Page 2 of The Baker’s Shadow

My shadow-soul pulls toward the darkness. I haven’t tasted a vintage this complex in centuries. The virgin offers survival, an easy option, her lavender scent a safety. Fuck. This new scent offers oblivion.

I want it now.

In a flurry of my own fucked-up desires, back between the buildings I move, this time on the ground, my steps silent on the dry pavement. I don’t take care to keep to the shadows as the delight of desperateness drives me.

The sign, The Daily Bread, flickers under a dying light bulb, flashes of peeling paint, chipped wood show repairs left undone.

The front window of the bakery glows with a dull warm, yellow light that barely spills onto the empty pavement. No one else is awake, just this woman, her aura calling out to me, making me forget the delights of virgin flesh.

“Damn it.” My voice sounds like dry leaves skittering on pavement. I hate myself for what I am about to do.

The door doesn’t resist me as if it knows better. The lock clicks open like a throat swallowing, and I’m inside before the sound dies.

The storefront is clean with empty shelves that wait in the dark for produce, and I taste the ghost of tomorrow’s bread on my tongue. That’s hours away. Right now, this place belongs to her grief, and I’m here to feast on it.

Her scent yanks me deeper. Not the floral bullshit of the tourist, this is richer. Flour dust and salt with yeast blooming in warm dark places, and my mouth waters as my body hardens.

I slip into the kitchen and let the shadows eat me. She’s there with her back to me. And fuck, she’s not what I expected.

Younger than the weight she carries with the curves of experience and love of food. Her hair is a messy knot at her nape, exposing the vulnerable stretch of neck that makes my teeth ache. The apron hangs crooked on her frame, tied in a lopsided bow that’s come half undone, one string trails down her spine like an invitation.

But it’s her body that locks every muscle, every instinct into place in my aching body, naked fresh from hell ready for fucking.

When she leans into the dough, driving her weight forward, the heavy fabric of her skirt molds to the full shape of her thighs, then whispers loose again when she rocks back. The motion is hypnotic.

I count her heartbeats in the silence, sixty-two per minute, slow and exhausted. My own pulse is triple that, hammering like fists on a door desperate to get inside.

She’s working at the edge of the light. A single bulb flickers overhead, struggling, casting her in amber for a stuttering second before it gives up and lets the dark reclaim her. She could move closer to it. Could flood this space with fluorescent certainty.

But she doesn’t.

She’s chosen the margin. The threshold between seen and unseen. She’s half-disappeared herself already, kneading that dough in the place where shadows start to win.

A violent spike of hunger claws up my throat. My hands clench tight, claws piercing my own palms until I feel the hot trickle of blood. My tail whips free from my back, cutting through the air with a sound like silk tearing.

But I don’t act. Don’t send out the sleeping breath that would drop her where she stands.

Because her thoughts hit me like a fist to the sternum.

...so tired... God, I am so tired... just want to feel something other than this...

The craving shifts. Mutates into something I don’t recognize. It’s want.

Her head tilts, ever so slightly. The way prey does when it senses the predator but can’t place the direction.

Flour dust clings to her cheekbone in a pale smear. A few wisps of brown hair have escaped her bun, curling against the damp skin at her temple. She’s looking into the shadows where I’m standing.

“Don’t look,” I whisper, though the words never leave my throat. I don’t want her to see me, not the leathery span of wings folded against my spine, not the too-many joints in my fingers, not the eyes that glow like banked coals. I’m the nightmare mothers warn their daughters about. The reason virgins triple-check their locks.

I brace for the flood. The sharp spike of terror that should lance through her the moment her eyes adjust and she sees. I’m ready for her to scream, to run, to grab for the bread knife on the counter.

But her heartbeat stays steady. That void in her chest just keeps echoing, loud and relentless with each beat. She hasn’t called out. Hasn’t moved. The pulse at her throat drums its exhausted rhythm, and there’s no fear in it. None.

Fuck.

The hunger sharpens into curiosity. The kind that’s gotten my kind killed throughout history. What would it be like to touch someone who doesn’t flinch? To feed from someone who isn’t running? To be wanted instead of endured?

She turns back to the dough. Dismisses whatever instinct made her look. Her arms resume their rhythm of push, fold, turn, and the motion pulls her skirt tighter across her hips with each forward rock. The candle on the far counter gutters, sending shadows skittering across the walls. Heat rolls off the brick ovens in waves, turning the air thick and suffocating.