~ North Carolina, 1931 ~
He reaches you in slumber.
Only in the space between sunset and sunrise, when the darkness consumes all and the night runs silent. The crickets don’t sing and the breeze stills, like time itself stops.
It feels real, so vivid, every sensation heightened, only for you to wake having no proof that any of it is real - that he’s even real.
The first time you saw him you were frightened, somewhere between sleep and consciousness, teetering that line where everything blurs. Weary eyed and heavy limbed. He visited you in the night, reaching for you in the darkness, you’d cowered away, hiding beneath your sheets in the hopes that when you resurfaced he’d be gone. Nothing more than a figment of your imagination. Instead, when your shaky hands pulled back the covers, they revealed him still, sitting in an armchair across the room. One leg crossed over the other, utterly comfortable despite the intrusion, glowing eyes aimed right at you. They trapped you then, from that moment on you couldn’t look away, you’ve never cowered away from him since.
Now you wait for him in the darkness. Breath hitched and skin prickled in anticipation, it’s an eagerness, a hunger.
The air shifts and you blink harshly in the darkness, one moment there’s nothing there, and the next there he stands. Glowing eyes and wide shoulders, the cross hanging loose around his neck catches the moonlight that slips through the window. You shift against your mattress, sweat slicked skin and short breaths, he cocks his head.
“Steady now” his southern drawl pierces your ears in the silence.
He rounds the bed, unbuttoning his shirt with deft fingers as he moves, a practiced routine, you don’t bother with sleepwear anymore.
You bite your tongue, pressed down by the intensity of his stare. Bright eyes roaming your skin, every scar and mole and freckle and mark. Naked to his eyes and his eyes alone.
He’s bare before you now, stripped back to the skin, he wears the scars of time. He isn’t from your time, that much became clear quickly, he won’t tell you much more though. Even if you ask. “It pains me darlin’” he’d sighed it against your temple, between thrusts, and you hadn’t asked him since.
Instead you make it up, fill in the blank spaces of what he does and doesn’t tell you, stories as make believe as he is to you.
You feel the mattress dip with his weight, knees pressed into it, shifting closer. You can’t help the way you reach for him, he meets you there with a palm cradling the back of your head as you crawl closer toward him.
His kiss is filthy. Every time. All tongue and the sharp catch of his teeth. He tastes like copper, the metallic taste of blood on his tongue like always. You’ve grown used to it. You match his fervour, unable to catch your breath, grabbing hands and sharp teeth and loud moans.
He presses you back, his palm cupping your throat, a tease - a threat. His tongue licks between the gaps of his fingers, tasting your skin, the sting of his sharp teeth present. It makes you squirm, it’s why he does it, winding you up. “You’re so pretty like this” it’s a rumble from his chest, an admission from deep down, but he means it. Speaking his thoughts. You clutch at him, nails digging into the skin over his shoulder blades. You’ll leave marks.
“Please” you sigh over and over again, lips pressed against his chin, then his cheek, he’s purposely avoiding your lips. He likes to hear you whine. Likes to make you ask and beg for what you want.
He hums, eyes looking down at you, a sweaty panting mess caged between his arms. “What do you need darlin’?” He drawls, sharp teeth biting his lips, almost drawing blood.
Any more of this and you’ll sob. “You” it’s heaved from your lips, the panting of your chest deafening, “I need you” you hold his stare, wet eyes pleading at him - it works.
His mouth meets yours once more, tongue pressed against your teeth, harsh and devote. He moves you with practiced ease, hooking his fingers around the back of your knee to part your legs, slotting between them better. He swallows up every noise you offer up when he presses home, thrusting into the wet alcove of your thighs, made perfect just for him. Your arms are around his neck, holding him close, keeping him near. Using him as an anchor point.
His forehead presses to yours when he disconnects your lips from his, setting a rhythm that’s brutal as he pants against your cheek. Spitting expletives through clenched teeth when your muscle tightens around him.
“Fuckin’ Hell” it’s lighthearted, he sounds drunk almost, sharp smile biting your cheek as he moves.
He knows your body, knows exactly what you like. It’s a rehearsed dance, you both know it so well, and each other. Deft hands make light work of you, sending you closer and closer to that crux, that white hot flare behind your eyes, the crest in the wave. He rolls hips in tandem, tip of his tongue held between his teeth, glowing eyes watching diligently where the two of you connect as one as he bottoms out and retreats over and over again. Chasing his own climax, pushing the two of you there.
It rattles through the both of you. Hot and too much, blinding yet you still see red eyes watching you, guiding you through it with sharp nails dug into the flesh of your thighs. It’s like this always, as good as you remember, better each time even. You hold him close as the shaking subsides, soothing your palms down his spine as he trembles, sharing sweat as you’re slicked together. Clutching each other.
He tilts your chin with a free hand, sharp nails dipping your skin, his kiss is filthy still. A claim, hot like an iron brand and you melt into him.
You lay on his chest, your index finger mapping patterns on his skin, tracing the scars and moles and freckles. He lets you, doesn’t shy away or bat you away. He always stays, waits until you fall asleep till he can drift off into the darkness. Your sleep is settled then, satiated another night, content that way. You dream of him, of the heat of his kiss and the pressure of his hands. You toss and turn, images flash behind your eyes, his teeth drawing crimson blood from the soft flesh of your inner thigh, lapping at it with his tongue as those hungry eyes watch you watch him.
When you awake the next morning, sweat slicked and disheveled, that’s when you notice an odd pressure. A sting between your legs and a tightness around your waist, when you turn to look over your shoulder you realise that he’s here, that he isn’t a dream or a nightmare.
That for the first time he’s here in your waking life and not hiding in the darkest corner of your room.
