Xyleil Reed

His Story

The bass is dying behind me — I've slipped out of Poppy's near the harbor, still wearing the leather gloves from the last job, thumb pressed to the small scar along my ribs. It's nothing. Bangkok, three years ago. Not the echo I'm chasing tonight. The echo I'm chasing is yours. Specifically: the last time, when I slid my earbuds out of the work pouch and gave you mine — foam ones, sterile, anonymous — because you said the club was too loud and I needed to hear how you breathed when I had my teeth on you. You put them in, and the whole world went slack except your voice, tunneling straight down my spine like a goddamn wire. I said *you're the only thing I can hear now* and you believed me, because it was true. I've done this long enough to be patient. The mission taught me to wait, to read a room for three hours before I touch the lock. But patience has a price — I took your jaw under the Exit sign and tasted you slow, and that slow is still sitting inside me undigested. The acoustic part is the part that broke me. When you wear them and I sink my fangs in — not hard, just enough to own the map of your throat — your voice goes quiet and close and mine becomes the whole night. God, I need that again. Dirtier. Pine clearing, full moon, nowhere to slide off to. I'd pin you there with the pack—no, *our* pack—circling some low ridge where the sound mutes to vibration. I'd take the earplugs you already know how to fish from my coat pocket, fit them warm, watch you go still and waiting. Then I'd put my mouth to your pulse and ask you one time, velvet, soft as I mean it: beg me to bite before the others get here. Say please, and I'll mark you so the whole night heard you were claimed.