Big Words Make Me Happy

You are standing on the roof of the White House, above the Truman balcony, wanting to kick your shoes off, but needing to play the host for just a little longer. This is your second Fourth of July in the White House and you thought you knew what to expect, but you are happy to be wrong, because the fireworks are impossibly brighter and more wonderful this year, the celebrations more grand, and you’re shoulder to shoulder with your husband, hands entwined as the dazzling show plays out before you over the South Lawn.

It’s breathtaking.

And so is he. Still. Always.

The grand finale erupts overhead, a cascading symphony of red, white, and blue that paints the night sky in impossible, starburst glory. You can feel the percussion in your chest, reverberating through the soles of your shoes, and you tip your head back to watch the last brilliant volley streak upward and burst into a thousand glittering silver and gold tendrils that drift lazily toward the earth.

Then jubilant cheers and applause and the faint, sweet smell of smoke and the distant roar of the crowd on the lawn below, cheering, waving, singing.

You turn to Steve, a smile already blooming on your lips, ready to say something about how beautiful it was, but he's already looking at you, and his eyes are doing that thing—that thing they've done since the very first kiss you shared, the real one, in Kansas City, that thing where the whole world seems to narrow to the blue of his gaze and the impossible softness of his mouth.

He pulls you close.

One hand slides to the small of your back, warm and certain through the fabric of your dress, and the other rises to cradle your jaw, his thumb brushing the apple of your cheek as if he can't quite believe you're real, as if he needs to check. And you have to admit there are moments you still can’t quite believe yourself that this is your life, these moments, and him. The night air is still thick with the scent of gunpowder and summer heat, and the last of the silver sparks are drifting down behind him like slow, glittering rain, and you have just enough time to think oh before his mouth finds yours.

It's quick. It has to be quick—you're standing on the roof of the White House, surrounded by friends and aides and a few dignitaries, Secret Service agents with their earpieces. But it's enough. It's always enough. His lips are warm and a little dry from the evening air, and he kisses you the way he kisses you when he's happy, which is to say with his whole heart, like there's nothing else in the world worth his attention, like the presidency and the country and the fireworks are all very nice, but they are not this.

You kiss him back. Of course, you kiss him back, placing your hand over his heart.

When he pulls away, it's only an inch, his forehead resting against yours, and you can feel him smiling. You can feel the shape of it against your mouth before you see it, and your own smile is bursting for him, too.

"Happy Fourth, Mrs. Rogers," he murmurs, and his voice is low and rough in that way that it has no business being right at this moment.

"Happy birthday, Mr. President," you whisper back, and he laughs, a quiet, rumble before the two of you break apart and turn to face the small crowd with you on the roof.

And there they are—the faces you've come to know so well, the ones that make this house feel less like a museum and more like a home, or at least as close to one as you can get here. Ambassador Chen from Taiwan, laughing with the German trade minister. Sophia, sharp as ever in her midnight blue, already catching your eye with that knowing, slightly smug look she gets whenever she catches the two of you being soft with each other. Senator Nakamura, who flew in from Honolulu just for this. Colonel Rhodes, grinning like he's about to make a joke he absolutely should not make in mixed company.

You move through them like water, because you've gotten good at this—good at the handshake that lingers just long enough, the murmured thank you for coming that sounds like you mean it, because you do. You mean all of them. Steve is circulating as well, but you’re both being led by your aides toward the exit, aiming to get you into the Residence as quickly as possible because you both have packed days tomorrow (as ever).

Back inside, you kick off your heels in the elevator and breathe, sinking into Steve’s side as your small phalanx of staffers peels away, each murmuring quick good-nights and peeling off down the Residential Corridor, exhausted and slightly tipsy.

He bumps your shoulder with his, sly and crooked in a way that tells you he’s been waiting all night to be alone with you. He reaches for your heels, and you let him take them for the short walk down the hall and into your borrowed home.

The next minutes are a tangle of hands and laughter, breathless and urgent, your dress falling to the carpet with a sound like wings beating, his tie left hanging somewhere between the elevator and the bedroom. You are giddy and graceless, all eager to be together, just the two of you.

He kisses you until your knees go watery, but never letting you falter, guiding you backwards until the back of your thighs catch on the edge of the mattress. You tumble together, the bedspread starched and crisp beneath your palms and knees, and then the world narrows down to calloused hands and the hush of his laughter and the feeling, always, that you are safe. The dim lamplight gilds the curve of his shoulders, the roughness that’s come into his voice as he pulls your name from the space between your mouths. He tastes like bourbon and wild honey from the refreshments at the party, just enough to loosen the lines of his day.

You drag him closer by the lapels, hungry for the taste of him. You pull him down and roll, greedy, pinning him beneath you. His tie is gone; you’re not sure when, but you feel the press of his hands at your waist, guiding you in a slow, grinding circle that makes you gasp. You forget to breathe as you tangle your hands in his hair and let him kiss you dizzy. He’s already undone the buttons of his shirt one-handed, and you help him push it off his shoulders, so you have the skin of his arms beneath your palms. He’s golden and warm, his heart beating under your fingers like a secret. There’s a lightning-bolt thrill each time he murmurs your name. You want to bottle this, this slice of private time in a life where you so rarely get to keep anything for yourselves, and you want to uncork it every time the day-to-day feels a little too heavy.

He traces the line of your jaw, thumbing your chin up and examining you. "You've been different all day," he says, quietly, not accusing, just curious. "Not off, just…something on your mind?"

He’s not wrong. You laugh, because you can’t help it, because how could he possibly have noticed, because you’ve tried to be so careful. But of course he did. “Yes, there’s something.”

He sits up, pulls you into his lap, and you tangle your knees around his waist, greedy for the press of his body. You take a breath, not to arm yourself, but to gather him in. This is a moment you’ve waited for all day, and it’s a moment you know the two of you will remember for the rest of your lives.

“It’s Independence Day and your birthday, and so, so much of today was about everyone else, but I wanted to save one thing for just us.” You run your hands up his chest, and you can feel the way his muscles tense, just a little, the way he always does when he senses something is about to change. His hands go still at your waist. He looks at you the way he looked at you on your wedding day—that same unguarded, ungoverned look, the one that has no presidential composure in it whatsoever.

You swallow, suddenly giddy with nerves, but you try to keep your voice steady as you tell him, “We’re going to have a baby.”

For a moment he’s silent, holding you so tightly you are certain he’s the only thing keeping you from flying off this bed and straight through the window into the dark and dazzling sky now that your stomach is completely aflutter with butterflies - your whole chest really. Steve opens his mouth, then closes it, startled as you’ve ever seen him, caught utterly off guard, and the surge of joy in his eyes is so bright you almost have to look away.

He laughs, choked and astonished, and cups your face with both hands, searching you for the truth even as he repeats your words back to you, as if you’ve cast an unbreakable spell. “We’re—are you—are you sure?” he whispers, and you nod, and in less than a heartbeat he is kissing you everywhere—your forehead, your cheeks, your jaw, the tip of your nose, your lips, your collarbone, drawing your fingers to his lips.

“I wasn’t sure at first. The first test I took was negative. But then I took four more—yesterday being the most recent—and all the rest have been positive. I’ll need to have an official one from our medical team, but this is how normal people try to figure it out, and I wanted to at least start that way.”

“Say it again,” he whispers, and there’s something raw and vulnerable in it that makes your own eyes sting.

You say it again, just for him, and its warmer and easier the second time. “We’re going to have a baby.”

He tugs you close, a long, slow drag of his palms up your spine, and his mouth finds you again, velvet and open and as gentle as if you’re already breakable. You can feel the words he isn’t saying in every touch, every line of his body, every hush of breath against your lips. The rest of the world can wait awhile longer. The future, the headlines, the meetings and luncheons and the never-ending security briefings—they’re so far away. Tonight, it’s just the two of you.

You’re still in his lap and you want to stay there, anchored by his arms, held in place by the gravity of him. Just Steve, the curve of his neck under your hands, the soft light making gold of his hair and blue fire of his eyes and the clean, clean taste of his mouth.

He slides his palms up your thighs, slow and reverent. You feel the calluses catch on the delicate skin behind your knees, then up the slopes of your thighs. Your whole body is tuned to the gentle sweep of his hands, the warmth of his breath against the hollow of your throat.

Steve shifts you in his lap, sliding his cock into your warm and waiting cunt, and your legs find their place around him, heel pressed to the hard muscle of his lower back, hips flush.

You rock together, slow and steady, as if this new knowledge has rewired the both of you, as if every part of Steve that has ever belonged to you is suddenly magnified, gifted back to you in triplicate. He moves inside you as if your bodies are completing unfinished sentences.

You clutch his shoulders and ride him, slow and deep and close, the sounds of your bodies punctuating the quiet as you move together, breath and heartbeat and the little desperate noises you can never hold back from him. His hands travel the length of your back, every unhurried pass softening the landscape of you. The window is open just a crack and summer air pulses in, humid and electric, thick with city sounds and the far-off echo of festivities still unfolding for a thousand strangers. But here, in this room, everything is slow, thick, sweet, nothing but devotion.

He groans, burying his face in your shoulder, and you feel the shape of his smile against your skin, the press of his teeth where he bites back a more urgent moan. You want to laugh, to cry, to collapse and never move again. He moves his hands to your hips, slowing you even more, keeping you close while his mouth traces up along your jaw, kissing the corner of your mouth, your ear.

“I love you,” he says, a promise and a benediction. “I love you so much.”

You clutch him even closer, saying as much back, pouring it into his big heart, and time doubles back on itself, collecting all the nights that led you here: sprawled on a mattress in a St. Louis walk-up, or in Colorado Springs when you were snowed in during the state’s Clean Energy initiative tour, and even sometimes in the backseat of an electric SUV of a Secret Service motor pool. You could have lived a thousand lives and never guessed at this particular happiness, this improbable ending: you and Steve, knotted together in the gleam of a presidential bedroom, a future unspooling inside you, somehow as terrifying and bright as fireworks.

You spend the rest of the night lying together on the sheets, his arm curled around your waist, your hands splayed together with each other over your stomach; his full chest pressed tight to your back, the long, slow breathing of him on a slow, rising tide of emotion you aren’t sure you understand, or ever want to. There’s a secret, quiet sense of being at the exact center of the world that’s only the two of you and the baby on the way. At least for a while.

You drift in and out of sleep, and each time you wake, Steve’s hand is where it left off, thumb brushing circles low on your belly, as if by touch alone he could will the newness of what you told him into the marrow of himself.

As dawn slips in, painting the suite with the faintest gold, you shift slightly, and Steve murmurs, “You awake?” against your neck.

“Mm. Barely.”

He nuzzles in deeper, his beard tickling your neck, and you squirm and turn around to face him. “Did you even sleep?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Not really,” he admits, voice gone hoarse and quiet. “Kept worrying I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be real. You’re here, though.”

“Mhmm, you’re stuck with me.”

You kiss his brow and let your hand run through the gold of his hair, musing at what a child of his might look like. You picture the bright blue of his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, and, despite yourself, the impossible hope that the world you’re building together will be even marginally kind to someone so new and small.

Steve pulls you into his chest, folding your whole body into his, and you melt.

"When I woke up in this century," he begins, his voice low and intimate, "I thought I'd lost my chance at this kind of happiness. I resigned myself to being a man out of time, always looking back at what might have been." His thumb traces gentle over your stomach, soft whispers of his hope.

“I felt untethered, but you are the anchor my soul needed.”

Your throat aches, and you’re not sure what to say because your heart is so full. As much as he’s clear about his devotion to you, it’s reciprocated note for note from your heart. Everything you two have built—the relationship, the purpose, the passion, the drive, the community of people around you—moved your post-blip return from average to a life of vibrancy you also thought you’d never find again.

“I only ever told Bucky I was considering it, but since we figured out time travel to bring everyone back, there was a time I weighed going back to the forties or fifties, but now I thank everything in my bones that I didn’t. I would have missed so much. Even the hard parts, even the hurt, I’d choose all of it to find us.”

It’s a strange, buoyant sadness that washes through you, an ache for the lives you both were supposed to have and the astonishing joy of the one you’re building now, brick by brick, night by night, and dream by dream.

You thread your hand through his, squeezing, letting the gravity of his words swirl through your psyche. “Good, because there’s no one else I would ever want to do this with—not just this,” you gesture to the presidential trappings you live in, “but this,” and you let your hands rest together, gentle on your belly, both of you quietly marveling at the shift in your world.

“I’ll never be able to say it enough, but I love you, Steve. Always.”

Instead of more words, he says it back with another searing kiss.

Once dawn has broken and the two of you are side by side in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, moving through your morning routines, Steve frowns, and you catch the knit of his brow in the mirror. “What’s that consternation for all of a sudden?”

“How did you get not just one, but multiple pregnancy tests smuggled in without a soul finding out?”

You grin. “Sophia.”

Steve scoffs and shakes his head, his scowl turning sarcastic. “She’s supposed to be my personal secretary.”

“And she staffed me on the campaign first,” you remind him. “I’m convinced she only accepted your offer so she could keep you in line and spy on you for me.”

“She doesn’t even pretend to have plausible deniability,” he mutters, rinsing his mouth. “Busted me on a whole security briefing last week when she caught me stashing Reese’s in my desk. I’m the President—” he says this with faux outrage, like he still doesn’t quite believe it, “yet she controls the candy flow and now, apparently, the pharmacy.”

You spit your own minty mouthful. “A First Lady’s job is never done, and I can’t help it if I’ve got the best co-conspirator.” The two of you share a look in the mirror—a look that says God, what have we gotten into—and then there is a knock at the bedroom door, sharp and brisk.

Steve’s head drops with a groan. “Five minutes,” you call, and trade glance with your husband, resignation and amusement in equal measure.

It’s Jake calling into the master suite, “Sir, the British Prime Minister’s advance team just arrived and we have a briefing with the Joint Chiefs at 09:15 but we will need to move your security detail to accommodate the updated press pool, and—”

“Roger that,” Steve calls back.

You holler “Thanks, Jake,” into the hallway, and before you can even turn back to Steve and finish rinsing your mouth, he’s close behind you, arms caging you between the counter and his chest, both of you reflected twice in the gilded mirror.

His chin hooks your shoulder, his lips finding the sensitive skin just below your ear, and you nearly drop your the hairbrush you’ve reached for into the sink. “Come here,” he says, as if you aren’t bodily pressed against him, as if he could ever actually want you closer.

You smile at him in the mirror because you can’t not, and the whole reflection is so absurdly domestic—yesterday’s confetti still in your hair, his shirt unbuttoned just below the collar, the two of you framed by White House marble and gilt. “We are going to be late for your entire country,” you warn, but you let him wrap you up anyway.

“Let them wait,” he says, but he steps aside after a final, scandalous little nuzzle, letting you go. He’s a man who never shirks responsibility, and you know that to be true in every part of his life. You can’t wait to explore a new chapter with him.

I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM! So soft and so fluffy here, but I still love this AU so much. 🥹 ❤️🤍💙

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

Mercy!Jake

Mind Your Business!Andy (This is his cameo/intro in mob enforcer!Ari’s story)

Pound Town!Frank & Nick

"You always flirt when you're nervous?"

The completely out of pocket breaking of silence between you and Curtis has you sputtering, and you’re unable to string any type of real response together. "That's not—you—I—never flirting," you manage, the sentence falling apart in your mouth. Your face goes hot with embarrassment.

Curtis smiles, soft and warm. "Relax. I know. I just wanted to break the nerves." He nudges your shoulder with his.

The two of you had been sitting in silence in the waiting room before his teasing. In maybe any other circumstance your mind might have been racing with what to say and whether or not flirt with your stoic, thoughtful neighbor—the man you’d slowly begun to call a friend, but who you were painfully aware could ruin your panties with one look. The man you’d been trying to keep things together around for the last year since moving in with your aunt down the hall from him.

You say, “I’m not nervous, just—" and then realize you’re not sure what else to be besides nervous. Afraid? Hopeful? Angry? All of the above? You settle for staring at the scuffed linoleum while Curtis watches you with a look that, if it were on anyone else, would probably be pity, but on Curtis registers closer to loyalty. “Tense. I know she’ll be fine, but I can’t help being tense.”

He leans in, elbows on his knees, and says, “Whatever comes next? I’ll be right here. Okay?”

You blink at him, surprised by the havoc this simple phrase generates in your chest. This is not the kind of comfort you’re used to. People have shown up in your life when they need to, but this isn’t necessarily one of those need to times. It’s just an outpatient surgery—knee replacement for your aunt.

You want to tell him it’s not a big deal, that you’ve done bigger surgeries and worse scares with family before, that stitches and staples and anesthesia are the stuffing of childhood summers and parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins getting older, but for some reason you don’t. Instead, you nod, and murmur a soft, “Thank you.” He leans back against the seat back of the chair next to you, close enough your jackets are flush together, and lets the silence hang again.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. It’s a group text from the family, a cascade of prayer hands emojis and gifs of cats doing knee bends, as if the artificial cartilage will be charmed into behaving by the cuteness of calico kittens. You smile awkwardly into the glare of your screen and pocket the phone again.

Curtis watches your movements, then turns his gaze to the wall clock. He has this way of looking at things as if they’re always about five minutes away from letting him down, but he’s determined to be charitable until then. You wonder if he’s always been this patient, if there was ever a time where all the anger in him boiled over. You wonder if he feels anything on high intensity, if he ever loses control, because he never seems to crack or shout or stop being so frustratingly (and in this case blessedly) calm.

You’ve analyzed him too much lately, trying to get a bead on where you stand in the whorled grain of his attention, but he doesn’t give up much. He portrays himself as a lone wolf, and yet seems to know about and look after every tenant in your building. He doesn’t say, “You can lean on me,” but he sits here, all more than six feet of him, silent beacon of support.

After another moment, you ask, “Is this the most boring Wednesday you’ve ever had?”

He considers. “Not even the top five,” he says. “But the company helps.”

You snort. “Such a flatterer.”

He glances at you again, evidence of a suppressed smile in the twitch of his cheek. “You don’t have to be tough, you know.”

“But I am tough,” you say, and you mean it, but also the words feel like a dare, a plea, and an apology at the same time. He accepts all three without question or challenge or platitude, which might be the best thing. The only thing.

“Did you eat today?” he asks, which shouldn’t be as cute as it is but, God, he’s always sliding into caretaker mode when you least expect it. He’s nothing if not a fixer.

You want to lie, just to keep up. “Of course,” you say, but your stomach betrays you with a watery gurgle. You both pretend not to hear it.

“Coffee only doesn’t count. Conveniently, the cafeteria here is edible,” Curtis offers, rising in a controlled, economical motion that is all the more impressive for its unselfconsciousness. “I’ll be right back.”

You open your mouth to protest, to insist you’re fine or offer to go yourself, but he’s already two steps away, and you’re left to watch his big, hulking frame disappear around the corner, and you can’t help the small sigh watching him go.

You’re alone in the waiting room again, and the absence of Curtis, which you keep telling yourself should feel like a relief—because then you don’t have to perform, or talk, or keep yourself from staring at his hands—has the opposite effect. You miss the quiet, stabilizing force of him beside you. You count the number of times your phone buzzes. You scroll through the same three news articles, not retaining a single word, and then stare at the hospital’s “Our Mission” poster with a resolve that feels like penance.

This is inconvenient. You’re not supposed to get attached. He’s your neighbor and friend, someone who has been so good to everyone, had practically adopted your aunt as his own.

You’ve survived this long by keeping ties loose and laces untied, but Curtis has a way of making himself necessary without being intrusive, leaving an impression just by existing nearby. The way he leans into you—not quite touching, but always within reach. The way he remembers your Thursday sandwich order, the way he brings up stories from three months ago like they just happened. The way he says your name when it matters. Small things, but dammit, they add up.

Even now, he’s probably making a spreadsheet of hospital food options in his head, for your benefit, and this makes you want to laugh and throw up at the same time because you are not supposed to fall for someone who makes it so easy. You’re not supposed to fall at all, because you are the one who knows how to manage risk, how to keep your heart sheathed in bubble wrap and sarcasm and the practiced art of staying unbothered. You are not supposed to crave the constancy of a man like Curtis, and yet here you are, sitting in this goddamn hospital, waiting for him to get back from the cafeteria like a dog at the front door.

Mostly you’re not supposed to fall because this is just him being nice, the same way he helps Mrs. Noyes from 4B with her recycling and walks the blind dog for the guy on 3 when he works a night shift.

You’re still chewing on this, gnawing at that impossible mental cuticle, when Curtis returns with a paper cup and a small brown bag. He offers them to you like a treaty, or maybe a dare. “They were out of blueberry,” he says, “so you’re getting banana. You’ll live.”

Your hand comes up for the bag, and the tips of his fingers graze yours, almost theatrically gentle, as if he’s afraid you might startle and bolt. You do not, but you do clock the hitch in your own pulse, the way your body catalogues the warmth and weight of his touch in the useless hope of replaying it later.

He sits down next to you again, his knee bumping yours and staying there. It’s such a nothing, such a casual point of contact, but you feel it in your teeth. He’s just big and tall and his legs have to fall where they may. And if you don’t move your leg away, that’s no one’s business whatsoever.

And if this is a prequel to the prologue for the Curtis we met in His Law would any one have any objections? (This then would have happened BEFORE the events that lead to the post-apocalyptic landscape of that entire AU.)

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

“I dunno,” you hesitated, gnawing on your lower lip as you eyed the small plant. It really was so cute and would be the perfect pop of color on your new entryway table, but… “I’m so terrible with plants,” you confessed, your guilty gaze flickering up to the man who ran the plant and flower booth. 

His smile was soft–his bright blue eyes twinkling in amusement–as he ducked his head to meet your gaze more fully. “I promise this plant is practically unkillable. And I can give you a little card with easy, detailed instructions to help you care for it.”

You sighed, your fingers gently touching the healthy, vibrant leaves of the plant. It really was calling to you for some reason. “Okay…” your eyes caught the man’s, and you frowned playfully. “But if I kill this thing, its blood is on your hands.”

He laughed, and it lit up his entire face, which only grew more handsome in his delight. You felt your belly swoop at the sight, at the way he was watching you with a spark of interest you hadn’t had directed your way in a long time.

“I’m Cole, Turner,” he introduced himself, holding out his big, rough hand for a shake. 

You didn’t hesitate to slip your hand into his, noticing the way he cradled it more than shook it, the way his touch lingered longer than necessary. 

“And I’d happily get blood on my hands for you,” he grinned, then froze, his eyes going wide as he registered his own words. 

There was a beat of silence as you both stared at each other, and then Cole grimaced as he let your hand slip from his. 

“Sorry, that sounded more suave and less serial killer-y in my head,” he cringed, broad shoulders hiking up to his ears.

You laughed, utterly charmed by this sweet, handsome stranger. “Noted,” you murmured in amusement, watching the way Cole’s cheeks glowed pink as he started to gently package your plant for the car ride home. 

You took a shaky breath as you hugged yourself tightly, feeling a chill dance along your spine as you thought of Cole, of the fact that you had been genuinely interested in him, and so happy he seemed to feel the same way. 

You glanced over at Steve to find him watching you with this look of sympathetic concern. His eyes were so soft and earnest as they met yours, that you had to remind yourself that he was a robot and not an actual person.

“You couldn’t have known the way things would turn out,” he assured you. 

“No,” you shook your head slowly. “I really couldn’t have. Cole was so lovely at first. Always had new plants set aside for me at the market, always checking in on the ones I had previously bought. It only took a few visits before he asked me out, and I was happy about it,” your voice broke as tears began to flood your vision. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into…”

The longer you sat across the dinner table from Cole, the more uneasy you grew.  There was this intensity to him tonight, an almost manic gleam in his eyes as he leaned in close and rambled about finally settling down, how relieved his parents would be, how he couldn’t wait to have children, how the farm was the perfect place to raise a family…

“Wow,” you couldn’t help but blurt, laughing uncomfortably as you glanced away. “You really know what you want, huh?”

“I do,” Cole hummed, and when your gaze hesitantly returned to him, it was to find him watching you in this way that made all of your hair stand on end. 

In that moment, as a chill skittered its way up your spine, you felt like prey, and it was nowhere near as sexy as the dark romances you read made it out to be.

Instead of thrilled or flattered, you felt sick. You felt dread the longer Cole stared at you, and disappointment, too, because you had been so excited for this date. 

“So, how many kids do you want?” Cole asked, reaching for his wine glass and taking a drink. 

“Well,” you laughed awkwardly, fiddling with the napkin spread across your lap. “I never actually said I wanted kids, so…”

“Oh you were definitely meant to be a mother,” Cole scoffed, a knowing smile tilting his lips as his eyes slowly trailed over you, making your skin crawl. “I can already see it now. One baby perched on your hip and another growing in your belly. You’d be so beautiful pregnant, glowing.”

This time, you were the one reaching for your wine glass, taking a deep gulp as you discreetly glanced at your watch, praying for dinner to be served so you could get the hell out of here. 

Once you were finally home a couple of hours later, you still felt icky at the way Cole had tried to kiss you goodnight and seemed very disappointed when you’d evaded him and gone in for a quick, fleeting hug instead. 

You waited a while, until you were sure he was home, before texting him to thank him for dinner but also let him know that it wasn’t going to work between the two of you. 

The deluge was instant. 

One text after another flooding the chat thread you had with Cole. Asking why. Refuting your shutdown. Telling you he knew the two of you were meant to be together. That he had never felt this way about anyone.

Then he tried to call you. Repeatedly. Your phone blew up until you finally blocked him with trembling fingers, feeling beyond anxious and strangely scared before turning your phone off entirely and trying to wind down for bed. 

“I thought that would be the end of it, you know?” you whispered, gaze distant and fixed on the fireplace as you twisted your fingers in your lap. “I didn’t dare return to the farmer’s market, I avoided it instead. But it only took a couple of weeks before it started to feel like I was being watched any time I left my home. Then Cole confirmed my suspicions by cornering me one day after work…and I never told him what I did or where I worked…”

“Cole?!” your voice was pitched high–unnaturally so–your panic bleeding into your tone as Cole pressed you up against the driver’s side door of your car. “What…how…”

“You can’t just avoid me forever!” he huffed, gripping your shoulders hard enough to bruise and make you squeak in pain. “Sorry,” he relented his harsh touch immediately, but kept his hands on you, his fingers petting instead of gripping now as you squirmed and tried to recoil. “Look, I just… I can’t stop thinking about you, and I just know if you gave me another chance–”

“Cole, you’re at my work right now,” you said firmly despite your voice shaking, despite your terror. “How did you even know where to find me?”

He looked away, jaw clenched as he remained silent. 

“Please, you need to go,” you trembled. 

“No!” he shook his head, eyes blazing as they returned to you. He took a breath, deflating a little at the look of sheer terror on your face. “Please, sweetheart, I’m sorry for scaring you, I just… I need you.”

“We hardly know each other.” 

“When you know, you know, and I know, with everything inside of me, that you’re it for me. You’re all I want, please…”

You squealed and jerked away as Cole leaned in and tried to kiss you. 

It was instant the way his eyes flashed with displeasure, with malice. 

“Don’t do that,” he snarled, his fingers digging into your arms as he shoved you back against your car with enough force to make you whimper. He opened his mouth again, but before he could speak, one of your colleagues was calling your name from across the parking lot, sounding concerned. 

It was enough to have Cole cursing under his breath before turning on his heel and racing from the parking lot, leaving you weak from fear as your coworker rushed over and asked if you wanted them to call the police.

“But I didn’t want to get Cole in trouble, I didn’t want to make this a big thing, you know?” You sniffled, batting away a stray tear. “I just wanted him to leave me alone.”

“But he didn’t?” Steve guessed, a tic popping in his jaw as you slowly shook your head. 

Curling into the corner of the sofa, you whispered, “No, he didn’t…” 

You weren’t sure what woke you up, but you startled awake nonetheless, feeling the furthest thing from well rested, as your sleep quality had deteriorated over the past few months due to everything happening with Cole.

Just as you thought his name, you realized that he was standing over you.

That it wasn’t just another nightmare or night terror, that Cole Turner was in your bedroom right now–naked, his bare chest heaving as he stroked his cock slowly and shushed your terrified whimper. 

“Shhh, don’t scream–” he started as you opened your mouth to do just that. He cursed, lunging at you, pressing the hand he had been using to touch himself over your mouth to muffle your cry for help. 

You struggled wildly beneath him, something about feeling the weight and warmth of him–his bare skin, his wiry chest hair–it made you feel sick, but it also made you feel angry.

So you slapped at him, clawed at him, continuing to shriek against his damp palm as he tried to subdue you. 

“Shh shh shh, it’s okay! Baby, please, just let me show you how good we can be together,” he groaned as all your writhing and twisting had his hard cock getting trapped against the blankets bunched at your stomach. “Fuck, I know you’re gonna feel so good, cause you were made for me–” 

Cole’s words morphed into a pained cry as you bit his palm hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to have him jerking away from you as he cradled his hand and stared at you with wide eyes. 

Then you opened your mouth and screamed for all you were worth. 

You didn’t stop screaming when Cole scrambled out of the bedroom window he had left open, and onto the fire escape. You didn’t stop screaming when your neighbor pounded on your front door asking if you were okay, or when you heard the police sirens in the distance growing closer. 

You didn’t stop screaming until your voice finally gave out. You sank back against your headboard, sobbing and shaking, feeling like you were going to be sick as adrenaline surged through your body, mixing with the fear and disgust rioting within your very bones.

“But they didn’t believe me, the cops,” you explained. “Not when it was all said and done.” 

At the sound of displeasure–of offense–that Steve made, your tear-filled eyes finally focused and returned to him.

“Cole’s parents gave him a fake alibi, and the cops boiled it down to it was dark and I was hysterical because I’d been stressed and suffering from insomnia. They had no proof, it was my word against his, and…” you shrugged, more tears spilling over as you whispered, “They did nothing. So I moved here and left everything behind–my whole life, my career, my friends and family. Everything.”

You shook your head in disbelief that this was now your life–your unwanted reality.  

“What else was I supposed to do? I knew he wouldn’t stop. He won’t stop,” your face crumpled as you dropped your head into your hands, feeling panic rise within you as you thought of Cole, of how relentless he had been, of the fact that he was still out there. “He’ll never stop.”

Steve was crouching before you in a heartbeat, holding out the box of tissues from the side table, looking hesitant and so concerned as he touched his free hand to your knee and gave it a squeeze.

You shuddered at the soft touch, realizing that you hadn’t been touched by another since that night with Cole. But this was so different–Steve’s touch made you feel safe and cared for. 

Which, for some reason, only made you cry harder.

“I will keep you safe,” Steve promised. “It’s my number one objective, my sole mission. The whole reason why I exist is to protect you.”

It took a moment for Steve’s words to sink in, for you to realize that you weren’t alone in this anymore, that you had support now. 

That you had Steve. 

“I-I’ve been so scared and alone,” you cried. “They didn’t b-believe me! How could they not believe me?”

“I believe you,” Steve’s voice was soft, but his words were firm. “I will always believe you.”

“What if he finds me? What if I have to spend the rest of my life running and hiding from him?”

Steve shook his head, not one solitary doubt flickering across his painfully handsome face as he assured you, “I won’t let that happen.” 

There was a fierceness to Steve now–in his words, in his gaze–and for a moment, you forgot what he was, and what he wasn’t.

Because he seemed like so much more than a machine.

And maybe that’s why you were finally allowing yourself to fall apart, because you had someone else now to help you pick up the pieces, to help you hold all of this. 

You were no longer all alone in the darkness, being crushed beneath an unbearable weight.

“I don’t want to live like this,” you whispered brokenly. “I’m so tired and I’m so scared and I don’t want to live like this anymore! I can’t do this anymore, I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

You hunched over your lap as you sobbed, rocking back and forth, your body buzzing with grief and overwhelm, with absolute turmoil as you finally surrendered to all of the feelings you had been harboring and suppressing for months on end.

You were so lost to it all, that it took a few moments for you to realize that you were pressed against a warm, firm chest. That you were crying into Steve’s shoulder as he gently smoothed his hands up and down your back in soft, soothing strokes.

For some reason, the gesture of comfort only made you cry harder. 

When Steve asked if he could hold you, all you could do was nod before collapsing against him entirely, letting him hold you through the tidal waves of emotion, your calm and steady anchor who, despite the maelstrom raging inside of you, made you feel safe and cared for in his tight embrace.

A little while later found you on the sofa, tucked beneath the cradle of Steve’s arm, your body pliant and tension free for the first time in weeks as you slept soundly against his chest. 

Of course Steve had been briefed on your situation before being delivered to you, but seeing the toll everything had taken on you firsthand–and how vulnerable you truly were–it had Steve experiencing something unexpected.

Beyond his programmed duty to keep you safe, Steve felt this overwhelming need to protect you, to take care of you, to take away all of your pain and distress. 

And it wasn’t so much his undeniable attachment to you–and how quickly it had formed–that had Steve’s brow furrowing. 

It was the fact that he felt at all. 

Because machines shouldn’t have emotions. 

Not even top-of-the-line, meticulously designed custom AIs like him should feel.

But Steve couldn’t deny that he felt strong empathy for you, as well as a fierce desire to keep you safe. It was like a living, breathing thing clawing at him from the inside out. 

And it only grew stronger as Cole Turner’s photo flickered across Steve’s vision. 

He’d gone a few steps further than all of the information on your situation that Sam had already uploaded to his mainframe, running his own in-depth research on the offender as you slept. Seeing Cole for himself, and recalling how terrified and disturbed you had been as you recounted your experiences with him…

It had Steve’s vision bleeding red at the edges.

It had him feeling anger, no, fury for the first time ever.  

And that unexpected, unexplainable ripple of feeling–of something more and outside of his programming–had Steve going rigid in his seat.

It had him worrying that perhaps there was a flaw in his design, in his functioning, in his ability to take care of you like you needed and deserved. 

Steve’s vision flashed green as he initiated diagnostics on himself, coding now speeding across his sight, as he made a mental note to send any findings–and his concerns–to Sam once the process was complete.

But just as quickly as the thought had come to him, it was pushed aside as you shifted against him, murmuring in your sleep. 

Steve’s eyes flew to you, softening as he watched you frown in your sleep. 

He moved before he realized it–before his programming caught up with his actions–his hand smoothing over your head in a slow, gentle caress that immediately had you sinking against him and the line between your brows smoothing.

His touch seemed to have a mind of its own, and Steve could only watch, feeling a sense of helplessness for the first time, as his fingers traced along your face, mapping the terrain of your skin. 

As he looked down at you sleeping against him and processed the way you clung to him, how your fingers curled into the front of his shirt, Steve felt something else that he knew shouldn’t be possible.

Something that should be cause for concern and reported to Sam immediately…

Possessive.

Steve felt possessive.

Of you.

—

AHHHH! AHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHH! Okay, I’m fine. I’m fiiiiine. 

RIP slow burn, sorry to say. Or sorry not sorry, I can’t decide yet lolll. 

—

Please take a moment to comment or reblog. It means a lot to hear from my readers after sharing a story that I put so much love into. Serial liking without engagement is the quickest way to kill my writing motivation, so please don’t do that. It only takes a moment to show a little love. Thank you 🙏🏻

I no longer do tag lists, but if you'd like to be notified when I post new writing, follow my side blog @‌sirisshamelesshoelibrary​ and turn on notifications to get pinged when I drop some new hoe fuel 😘

As you moved into the hall, you were surprised to find Ransom’s door wide open. The far bedside lamp was on, but his bed was empty. But when you went downstairs, none of the lights were on. You cautiously flipped on the light in the kitchen, checking around, but the whole floor was empty. That was a bit odd, but not enough to interrupt your mission. You went straight to the pantry and got out the jar of peanut butter, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. As you were about to go back upstairs, something outside, by the back door, caught your eye. You stopped and waited until you saw movement again, so you cautiously moved forward and peeked your head outside. Ransom was standing a few feet to the side of the door, his gaze on the trees that lined the yard. There was a glass of whiskey in his hand, but it looked untouched.

You came out to stand next to him, closing the door behind you. “Sorry,” he said, very quietly, “did I wake you?”

You weren’t sure how that could have happened, when he was standing alone in the dark, completely silent. “No,” you answered. “I was just hungry.”

He glanced down at what you were holding. His nose wrinkled. “You’re eating peanut butter straight from the jar.”

“Yup,” you confirmed with a smile. “It was the only thing we had that sounded good. What I really want is a burger to dip in it.”

He raised his eyebrow at you. “A burger? To dip in peanut butter?”

“Uh huh! With extra pickles and extra mustard. And jalapeños.” Your stomach gave a little rumble, as if to cement your position on the matter.

Ransom wrinkled his nose. “That sounds disgusting.”

“Yeah,” you agreed with a sigh. “I want it so bad.”

“So I guess that means your appetite is back.”

“Yeah,” you gave him a relieved smile. “Finally.”

He nodded. “That’s good,” he said, quietly.

You waited a beat, comfortable in the silence, and then asked, “What are you doing up?”

He shrugged, looking back out at the trees. “Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Mmm,” you hummed in response. You could have gone back in, finished your snack, gone back to bed. But you didn’t. You weren’t sure why. But you settled in next to him and looked out at the trees.

After several minutes, he added, “My brain just won’t turn off.”

“Oh yeah?” you asked, not turning your attention to him.

“Yeah,” he said, quietly. There was another very long beat before he continued, “I’m not going to be good at this.”

“Good at what?” you asked softly.

He shrugged, resolutely not looking at you. “Any of this. I have no idea how to be a father.” He swallowed, swirling around the ice in his drink but not taking a sip. “Or a husband. I don’t know how to be good at it.”

“Oh,” was all you said at first, his words landing in your chest. Then, “I don’t know how to do it either, be a wife or mother. Or,” you stopped, remembering all of your mother’s words and advice since you were a little girl and how hard you’d been trying to shut them out recently. “I guess I know how to be a certain version of a wife, but I don’t think that’s the kind I want to be.”

He finally looked at you, his eyes soft, a deep blue in the dark. “Like your mom, you mean.”

“Yeah,” you whispered.

“Hmm…” another swirl of his glass, “was she a good mom? To you?”

“Um…” you started, fully turning your head away, but you still felt his eyes on you. “I don’t know. I guess–“ You sighed. You knew the answer even though you didn’t want to say it. “No. No, I don’t think she was. Not in a malicious way, she just- I don’t think she ever had the capabilities. I think she was too beaten down by the time I came along. She loved me in the only way she was able, but… But maybe that wasn’t enough.” You blinked back a few tears and shook your head. The steady chirping of crickets filled the quiet. You tried to let it calm you.

“My parents never loved me,” Ransom said after a long enough beat for you to pull yourself together. “I know that for sure. They’d tell you they do, but they don’t. I’ve known it since I was a kid.”

You put the spoon in the peanut butter and set it down on the patio next to you. With both hands you cradled your stomach. You were starting to really notice it changing, now that you were officially in your second trimester. Now that there was no reason to try to hide it. “I want to love them so much, but I just, I’m afraid I won’t know how.”

Ransom put his glass down on the ledge behind him and then took a step towards you. He didn’t say anything at first, just looked at you very carefully. Then he took another step, reached a hand toward your middle and stopped. “Uh, do you mind if– Can I?“

It took you a moment to understand what he was asking for. Then, “Oh! Uh, yeah, sure.” You moved your own hands from your belly to make room for his. He carefully put both hands on you, cradling whoever was inside. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even really look up at you. But he stood there for a long time, holding you so gently, staring at your stomach like maybe if he stared hard enough, he could unlock some secret of the universe.

Eventually, you broke the silence, speaking softly in an effort to not disturb the peace you felt here in the dark. “I think,” his eyes shot up to meet yours at the sound of your voice. You gulped at the intensity of his gaze but kept going. “I think that as long as we try, we’ll be giving them more than we ever got. Maybe it still won’t be enough, but, it’ll be something. We just have to try.”

Ransom visibly swallowed, then looked you right in the eye and nodded. He took a step back and picked up his drink from where he’d left it, but he still didn’t drink it. He seemingly just needed something to do with his hands.

You stood in companionable silence for another long moment. Just as you were readying yourself to leave him alone with his thoughts and go back to bed, he spoke again. “What do you think about this house?”

“What?” was the only thing you could say to the strange abruptness of the question.

He was staring absently into the house now, a pronounced crease between his brows. “I keep trying to imagine a little kid running around here and I just can’t.”

Oh. You remembered back to that first day when you found out you were pregnant. You’d tried and failed to do the same thing. “No, I guess I can’t really either. And–“ you paused, finding your words, and he turned his attention to you, “when I first got here, I remember thinking that there was nothing in this house that seemed to have anything of you in it.”

He looked back into the living room through the large windows. “Linda got me this house when I turned twenty-five. It was already decorated and fully furnished when I moved in. I don’t know, I guess it was just the place I lived. Nothing more. And I never really thought about it.”

You didn’t say anything in response. He was clearly thinking through something. You took the moment to look at him, here in just the light coming out through the window. He looked different, you thought, now that you were actually getting to know him. Softer, maybe. Or smaller? Or, just, more like him.

“Maybe,” he said after several moments, “maybe it could be good to find a new place. Somewhere that fits all of us.”

“Yeah,” you said, quietly, a warmth moving through you. “Yeah, that could be really nice.”

He hummed in affirmation, and finally took a sip of his drink, before decisively putting it down again.

He didn’t say anything more, so you decided it was a good time to head back to bed. You quietly moved to the door, then stopped and turned back to him. “Hey, Ransom,” you called. He looked up at you, questioning, ready. “There’s still so much about this that really scares me, but I don’t think I’m scared of doing it all with you. Not anymore.”

The way he held your gaze at that was intense. Like he could really see you. And you could see him too. He swallowed roughly and then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. It came out rough. “Me too.”

You just looked at each other for a few more seconds. Then, with your hand on the door, you nodded back at him. “Okay. Well, goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight,” he said, soft and quiet. You felt his eyes on you until you were all the way inside.

Once you got upstairs, your room was empty. You went across the hall, and sure enough, Lola was curled up next to Ransom’s pillow. You smiled to yourself then went back to your room, leaving the door open, just a bit, a little dog-sized crack, in case either of them changed their minds.

You shouldn’t have been surprised how quickly things moved after that. If you’d learned anything about him it was that once he’d made up his mind about something, he acted quickly. The next week, Ransom had set up a meeting with a real estate agent—completely unaffiliated with his mother—and a week after that you were looking at houses. It felt surreal, actively making plans for your future family. But as the growth of your stomach became more noticeable every day, that future was starting to feel a lot more like your present.

There were some differences, it’d turned out, in how you and Ransom had pictured that future. You’d had your sites set on somewhere in Boston proper. Ransom’s empty neighborhood only added to your feelings of isolation and you were sick of it. You missed your apartment in downtown LA. and you wanted something urban again. You wanted parks and restaurants and walkability and culture. You wanted noise and activity and life.

Ransom couldn’t understand that. Especially with a baby on the way. He wanted privacy and quiet and space. But Ransom had a car he loved driving. Ransom had a job that got him out of the house everyday. Ransom had never had to worry about feeling isolated.

So you silenced the voice in your head that always sounded like your mom and put your foot down. This new life you were starting together would not involve another house that didn’t have neighbors. A house that made you feel like a ghost. A house that cut you off from society. So you stared Ransom down until he threw his hands up in exasperation.

Your real estate agent Deborah did her best to bridge the gulf between you, mostly looking at inner-ring suburbs that were quieter and upscale without feeling dead. You’d seen a few houses so far and at each one both you and Ransom had found reasons to turn them down. You hoped this one might be different. You were ready to have at least one part of your new life with this baby settled.

The car pulled up in front of a three-story, swell-front house in Brookline. It was constructed from red brick with black trim. There were brightly colored flower beds lining the walk up to the front door. It felt homey, at least from the outside. As much as you tried to focus on taking it all in, you were quickly distracted by the sight of Ransom, already there, pacing in front of the property and growling into his phone. You turned to the driver, asking him to wait there for you, as you weren’t sure if Ransom would be coming home when you were done or would need to return to work. As he nodded and got back in the car, you headed to Ransom who’d ended his conversation and now was shaking his head in frustration.

“Everything okay?” you asked him as you got close.

His shoulders relaxed at the sight of you. “Just fucking Harlan,” he said with an eye roll as he greeted you with a hug. That was something he’d been doing lately. Since that awful dinner at his grandfather’s house. It was nice. It was really nice. “He wants the baby to take his last name.”

That stopped you cold. “What?”

“Yeah,” Ransom scowled. “I think if he had it to do over again, he would have figured out a way to get my name changed when he made me his heir. But he didn’t, so now he wants to correct it with my heir.”

Your hands instinctively went to your belly. What if this baby isn’t your heir? a tiny voice asked. A voice that had been getting bigger ever since Harlan’s toast to your son at that dinner. But saying that out loud felt too much like tempting fate, so instead you voiced a safer anxiety. “The baby will have a different last name from us?”

“Hey, no. Don’t worry. I’ll figure out a way to talk him down. I promise.” He gently placed his hand on the small of your back. “Now, come on, let’s go let Deborah try to convince us that this is the house.”

You nodded, letting your hands relax at your sides, and let him guide you up the front steps to where Deborah was waiting to let you in.

Your first impression was that everything was very beige. It was staged beautifully. But god, you hated the color scheme. The paint, all the fixtures. All so beige. It was oppressive.

Deborah showed you through the house. The finished basement, the semi-open plan living and dining spaces on the first floor, the bedrooms and en suites on the second. It was nice, you supposed, fine. But it just felt like a house. You didn’t know what would push you over into loving it.

So, instead of looking around at the rooms you passed through, you started watching Ransom. You could see his keen eyes taking in every detail. You wondered what he was seeing. More than you were, it seemed. But you couldn’t tell what direction he was leaning. You still found him so hard to read.

Deborah ended the tour on the third floor. “This floor would make a lovely au pair’s suite,” she said with a soft smile toward your pregnant belly. You and Ransom hadn’t talked about that yet, the nanny situation. Only that you both lamented having been completely raised by nannies. “Or if you decide against live-in help, easily convertible into a set of offices.” She looked to you and then Ransom, who was peering around the small common living space. “Well, I’ll let the two of you explore a bit on your own. I’ll be right downstairs if you have any questions.”

You thanked her as she left, then turned to Ransom who was looking at you, a soft smile on his face. “This is the one, right?” he asked you.

“You think?” you asked back, looking around, trying to see what you were missing.

“I do,” he nodded. “I think it’s exactly what we need.”

You wrinkled your nose at the beige walls that surrounded you. “I hate all the colors.”

Ransom gave you a smile that you could only describe as affectionate. It made your stomach swoop oddly. “That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll get a decorator. Have it exactly how we want before we even move in.” He paused and his expression grew more careful. “You really don’t see it?”

You sighed as you looked around again. “I mean, I don’t hate it. And I’m trying, but…” You gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry.”

One last long, careful look at you had him asking, “Can I show you?” with his hand outstretched to take yours.

You only hesitated for a moment before putting your hand in his. “Okay.”

He quickly brought you down to the second floor, his hand warm and snug around your own. He stopped in the hallway. “We can figure out rooms for each of us eventually. You can have the primary if you want. I–“ He abruptly stopped, then shook his head. There was a look in his eyes that you couldn’t read. But then he gestured to the room directly across from the primary and said, “But that’s the nursery.”

You let him lead you inside. It was a large room with a window directly opposite the door. There were built in bookcases on each side of the window, with a low, padded window seat that ran between them. It was lovely.

Ransom came up behind you, close enough that you could feel a hint of his body heat, and pointed, over your shoulder, to one corner. “That’s where the crib will go. Something to match the built-ins.” He moved your attention to the opposite wall. “Some toy chests over there.” And then back to the space next to one of the bookshelves. “And a comfy rocking chair in the corner here. So we can sit with them.”

“Oh,” was all you could say. Tears had started to prick at the corners of your eyes. It wasn’t just that you could see what he was describing. It was that he could see it. That he had thought of the kind of room he wanted for your child. That he so clearly wanted them to be happy.

“We could do a forest theme. Sage and dark green walls, knick knacks on the shelves, get some big stuffed animals.”

“Yeah,” you nodded, trying to keep your emotion out of your voice. “That sounds really nice.”

He grabbed your hand again. “Okay, come on. There’s more.”

He brought you downstairs next, and into the kitchen.

It was large, spacious, with two sliding doors that could separate it from the rest of the house if needed. There was an island with a large gas range on top of it and stools lining one side. It was nice, with all the appliances you could want in a kitchen.

Ransom was watching you take it in. “We’ll have a housekeeper who can prepare meals, of course, but I want this to be a place you can use whenever you want. But only when you want. When the doors are open, I think the sight lines are pretty good to the rest of this level.” He walked over to the breakfast nook that sat under a large window to the backyard, looking at something you couldn’t see. “I really like this,” he said, quietly. “The kid could sit here and color or play or whatever, while you cooked. Or I could sit here with them, and talk to you. Keep you company. I think this could be a really nice place to spend time in.”

You swallowed harshly around a lump in your throat. He was imagining so much. “Yeah,” you agreed, starting to see what he saw. “You’re right. It really could be.”

“Okay,” he said with a soft smile. “One last thing.” Then you let him pull you, a little dazed, into the backyard.

It was bigger than you’d expected, due to it being a corner lot. But you thought the property must have been extended at some point as well. There was a carriage house with the same red brick and black trim as the main house converted into a multi-car garage in the far corner. A paved drive leading from it to the street guarded by a wrought-iron gate. Nearer to the house, there was a small patio, big enough for a dining area. It was beautifully landscaped, surrounded by a tall, thick hedge screen.

“It’s not huge, but big enough I think. Lola would have plenty of room to run around. And maybe we could put a little swing set or something over there, some sort of play area” he gestured back to the dining area, “and you and I could spend nice nights out here, watch the kid play–“

He kept talking. You know he did. But you were so overwhelmed you couldn’t take in anymore. He hadn’t just imagined his own life in this house, with you as a background character. No, he’d imagined the three of you here, as a family, and the way these walls might contain your whole lives together. You were so overcome with feeling. You’d never felt like this before. You lunged for him without a single conscious thought to do it, connecting your lips to his.

Ransom went very still. Shocked. His whole body stiff against yours. Just as you felt him start to relax minutely, you brain finally caught up with your body and you pulled away, taking several steps back. Your hands came up to your mouth in horror. “Oh my god,” you muttered. What had you done? Why had you done that? “I-“ you started and stopped. You wanted to apologize but you didn’t know how to get the words out. And he was standing there, stock still, just staring at you. “I, um,” you swallowed harshly. “You’re, uh, you’re right. This house is ours. Um. You should go tell Deborah. Get the process started. But I–“ You tried to force yourself to breathe. “I have to go.”

And then you ran away, even with him calling after you. Back to the waiting car and then back home.

You beat Ransom home. Of course you did. Hopefully, he’d be gone for a while, getting things settled with Deborah. You didn’t know how you would face him. You fed Lola and let her out, and then you just paced around the lower floor of the house, round and round, before you finally got out your phone and typed a message.

Shit Steve, I think I really fucked up

The three dots to show he was typing appeared immediately, then disappeared, and reappeared.

Give me two minutes

You reacted with a thumbs up and waited. Two minutes later, on the dot, your phone rang. “Hey Steve,” you answered.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, urgently. “Do I need to come out there and beat someone up?”

“No,” you sighed. “This one’s all my fault.”

“Chip, what happened?”

You braced yourself. “I kissed Ransom.”

Steve didn’t say anything in response. For too long. Oh god. You really had fucked up. “Steve?” you asked nervously.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, sounding caught off guard. “I thought– Is that it?”

Your brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean ‘is that it?’”

“I– I guess I don’t really understand what the problem is here. You think you fucked up because you… kissed your husband?”

“No, that’s not– When you say it like that–“ you struggled, then sighed. “You know that’s not how we are.”

There was another long pause from him and when he spoke again his voice was shockingly soft. “Are you sure about that?”

“Steve, I– What are you talking about?”

“Chip, I was there. From everything I saw and everything you’ve told me since, it’s obvious he cares about you. And vice versa.”

This time it was you who was quiet for a moment as you gathered your thoughts. “I know that he cares about me,” you said, and you meant it. You could finally admit that you felt his care every day. “But caring about me isn’t the same thing as wanting that kind of relationship with me. We’re friends and–“ you stopped, not sure how to say exactly what you meant. “We’re friends.”

When he paused this time, the silence was thoughtful. “Okay, Chip. I can tell you're really panicking and I want to help you, but I need you to help me understand why you’re so upset."

“I just–“ You took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears that wanted to form. “I don’t want to have ruined everything.”

“But what if you didn’t?” he asked, his voice gentle. “What if he feels the same way?”

You immediately shook your head, even though he couldn’t see you. “No,” you argued, voice quiet. “No, he can’t. That’s not something I get to have.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, hesitantly.

“I– I’ve always known that that isn’t for me. I– That’s not– Even being friends is more than I ever imagined I’d get to have. I should be so grateful to have a husband who cares about me at all. It feels too greedy to want anything else.”

“Oh, Chipmunk.” His voice was so sad. “It’s okay to want good things for yourself. I want everything good for you. I want you to have it.”

Your eyes were fully watering now. “I don’t think I know how to do that.”

“Listen, you know I hate to say anything nice about Ransom. But I think he really wants to take good care of you. If that’s true, he’d want you to talk to him about this. I think it’ll go better than you expect. I think you can trust him.”

“I want to,” you whispered.

“Talk to him,” he ordered. “Promise me you will.”

“Okay,” you acquiesced, your voice so small.

“It’s going to be okay, Chip.” He sounded so sure. “No matter what happens, it’s going to be okay.”

And for a moment, you were ten again, believing everything your big brother told you. “Okay,” you said. “Thank you.”

“Always,” he said, without hesitation. Then he sighed. “All right. I should probably get back to my meeting.”

“What? Oh no, you didn’t–“

“Stop, this was more important. But I should get back now. Let me know how things go.”

“I will. Thank you, Steve.”

“Love you, Chip. Bye.”

Love you. Bye Steve.” You hung up the phone and tried to hold onto the feeling that things might be all right.

You’d done your best to try to settle yourself down. You’d sat on the couch. You’d picked up the book you were in the middle of and opened it to where you’d left off. But you didn’t read. You couldn’t. Your eyes stayed locked on the front door. You had no idea how this was going to go.

Even with all of your attention on the door, you still startled when it opened and Ransom walked in. He froze, a little, when he noticed you on the couch. He was carrying something. Your eyes flicked to it as you stood up, taking a few steps forward, but still leaving a gulf between you.

“I got you something. To eat,” he said, shockingly timid, gesturing at you with the greasy, white paper bag in his hand. He set it down on the kitchen island and took a step back.

You walked to the island and very carefully opened it. It was a burger, absolutely slathered in peanut butter. With extra mustard, extra pickles, and jalapeños. The exact burger you’d told him you’d been craving.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, “it took me a while to find a place that could do it. Because, you know, it’s disgusting.”

You just stared at it for a long moment, ignoring his teasing. Those feelings welling up inside you again. But no matter how he cared for you, you decided, it was enough. No matter what Steve said. You couldn’t fuck that up. “I, uh– I owe you an apology,” you said nervously, your fingers fidgeting on the counter top in front of you. You felt Ransom’s gaze snap to you, but he didn’t say anything so you continued. “I’m so sorry I kissed you. I never should have done that and it won’t happen again. I’m really sorry.”

You kept your gaze on your hands until the silence stretched on far longer than you were comfortable with. Nervously, you looked up, locking eyes with Ransom. His brow was furrowed. He looked upset. Was the apology not enough?

He stared at you for too long, like he was trying to find something in your expression, but you weren’t sure what. Then, finally, he asked, “What, exactly, are you apologizing for?” When your only response was to look at him in confusion—you thought you’d been clear—he rephrased. “Why are you sorry you kissed me?”

“Because–“ It felt like your breath was caught in your throat. The moment suddenly felt charged, for reasons you didn’t fully understand. “Because I know that’s not something you want and I–“

“I think,” he cut you off, voice low and so serious, “that you have no idea what I actually want.” And then, before you could parse what he meant, he surged forward, taking your face in both hands, and kissed you.

It took a moment for your brain to register what was happening, it was so far beyond anything you’d expected. But then you caught up, feeling his soft lips on yours, his hands gently cradling your head, the warmth of his body seeping into you. You let out a little gasp, finally understanding, feeling it for real, and he took it as invitation to deepen the kiss, his tongue tentatively entering your mouth. You sank into it, taking everything he was giving you. You’d never been kissed like this, never with such feeling. All you could do was ride its wave.

Far too soon, Ransom pulled away. But not far. He pressed his forehead to yours, his lips still so close, and whispered, “What I want is whatever you’re willing to give me. Not a single thing more, but not anything less, either. I want anything you might want.”

“Really?” you asked, your voice so small, overwhelmed. You could feel the tears starting to gather in your eyes, and you futilely tried to blink them away.

“Really,” he answered, and the certainty in his voice moved through you, as he brushed a tear off your face with his thumb. “I promise. Anything you want. Always.”

You took a deep breath. “I want to be a family with you,” you whispered. And with those words, you felt something inside of you, something that you hadn’t fully realized was undone, settle for the first time since you’d sat in Joseph’s office and been forced to sign that contract.

“Me too,” he whispered back. “Let’s be a family.”

And then he kissed you again. Like he meant it. And you believed him.

A/N 2: 😭😭😭 It only took eleven chapters but they finally did it, you guys!!!! I hope you love this as much as I do. Please let me know what you think!

Tag List

@stargazingfangirl18 @yenzys-lucky-charm @thezombieprostitute @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory @bval-1 @km-ffluv @texmexdarling @ladyvenera @roxyfan14-blog @darkserenity24 @midnightramyeoncravings @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @ronearoundblindly @brandycranby @steviebbboi @missaprilt23 @thiquefunlover63 @hisredheadedgoddess28 @stellar-solar-flare @alexakeyloveloki @kmc1989 @awkwardgiraffe726 @watermelontidewater @alicedopey @lokislady82 @sassybearfire @mencantaleer @thecrandle @1000plants @remussbitch @rach2602 @dragon-of-dreams @mommad @cookiesandwhimsy @venigrantrogers @bartonsparrow25 @blobfishlol @emerald-writes @cakesandtom @buckets-and-trees

You watched Curtis pace the length of the tiny, rustic kitchen as he typed away on his phone, his brow furrowed and his handsome face pinched as he turned on his heel and retraced the path to the other end of the kitchen. 

“It’s so fun that I still get to learn new things about you after all this time,” you chirped from your seat at the retro dining table tucked in the corner of the kitchen. 

You couldn’t hide your smirk as you rested your chin on your hand, watching as Curtis paused and looked over at you, his brow somehow furrowing even more. 

“What do you mean?”

Your smirk turned to a full on grin as you replied, “You, sir, are badddd at vacationing.”

Curtis glowered at you, his gaze narrowing into a very impressive stink eye that didn’t intimidate you in the least. Quite the opposite. It made you want to coo at him and cover his ridiculously handsome face in allll the kisses. 

“It’s true, Mr. Workaholic. We’ve been here two days, and sadly you’ve spent more time texting on your phone than rocking my world. For shame.”

Curtis rolled his eyes at your teasing, but then his features softened with a hint of concern–a glimmer of guilt, too. “I’m sorry, I just want to make sure Edgar doesn’t burn down the diner while I'm gone.”

“He won’t,” you assured Curtis, rising from your seat. You closed the short distance between you, pressing close and twining your arms around his neck as he sank against you, wordlessly welcoming your embrace. “Edgar wants to make you proud, so let him.”

Curtis frowned, his gaze falling away from yours. He grumbled a little, knowing you were right but also this was the first time he had ever left his diner in the hands of another, and it was hard not to worry. 

“Looks like maybe I need to distract you,” you decided.

“How are you–“ Curtis started, and then made a sound of surprised indignation as you backed out of his hold and swiped his phone as you went. 

You put it on silent mode before tucking it away in a random kitchen drawer, and then you planted your hands on Curtis’ chest and began to push him out of the kitchen and toward the living room. 

Of course, you wouldn’t have been able to move him if he didn’t allow it, so you were glad he did, and you were sure the mischievous smile on your face–along with the darkening twinkle in your eye–was why he didn’t resist. 

Curtis grunted once the back of his knees hit the edge of the sofa and you gave him a final shove until he was plopping down on the plush, plaid cushions. When you sank to your knees between his spread legs, his eyes widened ever so slightly, his nostrils flaring as his tongue snuck out to wet his bottom lip. 

“Oh,” he realized, the single word a primal sound of acknowledgment that had your pussy fluttering in response. 

You grinned at his dumbfounded look. “Time to relax, handsome. No more work or worrying. Good vibes only.”

You bounced up to peck his parted lips before your hand dropped to the bulge at the front of his jeans that wasn’t there a moment ago.

“Hnnnngh,” Curtis groaned, sinking back against the sofa even more now as you began to undo his pants. 

“See, isn’t vacationing the best?” You teased as your hand circled his swelling length and gave it a few strokes until he was at full mast and pulsing in your grip. 

“Anything with you is the best,” Curtis rumbled. 

“I’m so impressed that you can still be so smitten and sweet even when I’ve got your cock in my hand. You’re such a keeper,” you giggled as Curtis gave you another stink eye. 

Waggling your eyebrows at him, you gave him another stroke, making sure to let your thumb swipe through the mess of pre-cum dribbling from his tip before smearing it along his length, aiding the glide of your hand and pulling a ragged moan from the back of his throat. 

And if you thought that sound was delightful–and porn worthy–it was nothing compared to the near growl that vibrated Curtis’ chest when you eagerly took him into your mouth. 

Honestly, you weren’t sure who was enjoying it more–you or him. You loved feeling the weight of him on your tongue, the salty musk of him overtaking your senses. And the way both his big hands shot out to cradle the back of your head when you began to bob up and down on his cock–it made your pussy gush. 

You drew it out as long as you could, savoring each and every one of the wrecked sounds Curtis gifted you. The broken moan when you took him deep into the back of your throat and swallowed until you gagged. The grunt of your name when you dragged your tongue along the throbbing vein on the underside of his cock. The sharp gasp when you suckled at the crown of his cock, humming as a healthy trickle of pre-cum spilled past your lips in response. 

Eventually, you could feel Curtis just on the edge of his climax. His thick thighs were tense and shaking, he was muttering complete nonsense as he rutted into your mouth, and then he was groaning so loud you nearly came as a result–that deep, primal rumble making the flood of his cum down the back of your throat all the more rewarding. 

Once you pulled away from him with a wet pop, you barely had time to wipe the cum from the corner of your mouth before Curtis was pulling you up into his lap and burying his face against the crook of your neck. 

You grinned as he barnacled to you, and you felt him breathlessly pant against your skin. His hands were everywhere as he touched and caressed every inch of you he could reach as he slowly came down from his high. You were pretty sure he started purring like a cat once you began to drag your fingers along his scalp, feeling him go even more boneless beneath you. 

After a few minutes of quiet cuddling, Curtis pressed a kiss to the side of your neck. He straightened, his handsome face still a bit pink and glowy from the aftermath of your sinful attention. 

He was giving you those soft, moon eyes of his that always made your insides flutter like wild, and when his big hand reached out to cradle the side of your face, you eagerly leaned into his touch with a dopey smile. 

“I’m sorry if I ruined the first couple of days here,” he said.

“You haven’t,” you were quick to counter, turning your head so you could kiss his palm. “You couldn’t. Just being here with you is special, you cute worry wart.”

Curtis’ eyes twinkled at you, his lips tilting at the corners as he drew his thumb over your bottom lip before reeling you in. He kissed you softly, lingering in that way that always made you feel like he found you irresistible, like he loathed even the smallest amount of distance between you two. 

When he pulled away, he watched you for a beat, something sheepish working its way into his gaze, and it made you laugh. 

“You’re thinking about texting Edgar again, aren’t you?” you grinned.

Curtis’ shoulders hitched up to his ears. “I forgot to tell him where I store the backup backup backup napkins. And if we have a busier week than anticipated, and he runs out–”

Giggling, you leaned in and kissed away the rest of his spiral, giving him a fond smile as you pulled away and said, “I love you.”

Curtis blinked, making a wordless sound of shock before he stuttered, “W-what??”

You felt a little shy at his reaction, but it was cute, too, and most importantly of all–you didn’t regret your words or dropping them without thought or plan in the least–because they were true. “You’re ridiculous and amazing and I love you,” you confirmed. 

Curtis’ features went the softest you had ever seen them, but there was a serious air to him as well as he cupped your face between both of his hands and tugged you in for the gentlest kiss he had ever given you. One that stole your breath away because it was so painfully tender and telling.  

“I love you too,” Curtis breathed, giving you another soft kiss for good measure. And then he was nearly grinning as he said, “Actually, I’m pretty sure I loved you first, because I had years of pining on you, so. I win.”

Rolling your eyes, you tugged him in for another kiss, not pulling away until you were both panting against each other’s lips and grinning like a couple of giddy idiots in love. 

Which you were. 

“Just give me a minute to text Edgar about the napkins, and then I’m gonna make it up to you.”

“Oh yeah? And how will you do that?”

“You’re gonna sit on my face and let me eat that pretty cunt until I melt your bones with my tongue and a few orgasms.” Curtis laughed as your face went slack at his words, pressing a soft kiss to the tip of your nose before gently moving you from his lap so he could stand. “Give me sixty seconds, pretty girl, and get naked while I’m gone.”

You blinked as he winked at you, still gaping after him like a fish as he hurried into the kitchen to use his phone. 

And then you were snapping to, giggling quietly as you jumped to your feet and began to shimmy out of your clothes, tossing them haphazardly away, pretty sure that this was, in fact, the best vacation ever. 

Please take a moment to comment or reblog. It means a lot to hear from my readers after sharing a story that I put so much love into. Serial liking without engagement is the quickest way to kill my writing motivation, so please don’t do that. It only takes a moment to show a little love. Thank you 🙏🏻

I no longer do tag lists, but if you'd like to be notified when I post new writing, follow my side blog @‌sirisshamelesshoelibrary​ and turn on notifications to get pinged when I drop some new hoe fuel 😘

“An asshole,” Curtis grunted as he moved on to topping off the salt and pepper shakers lining the counter.

“Ransom’s not–” you started, but then wilted when Curtis’ eyes snapped to you, his eyebrows hiking up in a wordless, ‘really?’ “Okay, fine, he is, but I kind of liked that about him. Well, until he aimed it at me.”

You pouted some more, stuffing your face with another forkful of tastebud heaven as your eyes speckled with more tears at being ghosted by the guy you had been so smitten with for the past couple of months.

You had really thought things had been going so well with Ransom. 

Apparently, you were wrong. 

“I was so excited to invite him to the winter festival, too,” you quavered. “It would have been the first time I could share it with someone else, yanno? It’s my favorite town event, and now…I probably won’t even go.”

Curtis sighed, pausing in the middle of refilling the nearest napkin dispenser. “You should still go,” he said firmly. “You love that stupid thing.”

“It’s not stupid,” you admonished, nearly grinning as Curtis just rolled his eyes and gave a wordless grunt in reply. 

Curtis wasn’t the most talkative person, he was more the type to be a man of few words, but those few words were always impactful. But if there was one thing you knew he could expound on for a good, long while, it was the “unhinged amount of over-the-top town events and activities” that Snow’s Hollow frequently hosted.

Sometimes, you wondered why he even lived here, if he seemed so irritated by the quirky town’s way of operating, but then you’d catch him in these moments–of quietly talking with Tanya over breakfast, or throwing around a football with Timmy in the town square, or helping old Mr. Gilliam carry his groceries home–and you just knew that Curtis loved this town as much of you did, in his own cranky way. 

Shaking yourself from those musings, you pushed away your nearly empty plate, your belly uncomfortably full now as you crossed your arms and sank back in your stool. 

You watched Curtis as he quietly continued his closing routine, finding comfort in the methodical way he moved and operated, the familiarly of him, the way his big, calloused hands were oddly gentle with the outdated bits and bobs that were still in shockingly good shape considering most of them had accessorized the diner back when his father had owned it many years ago. 

Your eyes lingered on Curtis’ big hands, and you ignored the way you squirmed in your seat as you perked up and exclaimed, “Hey, you’re a guy!”

Curtis’ face was deadpan as he met your bright gaze, his own eyes twinkling with mirth as he wryly replied, “Thanks for noticing.”

“No, I mean, you can give me the male perspective!”

His brows furrowed, and he was somehow able to convey his intense trepidation in only one word: “On?”

“What’s wrong with me!”

Curtis gave you an unamused look as he shook his head and moved around the counter to start stacking the chairs on the tables littering the floor so he could sweep.

“No, seriously! I mean it,” you needled, hopping off your stool and trailing after him as he worked. “I genuinely want to know! I mean, there has to be a reason why I’m like guy repellant and can’t maintain a relationship to save my life. So! Tell me: what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” Curtis muttered with finality, shooting you a stink eye over his shoulder as he moved to the next table. 

“Curtis!” you whined, sticking out your lower lip and holding your hands together before you in a pleading fashion. “Please! Tell me! You know me better than anyone and have the male perspective. So just…please. Just tell me what’s so wrong with me—“

Curtis spun around and was looming over you so suddenly, that you squeaked in alarm, staring at him with wide eyes as he swept you up against him with one arm curled around your back and cradled your cheek with that rough hand of his as he kissed you quiet. 

And not only kissed you quiet, but kissed you quiet. 

You gasped as his soft, plump lips eagerly moved against yours in a way that conveyed he had been yearning to taste you like this–intimately and without reserve–for years. Curtis’ tongue soon joined the fray, sneaking out just enough to tease along the seam of your lips and make your knees quake as you sank against him with a soft moan. 

Your mouth mirrored his own frantic need as your fingers curled into the front of his worn flannel and you kissed him back with the same kind of fiery passion that you didn’t even think yourself capable of.

Until now.

Pressing a final, lingering kiss to your now swollen lips, Curtis slowly retreated just a few inches, his eyes dark but smoldering–blazing at you–as he met your dazed, still startled gaze, and husked, “There is nothing wrong with you. Nothing. Every single thing about you is perfect.”

Your breath caught, not only at his words, but at the fierce truth behind them burning in his eyes as he watched you like you were the most beautiful thing–the most beautiful person–he had ever seen.

“Oh,” you breathed, your body still trembling and lighting up all at once as you met that dark, heady gaze of his head on, fell into it, happily drowned in it of your own free will.

You were quiet for a beat as this unexpected moment–and realization–sank in, inched over you from head to toe and warmed you in a way that you felt deep down in your bones.

And then you pounced on Curtis this time, your hand sliding around the nape of his neck as you yanked him in for another round of ardent, needy kisses that were your new favorite drug.

Curtis groaned against your mouth as your tongue brazenly swept into his mouth to tangle with his own. Those big hands of his that you had been so mesmerized by earlier fell away from where he had been gripping your arms and tentatively touched your sides instead. 

His touch grew more confident–and wanting–by the second, his hands traveling along the curves of your body, wordlessly admiring your softness before he gripped your hips and backed you toward the door behind the counter that led upstairs to his apartment. 

You were only a few feet away from that destination–your mouths still fused together and stealing each other’s breath away between eager kisses as both your hands wandered the new and exciting terrain of the other’s body–when Curtis abruptly pulled away. 

“Wait,” he panted, dropping his forehead to yours as you clung to him. “We shouldn’t do this.”

“If there’s nothing wrong with me, then why are you rejecting me?” you frowned up at him, feeling your insides suddenly curdle as you tried to pull away from him entirely. 

But Curtis wouldn’t let you. His hands locked together around the small of your back, tugging you flush against him once more.

“I’m not rejecting you,” he said. “But you deserve more than an impromptu fuck, especially when you’re feeling sad and hurt about that asshole Drysdale. I want you in my bed because you want to be there, with me, not because you’re trying to forget about someone else.”

That curdling feeling instantly morphed to your insides blooming and fluttering wildly at Curtis’ words. His desire for you. 

And his desire for you to want him as much as he apparently wanted you.

“The winter festival,” he suddenly muttered.

“Huh?” You paused in the way you had been unthinkingly petting along his chest, your brows furrowed in confusion as you lifted your gaze to his.

“You won’t have to go alone. I want to take you.”

“You want to go to the winter festival? You? Curtis Everett?!”

He glared at you, but it was nowhere near as fierce or genuine as you knew that look of his could be. 

Not for you, never for you.

“I want to take you,” he said firmly, broaching no argument. Then he softened as he murmured, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year, right?”

You couldn’t help it as your lips unfurled into a big, dopey grin, and you clutched Curtis’ broad shoulders as you bounced on your toes and replied with an enthusiastic, “Okay! Then we’ll go, together!”

Curtis’ lips curled into a small, pleased smile, and then he corralled you close once more, and kissed you breathless all over again. 

When Curtis showed up at your place a few evenings later, it was only awkward for a moment as you stood together out front, drinking each other in. 

He was wearing a new winter coat and scarf combo, his pale cheeks ruddy from the cold, winter air, and he was gazing at the way your little leggings and sweater dress combo hugged all your curves like he wanted to eat you.

Which had you giggling nervously and preening all at once. 

Curtis' gaze cleared as his brow furrowed and he encouraged you to finish doing up the front of your coat and put on your gloves, and then he guided your arm to hook around his as you two turned to walk to the town’s center–together. 

It didn’t take long to notice the way others were giving the two of you looks of interest and encouraging smiles. Edgar even shot you a double thumbs up as he walked by, giving Curtis a cheeky grin and wink as the other man growled in response to his shenanigans.

You laughed, feeling your face warm as you clung to Curtis even tighter and leaned into him to mutter, “Wow, they’re real subtle, huh?”

“Like a sledgehammer,” he scoffed, making you laugh.

“It’s sweet though,” you couldn’t hide a big, dumb grin as Tanya shot you a lascivious wink as you passed by her hardware shop. “That they’re all, I dunno, rooting for us.”

“They’re a bunch of meddling busy bodies.”

“You love them anyway,” you wheedled, rubbing your cold cheek against Curtis’ sleeve.

He hmphed, glancing over at you, that concerned furrow taking over his handsome face as he murmured, “You cold?”

“Yes,” you answered honestly, smiling big. “But I love it.” Your voice had a dreamy quality as the two of you stepped under just one of the half a dozen archways of twinkling lights and decorative snowflakes and icicles that littered the area.

Curtis nodded across the brightly lit and almost garishly decorated town square to where a bunch of different food and game booths were set up. “How about we get some hot cocoa to warm up?”

“Only if we get extra whipped cream,” your grin was cheshire-like and faded as you spotted the soft, fond way Curtis was watching you. It made you feel shy, and you buried your face against his arm once more.

“I’ll steal all the whipped cream they have if it’ll make you happy,” he murmured against the crown of your head before leading you to the booth.

A few moments later, you cradled the steaming cup of hot cocoa and mound of whipped cream that came with it, carefully taking a sip before pulling back with a happy hum. “Chocolate, creamy nirvana.”

Curtis was actually grinning when you glanced over at him. He shook off one of his gloves before reaching out to wipe away the smear of whipped cream your drink had left behind on your upper lip. 

His eyes met yours–unwavering–as he brought his thumb to his mouth and sucked the cream from his skin.

“Oh boy,” you whispered, unable to stifle your response, and feeling heat flood your face as he gave you a wicked grin before ushering you across the square. 

“Come on, there’s something I always wanted to do with you,” Curtis spoke softly as his hand found its way to the small of your back and stayed there. 

“I know the fine people of Snow’s Hollow are rooting for us, but I don't think they want a show,” you trailed off into giggles as Curtis shot you a half-hearted stink eye.  

Knowing he didn’t even need to ask, he paused at the sugary treats stand and bought a bunch of snacks he knew you loved, and then he was once again leading you to his chosen destination with this determined glint in his eye. 

You stood at the crossway across the street from his diner, confused as you sipped at your hot cocoa and glanced around. You opened your mouth to ask what you were doing, and then promptly choked on your words as two gorgeous horses trotted up, pulling behind them an intricate red and gold carriage that looked just like a sleigh.

You had forgotten this was one of the winter festival activities, one you always seemed to miss out on because the line was always so long and the cut off time made waiting at the end of it not worth it. 

“How?” you spluttered, glancing around again, “There’s not even a line…”

“Because sleigh rides haven’t technically started yet,” Curtis smirked. “I paid Grey to do me a solid.”

You glanced past Curtis to where Grey sat at the front of the sleigh, he shot you a wink and amused grin before looking away as Curtis grabbed your hand and ushered you up into the carriage. 

“Wow, this is so…wow,” you breathed as you settled into the cushy velvet seat. 

“I’m glad you like it,” Curtis replied, arranging a ridiculously soft and warm blanket over both your laps before curling his arm around your shoulders and pulling you close. 

As the horses started to trot down the beautifully lit street, you snuggled even closer to Curtis, remembering something he said from before. “You always wanted to do this? With me?”

Curtis glanced at you, huffing a laugh at your pleased, cheesy grin. “Yeah, I have.”

“I can’t believe I’ve known you all this time and had no idea that you’re a big secret sap,” you teased.

“I guess it’s a week of discoveries for you, huh?” Curtis drawled. “First, you realized I’m a guy, and now a secret sap, just for you.” 

You had never seen him so playful, or so happy–it was coming off of him in waves, really. His beautiful blue eyes were bright and dancing, a smile was constantly tugging at the corner of his lips…and it was because of you.

You made Curtis Everett happy. 

And if the way your belly was swarming like it was filled with a kaleidoscope of butterflies was any indication–and the way you couldn't stop smiling like an absolute dope–Curtis had the same exact effect on you. 

“I can’t believe this is really happening,” you confessed softly. “You and me. It’s like…a dream, or a fairytale. It’s–“

“Everything I’ve always wanted.”

“Flatterer,” you huffed playfully to hide just how touched–and joyful–his admission made you.

“No, I mean it,” Curtis said, gently touching your cheek. 

As much as you wanted to believe him–as beautiful and memorable of a time as you were having–you couldn’t help it as a little voice of doubt spoke up in the back of your mind…

You’re so bad at men and relationships, this will never last.

Curtis, who knew you so well, must have been able to read the doubts and fears stirring up your mind, because he got this determined look on his face as he turned toward you, reaching behind him to dig his wallet from his back pocket. 

“You moved here eight years ago in January,” he said, flipping his wallet open. “And the third time you came into the diner and ordered pancakes, you gave me this little Best Pancakes in the Universe certificate that you made.”

“Oh my god,” you laughed at yourself, feeling your face re-heat all over again. “I’m truly the biggest dork ever.”

“No,” Curtis shook his head, his eyes blazing at you in that way that made your body stand to attention and your insides squirm and throb. “You’re sweet and unguarded, genuine and kind.” 

He finished rifling through his wallet, pulling out a worn and battered square of paper that he so very carefully unfolded before holding it out to you.

It was the Best Pancakes in the Universe certificate that you had given him all those years ago.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, your eyes filling with tears as you stared down at the ridiculous award you had fashioned, just for him. “I can’t believe you kept this. After all these years?”

“I’m all in,” Curtis replied, his gaze meeting yours, as unguarded as he said you were, and the most serious you had ever seen him. “You and me?” he reiterated, making sure he was perfectly clear. “I’m all in.”

Feeling the first few happy tears spill over, you reached for him, pressing close as you cupped his beardy cheek with your gloved hand, met his gaze without wavering, and told him, “So am I.”

You could actually feel the coiled tension ease from Curtis’ big, broad frame as he melted against you in relief, sinking into your touch, his lips gentle but still eager as they met yours. 

He kissed you slowly, reverently, taking his time tasting you–and savoring you–as the sleigh continued its trek around the town square, the two of you completely oblivious to anything or anyone other than eachother.

“Curtis,” you whimpered, your body so overwrought and yet standing at the cliff’s edge all over again. Honestly, you had lost count of the number of times he had made you cum at this point. 

Neither of you had expected your first date to end like this, but you certainly weren’t complaining.

Not. One. Bit.

“I’ve got you,” Curtis breathed against your sweaty cheek. 

The rhythm of his hips didn’t falter as his hand found yours atop the tangled sheets of your bed. His rough palm slid against your own, his fingers twining with yours as his lips dragged along your skin. 

“Let go for me,” he breathed into your ear. “I wanna feel you cum around my cock, gorgeous.” 

His next thrust was harder than before, going deeper, lighting up every inch of you more brightly than the town square, until you gasped sharply and tipped over the edge.

You were falling, falling, falling as bliss enveloped you entirely, rushing through your veins from head to toe as you moaned and arched up against the warm, firm mass of Curtis’ naked body. 

“Good girl,” he husked against the cut of your jaw, his teeth nipping and making you gasp and squeeze around him all over again.

Curtis’ forehead was sweaty as it dropped to your shoulder, and only then, as your fluttering cunt clamped around him as the last dregs of your orgasm faded away, did he finally falter. 

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groaned.

“Your turn now,” you slurred in response, your free hand rounding Curtis’ waist and sinking down to grope his bare ass. You tilted your hips up, spreading your legs even wider in invitation. “Wanna feel you fill me up.”

He groaned again, his long, hard cock twitching inside of you, but then he started to move again. The push and pull of his hips frantic and feral. Desperate. 

Curtis sank against you more fully, clutching you tightly as he buried his face in the crook of your neck and rutted into you until his own release washed over him in a powerful wave of pleasure.

You felt him gasp against your bare skin, moaning as he shoved into you hard and deep, lingering as his cock throbbed. A few more jerky pumps of his hips and you felt the warm flood of his cum as he filled you up just like you wanted, not stilling until he fucked every last drop as deep into your thoroughly claimed cunt as he could.

The feel of his large, heavy body going totally boneless as he sank against you made your chest flutter and your belly swoop. And when you felt Curtis gently snuffling along your neck and shoulder, you couldn’t help but grin. 

“Be honest,” you murmured, your hands gently skimming up his bare back before gripping his sides. “What was more satisfying? This, or the sleigh ride?”

Curtis shook with laughter against you, his head popping up and his eyes so very warm as they met yours. “This, definitely this.”

“Agreed,” your grin was mischievous as your fingers trailed along his rosy cheek. “Besides, this ride came with a very generous load of cream, sooo….”

You giggled as Curtis tickled your sides, squirming beneath him and then gasping as he suddenly ducked low and caught your lips with his. 

You hummed into the kiss, your hands moving to frame his face as you opened up to the passionate, talented onslaught of his mouth.

Curtis didn’t pull away until you were both panting for breath, shifting until he could cradle your warm, beaming face between his massive hands. He just watched you for a long, quiet moment, admiring you in a way that was impossible to ignore.

“I believe you,” you whispered, your fingers gently curling around his wrists. 

“About what?”

“That you think I’m perfect,” your gaze flickered away shyly, but your insides were swooping all over again, because it was true. 

Curtis made you feel beautiful and wanted, and you knew that to him, you really were perfect.

He caught your chin with his fingers, guiding your vulnerable gaze back to his. Curtis’ knuckles gently caressed your cheek as he said, “I don’t think you’re perfect, I know it.” 

Then that warm, unguarded smile of his that was becoming your new norm split his lips, and he dipped close, stealing another kiss between declaring, “In addition to being perfect, you’re also mine.”

And you were.

AHHHHH!!! I actually really, really love this. It made me so 🥹 to write it. I hope it’s a bright dose of hoeliday shenanigans for you, too!

FOLLOW UP DRABBLE

—

Please take a moment to drop a comment or reblog. Engagement is the fuel that keeps writers writing and sharing their work for your enjoyment, so do your part to keep our fandom alive. Serial likers will be blocked.

I no longer do tag lists, but if you'd like to be notified when I post new writing, follow my side blog @‌sirisshamelesshoelibrary​ and turn on notifications to get pinged when I drop some new hoe fuel 😘

He opens the fridge and stands there, hand on the door, looking for the thing he knows he doesn’t have: some dinner that isn’t toast or yogurt. He glances at his phone, no messages. He looks around before releasing a deep sigh. The house always feels too silent.

Now he’s back at the door, peering through the storm glass, the box still waiting unobtrusively before him.

It isn’t his birthday, not for another three months. He’s not sure who would send him a package anyway, and he’d made no orders recently. Andy’s neighbors are too old to bother with pranks. He opens the screen, bends down to collect the box, and slips the package under his arm, carrying it in to the kitchen counter.

A neat arrangement of flowers emerges as he opens the box. No cellophane, just a pale blue tissue cushioning the stems and a small card. Not even in an envelope. The handwriting is blocky: TO ANDY. That’s it. No return address, no signature, just his name as if that alone would explain everything.

He looks at the flowers: some kind of bloom he’s never seen before. The petals seem delicate, and they’re a strange, precise shade of ivory, each petal streaked with a faint green that seems to deepen as he stares. The scent is so thick he almost recoils, first overly sweet, almost rotten with anticipation, syrupy-sweet and high-pitched, but settling, after a breath, into something lusher, like the inside of a greenhouse after rain. The air feels heavy, and on a second, unguarded inhale, his chest swells with a pleasant, tingling warmth. He can feel the pink rising along his neck, the way his hands want to fidget, like he’s standing awkwardly at a middle school dance, which is so strange he almost laughs. The scent—if he admits it, even to himself—reminds him of you, his new neighbor.

He wonders if you’re home, and the thought is so sudden, so absurd, he nearly puts the flowers back in the box. But that would be ridiculous.

He’s only met you twice: once waving from your side of the street as you retrieved your mail from the mailbox at the curb, and once at the neighborhood meeting, where after introductions were made the two of you had exchanged a handful of words about the late pick-up of recycling before Janice had called the meeting to order.

Maybe he should give the flowers to you.

No, that would also be ridiculous. He hardly knows you.

He goes to the kitchen sink and fills a water glass, digs under the cabinet for the only vase he owns—one of those heavy-glass things, left behind by someone in the house before it was his, maybe a relic of a more optimistic era, or more likely, a leftover from a florist’s upcharge. He arranges the flowers, still cautious, sets them in the middle of the kitchen table. For a minute he stands, simply staring, as if they might reveal something by being observed.

He sits at the table, scrolling his phone, forcing himself to focus on the news, but the scent of the flowers—now more bearable, even comforting—keeps lapping at his attention. He tries to read about the city council’s new water restrictions. Then about the meteor shower predicted for next week. When he looks up, the glass vase is throwing long, refracted ovals of green-tinted light onto the table, and the petals are trembling faintly, as if in a draft. There is no draft. He wonders what kind of flowers these even are. The urge to Google it is strong—maybe they’re from some rare local shrub. Maybe you’d know.

He huffs in frustration, then pushes away from the table. He makes his usual evening circuit through the house—checking doors, clicking on the living room lamp, pulling a can from the fridge—but each time he passes the kitchen, the wet-glass shimmer of the flowers is waiting, like a question he forgot to answer. He hovers in the doorway during commercials as he pretends to watch the game while really watching the slow collapse of petals in the vase. He tries to remember what you looked like across the street, what you were wearing, but all he can recall is how you hadn’t noticed him at first, and how that felt sharp and interesting in a way he didn’t know what to do with.

He eats cold noodles over the sink and finds himself rehearsing, in his head, how you might react if he brought you the flowers after all. What kind of note would he write? Would you even open the door?

The phone buzzes—a work group text, something about interviews for the new interns next week—and he thumbs out a reply, then set the phone down and finishes his shoddy meal.

He can’t remember the last time he was this preoccupied with anything. You’ve crossed his mind a number of times since you moved in across the street, but tonight it’s somehow impossible to think of anything or anyone but you. He’s never thought of himself as the “intrigued by a neighbor” type. And yet. The air feels crimped with possibility, which is stupid, because what would that even mean? He wonders if you’re watching the same game, or if you’re home at all, or if you’re across the street eating your own sad single-person dinner, oblivious to the fact that you’ve taken up residence in someone’s mind.

It doesn’t get any better.

He blames the flowers. The scent is everywhere, and he can’t make it stop, can’t crack a window wide enough to dilute it, can’t shake the sense that the petals are folding and unfurling at a speed just shy of human perception. He’s always been able to fall asleep instantly—smirking at friends who whined about insomnia—but now it’s as if his head is a hive. Minutes after crawling into bed, he’s restless, hot, the sheets sticking to him. He twists, then sits upright, the pillowcase damp and smelling faintly of the flowers. He gets up, paces the kitchen, then the living room, then stands at the window and stares across the street.

Your porch light is on. A rectangle of light throws out from your living room, and there’s a silhouette moving inside, maybe you, maybe a coat thrown over a chair, but all the same, the knowledge of you being over there is a burr under his ribs, a contamination in his bloodstream.

He can’t take it. He runs his hands through his hair, then growls in frustration and strides out his front door and down the steps of his porch before he knows what’s happening or what will come next.

The knock on your door startles your heart clean out of your body because no one should be knocking on your door this late at night.

You freeze, bowl of cereal in hand. In place of chewing, you hold your breath. After a full, tense ten seconds, there’s a second knock, insistent and measured, as though whoever is out there has no intention of going away.

You reach for your phone, thumb shaking a little more than you want to admit, and check the time, knowing you should’ve headed to bed ages ago. Not even the delivery apps will come out this late, not in this blissfully suburban neighborhood.

You mute the TV and tiptoe to the entryway, bowl cradled to your chest like a shield. Peering through the peephole, you almost drop the whole thing—milk, cereal, ceramic and all—because Andy from across the street is standing on your porch. He’s alone, wearing lounge pants and a t-shirt that’s wonderfully too tight, his usually soft-looking floofy hair wild, face creased with some expression you can’t decipher.

You step back, breathing through your nose, heart in overdrive. It’s not as if you’ve fantasized about him showing up at your doorstep in the middle of the night. Except you have. Far too many times.

You set the bowl on the entry table and smooth your hair in the faint reflection of the hall mirror. Four seconds elapse. Too long? Too short? You open the door just enough to wedge your face out the crack, just far enough to shield your pajamas, which feature a cartoon from your childhood with a long-defunct brand logo, but not so much that you’d seem like you were hiding. Andy’s bearded face is flushed; he runs a palm over the back of his neck.

“Hey,” he says, honeyed voice low, and pitching right to your twisting core. “Sorry. I know it’s late.”

You make yourself smile. “Is everything okay?”

“I, uh, yeah. I—” He glances back at the perfectly safe, empty street, then leans a little closer to the door frame. “Actually, could I come in? Just for a second?”

There’s a quality in his voice you can’t name. An urgency layered under hesitancy. You nod, opening the door wide, and back up through the narrow entry, suddenly very aware of the state of your hair, your house, the half-finished bowl of cereal.

He nearly pulls the door out of your hand, pushes it tenderly but forcefully shut, and before you can arrange your face into the appropriate social mask, Andy is kissing you like he came here to do exactly this and nothing else in the world has ever mattered. His hands are reverent and greedy at once, one cradling your jaw, the other fisting in the back of your t-shirt. He tastes faintly of toothpaste. You respond as you always imagined you would—if not out loud, then with every part of your animal self—gripping his shoulders like a lifeline, digging into the muscles you’d admired from across your respective sidewalks.

You’re already a little winded when you break apart, but Andy’s eyes are glassy and his breathing is ragged. His thumb is tracing delicate lines over your cheekbone, and you’re trying to remember how to speak when he does it again—lips on yours, but this time slower, like he’s trying to press your molecules together, seam to seam. You let him. He mouths at your lower lip until you open for him, tongue gliding in, deliberate and sure. His body presses yours backward, and you feel the flat cold of the door through your pajamas. Andy’s body is all heat and intention and hard planes against your utter softness, and the pressure of him caging you in is heady.

He pulls back, just enough to look at you, eyes wide and startled as if he can’t quite believe what he’s doing. “Sorry,” he says, almost in a daze of his own, “I just need…”

He kisses you again, mouth hot and desperate, tongue slick against yours, like he’s been thirsty for weeks. His hand never strays from your jaw, thumb stroking the hinge of it with a tenderness that nearly undoes you, but he slides the other down, skimming your side, the subtle flex of muscle through his shirt as he grips your waist. Your mind cracks open, every synapse alert, every cell singing.

You arch into him, needy, shameless. You think there’s no way this can be real. But even as you think it, he smothers a groan into your neck, lips dragging from your mouth to the pulse that hammers there, then back again, like he can’t bear to be away from your lips for more than a single heartbeat.

His palm curves over your hip, slow and decisive, then dips past the loose elastic of your pajama shorts. You gasp a warning that’s half protest, but mostly need, as his knuckles drag against your belly, then he’s inside, palm cupping you, and the simple warmth of his hand makes every thought you’ve ever had vanish. Andy kisses you with the same searching hunger, open-mouthed and ruined, as two blunt fingers sweep through the wet slick of you, slow at first, deliberate, petting the lips of your cunt until you’re squirming for more, until it’s embarrassing how wet you are, how quickly you’re coming apart.

You brace both hands against his chest, meaning to slow him, but instead you just hold on, clutching the soft cotton of his shirt, small noises escaping you. The way he kisses you is relentless—mouth devouring, tongue hot and sure, as if the world might end if he doesn’t taste every inch of you. His hand works down your body, urgent and hungry, and his fingers push deeper into your shorts, parting the seams, as if he’s opening a gift he’s thought about unwrapping for months. He slides two thick fingers into you, curling them with a deftness that feels like it should belong to a darker, more dangerous man—the kind of person your mother warned you about, not Andy, who always walks his recycling bin out at the exact right day and waves at the old lady three doors down.

You’re already trembling and he’s barely started. He fucks you with his hand, slow at first, then ruthless, setting a rhythm that makes your knees threaten to buckle. You clutch his shoulders, gasping into his open mouth, and he swallows the sound, grinning against your lips.

How is this happening?

You can’t think. You feel the split between your thighs and Andy’s hand, the way his palm is big enough to cover all the space there, possessive and gentle at once, drawing out tight circles over your clit. His fingers drive in unyielding and sweet, crooking with precision, the heel of his palm grinding firm as he fucks you through a shattering pleasure—one that comes so fast and hot you actually try to bite it back, your teeth sinking into his lower lip. He huffs a desperate, laughing sound, and when you come, it’s not like climbing some steady hill, but being dropped through a trapdoor.

You gasp and shudder, clutching at the man who just wrecked you. You should’ve protested all of this, shouldn’t you?

You want, more than anything, to collapse to the cool hardwood and drag him down with you, but Andy must sense this, because he presses you harder to the door, trapping you upright between the wood and the furnace of his body.

Andy’s hand doesn’t ease up. He holds you pinned, like you’re an answer he’s demanded from the universe and now that he’s got you, he won’t let you out of his grip. He presses his lips to your temple, riding out your aftershocks, but you feel the tremor in his arm, like restraint is costing him something precious. When you try to shift away, to breathe, he gives a small, strangled sound—almost wounded—and tugs you back, mouth at your ear.

“No,” he whispers, and his hand strokes lower, like he’s determined to find the bottom of you, the root of this need. “I need more. Need to see you—” His breath stutters, and he sucks your earlobe into his mouth, worrying it with his teeth. “Need to watch you lose it for me again.”

You’d argue, but the truth is you want the same thing, no part of you wants him to stop.

The twist of his wrist, the scuff of his palm over the tight bundle of nerves, the softness of his mouth on your jaw, your neck, the corner of your lips—he’s everywhere, demanding and worshipful. Andy’s body presses closer, crowding you against the door, and you can feel every frantic beat of his heart through the thin shield of his t-shirt. He murmurs nonsense into your skin—good girl, so gorgeous, fuck, need, need, need.

You think you’re going to say his name, but it gets stuck behind your teeth, too many syllables suddenly unfathomable. It’s ridiculous. The pressure builds, sweet and sharp, and Andy’s hand is never not exactly where you need it, somehow reading micro-adjustments on your face, your breath. He curses—soft, reverent—when your whole body shivers, when your hips buck into his palm. You’re making noises you don’t recognize, high and pleading and so raw you’d be embarrassed if you could think straight. There’s no shield. There’s just Andy and his hand and you, the way your body opens for him, the way you melt and tremble. The second release is so complete it whites out everything—and what brings you back is not your own breath or heartbeat but the faint, helpless trembling in Andy’s forearms, the way he is shaking almost as badly as you are.

He’s watching you, face open and wild, like he’s just been let out of a cage. And the sight of him—lips parted, brow damp, pupils obliterating the blue—turns your insides to syrup. You are about to collapse, or maybe just melt, when you realize Andy’s hand is still inside your shorts, but now it’s gentle, just a palm pressed over your cunt, and his other hand has caught your wrist and pinned it gently but immovably above your head.

You try to breathe. You fail.

He kisses you, softer this time, and you let your eyes flutter closed. For a long minute, the world is just your breath curling together, the press of his lips, the warmth of his chest pressed to yours, and your heart constricts beautifully, remembering how you’ve longed for a moment just like this.

And then a sudden, vivid memory of the other night, ambushes you mid-kiss.

You, alone and wine-drunk a week ago, flicking through late-night TikToks until you scrolled upon a witch who was too intriguing to pass by. She spoke about manifesting and desires and moon cycles. She was answering comments with wisdom that was tinged with only a whiff of whimsy. The whole thing seemed so exquisitely stupid, so precisely the sort of thing you’d mock with a friend at brunch, but that was half the ache that had you wine-drunk and scrolling. You’d never been in a serious romantic relationship, but now you were also in a new town with no family, no friends, lacking connection, and feeling so alone.

So you’d stayed, wanting to believe, just a little, in magic.

The witch hadn’t seemed much older than you, if at all—hair in two space buns, eyeliner winged so sharp it could slice through time. Unlike the other algorithmic spiritualists who popped up on your feed, she answered comments with candor and missed no opportunity to call out the grifters. She laughed often, cackled sometimes, and radiated a low-budget but compelling earnestness that you respected. Her handle was something like @HexAndFlex, and before you knew it, you’d clicked through to her profile and linktree, then her Etsy, then, in a tangle of embarrassment and fascination, to the checkout page.

Wine glass in hand, you signed up for her $19.99 “Goddess Alignment Manifestation” bundle via Etsy, which included a personalized reading and three PDF guides. You filled out the intake questionnaire at 2:12 a.m., pausing long and hard on the prompts: “What are your hopes? Who are you inviting into your life? What does love feel like in your body?”

Waking up the next morning, you had an email from Sage Moonwater—a name that was either a branding masterstroke or her actual birth certificate humiliation—inviting you to select a time to consult that evening via her convenient Calendly link so you could step into your power and claim the life you deserved, specifically by manifesting “your soulmate’s touch” before the next crescent moon. It was so transparently silly, but her voice had had a way of making you feel less like a joke and more like a person who could actually want things, and what the hell did you have to lose now that you’d already paid the twenty bucks?

You’d set up the call for the same evening, all self-mockery, already rehearsing the text you’d send to Emily about what you were about to do. But as soon as the video chat connected, you felt a weird, grounding nervousness, like maybe you were about to reveal something shameful and true.

Sage had an actual backdrop—galaxy stars on a rich tapestry, a candle burning low, shelves of glass jars and labeled bottles that might hold essential oils or ketchup packets for all you could see. She greeted you with a firm, confident wave and a smile so wide it bordered on conspiratorial. She asked about your day, your mood, how you slept, and the questions came not as a checklist but as a real curiosity, like she wanted to know what you’d eaten for lunch because it was the first data point in a cosmic equation. The whole interaction felt, bizarrely, more intimate than your last three actual dates.

She asked and you talked about desire, about heartbreak, about loneliness, about the years and years of being the person everyone called “so independent” and “so intimidating” when really, you would’ve given up every self-actualized inch of it just to have one person see you across a crowded room and want you enough to cross the distance. You had not intended to say any of this, not even to yourself, but in the slow momentum of Sage’s affirming silences and cocked eyebrows, it all tumbled out. The next thing you knew, you were telling her about the feeling of your last almost-relationship ending, how it made you feel like a fading echo in a canyon, and how the new town had seemed like a possibility for a reset, a new chapter and new connections, but instead just made everything echo louder.

And then you mentioned your neighbor. Andy. Not by name at first, but by silhouette: the broad-shouldered man who was clean cut and seemed so kind and took his trash bins to the curb at the exact legally sanctioned minute, who always mowed the lawn of your elderly neighbor. You admitted—your cheeks burning, as if Sage could sense it across the pixels—that your neighbor looked like the actor who played Captain America, only with a beard that made him look less Marvel franchise and more the Northeast suburban lawyer that he was. You told her that, and Sage grinned, writing notes on an index card, and said you should never apologize for wanting a man whose forearms could probably open a stuck pickle jar with hardly an ounce of effort.

Sage guided you through a ritual that was half guided meditation, half pep talk, and one hundred percent more soothing than you expected. The rest of the call was a blur, but you remembered the precise click of the lighter as Sage torched a little twist of something in a shell, then told you to believe, for just a minute, that the universe would not play you if you simply asked for what you wanted, no disclaimers, no shame. At the end, Sage closed her eyes and murmured something, then said, “Manifestation doesn’t mean sitting still. When you see the signal, walk into it. Be the spell.” You laughed—together as she took her craft but not herself too seriously, you promised to leave her a five-star review, and closed the laptop.

Then you forgot about it. Full on forgot for the rest of the week, until the entire affair reverberates with the force of a sucker punch, the moment Andy’s hand, slick with you, presses harder, grounding you in the exact present of everything Sage told you to want.

Now, as you gasp for air—Andy’s mouth still pressed to the hinge of your jaw, his hand holding your wrist pinned—you have the wild, horrible thought that you might actually have done this. Not just metaphorically, not in the way of I set an intention and now the universe is showing me signs, but in the literal, actions-have-consequences sense of the word. That you, in a fit of late-night desperation, tapped your wishes into the digital void with the help of an Etsy witch, and then the void, bored or mercenary or high on its own power, sent you Andy, unfiltered, nearly deranged with need, to finish what you started.

“Oh, no,” you murmur, breathless, aware at cellular level that you’ve broken something and there’s no undialing it back. Andy’s mouth is still on your neck, but his hand has stilled, fingers wet and honest where they rest. You feel the insane urge to confess all of this, to babble out the chain of cause and consequence, but that would be even more unhinged than what’s actually happening, so you just clutch at his nape like you can anchor yourself to him and ride it out.

Andy, meanwhile, is not waiting for your existential reconciliation. He’s pulling you from the entryway, hands gentle but insistent, urging you through the darkness of your own house toward the living room. Neither of you turns on the light, as if to do so would break this spell and lay bare the ordinary details—your couch’s threadbare arm, the red-wine blot you still haven’t cleaned from the rug.

You stumble a little in front, Andy’s body close behind, and he makes a sound, half-plea, half-laughter, and tells you to, “Wait, wait,” and then he’s pulling you, deft hands at your hips, to the couch.

He presses you down by the shoulders. Not rough, not even assertive—just a gentle, inarguable pressure until you’re seated, knees spread slightly by the width of his own. Then he is on his knees before you, hands sliding up your thighs with a kind of focus you’ve never been on the receiving end of, certainly not from a man who, until ten minutes ago, was no more than a participant in your erotic daydreams. He looks up at you, gaze level and starved, and you realize with a choked hitch in your breath that Andy’s intent is not ambiguous. Not even slightly.

You know how this scene is supposed to go. You’ve read enough, watched enough, spent enough late nights with a hand beneath your sheets and a fantasy running wild to recognize the choreography: the kneeling man, the parted thighs, the hungry eyes and trembling hands. Your heart should be galloping, and your body should be velvet and opening, but what you actually feel in this precise instant is a kind of underwater panic—a clutching in your chest that says, This isn’t you, this isn’t how you imagined it, not even in the most fevered, shame-laced moments before sleep. You want him, yes, but you want the wanting to be mutual, not conjured or compelled or rolling downhill because gravity says it must.

You seize his wrists—not to guide, but to stop him. For a second, the only sound is your breath, jagged and raw in the dark. Andy’s arms tense, and he freezes, hands hovering just above your knees.

“I need to know,” you say, surprised at how thin and breakable your voice is. “Do you actually want this?”

He’s startled, like you’ve splashed cold water in his face, and draws back just enough for a wedge of lamplight from the street to silver his jaw. He blinks, hard, and his mouth forms a quizzical line. “Of course I want this,” he says, and when you don’t let go, he adds, “I need it.”

You should let that be good enough. You should. But something inside you is a little stubborn, a little afraid this isn’t about you, but about magic and that the spell won’t last if it isn’t real.

You tug Andy’s arms higher, make him look at you. “Not need,” you say, the two words sounding childish, a repetition from some earlier, unsophisticated self. “Want. Do you even like me?” It’s an absurd moment to ask, and you nearly laugh, except the stakes are so much sharper than they were a minute ago.

Andy’s head tilts, and you see the fight in his face, the tangle of what’s happening and what he thinks should be happening. His brow knits, lips pursing as if considering this seriously, like you’re a witness in some small, late-night court, and he needs to get the answer right on the record.

“I—” The word is thick. He tries again. “Yes. Jesus, yes. Since you moved in. Hell, I thought I was being subtle. I—” He drops his gaze, and his hands flex hard on your knees.

Then his hands come up to cradle your hips, steady and unquestioning, and for a moment he just looks at you. His hands squeeze your hips, like he’s grounding himself, and he says, “No, I wasn’t being subtle. I was being careful. Guarded.

“Last time I had something that was supposed to be good, it blew up, and I lost it all. I couldn’t keep it, and I swore I’d never want that hard again.” His thumb slides, absently, along the bare skin where your shirt rides up. “But I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Not since the first week you showed up. I don’t even know why I’m here, doing this, skipping a hundred steps. But I want to want you, actually want you, and not just for tonight.”

You stare at him like an idiot, every word a stone dropped in the deep well of your body. You surge forward and now it’s you who’s kissing him like he’s the air you need to breathe. Your mouth meets his and this time there is no hesitation, no apology. You wind your hands into the back of his hair and tug, not to hurt but to anchor, and when Andy’s teeth scrape your lower lip, you welcome the pain because it means presence, it means both of you are here. The kiss tastes a little of resolve and a little of blood, and you devour it, clambering forward until you’re no longer seated but crouched over him, both of you half off the couch, falling together into the negative space between bodies.

He moves with you, arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you into his lap, so you’re straddling him, your knees bracketing his hips, your hands gripping his face. The feel of his beard on your palms is shockingly soft, and you run your thumbs along his jawline, mapping him, learning the shape of what you’ve summoned into existence. “Andy,” you whisper, testing the word against the flat of his tongue, and then again, like this will root him in place and keep him from dissolving away. He shudders, arms banding you tight, and you think, This is what it means to be wanted.

You can’t stop your hands. You want to clutch the collar of his shirt and drag it over his head, but instead you just knead the soft cotton over his shoulders, wanting to memorize every contour, every heat map of skin and muscle. He lets you, hands feather-light at your back, as if he’s still recalibrating to the idea that it’s possible, that this is happening. You dig your nails into his shoulders, shivering at the thought that this is real. Andy shivers too, and when your hips rock down, you both moan, a glorious, unscripted duet.

You laugh, or do something like it—a sound that is threaded with disbelief, with the creeping thrill that this moment is real. Andy is kissing your throat, your jaw, your face, kisses everywhere. You let your arms go slack, let your head fall back so he can drag his mouth along the column of your neck. All shyness has evaporated. You grind against him now, swim in the dizzy, churning heat, and every friction of your body ratchets it higher.

He rocks you in his lap, hands steady, and you can feel him straining hard beneath the soft jersey of his pants. There’s a voice in your head that wants to script this, to slow time and savor every beat—but you’re already gone, fueled by something that feels elemental. You hook your fingers under the hem of his shirt—his body is so warm, too warm, as if he’s been running a fever for you—and drag the fabric up his back. Andy helps you strip it off, and you stake your palms against his chest, which is warm and smooth, and you realize with delight that you had guessed correctly—light brown hair, just enough to tangle your fingers in. You do, just because you can, and Andy hisses, then laughs, catching your wrists and kissing the insides of them.

Your own shirt is next, or maybe he gets there first, but either way you’re bare chested against him, your nipples dragging over the broad terrain of his chest, and the friction is electric. You shudder, and Andy’s breath is hot on your neck as he buries his face there, humming low. His hands find the small of your back—one splayed to anchor you, the other traveling up your spine to cradle the curve of your neck, fingertips tracing fire along your vertebrae. His palm is huge, a brand against your skin, and you arch into it—hungry, greedy, alive.

You reach down, pulling at the drawstring on his lounge pants, and brush your knuckles along the line of his hip, skin so hot you think it might burn you. Andy’s teeth scrape your collarbone, and you laugh again, gasping.

You slide your hand beneath the waistband, push past the taut elastic, and find him hot, hard, and heavy in your palm. Andy’s eyes screw shut, jaw flexing. His head tips back, lips parted, and the sound he makes is so raw, so unguarded, you grip him tighter just to hear it again.

He lets you stroke him for three, maybe four slow pulls, until his patience fails and he tackles you backwards, the suddenness of it sending you sliding to the rug. He lands above you, catching your skull in his hand so you don’t hit the floor, the other braced by your shoulder, and for a moment you both hover, suspended over the thrum of your own need, before he’s tearing at your shorts, shoving them down your legs and off, then pulling your thighs around his hips. You’re naked on your living room rug, limbs akimbo, world reduced to the heat where his body meets yours.

Andy’s hand finds your knee, wedges himself between your thighs, and your heart stutters when you feel the heavy press of his cock against you, notching himself at your entrance. He presses forward, the head of him breaching you, then stops, sucking in a breath so sharp it’s almost a curse. “Fuck,” he growls.

The tenor of it sends a sliver of doubt through you. “What is it?”

He looks down, like this is the first moment he’s considered anything other than skin and the immediacy of you. “I, uh,” he says, “I don’t have anything on me.” The way he says it—on me—drags you back to the shore of reality. “Fuck, I’m sorry, this is so… Do you have anything?”

You don’t have to think hard about it. You know there is no pharmaceutical miracle in your bedside drawer, no leftover Trojan in your purse, not even a faded old wrapper in the medicine cabinet. You are never reckless, never this unprepared, and yet—“I don’t,” you say, and there is no hiding the want in your voice, no matter how much you try to paste on a veneer of caution. So you say the only other thing that’s blaring through your mind, “I don’t care. I want you.” And you mean it.

Andy freezes, some battle of conscience visible in the sharp lines of his face. But your next words crack him open. “I trust you.”

He leans in, presses his brow to yours. “I’ll pull out,” he says, voice a rumble and a promise, but you know even as he says it that you’re both already beyond that kind of discipline. He lets the head of his cock push just inside—enough to make your body go tight, desperate—and then he fucks you. It’s want, it’s intimate, but it’s an unadulterated fuck.

There is no slow easing in, no warmup. He’s already so thick and hard that the first push makes you gasp, makes your knees come up to lock behind his hips, makes your eyes flutter shut so you can concentrate on the sensation of being split with wanting. Andy cradles your head in his palm, mouthing frantic apologies into your neck, but you clutch at his ass, digging half-moons into his skin, urging him deeper. He’s past the point of teasing, and so are you. He drives in, the long, forceful motion grinding your back into the rug, and you can feel every inch of him, feel the way your body adjusts and grabs at him, absolutely unwilling to let go.

The sounds are obscene—yours, his, the wet slick of every thrust amplified by the chamber of your ribs. With each stroke, Andy mutters a gospel of fuck yes, you feel so good, so tight, fuck, never, never, not like this, fuck, need, fuck. You lose the shape of your own voice, the thrum of your body a radio tuned to a single frequency—fullness, friction, the absolute need to have him inside you.

You feel the edge building with every thrust, the thick heat of his cock nearly too much, the sweet ache of him pushing against the deep wall of you, and then—he angles your hips and suddenly he’s hitting something that turns you inside out. Your yelp is wild, and he does it again just to hear it, just to chase it. The rhythm is relentless, not violent but insistent. Your hands catch at his arms, shoulders, back—anywhere, everywhere—and your nails rake lines down the ladder of his spine.

He braces himself above you, then drops onto his elbows, crushing your body beneath his, pressing your breasts to his chest, so every thrust rocks you together. One palm cradles your jaw, tilting your face up, and he kisses you so deep the longing goes atomic, the world turning inside out.

You know that you’re making noises. You know your mouth is open and you’re emitting a sound with each pulse of his body into yours, but you’re not sure what it is, nor do you care. You’re right at the edge, clinging to the lip of it, and the friction is so much, so constant, that when you blurt, “Don’t stop,” you don’t even recognize your own voice.

Andy cants his hips and you swear he’s gotten deeper, impossibly so, and he grazes the spot that makes the world flash white at the edges.

You teeter at the precipice, clutch at his back, your legs straining around him. He feels your body start to come undone and murmurs, “That’s it, just like that,” right by your ear, breath molten. He grinds even deeper, and the pressure is so much you’re not sure if you’re gasping or screaming. Climax devours you in greedy waves—first ripping and sharp, then rolling, sensual, heady. Your cunt clamps hard around him and you feel him stutter, lose cadence, gasp your name like a plea. He’s close, so close, so ready to follow, and you sense his muscles tense, his will battling itself.

He tries to pull out, you feel it, the faltering withdrawal, and something primal and vast surges up from your deepest self. You fist your hands in his hair, drag his mouth to your ear, and whisper, “Don’t. Please. I want you to finish inside me.” Your voice is shredded, a raw thing, almost animal.

He groans, the sound wrenching from him, and he punctuates it with your name, the syllables snapping and falling apart, and then he’s coming inside you, the heat of it blooming in deep, pulsing bursts, and your body cages it, cages him, takes in all of it because it wants to, because you can. He’s heavy on top of you and you pull him down, press your face to his shoulder and hold him through that long, shuddering ride-down, both of you panting, hearts jackhammering against rib and skin and the braided muscle of your entwined bodies.

Eventually, Andy shifts, bracing himself carefully on his elbows so as not to crush you under his weight, but he looks down at you, face awash in disbelief and—if you’re reading it right—something like worship.

For a long time you just breathe. Your body hums, a sweet ache radiating from your pelvis, your thighs, your shoulders. Andy strokes your ribs in slow, lazy circles, like you’re a cat he’s coaxed into his lap. The air smells like salt and sweat and ozone, like something essential has been altered at the molecular level.

Andy is the first to break the silence, resting his brow against yours and exhaling, “Jesus Christ.”

You giggle softly and press a kiss to his jaw. “That was…” You don’t finish the sentence. Can’t. The words would be inadequate.

He nudges at you, gentle as a suggestion, and rolls your entire body with his until you’re both on your sides, limbs still knotted, belly to belly. The rug itches at your hip and the room is cold now that the furnace of him has transferred from on to next to, but neither of you is willing to move. Andy tucks your head under his chin, beard scraping your scalp, one arm pillowed under you, the other banded around your ribs.

You go slack in his arms, the exhaustion of pleasure rolling in after the storm, but your mind is a live wire, all overloaded circuits and impossible, bright newness.

“We should get up,” you say, because you were never one to fall asleep on the living room floor, but now you know you and Andy are both far too old to stay here for long in any kind of comfort.

Andy rumbles a laugh in your hair. “We should,” he agrees, but neither of you does, and you lay there, two bodies caught in a gravity well, breathing in tandem.

You run your palm up Andy’s rib cage, feeling the slight tremor beneath his skin, and look up into his face. He’s already watching you, blue eyes luminous in the dark. You’re both still naked; your bodies are still a tangle, and neither of you is prepared to speak just yet. He kisses your forehead, so light it feels like a benediction, and then he sighs, long and low, utterly without artifice. “You’re unreal,” he says.

You want to tell him, in that moment, about the witch, the twenty-dollar spell, about the two a.m. confessional and the shattering loneliness that made you whisper your want directly at the universe. You want to tell him you think you made this happen, that the ties between coincidence and desire are thinner than dental floss, but the words tangle up in your chest.

Because as surreal as the first moments were rocketing through the two of you as he showed up in your entryway, everything after felt real. The ache in your limbs is a perfect echo of satisfaction. You’re aware of Andy’s hand moving, tracing slow, distracted circles along the small of your back, like you’re something fragile or a secret he’s only just discovered.

It’s only a few minutes later that you do shift and groan at the discomfort of the floor, and Andy laughs.

You both untangle, groaning dramatically at the effort it takes to stand. Andy is first to his feet, and he has the nerve to offer you his hand like he’s some kind of courtly gentleman and not the man who just railed you so hard your vision is migrating out the sides of your skull. You snort and take it anyway, let him steady you as if you might topple, even though you are perfectly well balanced, thank you.

You shuffle toward the bathroom and he hangs back, fastening his pants, fussing with the drawstring. When you turn back to catch him, he’s straightening the couch cushions, gathering your clothes, and—hilariously—folding them into a neat pile on the endtable.

“Andy?” you call softly.

“Yeah?” he answers, turning to look at you.

“Come shower and stay the night?”

He looks at you for the space of four heartbeats, but it’s all intensity and warmth, and so you know before he says it, that the answer is a simple, “Yeah.”

Maybe this will be nothing. Maybe this will be everything. Right now it’s just this: a real thing, a warm thing, a thing with no name yet and no need for one, and the rest of it can wait.

AND???

WHAT DO WE THINK?

Did you like? 🥹 As I said in the A/N at the beginning, I had some immediate AU possibilities come to mind, but then I felt like they were all stories I'd probably read before, and I was happy enough to play in the typical sandbox, but then I thought....

WAIT!

WHAT IF ETSY WITCH?! And then my muse was gleeful in that idea... scrolling through Tiktok, going ahead and just trying the thing, and then maybe the witch thinking... maybe let's give these two a little push and sending those flowers Andy's way, see if she could send just a little bit of harmless magic your way because she genuinely liked you.

A little sex pollen never hurt anyone, right? 😌

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

Things are different in the weeks that follow the visit from your guests from the south. You sense it in the way Steven moves through the halls—with more watchfulness than before, less the heedless animal force that once hurled him at everything in reach and more the measured, circumspect tread of a man who has recognized, possibly for the first time, the possibility of losing some part of his world.

He wakes you each morning with the same relentless heat, the same demanding hands and cock, but sometimes in the small moments after—when his breath has slowed and your bodies are still tied together by what he’s poured into you—he watches you as though trying to decipher a language only you two share, and that he’s afraid to find his own words missing.

He fills his days with a new kind of purpose, stalking the battlements at dusk, making careful inventory of the armory, drilling the younger men himself, relentless and all-consuming. He is building something, you think; you are watching him fortify what he loves, even if he cannot say so aloud.

It changes things between the two of you, this awareness—a tension not of violence or even sex, but of something almost—fragile. It surfaces in the way he sometimes laces his fingers with yours, as if idly, but never breaks the hold first. Or in the way his hand will pause at your back, hovering as though it wants to support you, but cannot quite allow itself the indulgence of tenderness outright. You feel it when he watches you from across the hall during mealtimes, and in how he discusses matters of the court with you, less dismissive, more—what is it, respect?—than before.

You’d imagined, once, that the longer you stayed here, the more invisible you might become. That a queen, even one captured and bartered for as you were, would eventually be more statue than person, a vessel for tradition and dynasty, not for selfhood. But the opposite has happened. Your days are full—helping Ursa plan the planting festivals, overseeing repairs to the winter-damaged barns, learning which of Helga’s cryptic warnings to heed and which to ignore. Even the village children know you now, trailing after your skirt-hems, bringing you bits of amber and sea glass as trophies.

You do not yet know all your position will be nor what your marriage is, but it has grown in ways you did not expect.

Today the itch comes before the noon hour but you try to ignore it—try to keep occupied, try to let your hands and mind be so full of tasks that they might crowd out the throb in your thighs, the heat curling low in your belly. You visit the kitchens, where the steam and spitting fat makes you lightheaded; you walk the length of the halls. Nothing works. The ache is stubborn, eager, and it turns every thought toward Steven and the way he sometimes bends you over the windowsill, or pins you against the wall, or drags you across the floor, or—most especially, most humiliatingly—the way he simply looks at you from across the room and makes you want to drop to your knees and beg for him.

It’s the wanting that undoes you.

So you go to him.

You find Steven in the council room, hunched over a parchment at the long pine table. Two of his advisors—Lorens with his pinched mouth and restless fingers, and Samuel with his strong jaw—lean in, voices serious as the men confer. The fire is banked low, providing warmth in the chill of late winter, some light still making itself available at the end of the afternoon.

Steven glances up before the others notice you, as if summoned by the heat of your gaze. His eyes meet yours and for a fraction of a second the animal in him flares out from behind his eyes—hungry, sharp, but now tempered by something that almost looks like pride. Then his face flickers back to impassiveness, the steel mask that serves him so well.

You linger at the edge of the room, weighing whether to approach, and Steven’s head tips a fraction—an order: come here.

You cross the stone flags, your steps soft in the hush, and though both advisors shoot glances your way, neither wavers in their discourse with their king. Steven’s attention swings fully your way. “What is your need?” he asks, tone flat, but his eyes flick down your body in a way that indicates he has a suspicion.

You feel the heat rise up your neck, but you meet his gaze with steadiness. “May I have a moment alone with my husband?” you ask, glancing at the two counselors, but then back to Steven, who holds the power to determine.

Steven doesn’t bother with the pretense of courtesy or debate. “You are both dismissed,” he says, without looking away from you.

Lorens rises first, shuffling his papers together, darting you a glance that slides away as soon as it lands. Samuel lingers a moment, still watching Steven, then bows and retreats. The door closes and the hush in the room is absolute.

He shifts his weight back, squares his shoulders and leans into the chair in a way that makes you aware, acutely, of the span of his thighs and the space he commands even at rest.

You cross the distance with measured dignity, careful not to let your pace betray the heat burning in the marrow of your bones, and stand just close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from him, like a sun behind a cloud. He is silent, letting you name your need, or your shame, whichever will come first.

Steven watches you for a long moment, eyes keenly narrowed, the muscle in his jaw tight. He says nothing.

For a moment, you don’t know where to begin. Everything seems both urgent and trivial in the presence of his attention, so you choose the truth. “There are things I want,” you say, boldness tripping up over the lump in your throat.

He lets the silence hang there, sharp as a blade, before allowing himself the faintest lift of a brow. “Then take them.” He speaks with the same ruthless clarity he brings to every command, but there’s no mockery in it. He means it, means for you to have whatever you dare to name.

You do. The table is long, but you are bold; you slide one knee onto the bench beside Steven, the movement deliberate, and then sit on his lap, straddling him there in the firelit hush.

His hands go immediately to your hips, holding you hard but not to control—just to steady you. You feel the heat of him, not just between your thighs, but burning clean through the linen of his shirt, through the wool of your own bodice. He stares up at you, face hungry.

You stare at him, daring him to make the next move. He doesn’t. His hands rest at your hips, heavy and expectant. The fire at your back, the muscle and heat of him before you—everything about Steven in this instant screams that he is ready to be the instrument of whatever you wish, but will not move first. Not on this.

“Is that an order, my king?” you ask, your voice breathier than you wish it to be.

He tilts his head, considering you with that odd, deep tenderness that you’ve begun to learn is not softness, not in the way you once recognized, but a fiercer kind of loyalty. “If you want it to be,” he says. “If you find that easier.”

You shake your head slowly, hands coming up to splay over the breadth of his chest, flattening your palms against him. Your center rocks forward, brushing over the bulge beneath his breeches, his cock hard and already straining, and your knees nearly give out at the contact.

You move your hips again, slow at first, feeling the thick heat of him grow even harder through the layers of cloth. His hands tighten at your waist, fingers digging in, but he still does not guide, does not take—just lets you rut against him, lets you chase the friction, lets you lose yourself in the animal want while the firelight flickers on his jaw and shadow.

You know what you want. You want to make him want, want to crack this composure, want to see him desperate and raw for you in the way that matches the heat that drove you here, the appetite he’s shown so consistently for you night and day. You grind down, seeking the angle that brings his cock flush against your throbbing center. Steven’s hands tighten with every pass, and his breathing grows shallow, the tips of his ears red with the effort it costs him to hold back.

You slide your hands to his face—beard rough against your palms—and force him to look at you, really look. “I want you to fuck me,” you say, and the baldness of the word makes you pulse with shame and thrill both. “Here. Now.” The echo of that word clings in the air, lurid, and the last filter between you and your want is gone.

Steven’s mouth doesn’t twitch with a smirk, but his eyes—blue, hungry and dark—crinkle at the corners in a way that says everything. His hand moves, slow as a glacier but infinitely more dangerous, sliding beneath the folds of your skirt, up the naked curve of your thigh. The callused pads of his fingers ignite a trail of prickling heat as he climbs, relentless. He finds you already slick, sodden with want, and his thumb strokes the seam of your cunt with a firm, approving press.

“Good,” he murmurs, voice soft but thick with command, “you’re already soaked for me.” There is no pretense, no veneer of gentleness—he takes pride in your need. He sinks the tip of his finger into you, just a knuckle, then deeper, testing your readiness, your greed.

He pulls out, coats his thumb in your arousal, and draws lazy, humiliating circles over your clit. Every nerve is strung to that spot, never letting you retreat from the pleasure he wrings from you. You clutch at his shoulders as the world narrows to the relentless, masterful pressure of his hand, the delicious grind of your hips against his, and the raw, unslakable need that’s driven you across half the castle to tremble on his lap like a supplicant at an altar.

He toys with you like this until you’re panting, biting your own lip to keep from sobbing with how close you are, how much you need more—him, inside you, every inch. Steven keeps you there, strung out on the edge, until you think you’ll break apart from the wanting. He waits, and he watches, the blue eyes locked on yours as if daring you to beg.

You do, in the end. “Please,” you whisper, and the word is so thin and desperate it hardly sounds like your voice, but it gets the reaction you want. He withdraws his hand entirely, leaving you gasping and empty, eager.

His voice is a rough thread as he says, “Up. Bend.”

Your legs shake as you climb off him, but you obey instantly, turning to face the table and propping yourself on your elbows, the rough grain cool beneath your cheek. You hear him behind you, the scrape of his chair across the stone as he moves to stand. The weight of his hand at your back is both warning and anchor as he flips your skirts up and over your waist and exposing your bare flesh to the chill of the council room. The air is cold, but his hands are a brand, searing every inch they touch.

He grinds up behind you, the heavy, swollen head of his cock lining up with your slick, clenching entrance, and you are so hungry that you try to wriggle back to catch him, but his other hand clamps to your hip, holding you in place.

Steven bends low, beard scratch and all, and growls into your ear, “You want to be claimed, little queen? You want to prove who you belong to?” The timber of his voice, the brutal edge of the words, makes your knees go to water. The answer is obvious. The answer is him. Always, always, always him.

You nod, but it isn’t enough for Steven. He wants words, he wants confession, he wants you to submit to this truth with clarity. “Say it,” he snarls, and the hand at your hip shifts to wrap around your throat, not hard, but with promise of force.

“I belong to you,” you say, the words the admission to usher in the next movement. You feel the hot slide of the broad head of Steven’s cock dragging slow and deliberate through your folds—soaking it in the mess he’s just made of you, teasing as though there is any possibility you would not take him instantly and whole. He rubs the slick head up and down, slow, then lingers at your entrance, not yet breaching, just savoring the helpless flex and pulse of your body trying to draw him in, refusing you the fullness you crave.

“You’re so desperate, you will let me fuck you right here on the war table,” he mutters, voice raw. The hand at your throat tightens slightly, making you shiver. “Would you let the entire kingdom see their queen bred by her king?”

You whimper, the shameful thrill of his words tightening every muscle in your core. “Yes. I would.” The fibers in your throat burn with the confession, but Steven’s hand at your nape releases just enough to let you gasp in relief. He’s proud of you—can feel it in the pulse of his cock, straining now, that he has made you need him so absolutely in this place and in this way.

Then there’s the sharp, deliberate press of his body crowding your ass, the hard and heavy heat of his cock settling between your cheeks, threatening the softest, tightest part of you. He bends down, mouth at your ear, and you feel the scrape of his beard and the thrum of his voice as he says, “Hold still.”

You do.

You pulse with anticipation, with nerves, with a need that borders on terror. Steven spits into his hand—loud, crude, and the sound goes straight to your clit—and then he smears the spit over the head of his cock, and over you, and then the push comes, blunt and inexorable, at the forbidden ring of muscle. It is too much, always, but you want it, you want the proof of his hunger, the rawness of being taken where only he has ever claimed.

The stretch is a fire in your bones. You dig your fingers into the edge of the table, desperate to ground yourself as Steven pushes past every last shred of resistance. It is agony and rapture, the full width of him splitting you, and for a moment you go blind, dizzy from the stretch and the heat and the sheer, obscene fullness of him forcing its way inside you.

He doesn’t take you all at once. He works you open, withdrawing and then pressing back in, a little deeper with every rut until you shake beneath him, gasping for air, sobbing around the thickness of him. Sweat beads along your spine, and you are aware only of the way the rough grain of the table digs into your cheek and the way his voice is a rasp of praise washing over you as he speaks.

“You take it,” he says, a kind of awe in the echoing hollowness of the council chamber. “You take me so well, little wife.”

Once fully sheathed, he holds you there, impaled, the hand on your neck now a bracing anchor, his hips flush to your ass. His other hand splays over your lower back, holding you steady and open, thumbs digging in just above the curve of your hips. You feel the tremble in his thighs, the fight he wages to keep from just rutting you through the table; you feel, too, the seething pride in how willing—how eager—you are to take whatever he gives, no matter how intense.

Slowly, Steven withdraws, the drag of his cock raw against the tight, trembling ring. He spits another mouthful into his palm, adds more lube to your now-aching hole, and sets a rhythm that is measured, deliberate. The sound of it—his hips meeting your flesh, the wet suction, the low, rough praise in his voice—is a percussion that underlines every brutal stroke. You crave the violence of it, the way he fucks you open with single-minded focus, and still, still, you want more.

“Steven,” you gasp, not knowing what you’re begging for, only that you want every inch, every ounce of him, even in the places that ache and pulse and maybe cannot take more. He answers with a groan, a hand moving from your hip to your clit, grinding over the little bundle of nerves with all the wicked skill he’s refined over months of your fucking.

The overwhelming friction, the fullness, the throb—is unbearable, and you come, hard, so hard it borders on violence. Your body clamps around him, the spasm nearly paralyzing you as your limbs weaken, every muscle in your core pulsing and throbbing around the invasive, overwhelming width of your king. The edges of your vision blur and the sound you make is animal, wordless, but Steven answers, driving you through the crest of your climax, sinking into you with a force that obliterates all thought.

He fucks you through it, relentless and victorious, hands huge and hard at your hips, jerking you back to claim every last inch until you’re sobbing with how full, how impossibly stuffed you are. Each thrust pushes you flat to the table, and you are only vaguely aware of the smears of spit and slick and sweat pooling at the join of your bodies, the way it soaks through your thighs, leaving you wrecked and open for him.

He’s not finished with you, not by a long shot. Steven’s cock withdraws from your ass with a slow, wrenching drag, leaving you shuddering and empty, all your muscles fluttering and your face hot against the cold grain of the table. You sob, a little, at the loss, and you can feel the slick mess of your own juices and his spit running down your thighs, the burn at your rim pulsing in time with your heartbeat.

But then his hands are gentler—one at your hip, one braced at your shoulder as he lines himself up again, this time pressing the heavy, hot tip of his cock between your thighs, seeking the place you are already swollen and desperate for him. You whimper, still spent and oversensitive from your first climax, but even so, you arch your hips, eager for the fullness only he gives.

He slides in, not slow but not cruel, just driving every inch into your aching, greedy cunt. You keen, desperate, not even caring that your voice is a needy, broken thing in the echoing hush of the council chamber.

Steven’s mouth finds your ear, “Every man at court, every lord, every advisor—every last one knows you are mine, but I want it ringing in their ears forever as I breed you.”

With every stroke, Steven’s cock brushes the most sensitive part inside you, your battered and wet cunt spasming around him, milking him for all he can give. You feel every vein, every ridge, every pulse of his cock as it spears you open, and it’s so much, so good, you come again, harder this time, a rush that’s almost terror but made only of pleasure, pure and shattering.

Your cunt pulses around him, hungry and slick, wringing him, wringing you, until there is nothing left in your head but the need to come again—and the way Steven makes you do it, every time, with just a fuck and a promise and the weight of his whole body pressing you down. You arch your back, desperate to take him deeper, and the hand at your shoulder pins you flat to the table, holding you still as he braces and thrusts, making you quiver and moan, making you mindless for him.

The pace now is punishing, but you crave it. Each time your hips threaten to buck off the wood he keeps you pinned down, rutting into you as if you’re a thing made only for his taking. The itch in your belly blooms to wildfire, sharp and wild, and the overstimulation is edged with a pleasure so beautiful you could scream for it, could cry for the way it rips you open and fills in every last corner of your wanting, and so you do.

He fucks you through the aftershocks, fucking every last spasm of pleasure from your body, fucking you until you’re hoarse and sobbing and barely conscious with the white-hot pleasure and the raw bruise of being so completely, so thoroughly used. You know you will wear the marks of this for days—on your throat, on your hips, at the tight, spent holes still drooling spit and slick and sweat down your thighs.

Steven comes at last with a roar, hips slamming into you so hard the edge of the table cuts the breath from your lungs, and the twitch and pulse of his cock fills you, flooding you in one final, conquering pulse. The heat of him, the quantity of him, is unspeakable—you feel it sear a path to your womb, a brutal, claiming flood that fills you so full the excess is forced out around his cock, further slicking your thighs, sticking your skin to the wood.

The hand at your nape strokes the ridge of your spine, his breath crashing against your back, and you realize he is fighting himself, struggling to corral the violent tenderness now threatening to shatter him from the inside out.

For a long while, neither of you move. The only sound is the ragged thrum of your breaths and the wild, feral stammer of his heart as it tries to slow. Your legs are boneless, splayed wide, and he keeps you pressed to the table, still impaled, as if even a breath’s space could risk losing what he’s just staked his soul on.

Finally, Steven eases back, hands gentle as he scoops you from the table—your limbs limp, trembling, useless in the aftermath—and cradles your whole body against his chest. He gathers your legs up as he moves back and reclaims his earlier seat, settling you in his lap, bundled and shattered against the heat of his skin. He strokes your hair, your back, mauling you close as if afraid you might dissolve into the air if not caged to him. His cock softens inside you, but he cannot let you go, not yet; he just clutches you tighter, your spent body rocked gently soothed, a motion at odds with the violence of minutes before.

When you can finally catch your breath, you turn slightly more into him and you press your cheek to the hollow of his throat. You listen to the tide of his pulse, the desperate hunt of his lungs for air. Somewhere outside, the world carries on—voices, firewood splitting, kids shrieking down the corridor—but here, in this carved-out moment, you are the only two who exist.

Steven is the one to speak first, rough and low in your ear. “I want—” He breaks off, his voice rough and strangely weak, so unlike the man who just ruined you over a council table you hardly know how to answer it. The man who has ruined you so many times. You lift your head to meet his gaze. The fires in his eyes are guttering now, but not cold—they burn with a different fuel, something almost like desperation.

“I want you to want it,” he says, the words torn from some engine deeper than pride, deeper than need. “Not just because I am your king. Not because it is owed. I want it because you choose it.”

The statement lands in the hollow between your ribs like a fist. You don’t know how to answer except to touch your lips to his, gentle, a whisper of a kiss where violent need reigned just minutes before. You press your mouth to the corner of his, then to the sharp line of his jaw, then the hollow beneath. “I do,” you say, and it’s a word so small it could barely crack a window in the cold stone of the Kongsgård, but you see the effect it has. His grip on you shifts, softer now, and he lets his forehead fall to yours, breaking into a long, shaky exhale. In this way you know that you have power, too—a different kind than you ever imagined, but no less absolute.

You stay like this, bodies twined, until the fire in the hearth burns low and the sweat on your skin cools to a chill. Every inch of you aches in the most delicious, dangerous ways. Your cunt is tender, the ring of your ass still pulsing with the memory of how he split you open and left you gaping. You ought to feel shame, but all you feel is a molten pride that you can take everything Steven gives and still want more.

You let him hold you until your breathing matches his, until your own hands find the strength to fist in the linen at his collar. His sweat cools in the hollow between your bodies, and you let your head rest heavy against his chest, the salt of his skin mixing with your own. Neither of you moves for a long while. When you finally slide off his lap, legs watery as river clay, Steven follows you, only a half-step behind, as if the gravity between your bodies is too constant to fully break.

You should return to your duties. Somewhere you are most certainly needed. But when Steven cups your chin and tilts your face up, his thumb grazing the corner of your mouth, every reason to leave the room vanishes. His lips devour you, slow and thorough, as if he wants to memorize this, encode it in every cell, until no part of you is untouched by the taste of this moment.

You break apart only when the need for air forces you to, but the hunger in it lingers. His hand cups the nape of your neck, thumb stroking slow over the vein that jumps there, and he rests his forehead to yours like a man newly landed from a voyage half the world wide. “You have unmade me,” he says, and it is a confession, not a complaint.

You laugh, shaky and soft, pressing your nose to his. “You did all the unmaking yourself.” The words are true, and you let them settle between you. He grins, the wolfish flash of his teeth just visible, and with it the tension diffuses, neither of you quite knowing what to do with so much tenderness made raw.

You gather yourself, smoothing your wrinkled skirt down over sticky thighs, but Steven is not finished. He crosses to the door, and opens it to speak with the attendant there. He instructs that a meal to be sent up to the royal chamber, and for a bath to be drawn, hot as the hearth can offer. The servant, catching the devastation in your overall appearance and the almost drunken glaze to Steven’s eyes, bows with a speed rarely seen and disappears before the king can clarify any further.

Steven’s attention returns to you. “I do not believe we are fit for anything but to retire for the rest of the day.”

For a moment, you feel like a maiden caught in mischief, but then Steven’s eyes drop to your mouth and you remember you are not a maiden, you are a queen, his queen, and whatever want burns in your blood is not merely allowed, but expected, demanded, starved for. His. Deeply his. And you feel anchored in that surety now.

Are we in a happily ever after yet? No. But things are certainly changing.

Please reblog if you enjoyed this/enjoy this series. My blog got marked as explicit permanently by dumblr, which means that my posts no longer show up in the public tags, so people honestly won't find it unless it's gets passed along by your reblogs now. 🥺 I'm wavering on how much longer it may or may not be worth it to post here if the point is being able to share it with others.

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

Your nerves, which were already swirling inside of you like an anxiety tsunami, ratcheted up to an 11 as you got a glimpse of a few rough looking characters before scurrying over to the empty table at the center of the room.

You figured it would be the best seat in the house for the show.

Only the longer you sat there waiting, the more you began to doubt you were in the right place.

A jukebox was playing loudly from the corner of the room—a nonstop soundtrack of punk rock and metal.

And despite the fact that the show was set to start in half an hour’s time, you didn’t see any sort of makeshift stage or area for the band to set up.

Brow furrowed, you pulled your phone from your bag and pulled up the bar’s Instagram, your stomach sinking and your face flooding with the heat of humiliation when you realized you were at the wrong place.

You couldn’t even do one thing right, could you?

This is why you preferred to stay at home. It was easier. Safer. You knew what to expect, you had a routine, it kept you calm and quiet and—

“You’re in my seat,” a deep voice growled.

You startled so badly that you dropped your phone on the small wood table at which you sat. Your wide gaze lifted up and up to find a tall, broad stranger looming over you.

His hair was dark and shorn close to his head, his features handsome but surly. He had bright blue eyes that were narrowed on you and a silver lip ring that made your gaze linger. He wore dark skinny jeans, scuffed combat boots, and a sleeveless tshirt that put his tattoo-covered arms on full display.

You watched as his arm muscles flexed, his long fingers twitching at his sides the longer you stared at him—still startled and frozen in your seat.

Well, his seat, apparently.

Feeling another wash of shame flood your cheeks, you timidly glanced around the bar, noting a few mean grins and eager gazes aimed your way.

You got the sense that this was this man’s regular seat, and everyone knew it.

Everyone except you.

“Can’t you read?” He gristled at you, regaining your attention.

You blinked, quavering a quiet, “Yes?”

He leaned down, jabbing his finger at the worn wood table top. You squinted in the dim light of the bar before you realized the carving etched into the surface of the wood wasn’t random, it spelled a name in jagged, artsy scrawl.

Curtis.

“I’m…I’m so sorry,” you stammered, quickly rising to your feet. “I didn’t realize…”

You fumbled with your bag, meaning to step out of the way, but Curtis’ imposing figure blocked your path.

This time, it was his gaze taking inventory of you. His eyes were slow to inch over your body, taking their time as they drank in your cute little dress and denim jacket combo, and all of your colorful accessories.

You looked so out of place, Curtis’ lips tilted at the corners, his silver lip ring glinting as it caught the light and his gaze—darker than before—lifted to meet yours.

Something about the way he watched you now made your belly somersault and roil all at once. You felt suddenly scared, eager to leave, desperate to, and inched around him cautiously, wincing as your front brushed his.

You barely made it a step away before Curtis heavily dropped into the seat you just vacated. His big hand shot out, grasping your wrist like a vice and making you squeak.

His eyes flashed feral—predatory—at that sweet sound before he roughly yanked you back toward him, until you were sprawled in his lap and gasping as some of the other patrons laughed and hooted.

“What are you—“ you started, trying to shove away from Curtis, but your words cut off into a frightened whimper as his hand harshly collared the nape of your neck and tilted your scared gaze up to his.

“You keep squirming like that, I’m gonna take it as an invitation to fill you with my cock right here, while everyone watches.”

You released a shaky exhale, going still as you stared into his dark blue gaze.

Curtis leaned closer, eyes glittering as he whispered, “Good girl,” before sitting back as a waitress appeared beside the table and set down a beer before him.

She didn’t even look at you, in fact, few people did now as your frantic gaze darted around the room, desperate for someone, anyone, to step in and help you.

“They won’t help you,” Curtis murmured, as if he could read your mind. “Cause they know who’s in charge around here. Which seems like a lesson you still need to learn.”

He arranged you in his lap so you sat back against him, trembling hard as Curtis’ hand leisurely smoothed down your side, then over your thigh before shoving between your legs to cup your cunt.

You could feel Curtis grin against the side of your throat as you whined and snapped your legs shut around his hand.

“Be good and quiet while I finish my drink,” he rumbled, reaching for his beer. “Then I’ll take you to the back room and claim your sweet good girl pussy just like I claimed this seat.”

—

You went barefoot, toes digging in the mud, and thought that the strange itch developing under your skin was maybe not so strange, not in the grand scheme of things.

Curtis said your body would change. Maybe you had outgrown your skin and your home, until the only thing left to do was to come here and wait to be collected. The urge was stronger than ever, and you could no longer resist, only yield.

The waterline was lower than you remembered, the silt and reeds exposed in the flickering starlight. You waded in ankle-deep, sinking, sensing the soft sucking of the mud as it accepted your feet. The air was loud with crickets, the occasional splash of fish, the far-off call of some night bird. The moon was gone, but the stars provided enough light to see the expanse of the lake, sprawling out imposingly.

And yet the lapping of the water around your ankles soothed in a way you hadn’t felt in weeks. You’ve felt dry in your skin, and these last days even your veins feel like hollowed-out reeds beneath the surface.

It had been eighty-three days since Curtis climbed through your window, the second night he filled you with his seed. It had been one hundred and twenty-three days since the night he claimed your body and pumped you with pleasure and with his spend all night, marked you in ways no mother’s salve could erase, left you shivering on the shore, his seed rooted in your womb.

You kept going, wading past the reeds and the brambles, the hem of your nightdress dragging through the shallows, soaking up moonless water and pond scum.

Even now, you told yourself you’re out here only to see the stars, but you knew you were lying.

The changes in your body had become more pronounced and less deniable. Soon you would no longer be able to hide the swell of your belly, blossoming with the taut dome of new life. The skin had grown soft but oddly cold, even through the high summer.

Your eyes started to reflect light in a way that makes children in the street shy away from your gaze. Your sister, ever helpful, insisted you were simply tired, that the sleepless nights were just exhaustion from your job at the bakery, the endless cycles of flour and heat, the constant lifting and kneading. Your sister believed what she said, but you sensed her growing unease—the way she looked at your belly with furtive suspicion, the way she muttered prayers when she thought you could not hear.

Curtis has not returned. The absence of him was a wound that festered.

You thought, in the aftermath, that Curtis would return often, if not every night. You thought he would haunt your window, your dreams, your shadows. But he was true to his word: he gave you space. There were nights you sat up in the window seat, knuckles white on the wood, waiting to see the gleam of blue scales or the shimmer of his eyes, and nothing appeared but the unbroken dark. Sometimes you convinced yourself this was a mercy, a kindness, and that you hadn’t wanted any of it to begin with. Other nights, you pressed your face to the glass and called his name softly into the silence the night, and the longer he hasn’t come, the more your spirit has withered.

Surely he hadn’t abandoned you.

He had seemed so insistent.

And yet… he was not here, and you were, and inside you the child of him grew steadily, unerringly, as night follows the tides. The thought left you hollow, as if your body had already begun to be carved away by the thing inside it, making you less yourself with each passing week. You felt it now, even as you shivered in the shallows; a dull, aquatic ache that stretched through your hips and lower belly, encompassing all that you were meant to be, and all that you no longer were.

There was only the wind and the water, and you, marooned between them. No answers. Only a hunger, like a current, dragging you under.

You stood, shivering in your thin shift, despite the cloak around your shoulders, and waited.

Waited for—

You didn’t know.

But after some time, you trekked back to the shore. Your body seemed to know where it wanted you to go, and you are not surprised to find yourself back near the trees where it all began, where he both ravished and worshipped your body.

You crouched into the hollow of trees and planted yourself at the base of the trunk. It was humid and close under the branches, the sweet, sharp tang of decaying leaves pressed into the earth, and beneath that, the mineral wet of the lake. You pulled your knees to your chest and listened for footsteps, for anything, but in the night the whole world was quieted to only the whisper of leaves, your own uneven breathing, and the persistent lap of water against the shore.

Though you were well-hidden, there was a break in the trees that gave you a view of the lake. You watched as the surface quivered, reflecting back the warped face of the stars, and you wondered if you were supposed to do something more. If there was a ritual to summon him, or if all of this—the ache, the hunger, the uncertainty—was part of the summoning. You dropped your face into your knees and breathed deeply, searching for any scent of him, any hint that Curtis still lingered on the edges of this world. All you tasted was old wood and lake rot and something soft and almost metallic—a scent that felt like memory.

If you closed your eyes, you could remember the weight of his hands on your skin, the dark press of his body against yours, the way his voice was both threat and comfort. You wanted to hate him for what he did, for what he made of you, but you couldn’t. Not when your own body, traitorous and tender, mourned him even as it craved his presence.

The ache spiked, sharper this time, radiating from the place where your child grew. It was not pain, exactly. More an insistence, like a call you were unable to answer. You wrapped your arms tighter around yourself. But as the night wore on, your body loosened, drooped, gave into sleep—one of the things it had long been craving.

Something woke you in the deep hours, something more than cold or discomfort. You peeled yourself off the ground, stiff and numb, leaned against the tree trunk, and then instantly sensed the difference in the air. It was charged, vibrating with static, and the reeds at the water’s edge were shivering where no wind stirred them. Your heart stammered, your mouth tasted copper, and for a moment you were sure you were only dreaming.

Curtis was there, just outside the ring of trees that sheltered you. He stood perfectly motionless at the water’s edge, as if he’d been carved from the dark itself, a shadow with a suggestion of scales and the faintest luminescence tracing the lines of his body. His eyes shone out of his face, impossibly blue, fixed on you with a ferocity so wild and so focused it made you flinch. You had not heard him arrive. You wondered how long he’d been standing there, waiting for you to open your eyes.

You found that you are not afraid, not in the way you expected. It was something else, a tension like a drawn bow. His tail was flicking behind him, the tip slicing dangerous curves through the humid air.

He moved toward you in an unhurried, even elegant way, each step deliberate, his weight barely imprinting the mud despite his hulking form, so much larger than a human man’s. He didn’t speak; you realized suddenly that he never had to. He only needed to look at you, and your body would answer.

He took your face in his hands—not soft, not gentle, but not cruel either, and tilted your head so he could look into your eyes. You saw the hunger there, a desperation that matched your own, but also a grief, and something nearly like relief.

He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t even speak. His lips crashed into yours, sharp and cold and tasting of brine. It was nothing like human kisses, but you leaned in, lips parting, swallowing the taste of him, that deep, mineral tang, the way his teeth scraped across your lower lip. When he broke off, you gasped for air, surprised at how much of your hunger was for oxygen and how much for something else entirely. His tail snapped up behind you, coiling around your back and waist, pinning you to him so you could not slip away even if you wanted to.

You shivered, but it wasn’t from cold. A sound escaped you, a wet, hungry sob, and your arms went around his shoulders before you could think better of it. You expected roughness; you found yourself enveloped, cradled against a chest so wide and firm that you could hardly breathe for the way it trapped the air in your lungs. He held you like a cherished and broken thing, and you felt the hardness of his excitement against your hip, the way it pressed through both your clothes and his. The scent of him, seawater and something sweetly corrupt, filled your nose, and you worried, briefly, that you would drown on land.

His hands went to your shoulders, then your arms, then he pulled the damp cloak from your body and let it drop to the forest floor. He was more impatient with your shift, ripping the collar so the rest of the garment could fall away and pool at your feet. The shock of air on your bare skin made you gasp, but you didn’t try to cover yourself. Curtis bent down and sniffed you, pressing his face into the hollow where your neck and shoulder met.

He inhaled deeply, pulled a low, vibrating groan from somewhere in the cage of his chest, and just like that, you were entirely, murderously desperate for him, for the feeling of his mouth and the slick pressure of his tongue, for the pain of his teeth and the searing cold of his hands sliding up your thighs. His breath fogged against your skin, cool and alive, and just hearing the ragged need in it was enough to make your knees threaten mutiny.

“Curtis,” you managed, syllables fractured and spilling out before you could stop them.

He growled, the sound vibrating through your chest, resonant and urgent. His claws grazed your shoulders as he shrugged the cloak away from you, letting it slide to the ground where it slumped darkly into the leaf mold. His hands found your waist, spanning it with impossible ease, and then his palms moved, mapping the curvature of your ribs, your breasts, then down, down, his fingers raking over your belly. He lingered on your midsection, ran his knuckles with surprising care over the curve of it, fascination and triumph wrestling for dominance in his gaze.

His hands encircled your belly and held there, as though placing a spell, or as though he expected the child to respond to his pulse. Maybe it did. You thought you felt it, some answering quiver, and you tried not to flinch. You shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t want him, but when his mouth found your collarbone you choked on nothing, a breathless exhale that turned into a moan.

His mouth was cold against your skin but his tongue wet and shockingly warm, as if the heat of desire tunneled underneath his icy exterior, a core of molten need blazing inside him. Teeth pressed, not quite biting, then scraped a line along your clavicle, leaving a trail of sensation so bright it bordered on pain. Your hands went, almost stupidly, to his biceps: smooth, firm, scaled over in patches, reminding you he belonged to the lake.

Your stomach ached, low and deep, with a hunger you refused to call by name. You wanted this, you wanted him, you wanted him to take you apart, fill you until your bones dissolved, until the self you’d been before dissolved in the brine of his touch.

His lips found your throat and sucked until you thought you were being hollowed out, all feeling compressed to the bright ring where his mouth met your skin. His hands splayed at your ass, cupping and kneading, moving you against him until you both groaned in time, a shared, strangled note that seemed to ring out over the water.

He barely bothered to undress himself, simply tore away the layers of sodden cloth as if they were nothing, exposing his torso and hips until the heat of him seared into you. His cock, thick and strange and ridged with whorls of blue-black skin, already pulsed against your thigh. He backed you up against the trunk of the tree and pinned you there, one massive arm braced next to your head, and dipped his head to your chest.

His tongue rasped along the curve of your breast, a wet, hungry line, and when his teeth found your nipple, you cried out, the sound trapped between your tongue and his. He bit, just hard enough to mark, then soothed it with that impossible tongue, flicking and sucking until your head spun and a firecracking ache tethered itself from breast to cunt.

His hand was already between your legs before you could breathe out his name, and his fingers--long, ridged, preternaturally strong--slid through the wetness between your thighs. He pressed in, tasted how ready you were, and when he drew his hand away, he brought two glistening fingers to his mouth and licked them clean with a noise so greedy, so hungry, it made your core tighten almost painfully.

“The desperate smell of your want was intoxicating enough, little one,” he growled, “but your taste?”

His claws sank into the flesh of your hips and he yanked you off your feet, spinning you so fast your head swam. You landed, hands and knees in the leaf mulch, your bare ass exposed to the night and to him, your thighs smeared with your own want. His grip found your shoulder and pressed you down, arching your back, planting you so firmly into the earth you could feel the cool dampness rising through your palms and shins. You didn’t fight when he spread your legs wider. If anything, you shuddered in relief, because this, this was what you needed.

His breath was a frigid fog against your skin, and then the blunt, slick head of his cock was nudging at your entrance, so wide it seemed impossible to take him. You whimpered against the moss, torn between terror and a nearly painful anticipation. Though he had your entrance amply slick with your own arousal, the size of him was still enough to make you gasp when he breached you, slow and relentless. You felt yourself stretch, felt the ache of it, but he did not yield.

He slid in further, relentless, unyielding, and your entire body shuddered around the breach. You scrambled for purchase, fingers digging furrows in the loam, and then his hand was at the base of your spine, stroking small, slow circles in a semblance of comfort.

“Look at you,” he growled, voice low in your ear as he bottomed out with a shudder that rocked you forward. “You were made for me. You fit like a custom-forged scabbard, little one. I could breed you a thousand times and never get tired of the way you clench around me.”

His cock pulsed inside you, impossibly thick, and every subtle drag and shift of his hips sent a shiver through your entire body. He held you there, immovable, his weight pinning you to the mud and leaf litter, fucking into you with a slow, brutal rhythm that left you gasping every time he drove home. Each thrust felt like it would split you, stretch you beyond your limit, and each time you bent, pliant, desperate to be filled further, to be ruined in the same way again and again.

His tail wrapped around your left ankle, hoisting the leg upward and outward, so you were splayed wide, offered to him and the lake and the night. He leaned forward, his chest pressing between your shoulders, bent over you, mouth at your ear now, voice ragged and low. “Little one,” he growled, “I will never let you forget how you felt this night. No matter how many times I take you, I’ll always want to take you again.”

You didn’t bother to hide your noises now; any vestige of shame was gone, burned away by the friction and fullness and the way his hands gripped you with such claiming certainty. You felt yourself dripping down your thighs, making a mess of the ground beneath, and you thought it fitting, to mark the earth as you were marked, to leave nothing untouched by him.

“If the lake had not insisted on a bloodline to restore balance, I would have demanded it. You are the only thing I want in all this world, and every drop of you belongs to me.”

He fucked you harder, faster, driving you into the ground with abandon. Each thrust made you whine, made your elbows buckle and your head drop forward, hair stuck to your face with sweat and dew. He reached around and slid two fingers to your clit, rubbing in tight, ruthless circles that sent the world spinning white-hot.

You came so hard your vision narrowed to a single bright point. Your limbs splayed and trembled, nails sinking into the dirt and your ass bucking up to meet every brutal blow, savoring the way it forced you open, greedily cradling his cock to the hilt with every cycle. Curtis growled so low and animal it vibrated the whole length of you, and his hands tightened on your hips, guiding you, fucking you back onto him, making sure you took every last centimeter his body offered.

You wanted to scream with it. You wanted to howl his name so loud they’d hear it in every village around the lake. But you couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but let him use you, let the rhythm of his rutting into you become the only pulse that mattered. All sense of the world dropped away, and there was only the slap of skin, the wet, hungry noises of your cunt taking his cock, the raw, animal sound of your own voice every time the head of him pressed so deep it made your belly ache.

Curtis—no longer the stranger, never just the creature—was everything: the air, the ache, the axis about which you spun. Every time he slurred your name into your ear, mangling the syllables with his animal tongue, a fresh ripple shuddered through you. He rutted you in the dirt, rutting away the remnants of your old life, seeding you so deeply you could feel it pooling hot inside where the child already grew.

He never relented. Even as your body tried to collapse, he pinned you, forced you to take more, forced you beyond your own edge, made it impossible to know where you ended and he began. He held you through it, every time you tried to shudder or twitch away, his hands locked your hips exactly where he needed them, pulling on the strings of want and need until you unspooled every last thread, the tip of his tail tormenting your throbbing clit.

If you had thought yourself hollowed by his absence, you were now made whole by his invasion, every place inside you mapped and remade by him, by this act of mating, of possession. He bit the back of your neck, just at the nape, so hard you cried out and the sound split the night open, echoing off the trees and out to the water, where every living thing had to know what he was doing to you. The air rang with your sounds, and the taste of copper and earth and salt was on your tongue, and you felt the sharp crackle of him biting through the flesh just enough to breach the skin, a mark so carnal it would never fade. You wanted to be marked. You wanted to be his—no, you were his, and always would be, because some part of you had never belonged to anything else, and he simply reminded your body whose it was.

And then he came. You felt it, the flood of cold and the clutching, almost electrical pulse. His cock throbbed inside you, filling you even as you clenched and spasmed around him, milked every last drop of his seed so there could be no doubt, none, what your purpose was. He stayed like that, locked to you, fused to your body as if he could keep you in place for the rest of eternity by the sheer force of want. All up your spine, his scales left the faintest scratch, the imprint of his cooler body temperature, a memory of friction that anointed you as singularly his. Curtis kept you there, cock still embedded in you, his weight almost comforting, the way he spread over you like a shield against the cold and the dark and anything else that could try to threaten you.

Eventually, he shifted, rolling you gently onto your back as though conscious of your fragility. His cock slid from your body with a raw, slippery sound, and you felt some of his spend leak from your fluttering cunt, soaking the ground beneath you.

He hovered over you, gaze unblinking, so close you could see the reflection of your own trembling, ruined face in his eyes. The hard line of his body pressed you flat to the earth, and you felt every inch of him, every scale and muscle, the brutal weight of his presence. He let his hands roam your stomach and your hips, drawing slow, reverent circles, memorizing the curves of your form that he already knew too intimately. For a moment, you thought he was going to say something soft, something almost human. Instead, his mouth settled by your ear and he said, voice stripped to its essential hunger, “You come with me now.”

His tail curled around your thigh, not as a threat but as a matter-of-fact assertion of what would happen next. You were dizzy from the way he’d taken you, your cunt still raw and throbbing.

He lifted you, all at once, as if you weighed nothing. You were limp in his arms, boneless from the waves of pleasure, trailing wetness and ruin as he carried you back to the water. It should have been cold, but when the lake closed around your body it was only a relief, a soft, enveloping embrace that soothed the raw places. He held you afloat, one powerful arm under your knees, the other bracing your back, until your eyes unblurred and you could see his face above you, illuminated by the briefest shimmer of phosphorescence off the water. His eyes were luminous, impossible in the dark.

He kissed you again, more gently this time, and you let your head fall against his chest. He began to swim, slow and tireless, propelling you through the black, star-pocked surface and into the heart of the lake.

Hope you enjoyed a bit of monster-fucking Monday.

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

It was almost instant, the way the quiet rasp of Frank’s voice put you at ease as he stepped out from the shadows beside the closed balcony doors.

You turned and watched as he loomed a few feet away, looking as big, broad, and stoic as ever. But even in the darkness, you could just make it out in his steady gaze–that hint of something soft and warm that seemed reserved just for you.  

No one had looked at you like that since before your mother had died, with kindness and empathy–with care–and it soothed something deep inside of you, the most fragile, tender parts that had somehow survived what your life had become.

What you had become.

As a result of Frank’s appearance, a relieved breath shuddered through you, and it was a sudden realization that not only did he make you feel safe–which you supposed was the whole point of him being your bodygard–but he also made you feel less alone. 

You knew that you should probably be more cautious around Frank, more guarded, since he technically worked for Pete, but over the past few weeks since he had been assigned to you, you had gotten the sense that your bodyguard had an extreme dislike for your alpha, and you didn’t blame him one bit. 

It even made you feel like you had a real ally here in this new life that you had never wanted.

After a moment, Frank’s words processed in your brain, and a small smile curled your lips. Not at his compliment, but at the “ma’am” he had tacked onto it. Because it had bloomed into an almost inside joke between the two of you, this soft, silly thing that never failed to make you smile.

“Thank you,” you finally replied.

You glanced down at the floorlength dress that hugged your body much more than you were comfortable with. But it was what Pete had picked out for you, in a color he liked best, and just the sight of it made you grimace as you brushed your hand along the soft, expensive material that made you feel like a fraud. 

“It’s not really me. None of this new life is,” you murmured. “It feels like each day, more and more of who I am disappears.”

“Then tell me something about yourself,” Frank said. “Something about the real you.”

Your eyes widened, and you felt a nervous flutter in your stomach, and something else along with it. You weren’t sure why, but the thought of Frank wanting to know more about you, it made you feel shy, and strangely excited, too. 

“Like what?” you asked as you watched him move closer, until he stood beside you, just a couple of feet away as his big, rough hands dropped to the surface of the stone railing.

“Anything,” Frank shrugged, his gaze looking out at the city’s skyline for a beat before he turned to you. “Favorite hobby? Most embarrassing moment? A secret you thought you’d take to the grave?”

One of Frank’s rare smiles tilted the corner of his lips, his eyes shining with such mischief that you couldn’t help it as your own lips curled in response. 

Humming wordlessly, you cocked your head, lips pursed in thought as you considered what to share about yourself. After a moment, the most random thought hit you, and you couldn’t suppress the quiet laugh that accompanied it.

“Ah, you thought of a good one,” Frank teased. “Come on, now you gotta share. You can’t leave me hanging.”

“It’s so silly and not very interesting,” you murmured, feeling your face warm as you glanced away. “But when I was younger, in the trailer park where I lived with my mother, we had these neighbors who had a pitbull that they always kept chained up outside.”

“Assholes,” Frank grunted, and you glanced over at him, seeing his brows were furrowed as a deep frown marred his face. At your surprised look, he shrugged. “I love dogs.” 

“Me too,” you smiled, your mind returning to your memory. “Which is why it absolutely killed me to see that dog half starved and nearly feral from it. So I started to sneak out daily to sit near him and bring him food and water. Of course he wasn’t happy about it at first, he didn’t trust me, understandably, but eventually, he started to warm up to me. He even got excited to see me, especially on bacon days.” Frank snorted in amusement and you shot him a shy, abashed smile. “He even let me pet him.” 

You were quiet for a beat, remembering those days, that dog, your mom’s trailer.

Being happy.

Blinking back the mist gathering in your gaze, you whispered, “I always dreamt of being brave enough to unchain him so he could run away and be free, but the neighbors moved away before I could work up the courage. I hope he got away though and found a family that loved him.”

“You’ve got a real kind heart,” Frank murmured.

You could feel his eyes fixed on you, watching you, seeing you, and you realized quite suddenly–how vulnerable you felt after sharing that memory, that little snippet of who you were, or more like who you used to be. 

Blinking back the wave of tears trying like hell to spring free, you kept your gaze fixed away, watching as you trailed your fingers along the rough gray stone of the balustrade before you.

As if he could sense how vulnerable and emotional you suddenly felt, Frank spoke again, sharing something about himself in return.

“Family’s important to you, huh?” he asked, watching as you nodded but still couldn’t meet his gaze. “It’s important to me, too.” He hesitated before confiding, “I had a family once. A wife and two kids.”

At that, your head snapped up. Your surprised gaze zeroed in on Frank and now he was the one avoiding your gaze now as you echoed, “Had?”

He hummed, his jaw popping with a tic as he clenched it. After a long, heavy moment of silence, he finally replied. 

“I used to be in the army and was deployed halfway around the world. While I was gone, there was a house fire and…” Frank’s voice fizzled out for a moment before he whispered, “And I wasn’t there to get them out.” His head dropped, his hand curling into a fist that he knocked against the railing surface hard enough to make you wince. “I lost all three of them, just like that.” He rasped, snapping his fingers with the kind of finality that left you reeling. 

The urge to cry returned tenfold, but it wasn’t on your own behalf, it was on Frank’s. The silence hung heavy between the two of you as you struggled with what to say to him. You knew whatever you came up with wouldn’t be good enough, but god, your heart hurt for him, for everything he had lost.

“I’m so sorry, Frank,” you breathed, shifting closer to him without realizing it.

You felt the strong urge to reach out, to touch his hand with yours, to give it a squeeze of comfort, so at the very least, he’d know he wasn’t alone in this moment. 

But you didn’t know if he’d appreciate that, and it was probably inappropriate on some level, too. So instead, you hugged yourself tightly, your sad gaze never wandering from Frank’s profile as you watched him and empathized with him more than you ever had with anyone in your life.

“Some alpha I turned out to be, huh?” Frank scoffed, shaking his head. “I had one job, keep my family safe, and I failed them.”

“You didn’t,” you objected immediately. “It was an accident. An awful, terrible accident. But it wasn’t your fault, Frank. It wasn’t.”

“Feels like it was,” he grumbled, letting out a harsh, shuddering breath. He finally glanced over at you, and the well of sorrow in his gaze was so deep, so evident, that it was like a punch to your gut. 

You felt your breath hitch, your vision blurring with tears again, because you got it. You understood.

You knew the loss of your mother–of your freedom and your future–wasn’t the same as Frank’s loss, but on some level, you understood him in a way that most probably didn’t. 

And that kindred thread between you now, it only made you feel more fond of your stoic bodyguard.

Before you could respond or offer any more words of comfort, the doors to the balcony suddenly burst open and Pete surged outside. 

“I brought you here to show you off, not for you to hide outside with the help,” he scoffed, shooting a brief sneer Frank’s way as he strode over to you.

Still startled by his sudden appearance, you watched with wide eyes as Pete wiped a bit of white powder from beneath his nose. His cheeks were ruddy, his hair slightly mussed, and as his bright gaze flitted over you, the annoyance bled from his features as a haughty smirk took its place. 

You squeaked as Pete reached for you, yanking you against him so roughly it punched the air from your lungs. He purred as he dipped his head to nose along the side of your neck, uncaring of your bodyguard’s presence–perhaps even made more brazen and possessive because of it–as his hands shamelessly wandered along the curve of your ass.

As your face burned with a shameful kind of heat, you could feel the stirrings of an unfamiliar kind of euphoria through the bond as Pete’s hands gave your ass a harsh squeeze that made you squeal. You tried to shy away from him and got a glimpse of his devilish smirk before he lunged forward and kissed you. 

You gasped against Pete’s lips, reeling from his sudden onslaught, but just as quickly as he kissed you, he pulled away. 

“Come on, omega, you’re gonna come inside so I can show you off,” he gave you a boyish grin as he grabbed your hand. “You’re far too pretty to be hiding out here by yourself.”

Head spinning from trying to keep up with Pete’s mood swings, all you could do was stumble after him as he dragged you toward the balcony doors. 

Before he pulled you out of sight, you glanced over your shoulder, meeting Frank’s shuttered gaze and giving him an apologetic look as he slowly trailed behind you and followed you and Pete back inside.

It was after midnight, and you were thankfully home from the gala now, but you were even more anxious than before as you watched Pete knock back another drink.

He was “celebrating,” since he had apparently closed some big deal with a new business associate at the event, only further securing his climb up the corporate ladder. 

But Pete’s methods of celebration seemed to be drugs and alcohol, neither of which you had ever really indulged in yourself. And you couldn’t stop thinking about how casual he had acted as he snorted a white line of powder from the glass coffee table in the living room like it was no big deal.

Like he hadn’t brought illicit drugs into your home.

Although, you supposed, at the end of the day, it was his home, and you were just lucky enough to live in it.

Your insides buzzed with distress as your inner omega whined at the jumbled disarray that was Pete’s thoughts and feelings through your bond. You never really felt safe or comfortable with Pete, but right now? 

Right now he was scaring you in a new way, and while he was busy pouring himself yet another drink, you slowly backed out of the living room. 

Hopefully, Pete would just tire himself out, maybe even sleep it off on the sofa, and you could hide away in the bedroom for the night.

You kept assuring yourself that’s what would play out, but you had barely stepped out of your heels, your poor feet aching in the aftermath of wearing them, when Pete stalked into the bedroom, prowling the short distance between you before sweeping you up against him. 

“It’s not bed time yet, omega,” he cooed against your ear as he held you tightly in his embrace. “Well, time to use the bed, yeah, but not for sleep.”

You winced as he snickered against the curve of your neck, the heat radiating from his chest to your back suffocating you as your stomach wilted. 

Because you really didn’t want to be intimate with Pete.

Despite the way your inner omega perked up to be desired by your alpha, your logical mind would never forget–or forgive–the way he had treated you the first time you had sex. The way he had hurt you and humiliated you. 

You felt sick just thinking about it.

“Don’t do that,” Pete snapped, feeling how distraught you were becoming through the bond. “You have one purpose, omega, to keep me satisfied. And that’s exactly what you’re gonna do.”

You could feel him growing hard against your ass, and you closed your eyes, trying to just sink into him. To just make him happy and get it over with. 

Because you didn’t want him to hurt you again. You didn’t want him to spew vile things at you that no omega should ever hear from her alpha.

Maybe you could just pretend that you wanted this–wanted Pete. Maybe you could somehow shut off your brain and heart and everything that was screaming at full volume how much you wished that Pete wasn’t your alpha. That you weren’t here right now. That none of this had ever happened.

“Fucking goddamnit,” Pete snarled, shoving away from you.

Startled as you blinked back to the present moment, you hunched your shoulders and hugged yourself tightly as you turned toward Pete. You watched as he cupped the front of his pants, which didn’t seem to be bulging as much as it had felt like against you just a moment ago. 

Grunting, Pete rubbed himself through his slacks, his cheeks growing pinker by the second as he closed his eyes and muttered to himself. 

Releasing a shaky breath, his eyes popped open and his head snapped up, and you went rigid to be caught in his dark gaze that was stewing with a whole lot of malice.

With a whole lot of accusation, too. 

As if the way his body was responding to your distress was your fault. But you knew that in Pete’s mind, it was. 

“Ditch the dress,” he alpha commanded you. “I just need a little show, that’s all. Let me see what’s mine, omega.”

Your body obeyed his command without pause, even as your insides withered. Your mind sank deeper into that quiet space where it felt safest as you stared at Pete, unseeing, as your dress pooled at your feet. 

“Yeah, that’s it. Look at you,” Pete cooed, hastily shucking his pants and boxer briefs before moving toward you.

As he tugged you against him, you stared over his shoulder, your gaze fixed on the pretty, expensive sconce beside the bedroom door. The way its frosted glass was overflowing with a soft, soothing amber light.

Distantly, you felt the back of your throat burn with bile as Pete hummed and groaned, his fingers deft as he plucked off your bra before crouching to tug down your panties. You squirmed as he hovered before your bare cunt, breathing in deep and groaning some more at the scent of you.

Your gaze was torn from the sconce as Pete corralled you toward the bed before shoving you down onto it. You stared at the ceiling now instead as he roughly shoved your legs apart, so wide your muscles ached with the stretch, as he knelt between your legs and tugged you to the edge of the mattress. 

“Your alpha’s gonna make you feel so good, omega, and then you’re gonna return the favor,” Pete gritted, his smooth palms skimming up the insides of your thighs.

You felt aflame–but not from lust–to be laid prone and lewdly spread before him. Your skin was crawling with humiliation, your stomach roiling, and all you wanted was to curl up in a ball and disappear. 

You didn’t want Pete to make you feel good. You didn’t want him to touch you at all. 

“Please,” the soft, quavering plea fell from your lips before you could stop it. 

“Aw don’t worry, baby, I’m not gonna make you beg for it,” Pete snickered. 

“No, I–” you squeaked as Pete ducked close and you snapped your legs shut without thinking, trying to pull away from him.

“Don’t,” he gritted, his fingers digging into the bare skin of your thighs as he pried them open. His next words were another authoritative alpha command, “Be good and stop ruining my fucking fun.”

Even as your legs fell open at his directive, there was a rigidness to you that not even Pete’s alpha command could melt away. Your fingers were curled tightly into the blankets at either side of you, your eyes squeezed shut as you tried to make yourself float away–escape this, escape him–until he was finished using you. 

It was the strangest feeling–like there was a disconnect between your body and mind–as Pete began to lave your bare cunt with the attention of his mouth, but none of it would register in your brain as pleasure, let alone your own. 

Distantly, you were aware of the stray plucks deep in your core that responded to his tongue lapping at your clit, and the way you were growing wet despite not wanting this in the least, but it was almost as if you were a witness to your own ruin, not the recipient of it. 

“Yeah, see, look at how wet and messy this cunt is getting,” Pete husked, smearing your juices all around your folds. “You always gotta be so fucking difficult, but at the end of the day, you want me and my cock, omega.”

No, no, no played on repeat in your head, and you weren’t sure if it was in response to Pete’s claim, or the fact that he was stretching out over top of you and aligning his finally hard cock with your entrance. 

You tried to ignore the way the head of him stretched your hole, you tried to block out the deep, throaty sound of his groan as he slowly slid inside of you. You wanted more than anything not to feel each and every inch of Pete’s length fill you up, stretch you, bottom out deep inside of you.

“Fuck,” he breathed, giving another groan as he rutted against you, shoving his cock as far as it could go and ignoring the pained yelp that spilled from your lips as a result. 

It was the pain of his insistent invasion that sadly had you plummeting back down to earth–back into your body–and you whined as Pete started to hammer into you without any warning or build up whatsoever. 

It was like he didn’t want to waste his erection, especially after all the trouble he had had as of late getting hard and staying that way. And there was a different kind of desperation to him now, not just to feel good or to cum, but to prove that he was a man, an alpha, that he could fuck you the way he felt he should be able to. 

All of this filtered through the bond you shared with Pete as he pounded into you without relent. If it wasn’t for the way he grabbed your wrists as you tried to shove at his chest and harshly pinned them down above your head, you would have thought he wasn’t even aware of you at all. 

But then, his feral, lust-blown gaze met your teary one. 

“Please,” you whimpered as you squirmed beneath him. “You’re hurting me.”

“No,” Pete panted, his hips going harder and making you squeal as you writhed beneath him. “I’m taking what’s mine.”

“Pete, please–”

“Hush!” he snapped, covering your mouth with one of his hands as he sank against you more fully. “Be quiet, and good, and let me fucking finish,” he alpha commanded through his teeth. 

All you could do was what you were told, enduring the pain of Pete’s frantic fucking of you as you stared up into his manic gaze, a few tears escaping your own.

Because it was like his eyes were vacant as he watched you–completely devoid of any real emotion, attachment, or care–just blazing with a greedy, primal need that you knew any hole or omega could fill. 

The devastation of that realization didn’t get a chance to fully hit you before Pete was giving a long, obscene groan as he finally orgasmed. His thrusts were stilted now, deep and lingering as he moaned and pumped you full of his cum.

“Fuccccck, yes!” he hissed, squeezing his eyes shut as his mouth hung open and he lost himself to his pleasure, to his release, to his conquering of you. 

Your body was throbbing, the tension coiling your muscles so tightly that it hurt as Pete finally retreated from your body. Revulsion speckled all along your sweaty skin as he sank back on his haunches, shoved your legs wide open, and watched his cum dribble from your abused cunt with an arrogant smirk curling his lips. 

You jerked as Pete swiped up the creamy mess with his fingers before leaning over you and shoving it into your mouth. You choked on his fingers, and the disgusting brine coating your tongue now, as Pete’s eyes glittered at you. 

“Swallow,” he hummed the alpha command, shoving his cum toward the back of your tongue and nearly grinning as you gagged before forcing yourself to do what you were told. 

He pulled away, both this body from yours and his fingers from your mouth, wiping them along your bare thigh without care. 

“Thank your alpha for taking such good care of you,” Pete purred another alpha command. 

“Thank you, alpha,” the words sounded flat and lifeless as they were forced from your lips, your vision blurring completely with your tears now as your voice quavered as you whispered, “for taking such good care of me.”

Because that wasn’t what had just happened–it was the furthest thing from the truth–and you knew that you would never experience real, genuine care at the hands of Pete.

Grinning big, he gave a contented sigh as he flopped down on the bed beside you, and it wasn’t long at all before he passed out cold, surely aided by the cocktail of drugs and alcohol in his system. 

You supposed you should be grateful that his illicit activities aided you in this small way. But at the moment, all you felt was sick.

You were careful not to wake Pete as you slid from the bed, wincing as your tender cunt burned and throbbed from being so harshly used. For some reason, it was the sight of your fingers trembling so hard it took you two tries to pluck your robe from the hook of the closet door that nearly broke you. 

Trying to take a calming breath that barely squeezed past the hard lump in your throat, you slipped from the bedroom, then darted into the guest suite across the hall. You locked yourself away in the bathroom, and it was like now that you were finally alone, your body was starting to feel again–to process. 

You barely made it to the toilet before you heaved up all of the contents of your stomach. Your throat burned and tears streamed from your eyes as you heaved until your body slumped in exhaustion over the porcelain bowl. 

Even through the sour bile coating your tongue, you swore you could still taste Pete’s cum, and it had you gagging all over again as you grabbed onto the edge of the bathroom counter and hefted yourself to your feet. 

You wobbled as you rummaged through the bathroom drawers, feeling a small bit of relief as you unearthed a new toothbrush and some toothpaste. You used them both to scrub your mouth clean, rinsing thoroughly, desperately, until all you could taste was the minty remnants of toothpaste. 

You rinsed your face with cold water next, patting your skin dry with a nearby hand towel, unable to avoid the sight of your reflection in the large mirror hanging over the sink–the haunted, miserable gaze of the stranger staring back at you. 

You nearly lost it all over again, but tried to shove down the deluge of distress and unhappiness that was swirling inside of you. You made yourself focus on getting cleaned up, on relieving yourself. 

It was a stray thought that gave you a tiny modicum of relief and purpose–and a way to avoid Pete for as long as possible, too–that you should sneak up to the rooftop garden. It was your own little reprieve, and in this moment, you needed that more than ever. 

You felt numb as you slipped from the guest room, hugging yourself tightly and pulling up short at the sight of Frank leaning against the wall across from you.

It was after hours for him, he technically clocked out once you and Pete returned home, the overnight team taking over and settling into the quiet shadows on the perimeter of your home.

And for some reason, his presence right here, right now, made you feel ashamed. Because he was seeing you at your worst, at your lowest, in the aftermath of being used by the person who should care for and covet you most.  

That thought nearly had your features crumpling again, but you tried to be strong–to be stoic, like Frank. Although the glimpse of his concern for you shining in his gaze made it all the harder. 

So you looked away, dropped your eyes to the floor and curled your shoulders as if they could ward off the reality of your life as you turned and slowly made your way to the roof, Frank faithfully trailing behind you as you went.

You shivered as you curled up on your favorite lounger, and just a second later, Frank was looming over you, shrugging off his jacket and holding it out to you. 

Eyes filling with tears at his kind gesture–at his little act of care, for you–you just stared at the proffered garment for a moment before your gaze slowly lifted to meet his. 

“Thank you,” you whispered, your voice a ragged, broken thing. 

When you reached out to accept Frank’s offering, the silk sleeve of your robe fell back, pooling at your elbow and drawing your bodyguard’s gaze. 

You saw him go rigid, his eyes flashing with fury and his nostrils flaring, and when your confused gaze followed his own, it landed on your bare wrist, and the way it was darkening already with finger-shaped bruises. 

From where Pete had held you down when you tried to push him off of you, when you tried to stop his assault. 

A new and different kind of shame rose up within you, and you quickly retracted your arm, hugging it against your chest as you curled in on yourself. 

Those tears you had tried so hard to keep at bay finally started to fall, and you hid your face in your hands as you cried, as you grieved for all that you had lost, all that you had become, and all that you had to continue to endure.  

The fact that Frank was there to bear witness to it all, somehow made it feel more real. It made it harder to avoid.

And that just made you cry harder.

You were so lost to your pain and distress, that you didn’t realize Frank had sat down beside you. That he had gently draped his jacket over you as you wept. 

That his big, rough hands were clenched tight atop his thighs, like he was retraining himself from reaching out to you, from touching you. 

But when his quiet voice rumbled from beside you, even through your tears and misery, you heard him. You heard him as he told you, “You’re so strong, omega, so good and kind and brave. And you’ll be okay, you hear me? He won’t hurt you again, I’ll make sure of it.”

I am not okaaaaay 😭 Although I’m sure @krirebr will be delighted by the degree of angst here, it actually wasn’t my original plan, but here we are. There's still a light at the end of the tunnel though.

—

Please take a moment to comment or reblog. It means a lot to hear from my readers after sharing a story that I put so much love into. Serial liking without engagement is the quickest way to kill my writing motivation, and if you catch me on a bad day, you may even get blocked for it.

I no longer do tag lists, but if you'd like to be notified when I post new writing, follow my side blog @‌sirisshamelesshoelibrary​ and turn on notifications to get pinged when I drop some new hoe fuel 😘

Steve is used to tight clothes, but his SSR uniform feels excessively tight as he stands in the mirror. It’s putting pressure on his waist and chest. Yeah, that’s what it is. The suit.

He pulls the lighter tie back and forth to straighten it, flipping the shirt collar back up and down. When he smooths it back down, he keeps his hand pressing over his heart, feeling it race.

“Quit fussing,” Bucky mumbles, standing behind him.

“I’m not fussing.”

Bucky simply tilts his head with a knowing look and goes to lean on the furniture.

Steve feels no better. He doesn’t have enough information. Are you nervous, too? Are you having second thoughts? Did he do enough to make this feel like your day too? Has he shown you enough love to convince you to hitch your life to his?

Steve Rogers’ life is far more of a zoo than he thought it would be growing up. The original plan was ‘go to war, end the war, come home, and live.’ He’s not quite done all of those things, but they are all on shuffle repeat.

His goal was to do his part. He wanted to stick up for the little guy. Each fight his fragile body got roughed up in could have been his last, so in the grand scheme of things, Steve only recently let himself plan ahead. Those once nebulous, unattainable hopes are starting to coalesce in the gravity of you. 

It’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s new.

It’s making Steve feel a little queasy.

Life is unpredictable. There’s no blueprint. Army strategy doesn’t much apply to single human-on-human interaction, teaches not to make the other party happy, and in terms of friendlies, sticks with ‘don’t shoot each other.’

He knows how to fight, to disarm, to destabilize, to surround and corner, to capture, and to thwart. Steve even knows—begrudgingly—how to kill. Those are his strengths.

What is he thinking? He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know how to be a husband.

Oh boy, he’s gonna puke.

“Take a breath, punk. It’s fine. You’re fine.” Bucky’s nothing but amused by Steve’s nerves though, so his best friend seems to purposefully offer lackluster help.

Steve adjusts his uniform’s tie for the twentieth time. It’s still not right. Steve’s hands are still shaking, and as sick as he feels now…he actually might want a hearty swig from Thor’s flask to take the edge off.

Buck intuits this and is already on his phone, calling in the cavalry, or so Steve thinks.

“What if I choke up and don’t say it right?”

Steve watches Bucky shrug. “Ok then—“ Bucky unfolds a little piece of paper “—one more time. I, Steven Grant Rogers…”

“I, Steven Grant Rogers,” Steve breathes through lips he can’t seem to move properly.

“…do solemnly swear…”

The tie is still crooked. “Do solemnly swear.”

“That I am up to no good.”

“That I…what?”

“Clever,” Tony’s rich laugh sounds from the doorway, “very modern for you boys.”

“Those aren’t my vows,” Steve (just shy of) whines.

“I sure hope not—“ Tony comes in “—don’t think your little lady would like all these guests to know your dirty little intentions for the rest of the night.” He waggles his eyebrows, elated by Steve’s frustration.

“I’m getting married.”

“Yes,” Bucky agrees, “he’s allowed to be as dirty as he wants with Nerd once they’re married.”

Steve snaps up at Bucky. “That’s not—“

“Oh, he did not wait until—“

“Tony, don’t!” Steve’s about to crack, face hot like he has a fever, and he’d be fine with the ribbing if it weren’t for experiencing a minor earthquake beneath him, rocking his composure since last night when Nat whisked you away after the rehearsal.

“I’ve got it. I’ve got you, buddy. Here—“ Bucky hands him his phone “—she sent you a little something.”

“Hey, Sketch,” your voice rings in his ear, “I thought you might need a message to help you chill the eff out, so I wrote you a poem. Here goes.”

Steve smiles instantly and relaxes his neck, head falling forward in a sigh.

“You’re pretty old but to me you’re new. I borrow you from the world where you’re dressed in blue. You can keep me forever, I promise you that. Our lives start today…just don’t anger Nat.

“See? I’m such a great writer—“ The message cuts off in laughter from both you and your sibling, Ro.

In the background, he hears Natasha grumble, “if that weren’t true, I’d be pretty pissed, now get over here so your—“ and it’s over.

Bucky beams, smacking Steve’s back with a jolting force, likely checking that his heart is still functioning.

“Awesome,” Tony adds, “final flourishes?”

He pulls a small velvet box from his pocket, and Steve stiffens.

“Tony, the rings are supposed to be with—“

“Hold your horses,” Stark dismisses. “This is something else. You’re missing a pin.”

Steve’s hands frantically sweep down his uniform as he checks. “Where?”

“You mind?” Tony picks something silver out and hands the box over to Bucky. He turns to grab Steve’s lapel and flicks it out.

The pin is a globe with many—but not accurate—lines crisscrossing it. Beneath that sits ‘1943.’

“First Stark Expo commemorative pin. I believe it technically is where you began in a way, and I’ve got to somehow make this day about me, so you’re welcome.”

He wants to be mad and say something sharp, but instead, Steve just gets hotter and more emotional. Tony, pleased with his work, pulls Steve into a tight hug that both cling to for a moment.

“I know, big guy. I’m just that great. There, there.” Tony—only half-jokingly—rests his hand on the back of Steve’s head before a gentle pat.

“Thank you,” Steve sniffs. “I can’t believe you kept this.”

“I brought you one, too, Dynamo.” Tony collects himself, pointing at the box Bucky holds. “Good ol’ Dad only printed about a hundred of those before his publicist stopped the machine, so it’s extra perfect.”

As the box opens, Bucky snorts.

“Oh wow. Yup. I see why,” he mutters, pulling out another silver pin with the same year and the initials for the World Exposition of Tomorrow.

Bucky smirks while Tony pushes the W.E.T. pin into place.

“Perfect,” he agrees, sharply straightening his matching uniform.

Steve nods. “Now I get why you kept them,” he says flatly, mind already far away again but at least his body jitters less. “Is it time?”

“Just about.” Tony smiles wide and earnestly. “We’re all ready to get up to no good. You just need to—” he waves his hand in front of Steve’s face “—fix this a bit.”

Steve frowns. “That’s my face, Tony.”

“Yeah, well, it’s making me nervous, so…” Tony walks off into the hallway.

Bucky’s expression tells Steve that the sentiment wasn’t wrong. He looks a wreck and a half, and he knows it.

Bucky shrugs. “I could sock you one if that would help.”

Between the Asgardian liquor and a punch to the face…Steve weighs his options and takes one final breath.

It’s crisp out. Overcast. Everything around feels subdued. The beautiful, turning foliage of the woods past AvIn campus sits quiet, framing the wrought iron archway.

Out of habit, Steve scans the tree line. All worst-case scenarios have been on repeat in his brain since Nat shuffled you away last night. There’s the obvious: being called out on an emergency, some of your family not arriving on time, the cake tasting like plaster, him looking like an idiot in every single photo…

Or the unlikely: Bruce hulks out for no reason, some evil agent(s) show up to hurt people, Steve missing a single moment of you walking down the aisle…

Sam’s taught him a technique for keeping his eyes open as long as possible—without looking like a creepy goof—so he can catch every second. Finally, all those stupid staring contests with Bucky have a good use.

Steve stands facing the woods, shaking out his arms in hopes of feeling less crawling beneath his skin. He’s so twitchy. He’s so damn nervous that Buck’s hand on his shoulder makes him jump again.

He knew he was there, for goodness sake. He’s being ridiculous.

Steve tries to crack his neck and accidentally hikes his shoulders clear up to his ears, so there’s one ding on looking like an idiot in a photo.

Sam makes a gesture to remind Steve to breathe. Tony flashes a thumbs-up and winks at him.

Steve’s stomach knots up as if he guzzled Thor’s Asgardian liquor, and he forces himself to smooth the front of his jacket. Steady. He can do this. Even though he feels tiny. Even though his knees feel weak and wobbly. Even though he’s having trouble breathing. He can’t magically develop asthma again, right? He tells his face to smile. Eh, he didn’t quite nail that.

It’s like he can’t register the mass of people—ok it’s not so many, but they’re there—in front of him until Buck’s elbow knocks his.

Steve snaps to attention.

The music warps to a crawl in his ears, and he’s dimly aware of Morgan tossing leaves over the aisle. There are approving murmurs and whispers when the bridesmaids slowly—gah, why is everything so slow?—meander past Steve’s right, but he’s still not looking. Not really.

The delicate rustle should be impossible to hear. You’ve barely inched a toe past the threshold of the building’s West Entrance, but Steve’s vision tunnels immediately into the distance.

He doesn’t see white first.

A deep, navy lace creeps up the long line of you before melting into the more traditional cream color. Some of the embroidered flowers dotting the dress are cast in burgundy, increasing in their cluster until solid along your neckline.

His heart stops, but not in cold. Steve’s sparking, concentration so honed and potent on your every step, every flutter and ripple of your gown, that he could light the ground you walk on with just his gaze.

Honest to god, he can’t see your father on your arm because the universe shrinks to the size of one half strip of carpet for the eternity it takes you to float to his side. He suffocates, blissfully, waiting so patiently.

And then your fingers smooth into his outstretched hand and squeeze.

The pulse wraps his entire body, somehow, someway, releasing all that pent-up terror all at once. He remembers. He remembers now. You’re gonna marry him. Your smile brings the sun. Your beauty brings him warmth. Your love keeps him alive.

He couldn’t breathe without you. That was the missing piece.

Steve should look forward. He should look at the priest and think of his lines and focus, but he just stares.

There’re burgundy flowers in your hair above sapphire earrings, and you’re gonna marry him. A pulse right there beneath the chain of your necklace beats rapidly, and you’re gonna marry him. Your mouth opens, sighs, speaks, and you’re gonna marry him. You’re giggling and helping him say some words…

And you’ve married him.

Your hands are steady in his as he slides a garnet ring over your finger, and your hands steady his while you slide a matching yellow gold band onto him. You’re married, and he’s yours.

Everything’s different. Absolutely nothing has changed.

One second he loved you and the next he loves you more. Unfathomable.

A gentle gust of wind knocks a wisp of hair out of place. We can’t have that, he thinks, tucking it back over your ear with a smile. He smells your hair and skin now, hears your breaths and heart, sees a familiar twitch of nerves, feels the tiniest tremble of your hands in his, and knows nothing but you in this moment.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the priest harps loudly from a planet away. “You may k—“

He gets to taste now, too. Steve can’t wait. 

The momentum does not start out sweet. You’d expect all delicacy and tenderness from him, but no, he’s married now. Your body bends and molds to him, bringing you close, closer, and closer still.

A chorus of ‘woah’ and one ‘dang, boy’ erupts from behind him, and the poor priest tries to slow Steve down.

“No need to rush. You have eternity.”

Doesn’t matter. As Buck would say, this isn’t kissing; this is necking, and Steve’s gonna neck his wife all he damn well pleases from this day forward.

“I told ya,” Tony cracks behind him, “always the quiet ones.”

“Made her stretch this morning, too,” Nat adds with a snort.

The priest just chuckles. It’s not his first rodeo either. “May I present Captain and Misses Steven Grant Rogers.”

“Even Stevens,” Steve whispers as he pulls away.

Your eyes open, dark and glassy.

“Even—“ but his lips cut you off with one more playful kiss.

He rights you and your dress, careful not to let his buttons and medals snag on the lace, which only leads to Steve petting his splayed hand down your entire bodice while your sibling stands feet away cheering.

“Steady on, brother,” Ro yells.

That is the moment when Steve comes back to himself. The sights and sounds of the rest of the world dial back up into existence, and he flushes, realizing he really couldn’t be held responsible if he’d gone further in the last few minutes. He just wasn’t in control of his body or mind.

But he remembers. He has every minute detail of you locked away permanently now. At least, your joy tells him that he did okay; he’s made you happy. He’ll need a video to figure out what he actually said, however.

Semantics, as Buck would say.

Normally, Steve is not this bold, but something about watching you smile and him thinking “that’s my wife” has caused him to push the envelope. Will this touch at your neck make your heart race? Will that question whispered in your ear make you shiver? For those reasons, he’s taking the ritual of removing your garter very seriously.

He stares right into your eyes through long lashes, ignoring the cheers and hoots of your guests, savoring your alternating excitement and shyness while he drags his hands over the soft skin of your leg.

You’re not wearing tights.

His fingers initially pass the scrunched satin and lace band to pinch at your inner thigh several inches higher than where he’s supposed to be, and you jump, unable to stifle of laugh of surprise. 

The audience reacts, too, but he can’t hear it. 

Stretching out his hand to smooth his palm back down causes the tip of his middle finger to brush against the lace of your panties, and he’s so proud of your widening eyes. He relents after he’s sure you see his devious grin and slides off the frilly band, carefully cupping your foot to wiggle it over your shoe.

Shit.

His wife.

In heels.

No tights.

Yeah, Steve isn’t usually this bold, but he could get used to this.

He eats dinner with his hand on your knee, barely able to feel the shape of you beneath all the layers of fabric, but at least he knows you’re right there. He does not know or care what he’s eating.

When you two cut the cake, the layer you’ve cut is your favorite flavor. Apparently, he’ll have to wait another year to eat his favorite from the topper??? No. That’s not fair. Steve doesn’t like that and plans to just take the thing on your honeymoon, wherever the hell that is since Tony won’t say.

Steve carefully places a big bite of cake in your mouth, hoping no crumbs fall down your dress, and you raise a piece high for him.

Then you take it right back before he can get it, eating it yourself.

What did he expect? It’s cake and you’re you. He smiles warmly anyway and licks icing from his fingers.

His solace is the top tier coming with him at the end of the night and that you’re his wife.

His wife, in heels, wearing no tights.

How much longer is this event?

He’s danced with you so many times before, but Steve suddenly feels entirely unsure about his hands. Where he places them naturally isn’t too suggestive in front of guests, is it? Is he pulling you too close? Is the hem of your dress under his foot?

His thoughts are consumed with what he might be doing wrong until your voice pierces through the static in his ears.

You’re singing.

You’re singing your song—his and yours—very softly to him as it plays in the background.

Just like that his feet are light as air. Just like that he’s tucked into the crook of your neck. Just like that his hands feel right hugging you.

Just like that.

“You ready for skydiving and scuba?”

He didn’t, Steve groans internally, staring at Tony’s inscrutable smirk above a scotch glass. He wouldn’t.

“No. No,” Tony snorts, “don’t worry. You two will really enjoy the Avengers cruise leaving from Florida in the morning.”

Steve’s gonna kill Tony because you’re gonna kill Steve if a giant ship in the middle of the ocean full of fans is what Tony’s chosen for your damn honeymoon. There wasn’t a way for you two to plan it yourselves, not with how unpredictable the whole engagement has been. Tony Stark is the only one with the resources enough to make a whole honeymoon happen at the drop of a hat, or a dime, or several billion dimes. Hell, you and Steve would have already changed flight and hotel bookings for anywhere three times by now based on missions alone.

His worry must show on his face; it must be exactly what Tony was hoping for because he beams back.

“Gotcha, Cap.” Tony winks. “Man, you are easy.”

Steve’s trying. He really is.

He’s also met Tony, so there’s a generalized fear of sheer Starkness that sloshes around the bottom of Steve’s gut like their drinks.

“All I’ll tell you—“ Tony grabs Steve’s shoulder and settles into a genuine smile “—is you’re taking a quinjet, and you’re welcome.”

“Great.” Steve’s face falls. “Very specific.”

Tony shrugs, turning to order a refill. “What do you want from me? You’re the logistics, guy.” He points off to the table where you sit talking to your family, huffing, “go snog your wife or something.”

Necking, Steve thinks, it’s called necking.

The sparkler sendoff is a nice touch, the flickering light of waving friends slowly replaced by steel as the bombay doors shut.

Bucky and Nat—who apparently know more about Steve’s honeymoon than he does—hauled his and her luggage aboard—only some of which you two were allowed to pack—before the dancing even ended. Steve scans the rest of the supplies tucked by the duffels of clothes and still can’t tell where you two are going. When he peaks at the clothes though…

Sweaters. Average apparel for this time of year on this continent. That’s a fairly comforting sign.

“Keeps, did you want to change out of your—“

He turns to see you clutching your arms and rushes over. “Are you cold?”

You shake your head, silent, so Steve takes the moment to look at you—really look at all of you—and admire your beauty.

You wear his colors with a twist of individuality, with an added delicacy that’s more Steve than Cap. No stars. No stripes. No harsh lines. Just your gentle curves and complex lace amidst blending colors. You are a representation but the farthest thing from a flag.

You’re a tangible promise.

He watches your breaths push your chest against the red rose trim of the gown’s bodice. There’s a refraction from your earrings that shimmers across your shoulder. He can smell the fading flowers in your hair.

“I haven’t…” you gulp out with shimmering eyes, “been in one of these since that day.”

Oh god, how did he not think of that? He didn’t know. It’s hard to fathom how many times Steve has ridden in a quinjet within the year and a half since you first met.

He didn’t know.

It’s so strange to think he didn’t know then what you would mean to him now. He’d boarded the jet with your Dream Team and had no idea. There was no magic indicator, no slow motion or love at first sight. His world did not turn upside down. More rightly, his world came to you that day.

He assessed the camaraderie of three men and two women. That’s all. He could tell which was the leader, Norm, and Steve thought nothing more of it until after his shield was suctioned to a hole in the hull. 

He secured two men and two women, one of which was trapped with her hand in his makeshift plug.

He remembers he prayed you’d live. That was the first real thing Steve ever thought of you—you specifically—that you’d live.

He remembers looping his arm in the cargo nets and holding you tight. He remembers how he thought about his own strength and if his hold was hurting you. He remembers that your eyes weren’t closed, but he knew you saw nothing. Not really. In fact, your eyes were open the whole time: landing, taking the shield off, examining your hand on the grass outside; all of it until you popped up and headed back toward the jet.

That was the day Steve learned your name.

He remembers you crying at Norm’s funeral and how hard—how brutally, valiantly hard—you tried to convince Steve that you were fine. He’s found that the best people are not fine when something like that happens. He has great respect for those people.

That was the day you earned Steve’s respect.

He remembers footage of the employee gym getting flagged during a day he was on duty as the therapy group leader. He recognized you as he fast-forwarded through hours of footage. You walked the entire time. Alone. After a full day of work. Your car never registered as leaving the compound gate either. In the circle, you were stubborn and cagy, refusing to roll over and open up.

That was the day you impressed Steve.

You didn’t lie. You didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. You never rolled over, but eventually, you did open up. He felt drawn to a kindred spirit, a thing old Steve rarely feels nowadays, so he tested something. He opened his arms.

That day you hugged him—really, really hugged him—and he couldn’t remember the last time he was held. What’s more is you prompted him to focus on the touch, not for yourself, but for him. How he ached for this without realizing. How he missed it the moment you let go.

That was the day you stole Steve’s heart. He hasn’t regretted a moment since, except, perhaps, that he waited so long to ask you out.

“Are you scared, Keeps?” His voice is soft as is his embrace. “I promise you’ll be safe, but I can turn us ar—“

“No.”

There’s his stubborn girl.

When he steps back, you drop your hands in front of you hesitantly. “Not scared. No. Just…I don’t know. It’s strange to think about.”

That’s no lie either. It’s mind-boggling to imagine coming all this way. Steve gently cups your elbows to ground you both. He’s utterly grateful. His prayer was answered. He was given an incomparable gift.

Even though he trusts you, he knows this is scary, but he needs you to know that he’s here, right beside you, forever.

Partners.

His head sinks down to meet yours, forehead to forehead.

“Strange to be happy—“ which he means in a much deeper, more complicated sense than he could ever explain “—to have something so good come from something so bad.”

With one guiding finger under your chin, Steve tilts your head so your lips can meet. It’s not the same as his overjoyed outburst when you were announced husband and wife. That was in the good times your vows spoke of. Standing in the memory of how you met is one of the bad, but he still loves you, he still holds you, and that’s the promise of this kiss.

“Let’s get you comfy and warm, yeah?” He runs a finger over your bottom lip, further smudging your red lipstick, but he doesn’t care. You can rub off on him as much as you like.

He stands straight to pluck a burgundy flower from your hair. He tucks it away with his pocket square. He plans to press it in a book after he sketches it. 

Every detail must be preserved. He won’t simply rely on photos or video though. He’s old school. He wants the sensory memories as well. It’s alright that there’s no photographer here, too, because Steve has a solution for that which can wait until his hands, nose, ears, and mouth have had their fill of you.

Next he asks if you want to remove the rather large sapphires that seem to weigh on your ear lobes. You take those off yourself and hand them over.

When he raises his hands to help with the clasp of your necklace, he pauses, tracing the neckline of your gown with the tip of his middle finger.

His new wedding band passes over you heart.

He knows he’ll have to leave it behind on missions. There was a moment of wallowing since tattooing one on wasn’t an option with how his skin heals; the ink can’t take. Steve didn’t much like the idea of buying a matching dozen in order to replace them as they were lost or damaged. This one is special. It’s the only one. This one, today, the one you slid onto his finger, has meaning far beyond a circle of gold. He’s going to protect it and keep it safe, too.

“Help me with the back?” You sheepishly turn, forcing the full bustle of your shirt to sweep across his feet.

Good lord, that’s a lot of buttons, and the skinny loops are more finicky than Steve’s most detailed sketches. He manages to only destroy three fastenings out of what feels like thousands.

He’s rewarded with a peak of your skin beneath, absently running the back of his finger over the side of your spine on your lower back. Even though you two have been intimate, even though he saw this soft expanse even before then—on the day you first said ‘I love you’—somehow it’s different.

He can’t describe why this pang in his chest is good, why when he feels as if he can’t breathe he’s happy about it, why he won’t lift a finger to correct any of his past because every second led here. Your worth is indescribable.

Once the dress is undone and pools at your feet, you’re the star at the center of concentric blue, white, and red circles. You are his shield. You are what protects his humanity. You are his wife.

Tony didn’t pull any punches. The tent is basically a thin-walled house, practically a whole kitchen, a bed to actually fit both of you, and generously high ‘ceilings.’ Steve can stand to his full height throughout most of the space.

He’s stunned.

“Good evening, Captain and Misses Rogers,” F.R.I.D.A.Y chimes, startling Steve.

Of course. An entire artificial intelligence inside a fancy camp tent: the epitome of Stark, but Steve lands on feeling incredibly grateful in that moment.

There’s no one around.

You and he get to be completely alone for days, the air is so crisp and clean, and why is he just standing here?

Steve spins and rushes past the duffels he dropped at the ‘door,’ calling your name. His feet hit the ramp of the jet when he hears you behind him.

“Over here,” you harshly whisper. “Steve, turn off the lights!”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it.”

He smirks in confusion but trudges to the cockpit and shuts everything off all the same, muttering “yes, love” over and over like it’s a new phrase for him. When he thinks about it, it is because ‘love’ means wife now. Steve Rogers has a spouse.

He hurries back, squinting in the dark trying to see the outline of you when he realizes you didn’t layer much on.

“I thought you were gonna get warm, sweetheart.” His hand reaches out to test the thickness of the enormous sweater you’ve draped over you, but from the silhouette of your legs, there’s not much—oh.

Oh.

“I’m plenty warm,” you reply, your heart hammering so loud that he can feel it in his throat. Wait. No. That’s his heartbeat because Steve can see more and more by the second as his sharp eyes adjust.

Specifically, he can see your lack of bottoms and a clasp.

Steve swallows thickly. “Did you…are you wearing…?” He lost the words.

The damn garter belt is back, and if he thought he was being so coy and teasing earlier, he is not prepared to be controlled or wait now.

“Got the white one for a special occasion, ya see.” Your hot honey words stick to his brain and fill every crack. “But I was not going to wear these all d—AYY—“

In the blink of an eye, he scoops you up, strategically assessing the nearest surface which just so happens to be a picnic table a few feet away. He doesn’t mean to toss you down so hard, he swears, but he can feel the outline of satin over the swell of your ass.

Steve flips up the hem of your sweater without a second (or first) thought, nearly growling when the moonlight hits the pearly fabric.

He traces the edges of the belt and garters before realizing something else. There’s a glisten below the satin, and it isn’t more fabric. You’re bare and wet before him.

The instant his brain processes that you have no underwear on, the familiar scent of your arousal hits his nostril hard.

“Oh, Keeps,” he moans, one hand flicking open his belt and trousers while the other tangles in your wedding lingerie.

“For you, Sketch,” you gasp in response, breathy and thin with anticipation. “For my—“ you squeal at the intrusion of his fingers “—husband.”

You sound tortured already. It makes Steve realize how tightly wound he is from the whole day, too, and he’s sure this one will be quick. You’re both strung out on the essence of being married. There’s no way to calm down without getting off, or rather, that’s how he’ll justify taking so little time to savor you when he thinks of this later.

He has to pop open the bottom two buttons of his shirt so it’s out of the way, but his tie stays on. That you’re using to haul him forward atop you. He hears the clank of his belt down by his shifting feet and the sharp pants escaping your open mouth as he rolls his tip through your folds to line up at your entrance.

“Steve,” you breathe when he’s partly inside your heat, “look up.”

He can’t stop his momentum, and the drawing force of your walls against his throbbing cock keeps him sinking deeper even while Steve raises his head. His back arches to view the sky. He’s fully buried in you at the same instant he sees that you both are floating in the vast Milky Way.

The light shining down is not moonlight; it’s billions of stars and a nebulous stripe of galaxy that scars the night. 

He’s dizzy, light-headed, and utterly consumed by pull of the universe. His universe. You.

Your body is the central hearth of his world—his home—and your warmth fuels a combustion of euphoria in his veins. It powers the electric jolts of pleasure the sizzle up his spine. He steadies himself with both hands tucked beneath the garter straps to grip your thighs wildly, pinning you open to his lust, spreading the sound and smell of your union.

The raging spin of gravity controls Steve so completely, he can’t warn you he’s coming. He can’t let even a molecule out of his seizing lungs. He tips the scale of ecstasy to unceremoniously fall straight back down to rest in your waiting arms. His breath stutters like his hips, both dragging across your cool, damp skin. He’s not expecting those heavy ruts to push you over.

Your rippling orgasm drains him, and his soul begs you to take whatever pieces of him you want. Every drop. He’s yours.

“Sorry,” he huffs when his brain finally restarts. He lifts most of his weight off of you gently.

“Yeah, me too.” You stare at the stars, ravaged by the same G-forces that wreck him now. “I’m sorry you’re so good at that.” With a blind pat at his still clothed chest, you snort lightly, “terrible really. Want a refund.”

“Oh, ok. Did you say ‘repeat?’ Don’t mind if I—“

“Fuck,” you groan as he pumps once more. “No. God. Give me a minute.”

“Honey, I’ll give you a lifetime.”

The hum of sex softens in your expression when you turn to look at him, your eyes now adjusted to the low light of this beautiful night.

“Good…because I want to see the rest of the place.”

Everything is set up except the water. F.R.I.D.A.Y is ready with instructions on hooking up the jet’s water tank to the utility sink, so once all the packed supplies are in, you two are in for the night as well.

Though he can’t figure out where it’s coming from, the tent seems to be heated once closed.

Tony Stark. Genius indeed.

Steve mourns that the garter belt is off when you settle into the big bed, but he can see the indents left on your skin from the thigh-high stockings. He appreciates the time he had. Maybe they’ll meet again someday. He’ll survive without for now.

While you get comfortable and start to cuddle, his fingertips trace over your hip. Though you’re under the covers, the edge of the blanket drapes down your chest, meaning his big spoon view is all cleavage, and Steve’s got a full-blown montage of all his fantasies rolling around in that overwhelmed brain of his. They aren’t all sexual even; he’s so turned on anyway that it doesn’t matter.

He has time to savor you now. Days completely alone, and without the stress-tension of the actual wedding. Well past midnight now, Steve’s been a married man for exactly nine hours and twenty-two minutes.

He tightens his arm over your waist, whispering, “I love you, Misses Rogers.”

You stifle a yawn and wiggle closer to him. “Love you, Stevie,” you answer softly, chirping when he kisses your temple.

He feels you clench your ass against him, and Steve grunts. No doubt that was your commentary on his returned erection poking at your back.

“Sweetheart,” he tries in a low, cautious tone, “do you think we could…” Steve’s not sure how to word his request. He doesn’t talk dirty so he doesn’t have much vocabulary to express any sexual thoughts.

You turn slightly and lift a hand to his cheek. “You may do whatever you like, Captain. I’m all yours. I trust you.”

Steve’s heart swells with pride until his ribs nearly crack. He brings his hand to your cheek, too, and kisses you gently, pouring love and hope into each brush of your soft lips against his. This is his life. You are his wife. He could die happy but only after this lifetime with you he’s been promised.

When he breaks away from your mouth with a grown, his fingers are already tracing through your folds, the heft of his fist forcing apart your ass cheeks. Instinctively, you grab and lift it to give him better access, moaning when he penetrates you again. You’re still slick from before, some of his cum is there to smooth his way, but that’s good for what he wants.

He’s quickly satisfied by your openness, and Steve lines himself up to enter you. Even though the cabin is heated, even though he runs hot naturally, there is something wildly soothing about burying himself to the hilt in you. He gets one gasp of satisfaction from you before he pulls your hand away to take in his, lacing your fingers together. He lets himself be pushed out slightly as your ass relaxes against his pelvis. Steve stops moving, taking in deep breaths of you and settling your combined hands in front of you.

He kisses your stretched neck. “Can I stay like this for a while?”

Your walls grab at him, but he doesn’t thrust in response. Steve hears how your heartbeat picks up for a moment then tries to calm. You nod and hum approval. He snuggles up to you, his face resting against your spine between your shoulder blades.

He’s still. You’re still. The Earth is still.

Steve relishes every tiny detail of this moment. He takes so long to savor it that your heart slows and your breathing goes shallow. You’ve fallen asleep—likely a light sleep, sure, but that’s how much you trust him. His thumb rubs over your palm absently. As comfortable as he is, he cannot fall asleep like this. The residual effect of the day is an echo of all lovely things, emotional and supercharged with anticipation.

You married him. You two are married. He has no idea when the novelty of that will wear off, but for now, the thought alone makes him unbearably excited to have you close, and hot, and loud with him. His cock has been twitching the whole time he’s been thinking so hard about this, and you haven’t woken. Even if he wanted to let you sleep, eventually he’d have to pull out before he could sleep himself, so he slowly, experimentally, rolls his hips away.

Your hand tenses in his as another soft gasp escapes you. Your hushed voice calls him, says his name like a plea and a prayer. You’ve grown wetter, silky smooth and just begging to be used.

You untangle your fingers and press his hand to your breast.

He doesn’t need to be asked twice.

Like a dance you both have practiced for a lifetime, your needs synchronize. Steve nips at your shoulder while you spread your ass for him again, allowing his thrusts deeper. He’s rewarded with desperate whines and muffled curses until it all molds into one cry breaking in rhythm with his pace. God, you are sexy. God, he is so hard for you.

As much as he’s enjoying this, he knows that you can’t come like this. He abandons the nipple he’s been toying with to graze down your stomach and thigh, parting your legs and lifting the top one until you catch on and switch to holding that instead. His thrusts slow as he circles your clit, already soaked by your arousal.

He can tell you’re close when you go quiet, biting your lip as an “oh, fuck” escapes.

“That’s it, love. That’s it,” Steve pants, craving your coming apart as much as his own. “Baby, please,” he begs.

His favorite shattered sound rises in your throat, and he plants himself inside you to feel that fluttering grip of your orgasm to full effect. He has half a mind—as he continues to torture your clit—to wring one more out of you before he comes, but you’re tired, he remembers, and that wouldn’t quite be fair. He knows you’d say yes, but you have days to be alone, days to handle and tease and caress each other to the brink and back.

You drop your leg, pushing his hand out of the way, and reach back to pull at his hair. “Do it,” you growl as an order, “fill me up.”

Steve may not be able to talk dirty, but he has to admit that in the throws of passion, he likes hearing one or two filthy things from you. It’s almost like a taunt for punishment. The excitement of you playing with him that way has urgent pressure lapping at his spine, tightening his balls while the whiplash of his own orgasm snaps his hips flush against you. He continues to press forward, unable to recede so much as a millimeter, the intense surge of blood to his groin depriving his brain of the ability to care what he’s doing so long as he’s inside you.

He pushes. You release his hair. He pushes more. You shout a bit in confusion. He pushes again, almost drained of his sanity, it feels, and then he hears a slap as your torso leaves the warmth of his chest.

Steve finally opens his eyes.

You’ve almost fallen off of the mattress, braced by your arms, your feet secured behind his thighs.

“Sorry,” he shrieks, twisting so fast to get you off the floor that you flail, planting your hands hard against his chest. You’re sitting up straddling him now, still facing away, your bare chest heaving in the near dark, the blankets banished in a heap to one side. He presses a wide hand to your back for support. “Sorry, Keeps.”

“’S…” You try to control your own body again, incidentally clenching around Steve still inside you.

He moans, his other hand joining to hold your waist.

“’S fine,” you finally get out. “’S fine.”

A long silence descends while you both recover.

You turn to eye him over your naked shoulder. “Think you can sleep now?”

“Oh, god.”

He’s pretty sure he could die right now. He’d be happy and blissed out beyond his wildest dreams, but he definitely can’t walk over to get a warm cloth just yet. “Give me a minute.”

It’s you—his stubborn, amazing, unpredictable wife—who dismounts him and the bed first. “I got it, love,” you say, leaning down to kiss his forehead.

There must be a draft of the heating somewhere close because Steve’s hit by the intense aroma of him and you dripping from between your legs. He groans, filing that memory away with so many others from the day.

Sure, he can have you whenever he wants, but can he handle that? Through the tender care and warm embrace you offer, Steve makes a simple plan for his future: do whatever makes his wife happy…and do anything that makes her come like that.

He’s been married for eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes.

[Next Part]

[Main Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

@im-a-slut-for-fluff @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @fangirl-swagg @georgeweaslysgirl @austynparksandpizza @bucky-fricking-barnes-reads @fallinallinmendes

beautiful sparkly dividers by @silkholland