My Sandbox

The flight in the private jet back to Boston is the first time you’re confined to a space alone with Andy since the morning after everything unraveled at the villa. The two of you had orbited around each other, and he’d only forced your company for the social engagements. It had been shocking, and you had expected there to be some point at which he’d demand an interaction.

But he hadn’t.

Even the morning of your departure, there’d been a note left on the kitchen counter that there was business associate he and Lloyd had to take a meeting with, and so he’d see you on the tarmac.

He hadn’t taken any meetings for nearly seven weeks, so why he had one on your final day seemed like an excuse, but one you were glad he’d made.

You keep to yourself for the first hour, blanketing yourself in music and noise-canceling the entire plane. The flight attendant brings you food; you turn it down. Andy doesn’t even look up from his tablet or whatever he’s staring at. You’re astounded by the discipline, the sheer restraint. Seven weeks of being together—sleeping together, eating together, sometimes not even breathing unless the other was in the room—and now you’re basically anonymous passengers to each other on a plane. You should be grateful for the reprieve, but it makes you feel something worse than anger. It’s a fatigue that’s half heartbreak and half relief, an exhaustion so deep it feels stitched into your bones, making it hard to want anything at all—not even vengeance.

For the last week you’ve harbored the exhaustion of wanting something you’re ashamed of wanting, the kind that makes thirty-five thousand feet of sky feel like the bottom of the ocean.

Even now, you think about calling your mom or calling Thea, and you can’t stomach it. You don’t want to be the fool who messed up again, and you know neither of them would let you feel that way, you do know that. But you still can’t stomach having to talk about everything that’s happened.

You look up at the roof of the cabin when the familiar ache at the back of your throat gets worse, when you realize your vision has gone blurry at the edges. You let yourself cry only once at the villa. You don’t want to be crying, and you certainly don’t want him to see it, but of course he does.

You feel it before you look up—the cabin contracting, his attention shifting from deliberate absence to something still and fixed. When you look over, he’s there, eyes on you, not bothering to look away.

He’s not glaring. He’s not smirking. He’s just sitting there, hands braced on his knees, head slightly lowered, as if he’s waiting for a verdict or maybe for you to say something—but you have nothing to say to him, not right now, not ever in a way that wouldn’t cost you more than you can afford.

You press the heels of your palms into your eyes until you see stars, then look away, back to the window. Nothing out there—just black, the kind that makes you feel like the plane is standing still, like there’s nowhere left to arrive. The hum of the cabin fills in around the edges. You. Him. Whatever it is you’re going to have to figure out how to carry when you land.

He does finally speak, somewhere over Newfoundland, in a tone so flat it could almost be the engine noise.

He says your name. Not Mrs. Not wife. Just your first name, like it’s a code word or a trigger. It floats across the cabin and you can feel it snag deep in your ribs, a sudden, sharp tug. You keep your eyes straight ahead.

“I know I can’t fix what happened in Italy,” he says. His voice is calm—not soft, not kind, just controlled. “But I want to know if you’re coming back to Boston as my partner, or as my hostage.”

You laugh, a sharp, biting sound that comes out before you can stop it. “Was there ever a choice?”

He lets it hang. The cabin is silent but for the white noise of engines and air rushing past aluminum. Quite reluctantly, you look at him. He’s leaned forward in his seat, elbows braced, hands locked tightly together.

“I need you to understand something,” he says, and the rattle of the cart in the galley is the only sign the world is continuing outside of this conversation. “The life we’re going back to is not going to feel like that house.”

“You made that abundantly clear,” you say, “You told me yourself—liminal space, not real life. Isn’t it a relief to get back to the world you designed?”

He doesn’t answer at first. He lets the words pool between you, absorbs them. His stare is unwavering, stripping away the distance between your seats, but it’s not cruel—if anything, it’s the most exposed you’ve seen him outside the night he gave you his mother’s brush.

“No, it’s not a relief,” Andy says finally. “It’s a liability.” He stops. Inhales. “You’re a liability.”

You did not expect those words, and almost lands as an insult, but instead you’re almost proud—finally, something true and ugly, not polished for effect. “I’ll try not to be,” you say with a humorless smile, but the ache in your throat is getting worse, and now it’s not from fatigue.

He sighs, and you hear the edge of human tiredness in him, not the constructed fatigue of someone performing the part. “I know I was ruthless with you. I know what I am.”

The questions of why did you do any of it, then? why take the risk? why force me? why pretend? swirl in you like a storm, but you don’t let any of them out in this moment.

Instead, you venture, “Do you want to know what I hate the most?” You give him a look so sharp you hope it draws blood, but you’re too tired for real malice. “I hate that it was good. I hate that you were better than I expected in ways that made me want things I couldn’t have. I hate that you made me want to stay, and then made it impossible to stay.” You take in a deep breath and then say the worst part. “I hate that I’m heartbroken.”

Andy absorbs this. He doesn’t try to talk you down or walk back the truth you’ve lobbed at him. He just rubs a hand over his bearded jaw, and when it drops away, you see the faint trembling in his fingers.

“I didn’t want it to end that way,” he says at last, staring at the tabletop between you like it might yield the correct answer if he keeps staring. “I thought if I took you far enough away, surrounded us with something perfect, we could…” He searches for the word, but even he doesn’t seem to know what shape to give it. “It doesn’t matter.”

You almost want to ask him what it was supposed to be between you, but what does it matter? How are you supposed to trust any of it?

Andy turns his head, gaze fixed on the oval window, the blue-white arc of the jet’s wing. “I can’t shut it off,” he says after a long beat. “I thought with you, maybe—” He stops. “I wanted to.”

You blink, not sure you heard it right. Maybe he’s angling for sympathy, but the words don’t quite land that way; they’re surrendered, not given.

You almost say, I wanted that, too. But the words feel buried under the weight in your throat. You’ve been in almost this spot with him before, and you won’t give him another soft admission this time.

You remember the reverence in his voice one of those blissful, happy nights in Lake Como, a tone you’d never heard before.

“I like us here,” he’d murmured into your ear.

And you, caught in the spell of it, had admitted, “I do, too.”

“I’ll be in New York for the next week. Maybe two.” Like he’s talking about going out for a carton of milk. “There are things I need to set in order since I’ve been gone.”

Everything inside you wants to spit something cruel, but you just nod, keeping your eyes fixed on the window. “You’ll have Shep and Mark. I’m not leaving you unprotected. But…” he pauses. Sighs, the word dissolving before it’s fully formed. “You can do what you want with the time.” You wonder if he thinks this is a kindness. If he expects gratitude. You say nothing. The silence endures, painful, invasive. He says, “I’ll be out of your way,” again, softer, and this time you almost believe he means it as penance.

You land at Logan airport. The customs officials board the plane and clear you for re-entry. The black Range Rover is waiting on the tarmac, backseat climate-controlled and softly lit, Mark up front, Shep waiting with the rear door open, his posture all respectful deference and zero curiosity.

Andy doesn’t make a show of seeing you to the car. He simply helps load your bag in the trunk and shakes Shep’s hand as if he’s passing along a charge. There’s no hug, no goodbye, but there is one last look. Short, and with a nod. Then he’s on the phone before you’ve finished getting into the back seat, and he’s striding back to climb the stairs into the plane and leave you for New York.

The city’s lights seem surgical after weeks of olive oil and sun, a whole different wavelength—unfamiliar, then familiar, because Boston is still utterly, inescapably home. The perimeter of things you have to face here is coming into focus, and beyond the ache in your ribcage and the hollowing exhaustion, there is a brittle sense that you are braced for it. At least some parts are. The rest is raw and soft and probably always will be.

You expect the house to be cold and dark, but you forgot that Andy’s people would keep the mechanisms of daily life humming and stoke them back to full life for your return. The lights are on, the entry immaculate, flowers everywhere.

The re-entry is a shock to the system. You wander upstairs and stand under the shower’s sterile, even heat, so different from the sun-warmed water at the villa. You let the cold marble chill your feet, a grounding sensation, and watch condensation erase your reflection in the glass.

You are halfway dried off and dressed in a robe when you hear Shep’s voice through the hallway, relaying some detail of tomorrow’s schedule to Mark—something about groceries and deliveries and your standing appointment at the studio. You almost want to cry at the normalcy. The urge to resent Andy for anticipating all your needs, for giving you back this version of your life like it’s a favor is strong, and yet it’s a relief to not have to fight for things to start up again.

You are almost ready to crawl into bed and lose yourself in a marathon of whatever the algorithm serves you, but there’s a knock at your bedroom door. You’re so unused to being summoned that your first thought is that you imagined it. The knock comes again, firmer.

A voice follows: “Ma’am?” It’s Shep.

You cinch the robe, open the door. Shep stands there, hands folded in front of him, gaze respectfully averted.

“Shep, you really can’t keep calling me ‘ma’am.’ You’re, what? Eight? Ten years older than me? It’s weird.”

He gives a short, almost silent laugh. “Forgive me. It’s not a matter of age. It’s just—never first names, not in this line of work.” His words settle with a gentle finality, as if he’s stating one of the few things in his world that is simply not negotiable. You want to argue—tease, even—but there’s a dignity in Shep’s posture that tells you he’s not performing. It’s not subordination, but a kind of personal code. “If you don’t want ma’am, I can use Mrs. Barber, or an equivalent. But never your first name. That’s not respectful.”

You almost smile at this. “Fine,” you say, “ma’am if you absolutely must. But you can drop the tone like you’re addressing the principal.”

He nods, a fraction less rigid. “Understood.” The corner of his mouth lifts, just barely.

“Is this just a courtesy check, or?”

“No, there’s a small matter that needs your attention down in the kitchen.”

“Alright, give me just a moment.”

He nods, and you close the door. You throw on leggings and a cashmere sweater, not bothering with makeup or anything else, and head down the wide staircase, following Shep. “What about a nickname? Like my security detail codename! You have those for us, right? Like the Secret Service?”

“Your codename on the records is ‘Mrs. Barber.’”

“That’s lame,” you huff. “It literally couldn’t be anything more interesting than that?”

Shep’s shoulders hint at a shrug, and the movement smooths out his usual ex-military stony bearing. “He insisted upon it from day one, ma’am, but we all would have. Codenames are for assets, not family. You’re not an asset.”

“I might as well be,” you mutter. But you drop it as Shep steers you into the kitchen, where the lights are bright, the air is flush with the smell of American fast food, and two figures you’d know anywhere are such a profound relief you could weep.

Your parents are standing at the island, your father in his battered Red Sox sweatshirt and your mother wearing a navy cardigan you would have called “teacher-core” if you had the emotional bandwidth for jokes. She’s unpacking a paper bag from Shake Shack, a guilty-pleasure custom sandwich in each hand. Your dad is setting out cartons of fries and the crinkle-cut pickles that only your mother will touch, and both parents look up in the same instant when they see you.

For one sharp, embarrassing second you nearly cry. Not from homesickness, but an animal relief you didn’t realize you’d been holding at bay for weeks. You’re in your own kitchen, your parents are here, and you have never felt so much like a child in your adult life.

Your mother, of course, crosses the kitchen in three steps, gathers you in a hug so tight you hope your ribs pop. She doesn’t let go, not when your dad comes around to add his own arms, both of them holding you in a sandwich of warmth and cheap detergent and fryer grease.

She smells your hair, then cups your jaw with one hand, tilting your face to the light. “You look too thin,” she says, which is her form of ‘I missed you so much it hurts,’ and you almost laugh, because you know you undoubtedly filled out more with all the indulgent meals and sweets that you never worried about at the villa.

“Oh, she’s fine,” your dad says, and then to you, “You look great, kid.” He scuffs your shoulder and draws you in, rolling his eyes at your mother in the way of a man who has built his whole life around loving her, and of course you.

You mumble something about not expecting them, as you step back.

“Did we overstep?” your mom flusters. “Andy texted us yesterday that you were coming home but that he had to go directly out of town for a bit, and he said there’d be nobody here to greet you. I thought—”

“We didn’t want you coming home to an empty house,” your father finishes.

You’re hit with the double impact of their presence—the comfort of being known and the mortification of being inspected by people who will always see more than you want them to.

“You didn’t overstep,” you say, because you realize it’s the closest thing to relief you’ve felt since boarding the plane. “I just. I’m really glad to see you.”

Your mother beams. “You don’t have to thank us, dear. You know we’d walk through fire for you.” She is, as ever, immediately in motion, pulling a chair out and patting it, already unwrapping your sandwich, refilling your water bottle, doggedly ignoring the bags under your eyes and the maternal worry warping every word. “Sit, sit, and tell us everything.”

You sit with them at the kitchen island, because that’s what you’ve always done, and let them fuss and fill your plate and ask questions you are both eager and terrified to answer as you fill your stomach with food that feels like home.

You do not tell your parents about the end of what happened in Italy, but you do tell them every detail of the lake, the food, the neighbors, and Lloyd—your mother wants to know everything, leaning forward on her elbows, and your father sits back with his arms crossed and a look on his face like he can’t quite decide if Lloyd is the funniest thing he’s ever heard or if you’re making him up. You leave out his mafia affiliation, of course.

You focus on what isn’t hard to say: the meals, the wine, the impossible blue of the water, the way Andy cooked from his mother’s recipe book. You skip all the nights of the last week, and edit your time down to just sun and laughter and the gradual narrowing of a world to the shape of the villa.

You let yourself be cared for. With every bite of the familiar food, every casual question about their friends, the tension in your shoulders eases. They are a shelter you didn’t know you were desperate for. You watch them, these people who have nursed you through everything, and know their love could contain the entire ugly truth. But the words won’t come—not about Andy, not about a marriage that feels both forced upon you and chosen, the two truths tangled so tightly you can’t find the start of either one. Especially not now, with damage you haven’t yet found the language for.

When your mother’s phone lights up mid-anecdote with a call from one of her friends, she excuses herself with an apologetic grimace and heads down the hall. You expect her to linger in the mudroom or maybe stand in the foyer, but she vanishes properly, leaving you and your father alone at the island.

He checks to make sure your mother is out of earshot, then sighs and leans in, folding his arms on the stone counter. He’s never been good at letting silence hang, so you brace for the bluntness you know is coming.

He says your name, softly. “Level with me. Are you okay?”

You look at your father, and your first impulse is to say, yes, of course, because you always want to be his strong, brave little girl. But you’re beyond empty, and the real answer is floating so close to the surface.

“No,” you say. “But I will be.”

He tilts his head, studying you, and you recall, with a sick kind of fondness, how your dad has never bought a single lie out of your mouth, not since you were six and inventing elaborate reasons for missing homework. He waits. His face settles into something patient and unguarded, the same expression you remember from every hard conversation you’ve ever had at a kitchen table with this man.

You flex your fingers around your glass, smearing the condensation that’s gathered there, and then you admit, honestly, “I don’t know, Dad.” Your voice comes out calm, steadier than you expected. “This all spun out a little faster than I thought it would.”

He nods slowly, his eyes dropping to the Shake Shack wrappers between you. “Your mother threw a plate at me once.” He says it quietly, picking at a napkin. “1987. We’d been married two years. I’m not telling you marriage is hard—you know that.” He finally looks up, his eyes steady. “I’m just telling you it’s your choice. And if you ever needed to just… come home,” he gestures vaguely at the room around you, “you could. You know that, right?”

You force yourself to nod, not trusting your throat to work around too many words. “I know. I do.”

Your father’s face breaks into a tiny smile, and it’s the only thing that keeps you from falling apart entirely. He squeezes your hand, then clears his throat. “It’s better with a full stomach,” he says, gesturing at the wrappers, “and better with company.”

Your mother returns, phone call over. “You two didn’t finish all the fries, did you?”

You shake your head and say, “Wouldn’t dare.”

Your father passes the rest of his fries to her, and your heart thrums happily watching them.

The evening winds into a tangle of low, sweet moments—your mother gushing over some of the gorgeous kitchen appliances, your dad quietly snooping through the fridge and coming back with four pints of ice cream, and insists you all do blind taste tests until your tongue is numb and you cannot stop laughing.

Eventually the yawns win out, your mother shooing you off the kitchen stool like a child past her bedtime. You protest, but your body sags in grateful relief as she ushers you up the stairs. Your parents gather their things, making you promise to come by theirs Sunday for brunch and any other night you just want company while Andy’s gone.

Back upstairs, you truly internalize that you’ve never been alone like this in this bedroom alone before. It’s the same room, the same balcony view, the same walk-in closet and familiar textures, but no one was waiting, and no one will eventually join you.

Andy is not here. He is not coming—not tonight, not for a week, probably not for longer.

The actuality of it feels weirdly hollow.

You drift through the motions of bedtime. You try to read for a bit, and you’re sure you do, but the words blur and ghost by. Your teeth are brushed, your face is washed; you can’t quite remember doing either. You are so wrung out you can barely cobble together the will to change into pajamas. You settle for underwear and a t-shirt, and sink into the endless white of the sheets.

You fall into a deep, dreamless sleep, and when you surface again, it’s to a spill of midmorning light and an unfamiliar quiet. For a second you forget where you are. The confusion is clean, like you could be anyone and in any life, and you let it last until the dull ache in your chest has time to catch up, and you realize you’re in the bed, alone. You feel oddly rested. Not good, necessarily, but not the emotional hangover you’ve been battling back bit by bit each day, either. It’s as if your body has decided, somewhere deep inside, to metabolize all the heartbreak and embarrassment into a low, manageable hum now that you’re back in Boston.

You rouse yourself and stretch, expecting the sensation of Andy’s hand on your lower back, but there’s only the cool rush of linen and your own skin. You lie there, staring up. The ceiling molds itself around the sunlight in a way that makes you ache for the lake villa, for the slow, gold mornings that rewired you to want gentleness.

You get up, pad across the cold floor, and spend an aimless hour in the shower, letting the spray needle your scalp until your thoughts turn clear. You towel off, dress comfortably, and head for the kitchen, not even bothering with a bra or shoes because this giant house is where you live and you don’t care who sees you here.

After breakfast, you meander into your study, pleased to see your plants were well taken care of in your absence, but after only glancing at the elegant desk with your laptop, you wander back out and head upstairs again.

You settle for the easiest distraction: unpacking. You’d only pulled out a couple of essentials the night before, and the suitcases are still half-zipped and listing open on the bench in the walk-in closet, the contents slumped and jumbled, exactly as you left them in the haze of last night. You unfold a tangle of linen dresses, roll up the last of the swimsuits. The second suitcase ends up containing the soft things you’d loved in Italy and the handful of gifts Andy had forced on you (a silk robe, the ridiculous but beautiful leather boots, the scarf you’re embarrassed you already missed). You’re nearly finished when you see it: a heavy cream envelope, not sealed, with your name written in Andy’s all-caps print.

You pause, thumb knocking the edge, considering whether to open, wait for some future courage, or refuse to read it altogether.

You stand in the middle of the closet, the envelope dense with the weight of what it might contain, and make yourself hold it for a count of ten, the way you once trained yourself to resist the urge to scratch mosquito bites as a child. Then you set it on the bench, hands steady, and back away as if it might be hot to the touch. You busy yourself with the rest of the suitcase, but your eyes keep wandering to the envelope. Eventually, you give in—how could you not—and stalk out of the closet, grab your phone, and hit Andy’s number before you can change your mind.

He answers before the second ring is finished. “I was waiting to see how long it would take,” he says, not quite soft, but without the shield of irony.

You don’t let him steer any further, not this time. “I found your letter,” you say.

There is a half-beat of stillness, then, “You haven’t opened it yet.” Not a question. A reading of you, as accurate as it is infuriating.

“No.” You squeeze the phone tighter, shift your weight from one foot to the other. “I hate you for knowing that.” You mean it to land with more weight, but it sounds raw.

“I figured you’d start with a text,” he replies, “but this is better.”

You close your eyes and force yourself to inhale, to let the silence expand before finally finding the words you want. “I can’t believe you wrote me a letter,” you tell him, and now the irritation has a shape and a target. “You don’t get to be Mr. Darcy. You don’t get to drop all this on a page.”

Andy lets out a short, breathy laugh. “I’m not pretending to be noble or romantic, or whatever you want to call it. I wrote it because I thought… I thought it might be easier for you to hear without having to look at me. Or fight me. Or argue.” A pause. “And maybe as a showing that I heard you and that you can read it in your own time. Or you don’t have to read it at all. It’s your choice.”

You want to hang up, to tell him that nothing on a page can fix the fact that you’re speaking only because of a letter he left for you to find, like some reverse land mine meant to detonate all of your resolve. But you don’t hang up.

“I might read it,” you say. You sit on the edge of the bed, the phone pressed to your ear. You don’t look at the envelope. “But since you might be listening, I’ll say this: I don’t care what you wrote. I need you to know it’s not about the letter. It’s about whether I can trust you to give me a real choice. A real relationship. Ever.”

Andy’s breathing is barely audible. “I know,” he says.

“I’m going to hang up now,” you tell him.

“Okay.” The word is a soft exhalation. Then he says your name, and you wait another moment before ending the call. “If you ever want to talk, I’ll always answer. No matter what.”

For those of you who were hurt/betrayed/livid after last chapter: I want you to know Andy doesn't get a quick fix overnight. I promise.

For better or for worse, because of how things combusted between them in Italy, our reader is going to be more assertive, more resistant, and hold her boundaries and demands more firmly. She still holds complicated feelings for him, but the feelings won't excuse or circumvent things anymore.

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

"What?" He mumbles, the word falling soft out of his cotton mouth.

You stir slightly in response to the grazing of his touch, and it kicks Peter-Tingle on high-alert that this was not a figment of his imagination. He's quick to un-hand you, scooting backwards towards the edge—and tumbling harshly onto the floorboards with a loud thump, snatching the sheets with him.

The noise echoes in his eardrums, curls splaying out over the floorboards, and Peter is completely frozen. In absolute cold, drowning terror, he watches you stir fully, turning around and stretching at your limbs—a dissatisfied frown perched in your lips at the sudden loss of warmth.

What has he done?

"Spider-Man?" You mumble, voice groggy, almost muffled as your nose dips deeper into the pillow, the one he occupied seconds ago.

Your gaze finally peers open, one palm coming to rub at your undereyes—before meeting his own widened, nearly terrified expression.

"You're awake." You state, as if his existence within the walls of your apartment is a daily, common occurrence. Even if he hasn’t stepped foot into his most favourite apartment, in years. "Hm, you've got brown eyes, who would've thought?"

Why is he here? Why are you so calm about this?

“I’m—so, so sorry.” His words fumble over each other, ears reddened at the tips. Feeling awfully exposed, he wraps his arms around his knees as he lifts himself into a sitting position, caving in on himself as he averts his gaze. “I don’t know why—or how—oh god. Was I hugging you? How did I even—I’m so sorry, I swear I have no clue on how I ended up here.”

Worse, he wasn't wearing a mask. Or much of anything really, aside from an old t-shirt, and Hello Kitty shorts that barely fit his thighs. As his fingers grip at the edge of the shirt, running over the hem, it hits him that these are his clothes. Ones he never stole back from your place, that he had merely assumed was lost to time.

Nothing could have prepared him for this situation, no prep-time or warnings from E.V.I.E.. He didn't have the protection of being Spider-Man and the mask that's become his second skin. No, he had landed bottom-first as bare-faced, shell-shocked Peter.

"You really don't remember how you got here?" You question, lashes fluttering shut as you struggle to stir awake. "Damn, I was wondering if you could tell me."

"No—I swear, I completely blacked out." He scrambles for a response. "Next thing I knew, I was in your bed—I can't believe I just said that."

Running a hand past the bridge of his nose, he hides pathetically behind his fingers, his best attempt of a mask against the chaotic churn of nerves bundling through his gut. He had promised to keep you safe by staying as far away as he could—aside from the daily checking of your social media pages and the occasional swing down your usual coffee shop just to see if your favourite order remained the same, but this? How was he ever going to forgive himself for it?

He hears shuffling, in the normal sense and not the heightened echoes he’s used to ever since his arachnid side started spinning out of control. Strangely, his senses have been dialed down to normal since he regained consciousness—and he can’t dumb it down to just a good rest. It has to be cause of you.

His lashes flutter against the pads of his fingers as he meets your gaze through the gaps. You face him head-on, sitting cross legged right in front of him, head tilted in innocent curiosity.

“You’re a cuddler.” You hum in acknowledgment.

He was genuinely going to be the first Spider-person to ever die of shame, not that he's met many, but he's sure Peter 1 and Peter 2 have never unknowingly climbed into the bed of their special someone because they couldn't control their own DNA evolution. A low sound escapes his throat, clenched through his teeth—completely at a lost for words.

He has no clue on what he’s supposed to do, not when there's no routine or steps to fall back on. Be Spider-Man (Mask's gone). The man the city actually wanted (One who preferably doesn't have panic attacks wearing Hello Kitty pants). Stay far away from his previous life (Scored a huge FAIL here). Get flowers for May (Done). Scroll through your social media pages (..Done). Feel the thrumming vibrations of the washing machine after patrols (Skipped, was too nauseous). Rinse and repeat.

There’s no coming back from this, and it wasn’t even in his control. He hadn’t meant to find you. The last thing he could recall before passing out in his apartment was—he had just wanted to go home. He swore that was all he intended.

“Hey.” Your voice, soft and warm, finally coaxes him out of his thoughts. He hadn’t even realised just how tight he had been clenching his eyes shut—as his gaze takes a few seconds to adjust back into colour with you in his full view.

Slowly and gently, your own fingers raise to pry his away from his face. He’s sure he has hand marks all over his skin, but you look at him with such a soft expression—he nearly keens.

“I got you. You're safe.” You reassure, repeating it as a mantra. “You’re safe here.”

His Adam’s apple bobs harshly, and he feels the tightening of his chest nearly burst at the seams. God, he missed you. All he wanted was to hug you, and tell you he was sorry—for all of it. That he hadn’t gone a single day without wanting to hear your voice, to be exactly where he was right now—that this was all he needed if he wasn’t so weak. If he wasn’t cursed.

“Sorry.” That’s all that comes out, a croak in his voice that he failed to swallow back.

Your lips quirk into a soft smile, and you look like home. He feels his muscles physically deflate in tension at the sight, something no inhibitor or invention could ever replicate. His life has been spinning out of control, and you've just set the needle aside without even blinking.

“You’re all good, Spidey.” Your voice is warm, comforting. “Aside from hogging the blankets, it wasn’t half-bad for my first sleepover with a vigilante.”

His lips part, a laugh caught in his throat—half shattered, half hopeful.

“Could you—I don’t know, explain to me what happened?” He raises his hands, gesturing to your apartment. “I can’t believe I lost control—I don’t remember anything.”

Your lips part, a small grin tucked between your lips. "If you insist."

A loud crash resounds behind you, kick-starting your frightened senses. Head whipping to the window, you spot your window ledge shoved half-way with brutal force, and a body covered in deep reds and blues on your wooden floorboards.

"Holy shit." You mutter to yourself, skillet pan still in hand, the oil coating its surface bubbling into tiny pops.

Spider-Man is in your living room. Spider-Man is spread out across your floorboards, seemingly knocked out cold, in your apartment.

Another sizzling pop snaps you out of your stump, and you realise the collapsed vigilante is your responsibility. Your fingers fumble to switch off your stove with a click, skillet haphazardly placed over the stove burner—apron still hanging around your neck as you rush towards the body. God, you hope it wasn't an actual body.

"Spider-Man?" You call out tentatively, and you're struck by how his body moves in response, the stretch of his back with that familiar logo disappearing to reveal a mop of dark brown curls.

He wasn't wearing a mask. You didn't know what you expected from a hero who seemed nearly indestructible on the news, even when in the process of being smashed into buildings by tanks, but Spider-Man looks much younger than you expected, ahead of you by at most a couple years—bearing a youth that is almost frightening.

He certainly did look battered. Bruises littered his cheek, as if he had slammed himself into bricks or concrete on the way, before he had landed himself in your apartment. Dark circles pooled as a dark shadow under his eye-bags, and his hair was a wet, clumped mess from the rain.

You didn't know where to begin—if you were even allowed to touch him to check if he's hurt, or to call a professional. Did the professionals even know who he was, of his true identity? What if you doomed New York City's most beloved vigilante to his fate, just because you made the wrong call?

Your knees meet carpet, hands trembling in indecision and nerves, coming to rest on his shoulder. At your touch, a hiss escapes his lips and you immediately snatch your hand back, clutching it at the wrist. Who were you kidding, you were the last person equipped to save a person's life—much less a hero's.

You rise halfway, head swinging around to locate your phone—when you feel an insistent pull of your apron, tripping you back to land on the carpet.

"Don't go." He whispers.

Your gaze snaps back to his face, and find his eyes open. Or at least, that's where his pupils should've been. He must be half-unconscious, with the way his eyes are blown into a darkened void, lips parted in some sort of daze.

"I'm going to get help." Your words form despite the panic arising in your chest at the state of him. Is this poisoning? What else could explain the blackened sclera, the way darkened veins coated his skin in an almost bluish-purple. "I'll be right back." You promise.

He shakes his head, almost insistently stubborn, jaw clenching in panic. "No, don't go." His grip tightens almost instantly, and you're swept by his abnormal strength with a sudden tug, tumbling on top of him. "Please."

You freeze, feeling the wet raindrops from his suit seep into the cotton of your apron. Before you even have a chance to push yourself off, his arms wrap around you protectively. Squashed between his broad chest and the tight grip of his hold, your nose is buried into the crook of his shoulder. You smell fresh detergent, sweat, and something so achingly familiar—it churns your senses into mush that it takes you a few seconds to register.

He's shaking, and almost feverishly warm.

"Spider-Man." You plead. "Listen to me. You don't look good. And I do not want a dead Spider on my conscience, so please—you have to let me go so I can find some professionals, just someone to check if you're alright."

His touch is a sizzling heat as the warmth envelopes you, almost like a weighted, heated blanket.

"No. Stay." He pleads. "Please, I don't want—I just need you."

He sounds so exhausted. Why wouldn't he be? Before he had suffocated you into this strange circumstance of a hug, his entire face had been dull in colour, sweat pooling at the curls over his forehead, and he just looked—fragile. Completely unlike the hero of the city you're used to seeing on screen, whether it be receiving the keys to the city or those cheerful quips that make its frequent rounds through the internet when he swoops in to save the day.

"Spidey." You call him gently, trying to think of how to persuade him. "—I won't leave you alone, I promise. Just let me get up, to at least fetch you a change of clothes. You're soaked."

The seconds passing by without a response, or the loosening of his muscles, feel like the longest beats of your life. Your own heart thumps along with the rise and fall of his chest, waiting with bated breath.

"Promise?" He murmurs weakly.

"I promise." You whisper. "I'm not going anywhere."

You feel the slow release of warm breath against your skin, the way his fingers tremor over the small of your back. Something in him relaxes just enough, and his arms give in, thumping heavily at his sides. You rise instantly, palms pushing at his chest and falling back onto the carpet. Feeling the wet residue of the rain coat your apron, and the side of your cheek that had been buried in his shoulder—your cheeks grow impossibly hot.

You need to snap out of it. He needs clean clothes. Yeah, that's a start.

Stumbling in your step, you rush towards your wardrobe—digging through the unorganised mess for a bag of clothes you had kept hidden in the most corner nook. One you hadn't thrown out since your first discovery of its existence, containing Hello Kitty shorts, some old, faded T-shirts—choices you would've never purchased for yourself but had for as long as you could remember.

You had run through a list of reasons for its existence, seemingly packed for an overnight guest. Maybe from that house-warming party you had thrown once before deciding you much preferred your space being reserved for only you, and someone had left their clothes mistakenly. Despite whatever plausibility or excuse—you never found the strength to throw them away. Even when you had every reason to, your mind instinctively buries the thought and the bag remained exactly where it was, kept in a zip-locked bag for it to be used by someone.

Apparently, today was its much-needed day.

Hoisting the bag over to the living room where he still laid, cheek pressed to the carpet, you’re relieved that the tension that previously consumed his expression has faded somewhat, with his lips parted slightly in slow exhales. His body seemed to be recalibrating, instinctively calming down right in the centre of your home.

Your hand comes to rest on his cheek, tapping it gently. Although his eyes with that dark void don't open, a low rumble escapes his throat—convincing you that he's still somewhat conscious.

"Hey, Spidey." You whisper. "I brought some clothes. Do you have the energy to change?"

He doesn't respond, and you poke your tongue into your cheek, analysing the length of him with dawning dread. It's no big deal, you just have to peel off this ridiculously tight suit with no zipper in sight without making it weird, and attempt at successfully pulling a T-shirt over his head.

Making your choice of a 'I Survived My Trip To NYC' graphic tee found at the top of the pile inside, your gaze switches back to the sprawled vigilante. From how heavy his arms had been earlier, rendering you immobile when pinned under them, you wouldn't dare make the mistake of assuming his weight would be easy to flip over. You could attempt to at least expose his back for you to take off that suit—assuming the costume even had a zipper.

Your long calculation apparently does the job for you as Spider-Man senses you near, and his arm curls protectively around your thigh, burying his nose into the crook below your knee. Your entire body stills, a tight grip over the tee as he gently rests his head over your knee, the soft texture of his curls brushing goosebumps against your skin. HIs body turns just enough to expose the expanse of his back—and the sight of a hidden zipper beneath that familiar symbol is a good sign.

Okay, sure. You could work with that.

He was ripped. You should've expected that, but the slow rise and fall of his chest expands the muscles across his exposed torso. You force yourself to tear your gaze away from the sight, reassuring yourself that your eyes were purely looking for possible injuries. You wouldn't go that low to check out a vigilante who was passed out in your living room.

Your fingers press into the sides of his cheeks, maneuvering his head so you could fit the opening of the tee over his head. Curls run through the white fabric before landing over his shoulder blades. It's strangely intimate, the way he's easily pliable in your hands—trusting you so completely. His lashes flutter once every few seconds, but he remains exactly where he is, body wrapped almost completely around yours—acting as a human barrier to you and the outside world—as you dress him in something soft and clean.

He's not supposed to be here, and you're not supposed to feel this protective over a stranger who dresses in two primary colours. Yet, seeing him at rest—makes you feel calm. The quiet of the apartment is a low hum rather than the empty chasm you’re used to, and your fingers run through his hair almost habitually.

You can't just leave him on the floor. There's also the latter half of his suit you don't want to deal with.

"Spidey." You whisper.

He lets out a low groan, wincing as his eyes shut tighter—burying himself deeper into your skin.

"No-no." Your hands come up to gently cup his cheek, coercing him.

His lashes part, and you're met with that same, expansive void, finding your own reflection in his gaze. He's still not quite himself, you believe—but he is able and willing to listen to you.

"I need you to put on these shorts." You gesture to the Hello Kitty pants you laid out for him. "Then, I need you to come to bed."

His brows furrow, lashes fluttering slowly as he processes your request. "Bed."

"Yes." You repeat. "You're exhausted, and I'm not leaving you on my floorboards. It's not too far, so please—help me out a little, Spidey."

His gaze doesn't blink, but you feel the shift in his muscles at your command. He stumbles as he raises himself, body slumping into you—but you steady him with your own grip. His nose buries itself once more into a crook to inhale your scent, this time being your shoulder.

"Okay." You mutter. "That's progress. Come on, up."

It takes you a couple minutes, mostly because he clings to you with every step and he is made of heavy weight. Whatever they feed the heroes of New York, it was clearly something out of limits from your measly grocery bill. By the time he managed to slip himself into those Hello Kitty shorts while you kept your gaze heavily fixated on the ceiling, making sure only to look when the waistband was tight around his torso, it wasn't long before he tripped himself face-first into your blankets. Your own body collapses beside him—equally tired as he is.

You attempt to form a pillow fort in your daze, a barrier of sorts. More for him than you, as you're sure in the morning once this side of him disappears—he'll have a much different reaction to waking up in an apartment with a stranger he doesn't know.

It gets demolished within seconds.

As if the pillows have formed a personal vendetta against him, they're thrown aggressively onto the floorboards. Your hand reaches out to grab them because you had just put them in the laundry—but your wrist is snatched too and you're tugged into his embrace.

You land back into the sheets, cheek smothered against his chest, and there he goes again, wrapping himself around you like a cocoon.

Here in your bed with his arms wrapped around you like you're his only anchor, brows furrowed tight—Spider-Man looked so human. Soft, and incredibly vulnerable. His arm still grips limply onto you even if you can feel his consciousness fading, as if the lack of contact would have you disappearing completely from his reach.

"Those pillows were meant for you, y'know." You mutter, unable to hide your amusement.

His lips curl into a stubborn pout. "Don't want them." He grumbles, words nearly incoherent with the small parting of his lips. "In my way."

You snort softly, before noting the dirt that coats his cheeks. With such a close proximity, you see everything. The soft lines at the corners of his eyes, the bridge of his nose, and just how beautiful he was.

"You've got dirt on your face." You whisper softly. "I should help you with that."

His grip tightens considerably, and you're dragged up so close to his face that your noses nearly bump into one another.

"Okay-okay. I'm not going anywhere." You feel the need to remind him, hand slowly lifting to press against his bruised cheek.

If the press of your finger-pads against the bruise was painful, he didn't show it—only burrowing his face deeper into the curve of your palm, a relieved sigh escaping his lips. The crease between his brows finally unfolds, and the years coated on his expression fades with it—leaving him looking impossibly young.

"Smells like you." He grumbles lowly, pressing the tip of his nose deeper into your palm.

Your heart skips a beat, traitorously even when you're sure he won't remember any of this by the morning.

“Do you have anyone?” You ask gently. “Someone I need to call?”

It’s heart-breaking, the way he immediately shakes his head, his curls ruffled against the sheets. For someone so beloved by the city, even in such a weakened state, he still believes that he has no one.

"Why are you here?" You murmur more for yourself, gazing openly over the fanning of his lashes over his darkened circles.

If it weren't for the expansive heat seeping from his broad chest through the cotton tee you tugged over his head, you would've believed yourself to be in the thick of a sweet, non-sensical dream.

You expect him to be fully asleep, but you hear it, low and almost inaudible. "Home."

Your heart tremors, barely able to comprehend it. "What?"

His words grow muffled against the sheets, the mess of his curls sinking deeper into the pillows—but you hear it. “Wanted to come home.”

Peter watches as you wring a cloth of its excess water over the sink, and the familiarity is dangerously luring. How many times has he sat here on your couch, watching as you prepped a medicine kit or a towel after his patrols? It’s almost unfathomable how quickly the new routines, rigorous with repetition and duty, all that control—that responsibility that leashed him tight falls apart the second he is in your proximity. Where old overpowers the new, because there is nothing he craves more than this. The past—the memories that became more present than reminder, when his own life had pressed ‘pause’ the moment he lost you.

He should’ve insisted on leaving when you offered to clean up the dirt that still coated his face. He should’ve shattered the hope that gleamed in your eyes when he gave you the barest nod, knowing how dangerous that fleeting belief could be when his own had never held value.

He did none of what he was supposed to do—and he didn’t even have the gull to feel ashamed for it, taking in the sight of you with unconditional hunger, absorbing every trace of movement and the way your voice resonated in the hearth of your home. He belonged in your life once, the same way the remains of his old t-shirts were kept in your wardrobe, or how the bathroom door still has the replaced hinges he fixed once on your third home date. There’s him all around, and the sight was its own guilty pleasure that the universe hadn’t completely stripped away the parts of him that used to exist in your life.

"You didn't do anything." You reassure him from across the kitchen counter. "Trust me, when you showed up in my apartment—you weren't in a state of anything other than being near-collapse."

His expression contorts. As if he needed more reasons to hate these new changes to his body—messing up all that is predictable. Predictable is good. It's safe. What isn't within even the remote levels of safe, is forcing you to look after him the entire night because he isn't even in control of his own body.

You stop in front of him, brushing some magazines and half-littered candy wrappers to the side as you sit on the coffee-table, knees brushing against his.

"Breathe." You murmur softly, eyes crinkling with a soft teasing expression.

He hadn't even realised he was holding his breath, being so close to you that it makes him feel faint. Oxygen swoops back into his lungs, his chest rising and falling as he stares at you openly with his mouth slightly gaped.

The cloth in hand raises to press against his cheek, and he feels the slight sting of its cool temperature against the warmth of his skin, the bruise above his cheekbone.

It doesn't truly register for him, not when you're staring at him so keenly he feels the need to ask. "What?"

"I just didn't expect Spider-Man to be so—" You struggle to find the words. "Human. I don't know. I suppose that sounds stupid, but you could pass by me in a coffee shop and I'd just sum you up as a cute stranger I'd never see again, not an actual crime-fighting vigilante."

The two of you were together, so it shouldn’t have struck him with elated surprise to hear it, but the admission that you still found him—he feels sixteen again, taken back to when you had first pressed a kiss onto his cheek and he understood immediately on what it meant to fall in love so completely that you could never look back.

You're too focused on dapping the wet cloth to notice his widened gaze, or the way he swallows dryly—licking at his lips. "You think I'm cute?"

"I mean—this entire time, I half-expected Spider-Man to be at least half-spider. Plus, I have eyes." You tease, your fingers gently brushing the wet cloth over the darkened soot across his cheek, rubbing off the marks. "I meant to do this last night, but you kept protesting when I tried to leave the bed. Clinging onto me—"

"Okay, okay." He raises his hand, catching you by the wrist. He's definitely flustered now. "I don't need to hear the details. I believe you."

You snort softly. "Thought you wanted the full story."

"Yeah, summed up—minus the details." He splutters. "I'm already dying inside from shame, and I've definitely ruined my impression with you forever."

"That's not true." You hum.

He blinks slowly, processing your words.

"There's no shame in reaching out for help, hero or not. I know you’re under a lot of public scrutiny but—it doesn't change who you are, y'know? You're deserving of support, just as much as everyone else. Even if the world expects you to be a hero—" You state. "You're still a person, and it seemed like you really needed someone."

He stiffens, jaw tightening as his eyes avert from yours to pinpoint his focus elsewhere—anywhere but you.

"You're not just someone." He mumbles lowly.

The press of the cloth against his cheek falters. "What?"

"You're—" His voice trails off, jaw clenching tight. “You weren’t scared of me?”

He understands how he can get when he loses control. The way his vision blacks out, and how his mind caves into silence—with his body moving on instinct rather than command. The reflection of a monster in the mirror, everything he swore not to be. The version of him that snuck into your apartment, clinging onto you as a lifeline—was stripped of the rules and promises he had made to keep everything together.

It was him at his most selfish—doing what his instincts pleaded—no, begged for him to do, and he had caved in for all of it. That's why he's here, and why you're staring with an expression he didn't dare uncover.

“I think you’re a lot more scared of yourself right now than I am.” You answer truthfully. “You were in a lot of pain. The last thing I would be was scared, when all you needed was someone to look out for you. Even if it's just for a little while.”

"I—" What is he supposed to say to that? That you're right on, and you've always been even without knowing who he is, and that he's been losing himself ever since he lost you? He swallows thickly. "I haven't been myself lately."

Your fingers tighten imperceptibly, grounding him. "You're still you, maybe you've just been putting aside what reminds you of that. I'm no vigilante, but working yourself to the bone and collapsing in a stranger's apartment—I think that's a signal for a horrible work-life balance."

"I have been resting." He argues. "I get enough hours, I have proof."

"Yeah, that's definitely why you slept like a log last night."

His lips part, gaze finally meeting yours, staring at you wordlessly. Eventually, a laugh escapes his lips, deepening the lines near the corners of his eyes. It's a little sad, and you wonder just how much he had to carry on his own—for a laugh to sound that broken.

"This is hard. I'm not supposed to—" He mutters, and that's the closest thing to raw honesty that you've pulled out of his mouth. "You're way too good for me."

Your smile deepens, and your fingers trace gently over his cheek where the bruise was finally fading. That must've been the mistake of it—the familiarity of muscle memory after a long patrol. He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek in thank you.

It’s only when he spots your frozen expression that he realises what he's done.

"I was not supposed to do that." He mutters to himself, widened eyes locked onto the spot where he left the kiss.

You blink, and he follows the movement—staring at each other in complete silence. His expression contorts, and you can't help the giggle that bubbles out of you.

"That was—wow." You choke back on your laughter. "I think you're running out of things you're not supposed to do, Spidey."

His own gaze crinkles into a smile, abashed. "I'm sorry, I just—I wanted to thank you. It was out of habit."

"Habit—you crash into people's apartments often and give out these free kisses?" You tease. "Is it part of the job description?"

He shakes his head immediately, terrified by the suggestion. "No—no. I swear this is my first time ever doing anything like this. I got the habit from my aunt, she used to—um..."

His expression dampens considerably. "Kiss my cheek for good luck."

Your gaze softens. "She sounds sweet."

"Yeah." His laugh churns awkwardly with a wince. "You would've loved her."

You watch him, and you sense it again—that chasm that ran deeper than the surface of his winced smiles. The way he shook his head when you asked if he had anyone, and even now, the way he fumbled with his fingers as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself in your gaze—and how he hadn't suggested once since waking up that he wanted to leave.

He was waiting, the way one waits for permission to exist in a room when they haven't been invited in one for years.

"Spidey." You call out.

He whips his head to look at you, pupils still widened in some perpetual disbelief, over the fact that he was in your apartment—that you were right in front of him.

"I'm going to make breakfast." You start, not leaving room for argument. "And you're going to help me."

He blinks once, then twice in astonishment. He swallows dryly. "O-Okay."

Your smile loosens into something reserved for a vigilante you had stayed up all night checking his temperature for.

You find that Spider-Man is pretty good in making pancakes, and that he easily maneuvers himself around your kitchen as if he had already memorised the layout. Of where your favourite mugs are, and how he didn't question twice when taking out the ice-cream tub without you needing to say it.

You could narrow it down to Spidey-senses, or whatever theories that's come up on your feed for his inhuman capabilities—but could it really just be that? Could his super-human abilities be the only reason behind why the warm hazel of his eyes light into the tiniest fireworks as he watches you scourge on your pancake, smiling at him with butter at the corner of your lips—as if the sight of you eating breakfast was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen?

Or why he picked you as his destination for home, or the slip of his tongue on how you meant a great deal more to him than just a someone who so happened to let him stay the night.

You have so much to uncover, but for now, he's just a boy in a NYC graphic tee that’s his exact size, and fluorescent shorts that do nothing for his thighs. He catches your gaze on his peculiar outfit, and his own lips purse in amusement.

"Any reason for the outfit choice?" He murmurs, a knowing smile covered by his fist as he rests his chin over his wrist, head tilting slightly as he gazes at you. "It's inventive."

"Oh—" You blink. "I don't know. I kinda always had them. They don't belong to me, but I just didn't see a need to throw out free clothes."

Your lips quirk up, teasing. "Suits you though. Think you'll keep it?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. I think I'll have to return it."

"Why?"

"So I can borrow it again." He suggests slowly.

You stare at him, unable to hide your growing grin. "Smooth, Spidey. Real smooth."

His gaze lights up. "Better than the cheek kiss?"

"Tons better. You could try it again—I'll see if I can adjust the scores." You tease.

"Really?" He stutters, akin to a flustered high-schooler.

"Yeah, but you'll have to tell me your name." You gesture with a point of your fork. "Can't go around giving free kisses without ID."

You meant it as a joke. You're no expert in superhero protocols, but you're sure the codenames meant no personal information spilled outside their work-life. Even when you've already seen his face, and shared a bed with him, and let him take your second favourite mug though he can't possibly know that last one. There's lines you've certainly crossed, but his name?

You part your lips to take back your impulsive request, to brush it off—only to find genuine consideration forming in his expression. Your smile falls slack in wonder. No, he wouldn't. He couldn't possibly.

Yet, he looks at you, almost peering deep into your soul. He looks at you as if he knows you, all boyish and unguarded. Whatever he sees, past the bed-hair and ice-cream smothered lips—it's worth it to him. It's worth something honest, and sacred—a truth he'll never be able to take back. It's a genuine, soft thing—a precious smile that lifts his lips, one you have no idea how brave he is for keeping. He has made his choice, and you're a part of it, always.

Peter looks at you, and he sees the only present he'll ever want. Past spells and starting-overs and stupid choices—at the centre of it all, it all becomes so simple. You—who his body sought out of instinct, who inhabited his mind with your own personal island, who had taken his heart from the first time he saw you. You're home, and no rules or lines drawn could've stopped him from returning back to you. His everything.

"Peter. Peter Parker."

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You have learned to read Andy well through the past weeks: the way he stands at a window, how he crosses the flagstone kitchen after lunch, the angle of his body when he sits at the enormous marble island, elbows planted, hands steepled. Today, there is nothing predatory in his posture—no sharpness, no smirk—but a kind of diffident calculation, as though he’s rehearsing a script only halfway written. Still, you leave him to reveal whatever it is he’s thinking about for when he decides to bring it out and present it to you. He remains contemplative all morning.

You are rinsing your plates after lunch, and you’re considering taking the walk down to the lake, when Andy finally says, “Wait.” The word lands with no urgency or demand, it is simply a marker before what he wants to come next.

When you turn, he is already moving toward the glass-fronted cabinet near the pantry—a section you have seen but never opened, because you’ve lived off simple meals through the early parts of the day—bread, figs, cheeses. And for the rest of your meals, at some point a private chef descends either to cook dinner or drop off dishes for the week, and occasionally Andy will drive you to one of the lakeshore trattorias and order for you in his fluent, unshowy Italian.

Andy returns to your side with an old, battered notebook in hand. He sets the notebook on the counter with both hands, a careful act. You recognize the reverence in his fingers, feel the slight uptick of gravity in the room.

It’s a spiral-bound thing, the kind you’d expect to find in a grandmother’s kitchen drawer—edges dog-eared, pages stained with rings and flour-dust, a dozen tabs made of masking tape and ancient Post-its. The front cover says, in an elaborate, feminine hand: FAMILY RECIPES.

You dry your hands before reaching for the precious tome. You flip through the pages, careful, running your thumb along the edge the way you might with old money or ancient letters. Most of the recipes are written in faded, looping script, others in blocky, penciled all-caps. There are short, cryptic notes in the margins—“add more lemon if not fresh,” “marinate overnight or don’t bother”—and the effect is of something not curated for show, but built up over years of trial and error.

You glance up at Andy, who is watching you with a studied nonchalance, as if he might bolt if you laugh at this offering.

You run your hand down the page, feeling the indentations of the pen, the grit of flour caught in the spiral’s seam. “Did you ever make these? Or is this… was this your mom’s?”

“It was hers. We made most everything in there at some point together.” He shrugs, not quite meeting your eyes. You imagine the blocky script then has to be his additions and annotations. “I thought it might be good to have a few things from home here. For the future.”

The word future lands heavy between you, but not unwelcome. He edges closer, almost bashful, as if worried that presenting this piece of his past is a violation, or an imposition, or worse, a vulnerability. You can hardly believe how tentative this moment is between the two of you, how precious and telling.

“Which do you like?” you ask, voice softer than you intend, but Andy doesn’t seem to mind. He leans in and flips to a page marked with a yellowing Post-it, the ink here a mix of bold and delicate: LEMON CHICKEN. There is a doodle of a chicken in the margin, and a note in a younger hand: “good for impressing guests.”

Andy’s finger rests there, but he doesn’t speak right away. Instead, he moves behind you, arms coming to rest on either side of the notebook, bracketing you in. His chin finds your shoulder. “We could try this one,” he says, after a moment. Another beat, and then, “It’s more complicated than it looks.” His mouth is close to your ear, but the games are absent; this is not a seduction, but something closer to an ask. You realize it is important to him, more than he will admit.

Your turn your head slightly so you can meet each others’ eyes. “For tonight?”

You see the exact second he wants to say, No, not tonight, but he’s set this gambit in motion, and a mafia boss won’t blink. “Tonight’s good if you’re up for it,” he says, as though it isn’t the most loaded suggestion possible.

You are up for it. And it’s the first of what becomes the everyday ritual of cooking something out of the family recipe book for dinner together.

The first day you attempt the lemon chicken, you are both so hyper-focused on the recipe that you forget to set the table, and end up eating off the kitchen island straight out of the pans.

The next night you try the thyme and basil roast pork, and the next after that, a tortellini in brodo that requires two hours of simmering and a phone call to Ugo for advice about the right kind of herbs to gather from the garden.

By the end of the week, you are inviting dinner guests—first just a pair, then a trickle, then somehow, the momentum of the lake and the villa and the rumor of a young American couple in residence brings neighbors out of the woodwork. There’s a widow from the slope above, her British accent perfection and her opinions more so, and the retired engineer with his grandchild, and eventually, a small parade of acquaintances who rotate through with bottles of local wine and offers to swap garden produce. The first time, you’re nervous, certain one or another of them will see through you and Andy, but the rhythm of food and small talk smooths everything while also seeming to stitch the two of you closer together.

If there’s one spot on the estate of this Italian villa that you love more than any other, it is, without question, the terrace that features a fine outdoor dining table intended for small gatherings of friends or family, nestled under a lush, vine-covered pergola looking directly over the lake. Now that it’s coming into late October, the evening temperatures of autumn are crisp enough that everyone is in sweaters, and there are heat lamps, but with the warmth precautions, it’s still pleasant enough to eat outside in the stunning setting. The space is illuminated by a stunning chandelier glass chandelier, augmented with strings of white lights threaded through the vines. It’s been the most enchanting place to host your new friends with your new husband in this new life that feels endlessly surreal.

The dinner table is big enough for twelve, but tonight it’s just eight. There is a bowl of lemons at the center, bright as orbs stolen from a still-life painting, and the smell of the lake is so clean and sharp you can taste it even through the heady wafts of roast chicken and white wine. Andy pours for everyone, moving around the table with a host’s grace that no one at the table would clock as anything but camaraderie, except you who knows that he’s a ruthless mafia boss back home, but even you question who he is now that you’ve seen so many new elements of him that exist here.

Tonight, the table is loud with stories and laughter. The gathering includes the widow, Sarah, with her foxlike charm and acid tongue; the engineer, Paolo, his wife, and their college-aged grandson, who is mortified by everything; and a pair from lower on the hillside, a married couple who bring a kind of Mediterranean tennis-pro energy despite clearly hating sports. There are also two empty seats for “a last-minute add-on,” as Andy puts it, and when they arrive, it’s a surprise: Sarah’s daughter, home from Rome, and her boyfriend, a Spaniard who teaches at the university.

You’ve come to relish hosting the rotating circle strangers-turned-friends you’re quickly building, but you’re still adjusting to the tradition of an Italian dinner party, which is as much about the relentless, cascading waves of conversation, as it is about the food. Here, no one is allowed to be quiet for long.

You’re impressed at the ease with which Andy navigates all pockets of conversation across the table, how deftly he manages the pivots from politics, to soccer, to the village gossip. It seems impossible, but he makes it look like he’s always lived here, always belonged.

You play the part too, trading stories, laughing into the night. When Sarah asks, point-blank and with the confidence of the terminally curious, “So. You two—how did this happen?” she makes a little waggle of her empty glass at your newly minted wedding bands. “You’re newlyweds, and you said it was a quick engagement, but what got you to that altar? How did you and Andy meet? You never told us the whole of that story.”

The table hushes, expectant. You’ve become aware how much you’ve inherited Andy’s ability to evade and deflect, to answer with a truth that is not entirely true.

Andy’s head cocks. He’s winding up for a deadpan lie or a polite deflection, but you’re quicker tonight, emboldened by the wine and the waves of collective cheer.

“Oh, it’s nothing as romantic as it looks.” You set your fork down, lean an elbow on the table, and say, “He extorted me. Threatened to ruin my life if I didn’t say yes.”

There’s a beat of silence, then the neighbors laugh—first a burst from the widow, then the rest, the sound rolling in like the waves lapping up against the property of the villa. “Honestly, I’m trapped. A prisoner of the fearsome Andy Barber.”

The joke lands, the table erupts in laughter, but Andy is not among them. His mouth approximates a smile, sure, but there’s a sudden, unmistakable torque to his jaw that tells you he in no way appreciates your antics. Nobody else catches it, and then Paolo is recounting his own disastrous engagement story for the benefit of his grandson and the young Spaniard, who are, against all odds, enraptured. But you see the way Andy’s hand curls around his wine stem, the white of his thumb gone bloodless, and you feel the new coil of tension slither under the table straight from where he sits at the head of the table to where you sit on the other end.

When you excuse yourself to fetch dessert from the kitchen inside, Andy follows. He is so casual about it—“let me help,” because he always does as you two host these evenings—that no one at the table thinks twice. But when you pass from the spill of terrace light into the dimness of the patio leading up to the villa, you feel the change in pressure, the sharp coiled energy in the silence. You can feel every motion of Andy stalking behind you, every footstep measured, the gravity of his attention drawing up the length of your spine.

You step into the kitchen and turn to face him, but he’s already seized your wrist, pinning you to the cool marble counter with so little force it’s almost nothing, but you both know the implication. His eyes are dark, unblinking.

“Don’t do that again,” Andy says, voice only just above a whisper. “Don’t ever joke about me owning you.”

You stare at him, momentarily stunned by the vehemence, but you hardly miss a beat, and the words, “But you do, don’t you?” tumble out of your mouth.

You say it like a dare, but Andy steps even closer, eliminating the gap until your hip is pressed flat to the lip of the counter. “I would burn down everything you’ve ever loved before I let you make a cheap joke of this,” he says, but his hand is shaking, and he doesn’t even try to hide it. “Don’t do that again.” His grip tightens, a flash of heat, then he releases you. He turns away, breath ragged. You haven’t seen him so intensely worked up in months. You forgot this part of him existed.

You stay where you are, hand braced on the marble, as Andy looms back to his full height. You feel something flare at your core—that traitorous twist of desire when he’s like this, a spike of outrage that he’s resorted to it, the seams of both threading together tight as wire.

You tilt your chin up to meet his gaze, your pulse steadying into a challenge of its own. “It was only meant to be clever banter,” you say, careful to keep your voice low and even, but letting him hear the needle in it. “No one believed it.”

He doesn’t respond right away. Andy’s eyes bore into you, reading for signs of retreat or remorse. When he finds neither, he finally inhales—slow, deliberate, calming himself by increments.

“I know what you were doing,” he says. Because you know as well as he does that jokes are always a vector for the truth. “But I mean it. Don’t.”

He’s still a gracious, charming host the rest of the evening, but you see that it’s subdued, less warm.

The moment you’ve called out the last of your goodnights from the front steps as your guests wander home, Andy turns, looks at you with those hard, steel blue eyes, and goes inside without a word.

Now it’s you following him into the kitchen, because the clean up from these dinners with friends has become part of the closing ritual that you two share, as well, but when you step up next to Andy at the sink, he growls, “Leave it and go upstairs.”

You don’t bother to argue, to offer some response meant to salve either of you and smooth things over. Instead, you pivot with a clipped, “Fine,” and leave him. You don’t bother flipping on lights as you reach the master. You stand there in the dark, hearing your own heart thumping, feeling every inch of your skin alive and restless, your body trying to decide if it is angry or simply keyed up by the aftershock of that confrontation.

You pace the bedroom, back and forth, and finally drop onto the edge of the bed, arms crossed hard over your chest. For endless minutes, you’re just locked there in the moon-shadow, staring out over the black sweep of the lake, counting seconds. You’re waiting to hear Andy’s footsteps, the sound of him coming up to finish what he started, to demand a further reckoning.

When Andy finally comes upstairs, you’re ready for him. He enters without a word—just a sweep of dark eyes, a tightening of his mouth as he closes the door behind him, the quiet slide of the latch declaring this space sealed from the rest of the world. You don’t let him get two steps in before you say, “It’s not going to be anything like it is here when we go back to Boston, is it?”

He stops. The shadows cut the sharp lines of his bearded jaw, and for a second you wonder if he’ll lie—if he’ll even bother with a performance for your benefit or simply bulldoze past the question. Instead, he stands there, hands in his pockets, and weighs you like a problem.

“No,” he says. “It won’t.”

You push up from the bed and take a few steps forward. “Why?”

He stalks the edge of the bedroom, not coming closer, his hands still jammed in his pockets. His voice is quieter, but it vibrates at a pitch meant for you alone. “Because,” Andy says, each syllable landing deliberate, “a honeymoon is a liminal space, a fairytale. It isn’t real.”

You know what he means, but you want to punish him for the admission, want to see how far he’ll go in spelling it out. You cross your arms tighter, say nothing, hold the silence until he continues. He’s right, but this hurts because you wanted it to be more than temporary.

“This,” he gestures vaguely—at your body, at the lake, at the high, old bones of the house, and the air quivering between you—“is a retreat. It’s not the world. It’s not sustainable. I borrowed this time for us. But it can’t last.” You watch him, still and wary.

“Why can’t you fucking want us?” Andy asks.

You want to scream because somehow you’ve unraveled everything right back to the start in the space of mere hours. You don’t scream, but you do choke on a frustrating sob when you say, “Because you demanded it. I would have chosen you if you’d been kind instead of cruel, but you never even gave me a choice.”

You say that last part too loud, but you want him to hear the garble and the pain in it, that you want him to finally react as a person, not as an institution or a fortress. Andy holds very still.

“Don’t you see?” he says, and he’s close enough now that you can see the quiver in his left hand. Then his hands curl, not into fists, but into something worse—into the shape of wanting to touch you. He comes closer, walking with a kind of exhausted inevitability, and you can tell he’s been fighting with the words since before he came up the stairs. “If I didn’t take you, you would have run.”

You surge forward and raise your hand to slap him, but he catches your wrist before you can strike. You try to shake out of his hold, but he doesn’t let you.

“You don’t know that,” you argue. “You never even let me make the call.”

Andy doesn’t flinch, but his grip changes, less capture and more containment. Andy’s breaths are ugly and uneven. “I wasn’t going to risk it. I couldn’t.”

Your pulse is skittering under his thumb where it grips your wrist. You wish you could say the feelings are all anger, but the emotions are thick with something raw and unkillable that’s lived under your skin since the first week you met, all the more terrible and breathtaking now that whatever’s between you has evolved and expanded deeply here in Italy. You close your eyes, just for a second, because the only thing worse than being seen by Andy is seeing the want on his face.

He yanks your body tight to his, foreheads nearly colliding. You feel the way his whole being is trembling, probably close to shattering, you in the fallout zone. “You don’t understand,” Andy says, and you hear the ferocity in his conviction.

“Then make me,” you bite back.

You are thrust backward, the world contracting to the violence of his mouth on yours, then down the column of your neck, his tongue ferocious and wild. There is nothing careful in the way Andy drags you toward the bed, your body crashing against the mattress, his grip so absolute you know you’ll wear the ghost of his fingers for days. He tears at your clothes—not undressing you, but stripping you, rough and elemental—and pins your wrists above your head, his weight a pact that you are not leaving, not now, not ever.

He fucks you with a savagery you haven’t seen in him since the earliest days, when everything between you was a war, and then an addiction, and then a war again. There is no foreplay because your bodies remember every password, every escalation, and Andy knows yours by heart. He forces you open, mouths your skin so hard you arch up in shock, pleasure already a cry from your throat. He bites at your mouth, your jaw, the line of your neck.

He forces a knee between your legs, spreads you wide, and fucks into you in a single, savage thrust so deep your vision whites out for a second. There’s only the impact of Andy’s hips crashing into you, the push and force of hands you could never mistake for gentle. You are flipped as if you weigh nothing, your face pressed to the mattress, your body pinned in a way that is—should be—danger, but now reads as his. Because his cock finds you wet, spread, so ready you want to scream with the humiliation of it, and when he plunges in, you do scream, muffled by fists knotted in the bedding. He fucks you with a violence that lights up every nerve ending in your body, stroking so deep it feels like he’s remaking you, each thrust a seismic reminder that you are his, that you have always been his, that even now, especially now, you want it. You want it more than you want to win.

He is relentless. He takes you from behind so hard you nearly lose your bearings, his hands bruising your hips, his cock battering a rhythm into you with no mercy, no space for anything but the friction and fullness. He grunts into your shoulder, each sound a confirmation that the only thing he wants is more—more from you, more inside you, more of everything you have to give.

When you come, it’s not a climax so much as a collapse, a convulsion that tears something loose, but Andy doesn’t slow down. He fucks you through it, not letting up, as if your pleasure is a thing to be drained. You sob, raw, and he covers your mouth with his—biting, licking, silencing the sharpness with his tongue. He flips you again, manhandling you onto your back, and hooks your knees over his elbows, spreading you so wide you can barely breathe. His cock pistons in you, deeper, until you are gasping, keening, until you are reduced to the rawest version of yourself, nothing left but sensation, the feel of him, the violence of his wanting you.

He is not gentle, not even a little, and you don’t want gentle. You want to be consumed, and Andy obliges—he fucks you until your body is shaking, until the tears spill down your face, until your voice is hoarse from the pleading, the yes, the please, the more that you can’t help falling from your lips. He does not stop. Not until you are truly broken open, legs trembling, cunt so raw and used you think you will never get the ache out of your bones.

He circles back to your mouth, forces his tongue inside, kisses you with the same ferocity as he fucks you. He bites your lower lip until you taste blood, and then licks it away, tongue soft as an apology, but you know it is not one. You have been wrecked in the span of a few minutes, but it’s clear he’s not done.

He is going to fuck you until you don’t remember your own name.

He crawls up over your body, grabbing your jaw with his big hand and shoving the wet head of his cock between your lips, not waiting for an invitation. The first taste is salt and skin, your juices and his precum, the burn of him so deep on your tongue you gag, but Andy does not relent. He drives his cock into your throat, one hand fisting in your hair to keep you exactly where he needs you, the other bracing against the wall as he looms over you, and all you can do is take it. If you try to twist away, he holds you tighter. If you choke, he says, “Good girl,” and pushes in further. Your vision blurs with new tears as he fucks your face, the thick, hot shaft of him relentless, your mouth ruined already from the earlier kisses and now wrecked by the invasion.

You want to hate him for it, you’re sure you do, but you are gone, reduced to this animal need to please and to be conquered, to see how far he’ll push you and whether you’ll break. You need to be ruined by him, made anew, fucked out of even the memory of the anger that brought you here. You try to breathe through your nose but he’s too deep for too long, and when he finally lets go, you gasp so hard your lungs ache.

Andy groans as he fists himself furiously and then comes across your face, and shifts so he can shoot the rest of his load over your chest. When he finally releases your head, you collapse backward on the bed, breath heaving, spit and come and tears streaking your face. Andy towers over you, his own chest heaving in time with yours.

You feel the collapsing hush of the bedroom as Andy composes himself, standing at the edge of the mattress, his features still marred by the wet brilliance of anger and longing both. Your legs are spread, trembling, and you hate how much you love the weightless aftermath of being used until your head empties out, until there’s no room for doubt, only this: this knowing, this rawness, like a secret you must never confess.

You don’t flinch as he reaches for your chin, thumb smearing his come from the corner of your mouth and dragging it slow across your cheek, tracing his claim into the skin. It’s humiliating, and it’s the only thing that quells the shaking inside you.

He leans down, bracing his hands on either side of your head, and you see the play of war and reverence in his face—still caught between violence and awe. Then he kisses you, you, deep, with a hunger that seems bottomless, the heat of his tongue against your teeth and the salt-blind taste of your own tears and the ache he’s left in every muscle. The kiss is messy, open-mouthed, more bite than balm, but it binds you to him in ways words never could. You can taste the iron resolve in it, the promise of obliteration and devotion entwined. He doesn’t say “I love you” — and you don’t want him to. Not like this, not ever. All the same, you know the truth of it down to your marrow.

Andy injects his cursed, talented fingers into your cunt, tormenting you with the mess of your ruin, again, knuckles grazing your clit and making you buck up on reflex because you are so tender and slick all movement is pain-laced pleasure, so much more intense than usual. He probes two fingers inside, pressing deep and curling to stroke that perfect, devastating spot. “You’re dripping, cunt still gripping for me,” he murmurs with a strange reverence, as if confirming a suspicion about the physics of your body. He works his fingers in and out with increasing speed, and the obscene wet sound of it is so raw you want to die. “You take every inch of me,” he says, not as a question, but as the ending to an equation. “You’re made for me.”

He moves with a deliberate roughness, fucking you with his hand, thumb never leaving your clit, and in seconds you’re strung out and shuddering again, unable to stop. You wail into the darkness, no longer caring if it sounds like anger, or keening, or the wound of wanting. Andy doubles down, unrelenting, until your body spasms and you break yet another time for him, this time so wrung out you black the edges of your own consciousness, every muscle clamped and helpless to resist.

After, you lie there, wrecked, every limb trembling and dead, your breathing wild and uneven. Andy finally draws away from you, leaving, and you can’t pinpoint to where since you can hardly sustain your own functionality.

Andy’s presence is gone for less than a minute, but the void is so total it makes your ears ring. When he returns, he is silent. He carries a hand towel in one hand, and in the other, a damp cloth. You lie there, still splayed and shaking, and let him clean you—face, chin, the slick mess over your breasts. He is methodical, almost gentle, the movements so unlike the violence that came before you want to claw at him for the contradiction. You’d planned to meet his eyes, maybe spit a retort or something wounding to break the spell, but the look on his face is so devastating, so utterly intent on you, that you can only stare back and let him do what he will.

He wipes his hands and sets the towel aside. Then leans back, surveying you. He should be satisfied, should be spent, but you feel the air thicken again—the promise of more, of escalation. Without further warning, Andy slides his hands under your shoulder and thigh and flips you face-down to the mattress, your body a ragdoll in his grip. You are so dazed you don’t even register the force of it, the way he wrests your upper half down to the pillows while yanking your hips up with his other hand. You wind up face down, arms crushed beneath your chest, your ass arched in the air and on display, vulnerable and wide open.

You whimper, not even sure if it’s resistance or anticipation, and try to close your legs, but Andy just presses your knees wider, immobilizing you with a ruthlessness that’s almost tender.

He presses your chest to the mattress with one palm, weight pinning you flat, the other hand palming your ass, squeezing, kneading, as if cataloguing every inch of you before making a decision. You can’t see him, but you feel the heat of his breath ghost over your skin, and then—his tongue, hot and slick, working a slow, punishing stripe from your cunt to the rosebud of your asshole. You buck, shocked at the invasion, but Andy’s grip on your hip is iron.

The first lick is speculative, as if Andy is testing the edge of your reaction, what you have left in you tonight, but when your hips jerk and you press back, he doubles down, dragging his tongue in slow, obscene circles around your rim, then spearing it in with a precision that leaves you keening into the bedding. He holds you wide, open, and feasts on you, his tongue circling and plunging, working you in both places with obscene, relentless pressure. It is too much, and not enough, and you cannot believe you are so needy that when he works his thumb inside your ass, you nearly come from just that.

He fucks you with his tongue and his fingers and then both, alternating, escalating, until your thighs are slick and the sheets beneath them are soaked, and you have lost the thread of yourself entirely. There is no air, no sound but your own voice breaking, the wet slick of his mouth and the way your body trembles and begs for more. You arch, you plead, you scream into the mattress, devoured, mindless, reduced to a surface of nerves and a single quaking need. It is worse—better—when he spits on your asshole, massaging it with two wet fingers before working them in, stretching, filling, never ceasing his licking and sucking at your clit.

You sob, humiliated and mind-shattered, when Andy’s fingers press deeper, opening you; you arch and shudder, every part of you stinging, burning, exquisitely ruined. He pushes three fingers into your cunt, then adds a second into your ass, the double invasion so intense it makes you come almost instantly, the orgasm breaking through you like a blackout. You can’t move, can’t even process the pleasure—just take it, and take it, every aftershock.

Andy finishes you, and himself, in a blur of escalation and satisfaction, then, without ceremony, lifts you from the wreckage of the sheets—one arm under your knees, the other braced at your back. You’re so limp he might as well be carrying a sack of flour. He deposits you so achingly gently onto the still cool and untouched side f te bed, then climbs in beside you. He wraps both arms around you, winding you tight into his chest, flushed naked skin next to his flushed naked skin. You don’t fight him. In fact, you’re still so strung out that you cling to him, so spent it takes you a minute to realize he’s murmuring something—a string of words, low and urgent, nearly inaudible above the static in your ears.

You scrabble for a reply, but your own pulse is so loud it drowns out everything; your only coherent thought is the feel of his hand in your hair, the rough sweetness of it, an anchor to reality.

You drift toward sleep. Andy holds you so tightly you can’t tell if your ribs ache from the aftershocks or from the pressure of his arms. His breath comes in a slow, deliberate cadence, each inhale a claim, each exhale an ironclad reassurance.

He never releases you. Even as your breathing slows, even as your mind empties out, he keeps you pinned to him, chest to chest, as unwilling to let you drift in sleep as he is this marriage. You can’t move. You don’t want to. There’s nothing left in you that isn’t claimed, nothing untouched by Andy’s insistence. Even your bones feel different.

Andy presses a solemn kiss to your forehead, and the weight of it is so grave, so final, that for a moment you are sure you will never be released.

You try to stay awake, to hold on to something—anger, maybe, or identity—but it dissolves, every thought leaching out of you until only Andy’s grip remains, steady and absolute.

You wake at dawn with your thigh thrown over his hip, his hand still buried in your hair. The room is cold, but your body is kept warmed by his. He still has you locked, but the violence is gone, replaced by a solemn stillness that feels almost, but not quite, like peace. You move to extricate yourself, but he anticipates the

As the waves of everything that transpired the night before roll over you, battering your memory, your throat aches, and your eyes burn, and softly you start to cry.

The last time you were held like this was years ago, childhood, your mother tucking you in on the worst night of your life. The same hush, the same grave quiet, as if by clutching close she could keep the world from breaking you. Some animal core in you recognizes the shape of this hold, the way it’s designed not just to possess but to comfort, to render you safe against your will.

You hate him for it. You hate him in a way that loops back on itself and becomes something else entirely. You hate that he’s devastatingly handsome, that he’s capable, that he’s clever and so good at loving you—yes, loving, you are not a fool. You hate that he can make you want him even after he’s destroyed you, that he can ruin your body for anyone else and then hold you like you are a thing to be treasured.

Andy wakes exactly when you need him to, which is to say, when you are at your worst, about to break down. His arms shift; his breath changes. You sense him resurface and look at you, then the thumb at your cheek, rough but oddly tender, and he wipes away a tear.

“Don’t cry,” he soothes, and you lean into his touch for one brief last moment.

When you push to roll away, Andy lets you go. You shift to the other side of the mattress, heft your legs over the side, and pull yourself out of bed. “I want to go back,” you say, voice sanded raw. You don’t say back to where—you both already know.

Andy props himself on an elbow, gaze unreadable. “Good,” he says. “I already arranged it.” His tone is flat, businesslike. “But not until the end of the week.”

You blink, waiting for the justification, and he gives it without you having to ask. “We’re expected for dinner at Paolo’s tomorrow, brunch at Sarah’s on Thursday, and we owe our neighbors a few more nightly dinners, so they don’t think anything’s awry.”

“You just expect me to play house with you until you let us leave?”

“That’s exactly what I expect of you. The charming newlyweds who’ve welcomed so many new friends to their home wouldn’t leave without inviting everyone over for a farewell-for-now dinner.”

It takes everything in you not to stamp your foot. “You’re unbelievably infuriating.”

You don’t wait for Andy to respond, biting down the taste of an argument you know he won’t let you win. You dress in whatever shirt is closest, clambering into soft pants and hissing at the burn between your legs as you do. You stalk through the villa and out onto the upper terrace. The sun is not fully over the mountains, and wind off the lake stings your face, cooling the sweat and salt and tears you haven’t yet washed off.

You pace the perimeter path above the water for an hour before you realize you haven’t brought anything with you—no phone, no shoes, not even the scarf you’ve worn every morning for weeks. It doesn’t matter. You don’t need anything but the sensation of your feet striking the cold flagstones, don’t need anything but the air to burn out the memory of last night and everything that led to it.

You re-enter the villa through the kitchen, hoping for empty space, but Andy’s already there, leaning over the marble island, hunched in concentration as he prepares your preferred morning drink right alongside his. He doesn’t look up right away, only when he’s poured your cup and slides it across the counter to you.

You take it, despite yourself, and let the liquid sooth the rawness in your throat.

“Chef’s been notified to resume evening meals,” he says without any undercurrent. “I told her to stock us up for the week, until we leave. If there’s anything you want, just let me know.”

“I’d like to have no plans,” you say, and the words come out so blunt it surprises even you. “No social obligations. No guests. No performances.”

Andy shakes his head. “You already know that’s not up for negotiation.”

“I won’t share a room with you here anymore.”

Andy takes a beat, then nods. “Fine,” he says, and you can feel the shift in him—the hard retraction of self.

You did not expect him to agree to that. And certainly not so easily.

So you quickly add, “I don’t want to share a room when we get back to Boston, either.”

Andy scoffs, and his eyes narrow. “No deal. We both own that this honeymoon has been a suspension of real life, so separate rooms will do us both good to recalibrate. But when we get back to Boston, you are my wife. My wife, not my guest. We start our real life then.”

You wonder if Andy’s version of real is something you will even recognize, let alone want.

You set your mug down with care, fingers curling around the handle as if to anchor yourself. Andy watches, lips pressed thin, and you can see he's expecting a counter or a protest. Instead, you say, “I don’t know if why you never believed me or never understood, but I said it in the beginning, I said it last night, and I still mean it now: you never should have forced me into you bed or to accept your proposal. You keep making these choices for us, and you keep assuming I would have run if you hadn’t forced it.” You wait for him to look at you, to meet your eyes, and when he does, you let out a breath that tastes like iron. “But that night—the first night—if you’d asked, really asked, I would have chosen you. No threat, no blackmail, no war. I would have said yes.”

You say this, and your hands shake around the mug, but you don’t look away. Andy doesn’t either. The stillness is absolute—so sharp you hear the tremor in your pulse, the old house humming with the tension of two people who want, and are ruined, and will not concede.

You really would have said yes to that first night and undoubtedly so much more.

You didn't know he was this—the depth and breadth of so much good, so much bad, so much ugly—but part of you had wanted him and assumed he'd never seriously entertain your as an option.

He’d taken you so seriously you never saw him coming.

A fairytale honeymoon had been the curse, not the breaking of a spell, and the next chapter awaiting you in Boston? You truly didn’t know where you would land, how it would mold and carve itself, especially now that you knew what had existed here with him in Lake Como, both of you transformed, and now seemingly all of it lost.

This is how I feel posting this chapter. I've questioned going back on it all week, but ... I think the fact that I'm so conflicted means it was what needed to happen. I'm not second-guessing the longterm plot, I only feel bad about how it hits in this moment right now.

NEXT PART: Cold Ashes

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The first thing you notice, waking from a nap on the floating bed in the pool, is that Andy is gone.

Not gone gone, just not on any visible axis of the infinity pool, nor on the adjacent stone terrace, nor peering at you from the shade of the loggia the way he sometimes does, as if he’s making a private study of how thoroughly the Italian sun kisses your skin. You hear the distant echo of his voice, maybe a phone call, maybe not, and the hush of water lapping gently under your body—then, nothing but bird noise and the lethargic patter of an October breeze, already shifting the air toward winter.

You close your eyes and count each lapping wave, the buzz of distant bees, the punctuation of a single, insistent fly spiraling nearby is the only irritant these days. It’s nearly impossible to believe this is your life now, but three weeks in, the unreality is smoothing into a different genre of normal.

The days have been long and slow, a sequence of luxuries and heat, the kind of leisure you used to think only existed for other people. You and Andy fuck constantly, everywhere—on the bed, the pool steps, once on the sun-warmed hood of the vintage Maserati that he’s aquired for this house. There is no schedule, no work—or rather, your work is to be together, to weather the strange storm of his affection and your own disbelief that you are, in fact, married.

The rhythm of the days is built around meals and sex, though not always in that order. Some mornings you wake to croissants and espresso, some to the weight of Andy’s body already moving inside you, his mouth flattening any chance you had at protest. There’s a kind of athleticism to it now, a drive that’s less about conquest than about seeing how far the two of you can dissolve into each other before you lose track of who’s who.

And here there is just time: for sleeping in, for reading entire novels on the terrace, for walking the estate’s perimeter in silence, hand-in-hand, or apart but within each other’s sightlines.

Only twice in these three weeks has Andy vanished, usually for less than an hour, silent and grim, striding off with his phone pressed to his ear. Each time you think you should be annoyed, resent the way he leaves you alone, but shouldn’t you want the alone time? Regardless, the sense of abandonment never quite blooms. He always comes back to you, faster than you expect, with a heat in his eyes that insists you are the thing he wants most.

You learn the gentle rhythms of the house. The gardener, Ugo, arrives at sunrise, and if Andy’s not already up and prowling the study, you’ll often find him barefoot on the dew-wet grass, talking with Ugo in a tangle of Italian that sounds almost like music. You learn that the best breakfast is not at the marble table but at the ancient wooden bench near the back door, looking out over the lake with your legs over Andy’s lap, watching the chop of early light on the water.

The villa is built on a steep slope that plunges into Lake Como, all pale stone and terracotta roof tile, the kind of property purchased only by those who intend to keep it for generations.

Andy is softer here, in a way that doesn’t mean gentle. He is more relentless, if anything, but less guarded. He will spend hours reading in a chair beside you, or spiral into long monologues about Roman history, or sleep like the dead, one hand always on your skin, as if the long habit of possession won’t dissolve even under a Mediterranean sun.

You get out of the pool, towel off in the sun and walk toward the second floor bedroom you share with its view onto the glassy blue lake. You peel off the swimsuit, and change into a loose linen shirt and soft drawstring pants, and even this luxury feels excessive. Since your engagement, Andy has thrown out half your old wardrobe, replacing it with indecently fine things that you pretend to resent but wear anyway. It makes your skin buzz, the way he dresses you for both your pleasure and his.

You tidy your hair in front of the wide, low vanity—a walnut table, ancient, with a marble top. It’s the kind of thing you would have rolled your eyes at a year ago—the velvet stool, a beveled oval mirror, and an array of perfumes and powders, all staged with an artful disregard for clutter. But you’re drawn to it every day, primarily because of the golden brush and hand mirror that sit at its center, a vintage set that Andy gifted to you the first morning here in Lake Como.

He presented them to you the very first morning. They’d been in a heavy walnut case lined with blue silk. “It belonged to my grandmother,” he’d said, watching your reaction with the same intensity he brought to every other element of his life. “My mother used it every day. I think she’d rather you have it than leave it locked in a safe.” The set was shockingly beautiful—brushed gold handles, and fine porcelain painted with an intricate flower pattern. The bristles are impossibly soft. The mirror refracts your face into something both clearer and less familiar. Every morning, you brush your hair with it. Every morning, you catch Andy watching you in the reflection.

He is in the doorway now, arms folded, his own shirt liberally unbuttoned down the front. You didn’t hear him come up. He has a look you know: right on the seam between hunger and amusement, as if the sight of you is a surprise every time, but never unexpected.

“You’re lurking,” you say. In the mirror you watch Andy tilt his head very slightly, a fox reading a threshold.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He approaches and stops just behind you, not touching you yet, but close enough that you feel the warmth of him.

He watches you finish brushing your hair all the way through, slow, deliberate strokes until the ends fall perfectly straight. Setting down the brush, you turn and face him, waiting.

“You look like you belong here,” he observes.

You arch a brow. “Didn’t you hope it was an inevitability?”

“I don’t leave things to hope.”

He bends and kisses your shoulder—slow, savoring—then lingers, breathing in the scent at your neck. Despite your engagement and these three weeks, you are not yet immune to this. He knows it, too, the way every nerve in you wakes up and goes hunting for more.

But today, he does not escalate—he holds you, chest pressed to your shoulder-blade, and lets the moment dissolve without claiming it. You wonder if he’s in a rare mood of restraint, or whether some part of him is truly, for once, at peace.

You pivot in his arms—quick, surprising him—until you face him fully. The top three buttons of his shirt are undone, exposing the familiar whorl of dark hair, a constellation of fading scars, and the lick of some of his tattoos exposed.

Andy’s hands settle at your hips, his thumb pressing the linen flat to your skin. “We’re having company tonight,” he says, almost offhand, but you catch the flicker of something in his face—a signal flare if you care to read it.

You blink. “Who?”

He feigns a sigh, but there is almost the hint of a smile around his mouth. “Someone we can’t avoid any longer.”

“That sounds cryptic and ominous,” you say, though not entirely without humor. “Are they dangerous?”

Andy tilts his head as if considering how much he wants to reveal before confirming, “Not to you.”

You frown. “Who is it, then? Another family? A business rival?” You half expect to hear a name you’ll have to Google later, some ancient consigliere or a senator’s nephew with a gambling problem.

Andy hesitates longer than you expect, then finally, “My stepbrother.”

Your brain stutters, reboots.

Stepbrother?

Not a word you’d ever heard applied to the realm of Andy. You comb through every memory of his disclosures, minimal though they have been thus far, and come up empty. You shake your head, as if a drop of pool water still clings to the inside of your ear. “You never said—” you start, but Andy is already laughing, soft and sharp.

“Didn’t seem relevant, until now.” He grins, his hands tightening at your hips as if to steady you through the shock. “He’s an acquired taste.”

“So, is he coming for dinner, or for war?” you ask.

He shrugs one shoulder, brushing off the gravity even as you feel an undertow. “He’ll be here at seven. He’s in Switzerland, claims traffic, but really he’s just never been on time for anything like this.”

You lean back against the vanity. “Why now?”

The answer is a smile, but not one that reaches his eyes. “Curiosity.”

You process this. Maybe you should be mad, but if Thea read way too many mafia romance novels, you’ve read just as many mafia and non-mafia romance novels to have where the heroine manufactures outrage over nothing, and you’ve always found it exhausting—the obligatory fight, the unnecessary tension, the reconciliation that changes nothing.

And you’re not actually mad at all that he hasn’t told you about a stepbrother. There’s a long list of things you haven’t told him about because you don’t want to.

So really, you’re just genuinely shocked at a stepbrother’s existence.

“Should I be nervous?” you ask. You’re already running the math in your head: whether this stepbrother is the mold Andy was cast from, or the thing he was cast against. Whether they’re estranged or just whatever the word is for two men who have learned to exist in separate countries.

“You’re not the nervous type,” Andy says, though there’s a sweetness in it, a note of reassurance. He tugs you closer, hands molding you against his chest. “It’s just a meal. He’s not the enemy, he’s just…” Andy trails off, one hand sliding up and down your waist. “Don’t let him get in your head,” he says, softer now. “He’s got a talent for it.”

You know a warning when you hear one.

Seven isn’t so far off. You spend a bit more time trying to care about what to wear, but finally just keep on the linen, Andy insisting that you don’t need to dress up. Your husband, without comment, switches out his shirt for another almost as lazily unbuttoned.

At precisely 6:58 pm, Andy’s phone vibrates where it’s been abandoned on the edge of the sideboard, humming a predatory sound against the wood. He glances at it, then at you, and the look—dry, resigned—tells you more than words could.

“He’s early,” Andy says, but doesn’t move to get the door. Instead, he lets you lead, and you do, padding barefoot down the stone staircase, the cool tile sending a charge up your calves.

The villa’s front door has already been opened by one of the Italian security detail, and waiting on the threshold is a man who waits, arms crossed, with a patience that broadcasts itself as challenge.

The men are nearly the same height, but the similarities differ endlessly between them. Where Andy is all cool blue flame, this man is severe angles and a sharp, surgical presence, muscles hardly contained by his frame. His blue eyes are nearly black, set under straight, unyielding brows—nothing of Andy’s bright, sly smile here. His nose is as straight as a blade. Even his hair is a darker, more exacting version of Andy’s, trimmed so close at the sides it’s nearly military, but longer on top and combed back with obsessive precision.

His clothes are immaculate, but in a way that feels less tailored and more engineered: a black shirt, jacket fitted so closely it suggests armor. Ex-military, you think immediately, but then you see the tiny glint of gold at his left wrist, a watch so expensive and so quietly worn that only someone who doesn’t need you to notice it would ever put it there.

And that mustache.

That’s certainly its own personality trait altogether.

Andy’s stepbrother is attractive, but not in any safe or approachable way. If Andy is handsome in a way that draws you in, this one is repellent, polar, a negative charge that wants to spark or burn.

Even his name, when Andy says it, carries its own weight: “Lloyd.”

“Andrew.” The greeting is a handshake, but Lloyd’s eyes dart sideways, taking you in with an efficiency that’s almost anatomical.

He clocks you in less than a second, blue eyes cutting across the foyer before you can even finish your first, startled blink. A once-over that would be offensive if it weren’t so openly, audaciously clinical. You feel yourself stand a little straighter, some competitive impulse sparked by his entrance, so you paste a smile on your mouth and force yourself to hold his stare.

He doesn’t smile back. “The wife,” Lloyd says, like a fact he’s verifying on a checklist.

You offer your hand because it’s the only move that gets you both out of the standoff, and he takes it in his own, the grip surgical and dry, yet with a voltage that makes your wrist bones hum. He doesn’t give his name or prompt you for yours, just releases and steps inside, sweeping the room with a predatory calm. When he’s satisfied, Lloyd turns his attention back to Andy, and whatever conversation occurs between them is nonverbal but absolutely deafening.

“Congratulations,” Lloyd says, and the word lands somewhere that feels simultaneously genuine and hideously sarcastic.

Andy only smirks. “Let me get you a drink.”

You watch them move into the library off the foyer, and you follow in their wake, observing Lloyd as he glances at the rows of rare books like he’s casing the place for weak spots.

“Scotch?” Andy asks.

“Negroni, if you’ve got a proper vermouth.”

Andy doesn’t dignify this request with a joke, just flips open a lacquered sideboard and pulls down a cut-glass decanter of gin, a bottle of Campari, and an unfamiliar squat bottle with an Italian label. “They make this two kilometers from here,” he says, pouring with a reverence that is almost priestly.

Lloyd, meanwhile, has found the one chair in the room that could double as a throne and seats himself with a proprietary air. Without invitation, he props a booted foot on the low table, surveying you over steepled fingers. He says nothing, but the silence is medical in its sharpness, and you sense he is running diagnostics with each flick of his gaze. You perch on the leather couch next to where you know Andy will sit, knees angled out, showing Lloyd you’re not planning to shrink beneath a family dynamic you have just now learned exists.

It is an old, beautiful library, full of rare bindings and the smell of dust and oil, but the air between the men is fresher, the distinctions newer. Andy sets Lloyd’s negroni before him, then offers a glass of your favorite drink to you, settling in beside you.

“So, Lloyd,” you try, figuring you might as well trot out some kind of conversational opening gambit, “how long are you in Italy?”

He weighs the question for sport. “I’m based out of Switzerland. But till Friday. Then Tokyo.” He sips the drink, his mouth compressing to a tight, precise line, then finally flickers a look your way. “I’ll admit,” he says, “I did not think Andy would ever get married again.” He makes the word again do all the work of a punchline.

Andy’s face does not move, but you sense him recalibrating in the space beside you.

You shrug, as if immune to the dig. “I was as surprised as anyone.”

“You must have really good dirt on him,” Lloyd says, turning to you with a wry arch of his eyebrow. “Otherwise, I can’t imagine him tying himself down at this stage of the game.”

You sputter, shocked since it was exactly the opposite. But Andy intervenes, with a hand on your thigh. “She doesn’t need dirt to get what she wants from me,” Andy says, just on the edge of a threat, but it seems to be a warning to Lloyd, not to you. “She’s the only woman who’s ever really tempted me.”

You blink at Andy, a little surprised, warmth squirming through your chest, unsure how to catalog what he’s saying, and if it’s just for Lloyd, or if it’s actually true.

You’re still processing what even to say to that, but before you can land a response, Lloyd sets his glass down with a decisive clink and leans forward, elbows on knees, gaze slicing into you with surgical clarity.

“So, what do you actually do, then? Wife of Andrew Barber.” The way he says it, with the capital W, makes it clear he sees it as a job in itself. You cock your head, deciding whether to play petulant, sincere, or unvarnished.

“I sleep in, I swim, I read too much. Apparently, I get kidnapped from my life in Boston and flown here for undetermined weeks of forced relaxation.”

Lloyd surveys you, a flicker of amusement passing across the frost of his face, then turns to Andy. “I really hope ‘forced relaxation’ is code for indecent amounts of honeymoon sex or else I’ll have to object to everything this marriage stands for.”

“Lloyd!” Andy’s tone is the admonishment of an older brother, but also a little exasperated, as if Lloyd is forever blurting the worst possible thing at the best possible time.

You can’t help but laugh, which seems to catch Lloyd off guard. “Oh, it’s absolutely code,” you say. If Andy’s hand tightens a fractional increment on your thigh, it’s matched by the up-curve at the corner of his mouth.

Lloyd throws his head back and barks out a single, cold laugh, and then, abruptly, all the armored tension in the room fractures. He shoots you a look that’s almost warm—impressed, maybe, or at least entertained—and Andy, feeling the shift, leans more comfortably into the sofa.

“For a second, I thought you’d be one of those tragic, blink-twice-if-you-need-rescue brides or a total waif and a bore,” Lloyd says. “But I think I’m going to like you. You’ve got bite. A spine. Under different circumstances we might’ve had a one-night-stand.”

You say nothing to that—what can you say?—and take a slow sip of your drink. Lloyd grins, animate now, as if he’s been waiting for a worthy audience all along.

Andy glances over, reading the beat of your silence, and says to Lloyd, “She’d have eaten you alive.”

“She’s doing that now, Andy,” Lloyd says, tipping his glass at you.

The more Lloyd talks the more you see—he’s not so much Andy’s shadow as his negative. Where Andy is tactician, Lloyd is dismantler. Maybe even a little unhinged, but in a way that’s technically useful. You can see why Andy can’t ignore him, but also why he’s arranged his life at a safe distance.

“Tell me, Lloyd,” you say, enjoying the game, “what do you actually do? And do you bring this much charisma to all your diplomatic functions?”

Lloyd refills his own drink, swirling the red liquid with a kind of absent, precise menace. “Officially, I’m a strategic consultant. Audit committees, risk and compliance, that sort of thing. Unofficially… Let’s say I help people find their limits, sometimes by exceeding them.”

You smile, liking this more than you should. “So, you’re the fixer.”

Lloyd shrugs, a gesture of such exaggerated modesty it circles around to arrogance. “I fix things, sometimes. Break them, sometimes. It’s the same art, in the end.” He slouches further in his chair, all calculated ease. “But unlike Andy, I don’t long for power. I just want to see how everything works. People, organizations, the occasional marriage.” He flashes a brief, knife-sharp smile. “I’m here because I couldn’t miss the spectacle.”

Andy groans before throwing back the rest of his drink. “Let’s get this dinner over with.”

It’s late, and the moon is a white saw-curve over the lake, when you and Andy finally give Lloyd a send-off in the gravel half-moon of the drive, hand in hand.

Lloyd had commented on every course over dinner, praising the risotto, bemoaning the use of an olive tapenade as an accompaniment to the roasted vegetables (to which you had to agree), and providing a two-minute oral history of the grappa served afterward (“Never drink it after midnight, unless you want to wake up in another country, married to a Turkish heiress, with a contract out on your spleen”). He did not attempt to murder Andy, nor did he try to seduce you, though there was a blank period in the middle of the evening where he became weirdly intent on teaching you the difference between “threat” and “risk” (both as a business concept and a party game).

Lloyd catches your eye, and for a moment you see the flicker of a new alliance—something conspiratorial. You suspect the two of you are possibly the only two people in existence to challenge Andy so much, and the shock of it seems almost to delight him.

“How long’s this honeymoon gig scheduled to last for you lovebirds?” Lloyd asks.

You, of course, don’t know, so you turn to Andy, who responds with a simple, “Undetermined.”

Lloyd raises both eyebrows. “If that’s true, that’s a first for the mastermind of our operation.”

Andy doesn’t react to the dig—just shrugs, unbothered—but you catch the way his grip tightens imperceptibly on your hand. Lloyd’s grin is the most honest expression he’s worn all evening, something primal and delighted lighting his face.

“Listen, don’t you ever let him win at anything,” Lloyd says, blatantly baiting Andy for maybe the eightiegh time this evening.

“Careful,” Andy says, “You’re going to make a friend out of my wife, and I wasn’t the marrying kind, but we all know you don’t do friends.”

“No friendship here,” Lloyd laughs. “Maybe an ally though,” he says with a ridiculous wink.

You grin, and at that moment you know you’ve not only survived an impossible dinner, but recruited a kind of secret weapon—one more unpredictable variable in a world where all bets have been, for so long, placed in advance.

You’re not sure what you expected from Andy’s stepbrother—less terror, more frat boy turned finance bro smarm—but the actual Lloyd is something more dangerous. The air always feels as if it’s about to spark, but you’re reassured with the knowledge that the threat is mostly performance. He is less a bomb than a demolition analyst, carefully always looking for the support beams to test.

Lloyd shakes Andy’s hand, the briefest clamp of muscle around bone, then holds your gaze a half-second longer than is polite. “Next time,” he says, tilting his head at you, “let’s try for lunch. Or something more dangerous.”

He stalks off into the dark, coat slung over his shoulder. His footsteps barely crunch on the gravel; you imagine he never leaves a trace.

You and Andy linger at the end of the drive until the taillights are just two points of red at the base of the hill. There’s static in the air, a lingering voltage that belongs to the aftershock of Lloyd, but maybe to something else, too.

“Are all your family gatherings like that?” you ask.

Andy chuckles. “Not even close. He’s the only family I really have left, and that’s the most time I’ve spent with him in years.”

“Really?”

He hums in the affirmative. “Lloyd’s dad married my mom when the two of us were in our last two years of high school. We put up with and defended each other in equal measure. Built trust. Still stuck with each other even though both our parents are gone.”

You soak this in as you walk back into the villa, side by side, Andy’s pinky hooked in yours as if he doesn’t trust the night not to take you. The air’s gone cool, the breeze off the lake hinting at woodsmoke and dying leaves. You’re so full of food and conversation that you could float, but you also sense the edge of some deeper story curling beneath everything Andy’s said tonight.

Upstairs, the master suite is all golden lamp light and the faint scent of warm linens and cypress from the trees outside. You kick off your sandals near the door and watch Andy cross to the low settee at the foot of the bed. He sits, elbows on knees, head bowed in that posture you’re learning means he’s prepping to tell you something he hasn’t told anyone in years.

You open the window wide, let silence in with the night air, and begin your bedtime routine. You’ve learned that it soothes Andy to watch you. You move through it slow, deliberate—untangling your hair, massaging lotion into your legs, washing your face, brushing your teeth. When you glance in the mirror, you see he’s still hunched, lost in the linen folds of his shirt, and you feel a pang that is half affection, half something harder.

Whatever the complex mix of what’s brought you to this point, he is your husband, and there’s a solid, warm weight about that fact that exists in the cavity of your chest now, unquestionably.

You finish by the window, looking out at the moonrise over the lake, and say, “Tell me about your mom and Lloyd’s dad.” You don’t mean it as a challenge, only an invitation.

He stretches his legs, slides his palms down his thighs, then says, “He was widowed, and she was divorced, of course.” He glances up, eyes catching on yours, then flicking away. “The man who ws my father was put behind bars for murder when I was eight. Looking back I can see that the man put us through too much for her to ever want to tie herself to a man again. But when she met Lloyd’s dad—Henry—he found her compelling enough to put in the time, talking, showing up, respecting her boundaries for months before she finally agreed to go out with him. He was aggressive, but not creepy. Just… very determined, reliable.” Andy huffs a laugh. “They were ridiculously happy together. Lloyd and I hated each other at first, but we saw our parents were too happy to ruin it for them. I thought he was a sociopath; he thought I was a pretentious little shit. We were both right.”

You laugh before you can stop yourself, the sound bouncing off the bedroom’s high ceiling. “You still hate each other?”

Andy’s mouth twitches. “We still keep each other sharp.” There’s a thread of pride in it, or something very close. “He’s the only person alive who can predict my moves.” He’s quiet for a moment, then stands and begins to undress for bed as well. “He tests everyone, all the time. You saw that. But if you pass, he’s loyal.” He glances up at you. “Loyalty means something different to him than most people.”

“So you trust him?”

“Essentially,” Andy says flatly. “He’ll always do what he says he will do. That’s almost the same.”

You study Andy’s face as he peels away his shirt—watch the uncanny way his body sets itself at ease, all muscle and self-discipline. He rakes a hand through his hair, the thick, floofy strands that your fingers easily melt into in your intimacies.

“Lloyd’s dad was killed in a hit-and-run accident. My mom made it clear she still considered him a son, but then she only made it two more years—we discovered she had advanced and aggressive breast cancer. We couldn’t save her. He was there for her for every moment at the end. You could say we were trauma bonded.”

Though it’s a stripped-down recounting, you intuit just how much more is unsaid. It’s not happenstance that’s kept these forced-brothers bonded, but a gravitational choice not to sever the association. What they have makes sense given the context of what you know of each man.

And then there’s his mother. Though he’s spoken only rarely of her, the way he speaks of her, you know he loved her with a ferocity that was rare and consuming. You saw it in the reverence with which he gifted you her brush set, in the way he measures his words about her now, in the fondness you’ve seen in his eyes the handful of other times he’s told you something about her.

Now, in the huge, moonlit room, Andy undoes his belt and lets the sound of the leather sliding free punctuate the silence. He steps out of his trousers, as at home in nakedness as in a suit. There is no shame in him, no self-consciousness—only the expectation that you will watch and be affected.

You could, if you wished, make a study of him for hours. You have, some nights: lying sated beside him, or else propped on an elbow, watching the way breath shifts the shadows across his ribs, or how his chest rises and falls when he is, on the rare occasion, truly asleep while you’re still awake.

Andy pulls back the covers and slides in. You move instinctually to join him, crossing the room, barefoot, skin prickled from the open window and the cold stone underfoot. You watch his eyes track your movement, the intensity in his gaze a physical thing, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.

You climb onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath your weight. He reaches for you, but he has no need to draw you in tonight. You want him.

You straddle him, sliding over his hips with the smooth confidence of repetition. Andy’s cock is half hard, and the moment your thigh brushes it you feel him tense—a preemptive shudder that assures you how deeply he wants you, never mind that he had you three times earlier in the day. His hands close around your waist, greedy, guiding you down until the heat of him notches against you. You sink down slow, unhurried, taking him inch by inch.

He hisses through his teeth, eyes slitted, watching your face for every flicker of sensation. When you bottom out, you pause, savoring the fullness. His hands grip tighter, thumbs digging into the soft flesh at your waist, insistently rocking you forward. You let him set the rhythm at first—he always wants to be in control—but you slide your hands against his chest and demand the kisses you want in tandem with the slow fucking.

Your lips and tongues are devoted to devastating each other. You fuck him the way you’ve learned he likes best, slow, steady, a kind of deliberate mutual detonation, nothing performative, just the honest, hungry slide of your bodies.

It hasn’t escaped you that the reason he likes this the best is likely because he knows the level to which it completely undoes you.

You rock into him, savoring the friction, feeling every inch. Andy’s lips roam your jaw, your throat, his hands possessive at your hips, thumbs stroking small, private circles into your skin. You move together in a rhythm that’s almost lazy, but the heat underneath is anything but.

Andy’s cock pulses inside you, warm and thick. He slips one hand up to your breast, kneading it gently, running his thumb over your nipple until it’s stiff and aching. You arch into him, letting your head tip back, throat bared, and you hear the catch in his breath—the way he loses a thread of composure whenever you let him see you undone.

You ride him, your nails leaving crescents in his chest, the thick, slow grind so deep you could weep from the goodness of it. When your orgasm comes, it’s not a thunderclap but a long, exquisite ache that blooms out slow and stays. Andy holds you tight through it, riding your shudders, his hips rolling up to meet yours in perfect counterpoint until he comes, not with violence, but with a decisive, shivering surrender. He pulls you down with him, chest to chest, his arms locked around your back, the world narrowing to the feel of his pulse under your fingertips, the aftershocks echoing through both of you.

After, you lie together without talking, your cheek pressed to his heart, his hand running lazy paths over your shoulder, the length of your arm, the line of your spine. You are so tired you think you might sleep, but there is a question lingering, and you decide to put it out there, wondering if he may deign you with an answer.

“What did you mean when you told Lloyd the length of our honeymoon was ‘undetermined?’”

Andy doesn’t answer immediately, but he doesn’t tense or look away, just keeps stroking your shoulder, his fingers tracing patterns that feel like a signature.

“I meant it exactly as I said,” he murmurs, settling a little deeper into the pillow. “We have no return date. I haven’t set one. There’s no obligation for us to go back until we want to.”

You frown at him skeptically. “You don’t have obligations and business you have to get back to?”

Andy’s smile is lazy, almost smug. “Perk of being the one that runs the show,” he says. “I decide when I’m needed. I decide when I’m not.” He nudges your ankle with his foot under the covers, a quiet intimacy that feels more too normal to belong to the two of you. “If anyone has a problem, they’ll take it up with me when I feel like answering.”

You settle your cheek into the warm spot above his heart. “I didn’t realize crime lords had PTO.”

“Not PTO,” Andy says, his voice rumbling against your ear. “Sabbatical. Indefinite. I worked for years to keep the world in order enough that I could disappear for a while, if I wanted. Most days I didn’t want to. Now, I do.” He doesn’t have to say with you; it’s so palpable in every gesture, every way he rearranges the days around the shape of your body.

You’re quiet, surprised by how much you don’t want to leave this place either, not yet. Not ever, if you’re honest. The luxury is lovely, but it’s the feeling of waking up every day with nothing to do but want and be wanted that you’re afraid to lose.

He catches your silence, fingers tightening a fraction at your arm. “I like us here,” he murmurs reverently into your ear.

He says it so matter-of-factly, with no expectation or agenda, that you go absolutely still, unprepared for how real it lands.

But then you melt, and admit, “I do, too.”

Anyone joining me with a little swooning?

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CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR BROTHER-IN-LAW! MWAHAHAHA!

NEXT PART: Cracks in Paradise [6.8k]

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He props himself on his elbow, watching the sun spill over your skin, striking gold from the fine hairs on your cheek and the unruly sweep of hair across your pillow. The covers have slipped, pooling at your waist, leaving the topography of your neck, your shoulder, and the softness of your curves lit in fresh daylight.

He memorizes the moment, the way your mouth is slightly ajar and your lashes flutter at the threshold of dream. Last night’s conflict has cooled on the air, replaced by the slow, syrupy warmth you always bring to a shared bed, though you don’t know it. God, he’s addicted to you, and he thought it was bad in the beginning.

Andy studies you for three or four shallow breaths, then slides gently out of the bed. You don’t stir, and that’s for the better. He knows he kept you up—kept you up waiting, and then kept you up trying to make up for the waiting.

Part of him is still genuinely surprised over how emotional you had been. That you’d attempted to wait up at all. He knows he’s on a long road to win you over completely, but last night was an unexpected indication that he’s further along than he thought.

He pads to the bathroom to piss and brush his teeth, and from there he stands a good three minutes, arms braced on the lip of the marble sink, absorbing the fact that he’s getting married today. He never thought he’d marry again.

Until you.

He thinks of you waking, drowsy and annoyed, scanning for him with that sense you have for knowing whether you’re alone or not. You hate being the first one up, but you hate empty beds more. He will be back before you miss him.

He’s had his share of women. Many, if you cared to count. But this is different—has been different since the first time he saw you. You hit him like a freight train, and you hadn’t even known it.

He’s changed, that’s the unexpected part. All the years building up callus, thickening moral cartilage, solitary walls, drilling in the discipline to never, ever let anything leak out. The years with Laurie had their own currency; that was a different flavor of ambition and mutual respect, a cold calculus he’s always valued even after the marriage ended and evolved into only the business arrangement. She never got in, not really. She never even wanted to. But this—this thing in the next room, wrapped now in sheets and vulnerability—this is something else. This is a full breach of his defense. And he doesn’t know what to do about it.

He stands in the doorway and gazes on you once more.

Then he leaves the bedroom on bare feet, stepping out into the hush of the hall, and finds the house already humming with the early, invisible work of staff. He smells coffee, hears the distant whir of a vacuum, and the low rumble of men’s voices as his security team keeps circulating, moving, monitoring. Everything about this morning is ceremonial, abuzz with anticipation. He’s more used to the casual constancy of threat in the air—a job to be done, a move to be countered. This, the wedding, the luxury of it, makes him almost more uneasy, but things have been different since the first morning you woke in his bed.

Brendan, his head of security, is at the oak table in the security den, laptop and phone and a half-empty mug, eyes flicking up as Andy enters. “Boss,” he says. The casual air is for show, underneath, Brendan is all readiness, efficiency, vigilance.

“Status?” Andy asks, not bothering to sit.

“Mark’s swapping the car rotation,” he says. “Everything is clear so far: perimeter checks, vendor arrivals, a revised guest list. It’s early, but we’ll be on it all day.”

“And any developments since the incident last night? Lupo or Levinson?”

Brendan shakes his head. “Quiet. Lupo’s side is posturing—socials and our sources indicate a few goons gathering but no sign of actual muscle movement. Jersey’s got no appetite for a Boston brawl and Lupo reminded his men of that after the sit down with you and Ari.” He taps the laptop. “Full logs if you want the details.”

Andy waves it off. If something mattered, Brendan would have led with it. He prefers the trust, almost as much as he likes testing it.

“We’ll keep our own hand on the situation, but Levinson’s outfit assured us their boss wants to make sure you’ve got a clean day as his particular wedding gift to you.”

Half of Andy’s mouth quirks up. He nods, a brief flick of the chin, then drags a finger along the grain of the table before pushing off. “Keep it that way.” He leaves Brendan to his screens and walks the circuit of the first floor—habit, comfort, a ritual like prayer but more honest. He checks the kitchen, the garden doors, the garage, noting each detail the way he’s trained himself: who’s working, who’s slacking (no one), where the weaknesses are.

It’s dangerous, getting married. Too many moving parts. Too many incentives to fuck with the day. But he’s made a fortress of the day: layers of staff, loyalty, and contingency plans stacked one on top the next. Even if someone wanted to take a shot, they’d hit a wall of a wall of professional, cold-eyed men before they even crossed the county line.

He will make this happen and do it right, no matter the cost.

The wedding is a statement while also being a gesture.

A statement to everyone around him.

A gesture to the life he intends to build marrying you.

He takes the stairs two at a time, the climb burning off some of the adrenaline that knots at the base of his skull. The master suite is still, the hush broken only by the sound of your breath—the slow, measured in-and-out, so regular he could set his watch by it. You’ve shifted again in sleep, tangled limbs and hair, one knee exposed, the sheet askew at your thigh.

He slips back into bed just as you roll over, blinking awake like you’re coming to from anesthesia. You see him and scowl, though it lacks conviction. Andy reads it as a greeting and presses close to plant a kiss on your forehead.

You can’t seem to help but let a little sigh escape, but then burrow down into the pillow. “What time is it?” you ask, your voice a croak.

“Early. Go back to sleep,” Andy insists.

You mutter, “No, I won’t,” but you settle more into the mattress, your cheek pressed to the pillow, tension gone from your brow. He tucks the covers back over your shoulder, as if making up for all the things he can’t tell you if he can at least keep you warm for five minutes more. He should let you sleep—so much of today will be performance, for both of you—but instead he can’t help but trace his fingers along your jaw, your neck.

He runs his thumb along the curve of your cheekbone, marveling at the warmth that radiates from you, and the hold over him you have that he negotiates inch by inch.

He wants to fuck you again. When doesn’t he? He almost needs it after last night—not because of the business he had to deal with, but because he’s still unsettled with the new element that your existence has created in his universe. You’re a complication. Collateral he won’t let be damaged.

But he doesn’t.

The memory of last night is sharp, and the skirmish between Lupo and Levinson’s men isn’t what has him uncertain, it’s what happened after. He saw the way you collapsed, not just into his arms but into yourself. He saw the fine tremor in your hands, the way your voice had frayed when you’d asked him not to leave you like that again. It was the opposite of a threat and yet so much more potent. He’s been responsible for countless men, held thousands of secrets, and yet the look on your face made him more nervous than walking into the last sit-down with three guns pointed at his chest because last night was a reminder that he can’t make you any of the promises you crave, maybe not even the promises you deserve.

But he won’t relinquish you.

And he can’t leave you unprotected.

He reaches for your hand—fingers barely brushing yours on the sheet. You don’t pull away. He interlaces his fingers with yours and considers, for a fleeting second, what it would mean to never let go of this. When you squeeze once, almost irritably, he feels the pressure all the way up his arm. Married, he thinks. This is what married is supposed to be.

Maybe you won’t regret marrying him forever. He lies there longer than he should, the heat of your body drawing him into a stillness he doesn’t indulge for anyone else. The air is thick with the intimate vulnerability of sleep. Through the glass, the sun carves its way around the heavy velvet curtains, striping your bare shoulder and the mess of hair at your temple. Andy should regret disturbing the scene, but he’s never been any good at leaving beauty unbroken. He smooths your hair. You twitch and mumble, burrow deeper, exposing the tender shell of your ear.

“I’ll give you a perfect day, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll keep you.” He whispers the vow into your hair, too faint for you to hear.

He waits. Two more minutes. The world can roll on without him for two more minutes. Then he’ll leave, letting you continue to sleep until the bridal party descends and sweeps you up for a celebratory brunch and a day of getting ready for you to walk down the aisle where he’ll be waiting for you and make you his.

🫠🫠🫠

So? Feels?

NEXT PART: Tangled in the Warmth of Him

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There are eighty-six people in attendance at the rooftop restaurant, and you are only sure you know the names of maybe a third. The rest are here because of Andy—to witness or test alliances, play in the ongoing power games, weigh old debts or new risks. It’s the rehearsal dinner for one of Boston Mafia’s elite, so the guest list was meticulously refined for Andy’s part. Yours as well, but not with the same intent or stakes to be considered.

Andy doesn’t own Contessa—the restaurant atop The Newbury Hotel—but he does own the hotel, so it was seamless for your team to arrange this part of the wedding nuptials there. While you and Andy aren’t having a full society affair wedding with all the bells and whistles and three or four days of events and traditions, you do have few significant event pieces woven into the wedding weekend, this being one of them. No one had asked you what to include, but you were part of the overall conversations, and if there had been anything you truly wanted to refuse, you think you might have been able to say so. But your team knows you well enough to create elements you appreciate.

And, annoyingly, so does Andy.

The room is a riot of velvet and silk and black wool, the exact social armor you expect at a pre-wedding gathering of this sort. And yet you can tell this doesn’t scream mafia to the people who don’t know the predators they’re intermingling with. It’s all too reminiscent of how you dismissed the barely-hushed rumors of Andy Barber’s potential connections before he revealed he was one of the kings of organized crime in the city. And for the sake of your parents, your friends, your family, you’re relieved and hope they remain ignorant.

Tonight will be a monumental tell for the future and whether or not you can pass, or rather, who you have to be while passing. You scan the clusters of guests and realize you should have always been able to spot true mafia at ten paces, even when they’re disguised as board members and development officers and venture capitalists. There’s a particular gravity, neither ostentatious nor shy. Men in Brioni suits who know how to vanish into the background, women with hair so immaculate it could have been sculpted from silk.

Andy’s hand has been heavy at the small of your back most of the evening, and it’s somehow almost comforting, an anchor. Occasionally you feel his thumb graze the bare inch of spine between velvet and skin, a touch so subtle it’s only for you.

You look across the room and spot your parents lingering near a tray of passed champagne, your mother straightening the lapels of your father’s jacket with the hopeless affection of people who have been married long enough to know that preening is just another form of devotion. Your mother’s dress is a shade of navy so dark it reads black, and your father looks as if he was born inside a suit, so naturally does this one fit him.

Suddenly Thea is in front of you, plucking a glass of champagne off a passing tray and handing it over, flanked by your other two other bridesmaids. Thea gives you a once-over, and says, “You look like a goddess, a terrifyingly pretty one.” You mutter a thank you, and Thea rolls her eyes. “Please pretend you believe it, just a little bit. You’re a gorgeous bride-to-be whether you want to be or not.”

She’s the only one who knows about your hesitations, and even then you’ve only indulged a fraction.

She winks at Andy, linking her arm through yours. “I’m stealing your fiancé.”

He smirks. “At least you're conceding she’s mine.”

“You wish,” Thea replies, and with a toss of her hair of her shoulder, she leads you away.

The entire evening is a kind of lucid dream. Greetings, handshakes, hugs, careful double-cheek kisses dispensed by those in attendance as you circulate the room. In reality there was no rehearsal for tomorrow’s ceremony, tonight it is merely a small gathering staged for … well, from what you gather, for the sake of it. For those closest to you, it’s to keep up the illusion that this is a wedding you want. For Andy’s world, it seems to be a necessary ritual to confirm the ranks of his order—his trusted soldiers and a handful of his choice allies.

You don’t register that your uncle Rob isn’t there until suddenly he is, and by then, the room has already begun the low-pressure phase transition from cocktails to dinner. The movement is organic—someone dims the lights, the waiters begin the subtle herding, and you are being gently, almost imperceptibly, shepherded toward the long, low banquet table at the far end of the room.

You are halfway to your seat, with Thea close behind and Andy once again at your side, when the double glass doors at the restaurant’s entrance hiss open and Rob strides in, in a full three-piece suit and with the off-kilter swagger of someone who seems to have truly rushed directly from the airport. He gives you a nod and a warm smile, though even at this distance you note it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

You wave him over, ignoring the subtle tightening of Andy’s hand on your hip. Rob moves quickly across the room to you, and immediately drops a palm on your shoulder, squeezing—warmth, family, genuine affection. “Am I horrifically late or just fashionably disruptive?” he asks, and before you answer, he’s already deflecting. “You look tired but good. He treating you right?”

Your uncle’s gaze bores into yours for a half-second, searching for something reassuring. You nod and give him a smile. He softens, but only infinitesimally.

“Uncle Rob, this is—”

“Andy Barber,” he supplies, and his gaze flicks to your fiancé, settling there a half-beat too long, cataloging him. You don’t know what’s transpired between them, but you sense something clearly has as there’s a palpable undercurrent, like two strong magnets meeting, neither yielding.

Uncle Rob gives Andy a stiff nod, but Andy merely meets the moment with an open hand. You sense the silent exchange—neutral ground, white flag for tonight, or maybe just a kind of mutual agreement not to detonate inside a room full of witnesses.

It feels strange, but it’s only another line on the list of things that aren’t normal for this entire affair. The exchange goes unnoticed by nearly everyone else since all in attendance are finding their seats, and Uncle Rob falls in among them and takes his assigned seat by your parents.

The food is dazzling, course after course in small, perfect compositions. You try to taste things, to remember flavors, but you are more conscious of the shifting dynamics around you. You are aware of Andy’s hand ever present—on your knee, tracing patterns on your arm, once just lightly gripping your wrist as if keeping you tethered to the table, to himself. You wonder if it’s meant to keep you under control, but the gesture genuinely feels more like reassurance than possession tonight.

Flanked by Andy on your left and Thea on your right, both seem engaged in a subtle contest to out-maneuver each other in their attempts to manage you. Sometimes it’s by steering the conversation, sometimes by way of silently passing you the better part of a shared dish, with Thea by gambling how much she can make you laugh given the current company and whether the moment is suitable for choking on your wine. You’re not sure if you resent this orchestration or if it’s a balm. Maybe both.

At intervals, you glance over at Uncle Rob. The smile he flashes the room is the same as ever, but his eyes seem to rove the room, always taking stock, never fully at rest. He watches Andy most of all, the way a hunter watches a rival predator—admiring and calculating, never blinking outright. At one point, your eyes meet and Rob lifts his glass in a toast, not quite a salute, but you feel the force of the message: he’s here, for you, and he’s not leaving until he’s sure you’re safe. He’s always been more protective of you than anyone else in the family, but this seems more intense, even for him.

Halfway through the meal, Andy excuses himself to confer with two men in dark suits who materialize at the edge of the room, and you find yourself, for the first time all evening, feeling alone at the lack of him. Thea leans in. “You doing okay?” she whispers, but with a smile on her face so it reads as idle gossip.

“It feels like someone else’s wedding,” you mutter back. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

She gives you a look that is both knowing and impossibly gentle. “If you want to run, just say the word. I have five hundred dollars in cash and a getaway Prius, and that’s enough to get us at least to New Hampshire before anyone notices.”

You snort-laugh, a little louder than you meant to, and feel lightheaded for an instant. There is some relief in naming it, even as a joke, even though you don’t question she’s serious about the Prius and the cash.

There is a moment, a half-second, a single synaptic twitch, in which you consider the offer or vanishing into an Uber for Logan Airport. But the urge passes. You already jetted away once and came back.

And that coming back was your choice.

It doesn’t make sense to escape again now.

The rest of dinner passes in a spiral of rich food and laughter that from most people seems to be unforced. Andy returns, all courteous apologies, and places his warm palm on your back again as if plugging back into a vital organ. He leans in and presses a kiss to your temple, his voice pitched only for you. “I’ll need to disappear for a bit after dessert. Business.” He says it lightly, but the tension is a wire behind each syllable. You nod, and at the same moment he gives your leg a squeeze under the table, as if to say: Don’t worry, I’ll be back. For you. Always that emphasis.

When the meal ends, the room doesn’t thin so much as it condenses. People abandon their seats in favor of looser, more volatile clusterings near the bar or moving out onto the balcony. You sense the shape of the next hours—a kind of shadow afterparty, drinks and ritual toasts and the swerve toward dysfunction that all close social gatherings eventually take. Andy fields a last volley of congratulations, then gives you a look that says thirty seconds, and moves toward a private door near the kitchen, shadowed by his men. You watch him go, feeling again the negative space at your side.

It’s at this point that your uncle finds you again.

“You sure about this?” he murmurs, like you’re trading nuclear secrets instead of making polite familial small talk at your rehearsal dinner. “Not too late to call it off.”

You set your jaw, then, because the answer is yes. Or as close to yes as you’ll ever have. If there’s a question curled up in the base of your spine, it’s quieter now—not gone, but quelled by Rob’s questioning.

You find yourself saying, “I’ve made my decision.”

Uncle Rob’s expression is unreadable, then softens just enough to let a sliver of affection through. “Your folks are damn proud. Just so you know. You do know that, right?”

You give half a shrug and a nod.

“And you know that you can always come to me, for anything.”

“Even ashes and body disposal?” you ask, letting a smirk break through the anxiety. He huffs a laugh, but you can see he’s not disarmed by it, not really.

“Especially that,” he says. But then, gentler, yet more serious, he says, “You ever want out, you just say so. Don’t matter what anyone else wants, least of all him. You come to me. You hear?”

You nod, only then realizing, “You know who he is.”

He nods and knocks his glass lightly against yours. “I’m only a phone call away. Fuck the protocols.”

You don’t know exactly what his ties to Andy’s underworld are, or how long he and Andy may have known each other, but some unexplained parts of Uncle Rob’s past make a whole lot more sense if he’s involved with the mafia. You imagine the more you trace back, the more certain absences and behaviors could ultimately be explained.

You don’t allow yourself to ask the next rush questions assembling in your mind. Instead, you clink glasses with Rob again, and when Thea reappears at your side, he makes an excuse and fades back into the crowd. You watch him go, feeling heavier and lighter at once.

“You want air?” Thea asks, as if the answer could ever be no.

Out on the balcony, you stand at the stone parapet for a while, each of your with a glass in hand, the city shining beneath you. Over the railing, half the Back Bay looks like a jewelry case, all neat squares and gold filigree light.

Thea tips her chin out into the dark. “So what’s it like standing up here, knowing you’re about to be a married woman?”

You roll your eyes, but there’s a nervous tickle in your chest. “About the same as it is being an unmarried one, only with more witnesses.”

You expect her to laugh, but instead she fixes you with a sly, assessing stare. “He scares me a little, you know,” she says, so matter-of-fact it undercuts any drama. “Not for anything he’s said or done. More in the way those security guys all treat him like he’s royalty. Which, I guess, he basically is, right? Mafia royalty?”

You hesitate, glass at your lips. Did you ever say it to her? You don’t think you did, because you went to Stockholm on the heels of signing the pre-nup which included the NDA elements… You race back through every conversation, every running-on-fumes phone call, and there’s nothing you can recall that would have spelled it out. But your silence lingers half a second too long.

Thea’s face splits in a grin that’s bright and wolfish at the edges. “I KNEW it,” she crows, as if you’ve just confirmed a conspiracy theory about the moon landing. “Oh my god. I knew it. I KNEW IT! Don’t even try to deny it.”

You gawk. “What are—how did—”

You try to look innocent, but Thea is already cackling, delighted with herself, her elbows resting on the parapet like a triumphant detective. “Please,” she says, waving her hand at the party inside, “He’s waaaaaaaaay too rich, I’ve read way too many mafia romance novels, and you had a security detail when you visited me in Stockholm using his private jet. I was 99% sure, and your hesitation there hesitation gave me the last percent.”

You consider protesting, but technically you’ve broken nothing in the contract, and the fact that your best friend knows—that anyone knows—feels like an instant balm.

You clamp a hand on Thea’s wrist. “Promise me you won’t say a word. Seriously. Not to a soul. I mean it. Not a joke, not even a whisper or a meme reference.” There’s an urgency in your voice, and Thea, reading the shift instantly, sobers.

The brightness in her eyes dims by an iota, the seriousness of your tone cutting through the fizz of her delight. She nods, solemnly, and you know that as cavalier as she can sometimes be, she doesn’t question the gravity of your insistence. “I won’t,” she vows, putting her hand over yours.

In the shared silence, you feel her searching your face for something she doesn’t want to say. You let the air prickle between you, each steadying the other just by being present, until Thea finally asks, “Does he make you happy?”

You don’t answer, not at first. You stare into the bright helix of city lights and let the question slide down your spine and settle into your gut. You want to say yes, or even no, anything definitive, but instead you just tell her, “He makes me feel alive,” and hope she hears the ambiguity for what it is.

She nods, lips pressed together. “I’m still not sure why you’re doing this, but I will admit that even though I still have questions, one of those questions is not how much that man cares for you.”

Thea fixes you with a look so curious and gentle it makes you want to squirm out of your skin. “It doesn’t look like any love story I’d picture for you,” she says. “It’s not the type people write poems about or that you see on Pinterest boards. I don’t even know that it’s love, but it’s definitely fierce, and runs deep.”

“Thea,” your voice is a little choked.

“He looks at you like you’re the last thing on earth he thinks is worth burning for.” She shrugs and takes another sip of her champagne. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s true.”

You’re grateful, even if you can’t manage the words to say so outright. Thea is one of the few souls you trust without hesitation in this world. You study her face in the city-dark, finding closeness there that reminds you, with a pang, of who you were before all this.

“I’m glad you’re here,” you say. You mean it harder than it sounds.

Thea bumps shoulders with you. “I’d literally stand in front of a bullet for you.” She glances toward a distant rooftop bar, probably scouting for snipers. “Metaphorically, but also probably literally.”

You stay there together a little longer, the gentle thrum of summer and the humid glow from the party behind you, breathing easier for the reminder that not all loves are fairy tales, that some are knife-edges, and open secrets, and best friendships.

Shep slides out the glass door with the hush of someone practiced in not disturbing an armed perimeter. He doesn’t interrupt, just drifts into the range of your awareness and waits. When you finally realize on a conscious level that he’s there, turning your head and giving him a small, tight-lipped smile, he says, “Time to make our exit, if you’re ready.”

There’s a quiet emphasis on the word “our,” and you realize how long you must’ve been out here.

“Where’s Andy?” You look over his shoulder, expecting to see him somewhere in the glow and tangle of the party, looming, waiting for you expectantly, but he’s not there. You’re surprised at how keenly you feel his absence. Then you ask Shep, “He’s not coming back tonight, is he?”

Shep shakes his head, a single, precise movement. “He wanted me to see you home. Mark’s already downstairs.” He hesitates, then softens with a half-smile, reading some of your reluctance to leave. “You can have ten more minutes if you want them.”

You take the ten.

It’s enough time for Thea to finish her glass and for you to make the rounds of the party, saying goodnight to your circles of friends and family who were invited to be part of tonight.

Your mother is waiting for you near the coat check, her dark eyes shining, twin tears perilously close to the edge. She pulls you in for a fierce, almost painful hug, her perfume sealing around you like a memory from childhood. “You’re my treasure,” she says into your ear so hard you forget to breathe for a second. She pulls away, fixing your hair with a trembling hand. “Just tell me he’s as good as he looks. That’s all I ask.” Her voice breaks on the last word, and you bob your head, not trusting yourself to say anything more.

Outside, the night air is a slab of heat. Shep guides you to the waiting Range Rover with a balanced mix of deference and I’m still your bodyguard. Mark already has the curbside door open, and you buckle yourself in, feeling the exhaustion of the night releasing through your limbs. You lean your head back against the headrest and close your eyes. As complicated as your feelings are around Andy, his absence gnaws at you in a way you didn’t expect. Especially tonight.

When you walk into the mansion, the silence is as sharp as a slap. You expected it, or something like it, and yet standing in the cavernous hush of the marble entry, clutching your tiny evening bag, you’re overtaken by an urge to slam the door hard enough to wake the dead. You don’t, though. You click it shut, toe off your heels and hook them on your fingers, and walk barefoot through the dark to your rooms upstairs.

Andy’s absence is complete and total—no jacket left half-flung on the banister, no ghost of movement or glass of half-drunk bourbon left somewhere. You resist the urge to immediately check your phone, because you want to feel the ache fully, let it sharpen until it outcompetes the dull, unanswerable questions that have circled every day since you said yes, but especially tonight.

You go to the bathroom and take a long, methodical shower. You take your time as you finish getting ready for bed, drifting through the mechanical rituals of skincare and pajamas and teeth-brushing, but you take no comfort in the delicate, orchid-scented candle you light, or the feel of the silk on your skin.

You check your phone, eventually. There’s a text from him, timestamped an hour ago.

ANDY: I’ll be late, don’t wait up.

You want to scream. You want to hurl the phone at the wall or at least send an angry string of messages to force some reaction from him, but you don’t. You sit at the end of the bed with your phone in your palm, glaring at the glow as if it can blink first. Don’t wait up, as if this is remotely normal. You know he’s got business, but he’s never missed an evening with you, never let you go to sleep without him there, touching you, fucking you, just being with you. And now he’s gone the night before your wedding?

You thumb your phone off, toss it face-down onto the bed, and stand for a moment in the hush. You are lit by moonlight coming by moonlight coming in a narrow spill through the vast window, alone with the hum and pop of baseboard heat, a ghost in your own life. You want to be sated by this, to have the sudden expanse and absence feel like relief, but instead it gathers pressure inside your chest. Under the thin silk of your robe, your skin feels hypersensitive, almost electrical, and the wet ends of your hair drip cold water down your spine.

You don’t want to admit how badly you want him here—how quickly your anger at his text has curdled into a more woeful, sticky missing. It chafes to need him.

You try to zone out streaming something on TV, but nothing cuts through to capture enough of your attention in the absence. You’re so used to the energy of Andy’s presence—the kinetic hum of him near you, whether he’s angry or amused or simply radiating power from the next room—that the void he leaves behind is almost audible.

Eventually you are able to at least focus on reading, legs tucked up under you on the settee.

You must have fallen asleep, because the next sensation is not the passage of time but abrupt displacement.

You’re in mid-dream when you sense the shift, the weightless suck of gravity before the realization: someone is lifting you. You twist, half-awake, to find Andy’s arms locked under your knees and back, carrying you with the unthinking efficiency of someone who has probably hauled bodies at some point. You mutter something into his shirt, a syllable heavy with sleep and protest, and he just keeps moving, your head lolling against his chest, too groggy to fight him off at first.

Then you thrash, not gently. You elbow at his chest, catch his ribs with a knee, and hiss, “Put me down.” You mean it. You’re not just startled—you’re still feeling that lingering anger—and Andy, to his credit, sets you down with more care than you expected. You sway and nearly lose your balance, but he catches your wrist, keeping you upright.

“Easy,” he murmurs, voice absurdly gentle, and that somehow pricks worse for all its reasonableness.

You rip your hand away. “Don’t do that. Don’t just—pick me up.”

He studies you, searching your face with an unreadable patience. “You were sleeping,” he says.

You steady yourself and glare up at him, refusing to let your fatigue soften the edge of your voice. “You missed the whole rest of the night, Andy. Where were you?”

Although his expression remains the same, the tension around his eyes tightens. “You know I’m not going to tell you that.”

You scoff. “How do I know that?”

Maybe it’s the sleep, maybe it’s the hunger you’ve been stifling, but it lands with a new kind of sharpness, how Andy answers a question only by hollowing out the possibility you’ll ever ask again. But you refuse to fold into that silence tonight.

“I want you to tell me,” you say.

Andy closes the gap between you with a slow step, his gaze not leaving your face. “Tomorrow’s our wedding,” he says, low and thick in his throat, a softness that isn’t practice so much as exhaustion. His hand goes to your shoulder, thumb pressing the knot between bone and tendon, and you flinch at the intimacy of it, at how easily he can make you want to forgive him. You step back, and he lets you, his arms falling to his sides in a slow, theatrical surrender.

“Don’t do that,” you say again, voice thin this time. You hate the tremor more than you hated his absence.

He tilts his head, studying you in the low light. “You’re angry.”

He smiles, weary but pleased. “You’re angry because you missed me.” He says it not as an accusation, but a simple, delighted observation, like he’s just solved a riddle in your presence. “You care.”

You make a sound, a cross between a snort and a huff, and turn your head before he can get a better look at your face. “I’m angry because you’ve insisted on all of this—me, the wedding, pulling me into your life—and then you desert me the night before we’re supposed to get married? Leave me during the rehearsal dinner? And all I get is a ‘don’t wait up’ text?”

You hate that your voice rises, hate the heat behind your eyes. Andy comes closer, and you want to slap him and also want him to hold you. You flex your jaw, force your gaze to stay away.

He listens. He lets you say it all, and when it’s out of your mouth, tumbling and ugly, he says, “I know. But there are things I can’t and won’t tell you. I can’t ever expose you to certain things. I won’t allow them near you.” His voice is all iron and velvet. “I’m protecting you, even if it doesn’t look or feel like it.”

He lets the pause hang, then takes a slight step closer—close enough that you nearly shiver at the radius of his heat.

There are things I won’t shield you from, either. You told me to never lie, so I won’t pretend I’m made another way. But I will always come back.” He says it softly, neither a threat nor a comfort.

After a lengthy moment of silence, you tell him, “I don’t want another night like this. I don’t want to ever be stranded in the dark.”

He considers it. Not with a smirk or a challenge, but real intent, a resolution hardening. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I’m not good enough,” he says, and it is the flattest, most relentless admission. “But I am what you’re marrying.”

You should laugh. You almost do, at the incredulity, the audacity, the unfairness of his answer, of this entire situation, but then he reaches out, just a single knuckle under your chin, and you’re suddenly taking in a shaky breath.

You hold his eyes for a full count, your body picking up the stutter of your pulse, anger and want running convergent through your system. You want to turn away, to break the connection, but you can’t.

“Then show me. Make it better,” you say, and your voice is a command, not a plea.

You let him guide your face up. His thumb travels a gentle path down your jaw. He leans in, pressing his words, and his mouth, against your skin. “You want more than this? I will never give you less.” The last of it is a murmur, not a vow, but it lives in the hollow between you, nudging the edge of promise.

He kisses you behind the ear, slow and intentional, and your whole body contracts around the point of contact. You hate how even this controlled display of contrition draws you in. Were you less tired, were it not the night before your wedding, you may have pushed him away. But he knows exactly how to pull on the string that unravels you, and you can’t leave it at that, so you cup his face and press your mouth against his, not sweet or apologetic but with a frustrated need to bite, to mark. He lets you, opens willingly, tongue flicking yours, and the pressure he uses to guide you toward the bed is insistent. You pull him with you, backwards, the two of you bumping knees, bumping hips, his hands already finding the tie at your robe and making short work of it.

He pulls it from your shoulders, lets it float to the carpet with exaggerated gentleness that’s belied by the urgency of his mouth and hands. You take brief satisfaction in yanking at his shirt buttons, two of them tumbling somewhere onto the bedding, but Andy just shrugs out of the rest and lets it fall to the floor.

He is, as you’ve come to expect, taller and heavier than you in the moments that matter. He pins you beneath him, stretching your arms above your head, taking his time as if you both aren’t aching with a violent need. He kisses you with a patience that does not match the tension in his body, hands working down your ribs, touching and teasing the places he’s learned draw your responses.

You let him press you down, let him grind against you, clothed below the waist but with a bare chest and a punishing grip as he presses one of your thighs up and open for him. Your silk nightgown is tangled above your hips, ruined for decency, and the sheets under you bunch as you wrap your leg around him.

You are not even sure when you stop resisting—the anger, the loneliness—maybe when he murmurs, “I’m here,” into the shell of your ear, or maybe it’s before that, at the familiar drag of his teeth across your shoulder. You want to snarl at him, but you can only gasp and tear one of your hands away so you can grab for his waistband, the zipper, too impatient for finesse.

The button resists for half a second before you hear the pop. Andy’s hips cant, the gesture half involuntary. He is, unlike you, a master at not showing his hunger—unless he wants you to see it, and tonight he must, because the restraint rubs your skin raw in a way that’s almost a dare. You dig your heel into the mattress, lift your pelvis to grind into the urgency that’s thickening between your bodies. He lets you, but barely; his hand catches your thigh, squeezes, and you wonder if there will be marks tomorrow. You hope so.

He pulls back, and you make a desperate, wordless noise—appalled at the empty space, the abrupt loss of him. Andy grins, a glint of teeth in the dark, and then he’s dropping to his knees at the edge of the bed, eyes black and bottomless. “Patience,” he says, voice low and hoarse. “I want you naked for me. Completely.”

You’re tempted to resist him, to force him to earn the reveal, but you want the heat and the gaze and—more than anything—the feeling of him unraveling for you. So you tug the nightgown up and off, shimmying as best you can.

Andy reaches out to assist, dragging your panties off in a single, practiced movement, leaving you splayed open and vulnerable in the spill of moonlight, the air cold and sharp against your skin.

He stands, shucking his pants and boxers with ease. His cock is already hard, and he takes himself in hand, stroking slow, almost lazy, but you can see the tension in his jaw, the way his forearm tightens, every line of his body at the edge of restraint. He stands there for a moment, head tipped, just watching you with that focus, just this side of feral. It should alarm you. It should, maybe, make you recoil, the ferocity in him, so unlike the men you’ve known before. It’s a look that should have scared you from the beginning—but no one has wanted you the way he wants you, and you’ve grown addicted to how Andy’s hunger works.

You want to wipe that look of composure from his face, and you know exactly how to do it. You arch your back, knees falling apart, and bring your fingers to your cunt—slow, deliberate. Andy’s mouth parts the barest inch, but he doesn’t move to stop you. You circle your clit with two fingers, the slide easy and slick, and moan just loud enough that you know he’ll hear it for days. He watches, lips parted, and the tension in his neck sings.

“Is this what you want?” you ask.

You don’t wait for an answer. You drag a slick, purposeful circle with your fingertip, then roll your hips up again, forcing his attention onto the precise spot you want it. Your other hand moves to your breast, pinching a nipple until the ache flashes through your belly. You moan again, longer, keeping your eyes pinned to his as though you can draw out his release through sheer insistence.

Andy comes closer, his hand sliding up your calf, kneading the inside of your knee with enough pressure to make you gasp and lose the rhythm of your own touch. He takes your wrist in his, slows your movements, and brings your fingers to his mouth. He licks them, savoring your taste, then sucks the tips into the heat of him, eyes trained on yours the whole time. “You want to make me lose control?” he murmurs. “You’re close, sweetheart.”

You shudder, half from his voice and half from the pleasure needling up your legs. “Then what are you waiting for?”

“Flip over,” he says, and you obey. Not because you care to perform for him, but because this is the only language you speak fluently with each other.

You turn, face pillowed in moonlight, the curve of your ass arched and on display. The sheets are cool under your cheek. Andy’s hands find your hips, not rough but absolute, his palms broad and braced. He kneads you for a long moment, a brief, silent exhibition of ownership, before running his thumb down the seam of you, spreading you open with the same clinical certainty he uses to carve out secrets.

He fucks you in one smooth, relentless motion, every inch filling you until your body feels engineered for the shape of him. You groan from the fullness, and he groans being sheathed inside your cunt. He leans forward, curling over you, and presses a kiss into your neck.

He holds you there, pressed hard against the mattress, your knees bracing apart as his cock drives into you with a steadiness that’s almost brutal but never crosses over into pain. You have only ever known men in this position to get greedy, to lose their pacing almost immediately, but Andy’s rhythm is a ruthless metronome, each thrust a little deeper, a little harder, calibrated to keep you right at the edge.

His weight is a gravity you loathe and crave; you let him press you into the bed and hold you there. You’re still angry, still trembling, but everything is blurred with your arousal, your hunger, the lines so tangled you can barely see the difference.

You try to deny him your pleasure out of spite, but it’s a losing proposition—Andy finds the angle he wants, rocks into you so that you choke on a half-sob, and holds there until you scratch at the sheets, half-crazed. The sound you make is ugly and desperate, and the only thing worse is how much you want him to hear it, to be stoked by it, to see what he does to you. He seems to sense this, his voice a gravel scrape against your shoulder blade. “Take it, sweetheart. Let me hear how much you want it.”

His thumb finds your clit, presses in tight, and for a few strokes you somehow resist, but then your hips buck and your vision splotches out, and you do let him hear how much you want him. It’s exquisite. He continues to fuck into you, working your clit, every nerve burning, every muscle tightening in a white, brutal wave. He fucks you through it, groaning, not letting up until a second, sharper quake rips through your body. Then and only then does Andy let himself go—slamming into you, his hand a vise around your hip as he spends himself, jaw pressed to your spine. The shudder of him fully inside you is shocking, almost convulsive, and he bucks in you until the last aftershocks fade and the only sound in the room is two desperate people fighting for air.

He doesn’t pull out right away. He just stays there, draped over your body, letting you catch your breath, his weight an absolute. When he does finally move, he’s slow and careful, laying beside you and rolling you into his arms, not a word spoken. You’re still too fogged by want and exhaustion to move, content to let him hold you close, the press of his cheek against your hair. Neither of you speak for a very long time.

But there are thoughts you still need him to hear.

You find your voice in the hush, not loud or demanding but plain, with the rough edge of sleep and aftershock. “I don’t want more nights like this,” you say, and you can feel the way Andy’s chest stills under your hand. “I didn’t want to be coerced into your bed, I didn’t want to be forced into an engagement, I didn’t want to get married like this. You exploited the attraction, you’ve made me weak for you, but please,” your voice breaks, “please don’t make me the wife who has to wait up alone for you.”

Andy doesn’t speak, not at first, and the silence unsettles you, but you make yourself hold it—make yourself show that it matters. You refuse to shrink or swallow the need. If he’s going to be the kind of man who pulls you into his orbit, he’s damn well going to know he can’t just leave you in the dark. Not without a fight. He’s made slow but small shifts in some areas you’ve pressed with him. Maybe you can have resonance here, too.

He smooths a hand from your shoulder, down your back, each pass gentler than the last. He’s thinking, you know. Not just brushing off what you said, but actually holding it up to the light, inspecting the seams. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and soft, but firm.

“I meant it when I said I’d do my best,” he says. “I don’t want you to be her—the wife who waits at the window. But I also can’t give up what I am.” His hand lingers at your waist, a heavy presence.

You sigh, too thoroughly boneless to summon the right words, so you simply roll over, and it’s too natural how your body melds against him as he curls his arm around you and pulls your back flush against his chest. All you can do now is hope your sentiments will start to seep into him through osmosis.

You let the silence ride a little longer, curled together as if this is some and listen to the slowing cadence of his breath, to the metallic taste of words you didn’t say, and you wonder if this is what love might be—the willingness to be furious and still stay.

And you wonder if this is love—not because it’s gentle or clean or what you imagined, but because it has weight, because it has teeth, because it sits in your chest like a stone you keep reaching for. Because you are angry and ruined and held, and somehow all three of those things are the same thing. Because no one has seen you the way he does. Because no one has made you feel so wanted, even if it’s infused with possession. But even through the moments you know there are things he isn’t telling you, you know he’s never lied to you. Even when he says things you don’t want to hear, he speaks to you openly. Even when his actions are incendiary and disagreeable, they’re still somehow for you now.

He says your name. It’s a quiet thing, a soft push through the dark, but it lands with a rattle in your chest.

“I want to tell you something,” Andy says. “Not because you asked, but because if you’re going to be my wife, you will need to know.”

You swallow, knowing instinctively that to interrupt is to lose the tiny, trembling momentum inside him. He never initiates these confessions. He’s all action, never exposition. You hold your body still, afraid any breath will snap the thread.

“They brought me in tonight to consult on a sit-down. Not a war, but something close. One of the families in Jersey—Lupo’s people—made a move on Levinson’s properties—of one of our allies—along the North River. Not a huge play, but enough to draw blood. No one got shot. But next time, someone will.” Andy’s hand flexes at your hip, tightening like a vise. “If that happens, everything changes. This life, the way we can have it, ends. The only thing that keeps us—keeps you—safe, is the order.” He breathes out, a single tight exhale. “If the peace goes, I can’t guarantee anything. Not for you, not for me. And that’s not something I’m willing to risk.”

You lie there, staring at the ceiling, sheets cooling under your legs, and you realize what he’s giving you is not reassurance, but the truth of his world, knife-sharp and blood-warm. It should terrify you. It does, to a degree, but you’ve had a security detail, you know there are six loaded guns hidden here in the master suite. There is nothing normal about any of this, but the fact of Andy’s world is that it remains obsessively ordered only so long as no one has reason to start a war.

“When I have to go, I have to go, and I’ll never apologize for that,” he adds when you don’t say anything more.

Thea joked about reading mafia romance novels, but this is not a genre, this is your life now. When you let the reality land, it isn’t just gravity, but something like inheritance: no matter what you wanted or didn’t, you’re marrying into all of this.

And yet, as you lie there, taken apart and held tightly yet again, you find a calm in yourself you didn’t realize you could access. Maybe it’s the spill of adrenaline draining away, or the simple fact that Andy—your future husband, in a matter of hours—has finally handed you the truest thing he’s ever said. Everything is always at risk.

But if the world really is this dangerous, you’ve no doubt you’re held by the most powerful man you’ve ever met, and since he stopped at nothing to secure you, he will stop at nothing to keep you secure.

Uncle Rob! Thea! Andy! A Levinson name drop?!

There are so many things here that I've been plotting for ages, and so I think it's half the reason it took me so long to finish this chapter. Back in May I had written what I thought was about 3k to make up the first half of the chapter, but something about it just wasn't working, so I pulled it apart, kept a few of the scraps, and went back to the drawin board. I'm pleased where it finally ended up, and even though I know parts of this story are frustrating (coughSOMEOFANDY'SBEHAVIORcough), I do hope you all like the chapter.

And I know this is at the verrrrrry tail end of Monday for the first of what I'm hoping will be I'm Your Man Monday, but we made it! So we'll see if I can make this happen and get you another update next week!

NEXT PART: For Better and For Worse

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

He barely lifted his head when he heard you gasp, the lens of his mask focusing on your figure standing there with wide eyes, wearing only an oversized shirt.

“Wrong window,” he choked, then tried to hold himself up but immediately collapsed again. “Dammit,” he cursed, waiting for you to freak out any second now. 

You could have, but instead you rushed to him and knelt beside him.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Your hands hovered helplessly over his body, trying to see how bad the damage was in the dark. “You need a hospital–”

“No!” He snapped, trying to turn away but failing miserably. “I’ll be fine, I heal quickly.”

“You still need to stop the bleeding,” you countered, folding your knees under your body so you could rest on your calves. “Listen, I can help you. I took some medical courses last year and I have a kit somewhere.”

You looked at him with pleading eyes. He’d saved the city so many times, the fucking world, it was the least you could do to give something back. 

He considered his options for a second, and to be honest he didn’t have many. His body was betraying him, and he couldn’t even get up to fix it himself like usual. 

The blood loss made him nod, and you wasted no time in getting up and finding said kit. The blood loss also made him drift in and out of consciousness as you tended to the wounds on his ribs as much as you could. 

It did not make him less cautious of you though. When you noticed the rip on his mask over a nasty gash on his neck and reached for it, his hand closed around your wrist and even half conscious, his grip was strong. 

“Please,” he whispered. Pleaded. “Keep it on.” 

The fear in his voice made you promise you would. Even if you couldn’t get to that gash properly. Even when he fell asleep on your floor and didn’t wake up for six whole hours. 

The next morning, he opened his eyes and found you sitting on your bed, still staring at him. 

His hands patted his chest, and confirmed his arachnid powers had done its job and healed him mostly. But most importantly, his mask was still in place. With no warning from E.V of it being removed. He learned that you’d spent the night making sure he was still breathing without seeing his face. 

That had been one year ago. 

After thanking you profoundly for helping him, he’d repaired your window, apologized several times, and disappeared into the apartment next door. He then considered moving into another building, but the thought was brushed away very quickly when he remembered the balance in his bank account. 

So he acted more careful instead. For a while, he only turned back home when your curtains were already closed, or he only left the apartment when you had already left for your job (because yes, he absolutely researched the hell out of you after that night.)

Then he moved to the attic of the building. Bigger space, no neighbors, no risks. No you. Or at least he thought. 

Because some nights…some delirious nights he still found your window a few stories down, and the accidental visits became less accidental. When he was too badly injured to care for himself, he came to you, even after you confessed your degree had nothing to do with medicine. 

When he noticed you understood about his equipment malfunctioning, he’d bring it for you to inspect. When he became too reckless with himself you talked his ear off about how being difficult to kill did not make him immortal.

Somewhere along the way, you became spiderman’s friend. 

Spiderman was safer. With you, spiderman was the only part of him he could let you see. Because that was the thing, you only knew the masked superhero. 

He’d spent so much time blocking away his identity, making peace with the fact that there was no longer anyone in the world who would call him Peter and know exactly who that person was. That name only belonged to the people that once knew him, and no longer existed, so he never gave it to you.

Never showed you more than a sliver of skin when his mask rode up or glimpses of his abdomen when you tended to his wounds. He always kept that barrier and you respected it, even on those nights he was too weak to stop you. Even if sometimes not knowing the color of his eyes kept you up at night. 

A promise was a promise. 

Maybe that’s why he kept coming. Why he trusted you with a certainty he couldn’t understand. Why he eventually showed you his new living quarters in the attic and let you spend time with him. Why half a year ago, he added another chair next to his desk so you could work together, or help him when he was out patrolling and needed an extra set of eyes.

“I’m officially the girl in the chair, spidey,” you joked that time as you sat next to him, spinning around in your chair.

He’d gone quiet immediately, his body tensing up enough to make you frown, but then managed a small smile and said you were. You pretended you didn’t notice him being too quiet as he worked on his inhibitor after that. 

He was wearing a hoodie, sweatpants and the mask. Always the mask that didn’t quite let you see through him. After a moment of quiet, you rolled your chair closer to his and nudged his arm playfully. 

“You know I can’t keep calling you spidey forever, right?” 

He snapped out of his trance, and the chuckle that came from under the fabric was unmistakable. 

“Why not?” He nudged your arm back, but still focused on the device he was hunched over. “I like spidey.”

You put your elbow on the desk, resting your cheek on your hand so you could lean a little closer. 

“I like it too, but it feels ridiculous after having my hands all over your body almost every night.” 

The moment the words left your lips, you realized how bad that sounded. He straightened up, turning toward you.

“Wow.” Even if you couldn’t see the smile on his face, the lenses of his mask were quite expressive sometimes. He was amused. 

“That came out very wrong,” you said immediately, before he bursted into laughter. He had been laughing more since you entered his life. “You know what I meant,” you whined, laughing too with heat flooding your cheeks. 

“I think I know,” he chuckled, making you roll your eyes. 

“I’m being serious though,” you added, a little more quietly. “You don’t have to say your real name. Just give me something.”

“Mmm…” he acted like has considering it, going back to tinkering with the piece of metal between his fingers, but then his eyes drifted to the flowers he’d bought that morning, and the name came out of his lips before he could think twice about it. “You can call me Maynard.” 

“Maynard?” You repeated, suppressing a chuckle. “You don’t sound like a Maynard. That’s like an 80 year old man’s name.”

“That’s all I can give you,” he shrugged playfully. 

You had a feeling it went deeper than that, but you’d also learned not to push it with him. 

“Alright. Maynard,” you nodded, “but don’t expect me to use that name unless you’re dying. Guess I’ll stick to spidey for now,” you chuckled, going back to your own work as he hummed in agreement. 

The conversation ended there. With him trying not to think about your hands all over his body in…different conditions. 

Peter didn’t know exactly when his gratitude became longing. He could not identify the moment the friendship, the closeness, or just your smile, shifted into something he craved everyday. 

Despite the mask and the fake name, he knew that after years of being no one to everyone, he had become someone to you. And you had become everything to him. Even if it was behind walls he’d built, you were the person who knew him better than anyone alive.

Which is why, the night he lost control of himself after an unknown dust was thrown at him in a fight, he chose not to crash land into your room. 

Peter hit the floor of the dark attic with a loud thud, as his senses went overboard. His suit was sticking to his body uncomfortably due to the sweat coating his feverish skin. The fabric was intact, with no visible wounds in his body, just that burning sensation of something running through his veins. 

And that dark part of him he’d managed to lock down with the inhibitor, trying to claw its way out. 

“What the…what the fuck is going on,” he cursed, clutching his heaving chest as he panted against the worn wood floors. “I can’t–I can’t breathe…” 

The computer’s monotone voice broke through the silence. 

“You have arrived injured. I’m letting her know–”

“NO!” He cut the AI off, “EV, don’t tell her–”

“Message already sent.”  

He glanced up at the digital clock on his desk. 2:18 am. 

He groaned, grabbing his head when a wave of migraine hit him. He knew what came after that. The black eyes. The desire to break. To take. But this time something felt different. It was like a pull, looking for something or someone…for…for you? 

Oh fuck. 

You were going to come in and you were going to see him like this. No, no–

“Spidey?” You asked from behind the door, knocking exactly twice before opening it anyways.

The air changed the exact moment you walked in, and that something inside him shifted too. It became aware that the only thing it craved to survive was in the room now. 

He needed to get to you. He needed to pin you down and– 

“Don’t!” He managed to scream, holding his hand up weakly when you scrambled toward him. 

You stopped right in your tracks, eyes wide and running all over him, searching for torn fabric, blood, or anything that would explain why he looked like every breath was painful. 

“What happened?” You frowned, when you couldn’t find any source. “Did you get hurt?” 

You instinctively stepped forward, but he waved his hand in front of him again. 

“Stop, stop, stop,” he said quickly, “don’t come any closer.” 

The harshness in his voice caught you off guard, but what sealed the deal was him dragging himself further away from you. It was barely more than a clumsy, desperate crawl, but he managed to put a decent distance between you before collapsing against the side of his thrifted couch. 

He avoided looking at you. The oversized shirt covering your body, the comfy shorts you were probably wearing, the way your hair looked messy from rolling out of bed as soon as you got EV’s warning even if you had work the next morning.

You stayed right where you were, watching him. His suit had always fit him like it was painted on his skin, but every pant made his chest rise and fall beneath the fabric so violently that you wouldn’t be surprised if it ripped at the seams. 

This reminded you too much of the changes that happened in him months ago. 

It started with a sharpened temper, then the heightened sensitivity to everything, the black covering his eyes, and moments during patrol when his reactions became simply frightening for someone who had as much strength as he did. But you were supposed to have stopped it. 

“Is it the inhibitor?” You asked, crossing your arms over your chest, “is it failing?” 

“I–I don’t know…I was hit with some dust out there,” he breathed. “I think it’s tampering with it…my head is killing me. Everything is too much.”

You nodded, turning toward the workstation. 

“I will check the programming. Just hold on.” Not your best attempt at reassuring him, but he groaned in acknowledgment. 

“EV?” 

The computer woke when you touched the keyboard, illuminating the dark attic in a wash of blue light. 

“Online.”

“Please run a diagnostic on the inhibitor and any possible interference.” 

“Beginning diagnostic.” 

You waited impatiently for the results, tapping your fingers on the desk while you watched him from the corner of your eye. 

Over there, he…he was doing his best trying to breathe. 

This obviously wasn't his first time having sensory overload. When the animal tried to take over the human part of him, everything in the city became impossible to escape. Not a single movement, or sound, or simple existence within miles was unnoticed by him. 

But this time? The rest of the city had disappeared. There were no sirens in the distance, or voices coming through the walls, or every heartbeat in the building pounding in his head. 

There was only you. 

Your rapid heartbeat echoing inside him. He felt every tap of your fingers against the wood, every slight catch in your breathing each time he made another involuntary and pathetic sound from his spot on the floor. 

Your scent…God, your scent filled the entire apartment. 

The scent he found himself coming back to so often that it scared him. He didn’t want the attachment. The possibility of having someone again only to risk losing them again. 

That same scent was making every muscle in his body react in a way he didn’t understand. It made him, and the other him, wanna do things to you he had only dreamed of in his wildest fantasies. Things he wasn’t proud of, things he wouldn’t dare to say out loud, even if he looked at you through the lenses of his mask and you couldn’t see the black in his eyes. 

He pressed the back of his head against the couch harshly. 

This was wrong. So wrong. 

His senses were supposed to consume everything when the change came. Instead, they had fixed themselves entirely on you.

He could feel the heat of your body from across the room as though you were still in front of him. Could remember with sickening detail how soft your hands looked when they reached for him. Could almost feel the burn of the touch that had never landed because he stopped you. 

What if he’d let you? What if he’d felt the way your hands ran all over his body? What if you’d moved them lower, and lower, as your mouth–

“Diagnostic complete.” 

Your heads snapped toward the screen. 

“There’s no external damage affecting the integrity of the device. I detected a foreign biotoxin in the bloodstream that may be bypassing the inhibitor, activating the suppressed arachnid hormones.” 

“What biotoxin?” You frowned. 

“Unknown. No matches found in available databases.” 

Great. He thought. He had no time to take a bath with Yelena Belova to find out what the stupid dust was. 

Tiny, microscopic potato, she would say.

The screen changed, displaying a model of his nervous system. There were yellow bright lines pulsing quickly, running all the way from the base of his brain down the length of his spine. Something unknown was moving through his blood, altering the part of him he had spent months forcing into submission.

He sucked in a breath as he watched you read the screen. Your eyes were focused, and a bead of sweat made its way down the side of your forehead. 

He suddenly felt the need to lick it off. 

Wanted to run his tongue from the base of your neck to the back of your ear. Wanted to fist your hair and make your heart beat out of your chest from how good he knew he could make you feel–

“The effects remain within his enhanced tolerance. However, prolonged exposure to certain hormones can cause extreme distress without relief.” 

“What hormones?” Your voice, worried and unknowing of his thoughts only made him feel guiltier. 

It took him a second to realize what you asked, but EV threw him under the bus before he could say anything. 

“There’s a significant rise in reproductive hormones. The unknown toxin is inducing a strong mating response in him.”

Mating response. He stopped breathing. 

Your eyes slowly moved from the monitor to him, and he saw the moment your attention dropped lower to the tent of his pants. 

That suit concealed nothing on a good day. On one like this? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck–

He shifted almost immediately, but the movement only worsened the pressure, pulling a helpless groan from his throat that made your pulse jump. You looked away at once, turning back to the computer. 

“Is there a way we can…umm…stop it?” You asked hesitantly. 

“The subject is experiencing severe sexual arousal with a fixation on a nearby individual,” she explained, because fuck him if he wasn’t the unluckiest individual on earth. “Acting upon it can be a positive option to relieve sexual tension.”

He wished the floor would open beneath him, swallow him, and never ever EVER spit him back out again.  

Your pulse was absolutely hammering after that. He caught the sudden change in your scent. There was a sharp spark of surprise, nervousness, and something else beneath it that his altered senses fed on immediately.

You kept your eyes fixed on the monitor, although the data had stopped meaning anything the moment you heard fixation on a nearby individual. 

“Is that what you really feel?” You asked softly after a moment. 

His head fell forward, catching it between his gloved hands. He didn’t know how to answer without making everything worse.

Although, after what EV said, could it really be worse? 

“…Yes.” The word came out rougher than he expected. Yet still not enough for what was happening inside him. “It’s like…I can only feel you. All of you.”

Heat rose to your face once again. 

“What does that mean?” 

Don’t say anything, don’t–

“I can smell you.” Great start, idiot. He cleared his dry throat before continuing. “I can smell your shampoo…the lotion you use…the ink on your hands from your favorite pen.” 

He chose not to mention he could also smell the adrenaline on you. The heat gathering slowly beneath your skin. 

Your eyes dropped to your hands, and under the dim light of the computer, you caught the ink stains in them from your journaling session before bed. 

“I can hear your heartbeat changing every time I speak,” he added. Okay, that one slipped out.  

You swallowed. And god, he felt that in his own throat. 

The suit was suffocating him at this point. He wanted to rip it off as much as he wanted to rip off the fabric covering the goosebumps on your skin. 

“Is it only because I’m nearby?” You asked, gathering the courage to turn your chair to him.

White lenses met you across the room. He dragged in another shaky breath of oxygen made of you as he thought about his next words. He could’ve lied. He should’ve lied. But instead, chemically overwhelmed and stripped of every defense he possessed, he gave you the truth. 

“No.”

His voice was firmer this time. No hesitation in it despite the thousand red alarms pounding in his head telling him to shut up. 

“It picked you–no, I picked you for a reason,” he added. “And it’s not just me. The other…the other me wants you too.” 

His voice went lower on the last part, that told you how much it cost him to admit that. 

The silence following his confession was heavy. For a moment he wished he could read your mind. For all he could feel of you, your thoughts were unreachable. 

His own mind was a mess. The impulses didn’t feel like thoughts anymore, just his body feeding him instructions. 

Get up. Cross the room. Touch her. Breathe her in.

His palms shook with the urge to close around you. His teeth ached with the need to graze your skin. His eyes burned with the desire to see beyond fabric. 

Every part of him seemed convinced that the small distance between you was a mistake he needed to correct. That he needed to breathe you in until his lungs burned. Drag his mouth along the inside of your wrist and taste the pulse there.

He hated it.

He hated that something inside him could look at the person he cared for the most and reduce her to an answer for his pain. 

“EV, how long is this state going to last?” He asked the computer, followed by a weak cough as he clutched his side. 

“Your enhanced physiology is struggling to break down the toxin’s structure. I estimate a time between ten to twelve hours before it’s metabolized. However, neurological collapse is expected before that timeframe.”

“What?” You looked at him. “There’s no way we’re letting that happen. Maybe I can–”

“Don’t even start,” he cut you off, shaking his head profusely. 

“So what? I’m supposed to sit here betting on whether your body collapses on hour three or hour six?” 

“I’ll just pass out, big deal. I’m not putting you in danger because of this. I can handle it.”

“You’re barely handling it now. There’s no danger in trying–”

“You don’t understand what’s happening inside me right now,” he argued, raising his voice. “This other thing, the one the inhibitor controls it’s…awake. That part of me doesn’t think like I do. It doesn’t care if you're scared, or hurting–”

“You wouldn’t hurt me–”

“You don’t know that!” He snapped, his fist struck the floor next to him, hard enough to make the worn wood crack beneath his knuckles. 

The sudden noise made you flinch. He smelled the flash of fear moving through your body for only a second. 

One second enough. 

“Fuck–that is what I mean,” he cursed, covering his lenses with his hands. “I don’t…I don’t know if I’d be gentle. I can’t risk this, I can't…shit, I can’t risk you.”

The words, said with so much pain, and honesty, seemed to settle somewhere deep in your chest. 

“Okay,” you nodded, settling deeper in your chair. “But I’m not leaving you like this. I can’t risk you either.”

He shuddered a painful exhale. His head dropped to the couch again, shutting his eyes in preparation of what the next hours of torture would be. 

Except…he didn’t even last ten minutes. 

The suit was killing him, so he decided he’d be better without it. He reached desperately behind his back, clumsily undoing the zippers that tied the suit together.

He could feel your wide eyes on him as he tugged the fabric off his shoulders, peeling it off his sweaty arms. He groaned when he lifted his hips and the suit grazed his swollen crotch. In a matter of seconds that felt like eternity he managed to break free from the spandex, and threw it away somewhere in the room. He’d undressed down to his dark boxers, mask still in place, revealing the marble sculpture of his body.

You let out a shaky breath from your spot, eyes raking over a body you’d only seen partially. He was covered in wounds most of the time, but this time, he only had faint bruises from the night before decorating his chiseled abs. 

His tight muscles flexed with every rise of his chest, his bulge straining harder the more you devoured him, pressing against his pants, making him curse quietly. 

You noticed, and returned your eyes to the screen to track his vitals. 

He felt grateful that you’d given him that grace, but just you being in that room made it very hard for him to think of anything other than your existence. 

Too hard. 

Before he knew his hand drifted down the growing ache in his crotch, trying to feel some relief, but every rub he made over the fabric of his boxers sent a jolt of pain through his body instead of pleasure. 

It only made it worse when he realized you were tense at the desk, trying very hard to keep your focus on the screen and not on the whines he was letting out. 

“…I’m sorry,” he apologized instantly, breathlessly, moving his hand away. “I didn’t–”

“Don’t apologize,” you shook your head quickly, eyes still on the screen. “You…you can do whatever you need.” 

He didn’t say anything, just whined in pain again, so you took it as a chance to say it before you regretted it. 

“But my offer still stands, spidey.” 

What a polite way of saying ‘I’d let you fuck me into next week so you can control your horny arachnid hormones, spidey.’

Fucking hell. 

“I’m okay I just–God I didn’t–I didn’t think it would feel this way…” He laughed humorlessly, staring at the ceiling. “But I–I got this. Yes.”

You kept quiet, hearing him mumble to himself about a hundred times about how he had this.

“I’m okay…I’m good…it’s fine…” 

He wasn’t. 

“Fuck I don’t…I’m going to die…”

For God’s sake. 

“I think I can help.”

By the time he registered the words and looked back at you, you had already moved from your chair and shortened the distance between you, kneeling in front of him. 

His senses went from one thousand to one million. He forced his hands behind his back, trying to keep the animal from grabbing you and getting it over with. 

“What–what are you doing?” He stammered nervously, the lenses of his mask going wide. 

“Maynard,” you said quietly, ignoring the way his body tensed up at that name. “Would it make you feel better if I put my hand here?” 

You placed your hand right in the center of his chest, and your cold palm met his overheated skin. He gasped, feeling every individual fingerprint on his skin. He wanted them marked on him. Tattooed. 

His back arched from the couch, with a strangled gasp breaking from beneath the mask. The relief hit him all at once, through a simple contact that felt like salvation. 

Your hand steadied him for only a glorious second, but now that you had touched him, his body knew precisely what it had been denied.

It wanted more.

His own hand closed around yours so suddenly that you almost pulled back, but he loosened his grip the instant he realized how tightly he was holding you. 

“Sorry–”

“Don’t apologize.” You pressed harder. 

He was burning.

The heat beneath your palm scared you, but what scared you more was the violent pounding of his heart beating against your hand so so quickly. 

“Better?” You asked quietly, trying not to bite your bottom lip at the image of him crumbling under your palm. 

“So fucking better,” he said breathlessly, pressing your hand tighter against his chest. “I…dammit–”

“Breathe,” you reminded.

His head fell back against the couch. Chest rising up and down, up and down, up and down. 

Just take her, man, she’s right there–

Your free hand accidentally brushed his neck, right where the border of the mask started, snapping him right back. He grabbed your hand, not harshly, but firm enough to make your breath hitch. 

“Please.” Was all he said. 

Leave it on. 

It brought you back to that first night he’d crashed into your life. 

“I wasn’t planning on removing it,” you whispered, leaning closer. “You can keep it on. But let me help you…I really want to.”

See? She wants it. She needs it so bad. 

He hated that the other guy was right. He knew you meant what you said because he could smell the proof pooling between your thighs.

Fuck it.

In a sudden movement he reached for your waist, dragging you forward so you were straddling his lap. The bulge you landed on made you gasp, hands instinctively grabbing onto his sweaty biceps for balance when he let out a broken groan that vibrated against your core. 

His hand cupped your jaw, bringing it closer to his face, and your dilated pupils reflected on the white of his lenses. 

“I can feel that you want this,” he mumbled, tilting his head to the side. “Please, say it again…”

You shifted your hips, barely, so minimal yet he felt it travel through his whole body. He hissed, tightening the grip on your jaw. 

“I want this,” you repeated firmly, moving your head closer to his ear. “You can take whatever you need…”

You moved your hips again, more deliberate this time, pulling a broken whine from him. The toxin made every contact feel like electricity racing down his spine, straight to the heavy, aching weight of his cock under you. 

“Yes…yeah just like that…” he panted. “Just let me…”

His hands landed on your waist, moving you back and forth at a quicker pace over his bulge. You gasped at the friction, fingers digging into his shoulders, while he let out a collection of muffled words you could barely understand. 

“...M–more…” he whined, throwing his head back against the couch. “I can’t–I need…”

“What do you need? More what?” 

“More contact.”

His hands left your waist to grab the hem of your shirt. 

“Can I?” He whispered.

You nodded eagerly, gasping when his hands shifted to the collar of your shirt instead, ripping it off your body with a sharp pull. 

“Oh fuck,” he cursed when he realized there was nothing under that shirt, and saw your nipples hardening instantly under the cold air. 

He resisted the urge to bite them through the mask. 

His hands, however, wasted no time to cup your breasts with a broken whine. His thumbs played with your nipples, tugging at them as hard as he could allow himself to without hurting you. 

“Fuck you’re perfect…you’re so perfect…” he whispered, more to himself than you, pulling some soft whimpers out of you when he tugged a little harder. His hands drifted to your lower half, to the hem of the last piece keeping your body from his greedy eyes. “These too,” he said, “please, can I? I want to feel you.”

“Yes,” you nodded, already out of air. 

You didn’t even know why you tried to get off his lap to take the shorts off properly, when he just did the same as the shirt: ripped it in half where it rested on your hips, yanked it off from your body and threw the ruined pieces far away. 

You weren’t wearing anything underneath. 

“I can smell you. God, I can smell you. You’re so–oh God…”

Now he could feel your wetness drenching his boxers, dripping onto the fabric. He could almost taste it in his mouth. He wanted nothing more than to drown in it for hours. 

“Can–can I–?”

You didn’t even let him finish, you grabbed his hand and placed it right between your legs. 

Water. He found water in the middle of the dessert. 

His hand moved carefully through your wet folds once, twice, delighting in your warmth, the way you felt, the way you let out the prettiest sound he had ever heard in his miserable life. 

“Fuck…” you cursed softly, moving your hips eagerly when he kept stroking slow. Too slow. “Touch me, please.”

He obliged, fingers finding your clit in movements that had you gripping his shoulders tighter, eyes fluttering shut so beautifully he had to bite his lip to not let out a pathetic sound. 

“Been wanting this,” he mumbled. “Longer than today. Longer than tonight.”

His finger slid inside of you, making you moan when he curled it just right. 

“There were…there were nights I thought about you riding my hand,” he kept going, voice cracking as he added a second finger, stretching you more. “I’ve wanted you for so long–not just because of this shit in my blood. Because it’s you.”

Every word made you clench around his fingers. Every admission pulled another shaky moan out of your throat. You were a mess already, breathless, hips rolling down to meet the thrust of his fingers. 

“Oh my God–don’t stop, please don’t stop–”

“Not stopping, baby.” 

He kept working you open, the white lenses of the mask never leaving your face. His free hand slid up your chest, settling between your breasts. 

“I’m–I’m close,” you managed. “I’m so close–”

“Come on…you’re perfect. You’re so fucking perfect like this.”

The heel of his palm lifted to press against your clit. You were right there, right on the edge, about to come on his hand and drip down his boxers–

“Please,” he begged, unable to keep it in. “Let me fuck you after this…please. I need to be inside you. I’ve needed it for so long–just let me, after you come, please, please–”

The plea undid you.

You came with a broken cry, stopping your movements as your walls pulsed around him. The sound you made against his shoulder nearly finished him right there. 

It took you a second to just breathe again, your chest synching up with his in the search of oxygen. He kept rocking his hand slowly, not just to work you through the aftershocks, but because the friction of your pussy in his hand brought the tiniest relief to him. 

You just stayed there as the last soft waves rolled through you. 

Once you were able to see clearly again, you let out a breathless chuckle and straightened back up. 

He needed you. He needed you so badly you really thought he was going to die if you didn’t help him. 

You placed one hand on his chest as the other reached under you, slipping inside the fabric of his boxers without breaking eye contact. 

The second your bare fingers brushed him, his hips jerked hard under you. 

“You said please,” you whispered breathlessly. 

You wrapped your fingers around him and pulled him free.

His cock sprang out, heavy and flushed between your bodies, so thick and hard and painful. The head was red and shiny, with precum dripping down the vein that ran along his length. The tip brushed the skin of your stomach, leaving a warm, wet patch that made the hair on your arms go up. He could smell the small flicker of intimidation sparking inside you, but the want that followed was stronger. 

You stroked him a few times, slowly just as he’d touched you at first. 

“Oh my God, your hand–your hand–”

Another thick bead of precum welled up and spilled over your fingers. Whether it was the toxin or just his enhanced physiology, he was dripping for you.  

Flustered wasn’t enough of a word when you had his leaking cock in your hand. 

His hands slid down to your hips, gripping tighter, guiding you up as if he was about to lift you then pulling you back down immediately. 

Fuck her. Fuck her right now. 

“Please, I need–I need to feel you…” he cried out. “Let me…let me…”

You nodded just as desperately, lifting yourself up as he helped, steadying you with shaking hands until the thick head of his cock nudged against your entrance. You both exhaled hard at the same time when you started to sink down, taking him inch by inch.

He was big. Almost too much. The burn of it made your breath hitch, but the way he cursed under his breath multiple times, completely at your mercy, made you keep going until he was buried balls deep.

You sat there for a moment, breathing heavily, and so full of him. 

When the initial sting faded away, you started moving. He let you set the pace as you adjusted, holding back his need of thrusting up. His fingers dug on your skin, not lifting just holding you, but the more that you moved, the more that control started to waver. 

He could feel it coming. The change. 

You kept moaning, bouncing on top of him, completely unaware of his self restraint crumbling away. 

His grip slowly tightened when his eyes began turning completely black under his mask. That careful, pathetic boy who’d been begging disappeared beneath something more…primal. 

Fuck. Whatever had been holding him back finally snapped.

The next thing he knew, his hands slid under your thighs with sudden strength. He lifted you up in one motion until only the thick head of him remained inside you, held you there for a second as the last part of him tried to remember how to be gentle–then snapped his hips up hard.

That first thrust pulled a sharp moan out of you, but there was no chance to adjust this time. He set a relentless pace almost immediately, using pure strength to bounce you on his cock while he drove up to meet every drop of your body, buried so deep it stole your breath every time he bottomed out. 

“Oh my–May…Maynard–” the name you barely used on him slipped out in the middle of the frenzy, but his hand reached behind your head to pull your hair back slightly as he kept thrusting up. 

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped, his voice so different from just minutes earlier. “It’s Peter. Call me Peter when I’m inside you.” 

He didn’t even give you time to process, still lifting and dropping you onto his cock at the exact hard rhythm he wanted. The only one that satisfied the need inside of him. Your hands instinctively reached for the edge of the arm of the couch he was leaning against, fingers digging into the worn fabric as he hit that spot inside you over and over again. 

“Of fuck…Peter–fuck…yes…”

“That’s better,” he approved. “I was right, you’re so so perfect…taking every inch like you need it as bad as I do…”

A desperate sound slipped out of you at the praise, he could feel your walls clenching tight around him as your body went for that second orgasm, your eyes were fluttering shut, almost there–

“Nuh–uh,” he denied immediately, stopping mid thrust, holding you pressed against him as you gasped, surprised and confused. 

“What–what happened? I was about to–”

“I want you to hold it for me. I know you can.”

That twisted part of him enjoyed the slow realization on your face. 

Even if you couldn’t see his eyes, you knew the same spiderman he’d been without the inhibitor, was the one with your body at his mercy now. 

Good. 

He stayed buried to the hilt for a moment, breathing hard behind the mask. When your breathing finally slowed down and accepted that the high never came, he stood up. Still inside you, he walked you to the bed in the corner of the room. 

His bed.

He pulled out with a wet sound that made both of you groan, then laid you down roughly near the edge of the mattress. He kneeled down, strong hands hooking behind your knees and dragging your legs over his shoulders, folding you open for him completely.

“Look at the ceiling,” he ordered. “Don’t look at me.”

You obeyed, staring up at the wood beams high above you while he tugged the bottom of the mask just high enough to free his mouth. 

Peter leaned down and pressed a few soft kisses to your swollen folds. He wasn’t necessarily eating you out, just giving a few loud smooches that felt good enough to make you grip the sheets. 

“M’sorry, you were so perfect there…” he mumbled condescendingly against your most sensitive spots. “But I need you to hold on a little longer. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?” 

You nodded, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. Maybe too eager. Maybe too pathetic. Just like he’d been. Had he pumped that toxin into you? 

Either way, you didn’t care. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t like this version of him. 

He laughed right over your clit when you moaned loudly, after he moved his tongue in a slow, torturous swipe over it. 

“Was back there too much?” He cooed. “Maybe I just need to stretch you more...”

Two fingers slid inside you, so easily, but the sudden stretch still dragged a whine out of your throat. He curled them immediately, finding the spot that made your hips jerk. 

“Peter…” 

“Huh?” He acted coy, pumping his fingers with a rhythm that kept you right on the edge without letting you tip over. He added a third finger, making your back arch from the mattress. “Keep holding it in.”

Every shake of your body fed the stupid toxin inside him. Having you like this…really trying to keep your body from coming apart because he said so. 

God. He was never going back. 

“You just took my cock. I think you can take three fingers with no problem.” 

He kept the same relentless pace, chuckling when your body started twitching again. 

“Shhh, you’re perfect, absolutely perfect…”

“Peter…” you called out again, hand dropping the sheet to find his shoulder instead. “I need…need…”

“Need what?”

“Need you inside me…please I won’t–I won’t hold for much longer just–fuck me.”

He stopped altogether, a smirk you couldn’t see stretching the corner of his mouth. He pulled his fingers out with a wet pop, licking them clean before tugging his mask back in place and standing up. 

“Yeah?” 

Your legs dangled off the edge of the bed for a moment before his hands gripped your hips and turned you over. He moved you higher up the bed, grabbing one of the pillows, and shoving it under your hips, tilting your lower body up for him. 

He then climbed onto the bed behind you and knelt between your spread thighs, the mattress dipping under his weight as one hand stroked down the length of your spine. 

But something made him stop. 

“This fucking mask–” he cursed under his breath. “It’s suffocating me.”

The sweat on his forehead had pooled under the mask, making it so sticky over his eyebrows that it was affecting the lenses he was trying to see you through. 

“I need you to be a good girl for me,” he added breathlessly, yet still commanding enough. “Keep your head on the mattress. Ass up. Don’t turn around.”

You nodded. Too eagerly again. Couldn’t care any less again. 

He didn’t think twice, just yanked the mask off and tossed it aside. It landed near you, making you bury half your face on the sheets as if staring at the mask alone would be disobeying his commands. 

The sound he made when the cool air hit his face was pure relief. He swiped the sweat off with his forearm, finally seeing you clearly. Face down. Eyes squeezed shut. Already clutching the sheets. 

“You look so pretty like this,” he mumbled. “All spread out for me…waiting.”

“Peter…” you whined, lifting your ass slightly from the pillow. 

“I know, I know. You’re okay.” He couldn’t keep the smirk away when he added, “you said please.”

He reached between you, guiding the thick head of his cock between your thighs until it nudged against your entrance. You were still soft and ready and perfect. 

Peter pushed in slowly, letting you feel every inch as he sank deep and deep and deeper. 

He braced one hand beside your head and kept the other on your hip, pushing you into the mattress as his thighs hit the back of yours. Slap. Slap. Slap. The position left almost no space between your bodies, with Peter pressing his chest against your back. 

“Fuck…you feel so good like this…so pretty taking me.”

He kept going, making the mattress creak and the base of the bed hit the brick wall repeatedly. Your desperate moans ran through his body like electricity, making something inside him crack open again. 

What? What is–

The moment his rhythm stuttered, he shook his head, trying to clear it. Beads of sweat flew from his hair to your back. 

“God–you…you’re making me–” The roughness of his thrusts slowed down immediately, inhaling a sharp intake of air as he felt the change again. “I can’t, I can’t…”

He lifted his gaze to the window behind the bed and noticed his eyes had turned back to its original color. 

“Oh my god,” he gasped, stopping altogether. He straightened up, still kneeling and inside you, but panicking. “I’m…I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened I–“

“Peter!” You cut him off, pushing yourself back, closer to him, without turning around. “Shut up and fuck me.”

The order left your mouth breathless, pushing back against him even more to make the point clear. His hands twitched when they gripped your hips again. 

“Okay, okay…” he panted, groaning when you dropped back on the bed and his cock almost left the warmth of your pussy. “I’m sorry–if I was too rough, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

He picked up the pace again, but the words tumbling out of him now were pure pleading Peter again. 

“Don’t turn around–don’t turn around–fuck, fuck…” slap, slap, slap. “You can come now. Please. Please, I want to feel it–you’d come apart so pretty on me, I know you would…pleasepleaseplease–”

His final permission and the desperate way he said it made you crash harder than the first time, crying out into the mattress. The second he felt you coming around him, he knew he couldn’t last much longer either.

“Can I–inside…please, can I??…let me fill you up–”

“Yes–inside, Peter, do it inside me…” 

He buried himself to the hilt with a strained groan and finally came. The orgasm tearing out of him was harder and longer than anything he’d ever felt, holding you there, filling you up. 

You gasped against the sheets, breathless, as the waves of cum seemed to go on forever, flooding you with warm and thick ropes in every spurt as he emptied himself inside you. 

“Thank you…thank you…” His forehead dropped between your shoulder blades, sending broken gasps against your skin as he kept coming. “You are so perfect–fuck…so perfect…thank you…”

The pollen wrung him dry until he could barely breathe, and even then he kept rolling his hips weakly, chasing the last of it while he slowly softened inside you. 

When it finally eased, the pain, the need, the hunger…he pulled out slowly with a whine, and half collapsed over you. His arms held most of his weight as he planked above you, but you could feel every ridge of his muscles brushing your sweaty skin. 

Peter’s eyes fluttered shut, feeling exhausted and aching in the best way, almost lulled by the sounds of your agitated breaths. 

You both felt the warm trail of liquid leaking out between your bodies and neither of you moved or said anything for a while. He could’ve stayed like that forever, really. With your naked body under him, no masks, no barriers, just your swollen pussy leaking out his seed–

“Successful ejaculation brought down the arachnid hormone levels immediately. Inhibitor working within regular parameters now. Congratulations, Peter.” 

EV’s monotone voice cut through the silence. 

It took two seconds of shock before you both broke into breathless laughter. His teeth grazed your back as your bodies vibrated in sync from the amusement and overall flustering after everything that happened. 

“Thank you, EV,” Peter muttered. 

“You’re welcome. I gathered data and the released semen volume exceeds standard parameters by two hundred and twenty six percent due to the high hormonal concentration. Hydration, clean up and rest are advised.”

“For fucks sake…” Peter cursed under his breath. 

“Oh god…” you mumbled against the sheets. 

That was your call back to reality. 

Peter felt you move under him, reaching blindly to the side until your hand found the mask. You lifted it over your shoulder, offering it to him without looking. 

“I don’t want to,” he said, too quickly, then cleared his throat. “I…I don’t want to put it back on.” 

“Then I’ll close my eyes,” you offered instead. 

“No–I mean…you don’t have to. I don’t want to wear it around you anymore. Not after…all of this,” he admitted sheepishly. 

“But you told me to not turn around,” you reminded him, dropping the mask on the mattress again. “And that was you, not the darker you.”

He chuckled, nodding even if you couldn’t see him yet. 

“Yeah, because if I saw your face while I was balls deep inside you I would’ve busted before you came.”

There it was. He said it. No turning back now. 

At least it got a chuckle from you too. 

“Listen I…I meant everything I said. Everything. The wanting, the nights I thought about you,” he confessed. “I don’t want you to feel like I just used you when…when there was always a reason why I needed you like oxygen tonight.”

Your breath hitched, and his hand found your waist, pulling you closer to him, and when you didn’t push away…he exhaled in relief behind you. 

“So maybe…you can turn around now. If–if you want to. Know the real me.”

“I would really like that,” you whispered without hesitation. 

You tried lifting yourself up to turn around, but he did most of the job, moving away the pillow he had placed under you and helping you roll onto your back. You closed your eyes, at least until you were facing him completely, and took a deep breath. Holding onto his biceps for moral support, you finally opened them again. 

Seeing his face for the first time felt so intimate, even after everything you just did. 

There he was. The same guy who just fucked you into next week, looking more shy and boyish than you could’ve ever imagined. 

Brown eyes. Dark, curly hair sticking to his forehead. A nervous smile tugging at the corner of his gorgeous mouth. 

So young. So earnest. So yours. 

Not spidey anymore. Just Peter. 

Your Peter. 

Thank you so much for reading 🤍 I used to write Peter so much back in the day (shoutout to my starktonyx era) and I’ve missed him dearly.

Feedback is always appreciated 🕷️

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