His father calling him homophobic slurs and physically and verbally abusing him his entire life:
Getting sexually preyed upon by a GROWN WOMAN IN HER FORTIES WHEN HE WAS 17-18:
And then on his way to go on a date with said 40 year old woman, he was attacked by the mind flayer(AKA, the rape allegory monster) while Karen mother-fucking wheeler was prepping herself up to have sex with a literal teenager:
"You called for help. But nobody came".
These scenes:
And this isn't even mentioning the fact he was forced to kidnap people and indoctrinate them into a cult allegory, and the fact that the moment he had control over his body again, he killed himself.
how do you think bucky and reader would handle their childs first day of school? i see bucky being VERY emotional
The night before her first day of school, Bucky doesn’t sleep.
He tells you it’s because he wants to “double-check everything,” but by midnight he’s already checked her backpack three times, lined her pencils up like soldiers, and re-packed her lunchbox with the kind of care he used to reserve for weapons maintenance. The house is quiet—too quiet—and when you pad into the kitchen in one of his shirts, you find him sitting at the table, elbows braced, staring at a tiny pair of sneakers like they’ve personally betrayed him.
“James,” you murmur, soft and fond, leaning against the doorway.
He startles just slightly—still not used to being caught off guard in his own home—and then his shoulders sag when he sees you. “I just… wanna make sure she’s ready,” he says, voice rougher than usual.
You cross the room, sliding your hands over his shoulders, thumbs pressing into the tension there. “She’s been ready for weeks.”
“Yeah, well.” He huffs quietly, glancing back at the sneakers. “I haven’t.”
You smile, because of course he hasn’t. Of course the man who survived wars and Hydra and decades of nightmares is being taken down by a five-year-old with glittery hair clips and a backpack twice the size of her torso.
“Come on,” you coax, tugging at his hand. “Bed. You’re no good to her if you’re a zombie tomorrow.”
He lets you pull him up, but his eyes flick once more to the table before he follows you out. Like he’s memorizing it—this moment, this version of life.
Morning comes too fast.
“Daddy! Mama! Wake up!”
The bedroom door bursts open with all the subtlety of a grenade, and a small, bright force launches onto the bed.
“Whoa—hey—” Bucky grunts as a bundle of limbs and curls lands square on his chest.
“Daddy, it’s school day!” your daughter announces, as if the entire world might forget without her.
He blinks up at her, disoriented for half a second before recognition softens his face completely. “Yeah, Bug,” he murmurs, his metal hand coming up to steady her where she’s bouncing on him. “I know.”
Lila Barnes is sunshine in human form—wild hair, gap-toothed grin, and a confidence that somehow belongs equally to both of you. She’s already dressed, too—well, mostly. Her shirt is on backwards, her socks don’t match, and her backpack is slung over one shoulder like she’s ready to run a marathon.
“I packed my bear,” she tells him seriously. “For emergencies.”
Bucky’s mouth twitches. “Good thinking. Always gotta be prepared.”
You sit up, laughing softly as you reach for her. “C’mere, peanut. Let me fix you before you scare your teacher.”
“Hey!” Lila protests, but she comes willingly, climbing into your lap.
Bucky watches the two of you, quiet again—but this time it’s heavier. Fuller. His gaze lingers on every small movement: the way you smooth her hair, the way she leans into you without thinking, the way her tiny fingers clutch at your shirt.
It hits him all at once.
She’s growing.
By the time you’re all in the car, Bucky’s gone from quiet to… a little intense.
“Okay, so if anyone bothers you—”
“Bucky,” you cut in gently from the passenger seat.
“I’m just saying—she should know—”
“Daddy,” Lila pipes up from the backseat, kicking her feet lightly against the car seat. “No one’s gonna bother me.”
His jaw tightens. “You don’t know that.”
“I’ll make friends!” she insists, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
And maybe it is. For her.
He glances at her in the rearview mirror, those blue eyes softening despite himself. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Yeah, you will.”
You reach over, resting your hand on his thigh. Grounding him.
“She’s okay,” you murmur.
“I know,” he says quietly. “That’s the problem.”
You tilt your head. “How is that a problem?”
His grip tightens on the steering wheel. “Because I can’t keep her in a bubble forever.”
There it is.
You squeeze his leg gently. “No. You can’t. But you’ve given her everything she needs to be okay out there.”
He exhales slowly, like he’s trying to believe you.
The school is chaos.
Kids running, parents crouching for last-minute hugs, teachers herding small bodies into somewhat organized lines. It’s loud and messy and alive—and Bucky looks like he’s been dropped into a war zone with no briefing.
Lila, on the other hand, is practically vibrating with excitement.
“Look! Look, Mama, they have a slide!” she gasps, pointing toward the playground.
“I see it, baby,” you laugh.
“Can I go now?”
“Not yet,” Bucky says quickly, a little too quickly.
She pauses, looking up at him. “Why?”
He kneels in front of her, hands settling on her small shoulders. For a moment, he doesn’t speak—just looks at her, really looks at her, like he’s trying to memorize every detail.
“Because,” he starts, voice thickening slightly, “I gotta tell you something first.”
You soften behind him, watching.
“Okay,” Lila says, patient in the way only kids can be when they know they’re loved.
Bucky swallows. “You’re… you’re gonna have so much fun today. You’re gonna meet people, learn stuff, do things without me and your mom right there.” He huffs a quiet, shaky breath. “And that’s… that’s good. That’s really good.”
She nods, eyes wide.
“But if you ever feel scared, or sad, or anything—” his voice catches, just barely “—you remember that we’re right here, okay? We always come back for you.”
Her face softens, and she throws her arms around his neck. “I know, Daddy.”
That does it.
You see his composure crack in real time—his eyes squeezing shut, his arms wrapping around her like he might never let go.
“Okay,” he murmurs into her hair. “Okay, Bug.”
You crouch beside them, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Go on, baby. Your teacher’s waiting.”
She pulls back, grinning, completely unfazed by the emotional moment she just caused. “Bye, Mama! Bye, Daddy!”
And then she’s off—running toward her new world without a second glance.
Bucky rises slowly, staring after her.
“…She didn’t even look back,” he says faintly.
You snort softly. “That’s a good thing.”
He shakes his head, dragging a hand down his face. “I’m not built for this.”
You loop your arm through his, leaning into his side. “You are. You just don’t like it.”
He huffs, but then his eyes find her again—laughing with another little girl already, like she’s been there forever.
And something in him settles.
“…She’s okay,” he murmurs.
You smile, squeezing him. “Told you.”
He presses a kiss to your hair, lingering there for a second longer than usual.
summary: There’s something strange about the new farmhand. He’s too watchful, too polite, too hungry in ways you can’t quite name, and your drunk husband is too cruel to notice the danger he brought home. But when you ask the night for mercy, it’s not god who comes knocking.
wc: 12.4k
a/n: happy sinnersversary <333 I genuinely can’t believe it’s already been a year since Ryan Coogler blessed our screens and Remmick blessed my coochie. truly don’t think I’d still be here without this absolute landmark of a movie reigniting both my love of vampires and my deranged crush on Jack O’Connell. Sinners is still the best film of 2025 fuck what the Oscars say!! putting this together felt weirdly full circle in the best way, and i’m honestly a little emotional about it,thank y’all so much for all the love you’ve shown me and my writing this past year. every like, reblog, share, and comment got me here, and hitting 6k in 12 months still feels unreal. truly, my heart is so damn full
warnings: dead dove: do not eat, graphic violence/gore, cheating/infidelity, domestic abuse/violence, monsterfucking, piv, oral (f! receiving), aphrodisiac drool, spit kink, body worship, begging, manipulative/coercive undertones, fingering, creampie, breeding kink, overstimulation, praise kink, begging, possessive behavior, alcohol abuse
MASTERLIST
The first thing you noticed about the stranger your husband brought home was that he stopped at the steps.
All day the farm had sat beneath a wet, choking heat that made every chore feel heavier than it ought to, like it was bowing under the weight of the muggy atmosphere.
By sundown the fields had gone dull gold and black-green, the tree line cut hard against the sinking light, and the air smelled of dust, hay, animal musk, and the earthy promise of rain that never seemed to come. Cicadas droned from the cottonwoods by the creek. Somewhere in the barn, a horse stamped and blew hard through its nose, the sound knocking hollow through the boards.
You were on the back porch shelling peas into a chipped enamel bowl balanced in your lap, your apron damp at the waist, the cotton of your dress pasted to the small of your back. The day had left a fine film of grit over everything. It filmed your skin, dulled the porch rail, worked itself into the seams of your hands and under your nails no matter how many times you’d rinsed them at the pump. Your knuckles ached. Your shoulders ached. A small, mean throb lived between your brows from bending over rows, hauling feed, and scrubbing out the skillet your husband had flung into the sink that morning because the eggs had gone cold by the time he bothered to come in and eat them.
You were used to aches. To heat. To silence. To swallowing whatever wanted saying.
The truck announced itself before you saw it, coughing and rattling down the dirt road with that uneven, unhappy growl it always made when your husband drove it drunk. You didn’t look up right away. There wasn’t much point in greeting what you already knew was coming.
The brakes squealed. The engine shuddered dead. Then the driver’s side door banged open hard enough to set the hens fussing in their coop.
Your husband’s voice reached the porch before he did, thick and slurred around whatever he’d been drinking in town. “You still sittin’ there?”
You dropped the last pea into the bowl and set it carefully aside before standing. Your knees complained. At last a breeze moved across the yard, so faint it barely counted, lifting the damp hair at the nape of your neck before letting it fall again.
“I’ve got supper near ready,” you said.
He came around the side of the house smelling like sweat, dirt, and whiskey pushed back out through his pores. His suspenders hung half off one shoulder. His shirt was buttoned wrong at the throat. Red dust caked the hems of his trousers. There was a temper in the set of his mouth that made your stomach tighten on instinct, not because he’d said anything yet, but because you knew how little it took to turn him mean.
Then you saw the man standing a few paces behind him in the yard.
He’d kept back from the porch without seeming to make a point of it, posture easy and still in a way that didn’t fit the restless shabbiness of most men who came looking for work. For one strange second he looked less like a man standing in the yard than something the dusk itself had shaped and set there. The last bruised-red edge of daylight caught on one side of his face and shoulder, sank into the dark sweep of his hair beneath the brim of his hat, and carved the hollows under his cheekbones deeper. He wore a faded blue button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, suspenders, worn denim work pants dusty at the hems and held up by a belt. The chain at his throat caught faintly in the light, more bronze than gold. Nothing about him looked rich or polished. Nothing about him ought to have stood out so sharply as he did.
But he did.
Maybe it was the stillness. Or the deliberate way he looked.
He was looking at the house. At the porch.
At you.
Not boldly enough to be rude. Not shyly enough to be proper. Just intent.
Your husband jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Picked up a hand in town. Says he can work.”
The stranger lowered his eyes then, like he knew he’d been caught staring. “Evenin’, ma’am.”
His voice was low and smooth as creek stones, touched by the South in a way that ought to have sounded familiar. But there was something else under it too, some faint shape to the words you couldn’t place, as though the accent had been learned and learned well but not first.
You looked at him properly then.
He was handsome. There wasn’t any use pretending otherwise, not even in the privacy of your own mind. Handsome in a weathered, rough-made way, all hard planes and shadowed eyes and a mouth that looked too expressive when it wasn’t smiling and somehow more dangerous when it was. Not young in the careless, bright manner of farmhands who passed through town showing off their shoulders and their teeth. He felt older than that. Not necessarily in years. In presence, maybe. In the quiet. In the way he stood like no one had ever had to learn how to take up space.
He made no move to come up on the porch.
Most men would’ve come tromping right on up after your husband without a second thought, boots hammering the porch boards, tracking mud across your clean floor and expecting coffee for the trouble, as though their very presence were favor enough.
This man didn’t.
He kept his place in the yard, quiet and still in the last bad light, as though he knew better than to cross any closer.
As though he was waiting.
Your husband wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and squinted at you through the sour red haze of whatever he’d been drinking in town. “Got any coffee left?”
“There’s some on the stove.”
“Good. He can take his supper out back with the others.”
At that, the stranger’s eyes flicked to your husband. Not with fear. Not with the dull, careful deference most hired men wore when they needed a roof and a meal badly enough. It was something smaller than that. Sharper. A flash so quick you might’ve convinced yourself you imagined it if not for the cold little certainty it left behind. Contempt, maybe. Or the beginning of it, smoothed flat before it could settle properly on his face.
You knew something about that trick.
You’d gotten good at not letting your own face betray you. He seemed the same.
Your husband clomped up the porch steps, one hand catching the doorframe for balance, then shouldered his way into the house hard enough to send the screen door banging open behind him. The stranger didn’t follow.
You stood there with the bowl of peas cooling at your elbow and him down in the yard beneath a sky turning mean and purple at the edges.
The cicadas rasped from the cottonwoods by the creek.
From the kitchen came the noise of lids being lifted, drawers yanked, crockery knocked about before you were ready for any of it. Something in you flinched toward the sound and away from it in the same breath, the way a body learns to answer a storm long before the thunder cracks.
When you looked back at the stranger, he was exactly where he’d been before, hat in his hands, eyes on you.
“You can come up,” you said before you could think better of it. “At least out of the dirt.”
Something moved across his face then, quick and difficult to name. Surprise, maybe. Or something older and stranger than surprise, something that seemed to pass through him rather than over him.
“Appreciate that,” he said softly.
He came to the steps, but not quickly. He moved with a kind of care that might have been caution and might have been courtesy, as though he had no wish to startle you. It made no sense in a man built like that—broad through the shoulders, strength laid plain in the forearms his rolled sleeves left bare, every line of him suggesting he could lift more than most men and do it with ease. Yet there was something almost hesitant in the way he mounted the steps, something watchful.
When he set one boot on the bottom board, the porch gave its usual complaining creak. When he climbed the next, Blue shifted in the barn and let out a sharp, uneasy snort that rang hollow through the dim.
You glanced toward the sound. “Blue’s been in a mood all afternoon.”
“Animals know more’n they can explain,” he said.
There was the beginning of a smile at one corner of his mouth when you looked back, faint as a crease pressed into cloth, but it didn’t stay long enough to become anything easy.
Up close, he smelled like cut grass and evening air and something colder running underneath it, something that didn’t belong to a summer night in this part of the country or any other. Clean earth after a hard rain. River water over stone. The mineral chill of a cellar that had never once felt the sun. It caught you off guard badly enough that you breathed him in twice before you realized you were doing it.
His eyes were dark. So dark in the lowering light they were nearly black.
You realized, a little late, that you were staring.
He tipped his head. “Beg pardon, ma’am.”
“It’s all right.”
Inside, your husband shouted for his coffee again, louder this time.
Your shoulders tightened before you could stop them.
The stranger’s gaze shifted toward the kitchen window, where the first lamplight had begun to turn the glass a thin buttery gold from within. When he looked back at you, something in his expression had changed—not much, not enough to name outright, but enough that it felt like he’d stepped closer without moving at all. He hadn’t done a thing but stand there and notice, and still it felt intimate in a way that unsettled you.
“You ought not be made to jump at your own home,” he said.
He said it softly, and that only made it worse.
You gave him the sort of smile women learned early and used often, the one that passed for politeness when truth was too costly. “You don’t know anything about my home.”
His eyes held yours with a steadiness that made the warm evening seem to hush around the edges.
“No,” he said after a moment. “Not yet.”
The air caught somewhere halfway into your lungs.
From inside came the scrape of a chair, followed by another slurred curse. You stepped back, reaching for the bowl. “I should—”
“I can take that in for you.”
The offer was so unexpected you just looked at him.
Men offered labor, sometimes, when it made them feel useful in a manner visible enough to be praised for. They carried feed sacks, split kindling, fixed hinges. They did not offer small kindnesses without wanting something named in return. They did not offer to carry a bowl from a woman’s hands so she didn’t have to balance too much at once. That belonged to another kind of life entirely, one you’d stopped letting yourself picture because it only made the life you had feel more threadbare by comparison.
“I’ve got it,” you said automatically.
His gaze dropped to your fingers around the enamel rim, then traveled back up the length of your arm to your face.
It shouldn’t have felt like a touch.
It did.
“As you like.”
You carried the bowl in yourself.
The kitchen was thick with stove heat and smelled of bitter coffee, onion, scorched fat, and the lingering damp of dishwater. Your husband was already at the table, hat tossed aside, sleeves shoved up, one boot heel hooked on the rung of the chair like he owned not only the house but every room inside it. He had your mug in one hand and was glaring at the kitchen as though personally wronged by the fact that supper hadn’t yet risen up and served itself.
He looked toward the door behind you. “He comin’ in?”
You set the peas by the sink and turned back toward the porch, where the stranger had stopped just shy of the threshold.
There it was again.
That pause.
That waiting.
“He can,” you said, because now that you’d noticed it once, you couldn’t seem to stop noticing it.
Your husband barked out a humorless laugh. “What’s wrong with you, boy? Floor bite?”
The stranger’s mouth twitched faintly at one corner. “Didn’t want to presume.”
That odd edge in his voice slipped a little more on the last word. Not enough to place. Just enough to unsettle. Something old seemed to catch under the Southern drawl and glimmer there for a second before vanishing again.
Your husband snorted and waved him in with his mug. “Well, get in then.”
The stranger crossed the threshold.
Something in the room drew taut the moment he did.
You couldn’t have said why. Nothing visible changed. The lamp still hissed. The spoon still knocked softly against the pot when you stirred the beans. Outside, the cicadas still rasped from the trees. But his presence altered the room all the same, as though a draft had moved through that no one else could feel, touching the back of your neck with a coolness that didn’t belong there.
Once he stepped inside, you saw him more clearly. His hair was dark and a little too long at the collar, falling just enough to soften the sharpness of him without gentling it. His face was finer-boned than you’d first thought from the yard, all that hard severity eased only by his mouth. There was something travel-worn about him, but not in the ordinary sense of dust and road fatigue. It was more that time seemed to sit on him at an angle, as though it touched him differently than it touched other men.
Your husband pointed toward the back stoop with his chin. “Eat out there after. Don’t need muddy boots all over.”
The stranger glanced down at his boots.
They were no dirtier than your husband’s.
“Yes, sir,” he said mildly.
Sir. The word should’ve sounded submissive. Somehow it didn’t. Somehow it sounded like a man humoring a child too foolish to know he was being indulged.
You served the plates in silence. Your husband complained that the meat was tough, the coffee weak, the bread left in too little, the beans too salty, though he kept eating all the same. He talked with his mouth full and reached for your wrist once when you were too slow topping off his mug, squeezing just hard enough to remind you he could. Your face stayed still. You’d learned that too. How to go smooth and blank as a washed stone. How to leave nothing lying out where someone else could bruise it.
The stranger sat at the far end of the table until your husband jerked his head toward the back door again. “I said outside.”
For one stretched beat, the stranger didn’t move.
Then he stood, collected his plate, and did as he was told.
But before he stepped out, he looked at your hand where your husband’s fingers had already left their marks under the skin, discoloration beginning to rise there like something surfacing.
Nothing much changed in his face.
Only his eyes.
The look of him went darker somehow, quieter, the way deep water goes dark before you understand how far down it runs.
Like he’d put the sight of it somewhere he meant to keep.
By the time the dishes were washed and the table wiped down, the windows had gone black with night. Your husband had wandered off to the parlor with his bottle and the radio turned low and crackling, while you took the dishwater to the back door and stepped out to throw it into the weeds.
The stranger was still there.
He’d long since finished eating, but he remained on the steps instead of heading for the bunkhouse or the barn loft or wherever your husband planned to put him. The moon hadn’t climbed high enough yet to silver the yard, but there was enough weak spill of light from the kitchen behind you to sketch the line of his shoulders and the sharp angle of his jaw.
He rose when he heard the screen door open.
“You don’t have to stand every time I come out,” you said.
“That so?”
“No.”
He smiled then, small and crooked and gone almost as soon as it arrived, but it changed him more than you expected. Not softer. Just more alive. It drew your attention straight to his mouth and left it there a second too long, long enough for you to notice how pale his teeth looked in the dark.
You stepped off the porch and threw the water into the weeds by the path. The splash came back warm against your ankles, dampening the hem of your dress. When you turned, he took the bucket from your hand without a word. You hadn’t asked him to. One moment the handle was biting into your fingers and the next his hand had closed over it with such careful precision he managed not to brush your skin at all.
Even that shouldn’t have mattered.
Your body noticed anyway.
“Thank you,” you said.
“It’s nothin’.”
But he stayed close enough that you could feel the cooler current of him moving through the heat. Not cold exactly. Not dead. Just wrong for July. Wrong for the South. Wrong for any human body standing this close in summer dark.
Up close, his eyes looked darker still, rimmed in lashes too thick and fine for any man who worked with his hands. There was a pale scar near one temple, half-lost in shadow. His fingers, still curved around the bucket handle, were long and narrow-boned and oddly elegant for farm work. You could picture them wrapped around a shovel, a post-hole digger, a horse bridle.
You could picture them elsewhere too.
The thought came so fast and so shamefully it felt less like thinking than like being struck by it.
You dragged your gaze away.
The screen door banged behind you in the wind.
When you looked back at him, his head had tilted slightly, as though he’d sensed the path your mind had taken and was waiting to see if you’d follow it again.
“What’s your name?” you asked, because your husband hadn’t bothered to give it, because not knowing now seemed stranger than asking.
“Remmick.”
The name sat oddly in the warm dark. Not impossible. Just foreign enough to catch on the ear.
“Remmick,” you repeated.
Something shifted in his expression at the sound of it in your mouth.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where you from?”
“Far from here.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“No.” The ghost of that smile touched his lips again. “S’pose it doesn’t.”
You should’ve left it there. Gone back inside. Bolted the door. Said goodnight to the dark and to him and to the strange low flicker he’d stirred up in you purely by being kind when you’d been starved of kindness so long even the smallest portion of it felt indecent.
Instead, you heard yourself say, “Your voice doesn’t sound like any place around here.”
For the first time, he seemed genuinely caught.
He lowered his gaze, then raised it again, and when he spoke the words still carried that soft Southern ease, but the edges of something older glimmered beneath it, something rougher and stranger and not from here at all, a burr hidden under velvet.
“I get told I’ve traveled enough to sound like nowhere at all.”
The answer was evasive. The voice wasn’t.
A shiver moved down your arms despite the heat.
Behind you, the radio buzzed and popped from the parlor. Your husband coughed wetly, then shouted something you couldn’t make out.
The sound spoiled the moment like spit in clean water.
Remmick’s gaze shifted toward the house. His face gave nothing away, but the night around him seemed to sharpen.
“He always speaks to you that way?” he asked.
You stiffened. “It’s not your business.”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
There it was again.
Not yet.
Not a threat. Not quite. But it opened somewhere low inside you all the same, like a stuck door giving way under steady pressure.
You took the bucket back from him, meaning to end the conversation, but your fingers brushed his this time.
He was cold.
Not corpse-cold. Not dead. Just startlingly chill against the heat-swollen dark, like he’d been standing in cellar shade instead of summer night.
You must’ve shown something, because his gaze flicked to your mouth. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“No.”
“Your hands are warm.”
The way he said it made the words feel less like observation and more like the beginning of something.
You swallowed. “I’ve been working all day.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
His eyes held yours with unnerving steadiness.
“I know you’re tired,” he said. “I know you work more’n anyone on this place. I know he leaves marks.”
The words fell one by one and landed heavy.
For a second you couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.
The porch lamp hissed overhead, drawing moths that battered themselves against the glass until their wings made a powder there. Somewhere at the tree line, something moved through the brush and then went still again.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” you managed.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?”
He hadn’t moved any nearer, and yet the space between you felt thick with him. With his attention. With that low, terrible patience of his. It felt like standing too close to the edge of something and knowing, without being able to say how, that one more inch might change everything.
You should’ve gone inside.
You should’ve left him there in the yard, whatever he was, however strange.
Instead you stood with the empty bucket hanging from one hand and let him look at you the way no one had looked at you in years—not politely, not carelessly, not with ownership, but with a devastating sort of notice that felt almost worse.
At last he stepped back.
“Forgive me,” he said, and there was something very old in the phrasing, not just in the words themselves but in the weight of them. “Didn’t mean to press where I wasn’t welcome.”
It ought to have eased you.
Instead it left you rawer than before.
Because now you were thinking about welcome. About thresholds. About the way he’d stood waiting earlier as patient as a man with all the time in the world. About how carefully he watched until spoken to. About the horse going skittish in the barn whenever he came too close. About the slice of bread on his supper plate—the one you’d rubbed with garlic and set down without thinking—which he had left untouched.
You noticed that last thing only now, too late and all at once.
A small, cold prickle walked the length of your spine.
His gaze dropped again, not to your throat, not exactly, but close enough that your pulse suddenly felt visible. Something shifted in his face then—subtle but unmistakable. Hunger moved over it like a shadow over water and was gone just as quickly.
Then, very gently, he said, “You ought to get some rest.”
The parlor floorboards groaned. Your husband’s tread, heavy and uneven.
You turned toward the sound on reflex.
When you looked back, Remmick had gone still again, all traces of whatever had just passed between you tucked away beneath that patient, watchful composure. The bucket slipped slightly in your damp hand.
“Goodnight,” you said.
His eyes stayed on your face.
“Goodnight, darlin’.”
The endearment should’ve offended you coming from a stranger.
Instead it moved through you slow as liquor and settled low.
You went inside and fastened the back door with fingers that didn’t feel entirely steady.
Your husband barely noticed. He was slouched in his chair with the bottle dangling from one hand, eyes gone muddy with drink, mouth loose with all the ugly thoughts liquor made meaner. The radio muttered low. The room smelled of old smoke, sour whiskey, and sweat soaked into fabric too long to ever come clean. Home, in other words. Or what had passed for it.
You banked the stove. Blew out one lamp, then the next. Stood at the sink a moment longer than necessary with both hands braced on the edge, staring at your own thin reflection in the kitchen window.
Nothing moved behind you.
Still, you turned.
The room was empty.
You told yourself not to be foolish.
Upstairs, the bedroom was close and airless. Your husband came to bed late, swaying as he undressed, and reached for you the way he always did after drinking—careless, entitled, more interested in taking than seeing. You turned toward the wall and left your body where it was. The mattress dipped under his weight. The room filled with the smell of whiskey, sweat, and damp linen. You fixed your eyes on the dark seam where the plaster met the floorboards and went blank the way you’d taught yourself to do.
Afterward he rolled away and began to snore.
You lay awake.
Moonlight crept through the curtains in thin, dusty bars. The house settled around you with its usual night sounds—timbers creaking, pipes ticking, a branch scraping once against the outer wall. The room held the shape of a marriage and none of the shelter.
Your body ached in old ways and new ones. Your throat felt tight with all the words you’d swallowed over the years until silence had become second nature. Outside, the wind had finally picked up. You could hear it moving through the corn in long whispering passes, like something walking the rows.
You closed your eyes.
And because there was no one there to hear but God, and because you were too tired to keep pretending piety made suffering easier to bear, you whispered into the dark with your hands clasped beneath your chin like a child.
“Please,” you breathed. “Please. I can’t—”
Your voice broke.
The bedroom smelled of sweat, damp linen, and the sharp medicinal tang of the liniment you rubbed into your wrists on bad nights. Beside you, your husband snored on, dead to the world and no use to it waking or asleep.
You stared at the ceiling and let the tears come soundless.
“Please send me somethin’,” you whispered. “Anything. Help me. Please. If there’s anything listening at all, let it in.”
The dark took the words and held them.
Outside, somewhere below the bedroom window, the porch boards gave one long, low creak.
You stopped breathing.
Beside you, your husband snorted and rolled deeper into sleep.
The house went still.
So still that when the next sound came—soft, measured, unmistakable—it seemed to speak straight into your bones.
Not the wind.
Not the branch.
A knock.
Very polite.
Very patient.
From downstairs.
At the back door.
The knock came again.
Not loud. Not hurried. Just three measured taps against the back door as if whoever stood on the other side had all the patience in the world and every reason to believe he would be answered.
You lay rigid in the dark, every part of you suddenly alert.
Beside you, your husband snored on with his mouth open, one arm flung across the mattress, dead weight in every sense of the phrase. Moonlight striped his shoulder and the rumpled sheet over his hips. The room smelled of stale whiskey and sweat gone sour in the heat. Somewhere in the wall, something tiny scratched and settled. Outside, the corn whispered in the wind like a hundred careful voices rubbing together.
Then came the third knock.
Your pulse stumbled so hard it almost hurt.
You’d asked for something.
Help me. Please. If there’s anything listening at all, let it in.
The words rushed back through you with sick, breathless clarity.
The mattress shifted when you slipped from it, but only just. You froze at once, your eyes darting to your husband’s face. He grunted, smacked his lips once, then dropped deeper into sleep, the sound of his breathing turning wet and ugly again.
Slowly, carefully, you stood.
The floorboards were old enough to complain about everything, so you placed each bare foot with care, avoiding the spots you knew would creak the loudest. Your nightgown clung light and damp to your thighs as you crossed the bedroom. The moon had turned the room thin and gray, all the familiar shapes made ghostly—the washstand, the chair in the corner, the framed verse your mother had once given you hanging crooked on the wall. At the window, the curtain stirred.
You did not look out.
You didn’t think you could bear to and still keep moving.
The hallway was darker than the bedroom, the narrow runner faded soft in the middle from years of footsteps. Downstairs, the house held itself in a strange, listening quiet. Even the radio in the parlor had gone silent. The bottle on the side table caught a sliver of moonlight and glimmered faintly as you passed.
At the back door, you stopped.
The lock felt cold under your fingers.
Not just cool from the night. Cold.
A little shudder moved down your spine.
For one foolish, suspended second, you considered turning back. Going upstairs. Pulling the sheet over your head like a child and pretending you hadn’t heard a thing. Pretending prayers vanished into the rafters like smoke and didn’t end up heard by the wrong thing.
Then, from the other side of the door, came his voice. Low. Gentle.
“Darlin’.”
It was barely above a murmur, but it slipped through the wood and the dark and under your skin all the same.
Your hand tightened on the latch.
“Remmick,” you whispered, though there was no one near enough to hear but him.
A pause.
Then, very softly, “May I come in?”
The question should’ve sounded absurd after everything—after the knock in the night, after the strange chill of his skin, after the old weight in his words and the way he’d stood at every threshold as if he knew them better than you did.
Instead it did something awful and tender inside you all at once.
He was asking.
No one ever asked.
Your mouth had gone dry. “You’re already on the porch.”
“Mm.” The sound was almost a hum. “But not inside.”
The wind moved through the yard, carrying in the smell of damp earth, cut weeds, and something richer beneath it. Not rot. Not blood. Something mineral and dark and old as river stones buried in mud.
You stood there with your palm over the latch and thought of your prayer upstairs. Thought of your husband asleep in the room where you’d left him. Thought of the way Remmick had looked at the marks on your wrist like he’d taken the sight of them somewhere private and permanent inside himself.
“Why are you here?” you asked, and hated the unsteadiness in your voice.
The silence on the other side of the door lasted just long enough to make you feel it.
“Because you asked,” he said.
Your breath caught.
The lock gave with a tiny metallic click that sounded far too loud in the still house.
You eased the door open.
He stood on the other side with the night gathered around him.
For one startled second he looked much the way he had on the porch earlier—dark hair wind-touched and curled at the brow, shirt sleeves rolled, shadow lying clean in the hollows of his face. But moonlight changed him. It poured silver over one cheekbone, caught strange red at the very center of his eyes before it vanished, and left the rest of him in a darkness that didn’t quite behave like ordinary dark. The yard behind him seemed to lean away from the back steps. Even the cicadas had gone quieter.
He did not move.
Neither did you.
Then his gaze dropped, not rudely, just long enough to take in your nightgown, your bare feet, the loosened braid over your shoulder. When he looked back up, there was a voracity in his face so naked it ought to have frightened you.
It didn’t.
Not because it wasn’t there.
Because it wasn’t the same kind you knew.
“You let me in,” he said quietly.
You swallowed. “I suppose I did.”
A faint, almost disbelieving smile touched his mouth, then was gone. “You did more’n suppose.”
The cooler drift of him moved into the kitchen when he finally stepped inside. It wasn’t dramatic. No storm of shadows, no crack of thunder, no sudden spectacle to prove you’d done something foolish and irreversible. Just the unmistakable feeling of a boundary giving way. Of something entering that had been kept out until now. The little hairs at the back of your neck rose all the same.
You shut the door behind him.
The kitchen was all shadows and silhouettes. The table. The stove. The basin by the window. The dish towel hanging limp from the chair back. Your own breathing sounded too loud. Somewhere upstairs, your husband snorted in his sleep, rolled, and settled again.
Remmick’s head turned slightly toward the ceiling.
“He won’t wake easy,” he said.
There was something in the certainty of it that made you look at him harder.
“How would you know?”
His eyes came back to yours. In the dark they seemed darker than black, taking light in and returning almost none of it.
“I know more’n I ought,” he said.
He said it with no swagger at all. Just fact.
You wrapped your arms around yourself without meaning to. The kitchen suddenly felt too small for what was happening in it, for the strangeness of him standing there with his hands loose at his sides and his gaze fixed on you as if nothing else under Heaven mattered half so much.
“I don’t know what I’ve done,” you said.
His expression did not change.
“Opened the door,” he said softly.
You let out a breath that trembled on the way out.
“That’s not what I mean.”
Something in his face softened, and that frightened you more than if he’d smiled.
“I know,” he said.
He took one step closer. Then stopped, leaving enough space between you that you could still pretend you weren’t choosing to stay where you were.
Up close, his scent reached you again—night air, rain-soaked soil, river stone, and something faintly sweet beneath it now. Not flowers. Not fruit. Something warmer. Something that made your thoughts turn heavy and strange for just a second before righting themselves again.
His gaze slid to the side of your throat.
Not hidden. Not polite.
Hungry.
“Tell me what you are,” you whispered.
His eyes lifted.
For a moment, nothing moved between you but the thin curtain at the window breathing in and out with the wind.
Then he said, “Somethin’ old. Somethin’ mean. Somethin’ that ought to’ve left this world alone and didn’t.”
The honesty of it sent a chill through you.
“And yet you came when I asked,” you said.
His mouth moved at one corner, not quite a smile. “Aye.”
There it was.
That slip.
Just one small sound, but it cracked the Southern ease at once and let something older gleam underneath.
Your eyes narrowed. “You don’t sound from around here.”
“No,” he said softly. “I don’t.”
There was more of it in his voice now, worn smooth by time and distance but not gone. Irish. Old enough and buried deep enough that when it surfaced, it felt less like hearing a different accent and more like hearing the bones of him.
You should’ve been afraid.
Instead you found yourself taking one slow step forward, studying him the way he’d studied you all evening.
“You knew,” you said. “About him.”
Remmick’s gaze flicked toward the ceiling again. Toward the room above. “He doesn’t hide much.”
“He does behind closed doors.”
“Not from me.”
A pulse of silence passed between you.
Then, very quietly, “How much have you seen?”
His expression darkened. Not with shame. Not with embarrassment. With anger held on a hard, thin leash.
“Enough.”
The word left no room.
You looked down at the floorboards for a second, at your own bare feet in the puddle of pale light, the hem of your nightgown brushing your ankles. When you spoke again, your voice came rougher. “Then why didn’t you do anything?”
The question seemed to strike him harder than you’d expected.
His jaw shifted once. “Because I didn’t belong to you yet.”
Heat rose over your skin so fast it felt almost like humiliation.
He went on before you could speak. “And because if I’d put my hands on him before you asked it of me, I’d have taken more than I meant to.”
Something in the way he said taken made the room seem to still around it.
You looked back up.
His eyes had changed.
No, not changed. They were changing.
The dark center of them had thinned enough to show red beneath, not bright and theatrical but deep and living, like banked embers disturbed in a hearth. The shadows around his face seemed sharper too somehow. Not larger. More defined. Too defined. The line of his mouth. The cut of his cheekbones. The breadth of him under the work shirt. Everything in him looked suddenly less like a man in a kitchen and more like a thing wearing the memory of one.
And still he had not moved closer.
“I asked for help,” you said.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t ask for…” You gestured weakly, unable to name what stood in front of you.
His gaze remained steady on your face. “No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
A floorboard groaned overhead.
Both of you looked up.
The sound came again—heavier this time. A tread. Then another.
Your husband.
A cold knot drew tight in your belly.
You hadn’t heard him wake. Hadn’t heard the bed. Hadn’t heard the bedroom door. But there he was above you now, moving with clumsy, uneven purpose across the upstairs floor.
“Where the hell—”
The shout broke off as if he’d lost his place in his own thought. Then came the unmistakable slam of a hand against the banister.
“Woman?”
Your stomach dropped.
Remmick’s face went utterly still.
The stairs began to creak under your husband’s weight.
You turned toward the doorway to the hall just as he appeared there, one hand braced on the frame, hair mussed, face flushed with drink and sleep and sudden suspicion. He wore only his undershirt and trousers, the latter barely buttoned, belt hanging loose. In that thin, unforgiving light, he looked harsher than he had at supper. Meaner. More pathetic, somehow, in the way mean men often were when they lost control of a room.
His eyes went from you to Remmick.
And stayed.
The silence that followed was raw as a wound.
Then your husband laughed once, hard and humorless.
“Well,” he said. “Ain’t that somethin’.”
He pushed himself fully into the kitchen. The smell of liquor came with him like a second skin. “I turn my back one night and you’re spreadin’ your legs for the help?”
Shame burned hot and instant up your throat, followed almost at once by anger so sharp it made your vision clear.
“I’m not spreadin’ anything,” you bristled.
His eyes snapped to you. “Shut your mouth.”
Remmick moved then, but only enough to turn his body slightly, placing more of himself between the two of you without making a show of it.
Your husband saw that too.
Something reckless lit behind his eyes.
He looked Remmick up and down with the swagger of a man too inebriated to understand when fear should come. “What, you think you’re gonna stand there in my house and stare me down?” He spat on the floorboards near Remmick’s boot. “I took you in, you ungrateful bastard.”
“Took me in?” Remmick’s voice was almost mild.
The Irish edge had sharpened again. Not broad. Not performative. Just there now, impossible to miss.
Your husband sneered. “You heard me.”
Remmick’s head tipped slightly. “Funny way to describe it.”
The atmosphere in the room changed so fast it felt like weather.
Your husband felt it too. You saw it in the tiny hesitation that broke across his face. Then he doubled down, because men like him always did.
His gaze slid back to you and curdled. “You little whore.”
Before you could flinch, he lurched forward and grabbed your arm hard enough to wrench you off balance.
Pain shot from wrist to shoulder.
At the same instant, Remmick moved.
He crossed the space between them so quickly your mind couldn’t keep pace with it. One second your husband’s hand was clamped around your arm, hot and brutal and familiar. The next he was making a strangled, shocked noise as Remmick’s hand closed over his wrist.
Your husband went pallid.
Not with fear. Not yet.
With pain.
“What the fuck,” he hissed, trying to wrench himself free.
Remmick didn’t raise his voice. “Let her go.”
There was nothing strained in the words. Nothing hurried. His hand stayed locked around your husband’s wrist with an ease that made the whole thing worse.
Your husband bared his teeth. “You touch me again, I’ll—”
The threat broke apart when Remmick tightened his grip.
A sharp, wet pop split the kitchen.
Your husband screamed.
The sound tore through the room. You stumbled back, breath going ragged, as he dropped your arm and crashed half against the table. A plate left unwiped in the drainer hit the floor and shattered, pieces skidding across the boards.
He clutched his wrist, already swelling crooked, and looked up at Remmick like he was seeing him clearly for the first time.
“What are you?” he breathed.
The kitchen went very quiet.
The wind moved at the window. The curtain breathed in and out.
Then Remmick smiled.
It wasn't human.
The change didn't happen all at once. It moved through him like something remembered. His eyes burned fully red from within, swallowing the last of the dark. The bones of his face seemed to sharpen under the skin, elegance gone predatory. His fingers lengthened where they hung at his sides, nails darkening into dirty, curved points that caught what little light the room held. And when his mouth opened, it wasn't canine fangs you saw but all of it—every tooth too fine, too pointed, too meant for tearing.
Your husband made a sound you'd never heard from him before.
Not rage. Not bluster.
Panic.
He looked from his ruined wrist to Remmick’s face and seemed to shrink where he stood. “Jesus Christ.”
Remmick’s voice when he answered was lower now, roughened by that old burr until it sounded like velvet dragged over a blade. “No,” he said softly. “Not Him.”
Your husband bolted for the counter.
You knew what he was reaching for before he grabbed it.
The silver-handled carving knife you’d used on Sundays when there was enough meat to make one worth carving.
He turned with it in his good hand, wild-eyed, breath sawing in and out.
“Don’t,” you said, though whether you meant him or Remmick, you couldn’t have said.
He lunged.
The knife flashed in the moonlight.
Remmick moved his head just enough to avoid the first strike. The second he caught by the wrist. The third never landed. There was a hiss like fat spitting in a cast-iron pan, and Remmick’s face went terrible and still.
The silver edge had sliced across the meat of his palm.
Smoke curled up in a thin gray thread. The smell hit a second later—burnt skin, metal, something bitter and wrong.
Your husband saw it. Saw the burn. Saw that it had worked.
Triumph flared across his face, ugly and wild.
Then Remmick looked up.
What happened next hit the room like a storm breaking.
He slammed your husband backward so hard the table skidded and one leg splintered against the floor. The knife flew, struck the stove, and spun away into shadow. Your husband crashed into the wall, hard enough to crack plaster and shower chalky dust into his hair and eyes. He barely got a breath before Remmick was on him.
Your husband swung anyway, broken wrist hanging useless, good fist flailing drunk and desperate. Remmick let him land one hit—more insult than injury—then caught him by the throat and drove him sideways into the cabinet.
Wood burst.
A door tore off its hinge and hit the floor.
Stoneware crockery toppled and exploded around their boots in a spray of broken ceramic and flour dust. Your husband yelled something that came out half curse, half animal noise, his heels scraping furrows into the boards as Remmick hauled him up off the floor like he weighed nothing at all.
“Please,” he choked, grabbing at the wrist around his throat with both hands now, one broken and swelling, one slick with his own sweat.
The word sounded obscene in his mouth.
Remmick’s red eyes burned without a flicker. “Did you ever say it so sweetly for her?”
Your husband’s mouth worked. No sound came.
Remmick snarled then—a low, guttural sound that seemed too deep to belong inside one body—and the sight of all those fanged teeth drove the last of the fight out of your husband’s face. He kicked wildly, caught the edge of a chair, knocked it over. One boot slipped in spilled dishwater and blood from Remmick’s palm, smearing the floor slick and black.
He looked at you then.
Not Remmick.
Your husband.
As if maybe you might help him. As if you owed it.
You didn’t move.
Something in your stillness must have told him exactly what he needed to know, because real terror came over him at last. Total and naked and humiliating. He tried to beg again.
Remmick didn’t let him.
He turned his head, bared that impossible mouth, and tore into him.
There was nothing elegant about it.
It was wet. Violent. Horribly intimate.
Teeth sank in where throat met jaw and ripped through skin, muscle, tendon. The sound was thick and meaty, a tearing wetness that seemed to split the room in half. Blood didn’t spray so much as burst—hot, dark, and forceful—across Remmick’s mouth, down the front of his shirt, over the wall, the table leg, the floorboards, your husband’s own chest. He made one shredded, bubbling scream that collapsed almost immediately into a gargling choke as his windpipe came open under Remmick’s mouth.
Your stomach lurched.
You couldn’t look away.
Remmick wrenched back once, hard enough to open the wound wider. Flesh peeled. Blood pulsed. Your husband’s knees buckled, boots thudding uselessly against the floor while both hands flapped toward his ruined throat as if he could somehow hold himself closed. He couldn’t. Blood pumped between his fingers in glossy black-red sheets, splattering the cabinets, pattering hot onto the boards.
He tried to breathe.
The attempt made a hideous sucking rattle.
Remmick let him drop just enough to watch him fail.
For one awful, suspended moment your husband knelt there clutching what was left of his neck, eyes blown wide, mouth opening and opening around nothing. Blood spilled through his fingers, over his wrists, down his undershirt in thick hemoglobin pools. Every breath was a wet choke. Every swallow impossible.
Then Remmick caught him again, one hand locking into his hair, yanking his head back.
Your husband’s face turned toward the ceiling.
Toward God.
Toward nothing.
Remmick bent and fed once more.
This time the sound was lower. Greedier. A deep, animal pull broken by the crack of cartilage and the soft, sickening give of torn flesh. When he tore away again, there was hardly a throat left to speak of. Just ruin. Torn meat. Blood. White gleam of something beneath that should never have been seen in moonlight.
Your husband convulsed.
His boots drummed once, twice, against the floor.
Then stopped.
When Remmick finally let the body fall, it hit the boards with a weight that jolted the whole kitchen. Blood spread at once, quick and black in the dim light, finding every groove in the old wood. The smell of iron flooded the room so thick it coated the back of your tongue.
The house rang afterward.
That was the strangest part.
Not the body. Not the blood sheeted over the wall and cabinets. Not the way one of your husband’s left hand still twitched weakly near his chest before going still for good, wedding band a gleaming taunt.
The ringing.
As if something inside the house had broken and was still vibrating from it.
You stood frozen with one hand over your mouth.
Remmick straightened slowly.
Blood marked his chin. His throat. The torn front of his shirt. It glazed his mouth dark and wet, ran in thin lines down his neck, gathered black beneath his claws. One side of his shirt still smoked faintly where the silver had burned him. His chest rose once. Fell.
When he turned to look at you, his face was still monstrous.
Eyes red as coals. Mouth full of those terrible teeth. Fingers ending in dark, curved points slicked crimson at the tips.
And all you could think, in that first impossible second, was that he was beautiful.
Not despite it.
Like this.
Like the truth had only sharpened him into what he’d always been under the borrowed mask.
You lowered your hand.
Remmick’s expression changed the moment he saw your face. Not back to human. Never that. But something in the violence eased. Wariness entered him instead. Care.
“If you want me gone,” he said quietly, voice still rough with that old Irish tune underneath it, “say the word.”
You looked past him once, down at the body on the floor.
At the man who had filled this house with his temper and his stench and his hands and his taking.
At the blood spreading dark between the floorboards beneath him.
At the awful, strange lightness in your own chest.
Then you looked back at Remmick.
His mouth was red. His claws glinted wet. He stood in the ruined kitchen like a thing from some old story mothers told to keep children from wandering after dark.
And he was waiting for your answer.
You took one step forward.
Then another.
“I don’t want you gone,” you said.
The words came steadier than you felt.
Something flickered in his face. Not triumph. Not relief exactly. Something deeper and more dangerous than either.
“You should,” he said softly.
“Why?”
His gaze moved over you, from your loosened braid to your bare feet to the marks on your arm. When it returned to your face, there was hunger in it again, yes, but reverence too. Possessiveness already taking shape beneath restraint.
“Because I’m not kind,” he said.
You almost laughed.
The sound that came out was too frayed to be one. “You’re kinder than he ever was.”
The sentence hit him like a blow.
He went very still.
Then, slowly, he lifted one hand—those awful, elegant claws dark with blood—and stopped with it hanging between you, offering rather than taking.
It was the same gesture a gentleman might’ve made in a ballroom. The same one a monster might make at the mouth of a grave.
Your heart turned over in your chest.
You put your hand in his.
His fingers closed around yours with impossible care.
The contrast of him nearly undid you. The promise of danger, the touch of devotion.
His skin was cool despite the blood on it. The rough pad of his thumb traced once over your knuckles, almost absent-mindedly, as if he were confirming to himself that you were really there.
“You’re shakin’,” he murmured.
“So are you.”
The faintest smile touched his ruined mouth. “Aye.”
You didn’t know what moved first—him or you. Only that the distance between you disappeared as if the room itself had decided it no longer mattered. One moment he was standing before you with your husband’s blood on him. The next your free hand had found the torn front of his shirt and his head had bent and his mouth had found your throat.
Not biting.
Not yet.
Just there.
Breathing you in.
The sound he made was low and wrecked and terribly intimate. It shivered through you, straight down your spine.
His lips skimmed the side of your neck with a softness so at odds with the teeth behind them that your knees nearly gave. The scrape you expected never came. Instead you felt the warm wetness of his mouth, the drag of it, a touch too slick to be wholly human. Heat bloomed under your skin almost instantly, strange and deep, radiating outward from the place he’d kissed as though something in that touch had gone searching for your pulse and found it.
You inhaled sharply.
Remmick froze.
His hand tightened around yours by a fraction. “Too much?”
You could barely think past the rush moving through you. Whatever wet warmth he’d left at your throat hadn't stayed there. It moved. Not literally. Not like a living thing. More like heat spilled into cold water, spreading through your chest, your belly, the backs of your thighs, making every nerve feel newly awake. The room sharpened around the edges. The smell of him—blood, rain-dark earth, night air, something sweet and wrong and male beneath it all—went through you like liquor on an empty stomach.
“No,” you whispered.
His eyes closed once, briefly, as though the answer cost him something.
When they opened again, that ember-red burn had gone molten.
“Sweet girl,” he said, so softly it was almost a prayer.
No one had ever called you anything that made you feel more seen.
You made some helpless sound and his mouth found yours before you could stop it.
The kiss was nothing like your husband’s had ever been. Nothing careless in it. Nothing taken for granted. Remmick kissed as if he meant to learn what your mouth wanted and then give it back tenfold. His lips were cool at first and then not cool at all, the wet warmth of him dizzying and addictive, carrying that same strange heat through you all over again when his tongue touched yours. You tasted blood there too—salt-rich, metallic, unmistakable—his and your husband’s both, turned shocking and intimate in the dark. It wasn’t the clumsy thrust of a drunk man looking to get to the next thing. It was slow. Intent. Shamelessly intimate.
His hand rose to your face.
Even with claws, he touched you like something breakable and adored.
Your fingers knotted in his shirt. The cotton was damp and ruined beneath your grip. The kitchen smelled of death and summer and desire, all of it tangled so tightly there was no separating one from the next.
When he pulled back, it was only far enough to look at you.
Your lips felt swollen. Your breath came quick and shallow. That heat was everywhere now, low and aching and impossible to mistake.
His gaze traced your face as if he was memorizing the aftermath of his own kiss. “You’ve no idea,” he said roughly, “how long I’ve wanted this.”
“How long?” Your voice didn’t sound like yours.
“From the first evenin’ I saw you on that porch.” His thumb drifted once along your jaw. “Maybe before. Hard to say with things like fate.”
You ought to have flinched at the word.
Instead it settled into you deep and heavy.
Upstairs, the house creaked and then quieted again.
Your husband—no, the body that had been your husband—lay cooling on the floor only a few feet away. The fact should have horrified you. Maybe tomorrow it would. Maybe next week. Maybe never.
Right now all you could feel was the terrible, clean absence of fear.
Remmick looked over your shoulder toward the stairs, then back at you. “This isn’t where I’d have had you first.”
The possessive tenderness of it made your stomach drop pleasantly.
“You’ve thought about it, then,” you said.
A dark, almost disbelieving sound left him. “Darlin’, I’ve thought about little else.”
His claws brushed the side seam of your nightgown, never catching, never pressing enough to hurt. Just enough to make you aware of what they could do and what he was choosing not to do.
You looked at his hand. At the rough curve of each claw. At the blood dried along one knuckle.
Then, very deliberately, you covered it with yours and guided it to your waist.
The sound he made then was worse than any groan. It was too low, too hungry, too full of restraint fraying at the edges.
“Tell me to stop,” he said.
You shook your head.
His forehead dropped to yours. “You must tell me if you want it to stop.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t know what I am when I’m hungry.”
The confession came out ragged.
“I know what men are when they don’t care if they hurt you,” you said.
That did it.
Something in his face broke open—not control, exactly, but the last of the distance he’d been trying to keep between himself and wanting you. His eyes shut tight for a second as if in pain.
When he looked at you again, there was nothing hidden in them.
“I care,” he said.
You believed him.
That was the most dangerous thing of all.
He kissed you again, harder this time but no less careful, his hand at your waist drawing you into the length of him. Through the ruined shirt and your thin nightgown you felt the hard line of his body, the strength in it, the restraint. Not because he lacked appetite. Because he was drowning in it and still holding back for you.
His mouth left yours only to wander—your cheek, the corner of your jaw, the place beneath your ear that made your knees soften. Every touch left that same fevered shimmer beneath your skin, each one building on the last until you could hardly stand the sweetness of it.
When his teeth grazed your throat at last, it was so careful it almost hurt more than if he’d simply bitten. A testing pressure. A promise. Every point there and none of them cruel.
You gripped his shoulders.
He went still immediately. “Too sharp?”
“No,” you breathed. “Don’t stop.”
The words transformed him.
His head bowed. One clawed hand spread over the small of your back, the other cradled the side of your face, and then he mouthed at your throat with a patience so devastating it made your eyes burn. You felt the wet heat of his mouth again, the slide of it, the strange, aphrodisiac warmth chasing through your blood until your whole body felt languid and alert at once.
“God,” you whispered.
He drew back just enough to look at you, eyes blazing. “No,” he said again, softer this time, almost amused despite the roughness in him. “Just me.”
A laugh broke from you then, breathless and wrong-timed and half a sob with it. To your own surprise, he smiled.
The sight of that monstrous mouth softened by fondness nearly undid you.
He led you backward by inches until the backs of your legs met the kitchen table. The same table where your husband had sat and complained and grabbed and taken up air as if he owned all of it. The symbolism of it flashed through you hot and vindictive. Remmick seemed to understand at once.
His gaze searched your face. “Here?”
“Yes.”
The answer came quicker than your shame could.
His mouth brushed yours once, tender. “That’s my girl.”
The praise struck straight through you, lighting every inch of you from the inside.
He bent, monstrous still, and the whole room seemed to tighten around the sight of him there between your knees—red-eyed, blood-marked, impossibly careful, looking up at you like he’d been starving for the chance to worship before he ever got to taste. His voice against your skin was ruinous. “Let me take care of you.”
No one had ever said those words and meant them.
You nodded, fingers already in his hair, and the sound he made at your permission was almost feral in its gratitude.
His lips were warm. His tongue traced a slow, wet line upward, along the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. You gasped, your fingers curling against the table’s edge.
“So sweet,” he breathed against your skin, his hot exhalation making you shiver. “Taste the fear on you. The want. It’s divine.”
His claws, curved and sharp, hooked gently into the thin cotton of your nightgown where it covered your stomach. A soft tearing sound filled the space between your ragged breaths as he ripped the fabric open from navel to neck. The ruined garment fell away from your breasts, pooled around your waist. The night air, thick with summer heat and the copper tang of blood, touched your skin everywhere.
He looked up at you, his fanged mouth glistening. “Perfect.”
Then he lowered his head between your legs, and his tongue found your pussy.
The first touch was a flat, hot press that made your back arch off the table. He licked you slowly, thoroughly, from opening to clit, his tongue broad and wet and impossibly clever. A low, rough sound escaped him, a groan of pure pleasure that you felt against your most sensitive flesh.
“Dripping for me,” he said, his words muffled against you. “Soaked. Let me drink you.”
He did. His mouth sealed over you, sucking gently at your clit, his tongue flicking, circling, pressing. The sensation was immediate and overwhelming—a sharp, bright coil of pleasure that tightened low in your belly. You cried out, a broken sound, that had you yanking at his hair.
He encouraged you, pushing his head more firmly against you, his nose nudging your pubic bone. “Use me, darlin'. Take what ya need.”
His saliva was warm, slick, more viscous than any human spit. It coated you, dripped down your inner thighs, and where it touched your skin, a strange, languid heat bloomed. It felt like honey and whiskey in your veins, a slow-burning aphrodisiac that made the edges of the room soften, made your hips roll against his mouth of their own volition.
One clawed hand slid from your hip, down through the slick mess he was making of you. A single, terrifyingly sharp fingertip traced your opening, not entering, just circling. The contrast—the lethal point against your swollen, desperate flesh—made you sob.
“Please,” you heard yourself beg, the word torn from a place deeper than thought.
“Please what?” he asked, lifting his mouth just enough to speak. His breath was hot on your wet skin. His red eyes gleamed up at you, watching you fall apart. “Tell me.”
“Inside.”
He smiled, a flash of fangs. “My good girl.”
The claw tip pressed inward, just the very point, a sharp, impossible stretch. Then he turned his hand, carefully, and the curve of the claw slid into you, a smooth, thick intrusion. It wasn’t the claw itself—it was the back of his finger, the first knuckle, sheathed in you, the sharpness a constant, thrilling threat just beside the filling pressure. He crooked it, and the world went white at the edges.
He fucked you with that one finger, slow and deep, his mouth returning to your clit, sucking in time with the thrusts. The dual sensation, the precise, ruthless stimulation inside and out, built a pressure in your core that was agony and ecstasy. You were babbling, words you didn’t know, your thighs trembling violently around his head.
He pulled his mouth away again, his chin gleaming with your wetness and his own silvery spit. He was breathing hard. “Look at me when you come.”
He pushed a second finger in alongside the first, the stretch breathtaking, the curve of his claws cradling your inner walls. His thumb found your clit, rubbing tight, frantic circles. His eyes held yours, red and burning and utterly focused.
It broke you. The orgasm ripped through you, a silent, seizing wave that locked your throat and arched your spine. Tears sprang hot from your eyes, tracking down your temples into your hair. You shook, helpless, pinned by his gaze and his hand.
He watched you cry with a look of rapturous devotion. He leaned up, catching a tear on his tongue as it fell from you jaw. “Beautiful,” he whispered, his own voice ragged. “Every part of you.”
He withdrew his fingers slowly, making you gasp at the emptiness. He rose to his feet in one fluid motion, his trousers already open, his cock free—thick, veined, flushed dark and leaking at the tip. He guided himself to your soaked entrance, the broad head nudging against you.
“This is yours,” he growled, “all of it. Say it.”
“Mine,” you breathed.
He pushed inside.
The stretch was profound, a burning, perfect fullness that stole the air from your lungs. He sank into you to the hilt, his hips meeting yours, and you could feel him, every inch, buried deep in your belly. A low, guttural sound ripped from his chest.
He didn’t move for a long moment, just stayed there, joined, his forehead pressed to your shoulder, his claws digging gently into the wood of the table on either side of your hips. You could feel his cock pulse inside you.
He said your name, a prayer and a claim.
Then he began to move.
Your hands found his back, your blunt nails digging into the hard muscle beneath his shirt, scoring lines through the fabric. You met his next thrust with a roll of your own hips, a raw, answering push that drew a ragged groan from his throat.
He shifted his weight, lifting your hips higher, driving himself deeper. The angle changed, pressing him against a place inside you that made your vision spark. Your legs wrapped around his waist, locking him there, and he fucked you into the table with a steady, relentless rhythm.
The wet slap of your skin filled the hot kitchen, a obscene counterpoint to the distant crickets. Each thrust pushed a soft, slick sound from your body, a filthy squelch that echoed the perfect, brutal fullness.
“That’s it,” he growled, his face buried in the crook of your neck. His breath was fire on your skin. “Take all of me, darlin'. Every last inch. Feel how deep I am in you.”
You could. With every drive of his hips, you could see the faint, impossible bulge low in your own belly, a fleeting shape beneath your skin where he filled you. The sight undid you.
“You see it?” he whispered, his voice cracking with reverence. He watched your face, his red eyes burning. “You see what you do to me? What I give to you?”
You could only nod, a choked sound escaping you as he sheathed himself completely again, making your body stretch and accept him. He was so deep it felt like a brand in your bones.
“My good, perfect girl,” he murmured, the words a hot prayer against your lips. “So tight around me. Made for this. Made for me.”
One clawed hand slid from the table, coming to rest low on your abdomen, his palm pressing down gently. He rocked into you, and his own hand moved with the force of it, exaggerating the the thick bulge from the outside.
“I’m going to fill you up,” he promised, his thrusts losing their rhythm, turning urgent, desperate. “Going to plant myself so deep inside you, you’ll feel me for days. You’ll carry me with you.”
The promise wasn’t a threat. It was a gift. A filthy, tender vow that coiled the tension in your belly tighter than his fingers ever had. A fresh, shocking wave of wetness spilled from you, easing his frantic pace into a slick, driving glide.
“Remmick—”
“I know,” he breathed. “I feel it. Come for me again. Let me feel you milk my cock. I want to come inside you while you’re screaming.”
His words were the final key. The coil snapped, and your second orgasm tore through ypu without grace, a raw, convulsing thing that locked your muscles around him and ripped a broken wail from your throat. The world dissolved into white heat and the pulse of your own blood in your ears.
He followed you over. A guttural, inhuman sound ripped from his chest as he drove into you one last, punishing time and held, his body bowing over yours. You felt the hot, sudden flood of his release inside you, a claiming spill that seemed to have no end, filling the empty spaces he’d carved out.
He collapsed against you, his weight a solid, welcome anchor. His forehead rested on your shoulder, his breath coming in harsh gusts against your skin. His cock, still buried deep within you, gave a final, weak pulse.
For a long time, there was only the sound of breathing, the cooling night air on sweat-slicked skin, and the distant, indifferent chorus of the summer night.
Slowly, carefully, he withdrew. The loss was profound, a hollow ache followed by the warm, trickling evidence of what you'd done. He didn’t move away. He stayed between your legs, looking down at the mess he'd made of you, his eyes dark with something like awe.
He bent, pressing a kiss to the quivering skin of your lower belly. His tongue traced a slow, tender path through the sweat and spend. “Mine,” he whispered, the word a final seal.
By the time the worst of the night’s fever had burned itself through, the kitchen looked like the aftermath of a storm. Broken dishware. Turned chair. Blood drying on the boards. The curtain stirring at the open inch of the window latch. Your husband’s body covered now with a blanket Remmick had dragged over it without ceremony. The silver-handled knife tossed far out of reach.
And you, half-wrapped in Remmick’s torn shirt where he’d settled it over your shoulders, sitting on the table with your braid loose and your mouth tender and your whole body thrumming with a strange, deep quiet.
Remmick stood between your knees, back in shadow though not in human guise. He hadn’t hidden himself from you again. Red eyes. Claws. Too many sharp teeth when he parted his lips. A faint scorch still marked his palm where the silver had kissed him, angry and dark against the paler skin.
You reached for his hand before you thought better of it.
His gaze snapped to yours at once.
“Does it hurt?” you asked.
He looked down at the burn, then back up. “Less now.”
You turned his hand over in both of yours and studied the mark. The line of it. The way the skin around it seemed wrong, injured in a language different from ordinary wounds.
Then, before you could overthink it, you lifted his hand and pressed your mouth to the center of his palm.
He went utterly still.
When you looked up, his face had changed.
Not softened. Something worse.
Laid open.
“Darlin’,” he said, and your heart turned over at the sound of your endearment in that old, rough voice.
“You killed him,” you said quietly.
“I did.”
You waited for guilt to rush in and fill the kitchen. To fill you. To make itself known as the proper thing.
It didn’t.
“He would’ve killed you if he’d understood what you were,” you said.
“Aye.”
“And he would’ve gone on hurting me if you hadn’t.”
Remmick said nothing.
His silence let the truth settle where it liked.
You looked toward the shape beneath the blanket, then away again. “I can’t seem to feel sorry.”
At that, he moved closer. Not enough to crowd. Just enough that the coolness of him found your overheated skin again.
“There are worse sins,” he said.
A tired laugh escaped you. “That sounds like somethin’ the devil would say.”
One corner of his monstrous mouth lifted. “Wouldn’t know. Never met him.”
The answer was so dry, so unexpectedly easy, that another laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. This one was real enough to make your eyes sting after. Remmick watched your face as if the sound had left him a little stunned.
Then he reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear with a clawed finger so careful it felt almost absurd.
“What happens now?” you asked.
His gaze moved over you slowly, as if considering not the question but the life inside it.
“Now,” he said at last, “we clean what needs cleanin’.”
Practical. Calm. The answer of a man who had buried many things, literal or otherwise.
You looked down at the blanket, at the blood, at the kitchen that no longer felt like yours and yet for the first time didn't feel like his either.
Then back at Remmick.
“And after that?”
Something dark and tender moved his face.
The wind pressed once at the windows. Dawn was still a long way off, but not forever. Somewhere out in the fields a night bird called and was answered from farther off.
Remmick brought your hand to his mouth.
His lips touched your knuckles with a devotion that made your throat ache.
“After that,” he said softly, “if you’ll have me, I stay.”
He looked past you then, toward the black window over the sink where the house reflected only you, the moonlight, and the thing you’d let in.
When his gaze came back to yours, his smile showed every wicked fang in his mouth.
The first thing to ever love you right and it had to be invited in.
- despite how energetic and jumpy he is, he sleeps horribly, lives on 5 hours of sleep since the death of the previous listener all the way up to the establishment of the dawnstar sanctuary, even then he can only sleep calmly when the listener is home.
- additionally only after dawnstar he stops sleeping with a dagger clutched under his pillow and on those especially bad days when the feelings of fear and paranoia overcome him, he sleeps next to the night mothers coffin.
- after years of being alone he really craves human contact but is also very weird about it. I think after establishing a friendship with the listener he will catch himself wanting to be close to them, but a part of him will always be scared to actually tie himself to another person. (Three destroyed sanctuaries really fucks up a man)
- wears gloves most of the time to cover up how scarred his hands are, seeing them makes him think back to those silent years and makes him overthink reality
- really enjoys just being in a room with another person, each doing their own thing, but still together. He appreciates the small sounds of pages turning, pot stirring, breathing and just movement in general, it keeps the laughter mostly away.
- plays multiple instruments not only to keep up the jester act but he picked it up while he sat alone with mothers coffin, and after that, he does it to comfort himself.
- purposely ignores peoples personal space, especially when he dislikes them, knows how to push right buttons, and when he really wants something, he knows how to get it
I hate Remmick. Like I fucking hate him. I literally can’t stand him. Like I don’t understand how you guys want to fuck him. Like imagine you walk home and he stalks you. Stalks you??? EWWWW. Begging at your door, begging for warmth, asking if he can come in and show you a good time. Absolutely disgusting !!! And when he finally gets you? Pray. Pray, pray, pray. He’s spreading you open, ripping your underwear to shreds and slapping that fat cock on your pussy like he owns it. Like it’s a meal waiting to be feasted on. I know he’ll kiss it first, slobber all over it, make sure it’s crying and pulsing his name in Morse code and then he’s going to press the head of his swollen cock and say “open wide.” With a whistle and he’s just jamming that CAWK until you’re crying his name. ABSOLUTELY NOT! and he’ll fuck you through it, call you all sorts of pretty names and say your the best pussy he’s had in centuries. Jesus fuck— he’s not stopping, he’s going all the way. He’s gonna bury you into whatever surface you’re on— HELL! He’s so strong he’s gonna hold you while standing and let gravity take over. He’s just going to keep busting that pussy open until your brain turns into mush and that pussy convulses. Serving earth shattering dick game that your dna twists and erases itself— don’t even get me started on how raw everything is. Literally feels like a natural disaster ran threw and your the sole survivor— but not for long. I hate how fucking stupid he is— oh god he’ll make you stupid for him. Beat that pussy up over and over that you’ll feel him for years— and you’ll still feel him in your death bed! Y’all are brain dead— but that’s how you’ll feel when he fucks your mouth next, ramming himself down your throat and watching you cry and gag and he’ll say “there ya go— get it messy f’me. There’s my good girl” and he’s gifting you with cream. Tastes like vanilla and honey. I know it does. You’ll be eating dessert and your throat would suddenly feel hollow. Like, he’s Holding your head down so he can feel your throat go sour and then pulling back to watch your spit connect and then he’ll say “almost lost ya— let’s try again” and he won’t care about the protest cause he knows you can do better. How could you be his personal fuck toy? FUCKCKCKINGNGGG NASTYYYY
you can only mewl while your hole clenches in weak periodic beats around remmick’s dick. wincing when he yanks his wet meat out and slaps your puffed up pussy with it, laughing maniacally while your hole squeezes more helpless juices out in his absence. trying to clench a hold onto something.
“dirty little slut leakin’ a damn puddle all over us. who woulda thought this pussy does more when she’s fucked and filled right.”
“r-rem—remmick please, keep giving it to me, need you to keep me full—“
“greedy hole still wants it even after slobberin’ all over me twice already. christ. alright, you want it so bad, imma make you work for it,” he teases, rutting the lips of your rim with his pudgy tip before sitting back, patting his thighs in an invitation. the wet spot you left is still squished and stained on the sheets beneath. his red glowing eyes dilate just feeling the warmth you squirted, smelling the insatiable want all over you. he knew your time of the month was coming from how fast and willing you’ve bent over for him tonight. sticking your ass out and spreading. definitely ovulating. he knows it’s gonna take a couple more rounds than normal to fill your weeping little hole.
“here. get in this lap, ride all the dick you need, cowgirl.”
and so you did, boy you fucking did. locking him up so he stays put beneath your thighs, scrambling to take his dick and point it back home. remmick is more than impressed with your stamina. keeps his eyes trained on your shiny, fucked out hole while you rut and slip and slide against him before hurrying to sit down and claim him all the way in. he winces when he feels your possessive muscles clench, cute happy bounces while you sigh with relief while his cock fulfills all your horny wishes.
remmick groans a low, animalistic oohhh before swiftly picking up his pack of smokes just to the left of the bed on your nightstand, lazily sticking it in his lips. he can’t even light it immediately from the gushing sensation of your pussy taking him, growling on him, rubbing all your spots with him like he’s the best toy you’ve ever had. once he’s sure he won’t bust prematurely for you, he moans more with the cigarette still tucked in the corner of his lips, and finds the strength to nab the lighter and light the tip, blowing out a relieving puff of smoke while his other hand dances across your lower back, occasionally raising his hips up to surprise you with going even deeper.
remmick blows another cloud of smoke out, hardly keeping up with your bounces while catching his breath. the cigarette just added another hazy buzz, his dirty grin practically stitched to his cheeks while he zoned in on your meek little hole, noisily creaming around him.
“yeah, yeah I know that’s s’right, keep hoppin’. hop on that dick. go on, squirt on me again, wanna watch it happen this time,” he huffs. hissing while your pussy clenches down some more, rounding your hips around and finding more breathtaking angles that have you both howling.
“I’ll cum for you, I’ll make another mess just for you, just for you baby—god, can’t help it when this dick’s so good,” you whine, feeling his length accidentally slip out in the middle of a good thrust. his cock automatically slaps up onto his stomach, riddled in your juices. you whip your head back and stare down, trying to get a grasp on him again without even an ounce of patience left in your body.
“shhh, shhh hunny I got it, I gotcha. I’m puttin’ ‘em back in now, don’t stress that little pussy out. it’s comin’, comin’ right back in. thereee we go. feel that?”
his cigarette is stuck back between his lips while he holds one of your hips, gliding his tip right back in your needy, sopping hole. the sigh of relief you felt turns into another loud moan, sinking all the way back down on him and getting your rhythm back on like nothing in the world could ever interrupt you again.
“that’s it little bunny, little bunny needs her dick, hmm?”
“mmmhmmm.”
“oh I know that’s right, look at her, look at her go.”
he marvels at your speed winding up, watching you sink back down and pump back up, filling yourself over and over again with his cock balls deep, little splashes coating his thighs and your inner lips during the ride.
he blows more smoke out, so distracted he almost forgets it’s still lit. “so proud of you angel, little pussy’s gotten so good. you gonna gimme what I want? you gonna squirt a pretty little flood? c’mon, c’mon you can do it. you got it baby, fuck, fuck, keep bouncin’ little vamp, I’m gonna fuckin’ nut—“
“nut inside me, cum in my pussy, cum in my pussy, my pussy needs it—need my fuel, I’m gonna cum with you baby, your cock makes me feel so good,” you howl, clenching hard enough to trap him inside before you feel that all too familiar tense grip of both his palms right on your hips, squeezing like you’ll float away if he lets go. he grinds his teeth with a raspy, throaty moan, cigarette barely staying lit while he humps upwards to fully nest himself in.
“mmmm feel this baby, feel it shootin’ inside you, keep fuckin’ yourself on it hunny, yeah.”
remmick takes one last long hit of his smoke, blowing it out in a hurry while he pumps his hips up one last time. his balls felt blue, tightening up before the tingling feeling in his belly overpowers him. he makes a strangled noise that sounds like he got punched in the gut, first squeezing his eyes shut when the first spurt leaves him, scorching hot cum now unstoppably flooding your pussy, your womb. remmick forces his eyes to stay back open, watching with eagle eyed intensity while your pussy keeps hopping up and down on him, his cream oh so subtly making thick milky drips down, adding to more to this fucking mess. he hums so long while you pump him through it, tightening and whimpering while your own orgasm whips you out of it, leaving a hot, sticky wet mess behind and a shy little spurt of more cum right onto him.
“yeahhhh, knew that cunny had it in her. squirtin’ on this dick good. that’s it, that’s fucking it!—mmm slow that pussy down a sec, slow down,” he gasps, feeling the highest extreme of intensity, sensitivity, while his balls helplessly shrivel up again to let out another weak, sorry ass stroke of cum. beads of white sticking to your labia, a disgusting mess that he already wants to stuff his face in.
“darlin’, oh—mmmm you gave it to me good, got me so good this time. cain’t fuckin’ handle that pussy’s greed,” he gasps, halting your hips with desperation so his only his tip stays stuck in. his dick is three shades redder than he’s ever seen, wiped out from all the rounds your pussy took him on.
“alright, alright. tell you what. we clean up, I finish my damn smoke, then I’ll give this dick to ya nice and good again, sound good baby? sound fair?”
your mouth has stayed open, stuck in an o-shape while you finally allow him out. sticking your hips up to let his tip leave you, feeling a striking emptiness when his cock left your body. trying not to pout on him, knowing you’ve put him through enough rounds that most people wouldn’t get all month, you lazily agree with a smile, a little pinch of your lip, biting down while wiggling yourself back a little to give him a good show of what he’s done to you.
a stringy, thick glob slowly but surely dribbles down, landing right back down on the base of his dick. remmick’s blood boils just looking at it, reaching up to smack your cheek and spread a lip open just to watch even more fall out.
“five fucking minutes,” he grumbles, taking two deep drags of his smoke again, already feeling the heartbeat in his dick start accelerating up again. “gimme five minutes, then I’m all yours again, baby. I’ll fill that pussy up with s’more nut, all the nut you need,” he promises. snakes just a middle finger over your bulging, ruined clit, swirling a little circle there to soothe you.
“getchu plenty of dick, got plenty to fill my cute ass slut. here, sit down. grind it down on me, just rub. yeah, like that, just like that. good girl. get it hard again, we’ll pick right up where we left off. fuckin’ cleanin’ you up later. mmmmhm.”
. . .
another repost from my old blog I have a lot more to go through
remmick is so pretty and needy and i just know he’s LOUD in bed.
Remmick x Fem!Reader
Explicit sexual content: PIV sex, Hint of sub!Remmick, Vocal!Remmick.
Remmick’s hips drive into you, his rhythm matching time with all the desperate noises he lets out. It’s messy, frantic even. Like he’s trying to brand his soul to yours; his moans chorus like a spell he means to cast over you.
The heat of the room wrapped around you, made even warmer by his chest pressed against yours. Heavy damp breath ghosting along your neck as he groans into your sweat-slick skin. Your limbs are tangled together, the sheets draped half over your bodies and half in the floor. His hands shake as he holds you to him, no inch of flesh going untouched. The way he whines, choking on it, is obscene.
His lips kiss their way up to your ear, breath morphing into another moan. “Fuck me,” he whimpers, the syllables shattering on their descent. “Can ya feel that? I’m so deep inside like this.”
Remmick always liked to run his mouth. The need was almost obsessive; he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t focus enough to keep his sounds of pleasure under lock and key. Not when you, his pretty girl, were wrapped around him so tight. Not when you made the sweetest little noises too.
He just couldn’t stay quiet.
You didn’t say anything in return to his filthy words. Instead, your nails bit into his shoulders, the sharp pain only making him moan once again. A needy thing bordering on pathetic.
“You’re killin’ me, sugar,” he whines. He grips your jaw suddenly—rough and insistant—pressing his lips over yours. Not to kiss you, but to moan into your open mouth. Pouring his pleasure down your throat just like he’d spill his seed into your cunt.
He fucks you until your legs tremble and his voice is hoarse. His hips snapping into yours with a desperation that only grew with each slide of his cock along your walls. His groans and whines echoed throughout the room, accompanied by the wet sound of skin slapping skin. He cracks you open, your pleasure spilling out in high-pitched whimpers. Back arching and eyes rolling back into your skull as your climax reaches a fever pitch.
You clench around him so tightly it must have hurt. He cries out like it does, but it only makes him thrust into you harder. Short breaths and quick moans tumbled from his mouth, his hips stuttering as he neared his own high. At the end, when he finally broke inside you, just one phrase slipped from his lips. Sounding more like incoherent whimpers than actual words. “So fuckin’ good.”
ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: he was probably not the best choice for your first time. (ao3)
ᴡᴄ: 7.0k
ᴀ/ɴ: you know i'm such a fool for youuuuuuuu! y'all, please bear with me. this is essentially a cross between a one-shot and a drabble (heavily the latter) but i kept overthinking how to format it without an actual ask. I'M GETTING BACK INTO THE SWING OF THINGS OKAY?! anyways, this entire idea deadass came from my airplane movie being casino royale, specifically that scene where daniel craig is comforting vesper in the shower (😛😛😛). the horniest part of my brain immediately activated like a sleeper agent and i've been mentally plotting this fic out ever since. this might be my freakiest writing yet actually i gagged myself multiple times.
ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: 18+ MINORS DNI!!!!, good old-fashioned smut, heavy descriptions of blood and gore, murder and its subsequent arousals, established relationship, power imbalance, manipulation, extreme dubcon, reader having second thoughts, fingering, cunilingus, bloodplay, drool, scent kink, monsterfucking, biting, eye contact, body worship, dacryphilia, aftercare, praise kink but degrading actions (?), dom!remmick, obsessed!remmick, sub!reader, afab!reader (idt i ever put this in tags before omg mb yall), remmick is a CREEP, but also talks you through it, there's fluff somewhere in here, possibly rusty 🤧
“It just won’t come off.”
The words came out thin. Frayed. Barely louder than the hiss of the water hammering against marble.
You scrubbed harder.
The bathroom was enormous—vaulted ceilings, white-veined marble climbing every wall, gold fixtures gleaming through the thick steam like dull halos. A place meant for quiet luxury. For long baths and soft robes and someone pouring wine while you sank into warm water.
Now it smelled like copper.
Now it smelled like you.
Your hands shook as they moved over your skin again, nails dragging, scrubbing, scraping like you could peel it away if you just tried hard enough. The water was far too hot—scalding, really—but you barely felt it anymore. Your new skin drank the heat greedily, nerves lit up too sharply, too alive.
Everything was too alive now.
Every scent.
Every sound.
The drain gurgled below you and the noise alone made your stomach twist. You could hear the pipes in the walls. The hum of electricity in the sconces. The faint, distant whisper of traffic outside somewhere beyond the estate walls.
And beneath all of it—
The smell.
God.
It clung to you.
Metal and salt and something darker, richer. The thick, iron tang of spilled blood worked itself into your lungs until you thought you might choke on it.
You scrubbed harder.
Your reflection blurred in the fogged mirror across the room, a ghost of yourself—hair plastered to your temples, eyes too bright, lips trembling. Your knees were planted hard against the marble floor of the shower, the stone biting cold into your skin while the water burned down your back.
You couldn’t stop shaking from the memory.
An awful, awful thing.
His face kept appearing the moment you blinked.
Not Remmick’s.
The other one. The man from the street.
Kind eyes. Gullible eyes. The kind that softened when he smiled.
You saw it again.
The moment he realized something was wrong.
The confusion first.
Then the fear.
Then—
Your stomach twisted violently.
You clutched the edge of the shower bench, knuckles white.
“I didn’t—” Your voice broke. “I didn’t mean—”
But you had.
Your new teeth had known exactly what to do. Your body had known. Your hunger had known.
And above it all—
That voice.
Low. Smooth. Patient.
Go on now, darlin’.
You squeezed your eyes shut.
Remmick hadn’t touched him.
Hadn’t needed to.
He’d just stood behind you in the foyer, one hand resting warm against the back of your neck like a man steadying a nervous horse.
His mouth near your ear.
There ya go.
The memory made your stomach drop.
That’s it.
The praise had been soft.
Gentle.
Proud.
Show me what I made.
You gagged, the sound raw in your throat.
The water kept pouring down.
Still, the smell wouldn’t leave.
Still, the weight of it clung to your skin like something alive.
You were different now.
Changed.
It had only been days, but the world had already sharpened into something unbearable. Every scent was louder. Every heartbeat within range felt like a drum pressed to your ear.
You could still hear the man’s pulse sometimes, echoing faint in your head like an afterimage.
You curled in on yourself.
Then, the bathroom door opened.
The sound was so quiet, but it didn’t matter.
The room changed the second he stepped inside.
Remmick took over any space he walked into.
The air thickened with him in it, something warm and slow-moving through the steam. Even the light seemed to shift toward him.
Your head lifted slowly.
He stood in the doorway like he’d belonged there.
Dark slacks.
Suspenders hanging loose from his shoulders.
White shirt sleeves rolled just enough to show the strong line of his forearms.
His hair was still slicked back neat despite the late hour. A gold chain caught faint light at his throat.
And those eyes—
Blue at first glance.
Red glowing underneath if you looked too long.
Remmick’s gaze settled on you kneeling beneath the shower.
He didn’t speak right away.
Just watched.
Slowly, his head tilted.
“Well now,” he murmured at last.
That voice, again.
Low and syrup-thick.
It coated your brain like honey.
“Ya made yourself a mess.”
Shame hit you so hard your shoulders folded inward.
“I tried—” Your throat tightened. “It won’t—”
He stepped forward.
Shoes slow across marble.
Each step deliberate.
Agonizing.
Steam curled around him as he reached the edge of the shower.
You froze.
Remmick crouched down beside the glass partition, resting one forearm on the marble ledge like he had all the time in the world.
“Darlin’,” he said softly.
The word slid through you like oil.
“Look at me.”
You did.
You always did.
His gaze moved slowly over you—the trembling hands, the angry red skin, the faint streaks still clinging stubbornly along your wrists and collarbone.
And then he smiled.
Not cruel, not exactly.
Pleased.
That was the look that settled over his face. Quiet and satisfied, like a man admiring something he’d been patient enough to grow himself.
It made your stomach turn.
Remmick stepped fully into the shower.
The water soaked through him in seconds, white cotton clinging to his frame, turning translucent where it stretched across his shoulders, his chest, his abdomen. It should’ve looked ridiculous—leather on wet marble, clothes ruined—but somehow it didn’t.
It looked intentional.
Like everything he did.
Like this.
You shrank back on instinct, your spine brushing the slick tile behind you. “You don’t—have to—”
“Mm,” he hummed, cutting you off easy.
His hand found your jaw again.
Not rough.
Never rough at first.
Just heavy. Certain. Tilting your face toward him like you were something delicate he didn’t trust to hold yourself upright.
“Now why would I leave ya like this?” he murmured.
His thumb dragged slow along your cheek.
You flinched.
He noticed.
Of course he did.
A faint smile touched his mouth, softer than before, but no less knowing.
“That all too much for ya?” he asked, voice low, almost sympathetic. “World gettin’ loud?”
You swallowed.
Nodded before you could stop yourself.
Remmick’s eyes darkened—absent of concern. You knew this look all too well.
With interest.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I remember that part.”
His hand slid from your face to the back of your neck, fingers spreading wide, anchoring you there.
“Everythin’ feels sharper,” he went on, tone easy, conversational, like he was talking about the weather. “Smells stick. Sounds echo. Can’t outrun it, no matter how hard ya scrub.”
His gaze dropped—slowly—down your body.
To your hands.
Still trembling.
Still streaked.
“You’re fightin’ the wrong thing, darlin’.”
You shook your head, breath catching. “I can still feel it—”
“I know.”
The words came quick this time.
Firm, but not dismissive.
Confirming.
Which was so much worse.
Remmick stepped closer.
Too close.
The heat of him cut through the steam, a different kind of warmth entirely—denser, heavier, something that pressed in instead of wrapping around.
His hand slid down your arm again, slower now. His fingers followed the faint lines of your veins as he traced the map he’d memorized.
“You’re holdin’ onto it,” he murmured. “That’s why it won’t leave.”
His thumb pressed lightly into your wrist.
Right over your pulse.
It jumped beneath his touch.
He smiled.
“There it is,” he said softly.
It wasn’t triumph.
Recognition was the word you’d been searching for.
He’d been waiting for that exact note to surface in you. The crack where something human still tried to name what was happening, even as the rest of you leaned toward him.
He didn’t rush after that.
That was the worst part.
Remmick took his time the way a man admires something delicate before deciding exactly how to handle it. His hand stayed firm at the back of your neck, not forcing, just holding you in place as he leaned closer—slow enough that you could see every detail unfold.
His mouth parted.
And this time, there was no mistaking it.
The fangs weren’t subtle anymore. They weren’t tucked away behind charm or softened by that easy smile. They were there—fully bared, sharp and gleaming, lengthened into something undeniably monstrous. The water didn’t wash them clean. If anything, it made them glisten more, catching the light in a way that made your stomach tighten.
He was drooling.
Not a trickle. Not something you could politely ignore.
It was excessive. Thick. Strands of it clinging to his lower lip, gathering at the corners of his mouth before slipping free and vanishing into the torrent of water cascading over both of you.
You could see it.
Even through the steam.
Even through the heat.
Your breath caught, sharp and shallow.
For a second—just a second—you thought he might bite you.
The thought came uninvited, unwelcome, and yet it landed with a strange, desperate clarity. Pain would be clean. Immediate. Something you could understand, something that might cut through the noise in your head and the weight still clinging to your skin.
You wanted it.
The terrible realization of it all.
Remmick’s eyes flickered—subtle, but there. He saw it. That tiny shift in your breathing, the way your shoulders tensed not in retreat but in anticipation.
His mouth hovered closer.
Closer.
The fangs brushed your skin.
They didn’t puncture.
Just grazed.
A light scrape along your shoulder where the skin was already raw from your scrubbing.
It stung.
Wasn’t enough.
And then—
He licked you.
Open-mouthed and unashamed, his tongue dragging slow and broad across your skin, following the faint traces you’d failed to wash away. The sensation was overwhelming—heat layered over heat, the steady burn of the water mixing with something slick and invasive.
You flinched hard.
A sound caught in your throat, halfway between protest and something else you refused to name.
It was wrong.
God, it was so wrong.
The way he did it—no delicacy, no attempt to soften the act. Just the full press of his mouth, his tongue moving with a purposeful rhythm, gathering what remained and replacing it with something that felt heavier, thicker.
His saliva clung.
It didn’t rinse away like the water did. It smeared, spread, left your skin feeling coated in something that wasn’t yours.
Your stomach twisted.
Your fingers curled against his chest.
“Stop—” you tried, but it came out thin, unconvincing.
Remmick didn’t stop.
He shifted slightly, angling your arm, exposing more of your skin to him. His tongue followed, slow passes that bordered on methodical, like he was undoing your frantic attempts at cleansing and replacing them with something of his own design.
His fangs scraped again.
Another sting.
A shallow drag across your collarbone this time.
He didn’t apologize.
Didn’t even acknowledge it.
If anything, the faint hitch in your breath seemed to draw him in further.
The water poured down, relentless, but it couldn’t keep up with him. Wherever he touched, the sensation lingered—warm and slick and entirely his.
You should’ve pulled away.
Should’ve fought harder.
But your hands stayed where they were, braced against him, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your palms. Your body betrayed you in smaller ways—your breath coming uneven, your skin reacting to every pass of his mouth like it didn’t know how to separate disgust from something far more indefensible.
Remmick knew.
He always knew.
He paused—not pulling away completely, just enough that his mouth hovered a breath from your skin. His head tilted slightly, like he was listening to something only he could hear.
Or smelling it.
That faint shift.
That change in your core.
Your eyes squeezed shut.
“No,” you whispered, more to yourself than to him.
A quiet sound left him—almost a hum, low in his throat.
His hand at your neck tightened just enough to ground you, to keep you from retreating into yourself completely.
When he moved again, it was slower.
More deliberate.
His mouth found your shoulder once more, but this time the motion was almost… patient. Less frantic, more certain. Each pass of his tongue felt intentional, claiming rather than simply cleaning.
As if he was marking over what had already happened.
Replacing it.
Rewriting it.
The disgust didn’t leave.
It sat heavy in your stomach, coiling tight.
But it tangled with something else now—something warmer, something that made your pulse feel too loud in your ears.
Remmick didn’t comment on it.
He didn’t need to.
The way his breath shifted, the subtle press of his mouth, the faint scrape of fang against skin—it all spoke for him.
He lingered there, close enough that you could feel the shape of his smile without seeing it.
And when he finally spoke, it was barely more than a murmur against your damp skin.
“Mm.”
That was all.
But the way he said it—
Like he’d found exactly what he was looking for.
The understanding of it sat heavy in the air between you, thicker than the steam, heavier than the heat pouring down your back. Remmick didn’t move right away. He stayed close—too close—his mouth hovering just off your skin, breath warm, damp, alive with something that made your pulse stutter in your throat.
His hand never left your neck.
Not once.
It had settled there so naturally you almost forgot it wasn’t supposed to be—fingers spread wide, thumb resting just beneath your jaw, holding you upright without asking, without needing permission. It wasn’t forceful in the way violence was forceful. It was… inevitable. Like gravity. Like something you couldn’t reason your way out of.
Your breath came uneven.
He felt it.
Remmick drew back just enough to look at you properly. His head tilted slightly, studying you the way he always did when he was deciding something—eyes slow and calculated, dragging over your face like he was memorizing each flicker of resistance before it disappeared.
The red had spread.
You saw it now—clear as anything.
His pupils were blown wide, the blue swallowed whole by that deep, glowing red you’d only ever seen when something buried inside him slipped closer to the surface.
Hunger.
Your stomach dropped.
“Open,” he said.
No softness in it.
Not even a drawl curling around the word to make it easier to swallow.
Just flat.
Certain.
You shook your head before you could think.
It wasn’t a real refusal. Not the kind that held weight. Just instinct. Just something inside you trying—failing—to push back.
Remmick didn’t react.
Didn’t sigh. Didn’t smile. Didn’t threaten.
His fingers lifted from your neck and moved to your face, hooking lightly at the corners of your mouth. Not pulling. Not yet.
Just resting there.
Waiting.
“Open,” he repeated, quieter this time.
Worse, somehow.
The steam pressed in around you. The water kept falling, hot and relentless, but all of it faded under the way he was looking at you now. There was nothing rushed in him. Nothing uncertain.
He would wait.
He would get what he asked for.
The realization slid down your spine like ice.
You opened your mouth.
“Opened” was generous.
But it was just enough for him.
Remmick’s fingers slipped inside, slow and deliberate, pressing past your lips like he’d done it a hundred times before. The motion was controlled, careful in its own way—but there was no gentleness to it. No hesitation.
He pushed deeper.
Your breath hitched.
Your body reacted before your mind could catch up, a sharp gag catching in your throat as his fingers pressed further than you were ready for.
Remmick’s mouth curved.
A low, quiet chuckle vibrated against the space between you.
“Better,” he murmured.
Not praise.
Not quite.
But it landed like it.
You made a small sound—protest, maybe—but it got lost around him, swallowed up, turned into something softer than you meant it to be.
He didn’t remove his hand right away.
Let you feel it.
Let you adjust.
Or struggle.
It didn’t matter which.
When he finally drew his fingers back, it was slow—dragging, intentional, leaving behind the ghost of the pressure, the lingering warmth that refused to fade.
Your lips parted again, breath catching.
Remmick didn’t give you time to recover.
His mouth replaced his hand.
At first, it was almost gentle.
Almost.
His lips pressed to yours in a way that might have been mistaken for something soft if you ignored everything else—the fangs brushing against you, the damp heat of his breath, the way his hand returned to your neck with a firmer hold this time.
You froze.
Then—slowly—your body betrayed you again.
You softened.
Just a fraction.
It was all he needed.
The kiss deepened without warning.
His mouth opened wider, his tongue pushing in with a sudden, overwhelming insistence that stole the breath from your lungs. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t something you could meet halfway.
It overtook.
Consumed.
His fangs scraped faintly against your teeth, a sharp edge that never quite broke skin but never let you forget it could. His saliva was everywhere—warm, excessive, impossible to ignore as it coated your mouth, your tongue, slipping further back in a way that made your throat tighten reflexively.
You tried to pull away.
You couldn’t.
His grip had changed.
What had been steady was now unyielding—fingers pressing firm at the back of your neck, holding you in place with a strength that didn’t need to prove itself.
The world narrowed.
Just this.
Just him.
The sound of the water blurred into the background, replaced by the wet, overwhelming reality of the kiss—too much, too close, too consuming. You felt it everywhere. In your chest. In your throat. In the way your pulse stumbled and raced all at once.
It was suffocating.
It was—
You didn’t finish the thought.
You couldn’t.
Remmick pulled back just enough to breathe.
His lips hovered against yours, breath and spit mingling as his eyes still locked on you with that same unbearable focus.
You didn’t realize how unsteady your legs had gotten until his other hand moved.
Slow.
Unhurried.
It traced down from your waist, fingers dragging along the curve of your side before dipping lower—lower—until they brushed lightly against your thigh.
You tensed instantly.
Your knees drew together without thinking.
He paused, but didn’t push.
Just feeling the resistance.
His thumb pressed faintly against the inside of your leg, testing the line you’d drawn, the boundary you were trying so hard to hold onto.
Remmick’s gaze didn’t leave your face.
Didn’t need to.
He already knew.
The faintest hint of a smile touched his mouth again.
Not amused.
Not mocking.
Something far more patient than that.
His hand remained there—resting, waiting, letting the moment stretch just long enough to make it unbearable.
The water kept falling.
Hot. Relentless.
It struck the crown of your head, ran down your face, your throat, your chest, pooling and slipping and taking nothing with it—not the memory, not the smell, not the way your body had begun to hum in spite of everything.
Remmick watched you.
He bore into every part of your face.
That was where the truth lived.
His thumb shifted—barely—against the inside of your thigh, a slow, testing press that didn’t push, didn’t force, but didn’t retreat either. It lingered there, warm and deliberate, drawing your attention down to the place you were trying so hard to ignore.
Your knees stayed locked.
Your breath didn’t.
It gave you away.
Remmick’s mouth curved, subtle. Quiet. More private. Like he was letting himself enjoy the moment instead of performing it.
“Well now,” he murmured, voice thick with that slow drawl that came out strongest when he was most certain. “Ain’t that somethin’.”
Your throat tightened.
“Don’t—” you started, but the word came out weak, unraveling before it could hold shape.
He leaned in just enough that you felt it before you heard it—his breath brushing your cheek, warm despite everything.
“Go on,” he said, almost conversational. “Open up for me.”
You shook your head.
It wasn’t enough to matter.
Remmick’s hand didn’t move.
“Darlin’,” he added, softer now, almost playful in a way that made something sharp twist behind your ribs. “Y’know I’m a gentleman.”
Your stomach dropped.
“I’d hate to go and ruin that reputation.”
The lightness in his tone—the ease of it, like this was a game, like this was something small—it nearly brought tears to your eyes. It made the room tilt, made everything feel even more unreal than it already did.
You swallowed hard.
“I can’t,” you whispered. “Not here. Not—like this. I can’t—”
Your voice broke.
“I can’t do this right now.”
The words sounded fragile.
He heard them.
Remmick leaned back just enough to see you again, properly this time. His head tilted, eyes narrowing slightly—not in anger, not in disappointment.
In consideration.
For a moment—just a moment—it almost looked like he might give it to you. That small mercy. That pause you were so desperate for.
His thumb stilled.
His hand eased.
The pressure lifted just enough to make your chest ache with the sudden absence of it.
“Mm,” he hummed, thoughtful.
Then he smiled.
Slow.
Measured.
“Alright,” he said.
The word settled over you like a false promise.
“Just this once.”
Relief hit you too fast.
Too deep.
It made your shoulders sag, your breath rush out in a shaky exhale you couldn’t quite control. Your knees loosened—not opening, not yet, but no longer braced so tightly shut.
Remmick noticed.
Of course he did.
He didn’t rush you.
Didn’t need to.
He waited.
And that patience—God, that patience—did more than any force ever could.
Because now it was you.
You who moved.
Slowly.
Reluctantly.
Your legs eased apart.
Just a fraction at first.
Then more.
Each inch felt like something slipping, something giving way inside you that you weren’t sure you’d ever get back.
Remmick’s expression changed.
The lack of subtlety alarmed you.
The restraint broke into something brighter, wider—something that showed teeth, showed hunger, showed the full, unfiltered satisfaction of a man watching something unfold exactly the way he knew it would.
“That's my girl,” he murmured, and you knew he caught the corner of your mouth twitch in response.
The words hung there, low and approving, wrapping around your spine like smoke. His hand didn’t waste the opening. It slid higher, fingers parting the slick heat between your thighs with a certainty that made your breath snag hard in your chest.
You bit your lip.
Remmick’s mouth was already on you again—wet, open presses against your jaw first, then trailing lower, scattering kisses along the line of your neck like he was mapping territory he’d conquered long ago. Each one landed heavy, saliva-slick and unhurried, his lips dragging just enough to leave your skin gleaming under the falling water. The heat of him everywhere. Breath ghosting your ear. Fangs grazing faint, teasing threats that made every nerve scream alive.
“Goddamn,” he breathed against your throat, voice rougher now. “Look at ya. Soakin’ for me already.”
His fingers found you.
Two of them pressed in slow—inch by burning inch—stretching you open with a precision that reminded how well he knew this part of you. Knew the exact angle that made your hips jerk. Knew the rhythm that turned resistance to ruin.
You clenched around him on instinct.
Tried to hide it.
Failed.
A sharp gasp tore from your throat, raw and unfiltered, echoing louder than the water in your sharpened ears. Everything was amplified. The slide of his fingers inside you felt like lightning—wet, obscene sounds mixing with the shower’s roar, your own pulse thundering in your temples, his scent flooding your lungs. Cedar and smoke and something darker, primal, overtaking every sense until there was no room for shame.
No room for anything but him.
He chuckled low, the vibration humming against your collarbone where his mouth lingered, sucking a mark that would bruise just right. “Tryin’ to play coy, darlin’? Ain’t workin’. I feel that little flutter. Ya love this.”
His thumb circled your clit—slow, firm circles that built pressure like a storm gathering. In. Out. Deeper each time, his fingers curling just so, hitting that spot that made stars burst behind your eyelids.
You hated it.
Hated how he played you like an instrument he’d tuned himself. Every twist, every press, pulled euphoria from you in waves you couldn’t swallow down.
Your hands fisted in his soaked shirt.
Pulled him closer.
“Remmick—” It came out broken, a plea wrapped in protest.
He didn’t stop.
Didn’t slow.
His free hand stayed firm at your neck, thumb stroking your pulse like he was counting the beats racing under his touch. His mouth moved again—kisses peppering your cheek, your temple, the corner of your eye where salt mixed with water. Wet. Messy. Stealing every inch.
“That’s it,” he praised, fangs nipping light at your earlobe. “Take it so pretty. My perfect girl, openin’ up just like I knew ya would.”
The words sank into you, hot as the water scalding your back. His fingers thrust deeper, faster now, but still controlled—twisting on the outstroke, crooking to drag against your walls, thumb relentless on that bundle of nerves. Pleasure coiled tight, insane and overwhelming, your new senses turning it into something unbearable. You could hear your own slickness, feel every ridge of his knuckles, smell the sharp tang of arousal cutting through the steam.
You tried to bite it back.
Tried to keep your hips still.
They bucked anyway.
A whine slipped free—high, desperate, nothing like you.
Remmick's mouth found your neck again, sucking hard enough to mark, tongue laving over the spot before kissing lower, open-mouthed and dripping. “Hear that? That’s you, darlin’. So wet for my fingers. Actin’ like ya don’t want it, but this pussy’s tellin’ tales.” He teased, voice a rumble you felt in your bones. Another curl of his fingers—precise, devastating. “Gonna make ya come so hard ya forget every damn thing but me.”
He was everywhere.
Filling you. Surrounding you. His body pressed close, shirt clinging translucent to the hard planes of his chest, suspenders heavy with water slapping wet against his thighs as he moved. Kisses rained down—jaw, throat, the hollow of your collarbone—each one leaving trails of spit that the shower couldn’t rinse away fast enough. His breath in your ear. His growl when you clenched again. His scent choking out the copper ghost that had haunted you.
You hated this too.
How he knew.
Knew to slow just when the edge loomed, drawing it out with shallow thrusts that made you chase him. Knew to whisper filth against your skin—“Fuck, ya grip me like ya never wanna let go. Good girl, just like that”—while his thumb flicked faster, building that euphoric blaze higher.
Your thighs trembled, spread wide now, knees digging into marble that no longer felt cold. Everything narrowed to the thick slide of him inside you, the wet smack of skin, the relentless press of his mouth claiming your face, your neck, like he’d devour you piece by piece.
“Remmick—please—” You didn’t know what you were begging for. Stop? More? It didn’t matter.
He laughed soft, dark, lips brushing your pulse. “Please what, sugar? This?” Deeper thrust. “Or this?” Thumb grinding hard. His fingers pumped steady, unyielding, chasing every hidden spot until euphoria drowned you—wave after crashing wave, your body arching, toes curling, every sense screaming his name.
You were lost.
Floating.
So close.
The coil snapped taut, pleasure cresting, ready to shatter—
Then, he stopped.
Fingers still buried deep, but unmoving.
Why the fuck did he stop?
Your body clenched around him, desperate, chasing what he’d yanked away. A whine built in your throat—weak, needy—but before it could spill, Remmick’s eyes held yours. Blazing red. Unblinking. Pinning you there under the relentless pour of water, steam curling like fingers around his shoulders.
No words.
Just that gaze.
Then his mouth moved.
Kissing down from the frantic pulse in your neck—soft at first, lips parting to suck light marks that bloomed under his touch. Water streamed between you, mixing with his spit, but he didn’t care. Didn’t pause. His free hand braced your hip, steadying you as his kisses trailed lower, grazing collarbone with fangs that scraped just enough to sting.
You sucked in a breath.
Tried to form protest.
“Remmick, I—”
Too late.
His lips found your breast.
One.
Then the other.
He lingered.
God, he lingered.
Mouth sealing hot over your nipple, tongue swirling broad and slow, lapping like he was starving for the taste. Suction pulled tight—wet, obscene—drawing a gasp from you that echoed off marble. His fangs grazed the sensitive peak, not piercing, just pressing, threatening, sending jolts straight to your core.
He switched sides without mercy, sucking harder, biting down just enough to ache, tongue soothing the sting before diving in again. Your back arched. Hands fisted in his wet hair. Everything was too sharp, too much—pleasure spiking through your heightened nerves like knives wrapped in velvet.
He hummed against your skin.
Approval.
Hunger.
Kisses scattered lower—sternum, ribs, the soft plane of your stomach. His fingers slipped free at last, leaving you empty, throbbing, a slick trail dragging along your inner thigh as he went. His mouth followed, pressing open kisses that smeared heat, fangs nipping faint at your hipbone.
You were spread before him now.
Knees weak against marble.
Pussy bare, aching, dripping under his gaze.
But before his mouth could descend—
The flash hit.
Sudden.
Vicious.
The man’s face again. Those kind eyes widening—not in pleasure, but terror. Blood. Gurgling. Your fangs sinking deep, the hot spill over your chin. Remmick’s voice praising from the shadows.
Show me what I made.
Disgust crashed over you.
Thick as the steam.
You were soaked in it now—his touch, your arousal, all of it twisted into something vile. Pleasuring yourselves to this. After that. Your body betrayed you even as your stomach heaved, sobs ripping free, raw and jagged.
“N-no,” you choked, curling inward, hands shoving weakly at his shoulders. “I can’t—God, the blood, his eyes—I killed him, Remmick, and you—you made me a monster, and now this—”
Tears mixed with water, hot streaks down your face you couldn’t tell apart.
Remmick froze.
Just for a beat.
Then he rose—slow, fluid—cradling your face in both hands, thumbs wiping tears he’d caused. His eyes softened. Red dimming to something almost blue, almost human. “Hey now, darlin’,” he cooed, voice dropping to that velvet murmur, thick with drawl. “Shh. I gotcha.”
He eased you down.
Gentle.
Marble chilled your back as he laid you out, water pooling beneath, his body shielding you from the spray. He hovered close—not crowding—but everywhere. Mouth brushing your forehead, your temples, soft kisses peppering your eyelids. “I know, sugar. I see it tearin’ ya up. That ain’t right.”
You sobbed harder.
He shushed you soft—lips against your brow, hand stroking damp hair from your face. “Listen to me. I feel it too. That weight. Makes my chest ache seein’ ya hurt like this. He was just a man walkin’ his path, and now… hell, it sits heavy on me same as you.”
Lies.
Smooth as silk.
But your senses drowned—water roaring, his scent overwhelming, touch grounding you in the now. No room to question. Too raw. Too much.
“I didn’t want this for ya,” he murmured, kissing your cheek, your jaw, nuzzling close like a lover grieving with you. “Not the pain. Not the ghosts. I turned ya ‘cause I love ya, darlin’. Wanted ya forever with me. But this? This guilt? I hate it eatin’ at ya. Let me take it away. Just for now. Let me make ya feel good. That’s all this is. All for you.”
His hand trailed soothing paths down your side—light, reassuring. Kisses dotted your throat, your collarbone. “It’ll be okay. I promise. We’ll figure the rest. Together. But right now? Let me love on ya. Wash it all clean.”
You hiccuped.
Clung to him.
Not convinced—not fully—but the overwhelm crashed too hard. Sobs tangled with shivers, his words weaving through like balm on burned skin.
He felt it—the softening, the brief surrender.
Like clockwork, he moved.
Eased down your body again.
Settled between your thighs.
Eyes locked on yours one last beat—red flaring hungry beneath the feigned concern.
Then his tongue dragged.
Bottom to top.
He dove in.
A long, flat lick through your folds, gathering slick, pressing firm against your clit at the very end. The taste of you exploded on him. A growl rumbled low, ancient, and whatever mask lingered shattered.
Ravenous.
Unrelenting.
His mouth sealed over you—sucking hard, tongue thrusting deep like it aimed to replace his fingers and more. No tease now. No patience. He devoured—lips pulling at your folds, fangs grazing outer lips with dangerous precision, never breaking but threatening ecstasy edged in peril. His tongue swirled wild inside you, curling, lapping every drop, then flicking frantic over your clit—fast, messy, insatiable.
You cried out.
Body bowed.
Tears streamed—guilt? Pleasure? Blurred into one endless salt. Sobs choked into moans, your hands yanking his hair, hips bucking into his face despite everything. He was everywhere again—growls vibrating through your core, nose grinding against your mound, saliva mixing with your arousal in thick, dripping strands that clung and stretched. He ate like famine gripped him—sucking your clit between lips, teeth nipping light, tongue plunging deep, fucking into you with wet, obscene thrusts.
“Fuck—Remmick—”
He didn’t stop.
Wouldn’t.
A hand pinned your thigh wide—claws pricking faint, holding you open as his mouth worked ruthless. Lick after lick after lick—broad stripes, pointed flicks, circling that swollen peak until sparks lit your veins. Your heightened world exploded: every lap thundered like thunder, his hums rattled your bones, scent of sex and him choking the air. Pleasure built savage, coiling tighter than before, guilt fracturing under the onslaught.
He pulled back just enough—barely—to growl against your dripping core. “Taste so goddamn sweet, darlin’. All mine.” Then back in—fangs scraping inner thighs, tongue spearing deep, lips sealing to suck like he’d draw your soul through your cunt.
Your tears were endless.
Sobs melting to screams.
Hated it.
Needed it.
His free hand slid up—fingers pinching your nipple, rolling hard, syncing with the frenzy below. Mouth unrelenting—lapping, sucking, biting faint at tender flesh. Growls turning feral, drool slicking your thighs, water doing nothing to dilute the mess. You were soaked. Ruined. Every sense overtaken—his heat, his hunger, his everything consuming you whole.
The edge loomed again.
Faster.
Harder.
His tongue lashed with renewed fury, plunging deep into your core before flicking up to your clit in a rhythm that bordered on brutal. You couldn’t take it anymore. The pleasure bordered on pain now—too intense, too all-consuming for your sharpened senses to process. Your hands shot to his head, fingers tangling in his slick hair as you tried to push him away. “Remmick—stop, too much, I can’t—”
He didn’t stop.
He didn’t even pause.
Instead, his grip tightened. His claws dug deeper into the soft flesh of your thighs, pricking skin with sharp points that drew faint beads of blood. The sting barely registered amid the onslaught, but it anchored you, held you mercilessly open. He locked you against his mouth, nose grinding into your mound, lips sealing tight as he devoured you with even more ferocity. Growls vibrated through your folds, low and animalistic, drowning out your pleas. He didn’t seem to hear you anymore.
Or if he did, he didn’t care.
His tongue thrust relentlessly, curling inside you, lapping every inch like a beast denied for centuries. Fangs scraped your inner lips, teasing peril without piercing, while his lips sucked hard on your clit, pulling it between them with obscene pressure.
You thrashed.
Sobs tore from your throat—pleasure and overwhelm twisting into something frantic. “Please—Remmick!” Your hips bucked wildly, but his claws pinned you down, unyielding. He ate you like he owned you, tongue swirling faster, wetter, more invasive, saliva dripping in thick strands that mixed with your arousal and the shower’s endless cascade.
Every sense screamed: the wet smacks of his mouth, the copper tang of your own blood mingling faint with the air, his scent choking everything else. You loathed how it built again, coiling savage despite your protests, euphoria crashing higher until your vision blurred.
It hit like oblivion.
You came.
Hard.
Your body seized, back arching off the marble as waves ripped through you—insane, shattering, so high you nearly blacked out. A scream echoed off the walls, raw and broken, as you soaked him completely. Slick gushed from you in hot pulses, flooding his mouth, his chin, dripping down his neck to mix with the water. He drank it all, growling deep, tongue still working through the spasms, prolonging every twitch until you shuddered boneless beneath him.
Only then did he relent.
He lifted his head slowly, face glistening—your release smeared across his lips, his cheeks, clinging in strands to his fangs. Red eyes glowed triumphant, pupils blown wide. He crawled up your body with deliberate grace, water sluicing over both of you, and captured your mouth in a kiss.
You accepted it.
Couldn’t do anything else.
Your limbs felt like lead, spent and trembling, every muscle drained from the high. His lips pressed soft now—loving, almost tender—as his tongue slipped inside, mingling saliva thick and warm. You tasted yourself on him: sharp, sweet, intoxicating. Your fangs brushed his, a faint scrape that sent aftershocks tingling through you. He kissed you deeply, slowly, hand cupping your jaw like you were fragile porcelain. No rush. Just possession wrapped in gentleness.
He pulled back just enough to murmur against your lips. “There ya go, darlin’. All better now.”
And it was.
He had done exactly as he promised. The memory of the man—the kind eyes, the blood, the guilt—had faded to a distant echo, washed away in the flood of him. Nothing remained but Remmick. His touch. His taste. His voice coiling through your mind like roots taking hold.
Time blurred in the steam-filled haze.
Minutes?
Hours?
You couldn’t tell.
The shower poured on, relentless, but he made no move to stop it at first. He simply held you there, kissing your forehead, your cheeks, whispering soft nothings that wove deeper into your bones.
“Ya did so good for me,” he said, voice a low rumble, thumb stroking your damp cheek. “My brave girl. Lettin’ me take care of ya like this. Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt ya now. Not while I’m here.”
His words wrapped around you, gentle and addictive, each one a thread pulling you tighter to him. You melted into it, eyelids heavy, body limp against the marble. He shifted, reaching past you with one arm, and the water cut off abruptly. Silence rushed in—broken only by your shared breaths and the faint drip from fixtures. Cool air kissed your heated skin, raising goosebumps, but he didn’t let you shiver long.
Remmick gathered you up effortlessly, cradling you against his chest as he stepped from the shower. His clothes clung sodden and ruined, but he ignored them. He carried you to the marble counter, perching you there gently, like you weighed nothing.
“Hold still, sugar,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your temple before turning to the linen closet.
He returned with a towel—plush, oversized, warmed somehow in his hands. He draped it over your shoulders first, rubbing slow circles to chase away the chill. His touch stayed reverent, obsessive in its thoroughness: drying your arms, your back, lifting each leg to pat tenderly along the claw-marked thighs. He lingered there, eyes darkening faint at the red welts, but his fingers soothed rather than tormented—light strokes that made you sigh. “Look at these,” he whispered, voice thick with feigned regret. “Got carried away lovin’ on ya. I’ll kiss ‘em better later. Promise.”
You nodded faintly, too spent to argue, leaning into his care. He dried your hair next, fingers combing through the wet strands with shameless intimacy, tilting your head back to blot the nape of your neck.
Every motion screamed possession: the way he murmured praises—“So beautiful like this, all soft and mine”—the way his eyes never left you, red glow simmering possessive. “Ya don’t gotta worry ‘bout a thing. I got ya forever now. No more scrubbin’, no more ghosts. Just us.”
Time slipped further. He wrapped you in the towel like a cocoon, lifting you again to carry you from the bathroom. The estate’s halls blurred past—dark wood panels, faint lamplight casting long shadows—but you barely registered them. Your bedroom materialized: the massive four-poster bed, silk sheets rumpled from earlier nights, air heavy with his scent. He laid you down reverently, peeling the towel away to slide cool sheets over your naked skin.
He stripped then—efficient, unhurried—tossing wet clothes aside before joining you. His body pressed close, warm and solid, one arm banding around your waist to tuck you against his chest. “Sleep now, darlin’,” he cooed, lips brushing your ear, hand splaying wide over your stomach in a move that felt like protection. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Gonna hold ya all night. Dream of good things. Dream of me.”
His fingers traced lazy patterns—spine, hip, the curve of your breast—gentle caresses that lulled rather than aroused. Kisses dotted your shoulder, your hair. “You're perfect,” he whispered, obsessive litany spilling soft. “My heart. My everything. Turned ya right, didn’t I? Feel that strength in ya now? All mine to keep safe.” Delusions layered sweet, each word erasing cracks, filling you with him.
The man’s face flickered once—faint—then vanished, overwritten by Remmick’s touch, his breath syncing with yours.
Your eyelids drooped.
The world narrowed to his warmth, his voice humming low lullabies in that hypnotic tone. “That’s it. Drift off. I love ya more than anythin’. Forever, sugar. Just like this.”
hey hoes, we already know every month i have a new hyper fixation. so here we are. hope y’all like em :3
- we already know this man is going to eat you out during your period. that is a given. he can smell you from miles away. and by the time he gets to you, you have about ten minutes before he is lapping at your pussy with his hands digging into the meat of your thighs
- definitely has some sort of a predator- prey kink, loves the thrill of chasing you down. when he gets his sights on you. you are never getting away.
- he’s obviously going to nip and bite at you, probably won’t turn you fully but will most definitely nip at you. probably when your pinned under him, while he is still slamming into you.
- he can beg, beg to manipulate you. or he can actually be genuine. not often though. he strikes me as a switch, but he will probably want to secretly take over. say for instance, your ordering him around and suddenly. he gets an idea of how to get you right where he wants you. you best believe he’s going to get you there. probably flipping the roles when your weak- barely expecting it.
- loves when you cry and beg. loves it. god he loves it. he will overstimulate you, and that can range from making you beg for him to go easy or begging him to let you cum.
“don’t cry like that baby..i’m gonna make you feel so good”
- he’s definitely not immune from drawing blood from you. probably nipping too hard and then profusely apologizing. (he’s not that sorry, he loves it)
- loves to fill you up, he’s definitely more traditional in the fact that he views sex as something sacred. even when his more vampire- non human characteristics come through
- so possessive, like this man is so fucking possessive of you. because why would he let anyone else touch his baby..
- will probably cage you in after sex, keeping you close to him. especially if it’s something serious and he actually likes you.
- he also loves to brush the hair out of your face and tell you how pretty you are. (a very rare sight of his sweeter side)
IN CELEBRATION OF LINGER HITTING 1K NOTES... here's a little, REAL teaser for Manchild:
“Breakfast’s over, sweetheart,” he pleaded, voice wrecked already, lips brushing your ear. “Lemme take care of ya now. Please. Been dreamin’ of it all mornin’. Taste ya. Make ya feel good.”
You arched a brow over your shoulder, still rinsing. “You haven’t finished your plate, Remmick.”
He whined low, nuzzling your neck in a halfhearted attempt at sympathy. But before you could turn, a whoosh of air cut the kitchen.
He’d crossed it in a blur.
Plates clattered as he scarfed his food—bacon crunched savage, berries gulped whole, fork scraping like an animal at the trough. Gone in seconds.
You couldn’t help it. A giggle bubbled up, bright and teasing. “Good boy.”
He was back.
Plate clunking beside yours in the sink, water still running. His greasy lips planted on your neck—wet, salty kisses trailing down to your shoulder, fangs grazing faint. “All done,” he mumbled against skin, hips grinding forward. His cock strained shameless through slacks, thick and hard, rubbing insistent against your thighs. Heat seeped through fabric, throbbing with every rut. “Now lemme—”
You spun in his arms, hands on his chest shoving light. “Breakfast hardly earns you favors, you greedy mutt. Look at you—humping like a dog in heat.”
He whimpered.
High, broken, knees buckling faint. Eyes welled red, pleading. “Please, darlin’. Starvin’ for ya. That sweet pussy—need to taste it. Bury my face in it. Lick ya clean.” His hands gripped your hips, lifting slow—effortless—perching you on the counter edge. Your dress hiked up your thighs, exposing lace panties that were already soaked.
He dropped to his knees between your legs, nose inches from your core, inhaling deep like a junkie. “So wet for me. Lemme eat. Please.”
in which you and remmick settle into a dangerous little rhythm of night visits and hidden letters, until one evening he returns half-starved to find you too heartsick to leave your bed — and taking care of each other turns into something deeper, bloodier, and a whole lot harder to deny.
author's note: there's probably only gonna be one more part to this series my little rats! send ideas if you have em! pt.3 to western nights!!!
western nights → vacillator → thoroughfare → tbd
after that, it became a sort of life.
not a proper one. not anything you could lay out neat on a churchwoman’s lap and call respectable. there was no daylight courting, no hand at the small of your back in town, no picnic basket, no introduced names over supper.
there was only night.
night, and the little sound of his knock once the world had gone dark enough to keep him.
sometimes it came early, just after the cicadas started and the sky still held a bruise-colored band of evening over the trees. sometimes much later, when the house had already gone quiet and the lamp beside your bed had burned low and you were pretending to read. but it always came the same: that soft, distinct rap on your door, patient and wicked and dear enough by then that your whole body knew it before your mind did.
you would pause. always. not because you did not know who it was. not because you meant to deny him now. because some little bit of pleasure still lived in making him wait for you to cross the room. and because you liked what it did to him when the door finally opened.
he never acted used to it.
that was the thing.
for all that an understanding had settled between you — for all that the threshold was no longer truly in question, for all that he’d crossed it enough times now to know the groan your porch made under his boots and the way your latch clicked in the dark — he still looked at you every night as though being let in was a gift he had not earned.
it softened him. or maybe that is the wrong word. nothing about remmick was truly soft, not at the core. he was still an old thing wearing a beautiful man’s shape. still all dangerous teeth and impossible eyes and that deep, wicked patience beneath his skin. still a creature of blood and appetite and dark roads.
but there was sweetness in him too, and that was far more dangerous. because it arrived where you least expected it.
in the letters, for one.
the first one appeared pushed under the front door, folded small and neat as a prayer card. you found it at dawn while walking half-asleep from your bedroom, and for one stupid beat you only stared because no one in your life had ever left you anything so old-fashioned and deliberate.
your name was on the front in a hand far finer than you’d have guessed from him.
inside, only three lines:
baby,
got to go farther out tonight. don’t wait up fretful.
i’ll come back sweet to you soon as i may.
— r.
you read it three times standing barefoot in your foyer while the sun climbed over the ditch grass outside. then folded it again and put it in your pocket and carried it all day against your hip like a fool.
after that, the letters became a kind of promise.
not every time. only when he knew he’d be gone. only when whatever dark need ruled his kind pulled him farther afield and he would not be there to tap softly at your door and ask to be let in with that ruined, hungry look in his face. sometimes he left them under the porch rail just like he’d said he would. sometimes tucked between the pages of the book by your chair, though you never once caught how he got in far enough to leave it without waking you. once he tucked one in the crack of the window frame so that it waited for you pale and folded against the glass come morning.
they were never long. that made them worse.
sugar,
fed ugly tonight. didn’t want your first sight of me after.
think of me kind if you can.
— r.
or, once, so plainly that it sat hot in your chest all day after:
baby,
wanted your bed more than sense tonight.
had to choose sense. i’m out of sorts over it.
— r.
you never wrote back. what would have been the point. there was nowhere to leave such a letter for him that he would surely get it by day, and no postman in mississippi knew where to deliver correspondence for the dead. instead you kept them.
first tucked in the kitchen drawer. then, when there grew too many of them for that not to be absurd, tied up in blue ribbon and hidden in the bottom drawer of your dresser beneath stockings and slips. that was perhaps the clearest sign yet that you were no longer being sensible.
the nights he did come, he came sweet. shockingly so, just as you had thought he might never be. the begging did not stop. if anything it grew easier for him, more shameless with use.
but inside the house, inside your rooms, once the latch had dropped and the last of the night air had followed him in, his need changed shape. it was no longer the porch-lit spectacle of him writhing on your boards and crying to be let over the threshold. it was closer. smaller somehow, though no less real. tucked into the way his hands found you the second the door shut. into the low, half-whispered please when he laid his head in your lap and asked for your fingers in his hair. into the way he’d sit on the edge of your bed with all that old wickedness banked low and murmur, “lemme hold you, honey, i ain’t askin’ for much. jus’ your touch.”
liar that he was.
he was always asking for much. for your touch. your bed. your mouth. the warmth of your body around his cold old need. and, increasingly, for little ordinary things that somehow felt just as intimate. to sit with his head on your knee while you read. to have you unbutton his shirt and change his bandage when the shoulder still pained him. to hear you speak out loud if you had been too quiet when he first came in.
he liked that most when he’d been away.
would hover in your doorway, hat in his hands or hair damp from the river air, and ask in that thick, soft drawl, “say somethin’ t’me, baby,” as though your voice itself fed some separate hunger in him.
you should have mocked him more for it.
sometimes you did. but more often than not you gave him what he wanted. because he looked so indecently grateful every time. because he had gone from dangerous to something worse — known. and because there was comfort in him now, too.
that had been the other surprise.
you had expected heat. appetite. seduction. all the obvious ruin of letting an immortal blood-drinking creature into your bed and your house and your life after dark.
you had not expected comfort.
but there it was.
in the way he wrapped around you in the humid blue hour before dawn while the frogs called outside and the first birds had not yet stirred. in the way he held still and let you lay your head on that heartbeat-less chest of his, as if the silence in him did not frighten you now but steadied you. in the way his mouth found your shoulder when sleep made you restless and his hand slid slow up and down your back until you softened again.
once, waking in the deep middle of the night, you found him not asleep at all but simply looking at you.
when you blinked up at him and frowned, he gave the smallest shrug.
“what.”
“you weren’t snoring yet.”
“i do not snore.”
“sure.”
he smiled then, all lazy moonlit fondness.
“wanted to look.”
you ought to have thrown him out for saying such things. instead you tucked your face back into the warm curve of his neck and let him keep looking.
fool.
still, for all the sweetness, there was no mistaking what he was when hunger got hold of him.
even fed, he could go strangely still over your skin, breathing you in as though your scent rose from every pore and lodged under his ribs. some nights he came to your door half wild with wanting for you and no blood in the wanting at all, eyes already gone red around the edges and canines too long when he smiled. those were the nights the begging turned pathetic and whiny all over again the second the latch slid home.
“baby, come here.”
“remmick, i just let you in.”
“i know.”
“you ain’t been in the house ten seconds.”
“i know.”
“and you’re already pouting.”
at that his mouth would fall open in wounded offense.
“i ain’t pouting. i am petitioning.”
“you are whining.”
“same difference.”
and then, because he had no shame, he would come to you all heat and velvet and old longing and put his face to your neck like a lovesick hound, murmuring all his pleas into your skin.
“let me hold you. put your hand on me, honey, i ain’t particular where.”
and because you were weak where he was concerned, because his wants had become so easy to answer and your own no harder to feel, you usually gave in.
what else was there to do.
the nights of summer stretched thick and languid around the two of you, full of insects and sweat and lamp smoke and letters hidden in the bottom drawer. the understanding between you deepened in all the ways one does not name because naming makes them fragile. he showed up. you let him in. he left before dawn when he had to. when he could not come, he left his little notes to keep you from fretting. and all the while something old and dangerous and tender put down roots in the dark between you.
perhaps it could have gone on like that longer. perhaps if hunger had kept proper time and your own heart had done the same, you might have stretched that shadow-life out another month, another season, another year of night knocks and dawn goodbyes and your head on his soundless chest.
but bodies and hearts are ill-behaved things.
and yours gave out first.
it began quietly. with one day where you did not dress. then another where the bed seemed easier than the world outside it. there was no single grief to point to. no funeral, no telegram, no one terrible event. only that old heavy black weather inside you that sometimes rolled in and sat and would not move, making your limbs too tired for daylight and your thoughts mean and small and useless. you had known such spells before. you knew better than to fight them by force. so you stayed in bed.
the first day, you thought perhaps you only needed sleep. the second, you missed the sound of the vegetable cart in the lane and the church bell and the women laughing two houses over and did not care enough to move.
you did not light the lamp that night. did not sit up in your chair. did not pin your hair.
when darkness came, you were still in bed with the sheets tangled around your legs and the room hot and dim and stale. and no knock came. you stared at the ceiling for a long while after full dark, waiting for one.
none did.
that hurt in a dull, stupid place. but not enough to make you rise.
the next day the little house drifted out of order around you. dishes in the basin. water pitcher near empty. the curtains half drawn against the brutal heat. one of his letters still tucked in the drawer where your hand had gone to it without thinking that morning.
by the second night, even the thought of rising to open the door if he came felt beyond you.
which was perhaps why he did not. or perhaps he had his own business elsewhere. his own blood to find. his own dead man’s needs. you turned your face into the pillow and tried not to think on him feeding from somebody else under some other patch of mississippi dark.
that did not help.
on the third day, twilight crept in blue and sore around the edges of the curtains while you still lay where you had woken. the room smelled faintly sour with heat and old sleep. your hair was a tangle. your mouth dry. the whole world outside your bed seemed too large and too sharp.
then at some point, too near full dark for comfort, you heard it.
not the soft porch knock. but the door. opening. your whole body went still. for one long, stunned second you only listened — to the scrape of the latch, the soft push of wood on wood, the hush of a body entering a house that had not invited it tonight.
but of course it had.
because the last time he left, somewhere in all the sleepy tenderness and talk of letters and trust, you had said, plain as anything: you're welcome to let yourself in now, you're always welcome. and remmick, old dead rule-bound thing that he was, had taken that for what it was. an open invitation.
the floorboards in the hall creaked once. twice. a pause. then his voice, low and rough with something that was not patience:
“baby?”
you rolled onto your back and stared toward the bedroom door just as his shadow filled it.
and the first thing you knew was that something was wrong.
not with the house.
with him.
he stood in the doorway with the dark gathered around his body and looked thinner somehow, the hard planes of his face sharpened by want and want gone hungry too long. his shirt hung open at the throat. his hair was damp and wild. his eyes were already red in the fading light, and his mouth—
lord.
his mouth.
all wet and parted and shaking around breath he seemed unable to deepen enough. his canines showed plain. the bandage at his shoulder had gone loose. and even from across the room, before he moved one inch closer, you could tell.
he had not fed. not properly. not in days.
you pushed yourself up on your elbows.
“remmick.”
his gaze landed on you and went dark with so many things at once you near flinched. relief, first. then fear. then the plain, terrible hunger of him, sharpened to a knife edge now by the sight of you in bed all pale and rumpled and sad.
he took one slow step into the room.
and you knew, with a cold little certainty under your skin, that he was starving.
not in the abstract way you’d known before. not in the pretty, porch-lit, half-teasing way of his begging, or even in the sweeter hurt of the letters left under your door when he had to go out and feed elsewhere. this was hunger with the flesh worn off it. this was what remained when all his carefulness had been stretched too thin.
he came nearer and the room changed around him, all at once. the air seemed to tighten. the little night sounds outside the windows — frogs, cicadas, a distant dog — all thinned to nothing against the ragged pull of his breathing.
“baby,” he said again.
you had never heard that name in that voice before. not your porch name. not honey, not sugar, not darlin’. just the bare ache of him reaching for you.
you sat up more slowly than you meant to, because your body felt wrong and heavy after too many hours in bed.
remmick saw it. of course he saw it.
the shape of the sheets twisted around your legs, the stale water glass on the floorboards near the bed, the curtains still half-drawn against the dead weight of summer afternoon, the look of you — skin gone dull with no sun, hair in a tangle, mouth soft and dry and sad.
whatever else his hunger was doing to him, it could not quite drown the horror on his face.
“you ain’t been up,” he said.
you tried for a shrug. failed.
his jaw went tight.
“how long.”
you looked away. “a little.”
“how long.”
“two days.”
the silence after that felt like a blow.
he came all the way to the bedside now, slow enough that it almost looked like he was afraid of startling you. which would have been laughable if he did not also look one heartbeat from climbing clean out of his own skin with hunger. his eyes dragged over the room once more, taking stock of every small neglect. then came back to you and softened in a way that hurt.
“oh, baby.”
the tenderness of it near undid you.
because he was starving. because the smell of him told you so before he even did — that old, dark scent of his gone sharper now with need, with the strain of some appetite denied too long. because his eyes were red all the way through. because his canines showed plain at rest. because there was drool already wetting his lower lip and he seemed not even to know it.
and still, seeing you like this, he softened first. you hated him a little for that. or maybe loved him. which was much worse.
he sat carefully on the side of the bed and the mattress dipped under his weight. one hand hovered over your knee. did not touch at first.
“look at me.”
you did.
his face was drawn. beautiful still, and old and dangerous still, but drawn. every sharp line of him made clearer by lack. his mouth looked half-starved in every sense. his hair hung loose over his brow. and there was something almost sick in the effort it took him to keep still.
“why ain’t you got up,” he asked softly.
you let out a breath. it trembled.
“didn’t feel like there was much point.”
his eyes shut at that. only for a second. but you saw the hurt of it. when they opened again, red glimmering low in the lamp glow, he lifted his hand and finally touched you. just your shin, over the sheet, thumb moving once.
“you should’ve sent for me.”
the thought of that — of scrawling some pitiful note and leaving it where only the dead could answer — would have been funny on any other night. now it only made your throat ache.
“you got your own troubles.”
that got a short, humorless laugh from him.
“you see me and think i’m your less urgent problem?”
you looked at him then. really looked. the trembling in his hand. the wetness at his mouth. the way his pupils seemed blown near black against all that red, as if your scent in this close, stale room had already got under his skin and was digging there.
you were not blind.
“you ain’t all right,” you whispered.
“i am standin’ here, ain’t i.”
“barely.”
his mouth twitched at that, but only faintly. then the expression collapsed again into something far more honest.
“i ain’t fed proper in near three days.”
you swallowed. your eyes dropped without meaning to, to those canines, to the pulse of his throat, to the way he was holding himself together with what looked like pure spite.
“why.”
that answer took longer. when it came, it was low and ashamed and tender all at once.
“because every time i got hungry enough to go out, i kept thinkin’ maybe i’d come to you first.”
your heart gave one hard, miserable turn.
he laughed softly at his own foolishness.
“idiot thing, ain’t it.”
“remmick—”
“and then by the time i had the sense to quit thinkin’ on it, i was too deep in want to risk comin’ near this house.”
the room felt hotter with every word. because there it was again, laid plain between you: your scent, your body, your blood, all of it powerful enough in his mind to compete with survival.
you ought to have found that frightening. instead, what you felt first was pity. second, guilt. because he was right — he was not all right, and some selfish corner of you had still let the thought of his letters and his porch and his sweetness become a comfort while you lay here drowning in your own sorrow.
you pushed yourself upright. the room spun a little, but you ignored it.
remmick’s hand came up at once.
“easy.”
you caught his wrist. his skin was hot, strangely hot.
“i need to help you.”
the words came out before you had fully thought them, but once said they settled in your chest like truth.
his expression changed. for one stunned beat, he only looked at you. then he shook his head once, sharp and final.
“no.”
you frowned.
“what do you mean no.”
“i mean no.” his voice roughened. “not like this.”
“you’re starvin’.”
“and you ain’t left this bed in two days.”
“which one sounds fixable quicker.”
that got a flash of something close to anger in him — not at you. at the situation. at his own body. at being put in a place where his need might ask too much from yours.
“baby.” his hand tightened once around yours. “if i bite you, i turn you.”
there it was. the thing unspoken under every look at your throat, every breath of his at your neck, every night he left before dawn with your pulse still warm under his mouth. you knew that. or had guessed enough of it. and still, your eyes flicked to his mouth. then away again.
“not if you don’t.”
he went very still.
“what.”
“if you don’t bite me.”
your own hand left him first. you got up before you could think better of it.
the floor was cool under your feet and the house swayed a little around the edges, but you crossed the room anyway and went out to the kitchen with the determination of a woman too tired to let reason stop her.
behind you came the instant creak of the bed, then his steps.
“baby.”
you ignored him.
the kitchen was dim and close, lamp low, silver things bright and hateful where they sat on the table. the basin still stood where you’d left it. one of your knives lay near the breadboard.
you reached for it. that was the first thing that truly startled him. his hand caught around your wrist before the blade left the table.
“what in hell.”
you turned to him.
he looked almost wild now, hunger and confusion and fear all fighting in his face at once.
“let go.”
“not till you tell me what foolishness this is.”
you held his gaze.
“if you bite me, you turn me.”
he stared.
you pulled your wrist just enough to make him listen with his skin instead of whatever panic had him by the throat.
“if i cut myself,” you said, quieter now, “that’s different.”
the silence that followed was terrible.
because he understood at once. and because once he did, his whole body seemed to lock around the idea of it.
his nostrils flared once. twice.
the scent of your skin was already enough to drive him. the thought of your blood fresh and open under the same roof as him turned his face into something you had no proper human word for.
“don’t,” he said hoarsely.
“you need it.”
“not from this.”
“remmick.”
“baby, no.”
you had never heard him sound afraid before. that, more than anything, steadied you.
you slipped your wrist from his hand and set the knife against the soft inside of your arm, just below the elbow where the skin was thin.
remmick stopped breathing. for one suspended second, the whole room stopped with him.
then the blade kissed your skin and a bright line opened. not deep. not enough to do harm. just enough. blood welled red and sudden and shining.
remmick froze so completely it seemed almost unnatural even for him. his eyes locked on the wound. his mouth fell open. you watched the instant it hit him. not just the smell. the reality.
you.
offering.
his whole face went blank with it. not empty. overloaded. every expression at once burned clean out by hunger and reverence and horror.
“here you go,” you said softly, because if you did not keep your voice even you might lose your nerve.
for one awful beat he did not move. then he made the smallest sound in the back of his throat. a whine. it seemed dragged out of somewhere too deep for dignity.
“baby—”
you stepped closer.
that did him in.
his hands came up, but slowly, carefully, all that desperate speed gone from him now that you were bleeding for him. he caught your arm like it was made of blown glass and lowered his head, red eyes never leaving your face as if still asking permission he no longer had words for.
“take it,” you whispered.
his whole body shuddered. then his mouth touched your arm.
good lord.
the first pull of it made him moan. not loud. not theatrical. low and deep and so genuinely wrecked by the taste that your own knees nearly gave. his eyes shut at once. his brows drew tight. that old beautiful face of his went soft and devastated and hungry all at the same time.
he drank like a man in church.
careful.
grateful.
each swallow looked almost painful, as if your blood touched something in him far beyond appetite. his grip on your arm stayed reverent, never tightening, never taking more than the shape of your wrist and forearm as if they were precious. and each time his tongue swept once over the cut to gather what welled there, another sound escaped him — rough, needy, near obscene in its gratitude.
“god,” he whispered against your skin. “oh, god.”
you stood there in your kitchen with the knife still in your other hand and watched a starving vampire feed from your arm like he was drinking sacrament.
and the worst part was how beautiful it looked.
for a few more breaths you let him.
you could feel it plain as anything — the change coming over him not all at once, but in little increments. the desperate shake in his shoulders easing first. the frantic tightness of his grip softening. some of the hollowness in his face filling back in with color and life’s imitation. his breathing smoothed a little.
but he did not seem inclined to stop.
if anything, the taste of you only deepened his devotion. he moaned lower now, as though every swallow gave him more strength and less sense all at once. the red in his eyes had not gone. if anything it burned steadier, fed now rather than frantic, and every time his tongue passed warm over your skin your whole body answered in a little unwanted shiver.
“remmick,” you said softly.
he hummed against your arm.
you swallowed.
“i think that’s enough for right now.”
the words seemed to reach him from far off.
his lashes fluttered. his mouth lingered one second longer at your skin, one last slow pull that drew a little breath from you, and then he lifted his head. his lips were red. not just stained — red and wet and ruined with it, a shine of your blood at the corner of his mouth where he had got too greedy to mind himself. the sight of it struck so low and hard through you that your free hand tightened on the knife handle.
he saw that.
of course he did.
for one beat he only looked at you, eyes dark and alive and almost ashamed of how good you tasted to him. then he bent and pressed a soft kiss over the wound.
“yes, ma’am,” he murmured hoarsely.
you huffed a weak little laugh. “don’t start that.”
“can’t help it when you feed me out your own hand.”
he took the knife from your fingers before you could think what to do with it and set it carefully aside on the table. then, without you asking, he reached for the clean rag by the basin and wet it. his hands were steadier now. not human-steady, perhaps. not entirely. but more himself.
or worse — more himself in that old tender way of his.
“lemme see,” he said softly.
you held out your arm.
he cleaned the little cut with such care it almost embarrassed you. the same mouth that had just fed from you with moans and tears now pressed into a line of concentration while he dabbed away the smeared red, checked the depth, and muttered under his breath about how you’d scared years off him with that knife.
“you’re immortal.”
“exactly. i got a lot of years to lose.”
“you make no sense.”
“i make perfect sense. you’re reckless.”
“you were starving.”
he looked up at that.
really looked.
and whatever answer he might have made died in the heat between you.
because the room smelled of blood and summer and him. because his face was still wet with you. because you were standing close enough to feel his breath and the heat off his body and the way your own blood still moved under your skin as if his mouth remembered it.
he tied the little strip of bandage around your arm neat and snug then held your wrist a moment too long after. his thumb moved once over the inside of it.
you did not pull away.
“there,” he said quietly.
“there.”
for one beat, neither of you moved.
then his eyes dropped to your mouth.
you knew why before he kissed you. knew it by the way his nostrils flared, by the way his fingers tightened just slightly around your wrist, by the look of him — fed enough now to have some control back, and therefore dangerous in a whole new way. he brought your hand up first and kissed the bandage. then he leaned in and kissed you. slow. for exactly one breath.
and then it went filthy.
because you could still taste the blood on him. taste yourself on his mouth under the heat and sweetness of him. metallic, intimate, obscene in the most private way. and remmick, fed but not calmed, made a low wrecked sound the second he felt your tongue touch his and opened for you with all the old greed rushing back at once.
“baby,” he breathed against your mouth. “baby, i need—”
his voice broke clean in two. his hands landed on your waist. he kissed you again, sloppier now, the composure he’d gotten back from feeding already fraying at the edges under the taste of you and the sight of you and the impossible fact that you had bled for him.
and lord, he was messy.
spit and breath and your own blood all mixed on his mouth until the whole thing felt indecently intimate. his fangs grazed your lower lip and he groaned as if that little touch alone had nearly done him in.
“god,” he whispered, forehead falling to yours. “god, i need to be in you right now.”
the words came ragged, urgent, almost panicked with how much he meant them.
“right now?”
“now now,” he said, voice shaking. “like yesterday. like ten years ago. like before i ever even knew your name.”
heat shot through you so fast you laughed breathlessly at the madness of him.
that laugh only drove him farther gone.
“don’t,” he said, and his mouth found your throat. “don’t you laugh when i’m sayin’ true things.”
“you’re impossible.”
“i know.” he kissed the hollow of your throat, then the line of your jaw, then your mouth again like he could not decide which part of you he needed most. “i know, baby. please.”
he didn’t wait for a fuller answer than that.
or perhaps the answer had already been given in your body — in the way you leaned into him, in the way your hands found his shoulders, in the way you said his name half-reproachful and half-gone.
the kitchen counter was too cluttered. the wall too far. the floor too hard. so he took you against the table like some old delta sin come to life.
one arm swept the breadboard and spoon and yesterday’s folded dish towel out of the way in a rough clatter of wood on wood. the other hand got under your thighs and lifted you up, your hips landing on the edge of the table with a little gasp while he stepped between your knees.
“remmick—”
“i know.”
“you always say that.”
“because i do.” his mouth dragged hot over your throat while his hands pushed your dress up around your hips. “i know everything i need right this second.”
the way he said it — thick and southern and shaking with need — made your whole body answer him. when he finally freed himself properly he looked no less enormous than he had in your bed. if anything the sight was worse now, in your kitchen, with your own blood still fresh on his mouth and your bandaged arm between you like some vow half made and broken at once.
“good lord,” you whispered.
he laughed once, all nerves and hunger.
“that what you said last time.”
“it still applies.”
his hand slid between your thighs.
the first touch of his fingers found you soaked all over again. he froze. then looked down. then up at you. and whatever fed steadiness he’d gained from your blood vanished entirely.
“baby,” he said, sounding almost offended by the sheer wetness of you. “you are drippin’.”
“whose fault is that.”
“mine,” he said at once, and then, with a kind of reverent disbelief, “all mine.”
the pride in that ought to have annoyed you.
instead it only made the whole thing hotter.
he stroked through you once, twice, making a sloppy mess of it, and then lined himself up. your dress bunched at your waist, his body crowding yours in with all the fed strength and all the old want turned loose.
“look at me,” he said.
you did. his eyes were still touched red. his mouth still wet. his fangs still down. beautiful. starving in a new direction now. all his need poured into one rough shaking man’s body between your thighs.
then he pushed in. the cry that left you seemed to strike him like lightning.
“that’s it,” he groaned. “that’s my girl.”
he filled you in one brutal, steady thrust, and you both went a little stupid from the feel of it. your hands flew to his shoulders. his forehead dropped to yours. the edge of the table dug into the backs of your thighs. the room smelled of heat and blood and sex and old wood and him.
“remmick—”
“i know, honey, i know.”
he pulled out only enough to drive back in harder. the whole table shuddered against the wall. you gasped. he moaned. and then there was no more room in the world for anything but that.
he fucked you right there in your kitchen like all the nights he’d stood on your porch had come due at once. hard and deep and domineering in that old-fashioned, shameless way of his — all broad hands and filthy praise and the hot press of his body pinning you into the table while he used you exactly how he’d dreamed of.
“sweet little thing, look at you takin’ me. you feel so good i could die a second time.”
that last one part have made you laugh if he hadn’t thrust again just then and knocked every thought straight out of your head.
he was slobbering, too. there was no dignified way to say it. he was panting hard and drooling into the kisses he kept dropping over your mouth and throat in between those hard thrusts. spit shone at his lip and streaked warm over your skin every time he kissed too open-mouthed and too hungry. he seemed utterly beyond caring.
and why should he.
you were no better.
you clung to him and gasped and let him split you open on the edge of your own kitchen counter while the dark outside thinned by the minute.
one hand came up to the back of your neck. not choking, just holding. anchoring. his thumb pressed under your jaw while his mouth dragged to your ear.
“you got me ruined.”
the words shot through you so hard you clenched around him.
that undid him some. you felt it in the way his hips stumbled once. in the rough curse he bit off against your mouth. in the pure, stupid gratitude all over his face when he looked at you.
“thank you,” he whispered.
you blinked at him, dazed.
“for what.”
“for this.”
another thrust.
“for that.”
another.
“for everything.”
and because he was remmick and nothing in him was ever halfway once it mattered, the next words came out of him plain and helpless and far too honest for the shape of the night.
“i love you.”
your whole body tensed.
not from fear, not truly. from shock. from the force of hearing it said out loud in a room still smelling of blood and sex. from how naked it sounded in his old rough voice.
remmick felt you go still and instantly freaked.
“baby—” his eyes widened, all that red burning sharp again. “baby, no, i— hell, i ain’t— i didn’t mean— no, that ain’t true, i did mean it, but not—”
you stared at him.
for the first time all night, he looked frightened. actually frightened. like he’d misstepped some mortal edge and might lose you with one wrong word.
that tenderness in you broke open all over again.
you caught his face.
“remmick.”
“i’m sorry if—”
“i love you too.”
he went utterly still. if the whole world had stopped, it would not have looked much different.
“what.”
“i love you too,” you said again, and because his face had gone so beautifully dumbstruck, you kissed him once. “you old fool.”
the sound that left him then was unlike anything you had yet heard. not the starving groan of hunger. not the broken cry of porch-begging. not the low wrecked moans he made when he fed or fucked. this was joy hitting the body too fast.
it all but shattered him.
his whole face went open and ruined and bright with it, and then he kissed you so hard the breath left your chest. kissed you like a thing saved. like a man gone holy and filthy at once.
“say it again.”
you smiled against his mouth, shaking and full of him and too far gone to pretend otherwise.
“i love you.”
that was all he needed.
he groaned your name and went wild. not cruel. never careless. but all restraint burned clean away now that love itself had been said aloud between your bodies. his hands gripped your hips harder. his mouth moved over yours and your throat and your jaw in fevered, grateful little kisses. every other breath he was thanking you again, praising you again, drooling and panting and going at you with all the fed, lovesick strength in him.
“thank you.”
thrust.
“thank you, baby.”
thrust.
“my sweet little thing loves me.”
thrust.
“god, i love you. i love you baby.”
it was mad. absolutely mad. it was the edge of dawn and a vampire was sobbing his love into your neck while he fucked you stupid and thanked you for it.
and yet you had never known anything truer.
he hit deeper, harder, every thrust making the counter knock softly against the wall. your own body was done for under it, every nerve lit clean up by the way he looked at you now — not just hungry, but beloved. not just lust-drunk, but openly, pitifully devoted.
when your climax took you, it did so hard and sudden. you cried his name. he answered with one last broken thank you and followed a breath later, coming with a groan that sounded half prayer and half wreckage.
for a little while after there was nothing but breath and heat and the rough grain of the counter at your back.
then his forehead dropped to yours. his mouth, still wet and trembling, brushed once over your lips.
and he whispered, almost boyish in his astonishment, “you love me.”
you laughed weakly.
“i just said so.”
“say it forever.”
“don’t tempt me.”
“too late.”
and then he kissed you again, softer this time, though the hand on your hip still trembled from all the force of what had just passed between you.
for a little while, neither of you moved.
the kitchen had gone dim-blue with coming dawn now, the lamp no longer enough to beat back the first colorless light pressing in at the edges of the curtains. the room smelled of sex and summer and your blood gone faint on the air, and under all of it remmick — that dark, old scent of his mixed now with something warmer, sweeter, because the words had been said and could not be unsaid.
you loved him.
lord.
what a thing to have admitted in your own kitchen, half-dressed and trembling on the edge of the table while the world turned toward morning.
and yet now that it had been said, it sat strangely easy in your chest. heavy, yes. dangerous, certainly. but true enough to feel almost like relief.
remmick seemed no better off.
he kept looking at you as if he could not quite believe you were still there. still soft under his hands. still warm and willing and saying his name in that changed way of yours, like it belonged to somebody you meant to keep. his thumb moved once over the point of your hip.
“baby.”
“what.”
he swallowed. his mouth softened into something almost shy, and that on him was devastating.
“i got to go.”
the words struck hard all the same.
you knew it already. the sky beyond the window had gone from black to bruised blue. the birds would start soon, and after that he would have only moments before the day found him. but knowing a hurt and hearing it were not the same thing.
you let out a slow breath and rested your forehead to his.
“i know.”
his hands tightened, just for a second.
“i hate that.”
“i know that too.”
that got the ghost of a smile from him.
“you do know me alarming well.”
“you make it easy.”
“do i?”
“no,” you said honestly. “but i manage.”
his smile deepened a little then, old sadness and fondness braided together in it. he kissed you once, the kind of kiss that could not decide if it meant goodbye or promise or apology for having to leave at all.
when he pulled back, his gaze dropped. not to your mouth. not lower. but to his own hand. you followed it, and only then noticed what he was doing.
there was a ring on his finger.
a plain gold band gone a little dull with years, with age, with wear. not flashy. not pretty in any ornamental way. simple. heavy. old.
you had seen it before, of course, in the half-light of other nights, but never given it much thought. he wore so many old little traces of old lives that one more bit of metal had not seemed worth remarking on.
but now his thumb moved over it once, twice, and his whole face changed.
that was no ordinary gesture.
“remmick?”
he drew in a breath that seemed to come from some place much deeper than lungs.
“before,” he said quietly, eyes still on the ring, “when i was turned…i was married.”
the room held still around you.
not because the fact shocked you exactly. he was old enough to have been ten things already. husband among them ought not have surprised you. and still something in the plainness of hearing it said — of knowing there had once been a woman who stood close enough to slide that band onto his hand in life — lodged gently and sharply at once.
you said nothing.
he looked up then, and whatever fear you might have imagined from him before was nothing to what lay in his face now. not fear of you, perhaps. fear of what he was offering. fear of being refused in some part of himself too tender to protect.
“she’s long gone,” he said. “gone farther back than your grandmama’s grandmama. i ain’t held on to this for her in years, not truly. maybe i kept it because it was the last thing on me from when i had a heartbeat. maybe because i was too much of a coward to set it down.” he gave a little laugh, broken around the edges. “maybe because immortality makes fools sentimental.”
your throat had gone tight.
“remmick—”
he slipped the ring from his finger.
for one suspended second he only held it between thumb and forefinger, looking at it in the bluish half-light while the house breathed around the two of you.
then he lifted his eyes to yours.
“i know we can’t stand in a church and do things proper,” he said softly. “i know i ain’t fit for sunlight or company or any ordinary life a woman ought to want. i know there’s a thousand reasons in this old wicked world why i can’t ask you the way a man should.”
his voice thickened then, just slightly.
“but i want you to have this.”
he took your hand, turned it palm up, and laid the ring there. the metal was still warm from his skin.
“so you can have a part of me,” he murmured. “something of mine on you when i’m gone from the room.”
your fingers curled automatically around it. he watched that happen with such naked, aching intensity that your chest hurt.
and then, “an’ because i’d like to lay a claim on you, if you’ll let me.”
the words went clean through you. not because they were pretty. because they weren’t, not exactly. they were his. old-fashioned and dark and possessive in that deep south way of his, but softened by the tremor underneath, by the fact that he was asking, by the simple naked hope in his eyes.
you looked down at the band in your palm. then up at him.
“you sure?” you whispered.
his answer came at once.
“yes.”
you looked back down at the ring, then lifted your hand to the little gold chain at your throat. your fingers found the clasp, drew the chain up and over your head, and for one second the ring lay shining in your palm beside it.
remmick watched in silence, red eyes fixed on your hands.
then you slid the band onto the chain.
the gold ring clicked softly against the finer chain links, old metal against older habit, and something in his face gave all over again. by the time you lowered it back around your neck and the band came to rest warm at the center of your chest, his mouth had parted slightly.
you tucked the chain beneath your dress, then let the ring settle there against your skin.
“there,” you said softly. “that way i can keep it close.”
for a moment he said nothing. then he stepped nearer, looking down at the place where the ring now lay hidden under your dress like the sight of it there had struck him dumb.
“baby,” he said at last, voice gone hoarse. “you don’t know what that does t’me.”
you looked up through your lashes. “you said you wanted me to have part of you.”
his hand came up slowly, almost reverently, and rested over the little shape of the ring beneath the fabric at your chest. not pressing. just feeling the place it now sat.
“yes,” he murmured. “i did.”
his thumb moved once there, and the tenderness of it nearly undid you.
“you ain’t giving me some ghost of another woman are you?” you asked quietly.
for one second pain moved through him — not raw, not fresh, but old enough to have turned tender.
“no,” he said. “i’m givin’ it to you because it’s mine, and i want it yours.”
your eyes burned all at once. you hated that. he saw it and stepped nearer, one hand still over the ring at your chest, the other coming up slow to your cheek as if even now he feared some part of this might break.
“baby.”
you laughed shakily. “you are making a spectacle of me.”
his thumb brushed under your eye though no tear had fallen yet.
“take it,” he murmured. “or don’t. i won’t put sorrow on you for it. but i want you to know i meant it.”
you touched his wrist where it rested over the ring.
then leaned in and kissed him. he made a sound low in his throat — not quite a laugh, not quite a groan, something older and fonder and more shaken — and answered at once, both hands coming to you, one still hovering protectively near the gold band hidden against your skin as if even now he could not believe you had truly kept it.
when you parted, you rested your forehead to his.
“i love you,” you whispered.
the words seemed to travel through him slow and deep. then he kissed you again, longer this time, the kind of kiss that tasted faintly of blood and summer and vow. when he drew back, his mouth brushed yours one last time and he whispered, almost boyish in his astonishment,
“you wearin’ me over your heart.”
you smiled, despite yourself. “don’t get smug.”
“too late.”
that got you laughing softly, and the sound seemed to please him beyond all reason.
he kissed the spot over the ring then — right there through the thin fabric of your dress, mouth lingering against the place where gold warmed under your skin — and when he lifted his head, his eyes had gone shining and wicked and tender all at once.
“i love you,” he said.
not wild now. not startled by it. not broken in the heat of sex. slow. sure. deep as a vow.
you touched his face.
“i love you too.”
that pleased him so much he actually shut his eyes for a second, like the words had gone through him too clean to stand.
then he kissed you. long and deep and soft enough to ache, his hand still resting lightly over the ring at your chest, as if feeling it there was the only thing keeping him from falling clear apart.
when he finally drew back, the sky at the window had gone paler still.
he saw it and cursed under his breath.
“go,” you whispered, because if you did not say it you might beg him not to.
he nodded once.
kissed you again.
one last soft brush of his mouth and then a harder one that tasted faintly of blood and summer and love gone dangerous. he turned for the door, then stopped, looked back, and his gaze fell straight to the place the ring now rested beneath your dress.
the sight of it there changed him all over again. some deep, quiet satisfaction settled in his face, almost solemn in its intensity.
“lock the door behind me,” he murmured.
“there you go again.”
“letters,” he reminded you softly.
you touched the ring through the cloth of your dress. “you best.”
that earned you the smallest, most beautiful smile.
then he was gone — through the door, over the porch, out into the last blue shadows before day. and when you slid the latch and stood there in the hush after him, the ring lay warm and secret over your heart.
