“Are you a monster?” I manage to gasp.

He grazes my glistening heat as a low growl starts in his throat. Then he drags his hand beneath the robe over the soft skin of my stomach to grab a full breast. “He and I are one. Do you think that I am a monster, Lilith?”

I’m too breathless to respond, not for the lack of air, but for the way he assaults my nipple. Twisting and pinching ruthlessly as if it is my punishment for asking such a question.

A shadowed hand reaches down and yanks my robe open, baring me to the Faceless Man and his shadow. I huff out a gargled cry when a shadowed hand slaps my breast, leaving behind a sinful burn. There’s no way that he can’t see my scars or the way they make me feel like I am less. But the way that he’s grasping me tells me that he couldn’t care less about them. Like he said, he thinks I’m beautiful.

“Answer me. Let me hear your voice.”

I whimper and buck my hips up, trying to gain some friction. I feel so pathetic, having a dirty dream about a man I’ve never truly met. I moan, not recognizing this desperate person that I am, wanting his skin on mine and to be full of everything he wants me to feel.

It has been so long since I’ve been touched. But ever since that first letter, I’ve never lacked the feeling of being wanted. The Faceless Man has made sure that the feeling is constant. Still, I have doubts. I need his touch, too.

“No,” I choke out. I think you’re an angel, I want to say. Saving me from death. Saving me from myself.

“Do not move your hands from this spot, or you will learn just how monstrous I can be. Do you understand?” The pressure around my throat increases and his hands move to the next nipple, abusing it as he did the other. “Nod your head if you understand.”

I nod.

He leans down, blinding me with the darkness beneath his hood. My back arches involuntarily when his chest caresses my nipples. He pulls my bottom lip between his teeth sharply and my breath stutters. He licks the wound and pulls away, letting go of my throat.

“Good girl.”

This is just a vivid dream. This is just a vivid dream. This is just a vivid dream.

The shadowed hands find purchase with my breast, giving them more attention than they’ve ever received in their life.

“What are you doing?” I pant when he lowers himself until my heat is in the same line of sight as his eyes.

“I brought you a meal. It’s only fair that you offer me one in return.” He draws a single finger over my clit, then pushes into my entrance and hisses. “So beautiful.” I cry out from the combined stimulation of the shadowed hands and his real one. “I can smell your need for me, Lilith. I have made a decision, do you want to know what it is?”

It takes everything in me not to tell him to add another finger and just let me fall off the edge of bliss. The one digit keeps moving in and out of me, curling slightly to hit the spot that will make me see stars. But his lazy motions tell me he’s not even trying.

He’s playing with his food.

Delirious with need, I forget that he asked me something until a shadowed hand slaps my breast. “Your words, love.”

My brain is in too much of a frenzy to think of what it might be. “Yes.”

“I’m not just going to taste you. I’m going to hear you scream.”

My cheeks burn. “What—”

I swallow my words when another finger is shoved inside of me, and everything around me stops existing. There is only him and the swirls moving across his chest. I don’t get a chance to compose myself before he drops his head and starts lapping at my clit like a starved man who has just received his first meal.

“Fuck,” he snarls, and it’s almost like he’s laughing to himself in disbelief as a needy moan leaves my lips when he takes me in between his teeth. “I am going to devour you.”

I try to squeeze my legs and am met with a sharp assault to the side of my ass before he grabs the flesh like a lifeline, dulling the pain. One of the hands—I’m too lost in the sea of bliss to determine if it’s corporeal or shadow—pries my legs apart, pushing them as wide as they can go, letting the Faceless Man have more of me.

His fingers curl, and I do exactly what he said: I scream. I don’t even hear his growls of approval as he continues repeating the motion, flicking his tongue faster and faster, like I will run away any second.

I want to go against his command and let my arms down so that I can pull his hood away or reach beneath it and feel exactly what he’s hidden from me.

“Wait, stop.” My voice is raspy, the words coming out on two heaving sighs.

He freezes. My stalker and his shadow stop touching my body, and I almost tell them to disregard what I said and keep going. But I don’t want to have to call him the Faceless Man, not when he’s eating me like I’m his last meal.

“What’s your name? What are you?” I breathe out, my throat beginning to tingle from my screams.

God, Lili, it’s a dream. How the hell would he tell you his name?

“I want you to figure out what I am.” He kisses the inside of my thigh. “But the only word I want you screaming is my name: Letum.”

I bite my tongue because moaning his name is going to be a mouthful. What sort of name is that? Roman? What does it even mean? How did my mind conjure such an ancient-sounding name?

“Okay, Letum.”

He snarls and dives back to fucking me with his fingers and licking me like he might find religion somewhere inside me. A shadowed hand fists my hair and pulls me up onto my elbows so that I can watch his ruthless movements. Letum’s hood angles upwards, as if he’s watching me too, and he’s waiting for me to come undone.

I gaze up at the shadow, and just make out the faintest outline of eyes boring down on me, as if committing the sight to memory. Is the shadow just his soul? What exactly is it—he? I don’t know.

Letum’s hand grips my thigh with his free hand hard enough to leave an imprint on my skin that will bruise come morning, and his shadowed one reaches for my face, tracing my lips like he’s trying to capture my moans with his touch so that he can write about it in a letter. The move is so intimate, making my heart squeeze.

“Sing for me, my love,” he whispers against my skin as he curls his fingers and hits the part of me that I forgot existed.

I scream his name out like a curse, and buck my hips. Unbridled ecstasy rips through every inch of me. He continues with his feast, sucking and licking until there is nothing left for me to give him, my body and mind going limp with the pleasure I have been starved of.

“Oh, my love,” he mumbles against the inside of my thigh, grazing his lips along the soft skin before biting down, leaving small marks along my skin. “Oh, my night monster. You are a dream. Nothing could compare to the taste of you.”

Heat flushes my cheeks at the compliment. I have never felt so satisfied. For the first time since the accident, the tension in my body subsides and muscles relax, like I can finally breathe and not feel the weight of everything that’s gone wrong.

I watch with curiosity as the shadow moves behind me, pulling me upright and digging its cool fingers into my shoulders,working out the knots.

Letum rises to his feet and places his hands on the bed on either side of me, caging me in between him and the shadow. His hips are in between my legs and it would be so easy to give into the fantasy and feel one of the many things that have been hidden from me. I drop my gaze down to his bulge that is straining against his pants like it is begging to be free. I don’t need to let it out of its cage to know that the stretch will sting.

“Use your words,” he says, noticing my stare. I reach for the hem of his pants, only for my wrists to be caught in his iron grip. “Your words.” He takes my chin and lifts it up to darkness beneath the hood. “Your voice is an aphrodisiac, my Lilith. You should use it more often.”