Cal didn’t even reach the bottom of the stairs before he was tackled by a blur of limbs, perfume, and dramatic sighing.

  “Oh my God, Pride, you didn’t tell me he was cute.”

  Cal stumbled backward, narrowly avoiding a face-full of cleavage and a tumble down the staircase. The blur resolved into a person — maybe. Technically. They were tall and fluid, wearing something between a silk robe and a slip dress, cut high and low in ways that defied both physics and modesty. Their hair shimmered like candlelight, constantly shifting between styles as if they couldn’t decide who they wanted to seduce today.

  “Uh… hi?” Cal blinked. “Are you… another demon?”

  “Oh please,” they said, waving a delicate hand. “The demon. Lust, darling. But you can call me Lu. All my favorites do.”

  They winked.

  Pride appeared at the top of the stairs, arms crossed and amused. “I was going to wait until he finished brushing his teeth, but I suppose subtlety was too much to hope for.”

  Lu ignored him and turned back to Cal, looking him over like a rare wine label. “You poor thing. I can feel the loneliness radiating off you like microwaved leftovers. When’s the last time someone touched you?”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Cal shifted uncomfortably. “That’s… a little personal.”

  “Sweetheart, I’m Lust. Personal is kind of my whole thing.”

  Pride raised an eyebrow. “Ease up. He just started standing upright again.”

  Lu’s expression softened, ever so slightly. They reached out and touched Cal’s shoulder — not flirty this time, just… warm.

  “I’m not here to get you laid,” they said gently. “Well, not just that. I’m here to help you feel alive again. Desire isn’t just sex. It’s wanting something enough to reach for it.”

  Cal blinked. “You’re surprisingly profound for someone in thigh-highs.”

  Lu grinned. “I contain multitudes. And matching sets.”

  Later, Cal sat on the couch with a cup of overly sweet tea (Lu insisted it was an aphrodisiac — Cal suspected it was just hot Gatorade). The three of them — Cal, Pride, and Lu — sat in a triangle, the kind that felt less like an intervention and more like a slumber party with emotional stakes.

  “So what now?” Cal asked. “You help me feel sexy or something?”

  “Not sexy,” Lu said, draping a leg over the arm of the couch like a bored cat. “Desired. You’ve been invisible so long, you forgot how to want. Not just people — music, food, fun, life. We’re gonna fix that.”

  “Do I have to, like… go clubbing?”

  Lu made a gagging noise. “Ew, no. Baby steps. We start with a haircut, clean sheets, and that flirty barista who asked for your name three times last week.”

  Cal frowned. “You saw that?”

  Pride smirked. “We see everything. We live in the walls, remember?”

  Lu raised their cup. “To the first night of feeling again.”

  Cal clinked his cup against theirs, smiling for real for the first time in what felt like years.

  And for the first time in forever, he felt the faintest flicker of something he hadn’t dared feel in ages.

  Want.