This is a woman.
And God help me, I want every inch.
It’s easy to picture how she’ll look beneath me. How she’ll sound when she moans. How she’ll scream when she’s ruined and radiant, trembling and tethered.
The second Laurette spoke her hunger aloud, something deep within me shifted. I’m happy to be the man her darkness reaches for.
Silas Rourke is a no-show tonight. But the job is already compromised. My head’s not where it needs to be. My focus is fractured. I could wait longer, but why bother? He either went to ground or never planned to show.
Doesn’t matter. He’ll pay another time.
This night gave me something better than the kill.
Rourke can wait.
She can’t.
The bartender wipes down a glass, glancing my way when I stand. “You good, man?”
I toss a few bills onto the bar. More than enough. “Keep the change.”
He nods, pocketing the cash. “Appreciate it.”
I don’t respond. Just turn and walk away, my focus already locking onto something else. Something better.
The women spill out of Leviathan in a wave of perfume and laughter. They pause outside the entrance, hugging and waving.
“Be good,” one of them teases as she tucks her arm around another.
Laurette laughs. “Never have been. Don’t plan to start now.”
The women scatter, one slipping into a cab, two sliding into waiting cars driven by men. Laurette lingers beneath the awning, then lifts a hand to flag down her rideshare as it pulls to the curb.
I’m already in my car when her rideshare pulls away. I don’t follow immediately. That would be sloppy. I give it twenty seconds. Long enough for her to settle in, long enough for the street to breathe. Then I ease out, folding into the flow of traffic.
The Quarter pulses ahead. Tourists stagger out of bars, drinks sloshing. Music bleeds from open doorways—brass, bass, the deep pulse of something alive. The air is thick with fry grease, powdered sugar, bourbon, sweat, and the faint rot that clings to old buildings and older ghosts.
Up ahead, her rideshare merges with the mess of traffic. I stay two car lengths back, her taillights blinking a steady rhythm. A heartbeat I intend to follow.
We thread through the French Quarter, past artists with their work on display, canvases propped along wrought-iron fences, colors bleeding beneath the glow of gas lamps. Tarot readers hunch beneath flickering lights; couples sway in alleys as if no one can see. The smell of beignets lingers in the air. Then the noise thins, and the streets stretch wider. The city shifts.
We leave behind the neon and grit for something older. Live oaks line the road, their limbs tangled overhead like ribs. The houses are grand and silent behind iron fences.
She’s not heading to a downtown high-rise or a shared walk-up or a weekend rental.
Home is the Garden District.
Her house is a Southern Gothic dream. White, with black shutters and lace-like wrought-iron balconies that twist up into the night. Two stories high, with arched windows and white columns softened by time. Ivy claws at the walls, creeping toward the eaves, trying to claim the house for itself.
I park in front of a house down the street, engine and lights off. I wait and watch.
Laurette steps out of the rideshare and climbs the front steps. The flickering porch lanterns catch the curve of her shoulder as she reaches for her keys. She unlocks the door and slips inside without a backward glance, the door closing behind her.
One light clicks on. Then another. Warm pools of gold spill through old glass, soft and distorted. The curtains obscure her movements, but she’s inside, moving from room to room—switching lights on, then off again.
A few minutes later, the house goes dark, one window at a time swallowed by shadow until nothing is left but stillness.
I wait while she settles in for the night. I have no interest in being seen or getting caught.
