I wanna eat that booty so fucking bad lemme sniff that pole ngh
New suit got me wilding out
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I wanna eat that booty so fucking bad lemme sniff that pole ngh
New suit got me wilding out

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Trying to sleep in the UK but its over 35 degrees celcius with an almost 50% humidity turning your room into a tobeys carvery kitchen with you being the probably expired genetically modified turkey cooking away in the millennial oven that collects electrical hazards like its a competition..
ONE-SHOT
.°Ëâ§ pairing: james cook x fem!reader .°Ëâ§ summary: Cook had spent two years wanting her and calling it love because love sounded better than obsession. She didnât want him back. Not properly. Not enough. Not in the way heâd decided he deserved after every glance, every laugh, every moment she let him close without letting him in. Then the One Wish Willow ended up in his hands, promising one wish, one change, one chance to make the world fair in the only way Cook cared about. If she wouldnât choose him, heâd choose for her.
Because the wish didnât grant him love. It granted him obedience.
.°Ëâ§ wc: 33.3k
.°Ëâ§ a/n: the fic iâve been calling incel x yandere has officially become my magnum opus. i saw obsession on the 26th and havenât stopped thinking about it since, so naturally i had to write a crossover fic. i did take the liberty of changing where they work from a music store to a bowling alley/arcade because it felt more dynamic. apologies for the long paragraphs, normally i would have more separation but tumblr's stupid 1,000 paragraph block rule squashed it. iâll be taking a short writing break after this to work on the joc library, help co-host a little writing event for jackâs birthday, gauge interest for a shawn zine, and finally get through my manuscript edits because iâm behind on everything lol. huge shoutout to beany @pastabillities and ria @remmickstalker for beta reading this behemoth, youâre the best!! and thank you to abhi for once again making me a killer banner. i love it so much. okay, enjoy the fic!!
.°Ëâ§ warnings: dead dove: do not eat, noncon/dubcon due to supernatural coercion, mind control/forced devotion, graphic violence, murder, blood and gore, major injury, stalking, obsessive/yandere behavior, incel mindset, gaslighting and manipulation, toxic possessive relationship, jealousy and possessiveness, emotional abuse, sexual coercion, piv, rough sex, choking, slapping, biting, unprotected sex, oral (giving/receiving), spit kink, cumplay/facial, Cook sucks
.°Ëâ§ AO3 / MASTERLIST
Cook had built a whole love story around a version of her that had never existed.
People wrote songs about wanting like it was all aching and sweetness, all late-night phone calls, stupid smiles and wanting to be better because someone lovely had looked at you twice. That was bullshit. Wanting her felt less like romance and more like a bad habit he couldnât quit, something hot and mean lodged under his ribs, fed by every laugh she gave someone else and every smile she wasted like it didnât cost him anything to watch.
Kingpinâs wore its neon like cheap jewelry: loud, shabby, and fooling absolutely no one. The sign did most of the lying from the car parkâred glow, gold letters, the i swapped for a bowling pin wearing a crooked little crown, like the building fancied itself glamorous instead of scuzzy and embalmed in fryer grease. One of the bulbs over the front door flickered when it rained, and the apostrophe in Kingpinâs buzzed loud enough to hear from the smoking area if the wind blew right. Gareth kept saying heâd get it fixed. Gareth also kept saying Cook was on his last warning, so nobody took his promises seriously.
Inside, Kingpinâs was worse where the neon couldnât blur it pretty. Louder too. Bowling balls cracked down lanes with a violence people cheered for. Arcade machines spat tinny little victory songs at kids with sticky fingers. Prize tickets curled out in cheap pink strips like paper tongues, and the claw machines glowed blue over stuffed animals nobody won unless their parents were willing to be financially ruined by a plush frog with one wonky eye. The carpet was purple and orange but ugly enough to count as workplace abuse, patterned in swirls that hid stains until the lights hit them wrong. The air smelled of chips, lager, warm plastic, shoe spray, and the sugary cleaning stuff Gareth bought in bulk because he thought tropical blast meant sanitary.
Cook loved it there in the way a person could love a place that deserved to be condemned. It was grimy, bright and tacky. It gave him somewhere to be loud, somewhere to lean, grin, flirt, steal chips off peopleâs plates, vanish for smoke breaks, and stroll back in twenty minutes later like he hadnât just been dodging work. Kingpinâs suited him because nobody expected polish from a bloke working shoe rental at a bowling alley, and Cook had always been better when expectations were already in the gutter. He was meant to be spraying returned shoes when he caught himself watching her again. Not watching, heâd say, if anyone asked. Looking. Existing with eyes. Perfectly normal thing, having eyes. Couldnât help where they went. Except he could. He knew he could because every few minutes he dragged them away, told himself not to be a fucking creep, and found her again anyway.
She was behind the prize counter, restocking sweets into the glass case, Kingpinâs polo tucked badly into her jeans, name badge askew because the pin had been broken for two weeks. Birthday glitter clung to the side of her face from some kidâs party crown, catching blue from the nearest claw machine whenever she turned. Her hair kept slipping forward when she bent, and she kept pushing it back with the same impatient motionânot thinking about it, not knowing Cook had noticed enough times that the noticing had started to irritate him.
He knew what drink she bought on break. Knew she hated the left register because the drawer jammed unless you hip-checked it. Knew she skipped the third song on his driving playlist every single time and pretended it was because it was shit, not because it reminded her of a bad night out. Knew she took the long way around the bar when drunk men crowded it. Knew she smiled at old women even when they complained about prices. Knew she checked her phone more when Ryan was on shift. That last one pissed him off. He told himself noticing wasnât weird if you noticed because you cared. That was what romance was supposed to be, wasnât it? Paying attention. Remembering things. Knowing the little details everyone else missed and pretending it was sweet instead of evidence youâd been looking too long.
Girls liked that in films, didnât they? Some quiet, devoted prick knowing their coffee order and the book they mentioned once and the song they hummed under their breath. Some sad-eyed bastard remembering every tiny detail and getting rewarded for it in the end because apparently obsession was romantic as long as the bloke kept his mouth shut and looked tortured doing it. But when Cook knew things, suddenly it was creepy. Suddenly it was too much. Suddenly it was, Cook, why do you know my work schedule?
As if she didnât keep giving him reasons. As if she didnât smile at him over the prize counter, steal chips off his tray, laugh at his filthy jokes like she knew exactly where his mind would go and let it go there anyway. As if she didnât lean past him behind the counter and press herself close enough for him to feel the heat of her through that stupid Kingpinâs polo, then act like he was the problem for noticing. As if she didnât laugh.
That was what got him, really. The laughing. She laughed at him like it cost her nothing, like it didnât crawl under his skin and sat there, hot and stupid, even humiliating. Like she could throw little crumbs of warmth around, let a bloke start starving for them, then blink all innocent when he came looking for the whole fucking meal.
âAre you planning to stare until the shoes clean themselves?â she asked without looking up.
Cook leaned his hip against the counter and gave the shoe spray a lazy shake. âIâm supervising.â
âYouâre loitering.â
âSame thing with authority.â
âYou donât have authority.â
âIâve got presence.â
âYouâve got a pile of wet shoes and Gareth doing his angry walk.â
Cook glanced over. Gareth was, in fact, coming out of the office with his head forward and his shoulders tense, which meant someone was about to get blamed for something that probably was Cookâs fault. Cook straightened without actually moving away from her counter. âYou worried about me getting sacked?â
âIâm worried Iâll have to do your job when you do.â
âThatâs love.â
âThatâs self-preservation.â
âYouâre flirting again.â
âIâm warning you before Gareth does.â
âLove it when you get bossy.â
She shut the sweet drawer with her hip and looked at him then, eyes narrowed, mouth trying not to smile. âYouâre unbearable.â
âBut you bear me.â
âBarely.â
âStill counts.â
She shook her head and turned back to the prize case, but the corner of her mouth stayed lifted. There. See. What was he supposed to do with that?
Ryan came through the staff door carrying a crate of bottled drinks, already looking tired of Cook before Cook had even said anything. âGarethâs asking why the shoes arenât done. I told him I told you ten minutes ago.â
Cook didnât look away from the prize counter. âSnitch.â
Ryan followed his line of sight and gave a short, humorless laugh. âYouâre not subtle.â
âSubtletyâs for virgins and tax fraud.â
Ryan set the crate down with a clatter. âYouâre doing that tragic thing again.â
She glanced between them. âWhat tragic thing?â
âNothing,â Cook said.
Ryan smirked. âThe thing where he starts eye-fucking you and calls it supervising.â
Cook threw the shoe spray at him. Ryan dodged, laughing, and she made a disgusted little sound even though she was smiling.
âBoth of you are disgusting.â
âSay that softer,â Cook said. âIâm close.â
âIâm begging you to develop shame.â
Ryanâs eyes flicked toward her, and something passed between them too quick for Cook to pin down. Not a look, maybe. Not even a proper smile. Just a little beat of familiarity, easy and private, the sort of thing that said there were conversations Cook hadnât heard and jokes he hadnât been there for. It got under his skin immediately, mean and sharp, like a splinter heâd rather dig deeper than admit was there. Ryan was too comfortable with her. Had been for a while. He leaned against counters beside her like he had a right to take up space there. Knew when she was in a bad mood before Cook did. Could say her name across the arcade and get her attention without putting on a whole fucking show for it. He didnât even have the decency to be obvious about wanting her. He just existed around her like access was normal, like being allowed near her was something heâd never had to earn. Cook hated him for it.
Not that he was jealous. Jealousy was for lads who didnât have options, and Cook had options. Tasha made that clear enough every time she brought him a drink he hadnât asked for, every time she laughed too hard, every time she touched his arm and let her fingers linger like she wanted him to notice. Tasha had smoky eyeliner, chipped black nail polish, and a habit of biting her lip whenever Cook turned the charm on. Cook liked that. Liked knowing it. Liked keeping her attention close enough to warm his ego whenever the thing he actually wanted left him feeling like some sad prick with his face pressed to the glass. Tasha meant he wasnât pathetic. Girls did want him.
Just not the one he had stupidly, violently, inconveniently decided mattered.
The night dragged on in shouts and spills. Gareth yelled at lane six for bringing outside vodka. JJ nearly got taken out by the basketball machine when it spat a ball early. A kid dropped an entire tray of nachos on the carpet and burst into tears as hot cheese soaked straight into the purple swirls. Cook spent twenty minutes flirting with a group of college girls at concessions because they were drunk enough to think he was funnier than he was, then looked over to see if sheâd noticed. She had. She looked amused. Not jealous. Not bothered. Amused, like he was exactly the sort of idiot she expected him to be. That annoyed him enough to make him flirt harder.
By closing, Kingpinâs looked like the night had chewed it up and spat it out. The lanes were empty under the low lights, polished slick and useless, with only the odd mechanical clunk from the pinsetters breaking the quiet. The arcade still blinked to itself in the corner, cycling through demo screens for nobody. The prize counter shone with fingerprints and smears, and the air had soured into old beer, fryer grease, and the chemical sweetness of mop water. Cook was half-assing the returned shoes while she counted the till, Ryan wiped tables near the bar, and Tasha leaned beside Cook with her chin in her hand, watching him with a smile she clearly thought was subtle.
âYou coming out after?â Ryan called.
She paused with her fingers still in the drawer and looked over. âWhere?â
âFood. Drinks. Whateverâs still open.â
âAfter tonight? I should go home and stare at a wall.â
âStare at chips instead,â Ryan said. âLess bleak.â
Cook tossed a pair of shoes into the wrong cubby. âIâm driving.â
âYouâre always driving,â she said.
âBecause Iâm generous.â
âBecause you hate taxis.â
âTwo things can be true.â
Tasha nudged his arm. âYou giving everyone lifts, or just special people?â
Cook let the pause sit there because he could, because Tasha would wait for him to fill it and they both knew it. âDepends who asks nicely.â
Tasha held his gaze for half a second too long, smile tucked into the corner of her mouth, and Cook looked away just in time to catch her across the lobby looking back down at the register. Cook didnât know if that meant anything. He wanted it to mean something.
They ended up at a late-night burger place three streets over, the sort of place that stayed open less because people wanted to eat there and more because drunk people stopped being picky after midnight. The windows were fogged from the fryers, the plastic tables had a permanent tack to them, and the woman behind the counter took their order with the tired patience of someone who had already explained twice that extra sauce cost 20p. There were six of them crammed around two pushed-together tables: Cook, Ryan, Tasha, JJ, her, and Malik from the kitchen, who had mostly come along so he could call Gareth a tight bastard to people who already knew he was right.
Cook ended up opposite her because Ryan slid into the seat beside her before he could. That was Ryanâs first offence of the evening. The second was how easily they settled next to each other, like it took no thought at all. Ryan stole one of her chips without asking, and she smacked his hand away without even looking up from her drink. Not surprised. Not annoyed enough. Just used to it, like his fingers on her plate were another bit of background noise sheâd stopped questioning. He reached for the sauce before she asked and pushed it toward her, already knowing, already smug about knowing, and something hot and mean pulled tight in Cookâs chest.
Then she complained about the music, and Ryan said, âYou always complain about the music,â before Cook could even open his mouth. Always. Cook hated the word immediately. Hated how casual it sounded coming from Ryan. Hated the little doorway it opened into a history Cook hadnât been invited into, all those shifts and smoke breaks and late-night conversations happening without him there to watch, without him there to stop anything from becoming too familiar.
Tasha was beside him, knee brushing his under the table. âYouâre quiet.â
Cook took a chip from her tray. âIâm mysterious.â
âYouâre sulking.â
âI donât sulk.â
âYou absolutely sulk.â
âI brood. Sexier.â
She laughed, touching his sleeve. âSure.â
He leaned closer because Tasha made it easy and because he could feel her watching from across the table, maybe. âYou like it.â
Tashaâs mouth opened, then shut and Cook grinned. Across from him, she looked away first. His satisfaction lasted exactly three seconds before Ryan leaned in to say something near her ear and she laughed. Cook hated himself for how fast the feeling curdled.
Outside after, the air had gone damp and cool, the kind that made takeaway grease cling harder to everyoneâs clothes. JJ and Malik were still arguing about whether the pirate shooter in the arcade was haunted, Malik insisting the left cannon fired by itself and JJ getting increasingly wound up by the lack of evidence. Tasha had her jacket zipped up to her chin and was still hovering near Cook, close enough that her sleeve brushed his when she shifted, but his attention had already gone past her. Across the car park, she stood near Ryanâs car with her arms folded against the cold, smiling down at the cracked pavement while Ryan said something Cook couldnât hear. Cook lit a cigarette heâd stolen from Ryanâs pack.
Ryan wandered up beside him a moment later. âThatâs mine.â
âCommunity property.â
âYouâre a parasite.â
âA handsome parasite.â
Ryan glanced toward her, then back at Cook. âYouâre embarrassing yourself.â
Cook blew smoke out the side of his mouth. âBy smoking?â
âBy doing whatever this is.â
âItâs called standing.â
âItâs called staring like a pathetic, lovesick prick.â
Cookâs jaw tightened. âFuck off.â
Ryanâs tone shifted, softer but smug underneath. âMate, just ask.â
âAsk what?â
âIf she likes you.â
Cook laughed. âWhat are you, twelve?â
âIâm serious. Stop hovering around like a kicked dog.â
âIâm not hovering.â
âYouâve been mentally pissing on her leg all night.â
Cook looked at him. âYou got a death wish?â
Ryan grinned. âGirls like confidence, yeah? Ask straight. Worst she can say is no.â
Worst she can say is no. People said that like no was harmless. Like no didnât make a bloke feel skinned in public, stupid for wanting, stupid for thinking heâd seen anything there in the first place. Like she could just say it and go on with her night, still laughing, still eating chips, still looking at Ryan when he spoke, while Cook had to stand there with the word stuck in him and pretend it hadnât made him want to crawl out of his own fucking body. Easy for Ryan to say. Ryan, who sat beside her like it was nothing. Ryan, who knew what sauce she wanted and stole food off her plate and got away with it. Ryan, who could tell Cook to be confident because heâd never had to make confidence look like anything. He just had it. Worse than that, people gave him reasons to. Cook looked toward her again before he could stop himself. She was laughing at something Malik had said now, the sound carrying across the car park like she had no idea she was being watched, no idea she was standing there ruining him by looking happy without him.
Ryan followed his gaze and gave a small, knowing hum. âUnless you already know sheâll say no.â
Cookâs head snapped back toward him.
Ryan lifted both hands, grin barely held in. âIâm just saying.â
âYou donât know shit.â
âThen ask,â Ryan said, simple and cruel because he made it sound like there was nothing at stake. âProve me wrong.â
Cook hated him for that. Hated him more because he was going to.
A skinny red-and-cream box sat on the backseat of Cookâs car, cheap-looking in the way old magic tricks and corner-shop toys were cheap. Curved lettering, smiling cartoon faces, little sprays of stars. AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS! printed along one side like it was supposed to be fun, like there wasnât something rotten in how badly he wanted it to work. Near the end, tucked into a burst of red, were the words You only get ONE WISH.
ONE WISH WILLOW, it said across the front. Heâd bought it three days earlier on his lunch break, after sheâd mentioned old folklore while untangling tickets from a machine, talking half to him and half to the mess in her hands about wishing trees, charm bundles, little bits of luck people carried around when they wanted the universe to listen. Cook had called it witchy bollocks to her face. An hour later, heâd found himself in a oddity shop near Kingpinâs, a narrow little place wedged between a vape shop and a nail salon, all dusty shelves and incense smoke and tiny silver bells over the door that made him feel like a twat the second he walked in. The woman behind the counter had watched him pick it up, watched him turn the little box over in his hand like it might bite him.
âFor someone you love?â sheâd asked.
Cook had laughed too quickly. âSteady on.â
Then heâd paid cash, shoved it under his jacket, and told himself the whole way back that it was funny. A weird gift. A piss-take. Something he could toss at her and make a joke out of before she noticed heâd remembered something soft, something small, something she probably didnât even remember saying. He was lying, obviously. Heâd bought it because sheâd wanted it for half a second, and Cook had carried that half second around, polishing it into evidence that he knew her, that he listened, that there were bits of her Ryan didnât get to have. Now it sat behind him while he drove her home through wet streets, the box catching streetlights in the rearview whenever they passed under a lamp. She had his phone in her lap and was skipping through his playlist with increasing disgust.
âThis is terrible,â she said.
âThatâs a classic.â
âThis sounds like how the carpet at work smells.â
âYouâve got no culture.â
âI work at Kingpinâs. Obviously.â
He laughed because she expected him to, because laughing was easier than admitting his fingers had gone tight around the wheel. The car smelled of smoke, damp upholstery, mint gum, and the cheap air freshener Ryan had hung from the mirror as a joke, still swinging there like another little reminder of him. Rain tapped against the windscreen and dragged the traffic lights into red and green streaks. She sat curled toward the heater, worn out from the shift and everything after, comfortable enough to insult his music, steal his spare hoodie from the backseat without asking, and pull it over her lap without thinking twice. The box was underneath it. Cook caught the flash of red-and-cream packaging when the hoodie shifted, bright against the dark mess of the backseat, and his throat tightened before he could make himself laugh that off too.
He could give it to her now. Reach back, grab the box, toss it into her lap with a grin. Say, saw this and thought of your weird tree thing. Make it sound crude and stupid yet casual enough to hide behind. The kind of gift a bloke bought as a joke, not because heâd carried one passing comment around until it started feeling like something private. Sheâd probably laugh. Maybe call him an idiot. Maybe turn the little box over in her hands and look at him like she couldnât believe heâd remembered. The thought hit too soft, too fast, and he hated himself for wanting it. Then Ryanâs voice came crawling back in, smug and easy. Ask straight.
Cook kept his eyes forward. The engine idled low, the heater clicked softly, and the longer he sat there, the less it felt like something he could still choose not to say. Beside him, she shifted under his hoodie, tired and comfortable and completely unaware that he was ruining the night before heâd even spoken. He should have just given her the stupid box. Instead, he opened his mouth.
âYou like me, donât you?â
He knew heâd fucked it before she even turned her head. He heard it. Felt it. Too blunt. Too hungry. Too much like something that had been sitting behind his teeth for ages, waiting for the ugliest possible moment to come out.
She went still. âWhat?â
He could still save it. He could laugh. Could make it filthy, stupid, harmless. Could say as a driver, as a coworker, as a national treasure, obviously. Could swerve so hard sheâd never know there had been anything real underneath it. But fear got there first. Fear, then pride.
âYou heard.â
She frowned a little, not irritated yet. Just confused, which was somehow worse. âAre you joking?â
âNo.â
âLike me how?â
Cook scoffed because if he didnât, the silence was going to swallow him whole. âLike me how. Fucking hell, you need a diagram?â
Her face changed. Not much. Just enough. The warmth went careful around the edges, and the whole car seemed to shrink with it, everything was suddenly too close. Everything was suddenly watching. Cook felt the moment tipping away from him and kept talking anyway, because humiliation had momentum and his mouth had always been faster than his sense.
âYou and me,â he said. âThereâs something there, yeah?â
She looked at him properly then, and he hated that too. Hated the way she didnât laugh. Hated the way she didnât make it easy by being cruel. Hated the softness coming over her expression, like she was already trying to find the kindest way to cut him open.
âCook,â she said.
âDonât do that.â
âI like you.â
His pulse kicked once, stupidly.
âAs a friend,â she added.
There it was. Not sharp. Not nasty. Worse because it was gentle. Because she meant well. Because she had no idea that kindness could gut a person cleaner than mockery ever could. Cook stared ahead, even though they were parked outside her building now and had been for half a minute. He hadnât even noticed pulling up. His hands stayed on the wheel, locked there, because looking at her felt impossible and looking away felt like losing.
She shifted beside him. âYou know that, right?â
He nodded once. The silence got bigger. Then pride, ugly and panicked, threw itself over the wound.
âJesus,â he said, forcing a laugh that sounded wrong even to him. âI didnât mean like that.â
She blinked. âWhat?â
âDonât flatter yourself.â He forced his mouth into a grin because that was the only thing it knew how to do when everything else was fucked. âI meant, do you like me as a person? Like, am I tolerable? Didnât ask you to start naming our future fuckinâ kids or summat.â
Her embarrassment arrived fast. He saw it hit and felt a nasty little spark of relief, because now she looked stupid too. Now she had something to be ashamed of. Now he wasnât the only one sitting there with his insides showing.
âOh.â
âYeah. Oh.â
âI thoughtââ
âWhat? That I was about to profess my undying love in a Vauxhall?â He huffed another laugh, sharper this time. âGive me some credit.â
âIâm sorry.â
âFor having an ego? You should be.â
She looked down. For one second, it helped. Then it didnât. The relief curdled almost as soon as it came, leaving him with the same raw shame underneath and something meaner crawling up around it. Because she was sorry. Because she was embarrassed. Because she would get out of his car in a minute and go upstairs and feel bad for a bit, maybe, then sleep it off, wake up tomorrow, and still not want him.
âI didnât mean to make it weird,â she said.
âYou didnât.â
âOkay.â Her fingers closed around the door handle. âGood.â
Good.
She got out and hurried through the rain to her door, his hoodie over her head, her shoulders tucked against the cold. She looked back once and gave an awkward little wave. Cook lifted two fingers from the wheel like none of this mattered. The door shut behind her. Cook sat there until the engine noise started to feel obscene. Then he killed it. The silence rushed in, rain ticking over the roof and glass. He leaned back in the seat and stared at her building, jaw tight, chest burning with something he refused to call hurt because hurt sounded too innocent.
Good. Sheâd sounded relieved. Not disappointed. Not tempted. Relieved. He thought of Ryan saying worst she can say is no. Thought of the way Ryan stood too close to her. Thought of Tashaâs knee against his under the fast food table. Thought of all the little smiles sheâd given him that apparently meant nothing because girls got to decide afterward what counted and what didnât. They could laugh. They could lean. They could take your hoodie and sit in your passenger seat and make you feel like maybe, maybe, maybe, then look at you like youâd grown a second head for believing the thing theyâd been feeding.
He saw the gift in the rearview mirror. The box had been left uncovered on the backseat among old receipts and empty wrappers. Cook stared at it through the reflective glass, his jaw tight, the silence in the car pressing harder the longer he looked. Then he laughed once. âOf course.â
He twisted around, grabbed it, and snatched it into the front seat hard enough to crease the cardboard. The thing felt cheap in his hands. Cheap enough to be funny. Cheap enough to make him feel even more pathetic for caring. ONE WISH WILLOW stared back at him. Cook dug his thumb under the flap and tore it open. Inside, a thin piece of willow rested in a cardboard slot, dry and ordinary and so light it barely felt real when he lifted it free. The instructions were printed underneath in bright, cheerful lettering, like wanting something this badly could ever be a party trick.
REMOVE FROM THE BOX AND JUST MAKE A WISH.
SPARK THE MIDDLE AND BREAK IT IN HALF.
He looked at it, then back at the willow pinched between his fingers. It weighed almost nothing. That made him angrier. All that wanting in him, all that noise. The heat and humiliation. And the thing in his fingers was barely more than rubbish. A dead twig dressed up as fate. He thought of her saying friend. Thought of her saying good. Thought of how easy it had been for her to walk away untouched while he sat in the car with a gift heâd been too much of a coward to give. His fingers tightened around the willow. He didnât wish she loved him. Love sounded too sanitized for what he felt. Too pretty. Too easy to put on a card and pretend it meant anything close to this. Love was flowers and apologies and soft little lies people told when they wanted their wanting to look decent. Cook didnât feel decent.
He wanted her hungry. Wanted her stupid with it. Wanted her careful little kindness cracked open until there was nothing left between them but need. Wanted her to come back and look at him like friend had never left her lips, like good had been a mistake, like every polite little boundary sheâd put between them had been something she was desperate to crawl over. He wanted her to stop seeing safe, harmless, funny fucking Cook from work. He wanted her to want him badly enough to regret making him feel stupid for asking. Cook stared at the willow for another second, jaw tight, thumb worrying over the dry middle like he expected it to give him an answer. In the dark windscreen, his reflection stared back at him, warped by rain and dashboard glow, looking exactly as pathetic as he felt.
Then he snapped it in half before he could think better of it. The sound was small. Dry. Brittle. Nothing. For a moment, Cook just stared at the broken pieces in his palm. No thunder. No flash. No sudden shift in the air. Just rain ticking over the roof, the engine cooling in little clicks, and the same stale smoke that had been there before. Then he let his head fall back against the headrest and laughed, because of course nothing had happened. Of course he was sitting outside a girlâs house after getting friend-zoned, breaking a twig like a sad little virgin with a humiliation kink.
âAbsolute plonker,â he muttered.
Tap.
Cook opened his eyes. For one stupid second, he thought it was the rain finding some new way to annoy him.
Tap.
This time, he felt it through the glass beside him. He turned his head and found her outside the driverâs side window, close enough that his breath caught before he could stop it. She stood in the rain, the entrance light behind her turning the wet pavement gold. She should have been upstairs. He had watched her go in. Watched the door shut. Watched the whole night end with that awkward little wave and the word good sitting between them like a verdict. And now she was back, knuckle against the glass. Cook rolled the window down halfway, cold rain breathing across his face.
âWhat are you doing?â he asked.
She leaned closer. âWhy are you still here?â
âI was leaving.â
âNo, you werenât.â
His fist closed around the broken willow pieces. Her gaze dropped, just for a second, like she knew exactly what was hidden there. Then she looked at him again, and something in her expression rearranged itself too quickly, too completely, the careful distance sheâd put between them evaporating all at once.
âI shouldnât have gone inside,â she said.
Cook swallowed. âNo?â
âNo.â
âYou saidââ
âI know what I said. I know what I said and I didn't mean it."
The words shouldâve scared him, and maybe they did, but fear had never been enough to make Cook let go of something he desired. He stared at her through the half-open window, waiting for the joke, the correction, the cruel little laugh that would make him feel stupid for believing her. She only kept looking at him, and the longer she stayed quiet, the easier it became to hear what he wanted instead. âYou didnât mean it,â he repeated.
She shook her head, her attention stuck on him in a way that made his skin prickle. âCome inside.â
Cook could have started the engine. He could have told her to go upstairs and sleep off whatever this was, could have thrown the broken pieces into the gutter and admitted that something had changed too fast to be real. He could have done one decent thing before the night got any worse. Instead, he got out. The night slapped cold against his face as he stepped from the car. She backed away just enough to let him stand, his hoodie pulled tight around her like sheâd already forgotten it wasnât hers. The pieces stayed clenched in his fist until he shoved them into his jacket pocket, because leaving them behind felt too much like admitting there was something to hide. Neither of them spoke as she led him inside. The stairwell light buzzed overhead, dragging their shadows up the wall as she climbed ahead of him, glancing back every few steps like her body needed proof he was still following. Cook stayed close enough to turn around if he wanted to. He didnât.
By the time she unlocked her flat, the silence between them had started to feel like pressure. She pushed the door open and waited on the threshold. Cook crossed it, and the door clicked shut behind him. The lock slid homeâher hand, not his, trembling around the deadbolt. He stood in her narrow hallway, caught among the small evidence of a life heâd only ever imagined from the outside: a cherry chapstick with the cap bitten rough, an old ASDA receipt tucked into the cracked paperback spine of a battered paranormal romance novel, a single earring dropped into a little ceramic dish shaped like a strawberry, a shopping list on the side table in her own hurried scrawlâmilk, batteries, incense, bin bagsâwith half the words scratched through. None of it belonged to him, which made being there feel worse. She turned to face him before he could decide what to do with his hands, breathing too fast, looking at him with a certainty that felt planted there by something else. Every part of him knew this was wrong. He stayed anyway.
"You okay?" he asked, and his voice came out rougher than he meant. He knew she wasn't. He knew what he'd done. The willow bark was still under his fingernails, probably. Fuck. She didn't answer. Just stepped forward, into his space, and her mouth found hisâclumsy, desperate, her teeth catching his lower lip hard enough to taste copper. Her hands fisted in his red bomber jacket, pulling him closer, and he let himself be pulled. Let himself forget the how. Let himself sink into the heat of her body pressing against his.
He broke the kiss first. Grabbed her wrists. Pinned them against the wall beside her head. Her breath stuttered, and he watched her chest rise and fall. "Slow down," he said, and the grin he found was more teeth than warmth. "You dragged me up here. Least you can do is let me look at you proper."
She swallowed, throat moving under his attention, pulse hammering at the base of it as her whole body strained toward him like he was gravity, like sheâd die if he let go. But she stopped. Didnât pull away. Didnât roll her eyes. Didnât make some mouthy little comment about him thinking he was in charge because Cook, honestly, fuck off. She just stopped because he told her to, standing there with her wrists caught in his hands and her attention fixed on him like the words had gone straight through her. A sick little thrill hooked under his ribs, and Cook thought of the wish before he could stop himself. He buried it almost as quickly as it surfaced, because putting a name to it would mean admitting this wasnât just her finally wanting him; it was something else wearing her face like a mask. Cook told himself he wasnât testing the wish, then gave her another order anyway, just to see if sheâd obey.
"Take it off," he said, nodding at the hoodie. She pulled her wrists freeâhe let herâand tugged the fabric over her head, dropping it on the floor. Sheâd changed out of her work polo sometime after closing, before they went for food, and Cook remembered noticing it in the chip shop with the sort of attention he had no business giving it. The t-shirt underneath was an old band tee, washed thin, the collar stretching over her collarbone. He could see the outline of her nipples through it. Already hard.
"Been waiting two years," he said, low, almost to himself. His thumb found her bottom lip, pulled it down. "Two years of you being careful. Distant. Looking at me like I was something you stepped in."
She shook her head. "No, Iâ"
âShut up.â He said it softly, and she obeyed so fast it made his cock jump in his jeans. Her mouth closed. Her eyes stayed on his. Before the wish, she would have torn him apart for speaking to her like thatâcalled him a prick, rolled her eyes, made him laugh until the moment passed. Now she waited, quiet and ready, and the pleasure of that scared him less than it should have.
âYou donât get to talk right now,â he said, slower, because every word landed and he could see it landing. âYou get to listen.â He traced the line of her jaw and felt her shiver. She was still watching him, waiting for the next thing, and the waiting did something awful to him. Made him want to keep going. Made him want to find out how far the wish reached. âYou knocked on my window. You brought me upstairs. So youâre gonna stand there and take what I give you. Understand?â
She nodded, small and quick. Cook stared at her for half a second too long. There it was again. No argument. No bite. No careful little boundary set down between them like a warning cone. Just compliance, immediate and sweet, like the part of her that used to push back had been smothered under all that sudden wanting. It should have made him stop.
Cook took it as permission instead.
"Good girl." He leaned in and pressed his mouth to her throat, feeling her pulse jump against his lips. "Now get on your knees."
She dropped. Fast. Like her legs gave out. Her hands landed on his thighs, gripping the denim, and she looked up at him from the laminate floorâthat same desperate, unfocused desire in her eyes. It was fucked. He knew it was fucked. But his cock was already rock hard, already straining against his jeans, and the way she was looking at him made it so easy to bury the thought because she was following every direction. Every single one. And the part of him that had spent two years being laughed off, brushed aside, kept harmless, made into a joke, wanted to call that proof. Wanted to call it fair. Wanted to call it finally.
"Unzip me," he said. Her fingers fumbled with the button, the zipper, and then she was pulling him out, her hand wrapping around him. The sound he made was almost embarrassingly raw. Her palm was warm. Dry. She stroked him once, tentative, and his hips bucked into her grip. "Now put that worthless mouth of yours to use for once."
She leaned forward. Her tongue touched the tip, a single experimental swipe, and then she took him in, her lips sliding down his shaft, her cheeks hollowing. He hit the back of her throat and she gagged, pulled back, tried again. He let her set the rhythm for a few secondsâwatching her, the way her hair fell forward, the way her jaw strainedâand then he fisted a hand in her hair and held her there. His voice was ragged as he told her, "m' gonna need you to breathe through your nose. Remember, you wanted this, so you're gonna take it."
She did. Her throat worked around him. The wet, obscene sound of it filled the hallway. The radiator ticked. Somewhere outside, a car passed, headlights sweeping across the thin curtains. None of it mattered. There was only her mouth, hot and slick as he held her hair in a fist, guiding her pace as he watched her struggle. "Look at you. Pretty little mouth stuffed full and you're drooling like a fuckin' whore." She didn't pull away, she only took it deeper, moan muffled and the vibration made his hips reflexively stutter. He groaned, pulled her off and slapped his cock against her slick lips. "Now suck it clean. Lick every drop of your filthy spit off my cock." She obeyed, tongue tracing the shaft, her eyes never leaving his. "Yeahhhh, that's it, you're such a dirty little cocksucker."
He let her up when his legs started shaking, not wanting to blow his load too early, not until he was inside her. He yanked her to her feet and walked her backward down the hall, one hand on her hip, the other gripping her jaw. Her lips were swollen, wet with spit amd pre-come. He kissed her againâslower this time, meaner, biting her bottom lip and sucking until she whimpered.
Her bedroom was cramped and messy, dirty clothes sticking out of a hamper in the corner, an unplugged charger curled on the night stand, bed unmade and dragged half off the frame, one corner of the fitted sheet peeled loose, a bottle of nail polish left mostly uncapped beside a burned out glade candle. He laid her back down on the mattress, and she spread her legs without being told, her t-shirt riding up to reveal a strip of bare stomach. He took his time. Pulled her trainers off. Tossed them aside. Ran his hands up her calves, her thighs, pushing her knees wider apart. Her jeans were tight, and he took his time with the button, his knuckles dragging against her stomach, watching her breathe.
"Look at you," he murmured. "Soaked through your knickers already." He traced the damp cotton with his thumb, pressed, felt her hips lift into the pressure. "That for me?"
"Yes." Her voice cracked. "Cook. Please."
"Please what?"
"Please, Cook, I can'tâI need you inside meâplease, please, pleaseâ"
He pulled her jeans down and off before her knickers followed, wet enough that they there was a visible damp patch through the fabric. He knelt between her legs and just looked at her for a momentâthe slick shine of her cunt, the way her thighs trembled, the way her fingers twisted in the wrinkled sheets. Then he put his mouth on her. The taste hit him firstâsalt and skin, and then something deeper, muskier, entirely her. He dragged his tongue through her folds, slow, deliberate, and her whole body jolted like she'd been shocked. He held her hips down, flattened his tongue against her clit, and circled. Listened to her gasp. Felt her hand land in his hair, not pulling, just holding on.
He worked her like he had all the time in the world. Two years of want poured into every lick, every suck, every time he pushed a finger inside her and felt her clench around it. She was wet enough that he slid in easilyâone finger, then two, curling up toward her stomach, finding the spot that made her cry out.
"That's it," he groaned, punctuating the air with lewd, wet squelches as he finger fucked her. "You're shakin' and I haven't even gotten my cock in you yet."
She was closeâhe could feel it in the way her walls fluttered around his fingers, in the way her breath came in short, broken gasps. His mouth reattached to her clit, sucked hard, and she shattered with a sound that was almost a sob, her back arching off the mattress, her cunt gripping his fingers as she rode it out. He didn't stop. He worked her through it, gentle now, until she pushed his head away, oversensitive and shaking. He sat back, licked his fingers clean, watched her chest heave. He pulled his jacket off. His shirt. Kicked his jeans down. His cock was aching, flushed and slick at the tip. He saw her eyes track it, saw her lips part before he crawled over her, positioning himself between her legs. "Gonna fuck you now princess but I need you tell me how badly you want it, tell me how badly you want my cock."
"I want it." Her voice was a whine, "I want your cock, Cook pleaseâplease, I need it so bad."
He pushed in slow, inch by inch, savoring the feeling of finally. Her cunt was hot, wet and so fucking tight that he had to stop halfway, his forehead dropping to her shoulder, a low groan torn out of him. She stretched around him, her fingers clawing at his back, her breath hot against his ear.
"Fuck," he breathed. "Feel that? Feel how deep I am?"
She nodded, a choked sound in her throat.
"This is what you've been keeping from me." He pulled out, pushed back in, deeper. "Two years. Two years of watching you, wanting you, and now I'm finally inside you."
He found a rhythm. Long, slow strokes that made her gasp every time he bottomed out. He watched his cock slide into her, watched the way her hole stretched around him, slick with their shared juices and the sight made him impossibly harder. He told her to look at him, her eyes idly meeting his, dark and dazed. "When I come inside you, I want you watching."
He drove deeper. Harder. The bedframe knocked against the wall, a steady, frantic beat. She was meeting his thrusts now, her hips rising to meet him, her nails raking down his back. The pain was good. Grounding. He was losing his rhythm, the edge bearing down on him. "Yeah, you like that? You like being fucked like a shameless slag?"
"Yes." She keened, "yes, fuck, yes!"
He wrapped his hand around her throat. Not tightâjust there, a promise. "Come on my cock. Now."
She did. Her eyes stayed on his as her orgasm hit, her cunt squeezing him, and the feeling of it pulled him over with her. He drove into her one last time, buried deep, and came with a guttural sound that was almost her name. He stayed there inside her, breathing hard, the taste of her on his tongue. His hand was still on her throat, and he felt her swallow.
He pulled out slowly, watching his come leak out of her, mixing with her own. He collapsed beside her, dragging her into his arms, pressing his face into her hair. She was stillâtoo still, her body limp against his, her breathing slowing. He felt the silence settle. The wrongness creeping back in, cold along his spine. He looked at her face. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. A single tear slid down her temple and into her hairline, catching the light from the streetlamp outsideâor maybe it was just sweat. He didn't ask. He just pulled her closer, his arm locked around her waist, his face buried against her shoulder. What mattered, he decided, was that she was still there. The lie was still warm in his chest.
He held on, and he refused to let go.
Cook woke into a room that didnât sound like his life. No arcade machines shrieking, no Gareth shouting across Kingpinâs, no Ryan calling him useless from somewhere he couldnât see. Just grey morning pressed against the curtains, a phone buzzing on the nightstand, and the slow return of a body beside him before memory came with it: the mattress, the weight of her, the scratches down his back, his clothes puddled somewhere by the door. His stomach tightened before he opened his eyes.
She was awake, propped on one elbow with her chin resting in her palm, watching him from her side of the bed with the duvet pulled to her chest. Her attention stayed fixed on his face with the same strange focus sheâd had at the car window. The room smelled of something vaguely cozy, of slept-in sheets, of sexâblunt and undeniable. Something pleased and possessive tightened in Cookâs chest. He shouldâve made a joke, something filthy and easy, the kind he could use to make all of this normal, but for once nothing came fast enough.
âHow longâve you been doing that?â he asked.
She blinked slowly, like the question had reached her late. âI donât know.â
âThat s'not creepy at all.â
âI like watching you sleep.â
The words shouldâve worried him, should've made him pull away. Instead, they got under his skin in the worst possible way. Cook laughed because it was easier than admitting he liked itâliked her watching him, liked being looked at with that much need, liked that wanting him had made her strange. âYouâre mental.â
Her expression switched so abruptly his laugh died in his throat. The version of her that had been watching him sleep seemed to blink out, leaving her staring at him with naked panic, taking in the sheets, his bare chest, her own body under the duvet like the memory of last night had come rushing back to her all at once. Her breathing shallowed, quick and jagged. âWhy are you still here?â she whispered, and then, before he could answer, âCook, what happened?â
Cookâs throat went tight, because there she was: the girl from the car, the one who'd said friend, the one whoâd left him in the dark with his stupid broken twig and his stupid broken pride. She looked from him to the door and back again, one hand clamped to the duvet, the other pressed against her lips like she was trying not to be sick. âI donât feel right,â she said, voice fraying. âI donâtâfuck, I donât know what Iâm doing. Iâm sorry. Iâm sorry, Iâm being weird.â
The decent thing was humiliatingly simple: get dressed, leave, let her come back to herself without him in the room. Cook knew it in the way she kept looking toward the door, in the tremor running through her hands, in the terror she was trying and failing to swallow. Maybe she was on meds and had forgotten to take them. Maybe sheâd taken something last night and it was still dragging her sideways. He grabbed for both explanations because they kept him away from the willow, and because neither of them changed the part his worst self cared about: she had come back, crawled into bed with him, and let him believe heâd finally won.
Then the panic twisted again. Her face crumpled, and she reached for him so suddenly it startled him, both hands locking around his wrist. âNo, wait, please. Iâm sorry. I didnât mean that.â Her voice climbed, messy and frantic, apologies spilling over each other too quickly to sound steady. âI donât want you to go. I donât know why I said that. Please donât leave, Cook. Please.â
The question sat right in front of him, simple and unforgivable. What happened to you? What did I do? What are you when you look at me like that? Cook didnât ask it. He touched her face instead, and the alarm in her expression folded inward almost instantly, all that frantic energy narrowing until there was only him. Her grip loosened on his wrist only to slide higher, fingers curling into his forearm, and Cook felt the answer settle heavy in his stomach. That was all it took. Not an explanation. Not an apology. Just him.
âThere you are,â he said, softly enough to sound kind.
Her mouth trembled. âCook.â
He kissed her before she could say anything else, gentle at first, then deeper when she gave in with a shaky little sigh. The confusion left her quick, replaced by something eager and grateful, her fingers tightening around his forearm like she was apologising with her whole body, rightfully so.
When he slipped out of her bedroom later, it was only to fetch his cigarettes and charger from the car. That was what he told himself, anyway. He needed five minutes where she wasnât looking at him like that, where he could stand outside in yesterdayâs clothes and pretend this was just a bad comedown, missed meds, some private little breakdown he didnât need to understand because sheâd still crawled into bed with him. His phone buzzed while he was rummaging through the clutter in his center console.
The messages stacked up fast: come back, then why did you leave?, then are you angry?, then iâm sorry, then please come back upstairs. Cook stood beside his car with the charger in one hand and a cigarette forgotten behind his ear, staring at the screen while something pleased and rotten opened in him.
needy little thing arenât you
The reply came instantly.
only for you
Cook looked up at her window and let himself smile, because the unease was still there, but so was the want. Hers now. Loud. Clinging. Impossible to miss. Then he went back upstairs.
They arrived at Kingpinâs together later that day.
It wasnât subtle. Nothing about it was subtle, and that was why Cook liked it. He walked through the front doors in yesterdayâs work polo, unwashed and wrinkled from being yanked back on that morning, hair a mess, mouth bitten in one corner, with her beside him in the kind of silence that made talking feel more incriminating. The arcade lights were already on, blinking over empty machines before opening. Gareth was fighting with the coffee machine. JJ was stacking cups. Ryan looked up from the lane desk and went completely rigid. Tasha noticed a second later. Cook noticed her noticing.
He put his hand low on her back, not because he needed to guide her anywhere, but because Ryan was looking and Tasha was looking and Cook wanted the whole ugly, glowing place to know. Gareth stuck his head out of the office. âYouâre late.â
Cook grinned. âWorth the wait.â
âYouâre always fucking late.â
âStill got everyone looking, havenât I?â
âYouâve got five minutes before I dock your pay.â
She laughed under her breath.
Ryanâs eyes moved from Cook to her. âYou two come in together?â
Cook leaned against the desk. âObservant lad.â
Ryan didnât smile. âWhat happened?â
Cookâs grin widened because this was the bit heâd pictured without letting himself admit it: Ryan looking at him, Tasha pretending not to, everyone suddenly understanding that Cook hadnât read it wrong after all.
âWouldnât you like to know?â
Ryanâs jaw ticked. âCook.â
Ryanâs tone had a warning in it, the kind Cook might have heard if he wasnât already drunk on being right. Let Ryan look bothered. Let him stand there trying to work out how the sad prick from last night had walked in this morning with her at his side. Later, when she went to help JJ with the stockroom, Ryan cornered him near the shoe counter.
âWhat the fuck happened?â Ryan asked.
Cook grabbed a pair of returned shoes and sprayed them until the chemical smell hit the back of his throat. âYou told me to ask.â
Ryanâs eyes narrowed. âAnd?â
âAnd she changed her mind.â
âWhat does that mean?â
Cook leaned closer, lowering his voice into something mean and filthy. âMeans she came back to the car after all that friend bollocks, dragged me upstairs, and spent the night proving her mouth says one thing and the rest of her says summat else.â
Ryan stared at him, and Cook enjoyed it too much, the look on his face dragging something nastier out of him. âFunny, innit?â he said, tossing the shoes into the cubby. âGirls say one thing, then get all upset when you stop believing them.â
Then Ryan asked, âWas she on something?â
The question cut through the bragging.
Cookâs smile twitched. âWhat?â
âLast night,â Ryan continued. âWas she on something?â
âWhy?â
âShe was acting weird.â
Cook scoffed. âJealousyâs ugly on you, mate.â
âIâm serious.â
âYeah, tragic, that.â
Ryan looked toward the stockroom. âMolly, maybe. Pills. Whatever. She wasnât herself.â
Cook hated how quickly the idea caught. Not because it made him feel guilty, but because it gave him a way out. Molly was better than magic. Molly was normal. Molly meant the willow was cheap bullshit from a dusty shop and not something that had split her open in the middle of the night. Molly meant sheâd wanted him already and only needed a little chemical shove to stop acting so fucking pure about it. Molly meant Cook hadnât done anything except stand there when the truth finally crawled out of her.
He laughed. âYou saying she needed drugs to fancy me?â
Ryanâs expression didnât move. âIâm saying maybe donât be a smug prick until you know what happened.â
Cook hated Ryan for saying it, but the excuse was already there, useful and ready-made, some rotten part of him clung to it before he could look too closely. Later, behind Kingpinâs, she followed him into the smoking area and stayed close enough that he could feel her beside him without looking. Rain had left the concrete black and shiny; cardboard boxes slumped by the bins, soft with damp, while the fryer vent breathed hot grease into the cold. Cook lit his cigarette, took one drag, then held it out. She took it automatically, fingers brushing his.
âWere you on something last night?â he asked, casual as he could make it.
She paused with the filter near her mouth. âWhat?â
âRyan reckons you were acting weird. Molly or some shit.â
Her expression went blank in a way that made the alley seem louder. For a second, she looked almost confused, like the word had opened a door she didnât remember walking through. Cook saw her searching for an answer that wasnât there. Then she looked at him and nodded.
âYeah,â she said. âMolly.â
Relief opened in his chest so fast it felt obscene. There it was: normal, dirty, easy. Not a wish. Not him. Just drugs, some bad choices and her finally admitting what she wanted.
âThere we go,â he said.
She frowned slightly. âWhat?â
âNothing.â
She took a drag and exhaled slowly. âI didnât think itâd hit like that.â
Cook stepped closer. âHit how?â
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and whatever doubt had been in her face went soft around the edges. âYou know how.â
Cook smiled.
That was the version he chose.
 After that, things were good. Good in the way a bad idea could be good if Cook kept calling it molly and let her look at him like it was love. Good in stolen minutes, bitten mouths, her fingers hooked through his belt loop near the staff corridor while he pretended he was only hanging there because he was lazy. Good in coffee waiting before his shifts and his jacket disappearing over her shoulders during smoke breaks. Good in Cook sitting on the shoe counter with his knees spread while she stood between them, close enough for him to murmur something filthy against her ear and watch whatever sheâd been saying fall apart in her mouth.
She started arranging herself around him like it was natural. If he came in at four, she was there at half three with a cold drink already waiting with a smile aimed straight at him. If he closed, she lingered after clocking out and pretended she was helping. If Gareth sent him to unjam a machine, she found some excuse to cross the arcade, drifting through the blue glow and cheap ticket noise until she was beside him again. She fixed his collar before customers came in, plucked lint off his polo, stole chips from his tray during their lunch break, and let him drag her into corners for kisses that left them late, breathless, and grinning like they hadnât done anything wrong. Cook got used to her hand at his waist, her mouth near his ear, the constant heat of her attention following him from counter to lane to arcade floor. He got used to people looking. To Ryan going quiet whenever she touched him. To Tasha glancing away a second too late. He got used to being wanted loudly, stupidly, without all the careful little limits sheâd put around herself before.
For a little while, the wrongness dressed itself up so well he could almost call it happiness. It got into the small things first. Her lip balm in his pocket. Her lighter rolling around his cupholder. Her drink waiting beside his on the counter before heâd even thought to ask. She sat in his passenger seat with her knees tucked up, changed his music without asking, and kissed him over the gearshift when he told her she had shit taste. She took photos of him when he wasnât looking, laughed when he told her to delete them, then kept them anyway because apparently she liked him best when he was scowling. He called her his girl once as a joke, some filthy little throwaway line near the prize counter, and watched her whole expression change. So he said it again. After that, he said it whenever he wanted to feel powerful.
The texts became part of the weather: where are you? then answer me, then are you with tasha?, then miss you, sorry, i just miss you. Cook liked the apologies best, which was a nasty thing to learn about himself.
At night, she still watched him sleep. Heâd surface to grey light or the thin orange stripe of a streetlamp through the curtains and find her awake beside him, chin tucked against her arm, studying him with an almost worshipful stillness. The first cold prickle never lasted. It always got drowned out by the thicker, meaner satisfaction underneath: she was losing sleep over him. She was guarding him from the dark like leaving him alone for eight hours would be some kind of betrayal. Any decent bloke would have hated it. Cook started staying over more.
At first, the missing things were small enough to laugh at. His lighter vanished from beside the till and turned up in her jacket pocket. The pen he always chewed at work disappeared from the front desk. His spare name badge went from the staff room. A torn strip of red gift ribbon heâd tied around his neck during a kid's birthday party at work as a joke somehow ended up tucked beneath her pillow. Each thing had an excuse on its own. Together, they started looking deliberate. One night, searching her drawer for a charger, he found them arranged together: lighter, pen, badge, ribbon, a crumpled cigarette packet with the corner bitten where heâd opened it with his teeth, a receipt with his handwriting on the back, a loose button from the polo heâd split during a shift, and a folded rota with every one of his hours circled in black pen. His stomach turned.
She appeared in the doorway behind him. âDonât be creeped out.â
Cook looked back at the drawer. âWhat is this?â
âNothing.â
âThatâs not nothing. Thatâs a fucking drawer full of me.â
Her voice went small, anxious. âI like having pieces of you when youâre not here.â
A normal person wouldâve left. Cook shut the drawer instead. âThatâs fucked.â
âI know.â
He looked at her properly then, standing there waiting for him to decide what she was, punishment and forgiveness both written all over her face. Cook stepped closer. âYouâre a proper little psycho, arenât you?â Her expression opened at that, not wounded, not ashamedâgrateful, like heâd found the right name for her and she loved him for saying it. That shouldâve sent him running; instead, it made him feel like a bastard and a prize at once.
Ryan tried talking to her a few days into whatever Cook had decided this was. Cook was crouched near the ball returns, pretending to inspect a jam that didnât exist so he could keep slacking off, when he saw Ryan catch her by the staff door. Not touch her. Not block her exactly. Ryan was too careful for that. He just stepped in close enough to make the conversation private. Cook stopped pretending to work.
âYou canât just ignore me,â Ryan said.
She looked past him toward the lanes. âIâm working.â
âYou havenât answered a single text.â
âDonât text me anymore.â
Ryanâs face changed. âSince when?â
She blinked. Cook saw the question hit something. Not memory exactly, not recognition, but a loose thread tugged too hard. Her mouth parted, and for a second she looked at Ryan like she could almost remember why his voice was supposed to matter. Then she saw Cook. Whatever had slipped in her expression vanished. Her attention locked back onto him, simple and immediate, like the rest of the room had ceased to exist. âSince him."
Cook should have wondered why Ryan sounded less confused than hurt. He should have wondered what sort of texts sheâd stopped answering, and why the words donât text me anymore had come out so cold and clipped, like something in her had already decided for her. Instead, all he heard was the finality. Ryan followed her gaze, and for one second his expression turned black with hatred. Cook, the bastard he was, smiled.
After that, the days started arranging themselves around him: work, smoke breaks, her flat, his car, her hands finding him before he had to ask. Cook let himself mistake it. That was the stretch where his version of things started feeling easier to live with. The willow had been nothing. Ryan had been right about the molly. Sheâd been too careful before, too sober, too caught up in whatever walls sheâd built around herself, and the night in his car had only knocked them down. Cook hadnât made her want him. Heâd just been there when she finally stopped pretending she was too good for him. Maybe heâd been right all along.
He took her bowling after close one night when Gareth dipped out early and JJ pretended not to notice them turning lane seven back on. Neither of them changed out of their work attire. She bowled terribly, as always. Cook wasn't much better, cheating by stepping over the line and then arguing with the scoring screen as if the machine could be bullied into boosting his numbers. She giggled until she had to sit down on the ball return, and Cook kissed her there under the lane lights with the pins resetting uselessly in the distance. Then he took her for 2 a.m. kebabs and watched sauce drip onto her fingers. She licked it off without thinking. And Cook, because he was Cook and apparently incapable of letting anything stay innocent, leaned in and said, âCareful. Keep doing that and Iâm gonna start thinking you want something in your mouth that isnât garlic sauce.â She shoved his shoulder hard enough that he nearly dropped his food, laughing despite herself. She took another one of his hoodies that night and didnât give it back. He pretended to complain. He liked seeing her in it too much to actually mean it.
She came to his flat and cleared three empty lager cans and a crumbled burger wrapper off his dusty dresser while calling him a slob. Cook caught her by the waist before she could make it to the bin, pulled her down onto the mattress, and she went willingly, eagerly, already kissing him like sheâd only been waiting for him to give her the excuse. They fucked with the cans and the wrapper left sitting on the floor and the sheets half off the bed, quick and messy, and too pleased with themselves to care. After, she lay with her cheek near his shoulder and traced the tattoo on his arm until the gentleness of it started crawling under his skin, so Cook said something filthy just to ruin it. She didnât get annoyed. She kissed him instead. He started to crave the way she changed when he claimed her out loud. Started doing it in front of people because it made her lean closer and made everyone else understand she wasnât available to them anymore. Started testing small things because testing let him pretend it wasnât control. Come here. Look at me. Say it again. Donât answer him. Stay.
She listened. God help him, he loved that she listened.
The party happened on a Friday in a flat belonging to someone Tasha knew, or maybe someone Tasha had hooked up with, or maybe both. Cook didnât ask. It was small, mixed, and noisy: Kingpinâs people, friends of friends, two blokes from a football team nobody cared about, a girl from the bar down the road, someoneâs flatmate smoking out the kitchen window, cheap beer and liquor bottles sweating on every available surface. The living room was too warm and too crowded, music rattling from a speaker on the windowsill, bottles lined along the coffee table, crisps crushed into the rug.
Cook arrived with her tucked into his side and immediately felt better than everyone. That was the point of bringing her. Not the only point, maybe, but the one he liked most. He liked seeing people see. Liked the glances. Liked Tashaâs startled little look before she hid it behind her drink. Liked Ryan watching from across the room with his jaw set like heâd bitten into something bitter. She sat close to Cook on the sofa, thigh against his, fingers wound into the sleeve of his hoodie. Whenever he shifted, she shifted too. Whenever he laughed, her eyes cut to him first, sharp and swift, as if she had to know whoâd earned it. A decent man might have been worried. Cook felt worshipped.
Truth or dare started because everyone was drunk and unoriginal. Cook picked dare because truth was for pussies and people with fewer stories. A bloke whose name Cook didnât remember grinned and pointed. âKiss the person to your left.â
The room reacted before Cook even looked. Laughter, whistles, someone saying, âOh, shit.â Someone else going, âThatâs Tasha, innit?â Cook turned. Tasha sat to his left, eyes widening before she giggled and lifted her beer like a shield. âNo, donât make it weird.â
Cook looked at her lips. He didnât mean to for long. He meant to for exactly long enough. Then he looked back at the woman pressed against his side. Her expression had gone empty. The room was still laughing, but Cook felt the change move through her before anyone else noticed. Her fingers tightened around the beer bottle in her hand. At first it was nothing. A little pressure. A little stillness. Enough for him to see because he was watching for it, because some sick, glittering part of him wanted to know what sheâd do if someone tried to take what she thought was hers. The bottle cracked. The sound cut through the room. Beer spilled over her fingers and down onto the rug. Brown glass fractured in her grip and scattered near her feet, and the laughter died badly, piece by piece, until only the music kept playing too loud from the windowsill.
Tasha jerked back with a sharp, âJesus,â and Cook stood so fast his knee knocked the table. âOi.â She didnât look at him. She was already crossing the space, not shouting, not rushing, which somehow made it worse, the almost-empty bottle hanging loose at her side while everyone's wide, horrified eyes stayed glued to her. Tasha pressed back into the sofa, confusion giving way to alarm, âWhat the fuck?â
She stopped close enough that Tasha sank into the shabby cushions, and the jagged neck of the bottle rose between them, amber glass flashing under the light. âIf your lips go anywhere near him,â she said, calm enough to make it sound decided, âIâll smash your teeth down your throat and watch you choke on them, you stupid bitch.â
The room went quiet in a way parties werenât supposed to. Tasha sat pinned against the sofa, beer forgotten in her lap; cups paused halfway to mouths, knees locked at odd angles on the carpet, and the bloke whoâd given the dare looked sober now, his grin gone slack and useless. Sour lager soaked into the rug near her shoes while Ryan eased himself up from the armchair, careful as if any sudden noise might turn her on him. She leaned closer. âI mean it. Iâll carve your face open with this bottle until no one can tell where your slag mouth used to be.â
Cook caught her wrist. âHey.â She jolted at the touch like sheâd been woken mid-nightmare, her stare dropping to the glass in her grip, the beer running over her fingers, the shards scattered near her feet. Whatever blank certainty had carried her cracked all at once. âI donât feel right,â she said, voice thin enough to nearly disappear under the music still playing from the windowsill. Cook heard her, but he also felt the whole room watching him now: Ryan by the armchair, Tasha with her palms half-raised, everyone waiting for him to handle it because it was his mess, wasnât it? His scene. His problem. His intense new girlfriend.
He stepped in carefully and took the bottle neck from her before she cut herself worse. âLook at me.â She did. Her breathing hitched. Her attention kept snagging and loosening, and for a blink she was the girl from that first morning after again, the one whoâd asked why he was still in her bed, scared and trapped somewhere under her own skin. Cook shouldâve let that scare him sober; instead, he touched her jaw. âIt was nothing.â
She shook her head once. âI donât know why Iââ
âYou know what you want.â
The words came out quietly, and they worked. He felt the exact instant she latched onto them, fear rerouting itself into devotion as her eyes fixed on his. Her free hand grabbed the front of his shirt, and then she was kissing him in front of everyone, hard enough that the awkwardness spread through the room like smoke. Cook let her. Of course he did. Tasha looked away first. Ryan didnât. Cook got her into the hallway after, away from the stale crush of the living room and the whispers already crawling through it. Someone had turned the music down; someone else was blotting lager out of the rug with kitchen roll. She stood near the bathroom door, staring at her empty hand. âDid I scare everyone?â Cook leaned against the wall opposite her. âItâs a party. People love drama.â Her voice sank. âI scared myself.â
That shouldâve stopped him, but Cook only pushed off the wall and came closer. âYouâre alright.â She looked at him. âAm I?â He gave her the answer like it was obvious. âYouâre with me.â The desperate gratitude returned the moment he gave her somewhere to put herself, and Cook felt the power of it all the way down to his fingertips. He didnât have to ask anymore, didnât have to risk humiliation. He could say look at me, and she would. He could say come here, and sheâd come. Heâd wanted confirmation. Now he had it.
The next few days stretched quieter, which made the party easier to file away as a drunken, jealous accident if Cook didnât think about it too hard. He never thought about it too hard. He took her to breakfast after an opening shift, both of them half-asleep in a sticky cafĂŠ booth while she ordered whatever he ordered and didnât touch her food until he told her to eat, eyes flicking up to his face after every bite like she was waiting to be praised for doing it right. She fell asleep in his car on the way back to Kingpinâs, cheek against the window, and Cook drove around an extra fifteen minutes because he liked having her there. Soft, submissive, dependent on him to get her where she needed to go.
At work, she helped JJ fix the ticket machine and got grease on her sleeve. She spent ten minutes arguing with a little girl about whether the purple dinosaur prize was cooler than the green one, with such fierce seriousness that Cook laughed from the lane desk until Gareth told him to stop frightening the customers. She kissed him breathless behind the staff door after, tasting like cherry slush and cheese from the nachos sheâd snuck. For a few hours at a time, she was almost normal. Almost. Then Tasha would come too close, and it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. After the party, Tasha became careful around him. Embarrassed, maybe. Scared of the bottle incident. She didnât flirt the way she used to, didnât hover with her drink tucked to her chest or lean too close just because she could. If anything, fear made her quieter with him, anxious at the edges, her concern slipping out in small, stupid ways she could pretend were nothing. She asked if he was okay. Brought him a drink at work and left it beside him without mentioning it. When Gareth shouted from lane five about a jammed return, she came to find Cook by the prize counter with the lane key already in her hand.
âGareth wants you,â she said.
âPopular man, me.â
âMachineâs eating balls again.â
âKinky.â
âCook.â
He grinned, and it almost felt normal. Tasha held the key out. Cook reached for it at the same time she leaned past him to avoid a kid sprinting toward the claw machines, and her fingers knocked against his. Nothing much. A brush of skin. A tiny accidental touch that shouldâve meant less than nothing, especially after everything. Except Cook didnât pull away. He let their fingers stay tangled around the key for one second longer than they needed to, not enough for Tasha to call it flirting, not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough. He felt her watching from the prize station before he looked. So he made himself look. He told himself he was just checking. Testing whether the molly excuse still held up after weeks of this. Whether things had settled. Whether the weirdness was fading. He knew that was bullshit. He wanted to see if she still went crazy for him.
The prize display cracked under her palm an hour later. It happened in the middle of a Saturday rush, with the arcade full of kids and the lanes roaring. She stood behind the counter, hand pressed flat against the glass case full of candy rings, plastic tiaras, rubber snakes, glow sticks, ticket bundles, and stuffed animals with dead little sewn-on smiles. The glass spiderwebbed beneath her. Blood slipped down her wrist. For half a second, the whole prize area froze. Then a child started crying. Cook was already in motion.
âWhat the fuck?â he snapped, grabbing a towel from behind the counter and wrapping it around her hand.
She didnât look at the blood. She looked at Tasha then at Cook. âShe touched you."
Behind him, Ryan said his name like a warning. âCook.â
Cook ignored him. He got her into the back office with one hand around her uninjured wrist, kicked the door shut behind them, and grabbed the first-aid kit off the wall. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, that same broken note that always made his teeth itch. The office felt too small after the noise outside, too bright under the strip light, full of dust, stale coffee, and old paper. Garethâs desk buried under paperwork he kept meaning to file and never did. A cracked mirror above the sink threw Cookâs reflection back at him: messy hair, mouth set too tight, eyes too sharp for someone pretending he had this under control.
âSit,â he told her. She sat on the edge of Garethâs desk with her cut hand held stiffly in her lap, blood smeared across her palm where the glass had bitten into it. Quiet now that there was no one left to threaten.
âFucking hell,â Cook muttered, dropping the kit open beside her. His fingers felt clumsy as he dug out the antiseptic wipes. âWhatâd you do that for?â
She didnât answer. Just watched him too closely, too calmly, like some part of her was still back there, still seeing Tasha too near him, still hearing the bottle crack in her hand. Cook tore open a wipe. âThis is gonna sting.â
She didnât flinch when he pressed it to the cut. Didnât make a sound. Only breathed a little faster, her chest rising and falling beneath her work polo as he cleaned the blood from her palm. It wasnât deep, but it bled enough to stain the paper towels red, enough to make the office smell faintly metallic under the old coffee and disinfectant.
âShouldâve seen your face,â he said, not looking up. âWhen she got near me. Looked like you wanted to kill her.â
Silence. Then, quietly, âI would have.â
His hands stopped. Cook looked up at her. She meant it. There was nothing dramatic in her voice, no shaking, no performance. Just certainty, flat and terrifying, like she was telling him the weather, his voice rough as sandpaper as he asked, âyeah? Youâd kill for me?â
âIâd do anything.â
The words cut straight through him. Too much. Too easy. Too fucking far. But heat pooled low in his stomach anyway, and for one second Cook almost hated himself enough to stop. Almost. He wound the bandage around her palm, layer over gauzy layer, then pressed the adhesive down with his thumb. âThere. All fixed.â
She didnât pull her hand away. Her fingers curled around his. âCook.â
His name sounded foreign in her mouth when she was like this. Starved. Soft. Already reaching. Then her expression shifted. Not much. Just enough for him to see it happen. âI didnât mean to do that."
Cook went still. She stared down at her bandaged hand, breathing too carefully, like one wrong inhale might split the moment open. âI didnât. I donât know why I did that.â
There she was. Not the version who clung to his sleeve and watched his mouth like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Not the version who smiled when he called her his girl. This one looked at the blood drying near her wrist like it belonged to something sheâd woken from too late. Cook could have told her then. He could have said, I did something. I made a wish. I think I did this to you. Instead, he touched her wrist, her gaze snapping to his. âYou were jealous."
Her mouth parted. âI donât want to be.â
Cook moved closer, still holding her wrist, thumb pressed lightly over her pulse. âYeah, you do.â
She shook her head, but there was no force behind it.
âYou just donât like her looking at me.â
âNo,â she whispered.
âYou donât like anyone looking at me.â
Her breath hitched.
âThatâs alright,â he murmured, making it sound gentle, making it sound reasonable instead of irrational. âI like it.â
Something in her gave way beneath his hand. The dread in her face softened, blurred, turned inward until it had nowhere to go but him. Her injured hand curled against the bandage, and the other reached for his shirt, careful at first, then tighter, pulling him between her knees like she needed him close before she could breathe properly. âCook.â
âYeah?â
âKiss me.â
He should have said no. Should have stepped back, opened the door, left her in the back office with the buzzing light and the stale coffee and the blood on the paper towels. Should have let her surface again before he dragged her under. Instead, he leaned in. His mouth crushing against hers, one hand fisting in the collar of her polo, the other bracing against the desk behind her. The kiss was all teeth and spit, It was pure hungerâsloppy, desperate, the kind of kiss that said he'd been holding back all day and the dam had just fucking broken. She made a noise against his mouth, something caught between a gasp and a moan. And he swallowed it. His tongue pushed past her lips, tasted the slush, the lip balm, the mint of her toothpaste from this morning. He didn't care what. He just wanted more of it. More of her. His name tag scraped against hers as he pressed closer, the metal edges catching, and he felt her handâthe bandaged oneâcome up to grip his shoulder. Her fingers dug in, hard, through the cheap fabric of his red polo. The pain was good. Grounding. Proof that this was real.
"Fuck," he breathed against her mouth, reeling back just enough to look at her. Her pupils were dialated, lips wet and swollen. She looked fucked out already, and he'd barely touched her. "You've no idea how bad i wanted to fuck you out there."
"Do it," she said, her voice rough and needy. "Don't stop."
He didn't need to be told twice. This time, he bit her lower lip, tugged it between his teeth, and she gaspedâa sharp little sound that went straight to his cock. His hands found her hips, pulled her against him, let her feel exactly what she was doing to him. The hard length of him pressed against her through two layers of denim and boxers, and she rocked into it, a small involuntary movement that made his breath catch.
"Yeah," he muttered, his mouth trailing down her jaw, her throat, sucking at the skin just below her ear. "Yeah, that's it. Fucking move against me."
His hands slid up her sides, under the hem of her polo. The skin of her stomach was warm, soft, and he felt her shiver as his calloused fingers traced upward. He pushed the fabric up, exposing the curve of her ribs, the bottom of her braâa simple black thing, nothing fancy, and that made it hotter. She wasn't trying. She was just here, wanting him.
"Off," he said, tugging at her polo. "Take it off."
She did, pulling it over her head in one motion, and the name tag clattered against the desk. Cook's eyes raked over herâblack bra, collarbones, the slight sheen of sweat on her chest from the rush. He wanted to put his mouth on every inch of her. He reached behind her, undid the clasp with a practiced flick, and the bra fell away. Her tits were perfect as always, her nipples stiff. He didn't wait. He bent his head and took one in his mouth, laving his tongue over the peak, sucking hard enough to make her gasp.
"Oh, fuck," she breathed, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. "Cookâ"
He switched to the other breast, giving it the same attention, biting down just enough to make her hips jerk. His hand slid down her stomach, past the waistband of her jeans, palming her through the denim. She was wet. He could feel the heat of her through the fabric, and it made his mouth water.
"Been thinking about this all shift?" he asked, his voice rough, his lips still brushing her nipple. "Thinking about me while you were counting tickets, fixing Garethâs shitty prize display, pretending you werenât watching me the entire time."
"Yes," she whined, the word coming out broken and desperate. "God, yes. Every time you walked past."
"Good girl." He said it like a reward, and she shuddered. "That's what I like to hear."
He popped the button on her jeans and pulled them down her legs, her knickers going with them, helping her out of them before tossing them aside. He pushed her back onto the desk, laid her out like a feast, and dropped to his knees between her thighs. The fluorescent light above buzzed harshly, casting everything in that sick green pallor, but he didn't care. He just wanted to see her. Taste her.
"Look at you," he said, his thumbs spreading her open. She was glistening, wet, her cunt swollen and ready for him. "Fucking gorgeous. All this for me?"
"All for you." Her voice was barely a whisper.
He leaned in and licked a slow, deliberate stripe up her slit, from entrance to clit, and she bucked off the desk. Her taste hit his tongueâmusky, sweet, overwhelmingâand he groaned against her, his eyes closing. This was what heâd wanted before heâd ever had it, and having it hadnât cured him of a single thing. If anything, it had made him worse. Two years of wanting her had turned into something uglier now, something fed instead of satisfied, because the fantasy wasnât impossible anymore. He knew what she sounded like. Knew how she looked at him when the wish took hold. Knew he could have her in the back office, in his flat, wherever he decided, and the worst part was how quickly that had started to feel like something he was owed. He ate her like a man starved, his tongue circling her clit, his fingers sliding inside her, curling, searching for that spot that would make her scream. She was dripping, soaking his chin, her hands gripping the edge of the desk, her breath coming in sharp little cries. The sound of his mouth on her filled the small officeâwet, obscene, rhythmic.
"You like that?" he asked, pulling back just enough to speak, his chin glistening. "You like my tongue in your cunt?"
"Yesâfuckâyesâ"
"Tell me." He pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, then bit down, hard. "Tell me what you want."
"I want you to fuck me." Her voice cracked. "Please, Cook. I need you inside me."
"That's my girl." He stood, his hands going to his belt, undoing it with quick, rough movements. His trousers dropped, his boxers with them, and his cock sprang freeâhard, leaking, the tip already slick with pre-come. He stroked himself once, twice, watching her watch him. "You see what you do to me? See what you've always done?"
She reached for him, her bandaged hand wrapping around the base of his cock, guiding him to her entrance. He let her. He wanted her to be part of this, to want it as much as he did.
"You sure you want this at work?" he asked, even though he knew he wouldn't stop if she said no. Even though the thought of stopping was physically painful.
"I want it," she said. "I want you."
He pushed in. The first inch was heavenâtight, wet, hot. He had to pause, had to breathe, had to let her adjust. His forehead dropped to hers, their breaths mingling in the stale office air.
"Fuck," he whispered. "You always feel so fucking good."
She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and he groaned, his hips beginning to move. Slow at first, a long thrust that buried him to the hilt, then a pull-back that left him aching, then another thrust, harder this time. The desk creaked beneath them, the old wood groaning with every movement.
"Yeah," he said, picking up speed. "Yeah, take it. Take all of it."
She nodded, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open in a silent moan. He watched her faceâthe way her brow furrowed, the way her lips parted, the way her breath hitched with every thrustâand it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Look at me." He grabbed her chin, forced her eyes open. "I want you to watch me fuck you. I want you to see who's making you feel this good."
Her eyes met his, hazy yet focused, and he felt his balls tighten. He was close already, too close, but he wasn't done with her yet. He pulled out, ignoring her whimper of protest, and flipped her over. Her hands hit the desk, her ass in the air, and he lined himself up again, sliding into her from behind with one smooth thrust. The angle was deeper, tighter, and she cried out, her fingers scrabbling for purchase on the cluttered surface, knocking papers everywhere.
"That's it," he said, his hand smacking her ass with a sharp slap. The sound echoed in the small room. "That's my good little slag. Taking my cock like a fucking champ." He fucked her fast and mean, his hips slapping against her ass, his hand tangled in her hair, pulling her head back. The fluorescent light flickered above them, the buzz a constant backdrop to the wet sounds of their fucking, her moans, his grunts, the creak of the desk.
"You like that?" he asked, his voice a snarl. "You like being fucked like this? Like the dirty little whore you are?"
"Yesâ"
"Yeah, you do. You love it. You've wanted this since the moment you saw me, haven't you? All those months of pretending you weren't interested, that I was just a friend, and now look at you. Look at you, lettin' me fuck you stupid at work."
She didn't answer, just moaned, and he slapped her ass again, hard enough to leave a palm print. "I said, haven't you?"
"Yes!" she cried. "Yes, I've wanted this. I've wanted you."
"Good girl." He reached around, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing tight circles as he kept thrusting. "Now come for me. Come on my cock like the good little slag you are."
She did. She shattered around him, her cunt clenching, her whole body shaking, a broken cry tearing from her throat. The sensation pushed him over the edge. He buried himself deep, his hips stuttering, and came inside her with a groan that was almost a sob. Hot, thick, filling her, marking her from the inside. He stayed there for a moment, his forehead resting between her shoulder blades, his breath ragged. The silence was heavy, broken only by the buzz of the light and the distant sounds of the arcadeâthe beep of a ticket machine, the laugh of a customer, the crack of bowling balls hitting multiple sets of pins. The real world, still spinning, completely unaware of what had just happened. He pulled out slowly, watching his come leak out of her, running down her thigh. Didn't matter how many times he's seen it happen now, something primal and possessive still coiled in his chest.
"We need to get you on birth control," he said, his tone casual, matter-of-fact. "Can't have you getting knocked up. Not yet. Not unless I decide I want that."
She didn't answer. She was still leaning over the desk, her breath shaky, her body trembling. He reached for the box of tissues on the shelf, pulled a handful out, and handed them to her.
"Clean up," he said, already pulling his trousers up, buckling his belt. "We've got another two hours of shift left."
She took the tissues, wiping herself slowly, and he watched her. The bandage on her hand was stained with a faint red, the wound probably bleeding again from how hard she'd gripped the desk. He should redo it. He should take care of her. He didn't. Rather, he lit a cigarette, the smoke curling up toward the buzzing light, and let the lie settle warm and comfortable in his chest. She belonged to him. That was all that mattered. She'd wanted him enough to break glass, enough to bleed, enough to end up here on this grimy desk, her legs shaking, his come still inside her. And if that wasn't realâif the wish had made it happenâhe didn't want to know.
After that, Kingpinâs got quieter in the worst possible way. Tasha kept their conversation polite and professional. Ryan watched Cook with open dislike. Gareth complained about the cracked display and threatened to take damages out of everyoneâs wages, which everyone ignored because Gareth threatened that weekly. JJ asked if she was okay, and she smiled too brightly and said yes. Later, Cook found her near the womenâs bathroom, standing too close to Tasha. She wasnât touching her. Wasnât yelling. Just speaking softly beneath the arcade noise, her body angled in that calm, awful way Cook was starting to recognize. He couldnât hear the words, but he saw Tashaâs face. When Tasha walked away, shoulders tight, Cook caught up with her. âWhat was that?â
Tasha looked at him. âAsk your girlfriend.â
âSheâs notââ
He stopped.
Tashaâs mouth tightened. âRight.â
Cook found her in the staff corridor, wiping nonexistent dust from her bandage. âWhatâd you say to her?â
She looked up. âNothing.â
âDidn't look like nothing.â
A tiny smile touched her mouth, and it should have pissed him off more than it did. âShe thinks sheâs special. She thinks because you look at her, it means something.â
Cookâs throat tightened. He should have told her it didnât. Should have said Tasha was a coworker, that none of this was natural, that she couldnât go around threatening people because he had an ego and a wandering mouth. Instead, he asked, âAnd does it?â
Her expression sharpened, and Cook felt it low in his chest: the warning, the want, the sickness of being answered exactly how he wanted.
The first time someone actually paid for what Cook wanted happened just after close. One of the girls from the party came into Kingpinâs with friends, the one whoâd giggled too loudly when Cook got dared to kiss Tasha. Cook didnât remember her name. He remembered her from later, after the bottle incident had been laughed off badly and the music had been turned up again, when his girl had dragged him down the hall to the bathroom and made him wait outside the door because apparently even pissing required a fucking chaperone. Heâd leaned against the opposite wall, basking in the stupid satisfaction of being needed that badly, when the girl had wandered out from the living room with a beer in her hand and stopped at the mouth of the hall. âYouâre trouble, arenât you?â sheâd said. The bathroom door had stayed shut. The music had been too loud for anything to carry. His girl hadnât heard a word, which meant Cook got to enjoy the attention without paying for it. And Cook remembered every bit of female attention if it could be used later to soothe himself or make himself worse.
Near closing, she came up to the front desk and made a joke about the broken bottle.
âYour girlfriend still mad at everyone?â she asked.
Cook glanced toward her restocking prizes. âWouldnât call her that.â
âSeemed like she would.â The girl tore a corner from an old receipt then, borrowed the pen chained to the counter, and wrote something down with her shoulder angled so her friends couldnât see but they were giggling.
âJust in case she ever lets you off the lead,â she smirked , sliding it toward him.
Cook should have thrown it away. He didnât. He glanced at the number, grinned despite himself, and tucked the scrap under the register because he couldnât help it. Or because he didnât want to. Twenty minutes later, when he took the rubbish out through the back, he heard the impact before he saw anything. Not a scream first. Not even a shout. Just the hard, wet sound of someone being driven into brick, followed by a choked cry that seemed to catch halfway up a throat and die there. Cook stopped with the bin bag hanging from one hand. The girl from the party was near the car park wall, bent sideways against the bricks while her friend stood several feet away with both hands clamped over her mouth. The girlâs phone lay near the bins, screen shattered across the wet pavement in sharp little flecks, still lighting up uselessly beneath the rain. Her bag had spilled open near the wheel of a parked car, lipstick and keys scattered through the puddles.
She had one hand twisted in the girlâs jacket and the other pressed against the back of her head. For one horrible second, Cook saw the motion before his brain managed to dress it up as anything else. She shoved the girl forward again. Her face hit the wall with a dull crack. The girl made a broken sound and slid down a few inches before she yanked her back up by the collar. Blood smeared the brick where her mouth had struck it. More ran from her cheek and over her lips, dripping onto the collar of her jacket in quick, dark spots. She tried to turn away, but Cookâs girl caught her by the hair and slammed her sideways into the wall hard enough that her knees gave out. Her friend was screaming, âstop! Get off her!â
She let go so suddenly the girl dropped. She hit the asphalt on one hip, palms skidding through dirty water and broken bits of her own phone. Her friend lunged forward, then froze when Cookâs girl turned her head, slow and empty, blood smeared across the knuckles of one hand. Cookâs first thought wasn't, Is she alive? His first thought was, Fuck. Then she looked at him. His jacket hung from her shoulders. Her hand flexed at her side, fingers uncurling one by one like she was only just remembering she had them. Her knuckles were split. A thin red line ran down from her wrist and disappeared under the sleeve, but her expression was calm enough to make the cold air cut sharper in his lungs.
Ryan came through the back door behind him. âWhat happened?â
The girl on the ground sobbed into the pavement. Cook didnât answer. She stepped closer, eyes fixed on him and nothing else. âShe gave you her number.â
Ryan swore under his breath. The friend was crying now, one hand shaking around her phone as she tried to dial with wet fingers. The girl from the party curled in on herself near the wall, one hand pressed hard to her bleeding mouth like she was trying to keep her face together. Rainwater carried thin red threads through the cracks in the pavement, around the smashed phone, around the dropped keys shining under the security light. Cook stared at all of it. The blood on the brick. The girlâs hair gummied to her cheek. The receipt corner still tucked under the register inside, stupid and flimsy and somehow louder than anything in his head. The stain on the sleeve of his jacket like something heâd signed for and forgotten he could be charged with. He thought of the willow snapping in his fingers. Her tap on the car window. Molly, stupid and convenient. The way she kept waking up confused. The beer bottle. The prize case. Tasha backing away near the bathroom.
He had wanted her to want him so badly it ruined her. Now there was blood outside Kingpinâs, and he still had to bite back the part of himself that wanted to call it devotion. Heâd wished to be wanted; the wish granted him violence, and some sick part of him still mistook it for love.
By morning, Kingpinâs had turned the blood into gossip. No one had been charged. That was the first miracle, if Cook was still stupid enough to call anything about it miraculous. The girl from the party and her friend gave one version, shaking and crying under the ugly security light while rainwater thinned the red on the pavement. Cook gave another, mouth tasting of smoke and lies, saying heâd come out too late, saying she was already on the ground, saying maybe thereâd been lads hanging about near the bins earlier. Didnât know them. Didnât get a proper look. The camera over the back door didnât reach the car park wall. The one that should have covered the bins had been dead for months because Gareth refused to pay for anything that didnât immediately stop customers complaining. There was no clean footage. No simple story. No neat little clip to play back and prove what had happened in the dark.
Just two scared girls saying one thing. Cook saying another. And Gareth getting red in the face because he liked any explanation that didnât come with police sniffing around his business, compensation claims, or questions about why half the security system at Kingpinâs existed purely for decoration.
By open, the car park had already been sanded down into something easier to repeat. Sheâd mouthed off. Sheâd slipped. Sheâd been drunk. Sheâd got unlucky. Whatever blood was left on the pavement had been hosed away before the first birthday party arrived. The broken phone went into a black bin liner with the rest of the rubbish, and by ten the neon was buzzing again, the fryers were coughing grease into the air, and the arcade machines were shrieking over each other like nothing bad had ever happened in the back parking lot.
Only the staff knew how to move around the lie. Tasha now completely avoided whatever station she was on unless Gareth made it impossible: prize counter, front desk, shoe rental, arcade, the break room. Especially the break room. JJ kept looking at the back doors like he expected the night before to come stumbling in again, wet and bleeding under the security light. Ryan watched Cook with the kind of hatred people stopped bothering to hide once fear had worn the politeness off. Gareth paced by the lanes, scratching at his beard, muttering about CCTV, statements, and how if anyone brought police round Kingpinâs, heâd personally shove them headfirst into the ball return.
She behaved like none of it had happened. That was worse. She brought Cook a bacon roll wrapped in a napkin because heâd forgotten breakfast. Fixed his collar while he was talking to a customer. Stole a chip off his plate, then fed him one back with a smile so sweet it made his stomach turn over. When he yawned, she asked if heâd slept. When he said he was fine, she touched the inside of his wrist like she could take his pulse by instinct now, like his body had become a thing she was responsible for. Cook let her. He told himself it was easier that way. Told himself the girl outside had been walking and crying by the time someone called for help. Told himself there was a difference between hurt and dead, between jealousy and danger, between a one-off and a pattern. It was amazing how many lines a person could draw when he was desperate enough not to see the picture. Ryan cornered him by the staff lockers before lunch. âYou need to stop acting like this is normal.â
Cook shoved his jacket into his locker. âMorning to you too, mate.â
âIâm serious.â
âYeah, noticed. Youâre always fucking serious now. Proper inspiring.â
Ryanâs jaw flexed. âThat girl ended up in hospital.â
Cook slammed the locker shut hard enough to rattle the row. âAnd what, you reckon I did it?â
âI reckon you know more than youâre saying.â
Cook laughed, ugly and short, because the alternative was admitting Ryan had stepped too close to the truth. âYouâve been watching too much telly.â
Ryan looked past him, toward the lanes where she was leaning over a ticket machine with a screwdriver in one hand, hair falling forward as she worked. She glanced up at the exact second Cook looked at her, like his attention had tugged a string through the room. Her face lit up. Ryan saw it happen and tensed. âShe wasnât like this."
Cookâs smile faded.
Ryan looked back at him. âYou know that, right?â
Cook shouldered past him. âMaybe you just didnât know her that well.â
The words came out meaner than they needed to. That was how Cook knew they had struck a nerve. It got worse in ways that were small enough to excuse until there were too many of them. She knew his shifts before he told her. Waited outside his flat in the rain with her hood up and his hoodie under her coat, smiling like she hadnât been standing there for forty minutes. Texted him so often his phone never settled. Texts like: where are you? are you busy? did i do something? cook? cook answer me. Then, when he finally did, the relief came back so fast it was embarrassing, all hearts and apologies and i just missed you, like heâd been gone for days instead of ignoring her through half a cigarette. She wore his clothes more than her own now. His jacket. His hoodies. A red Kingpinâs polo heâd meant to bin because the collar was stretched. After the drawer, she didnât even bother pretending the little thefts were accidental anymore. When Cook noticed his lighter missing again, she pulled it from her pocket with a guilty smile and said she liked having it because it smelled like him.
âThat is mental,â he told her.
âI know.â
âYou know, and you still do it?â
Her smile twitched, nervous and wanting. âDo you want me to stop?â
He should have said yes. Instead, he took the lighter from her hand, flicked it open, watched the flame jump up between them. âDepends what I get for being nice about it.â
She kissed him before he had to ask. That was the problem. He stopped having to ask. At first, he made it a joke because jokes were easier to live with than commands. Say youâre mine. Donât look at him. Tell Ryan to fuck off. Come here. Sit there. Kiss me like you mean it. He said them with a grin, with his hand around a cigarette, with his shoulder propped against a wall, like he was only winding her up, like Cook had ever known when to stop winding someone up. She obeyed too quickly. If Ryan came near the desk, she went silent and looked to Cook first. If a customer flirted with him, she slid beside him and poseessively tucked herself under his arm before he could decide whether he wanted the attention. If Cook clicked his fingers just to be a prick, she shot him a look that should have been annoyed and came anyway, cheeks hot, mouth pressed into a line as if some real, stubborn part of her knew she ought to tell him to fuck off and could not force her mouth to form the words.
The first time he told her to say it properly, they were in his flat with rain tapping hard against the window and takeaway boxes going cold on the floor. Sheâd let herself in with the spare key heâd stupidly given her and waited with the food while Cook went to the local off-licence for cigarettes, took the long way back because being missed had started to feel better than it should, and didnât answer for twenty-six minutes. Twenty-six. She had counted them. Every single one. She said it like an accusation, then cried because she hated sounding like that, then apologized because apologizing had become another thing she gave him too easily. Sheâd tried texting first. Then calling. His phone had buzzed on the mattress beside the takeaway boxes, lighting up with her name over and over while Cook stayed gone, which somehow made it worse. He hadnât missed her messages. Heâd left himself unreachable.
âSomethingâs wrong with me,â she said, voice shaking in a way that took the heat out of the room. âI can feel myself doing it, and I still canât stop.â
Cook sat on the edge of the mattress and watched her come apart in front of him, barefoot in one of his old Man United jerseys, his phone still clutched in her hand like evidence. The girl from before was there again, fighting through the devotion with panic in her mouth and shame all over her face. She looked at him like he had the answer. Like he was the only person who could put her back together.
âTell me what to do,â she whispered.
Cook went cold. For once, he understood the line in front of him. Not guessed. Not felt it somewhere vague and inconvenient. Understood. She was asking because the curse had taught her to, because his want had taken something private inside her and rewired it toward him. He could have said, Go home. He could have said, Call someone. He could have told her to run from him and keep running until whatever rotten thing lived in the willow lost his scent. Instead, Cook held out his hand. âCome here.â
She came. Of course she came. Her knees sank into the mattress on either side of his hips as she climbed into his lap, the washed-out red jersey riding up high enough to show the crotch of the cheap boxers sheâd grabbed from his drawer. He watched her the whole wayâthe way her eyes stayed fixed on him, the way her breath came shallow, the way her bandaged hand caught his shoulder and left a faint red mark against the cotton when she braced herself.
âHowâs the hand?â he asked, voice neutral.
She looked down at it, flexed her fingers. âStill hurts.â
âGood.â He reached out and took her wrist, turning her palm up, studying the blood that had bloomed through the gauze. âYouâre gonna have a scar.â
âI know.â She didnât pull away. Her fingers curled around his, and the touch was hot, almost feverish. âCook, Iââ
âShut up.â
He pulled her closer, mouth finding hers before she could finish whatever honest thing was trying to crawl out of her throat. She tasted like rain and the cheap cherry lip balm she nicked from Boots. Her hands came up to his face, her injured one fisting in his hair, and the pressure was just sharp enough to hurt. Good girl. He bit her bottom lip, hard enough to taste copper, and she gasped into his mouth. âYou been thinking about this all night?â he asked, pulling back just enough to see her face. âComing here, sitting in my room, pacingâbeen thinking about what Iâd do to you?â
She nodded, a jerky motion, her pupils blown so wide her irises were just thin colored rings.
âYeah,â he said, sliding his hand down her throat, feeling the flutter of her pulse under his thumb. âThatâs your problem, innit? You canât stop thinking about it. Canât stop wanting it. Even when you donât know why.â
Her breath hitched. Her hand tightened in his hair. And for a secondâjust a secondâsomething flickered across her face. Something confused. Scared. The real her, trying to break through once again. He kissed her again before she could get there. Hard. Deep. Tongue sliding against hers, tasting the rain and the salt and the wrongness. He pushed her back until she was flat on the mattress, following her down, his weight pressing her into the sheets. Her legs fell open without him asking. Like a reflex. Like sheâd been trained.
âYou remember what I told you after the clinic?â he asked, mouth against her jaw, teeth scraping her pulse point. âWhen you sat there all quiet in that waiting room wearing my jacket, acting like you werenât squeezing my hand every time the nurse said implant?â
Her hips bucked up, searching for friction he didnât give her.
âY-yeah.â Her voice was wrecked, breathy, barely there.
Cook smiled against her skin. âWhatâd I say?â
Her fingers tightened in his shirt, shame and want moving through her at the same time. âYou saidâŚâ She swallowed, eyes squeezing shut. âYou said now you didnât have to be careful with me.â
âThatâs not all I said.â
She made a small, desperate sound when he pulled back just enough to make her look at him.
âYou said youâd fuck me full,â she whispered. âEvery time. Whether I wanted it or not.â
âThatâs right.â He sat up, pulling her with him, and her jersey came off over her head in one rough motion. The boxers followed, tossed onto the pile of takeaway boxes. She was naked now, sitting on his mattress, the streetlight cutting a stripe across her ribs, her hair tangled, her lips swollen. âAnd you let me. Because you donât say no to me.â
She didnât argue. Her eyes dropped to his lap, to the visible line of his hard-on through his joggers, and her tongue wet her bottom lip. She was already reaching for him, fingers hooking into the waistband, pulling the fabric down over his hips. His cock sprang free, hard and flushed, the tip weeping pre-come. She wrapped her hand around himâthe bandaged oneâand the sight of that white gauze against his skin made his stomach tighten. Sheâd bled for him. Sheâd break glass for him. Sheâd do anything.
âGood girl,â he breathed, and the words tasted like a confession. He grabbed her hair, pulling her head back, making her look up at him as she started to stroke. Slow at first. Experimental. Her thumb dragging over the head, smearing the slick bead of pre-come down his shaft. Her grip was too dry. Not tight enough.
âSpit on it,â he said.
She did. Her mouth opened, a thick glob of saliva landing on the head, and her hand spread it down his shaft, slick now, the sound of it wet and obscene in the quiet room.
âFaster.â
Her hand moved faster, her grip tightening, the wet slap of her palm against his cock filling the space between rain-gusts. He let his head fall back, eyes half-closing, and watched her from under his lashes. She was staring at where her hand worked him, focused, hungry, her lips parted, her breath coming in soft, desperate sounds that didnât quite form words.
âLook at you,â he said, voice low. âLook at you jerking me off like youâve been doing it your whole life. Like you were made for it.â He reached down and caught her wrist, stopping her. âYou like being my little hand-job machine?â
âYes.â No hesitation. Her eyes were wet, but he couldnât tell if it was tears or rain.
âYeah, you do.â He released her wrist and grabbed her chin, tilting her face up, forcing her to meet his eyes. âOpen.â
Her mouth fell open and he spat into it, watching her throat work as she swallowed. The wet shine on her lips, the way she looked at him like he was the only thing in the roomâit made his cock throb, and the feeling was so clean and so wrong that he almost laughed.
âThatâs it,â he said. âYouâre my personal littleâdâyou know what I called you in my head? Before all this?â
She shook her head.
âMy little cocksleeve. Thatâs what I thought every time you walked past the prize counter. Every time I watched you clock out. Every time you smiled at someone else.â His grip on her chin tightened until she winced. âYou were always gonna end up here. Just took the long way.â
He pulled her up, positioning her straddling his lap, his cock pressed against her stomach, leaving a wet smear against her skin. Her knees bracketed his hips and she was already sinking, grinding down, trying to find the angle, and he caught her by the hips and held her still.
âNot yet,â he said. âYou gotta earn it.â
He laid his palm flat against her cheek, not hard, just present. She leaned into it, and the way she pressed her face into his hand, like a cat asking to be pet, made something shift in his chest. He let it settle. Then he slapped her. Not hard enough to knock her over. Hard enough to make her gasp, her head snapping to the side, a lightly bruised bloom spreading across her cheek. Her eyes went wide, and for a second he thought heâd broken herâbroken the spell, made the real her surface again. But she turned back to him, looked at him, and her pupils were still blown, her lips still parted, and she said, âAgain.â
His blood sang. He slapped her again, the other cheek this time, and her body jolted, her nails digging into his shoulders. She didnât pull back. She rolled her hips against his, the wet heat of her cunt dragging across the underside of his cock, and he groaned despite himself.
âYouâre such a desperate little slag,â he said, fitting his hand around her throat. Not squeezing. Just holding. Letting her feel the weight of it. âYou know that? For so long you didnât want me, and now look at you. Canât get enough. Canât stop shaking on my cock.â
âPlease,â she breathed, and the word broke on its way out. âPlease, I needââ
âI know what you need.â He lined himself up, the head of his cock pressing against her entrance, slick with her wetness and spit. He held there. One inch. Just the tip. And watched her face as she tried to take more, her hips twitching, her breath coming in ragged, punched-out sounds. âRide me. Show me how much you want it.â
She sank down. Her cunt gripping him, tight and wet, and burning hot. The sound she made when she was fully seated was a low, wrecked moan that vibrated through her chest into his. He grabbed her hips and let her set the pace, and she started movingâa grinding, circular motion that pushed him deeper, her body learning the rhythm, her hands braced on his shoulders.
âFuck,â he hissed, his head dropping back against the wall. âFuck, thatâs it. Just like that.â
She found a rhythm, her hips rolling, grinding, her thighs working to keep her up, her breath coming in time with the motion. She watched himâher eyes never leaving his faceâand the intensity in her gaze, the way she was looking at him like he was oxygen, like sheâd die if she stoppedâit was everything heâd ever wanted. Everything heâd stolen.
âYou feel that?â he asked, his hands sliding down to grip her ass, his nails digging into the soft flesh. âFeel how deep I am? How full you are?â
She nodded her head vigorously, her mouth hanging open.
âThatâs where I belong. Inside you. Filling you up.â He reached up and grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back. âAnd youâre gonna take it. Youâre gonna take every drop, and youâre gonna thank me for it.â
Her hips stuttered, her rhythm breaking as a shudder ran through her. âCookââ
âShut up and ride me.â He pulled her down onto him harder, meeting her grind with a thrust of his own, and the air punched out of her lungs. âYou donât get to talk. You donât get to think. You just get to be my good little cocksleeve, taking what I give you. You understand?â
She nodded again, her teeth catching her bottom lip, her rhythm finding its way back. He loosened his grip on her hair and let his hands fall to her tits, rolling her nipples between his fingers, watching her arch into the touch.
âSuch pretty tits,â he said, the words half-buried in a groan. âWish I could see you like this every day. Wake up to you bouncing on my cock, go to sleep with my come still dripping out of you. Would you like that?â
âYes.â The word was barely a whisper, cracked and desperate. Her hips were speeding up, her grip on his shoulders tightening, her breath coming in pathetic little gasps. She was closeâhe could feel it in the way her cunt pulsed around him, the way her rhythm went sloppy.
âYou gonna come on my cock?â he asked, his voice dropping, rough and quiet. âGonna soak me? Make a mess?â
She whimperedâan actual whimperâand he felt the first flutter of her orgasm ripple through her, her body tensing, her cunt clenching around him like a fist. âThatâs it. Thatâs my good fucking girl. Come on me. Come on my cock, show me what youâve got.â
She came with a broken cry, her head falling forward, her body shaking, her hips grinding through the aftershocks. He watched herâwatched the way her mouth went slack, the way her thighs trembled, the way she kept moving even after sheâd come, like she couldnât stop, like sheâd keep riding him until she passed out if he told her to. He grabbed her hips, stilling her, and she slumped against him, her forehead pressing into his shoulder, her breath hot and ragged against his skin. He held her there for a moment, feeling the aftershocks ripple through her. Then he pulled out, pushing her down onto her back as he rose to his knees so he could kneel over her, stroking himself, watching her lie there spent and open.
"I'm gonna come on your face. And you're gonna thank me. Every. Single. Drop." She nodded, lips parted, waiting. He shuffled closer, aimed, and the first rope hits her cheek, hot and thick. "Thank you." Second rope across her mouth. "Thank you." Third across her chin, dripping down her neck. "Thank you." He stroked the last few drops onto her tongue, and she closed her lips around the head, sucking him clean, then pulled off and said, "Thank you, Cook." He smeared come across her face with his palm, spread it into her skin like lotion. "Good girl. Now don't wipe it off. I want to see it dry on your face. I want you to feel it crack when you smile." She didn't move. Just laid there, his come drying on her skin, her eyes fixed on him like he hung the moon.
He kissed her, gently this time, and the tenderness tasted like poison. He didnât care. He crawled out of bed then, his legs unsteady, and walked to the bathroom, catching his reflection in the mirrorâhair a mess, lips red, eyes dark. He looked like someone whoâd gotten everything he wanted. He grabbed a towel and walked back to find her still on the mattress, curled on her side, her hand resting between her thighs. She was staring at the wall, and he couldnât see her face, but he could see the way her shoulders rose and fell, slow and steady. Not crying. JustâŚbreathing. He tossed the towel at her feet. âClean up,â he said, and this time the words were flat.
She sat up slowly, reaching for the towel, and he watched her wipe his come from her thighs but not her face just like he told her to, slow and mechanical, like she was doing it in her sleep. The bandage on her hand was stained a deeper red, the wound bleeding again. She didnât seem to notice. Or care. He climbed back onto the mattress beside her, taking the towel from her hands and tossing it to the floor. He pulled her close, her back to his chest, his arm locking around her waist, and pressed his face into her hair. She smelled like rain, sweat, and him.
âWhereâs your head at?â he asked, and the question came out before he could stop it.
She was quiet for a long moment. Then: âHere.â
He tightened his grip. âGood.â
He didnât ask again. He closed his eyes and let the lie seal over him, thick enough to keep the truth from getting air. She was his now. That was all that mattered. She fell asleep after with her cheek pressed to his chest, one hand twisted in the fabric of his shirt like she was afraid he might vanish if she let go. Cook stayed awake longer than he wanted to admit, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet flat around them: the hum of the fridge, the drip of rain from the gutter outside, the slow drag of her breathing against his skin.
Then a phone buzzed where it had slipped beneath the bed. Not his. Hers. The cracked screen lit the floor in brief, cold flashes. Ryanâs name appeared across it. Cook didnât move at first. He told himself not to. Told himself only jealous little freaks checked phones. And he was many things, obviously, but he was not that pathetic. Then it buzzed again, and the excuse arrived clean and useful: he needed to know if Ryan was a trigger. Needed to know what had set her off. Needed to know if Ryan was a threat. He reached down carefully and picked it up. The phone needed her thumbprint. For a moment, Cook stared at her sleeping hand where it rested against his shirt. Then he lifted it. Her thumb opened the screen. Of course it did. Everything opened for him now. The messages were older, buried under weeks of unanswered texts from Ryan that got angrier and more worried the longer she ignored him. Cook scrolled past are you okay? and did he do something? and you need to talk to me until he found the ones from before the car, before the willow, before she had looked at him like he was the centre of the room. missed you after you left. you still got my hoodie?. donât tell cook, heâll be weird about it. heâs already weird about everything. you coming round later? maybe. depends if you behave.
Cookâs hand tightened around the phone. There were no declarations. No grand romance. Nothing he could point at and call betrayal because there had been nothing to betray yet. That made it worse. Casual was worse. Easy was worse. The thought of her choosing Ryan without magic, without pressure, without a broken twig and a stupid fucking wish in a rain-smeared car, put something hot and black behind Cookâs ribs. He looked down at her asleep against him and for the first time, he hated the version of her the wish had buried. Not because she had been taken. Not because she had been changed. Because before she was changed, she had wanted someone else and laughed about him in the same breath.
By the next shift, Cook had started turning that into something he could use. She had lied. She had pretended. She had acted too good for him while going round to Ryanâs like that meant nothing. The more he thought it, the easier it became to breathe. If the old her had been cruel, then maybe the wish had not ruined anything worth saving. Maybe it had only stripped away all the bullshit and given him the version honest enough to stay. Tasha ruined that by seeing him too obviously. She found him near the back corridor while he was stealing five minutes he hadn't earned, one shoulder against the wall, cigarette unlit between his fingers because Gareth had started threatening to check the cameras. Her eyeliner looked smudged, and there were shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there before the party.
âWe need to talk,â she said.
Cook groaned. âChrist, everyoneâs desperate for a chat lately.â
âIâm not joking.â
âCan tell. Whole vibeâs fucking tragic.â
Tasha stepped closer, keeping her voice low. âSomething is wrong with her.â
Cook looked away. âSheâs having a rough time.â
âShe threatened to carve my face open.â
âPeople say things when theyâre pissed.â
âShe put that girl in hospital.â
âYou donât know that.â
Tasha stared at him. âYou keep acting scared when people are watching, but I saw your face when she snapped at Ryan. You liked it.â
Cookâs mouth opened and nothing decent came out. No joke arrived fast enough. No insult covered the little flicker in his chest when she said it.
Tasha nodded once, like that told her everything. âMeet me after shift. My car. Iâm not doing this in here.â
âBit dramatic, that.â
âCook.â
The way she said his name was not like the curse. Not worshipful. Not desperate. Just tired and worried but also real. It landed somewhere he hadn't meant to keep open.
He looked at her properly then. âWhy do you care?â
Tashaâs face tightened. For a second, she looked furious with herself. âBecause maybe Iâm stupid enough to like you, okay?â
Cook felt the pleasure of it before he could stop himself. Normal. That was the thing. Tasha saying it with her jaw clenched and her eyes annoyed was normal. No wish. No shaking hands. No broken glass. Just a girl looking at him and choosing the embarrassment of admitting she cared. He should have hated himself for enjoying it. He didnât. After close, he told her he was taking rubbish out and slipped through the back instead. Tashaâs car sat in the far corner of the lot where Kingpinâs neon painted the wet bonnet red and gold. The rain had stopped, but the air was still damp, cold enough that the windows had started to mist at the edges. Cook could see Tashaâs silhouette behind the wheel before he reached the passenger side, both hands fixed at ten and two like she was scared sheâd change her mind if she let go.
He slid into the car. âThis better be good. Iâve got a very demanding friend waiting whoâll start chewing through plaster if Iâm gone too long.â
Tasha didnât laugh. She kept staring through the windscreen. The vanilla air freshener hanging from the mirror swung slightly when Cook shut the door, fake-sweet over rain-damp fabric and the faint stale smell of old chips and flavored vape smoke. Her knuckles were tight around the wheel.
âI talked to her before all this,â she said.
Cookâs grin thinned. âOkay? Congrats.â
âProperly. At work. At parties. When you werenât around.â
âMad concept, people talking when Iâm not there.â
âShe said you were fun,â Tasha went on, careful enough that it already felt like cruelty. âBut too much.â
Cook looked out at the empty lot. âYeah, well, I am a lot. Thatâs famously the charm.â
âShe said you were a friend.â
The word hit harder than it should have. Friend was nothing. Friend was easy. Friend was the sort of thing he called everyone because names took effort and feelings were embarrassing. From her mouth, through Tasha, it felt like a door closing.
Cook scratched at the side of his jaw. âThat all?â
Tasha swallowed. âShe said you werenât someone sheâd ever go for.â
The car seemed to shrink around him. Somewhere across the lot, a loose sign creaked in the wind, and Kingpinâs apostrophe buzzed like a trapped insect. âShe said you were more like an annoying brother than anything else.â
Cook froze. That was the version with no magic in it. No hidden desire. No fear of wanting him. No sweet little crush buried under sarcasm and bad timing. She had looked at him and seen noise. Trouble. A laugh. A friend. Something too familiar to want and too exhausting to touch. The wish hadn't revealed anything. It had replaced her entirely. Tasha turned toward him, eyes shining with fear and pity, which was a combination Cook wanted to smash out of the air. âIâm sorry.â
âYeah,â Cook said, voice flat. âYou look devastated.â
âIâm trying to help you.â
âWhy? Because you fancy me now? Bit fucking convenient.â
Her face flinched. âDonât be a prick.â
He laughed under his breath, but there was no life in it. âBit late for that.â
âI mean it, Cook. Whateverâs happening, it isnât love. She wasnât secretly waiting for you. She wasnât playing hard to get. She was herself, and now she isnât.â The truth sat between them in the fogged-up car, plain and brutal. Cook could feel it pressing against his teeth. He could also feel the other thing, the nasty little satisfaction that Tasha had said she liked him, that another girl had looked at him without the curse and wanted him anyway. For half a second, even with the truth bleeding through him, he let himself enjoy that.
Then the driverâs side window exploded inward. Glass burst across Tashaâs lap and Cookâs knees in a freezing spray. Tasha screamed. Cook jerked back hard enough to hit the passenger door, one arm coming up over his face as cold air and broken safety glass filled the car. She was already there. No warning. No slow silhouette appearing through the misted glass. Just her hand through the broken frame, fingers clamping hard in Tashaâs hair, yanking her sideways with a force that smashed her shoulder into the door.
âFuck!â Cook shouted, lunging across the gearstick.
Tasha clawed at the seatbelt, panicked, half-trapped, blood striping down from a cut near her temple where the glass had caught her. âCook!â
The first impact drove her face into the steering wheel. The horn blared, one long, ugly scream across the empty lot. Cook grabbed at the sleeve of his own jacket hanging from her shoulders, but she was braced outside the broken window with both feet planted, expression emptied down to one terrible point of focus. Tashaâs head. The wheel beneath it. The friend who had told him the truth and admitted she wanted him in the same breath. Again. The horn punched the night open. Tashaâs cry broke into something wet and stunned. Her mouth hit the wheel wrong, teeth clicking hard enough for Cook to hear through the blare, and red smeared across the grey plastic where her cheek dragged sideways. She tried to twist away, but the seatbelt had locked tight across her chest, pinning her in place while panic made her hands useless.
âStop!â Cook yelled, dragging at her. âStop, fucking stop!â
She looked at him then, just for a second, and the calm in her face was worse than rage. âShe wanted you.â Tasha made a small sound, a breath trying to become a word. The next blow cut it off. Her face struck the wheel again with a thick, awful crack that made Cookâs stomach drop. The horn stuttered under the impact, screaming, choking, screaming again. Blood spotted the windscreen from the inside in a fine red spray. Tashaâs hands flew up too late, fingers scraping over the dashboard, nails catching against the plastic before slipping. Cook shoved the passenger door open so hard it bounced off the car beside them. He stumbled out, glass crunching under his shoes, then rounded the front of the car and grabbed her around the waist from behind. She fought him like she didnât know him. Her elbow cracked into his ribs. One heel scraped down his shin. Her hands stayed locked in Tashaâs hair, trying to pull her forward again even as Cook hauled her back from the window.
âShe wanted you,â she said again, voice rising now, not calm anymore, breaking into something wild and wounded. âYou lied to me! Why would you lie to me?!â
âI didnât,â Cook gasped, dragging her away from the door. âI didnât fucking do anything.â
The lie came out on instinct, which told him everything. Tasha sagged against the wheel. The horn kept blaring beneath her, muffled by the weight of her body, one long animal sound trapped under the bonnet. Her face had turned toward them at an angle that looked wrong in the red-and-gold wash of the sign. One eye was half-open. Her lips moved, but all that came out was a wet little breath that fogged the glass in front of her. Cook got one arm around her middle and wrenched her back. This time, her fingers came away full of Tashaâs hair. For one horrible heartbeat, she stared at it in her hand. Then Tasha twitched. Small. Barely anything. Her fingers curled against the seat, searching for the belt, the door, a way out, anything. The sight of it snapped the curse back into motion. She surged forward so violently Cook nearly lost his grip. Her hand shot through the broken window again, palm slamming against the back of Tashaâs head, and before Cook could pull her off, she shoved down hard.
Tashaâs face crushed into the centre of the wheel. The horn screamed clean this time. Cook heard cartilage give. Heard the blunt, final sound of bone meeting plastic with nowhere left to go. Blood ran down the steering column and dripped onto Tashaâs jeans in heavy spots. Her body jerked once, shoulders locking, then slackened all at once. The horn stopped. The silence after was so sudden Cook could hear the tick of cooling metal, the buzz of Kingpinâs neon, the thin patter of rain starting up again on the roof. Tashaâs hand slid from the wheel and fell limp beside the seat. She went loose in his grip. The change came fast enough to make him dizzy. One second she was all force, all violence, all jealous purpose. The next, she was staring through the shattered window at Tashaâs body with the devotion draining out of her face, leaving only terror.
âWhat did I do?â she whispered.
Then she looked past him. At Tasha. Whatever had been holding her together split all at once. Her breath hitched, stopped, then came back wrong, too fast and too loud. She staggered toward the car like she meant to help, then recoiled before she got there, staring at her own hands as if theyâd been put on her body by someone else.
âNo,â she said. âNo, no, no. Cook, what did I do?â
Cook caught her by the arms before she could back into the broken glass. He could feel every tremor ripping through her now, violent enough to shake into his palms.
âCook?â Her voice climbed, thin and panicked. âWhy am I here? Why is there blood on me? Did Iââ She choked on the rest, eyes snapping back to Tasha. âIs she dead?â
The chance came back to him with the cruelty of a joke. He could tell her. He could say, I did this. I made a wish. I broke you because I couldnât stand wanting someone who didnât want me back. He could give her the truth even if it came too late for Tasha, too late for the girl outside Kingpinâs, too late for whatever decent version of himself might have existed before the willow snapped in his fist. Instead, he looked past her to the car park, the cameras mounted near the back entrance, the broken window, Tasha not moving in the driverâs seat. Self-preservation arrived before grief, before guilt, before anything that shouldâve made him human. Cook released one of her arms and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a smear near his knuckles that wasnât all his.
âDid anyone see you?â he asked.
She stared at him like heâd spoken another language.
âListen to me.â His voice came out harsh, urgent. âDid anyone see you come out here?â
âI donât know.â She shook her head hard, tears spilling now, breath breaking into ugly little sobs. âI donât know, I donât know, I donât remember. Cook, please, I donât remember doing that.â
âFuck.â
He checked the lot, the back door, the red blink of the camera, trying to remember which angle Gareth had said was broken because he refused to pay for a new one. His thoughts moved horribly fast. Cameras. Police. Ryan. Gareth. The girl in hospital. Tasha in the car. His fingerprints on the passenger door. Her wearing his jacket. She was unraveling beside him, hands hovering in front of her face, fingers opening and closing like she didnât understand what they were capable of. She wiped at the red on her skin and only smeared it worse, a broken sound tearing out of her throat when she saw it spread.
âI didnât mean to,â she said. âI didnât mean to, I swear I didnât. I didnât mean to scare you.â
Cook looked back at her. That was when it changed. Her hysteria didnât vanish so much as bend toward him, terror dragging itself into devotion because the curse knew where to put all that pain. Her eyes found his and stayed there. Her hands dropped from the red on her fingers to his shirt, gripping tight, pleading with him to make the world smaller.
âTasha confused you,â she said, voice shaking. âI saw her. I saw how she looked at you. I fixed it. Iâm sorry. I didnât mean to scare you.â
Cook shouldâve pushed her away. He pulled her behind the bins instead, out of the cameraâs cleanest line. He did call eventually. Not straight away. Not before heâd wiped what he could from the passenger handle with the inside of his sleeve. Not before heâd taken his jacket off her shoulders and shoved it behind the bins. Not before heâd told her to go to his flat by the back way and wait there, no texts, no calls, no stopping for anyone. When he finally stumbled into Kingpinâs shouting for Gareth to call an ambulance, his voice sounded convincing enough that everyone ran. By then, Cook had already learned something about himself he could never unlearn. His first instinct had been to live with it.
The One Wish Willow box was still under the passenger seat of his car because Cook had never been good at throwing away evidence of his own stupidity. He found it later with shaking hands, after the ambulance lights had gone, after Garethâs voice had turned hoarse from shouting, after Ryan had looked at him across Kingpinâs like he finally understood Cook was worse than a coward. The box had slid half under the seat rail, red-and-cream cardboard damp along one corner from whatever had leaked down there, the cartoon faces still grinning up at him like they knew the punchline. Cook sat in the driverâs seat with the door open, one foot on the wet tarmac, the heater blowing stale air against his knees. His hands smelled faintly metallic no matter how many times heâd wiped them on his jeans. The car park was mostly empty now, Kingpinâs neon buzzing overhead, gold and red dragging itself across the puddles like the place was trying to make even murder look tacky. He turned the box over. The hotline number waited on the back in small printed text, tucked beneath the instructions and all the cheery little promises the packaging had no business making anymore.
NEED HELP? CALL TODAY! 1-323-747-7118.
Cook laughed once. It came out wrong. He dialed before he could think too hard about it. The line rang twice, clicked, and then a bright recorded voice filled the car. âThank you for contacting One Wish Willow support. For wish dissatisfaction, press one. For unintended romantic escalation, press two. For injury, pursuit, fixation, or violent attachment, press three. If your wish has resulted in death, please remain on the line.â
Cook stared through the windscreen. âYouâve got to be fucking joking.â
A soft beep sounded. âYour call may be recorded for training and liability purposes. One Wish Willow is not responsible for unclear phrasing, malicious intent, emotional negligence, activation while intoxicated, activation during heartbreak, humiliation, rejection, social embarrassment, romantic jealousy, or poor judgment.â
Cook shut his eyes. âYeah. Brilliant. Very helpful.â
The hold music started. Tinny. Cheerful. Some little nursery-rhyme version of a pop song he couldnât place, plinking away while Tashaâs head hitting the wheel replayed behind his eyes. Cook gripped the phone so hard his knuckles hurt. The line clicked again. A man came on, voice flat enough to sound like heâd been saying the same thing all day and hated every person who made him say it twice. âOne Wish Willow support. Name and nature of your wish-related concern?â
Cook stared at the grinning cartoon branch. âYou lot are real?â
A pause. âYes.â
âRight. Okay. Yeah. Course you are.â
âName?â
âCook.â
âFirst name, surname, or nickname?â
âJust Cook.â
The man sighed softly. âFine. Nature of concern?â
Cook rubbed a hand over his mouth. âHypothetically, if someone wished for a girl to fancy him and now sheâs gone a bit murderyââ
âWe donât process hypotheticals after activation.â
Cook looked up at the rain-specked windscreen. âFine. Not hypothetically.â
âThank you. Was the willow broken cleanly or splintered?â
âI donât fucking know. It was dark, I was pissed off, and I was having a moment.â
Paper shifted on the other end of the line. âWas there blood at activation?â
âNo.â
âWitnesses?â
âNo.â
âWas the desired party named clearly in the wish?â
Cookâs throat tightened. The car seemed smaller suddenly, the box too bright in his lap.
âClear enough.â
âWas the wording romantic, sexual, possessive, punitive, corrective, or retaliatory?â
Cook blinked. âWhat?â
âClosest category.â
âAll of them,â he muttered.
Another pause.
âNot recommended,â the man said.
âYeah, well, weâre a bit past recommended, arenât we?â
âDescribe the escalation.â
Cook leaned his head back against the seat. The fabric was cold against his skull. âSheâs jealous.â
âExpected.â
âSheâs clingy.â
âExpected.â
âShe watches me sleep.â
âWithin range.â
Cookâs laugh scraped out of him. âWithin range. Brilliant.â
âHas the desired party displayed violence toward herself or others?â
Cook saw Tashaâs fingers slipping off the wheel. Saw the horn blaring under the weight of her body. Saw the girl in the car park folded against the bricks, mouth red, phone smashed near the bins. âYeah."
âSeverity?â
Cook swallowed. âBad.â
âI need more specific than bad.â
âHow violent is violent?â
âRecently?â
He let his eyes close.
âHospital,â he said. âThen worse.â
The operator went quiet. For the first time, he sounded less bored. âIs the desired party currently with you?â
âNo.â
âDo you know where she is?â
âMy flat.â
âDid you instruct her to go there?â
Cookâs jaw tightened. âYeah.â
âHas she disobeyed direct instructions since activation?â
He thought about it. No texts. No calls. No stopping for anyone. His stomach turned. âNo.â
âThen the bond is stable.â
âStable?â Cook snapped. âShe justââ He stopped himself, glancing toward Kingpinâs like the walls could still hear him. âShe nearly killed someone.â
âNearly?â
Cook said nothing.
The man exhaled. âUnderstood.â
âCan you fix it?â
âThat depends on what you mean by fix.â
Cook leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the box creasing slightly under his grip. âCan you make her, likeâŚless murdery but still into me?â
The silence on the line was worse than judgment. âAlterations after activation are not supported.â
Cook stared at the rubber floor mat. There was a tiny dark flake caught in the rubber grooves. Blood or mud. He couldnât tell anymore.
âSo what, thatâs it?â he asked. âSheâs just like this?â
âThe wish persists until the object of devotion dies.â
Cookâs hand went cold around the phone. For one stupid, shameful moment, he thought of her. Her body under the same ugly security light. Her blood on the same wet tarmac. A clean ending that required him to lose the thing he had wanted badly enough to ruin. Then the operator clarified.
âTo be clear, you are the object of devotion.â
Cook stopped breathing.
âThe wish ends when you die.â
The heater hummed. Rain ticked lightly against the roof. Somewhere upstairs, in his flat, she was waiting because he had told her to. Because she did what he said now. Because he had made her into someone who would.
Cook laughed once, quiet and empty. âSo Iâve got to die?â
âThat is the termination condition.â
âAny alternatives?â
âNone that work.â
Cook lowered the phone from his ear and looked at the box in his lap. The little doodled faces on the front stared up at him, a man and a woman drawn in soft, stupid lines like this was still some novelty you bought for a laugh. Bright colors. Cheap promises. The sort of thing that belonged in a gift shop beside scented candles and mugs that said things like follow your dreams. Not under his hands. Not after Tashaâs skull had met the steering wheel. Not after the truth had finally crawled out from under every excuse heâd built and sat there in front of him, simple as. He thought of the girl from before all this. Not the one in his bed. The real one. Laughing at the counter because Ryan had said something stupid. Rolling her eyes at Cook because heâd made something filthy out of nothing. Sitting in his car, rain on the windows, telling him in every way except the actual words that he wasn't what she wanted. He thought of Tashaâs voice in the car. She wasnât secretly waiting for you. He knew then. Properly. With horrible clarity. He had stolen her. Not won. Not uncovered. Not seduced. Stolen.
The knowledge landed with no softness around it, no pretty little way to dress it up. The world gave him one simple equation: his death for her freedom. His life for her curse. One simple answer, sitting there in his hands, waiting for him to be the sort of person he had never once managed to be. Cook sat with that until his breathing steadied. Then he hung up.
For a while, Cook just sat there with the phone in his hand, listening to the dead line that wasn't a line anymore, only his own breathing and the heater coughing stale air into the car. The answer stayed where the man had left it. The wish ends when you die. Simple. Clear. Horrible. Cook looked at the box again. The cartoon faces smiled back at him from his lap, cheerful and stupid, and untouched by consequence. It had no blood on it. No shaking hands. No girl waiting upstairs with pieces of herself missing. No Tasha slumped against a steering wheel. Just bright colors and soft rounded letters, as if all of this was still a joke you could buy at a counter and give to someone for a laugh. His thumb pressed into the cardboard until it bent. For one second, he imagined doing it.
Not properly. Not with any plan. Just a flash of it, sudden and ugly: stepping into the road, swerving the car into a wall, taking a knife from the kitchen and making himself brave for once in his miserable fucking life. Ending it. Ending her. Giving her back whatever part of her he had stolen. The thought lasted long enough to make him feel sick. Then it passed. Not because he couldn't picture it. Because he could. Because, in the picture, she was free. And Cook wasn't there to see it. He deleted the call from his phone. Then the number. Then he checked it twice, because panic made him thorough in ways guilt never had. He wiped the box down with the hem of his shirt even though his fingerprints were everywhere by now, then shoved it into the glove compartment beneath old receipts, a cracked CD case, and a packet of Rizla with two papers left inside. The cartoon faces disappeared under rubbish. Cook shut the compartment. There. Gone. That was how people like him handled the truth. Put something over it and decided it was buried.
When he got back upstairs, the flat was quiet. Too quiet at first. The kind of quiet that made his skin prickle before he saw her. She was sitting on the edge of his bed in one of his shirts, knees drawn up, bare feet tucked under the mattress frame. Her hair was damp at the ends like she had tried to wash more than her hands. The bathroom light had been left on behind her, striping the hall in yellow. His towel lay abandoned on the floor, streaked faintly pink where she must have scrubbed at her skin until the worst of it came off. Not all of it. A thin crescent of blood still clung under one nail. Cook saw it before she curled her hands into the hem of his shirt. Her face lifted the second he came in.
âAre you angry?â she asked. Cook closed the door behind him. The lock clicked. He felt it in his teeth. He should have said yes. Should have said worse. Should have told her he was scared of her, scared of himself, scared that the only way to undo any of it required him to stop breathing. Should have told her about the box, the call, the man on the phone, the termination condition sitting in the glove compartment under receipts and dust. Instead, Cook crossed the room and touched her face. She went quiet instantly.
âThere you are,â he said, because the line still worked and he hated that it did.
Relief crossed her so fast it looked painful. âI didnât know where I was.â
âI know.â
âI saw her.â Her voice shook. âTasha, and then outside, and then glass, and thenââ She swallowed hard, staring at him like he could decide how much of the memory survived. âI hurt her.â
Cook kept his hand on her cheek. âYou were upset.â
âShe was bleeding.â
âYou were confused.â
âI hurt her, Cook.â
His thumb brushed her cheekbone once. âShe got in your head.â
The words changed the air between them. Her brow pulled in. âNo.â
âTasha got in your head,â he repeated, gentler this time, like he was reminding her of something sheâd forgotten. âShe was trying to make you doubt yourself.â
âI donât thinkââ
âThatâs the problem, isnât it?â Cook stepped closer, until her knees brushed his legs. âYou keep thinking thereâs some other you under all this. Some better version waiting to come back and tell you Iâm bad for you.â
Her mouth trembled. âThere is.â
The honesty of it cut through him so cleanly he almost stepped back. Almost. Instead, Cookâs hand slid from her cheek to the side of her neck, not holding tight, not yet. Just there. Present. Familiar. A reminder.
âNo,â he said. âThatâs what everyone else told you to be.â
She stared up at him.
âThis is you.â
Her breath caught.
âYou just finally stopped pretending.â
She shook her head once, small and frightened. âThatâs not true.â
âIsnât it?â Cook asked. âYou came back to the car.â
Something fractured behind her eyes. Cook saw it and pushed.
âYou remember that, yeah? The night it started. I was sitting there like a fucking idiot, and you came back. Couldâve gone home. Couldâve left me there. But you didnât.â
Her hands twisted in the hem of his shirt. âBecause I wanted you,â she said, but it sounded like someone had placed the words on her tongue and made her taste them.
Cookâs stomach turned. He smiled anyway. âThere you go.â
Her eyes filled. âCookâŚâ
âYou wanted me.â
She shook her head again, weaker this time. âI was scared.â
âYou wanted me,â he said, and now his voice had an edge under the gentleness, something he couldnât keep buried. âNot Ryan.â
The name cut through the fog. Her expression emptied. âRyan?â
Cookâs grip firmed before he meant it to, not enough to choke, enough to make her attention snap back to him. âYou remember him?â
âIâŚâ She blinked hard. âI donât know.â
âYou liked him.â
âMaybe.â
âMaybe?â
âI donât know,â she said, panic rushing back into her voice. âI donât know, Cook. I canât tell whatâs mine anymore.â
That shouldâve stopped him. It sat right there in front of him: the truth, plain as Tashaâs voice in the fogged-up car. She couldnât tell what belonged to her. He had done that. His wish had taken her wants and bent them around him until every thought came out wearing his name. Cook leaned down until their foreheads nearly touched.
âThen let me tell you.â
Her eyes searched his. His heart was going too fast, ugly living proof that he had chosen himself once already and was about to do it again.
âYou didnât want Ryan,â he said.
Her mouth parted.
âYou didnât want Tasha.â
A tear slipped down her cheek.
âYou wanted me.â
Her voice broke. âI wanted you.â
Cook closed his eyes briefly. It felt like winning. âSay it properly.â
âI wanted you,â she whispered. âI only wanted you.â
She was crying now, silently, like her body knew it had been made to lie and couldnât stop obeying the lie anyway. Cook wiped the tear away with his thumb. The tenderness of it was almost obscene.
âGood,â he said.
The word ruined her. Her shoulders sank, relief cutting through the panic, devotion closing over the wound he had made. She leaned into him like he had saved her from something, when all he had done was press his hands over her mouth until her own voice came out wrong.
âIâm sorry,â she said. âIâm sorry I scared you.â
Cook took in the bathroom light glowing behind her, the towel on the floor, the tiny red crescent under her nail, his shirt on her body, his name in her mouth. Then he thought of the operatorâs voice again. The wish ends when you die. His hand moved into her hair.
âIâm still here, arenât I?â
She nodded quickly.
âAnd youâre still here.â
âYes.â
âSo stop looking like that.â
She tried. That was the worst part. She actually tried. Swallowed it down, rearranged herself into something he could bear to look at without seeing the car park reflected back at him. Cook kissed her, not because it was the right thing, not because she needed comfort, but because the alternative was standing there with the truth between them, and Cook had never known what to do with truth except make it uglier. She kissed him back after a moment. Of course she did.
By morning, pretending had gotten easier than remembering. Cook woke with his arm still locked around her waist, her body tucked against his like sheâd fallen asleep mid-apology and never finished the sentence. For a few seconds, the flat was ordinary in the miserable way his flat was always ordinary: cold air near the window, stale smoke in the curtains, a mug on the floor with tea dried brown at the bottom. Then she shifted, and everything came back. Tashaâs car. The horn. The hotline. The wish ends when you die. Cook stared at the ceiling and didnât move.
Beside him, she made a small sound in her sleep and pressed closer, fingers curling against his shirt. The red under her nail was gone now. She mustâve scrubbed it out sometime in the night, or he had, or both of them had done enough cleaning that his head had folded the details into one ugly blur. His shirt had slipped at her shoulder, showing the edge of the bruise his mouth had left there, and the sight of it still gave him that same sick, satisfaction.
Mine, he thought.
Then, immediately after, because the universe was a sadistic little prick: Stolen.
She woke up with his name already in her mouth. âCook?â
He shut his eyes. There were a hundred things he couldâve said. He couldâve told her about the hotline. He couldâve told her the truth while morning made everything less dramatic and more damning. Instead, he rolled toward her and put a hand on her hip. âMorning.â
Her expression changed too quickly, nervousness bending toward him before it knew what else to be. âAre you still angry?â
âNo.â
âAre you lying?â
Cookâs mouth twitched. âObviously.â
She didnât smile. That was new. Or old. He couldnât tell anymore. Her eyes searched him like she was trying to read his answer before the curse finished deciding how she felt about it.
âI remember some of it,â she said.
Cookâs hand stalled.
âNot all,â she added quickly, like she was scared the memory itself would upset him. âJust bits. The car. Tasha crying. You pulling me back.â Her fingers curled into the sheet. âI remember asking what did I do.â
âYou were upset.â
âThatâs not an answer.â
âNo,â Cook said. It's the only one you're gonna get. âItâs the only one that matters.â
She turned away toward the curtains and the weak morning light leaking around the edges. For a moment, she looked like someone trapped in a room she didnât remember entering. Then Cook touched her face, and her attention came back to him too fast.
âYou need to stop picking at it,â he said. âYouâll only make yourself worse.â
âI hurt someone.â
âI already told you, Tasha got in your head.â
âSheâs dead, isnât she?â
The room went silent.
Cook felt the question land in his chest and stay there. He hadnât meant for her to know. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Heâd imagined keeping it vague, messy, something sheâd done but didnât have to name. Hospital. Accident. Bad night. Anything that left the final shape of it blurred.
âCook.â
His jaw worked.
âYeah,â he said.
The answer hollowed her out. No sobbing. No screaming. Not at first. Her fingers slipped from the sheet, her mouth parting around a sound that never made it out, and for the first time since the wish, Cook saw her look at herself like she was the thing in the room to fear.
Then Cook ruined it.
âYou didnât mean to.â
Her eyes filled. âThat doesnât make it better.â
âI know.â
âYou donât.â The words came out small, but they came out hers. âYou donât know that.â
Cookâs hand dropped from her face. The loss of contact seemed to scare her more than the confession. She reached for him instantly, then stopped herself halfway, hand hovering between them like she didnât trust it to be her own. That shouldâve killed something in him. Instead, it made him angry. Not at her. At the pause. At the tiny stubborn piece of her still trying to choose. Cook sat up.
âGet dressed,â he said.
She blinked. âWhat?â
âWeâve got work.â
âCookââ
âGarethâll be watching everyone. Ryan too.â He swung his legs off the mattress and found his jeans on the floor. âYou donât show up, it looks weird.â
âIt is weird.â
He turned back to her. She flinched before he even spoke. Cook saw it. Cook hated it. Cook kept going anyway.
âYou want everyone asking questions?â he said. âYou want them looking at you?â
Her defiance drained, replaced by fear so quickly it proved him right in the worst way.
âNo.â
âThen get dressed.â
She stared at him for another moment, eyes wet, mouth trembling around something she didnât say. Then she nodded.
Of course she did.
Kingpinâs opened late, which was Garethâs version of respect.
By noon, the front doors were unlocked, the arcade machines were shrieking, and the fryer was back to pumping grease into the air like nothing human had ever happened within fifty feet of the place. The back corner of the car park was still taped off. Tashaâs car was gone. Someone had thrown sand over the worst of what had been left on the tarmac, but rain had dragged some of it thin, carrying it in faint reddish trails toward the drain near the bins. Cook saw it before she did. He stepped in front of her without thinking. Not to protect her from it. To stop her reacting where anyone could see.
She almost walked into his back. âCook?â
âEyes on me.â
Her fingers were cold when he took her wrist, disappearing almost completely into the sleeve of his old jacket. His jacket. Because apparently even after everything, Cook still couldnât stop making little claims on her where people could see. No. Worse than that. He liked seeing her in it. Inside, Gareth was pacing by the front desk with his phone in one hand and a clipboard in the other, face blotchy, beard rough where he kept dragging his fingers through it.
âNo one says anything that isnât what they already said,â he snapped before Cook had even clocked in. âPolice come back, you cooperate. Customers ask, you donât know a bloody thing. Press ask, you donât know a bloody thing louder.â
JJ stood near the shoe rental, arms folded tight across his chest, staring at nothing. His face had a greyish cast to it. Every few seconds his eyes flicked toward the back corridor and then away again, as if looking too long might bring Tasha through it. Ryan was behind the lanes. He looked like he hadnât slept. The second Cook walked in, Ryanâs attention fixed on him with a hatred so evident it made the room feel hotter. Then his eyes moved to her. She was standing half a step behind Cook, quiet, hands tucked into the sleeves of the jacket. She looked smaller when she wasnât performing devotion. Not physically. Just dimmed somehow, like the morning had drained the violence out of her and left her with the echo of it. Ryan looked from her to Cook, and whatever he saw there made his jaw tighten. Cook felt her shift beside him.
âDonât,â he said under his breath.
âI wasnât.â
âYeah, you were.â
Her fingers brushed his wrist. âI just donât like how heâs looking at you.â
Cook almost laughed. Almost. Because Tasha was dead. Because the back lot still had caution tape around it. Because Ryanâs grief had teeth, and all Cook could think for one sick second was that she still cared more about Ryan looking at him than the body that had been dragged out of the car. He leaned closer, mouth near her ear.
âThen donât look back.â
She went still, then her eyes dropped to the floor. Of course they did. Gareth clapped his hands once, sharp and desperate. âRight. Weâve got two parties booked, one staff member down, and if anyone starts crying where customers can see it, I swear to God Iâll join in and then weâre all fucked. Move.â
It shouldâve been impossible to work. It wasnât. That was the worst part. Shoes still needed spraying. Lanes still jammed. Kids still shoved tokens into machines and screamed when the claw dropped half an inch from a stuffed plushie. The world had a disgusting talent for carrying on. Tasha had been alive yesterday. Today, a man complained that lane five had swallowed his daughterâs pink bowling ball and could someone please fix it because theyâd paid for the full hour. Cook fixed it. He crawled half under the return while the machinery coughed and rattled above him, grease and dust sticking to his forearms, and tried not to think about Tashaâs head hitting the wheel. Tried not to think about the hotline, about the box in his glove compartment.
When he came back out, Ryan was waiting. Not by accident. He stood near the staff-only door with a bucket of lane cleaner in one hand and murder in his face. Not the messy kind she had. Ryanâs was quieter. Human. The sort that still knew what consequences were and hated itself for wanting them anyway.
âWe need to talk.â
Cook wiped his hands on his work trousers. âPopular fucking phrase lately.â
Ryan didnât blink. âNow.â
âNo.â
Ryan stepped closer. âDid she do it?â
Cookâs eyes flicked, just once, toward the prize counter.
She was there with JJ, sorting tickets into bundles because Gareth had stuck her somewhere visible, somewhere bright, somewhere he could pretend visible meant safe. Her hands moved carefully. Too carefully. Every few seconds, she looked over at Cook like she could feel the distance tugging. Cook looked back at Ryan.
âCareful.â
âDid she do it?â
âYou grieving, mate? Or interrogating?â
Ryanâs face twisted. âDonât call me mate.â
Cookâs smile came on out of habit. It didnât reach anywhere real. âAlright. What do you want me to call you?â
âI want you to tell me why Tashaâs dead.â
The word hit the air between them. Dead. Not hurt. Not hospital. Not accident. Dead. Cook felt it move across the room even though Ryan had kept his voice low. It seemed to find her anyway. Her head lifted at the prize counter, eyes locking onto him. Cookâs stomach dropped. Ryan saw it. Saw her. Saw the line between them work. His expression changed.
âJesus,â he said quietly. âYou know.â
Cook grabbed his arm and shoved him through the staff-only door before Ryan could say it any louder. The back corridor smelled of damp cardboard, bleach, and the bins outside. The fluorescent light overhead flickered hard enough to make the walls twitch. Cook let go first, because keeping his hand on Ryan felt too much like admitting Ryan had made him move. Ryan shoved him back. Cook hit the opposite wall, shoulder first.
âThere he is,â Cook said, breath coming sharp. âKnew you had a little fight in you.â
Ryanâs eyes were red. Not crying now. Past that. âWhat did you do to her?â
Cookâs mouth shut. Not what did she do? What did you do to her?
Ryan stepped closer. âShe wasnât like this.â
âEveryone keeps saying that.â
âBecause itâs true.â
Cook laughed, short and ugly. âYou all experts now, yeah?â
âI knew her.â
The words landed exactly where Ryan meant them to.
Cookâs hands curled at his sides. âDid you?â
Ryan stared at him. Then something bitter moved through Ryanâs face, grief and guilt and cruelty all getting tangled together.
âYeah, Cook. I did.â
Cookâs jaw flexed.
Ryan took one more step. âYou read her phone?â
Cook said nothing.
âThatâs why youâve been looking at me like that.â
Cookâs smile came back wrong. âCareful, mate.â
Ryan laughed then, but there was nothing funny in it. âYouâre unbelievable.â
âYeah? Go on.â
âShe was coming round mine,â Ryan said. âBefore all this. Before you started acting like sheâd been yours the whole time.â
Cook felt the corridor tilt. Ryan saw it and kept going.
âShe was texting me. Wearing my hoodie. Getting in my bed because she wanted to, not because I had to hover over her every second like a fucking creep.â
Cookâs hand curled into a fist.
Ryanâs voice shook, but he didnât stop. âAnd the worst part? I told you to ask her out because I knew sheâd say no. I knew she didnât want you like that.â
Cook hit him. It wasnât clever. Definitely not planned. His fist cracked across Ryanâs mouth hard enough to snap his head sideways, and for one beautiful second the only thing in the world was impact. Ryan stumbled into a stack of flattened cardboard boxes, caught himself, then came back swinging. His knuckles caught Cook in the cheek. Pain flashed white. Cook laughed through it because laughing was better than making the sound he actually wanted to make. He shoved Ryan back towards the door at the end of the corridor, the one that opened behind the lanes where the machinery ran loud enough to eat voices. Ryan grabbed the front of his Kingpin's polo.
âYou ruined her,â Ryan spat.
Cook drove his shoulder into him, slamming him against the wall. Ryanâs breath punched out.
âYou donât know shit.â
âI know she was scared of you.â
âShe came back to me.â
âDid she?â Ryanâs mouth twisted, blood bright at the corner. âOr did you finally wear her down enough that she stopped sounding like herself?â
Cook froze. The corridor seemed to narrow around the sentence. Ryanâs chest rose and fell hard. He looked past Cook then, toward the small rectangular window in the staff door. Cook turned. She was there. Standing on the other side of the glass. Watching. For a long moment, no one moved. Her eyes went from Cookâs split cheek to Ryanâs bleeding mouth. Then to Ryanâs hands, still twisted in Cookâs work shirt. Something in her face went empty. Ryan let go first.
âDonât,â he said. Not to Cook. To her. That made it worse. Cook opened the door before she could.
âGo back out front,â he said.
She looked at Ryan, then at Cook. Ryan shook his head slowly. âDonât listen to him.â
Her hand flexed at her side. The bandage pulled tight across her palm. Cook felt the whole thing balance there, awful and delicate. He shouldâve told her to leave. He shouldâve told Ryan to run. Instead, because Ryan had said she was coming round mine and Cook could still feel the words chewing through his ribs, he said, âHeâs upsetting me.â
Her face changed. Ryan saw it happen.
âOh, fuck you,â he said, voice cracking. âCook, donâtââ
She didnât run at first. That was what made it scary. She walked through the staff door with the same terrible focus sheâd had outside Tashaâs car, shoulders still, bandaged hand flexing at her side. Ryan backed up on instinct, one hand lifted like he could talk her down, like there was anything in the room left to reason with. Cook saw the exact second Ryan understood he wasnât looking at someone angry. He was looking at someone aimed.
âStay back,â Ryan said.
She didnât even blink. âYou hurt him.â
Cookâs split cheek pulsed with heat, and some rotten little part of him thrilled at how quickly sheâd made it simple. Ryan had blood on his mouth. Cook had blood under his skin. That was enough. That was all the curse needed. It didnât care about Tasha, or the phone, or the way Ryan had said she was coming round mine like it was a knife and he knew where to jab. It only needed Cook hurt and Ryan close enough to punish.
Ryan looked past her. âCook.â
Cook shouldâve said something. He shouldâve grabbed her, shouldâve pulled her back by the waist and told Ryan to get out, shouldâve used the same horrible obedience that made her drop her eyes and come when called. The command sat ready in his mouth. Stop. Leave him. Come here. But Ryanâs words were still lodged under his ribs. She was coming round mine. Wearing my hoodie. Getting in my bed because she wanted to.
Cook said nothing, and she closed the distance.
Ryan shoved her away when she reached for him, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to keep her off. That was his mistake. Her shoulder hit the wall, and the sound she made wasnât pain. It was surprise, followed by something low and furious. She came back faster, catching his wrist with both hands and twisting it down so sharply Ryan swore and stumbled sideways into the door behind the lanes. The machinery was louder back there, all clatter and hum, the ugly industrial guts of Kingpinâs hidden from customers by painted walls and ugly carpet. A return motor coughed somewhere beyond the door, belts turning, rollers dragging, pins knocking together in hollow plastic thuds. Ryan tried to wrench his arm free, but she went with him, body pressed close, face blank with effort.
âYou touched him,â she said.
Ryanâs eyes flashed with panic. âI didnâtââ
âYou made him bleed.â
Cook moved then, too late to be innocent and too slow to be useful. âAlright, thatâs enough.â
She didnât hear him. Or she did and chose the stronger command: his hurt, her rage, the wish turning both into permission. Ryan stumbled through the half-open service door and hit the narrow space behind lane seven. The air changed at once, hotter and worse, thick with dust, oil, and old rubber. The ball return was exposed in pieces back here, not the glossy customer-facing mouth that spat balls neatly onto the rack, but the underside: belts, metal runners, wheels turning with a grinding patience that made Cookâs stomach tighten.
âGet her off me!â Ryan shouted.
Cook grabbed her shoulder. âStop it.â
She jerked out from under his hand so violently his fingers slipped off the jacket. Ryan tried to swing again, but she caught his arm and shoved forward with everything in her, driving his hand down toward the moving gap beside the return belt. Ryan realized what she was doing half a second too late.
âNoââ
His hand went into the machinery.
The sound was immediate and awful, a wet crunch swallowed under the churn of the return motor. Ryan screamed, high and shocked, his whole body folding toward the trapped hand as the belt dragged and bucked around him. The machine didnât care. It kept trying to do its job, kept pulling, kept grinding, the rollers knocking his knuckles sideways in a way hands were never meant to bend. Cook lunged for the emergency switch. His palm slapped the red button hard enough to hurt. The belt stopped, but the silence after was somehow worse because Ryan was still screaming. He dropped to his knees, clutching his wrist with his free hand, his other hand caught at a wrong angle inside the metal mouth of the return. Blood ran fast over the black rubber belt and dripped onto the concrete in thick, ugly spots. One finger twitched when it shouldnât have. Another didnât move at all.
âFuck,â Cook breathed. âFuck, fuck.â
Ryan sobbed through his teeth, trying not to look at it and looking anyway. âMy hand! Oh my God, my hand!â
She stood over him, chest rising and falling, the bandage on her palm red again where the fight had split it open. Her face wasn't blank now. It was bright with purpose, eyes locked on Ryan like the machine had only done half the work.
âHe hurt you,â she said to Cook, almost pleading with him to understand.
Ryan looked up at her, ruined hand still caught, face pinched in pain. âYouâre sick.â
That did it. Cook saw it happen and still didnât move fast enough. There was a rack of spare pins against the wall, scuffed and dirty from practice lanes, their white plastic bodies scarred with black marks. She grabbed one by the neck with both hands. Ryan tried to scramble back, but his trapped hand kept him anchored in place, dragging a gutted sound out of him when he pulled against the crushed fingers.
âDonât,â Cook snapped.
For once, the word hit her. She hesitated, pin lifted, breath shaking in her throat. Her eyes cut to him, and for a second the whole room balanced on the thin, disgusting edge of what he wanted her to do. Ryan was crying now, properly, sweat and tears and blood all mixing on his face. âPlease.â
Cook looked at him, at his hand, at her holding the pin.
Then Ryan said, âSheâs not yours.â
The pin came down.
It cracked against the side of his head with a hollow, brutal sound that seemed too loud even with the machines around them. Ryanâs body jerked sideways, his shoulder slamming into the return housing. Blood opened at his temple and ran immediately into his hairline, down along his ear, over the corner of his jaw. He made a noise like air leaving a bag. She hit him again. Not clean this time. The pin glanced off his cheekbone and caught his mouth, splitting his lip wider, knocking his head back against the metal. His teeth clicked together with a sound Cook felt in his own jaw. Blood sprayed across the pin in a curved red stripe, then onto her shirt, Cookâs jacket, the concrete between them.
âStop!â Cook grabbed the pin before she could swing a third time, wrenching it hard enough that she nearly came with it. âI said stop!â
She fought him for it, wild for two seconds, then all the force went out of her at once. The pin slipped from both their hands and rolled across the concrete, leaving a thin red track behind it. Ryan sagged beside the machine, half-conscious, his breath coming in broken, wet pulls. His trapped hand was still caught in the return, mangled and slick, and Cook couldnât look at it for more than a second without his stomach trying to turn itself inside out. The door behind them banged open. JJ stood there, face drained of all expression, one hand still on the handle. His eyes took in Ryan first, then the pin, then her, then Cook. For one long second, nobody spoke. The only sound was Ryan breathing through blood and pain, the soft drip of something hitting the concrete, the muffled shriek of children out front winning tickets from a machine.
JJ whispered, âWhat the fuck?â
Cook moved before anyone else could.
âGet Gareth,â he said.
JJ didnât move.
âNow,â Cook barked, and that finally snapped him out of it.
JJ stumbled back through the door, nearly tripping over his own feet as he ran. Cook turned to her, grabbed her by both arms, and dragged her away from Ryan before she could look down long enough to understand what sheâd done. Her breathing was too fast. Her pupils were blown wide. Blood dotted her cheek in tiny specks that werenât hers.
âLook at me,â Cook said.
She did. Of course she did. The obedience hit him like nausea.
âGo to the toilets,â he said. âWash your hands. Wash your face. Donât talk to anyone.â
Her lips parted. âButââ
âNow.â
She obeyed, but not before glancing back at Ryan. The sight of him seemed to cut through something. Her face buckled, horror pushing up through devotion, and Cook saw her almost say his name in that scared, lost voice from the car park. He stepped in front of her before she could.
âGo.â
She went. Cook crouched beside Ryan, hands hovering uselessly because there was nowhere safe to touch. Ryanâs eyes rolled toward him, unfocused but aware enough to hate.
âYou did this,â Ryan rasped.
Cook swallowed. âShut up.â
âYou did.â
âShut the fuck up, Ryan.â
Ryanâs mouth twitched, a bloody, terrible attempt at a laugh. âShe didnât even know why.â
Cookâs throat tightened. Boots pounded down the corridor. Gareth arrived first, JJ right behind him, both stopping dead at the edge of the service space. Garethâs face collapsed into something Cook had never seen on him before. Not anger. Not annoyance. Fear, pure and stupid and useless.
âWhat happened?â Gareth shouted.
Cook looked at the stopped machine, the blood on the concrete, the pin against the wall, Ryan folded beside the return with his hand ruined inside it. A dozen lies came running at once, each worse than the last.
âHe slipped,â Cook said.
Gareth stared at him. âHe fucking what?â
âHe was messing with the return.â Cook stood, wiping his palms on his trousers even though that only spread the red thinner. âHand got caught. Hit his head when he went down.â
JJ made a sound behind Gareth. Not belief. Not disagreement. Just panic trying to find somewhere to go.
Ryan coughed, blood bubbling at his mouth. âLiar.â
Cook looked down at him. Ryan looked back. For a second, Cook thought Ryan might say it. Might say her name. Might say everything in front of Gareth and JJ, and whatever police came crawling back into Kingpinâs after this fresh disaster. But pain broke across his face before words could, and he folded over his trapped hand, choking on another scream when he shifted wrong. Gareth snapped into motion then, not because he believed Cook but because the emergency gave him something easier than the truth. âJJ, call an ambulance. Now. Cook, donât fucking touch him. Nobody touches anything.â
JJ ran. Gareth turned on Cook, voice low and shaking. âWhere is she?â
Cookâs heart dropped. âWho?â
âDonât,â Gareth said. âDonât you dare, not now.â
Cookâs cheek throbbed. His ribs hurt. His hands smelled like blood and rubber and old grease. Behind the customer wall, someone laughed loud enough to carry, bright and horrible, followed by the crack of pins at the end of a lane. Gareth stared at him like he was finally seeing the thing everyone else had been circling. Cook held his gaze and said nothing. The toilet door opened somewhere down the corridor. She stepped out with wet hands, face scrubbed clean enough to leave the skin rubbed raw-looking under the harsh lights. Her bandage was soaked through again. She looked at Gareth, then JJâs empty spot, then Ryan on the floor. Her face crumpled.
âWhat did I do?â she whispered.
Gareth turned toward her. Cook got there first. He caught her by the wrist, careful of the bandage this time, and pulled her behind him. âNothing,â he said.
Ryan made a broken sound from the floor. Cook didnât look at him.
âNothing,â he repeated, and felt the lie take shape around all of them.
The lie didnât hold this time. Not properly. It got them through the next ten minutes because panic was louder than truth. Gareth shouted. JJ came back shaking with a phone pressed to his ear. Ryan kept slipping in and out of sense, groaning through his teeth whenever the smallest movement dragged pain through his ruined hand. Cook stood between her and everyone else like his body could block the whole scene from becoming what it was. But no one looked at him like they believed him. Not JJ, pale under the fluorescent lights, eyes darting between the blood on the pin and the blood on her sleeve. Not Gareth, whose face had gone hard in a way Cook had never seen before. Not Ryan, half-folded beside the machine, mouth bloody, eyes glassy with pain and still full of enough hate to keep finding Cook through it.
âShe did it,â Ryan rasped when the paramedics came.
Cookâs stomach dropped. Gareth looked at her. She stood behind Cook with both hands tucked into the sleeves of his jacket, bandage soaked red, face scrubbed raw from the bathroom sink. She didnât deny it. That was the worst bit. She didnât cry, didnât argue, didnât perform innocently. She only looked at Ryan like some part of her was trying to wake up and couldnât get past the fog. One of the paramedics asked her to sit down.
Cook answered before she could. âSheâs in shock.â
Gareth snapped his head toward him. âEnough.â
Cookâs mouth shut. One word, and it hit harder than any of the shouting had. Not from Ryan. Not from Tasha. Gareth. Red-faced, cheap, useless Gareth, whoâd spent years caring more about broken lane motors than broken people, looking at Cook like he finally knew exactly what kind of rot had been spreading under his carpet. Police came after the ambulance. Of course they did. This time, there was too much to sand down before opening. Too much blood. Too many witnesses. Too many broken things happening around the same two people. Cook gave his statement in Garethâs office while an officer with tired eyes wrote everything down and asked the same question six different ways.
Had Ryan attacked him first? Yes. Had she intervened? She panicked. Had she used the bowling pin? Cook didnât see. Had she shoved Ryanâs hand into the return? Cook didnât see. The officer stopped writing. Cook smiled like his cheek wasnât throbbing. âBit busy getting punched, mate.â
The officer didnât smile back. Through the glass strip in the office door, Cook could see her sitting on a plastic chair by the staff lockers with JJ beside her and another officer crouched in front of her. She looked small under the strip lights, not because of her body, but because the room seemed to have stripped all the command out of her. Her hands sat open on her knees. The red bandage glared against her lap. When the officer asked her something, she looked toward Cook. The officer followed her gaze. Cook looked away too late.
By the time they let them leave, it was because no one had enough straightforward answers to do anything else yet. Ryan was in hospital. Tasha was dead. The girl from the car park was still alive but no longer some one-off bit of violence they could bury under bad luck and Garethâs lack of CCTV. Everything had started connecting itself in peopleâs heads, thin red lines between nights Cook wanted kept separate.
Gareth caught Cook near the back door. He looked older than he had that morning. Not softer. Never that. Just worn down, as if Kingpinâs had finally asked too much of him and he hated them all for making him notice.
âYou donât come in tomorrow,â he said.
Cook blinked. âWhat?â
âNeither of you do.â
âGarethââ
âI said donât.â Garethâs voice shook once, then steadied into something ugly. âI donât know what the fuck is happening, and I donât want to know. But if she comes near this place again before police sort it, Iâm calling them myself.â
Cookâs laugh came out thin. âBit late for principles, innit?â
Gareth stepped closer. For once, he didnât look ridiculous. âGet out.â
Cook wanted to say something clever. Nothing came. Outside, the late afternoon had gone grey and wet, the sky sagging low over the car park. She followed him without speaking, footsteps too quiet behind his. The tape was still around the corner where Tasha had died. Rain had softened the edges of everything except the memory. Halfway to his car, she stopped. Cook noticed because the distance pulled at him now too, some sick echo of the way she always felt him. He turned and found her standing by the drain, staring at the car park like she could replace the scene of every bad thing sheâd done printed over the concrete.
âI donât want this,â she said.
The words were quiet, but they carried. Cookâs chest tightened. She looked at him then, and for the first time in days, maybe weeks, there was no worship in her face. No softening. No automatic reach toward him. Just fear and grief and something exhausted enough to be honest.
âI donât want this,â she said again.
Cook took a step toward her. âYouâre upset.â
âNo.â Her voice shook. âNo, donât do that. Donât tell me what I am.â
He stopped. Rain caught in his hair, cold at the back of his neck. Her hands curled against her sides. âI can feel it when you say things. I can feel myself changing around them. Like my head turns wrong. Like Iâm there, and then Iâm not.â
Cook swallowed. She pressed both hands to her chest like she could hold herself in place. âI remember Ryan. I remember liking him. I remember Tasha. I remember thinking she was nice to me when you were being a dick about something. I remember all of it until you talk, and then it moves. It all moves.â
âCome here,â Cook said before he could stop himself.
She flinched. Then her body took one step. Only one. She froze with horror on her face, staring down at her own foot like it had betrayed her. Cook felt the bottom drop out of him and hated, viciously, that some part of him still wanted to see if sheâd take another. Her eyes lifted to his. Wet. furious. terrified.
âDonât,â she whispered.
Cookâs mouth went dry.
âI donât want you,â she said.
The sentence landed exactly where heâd always known it would. Not like Ryan saying it. Not like Tasha reporting it. Her. Standing in the rain, shaking under the weight of everything his wish had done to her, finally getting one clean line through the curse and putting it between them.
âI donât want you,â she repeated, and the second time it broke her voice. âNot like this. Maybe not ever. I donât know anymore. I donât know whatâs mine.â
Cook looked at her and saw the whole horrible truth of it. The car. The willow. Her at the window. Her in his bed. Her hands in Tashaâs hair. Ryanâs hand caught in the machine. Every time heâd said come here and watched her obey. Every time heâd told himself it was close enough to love if she kissed him back. He could still do it. That was the thought that ruined him most. He could say her name the right way. Step closer. Touch her face. Tell her she was confused, that she was his, that sheâd always been his. The curse would help. It always helped. It would take the pain out of her eyes and put the devotion back. It would make her easier to hold.
Instead, maybe because the rain was cold enough to feel like punishment, maybe because Ryanâs scream was still in his ears, maybe because Tashaâs last breath had followed him all the way into daylight, Cook finally said it.
âI made a wish.â
She stared at him.
His voice came out rougher than he wanted. âThat night. In the car. After you got out.â
Her breathing changed.
âI had that stupid fucking willow thing,â he said. âThe gift. From that oddity shop by Kingpinâs you told me about. I broke it.â
Her face lost everything.
âI wished for you to want me.â
For a second, even the rain seemed to go quiet. Then she took a step back. This time, it was hers. Cook felt it like a door slamming in his face.
âNo,â she said.
He almost laughed, because of course that was what people said when the truth was too ugly to fit into the room. No. As if refusing it could make the world rearrange itself. As if he hadnât spent days doing exactly that.
âIâm sorry,â he said, and hated how useless it sounded.
She looked at him like she didnât know what sorry was supposed to do with all the blood.
âYou made me?â
Cook said nothing.
âYou made me want you?â
âI didnât know it wouldââ
âDonât.â Her voice cracked hard. âDonât you dare say you didnât know. You wanted it.â
He looked away.
She laughed once. Small. Broken. Nothing like amusement. âOh my God.â
âI didnât know itâd be like this.â
âBut you knew enough.â She looked down at her bandaged hand, then back at him. âYou knew enough to keep going.â
That was the bit he couldnât answer. She came closer then, slow and careful, like approaching him cost her something. Cook didnât move. He didnât trust himself to. She stopped close enough that he could see the rain caught on her lashes, the tremor in her mouth, the terrible clarity in her face.
âThen Iâm yours because you asked,â she said.
Cook shut his eyes.
âNo.â
âYes.â Her voice was soft now, and that made it worse. âThatâs what this is, isnât it? Iâm yours because you asked something to take me.â
He opened his eyes. The curse moved under her grief like something waking up. He could see it, and he hated that he could see it: the way her anger bent toward pain, the way her pain bent toward him, the way even this truth tried to make her reach for the person who had caused it. Her hand lifted. Stopped. Shook in the space between them.
âI hate you,â she whispered.
Cook nodded, because she should. Then her fingers caught in his shirt.
âI love you,â she said, and broke on it.
That was the worst thing the wish had done. Not the blood, not Tasha, not Ryan, not the girl by the bins. It hadnât erased the hate or spared her the truth; it had left both alive in her mouth and made the love louder. Cook caught her wrist before she could come any closer. For one breath, he almost let her go. Then he pulled.
And the worst part wasâshe came.
HELLLOOO?? this is literally the movie if it was written and directed by a creative genius whoosh
you keep moving like that im gonna put a fucking baby in you
đđ˘đĽđŹđ¨đ§ đđđđĄđđĽ đ˘đ§ đđ§đđđŚđđ đđđđđ [đđđđ]

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dex in casual [2/?]
thinking about mattđ
Let Me Be Enough
#SYNOPSIS. Dex just wants to be perfect for you, unfortunately youâre not making it easy for him
#CHARACTER(S). Benjamin Poindexter
#WARNING(S). Implied Stalking, obsessive jealousy, implications of voyerism, dubious consent(?), ooc dex
"m'sorry, m'sorry..." Dex sobs, voice muffled against your neck, his words dissolving into broken breaths.
He won't pull away from you, not even when your nails rake down his broad back, drawing red lines and tiny beads of blood. The slap of his hips against yours is relentless, drawing filthy, broken sounds out of both of you.
"Can't stop â don't want toâ" he whines, hips snapping harder, chasing the feeling. The wet noises of your cunt echo through the room, slick and obscene.
"Dex!" you cry out, back arching off the sheets, oversensitive, shaking, â m'so close, too much, pleaseee stopâ"
He shakes his head like he's the one falling apart, a choked sob breaking out of him. He can't stop, not when you're squealing out his name so prettily, not when your cunt is trying to milk him for all heâs worth.
His grip on your hips tightens enough to bruise, fingertips digging in like he's terrified you'll vanish if he loosens them for even a second. The rhythm of his thrusts falters, his balls slapping heavily against your ass, hips stuttering as desperation overtakes the control he had moments ago, bleeding into every messy, uneven snap of his hips. His breath hitches wetly against your skin, and you realize he's crying again, silent tears dripping hot onto your shoulder.
"You neverâ" he gasps, voice cracking, "ânever made those sounds with meâ The words spill out between ragged breaths, raw with something that isnât quite anger but aches just as deep, âNot once. Not like you did with him â he spat.
His words were swept away, lost somewhere between the ringing in your ears and the white-hot haze still clouding your head. You blink up at him, dazed, lips parted, trying to catch up to whatever he just said.
âHuh?"
Dex's face is wrecked above you â flushed, lashes wet, that same broken sob still caught in his throat.
"Your window," he pants, tongue dragging wet over your pulse point before his teeth sink in again, sucking another bruise into your skin, â South side. The blinds wereâ fuckâ always crooked â His hips jerk forward again, slower now but no less insistent, grinding into you with a groan as he felt your cunt squeeze around him, â Every Tuesday. Thursday nights tooâ
The realization creeps over you slow, sick, like cold water seeping into your bones. You go rigid beneath him, fingers twisting tighter in his sweat-damp hair, â Dexâ"
He whines, high and desperate, rutting against you like an animal, his cock twitching inside you, still sensitive, "Saw everything," he confesses, breath hot against your jaw, â Every timeâ Every fucking timeâ His voice cracks open on the last word, ragged, raw, â The way youâ the noisesâ" He shudders, eyes squeezing shut, and you feel the fresh spill of tears against your cheek, â Never with me. Never onceâ
You're pulling at his hair now, nails scraping his scalp, and he just moans, loud and broken, hips stuttering against yours. His lips are slick and messy against your skin, spit-wet kisses that trail down your throat, his teeth catching on your collarbone, â Stopâ Dexâ" you gasp, but your voice comes out weak, trembling, because your body's still clenching around him, still squeezing him tight, betraying you.
"You squirted for him," he mumbles into your shoulder, delirious, hips jerking shallowly, â Twice. I sawâ" His fingers dig into your thighs, spreading you wider, and you sob, oversensitive, shaking as another wave crashes over you, â Wanted toâ fuckâ wanted to make youâ" He breaks off with a groan, burying his face in your neck, shuddering as he spills inside you again, hips twitching weakly.
The squelching 'pop' of him pulling out echoes obscenely in the quiet room, followed immediately by the warm spill of his cum trickling between your thighs. Dex doesn't give you a second to breatheâhis hands are already dragging your hips up, his mouth latching onto you with a desperate, messy hunger.
His tongue swipes broad and flat through the mess he left behind, tasting himself mixed with your slick, and the broken sound he makes vibrates against your oversensitive cunt, â m'gonnaâ fuckâ m'gonna make you," he slurs between wet, open-mouthed kisses to your inner thighs, his grip bruising-tight as he spreads you wider.
"Nononoâ Dex, stopâ" Your legs jerk uselessly against his shoulders, heels skidding against sweat-slick skin, but he pins you down with the full weight of his body, tongue working relentless circles where you're oversensitive and trembling.
The vibrations of his groan against your clit send another jolt of pleasure-pain up your spine, your thighs clamping around his head instinctively even as you try to squirm away.
"Taste so fucking good," he mumbles into you, voice wrecked, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of your ass dragging you closer. "Gonna make youâ fuckâ gonna make you cum rightâ" His words dissolve into a wet, obscene noise as his tongue dips inside you, fluttering shallow and fast, and your back arches off the bed with a punched-out whimper.
You claw at the sheets, toes curling, breath coming in ragged gaspsâbut Dex just growls against you, the sound dark and possessive, and doubles down. His lips seal around your clit, sucking hard enough to make you yelp, and suddenly his fingers are there too, pressing in deep, curling just rightttâ "Dex, pleaseâ" you sob, but it's too late, your body betraying you again as heat coils tight in your belly, your hips jerking against his mouth uncontrollably.
The orgasm hits you like a delayed aftershockâsharp and sudden, tearing through you with enough force to leave your vision momentarily white. Your thighs clamp around Dex's head instinctively, heels digging into the small of his back as you arch off the bed with a choked cry, but it's not the same.
Not the gush of wetness he'd confessed to watching through your crooked blinds, not the mess he'd fantasized about for weeks. Just a shuddering, ordinary climax that leaves you twitching beneath him, breathless and spent.
Dex pulls back immediately, lips swollen and wet, his breath coming in ragged bursts. His eyes dart between your face and the space between your legs like he's waiting for somethingâsome proof, some signâbut when nothing comes, his expression cracks, â Why?" he rasps, voice raw, hands tightening on your thighs hard enough to leave marks. His cock twitches weakly against his thigh, still painfully soft, the flush on his skin deepening with frustration, â Why not with me?"
The question hangs between you, jagged-edged and desperate. You reach for him, fingers brushing his sweat-damped cheek, but he jerks back like you've burned him. "Dex, it'sâ"
"Don't âHis laugh is brittle, fingers dragging through his own hair as he sits back on his heels, his cock bobbing against his stomach, red and leaking, â Don't fucking say it's fine. It's not â His throat bobs as he swallows hard, eyes darting away from yours, â I saw you. I know what I saw. So whyâ"
His voice cracks, fingers digging into his own scalp now like he's trying to physically pull the thoughts out, â Is it me? Am I notâ fuckâ not good enough? Not rough enough? What is it? â
You push yourself up on shaky elbows, still catching your breath, â Dexâ baby pleaseâ
" Do you still love him?," he interrupts, voice breaking, and suddenly you understand the wet shine in his eyes isn't just sweat, â You let him. Youâ fuckâ His hand fists around his own cock now, stroking roughly, his hips jerking into the tight circle of his fingers, â But not me. Never me âHis breath hitches, his strokes turning punishing, â What's wrong with me?"
Your stomach twists, â Nothing's wrong with you âYou reach for him again, but he flinches away, his jaw clenching, â Dexâ"
"Then what?" His grip on himself tightens, precum smearing over his knuckles. "Tell me what to do. Tell me how toâ fuckâ" He cuts off with a groan, his free hand dragging down his face, smearing tears and spit, â I watched you. Every time. The way he touched you, the way youâ" His breath stutters. "I did exactly what he did. Exactly! â he cried out
"So whyâ" His voice drops to a whisper, raw and shattered, âWhy aren't you giving me what I want?" he whines
Dex doesn't let you mutter another word out. His hands clamp around your wrists, pinning them to the mattress with a force that makes your breath catch. His weight presses you deeper into the sheets, the heat of his body scorching where it touches yours. You can feel the tremor in his gripâthe sheer restrain he was holding from lashing out at you.
"You don't get to lie," he grits out, voice ragged. His thumbs dig into the delicate bones of your wrists, not quite painful but close enough, âNot when I saw it. Not when I fucking countedâ His breath hitches, wet against your cheek, âTwice, you did it twiceâ for him!â he cried out.
His hips jerk against yours, his cock dragging through the mess between your thighs with a filthy, wet sound.
You lift your hands gently to frame his face, thumbs brushing away the wet trails on his cheeks as you press soft, feather-light kisses to his trembling lips, âShhh, baby," you murmur, the words warm against his skin, your voice honey-sweet, "It's okay, I'm right here. I love you so much, Dexâlook at me, sweetheartâ His breath hitched when your fingers slide into his hair, scratching soothingly at his scalp the way he likes, and you lean in to nuzzle his nose with yours, grinning when his lashes flutter.
Your thumbs trace slow circles along his damp cheekbones, to the scars on his skin, pressing delicate kisses to each eyelid, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his quivering mouth.
"Love you," you whisper against his skin, lips brushing the shell of his ear as your fingers card through his tangled hair, "Love you so much it hurts, Dex. My sweet boyâ His breath shudders when you nip playfully at his jaw, grinning against the stubble as he instinctively tilts his head to give you better access, â That's it, baby. Just breathe with me, yeah?"
His fingers twitched as they slide towards your palms intertwining your fingers together. You squeeze gently, bringing his knuckles to your lip, kissing each one while his chest rises and falls in uneven bursts, âThink we've had enough for today, hm?" you murmur, stretching up to peck the furrow between his brows, smiling when it smooths under your mouth, "Got all tomorrow toâ"
"No. No, no, noâ" the words tumble rapidly out of his mouth, desperation cracking through every syllable.
His hands tremble where they're clutched around yours, gripping tighter instead of letting go, like he needs the anchor of your fingers laced through his to keep himself from spiraling.
"You don'tâyou don't get it," he chokes out, shaking his head violently, strands of sweat-damp hair sticking to his forehead. His pupils are blown wide, dark with something frantic and wounded, âI canâfuck, I can do better. Justâjust let meâ" His hips jerk forward involuntarily, still achingly soft despite his wants, body too spent to follow where his desperation wants to take it.
His words dissolve into a wet, desperate whine as he presses his forehead against yours, trembling fingers scrabbling at your hips like heâs trying to carve himself into your skin. "Let meâ" His voice cracks, raw and broken, "Let me be enough, just this onceâ"
You barely have time to inhale before heâs pushing into you again, his cock still half-hard and oversensitive, the swollen head dragging against your walls with a shuddering gasp.
His whole body shakes with the effort, muscles twitching under sweat-slick skin as he forces himself deeper, teeth gritted against the overwhelming sensation. His fingers dig into the bruises already purpling your hips, blunt nails leaving crescent moons in their wake.
"Dexânoâ you start, but he cuts you off with a ragged groan, his hips jerking forward in shallow, uneven thrusts. His breath hitches wetly against your neck, his lips brushing your pulse point in something that mightâve been a kiss if it werenât for the way his teeth catch on your skin moments later.
"Please," he whimpers, the word muffled against your collarbone, his voice so small it barely reached your ears. His cock twitched inside you, still soft enough that every movement draws a broken noise from his throat, his body trembling with the strain of chasing a pleasure thatâs just out of reach. "Please, please, pleaseeeâ"
His plea dissolves into a wet gasp as his hips stutter forward, the swollen head of his cock dragging against your oversensitive walls.
The sound is obsceneâwet, squelchingâas his cock drags in and out of you, still half-hard but relentless in its pursuit. Each thrust is uneven, desperate, his hips jerking forward with a broken rhythm that makes his breath hitch.
His fingers dig into your hips, dragging you closer, as if he could fuse himself to you if he just pressed hard enough. "Fuck, fuckâ" he whines, voice cracking, forehead pressed to your collarbone as his cock twitches inside you, still oversensitive but refusing to stop. His hands scramble upward, palms rough as they grope your tits, squeezing hard enough to make you gasp.
"Feelâfeel so good," he slurs against your skin, tongue laving over the sweat-slick curve of your breast before his teeth sink in, sucking a bruise into the soft flesh. His cock pulses inside you, still struggling to stay fully hard, but he pushes deeper anyway, hips stuttering as he grinds against you with a choked sob. "Wannaâwanna make youâ"
His words dissolve into a wet moan as his fingers pinch your nipples sharply, twisting just enough to make you arch beneath him, your cunt clenching around him reflexively. He groans, loud and wrecked, his hips snapping forward like he's chasing the sensation, even as his body trembles with exhaustion.
Dex's body gives out all at onceâhis arms buckle, his knees slip, and he collapses onto you with a ragged groan, his sweat-slick chest pressing flush against yours. His breath comes in harsh, uneven gasps, his muscles trembling with exhaustion as he nuzzles weakly into the crook of your neck, lips brushing your pulse point in a silent plea.
âmâsorry, m'sorry," he slurs, voice thick with tears, his hips twitching weakly against yours even now, as if his body refuses to accept defeat, â I'llâI'll be better, swear it, justâjust lemmeâ" His words dissolve into a broken whimper, feeling your pussy clamp around his spent cock, jizz oozing out of your dripping hole.
You pant beneath him, your own limbs heavy, skin tingling from oversensitivity, every inch of you aching in the best and worst ways.
Your thighs quiver where they bracket his hips, your cunt still fluttering around him in aftershocks, and you wince at the sensationâtoo much, too soon, but Dex doesn't pull away. Instead, he presses closer, his fingers tangling in the sheets beside your head as he shudders, his entire body wracked with exhaustion.
âGonnaâgonna be good," he mumbles, lips dragging wetly along your collarbone, his voice wrecked. "Gonnaâfuckâgonna make youâ" His hips jerk again, but it's weak, pathetic, his body betraying him as a fresh wave of tremors wracks his frame.
Dex's voice scrapes out dry and cracked, throat raw from overuseâ every whine and broken syllable he's spent the last hour pulling out of himself leaving him parched, "We're gonna go againâ
His hips shift weakly against yours, a half-hearted grind that barely stirs him inside you, â Iâm gonna get it right this timeâ
The ceiling stares back at you, blank and indifferent, while something heavy settles low in your ribs, cold and creeping.
shane maguire and ddba!dex poindexter keeping a collection of polaroids taken of them fucking you
18+ mdni!!, penetration, creampie, implied masturbation, nudes, established relationship, gn!reader, nsfw under the cut
shane was looking around your room one day when he spotted the old polaroid camera you owned since you were a preteen. you loved to take photos with it and always took it on trips with him. for memories and keepsakes, you told him, reminders of all the good days you had. naturally, there was a whole set of photos of shane, mostly going about his dayâhunting, making breakfast, standing around like an assholeâand totally unaware that youâd pulled out your camera on him. he wasnât really into posing for photos.
your thighs dug into his hips as shane drove into you mercilessly, whimpering when he leaned his weight over you as your orgasm approached quickly. he was nearly there too. he supported himself on his forearm, hand coming up to cover your eyes. you let out a sharp whine, annoyed you wouldnât get to see him come. your mouth hung open when he started thrusting into the spot he knows makes you see stars.
you felt his dick twitch, heard his long and low groan as the first rope of his cum filled you before he quickly pulled out. you could hear the sloppy wet sound of shaneâs hand stroking himself through his high, painting the rest of his cum onto your chest and stomach. your mouth was fixed open, still heaving heavy from your orgasm. thatâs when you heard the distinct and familiar sound of a camera, your camera, to be exact. the one youâd like to take whenever you go out with shane and explore and take more pictures of him than any other pretty thing outside.
you find your voice, mumbling out, âwhatâre you doinâ?â
âjust making some memories, darlinâ, like you. got a hundred of these of me. only fair i get some of ya,â shane answers, the corner of his mouth lifts skyward in a smirk that makes you wanna slap him and kiss him stupid both at once.
you take a look once theyâve finished developing. the first one he took has your whole body in it, legs spread wide around him, but your eyes are covered by his large hand. your mouth is open dumbly, like youâve completely rendered yourself to the pleasure. trails of shaneâs cum are splattered onto your skin. heâd done it plenty of times, but youâd never seen it from this angle before. his softening cock rests along your messy hole, which is also covered in his cum. the other photo is much closer to your body. he had slipped the head of his cock inside you to push his cum back in. itâs still as insanely erotic as the last.
the photos he takes go into his wallet and donât ever leave them unless heâs out in his tent late at night or early in the morning, whenever heâs missing you and wants a little more than just memories, imagination, and his own damn hand in place of your warm body. of course, they donât even compare to the real deal, but boy do they sure help.
shaneâs collection grows quickly over a few months, and heâs started buying the refills himself because heâs taken so many. and eventually he has to start storing the pictures in a shoebox when they stopped all fitting into his wallet. the man has got himself a rotation of dirty photos of you now.
dex, on the other hand, is just a little more shy about taking these of you. because itâs you! you make him nervous because he cares so much, and he just misses you more than he can even bear while heâs away on his missions. but this shyness doesnât last when he realizes youâre into it just as much!! but also on the condition that you get some of your own material out of it.
the man is beefy and broad and big in the all the best ways!! ofc you want some pictures for when heâs far away and the only thing you have is your own hand to work with. well, youâd already amassed a vast collection of dex pictures during your relationship, but none below the beltâŚ
heâd keep the pictures of you in one of his many pockets, a perk of having a job that requires so much tactical wear. stakeouts often got boring, and even if he wasnât gonna fuck his own hand and pretend that it was you, he still liked to slip out the photos he kept on him. it was a reminder that he had someone to return home to, that there was something worth all this trouble waiting for him back home, who missed him just as much.
the pictures are mostly faceless and pov shots. in one dex had taken, he had you on your stomach on the bed, his dick buried deep inside you, despite the overstimulation. his hand was splayed against the center of your back, your spine arched with need. your ass was covered in one of his loads, dripping down to your asshole. another picture he took was by his window, your ass resting off the windowsill as he plowed into you. your arms held onto his shoulders for support.
there was one youâd taken of him, of his head between your thighs, your legs resting over his shoulders as his mouth gave you one of the best orgasms of your life. you held up the camera, trying not to buck your hips too much or else the picture might turn out blurry.
âdex, smile,â you teased, not expecting him to smirk with his mouth still on you, his warm brown eyes flirting with the camera lens.
you laughed, plucking the photo out of the slot, tossing it face down onto the corner of your bedside table. you took another similar one, but this time with one of your hands grabbing hold of his dark blond hair, pressing him down between your thighs almost suffocatingly.
but dex was right where he wanted to be.

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OBSESSION ââââămdni .á stalker!dex, obsessive behaviour, masturbation (m)...
dexs' ocd making him hate unfamiliar touch.
so when he weasles his way into your life, enough to meet you he practically studies your hands because he would rather die then be made uncomfortable by you of all people.
he knows eventually you'll let him in and surely that'll mean more time together and maybe holding your hand or even a kiss if he's lucky. but for now he'll stick to getting coffee and complaining about work. all while his eyes are stuck on your hands, watching the way you trace your knuckles while you talk, imagining what it would feel like if it was his skin. he watched how you tap at the table before you stand and how often you moisturise your hands, even what soap you use.
late at night he revises what he learnt from the day with you and he'll 'practice', stroking his cock at the pace he thought you would use, squeezing just enough, getting used to it in his own way. his eyes are closed tight remembering how you tapped his shoulder, or passed him his drink. those quick fleeting touches and brushes of skin, he knows you so well, he knows how gentle you'd be.
when he gets closer he starts thinking of your lips, how they stretch when you smile and how they pressed against your cup as you took a sip of your hot drink, how they puckered while you blew out gently to cool it downâ fuck that last one got him every time.
he would cum thinking about it, hot white spurts shooting out across his stomach in thick ribbons while he squeezed his cock harder. dex would drain his balls not wanting to waste a drop to a thought that wasn't about you. he'd moan loudly, your name obviously, arching slightly while his cock twitched and fell limp against his thigh.
and of course dex is already groping for his phone thinking to the next time you'd be free that he would coincidentally be aswellâ another coffee maybe or something a little more date like.
he's a freak.
Š rottndeer 2026. please do not repost, copy, translate or use any of my work for ai. i post only on tumblr.