man touch her yet.

But she knew how to lean soft against their side, how to let her fingers trail across a lap, how to pretend she’d whisper something filthy but only ask if they liked their drink cold.

Stack didn’t pressure her. Not yet.

“You sell the idea right now,” he’d said, voice low, one gold tooth catching the lamplight, “Let them chase what they can’t have. That body gon’ pay double when the time comes.”

So she played host.

She laughed when needed. Danced when asked. Gave lap dances in silk and lavender and let men groan beneath her without ever opening her legs. She was a ghost in perfume, a promise wrapped in ribbon.

And when her shift was done, she’d sit in the corner room behind a sheer drape, knees drawn to her chest, watching.

Watching the other girls work.

Watching bodies move like shadow puppets behind beaded curtains, the sound of wet mouths and thick groans muffled by the low hum of jazz.

Sometimes, she’d close her eyes and imagine someone touching her like that. Not the men who came in drunk and lonely.

Someone else.

Someone who hadn’t even looked her way yet.

He came and went through the hallway like a breeze before the storm.

He didn’t linger. Didn’t smile. Didn’t talk unless he had to. Just passed through with his coat open, sleeves rolled, his news cap pulled low over a face that made women stare without meaning to.

He hadn’t looked at her. Not once.

But Violet noticed everything about him.

The way he lit his cigarette with one hand. The way his loafers hit the floor slow but certain. The way his voice rumbled when he spoke to Stack—not raised, not rushed, but enough to make the other girls shut up just to listen.

He wasn’t dressed like Stack, who wore velvet and gold and lace cuffs when he felt like it.

Smoke was simpler. Cleaner. But not softer.

Dark shirts. Dark trousers. Black suspenders. He didn’t wear flash. He didn’t need to. He wore command.

And something about that…Something about how his silence filled a room more than any shout…

It did something to her.

It made her thighs press together beneath her dress.

It made her breath catch when he passed.

And it made her wonder, what would his hands feel like?

Not the hands of the laughing men who grabbed without asking.

But his?

Would they be rough? Careful? Would he say her name like it was a secret or a sentence?

Violet didn’t even know if he’d noticed her.

But her body already had.

On the third night she saw him, some drunk fool tried to grab at one of the newer girls—Peaches. The kind of man who forgot this place had rules. Smoke didn’t say a word.

He rose from his chair like a dark wind, flicked his cigarette to the floor, and grabbed the man by the collar. The struggle wasn’t loud. There were no threats, no curses. Just the wet sound of knuckles hitting bone, the quick thud of someone’s pride dropping to the floor. Then silence again, broken only by the ragged wheeze of the man as Smoke leaned in, murmuring something only he could hear.

He dusted his coat, lit another cigarette, and sat back down.

Violet hadn’t realized she’d stopped breathing until Cordelia touched her hand beneath the table and whispered, “That’s how Smoke handles disrespect. Quiet and clean.”

They all tried him. The girls.

Some sat on his lap, giggling and twirling curls like schoolgirls. Others pressed their breasts to his arm, offering their best pout. Cordelia once wrapped her legs around him just to tease, but even she couldn’t break through that armor. Smoke didn’t flinch, didn’t soften. He simply watched. Took long drags of his cigar and let the world orbit him.

The only time he smiled was when Stack made some offhand joke, or when the saxophone player hit a particularly sweet note. But never at the girls. Not the way they wanted.

Violet found herself waiting for him. Listening for the weight of his boots on the floorboards. She never approached. Just peeked around corners. Hid behind curtains. Her heart fluttered every time his gaze swept across the room.

Once—just once—his eyes landed on her. Those sharp, heavy-lidded eyes. He didn’t smile. Didn’t blink.

And Violet turned away so fast she nearly tripped over her own feet.

The night had finally slipped quiet, the gramophone long gone silent, the perfume of cigar smoke and gin clinging to the velvet drapes like ghosts.

Backstage, in the dressing parlor with cracked mirrors and soft lamplight, Cordelia peeled off her silk stockings slow, leg stretched out long, her golden skin catching the amber glow like honey poured over polished mahogany. She had high cheekbones dusted in old rouge, eyes lined sharp as razors, and a gold mole painted just above her full mouth. Her hair was set in glossy Marcel waves, pinned back with a diamond barrette she claimed once belonged to Josephine Baker herself.

She sat in front of the mirror like she was on stage again, one leg crossed over the other, smoking a thin clove cigarette in a long ivory holder.

Peaches was across from her, lounging in a pink floral robe that hugged her plush figure. She was soft in all the places men dreamed about—belly round, hips thick like southern bread dough, and breasts that spilled out no matter what she wore. Her sandy brown coils framed her moon-round face like a lioness, fake flowers tucked behind her ears—yellow hibiscus and a few wilted daisies from the night before. She smelled like coconut oil and rum, sweet and warm.

Violet sat quiet near the wall, still in her slip, legs curled beneath her. She wore a pale-blue robe Cordelia had passed down to her. It was satin and fraying at the sleeves, but still soft against her shy skin. She didn’t speak, not yet. Just listened.

Cordelia let out a long sigh and flicked ash into an old crystal ashtray.

“Mmm. That old man in Room 2 tried to suck on my toes again,” she muttered, “Swore up and down I was an angel sent to forgive him. I told him, baby, I ain’t the Virgin Mary, I’m just Cordelia with rent due.”

Peaches cackled, her laughter rich and sweet like a gospel solo.

“At least he’s clean. That man with the gold teeth wanted me to act like his damn mama,” Peaches said, fanning herself, “Callin’ me ‘mama’ while I was ridin’ him. I almost said ‘boy, go to bed’ just to mess with him.”

Cordelia leaned back, puffing on her cigarette, “These men want every kinda woman. Soft ones, mean ones, silent ones. But you know what they really care about?”

“Pussy hair,” Peaches said, deadpan, grinning.

Violet’s eyes widened slightly.

“Exactly,” Cordelia purred, “I swear, half these fellas more opinionated than a church mother. One want it waxed bald like a lil’ girl. Another want it wild like a thicket. One man asked me to braid it.”

Peaches hollered, “Stack like it full, but trimmed. Just enough for his nose to get lost but not choked.”

Cordelia raised her brows at Violet through the mirror, “You shy, baby, but you got somethin’ under there. What you got goin’ on? Don’t be modest. We all women here.”

Peaches wiggled her brows, “Show us, baby girl.”

Violet hesitated. Her cheeks burned, but something in the way they watched her wasn’t cruel, it was curious, sisterly. So slowly, carefully, she opened her robe just enough to reveal the soft down between her thighs. A natural, delicate triangle—neatly trimmed, but untouched by razor.

“Well damn,” Cordelia murmured with an approving nod. “That’s a pretty little thing.”

Peaches smiled warmly, “You keep it just like that, baby. Let the right man teach you how he likes it.”

Violet closed her robe again, heart thudding.

“I’m surprised Stack ain’t done your initiation,” Cordelia said next, shifting tones.

Violet blinked, “My what?”

Cordelia smirked, “The initiation, sugar. When Stack gets a taste. He don’t always fuck you, sometimes he just eats. But he gotta make sure you gonna sell. That your body gonna bring money in.”

Peaches nodded solemnly, “He say he can tell from just the first taste. If you gon’ be a money-maker or a waste of time.”

“All the girls been through it,” Cordelia added, “We love Stack, even when we hate him. He run things tight. If you need food, he got it. If a man put hands on you, he handle it. If you act up, he cut you off. But he protect his girls.”

A hush fell after that. Cordelia reached for her perfume, dabbing it behind her ears. Peaches picked petals out her hair.

Violet sat quiet again. Not with fear—just thought.

She wondered if Smoke had ever done an initiation.

But the idea seemed…strange. He didn’t look at them like Stack did. He didn’t play. Didn’t sample. He sat in the shadows like a king who’d already had every fruit in the orchard.

Still, she wondered.

if he did it…how would it feel?

Would he ask?

Would he taste slow?

Would he whisper her name?

The brothel was still humming low that night—music crawling through the floorboards like midnight pour, the scent of clove and spilled gin heavy in the air. Violet was in the hallway near the parlor, pretending to check a tear in her stocking. But really, she was watching.

Cordelia walked by in her silk robe, hips swaying like she owned gravity itself. She passed Violet without a glance but tossed, “Don’t stare too long, baby. You’ll get ideas,” over her shoulder with a sly smirk.

Violet followed behind, quiet as always.

Stack was in the main parlor, sunk into his velvet armchair like a man born to it. His legs were spread, gold rings glittering on thick fingers. A black button-down hugged his chest, the top few undone just enough to show the glint of a gold chain and the curve of a rose tattoo blooming over his collarbone. A toothpick rolled lazy between his lips, and his fedora was tilted just enough to cast a shadow across his sharp eyes.

He was flanked by two women—Black beauties dressed in mink-trimmed lingerie. One with midnight skin and copper-gold eyes, the other with a cinnamon glow and long, oil-slick braids. Girls from back in New Orleans. The kind who moved too quietly, whose laughter echoed wrong if you listened too long. Their glamour was turned up high tonight—cheeks glowing, lips stained bloodred, eyes like honeyed storm clouds.

They leaned into Stack like cats in heat, one on each arm, hands tracing his chest while he accepted the girls’ cut of the night’s earnings—crisp bills folded neat in silk pouches. He didn’t look rushed. He didn’t ever look rushed.

Cordelia stepped forward, elegant as a sermon, and slid her own pouch into his open palm, “For you, baby,” she purred.

Stack gave her that grin, slow, wicked, full of teeth and secrets, “That’s my girl.”

Cordelia stayed close, ran her hand up his thigh, “I got a question though,” she said lightly, tone flirtatious but eyes sharp, “That lil’ new one…Violet. Why ain’t you done her initiation yet?”

The question landed like a dropped match.

The girls giggled, expectant.

Violet froze in the hallway, half in shadow.

Stack chuckled low, licked his lips slow. Then he leaned back and finally looked up—right toward Violet. Right through the wall, through the shadows, like he felt her watching.

“’Cause she ain’t ready,” he said. Voice calm. Final, “She still soft. Still dreamin’. I bite her now, she won’t come back from it.”

The room went still for a moment.

One of the girls murmured, “Ain’t never heard you hold back before.”

Stack smirks, “I don’t break toys I like.”

Cordelia tilted her head, “You like her?”

He didn’t answer that part. Just sat there, eyes still locked in Violet’s direction.

The one of the girls leaned down, whispering something in his ear. He grinned wider, eyes glinting gold.

Cordelia laughed, kissed him on the cheek, and walked off, hips rolling like waves.

Violet slipped back down the hall, heart pounding, not sure what she felt.

She wasn’t afraid.

But something in her ached.

She didn’t know whether it was longing for Stack…or disappointment that it wasn’t Smoke who’d said those words.

The days passed, and Violet became a ghost of temptation.

She hadn’t laid with a single man yet—not really. Not how they wanted. Not how Stack trained the girls to break a John in, slow and sweet. Violet would let them look, let them taste her perfume and the way she moved when she walked—but that was all.

She’d lean in close enough for breath to catch in their throat, then pull away with a soft apology and a smile that made them want to beg.

They were starving for her.

Some started offering more; double, triple. One even brought roses. Another sent sweets and a gold bracelet. Stack let it happen. Watched from the upstairs rail with his cigar in hand, head tilted just enough to track every whisper, every reach, every ache in the eyes of the men who wanted to ruin her.

Cordelia called it “the long game.”

“You reel ‘em in slow, baby,” she told Violet one afternoon in the vanity room, lips lined red, a lace shawl loose over her shoulders, “Make ’em chase what they already think they own.”

She leaned in, breath warm against Violet’s ear, “You let ‘em think you’re green. Shy. Then one night, you open that door just a little…and they lose they whole mind.”

Peaches nodded from across the room, filing her nails, “Ain’t nothin’ like the first time a quiet girl turns bold. That pussy hit different when it’s got mystery on it.”

Violet listened. Blushed. But she held her posture a little taller now. Her silence wasn’t fear, it was control. And she was learning.

Upstairs, Stack knew.

He saw it in the way she moved through the hallway now, hips learning how to sway without effort. He saw it when she made the mistake of biting her lip in front of a customer and didn’t notice the way his hand twitched. She was blooming. Not all at once. But the petals were opening. And Stack…was patient.

He didn’t rush the flowers he wanted to own.

That night, Smoke returned.

The front door swung open in the low light. He came in like he always did—silent. Slow. Solid. Black suspenders over a white shirt, sleeves rolled just enough to show his forearms and the cut of his veins. Cigarette already lit. No words. No greeting.

Just presence.

Violet was sitting behind a sheer gold drape near the hallway curtain, her usual hiding place. A secret pocket of velvet and hush where she could pretend to be invisible and watch the world breathe.

She held still, barely blinking, eyes tracing the shape of his jaw in the smoke.

And she wasn’t the only one watching.

Two of the girls were near the bar, sipping gin and whispering low.

“Mmm mmm mmm…that man walk in here like sin in a suit,” one said, fanning herself, “I’d let him ruin my whole damn life.”

“He don’t even talk much,” the other whispered back, “But I love me a grown, confident-ass man. One that don’t gotta raise his voice to make the whole room shift.”

“You see how he move?” the first continued, “Like he ain’t gotta explain nothin’. Just action. He said forget all that talk, I’m bout that action.”

They giggled, voices thick with desire and bravado, but there was hunger underneath it. Real hunger. The kind even the boldest girls didn’t say too loud.

Smoke didn’t even glance their way. He walked straight to the far wall, leaned back, lit a fresh cigarette, and scanned the room with eyes that held weight. You didn’t look into them—you fell into them.

And then…he paused.

His eyes drifted. Toward the sheer drape. Toward her.

Violet held her breath.

Did he see her?

She didn’t know. But she knew one thing…

The ache inside her, the low simmer that burned beneath her belly, had a name.

And it wasn’t Stack.

It was him.

Smoke.

The brothel quieted in the small hours, when most of the girls had either gone to bed or were curled in the laps of men too drunk to finish what they started.

Violet slipped away to the back bathroom, the one with the deep porcelain tub and the cracked pink tiles, where steam clung to the mirror like breath. She twisted the knobs, hot water rushing out, cloudy with the salts and lavender oil Cordelia always kept in a little jar by the sink.

She stripped slow.

Her pale blue slip slid down her curves, skin dewy in the dim yellow light. Her breasts rose and fell with soft, shallow breaths. Her thighs were warm with sweat from the long night. Her curls stuck to her neck. She eased herself into the bath, the heat licking at her skin, pulling a sigh from her lips.

She sank deep with her knees drawn up, arms resting along the edges, eyes drifting shut.

And then the ache started again.

Smoke.

Not Stack. Not one of the slick-mouthed Johns who tried to coax her open with sweet words and sugar lies. But him—silent, watchful, heavy with power and mystery. The way he filled a room without ever trying. The cut of his jaw, the roll of his sleeves. The way he looked like he’d never say your name out loud—but growl it into your skin.

Her hand drifted down.

Fingers slipping between her thighs, slow at first. She breathed his name so softly it never left her lips. Her toes curled. Her hips arched slightly. She imagined his hand instead of hers. His fingers. His breath hot against her ear, not asking permission, just knowing what she needed.

The water lapped softly. Her moans were barely whispers, but they filled the little room all the same.

She was just on the edge, lost in that imagined weight of Smoke pressing her down, when—

Knock-knock. Click.

The door creaked open.

“Mmm.” Cordelia’s voice floated in, amused, “Now what we got goin’ on in here, sugar?”

Violet jerked up, water sloshing over the edge. She scrambled to sink lower into the bath, cheeks blazing red.

“I—I thought I locked—”

Cordelia leaned against the doorframe, fully dressed in a black silk robe trimmed with marabou feathers, cigarette holder dangling from her painted fingers.

“You didn’t,” she purred, eyes twinkling, “And even if you had, I got keys to everything in this house. Don’t look so scared. I ain’t mad. Girl’s entitled to her lil’ bath time fantasy.”

Violet covered her chest with her arms, mortified. Cordelia stepped inside, clicking the door shut behind her. She didn’t come to shame. She came like a storm that knew the rain was needed.

“Let me guess…” Her eyes narrowed, voice playful, “You wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout Smoke, was you?”

Violet didn’t answer.

Cordelia smirked and slid down to sit on the edge of the tub, letting her hand stir the water lazily.

“No shame in it, baby. That man walk in like judgment day, and every girl in this house got a little tremble in her thighs when he lights a cigarette.”

Violet looked down, face flushed, lips still parted from what almost was.

“You ever wonder what he’d do if you let him have you?” Cordelia asked, voice dropping, “Not rough like these other fools. Nah. A man like Smoke…he take his time. He don’t fuck. He consumes.”

Violet whimpered under her breath, thighs pressing together beneath the water.

Cordelia chuckled softly, “See? I knew it. You hooked and he ain’t even touched you yet,” She stood, smoothing her robe, “Just don’t drown yourself in here, alright? Save a little of that sweetness for when the time come. And baby…”

She paused at the door.

“When a man like that finally notices you? There ain’t no goin’ back.”

Then she was gone, leaving the room scented with her perfume and laughter.

And Violet?

She leaned back in the tub again.

But her hand moved slower this time.

And in her mind, she heard Smoke whisper her name.

After her bath, the house had gone hush. Only the soft lilt of old jazz drifted up from below—scratchy and faraway, like a memory playing through a wall. Most of the girls had gone to their rooms or curled up with company. Violet had begged off early. Said she had a headache. Nobody questioned her.

She wasn’t sick.

She was starving—but not for food.

The dressing room was dim, lit only by a row of half-burned candles flickering in their dusty glass jars. Smoke from earlier perfumes still clung to the air—rose, patchouli, hair tonic, clove cigarettes. The mirrors were fogged from the night’s heat and steam, the room heavy with the perfume of want.

Violet stood barefoot on the cold tile floor, wrapped in a short silk robe. Her curls were damp, falling in soft tendrils around her face, and her cheeks still flushed from her bath. Her skin glowed in the candlelight—bronze, delicate, young.

She stepped closer to the mirror.

The fogged glass showed only a whisper of herself at first, like a spirit trying to take form.

She wiped it clean with her palm.

Then stood still.

She studied her reflection. The cut of her collarbone. The shape of her mouth. The softness of her eyes, the way her lips always seemed half-parted like a question left unanswered.

“He don’t want soft,” she whispered to herself, “He want…sultry…woman.”

So she tried.

She dropped one shoulder of the robe. Let it slide down slow.

She ran her fingers through her curls and pushed them back, exposing her neck. Then she tilted her chin up just a little, parted her lips.

“You like this, don’t you?” she murmured, voice breathy, “I bet you wonder what I taste like…”

She paused. Cringed.

It didn’t sound right.

It sounded like someone else. Cordelia maybe. Or one of the other girls who knew how to speak a man into madness. Not her. Not sweet little Violet from the coast with Gullah blood and old folk songs still hiding in her bones.

She tried again.

Swayed her hips slow. Dragged her finger down her chest. Let the robe part just a little between her thighs.

“You want me, don’t you?” she whispered.

The words stuck in her throat.

Her shoulders tensed. Her eyes dropped.

It felt fake.

Like she was wearing someone else’s skin, trying to fit into a mold that wasn’t made for her. Pretty? Sure. She’d been told that. Men looked. Girls cooed. But she didn’t have Cordelia’s poise, Peaches’ sass, or the polished glamour of the girls from Stack’s past. She didn’t know how to weaponize her beauty yet.

And Smoke?

Smoke would eat a woman alive if she stepped to him wrong.

Violet sank onto the vanity stool, staring at her bare thighs, her robe still half-open.

She whispered, “You don’t see me, do you…”

She wanted to cry. Not from sadness. From that terrible tightness in the chest when your want grows too loud, and your confidence grows too quiet.

She reached for a lipstick tube and twisted it open. It was a deep wine red, something Cordelia once left on the table.

She painted her lips slow.

Then leaned in and kissed the mirror.

A print bloomed on the glass.

“If I was bold…you’d touch me, wouldn’t you?” she whispered again, softer now, “You’d press me to the wall. You’d tell me I was yours without sayin’ a word…”

Silence answered her.

And still, she sat there, robe slipping from one shoulder, red lips parted, candlelight dancing across her skin.

Just a girl aching to be noticed.

She didn’t even remember falling asleep that night. One minute, she was staring at her own reflection, robe half open, mouth painted, thighs pressed together. The next, the mirror seemed to ripple, soften, breathe.

And suddenly, he was there.

Smoke.

Leaning in the doorway behind her, half in shadow, cigarette in hand.

But this wasn’t the real Smoke. This was dream-Smoky, smoky Smoke—heavier, slower, hungry.

He stepped into the room with that same impossible quiet, like the floor moved for him, not the other way around. The door didn’t creak. The candles didn’t flicker. He just was.

His eyes moved over her…over her parted robe, over her soft thighs, over the kiss mark on the mirror like it was a challenge.

Violet tried to cover herself, but in the dream, her arms wouldn’t move. She could only look back, breath catching, skin prickling with heat and shame.

“I was just—”

Smoke didn’t speak.

He crossed the room in three long strides and stopped behind her. She could see him in the mirror now. Towering. Watching. His gaze dragged down her body like a match tip over dry bark. And then, he bent low, his mouth grazing the shell of her ear.

“You think I don’t see you?” he murmured, voice like liquid dusk on hot skin.

His hands slid down her shoulders, calloused palms dragging over her arms, her waist. He didn’t grab. He claimed. His touch said…this has always been mine.

No one else’s

You hear me?

You’re mine, my pretty Violet…

She whimpered. Softly. Slightly strangled. Like an echo. Like she’d been longing for him to say those words and it’s only been such a short amount of time.

He dipped his head further, pressed his lips to her neck feather-like, breathing her in like she was a fragrance. The robe fell from her shoulders. Slowly. Her nipples hardened in the air.

“I see everything, Violet,” he said, “Every little ache. Every quiet moan you try to hide from the night…”

He turned her gently in the dream, and she rose without resistance. She was bare before him, trembling, but not afraid. Ready. Puddy beneath his calloused hands. Ready and willing to be told what to do.

“You ain’t gotta perform for me,” he whispered.

Then he sank to his knees. His eyes never leaving hers. Not once. His mouth was at her belly, then lower, his breath hot against the soft thatch between her thighs. He pressed a kiss there—slow, worshipful.”

“I want this,” he said.

And she believed him.

Violet gasped—and woke with a jolt.

The candles were low. The room was quiet. Her thighs were wet with sweat, her robe askew. No one was there. No door creaked. No match was struck.

But her heart was racing like he’d just left.

And for a long, long moment, Violet sat in the hush, fingertips brushing her lips.

A thought bloomed in her chest like a secret.

Despite what Violet thinks Smoke wants—sharp, sultry, polished women like Cordelia…

She’s wrong.

He’ll want her exactly as she is.

Soft. Quiet. Ache and all.

@theereinawrites @angelin-dis-guise @thee-germanpeach @harleycativy @slut4smokemoore09 @readingaddict1290 @blackamericanprincessy @aristasworld @avoidthings @brownsugarcoffy @ziayamikaelson @kindofaintrovert @raysogroovy @overhere94 @joysofmyworld @an-ever-evolving-wanderer @starcrossedxwriter @marley1773 @bombshellbre95 @nybearsworld @brincessbarbie @kholdkill @honggihwa @tianna-blanche @wewantsumheaad @theethighpriestess @theegoldenchild @blackpantherismyish @nearsightedbaddie @charmedthoughts @beaboutthataction @girlsneedlovingfanfics @cancerianprincess @candelalanegra22 @mrsknowitallll @dashhoney25 @pinkprincessluminary @chefjessypooh @sk1121-blog1 @contentfiend @kaystacks17 @bratzlele @kirayuki22 @bxrbie1 @blackerthings @angryflowerwitch @baddiegiii @syko-jpg @inkdrippeddreams @rolemodelshit

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shadowyfigure1207 · 1 day ago

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𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐌𝐘 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐆

𝒲𝓇𝒾𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝑜𝒻 𝓈𝑜𝒻𝓉 𝒻𝒾𝓁𝓉𝒽 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓈𝒽𝒶𝓇𝓅 𝒻𝑒𝑒𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈.

𝖂𝖊𝖑𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖒𝖞 𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖙𝖑𝖊 𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖗 𝖔𝖋 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖔𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖌𝖔𝖔𝖉 𝖌𝖎𝖗𝖑𝖘 𝖋𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖇𝖆𝖉 𝖒𝖊𝖓—𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕴 𝖜𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖊 𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝖉𝖆𝖒𝖓 𝖉𝖊𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖑 𝖔𝖋 𝖎𝖙. 𝕱𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖐𝖑𝖎𝖓 𝕾𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙, 𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖜𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖒 𝖔𝖋 𝖂𝖆𝖞𝖓𝖊, 𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖑𝖔𝖜-𝖇𝖚𝖗𝖓 𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗 𝖔𝖋 𝕽𝖎𝖔. 𝕴’𝖒 𝖕𝖚𝖙𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖕𝖔𝖗𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖕𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖕𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖘𝖊.

💋 Smut-forward. Emotionally messy. Criminally addictive.

📓 Fanfiction central. Plot? Optional. Tension? Required.

🔥 Villain lovers, antihero chasers, and angst addicts—come stay a while.

“𝙃𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙞𝙙 𝙄 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙𝙣’𝙩 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙡𝙚 𝙝𝙞𝙢. 𝙄 𝙨𝙖𝙞𝙙—𝙬𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝 𝙢𝙚 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙞𝙩.”

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐫 🖱️ 𝚁𝙸𝙾 𝙶𝙾𝙾𝙳 𝙶𝙸𝚁𝙻𝚂.

𝙇𝙊𝙑𝙀🖱️ 𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚕𝚒𝚗 𝚂𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚝

𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰. 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚌𝚔 𝙼𝚘𝚘𝚛𝚎

𝐀𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐈𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐬. 𝚂𝚖𝚘𝚔𝚎 𝙼𝚘𝚘𝚛𝚎

@waiting4winnie is my second blog. sapphic fanfics only

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shadowyfigure1207 · 1 day ago

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Random thoughts about Sinners (2025) part two

• Annie's knowledge and wisdom meeting Sammies gift. Showing us that hoodoo as a way to protect those gifted with abilities to uplift and free our spirits from the confines of the lives we live.

• Smoke and Stacks abandonment issues manifesting differently. Smoke showed a desire to find what he didn't have. But Stack rejecting all Black women.

• Mary's disregard for Sammie until she realized who he was and his proximity to the twins. Now she uses that and her money to distract him from what he said..for her to leave.

• Stack having a love and affection for Annie, because she was capable of providing a safe place for Smoke to be Elijah, something he couldn't do. Something he couldn't be.

• The fact that we got to meet Smoke and Elijah, but only got to see Stack and will never have the opportunity to witness Elias.

• Annie not looking surprised at Smokes arrival, she knew he was coming, just no exact idea of when.

• Sammies father was most likely responsible for alienating the twins from the rest of the community. Talking some bullshit about the twins killing their father is going against God.

• Sammies father trying to shame Sammie into leaving the music behind.

• The song in the church being 'this little light of mine' right before the preacher tries to dim Sammies light.

• Dimming or extinguishing Sammies light would've hurt future generations to come.

• The preacher admitted to bringing the guitar in. He's aware that Sammies got a gift, he wants to control it. Own it, posses it. The church taught him well.

• As much as there was a real visceral love between Annie and Smoke, she still falls into the archetype of the women of the past who had no choice but to accept any and everything from men who did nothing but hurt them.

• MBJ being on screen with a dark skinned, plus sized black woman as a Love Intrest....Lord! thank you Ryan. Leaning into the blackness instead of always trying to soften and contrast it in order to appease white people. I was getting tired of it. I think Ryan could sense it, he knows the industry better than we do and how to go around it.

• Smoke being more of a father to Stack than a brother at times.• While Smoke was protecting Stack, who protected him? Annie obviously, but who before her? When they were kids?

• Stack disrespecting Cornbreads wife the moment he met her.

• Even if Sammie did everything his father wanted, his father would've been unhappy with him.

• Remmick saying the prayer with Sammie. Trauma.

• Am I crazy for thinking Remmick was after the twins in the first place? They robbed the Irish mob, then an Irish vampire comes for them? I don't know, maybe I'm crazy.

• Remmick saying I want your Stories, reminder that everyone wants Black peoples stories, music, art, minds, light but what they really want is something they can't take from us. The undying soul that resides within. Something we can't even locate. We can access, but never locate and extract to give to anyone else. Everyone wants this thing but not the people who have it.

• Sammies parents not caring about his well-being instead focusing on what the churchfolks opinions and viewpoint. Had me yelling at them in front of other people.

• Sammies dad calling him a prodigal son...my guy he left YESTERDAY!🙄 I actually laughed at that shit.

• Smoke saying he never seen the things Annie warned him about...SIR, you never seen those things because of the MOJO BAG. 🤔

• The white people performing at the door to lull everyone into a false sense of security. And all it did was instill fear, because since when do white people try so hard? To be around black people? At night?

• When the haze of the hive mind lifted from Stack, does Smokes voice haunt him? Smoke, his strong, protective other half, begging, pleading, with him not to hurt Annie, not to hurt him. Tell me he hears Smoke everytime he closes his eyes. I need someone to write a fic about this.

• Am I the only one that thought of Cornbreads wife when I saw them getting burnt by the sun? The trauma of not knowing is worse.

• I know the entire community is gonna blame Smoke and Stack for bringing the Devil with them. And whose gonna lead the charge...their trifling uncle.

• I need the whole 'you gonna let her get between us again'• explored...thoroughly. Please Stack tell me more.

• Seeing Smoke stand between Stack,(behind the door) and Annie (directly behind him) made me wonder, did Smoke ever feel torn? Or like he had ro choose? I feel like he was Smoke for Stack and reserved Elijah for Annie.

• Yes I would've loved a triangle between Smoke, Annie and Stack. Simply because black women deserve more. And Annie deserved the world.

• Why, lord why did Stack bite Annie twice? AND why did I kinda enjoy the visual of him on her? Help.

• Capitalism is trash. That's it.

For now. This movie has me losing my mind.

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shadowyfigure1207 · 1 day ago

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Blues beats the clues

Warning : ⚠️ Domestic Abuse , Dubious Consent, Gaslighting, Blood, Gore, Manipulation, Supernatural Horror, Smut , Unreliable Narrators, Stalking, Power Dynamics.

A/N:This one shot is a work of dark fiction and does not glamorize or romanticize domestic violence, manipulation, or abuse of any kind. While themes like gaslighting, dubious consent, and trauma are explored, they are done so through a dark fantasy lens meant to evoke emotion—not endorsement. ( wrote this one a few days ago and forgot to post hope you guys enjoyed it.🤭).

None of the harmful behavior depicted is condoned by the author.

If you’re sensitive to these topics, please read with care. Your safety and comfort come first. 🖤

Paring : Mary x Stack x Black ! Reader , Throuple, 1980’s au, ( this takes place a decade before the final credits of the film ifykyk.)

Summary: By day, you’re the invisible wife of an angry man—an alcoholic line cook with nothing left to lose and fists that speak louder than words. Your life is a patchwork of burnt dinners, bruised ribs, and the quiet hum of Top 40 radio as you scrub the kitchen floor. But when the sun dips low and the neon signs flicker to life, you slip out your window, trade your apron for fishnets and eyeliner, and disappear into the pulsing shadows of Club Euphoria—the town’s best-kept secret, where the music never stops and the night never ends.

That’s where you meet Mary and Stack.

Mary, the club’s haunting torch singer, and Stack, the brooding bouncer with eyes that follow your every move. They seem drawn to you—obsessed, even.

But they’re not just watching.

They’re waiting.Stay in your cage, or remake your destiny?

The kitchen light flickers like a dying star, casting long, wavering shadows against the cracked wallpaper peeling in silent protest. The air is thick and heavy, swollen with unsaid things—bitterness, rage, and a grief so old it has hollowed you out from the inside.

He stands across from you, a silhouette carved from years of fury and disappointment. His voice cuts through the silence like shattered glass, sharp and unforgiving.

“Where the hell have you been?” The words are less a question, more a verdict, weighted with accusation.

You do not meet his eyes. Instead, you feel the cold press of the chipped mug in your trembling hands, the porcelain slick beneath your skin. Your voice is barely more than a whisper, a fragile thread pulled tight.

“Working late.”

He laughs—a sound void of humor, raw with contempt. “Don’t think I’m blind. The lights were on. You were sneaking like a thief in the night.”

His gaze is a blade, slicing through the thin veil of your carefully constructed calm. “You owe me more than this,” he spits, stepping closer until his shadow swallows you whole. “I hold this house together.”

Your heart hammers, a frantic, desperate rhythm against ribs that ache too much to breathe. “I’m tired,” you say, voice cracking like dry earth. “Tired of pretending.”

“Pretending?” His fist slams against the counter, the force rattling chipped plates and fragile peace. “You think you can just walk away? You think you’re better than me?”

Before the shock can settle, The blow came fast. A slap, then a shove. Your hip slammed the edge of the counter. You dropped like a doll with the strings cut, and the breath left your body in one jagged wheeze. He stood over you for a moment, his shadow stretched across the floor like some ancient god.

You curl into yourself, a wounded thing beneath the unforgiving light, tasting copper and salt on your lips. Tears prick your eyes, but they fall only as threats—silent defiance against a darkness that tries to swallow you whole.

“This is your fault,” he snarls, voice low and venomous, “You brought this on yourself.”

You lie there, broken and burning, the night swallowing your whispered apologies.

Once, you dreamed in colors brighter than the flicker of this failing kitchen light. Born in a small town where the air was thick with the scent of pine and possibility, you carried a hunger for something beyond the dust and quiet. Your mother’s lullabies still echo faintly, gentle reminders of a world where love wasn’t measured in silence or bruises.

But life—cruel and patient—wove its web tight around your ankles.

You met him when you were young, naïve, and thirsty for love. His smile was a promise, a warm ember in the cold nights of your youth. But embers turn to ash when fed with neglect and anger. His charm cracked, revealing the storm beneath—the man who would cage you not with locks, but with fear.

Financial chains wrapped around you next. The bills, always in your name. The rent paid on a paycheck that was yours alone to earn. He scoffed at your work, sneered when you spoke of saving, controlled what little money you managed to scrape together. “Don’t spend it all,” he’d say, but every dollar was a thread holding you prisoner.

Every debt, every overdue notice was a silent scream in your chest.

And so you stayed—because where else could you go? Because the nights of pain were softened by brief moments of quiet, and the hope that somewhere beneath the bruises, a flicker of you remained .

You don’t have much family. That truth sits heavy inside you, cold and constant, like a stone in the gut.

Your mother died when you were ten—too young to understand how quickly a woman could vanish from a world that never made space for her. It was a crash on a rain-slicked road, a blur of blue lights and a mangled sedan. Your father followed not long after, grief hollowing him out until all that remained was silence and the smell of stale cigarettes. One day he just didn’t wake up.

After that, you were sent to your grandmother’s house—an old shotgun-style home on the poor side of town where lace curtains yellowed in the sun and the furniture never moved, as if even the rooms had resigned themselves to stillness.

She raised you on 5 a.m. chores and bitter coffee, and said things like:

“A woman’s gotta keep her man fed, or he’ll find someone who can.”

“Don’t talk back, you’ll push him away.”

“Sometimes men get angry, that don’t mean they don’t love you.”

Her voice, always low and clipped, still rings in your skull whenever you consider leaving. She loved you the best way she knew how—by teaching you how to stay silent.

When you got married at twenty, she called it “the best thing you ever did.”

She didn’t ask if you were happy.

She didn’t want to know.

You learned early that the world had no place for women who cried out. Especially not in 1986, when men still owned everything—the house, the car, the story. And if your husband drank too much or hit too hard, well… maybe you were the one who said something wrong. Maybe your lipstick was too bright. Maybe dinner was late.

That’s how it starts.

And tonight, it ended with his fist once more . The fight started small. They always do.

“I do everything,” you whispered into the linoleum. “You don’t pay a single goddamn bill.”

He didn’t answer. He just stumbled away, slurring something cruel as he collapsed into the couch, the familiar sound of a beer can cracking open the only reply.

You waited.

Waited for his breathing to slow, for the room to fall into that suffocating hush that meant he’d passed out. Then you pushed yourself up, slow and aching, one arm curled protectively around your ribs.

You moved like a ghost, silent and deliberate.

From beneath the loose floorboard in the hallway closet, you pulled your secret: the burner phone. Cheap, scratched, pre-paid. He didn’t know about it. He wouldn’t care even if he did—he never bothered with the bills, never asked where the money went. You worked three jobs. He watched TV. The weight of debt was yours alone.

A single message blinked on the screen:

LISA: You still comin’? I got us in free.

You didn’t reply.

You just moved.

————-

You met Lisa two blocks away, near the corner store where the streetlights flickered like warning signs. Her hair was pulled high, hoop earrings gleaming, a cigarette dangling from her painted lips. She looked like every woman who refused to be broken—and for a moment, you let yourself pretend you were one of them.

“Damn,” she murmured when she saw you. “That bad?”

You nodded, wordless. Lisa didn’t ask more. She never did. She was the kind of friend who didn’t need the details to believe you.

“Then let’s make tonight worth it.”

You climbed into her rusted Camaro, the leather cracked and sticky with heat. The windows rolled down, the night rushing in like a second wind. The city lights blurred past in streaks of pink and gold, and the music pulsed low through the speakers—some synth-heavy song that made your bones ache with nostalgia.

You didn’t feel beautiful.

But you felt alive.

And when you saw the red glow of Club Euphoria in the back of your mind rising through the city smoke like a mirage—sharp, loud, and decadent—you knew you weren’t going home tonight.

You were going somewhere else.

Somewhere far from him.

Somewhere you’d finally be seen.

Somewhere something was waiting.

Something ancient.

And hungry.

Lisa’s Camaro rattles as it tears down the avenue, windows down, summer air clawing through your hair, warm with exhaust and neon static. The city hums all around, alive with a feral kind of joy. Your bruises throb in rhythm with the road beneath you—thump, thump, thump—like your body is trying to remember it’s still here.

“Okay,” Lisa says, eyes darting between the road and you. “What’s the vibe? We need music. Like, soul-saving, end-of-the-world, strut-into-the-club-and-own-it music.”

You reach under the seat, fingers brushing past forgotten receipts and half-melted lipstick tubes. Then you find it—your old cassette case, plastic cracked at the spine, a mixtape you made back when the world still felt like it belonged to you.

The label is handwritten in smeared ink: “Night Drive Vol. I”

You click it into the deck with a satisfying snap. A moment of hiss and fuzz—and then the soft synth of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” floods the car.

The bass kicks.

And so does your heart.

You close your eyes for a second. Just one. Letting the voice of Annie Lennox coat your ribs like velvet. Every note a prayer to keep going.

Lisa turns the volume up and rolls her window down further, howling into the night air like a wolf set loose. “Sweet dreams are made of this, baby!” she yells, grinning.

You laugh, really laugh, for the first time in weeks.

The city whips past like a memory trying to outrun itself.

Neon signs flicker like eyelids on the verge of dreams, and car horns cry out like restless spirits. The world you knew fades with every block passed, every pulse of bass seeping through Lisa’s rusted car speakers.

Your bruises still ache. Your ribs still burn. But as the glow of Club Euphoria rises ahead—red and gold and wicked—you feel something unfurl deep in your chest. It’s not joy, not yet. But it’s close.

You don’t dress like this at home.

God no—he’d never allow it.

He called heels “whore shoes” and said lipstick meant you were “asking for trouble.” The idea of you in anything tighter than a church dress was enough to trigger one of his mean moods. But he never looked in Lisa’s truck. Why would he? He didn’t pay attention to where you went, as long as dinner was on time and your voice stayed small.

Three days ago, you’d tucked the outfit away, folded it like something sacred, wrapped in an old band tee and a CVS bag. Hidden there like contraband, like a secret version of yourself waiting in the dark.

Now, in the Camaro’s passenger seat, you peel away your daytime skin.

Out comes the black minidress—ruched, off-the-shoulder, with a neckline that whispers sin and freedom. The velvet hugs your curves like a memory you haven’t dared to touch in years. Over it, a cropped leather jacket, more worn than warm, with a cracked patch on the sleeve that reads “Hell is boring.”

Fishnet tights kiss the bruises on your thighs, the mesh digging in just enough to remind you you’re still alive. Your boots—chunky, scuffed, defiant—thump against the pavement as you step out, tall where he made you small.

You slide on a pair of hoop earrings and pull your hair back into a half-up tease. Lipstick—a red so deep it looks like blood beneath candlelight.

Lisa whistles low. “Damn, mama. Look at you. Homicide in heels.”

You smirk, adjusting your jacket. “Think he’d approve?”

“If he saw you like this, he’d die.”

“Good.”

The laugh you share is sharp and small and carved out of old pain. The kind that doesn’t try to forget but chooses to survive.

And then—Club Euphoria.

A creature built of neon and heat. The marquee above the door flickers like it’s breathing, like it’s waiting for you. Music pours through the walls like blood through veins.

The line outside stretches down the block. Sequins, stilettos, spiked mohawks, lace gloves, boys in eyeliner and girls in leather. The ‘80s in full divine decay.

You and Lisa skip the line, walking with the confidence of sinners in satin. You catch people’s stares—and for once, they don’t feel like threats. They feel like confirmation. As you guys step behind the red velvet rope, that hugged the long line together.

And there he is.

Stillness incarnate.

Stack.

He stands by the entrance like he was carved from the night itself—stone-still, one boot propped against the wall, arms crossed, jaw lit by the hum of the red club lights. His eyes drag over you like fire over silk. Not lewd. Not surprised. Just coldness , with a hint of amusement . His gaze drops from your heels to your throat, slow and deliberate. “You sure that little costume’s not going to melt off the second you sweat?” he asks, the edge in his voice wrapped in velvet.

You raise an eyebrow. “Careful. Sounds like concern.”

“It’s not,” he says, deadpan. “Just hate watching a good performance fall apart halfway through.”

The words sting, more than you’d admit.

Lisa shoots him a look. “Jesus, Stack, maybe try not negging girls at the door for once?”

But you don’t flinch.

You smirk, lips red as ruin. “I’m not a performance.”

He leans in—too close. His breath is cool against your neck, and the bass of the club seems to stutter as his voice grazes your ear.

“No,” he murmurs. “You’re a scream waiting to happen.”

Something shifts in your spine. Your breath catches—sharp, furious, seen.

You disliked him. You wanted to dislike him whole at least , but for some reason deep down couldn’t.

Like he didn’t just peel something inside of you, like it didn’t matter , or that he cared if it did, in fact almost got a kick out of it.

“You sure you’re ready?” he says low, like a warning. “Past this door, you don’t come back the same.”

You open your mouth, but Lisa grabs your arm and pulls you toward the velvet rope.

Lisa rolls her eyes and mutters, “Fucking weirdo,” before tugging your arm. “Come on. Before I punch your personal vampire bouncer in the teeth.”

He doesn’t even blink. Just lifts the rope with a slow, deliberate motion, never breaking eye contact.

And just before you pass, he murmurs—

“Let’s see if you make it to midnight.” With a low toned chuckle as the gold between his teeth start to show even more than before .

Your heart bangs against your ribs like it’s trying to escape. You hold his gaze for half a second longer—refusing to break.

Then you step inside.

And the night swallows you whole.

Inside the club, the world is louder, hotter, hungrier.

The bass hits you in the chest like a second heartbeat. The lights don’t just flash—they move, red and gold and ultraviolet, dancing across smoke-thick air like living things. The ceiling disappears in darkness, but the floor—sticky with liquor, shadow, and secrets—holds you fast.

You take a shaky breath. It smells like sweat, perfume, blood orange, and old wood.

Lisa spins beside you, arms raised, shouting something into the noise you can’t hear—but you feel it. She’s alive here. Free here.

And for the first time in a long time, so are you.

The crowd parts like a stage curtain, revealing the soul of the place.

A raised platform at the far end of the room, bathed in soft red, like the inside of a mouth. That’s when you see her.

Long, black hair piled atop her head in a messy cascade, strands curling around her throat like silk vines. Her dress is pure ‘80s opulence—black sequins and sheer mesh, thigh slit high enough to cut heaven in half. Her mouth is the color of desire. Her eyes: two dark wounds that watch everything and give nothing.

She is the main act and the final sin.

As if pulled by invisible thread, her gaze lifts—and locks on yours.

A second stretches longer than it should.

The noise dims.

Your breath stops.

Then she smiles—slow and precise, like she’s already unwrapped you in her mind.

Lisa nudges you. “That’s her,” she whispers. “Mary. She owns the place. Or haunts it. No one’s really sure.” She chuckles.

“Why’s she looking at me like that?”

Lisa smirks. “Because she knows something you don’t.”

Before you can answer, a server appears with a tray. One drink, dark and fizzing, served in a highball glass with a cherry bleeding down the side. You didn’t order it.

“It’s from her,” the server says, nodding to Mary.

You glance back to find her gone from the platform.

Your stomach flips.

You turn.

And she’s suddenly in front of you.

Up close, she’s even more unreal. Her skin catches the light like she’s lit from inside. And she’s taller than you imagined. Not just in height—in presence.

“You wear pain like pearls,” she says, her voice like silk soaked in smoke. “Did he pick them out for you?” She leans in whispering in your ear.

You can’t breathe. Can’t lie.

You look confused at the woman , as if she’s lost her ever lasting mind, you remain frozen for a moment , out of confusion and shock.

She reaches out and tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear. Her fingers linger on your cheek, dangerously gentle.

“Well, darling,” she says, “tonight, you wear fire.”

And before you can look to your friend for some kind of guidance out of the current situation , Lisa’s grabbed by a dancer in mesh and glitter, twirled away with a laugh and a wink.

You are alone.

With Mary.

And somewhere behind you, you know Stack is still watching.

And for the first time tonight—

you don’t care.

Time slips in places like this.

It doesn’t pass.

It melts.

Hours bleed together in streaks of laughter and sweat, of empty glasses and refilled promises. You and Lisa dance until your legs ache, until your lungs burn sweet. Neon soaks into your skin, softens the bruises he left behind, even if only for now.

Strangers swirl around you—beautiful, strange, sharp-edged like broken mirrors. You don’t know where one ends and another begins. Hands graze hips. Eyes linger too long. But there is no fear here, only the illusion of it, dressed in rhinestones and eyeliner.

You’re drunk on it.

Not just the drink.

The feeling.

Of being seen.

Of being someone else.

Of being alive in a body that used to feel like a cage.

Then—a vibration.

Lisa checks her pager. Frowns.

“Shit,” she says. “It’s my sister. She’s freaking out about the baby again. I gotta step out and call.”

Your smile falters. “Now?”

“Just a minute,” she promises, already vanishing into the crowd like smoke. “Don’t get kidnapped!”

You laugh. But it doesn’t quite reach your chest.

You wait.

And that’s when the music changes.

The DJ steps down.

The lights dim.

The crowd hums in anticipation.

And Mary reappears.

Not just dressed to kill—dressed like death itself might pause to watch her. Her gown has changed—now deep burgundy velvet, strapless, carved tight against her waist like a funeral kiss. The lighting makes her glow, impossibly alive and yet not of here.

She takes the stage like she owns the concept of stages.

Then—she sings.

It’s not a voice.

It’s a spell.

Low, sultry, slow. A classic—“I Want to Be Evil”—but not like you’ve heard it before. Her voice curves through the lyrics like smoke around a knife. The room stills. A few dancers fall silent mid-step. A man drops his drink.

And you?

You forget how to breathe.

Her eyes stay on you the entire time.

As if this song, this moment, this haunting—was for you alone.

But the spell starts to break.

First, the regulars notice the time. People begin filing out in twos and threes. The mood shifts—like something’s coming that shouldn’t be witnessed. Like the glamor’s fading.

Mary’s last note hangs in the air like incense.

She steps down.

And just like that—she’s gone again.

You turn to look for Lisa. Still missing.

That’s when you feel the presence at your side. Heavy. Familiar.

Stack.

“Didn’t think you’d last the night,” he says quietly.

You don’t turn. “Didn’t think you’d care.”

“I didn’t.”

You look up at him.

His posture is different now. Less stone. More man. Arms loose at his sides, a slouch that reads wounded more than tough.

“Look,” he says, eyes tracking the floor, “I was… out of line earlier. Being an asshole ,outta fun, Doesn’t excuse it.though “.

The apology is stiff—but real. Raw.

You nod. “I’ve heard worse. But thanks.”

You both pause, surrounded by the quiet collapse of the night. The remnants of the party hum softly behind you like a heart slowing down.

Stack glances sideways at your middle finger, as he observes you, “You married?”

You tense. “Used to be. Still technically am. He doesn’t let me forget.”

Stack studies your facial features change drastically for a minute, “ you don’t seem so happy, has he ever? Hit you or sum “. He chuckled trying to lighten the mood.

Your jaw clenches. “Yes.”

He nods slowly, as he slowly began to unveil the seriousness of the conversation as his gaze became more soft, you fiddled with your wedding ring.

He nods slowly. “Same as my old man.”

You glance at him. His eyes are far off now, cast into some memory that tightens his jaw.

“He’d knock us around just for breathing wrong. My mom—she’d disappear in her own house. Me and my brother, we tried to protect her. We were kids. We couldn’t.”

A pause.

“ I use to have a brother … that didn’t make it “.

Your breath hitches. “I’m sorry.”

Stack doesn’t look at you, but his voice lowers. “I don’t talk about him. Not with anyone.”

“Why me?”

His smile is soft and bitter. “Because I see the same ghost in your face.”

The silence stretches like a wound between you—shared. Clean. Undeniable.

And somehow, for the first time in years, it doesn’t hurt as much.

You open your mouth to respond—

And the lights in the club flicker.

The music skips.

You feel it—like something brushing the back of your neck.

The air turns colder, sharp and unnatural. A gnawing unease coils in your gut, rising like a warning you can’t ignore. The night isn’t over—not even close.

You try to drown it out, losing yourself in the music, swaying your hips and elbows in a slow, desperate rhythm. But even as the beat thumps, something feels off. Stack drifted away a while ago, shaken, his steps uncertain after the emotional hit—and you’re left standing in the shadow of something you can’t quite name.

———

Laughter trails off into the night. Glitter sticks to the floor like stars that lost their shine. Bodies exit in slow waves—some swaying, some stumbling, all marked by Mary’s voice like a dream they’ll never quite remember right.

She steps offstage, radiant and composed, her glass heels whispering across the floor. The crowd that remains parts for her—offering compliments in hushed reverence. Someone hands her a rose. Someone else calls her a goddess.

She takes it all in with a half-smile, like none of it matters and yet she expected it all.

Lisa appears in the doorway a few minutes later, breathless and amused.

“There you are,” she says. “Was wondering if I should leave or wait for the wedding invite.”

Mary laughs softly. “Oh, she’s not ready for vows. Not yet.”

“I—shit, I didn’t mean to dip like that. My sister called freaking out. Baby’s fine. She’s just… you know. Chaos. I should’ve told you. I didn’t mean to leave you stranded.”

Relief washes over you. “It’s okay. Really.”

Lisa glances between the two of you. “Right. Well, I’m off. You sure you’re good?”

Lisa was okay leaving the video with Mary, since she was kind of a local and they knew each other as acquaintances. There was a certain level of trust there, even if they weren’t exactly close.”

You nod. “I’m fine.”

“She’s better than fine,” Mary says. “She’s becoming.”

Lisa laughs. “Okay, creepy. But I like it. You two be safe. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“You wouldn’t do a tax return,” you quip, and she throws you a wink as she vanishes through the entrance way.

You and Marie start so small talk before she mingles back into the crowd of fans , and you’re left back to yourself. Stack lingers for a moment, eyes still tracking her silhouette as it fades into the thinning crowd. The music is winding down, the pulse of the night slowing like a heartbeat losing momentum. People drift toward the exits in clumps, laughter turning quiet, bodies no longer pressing together but pulling apart.

He doesn’t say anything at first. Just watches.

Then he moves.

You feel him before you see him—his presence cutting through the haze, steady and warm in a night that’s turning cold. He joins you without ceremony, standing close enough that your shoulders almost touch.

“She’s leaving,” he murmurs, like it matters more than it should.

You glance at him a little confused, but he doesn’t look away from the door she slipped through.

“So what now?” you ask, quieter than you meant to.

Stack exhales, something heavy in the sound. “Now,” he says, finally turning to face you, “we see if the night’s really over… or if it’s just changing shape.”

You don’t answer right away. The club is nearly empty now, the last echoes of bass fading into a dull hum. Neon lights flicker overhead, casting everything in washed-out reds and blues. A few stragglers laugh drunkenly on their way out, their joy feeling like it belongs to another world.

Stack shifts beside you, his posture relaxed but his jaw tense. You get the sense he’s weighing something—an impulse he hasn’t quite decided to follow.

Then he moves.

“Come on,” he says, low and certain.

“Where?”

He offers a glance that feels like both a challenge and a promise. “Wherever Mary went. Or somewhere better.”

You hesitate. Just for a second. Then your feet move, following his lead, chasing that strange pull neither of you are willing to name.

But now most of the bar was now empty, and the party was damn near over as the crew on stage started packing to leave, and soon it was just down to a handful of people.

Then he turns to you.

“She doesn’t invite people back,” he says. “Not usually.”

Your pulse skips. “But she’s going to?”

His mouth quirks. “If she doesn’t, I will.”

You glance sideways at him. “Oh? You run the show now?”

He shrugs. “Only the door. And the parts nobody wants.”

————-

Mary’s eyes suddenly flick over to you through the last of the people leaving . She inclines her head. The invitation is silent, but unmistakable.

Stack nudges his head toward a side corridor lit by a single hanging red bulb. “Come on.”

You follow.

The hallway backstage is quieter, but not safer. You can feel it. The walls hum with old sound, old lives, old secrets soaked into the brick.

Mary’s dressing room is tucked behind a velvet curtain.

Inside, it’s a den of velvet and smoke and mirror glass, a chaos of luxury—half-spilled perfume bottles, an old chaise lounge piled with fur coats, vintage posters curling at the corners. There’s music playing from a turntable—low jazz, something sultry and slow.

Mary lounges on the couch like it was made for her.

Stack pours drinks from a side table stocked with cut-crystal decanters—blood-wine, dark rum, something glowing faintly gold.

“Sit,” Mary says, gesturing to you with fingers like sharpened silk. “Don’t be afraid.”

You sit. Slowly.

Stack hands you a glass.

The silence feels different now.

Heavier.

Stack moves to lean against the wall, sipping his drink with eyes half-lidded. “You ever sing?” he asks, casually.

You blink. “What?”

“Mary says she can tell when someone’s got a voice. A real one. The kind that comes from surviving.”

Mary tilts her head, considering you like a painting in a museum no one’s ever seen quite right.

“You wear your past like eyeliner,” she says softly. “And I like the smudge.”

You shift in your seat, suddenly aware of your breath, of your blood.

Stack chuckles darkly. “She’s starting again.”

Confused you fear your eyebrows between the two as the awkwardness becomes too much for you to bear as you pour your cup full of liquid courage, to fill the confusion and awkwardness with blissful ignorance.

Mary narrows her eyes at him, smiling. “Don’t be jealous.”

“I’m not,” he says, but his voice drops—low and amused. “Yet.”

You take another sip. The drink is sweet. Strong. Strange.

Time moves strangely here. Again.

Mary rises, barefoot now, and moves to the record player. She flips the vinyl with one hand, hips swaying like a rhythm only she can hear.

“You ever think,” she says, half to herself, “that some of us are just waiting to become monsters?” Her thick southern accent becoming more prominent.

Stack doesn’t answer.

Neither do you.

The air in the room thickens like something waiting.

You clear your throat, softer than you mean to. “So… how do you two know each other?”

Mary’s eyes flick to Stack. A ghost of a smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“He used to run with someone I knew,” she says.

Stack gives a short, dry nod. “We’ve crossed paths. A few times.” He shrugs

You feel like you’ve only been handed the edge of the story—but something in the way they look at each other says the rest is still very much alive between them.

And maybe dangerous.

⸻

Mary turns, and her face shifts—not exactly a smile, but something warmer than before. The edges of her expression soften, like she’s letting her guard down just a crack.

“She loves you, you know,” she says, tone lighter now. “Lisa. In her own chaotic, bossy way.”

You let out a small breath, almost a laugh. “She’s all I have.”

Stack’s voice cuts in, low but not unkind. “Not anymore.”

Mary moves to you, kneeling beside the couch with an ease that feels rehearsed. She doesn’t touch you, but her hand hovers near the hollow of your throat—close enough to feel the space between.

“She used to talk about you like you were some kind of myth,” Mary goes on, her smile turning mischievous. “All fire and loyalty and biting sarcasm. I figured you had to be made up.”

You glance down, heat prickling at the back of your neck. “Sounds like her.”

“She always loved talking about you during our school days” Mary says. “Fat lot of good that did.”

There’s a pause, light but loaded.

Then she grins. “Still. I like you better in person.”

⸻

A little tipsy , Mary glides to you, slow and deliberate, like she’s moving through water. She kneels beside the couch, so close now you can feel the faint stir of her breath. Her fingers reach out—not quite touching—but hovering just above your skin, right at the hollow below your collarbone.

“There’s something under your skin,” she murmurs, her voice low and intimate, like a secret slipping into the dark.

You hold still, your breath catching as her fingers ghost along the edge of sensation. Your body tenses—part anticipation, part confusion, part something else you don’t want to name.

“What is it?” you ask, barely managing the words.

Her gaze flicks up to meet yours, and there’s something burning behind her eyes. “Survival,” she says. “Something wild. Something that doesn’t ask permission.”

The air between you hums, thick and charged.

She doesn’t move away—not right away. For a moment, the space between your mouths feels like it’s shrinking. Her eyes linger on yours, then dip lower.

Then she smiles—slow, knowing—and stands, as if pulling the heat with her.

“There’s something I want to show you.”

Stack shifts, setting down his drink with a soft clink, watching from across the room. His jaw’s tight, eyes unreadable, like he knows exactly what just passed between you.

You blink, trying to gather your thoughts. “What… what is it?”

Mary glances back over her shoulder, the curl of her smile still playing at her lips. “Something that’ll make everything make sense.”

You glance at Stack, who doesn’t move—just stares at you with that same careful tension.

“Should I be worried?” you ask, voice a little rougher than before.

He lifts one brow. “Only if you’re not.”

Still, your body rises before your mind can catch up.

And already, something inside you is unraveling.

Something that wants more.

Of answers. Of her.

Of whatever this is.

You start to move your body , but Stack’s already watching. Already moving. He sets his drink down slowly on the ground , as if bracing for what comes next.

The tension hangs heavy between the three of you—sexual, emotional, primal. And then he speaks.

“We’re… together,” Stack admits finally, his voice softer than you’ve ever heard it. “Been through hell and back. Twins lost. Fathers broken. That kind of pain makes strange bedfellows.”

Mary nods, a flicker of something darker in her eyes. “We fight like hell, but we protect each other harder. We bleed for each other.”

Their words don’t feel rehearsed. They feel lived-in. Raw.

Their honesty curls around you like smoke—thick, hypnotic.

Stack steps closer. His gaze meets yours, unwavering. “This isn’t just some show. We live this. And if you’re here now, it means you’re part of it too.”

Mary leans in, close enough that her breath dances across your cheek. Her voice drops to something hushed and dangerous. “Do you want to feel alive?” she whispers. “Really alive?”

You don’t answer. You can’t.

Because your body already has.

Stack’s hand finds yours—rough, warm, steady. Mary’s follows, delicate, electric, sliding over your shoulder.

And then their lips are on you. Hers first—slow, coaxing, tasting. Then his—hot and unrelenting.

It’s not just a kiss. It’s ignition.

A collision of heat and shadow, of buried longing and sharp truth. A rhythm older than memory, deeper than reason.

In the hush of this backstage sanctuary, the world outside falls away.

You’re not just watching anymore.

You’re choosing.

And now, you’re part of the story—the part no one dares to write down.

Mary’s lips linger on yours, her kiss slow but sure—like she’s claiming something. Then Stack’s hand tightens around your waist, grounding, guiding, and suddenly he’s there—pressing closer, the warmth of his chest against your back.

You barely have time to react before his hands are on your hips, firm and possessive, steering you.

A gasp catches in your throat as he pushes you gently but unrelentingly down onto the couch.

The cushions catch you with a soft thud, the world tilting as your body gives in before your mind can catch up.

Above you, Mary watches—lips curved in a knowing smile, dark eyes gleaming with a mix of hunger and amusement. Like she’s seen this before. Like she’s waited for it.

She kneels beside you again, brushing your hair back with reverent fingers, her touch softer now, almost tender. “You’re not afraid,” she says, more observation than question.

Stack leans over you, one hand braced by your shoulder, his presence all heat and tension. “You feel it too, don’t you?” he murmurs, his voice like smoke curling low in your ear. “Whatever this is.”

You nod—barely. But it’s enough.

Mary shifts closer, her hand resting lightly on your thigh. Her smile deepens, not cruel, not kind—just honest.

“You’re ours now,” she says.

And with that, the room folds in on itself—just the three of you, lost in a moment where the past doesn’t matter, and the future is rewritten in breath, touch, and fire.

Stack’s hands are already on you—rough palms sliding up your sides as he presses you gently but firmly back into the couch. The cushions sigh beneath you, but your breath catches in your chest, too focused on the heat unfurling under your skin to care.

Mary watches from just a step away, lips parted, her eyes dark and gleaming with amusement, curiosity, hunger. Then, with unhurried grace, she lowers herself beside you, her fingers tracing a line from your collarbone to your jaw. Featherlight, electric.

“You should see yourself right now,” she murmurs, leaning in close, her lips brushing your ear. “Absolutely burning.”

Stack leans over you, his body heat pouring onto yours, his mouth finding the edge of your jaw, your neck, your collarbone—each kiss hot, deliberate, claiming. His breath is rougher now, like he’s been holding it in too long.

You gasp as Mary’s hand finds your thigh, sliding upward with slow, teasing purpose. Her lips are at your temple, then lower, ghosting over your cheek. “Let go,” she whispers. “No one’s watching but us.”

And then she kisses you again—deeper this time, more demanding—and Stack’s lips follow, chasing hers, until you’re caught between them, their hands moving over you in tandem, fire on both sides.

The heat builds fast—crackling tension giving way to something wilder. Their bodies press in, mouths hungry, hands restless, all three of you caught in a gravity that feels ancient and irresistible.

You’re dizzy, not from fear, but from the rush—of sensation, of surrender, of finally letting go.

Stack growls low in his throat as he kisses you harder, his hands tangling in your hair. Mary laughs softly, a sultry sound that melts into another kiss as her fingers tug at your shirt, dragging it up just enough to feel your skin beneath hers.

“You feel that?” she breathes. “That’s real. We’re real.”

The couch creaks beneath the weight of the moment, bodies tangled, breath ragged. And still, it’s not enough.

Not yet.

Because the fire they’ve lit inside you is only just beginning to consume. And the next thing you saw , was a pile of clothes on the floor , it was fast.

The lights in the back room are low—just enough to throw golden shadows over Mary’s skin as she circles you like a lioness. Stack leans back on the couch legs spread, watching with that unreadable expression he wears when he’s feeling everything and showing nothing.

Mary’s hands kneels between your legs, her hands slow, steady, reverent. Her eyes stay locked on yours, never flinching. Not once. “You trust me?” she asks, voice low and thick, not seeking permission—confirming something already decided.

You nod, your breath shallow.

Stack watches from across the room, jaw tight, eyes shadowed. Not out of jealousy—control. This is something he’s done before. Something he knows how to handle. He wants you to see what it’s like to be touched, seen, undone in their hands.

Mary’s fingers slide along your inner thigh, deliberate, teasing, never quite where you want them. “Look at him,” she whispers, mouth ghosting over your jaw. “He’s watching you come apart already.”

You glance at Stack. His eyes are molten, locked on yours, unmoving. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. Every breath from him matches yours, syncing into something that feels ritualistic, sacred, and a little wicked.

Mary leans in, her breath hot on your neck. “We do this together,” she says, her hand finally dipping between your thighs, her touch featherlight, almost cruel in how gentle it is. “We always do.”

Your body arches instinctively, and Stack shifts forward in his chair, his hands gripping the armrests tight. His jaw works as he breathes through his nose, steady but deep—like he’s barely holding back.

The pressure builds. Mary’s rhythm is slow, patient, devastating. Her free hand moves to your chest, fingers brushing over your heart. “You feel that?” she whispers. “That pulse? That heat? We’re going to take that… and burn it into forever.”

Mary doesn’t rush. She watches your face—every flicker of breath, every shift in your body—as her hand moves lower, her fingers pressing with unerring purpose.

You suck in a breath, sharp and unsteady.

Her touch isn’t hesitant. It’s deliberate. She explores like someone who already knows the shape of your desire, tracing slow, maddening circles that have your hips lifting toward her without thought. She leans in closer, breath warm against your neck, lips brushing your ear.

“Don’t hold back,” she whispers. “I want you to feel everything.”

Across from you, Stack’s eyes are locked on the connection between you and Mary. His hand has moved to his thigh, fingers flexing. There’s a tension in him now—not restraint, not jealousy—but hunger, tightly coiled, waiting for its turn.

Mary’s fingers slide deeper, and your head tilts back with a stifled moan. The room is full of heat now—thick, slow-burning, sacred in its own wicked way.

“You’re doing beautifully,” she murmurs, her voice low and rich. “He’s watching every second.”

You glance at Stack again, and something flares in his eyes—approval, need, something darker. He’s not moving, but you can feel him right there, pulling every breath from your lungs with just a look.

Mary kisses your neck, then lower, lips grazing your chest, her rhythm never faltering. You’re unraveling—bit by bit—and both of them are watching it happen.

You’re no longer sure where pleasure ends and transformation begins.

And somewhere deep inside, a part of you whispers:

This is how it starts.

This is how they pull you into their world.

Your hands clutch the fabric beneath you as Mary’s fingers move in perfect, devastating rhythm—tuned to your body like a song only she knows how to play. She doesn’t rush, doesn’t falter. Just smooth, unrelenting pressure that pulls soft gasps and bitten-off moans from your throat.

Every nerve is awake.

Every breath is molten.

She lifts her head to watch your face—her eyes glowing now, not just with lust, but something more primal. Something ancient. Her lips are parted, glistening from the trail of kisses she left across your skin.

“She’s close,” she says to Stack, but she never looks away from you. “So close she’s humming.”

Stack moves forward, the tension in his body finally giving way. He kneels behind you, his presence wrapping around you like heat, like gravity. His hands come to rest on your shoulders, grounding you as your body quakes beneath Mary’s touch.

His lips brush the back of your neck. “Let go,” he murmurs, voice like smoke. “We’ve got you.”

Your body is still trembling, a slow aftershock of pleasure rolling through your limbs. Mary withdraws her hand gently, trailing her fingers back along your thigh, her touch featherlight and lingering. She doesn’t break eye contact, her gaze warm and dark with satisfaction.

“You’re sensitive,” she murmurs, voice like velvet. “I like that.”

Stack shifts behind you on the couch, one hand tracing idle patterns along your arm, the other resting just above your hip. His presence is calm but charged, his breath still a little unsteady. You can feel the heat of him, the weight of his attention.

Mary leans in again, her lips brushing your cheek before they trail toward your jaw. She kisses slowly, purposefully, leaving little sparks in her wake.

————

Mary reaches behind her back, unhooking the bra with a flick of her wrist. It falls away, exposing her full, round breasts to your hungry gaze. Her brown nipples are hard, begging for attention. "Come here," she whispers, crooking a finger at you. "Let me show you how a real woman kisses."

As you move towards her, Stack's hands are at the fastening of his pants, undoing the button and zipper with a swift, impatient tug. He shoves them down his hips, stepping out of them to stand before you in a pair of tight black boxers that leave little to the imagination. His erection strains against the fabric, a thick, rigid outline that makes your mouth water.

Mary pulls you into a deep, passionate kiss, her tongue dancing with yours.

Mary's lips move against yours with a fervor that steals your breath, her hands gripping your shoulders as she deepens the kiss. The contrast of her light skin against yours is electrifying, the pale brown of her nipples a stark contrast to the rich chocolate of your own. She breaks the kiss, panting softly as she looks into your eyes. "I want you , no I need you," she whispers, her voice husky with desire.

She moves away from you, crawling over to where Stack is, his muscular brown body sprawled out invitingly. With a graceful motion, she straddles his face, her back to him, facing you. His hands grip her hips, pulling her down onto his mouth as he begins to feast on her pussy, his tongue delving deep into her slick folds.

Mary's eyes flutter closed, her head thrown back in ecstasy as Stack's mouth works its magic. She reaches out for you, her pale hand grasping yours, pulling you closer. "Come here," she urges, her voice trembling with need. "Sit on his cock, darling”

As you move closer, Stack's eyes lock onto yours, burning with an intensity that makes your knees weak. He releases Mary's hips, his hands reaching out to grasp your waist, guiding you to straddle him. His thick, pretty shaft stands proud and erect, the tip glistening with precum.

“Climb on,” he growls, his voice thick with heat, rough against your skin. “Nice and slow at first—I want to feel every inch of you sliding down. Then I want you to lose control. Ride me like you need it. Like you’ve been starving for it.”

Mary's hand squeezes yours encouragingly as she watches you with heavylidded eyes, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "Do it," she whispers, her voice thick with arousal. "Take him deep inside you. Let us pleasure you like you've never been pleasured before."

You position yourself just above Stack, the heat of his body like a furnace beneath you. His hands grip your hips with a mix of reverence and raw need, guiding you as you sink down onto him—slowly, achingly, until he’s buried deep inside you.

The stretch, the pressure, the fullness—it steals your breath.

His head falls back with a low groan, fingers tightening around your waist. “Fuck… just like that,” he growls, hips shifting to meet your slow, grinding rhythm.

Stack’s hands slide up your back, holding you steady for a moment before he leans forward, mouth at your ear. “Don’t stop,” he murmurs, voice rough. “I want to feel you—every move, every clench—while I taste her.”

Before you can answer, he shifts under you, guiding you forward just enough to free himself, then turns slightly, his hands dragging Mary closer. She lets out a laugh, low and sultry, as he lowers his mouth between her thighs, tongue tracing her slick heat like he’s starving for her.

Mary moans, her hands tangling in his hair, hips arching into his mouth. “God—yes,” she gasps, eyes locking with yours. “Keep riding him, sweetheart. Let him feel how good we both taste.”

You move again, slow and deep, every thrust echoing with shared heat, tangled breath, and the electric pull between the three of you—pleasure looping in waves, building with no end in sight.

And in the middle of it all, there’s no before, no after—

Just this.

Bodies, mouths, heat, hunger.

Just need.

hips rolling in deep, deliberate circles, and every inch of him presses into you, claiming you from the inside out. Your hands plant against his chest for balance, muscles tight, pleasure coiling hotter with each movement.

Beneath you, Stack groans against Mary’s thighs, tongue working in rhythmic, hungry strokes. She writhes under his mouth, one hand in his hair, the other snaking behind your back to grip your waist, guiding your rhythm harder, deeper.

The room is drenched in heat and breath and skin.

Mary’s lips find your jaw, then your mouth—hot, open, tasting you like she’s drinking you down. “Look at you,” she whispers between kisses. “So fucking gorgeous like this. You feel everything, don’t you?”

You nod, barely—your breath shallow, body trembling as the fire between your legs starts to burn out of control. Stack’s grip tightens again, his hips bucking upward just as his tongue draws a moan from Mary that sends shivers down your spine.

She’s close. So are you.

The rhythm becomes frantic—your bodies moving together like instinct, like hunger, like a storm breaking.

Mary’s head falls back with a cry, thighs clenching around Stack’s face as she comes undone, her pleasure spilling over like a dam breaking. Her moans trigger something in you—your body tenses, heat flooding your core as your climax builds, surges, breaks.

You cry out, nails digging into Stack’s chest as he groans, his own release following hard and deep inside you, body bucking with raw, unfiltered need.

And then everything slows.

Breath. Movement. Sound.

Stack leans back against the couch, breathless and flushed. Mary breathlessly gets off of him , laughing softly, like she’s high on every part of you both. Her hand finds yours, fingers lacing through, grounding the moment in something quiet and real.

For a moment, none of you speak.

No one needs to.

The only sound is the thrum of your hearts and the cooling hush of the dark room around you—three bodies tangled in sweat, breath, and something deeper.

Something binding.

Stack starts kisses down your neck with reverent slowness, dragging his teeth lightly, like he’s tasting where he wants to sink in. Mary’s lips press against yours, coaxing, owning, her hands curled around your face as though you might shatter if she let go.

You think you’re unraveling in pleasure.

You don’t realize you’re being prepared.

“Tell me you want this,” Mary whispers against your lips. “All of it.”

Stack’s voice is molten in your ear. “Even the pain. Especially the pain.”

You’re trembling, caught in their rhythm, your breath stolen—until suddenly…

Mary’s kiss deepens—and then sharpens.

A white-hot spike of pain bursts through your lips as her fangs slide into your mouth. The taste of blood blooms like a dark flower, coppery, electric, and wrong.

Your gasp chokes in your throat.

Then Stack strikes.

You scream—but it’s a muffled, helpless thing, swallowed by Mary’s iron grip.

Your body arches. Limbs twitch.

And still—they drink.

Mary’s hand is in your hair, holding you still like a doll, her mouth smeared crimson. She watches the life drain from your face with a feverish, terrifying affection.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” she breathes.

Stack growls low, blood slicking his lips and chin. “She’s almost there.”

Your vision blurs. The lights spin in slow spirals.

Your heart—once frantic—now thuds softer, weaker.

Your thoughts fragment, melt. Something ancient creeps into your mind, cold and endless.

Mary strokes your cheek with a bloodstained thumb.

“This is the part they never tell you about,” she whispers. “When dying starts to feel like being born.”

And then—

Darkness.

The first thing you feel is cold.

Not the cold of winter or a draft through an open door—no, this cold lives inside you. It coils beneath your skin like ice forming on bone.

And then—

Pain.

Like your blood is glass. Like your breath is shards.

Your lungs heave, but no air comes. Your heart punches wildly once… then halts.

You jolt upright with a scream caught in your throat, eyes wild, back arching off the velvet floor.

Everything is wrong.

The world is too sharp—colors bloom too bright, sounds too loud, the overhead light buzzes like a swarm in your ears. You can hear everything—Mary’s whisper-soft breath, Stack’s boot scuffing the wood, the distant flutter of a moth’s wings against glasses on the floor .

You crawl backward, limbs jerking, frantic , now fully clothed, along with Mary and Stack .

“What did you—what did you do to me!?”

Your voice comes out raw, cracked, feral.

Mary moves toward you slowly, her bloodstained hands open. “You’re okay, baby. Just—breathe.”

“I can’t breathe!” you choke. “I’m not—I’m not supposed to be—this isn’t real—”

Stack crouches in front of you, his hands steady. “It is real,” he says, calm as a storm about to break. “But you’re not dying anymore. You’re waking up.”

You stare at him, the weight of your own heartbeat—now silent—reverberating in your head like a scream.

“You killed me—”

“No,” Stack says, voice low, serious now. “We saved you.”

He leans in, eyes burning with something ancient and fierce. “You were already dying in that house. Every single day, slowly. We saw it.”

“What are you talking about?” your voice trembles, panic clawing your ribs.

Mary kneels behind you, gently smoothing your hair, her voice like velvet soaked in honey and sorrow.

“We’ve been watching you. For months. We saw the bruises. The way he screamed at you like you were nothing. The night he broke your favorite dish and blamed you. The way you cleaned blood off the kitchen tiles with shaking hands and lied to your neighbors about the ‘stairs.’”

Tears burn your eyes. You want to deny it. But you can’t.

Stack’s gaze holds yours. “He wouldn’t stop. You know that. You know it.”

A long silence swallows the room.

“You can start over,” Mary whispers into your ear. “Right now. With us.”

“With me,With us ” Stack adds. “We’ll leave this city, this life. You’ll never have to feel afraid again. No more bills in his name. No more hiding phones. No more waiting to be hit.”

Your voice cracks. “He’ll come looking for me…”

Stack’s face darkens with a cruel, sharp smile. “Let him. He won’t find you. And even if he tries—he won’t survive.”

Mary kisses your temple, her lips soft against your cooling skin. “Let go. Come with us. You’ve already crossed the threshold. You just have to say yes.”

You sit in silence, shaking, your hands still stained with the remnants of your own blood.

Then slowly, slowly…

You nod.

Not because you’re fearless.

But because you’re done being afraid.

——————

Months pass like smoke.

Somewhere coastal, the sea winds wrap around your new skin, and the stars greet you like sisters.

You learn to walk with sharpened heels and a tongue dipped in fire.

You sleep in silk, feed in shadow, and smile at the moon with teeth no longer afraid to bare themselves.

Mary teaches you to dance and enjoy life again—not in secret—but in joy, beneath chandeliers and candlelight.

Stack teaches you how to kill cleanly.

And how to love in the aftermath.

They give you more than freedom.

And for the first time, you wear it like armor, not a shackle.

But some ghosts don’t vanish quietly.

You still see him sometimes in your dreams—beer-soaked, red-faced, with rage for breath.

And then one night that all changed , as Stack watches you from a near by tree , eyes glowy , near your former home, he asks you a simple question.

“You ready?”

You are.

He lives in the same house. The curtains hang heavy, stained yellow from years of nicotine. The porch light flickers erratically, casting shadows that dance with every gust of wind. The thought had crept into your mind again and again, always pushed aside—until you finally opened up to Stack and Mary. They didn’t just listen; they convinced you to take the leap, to finally face what you’d been avoiding.

You wait in the dark, heels clicking against pavement slick with drizzle.

He opens the door half-drunk, stumbling forward, shirt stained.

Then freezes.

You are radiant—skin like glass-polished obsidian, lips painted black, your hair in thick waves that cascade past a leather trench. Eyes glowing faintly, like a storm brewing behind them.

His mouth moves. “Is that—?”

“You thought I died, didn’t you?” you say softly.

He stares, slack-jawed, as Mary steps out of the shadows behind you, in a blood-red velvet coat and heels sharp as blades. Her lips curl into something not quite a smile.

“Shame,” Stack says from beside the porch, flicking a lighter open and closed. “You could’ve just let her go.”

Your husband turns to run. But he barely gets two steps.

You move like wind. He hits the wall hard, your hand around his throat—cold, unyielding.

“I begged you to stop,” you whisper.

He thrashes. Mary tilts her head.

Stack doesn’t intervene.

You lean in close, your breath colder than winter. “Now you beg.”

His scream barely starts before you silence it—fangs bared, jaw locked.

The blood is sour. Full of rot. But it’s earned.

Mary watches, eyes gleaming with approval, as you tear away everything that once terrified you.

When it’s done, you rise—glistening, unshaken.

Stack drapes a jacket over your shoulders. Mary threads her arm through yours.

No words are needed. The house behind you smolders.

And as you walk into the night, no longer a wife, no longer a victim—only vengeance and freedom walking in stilettos—

You smile.

Not because it’s over.

But because it’s just beginning.

A/n: A little rushed lol but I hope u guys like it

195 notes · View notes

shadowyfigure1207 · 1 day ago

Text

Blues beats the clues pt 2, Blood in Every City

Warnings:(18+) 🩸🕯️

Blood, lots of it,Toxic vampire throuple , Possessive behavior disguised as love,Slow-burning madness, Angst, Psychological unraveling, Fangs where mouths shouldn’t go, mentions of past-life Trauma(Abuse), Emotional Manipulation, Smut , Unreliability (memory, narrator, reality—take your pick), lowkey body horror n gore , Mary being sweet in the scariest way, Stack being a red flag with a jawline,Reader slowly realizing she might not be theirs—they might be hers.

🔞 This is for adults only. don’t romanticize abuse. Read responsibly babes <3

————

A/n: 😮‍💨 here she is yall

Paring : Black! Reader x Stack x Mary

Summary : They didn’t just run — they disappeared.

From the smoldering remains of her husband’s house, the reader flees into the long dark with Mary and Stack at her side. The world becomes a blur of nightclubs and safehouses, back roads and blood-stained hotel rooms. Cities change. Decades shift. Names fade. But their bond grows fiercer, hungrier.

They bled their way through the ‘90s, hunted through forgotten alleys in Berlin, seduced the millennium in London nightclubs, burned through early 2000s L.A. like a fever dream of velvet, glitter, and ash.

It’s 2014. The blood is colder. The silence is louder.

You, Mary, and Stack have outrun time—cities burned behind you, names shed like skin.

Now, in a quiet town, you’re strangers under one roof.

Mary avoids your eyes. Stack drinks too much.

And you—

You dream of drowning in blood you didn’t spill.

Mirrors moved . Strangers forget you. And something inside was very wrong.

———-

It’s Halloween night on the quiet north side of L.A.—where the houses sit pretty behind trimmed hedges and the moon hangs low like it’s watching.

The porch light flickers gold against the haze of cigarette smoke and jasmine perfume, and you and Mary have been camped on the front steps for nearly two hours, handing out candy with practiced charm to tiny ghosts, glittering princesses, and boys with plastic fangs too big for their mouths.

She’s curled beside you on a plaid blanket, barefoot, wearing a silk slip black dress and a black sweater that keeps sliding off her shoulder. You’re halfway through telling a little witch that no, sorry, you’re all out of Reese’s, when Mary leans in with a giggle against your ear and says, “Baby, we’re out again. Think Stack’ll get more without being a dick about it this time?”

You sigh. “I’ll ask,” you mutter, brushing candy wrappers off your lap.

Inside, the house smells like cloves, wood polish, and something sweet baking too long. Stack’s in the kitchen, arms crossed, already watching you like he heard her.

“We need more,” you say, trying to sound neutral.

He snorts, doesn’t move. “Of course you do. Can’t have the little monsters going home empty-handed. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking this perfect little façade’s cracking.”

You blink. “Stack—”

He grabs the bowl off the counter hard enough to rattle the silver. “You two want to play house so bad? Go ahead. Just don’t ask me to pretend this shit is normal.”

Behind you, the door creaks open and Mary calls sweetly, “Did he say yes?”

You don’t answer right away. You’re too busy watching the way Stack’s jaw clenches, the way something darker flickers behind his eyes.

And outside, the wind picks up.

——

A chorus of tiny knocks interrupts the tension—three quick raps on the front door followed by muffled giggles and a plastic pumpkin banging against the wood.

Mary pops her head in, grinning, effortlessly soft. “Last round’s here, sugar. You comin’?”

Before you can speak, Stack catches your wrist—not hard, but firm. His hand is cold, even for him.

“You go,” he says to Mary without looking at her. “I need to talk to her.”

Mary hesitates for a beat, then lifts her brows, unreadable. “Don’t break anything,” she hums, then turns on her heel, silk slip brushing the floor as she disappears outside in a trail of perfume and fake spiderwebs.

You and Stack stand in the low amber light of the hallway, the front door creaking behind her, children’s laughter barely audible through the walls.

“What is it now?” you ask, voice low.

He studies you, the flicker of the porch light reflecting in his dark eyes, making them look almost too deep. Like if you stare too long, you’ll fall into something that doesn’t end.

“You don’t see it, do you?” he mutters. “You’re out there smiling like we’re just a couple of bored thirty-somethings passing out chocolate in the suburbs. Playing house. Playing safe.”

Your stomach knots. “It’s Halloween, Stack. We’re blending in.”

He takes a step closer. “We’re fading. That’s what we’re doing.”

His voice drops to a near growl, something unspoken tightening between you both.

“You used to burn,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Now I don’t even know if it’s still you under there. Or something pretending.”

You pull your wrist from his grip. “You think I’m pretending?” you snap. “You’re the one who can’t go a single night without trying to start a fire in a glass house.”

Outside, you hear Mary’s voice—sweet and lilting—thanking the kids, telling someone to be safe, to not eat all the candy at once.

Inside, Stack’s gaze is burning into you.

“You’re changing,” he says finally. “And not just the way we did.”

A long silence passes between you.

And then he adds, dark and quiet, “I just don’t know if you’ll still want us when whatever’s inside you wakes up.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. You’re starting to sound like him.”

That lands.

Stack flinches, just barely—but it’s enough. His jaw ticks. The bravado softens around the edges. He looks older in the flickering hallway light, like someone forced into remembering something he’s spent decades trying to forget.

You glance down at his costume—black jeans, steel-toe boots, a weathered leather duster thrown over a vintage sheriff’s badge and a blood-stained button-down. A plastic revolver holstered at his side, all part of his half-assed attempt at being “the outlaw.” Ironic, considering how often he acts like judge, jury, and executioner behind closed doors.

“You really wanna go there?” he murmurs. “Say I sound like him?”

You swallow. “You’re not there yet. But when you talk like that… When you look at me like I’m less just because I’m not killing like you two—yeah, it reminds me of him.”

It’s the first time you’ve said it out loud: you’ve never killed. Not once.

Not in all these years.

You drink from the willing. You drink from the reckless, the lonely, the dancers who lean too close in the dark and ask you to bite like it’s foreplay.

But you never take too much. Never past that invisible line.

Mary calls it “starving politely.” Stack used to call it “your little self-control act.”

Now? He just stares at you like he’s trying to remember who you are underneath it all.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he finally says, voice low. “I just… I see you slipping and I don’t know how to hold onto you without pulling you down with us.”

The vulnerability in his tone cracks something in you.

You move toward him slowly, cautiously—like approaching a wild animal you still trust to love you. And when he doesn’t move away, you wrap your arms around his middle, resting your head against his chest. His jacket smells like smoke and clove.

Stack doesn’t say a word. Just holds you. Tight. Like if he lets go now, he never will again.

A few beats later, the front door clicks softly open.

Mary enters, smiling like a ghost in a long black dress with spiderweb mesh sleeves and a crown of dried roses in her curls. “I swear,” she says, “if I have to see one more toddler in a Paw Patrol costume I might combust.”

She pauses mid-step, watching the two of you. Her smile softens. “Everything alright?”

You pull back just enough to nod. “Yeah. We’re good now.”

Stack exhales into your hair.

Mary moves past you both and starts picking up candy wrappers from the floor. “Good,” she says softly, half to herself. “’Cause the night’s not over yet.”

——

the three of you are curled into the dim living room—candles flickering low on every windowsill, the scent of pumpkin-scented wax and woodsmoke thick in the air. The party you didn’t plan for is happening anyway.

A few stragglers from Mary’s boutique and Stack’s regulars from the bar drift in, half-drunk in mismatched costumes, collapsing onto your velvet couch and vintage armchairs like they’ve always belonged there.

Mary’s nestled beside you, legs across your lap, humming something off-key. Stack’s in the kitchen, phone pressed to his ear, ordering two large pizzas like he hasn’t killed a man in thirty years.

“Yeah, pepperoni on one, white with garlic on the other,” he says, glaring at the receiver. “And don’t fuckin’ skimp on the crust this time, bro.”

You snort.

Drake’s “The Motion” slips through the speakers—lazy, slowed-down, seductive in that strangely sad way only he can make sound sexy. Mary immediately croons along, a little off but charming:

“I’ve been drinkin’, I’ve been drinkin’…”

“That’s not even the right song,” you tease, laughing, “You’re mixing Beyoncé and Drake—”

“I’m remixing,” she insists, half-smiling. “Drunk witch energy, baby. Let me live.”

Stack finally comes back in, tossing his phone onto the coffee table and dropping into the armchair beside you both. The leather creaks under his weight. He eyes Mary, then looks at you, a faint smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth.

“What are we doing?” he asks.

You raise a brow. “Eating, vibing, pretending we’re not vampires for like—one night?”

Stack exhales a dry laugh. “Cute.”

Mary reaches out, linking her fingers through yours as she sings under her breath:

“I’m just saying, you could do better…”

The whole room echoes it seconds later. A chorus of slightly off-key, wine-loose friends joining in. Laughter. Someone clinks a wine glass against a bottle. A guy dressed like Frankenstein starts doing a slow-motion twirl.

For a moment—it’s almost normal.

You close your eyes.

But then the lights flicker—just once. Brief. Like the house itself took a breath.

Your eyes open.

Mary’s still humming. Stack’s scrolling through his phone. No one else notices.

But you do.

The feeling. That something just stepped inside with the wind.

——

You blink—

—and suddenly, it’s not 2014.

It’s a basement. His basement.

Your old husband’s breath is hot on your neck as he screams about the gas bill, his spit thick against your skin.

His ring catches the light just before it hits your face.

You remember the floor. How cold it was. How still you had to be.

How easy it became to disappear.

You remember thinking: maybe if I stay perfectly quiet, he’ll forget I’m here.

And now…

…now even the world forgets you’re here.

You inhale sharply.

——-

The music is still playing.

You’re back on the couch—Drake’s voice dragging through the room like a lazy, tired god. Mary’s fingers still laced with yours, her nails painted black with tiny silver moons. Stack’s halfway through his second beer, leaning back in the chair like the king of a castle that’s slowly crumbling beneath him.

The pizza’s here. Someone’s passing a joint. The smell of weed and marinara mingles.

But something isn’t right.

You stand up, a little too fast. Your body still humming with aftershock. You murmur, “Bathroom,” and slip down the hall before anyone can stop you.

The hall is quiet. Too quiet.

You pass the family photos you never took, the framed prints Mary found at estate sales—curated memories. The illusion of stability.

You pause at the mirror near the end of the hall.

And for a moment—it doesn’t reflect you.

It shows the couch. Mary. Stack. The room behind you.

But not you.

You lean in. Blink. The image resets. Your face stares back.

But your eyes are gold for half a second. Not brown.

Something deep and ancient stirs in your chest. A name you don’t know curls on your tongue.

Behind you, the floor creaks.

“Hey,” Stack’s voice, low and unreadable. “You alright?”

You turn. He’s standing there in the shadows, still in costume, beer bottle in one hand. His brow furrows as he looks at you—like he knows. Like he always does.

You nod slowly. “Just needed air.”

“You don’t look like you need air,” he mutters. “You look like you saw a ghost. Or maybe—finally saw yourself.”

He steps closer, leans against the wall across from you. Silence stretches.

“I know that look,” he adds. “That haunted, ‘what the fuck am I becoming’ kind of look. I wore it for years. Still do.”

You bite your lip. “You always talk like you’re not afraid.”

“I’m always afraid,” he says. “I’m just better at making it look like rage.”

You want to cry. Or laugh. Or grab him and scream into his mouth.

Instead, you say: “Sometimes I wish I’d never opened that door.”

Stack tilts his head. “You mean our door?”

You shake your head slowly. “No. His.”

Another silence.

Then he tosses his empty bottle into the trash bin across the hall. A perfect shot. No effort.

And when he moves to leave, he pauses just beside you and says:

“You’re not her anymore. Don’t ever confuse who you were with who you are. Not in this house.”

Then, softer, just for you:

“And if you are losing yourself… don’t do it alone.”

——

You blink once more at the mirror, steadying your breath. Your reflection has returned—brown eyes, soft mouth, a smear of lipstick at the corner. Human enough.

You shrug it off. The blood. The memory. The shimmer in your irises.

It was nothing. Just a trick of the light. Just a bad flashback.

That’s what you tell yourself.

You turn and head back toward the living room, where the music’s slowed to something mellow and electronic. Most of the guests are already gone, coats in hand, mumbling goodbyes and thanks. Someone mutters about work tomorrow. The door closes behind them with a sigh.

Mary’s the last one standing—perched on the edge of the couch, red wine in hand, her crown of dried flowers slightly tilted now. She smiles when she sees you. Her eyes track your every move, slow, soft, a little dangerous.

“There you are,” she says, voice smooth as silk pulled across skin. “I was starting to think the mirror took you.”

You force a small smile, and she sees through it immediately.

“Come on,” she says, setting her glass down. “I’m stealing you.”

Before you can answer, her fingers find yours—cool and certain—and she’s already guiding you down the hall toward the bedroom. You follow, barefoot and a little breathless, letting the haze of wine and incense blur the sharp edges of the night.

The bedroom is dimly lit, soaked in warm lamp glow and shadows. Candles flicker on the vanity. The sheets are already turned down, inviting. You catch your reflection again in the full-length mirror across from the bed—but Mary kisses you before you can look too long.

Her lips taste like cabernet and clove.

“Let me take your mind off it,” she whispers, against your jaw.

You hum, letting her guide you onto the mattress, hands already tangled in her dress. The tension in your chest begins to melt under her mouth, her touch—this soft, consuming rhythm you both know too well. Her crown slips off entirely, landing on the pillow beside you.

“Forget him,” she murmurs between kisses—your old life, your old pain, your too-sharp thoughts. “Forget the mirror. Forget the past. Right now, it’s just us.”

You nod, breath catching as she moves over you. And for a moment, you believe her. For a moment, the shadows hush. The monster quiets.

You pretend you’re not changing. You pretend it’s just love.

But outside, the wind picks up again. And something ancient watches from the mirror, patient, waiting for you to look again.

The candlelight paints you both in flickers—gold on brown skin, shadows on silk, the illusion of safety curling in the corners of the room.

Mary tastes like wine and wickedness.

Your hands roam her body like you’ve done it a thousand times—and you have—but tonight feels different. Hungrier. You’re not gentle this time, not entirely. Your kiss is all teeth and heat, and she takes it with a sigh that sounds like a dare.

She’s beneath you now, her slip bunched around her waist, thighs parted, breath coming faster as your mouth trails down her collarbone, licking away the faint line of blood you left there seconds ago.

“You like when I bite?” you murmur, voice husky against her skin.

Mary lets out a breathy laugh, tilting her head to bare her throat. “I made you, baby. You think I don’t know what you’re capable of?”

Your fangs slip longer now—sharp, aching behind your lips—and she watches with dark, delighted eyes as you lower your mouth again.

You bite her shoulder this time, deeper. Her nails rake down your back. You both moan.

The blood is hot on your tongue, dizzying, laced with the sweetness of her—like tasting power and perfume all at once. You lap it up, messy, smearing your mouth down to her chest, suckling over the wound until she arches up into you.

“You always take your time,” she pants, fingers in your hair. “Always so careful. But look at you now…”

You lift your head, lips stained crimson, golden eyes glowing. “What if I don’t want to be careful anymore?”

“Then don’t,” she says, pulling you into another kiss—open-mouthed, gasping, tongues slick with blood and heat. She pulls you tighter between her legs, her hips grinding into yours with slow, deliberate pressure. “Let go.”

And this time you do.

You sink into her—bodies tangled, mouths never far, hands exploring in rough, reverent patterns. The slick sound of skin on skin, the drag of fang against throat, the way you both gasp and shudder as you take and give at once.

Mary’s laugh turns into a moan. Your moan turns into a growl.

You don’t know where you end and she begins. You don’t want to.

And somewhere in the house, the front door clicks softly shut.

Someone has left.

Or something has just arrived.

But you don’t hear it.

You’re too busy sinking into each other .

The sheets twist beneath you as Mary rolls her hips into yours, pulling you deeper into her, breath hitching with each slow grind. Her blood still lingers on your tongue—rich and electric—making your head swim and your body ache with something ancient and starving.

Her hands are everywhere—gripping your thighs, tugging your hair, dragging sharp nails across the curve of your waist. She kisses like she wants to swallow you whole, gasping against your mouth when your teeth graze her lower lip again.

“You forget how wild you get,” she breathes, eyes half-lidded, lips red and raw. “Like something just under your skin’s been waiting to come out.”

“It has,” you whisper, your voice rough, unsteady. “You brought it out.”

She smiles darkly, curling her fingers beneath your jaw and tilting your face toward her. Her fangs have slipped fully into place now—sharp, shining under the lamplight—and you swear you could come undone just looking at her like this. Beautiful. Unholy. Yours.

“Then show me,” she murmurs. “No more hiding.”

Your mouth crashes into hers, desperate now, messy and unrelenting. You’re both clawing at each other like the hunger might consume you otherwise. You bite down harder this time—her shoulder, her collarbone, the curve of her chest—and she moans for it, arching up into your teeth like she needs to be marked, like she’s been waiting.

The blood comes again—thicker now, pooling between your bodies as her hips buck and roll against yours. You drink from her like you’re parched, like it’s all you’ve ever wanted, hot and iron-sweet and alive.

She flips you suddenly, straddling your waist with practiced grace, the silk of her thighs sliding against yours as she settles atop you.

The silk of her skin drags against yours, and when your slick folds finally meet, the friction steals the air from both your lungs.

“God, look at you,” she breathes, voice thick with hunger and heat, curls wild around her face. “So soft for me now. All that fight gone.”

A gasp spills from her mouth—sharp and unfiltered—as her soaked heat grinds into yours with a deliberate rhythm. Wetness slicks between you, folds clashing with every slow, hungry movement. It’s primal, electric, and almost unbearable in its intimacy.

Her fingers trail down your ribs like she’s playing a melody only you were meant to hear.

“Don’t hide from me, baby. Let me have all of you.”

You nod, barely able to speak, fangs sharp, vision glowing at the edges.

Only with moans, with trembling hands clutching at her hips, pulling her closer, chasing the pressure. The room spins with heat, breath, the scent of candle wax and iron and arousal—until it doesn’t matter where one of you ends and the other begins.

You’re hers now. In every possible way.

And still, under all that euphoria—just beneath the hum of pleasure and blood—something inside you growls. Something vast. Old. Not quite her. Not quite you.

But for now… you let it sleep.

And you let her ride it out of you.

——

bodies move in sync still—slick and desperate, hips grinding, thighs trembling, breath tangled in gasps and curses and praise whispered like prayer. The room is drenched in shadow and candlelight, and every sound echoes like sin between the walls.

Mary grips your shoulders tighter, her forehead pressed to yours, curls clinging to damp skin. Her voice shudders against your lips, broken and breathless.

“Come with me,” she begs, or commands—you can’t tell anymore. “Right here, baby. I wanna feel you lose it.”

You nod, too close to speak. The tension builds like a storm in your spine, in your stomach, in your soul. Her movements grow faster, sloppier, the wet heat between you igniting into something reckless and beautiful. And when her body jerks, trembling above you, a raw cry spilling from her throat—

You go with her.

The release crashes through you like a wave of light—white, hot, searing. Your back arches. Your hands claw at the sheets. The pressure explodes, pleasure cracking open every nerve like lightning through blood. You cry out her name, and she chokes on yours, riding the high until your bodies collapse into each other, panting, shaking, utterly undone.

There’s blood between you, sweat slicking your chests, thighs tangled and trembling. Her lips find your neck again—not to bite, this time, just to stay.

And through the fog of afterglow, you feel it

Not fear.

Not hunger.

Not the echo of your old self.

But belonging.

Even in the ruin of it all.

——-

the candles are just dying embers, and the once-lively house has fallen into that strange hush that only comes after pleasure, after people have left and laughter has faded into the walls.

The bedroom door creaks open.

Stack leans on the frame, one hand still wrapped around the neck of an almost-empty beer bottle. His eyes are a little glassy, his shirt untucked, costume rumpled like he gave up on pretending somewhere around midnight.

He doesn’t say anything.

Doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t joke.

Just watches for a long moment.

You and Mary are a tangle of limbs and soft breath, still bare beneath the sheets, hair wild across each other’s skin. Her head rests on your chest, your arm draped over her back, both of you sunk deep into the mattress like a storm’s passed and sleep has claimed what’s left.

Something flickers across his face—something complicated. Not quite jealousy. Not quite sadness.

Grief, maybe. For a version of the night that never happened. For something he’s never been able to say.

He walks quietly into the room, pulling the spare blanket from the corner chair. It smells like cedar and old perfume. Gently, he drapes it over both of you, careful not to wake either. His fingers linger on your shoulder for a beat too long.

Then he straightens up with a tired sigh.

“Figures,” he mutters under his breath, not unkindly.

He leaves without another glance, heading down the hall. The creak of old floorboards marks each step until you hear the couch cushions sigh beneath him in the next room. A bottle clinks against wood. A breath escapes.

The house is quiet again.

And in the mirror across the room—half-fogged and still—the faintest shape flickers behind the glass. Watching. Waiting.

But neither of you stirs.

You just sleep.

Wrapped in warmth, blood, and something that almost feels like peace.

——-

The house smells like coffee and wood smoke.

Morning crawls in through the gauzy curtains—soft, grey, and almost too still. You stir first, blinking at the filtered light cutting through the bedroom. Mary is still curled against you, legs tangled with yours, one hand draped across your stomach, her nails painted and chipped from the night before.

For a moment, everything feels fragile and warm. Safe.

You rise carefully, slipping from the bed without waking her. The blanket Stack laid over you both falls to your hips like a hush. You pull on one of Mary’s oversized silk robes—black, floor-length, smelling faintly of her perfume and blood—and step into the hallway.

Stack’s passed out on the couch. One arm thrown over his eyes, the beer bottle still in his hand, now empty. His chest rises and falls slowly beneath his rumpled outlaw costume, the sheriff’s badge glinting dully in the morning light.

You pad into the kitchen barefoot.

The coffee pot’s already half full. Probably Mary. She always woke before the sun—says it’s a habit she never lost, even after centuries of avoiding it.

You pour yourself a mug and lean against the counter, watching the steam swirl.

Then the radio clicks on by itself.

You blink.

It was off. You’re sure it was off.

The static rolls in first, soft and slow, followed by a warbled, broken version of some 1950s doo-wop song. It distorts as if underwater, the voices echoing in strange, reversed vowels.

Then—

You hear it.

Your name. Clear. Drawn out in a whisper.

“You forgot us.”

“You were ours first.”

The mug slips in your hand and crashes to the tile—coffee shattering across the floor in a dark brown bloom. The sound wakes Mary.

She appears in the doorway moments later, robe loosely tied, hair wild, one brow arched. “Baby?” she asks, groggy. “What happened?”

You turn toward her, heart hammering. “The radio—”

But when you look back, it’s off again. Silent. Still.

Mary steps over the broken mug, eyes narrowing. “You’re shaking.”

“I—I heard something.”

Stack’s voice, hoarse, from the couch: “I told you that thing’s been acting up all week. Probably a fuse or some dumb shit.”

But Mary isn’t looking at the radio. She’s looking at you.

“Your eyes,” she murmurs. “They’re glowing.”

You freeze.

Stack stumbles in, still buttoning his shirt. He stops when he sees you. “Holy shit.”

In the reflection of the microwave door, you catch it too.

Not just glowing—your irises are ringed in deep black. Something ancient and violent pulses just beneath your skin. Not hunger. Not thirst.

Something older.

And far outside, in the shadowed edge of the street, where the Halloween decorations are still fluttering—

a crow with two heads watches the house without blinking.

—-

Stack is shirtless at the stove, flipping pancakes like it’s a performance. He hums along to something playing low from the Bluetooth speaker—a playlist called “Bloody Sunday” you wish was ironic. His gold chain glints under the morning light as he grabs a slab of butter with his fingers and slaps it right onto the stack.

You’re perched on the counter, freshly showered, wrapped in Mary’s robe again. Still shaken from the radio… but you’re hiding it well.

Or trying to.

Across the room, Mary lounges on the velvet couch, messy-haired and scrolling Netflix like it’s religion. She’s settled on The Fall—because of course she has.

“I like this one,” she says softly, one leg draped over the other. “The killer’s always two steps ahead. Like us in ‘08.”

Stack chuckles without looking up. “You mean when we had to skip town because you left a body in the conference room?”

“He left himself there,” she says coolly. “Nobody told him to grope my thigh mid-meeting. Pig.”

You smirk. The memory comes rushing back—fluorescent lighting, the taste of bitter coffee and stronger blood, the too-bright offices of Lawson & Flint, where you all worked for nine months before the incident. Stack in IT. Mary in litigation. You? A glorified assistant with sharper teeth than anyone suspected.

Your old boss—Mr. Crane—had called you “sweetheart” one too many times before Mary snapped and drove her stiletto heel straight into his thigh.

The short-lived killing spree that followed was almost nostalgic.

Three cities. Six bodies. Nothing traceable.

You’d all promised not to get reckless again.

Then came the quiet town. The false names. The rented craftsman home with big windows and a big enough lie to crawl into.

“Pancakes or blood?” Stack asks suddenly, glancing at you.

You raise an eyebrow. “Are you offering a choice?”

He grins, fangs peeking out just enough to make your thighs clench. “Nah, just flirting.”

He walks over with a plate in each hand and presses one into yours before leaning in close, lips near your neck.

“Honey,” he whispers dramatically, fangs brushing your skin, “you smell like sin and shampoo.”

You swat him with the pancake spatula and he hisses playfully, staggering back with his hand over his heart.

“Domestic bliss,” Mary murmurs from the couch, eyes still glued to the screen. “Until one of us burns the eggs or opens a portal.”

You all laugh—but it’s nervous, half-buried under the weight of what happened earlier.

Because none of you mention the radio. Or the way your eyes glowed.

No one speaks about the thing that’s been following you across decades.

But it’s there.

In the silence between scenes.

In the way Mary keeps glancing at the mirror.

In the way Stack’s smile never fully reaches his eyes this morning.

You eat together, and it feels almost real.

But even in your laughter, even in the taste of syrup and salt…

You can feel it.

Something waking up.

And it knows your name.

Weeks had passed, but the shadows inside your mind had only grown thicker, darker—nightmares clawing at the edges of your waking hours, visions that blurred the line between memory and madness. Every night, you sank deeper into the hunger that no longer whispered but roared.

Mary and Stack had watched you unravel, helpless yet relentless in their push. They told you it was time. Time to stop fighting what you were—and start living it.

The night of the gas station was cold and unforgiving. The blacktop glistened beneath flickering streetlights, the distant hum of the highway a low pulse beneath your pounding heart.

You’d all stopped to fill the tank—Mary keeping watch near the car, Stack tinkering with the radio to drown out the silence.

Then he came.

A gangbanger, swaggering up with too much attitude and too little sense, brandishing a rusty blade like he owned the night. His eyes were wild, teeth clenched, rage spilling off him like heat.

“Hand over the cash, old man,” he snarled, stepping toward Stack. “And don’t try anything.”

You didn’t hesitate.

Something inside you snapped—the last tether to your fading humanity shattered like glass.

Before Mary or Stack could move, you stepped forward. The streetlight caught your eyes—no longer brown, but deep obsidian, rings of abyss swallowing the light whole.

The hunger was a tidal wave, dragging you beneath.

Your voice dropped low, predatory.

“Back off,” you hissed.

He laughed.

A fatal mistake.

Your hands blurred, claws sharp as razors tearing through denim and flesh. His scream was a guttural sound that ripped through the night air—half-man, half-beast—blood spattered in thick, hot waves.

You sank your teeth into the side of his neck—hot, salty, intoxicating—tearing with a ferocity that left no doubt: you were no longer fighting the monster inside.

His body convulsed beneath you, eyes wild with terror and pain as you drank. The crimson flood painted your lips, dripped down your chin, pooled on the cracked pavement.

His blade slipped from his grasp, clangs echoing like a death knell.

You ripped again, flesh shredding beneath your jaws, a scream torn into a final, wet gurgle.

Mary’s eyes gleamed with fierce pride as she watched, lips curling into a dark smile.

Stack exhaled slow, eyes locked on you, respect and something more burning there.

“She’s ours now,” Mary said, voice low and reverent.

Stack nodded, his own fangs flashing as he stepped forward, the predator in him awakening anew.

You stood dripping, breath ragged and sharp, the scent of blood thick on your tongue and skin. The world around you was still—the only sound the distant wail of sirens and the steady pounding of your heart, wild and alive.

For the first time since the darkness took hold, you felt… whole.

And the night was yours.

—-

Stack moved like a shadow slipping through the gas station’s back door, his jaw tight with focus. Years of knowing the owner—loose lips, debts, favors—had earned him this quiet leverage. The flickering CCTV screens that might have captured everything were wiped clean before sunrise, pixels disappearing like ghosts into the void.

He stepped back into the night, the familiar weight of power settling on his shoulders. “Done,” he said simply, voice low but steady. “No footage. No witnesses who’d risk talking.”

Mary was already waiting by the car, the sharp scent of victory in her smile, red eyes gleaming with approval. “You did good tonight,” she said, voice soft but sharp, almost proud.

You sat in the backseat, blood still warm under your skin, the adrenaline a slow burn fading into a deep ache. Mary slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The hum of the car felt heavy.

The long driveway home stretched ahead—an endless ribbon swallowed by dark trees, the headlights cutting through the black. Silence hung thick in the air.

You swallowed hard, voice barely more than a whisper. “What… what’s happening to me? What did I just do?”

Mary glanced back, her smile tight. “You survived. You became.”

You shook your head, tears burning behind your eyes. “I didn’t want this. I’m not like you. I don’t want to kill. I never wanted to.”

Stack shifted in the front seat, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “You think it gets easier? It doesn’t. But you won’t be alone.”

“But—” you choked out, voice cracking. “What if I can’t stop? What if I become… a monster?”

Mary’s eyes softened, but there was steel beneath the tenderness. “You are a monster now. But so are we. And that’s okay. You survived hell to get here. You’re stronger than you think.”

Your hands trembled, clutching your knees to your chest as tears spilled free. “I don’t want to be like him,” you whispered. “My husband—he broke me. I’m scared I’m going to turn into something just as cruel. Or worse.”

Stack’s voice was low, almost a growl. “You’re not him. Never will be. We’ve seen what happens when weakness wins. You’re different.”

Mary reached back, her fingers brushing a tear from your cheek. “You choose what you become.”

You looked up, eyes raw and desperate. “But what if I don’t want to choose this? What if I want to be human again?”

Mary’s smile twisted into something fierce. “You lost that chance the moment you took that first bite. But that doesn’t mean you’ve lost yourself. We’ll teach you how to live. How to survive. How to own it.”

Stack laughed darkly. “And if you try to run, we’ll find you. Because we don’t let go of family.”

You swallowed hard, broken but unbowed, the weight of their words sinking into your bones. You were theirs now—in blood, in darkness, in the endless night.

——

The sharp crack of a fist against wood.

Your father’s voice—rough, shouting—echoing down the hallway like thunder, “You’ll never be good enough, girl!”

A younger you, curled beneath a threadbare blanket, trembling as the world outside faded into distant screams and silence.

⸻

The cold hospital room.

Your mother’s hand, pale and still, resting on your tiny fingers.

The slow drip of machines, the sterile smell of loss swallowing the air.

⸻

Your grandmother’s harsh voice.

“Men are what you tolerate, child. You can’t fix what’s broken.”

The sting of those words sinking into your bones like ice.

⸻

Your husband’s face twisted with rage, his fist raised—then you running into the night, breath ragged, heart shattering.

——-

The chaotic flashbacks fade like distant thunder as the kitchen fills with warmth and chatter.

Mary hums softly, chopping sweet potatoes with a practiced hand.

Stack stirs a pot, the aroma of herbs and roasting turkey weaving through the room.

You tie a faded apron around your waist, feeling the weight of the fabric—and something lighter in your chest.

Mary catches your eye and smiles, the kind of smile that holds centuries of pain and hope.

“First Thanksgiving,” she says, voice soft but sure. “Our way.”

Stack grins from behind the stove, tossing you a glance that’s equal parts challenge and affection.

“We might be monsters,” he says, “but at least we can cook.”

Laughter bubbles between you, a fragile thread pulling you all closer.

The past lingers—deep, dark—but tonight, in this quiet house on the edge of everything, you’re family.

And for now, that’s enough.

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