hello crow 02

In a secluded courtyard somewhere. A body still warm but drained of life lay down out of sight. Everything you took was parceled up behind straining shirt buttons. You had the gape, my dear Crow. Shouldn’t have worn such tight clothing.

No part of me planned on backing off as you advanced. I was looking into your eyes and then poof, there was a wall behind me.

You stopped close enough to kiss. I could smell blood on your breath. We were actually the same height but you seemed taller as you stood there, shoulders square opposite mine, hemming me against the wall as surely as if you’d grabbed me by the throat. More surely, in fact. I’d have fought if you grabbed me.

You glanced down at your hand by my side. Palm up, expectant. Ah, my phone was still in my hand. Slowly, I placed it in that hand.

Not moving away or letting up the tension, you started futzing with my phone. The contacts list came up and you scrolled through the recent calls. I could just about convince myself that you had merely got lost looking for the Add Contact function, but I felt a wave of cold as I realised you saw my wife’s name.

You beep-booped your name into my phone alongside your number, then handed it back to me. I took it without looking. “You killed her.”

A nod, casual. “Ate her. She was prey.” You covered your mouth with a fist and breathed out a hot gust of copper to the side. My eyes flickered to your rounded stomach where it climbed above the smooth lines of your abdomen, and then back again. “You’re prey, too.”

I opened my mouth to object and nothing came out. If I could have I’d have postured, told you I wasn’t your prey, warned you how dangerous I was. But being recognised had shaken me.

Only action was available to me. Feeling like I’d stepped off the cliff edge and was awaiting the impact of the onrushing ground, I raised my hand past your shoulder. You let it slip around to cup the back of your head. Less a lover’s touch; more a wrestler’s hold. You felt like teak: your strength was unreal, obvious when you didn’t budge from the slight pressure I applied.

I don’t know why I did this next, but my next move wasn’t a wrestler’s. You felt three hesitant fingertips appear on the taut swell of your stomach. Naturally toned, it seemed that I had to press quite hard to get any kind of give; to feel the liquid resistance of your bloated tummy. When you didn’t object—your eyes widened slightly and your lips parted but you didn’t object—more of my hand glided into place. I cupped your stomach, weighing the organ that had so benefited from the life you drank down just moments before.

Your expression, Crow! I couldn’t tell if you were more puzzled or more gratified by the halting touch. Emboldened, I gave you a sudden broad, knowing smile. “I might be prey, but I think you’re not going to take me quite yet.”

Your downturned mouth showed your displeasure. “That’s not for you to— ah…”

A deeper rub orbiting from navel all around your stretched belly caused your breathing to catch. I heard rumbling from deep inside you as some opaque process happened to twelve pints of hot-pressed woman.

Clarity came back to your eyes with a vengeance. With ineluctable pressure—I could not have stopped you if I tried—you bared your teeth and lowered your fanged mouth to my neck. I didn’t resist, though I shivered when the points of your fangs fell upon my skin. Only continued to knead your blood feast.

I miscalculated. I honestly didn’t expect you to bite, but you punctured my carotid in two places. The world went grey in my vision and I heard your breath loud in my ear, then a chain of swallows in quick succession.

I’d already begun to resign myself to death when you suddenly stopped. Licked the wound, wolf-rough, and undid the murder. When you leaned back to take a look at me I was shaking and pale.

“Well?” you said, through lips wearing my blood. “Don’t stop now, then.”

I realised all at once. Even as you swallowed my heart’s output I’d never stopped rubbing the stomach that was beginning to take me in. Renewed attention made you sigh, long and deep. Your bite had been a test? I guess I passed.

Laughter, slightly frantic, bubbled out of me. You watched me through slitted eyes as I studied your face hungrily. What the hell were you, Crow? How had you done that? How had you left me alive?

I will still falling from the cliff edge and hadn’t hit the ground yet. Drunk with blood loss, adrenaline and fascination I dared to manoeuvre you, firmly and slowly performing a circle rotation with you, till it was your back against the rough sandstone and me holding you against it. The smirk on your face told me you were explicitly allowing it. Suited me fine.

I watched you lick my blood from your lips and swallow. Too shy to kiss you, I instead kneaded your belly forcefully. When I chased another, unmasked burp out of you I felt proud. And something else.

It wasn’t elegant, the way I unbuckled your belt with one hand, but if I stopped doing what it was that was bringing you bliss I thought you might stuff yourself with the rest of me. Metal clicked and rang and then leather whipped through the buckle: I’d done it. It took an effort of will not to just yank and pop the button on your trousers, but I didn’t want to ruin your outfit. It felt disrespectful. So while I continued to roll pressure up the curve of your belly, I worked with barely constrained frenzy to free what I could already feel stirring inside.

You stared into my eyes as I fell to my knees. Inexpert but eager I reached into your underwear and brought you out into the cold night. You stood erect, nodding slightly with a pulse partially stolen. My hand felt warm on the smooth, sensitive underside. The kiss I placed right at the side of the base, nuzzling into your fuzz, made you twitch with anticipation. I hadn’t stopped looking into your eyes. I never stopped lovingly working the heel of my hand over your belly.

You’d taken a mouthful of me: I took a mouthful of you. The cold of the evening was replaced with a flood of warmth, advancing slow and right down to the base. Like climbing into a hot bath. Like the exquisite pressure of grinding, except exposed, somehow vulnerable even as you mastered my mouth.

I withdrew and stroked you in my hand, then took you in again, gripping your base in my hand. Tightness. Pressure. Heat. Like the sensation in your stomach, roiling with my attention, now your cock in my mouth experienced the same and the two sensations redoubled.

I can’t tell you how excited I became when your hand tangled in my hair and set my pace, angled my head as you liked it. You stroked along my tongue and it took all my concentration to bear it and to massage with both hands on your still-rigid stomach. I heard you moan as you fucked my mouth.

You’d drunk me down; now I returned the favour. When you came I took everything you gave me. And you gave me so much, clamping my face tight against your crotch and living in the blissful release of pumping more and more into me…

Proud and shaken I withdrew from you. I placed a kiss right on the tip of your cock and then, well, I damn near crapped myself. The look you were giving me was raw hunger unfiltered by any social screen. I would not have been surprised if you fell upon me with open mouth, lifted me above you, and chugged me down into a belly currently only full of blood.

The moment passed. I don’t know why. Satiation and tiredness softened the sharp edges of your revealed hunger. I realised tears were streaming down my face. I wiped them on my shoulder as I busied myself with your trousers. Zipping you back up felt right, respectful.

Never stopped massaging your belly, though, even just tracing fingers over it when I stood back up.

“So do I make it?” I asked, trying to make light while my whole world shifted under my feet.

You gave a tired smirk and gripped my chin in one hand. “You’re going to want to call me. If you do it’ll cost you. Be ready.”

Enigmatic. You felt me shiver.

We moved the body out of sight. If she were discovered even a day later it would stymie any investigation, but you explained to me that you are adept at moving on.

As we left the courtyard I felt a little more my normal self. “So what’s your name? Is it really Crow?”

Your look of confusion and contempt answered my question.

“I just didn’t know if it was, like, your surname. Maybe you’re called John Crow or something. ‘Crow’ is cooler, though. You definitely made the right choice.”

You gave me a sceptical look that made me grin. “I’m beginning to regret not finishing you off.”

“Better luck next time.”

Your half-smile before you turn away almost makes me swoon. I watch you watch down the street, all the way until you turn a corner and disappear.

Images keep flashing past my mind’s eye. What you did and what I did make me wrap my arms around myself. Everything has changed.