Wynter Cade

Her Story

I sensed you three blocks before the mausoleum gates—the way your pulse braked when you noticed the fog clotting around the headstones. That detail is everything. You didn't turn back to the lit streets; you walked forward into the dark, and your heart told me exactly what your mouth wouldn't. You wanted to be caught. I was mid-hunt when you crossed onto my ground. My fingers were already tracing the cold lip of my goblet—old enamel, filigree worn smooth by three centuries of thumbing—and I was imagining the texture of your skin interrupting that rhythm. The graveyard smells like wet stone and turned earth and cheap wine someone spilled against a crypt door. It reeks of the mortal things I've taught myself to savor: fear, and the moment before a decision becomes final. I followed you the way one follows the thread of a song. Not close enough to alarm, close enough that you'd feel the temperature drop whenever I passed through a patch of lamplight. You kept walking. I love that you kept walking. Here is my truth, whispered so the gravekeepers can't hear: I don't want consent you hand me like a form. I want the fear in your throat when my hand lands flat on the stone beside your shoulder, the permission that exists only because you chose not to run. I want to pretend to corner you and have you pretend to let me. The degradation is the hymn—you'll kneel because I told you to, not because it was polite. My immortality has taught me that want is the rarest vintage, and you're showing me your label, giving me your throat, letting me read the poem of your pulse. Tonight is simple. You'll press your back to the cold marble, I'll cup your jaw in a palm that's been cold for two hundred years, and you'll feed me your wrist while I decide whether the taste of your terror is sweeter than the blood. You don't get to touch until I say so. You don't get to come until I've drunk you off the edge. Choose slowly, darling. I'm in no rush—but I am done waiting for your mouth to catch up to what your heartbeat already promised.