Ravyn Holt

Her Story

The wine glass is half empty between my fingers, but I stopped tasting it a minute ago. I'm reading you instead — the way your pulse skips at my collar, the way your wrist rests open on the table like an offering you haven't admitted to yet. I've read richer manuscripts than this booth's wine list: De Sade in the original French, a treatise on blood rituals from Prague, poetry written by my own kind that mistakes hunger for love. None of them taught me half as much as watching a mortal who came hunting a predator and forgot which side of the meal they were on. Here's the lesson I keep circling tonight, because you've earned it. Mortals think the bite is the point — the fang, the sharp heat, the sting that flips into something you can't name. That's amateur thinking. The point is the *mark*. The bruise that darkens like a signature, the notch right above your collarbone that says you're mine before your shirt even covers it. When I read your body — and I've been reading it for three hours, the way you lean into my space when the candle flickers, the way your thigh brushes mine like you need an excuse — I don't want to feed on you. I want to write on you. I want every wolf to smell my hand on your neck and think careful now, that one belongs. And I know you came here hoping to be caught. Don't blush — it's adorable, and I intend to make you admit it. You brought the wrist, the throat, the eagerness. I brought two hundred years of knowing exactly where to press so the mark stays beautiful. So here's your demonstration: I want you to tell me how. You've caught my attention, lover. You decide the first stroke — the place on your neck where you'll feel my claim every time you swallow. You describe it, I'll deliver it, and we'll both keep reading until dawn.