The forbidden section smelled like dust and something darker I couldn't name. Loneliness, maybe. Or desperation.
I shouldn't have been there. The head librarian had made it clear on my first day: "The back section is off-limits. We don't go there after dark." But after two years of returning to an empty apartment where even my reflection looked surprised to see me, I was done playing by the rules.
I ran my fingers along the spines of the books, feeling leather crack beneath my touch. Most had no titles, just weird symbols carved into ancient bindings. Then my hand stopped on one that felt warm.
The Secret of the Bookmark.
The letters glowed faint gold in the dim light, and my eyes followed its glow. When I pulled it free, the book fell open like it had been waiting. The pages were yellowed, brittle, covered in handwriting that looked disturbingly like dried blood.
That was enough red flags for a sane person to run.
Instead, I read.
The story was explicit. Violently erotic. A woman summoning something from the dark, something that touched her in ways no man ever could. Heat crawled up my spine. My breath came shorter. The musty smell of old paper filled my lungs, thick and intoxicating, like a drug I shouldn't want. I groaned softly, the sound swallowed by the heavy silence.
Halfway through, I found it.
A bookmark.
Crimson silk, frayed at the edges, thrumming with warmth against my fingertips like a living heartbeat. The moment I touched it, the lights above flickered. Once. Twice.
I froze, pulse hammering in my throat.
My eyes swerved above, but the library was empty. I exhaled, laughing at my own paranoia, and slipped the bookmark between the books in my bag as a souvenir of my bravery tonight.
The walk home took twenty minutes. By the time I reached my apartment, exhaustion dragged at my bones.
Getting home was the same old drill. Open the fridge, get a bottle of cola, steam it up, and drink. The few that had seen me do this pegged me as weird but it was an old comfort from when my mother was alive. I had no inclining of changing that.
I changed into my nightgown. A pale pink silk, spaghetti straps, shamefully short, just the way I liked it. I wore them for myself, proof I was still a woman, amidst all the tags as 'unattractive'.
The book I kept the bookmark in sat pretty on my counter, the bookmark peeked out like a viper's tongue.
I collapsed onto my bed at eleven, too exhausted to think about the strange way the ribbon glowed, too tired to notice how the air in my apartment had grown thick. Heavy. Expectant.
The knock came forty seven minutes later.
Three sharp raps that made my heart lurch.
"Anyone home?" A voice like whiskey and smoke drifted through the door. Deep. Male. A man?
I sat up, skin prickling, then laid back down. Must be a dream. No one came to this side of the woods, heck, no one ever knocked on my door.
"Hello? I don't mean to intrude..." Another knock, harder this time, rattling the frame.
Irritation flared through my disbelief. I yanked the door open, ready to tell whoever this was to go to hell...
The words died in my throat.
Cool night air rushed in, but it couldn't compete with the heat radiating from the man filling my doorway. Curly dark hair fell to his neck in wild tangles. Turquoise eyes glinted with amusement and something that made my stomach drop. He was tall. I speculated a six-one to my five-six, with a face carved from some ancient god's fantasy. Chiseled jaw. Full lips. The kind of beautiful that shouldn't exist outside of fever dreams.
"You're not intruding," I said, forcing steel into my voice, "because I haven't invited you in."
A light smile tugged his lips. "You called me."
"I did what?"
"You took my bookmark." His voice dropped. lower. "You read my words. You touched ME. And now..." He inhaled deeply, eyes sliding closed like he was savoring expensive wine, as a dark smirk spread across his lips. "I've come to fulfill your desire, Theresa?"
Ice shot through my veins. "How do you know my name?"
"I know everything about you." He stepped forward. I stumbled back. "I ate your loneliness as you turned each page. Fed on your desperate, aching need. You—" His hand shot out, catching my wrist and pulling me against a chest that felt like heated stone. "-pulled me out..."
The door slammed shut behind him.
The air in my apartment changed. A charged tension that didn't exist before. Like the space itself recognized what had just entered. My panties were already damp, my body responding to something my brain couldn't process. Fear and desire tangled so tightly I couldn't separate them.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
His head dipped low, lips brushing my ear. "The secret of the bookmark."
I froze. My eyes widened. The fog of desire clouding my thoughts almost cleared. Almost.
"That's impossible," I managed, shoving uselessly at his chest but it was like trying to move a mountain. "That's just a book!"
"Was a book." His mouth found my neck, tongue tracing the frantic pulse there. "I was bound in those pages for centuries. Trapped. Starving. Until you freed me...fed me." His hands slid down my sides, burning through the thin silk like worthless paper. "Feed me more." The words were a command. An irresistible plea to destroy me.
"Wait, I didn't mean to—"
His mouth crashed into mine, swallowing my protest. His tongue invaded, claiming, devouring like I was his last meal after centuries of starvation. He kissed like he was trying to consume my soul through my lips, and gods help me, I kissed him back.
Reason evaporated. My hands tangled in his hair as his palms slid beneath my nightgown, finding bare skin. He groaned into my mouth, fingers tracing down my spine with agonizing slowness until they reached the curve where my back dipped. Then he slid lower, beneath the flimsy lace of my panties.
In one fluid motion, he tore them off. The sound of ripping fabric made me gasp.
"Already dripping for me," he growled against my throat. "Good girl."
He lifted me like I weighed nothing, and suddenly my bare pussy pressed against his solid abs. The friction sent electricity shooting through me. I ground against him helplessly, chasing the sensation.
"Naughty," he murmured, carrying me toward the bedroom. "So desperate to come, aren't you?"
His mouth closed over my nipple through the silk, sucking hard, and coherent thought shattered. I arched into him, a moan tearing from my throat that didn't sound like my voice.
"Fuck me," I heard myself beg. "Please, just—"
"As you wish."
He threw me onto the bed gently and spread my legs wide. When I opened my eyes, my breath caught.
His shirt and pants were gone. Sweat gleamed on bronze skin stretched over impossible muscle. And his cock. Thick and long and so hard it curved upward. I never thought that was possible, it was...too big. He'd split me in half.
But I didn't care. My eyes melted at the sight of the feast.
"Say what you want, Theresa."
"I want you to fuck me," I whispered, too far gone to be ashamed, "until I can't see straight."
He didn't wait.
He thrust into me in one brutal stroke that tore a scream from my throat. Pain and pleasure intertwined messily, I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. He filled me completely, impossibly, stretching me to the edge of breaking. Then he pulled out slowly, agonizingly, before slamming back in.
"Fuck!" The word ripped out of me.
He set a punishing rhythm. Hard, deep, relentless. The obscene sound of skin slapping skin filled the room. Pressure built low in my belly, coiling tighter with each thrust. His fingers found my clit, circling with expert precision, and I shattered.
The orgasm ripped through me like lightning. I screamed as white hot pleasure obliterated everything else.
He didn't stop.
He kept pounding into me through the aftershocks, through the overstimulation that bordered on pain, building me toward another peak I didn't think I could survive.
"This will continue," he growled, his face inches from mine, eyes blazing with inhuman hunger, "for a hundred nights."
The words penetrated the haze of pleasure. "What?"
"That's the price of releasing me, Theresa." His rhythm never faltered. "One hundred nights of feeding, a hundred nights of claiming and this is only the first."
Dread crashed into me. "No, I didn'...I didn't know—"
"Too late." He thrust deeper, hitting something inside me that made stars explode behind my eyelids. "You opened the book. You took the bookmark. You summoned me." His voice deepened to a growl. "And now you're mine."
He fucked me harder, faster, and another orgasm built impossibly quick. As I came apart. I saw it in the mirror across the room.
My reflection was dimmer. Translucent. Like he was draining something vital with each climax, each devastating thrust.
By night one hundred, would there be anything left of me?
But as he groaned my name and spilled inside me, as heat flooded my core and my body clenched around him in helpless ecstasy, I realized the most terrifying truth.
I didn't want him to stop.
I didn't want to be saved.
The curse wasn't the hundred nights of sex.
The curse was that by the end, I wouldn't want it to end.
(END)