Page 40 of Lustling

A dress.

Black. Tight. Dangerous.

It clings to my body as if it was poured over my skin. I slip into thigh-high stockings and paint my lips with a red that bleeds confidence. Then heels. Not just for height—for power. Every inch I gain is a weapon.

I grab my phone and scroll through my messages until I find him.

Shawn.

The text I type is simple, soft, seductive:

You home?

The response comes quickly.

Shawn

Yeah. What’s up?

I smirk, thumb poised.

I was thinking about you. Can I come over?

I don’t wait for a reply because I already know the answer.

And tonight? I’m not the one being hunted. I’m the one knocking on the door.

And Shawn has no idea just how sharp my smile has become.

NINETEEN

I’ve never cared for feelings. Not mine, not anyone else’s. Emotions are the soft meat on the bone of power — easy to tear, easy to rot. I learned a long time ago that only strength matters. Only survival. Only control. Everything else is noise. Distractions for the weak.

So when Deimos pushed himself into her and followed it with a blade, I told myself it meant nothing. Just another night. Another experiment. Another gamble with a human body. But when the steel slid into her chest and her breath broke against the dark, something twisted in me. Not pity. Not horror. Something heavier. Something hotter. A pulse behind my ribs that felt like rage, felt like hunger.

He only smirked, eyes glittering with that beautiful, reckless madness that always makes me want to break his jaw. He didn’t just want to push her over the edge. He wanted to see what would happen when she fell.

And the worst part? It worked.

She transformed. She survived. She rose out of death and blood and sex as someone new, a new darker thing, and now I can’t decide if I want to drag her back down under me and fuck her until she shatters — or walk away before the soft edge ofcaring cuts my throat. Because I do care. And I hate that. I hate it enough to taste it at the back of my tongue like copper.

I leave the house before the walls start to close in. My boots hit pavement, and then dirt, carrying me toward the one place that still feels real: a bar that smells like ash and spilled whiskey, a hole in the wall full of ghosts and debts and people whose gazes don’t linger. The door sticks, but I shove it open, stepping into the low murmur of voices and the hiss of a neon sign dying in the corner. Perfect.

I drop onto a stool, and the bartender doesn’t even blink. He’s seen me before. He knows the rules. I don’t want conversation. I want oblivion. He sets the first glass down, clear and mean. I knock it back. Then another. Then three more. The liquor burns all the way down, but it’s nothing compared to what’s already burning inside me. My eyes glow faintly in the dim light; the wood beneath my fingers creaks like it wants to splinter. No one comments. They know better.

I keep drinking. It takes a hell of a lot to make me drunk. Tonight I’m committed. Shot after shot, the edge softens, but it doesn’t go away. It never does. The image of her — Lillien — lying there with her dark hair spilled across the slab, blood on her chest, lips parted around a moan that sounded like a prayer — it sticks to me like tar. It gets under my nails. It fills my lungs.

I shove the last glass away and push off the stool. This isn’t the kind of rage you drown. This is the kind you beat out of something. The kind you carve out with your fists until your knuckles are slick with it. That’s the only prayer I’ve ever known.

I never prayed to God. I never believed in His mercy. My altar was always pain. My psalms were fists, fire, fury. When I wanted salvation, I found it in blood.

Tonight will be no different.

The underground ring is buried beneath a forgotten mechanic’s shop, tucked behind rusted shutters and concrete dust. No signage. No cameras. No rules. Just fists, blood, and bodies thrown into a pit to see who crawls out breathing. It’s perfect.

I duck through the back entrance, brushing past the chains hanging from the ceiling like nooses. The lights above flicker erratically, half of them burnt out, the other half buzzing like a dying insect. The familiar stench of sweat, smoke, and stale fear hits me like a memory I never asked for.

The guy running the board looks up from his clipboard and grins like he’s just seen a ghost that owes him money. “Bastion,” he says, low and amused. “Didn’t think you were still crawling around this shithole.”