The Moonlight Dripping Red

"Desire is a bruise we press to see if it still hurts."

🩸🌹🩸

The next day arrived with too much light.

Amalia squinted against it as though it were personal, as if the sun itself had come to interrogate her. Her body was sore in strange ways, not from effort, but from restraint. Sleep had been shallow and feverish, drenched in half-formed dreams and unspent tension.

By noon, she'd texted one of her friend and asked what the plans were for the evening.

She needed distraction, something stupid, something loud. She needed noise that didn't sound like silk rustling or whispered filth curled in her ear.

By nightfall, she was dressed in a denim skirt, red lipstick, and the kind of crop top that demanded attention: bright, tight, deliberate. Her hair was pinned up in casual waves, though there was nothing casual about her reflection.

She looked like a woman begging to forget something.

The bar was warm with breath and music. Her friends were already tipsy when she arrived, waving and shouting as if nothing beneath the surface of the world had teeth.

She laughed when they laughed. Drank when they handed her drinks. Let the alcohol curl inside her like false courage.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed a man. He was tall, clean-shaven, strong jawline with a perfectly ironed shirt, and the kind of confidence that came from knowing women had said yes to him before.

He didn't hesitate.

He walked straight to her, introduced himself with a name she forgot instantly, and said something that was supposed to be clever. She laughed because she knew how. Not because it reached her.

His gaze dipped, then returned to her eyes. He leaned in and whispered:

📍"You want to get out of here?"

🌹 "No. But I do want to forget."

That was all he needed.

He reached for her hand with a kind of rehearsed urgency and led her through the throng of bodies and down the narrow hall toward the restroom. The door clicked shut behind them, and suddenly, everything was too quiet.

The bathroom was clean but cold. White light glared above, harsh and clinical, making the moment feel more like surgery than seduction.

He pushed her gently against the sink and kissed her. His mouth was warm, eager, and tasted of whiskey. His hands gripped her hips, sliding up beneath the hem of her skirt, moving quickly... too quickly. He didn't ask. He didn't hesitate and she let him.

She turned her face slightly, letting her cheek rest against the cool mirror behind her. Her eyes stared into her own reflection. She looked bored. Beautiful, but bored. Her eyes weren't glazed in lust, just fogged with distance.

He moaned softly into her neck, one hand fumbling with his belt, the other lifting her thigh. Her body let him in.

There was no foreplay, no pause, no moment of anticipation. He entered her in a rush, his hips slamming forward with a rhythm meant to impress more than to connect. His breathing grew louder. His grip tightened.

Amalia kept her eyes on herself. She didn't make a sound. She didn't move.

She just held the edge of the sink, white-knuckled and still, her body submitting without surrender.

He came quickly, gasping something incoherent, holding her tighter for a final thrust, then sagging slightly, like he expected her to fall with him into some blissful afterglow.

But she was still standing. Still untouched.

Still elsewhere.

He kissed her shoulder and whispered:

📍"That was… damn."

She looked at him in the mirror and gave the faintest of smiles.

🌹"I'm glad you enjoyed it" she said flatly.

She pulled her skirt down, smoothed it with graceful fingers, and stepped away. He was still tucking himself back into his jeans, flushed and smug.

Before he could speak again, she turned toward the door.

🌹"You're not a bad fuck. Just not the one I needed."

She opened the door and left the restroom.

She walked through the bar without looking back. Her heels struck the floor with precision, like periods at the end of unfinished sentences. No one noticed the tightness in her shoulders, the vacancy behind her eyes, or the way she moved, not with satisfaction, but with silence.

Outside, the night met her like a stranger. The wind slid against her skin, but it didn't cool the fire she'd been hoping to put out. It only reminded her how alive she wasn't. Her body had been used, pressed against tiles, filled with heat, breathless and bare but it hadn't been seen.

The ache was still there. And it was worse now because she had allowed herself to hope. That maybe, for a moment, desire could be scraped out by someone else's hands. That a man, faceless, eager could unearth what she had buried.

But he hadn't. He never stood a chance.

She climbed the stairs to her apartment, one hand trailing the railing as if it might anchor her to something real. The hallway smelled of dust and bleach. Her keys jingled like bells mourning a ceremony that never began.

She stepped inside.

Her shoes slipped off with no ceremony. Her bag hit the floor with a dull thud. She walked to the bedroom in a straight line, unbuttoning her blouse as she moved.

She undressed in silence.

When she sat at the edge of the bed, the sheets felt too clean. The air too still. She stared at her knees, parted slightly from habit, and let the numbness settle across her like a second skin.

She didn't cry. There was no anger left. No disgust. No regret. Just absence.

And through that stillness, through the quiet hum of a night that should have ended differently, a name moved like smoke.

Not the man's hands fumbling at her hips. Not the sweat-slick groan of someone finishing too fast. Not the breathless repetition of "baby" against her shoulder like a song she never asked to hear.

Only Liliana.

The way she spoke with teeth behind her lips. The way she hovered without touching, yet made Amalia feel marked. The way her words dripped cruelty and seduction in equal measure and still felt truer than anything whispered in a bathroom stall.

She lay back on the bed, her arm draped over her eyes, and exhaled through her teeth. Her skin still smelled like someone else. But it wasn't the scent she wanted.

What haunted her wasn't the man she'd just left behind.

It was the vampire who never touched her, yet made her body forget every man who ever had.

🩸🌹🩸

During the dialogue:

🌹 means Amalia

🩸means Liliana

📍means other people