1. My Hotel’s Across The Street -Finn
One
My Hotel’s Across The Street -Finn
The bar’s closing call had already begun when she slid onto the stool beside me.
No small talk, no names—just the slow, unhurried sweep of her eyes from my mouth to my hands wrapped around the glass.
Her edges were sharp: a black leather skirt riding high on pale thighs, red lipstick that looked like it had a rap sheet, and eyes that said, Let’s not pretend this is romantic.
“Another round?” the bartender asked.
She answered before I could, slowly licking her lips. “Two shots of tequila and whatever he’s having—but make his a double.”
I raised an eyebrow. She tilted her head, a silent calculation in her eyes: Worth the trouble, or not?
We didn’t speak until the shots were gone. Her fingers found the inside of my thigh—a slow graze at first, almost accidental, then her nails caught, a deliberate scrape that made me set my glass down.
“Your place or mine?” her voice barely cleared the bass line thumping through the sound system.
“My hotel’s across the street.”
The negotiation was over.
* * *
The door had barely clicked shut before she shoved me against the wall.
Her mouth found mine—teeth first, catching my lower lip, followed by her tongue.
Her nails raked down my chest through my shirt, and I felt the drag of them even after her hands had moved on. Salt. Lime. Something faintly copper.
She broke the kiss only long enough to yank her top over her head—a black lace bra, nothing delicate, just enough to frame her breasts before she reached behind herself and unhooked it without ceremony.
My hands found her hips and pulled her against me, letting her feel exactly where things stood.
She found my belt. The buckle clattered open as if it had personally offended her.
“Condoms?” Her hand was already moving against me through my jeans.
“Top pocket of the duffel.”
She pushed off me and stalked toward the bed.
I followed, shedding my shirt, kicking off shoes, pulse hammering in my throat.
By the time I reached the doorway, she’d stepped out of her skirt and left it pooled on the floor—nothing left but black lace panties and those knee-high boots she hadn’t bothered to remove.
My dick got harder. God, I was going to fuck the smug out of her.
She dropped to her knees without preamble.
No teasing. No coy glances up through her lashes.
Wet heat, suction, her tongue dragging slow and deliberate along the underside while her hand twisted at the base in perfect counterpoint.
Hollowed cheeks, an occasional scrape of teeth that made my hips jerk.
She hummed low in her throat—a sound of genuine satisfaction, as if she had nowhere else to be—and I hissed through my teeth. I tangled my fingers in her hair.
She slapped my hand away. Hard.
“Don’t.” The word came out muffled but unmistakable. “Just stand there and take it.”
So I did.
My thighs hit the edge of the mattress. I grabbed it, released, and grabbed again.
She maintained her pace, neither speeding up nor slowing down.
At some point, I muttered something—I don’t know what—and she completely ignored it.
When she finally took me all the way down, I lost awareness of the room.
She stayed there, swallowed, then pulled off slowly, and the cold air hit me like a slap.
She stood, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and shoved me onto the bed.
I landed hard. She climbed over me, her tits swinging into my face before she righted herself and settled onto my hips.
One slow grind. The lace, soaked through, warm and slick against me, and she watched my jaw go slack as if she’d been expecting exactly that.
“Hands above your head.”
I obeyed. She liked that. She dragged herself across my chest, leaned down, and bit the side of my neck—hard enough to bruise—before soothing the mark with a slow slide of her tongue that pulled an unplanned groan from me.
“You stay right there,” she murmured, her voice a low rasp against my skin. “You’re mine until I come; after that, you can finish anywhere but inside me. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She tore the condom packet open with her teeth, rolled it down with two efficient fingers—pausing once at the base to watch my stomach tighten—then reached down, lined me up, and dropped her hips in one long, slick motion.
Fuck.
Tight. Hot. So wet I could hear it. There was no time to adjust. Simply sharp, rolling thrusts, hips snapping forward.
She set a punishing pace, the sound of her slick skin against mine cutting through the noise she made taking what she wanted.
Her palms ground into my chest, nails dragging deliberate lines every time she bottomed out.
When I bucked up into her without thinking, she dropped her full weight onto my hips and went completely still, holding me there, letting me feel exactly how close she was. “I said, ‘Stay still.’”
So I stayed still.
Her rhythm built—faster, harder—the bed frame knocking against the wall in a way that would have embarrassed me under other circumstances.
She leaned forward, chasing something, adjusting until she found it—and when she did, she didn’t share it with me, just took it, her breath going sharp and irregular.
Her hand dropped between us. I watched her face and couldn’t tell if she’d forgotten I was there or if that was exactly the point.
She started clenching around me in rhythmic pulses that nearly broke my discipline entirely.
“Fuck—don’t move—don’t you fucking move,”
I didn’t.
She came with a low, broken sound—shuddering through it in slow, grinding circles, her thighs trembling against my hips, fingers finding my shoulders and digging in as if she needed an anchor.
When the last pulse faded, she lifted off me, peeled the condom away, and wrapped her hand around me—still slick, still throbbing. Two firm strokes, then she took me into her mouth for three slow, deliberate pulls.
That was it.
I spilled over her tongue in thick, hot pulses, my whole body locking up.
She swallowed unhurried, as if finishing a drink she’d ordered for herself.
What she didn’t swallow, she let trace her chin, a slow, deliberate spill.
She released me with one last lick, dragged flat across the head, that made my hips buck off the mattress.
She sat back on her heels and surveyed her work with an expression that had nothing to do with me—the smile of someone tallying a private score.
The only sounds were my own ragged breathing and the rustle of denim as she stood to collect her clothes. I lay flat on my back, chest heaving, my skin tingling where her nails had scored me, the taste of copper sharp on my tongue.
“You’re not staying,” I said. Not really a question.
She glanced over her shoulder, already stepping into her skirt. “You thought I might?”
Fair.
She zipped her boots, checked her phone.
“Solid nine out of ten.” She wasn’t talking to me. “Would fuck again if I’m ever back in town.”
The door clicked shut behind her, and that was that.
I stared at the ceiling, pulse still thudding, and thought:
Yeah. Worth every second of the hangover.
* * *
I woke to the phone buzzing against the nightstand, head full of wet concrete, mouth a mixture whiskey and her. The sheets still carried the smell of sex and whatever she’d been wearing.
I grabbed the phone. Fiona’s name on the screen.
“Yeah?”
My jaw went slack the second I heard her.
“Finn—oh God, you have to help me!”
Panic. Her breath came fast. In the background, glass shattered, followed by a man’s muffled shout, the sound bleeding through the line as if it were coming through a wall.
“Fiona, slow down. What’s going on?”
“They’re saying it’s a riot, but it’s—” A sob tore through her words. “People are attacking each other. They’re biting—”
My mouth went dry.
“Biting?”
“I saw a woman—she—” A shaky breath. “Finn… a woman just—she just bit a man’s throat… She just… tore it out.”
I told myself she had to be joking. But that wasn’t Fiona.
Another crash through the phone. Closer.
“Fiona, where are you?”
“At the hospital. I came in early and—” Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. “They locked the doors.”
A sharp bang ripped through the line.
She screamed.
“Fiona!”
“They’re trying to get in!”
I already had my jeans in my hands; dread settled in my chest.
“Find a room and lock it. Barricade the door if you can. I’m coming to get you.”
“Finn—”
Dead air.
I stared at the silent screen. Half a second. Maybe less.
I dressed in whatever my hands found first. The hangover, a dull pressure behind my eyes, was still there, but my body had already stopped caring.
My handgun lay on the small table beside the bed. I picked it up, checked the chamber, and tucked it into the small of my back.
* * *
I pulled the door shut behind me just as my phone rang again.
“Fiona?”
Her voice came through in a whisper, so quiet I nearly missed it.
“Finn… I made it out.”
My grip tightened on the phone. “Out of the hospital?”
“Yes.” Her breath trembled. “I’m in the parking garage, the underground one across the street. Hiding in the security office on the third level.”
I could hear her holding herself together by a thread.
“I sent you a pin with my location,” she said, her voice trembling. “Can you get to me?”
I didn’t even look. “I’m coming. Stay quiet and keep that door locked.”
“I did.”
“Good. Nobody gets in until you hear my voice. Nobody.”
A pause. Longer than it needed to be.
“Finn…is this happening everywhere?”
The sirens outside answered for me.
“Stay off the phone,” I said. “Don’t make a sound.”
The line went dead.
I shoved the phone into my pocket and headed for the elevator.
* * *
The doors opened on chaos.
The noise hit me like a wall before the doors had even finished opening, the lobby packed.
Every seat was taken, every inch of floor claimed by bodies pressed three deep against the front desk, where a clerk held both palms up, saying words nobody was listening to.
I saw a man in a business suit with his phone crushed to one ear, shouting to be heard over the din.
Near the couches, a woman had folded in on herself, face in her hands, the crowd flowing around her like water.
The television above the desk was turned up loud enough to rattle, but all I could make out was the anchor’s silent mouth and the red emergency banner crawling across the bottom of the screen.
EMERGENCY ALERT
“What the hell is going on?” someone yelled at the front desk.
“We don’t know yet, sir.” The clerk’s hands shook against the counter.
Near the entrance, a woman stood perfectly still in the middle of the noise, eyes glassy, voice flat, repeating the same words like a skipping record.
“They shut down the subway. They shut down the subway.”
I stood there a second longer than I should have.
A citywide shutdown. That wasn’t a riot. Riots don’t close cities. My mind supplied a list of things that did, and I shoved the thought down before it could take root.
I pushed through the crowd toward the doors and stepped outside.
The cold hit first as the sounds caught up—sirens, and somewhere down the block a single gunshot cracked through the morning air.
Silence.
Then screaming.
I pulled my jacket tight and moved.
* * *
I quickly realized I wouldn’t reach Fiona by car.
Traffic was gridlocked in every direction, vehicles abandoned mid-turn, doors ajar. A delivery truck blocked the intersection ahead, its rear doors swinging loose. Packages lay scattered across the asphalt, their cardboard darkened and wet, and a long drag mark disappeared into the nearest alley.
I stared at it for two full seconds.
Killing the engine, I grabbed my backpack—knife, emergency kit—then pulled up the pin Fiona had sent: four blocks to the east.
I climbed out of the car and slammed the door. The handgun pressed solid against the small of my back, beneath my jacket. Before moving, I looked at the drag mark one more time.
Whatever had left it had pulled someone heavy. The mark was wide and uneven—the width of a body being dragged—and it ended at the alley mouth in a dark, still-wet stain. Thin white lines flanked it on both sides where fingernails had scraped against the asphalt.
The first block was a blur of someone else’s panic. People shoved past in both directions, mouths open, eyes unfocused. A woman stood frozen on the sidewalk while a man pulled at her arm—she wouldn’t move, eyes fixed somewhere behind me.
From a side street, a car alarm screamed. Beneath it, another sound—wet and heavy.
The second block had gone quiet; it had nothing to do with calm.
Six people pressed flat against the brick wall of a dry cleaner, none willing to step past the corner. One man looked up as I approached.
“Hey—don’t. Turn back.”
“What’s down there?”
His eyes darted to the street beyond, then to me. “Something tore into a guy. Right there on the sidewalk.” His jaw worked.
The woman beside him had both hands locked on his arm. “It didn’t stop,” she said. “Not even when the screaming stopped.”
From the next block: a scream, high and raw, cut short. Then a wet, gurgling rasp. Then nothing.
Two blocks to go.
I drew the handgun and carefully rounded the corner.
The sidewalk ahead glistened dark and wet.
A man lay crumpled against a dumpster, his abdomen open, entrails spilled across the concrete in dark threads.
His mouth hung open, eyes fixed on the sky, still wet, still catching the pale morning light.
Steam rose from the cavity of his chest in the cold air. Thin. Like the last of him leaving.
I’d seen combat turn men inside out, but this wasn’t an IED.
His ribs were snapped outward, as if pulled by something.
The flesh was torn away in furrows so deep I could have fit my fingers inside them.
My hand started to move, some part of me needing to make it make sense, and I had to physically pull it back.
This wasn’t combat. This was consumption.
I stepped around the body, pressing against the wall, scanning every doorway, window, and shadow deep enough to conceal someone. A thin, dark line ran from the body to the storm drain. A second later, the smell reached me—metallic and almost rancid, thick enough to taste.
The street ahead lay empty, devoid of movement. After the last two blocks, that stillness was more unnerving than any threat.
I checked my phone; the red pin, one block out. The parking garage entrance should be just past the next intersection. Fiona was somewhere inside.
I breathed through my mouth, but it offered no relief.
Finger resting along the trigger guard, eyes constantly moving, I tried to ignore the steam rising from the body behind me, curling in the cold air like something ordinary.
Like coffee or a breath. Ten years, and I had never once needed to steel myself to move forward. I moved forward.
One block.
Get to Fiona.