There, near the bar, half in shade, sat a man alone, ogling him. Tailored suit, the expensive kind, hat on the table beside his glass. He drained his drink without breaking eye contact. Salt-and-pepper hair, an overpriced watch, longing thick in his gaze. Married, probably. Wanted to forget that for a night.Tale as old as time.
Ash slid his tongue over his bottom lip and smiled. Target acquired.
(12:32 a.m.)
The back door of the Eclipse groaned shut behind them, coughing them into the breathless Duskhaven night. The air outside was frosty, heavy with moisture and menace, the sudden silence after the music a plunge into deep water. The alley stank of piss and muck and secrets. Trash cans stood like silent witnesses as rats skittered behind torn garbage bags. A neon sign blinked in the distance, the dying pulse of a bakery’s concrete corpse, twitching in red light. The glamour was gone now. No lights, no stage, just flesh and breath and want.
Ash pressed the man against the brick wall, their mouths clashing with drunken desperation. Hands groped and clawed. His leather jacket creaked with the friction of skin and need. He still wore his harness under it, nipples hard from the chill,sweat cooling fast across his bare torso. No underwear; just his ripped black jeans for easy access. He was already slipping into autopilot, into that practiced choreography of lust: give enough to keep them hungry, take enough to feel full.
“Jesus Christ,” the man whispered, voice hoarse. “You’re unreal.”
Ash bit his neck hard enough to make him gasp. “You have no idea.”
Hands fumbled at belts, teeth scraping lips, hips grinding. A zipper hissed open, the sound of a snake disturbed. Ash slid his fist into the man’s fly, fingers curling around the hard shaft. The man moaned, bucked, cursed.
“Fuck, you’re gonna make me—”
“No,” Ash murmured against his skin, a soft command. “Not yet. I need you inside me.”
A noise stirred behind them. Footsteps, echoing off wet pavement, a rhythm with too much menace woven through it.
Ash’s spine stiffened, his hand still wrapped around the stranger’s cock. He pulled away, his breath a mist in the biting air, his heart gone still. Lifting his head, nostrils flaring, he searched the dark for what moved. A smell rode the wind: cheap weed, metal, sweat.Trouble. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, Calgrave’s familiar night music, too close for comfort, too far to be of any help.
From the shadows, three shapes emerged—young, twitchy, armed with knives and bad intentions. Tattoos, wild eyes, grins like broken windows. Tattered hoodies sagged off wiry frames. One had spiky green hair and a scar across his lip. Another wore dreadlocks on top of a shaved head, a piercing in his brow. The third, tall and lean with a big mohawk, spat at the asphalt, toying with his knife.
“Look what we got here,” said Scarface. “Fucking fags.”
“Ain’t this our lucky fuckin’ night,” Dreadlocks snorted.
The man in Ash’s arms went rigid. Panic radiated from him, hot and thick, a fog on invisible glass. Ash didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His gaze was calm, cold, slicing through the gloom.
“Wallets. Watches. Phones. Let’s go,” said Mohawk, flipping the knife in his hand. The blade caught a glint of a nearby streetlamp.
The stranger reached for his pockets, shaking. But Ash exhaled—long, slow, deep—and smiled, feline and terrifying. “You boys sure you wanna do this?” His voice was low, syrupy, all silk and razors.
The three punks laughed.
“Yo, pretty boy,” Scarface barked. “You got a death wish or something?”
“It’s a hell of a night to die,” Mohawk muttered, nudging Dreadlocks.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” the man behind Ash whimpered. “Here, take my money, take it all. Just don’t hurt me. I have a family.”
Ash stepped forward, hips moving with the fluidity of water. His eyes shimmered in the murk, catching the pale moonlight. “Put those knives away,” he purred. “Come on, now. Be good boys.”
“This cat’s nuts,” Scarface snorted and, without a warning, lunged with his knife. Ash sidestepped, grabbed his wrist, and drove his knee into the guy’s gut hard enough to make him retch. The knife clattered to the ground. Ash kicked it aside, then drove a sharp punch into his jaw, spinning him into the wall where he slumped.
Dreadlocks struck from behind, only to collide with Ash’s boot. Without even fully turning, he slammed it into Dreadlocks’s nose with a wet crunch, sending him staggering backward, howling. Blood gushed from his lips.
Mohawk was smarter. He didn’t charge—he danced in, knife flashing in short arcs. Ash ducked, pivoted, and caught him mid-swing with a savage kick to the thigh that buckled his leg. He followed it up with a hook to the ribs and a brutal palm to the chin that sent Mohawk sprawling onto his back, wind knocked clean out of him.
A minute was all it took. Now all three were sprawled in the gutter, dazed and leaking courage.
Ash stood over them, breath steady, chest rising and falling in slow, controlled rhythm. The night echoed around him with broken pride and bruised bodies. A thin sheen of sweat glistened across his collarbones. His knuckles ached, blood slicking one of them. He licked it clean without breaking eye contact. “I did ask nicely,” he said.
“Who the hellareyou?” one of the punks groaned.
Ash simply smiled. “The guy you’ll be thinking about while crying in the shower tonight.” And he let it bleed from his skin: the creeping pulse of seduction, solid and golden as fever heat, drugged as perfume laced with opium. It wasn’t something he controlled, not fully. Just a sense; a flick of energy beneath his ribs, a candle guttering to life. But he didn’t need to understand it to know the effect he had on people.
