Sirena
The trail home is older than memory.
I could walk it blindfolded — every bend and dip, every gnarled root and whispering pine. It should feel safe. Familiar. However, tonight, it doesn’t.
The festival’s noise has long since faded behind me. The laughter, the drums, the glow of lanterns — all swallowed by the woods. What’s left is moonlight and mist, the smell of smoke still clinging to my hair. My heartbeat sounds too loud in the quiet.
I tell myself I’m only tired. That I’ve had too much cider, too much imagination. Then I feel it again — that low, humming awareness beneath my skin. The sense of being followed. Of being hunted.
Every step I take should bring me closer to home, but somehow my feet keep straying. The narrow path forks toward the deeper woods, and I follow the path further away from home without meaning to.
It’s like something inside me already knows where to go. My body is acting of its own volition, craving something I’ve long since denied myself.
My hand grazes my throat, a ghost of where he touched me. I can feel the warmth gathering between my thighs, my pulse thrumming, matching the memory of his voice that will be engrained in my head for eternity.
The night air is cooler here. It tastes like iron and rain, and the scent of pine cuts through the smoke. My breath fogs, curling in front of me like a ghost.
He’s close. I can feel him. I stop walking, straining to listen. Silence — then the soft crunch of leaves somewhere behind me. My pulse skips. I don’t turn around. He’s watching. I know it. Part of me knows I should run, but my body won’t move.
I can feel the heat rising under my skin, the ache of need between my thighs.
I can feel my nipples harden once again under my tank top; my panties soaked through.
I press my thighs together, though it's helpless to stop the tremble. Need courses through my veins, yet I don’t know who it is my body is craving.
I mentally tell myself to stop, but my body has no plans of giving in.
“Show yourself,” I whisper into the dark. My voice sounds different — lower, breathless.
No answer, yet the forest shifts, like it’s holding its breath.
The wind stirs, carrying the faintest sound — a low exhale, closer this time. I spin on my heel, my heart tripping in my chest. Nothing but trees, silvered with moonlight. Still, I know he’s there. I can feel him — that same electric pull from before, coiling tight inside me.
When I close my eyes, I can almost see him. The skull mask, the black jeans, the dark t-shirt, the shadow of his massive body moving like desire come to life.
My mouth goes dry. My hands tremble as I clutch the camera hanging at my chest, but the thought of raising it feels wrong — almost blasphemous. This isn’t something meant to be captured. It’s meant to be felt.
My mind drifts to the memory of his voice, floating over the wind at the festival.
The way he said my name, the rough edge to it making my thighs tighten and my pussy slick with need.
I can imagine what it would feel like to hear him say it again, closer, his breath against my ear, his hand up my skirt.
I’m lost in my own head, dreaming of the things I would let this masked man do to me, when a branch snaps behind me. My breath catches, sharp and shallow.
“Please,” I murmur, not even sure what I’m asking for. “If you’re there…”
Something moves between the trees — slow, deliberate. A figure pulling free of the dark. Moonlight catches on bone. The wolf mask.
Him.
Every thought in my head scatters. I can’t tell if I’m afraid or relieved — maybe both.
He doesn’t speak at first. He just stands there, half in shadow, his chest rising and falling in time with mine. The space between us hums. It feels alive with need, desire, and something feral. When he finally steps forward, I feel it before I see it — the air tightening, my heartbeat stumbling.
The sound of his boots against the fallen leaves, the scent of his cologne and sweat on the breeze.
I can almost feel the heat of his body as if he were pressed up against me before he even touches my skin.
The ache between my thighs grows, a desperate need to be touched, to be satisfied.
I’ll bet he can smell my arousal from wherever he is in the shadows.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says. His voice is low, rough, the same voice that chased me through the woods mere hours ago. I shiver, but it’s not from the cold.
“I couldn’t stop,” I admit, barely a whisper. “I tried to go home, but—”
He tilts his head, the mask catching the moonlight. “But you didn’t,” he finishes for me.
I nod, throat too tight to speak.
He takes another step closer. The distance between us collapses until I can feel the warmth of him — solid, possessive, distinctly masculine, and dangerous. My pulse drums against the ribbon at my throat, and I know he can see it.
In my head, I imagine his hand closing over my pulse, pressing just enough to make me dizzy, to make me yield to his strength. My body aches with the desire to feel his skin on mine. His massive body caging mine in.
“Are you afraid?” he asks.
I should say yes because I should be afraid. Instead, what comes out is the truth I can barely admit to myself, “No.”
He moves closer still, and I step backward, my back meets the rough bark of a tree.
The night feels smaller now, caged around us.
His shadow falls over mine. My hands twitch at my side, fighting the urge to reach out and touch him and ensure this is all really happening.
I’ve created scenarios in my head like this, and I’m desperate to see who is underneath that mask.
“You’ve been looking for me,” he says. “All night.”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I admit.
He leans in, just enough that the edge of the wolf’s jaw grazes my hair. “Yes, you do. You just won’t admit it yet.”
My breath stumbles out. The world narrows to the space between us — his voice, his scent, the steady rhythm of his breath against my skin.
I can’t help that my brain automatically trails off to what his body would feel like fully pressed against mine, the things he would whisper in my ear, and tell me to do, what he wanted.
I can feel my body trembling and my knees going weak, but it isn’t from fear, it’s from anticipation.
I want this more than I can begin to explain, even to myself.
“I saw you,” I whisper. “At the fire. Watching me.”
“I’ve been watching you for a long time, Little Doe.”
Something in the way he says it makes my stomach twist, my thighs clench together desperate for friction to relieve the tension building in my center.
There’s recognition in his tone — familiarity, intimacy.
I know I’ve heard this voice before, but I can’t place it.
“Who are you?” I ask, even though part of me already knows what the answer will be.
He doesn’t reply, not with words at least. His gloved hand lifts — slow, deliberate — and brushes the edge of my mask. The contact is featherlight, but it steals my breath.
I’m desperate to feel his skin instead of this glove, but the anticipation is one in the same. His finger traces the outline of my mask, the curve of my jaw, pausing so delicately at my lips. Without thinking, I instinctively part them, my body aching for more. More contact. More heat. Just more.
He exhales, the sound deep and restrained.
“If you knew,” he says softly, “you might not let me touch you.”
“Then don’t tell me,” I say breathlessly, the words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
He bends closer to me now, and I can feel every ounce of restraint I had breaking and I call myself a little crazy.
I can feel his breath on my cheek, the promise of what is to come lingering between us.
I can feel how wet this is making me, everything I’m wearing soaked through, from sweat and from need.
The forest around us goes still — as if it's waiting. Even the wind holds its breath. When he finally closes the last inch between us, the world seems to tilt. Everything I thought I feared becomes something I want.
Something I need.