The motel room is a cheap, sweating box somewhere south of Baltimore, the kind of place that charges by the hour and still has the nerve to leave a Bible in the drawer. Outside, July heat presses against the single window like a living thing, turning the glass into a wet mirror. Inside, the air-con’s given up the ghost and decided to just blow warm breath over everything.

The sheets are twisted at the foot of the bed, half on the floor, half clinging to your thigh like they’re jealous. Your hair stuck to your neck in damp strands, your breath still uneven from the way his mouth had chased you across the car seat on the drive down. He hadn’t even waited for the engine to cool.

Butcher’s propped against the headboard now, back sticky against fake wood, chest still heaving a little from earlier. There’s a constellation of fresh bite marks across his collarbone and one particularly vicious crescent just above his left nipple that’s already blooming purple. He’s grinning at it in the dim, like it’s a medal. Sweat beads along his hairline, slides down the side of his neck, disappears into the hollow of his throat.

You’re sprawled on your stomach beside him, cheek pressed to the mattress, hair a wrecked halo fanned out over the pillow you stole from him twenty minutes ago. Your lips are swollen, the lower one split just enough to make him feel guilty and proud in the same breath. There’s a sheen on your shoulder blades, a lazy river of perspiration that catches the neon VACANCY sign bleeding through the curtains and turns it pink, then blue, then pink again.

He reaches for the joint smoldering in the ashtray on the nightstand and takes a slow pull. The paper crackles. Cherry glows. Smoke curls up lazy and blue, tangling with the smell of sex and sweat and the faint ghost of the coconut sunscreen you rubbed on each other this morning like idiots who thought the beach was still an option.

“Christ, love,” he rasps, voice scraped raw, “you look like you’ve been mauled by a very enthusiastic alley cat.”

You laugh into the mattress, the sound muffled and giddy, then roll onto your side so you can face him. One boob is still half-spilling from the cup of your bra (he never did get the clasp sorted) and there’s a smear of his blood on your neck where he bit you too hard and you bit him right back. You reach for the joint with lazy fingers, nails scraping lightly over his knuckles when he passes it.

“Pretty sure the cat was you, William,” you murmur, taking a hit, holding it, letting it seep out slow through that filthy smile. “Got the claws to prove it.”

He watches the smoke drift from your mouth like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. Watches the way your throat works when you swallow. Watches the tiny tremor in your thigh when the high settles deeper. His chest feels too full, like someone cracked it open and poured something molten straight in.

You pass the joint back. Your fingertips brush his lower lip on purpose.

He catches your wrist, turns it palm-up, presses a kiss to the faint red marks his teeth left earlier. “Sorry, darlin’. Got carried away.”