The Cost of Wanted Her Touch - Part II

[Be****]

One year passed.

And yet, she never left.

Not truly.

I saw her in the mirror when I shaved, in the fog curling at the edges of streetlamps, in the eyes of strangers who looked too long. She lingered like a bruise on my soul — a mark unseen but always aching. And every night, I dreamed of her lips, her voice, her fire.

Then came the wind again, whispering in dead tongues through the trees. The sky dimmed too early, and the stars turned their gaze. Halloween’s eve had returned.

And so had she.

This time, she did not step from shadows. She rose from the space between my breath — one moment I was alone, the next she was beside me, lying on my bed as though she had never left it. Her gown spilled off one shoulder, tighter than memory, darker than wine. Her eyes met mine, and in them I saw fire. But not rage.

Longing.

“You remembered me,” she said, her voice softer now. Not a hiss of power — but a murmur, *** in ways I hadn't thought her capable of. “Most don’t.”

“I never forgot.”

She smiled. Something about that smile wounded me. Like watching a fallen star flicker just before it dies.

Her hand found mine, guiding it to her heart. Beneath pale skin, her chest rose and fell with something very close to breath — something that hadn’t belonged to her, not in centuries. My touch made it quicken.

“You gave me this,” she whispered. “A taste. A rhythm I thought I’d forgotten. One year without it was…”

She paused. Her gaze dropped.

“…lonely.”

My hands cupped her face, thumb brushing her cheek. Her skin, though cool, trembled with something desperate. The succubus—this ancient, ***ed creature—looked at me not like a predator, but like a woman unraveling.

She climbed into my lap, wings curling around us like a cloak of night. Her gown fell in whispers, her nails trailing lines of fire down my arms. Her lips met mine again — but it wasn’t hunger this time.

It was need.

She moved slow, as if memorizing every inch of me, as if this moment had been carved in fate. And I met her with equal ache — my hands in her hair, my mouth tasting the centuries she carried. The world outside vanished. No clocks. No time. Just her breath in my ear, her voice a spell cast against loneliness.

“Stay with me,” I whispered.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m bound to the veil. I come when it thins. I go when it closes.”

“But I can’t—”

Her finger silenced me. Then her lips. Then her body, entwining mine like smoke and flame, fire and frost. We moved in rhythm, not like man and demon, but like something older — something that had been denied and had finally, finally found shape.

When we collapsed into silence, she rested her head on my chest, eyes closed. Her horns glowed faintly now, her wings folded gently around us.

“You feel it?” she asked. “Your soul, brushing mine?”

“I do.”

“It’s already begun,” she whispered. “You’re becoming something… not quite mortal anymore.”

I didn’t ask what she meant.

I didn’t care.

I held her tighter. Even as the night began to end. Even as she began to fade.

And just before the last light of dawn crept into the room, she pressed her lips to my chest — over the mark she left last year — and whispered:

“Next time… I won’t leave alone.”