“What should we do?” Eve whispered timidly into the darkness. She couldn’t even see Milo anymore, but she hoped that he was hovering just out of reach, on the verge of crashing down against her waiting lips.

The bathroom light flickered back to life and Milo saw that Eve wanted him.

“Here, take one of these,” Milo instructed, handing her a plastic-wrapped morsel of some sort. She unwrapped it and smelled it—mint and vanilla. Some kind of dessert?

“I guess I wouldn’t mind a snack,” Eve allowed, obviously confused. She popped it into her mouth and chewed. It was good, and the brief pleasure of its taste stole focus from the pain in her head.

“It’s a puff pastry made with marijuana,” Milo explained plainly. “It’s the only painkiller in this entire house that won’t interact with the alcohol in your system.”

Eve spat out the tiny melted fragment of the pastry which remained in her mouth. “Milo!” she cried. “You drugged me!”

“Hardly,” Milo scoffed. He hunted behind the broken mirror, in the medicine cabinet, and extracted a length of gauze. “Can you believe it?” he wondered. “They broke their own actual mirror for this party.”

“They even purchased an actual coffin apparently,” Eve said, beginning to forget the pain she was in.

Milo grinned at her as he came close again, this time unraveling the length of gauze for her head. She absorbed every detail. His wig was askew now. His pupils were bright and black at the same time, and they looked into hers, connected. Milo’s body heat crackled through her like static and she responded with a deep breath.

She peered up at him, suddenly feeling naked without her glasses. She wanted his hands on her again. She wanted to arch against him and find his mouth and get slammed up against that door behind her.

Milo stared back down at her, blue eyes smoldering darkly, reading her mind, and then the light bulb sputtered and died again.

“Milo?” Eve said quietly.

“I’m here,” he answered.

“Maybe we need to find a better light,” Eve suggested. The marijuana was starting to hit. She felt better but slower, looser.

“No. Stay here,” Milo instructed her, and just hearing the words sapped away all Eve’s will to do otherwise.

The light flickered back on.

“Don’t move,” Milo said, leaning forward and wrapping the gauze around her head.

“I won’t,” Eve whispered, and Milo slowed, looked at her more seriously.

“What are you up to?” he asked, intrigued.

“Nothing,” Eve assured him. She was almost certain that she meant it.

Milo wrapped the length of gauze around her head twice. Eve blinked up at him. “Thank you,” she said, her voice unintentionally sultry.

Milo grimaced with frustration and stopped wrapping again. “Stop it,” he commanded her, as if she was really doing something and she knew exactly what it was. “You’re happy with Cliff. I know you are. So don’t mess with me, Evelyn.”

Eve colored slightly at the name. She loved that he and he alone called her Evelyn. “Of course I’m happy with Cliff,” she agreed staunchly. “Aren’t you?”

Milo swallowed. “I’m not with Cliff,” he said.

“Neither am I, technically,” Eve replied. She wasn’t sure why she said it, except that it was a good comeback. “No one’s with him. You know that.”

“Why would you think that I know that?” he wondered.

“Please.” Eve’s hands threaded up to Milo’s and grasped the bandage. “You came to Galen’s birthday party.”

The day they never talked about. The one day where it was obvious what was really happening between Cliff and Milo.

Not colleagues. Not “besties.” Exes.

That was the real truth.

Milo stared down at her, and finally, gave one small tick of a nod. “Okay,” he confessed. “Cliff told you?”

“A long time ago,” Eve answered. “We didn’t talk about it much, but—I knew.”

“I didn’t know you weren’t with him,” Milo said. His eyes traveled over Eve’s dramatically lit features.

The overhead light sputtered again.

The darkness around them seemed to coil and bind. Eve sensed Milo’s nearness and her neck went slack, her lips cracking open for his. A rough mouth descended onto hers, and big arms crushed against her shoulders. They kissed.

The light bulb fizzed and popped on again. Milo shoved a hand through his wig, ripping it off his head. Eve’s hands cupped against Milo’s face, cradling him as he ravaged her. She forgot the light. Forgot the sink. Forgot the bleeding scrape in her head and the Halloween party bumping and grinding along on the other side of this door.

When his mouth finally tore from hers, it traced a warm, dizzying path from her lips and jaw to her earlobe. His paws climbed up into her hair and the bandages fell away. She didn’t even remember the pain anymore. Her ass slid up over the sink and her thighs parted, grasping Milo’s waist. She was vaguely aware of his hands tugging at the laces in the back of her corset, struggling to free her. Her mouth found his again and forgot about the other senses. Her world melted away.

Milo’s fingernails dragged over her skin and crept into her hair from behind, giving it an affectionate tug. The lightbulb sputtered off and covered them in darkness again. Eve moaned as if she understood intimately, innately, what the darkness meant for them. Milo’s mouth feathered across her nipple and Eve’s moan lifted into a needy whinny as the mouth suckled. Fingers went between her legs and her hips bucked forward without her consent.

“Yes,” she sighed hungrily. The sudden sensation of warm, smooth, hard skin running against the inside of her thigh caused her eyes to bulge and brighten. His cock was out. He had slipped it from his pants and it was playing naked under her crinoline skirt. Her mouth filled with saliva. She was grateful that she was still wearing sheer white tights, because in her feverish state of mind, she might have let him enter her with bare skin.

“Do you know how long it’s been?” Milo wondered roughly, coming up to whisper into her ear. His thumbs grated over her nipples as naturally and casually. Eve’s lips opened, folding slightly into her mouth with the intense pleasure of his calloused touch. She didn’t know what he meant, but she still wanted to know the answer to his question anyway.

His rubbing abated, and Eve was able to collect her thoughts again. “How long has it been?” she cooed up at him. She felt boneless in his arms. He could do whatever he wanted to her right now and she could take it. She wanted him to peel off these tights. She wanted him to.

“Ever since the day we met,” he answered his own half unspoken question, and the light bulb extinguished yet again. His mouth buried itself against hers and Eve reeled, pressing her hips forward, offering up the drenched crotch of her pantyhose to him. His fingers twisted around the fabric and wrenched it down in one swift, brutal gesture, pulling them completely free of her legs.

In another beat, his cock, pounding like a heart, was pressed against her entrance, and in the next, he slid into her fully. Her muscles stretched and quivered around his engorged member. She couldn’t stop trembling. Everything was humming, her skin, her blood, her hot spots. She didn’t know if it was the pot pastry and the alcohol and the head wound or if it was just the effect of finally having Milo inside her, but she was on fire. Electric, and every bit as mindless as a real zombie bride.

Milo’s strong arms wrapped around her and yanked her off the sink, pulling her against his warm chest, and her trembling subsided. He kissed her deeply, passionately, the way that lovers at the gallows might kiss. At the same time, he pumped into her like a man on a mission, and the measured rhythm merged their bodies together, as one organism. Her arms wound around his neck and gripped him for dear life. His tongue snaked up her neck. Sex with Cliff always felt beautiful, but this was another beast altogether. This was primal.

The light bulb came back on for what seemed like the millionth time, catching their shattered reflections gyrating madly together, filled with the fever of a mutually indulged fantasy. Milo slammed her against the bathroom door and took her pantyhose—still dangling from his right hand—and wove them around her wrists, lifting her arms and stringing her to the robe hooks on the back of the door. He let her bare feet drift to the ground, arms stretched high overhead, breasts and torso illuminated completely. Eve was wearing nothing but transparent, dirty crinoline now, revealing her bare thighs and the provocative sprig of her bush.

Milo took a step back, surveyed her, then moved his hand over her face, down her neck, over her breasts and down her torso. “The day we met,” Milo said thickly, surveying her. “And you were hungover and pissy because you had lost your job the day before.”

“I was hungover and pissy because you were almost an hour late,” Eve snapped automatically. Then it hit her. “You remembered,” she breathed, and Milo smiled at her—a real smile. A soft, fleeting thing she didn’t know she’d ever see again. She felt blessed as he descended on her, raining new kisses, and the light bulb snapped off just as Milo hit his knees and his lips crested the waistband of her crinoline skirt. The elastic peeled away from her hips and, in the absolute darkness, she wasn’t sure if he was pulling on it with his teeth or his fingers. But she knew the next sensation—wet and strong, but small—was his tongue slithering into her snatch, finding her clit eagerly, passionately. His tongue ground away at her and she whimpered, arms trembling to break free from the pantyhose. But she couldn’t. All she could do was dangle in the air and take the pleasure.

Milo slung her thighs over his shoulders and settled between her legs as for a gourmet meal. His mouth moved over her with slow, certain purpose, letting his bristly chin and wayward tongue work her every nerve ending into a froth before finally triggering her to explode. As she came, the light bulb came on with her, bathing them in its harsh light. She screamed as if she was being murdered and yanked on the pantyhose until those nylons were supporting the majority of her weight. She bucked and slammed her hips backwards into the door. She howled and trembled and her juices coursed down Milo’s chin.

“That’s my girl,” Milo murmured from between her thighs, husky and satisfied. “I knew you’d give it up to me.”

Milo stood and his eyes trailed her up and down. He hadn’t undressed at all, unless you counted the open zipper, and he still hadn’t given up his own climax, either. “I can’t come inside you,” he reminded her, sounding thoughtful and remorseful. Eve, strung up and trembling, nerves fried, knew how he felt. She felt like a crack addict right now, except it wasn’t crack at all. What she needed, what was making her shudder like this, was Milo. Needing Milo. Needing to be filled to the brim with him.

“Until we tell Cliff about this,” he went on, stepping closer, grasping the base of his cock and working his hand over its polished length, “I think I should only be coming outside of your body.”

Eve tensed with anticipation as his jerking motions became faster, as he stepped closer still, until the tip of his prick was pressed directly onto her bare stomach. He dripped pre-cum onto her as it all worked to a head inside him. She crushed her lips together and wilted against him, physically aching for his cum to be on her skin.

“Oh, Milo,” she moaned, and his eyes flicked to her, startled by the throaty passion of her voice.

“Say it again,” he breathed, fist pumping harder.

“Milo,” she called. Her hips bucked against him, her eyes searching his, and his threshold broke, going into spasms over her as his pearls spilled down her belly. He buried his face into her hair and made nonsensical grunts of release until his prick ran dry.

Milo exhaled at length and brought a hand up to cup Eve’s face. They were both utterly spent. The thought of opening this bathroom door and facing the party beyond was horrifying, but they had little choice.

“We should go,” Milo murmured, kissing Eve’s neck calmly. Any onlooker would have assumed that they’d been sleeping together for month already. The couple reluctantly separated and Milo ducked to collect her untied corset from the floor, where it had fallen after he’d torn the laces to hell. Now he tugged it up over Eve’s bare legs, cupping her torso again, and twisted her wordlessly, quickly setting to work on tightening all the laces again. “We don’t want to get in trouble. I’m sure the good people of the Baker Street Haunted House Party didn’t intend their bathrooms to be put to this use.”

“Then they shouldn’t have posted fliers,” Eve replied without skipping a beat. She tugged at the hose still suspending her arms overhead. “You knotted this pretty good.”

“Ah, shit. Yeah. How do you feel about everyone on Baker Street seeing your ass?” His eyes turned over the hosiery by which Eve was suspended, and he stuck his hand into his belt and extracted a small utility knife, sawing easily through the length of nylon. Eve’s hands came immediately free, but she scowled at Milo nonetheless.

“I can’t go out there like this,” she informed him hotly. “I’ll be assaulted. You can see my bush.”

“Fair point.” Milo shook his head.

He looked her over and sighed, rolling his eyes. The fact that he didn’t give her a sassy comeback let her know that it was true. He shrugged off his unbuttoned flannel and laced it gently underneath her crinoline skirt. Eve watched in disbelief as he first let the front fold down over her mons, then tucked and tied it around the back, so that her ass was hidden too… and it looked like she was wearing a big, red plaid diaper.

Eve pouted up at him wordlessly, and Milo grinned. “You could’ve worn underwear,” he reminded her cheerfully. “And at least you still have your one shoe, right?” Eve pursed her lips and Milo shook his head at her. He expelled one heavy, long sigh. “Get on my back,” he grumbled.

Eve let out a little yip and hopped, clapping her hands together. Milo scowled at the gesture. Now that all his sexual frustration had come arcing and spiraling out of his body, he felt almost sane again. Almost his good, grumpy, old-man self.

“I’m only doing this because there could be broken glass or vomit or something,” he informed her staunchly, turning and collecting her across his broad back. “Let’s go find Skye and Cliff and get the hell out of here. I don’t care what anyone says. ”

Eve wrapped her arms around Milo’s strong neck and melted into his back. She didn’t care what anyone said, either.