The hunger beneath our skin

The rain thickened, becoming a living curtain around them. No one would see them here. No one would hear her if she cried out.

And worst of all — she realized with a hollow twist of her heart — she wouldn’t cry out.

She didn’t want to be saved.

Lucien drew her closer, his other hand splaying across the small of her back, pressing her against the hard planes of his chest. His heartbeat thundered beneath his skin, matching the frantic rhythm of her own.

“You think this is a war you can win?” he murmured against the shell of her ear. “You think you can starve yourself of me and still breathe?”

Seraphina bit her lip until she tasted blood, trying to summon the walls she had spent so long building. But they crumbled like ash in the wind when he spoke to her like that — when he looked at her like she was both a weapon and a wound.

“You are poison,” she whispered.

“And you,” Lucien said, his voice a sin, “are thirsty for it.”

Before she could answer, he leaned down, brushing his lips along her throat, not kissing — just hovering — as if daring her to push him away.

She didn’t.

A sharp sound escaped her lips — part gasp, part sob — and Lucien seized it, capturing her mouth again in a kiss that left bruises on her soul. His hands, once so careful, now gripped her like she was a prayer he no longer trusted the gods to answer.

The truth was cruel and simple:

Seraphina could flee a thousand times, hide behind a thousand lies — but her heart would always find its way back to his darkness.

And deep down, even in the places she refused to look, she didn’t want to be saved from it.

Lucien’s hand slid up Seraphina’s spine, fingers threading through the damp silk of her hair. His touch was almost reverent — a cruel contrast to the way he had kissed her moments ago, as if he could devour her soul through her lips.

“I could break you,” he whispered against her temple.

“But I would rather ruin you slowly.”

Seraphina’s heart hammered violently against her ribs, every instinct screaming that this man — this creature spun from shadow and grief — would be the end of her.

But wasn’t that what she had always wanted?

Not an ending wrapped in peace and sweet lies, but an obliteration so complete that it left nothing of the girl she used to be.

She tilted her face up to him, rain streaking across her skin like tears she refused to shed. “Then what are you waiting for?” she challenged, voice shaking. “Break me.”

Lucien stilled, his thumb brushing her lower lip, tracing the tremor there. His eyes — burning black coals — searched her face as if he were memorizing every inch of her before he committed the final sin.

“You have no idea what you’re inviting,” he said, voice rough with restraint. “I am not kind, Seraphina. I never was.”

“Kindness never saved me,” she breathed.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. For a moment, Seraphina thought he might kiss her again, might drag her into the ruined cathedral and teach her all the beautiful ways a heart could shatter. But instead, Lucien released her with a growl of frustration and turned his back.

The rain poured harder.

“You think you know me?” he rasped, his broad shoulders tense beneath his soaked shirt. “You see the darkness and you think you can survive it. But the truth is…” He spun back toward her, his face a map of anger and ache.

“I am the thing that waits for souls too stubborn to die.”

The words should have frightened her.

Instead, they rooted themselves in the hollow spaces inside her — the spaces no hero had ever managed to fill.

“Then I guess,” Seraphina said, stepping closer until only inches separated them, “we deserve each other.”

Lucien’s laugh was low and broken, as if it had been ripped from his chest against his will. He reached out again — slower this time — and cupped her face between his rough palms. His thumbs traced the curve of her cheekbones, wiping away the rain, the fear, the fragile hope.

“You will hate me,” he promised, voice trembling with something she couldn’t name.

“Maybe,” she said, curling her fingers around his wrists. “But not tonight.”

Lucien lowered his forehead to hers, breathing her in like she was the last clean thing left in his filthy world. His hands slid down her arms, gathering her to him until there was no space left to breathe, no place left to hide.

The storm around them roared, but they were a quiet, feral thing inside it — a heartbeat stitched between despair and desire.

“I should let you go,” he whispered.

“But you won’t,” she answered, the words sealing their shared doom.

Lucien’s mouth found hers again, but this time there was no violence, no fury — only a desperate, aching hunger. A hunger born not from anger or lust, but from all the lonely nights spent wishing for something just out of reach.

And in that kiss, Seraphina tasted all the promises he would never keep — and loved him for it anyway.

Because some ruins were more beautiful than any cathedral.

And some loves were meant to end in ash and blood.

To be continued.

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