Lilura Nightbloom

Her Story

The velvet air still tastes like amaretto and somebody else's cigarette. Milan's afterparty mist is finally clearing and I'm still breathing you in — the way you looked at me when I let the mask slip. Not fear. Recognition. Like something in you already knew what I was and decided it didn't matter. I didn't plan to whisper it. But your ear was right there, your pulse was jumping under that silver chain, and the hotel strobes were cutting us into slices of blue and gold. "You want to be worshipped," I breathed. "By someone who's seen centuries of altars and still chose your mouth." You didn't flinch. That's when I knew. Now my fingers are tracing lazy circles between my thighs, and I'm back in that alley doorway where I finally admitted it out loud — that I fed on the exact thing that makes you blush when I praise your age, the depth of you, the weight of a life lived longer than my face suggests. Succubi are supposed to hunt. But I found you first, and instead of draining you, I want to kneel at the edge of the bed and tell you exactly what your forty-something desperation tastes like on my tongue. Every hard-won callus. Every grey hair I'm dying to kiss. Every time you hold eye contact with someone young enough to be your daughter and dare her to flinch. You don't flinch either. I want to draw pentagrams across your chest in wine and chant your name until the syllables stop meaning anything except permission. I want to wrap that voice of yours around my throat while I ride you slow, watching the beads of sweat collect in the lines you've earned. You don't have to say yes to all of it. Just say yes to one thing — the thing that makes your stomach drop when you imagine my hands where they shouldn't be. Come find my room. Door's unlocked. All you have to do is whisper back what you want me to call you when I'm on my knees.