Page 46 of Lustling

And just like that, I walk out into the night. Still thinking about the girl with blood in her mouth and a moan that could kill.

The mortuary’s quiet the way graveyards are—as if even the walls know better than to make a sound.

It’s after hours, not that it matters. No one's here to see me pull around back, kill the lights, and slide out of the car with a corpse slung over my shoulder like it weighs nothing. Because to me? It doesn’t. Not anymore.

It’s just another night. Another body. Another heatless fire chewing through skin and memory.

Inside, the air is still. The kind of stillness that feels like it’s watching you. I don’t bother turning on more lights than I need. The ambient glow from the furnace is enough, pulsing low and orange.

The cremation chamber is already humming, warm and waiting. Hungry.

I set Shawn down on the metal table with a grunt. His limbs flop. Slack. Empty. He doesn’t look peaceful. He looksused. Like someone wrung him dry and forgot to throw him out after.

“Bet this isn’t how you thought your night would end,” I mutter, mostly to myself. “Though I gotta admit… death by orgasm? Not the worst way to go.”

His face doesn’t twitch. His mouth is still half open, as if he died mid-whimper. I roll my shoulders, take one last look at him, and shove the gurney forward.

The furnace greets him with a whoosh, flames flaring high, licking eagerly at his flesh. The heat blasts against my skin, but I don’t flinch.

First comes the bubbling—his skin blistering like meat in a pan. Then the pop. Little bursts of pressure beneath the dermis, each one like a knuckle cracking under strain. His tendons seize. Contract. There’s a sudden twitch—violent and unnatural. Nerve endings firing off too late to matter.

A death spasm. I’ve seen enough to know that bodies lie, even after death.

The smell hits me like a fist. Burning hair. Cooking flesh. That thick, greasy stench of carbonized skin and muscle. But beneath it—there’s something fouler. Something obscene.

The acrid scent of cum. His last release, still fresh on his body. Stillstainingthe shell he left behind. The bastardcamehimself to death.

I stare into the furnace, eyes watering from the smoke curling up, the heat crawling into my lungs, coating them in ash and memory.

And I see her. Not him.Her.

Lillien.

The image burns behind my eyelids—her flushed cheeks, her thighs slick and strong around his waist, her mouth openin a gasp sheearned. Blood smeared between her legs. Power glinting behind her eyes like moonlight on a blade.

She sat on his death like a queen.

A goddess. A monster.

And fuck, if that doesn’t make something inside me ache in a way I haven’t let myself name.

The flames shift. Dance. For a heartbeat, I swear she’s there in the smoke, smiling. Smirking like she knows I’m thinking about her.

I blink. It’s gone. Just fire. Just meat. Just bone turning black. But I can’t stop seeing her. Not her face, exactly. Not her body.

Herbecoming.

And the thing that coils low in my belly isn’t disgust. It’s not even fear. It’s pride. It’s hunger. It’s that pull again. The one I keep trying to drown beneath jokes and jabs. The one that curls tighter every time I hear her name.

Lillien.

She doesn’t know what she is yet. Not really. Not fully. But I do. She’s not just powerful. She’sours.

At least, that’s what I tell myself. That it’s the novelty. That it’s biology and instinct and nothing more. I tell myself it’s because she’s a succubus. That any of us would feel this draw. That it doesn’tmeananything.

And yet…

As the flames reduce what’s left of Shawn to soot and ruin, I know it’s a lie. Because I’m not thinking about the corpse.