The second time Sophia Reyes summoned the phenomenon deliberately, she waited until the small, witching hours when the city outside her window had finally exhaled into silence—2:17 a.m. by the glowing red digits on her bedside clock, the only sound the faint metallic tick of the radiator cooling in the hallway and the distant, irregular drip of melting ice from the eaves striking the Fire escape below.

She lay naked on top of the comforter because even the lightest cotton sheet now felt suffocating against her overheated skin; the room smelled faintly of the bergamot candle she had extinguished an hour earlier, its waxy ghost mingling with the sharper, animal scent rising from between her own parted thighs. Moonlight filtered through the half-lowered blinds in thin, cool bars that slid across her body like ghostly fingers—illuminating the faint gooseflesh that prickled along her arms, the slow rise and fall of her ribcage, the dark, glistening trail already seeping from her onto the sheets beneath her hips.

She spread her legs wider, knees falling open until the tendons on the insides of her thighs pulled taut and trembled; the cool air of the room kissed the slick, swollen folds of her cunt and made her gasp softly, the sound swallowed immediately by the stillness. One hand drifted down to cup herself first—palm pressing firmly against the hot, pulsing mound so she could feel her own heartbeat throbbing there—then two fingers parted her outer lips with deliberate slowness, exposing the slick inner petals to the air. She exhaled shakily at the sudden vulnerability of it, the way her clit—already engorged and standing proud—jerked visibly under the lightest brush of her fingertip.

Three fingers of her right hand slid inside her with almost no resistance, the wet, sucking sound obscenely loud in the quiet room; she curled them upward immediately, searching for that ridged, spongy place that always made her toes curl and her breath hitch. Her left hand found her left nipple, rolling it between thumb and forefinger until the sting blurred into pleasure, then pinching harder—hard enough that the sharp bloom of pain arrowed straight to her core and made her inner walls flutter greedily around her thrusting fingers.

She built the rhythm slowly at first, then faster, hips lifting off the mattress in small, helpless jerks; the wet friction of her palm grinding against her clit sent sparks skittering up her spine, her breathing turning ragged and shallow, each exhale carrying a tiny, involuntary whimper. She pictured Lucas Morales—not asleep this time, not dreaming—but awake, eyes open and dark with recognition, watching her from across the room with that same quiet intensity he used when tamping grounds or steaming milk, only now the focus was entirely on her: the way her thighs shook, the way her breasts rose and fell with each frantic breath, the obscene shine of arousal coating her fingers as they plunged in and out.