Not slow. Not fast. Not at all.
Two hours later, they were in the back seat of his truck, parked under the skeletal branches of a dead oak. The windows fogged. Her dress hit the floorboard. His hands were cold, but his mouth was fire. She bit his shoulder when he found the spot behind her ear, and he groaned a sound that wasn’t quite human—hungry and hollow, like wind through a broken church. lust ‘n dead
She thought he was joking. She laughed, pulled him down for another kiss. Not slow
Ellie opened her mouth to scream, but only a sigh came out—long, slow, and strangely sweet. Two hours later, they were in the back
“What are you?” she whispered.
The jukebox at The Rusty Nail was playing something slow and swampy, a tune about love gone sour in the bayou. Ellie didn’t care about the song. She cared about the man at the end of the bar.
“I told you,” he said softly. “An epitaph.”