“Yes,” I finally say. He waits for me to continue, and I groan. “I’ve dreamt about what your cock would feel like inside of me. I have dreamt that I’d open my locker during my break, but instead of a letter or a note, you appear out of nowhere. You grab me by the neck and push me over the table, and you don’t stop fucking me until my knees give out and my voice goes hoarse with your name.”

Both Letum and the shadow snarl at once. They fill me at the same time and start pounding into me before I get the chance to take a breath. I’m stuck, permanently gagging on his cock while the shadow sinks deeper than I knew was possible.

Pleasure bubbles and boils beneath my skin. I try to stop Letum and warn him that I’m about to fall off the edge straight into the deep end and I’ll take him down with me, but neither of them stop their relentless thrusts.

When I can’t take it anymore, my hands and knees collapse beneath me. I’m writhing and trembling, trying to take my fill of the explosion of bliss caused by the unknown and his shadow, all while they keep me upright with their continued assault.

Letum’s roar shakes the trees and rattles my bones as he releases himself into my mouth. I try to take every sweet drop of him and swallow, laving at every inch of him with my tongue.

“You were more amazing than anything I could have imagined, my midnight storm.”

He slowly lowers me onto the mattress while I struggle to keep my eyes open. I’m too exhausted to watch the shadow retreat into Letum. Before I can ask him whether the shadow is his soul as I suspect, I close my eyes and the darkness engulfs me.

I groan when the incessant beeping of the alarm ruins the sensation of the forest air on my skin. Without opening my eyes, I keep slapping the bedside table until I find the culprit that tore me from the best dream I’ve ever had.

I don’t look at the time, just push any random button to snooze the alarm. Last night’s alcohol must have really gotten to me, because if anyone told me that I’ve been hit by a truck, I would believe them.

I shift onto my back and whimper from the ache between my legs—the type of ache that only happens from life changing sex.

My skin pebbles from the morning air, making my painful nipples even more tender. One by one, I peel my eyelids open.

What the hell?

No, I wasn't so drunk that I went to bed naked. I’m not a nude sleeper and I most definitely do not go around commando.

No, I wasn’t so drunk that I would cover my entire bedroom floor in rose petals.

Red creeps up my cheeks when I realize that he would have seen me naked in my bed and seen my scars. Worse, he could have seen me in god knows what state while I was having the raunchiest dream in my life. Was I moaning in my sleep? Oh god, was he watching?

My thumb grazes the velvety smooth petals, confirming that they are in fact real, and neither I nor he had gone to the dollar store to buy fake ones. I reach for my bedside lamp and turn it on to inspect one of the petals closer. It’s of the deepest red I’ve seen, but there’s something off about it, with veins-like threads going through the petal.

Blotches of blue amongst porcelain catch my attention and I discard the petal back onto the floor. Four blue bruises marr my thigh. When I turn my leg, I spot a fifth.

My heart slams against my ribcage. I leap out of the bed like a woman possessed and almost slip on the roses as I head straight for the bathroom. I flip the light switch before I make it inside, and stop dead in my tracks in front of my mirror.

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.

I turn in front of the mirror, then turn again, angling myself this way and that while trying to convince myself that I’m just imagining things.

The area around my nipples are red and raw, but that can easily be explained away with an excuse I’ll think of later. I’ll even find an excuse for the five small circular bruises on my hips. There is no explaining away the handprint that covers an entire ass cheek and then some though.

The size of the handprint is larger than anything I’ve seen in real life. The sting that follows when I touch the welt both shoots heat straight between my legs and fear straight to my heart.

I’m not sure if this is the reason I’m not meant to drink alcohol on my medication, but I swear the handprint is as large as the shadow’s hand, and I do vividly recall that it slapped my ass in the dream.

But that’s all that it was: a dream.

Right?

It must have been a dream. I didn’t make my way to a forest where I was practically mauled by a Faceless Man with moving tattoos and a gigantic shadow while lying on a velvet altar in what looked like a sacrificial circle. I’m only a few miles away from forestry, but I didn’t walk there naked or in a skimpy robe, and I most definitely didn’t drive.

I sprint back to the room, aiming straight for my phone to watch the nanny cam. As expected, half the footage of the night is completely sliced away. One second I’m snuggled up in my robe beneath the sheets, and the next, I’m completely naked with roses blanketing the floor. In the blurry footage, I notice a rolled parchment that slips between my pillows as I sleep.

With my heart caught in my throat, I throw the pillows onto the floor in search of the letter. I jump onto the mattress and lie flat on my stomach as I reach behind the bed, blindly patting the wooden floor until I touch familiar parchment.

My blood vibrates as I fish it out of the darkness, and move to the very edge of the bed near the light.

Keep dreaming of me, my dark love. I’ll be back for more.

Chapter five

Letum

For eons I have been tasked with one thing: Bring souls to the afterlife.

Day after day, night after night, with a single touch from my hand, a soul will pass peacefully and their body will sleep for all of eternity. I have known no other life other than this morbid repetition and passionless existence. For eons I have watched humans, standing to the side and waiting until they inevitably pass.

Because I am inevitable.

Poets have written sonnets about me; composers have written music. Beautiful as they may be, they never amounted to anything more than a moment lost to time.

Until her.

Lilith, my sweet love. She is a dream and a nightmare, merged into one.

I never thought I would find a woman such as her; a woman who can gaze upon death and bring him to his knees. The sight of her, the smell of her, the taste of her, she has made death himself come alive.

Even when fear poisons her blood, I could take a bite out of her and eat the softest flesh. My night monster is perfection, an anomaly in a room of normality, a miracle in the face of wonder. There is nowhere she can run where I will not catch her, nowhere she can hide where I will not find her.

Her soul sings to me like a summer’s breeze: fresh and decadent. I have not been able to get enough of her since the beyond called for her. The afterlife wanted her in its grasp, but I wanted her in mine.

Lilith has called for me in the night, begging and pleading for me to take her soul as I should have. The fates can attest to the wrongness of keeping a soul in the mortal plane long past its time. It is the only way I can make her mine for eternity; she must yearn for me as I yearn for her.

Not death, but me.

I watch her from the corner of the room as she piles the petals together, biting her lip while sporting my marks on her skin. She fists a plastic bag, convinced that she will discard the maroon flora. But she will not throw away something with life until it has decayed into rot. Not because she values life—no, it’s because she values me.