Lust ‘n Dead | ULTIMATE - 2024 |

Not slow. Not fast. Not at all.

She should have screamed. Should have clawed at the door handle, thrown herself into the night. But the heat hadn’t left her. It was still there, coiled low in her belly, confused and furious and desperate. lust ‘n dead

“It wasn’t a line.” He finally looked at her. His eyes were the color of a storm sea—gray-green and bottomless. “It was an epitaph.” Not slow

“I told you,” he said softly. “An epitaph.” She should have screamed

He kissed her again. And this time, when his mouth opened, she felt something worse than cold—a pull, like a riptide dragging her out to sea. Her vision blurred at the edges. Her heartbeat stuttered.

“That’s why they stay,” he murmured, cupping her face with those cold, tattooed hands. “The hunger doesn’t care if the heart beats. It only cares if the blood burns.”

Two hours later, they were in the back seat of his truck, parked under the skeletal branches of a dead oak. The windows fogged. Her dress hit the floorboard. His hands were cold, but his mouth was fire. She bit his shoulder when he found the spot behind her ear, and he groaned a sound that wasn’t quite human—hungry and hollow, like wind through a broken church.