Articulations of Aspen

It couldn’t have come at a better time. You needed a change, a big one. You’d been deeply unhappy, caught in a rut with no one to lean on. So you’d picked up everything and moved to a new place. A completely fresh start. You couldn’t wait to see what this new life held in store for you.

For now, what it held in store were high ceilings and built-in arches. Your old apartment could never. This was the first step to the ideal, happiest you. 

You were celebrating by unpacking boxes, aided by a moderately expensive bottle of wine you’d been saving for a special occasion. You’d made sure to unpack your wireless speaker first and were now blasting a high-energy oldies mix, reveling in the fact that you didn’t share walls with anyone anymore. “I love you, baaaaby,” you shouted along to the music, “and if it’s quite alright, I need you baaaaaby, to warm the lonely night.” Your half-drunk glass of wine sloshing dangerously in one hand while you rifled through a box of knick-knacks with the other. And yes, you were a little drunk, but that didn’t explain the intense chill that ran up your spine. And then– 

BANG

BANG

BANG

The house shook with the force of whatever had just happened. You jumped, wine spilling across the hardwood floor in a gruesome red splash. Your heart was in your throat. Adrenaline rushing through your veins. What the fuck was that? The sounds had come from upstairs. You took a deep breath and tried to calm your body. It’d probably just been a stack of boxes falling or– There was obviously an explanation, and you just needed to go upstairs and look.   

The chills were still crawling through your body, but that was just the adrenaline, just your spiked heart rate. As you approached the staircase off your front hall, you grabbed an umbrella that’d been haphazardly leaned against the door frame until you could find a permanent place for it. With a vice-like grip around the handle, the sharp tip pointed out to stab any would-be intruders (Oh god, please don’t be an animal. You had no idea how you’d get rid of it yourself), you forced yourself up the stairs. The first thing you noticed when you got up to the top was that the doors to what you’d decided would be your bedroom, the guest room, and your office were all closed. You hadn’t done that. Holding the umbrella out in front of you, you cautiously opened the first door, then shrank back in defense. But there was nothing there. It was completely empty. The gentle sounds of the suburban neighborhood at night filtered in through the open window. Oh right. You’d opened all the windows upstairs to let the lingering mustiness of the unoccupied house air out a little bit. A gust of wind must have blown through and shut all the doors. That was all. You let out the tension in your body with a laugh, then closed all the windows. But you didn’t glance outside to see that no wind blew through the trees and the air was completely still.

Your first night, you slept a little weirdly. You couldn’t remember your dreams, beyond the fact that you had some, but whatever they were, they’d left you feeling unsettled. You chalked it up to being in an unfamiliar place and got out of bed, ready to start your day.

You went for a run, excited to explore your new neighborhood. You also hoped that being out and about would give you a chance to meet some of your neighbors. You never really knew anyone in your apartment building. People were always moving in and out, which made it hard to forge any real relationships. Now that you were somewhere permanent, you were hopeful that that would change.

But as you ran, you quickly became discouraged. People were out: working on their yards, getting the mail, bringing in groceries. But anytime you tried to initiate contact, with a friendly wave and a happy “Good morning!”, you were just met with uncomfortable stares. The worst was an elderly couple tending to their flower beds. At your greeting, the woman leaned over to her husband and whispered something in his ear. He looked up at you, making eye contact, and sadly shook his head. Then they both got up and went inside. You didn’t understand what you’d done wrong.

You reassured yourself as you got back to your house that these communities could be insular. Maybe new people didn’t move in very often. You would just strengthen your resolve. Win them all over. You could do it. They’d see. You were gonna be a great neighbor.

Two days later, you were making good progress. You’d unpacked all of the essentials you needed to live, and now you were focusing on the little sprucing-up projects you wanted done before you’d get the furniture all in place and art on the walls. Fresh coats of paint in some of the rooms, updated fixtures here and there. The house didn’t need much work, but you were making it yours. It filled your heart to do it.

Currently, you were on the highest step of your stepladder in your bedroom, taping where the wall met the ceiling before you started painting an accent wall. You weren’t the most comfortable up so high, but you’d checked to make sure the stepladder was perfectly steady before you’d gotten on it.

You were about halfway done when a chill went up your spine, and you swore that you felt something behind you, and then, as you instinctively turned your head to look, the step stool just tipped over, the right two feet coming fully off the ground and you tumbled off of it with a shout, landing in a jumbled heap on the ground. 

You breathed heavily as your brain tried to catch up with what had happened. Without thinking, you were already cradling one hand against your chest. It’d taken most of your weight when you’d hit the ground. It hurt, but the pain wasn’t blinding. You tentatively touched your wrist and then carefully rotated it. You could move it. It wasn’t broken. With a sigh of relief, your heart still pounding in your ears, you picked yourself up and turned back to deal with the stepladder. But– That wasn’t right. It was just sitting there, perfectly upright, like nothing had happened. No. It’d fallen over. Hadn’t it? Maybe– Maybe when you’d felt something behind you, you’d turned around more sharply than you’d realized and lost your balance. That was what happened. It was the only explanation.

As you went to wrap your wrist, just to be safe, you ignored the loud voice in your head insisting that you’d been shoved. 

You loved this kitchen. You loved it so much. Marble countertops, a gas stovetop with six burners and a built-in griddle, an honest-to-god breakfast nook. It was like the whole thing had been plucked right out of your dreams. You still had no idea how you’d been able to afford a kitchen like this, how this whole house hadn’t been snatched right up above asking the moment it’d been put on the market, but you weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. You just let yourself be happy with it. 

Your music was blasting, and you danced around the built-in island as you made yourself dinner. Your first real meal in your incredible kitchen, all of your cookware finally unpacked, put exactly where it all needed to go in the ample cabinet space. 

You were sauteeing vegetables when your favorite part of the song hit, and you did a little shimmy as you sang along. But you were cut off when, right up against your ear, you heard a warm, low chuckle. You jumped and whirled around, your spatula held out at the ready. But there was no one there. Of course, there wasn’t. You were alone. 

You shook your head at yourself. It must have been something in the song, or the sound had traveled in from outside, or– Or any number of things. You were just scaring yourself. It was fine. You took a deep breath to settle yourself and went back to making dinner. 

You were in your bedroom. Well, except you weren’t. Not exactly. The shape was right, and you knew it was your room, but none of your things were there. None of your decorations. None of your furniture. Still, it felt familiar to you. You were on the bed, lying on top of the covers in a short, gauzy nightgown. The bed was a little softer than you preferred, the comforter a little downier. There was an armchair set across from the bed, with a man sitting in it. You’d never seen him before, but he was familiar too. He was tall, you could tell, even sitting down. Broad. He had soft-looking dark brown hair and a thick beard. He was staring at you.

He didn’t say anything, but you knew what he wanted. You placed one hand on the inside of your knee, slowly moving it up your thigh. With your other hand, you grasped your breast through the nightie, tweaking the nipple with one finger. You let out a little gasp and he visibly swallowed. The hand on your leg rose higher, but you didn’t rush it. You were taking your time, letting yourself feel. That was what he wanted.

Your hand finally reached your core, and you moaned softly. Oh. You weren’t wearing any underwear. You brushed your fingers across your lower lips, slowly, gently, moving your way between them. Over on the chair, the man leaned forward, and you spread and lifted your knees so he could see.

As you brushed your thumb against your clit, you wanted to close your eyes, sink into it. But you kept your eyes open. He wanted you to look at him, see him. He wanted your eyes on him as you came apart. 

You didn’t try to stifle your gasps and moans as you moved one finger inside of yourself and increased the pressure on your clit with your thumb, moving it in small, fast circles now. With your other hand, you pinched your nipple hard. His icy blue eyes were on you. He licked his lips. The wave was rising inside of you, higher, higher, but you needed more. You slipped another finger inside yourself, spreading them slowly. You moaned at the stretch, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enou–

You woke up with a throbbing between your legs, and your breath caught in your throat. Memories of your dream slammed into you. That was– What? What was that? You rolled over onto your stomach, burying your face in your pillow, muffling your embarrassed laughter. Then you reached over to your nightstand to grab your vibrator so you could finish yourself off before you moved on with your day.

You checked the thermostat for the third time in just a few hours. It’d been chilly all morning, but the readout still said 70℉, exactly what you’d set it at. You must just be running cold today. You grabbed a sweatshirt and hoped you weren’t getting sick. Maybe you’d pick up some zinc at the store.

You couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching you. You were alone in your house. You knew this for sure because, as silly as you felt, you’d checked all the rooms. You’d checked the windows too, but of course, there was no one there. You closed all of the curtains anyway. 

Now you were standing in your bedroom, trying to talk yourself into getting dressed. You were being so ridiculous. You knew it, but something you couldn’t put your finger on had you so completely unsettled. You took a few deep breaths. Come on come on come on. And then, finally, you changed as quickly as you could.

And you were fine. Of course, you were fine. Even though your heart thumped. Even though your skin crawled. You were fine. Another deep breath, and you left your room, turning off the light as you went. 

But once in the hall, you realized you’d left your phone on the bed. You turned around to go get it and stopped abruptly. The light was still on. You’d turned it off. You knew you’d turned it off. You forced yourself forward and then paused in the doorway. You flipped the light switch. The lights turned off. Then you flipped it again. The lights turned on. Flipped it again. They turned off. Everything was working exactly like it was supposed to. You must not have actually flipped the switch all the way when you’d left the room. There. Simple explanation. Everything was fine.

You moved forward to grab your phone, sitting at the foot of the bed, exactly where you’d thought it was. As you started to turn back around, but before you were fully facing the doorway— you only caught it out of the corner of your eye—something rushed past the door, through the hallway. A flurry of movement alone. You saw heard felt it. What the fuck? What the fuck? 

Your whole body was frozen, a chorus of nope nope nope running through your head. What was going on? You coaxed yourself forward enough so you could look through the hall. Nothing was there. But you had seen something. You knew you had. You had to get out of here.

You sat in the corner of the coffee shop, both hands wrapped tightly around the large, warm mug of herbal tea. Something calming. You’d settled down. Your breathing was back to normal. It was time to think about this rationally.

Ghosts, the supernatural, none of that was real. It was just things people made up for movies and books. Whatever you saw was because you were already on edge this morning, your brain in overdrive, looking for things to be afraid of.

Still. You took out your phone and googled “what to do if my new house has a weird feeling,” and were met with pages upon pages of results telling you it was perfectly normal to feel uncomfortable in your new home. Unsettled even. It could even send your brain into fight or flight, checking for threats everywhere in a new environment.

You breathed a sigh of relief. This was perfectly normal. Nothing was wrong with you. You just needed to keep working to make the space your own, and everything would settle out.

Later, when you were getting out of your car in your driveway, you noticed your next-door neighbor at her mailbox. Perfect. Forging connections would definitely help you feel more settled. But as you started to walk over, she turned around and quickly walked into her house, slamming the door behind her. You were sure she’d seen you. Why was everyone in this neighborhood so cold?

  You were back on the bed in the room that was and wasn’t yours. The man stood over you now, his fingertips hovering over your naked body. You couldn’t move, but that didn’t worry you. He didn’t want you to move, and you wanted to do what he wanted.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed out, his voice sonorous, hitting you deep in your gut. “And here you are, just for me. I’m so lucky.”

There was deep tenderness in his eyes, but something else too. Possession. It sent a thrill through you. No one had ever looked at you like that before. 

He hummed to himself as his fingers ghosted over your thigh. “But now that I have you, what should I do with you?”

When you opened your mouth, you found that you couldn’t speak. But once again, it didn’t worry or scare you. You were his; you'd do what he wanted. 

He tentatively pressed his fingers to your skin, like he was testing something. He closed his eyes when he made contact and exhaled. His touch sent a shock up your spine. “It’s been such a long time since I've been able to touch anyone,” he rumbled, full of awe. “You really are perfect.”

He dragged his fingertips up your thighs, but then skipped over your core, landing his hand on your soft stomach. You whined in displeasure, trying to tilt your pelvis up at him. He ignored it.

“I don’t even know where to start. I want all of it. All of you. All of you, forever.”

You whined again. Your wetness was pooling between your legs, starting to soak into the sheets. You needed more of his touch, anywhere. Everywhere.

“Patience, sweetheart. We have all the time in the world. All we have is time.”

You opened your eyes, suddenly thrust into full wakefulness. You were soaking wet, with only fragments of memories of what got you that way. But you barely had any time to focus on that. You were freezing. Your entire bedroom was absolutely freezing. 

You stepped back from the door to let the HVAC technician in, wrapped in a thick blanket over your sweatshirt and thick leggings. He paused over the threshold, rubbing his hands together and exhaling. “Oh shit,” he exclaimed with a whistle. “You weren’t kidding. It’s freezing in here. Must be at least a twenty-degree difference from outside.” 

“Yeah,” you said a little helplessly. “It’s been a little chilly the last week, but it feels like it got much colder in the night.” 

You led him to the thermostat, and he examined it. It still read 70°. “Hmm,” he hummed, opening the cover and giving it a once-over. “Seems like it’s probably just not communicating properly. Maybe triggering your AC when it shouldn’t. I’ll take a look downstairs and see what’s going on.”

You were trying to force yourself to focus on reading a book when the tech came back upstairs. His brows were furrowed, and he seemed lost in his own thoughts. You set your book down, not trying to be quiet, and he looked up, like he was surprised to see you there. “Everything okay?” you asked nervously.

“Huh?” he blinked at you. Then he shook his head, like he was trying to rid it of something. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” He paused, then looked at you very carefully. “You been in this house long?” 

You shook your head. “Just a couple weeks.”

His gaze narrowed. “Has everything been okay?”

“What do you mean? Besides the thermostat?”

His eyes focused on you, like he was surprised by your presence again. “No, I– I don’t know. Sorry. Don’t mind me, I just must be feeling a little off today.” He shook his head one more time, then returned to business. “Furnace and AC both seem to be working fine. So it must be the thermostat. I’ll just replace it with a new one real quick, and you should be right as rain in a few hours.”

You breathed a sigh of relief, feeling even better once you heard warm air being forced through the vents. It made it easy to ignore the way it seemed like he couldn’t get out of your house fast enough.

In the room that wasn’t quite yours, you stood in front of a free-standing full-length mirror. You were wearing a short black dress that hugged your curves, a silver necklace around your neck, matching bracelets on both wrists, like cuffs. The man was behind you, pressed against you, his head hooked over your shoulder, making eye contact with you in the mirror, one possessive hand on your stomach, the other coming up to gently wrap around your neck. 

“I’ve been waiting for something for so long,” he whispered into your ear. “Now I know I was waiting for you.” Both hands moved away from you, briefly, coming back together behind your head. Gently, carefully, reverently removing your necklace. He moved slowly, a look in his eye like he was unwrapping a gift he’d been staring at for ages. The necklace disappeared, and he moved on to the zipper of your dress. He lowered it achingly slowly. You didn’t move. He didn’t want you to. You knew that.

He moved the dress down your body at a glacial pace, revealing you inch by inch. His gaze flicking back and forth between your back and the mirror. Taking all of you in. Once it was down to your hips, he let it drop. You weren’t wearing anything underneath, fully exposed to him. For him. It didn’t occur to you to try to cover yourself. Why would you? 

One hand came back around to touch your stomach. It drifted lower, and then he dragged it, oh so slowly, up to your chest. You felt his cold breath on your neck as he sighed–

You were lying on the bed, and he was on top of you. Finally. Your bracelets were still on, and now they were hooked together, keeping your arms above your head. You didn’t try to move them. You stayed where he put you. Of course you did. Your breath felt trapped in your chest. You were waiting. For him. You needed it. He was touching you, your whole body, like he couldn’t get enough. Like it would never be enough–

You were on your side. He was pressed up behind you. The mirror was next to the bed now. So you could see yourself. See him behind you, as he kissed up your neck. Behind your ear. His fingers danced along the cut of you. Between your lips. One, two, three fingers briefly slipped inside. You didn’t need it. You were ready.

You were ready you were ready you were ready you were ready.

You whined. Low and loud and needy. He hushed you. Then. Finally. Finally finally finally he thrust himself inside you. Forcing a grunt a whine a moan out of you. You kept your eyes open, locked on the mirror so you could see your face and his as he was finally inside of you, where he belonged. So you could see the ecstasy on both your faces. 

He kept his eyes on yours as he thrust. As he set a punishing pace. As the pressure inside of you built and built and built. As one arm held you so tight to him, arm over your pelvis, hand between your breasts. His fingers pressing bruises into your skin. The other was between your legs, pressing pressing pressing against your clit, tight circles too much too much too much not enough just right. The hand on your chest pressed even harder, pushing you into his broad chest like he was trying to meld with you. 

As you climbed up up up and finally crested over, the air between his mouth and your neck, in all of the spaces where your bodies made contact, went blurry, squiggly, like he was literally breathing you in. You felt something inside of you go, but it wasn’t a loss. It was right. It was perfect.

You came with a scream. “Andy!” A name on your lips you hadn’t realized you’d known. 

“Mine mine mine,” he chanted as he chased his own release. “Forever. Eternity.”

You woke with a start. Your chest heaving. You were exhausted, like you hadn’t slept at all. And you were sore, stiff, all over. Between your legs. Inside of you. Almost like you’d–

Before you had time to wrap your head around that, you realized something else. You were absolutely freezing. The whole room was freezing. So much colder than it was before. No! You’d fixed it! No!

You didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with this. You were too cold, too worn out. Too fucked out, your traitorous brain supplied. You didn’t want to deal with that either.

You went into your bathroom and turned on your shower as hot as it could go. You didn’t turn on the exhaust fan. You needed all the steam you could get. Once the small room had warmed up a little, you quickly stripped and stepped into the glass shower stall. You stepped directly under the stream of hot water, pushing everything else, all of the very not right, out of your head. Focusing on just getting warm. You weren’t sure how long exactly you stood there for. Awhile. Long enough for the chill to finally leave your bones. Once you stopped shivering, you started cleaning yourself. Trying to let yourself go through your normal routine on autopilot. But that wasn’t possible when you found so many tender spots. On your legs, your hips, your stomach, your chest. New bruises. Like fingerprints. Like someone had gripped you too tight. Like your drea– 

You pushed that thought away before you could even fully think it. Not real. Not real. Not real. You were losing it. Starting to come apart at the seams. Maybe you’d been too isolated. Maybe that was it. That had to be it. You took a deep breath to calm yourself. Then, as you started to get back to washing yourself–

Something brushed against the back of your neck. Like someone’s hand. Like someone had touched your neck. You weren’t making it up. It wasn’t just in your head. It’d happened. You’d felt it. 

With your heart in your throat, you whirled around on instinct. And right there, over where your shoulder had been, in the steam, was the shape of a man’s face. You saw it. You saw it. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. 

You crashed out of the shower, barely keeping your feet under you. You were soaking wet, but you didn’t stop to dry off. You couldn’t. You had to get out of there. You tore into your bedroom, grabbing the first leggings and sweater you could find, throwing them on as you continued to move. You grabbed your phone off your nightstand as you rushed past it. You had to get out of there. You couldn’t get out fast enough.

You didn’t feel safe until you were standing in the street in front of your house, trying to catch your breath, water dripping down your back.  You bent over like you’d just run a marathon, adrenaline coursing through you. You needed to get your head on straight. You needed to think about this rationally. It was just a house. It was just a house. If you thought it enough times, maybe you’d believe it.

You slowly straightened up, trying to force yourself to breathe normally. And that’s when you saw your next-door neighbor, sitting on her front porch with a friend, staring at you. And maybe it was just the adrenaline that hadn’t dissipated yet, but– No. Absolutely not. Not today.

You stormed across her lawn, your best ‘fuck you’ smile on your face, not caring that you were still dripping. Not caring that you looked like a crazy person. “Hi!” you greeted when you’d gotten to the porch, too loud, too aggressive. “We haven’t been introduced yet. I’m your new next-door neighbor. I moved in a few weeks ago,” you gestured at your house, like they hadn’t just seen you run out of it like a bat out of hell.

“Oh my god,” your neighbor’s friend exclaimed, her eyes wide.

“I know,” your neighbor, whose goddamn name you still didn’t know, said to her, shaking her head. 

“I can’t believe you moved into the Barber house,” her friend said to you, her voice tinged with horror. “Why would you do that?”

“What?” you asked, confused, some of your righteous anger leaving you.

She shook her head instead of answering your question, no longer able to look at you. “It was so awful, so awful, and then you just moved in like–” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Without another word, she got up and fled into the house. You and your neighbor both stared after her. What was going on?

After a minute of silence, your neighbor turned her steely gaze onto you. “You know,” she said, her voice cold, “maybe it seems like a lot of time has passed since it happened, but it’s still very fresh for this whole neighborhood. We’re still trying to recover. We don’t need someone coming in here and trying to dredge it all up again.”

“What–” you stuttered, “what happened? I don’t–”

“It isn’t easy for anyone here to talk about. They were our friends. I’m sure you can understand that.” Then, without another word, she got up and followed her friend into her house. And you were left standing on her porch alone, trying to catch up.

All you could do for several moments was just stand there, gaping. Your hands were shaking. Your mind was racing. But then, suddenly, you realized how creepy you were being. Oh god, she’d probably call the cops. So, with dread building in your chest, you forced yourself back to your own property.

You stopped at the end of your driveway. You couldn’t make yourself go further. Something was happening. You were missing something big. But you knew now, for sure, that there was something very wrong with your house. So, finally, you did the thing you should have done when things first started getting weird. When you first moved in. Before you even bought it. You took out your phone and you googled your address. Now with the added knowledge of adding Barber to the end of it.

Barely breathing, you clicked on the first result. Three Dead in Gruesome Apparent Murder Suicide.  And there right at the top, a picture of your house surrounded by police. Oh god oh god oh god. You wanted to puke. But you made yourself keep reading.

The Barbers were a family of three: Andrew, Laurie, and their teenage son Jacob. Andrew was an assistant district attorney. Laurie ran a children’s community group. They were well-liked. Pillars of the community. And five years ago, all three bodies had been found in what was now your basement, a shotgun laying next to Laurie. It had rocked the entire community, leaving everyone desperately searching for answers. 

You kept scrolling until you stopped dead in the middle of the page. A picture of the Barbers, happy and alive. Laurie was beautiful, picture perfect, smiling adoringly at her family. Jacob looked like any normal teenage boy, hair in his eyes, annoyed to be there. But that wasn’t what had your heart going still in your chest. No, that was the man looking straight at the camera. Looking at you. Andrew. Andy. Without a fucking doubt, the man from your dreams.

Your phone slipped from your fingers, landing hard on your driveway. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t breathe. What was happening? What– How– The fear was louder than anything else. You’d never been so scared in your life. You had– You had to go.

You ran into your house for the last time. You raced up the stairs, not looking around you. In your bedroom, you pulled a duffel bag from your closet, then just started shoving clothes into it indiscriminately. You didn’t know where you were going to go or what you were going to do. You just had to leave now now now.

When the bag was full, you tore back down the stairs, grabbing your purse and your car keys, heading right for the door. You were going to be okay. You were going to get out. But when you tried to open the door, it was locked. You didn’t remember doing that. You hadn’t done that. With trembling fingers, you flipped the deadbolt and then watched with horror as it flipped right back. No no no no no no no no.

You rushed to the nearest window in desperation, but it wouldn’t budge either. You cried out in frustration and panic. You moved to grab your phone then remembered that you’d left it on your driveway. No. 

As you were about to run to your back door to see if you could get out that way, all of the lights in the house began flickering. On and off on and off on and off. And your bluetooth speaker suddenly buzzed to life, filling the house with music.

You’re just too good to be true

Can’t take my eyes off of you

You’d be like heaven to touch

I want to hold you so much

And there he was, standing in the middle of your living room. Andy. He was there and not there. You could see through him. But it was him. It was unmistakable.

“Shhh, calm down, honey,” he cooed. “It’s alright. You’re alright.” 

“A– Andy,” you could barely get it out, your voice was shaking so badly. You couldn’t wrap your mind around it, couldn’t get control of your fear. You were talking to a dead man. “Please let me go.”

“Honey,” he started, his tone placating, “you know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” It came out as a sob, helplessness crashing down on you.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he cooed, his brow furrowing at your distress. “Because we belong together.”

That’s when your tears started. This was another dream, right? It had to be. Maybe you’d never actually woken up. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be real. 

The music got louder, and Andy crouched down in front of you. “This is our song,” he said softly, “remember? From your first night here. I’m sorry I scared you that night. I was– I was very upset. You were barging into my house and– Then you started changing things, changing my house and– you understand that’s why I had to push you right? Why I tried to make you go. But then. Then you stayed, and I started to get to know you. And I realized all the ways we fit. I realized the truth. That you were brought here for me. So that we could be together forever.”

You took a deep breath, forcing it. You wanted to tell him he was insane, but it was even worse. He was dead. A ghost. How could you reason with that? “Andy, no,” you started slowly. “All I did was buy a house. I’m so sorry that something awful happened to you, but this is my house now–”

“THIS IS MY HOUSE!” he roared, suddenly floating above you. The lights flickered even more intensely, and all of your shelves shook, books toppling over. And just for a moment, just for a flash, Andy’s face changed. Half of it disappeared, blood and viscera and bone and emptiness where his skin should have been. But then it was gone, back to normal, and he was once again on the ground in front of you. “This is still my house, that I had built for my family. The people who are meant to be my family are just a little different than I thought.”

You swallowed hard, trying to stop shaking. You had to find a way out. You had to get out of here. Andy was moving, floating, pacing, back and forth, mumbling to himself now. “That fucking bitch. Destroying everything I’d worked so hard for, everything I’d earned.” He was distracted by his own anger. You took the opportunity to start to crawl backward, see if there was something you could do to force the door open. “And then after all that, they left me alone here on top of it,” he continued, before his eyes locked on you, halfway to the entryway. “But you understand that better than most, don’t you, sweetheart? Being alone.”

You stopped in your tracks, collapsing back onto the floor. “What? No, I’m not alone!”

He shook his head sadly at you, like you were being ridiculous. “Honey, come on. I know you. I see you. All I do is watch you. You never go anywhere. You never see anyone. You never talk to anyone. You’re just as lonely as I am. But it’s okay. We have each other now. Forever.”

It was that word, forever, that made the bottom drop out of what you were feeling. Oh no oh god. It was only pure terror now. What was he going to do? What could he do?

He was crouching down in front of you again, so close to you that you could put a hand through him. But it wouldn’t do any good. You knew that. “Andy, I–” you didn’t know what to say, but you had to make him understand. Make him see sense. At the very least, to buy you some time. Get you out of this house. Burn it down, maybe. Destroy every part of it so that you could start over. Again. “You’re right. I see that now,” you lied, trying so hard to keep your voice even. “We fit. But– But we just can’t be together. I’m alive. I need– I need to live my life. We– We aren’t on the same plane.”

Andy shook his head, gliding closer to you as you tried to back up. He was practically on top of you now. It was a horrifically unsettling feeling. It made all the hair on your body stand up straight. “No,” he said, “no, we don’t need to worry about that. You’ve made me so much stronger. Since you came here, I can do so many more things. Things I never dreamt of when I was all alone. And after last night, I made you feel so good, and in return, you gave so much of yourself to me, my love.” The dream, you realized with a start. When it looked like he was actually breathing you in– And the exhaustion you’d woken up with. Like he’d taken part of your lifeforce. “Now I’m strong enough to do what I need to do. To make sure you never leave me.”

Your eyes got wide, and the panic that’d been ebbing and flowing this entire conversation spiked to a degree it somehow hadn’t reached yet. “Andy, Andy, wait, no! What does that mean? What are you going to do?” 

He didn’t respond, just brushed his translucent fingers down your cheek, leaving an awful chill in their wake. And that’s when you heard it, the barely there hiss coming from the kitchen, accompanied by a sulfuric smell that you’d been too afraid, too heightened to notice until this point. Oh god, your beloved gas cooktop. You started sobbing. You couldn’t stop. Doubled over on the floor of this house you thought you’d been so lucky to find.

“Shh, sweetheart, it’s okay, you’re alright,” Andy consoled you. You could feel the whisper of his fingers over you’re hair. “It won’t hurt at all. You’re going to fall asleep, and then when you wake up, you’ll be here with me. Forever, in our beautiful home. It’ll be perfect.” 

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“You’re much better at cooking than you think,” Nick assured you. “And it really does look and smell and taste amazing.” 

“Taste?” you echoed, giving him a half-hearted glare. “Did you sneak tastes when I was trying to find placemats for the table?”

“I definitely did,” he grinned. “Those mashed potatoes? Well, let's just say you’re lucky I love you, otherwise I’d hoard them all for myself.”

Your inner omega chirped happily at your beta’s praise–especially for something so homemaker-y, which you knew wasn’t exactly a strength of yours. It was probably one of your biggest insecurities actually, especially when it came to finding an alpha. 

But you were trying. You were trying so hard. 

You really wanted everything to be perfect for when Frank arrived home from work. 

It was the very least he deserved for saving you from Omega Control, from being shipped off to a breeder and God knows what kind of misery and abuse would have awaited you then. 

Surely nothing you haven’t already experienced in foster care, a mean little voice spoke up in the back of your mind. 

You closed your eyes against the onslaught of memories that stirred up. At the vivid intrusive thoughts that played against the back of your eyelids at what could have happened if you’d been torn away from Nick, from Frank, from the life you had worked so hard to live as freely and happily as possible. 

You had been so close to losing it all. 

And you still weren’t convinced you hadn’t already lost Frank, for good. 

“Omega?”

The sound of Nick’s concerned voice had you surfacing from the swirl of anxiety filling your head, and you blinked your eyes open, trying to muster a smile for him. 

It had been a really long time since you felt this anxious, this helpless. But you had to shove it all down. All of it. 

You had to finish this perfect dinner for Frank and welcome him home like a perfect omega would and–

The sound of the front door opening and the jangle of keys being tossed on the entryway table had you perking up in alarm. Your eyes flew to the clock above the stove and you gasped, “Oh my god! I didn’t realize how late it was! He’s home! Oh my–”

Your words faded away as Nick framed your face between his hand and tugged you in for a brief, soft kiss. 

“It’s all amazing, and so are you,” he whispered, giving you a soft smile before pulling away. 

A moment later, Frank’s tall figure appeared in the kitchen doorway. His brow was furrowed, his eyes wary as he glanced from the three places settings at the dining table, to you standing over the stove in an apron you had found in the back of the front closet along with the linens that now adorned the table. 

“Why are you wearing that?” Frank snapped, his face darkening in a way that made you whine and stumble back a step.  

“What?” You glanced down at the apron. “I-I didn’t want to make a mess–”

“That isn’t yours. Take it off!” Frank snarled, stalking toward you. 

“Hey, Frank, calm down,” Nick’s voice was as soothing and careful as ever as he stepped in front of you, holding up his hands in the universal gesture of meaning no harm. 

“It’s not hers! It’s…” Frank’s voice broke, his eyes gleaming with a wild kind of grief as he stared at you, then at the apron, like he was gutted.

And you realized that he was, and then why.

Horror dawned at your misstep–at what you had unintentionally done–unearthing something that had belonged to his late wife. 

“Oh god,” you quavered, quickly untying the apron and slipping it off. You folded it carefully, respectfully, your tears already spilling over as you held it out to Frank with trembling fingers. “Frank, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t realize.”

“Hey, let’s all just take a deep breath and calm down,” Nick encouraged, shifting sideways so he could give you a gentle look. “You didn’t know. It was an honest mistake.” He turned back to Frank, who was holding the apron between his hands with the look of utmost sorrow clouding his features. “Frank, she was just trying to do something nice for you. Spent all day cooking a really great dinner–”

“I didn’t fucking ask for any of this,” Frank rasped, shaking his head as he crumbled the apron between his hands. “I didn’t ask for this!” he held it up, his eyes wet with unshed tears and his face flushed in anger, in heartbreak. “I didn’t ask for this!” he swept a hand toward the stove covered in steaming pots as the delicious aroma of the meal you had worked so hard on all day filled the air. 

“Frank,” you wobbled, unsure of what to say but knowing you felt as devastated as he looked. 

He shook his head, jaw clenching. “I can’t… do this. I can’t. I won’t. I won’t.”

And then he turned on his heel and stormed from the kitchen, leaving you and Nick staring after him, utterly devastated for an entirely different reason.

A couple of hours later, Nick tentatively eased open the door leading from the kitchen to the garage. 

He heard soft clinking sounds, and the low hum of classic rock playing from a beat up stereo set on the corner of Frank’s work table. 

The man himself was ducked under the hood of a fully restored 1967 Mustang Fastback. It was royal blue with white rally stripes, and it was gorgeous enough to have Nick whistling before he could really think better of it. 

Frank went rigid, easing away from the car’s engine that didn’t really need any work, but it was just his way to keep himself busy, to keep his mind quiet when he needed it most, to hide.

“What do you want?” Frank grunted, looking tense as his grease-stained fingers twitched at his sides. 

“Nothing, just thought I’d bring you one of these.” Nick held up a beer in each hand, one for him and one for Frank. 

Frank’s eyes landed on the proffered beer and lingered long enough that Nick exhaled in relief. He moved closer, a soft, hopeful smile curling his lips as he held out the beer to Frank. 

After a long, tense moment, Frank swiped the bottle from Nick’s grip, taking a long pull before turning away and ducking back under the hood of his car. 

“I know you don’t want us here,” Nick murmured, inching closer before taking a tentative seat on a nearby crate. “I’m sorry that we’re encroaching on your space, on your home–”

“It’s not a home,” Frank said sharply before taking another gulp of his beer. “It hasn’t been a home for a long time. I don’t do homes, not anymore.”

“Right,” Nick breathed, his features softening, looking so very, very sad for the rigid alpha standing a few feet away. 

Frank turned to set his beer aside to free up his hand and caught the way Nick was looking at him. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t pity me. I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity, Frank. It’s empathy.”

“I don’t want that either,” Frank gritted, moving to grab a wrench from the toolbox placed on the mobile cart between them. He pointed it at Nick, his eyes hard. “Don’t fucking feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t,” Nick said earnestly. “I feel sorry for what you went through, and I’m sorry for… for all of this. How messy it all turned out. You deserve better, so much better–”

“Christ, can you just be quiet?” Frank scoffed. 

Nick snapped his mouth shut, his gaze falling to the floor as he took a small sip from his beer. He was trying so hard to smooth things over–for you, for himself, too, and for Frank. 

He so desperately wanted to see the potential that you had so joyfully spoken about for the past few months. 

All three of you had been through so much in different ways, and it was poetic, in a sense, that the Universe had brought you all together. 

He just knew that if Frank would let some of that emotional armor crumble, if you two could just get through to him–earn his forgiveness–there was a chance that this could be something special. 

The three of you, you could be a pack. 

You could be each other’s home.

“Hand me that grease rag behind you,” Frank muttered, making Nick sit up at attention. 

Blinking in surprise, that Frank had not only asked him for something but hadn’t kicked him out yet either, Nick twisted to the workbench behind him, plucking said grease rag from the surface and holding it out to Frank. 

Frank’s eyes met his for a brief second–enough for Nick to feel the spark of something between them–and if the way Frank quickly looked away and his shoulders tensed was any indicator, the alpha had felt it, too. 

Suppressing a soft smile, Nick watched Frank work, familiar with what he was tinkering with since he was the one who maintained your van. And before Frank could reach for the next tool he needed, Nick had scooped it up and had it held out. 

Again, Frank’s eyes found the beta’s, some of the icy glint fading into something else–curioristy, perhaps. A touch of confusion, too, and just the tiniest, tiniest glimmer of what could have been admiration. 

Regardless, whatever it was, it had Nick’s belly swooping and his chest fluttering with a tentative kind of hope. 

The next morning, Frank was intent on getting out of the house to head to work before either you or Nick emerged from the guest room you were sharing. But as he went to pass by said guest room, the sound of your sharp, raised voice made him pause. 

Frowning, because he had never heard you sound so irritated, Frank hovered just outside the door, which was cracked open, listening in on the conversation between you and Nick. 

“Please,” your voice was softer this time as you took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Just, stop.” 

“I’m not trying to upset you,” Nick swore as he crouched before where you were curled up on the window seat overlooking the side yard. “I’m just worried. You’re having nightmares again–”

“So?” you challenged, your features set and stubborn as you met his gaze. 

Nick sighed. “You haven’t had nightmares like this in a really long time.” 

“It’s nothing,” you insisted, feeling more tired than even Nick knew. “I’m fine.”

Nick’s touch was so painfully gentle as he held your hand, his thumb trailing back and forth over your knuckles. “It’s okay if you’re not, considering everything you’ve been through.”

“I’m fine,” you repeated, your exhaustion seeping into your voice now as you tried so hard to blink back the tears gathering. 

Nick’s hold on your hand shifted, until he was guiding your palm to the center of his chest, where you could feel the steady rhythm of his heart beating beneath your touch. He leaned into you more fully, his free hand lifting to cradle the side of your face, making your gaze meet his. 

“You haven’t told me anything about what happened at Omega Control,” he looked pained by this, his eyes flickering between yours, looking more worried than you had ever seen, so much so that you couldn’t hold his gaze any longer and looked away instead. “Usually you tell me everything.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it ever again,” you whispered, turning away from Nick and curling in on yourself as you fixed your gaze outside–both yearning to be out there but terrified of being caught again. “We should keep the past in the past.”

At the sound of Nick’s disappointed sigh, Frank eased away from the door, frowning at the way you had echoed his own words to you, about keeping the past in the past. 

Because everything inside of him–especially his inner alpha who was listlessly hovering beneath the surface, yearning to comfort you, to get to know Nick more–was telling him that you needed to talk about what happened. That it wasn’t a weight–or fear–that you should carry on your own. 

Frank watched as his hand moved toward the doorknob, trembling slightly. Every rusty caretaker instinct inside of him was screaming at him to walk through that door, sweep you up against his chest, and soothe you with his alpha purr until you felt safe enough to tell him and Nick what had happened. 

It would be so easy. All he had to do was press the door open, make his presence known, and just… allow things to go from there. 

But instead, Frank took a step away from the door, then another, until he was jogging down the steps, swiping up his keys and briefcase from the entryway table, and shoving outside into the bright morning sunshine. 

And the whole time he walked to his car, he thought the same thing over and over–that it wasn’t his place to take care of you, to protect you, that you had Nick for that. 

You didn’t need him.

You didn’t.

It was nearly midnight once Frank finally returned home. He was exhausted, and had spent the hours after work at his favorite dive bar, nursing a couple of beers and eating bad frozen appetizers for dinner when all he really wanted was to go home. 

But after this morning, what he had almost done…what he had wanted to do…

It felt safer to just stay away. 

So it was like some kind of twisted, cosmic joke, that as soon as Frank stepped inside the house, he was instantly enveloped in your sweet, addictive omega scent. 

Only there was a sour note to your divine smell, one that instantly had Frank as alert as his inner alpha. 

Because that sour scent meant that you were distressed–terrified. 

Before he realized what he was doing, Frank was dashing into the living room, only to pull up short. He wasn’t sure what he had expected to find–but it wasn’t you curled up on the sofa, asleep and visibly trembling as you whimpered at whatever nightmare had you caught in its dark web.

A beat later, Frank registered the distant sound of the shower running, which explained why you were by yourself in this state, and why Nick wasn’t there to soothe you. 

But you so obviously needed soothing in this moment as you gave a choked sob, your features twisting in the utmost distress as you curled in on yourself tighter. 

Frank was across the room in three long strides, before he even realized he was moving. 

The need to calm you was like a visceral thing rippling over every inch of him–clawing at him from the inside out–and it was all he could focus on as he knelt on the floor beside you and tentatively reached out to touch the crown of your head. 

“Shhh, omega,” Frank rumbled, his voice the softest it had been with you in weeks as he gently caressed your hair. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

This close now, Frank could see the glimmer of tear-tracks along your cheeks, how tense your body was as you laid in the fetal position and tried to make yourself as small as possible. 

Frank murmured your name, hesitating for a second before he held his wrist gland beneath your nose so you could breathe in his alpha scent. “You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re okay now.”

You shuddered hard, your brows furrowing in your sleep, a soft whimper falling from your lips as you shifted and pressed your nose against Frank’s wrist without even knowing it. You were just desperately seeking the sudden source of your comfort–of the familiar–of something, no, someone who made you feel safe. 

“There you go,” Frank praised softly, resuming his pets along your head as he watched your body go lax and the rigid tension slowly ease from your frame. “Such a good omega.” 

Frank’s voice broke, his breath shaky as he watched you sleep, as he really looked at you for the first time in weeks–since everything had happened. 

You looked so tired, and so small. 

So vulnerable. 

And it made him ache. It made him want. It made him yearn. It made all of his instincts–both man and alpha–stir up and rise within him in a way that terrified him. 

Because he never thought he would feel this way again. 

Frank never thought that he would care about someone so deeply again. 

In fact, he had tried so fucking hard to avoid it at all costs, because he knew what it felt like to lose it all. To lose the person you loved most. To lose the future you had been so hopeful for. To lose your entire family, your home, everything that made you who were in one awful, tragic fell swoop. 

He’d had it all–the love, the future, the life, the home. And he was supposed to protect them at all costs.   

And he had failed. 

He had failed as a man, as an alpha–as a husband and as a soon-to-be father. Frank had failed in a way that still haunted his every waking moment five years later. 

So when he looked at you, when he felt what he felt for you, when he got caught in Nick’s soft, warm gaze and wanted to stay there–it terrified him in a way that made him want to turn his back on it all–on everything. 

But he couldn’t find it in himself to do that right now. 

Not when you clung to his wrist in your sleep and a quiet chirp spilled past your lips. Not when the sour note faded from your scent and was replaced by the warm, spicy tones of your contentment and relief. 

All Frank could do was watch you, convinced that in this moment, he was the only thing keeping your nightmares at bay, and that was enough for his protective instinct to override his sheer panic. 

It was enough to have the rest of the world fade away as he focused on soothing you into a peaceful sleep, completely unaware that Nick stood in the doorway, having witnessed this entire tender, protective display.

And finally getting to see with his own eyes the kind of alpha that Frank Adler could be, and why you were so completely taken with him.

OH EM GEEEEE. I’m kind of in emotional shambles right now, ngl. This story feels so messy lol, but I’m also kind of in love with it anyway. I just want them all to be happy and loved 🥺

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You’d expected a lot of things when you agreed your husband’s oldest friend should come spend the holidays with you, but not this: you naked and splayed open, your back against Bucky’s chest, and Steve knelt between your legs, focus absolute as they took you apart.

Bucky’s lips moved against your neck, not quite kissing, hand sliding to cup one aching breast. “You want to feel for the ridge, the soft roof inside. Feel it?”

Steve nodded, learning by the tremors that rippled through you.

And you? You could only moan as his fingers sought a place only Bucky had touched before tonight.

Steve’s breath ghosted along your thigh, cool in comparison to the heat pooling where his fingertips pressed. “Like this?” he asked, looking up, seeking confirmation from Bucky.

Bucky squeezed you, barely-there pressure, his thumb circling your nipple. “Yeah, there—you’ll feel it through the front wall. Little bump.”

Steve slid his fingers deeper, slow and careful, and you arched back against Bucky’s chest. The pressure inside shifted, molten but sudden, and you gasped at the feel of it when he found it—that ridge, the soft roof, as Bucky had described it. Steve’s big hand trembled just a little as he kept it inside you, gentle but greedy, desperate to get it right. The man was as worshipping as he was determined, brow furrowed, lashes dark against his cheek as he mapped each element of your reactions.

And Bucky watched, grinning against your ear, voice thick. “That’s it, Steve. Watch her face, see how her mouth falls open? Touch her there, a tiny bit harder, that’s it, yeah.”

He kept the pressure steady, calloused thumb skating circles over your clit while his fingers pressed up, learning you, working with the careful tenacity he applied to every complex operation.

Bucky’s own hand drifted lower, his touch rough at your hip, a grounding force. You couldn’t move if you’d wanted to, pinned between them, the air thick with sweat and something like ozone.

You bucked, pulse thumping in your throat, teeth gritty against a whimper. Steve’s eyes flicked up again, shining, hungry, and your swore you might come just on the taste of his focus. With every press against that spot, your vision stuttered out, blinking in firework-bright bursts.

Bucky’s voice pressed into the shell of your ear, low and lazy, but with that hint of command that still managed to thrill you, even after all these years. “She’s real sensitive right there, Steve. Just steady. Keep the rhythm—yeah, just like that.”

“Fuck, Buck—she’s gonna—” Steve’s fingers jittered, the tip of his thumb ghosting over your wet clit.

“Let her,” Bucky hummed, open-mouthed over her shoulder. His other hand covered her thigh, holding her so wide the ache felt like a dare. “Make her feel it.”

Steve’s hand was huge, careful, coaxing, until it wasn’t, until the motion grew greedy, needy. You’d never been shy with Bucky, but with the attention of two lovers you felt nearly too open and exposed, nerves sparking along every limb. Bucky’s thumb toyed with your nipple, drawing it taut, while Steve’s fingers pursued your impending orgasm relentlessly.

And the orgasm came with no warning, just an unbearable pressure and then a bright, skittering release, your vision white-out as you shrieked and clamped around Steve’s hand. He nearly lost his balance but Bucky steadied him—steadied you—bracing your shaking limbs as you rode the aftershocks. Even after the pleasure crested, Steve’s fingers didn’t stop. He worked you through every shudder, sucking a breath through his teeth, awed. His voice was a fervent whisper, “Jesus. You—fuck, you look good like this.”

“She always does,” Bucky replied, mouth slick on your jaw, catching the sweat there. “You wanna see her come again?”

Steve’s hand stilled, then slowly slid free, leaving you embarrassingly empty and sticky. He watched you with dazed awe, pink flush climbing from his collar to cheekbones, as if he couldn’t believe the thing he’d just made happen, for you.

“Yeah, I do. Will you let me?” he asked, eyes meeting yours again.

You nodded, voice gone to wool and cotton, incapable of anything but a whispered, “Please.” The word left your lips desperate, high-pitched, a note of wildness that made Bucky’s hand tighten against your thigh, a subtle anchor to keep you from dissolving completely.

Steve’s smile broke open on his face, that cocky little tilt that always got him his way. He ducked down and pressed his mouth to your thigh, some kind of benediction, before giving Bucky a look, a question you weren’t included in: permission, or maybe the next step in instructions. Bucky’s hand still gripped your thigh, and the pressure from his fingertips went from comfort to proprietary.

“Take your time,” Bucky told him, slow as syrup. “She’s got plenty more in her if you work it up right.”

You whimpered, and Steve’s hand found your knee, thumb brushing circles that didn’t seem to know whether they were meant to calm or tease. He spread you even wider, fingers delving again, but now the touch was softer, coaxing in a new way. He watched your face the whole time, never letting you look away, and the sheer heat of his attention made it impossible to catch your breath, impossible to be anywhere but here, between them, for them.

You let your head loll back on Bucky’s chest, and he inhaled you like a secret. Steve’s mouth ghosted over the inside of your knee, the lightest of touches, as his hand slid slick with you, coaxing you open again. There was awe in his expression, like he couldn’t believe the things your body was capable of. That he couldn’t believe you let him see it.

Bucky’s voice was right in your ear, velvet and wicked. “You love this, don’t you? How he touches you, how he looks at you?” His teeth grazed just below your pulse, almost biting, his metal hand now flat and heavy on your soft stomach.

Steve’s mouth found your clit then, hot and wet, and you bit your lip, trying not to break apart too quickly, but Bucky’s other hand snapped up to your chin, forcing your jaw open. He slid two thick fingers into your mouth, muffling your gasps as Steve reached for that place inside you again, a blunt presence that made your hips twitch uncontrollably, mouth kissing and lapping at your clit.

“Be our good girl,” Bucky murmured, voice a velvet drag along your nerves. “Let me hear you, sweetheart.” He pressed your lips open wider, thumb tight on your cheek. Everything about him said claim, but you felt less like territory and more like treasure—something precious they’d both agreed to share.

You moaned and sucked on Bucky’s fingers, desperate for something to hold onto. Steve’s tongue drew slow, wide circles, alternating with little flicks that made you see stars, and every time his fingers curled inside you, you wanted to shake apart. Bucky’s hand pressed at the base of your throat, a leash without pressure, just a reminder of where you belonged.

Steve’s tongue moved with a rough, hungry precision that made your lashes flutter, the strangeness of his mouth—different than Bucky’s, somehow broader and needier—forcing you up against the edge of your own appetite. He groaned into you, animal, and the vibration made your toes curl as your hips bucked, seeking more, seeking everything.

The sound of you—wet and needy—filled the room, obscene, and Steve was impossibly focused. You could feel the shift as Steve’s mouth grew unabashed, each lap and suckle more confident. He lapped greedily, not just at your clit but at the desperate, shuddering noises you made, feeding on them, letting them escalate him past any feigned self-control.

Bucky murmured filth in your ear. “Such a pretty thing, all open for Steve. He’s a fast learner, isn’t he?” His fingers slipped from your mouth, gliding down to squeeze your breast with proprietary delight. “Sensitive here, too, Steve. She likes it just a little mean when you bite.”

Steve’s lips left your cunt, replaced by the blunt, perfect drag of his teeth—just a graze, but amplified by the velvet heat radiating between your thighs. The wild sound you made told him everything he needed. He grinned, eyes bright, and gave you another drag with his tongue and the barest scrape of teeth. Your legs shook, clamped for a second around his broad shoulders as he tormented you, licking through the slick he’d made.

“She’s right there,” Bucky insists, “but don’t let up.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, chest heaving, as Bucky’s words poured through you, making it impossible not to want to give him everything, even the parts you thought you’d never let anyone else but him see. He tugged his hand from your mouth, and you gasped, “I’m close, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Bucky coaxed, hand splayed again over your breast, pinching and then soothing. “Let him taste it. Let him taste everything.” He nuzzled the space behind your ear, catching the lobe between his teeth, a punctuation to his demand.

Steve’s hand, meanwhile, never stopped mapping you. His thick fingers curling again against that spot inside, a squirming, irresistible pressure, while his mouth closed around your clit and sucked, hard, and the world melted into a soundless scream in your throat. You bucked up, hands grasping at Bucky’s biceps, and came again, hard enough you thought you might black out.

This time Steve didn’t bother with awe, only a growl of triumph and gratitude as he licked you through every convulsion, not stopping until your thighs trembled against his head and Bucky had to murmur, “Enough, big guy, you’ll melt her.”

You didn’t remember the transition—somewhere in the haze of pleasure, Steve had shifted you onto his lap, his cock thick and leaking, pressed impossibly hard against your hip. Bucky sat facing you both on the foot of the bed, blue eyes greedy and soft at the same time, mouth slack with want. Steve held you to his chest, the thrum of his pulse wild and loud beneath your palm.

“Fuck, honey, you alright?” Bucky asked, thumb brushing along your jaw. You only nodded, eyes glassy, limbs a little insubstantial.

“She gets real soft after she comes,” Bucky explained. His metal hand stroked your cheek, thumb scraping your parted lip. “Steve, you ever eat a girl out til she can’t think straight, and then fuck her so good she gets slick again just from the memory?”

Steve’s gaze flicked down to your face, as if he needed to check in, as if the rules of this odd, shared gravity could change at your whim. But you only leaned harder into his chest, the memory of Bucky’s words blooming low in your gut. “Not like this,” Steve said quietly, the confession tumbling out like an apology. “Never had someone so slick and eager and pliant. She’s so fucking sweet.”

“She likes making a mess, especially when she knows someone’s gonna clean it up nice for her.”

It was obscene and beautiful in the same breath, the way your body pulsed and ached for these two men. You knew Bucky intimately, but Steve was still a new entity, it should be unbelievable what you were letting him do to you, and yet you were willing because Bucky said you could be.

“You wear her out, and she lets you do anything you want.” Steve pressed his lips to your temple, the gesture as tender as a prayer, but you could feel the tension in his body—like he was holding himself back as much as he was holding you up.

“Do you want him to fuck you?” It was as blunt as a knife’s edge; Bucky never did like to leave things to implication.

You meant to say yes, steeled and confident, but the only sound you could make was a whimper. Bucky grinned. “Use your words, honey. Steve’s been waiting a long time.”

Steve’s hands tightened on your hips. “Since your wedding,” he confessed, and you gasped.

Bucky nodded, proud, calm, even though this revelation was ricocheting through your mind. Steve had been overseas for years until just recently, and of course he hadn’t missed his best friend’s wedding—had been the best man—but it had also been the first time you’d met him.

You remembered the speech, the toast. Steve smiling at you across a room of strangers, nothing but friendship and pride in his voice, but now you wondered how long he’d been drinking you in, how long he’d been simmering in this kind of want.

You also remembered—vivid as if it bloomed on the backs of your eyelids—the way Steve’s eyes had lingered at the reception, how his hand seemed to swallow yours when he shook it, holding on a beat too long. You’d caught him watching you and Bucky slow dancing, his smile softer than it ought to have been, heavy with yearning. At the time you’d wondered if maybe he was just that kind of romantic, or maybe a little lonely after so much time away.

But now that memory rewrote itself, charged and electric, searing through you as Steve took your chin in his hand and kissed you—soft at first, learning the taste of you. His mouth tasted like you, and you shivered, deep in your bones, at being desired by these two men.

Bucky reached for you, steady hands bracketing your thighs, and you sank back against Steve’s chest. Your husband ducked lower, pressing a line of kisses from your hip bone to the soft, over-sensitive spot at the seam of your thigh.

You shivered as Bucky trailed his tongue through the wetness Steve had left behind, mouth hungry and reverent. He licked slowly, then nosed at your clit, already swollen and sore from Steve’s attention, and the jolt of sensation made you gasp into Steve’s mouth. He devoured your sounds greedily, tongue parting your lips as if he needed to taste how undone you were.

Bucky’s tongue was firmer than Steve’s, more insistent, and when he flattened it against you and sucked, you felt every vibration in your teeth. You whimpered into Steve’s kiss, and he swallowed the noise, hands squeezing your hips as you rolled against the heat of Bucky’s mouth, your body burning, melting, until there was nothing left but sensation.

You weren’t sure Bucky’s mouth could ever be called gentle, but right now it was a new kind of slow, each lap deliberate, stroking the sharp edge of oversensitivity and coaxing pleasure out of it until your eyes watered. Steve’s hand wound into your hair, guiding your head back against his shoulder, and you let him, lost in the heat radiating from both their bodies.

“She’s shaking,” Steve whispered, awe thick in his voice.

“She knows what she likes,” Bucky replied, voice muffled between your legs. His metal hand dug into your thigh, cool and greedy, while the other traced lazy patterns over your ribs, drawing your skin tight with anticipation for what would come next.

Bucky pulled his mouth away with a slick, obscene sound, smirking up at you. “You ready for cock?” he asked, and this wasn’t an idle question. Bucky wanted you to say it, wanted you to beg for it. Steve’s cock pressed up under you, thick and hot, and you could feel how desperate he was for it. You were too.

“Yes,” you said, or maybe just moaned it, letting your knees fall as wide as Steve and Bucky wanted them. “Yes, please.”

“Fuck, she’s polite,” Steve mumbled, hands already guiding you up, shifting you onto your knees, palms bracing the mattress as Bucky moved to the side of you, one hand fisting his own stiff cock, the other smoothing down your back and skimming over your ass. You could feel Steve’s cock, hot and insistent, nudging between your thighs.

“She likes a full feeling,” Bucky told Steve, the statement an offer and a warning both, and you blinked up at him, swallowing. “When you fuck her, you gotta go deep.”

Steve’s hands caught your hips, palms broad enough to span almost from waist to thigh. There was a reverence in his movements, but also the first hints of impatience—the way his fingers flexed, the way his cock jumped when it brushed against you, smearing precum along the seam of your body. He lined himself up and held, not yet pushing in, and the wait felt like another kind of pleasure, anticipation sharp as a blade.

Your chest seized—with anticipation or hesitation, you weren’t sure—as you realized Bucky was going to let Steve fuck you bare.

“He’s a big one, sweetheart,” Bucky warned, and you could hear the grin on his face. He planted a hand at the small of your back, keeping your spine bowed. “Nice and slow. She likes to feel every inch.”

You pressed your face into the pillow, bracing for a stretch that came slow and monumental—Steve’s cock parting you, nudging inside until you couldn’t breathe for the fullness, the hot-dull burn that quickly blurred into something sweeter.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Bucky murmured. “Let him all the way in.”

You were so wet he didn’t even need to force it; the broad head split you open easily. You heard Bucky’s purr, almost proud, as if he had made you this way, greedy for the kind of ache only they could give. Bucky loved to torment you with this kind of fuck when he slid inside you, so his direction for Steve to as well was to be expected.

Steve held, fully sheathing himself, body trembling with restraint. “You okay?” The sound of your name was different in his voice, kinder, stripped of any artifice.

You nodded, eagerly pressing your hips back, and the slide hit something deep, a place that made your toes flex and your mouth fall open. Steve’s hands stroked your hips, grounding you, his breath rough as he held as still as he could manage. Bucky’s voice was syrup-sweet at your ear, “Go on, Steve. She wants it.”

The first thrust was a slow, rolling motion that stole your breath. Steve drew out nearly all the way, then slid back in, the burn giving way to a greedy, clutching pleasure. You held perfectly still, squeezing your eyes shut, learning the new shape of yourself with Steve inside you. You keened, knuckles whitening in the bedsheets. Bucky stayed close, palm at the nape of your neck, his own cock hard and leaking, pressed to your shoulder as he watched Steve fuck you.

“She takes cock so well, doesn’t she?” Bucky crooned, his tone barely above a purr. “Bet you never seen anyone so hungry before.” His metal hand traced your spine, ratcheting the tension higher as he pet you and praised you, the words a molten thread tangled through every harder, deeper thrust. Steve’s hips pistoned slow, but with such force you swore you could feel it in your throat, each time catching a spot Bucky had mapped just for him.

Steve’s rhythm was a miracle of endurance, slow and deep, every thrust measured, watched, almost academic in its hunger. His hands never stopped moving, stroking your waist, your belly, your ribs, learning every inch of you as if he needed to memorize the route. His hips stuttered occasionally, evidence of his own struggle not to lose himself too quickly to the wet heat you offered him.

And he whispered your name between every other breath, like a vow, like he was kneeling in church.

Bucky’s hands grew rougher on you, easing your thighs farther apart, planting dirty encouragements in your head that made you slicker, filthier than before. “You should see her face, Steve. She’s so beautiful right now.”

Bucky coaxed your head up and to the side so Steve could see the exact, filthy pleasure contorting your features. And you felt it, the slide of your own tears, half-joy and half-overwhelm, as Steve picked up the pace, his thrusts deeper, harder.

Bucky wiped a tear from your jaw with his thumb, then sucked it into his mouth. “So beautiful when you’re ruined like this.”

Steve’s fingers dug into your flesh, and you could feel how close he was to letting go of decorum, of caution, of the last rags of self-control. You wanted it. You moaned for it. Your head swam with the ache of being so fucking full, of being seen and used and loved all at once.

“Not gonna last,” Steve groaned, the confession breaking at the seam. “Feels—fuck, Bucky, how do you keep your head—”

“I don’t, punk. That’s why I always make her come first.” Bucky’s laugh was sharp and breathless, the sound of a man profoundly in love with his own wife. He trailed a hand down your front, fingers gliding over the slick mess Steve had made of you. “And always make it up to her after, too. She loves that part too.”

Bucky’s hand found your clit, thumb and forefinger pinching, rolling it just this side of cruel, and you yelped, the sudden spike of pain-pleasure a match to the fullness Steve was feeding you, and your whole body shuddered. Bucky laughed—warm and wicked—and reached down, fingers sliding through the mess of slick and sweat and precum at the seam where Steve’s body split yours, then smeared it over his own cock.

He pumped himself once, twice, eyes locked on where Steve’s body met yours, and you watched, unabashedly.

Bucky leaned forward, mouth hot at your jaw. “You want me to fuck your mouth while Steve fucks you?”

The question, blunt and bright, sliced through your haze. You nodded, desperate, and Bucky grinned, wolfish. He pressed his thumb to your lips, smearing the taste of yourself across them, and then shifted around in front of you, kneeling up so his cock bobbed level with your mouth. It was already slick, the head flushed dark, and you opened for him automatically, tongue out, dutiful and greedy all at once.

“That’s my girl,” Bucky breathed, sliding in slow, letting you feel the heft of him as Steve’s cock ground into your cunt from behind. You could barely spare the coordination to suck and moan at the same time, the boundary between pleasure and humiliation dissolved.

Your throat worked, helpless, as Bucky fucked your mouth in shallow, reverent thrusts, and your jaw burned with the effort of taking him as deep as he wanted. He pulled back every time you gagged, not to spare you, but to watch the string of spit connect your lips to the tip of his cock. You blinked up at your husband, tears streaming freely now, and saw how it undid him—made him thrust a little deeper, fuck your mouth a little harder, hands cradling your jaw, both anchoring and guiding you.

“Pretty thing,” he muttered, almost gentle, “look at you. That’s it. Just like that. God, Steve, you’re going to love fucking her throat.”

“Buck, you can’t just—” Steve had to groan before he could finish his thought. “You can’t just say shit like that and expect me to last.”

You moaned, mouth full of Bucky and body full of Steve, your whole self strung taut between their appetites. The rhythm between Steve’s hips behind you and Bucky’s in front of you a terrifying, perfect sync.

Bucky smirked, thumb wiping spit from your chin, then dragged it down to your throat, pressing lightly so you felt the stretch of yourself inside. “Bet you want him in your mouth right after he fills you up, don’t you?” Bucky’s voice was honey-thick, tugging need like a thread from your cunt all the way up to your brain.

You nodded, desperate, and that was all it took—Steve’s grip on your hips locked down, his pulse a wild thrum against your skin, and he buried himself in you with one last, shuddering thrust. You could feel it, the way he pulsed and spilled hot inside, and the sound he made—it was raw, almost animal. He held inside, grinding so deep you felt it all the way up your spine, filling you so perfectly a whimper broke loose from your lips even with Bucky’s cock still in your mouth.

Bucky eased out of your mouth, palm still warm against your jaw, thumb stroking where his cock had just been. He grinned at you, all sweet-and-mean, then leaned in to press a kiss over your spit-slick lips. “That’s it,” he whispered, reverent, like he was kissing holy ground. “That’s my good girl.” The words landed low in your belly, twisting up with the mess Steve had left in you.

But his cock was still inside you, too, and he collapsed forward, chest to your back, his arms caging you in. You expected him to pull out, to give you a moment to recover, but instead he rocked his hips, slow and greedy, as if he couldn’t bear to lose the feeling of you squeezing around him.

And then, without warning, his hand slid under your belly, fingers finding your clit, already swollen and overstimulated. He drew tight, precise circles with the pads of first two fingers, not letting up, even when you whined and squirmed beneath him. Bucky’s hands held you steady, anchoring you so Steve could play your body like an instrument.

The friction was so good, so dirty, that your cunt clamped around him involuntarily, milked every last drop as Steve’s fingers worked you up again, your body already betraying just how ready it was to be used a second, third, hundredth time.

“Fuck, she’s insatiable, isn’t she?” Steve said, voice almost fond, the sound of it a pressure at the base of your skull.

“She’s always been that way,” Bucky answered, a frayed thread of pride winding through his voice. “After the serum, I never met a partner who could keep up with me until her. Like you were made for a super soldier, sweetheart.”

You laughed, or tried to, but it came out a shaky, desperate gasp as Steve’s fingers wrung another whimper from you. Your knuckles dug into the sheets, the only tether as your overstimulated clit set off sparks behind your eyes. “Bucky,” you croaked, barely audible, “I can’t—”

“You can, honey. You’ll show Steve just how much you can take.” His gaze was intent, and for a moment you remembered every night the two of you had built trust on, every whispered dare and secret need he’d coaxed from you, every time he’d made you shatter and put you back together.

You barely had time to brace—Steve’s closed closed hard and firm around your clit, pinching, sending a lightning bolt through you, and as your body seized, his mouth found the meat of your shoulder and bit down. Not a warning, not a tease—a real goddamn bite. It ricocheted up your spine and detonated any coherence you had left. Your vision went blinding white, then red, and you screamed, nails gouging at the mattress, his hardening cock still buried so deep inside you it felt like you were cleaved in half.

The orgasm hit different—shocking, jagged, beyond pleasure and into a place that was just sensation, raw and total. You were crying, you realized, drool and tears tracking down your chin, but you couldn’t stop, couldn’t get enough, not even when the world blurred and your whole midsection pulsed around Steve’s cock, milking him for everything he had.

Bucky held your gaze the whole time, watching you unravel, watching every second of you coming apart for his best friend.

“Never gets old,” Bucky said, voice ragged with want, “seeing you come apart.” He stroked your hair, gentling you even as Steve’s cock kept you pinned and shuddering.

Steve pulled out, finally, leaving a slick trail down your thigh, and you expected collapse—rest, maybe, or at least a breath of air.

You got part of what you wanted as you were manhandled with a gentle efficiency—Steve lowering you to the mattress and Bucky rolling you over onto your back. The two men bracketed themselves around you. Bucky’s thumb smoothed tears from your cheeks, his lips hovering at your brow. Steve’s palm swept your hair from your face, tucking the wild strands behind your ears, and he smiled at you, dazed and open and deeply, deeply gone himself.

“You okay?” he asked, voice so hoarse you wanted to laugh, if only you didn’t feel so utterly wrung dry.

Bucky’s hands mapped your body, stroking down your arms, your waist, as if to collect every piece of you that had scattered. “She’s perfect. She’s got a thing for being ruined,” Bucky said, rubbing his thumb hard across your jaw, “but it’s more than just the mess. It’s being wanted, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

You trembled, the answer right there but too big for your mouth. All you could manage was a soft, but firm, “It’s both.”

It was. The ache between your legs, the aftershocks twitching in your thighs, crescendoed in the knowledge that you belonged—here, between them—because you were wanted. Not just by Bucky, whose love for you was a still wildfire after the first few years of the life you were building together, but by Steve, the last person you ever expected to want anything at all.

They held you in the perfect kind of silence for a while. Bucky stroked your sternum with two fingers, tracing the rapid pounding of your heart, while Steve drew lazy patterns on your ribs, the gentle touch making your bones melt.

Steve was the one who broke the silence, voice still thick and slow. “I’m sure Bucky’s told you how everything feels amplified for us, after the serum?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice, but Steve caught your chin and made certain you were listening, blue eyes intent on the fall and rise of your chest. He thumbed the corner of your mouth, gentle in a way that didn’t match the bite mark blooming on your shoulder. “It’s true. Everything’s hotter, sharper. Smells, tastes, touch.” His hand wandered down your neck, tracing the chain of your pulse. “It’s like all the dials turned up past what they’re supposed to do.”

Bucky grinned, mouth curving against your temple, proud and a little feral. “It’s why we’re so good at this,” he said, and the “we” wasn’t just the two of them, but you too, looped into their satisfaction by being the one they found satiation with.

You remembered, dimly, what Bucky had once told you—something about how pain and pleasure were just colors in a spectrum for men like them, how sometimes the best you could do was grab hold of the brightest one and hang on until it faded.

You barely noticed when Bucky’s hand slid lower, two fingers sliding along the seam of you, dipping just inside. You’d thought you were emptied out, rung dry, but the dull ache at your entrance proved otherwise—the evidence of Steve inside you, the slow ooze of it, making your lashes flutter in a way that felt almost innocent.

“You want to keep going, honey?” He asked because this—the consent, the agency—was one of the roots of his pleasure. You nodded again, too spent for speech. “Yeah, you do,” he murmured, pressing his own cock flush against your thigh, hot iron against soft flesh. “And you want Steve to watch, don’t you?”

The way Bucky framed it, you didn’t just want to perform, to be seen—you wanted to be worshipped, to be watched while your body proved itself again and again. There was no performance anxiety; there was only the heat of two impossible men zeroed in on every twitch of your muscles. You felt your own slick between your thighs, the slow, filthy trickle of Steve’s cum pooling out of you, the ache where you’d been so thoroughly stretched.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky chuckled. “Words.”

You tried to say, “Yes, please,” but it came out as a sigh, and Bucky’s grin only widened.

Steve cradled your head like a priceless artifact, thumb pressing a sleepy circle against your jaw while his gaze moved between your eyes and the place where Bucky’s fingers cupped your cunt. You felt your hips roll up, wanton, trying to keep contact with Bucky’s hand even as he toyed with your entrance but never quite let you have the friction you needed.

“You want to show Steve how we fuck when it’s just you and me in the dark, how well you take me.” A statement, not a question.

“Mmmhmm,” you groaned, and Bucky pressed a kiss to your shoulder, then knelt up, hands guiding your unresisting legs apart. He knelt back on his haunches and pulled your hips close. You heard Steve’s breath stutter at the sight, and it filled you with a greedy, wild pride. Bucky teased the seam of you with the head of his cock, up and down, up and down, making you whine.

At the last moment, Bucky relented and pushed inside, filling you with a swift, brutal thrust that bottomed out in one motion. There was no slow stretch, no easing in—just the violent, relentless press of his cock, and you arched off the mattress with a helpless, desperate moan. Your body was made to take him, every inch of you was slick and trembling, so the pain blurred seamlessly into pleasure and back again until you weren’t sure which you preferred.

He moved slow at first, kneeling above you like a god, letting you feel the thickness of him as he rocked in and out, but it wasn’t long before he found the rhythm he liked—a rough, demanding piston that left you scrambling for breath, for touch, for anything to keep you from coming apart entirely. You felt every ridge and vein, every rutting pound as he chased his own need, each thrust fusing the two of you back together.

All you could do—wanted to do—was take it. The raw, pounding pleasure, the relentless stretch, the feeling of Bucky’s cock rutting into you deeply. You heard yourself sob—and it was not a neat or pretty thing, but a wrecked, raw sound that only made Bucky groan above you. He caught your thighs in his hands, spreading you wider, and you felt the obscene heat of the stretch, the way your cunt seized around him with each battering drive. The slick noise of it—your body, his cock, the fucking mess Steve had left in you—filled the room, a rhythm and a punctuation to Bucky’s breathing as he drove deeper, harder, faster.

Steve’s hand found yours in the sheets. He laced his thick fingers between yours and squeezed, grounding you, letting you feel the reverent awe rolling off him in slow, steady waves. But there was an unmet hunger still lingering there under the surface. You could feel it in the tense of his body next to yours, and when you turned your face, eyes seeking his, he met your gaze without hesitation.

Steve bent to kiss you, and there was no veiling tenderness or shy request for permission. His tongue pushed into your mouth, greedy and wild, tasting the ghost of Bucky on your lips, tasting the salt of your tears. You kissed back with everything you had, drawing another moan from your throat as Bucky pistoned into you, the force rocking your whole body up into Steve’s chest.

Bucky’s thrusts didn’t slacken—they were still relentless, still merciless—but as you and Steve kissed, the tempo oscillated into something deeper, a series of slower,seismic detonations. Each time Bucky bottomed out inside you, he held there, grinding, spine arched, as if the sight of you kissing Steve was as much a pleasure to him as the feel of your cunt squeezing him.

Steve groaned into your mouth, his hand coming up to cradle your jaw, and Bucky’s grip on your thighs tightened, like he needed to stake a claim even as he offered you up. With every new roll of Bucky’s hips, a different noise tore its way out of your throat—some for the pain, some for the pleasure, some for the blissful humiliation of being made a spectacle for their eyes.

“Fuck her mouth, Steve,” Bucky said, a low, hungry rumble.

Steve didn’t hesitate, and it was only for a fraction of a second before he was shifting up, the broad line of his thigh braced alongside your head. His cock was still half-hard, glazed with your slick and his own release. The sight of it, flushed angry-red and wet, made your cunt clench around Bucky. Steve cupped your chin, thumb curling along the hinge of your jaw, and you sucked him into your mouth, the taste salty and obscene.

You groaned around him, lips stretching, tongue flattening under the thick, salty weight. He barely thrust, just eased forward, but the size of him still made your throat protest. Bucky continued his slow, tortruous pace below, watching intently as Steve’s cock parted your lips, and the sight of it—his best friend fucking your mouth while he still pounded into your cunt—nearly undid him, you could feel it in the grip of his hands on your hips.

“Deeper,” Bucky ordered, and Steve obeyed. He slid in, careful but insistent, filling your mouth until you gagged, until your eyes watered anew. Steve slid in, your throat stretched, and the assault of it made you gasp around him, desperate for air, for mercy, for more. Steve petted your jaw, his other hand cupping the back of your head, and for all the brutality of the act there was infinite patience in how he held you there, letting you adjust, letting you learn the unique shape of his need. Somewhere above, Bucky laughed—a single breath of filthy awe, a marvel at the spectacle of you taking both their cocks at once like this.

The taste of Steve’s cum was thick in your mouth, the smell of sex and sweat and ozone burning in your nostrils. You wanted them both to know how much you liked this, how much you needed every inch of what they gave. So you hollowed your cheeks and sucked, rolling your tongue with just enough pressure to see the effect in Steve’s eyes—head thrown back, spine bowed glorious, hand clenching your jaw with a desperation that made you burn with pride.

Bucky’s cock pounded up into you from below, and Steve’s pushed into your mouth from above, and you—pinned, stretched, used—were nothing but bliss. The sensation was a hinge, your body swinging wild between the two of them. You felt the echo of your own heartbeat in your cunt, in your mouth, in every thrum of the mattress and grind of their hips.

Steve’s thrusts grew bolder, and at each push he eased a little deeper, patience thinning as your mouth softened to his shape. His voice, when it came, was raw and rough, “Fuck, fuck, you feel so good—” your name murmured as its own curse when it fell from his lips in this moment.

He spilled his seed down your throat, but not all of it. He pulled out and shot the rest over your breasts, warm rope after rope of it across your heaving chest as Bucky pistoned in even harder, the thudding slap of his hips the only sound in the world.

Bucky slammed harder, harder, until you felt the actual bruise of him inside you, some deep purple echo of the violence. He reached for your clit, pinched, and your body shuddered into another orgasm, spasms wracking you so hard you thought you’d bite your tongue. You moaned so sweet and so ruined as he flew over the edge.

Bucky’s cock throbbed inside you, a shuddering full-body tremor, and then he was coming, hips jammed flush as he spilled molten and messy into the deepest part of you. His moan was raw, unguarded, and he didn’t let up, kept grinding through every spurt, making sure you took every last drop. The pressure of it set off a chain reaction—your body seized, aftershocks tearing up your thighs and into your belly, squeezing around him in greedy, involuntary pulses.

Bucky’s head dropped back, his jaw flexing as he held your hips pinned. You watched him, glassy-eyed and adoring, as every muscle in his chest locked. “Christ,” he panted, eyes flickering to Steve, “This is unreal.” He pulled halfway out—slow, slow—then pushed in again, a wet, obscene sound marking every inch. “She’s still squeezing me, even after you ruined her.” Bucky’s grin was all teeth, all pride and filth. “Can feel your mess inside her, Steve. So fucking wet she’s dripping down my balls.”

You moaned in the hinge between them, wrung out and wild, as Bucky fucked you through the last quakes and Steve’s hand fanned gently against your throat, thumb pressing the pulse there like he wanted to count your heartbeats—maybe hold them for ransom.

Bucky let out a ragged exhalation and pulled out, the head of his cock dragging on hypersensitive nerves, leaving you gaping and gasping and dripping. Bucky didn’t bother to hide his satisfaction. Instead, he watched the spill with a sick, loving sort of pride, then reached down, scooped his own cum with his fingers and smeared it over your breasts, painting you in it, mixing it with his best friend’s seed until your whole chest was slick with it. He held you there for a moment, painted and panting and caught in the liminal pleasure, before tilting your face up and licking a stripe from your collarbone to your jaw, tongue lazy and flat. Bucky’s mouth found yours, and you tasted the salt of Steve and yourself on his lips. You kissed him like you were dying, and Bucky kissed you back harder, swallowing you whole.

Steve’s voice burrowed into your ear with shocking gravity, arms closing around your limp torso as if to protect you from the world outside this narrow, unrepeatable moment. “You are so fucking beautiful ruined like this,” he said, voice half-reverent.

Bucky’s thumb pressed under your chin, tilting your face: “You want more, don’t you?” You did. That was the devastating truth of it. Even as your body ached and stung from orgasm, you wanted all the ways they touched you, every version of this night.

“Are you sure, Buck?” Steve asked, incredulous.

Bucky’s laugh was a bright, sharp crack in the haze, so full of delight it rang in your bones. “Oh, sweetheart. Steve has no idea what you’re capable of after a few more rounds.”

He bent over you, hands braced by your head, and pressed a kiss to the center of your brow—a benediction at odds with the lazy trail of his hand down your body, cupping your breast, then skimming the mess he and Steve had left there. He rubbed their slick together with an idle curiosity, like a child finger-painting, until Steve’s hand joined his, pinching a nipple between two careful fingers and rolling it until you arched up, spent muscles clenching with electric aftershock.

“We could let her rest,” Bucky said, tongue laving your earlobe as he spoke, “but why waste a perfectly good afterglow when you haven’t even fucked my wife in the shower yet?”

WE ALL KNOW I'M RARELY CAPABLE OF CUTTING SOMETHING DOWN

SO

I HOPE YOU'RE ALL HAPPY/RUINED RIGHT ALONGSIDE ME.

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You’d expected a lot of things when you agreed your husband’s oldest friend should come spend the holidays with you, but not this: you naked and splayed open, your back against Bucky’s chest, and Steve knelt between your legs, focus absolute as they took you apart.

Bucky’s lips moved against your neck, not quite kissing, hand sliding to cup one aching breast. “You want to feel for the ridge, the soft roof inside. Feel it?”

Steve nodded, learning by the tremors that rippled through you.

And you? You could only moan as his fingers sought a place only Bucky had touched before tonight.

Steve’s breath ghosted along your thigh, cool in comparison to the heat pooling where his fingertips pressed. “Like this?” he asked, looking up, seeking confirmation from Bucky.

Bucky squeezed you, barely-there pressure, his thumb circling your nipple. “Yeah, there—you’ll feel it through the front wall. Little bump.”

Steve slid his fingers deeper, slow and careful, and you arched back against Bucky’s chest. The pressure inside shifted, molten but sudden, and you gasped at the feel of it when he found it—that ridge, the soft roof, as Bucky had described it. Steve’s big hand trembled just a little as he kept it inside you, gentle but greedy, desperate to get it right. The man was as worshipping as he was determined, brow furrowed, lashes dark against his cheek as he mapped each element of your reactions.

And Bucky watched, grinning against your ear, voice thick. “That’s it, Steve. Watch her face, see how her mouth falls open? Touch her there, a tiny bit harder, that’s it, yeah.”

He kept the pressure steady, calloused thumb skating circles over your clit while his fingers pressed up, learning you, working with the careful tenacity he applied to every complex operation.

Bucky’s own hand drifted lower, his touch rough at your hip, a grounding force. You couldn’t move if you’d wanted to, pinned between them, the air thick with sweat and something like ozone.

You bucked, pulse thumping in your throat, teeth gritty against a whimper. Steve’s eyes flicked up again, shining, hungry, and your swore you might come just on the taste of his focus. With every press against that spot, your vision stuttered out, blinking in firework-bright bursts.

Bucky’s voice pressed into the shell of your ear, low and lazy, but with that hint of command that still managed to thrill you, even after all these years. “She’s real sensitive right there, Steve. Just steady. Keep the rhythm—yeah, just like that.”

“Fuck, Buck—she’s gonna—” Steve’s fingers jittered, the tip of his thumb ghosting over your wet clit.

“Let her,” Bucky hummed, open-mouthed over her shoulder. His other hand covered her thigh, holding her so wide the ache felt like a dare. “Make her feel it.”

Steve’s hand was huge, careful, coaxing, until it wasn’t, until the motion grew greedy, needy. You’d never been shy with Bucky, but with the attention of two lovers you felt nearly too open and exposed, nerves sparking along every limb. Bucky’s thumb toyed with your nipple, drawing it taut, while Steve’s fingers pursued your impending orgasm relentlessly.

And the orgasm came with no warning, just an unbearable pressure and then a bright, skittering release, your vision white-out as you shrieked and clamped around Steve’s hand. He nearly lost his balance but Bucky steadied him—steadied you—bracing your shaking limbs as you rode the aftershocks. Even after the pleasure crested, Steve’s fingers didn’t stop. He worked you through every shudder, sucking a breath through his teeth, awed. His voice was a fervent whisper, “Jesus. You—fuck, you look good like this.”

“She always does,” Bucky replied, mouth slick on your jaw, catching the sweat there. “You wanna see her come again?”

Steve’s hand stilled, then slowly slid free, leaving you embarrassingly empty and sticky. He watched you with dazed awe, pink flush climbing from his collar to cheekbones, as if he couldn’t believe the thing he’d just made happen, for you.

“Yeah, I do. Will you let me?” he asked, eyes meeting yours again.

You nodded, voice gone to wool and cotton, incapable of anything but a whispered, “Please.” The word left your lips desperate, high-pitched, a note of wildness that made Bucky’s hand tighten against your thigh, a subtle anchor to keep you from dissolving completely.

Steve’s smile broke open on his face, that cocky little tilt that always got him his way. He ducked down and pressed his mouth to your thigh, some kind of benediction, before giving Bucky a look, a question you weren’t included in: permission, or maybe the next step in instructions. Bucky’s hand still gripped your thigh, and the pressure from his fingertips went from comfort to proprietary.

“Take your time,” Bucky told him, slow as syrup. “She’s got plenty more in her if you work it up right.”

You whimpered, and Steve’s hand found your knee, thumb brushing circles that didn’t seem to know whether they were meant to calm or tease. He spread you even wider, fingers delving again, but now the touch was softer, coaxing in a new way. He watched your face the whole time, never letting you look away, and the sheer heat of his attention made it impossible to catch your breath, impossible to be anywhere but here, between them, for them.

You let your head loll back on Bucky’s chest, and he inhaled you like a secret. Steve’s mouth ghosted over the inside of your knee, the lightest of touches, as his hand slid slick with you, coaxing you open again. There was awe in his expression, like he couldn’t believe the things your body was capable of. That he couldn’t believe you let him see it.

Bucky’s voice was right in your ear, velvet and wicked. “You love this, don’t you? How he touches you, how he looks at you?” His teeth grazed just below your pulse, almost biting, his metal hand now flat and heavy on your soft stomach.

Steve’s mouth found your clit then, hot and wet, and you bit your lip, trying not to break apart too quickly, but Bucky’s other hand snapped up to your chin, forcing your jaw open. He slid two thick fingers into your mouth, muffling your gasps as Steve reached for that place inside you again, a blunt presence that made your hips twitch uncontrollably, mouth kissing and lapping at your clit.

“Be our good girl,” Bucky murmured, voice a velvet drag along your nerves. “Let me hear you, sweetheart.” He pressed your lips open wider, thumb tight on your cheek. Everything about him said claim, but you felt less like territory and more like treasure—something precious they’d both agreed to share.

You moaned and sucked on Bucky’s fingers, desperate for something to hold onto. Steve’s tongue drew slow, wide circles, alternating with little flicks that made you see stars, and every time his fingers curled inside you, you wanted to shake apart. Bucky’s hand pressed at the base of your throat, a leash without pressure, just a reminder of where you belonged.

Steve’s tongue moved with a rough, hungry precision that made your lashes flutter, the strangeness of his mouth—different than Bucky’s, somehow broader and needier—forcing you up against the edge of your own appetite. He groaned into you, animal, and the vibration made your toes curl as your hips bucked, seeking more, seeking everything.

The sound of you—wet and needy—filled the room, obscene, and Steve was impossibly focused. You could feel the shift as Steve’s mouth grew unabashed, each lap and suckle more confident. He lapped greedily, not just at your clit but at the desperate, shuddering noises you made, feeding on them, letting them escalate him past any feigned self-control.

Bucky murmured filth in your ear. “Such a pretty thing, all open for Steve. He’s a fast learner, isn’t he?” His fingers slipped from your mouth, gliding down to squeeze your breast with proprietary delight. “Sensitive here, too, Steve. She likes it just a little mean when you bite.”

Steve’s lips left your cunt, replaced by the blunt, perfect drag of his teeth—just a graze, but amplified by the velvet heat radiating between your thighs. The wild sound you made told him everything he needed. He grinned, eyes bright, and gave you another drag with his tongue and the barest scrape of teeth. Your legs shook, clamped for a second around his broad shoulders as he tormented you, licking through the slick he’d made.

“She’s right there,” Bucky insists, “but don’t let up.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, chest heaving, as Bucky’s words poured through you, making it impossible not to want to give him everything, even the parts you thought you’d never let anyone else but him see. He tugged his hand from your mouth, and you gasped, “I’m close, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Bucky coaxed, hand splayed again over your breast, pinching and then soothing. “Let him taste it. Let him taste everything.” He nuzzled the space behind your ear, catching the lobe between his teeth, a punctuation to his demand.

Steve’s hand, meanwhile, never stopped mapping you. His thick fingers curling again against that spot inside, a squirming, irresistible pressure, while his mouth closed around your clit and sucked, hard, and the world melted into a soundless scream in your throat. You bucked up, hands grasping at Bucky’s biceps, and came again, hard enough you thought you might black out.

This time Steve didn’t bother with awe, only a growl of triumph and gratitude as he licked you through every convulsion, not stopping until your thighs trembled against his head and Bucky had to murmur, “Enough, big guy, you’ll melt her.”

You didn’t remember the transition—somewhere in the haze of pleasure, Steve had shifted you onto his lap, his cock thick and leaking, pressed impossibly hard against your hip. Bucky sat facing you both on the foot of the bed, blue eyes greedy and soft at the same time, mouth slack with want. Steve held you to his chest, the thrum of his pulse wild and loud beneath your palm.

“Fuck, honey, you alright?” Bucky asked, thumb brushing along your jaw. You only nodded, eyes glassy, limbs a little insubstantial.

“She gets real soft after she comes,” Bucky explained. His metal hand stroked your cheek, thumb scraping your parted lip. “Steve, you ever eat a girl out til she can’t think straight, and then fuck her so good she gets slick again just from the memory?”

Steve’s gaze flicked down to your face, as if he needed to check in, as if the rules of this odd, shared gravity could change at your whim. But you only leaned harder into his chest, the memory of Bucky’s words blooming low in your gut. “Not like this,” Steve said quietly, the confession tumbling out like an apology. “Never had someone so slick and eager and pliant. She’s so fucking sweet.”

“She likes making a mess, especially when she knows someone’s gonna clean it up nice for her.”

It was obscene and beautiful in the same breath, the way your body pulsed and ached for these two men. You knew Bucky intimately, but Steve was still a new entity, it should be unbelievable what you were letting him do to you, and yet you were willing because Bucky said you could be.

“You wear her out, and she lets you do anything you want.” Steve pressed his lips to your temple, the gesture as tender as a prayer, but you could feel the tension in his body—like he was holding himself back as much as he was holding you up.

“Do you want him to fuck you?” It was as blunt as a knife’s edge; Bucky never did like to leave things to implication.

You meant to say yes, steeled and confident, but the only sound you could make was a whimper. Bucky grinned. “Use your words, honey. Steve’s been waiting a long time.”

Steve’s hands tightened on your hips. “Since your wedding,” he confessed, and you gasped.

Bucky nodded, proud, calm, even though this revelation was ricocheting through your mind. Steve had been overseas for years until just recently, and of course he hadn’t missed his best friend’s wedding—had been the best man—but it had also been the first time you’d met him.

You remembered the speech, the toast. Steve smiling at you across a room of strangers, nothing but friendship and pride in his voice, but now you wondered how long he’d been drinking you in, how long he’d been simmering in this kind of want.

You also remembered—vivid as if it bloomed on the backs of your eyelids—the way Steve’s eyes had lingered at the reception, how his hand seemed to swallow yours when he shook it, holding on a beat too long. You’d caught him watching you and Bucky slow dancing, his smile softer than it ought to have been, heavy with yearning. At the time you’d wondered if maybe he was just that kind of romantic, or maybe a little lonely after so much time away.

But now that memory rewrote itself, charged and electric, searing through you as Steve took your chin in his hand and kissed you—soft at first, learning the taste of you. His mouth tasted like you, and you shivered, deep in your bones, at being desired by these two men.

Bucky reached for you, steady hands bracketing your thighs, and you sank back against Steve’s chest. Your husband ducked lower, pressing a line of kisses from your hip bone to the soft, over-sensitive spot at the seam of your thigh.

You shivered as Bucky trailed his tongue through the wetness Steve had left behind, mouth hungry and reverent. He licked slowly, then nosed at your clit, already swollen and sore from Steve’s attention, and the jolt of sensation made you gasp into Steve’s mouth. He devoured your sounds greedily, tongue parting your lips as if he needed to taste how undone you were.

Bucky’s tongue was firmer than Steve’s, more insistent, and when he flattened it against you and sucked, you felt every vibration in your teeth. You whimpered into Steve’s kiss, and he swallowed the noise, hands squeezing your hips as you rolled against the heat of Bucky’s mouth, your body burning, melting, until there was nothing left but sensation.

You weren’t sure Bucky’s mouth could ever be called gentle, but right now it was a new kind of slow, each lap deliberate, stroking the sharp edge of oversensitivity and coaxing pleasure out of it until your eyes watered. Steve’s hand wound into your hair, guiding your head back against his shoulder, and you let him, lost in the heat radiating from both their bodies.

“She’s shaking,” Steve whispered, awe thick in his voice.

“She knows what she likes,” Bucky replied, voice muffled between your legs. His metal hand dug into your thigh, cool and greedy, while the other traced lazy patterns over your ribs, drawing your skin tight with anticipation for what would come next.

Bucky pulled his mouth away with a slick, obscene sound, smirking up at you. “You ready for cock?” he asked, and this wasn’t an idle question. Bucky wanted you to say it, wanted you to beg for it. Steve’s cock pressed up under you, thick and hot, and you could feel how desperate he was for it. You were too.

“Yes,” you said, or maybe just moaned it, letting your knees fall as wide as Steve and Bucky wanted them. “Yes, please.”

“Fuck, she’s polite,” Steve mumbled, hands already guiding you up, shifting you onto your knees, palms bracing the mattress as Bucky moved to the side of you, one hand fisting his own stiff cock, the other smoothing down your back and skimming over your ass. You could feel Steve’s cock, hot and insistent, nudging between your thighs.

“She likes a full feeling,” Bucky told Steve, the statement an offer and a warning both, and you blinked up at him, swallowing. “When you fuck her, you gotta go deep.”

Steve’s hands caught your hips, palms broad enough to span almost from waist to thigh. There was a reverence in his movements, but also the first hints of impatience—the way his fingers flexed, the way his cock jumped when it brushed against you, smearing precum along the seam of your body. He lined himself up and held, not yet pushing in, and the wait felt like another kind of pleasure, anticipation sharp as a blade.

Your chest seized—with anticipation or hesitation, you weren’t sure—as you realized Bucky was going to let Steve fuck you bare.

“He’s a big one, sweetheart,” Bucky warned, and you could hear the grin on his face. He planted a hand at the small of your back, keeping your spine bowed. “Nice and slow. She likes to feel every inch.”

You pressed your face into the pillow, bracing for a stretch that came slow and monumental—Steve’s cock parting you, nudging inside until you couldn’t breathe for the fullness, the hot-dull burn that quickly blurred into something sweeter.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Bucky murmured. “Let him all the way in.”

You were so wet he didn’t even need to force it; the broad head split you open easily. You heard Bucky’s purr, almost proud, as if he had made you this way, greedy for the kind of ache only they could give. Bucky loved to torment you with this kind of fuck when he slid inside you, so his direction for Steve to as well was to be expected.

Steve held, fully sheathing himself, body trembling with restraint. “You okay?” The sound of your name was different in his voice, kinder, stripped of any artifice.

You nodded, eagerly pressing your hips back, and the slide hit something deep, a place that made your toes flex and your mouth fall open. Steve’s hands stroked your hips, grounding you, his breath rough as he held as still as he could manage. Bucky’s voice was syrup-sweet at your ear, “Go on, Steve. She wants it.”

The first thrust was a slow, rolling motion that stole your breath. Steve drew out nearly all the way, then slid back in, the burn giving way to a greedy, clutching pleasure. You held perfectly still, squeezing your eyes shut, learning the new shape of yourself with Steve inside you. You keened, knuckles whitening in the bedsheets. Bucky stayed close, palm at the nape of your neck, his own cock hard and leaking, pressed to your shoulder as he watched Steve fuck you.

“She takes cock so well, doesn’t she?” Bucky crooned, his tone barely above a purr. “Bet you never seen anyone so hungry before.” His metal hand traced your spine, ratcheting the tension higher as he pet you and praised you, the words a molten thread tangled through every harder, deeper thrust. Steve’s hips pistoned slow, but with such force you swore you could feel it in your throat, each time catching a spot Bucky had mapped just for him.

Steve’s rhythm was a miracle of endurance, slow and deep, every thrust measured, watched, almost academic in its hunger. His hands never stopped moving, stroking your waist, your belly, your ribs, learning every inch of you as if he needed to memorize the route. His hips stuttered occasionally, evidence of his own struggle not to lose himself too quickly to the wet heat you offered him.

And he whispered your name between every other breath, like a vow, like he was kneeling in church.

Bucky’s hands grew rougher on you, easing your thighs farther apart, planting dirty encouragements in your head that made you slicker, filthier than before. “You should see her face, Steve. She’s so beautiful right now.”

Bucky coaxed your head up and to the side so Steve could see the exact, filthy pleasure contorting your features. And you felt it, the slide of your own tears, half-joy and half-overwhelm, as Steve picked up the pace, his thrusts deeper, harder.

Bucky wiped a tear from your jaw with his thumb, then sucked it into his mouth. “So beautiful when you’re ruined like this.”

Steve’s fingers dug into your flesh, and you could feel how close he was to letting go of decorum, of caution, of the last rags of self-control. You wanted it. You moaned for it. Your head swam with the ache of being so fucking full, of being seen and used and loved all at once.

“Not gonna last,” Steve groaned, the confession breaking at the seam. “Feels—fuck, Bucky, how do you keep your head—”

“I don’t, punk. That’s why I always make her come first.” Bucky’s laugh was sharp and breathless, the sound of a man profoundly in love with his own wife. He trailed a hand down your front, fingers gliding over the slick mess Steve had made of you. “And always make it up to her after, too. She loves that part too.”

Bucky’s hand found your clit, thumb and forefinger pinching, rolling it just this side of cruel, and you yelped, the sudden spike of pain-pleasure a match to the fullness Steve was feeding you, and your whole body shuddered. Bucky laughed—warm and wicked—and reached down, fingers sliding through the mess of slick and sweat and precum at the seam where Steve’s body split yours, then smeared it over his own cock.

He pumped himself once, twice, eyes locked on where Steve’s body met yours, and you watched, unabashedly.

Bucky leaned forward, mouth hot at your jaw. “You want me to fuck your mouth while Steve fucks you?”

The question, blunt and bright, sliced through your haze. You nodded, desperate, and Bucky grinned, wolfish. He pressed his thumb to your lips, smearing the taste of yourself across them, and then shifted around in front of you, kneeling up so his cock bobbed level with your mouth. It was already slick, the head flushed dark, and you opened for him automatically, tongue out, dutiful and greedy all at once.

“That’s my girl,” Bucky breathed, sliding in slow, letting you feel the heft of him as Steve’s cock ground into your cunt from behind. You could barely spare the coordination to suck and moan at the same time, the boundary between pleasure and humiliation dissolved.

Your throat worked, helpless, as Bucky fucked your mouth in shallow, reverent thrusts, and your jaw burned with the effort of taking him as deep as he wanted. He pulled back every time you gagged, not to spare you, but to watch the string of spit connect your lips to the tip of his cock. You blinked up at your husband, tears streaming freely now, and saw how it undid him—made him thrust a little deeper, fuck your mouth a little harder, hands cradling your jaw, both anchoring and guiding you.

“Pretty thing,” he muttered, almost gentle, “look at you. That’s it. Just like that. God, Steve, you’re going to love fucking her throat.”

“Buck, you can’t just—” Steve had to groan before he could finish his thought. “You can’t just say shit like that and expect me to last.”

You moaned, mouth full of Bucky and body full of Steve, your whole self strung taut between their appetites. The rhythm between Steve’s hips behind you and Bucky’s in front of you a terrifying, perfect sync.

Bucky smirked, thumb wiping spit from your chin, then dragged it down to your throat, pressing lightly so you felt the stretch of yourself inside. “Bet you want him in your mouth right after he fills you up, don’t you?” Bucky’s voice was honey-thick, tugging need like a thread from your cunt all the way up to your brain.

You nodded, desperate, and that was all it took—Steve’s grip on your hips locked down, his pulse a wild thrum against your skin, and he buried himself in you with one last, shuddering thrust. You could feel it, the way he pulsed and spilled hot inside, and the sound he made—it was raw, almost animal. He held inside, grinding so deep you felt it all the way up your spine, filling you so perfectly a whimper broke loose from your lips even with Bucky’s cock still in your mouth.

Bucky eased out of your mouth, palm still warm against your jaw, thumb stroking where his cock had just been. He grinned at you, all sweet-and-mean, then leaned in to press a kiss over your spit-slick lips. “That’s it,” he whispered, reverent, like he was kissing holy ground. “That’s my good girl.” The words landed low in your belly, twisting up with the mess Steve had left in you.

But his cock was still inside you, too, and he collapsed forward, chest to your back, his arms caging you in. You expected him to pull out, to give you a moment to recover, but instead he rocked his hips, slow and greedy, as if he couldn’t bear to lose the feeling of you squeezing around him.

And then, without warning, his hand slid under your belly, fingers finding your clit, already swollen and overstimulated. He drew tight, precise circles with the pads of first two fingers, not letting up, even when you whined and squirmed beneath him. Bucky’s hands held you steady, anchoring you so Steve could play your body like an instrument.

The friction was so good, so dirty, that your cunt clamped around him involuntarily, milked every last drop as Steve’s fingers worked you up again, your body already betraying just how ready it was to be used a second, third, hundredth time.

“Fuck, she’s insatiable, isn’t she?” Steve said, voice almost fond, the sound of it a pressure at the base of your skull.

“She’s always been that way,” Bucky answered, a frayed thread of pride winding through his voice. “After the serum, I never met a partner who could keep up with me until her. Like you were made for a super soldier, sweetheart.”

You laughed, or tried to, but it came out a shaky, desperate gasp as Steve’s fingers wrung another whimper from you. Your knuckles dug into the sheets, the only tether as your overstimulated clit set off sparks behind your eyes. “Bucky,” you croaked, barely audible, “I can’t—”

“You can, honey. You’ll show Steve just how much you can take.” His gaze was intent, and for a moment you remembered every night the two of you had built trust on, every whispered dare and secret need he’d coaxed from you, every time he’d made you shatter and put you back together.

You barely had time to brace—Steve’s closed closed hard and firm around your clit, pinching, sending a lightning bolt through you, and as your body seized, his mouth found the meat of your shoulder and bit down. Not a warning, not a tease—a real goddamn bite. It ricocheted up your spine and detonated any coherence you had left. Your vision went blinding white, then red, and you screamed, nails gouging at the mattress, his hardening cock still buried so deep inside you it felt like you were cleaved in half.

The orgasm hit different—shocking, jagged, beyond pleasure and into a place that was just sensation, raw and total. You were crying, you realized, drool and tears tracking down your chin, but you couldn’t stop, couldn’t get enough, not even when the world blurred and your whole midsection pulsed around Steve’s cock, milking him for everything he had.

Bucky held your gaze the whole time, watching you unravel, watching every second of you coming apart for his best friend.

“Never gets old,” Bucky said, voice ragged with want, “seeing you come apart.” He stroked your hair, gentling you even as Steve’s cock kept you pinned and shuddering.

Steve pulled out, finally, leaving a slick trail down your thigh, and you expected collapse—rest, maybe, or at least a breath of air.

You got part of what you wanted as you were manhandled with a gentle efficiency—Steve lowering you to the mattress and Bucky rolling you over onto your back. The two men bracketed themselves around you. Bucky’s thumb smoothed tears from your cheeks, his lips hovering at your brow. Steve’s palm swept your hair from your face, tucking the wild strands behind your ears, and he smiled at you, dazed and open and deeply, deeply gone himself.

“You okay?” he asked, voice so hoarse you wanted to laugh, if only you didn’t feel so utterly wrung dry.

Bucky’s hands mapped your body, stroking down your arms, your waist, as if to collect every piece of you that had scattered. “She’s perfect. She’s got a thing for being ruined,” Bucky said, rubbing his thumb hard across your jaw, “but it’s more than just the mess. It’s being wanted, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

You trembled, the answer right there but too big for your mouth. All you could manage was a soft, but firm, “It’s both.”

It was. The ache between your legs, the aftershocks twitching in your thighs, crescendoed in the knowledge that you belonged—here, between them—because you were wanted. Not just by Bucky, whose love for you was a still wildfire after the first few years of the life you were building together, but by Steve, the last person you ever expected to want anything at all.

They held you in the perfect kind of silence for a while. Bucky stroked your sternum with two fingers, tracing the rapid pounding of your heart, while Steve drew lazy patterns on your ribs, the gentle touch making your bones melt.

Steve was the one who broke the silence, voice still thick and slow. “I’m sure Bucky’s told you how everything feels amplified for us, after the serum?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice, but Steve caught your chin and made certain you were listening, blue eyes intent on the fall and rise of your chest. He thumbed the corner of your mouth, gentle in a way that didn’t match the bite mark blooming on your shoulder. “It’s true. Everything’s hotter, sharper. Smells, tastes, touch.” His hand wandered down your neck, tracing the chain of your pulse. “It’s like all the dials turned up past what they’re supposed to do.”

Bucky grinned, mouth curving against your temple, proud and a little feral. “It’s why we’re so good at this,” he said, and the “we” wasn’t just the two of them, but you too, looped into their satisfaction by being the one they found satiation with.

You remembered, dimly, what Bucky had once told you—something about how pain and pleasure were just colors in a spectrum for men like them, how sometimes the best you could do was grab hold of the brightest one and hang on until it faded.

You barely noticed when Bucky’s hand slid lower, two fingers sliding along the seam of you, dipping just inside. You’d thought you were emptied out, rung dry, but the dull ache at your entrance proved otherwise—the evidence of Steve inside you, the slow ooze of it, making your lashes flutter in a way that felt almost innocent.

“You want to keep going, honey?” He asked because this—the consent, the agency—was one of the roots of his pleasure. You nodded again, too spent for speech. “Yeah, you do,” he murmured, pressing his own cock flush against your thigh, hot iron against soft flesh. “And you want Steve to watch, don’t you?”

The way Bucky framed it, you didn’t just want to perform, to be seen—you wanted to be worshipped, to be watched while your body proved itself again and again. There was no performance anxiety; there was only the heat of two impossible men zeroed in on every twitch of your muscles. You felt your own slick between your thighs, the slow, filthy trickle of Steve’s cum pooling out of you, the ache where you’d been so thoroughly stretched.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky chuckled. “Words.”

You tried to say, “Yes, please,” but it came out as a sigh, and Bucky’s grin only widened.

Steve cradled your head like a priceless artifact, thumb pressing a sleepy circle against your jaw while his gaze moved between your eyes and the place where Bucky’s fingers cupped your cunt. You felt your hips roll up, wanton, trying to keep contact with Bucky’s hand even as he toyed with your entrance but never quite let you have the friction you needed.

“You want to show Steve how we fuck when it’s just you and me in the dark, how well you take me.” A statement, not a question.

“Mmmhmm,” you groaned, and Bucky pressed a kiss to your shoulder, then knelt up, hands guiding your unresisting legs apart. He knelt back on his haunches and pulled your hips close. You heard Steve’s breath stutter at the sight, and it filled you with a greedy, wild pride. Bucky teased the seam of you with the head of his cock, up and down, up and down, making you whine.

At the last moment, Bucky relented and pushed inside, filling you with a swift, brutal thrust that bottomed out in one motion. There was no slow stretch, no easing in—just the violent, relentless press of his cock, and you arched off the mattress with a helpless, desperate moan. Your body was made to take him, every inch of you was slick and trembling, so the pain blurred seamlessly into pleasure and back again until you weren’t sure which you preferred.

He moved slow at first, kneeling above you like a god, letting you feel the thickness of him as he rocked in and out, but it wasn’t long before he found the rhythm he liked—a rough, demanding piston that left you scrambling for breath, for touch, for anything to keep you from coming apart entirely. You felt every ridge and vein, every rutting pound as he chased his own need, each thrust fusing the two of you back together.

All you could do—wanted to do—was take it. The raw, pounding pleasure, the relentless stretch, the feeling of Bucky’s cock rutting into you deeply. You heard yourself sob—and it was not a neat or pretty thing, but a wrecked, raw sound that only made Bucky groan above you. He caught your thighs in his hands, spreading you wider, and you felt the obscene heat of the stretch, the way your cunt seized around him with each battering drive. The slick noise of it—your body, his cock, the fucking mess Steve had left in you—filled the room, a rhythm and a punctuation to Bucky’s breathing as he drove deeper, harder, faster.

Steve’s hand found yours in the sheets. He laced his thick fingers between yours and squeezed, grounding you, letting you feel the reverent awe rolling off him in slow, steady waves. But there was an unmet hunger still lingering there under the surface. You could feel it in the tense of his body next to yours, and when you turned your face, eyes seeking his, he met your gaze without hesitation.

Steve bent to kiss you, and there was no veiling tenderness or shy request for permission. His tongue pushed into your mouth, greedy and wild, tasting the ghost of Bucky on your lips, tasting the salt of your tears. You kissed back with everything you had, drawing another moan from your throat as Bucky pistoned into you, the force rocking your whole body up into Steve’s chest.

Bucky’s thrusts didn’t slacken—they were still relentless, still merciless—but as you and Steve kissed, the tempo oscillated into something deeper, a series of slower,seismic detonations. Each time Bucky bottomed out inside you, he held there, grinding, spine arched, as if the sight of you kissing Steve was as much a pleasure to him as the feel of your cunt squeezing him.

Steve groaned into your mouth, his hand coming up to cradle your jaw, and Bucky’s grip on your thighs tightened, like he needed to stake a claim even as he offered you up. With every new roll of Bucky’s hips, a different noise tore its way out of your throat—some for the pain, some for the pleasure, some for the blissful humiliation of being made a spectacle for their eyes.

“Fuck her mouth, Steve,” Bucky said, a low, hungry rumble.

Steve didn’t hesitate, and it was only for a fraction of a second before he was shifting up, the broad line of his thigh braced alongside your head. His cock was still half-hard, glazed with your slick and his own release. The sight of it, flushed angry-red and wet, made your cunt clench around Bucky. Steve cupped your chin, thumb curling along the hinge of your jaw, and you sucked him into your mouth, the taste salty and obscene.

You groaned around him, lips stretching, tongue flattening under the thick, salty weight. He barely thrust, just eased forward, but the size of him still made your throat protest. Bucky continued his slow, tortruous pace below, watching intently as Steve’s cock parted your lips, and the sight of it—his best friend fucking your mouth while he still pounded into your cunt—nearly undid him, you could feel it in the grip of his hands on your hips.

“Deeper,” Bucky ordered, and Steve obeyed. He slid in, careful but insistent, filling your mouth until you gagged, until your eyes watered anew. Steve slid in, your throat stretched, and the assault of it made you gasp around him, desperate for air, for mercy, for more. Steve petted your jaw, his other hand cupping the back of your head, and for all the brutality of the act there was infinite patience in how he held you there, letting you adjust, letting you learn the unique shape of his need. Somewhere above, Bucky laughed—a single breath of filthy awe, a marvel at the spectacle of you taking both their cocks at once like this.

The taste of Steve’s cum was thick in your mouth, the smell of sex and sweat and ozone burning in your nostrils. You wanted them both to know how much you liked this, how much you needed every inch of what they gave. So you hollowed your cheeks and sucked, rolling your tongue with just enough pressure to see the effect in Steve’s eyes—head thrown back, spine bowed glorious, hand clenching your jaw with a desperation that made you burn with pride.

Bucky’s cock pounded up into you from below, and Steve’s pushed into your mouth from above, and you—pinned, stretched, used—were nothing but bliss. The sensation was a hinge, your body swinging wild between the two of them. You felt the echo of your own heartbeat in your cunt, in your mouth, in every thrum of the mattress and grind of their hips.

Steve’s thrusts grew bolder, and at each push he eased a little deeper, patience thinning as your mouth softened to his shape. His voice, when it came, was raw and rough, “Fuck, fuck, you feel so good—” your name murmured as its own curse when it fell from his lips in this moment.

He spilled his seed down your throat, but not all of it. He pulled out and shot the rest over your breasts, warm rope after rope of it across your heaving chest as Bucky pistoned in even harder, the thudding slap of his hips the only sound in the world.

Bucky slammed harder, harder, until you felt the actual bruise of him inside you, some deep purple echo of the violence. He reached for your clit, pinched, and your body shuddered into another orgasm, spasms wracking you so hard you thought you’d bite your tongue. You moaned so sweet and so ruined as he flew over the edge.

Bucky’s cock throbbed inside you, a shuddering full-body tremor, and then he was coming, hips jammed flush as he spilled molten and messy into the deepest part of you. His moan was raw, unguarded, and he didn’t let up, kept grinding through every spurt, making sure you took every last drop. The pressure of it set off a chain reaction—your body seized, aftershocks tearing up your thighs and into your belly, squeezing around him in greedy, involuntary pulses.

Bucky’s head dropped back, his jaw flexing as he held your hips pinned. You watched him, glassy-eyed and adoring, as every muscle in his chest locked. “Christ,” he panted, eyes flickering to Steve, “This is unreal.” He pulled halfway out—slow, slow—then pushed in again, a wet, obscene sound marking every inch. “She’s still squeezing me, even after you ruined her.” Bucky’s grin was all teeth, all pride and filth. “Can feel your mess inside her, Steve. So fucking wet she’s dripping down my balls.”

You moaned in the hinge between them, wrung out and wild, as Bucky fucked you through the last quakes and Steve’s hand fanned gently against your throat, thumb pressing the pulse there like he wanted to count your heartbeats—maybe hold them for ransom.

Bucky let out a ragged exhalation and pulled out, the head of his cock dragging on hypersensitive nerves, leaving you gaping and gasping and dripping. Bucky didn’t bother to hide his satisfaction. Instead, he watched the spill with a sick, loving sort of pride, then reached down, scooped his own cum with his fingers and smeared it over your breasts, painting you in it, mixing it with his best friend’s seed until your whole chest was slick with it. He held you there for a moment, painted and panting and caught in the liminal pleasure, before tilting your face up and licking a stripe from your collarbone to your jaw, tongue lazy and flat. Bucky’s mouth found yours, and you tasted the salt of Steve and yourself on his lips. You kissed him like you were dying, and Bucky kissed you back harder, swallowing you whole.

Steve’s voice burrowed into your ear with shocking gravity, arms closing around your limp torso as if to protect you from the world outside this narrow, unrepeatable moment. “You are so fucking beautiful ruined like this,” he said, voice half-reverent.

Bucky’s thumb pressed under your chin, tilting your face: “You want more, don’t you?” You did. That was the devastating truth of it. Even as your body ached and stung from orgasm, you wanted all the ways they touched you, every version of this night.

“Are you sure, Buck?” Steve asked, incredulous.

Bucky’s laugh was a bright, sharp crack in the haze, so full of delight it rang in your bones. “Oh, sweetheart. Steve has no idea what you’re capable of after a few more rounds.”

He bent over you, hands braced by your head, and pressed a kiss to the center of your brow—a benediction at odds with the lazy trail of his hand down your body, cupping your breast, then skimming the mess he and Steve had left there. He rubbed their slick together with an idle curiosity, like a child finger-painting, until Steve’s hand joined his, pinching a nipple between two careful fingers and rolling it until you arched up, spent muscles clenching with electric aftershock.

“We could let her rest,” Bucky said, tongue laving your earlobe as he spoke, “but why waste a perfectly good afterglow when you haven’t even fucked my wife in the shower yet?”

WE ALL KNOW I'M RARELY CAPABLE OF CUTTING SOMETHING DOWN

SO

I HOPE YOU'RE ALL HAPPY/RUINED RIGHT ALONGSIDE ME.

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You’d expected a lot of things when you agreed your husband’s oldest friend should come spend the holidays with you, but not this: you naked and splayed open, your back against Bucky’s chest, and Steve knelt between your legs, focus absolute as they took you apart.

Bucky’s lips moved against your neck, not quite kissing, hand sliding to cup one aching breast. “You want to feel for the ridge, the soft roof inside. Feel it?”

Steve nodded, learning by the tremors that rippled through you.

And you? You could only moan as his fingers sought a place only Bucky had touched before tonight.

Steve’s breath ghosted along your thigh, cool in comparison to the heat pooling where his fingertips pressed. “Like this?” he asked, looking up, seeking confirmation from Bucky.

Bucky squeezed you, barely-there pressure, his thumb circling your nipple. “Yeah, there—you’ll feel it through the front wall. Little bump.”

Steve slid his fingers deeper, slow and careful, and you arched back against Bucky’s chest. The pressure inside shifted, molten but sudden, and you gasped at the feel of it when he found it—that ridge, the soft roof, as Bucky had described it. Steve’s big hand trembled just a little as he kept it inside you, gentle but greedy, desperate to get it right. The man was as worshipping as he was determined, brow furrowed, lashes dark against his cheek as he mapped each element of your reactions.

And Bucky watched, grinning against your ear, voice thick. “That’s it, Steve. Watch her face, see how her mouth falls open? Touch her there, a tiny bit harder, that’s it, yeah.”

He kept the pressure steady, calloused thumb skating circles over your clit while his fingers pressed up, learning you, working with the careful tenacity he applied to every complex operation.

Bucky’s own hand drifted lower, his touch rough at your hip, a grounding force. You couldn’t move if you’d wanted to, pinned between them, the air thick with sweat and something like ozone.

You bucked, pulse thumping in your throat, teeth gritty against a whimper. Steve’s eyes flicked up again, shining, hungry, and your swore you might come just on the taste of his focus. With every press against that spot, your vision stuttered out, blinking in firework-bright bursts.

Bucky’s voice pressed into the shell of your ear, low and lazy, but with that hint of command that still managed to thrill you, even after all these years. “She’s real sensitive right there, Steve. Just steady. Keep the rhythm—yeah, just like that.”

“Fuck, Buck—she’s gonna—” Steve’s fingers jittered, the tip of his thumb ghosting over your wet clit.

“Let her,” Bucky hummed, open-mouthed over her shoulder. His other hand covered her thigh, holding her so wide the ache felt like a dare. “Make her feel it.”

Steve’s hand was huge, careful, coaxing, until it wasn’t, until the motion grew greedy, needy. You’d never been shy with Bucky, but with the attention of two lovers you felt nearly too open and exposed, nerves sparking along every limb. Bucky’s thumb toyed with your nipple, drawing it taut, while Steve’s fingers pursued your impending orgasm relentlessly.

And the orgasm came with no warning, just an unbearable pressure and then a bright, skittering release, your vision white-out as you shrieked and clamped around Steve’s hand. He nearly lost his balance but Bucky steadied him—steadied you—bracing your shaking limbs as you rode the aftershocks. Even after the pleasure crested, Steve’s fingers didn’t stop. He worked you through every shudder, sucking a breath through his teeth, awed. His voice was a fervent whisper, “Jesus. You—fuck, you look good like this.”

“She always does,” Bucky replied, mouth slick on your jaw, catching the sweat there. “You wanna see her come again?”

Steve’s hand stilled, then slowly slid free, leaving you embarrassingly empty and sticky. He watched you with dazed awe, pink flush climbing from his collar to cheekbones, as if he couldn’t believe the thing he’d just made happen, for you.

“Yeah, I do. Will you let me?” he asked, eyes meeting yours again.

You nodded, voice gone to wool and cotton, incapable of anything but a whispered, “Please.” The word left your lips desperate, high-pitched, a note of wildness that made Bucky’s hand tighten against your thigh, a subtle anchor to keep you from dissolving completely.

Steve’s smile broke open on his face, that cocky little tilt that always got him his way. He ducked down and pressed his mouth to your thigh, some kind of benediction, before giving Bucky a look, a question you weren’t included in: permission, or maybe the next step in instructions. Bucky’s hand still gripped your thigh, and the pressure from his fingertips went from comfort to proprietary.

“Take your time,” Bucky told him, slow as syrup. “She’s got plenty more in her if you work it up right.”

You whimpered, and Steve’s hand found your knee, thumb brushing circles that didn’t seem to know whether they were meant to calm or tease. He spread you even wider, fingers delving again, but now the touch was softer, coaxing in a new way. He watched your face the whole time, never letting you look away, and the sheer heat of his attention made it impossible to catch your breath, impossible to be anywhere but here, between them, for them.

You let your head loll back on Bucky’s chest, and he inhaled you like a secret. Steve’s mouth ghosted over the inside of your knee, the lightest of touches, as his hand slid slick with you, coaxing you open again. There was awe in his expression, like he couldn’t believe the things your body was capable of. That he couldn’t believe you let him see it.

Bucky’s voice was right in your ear, velvet and wicked. “You love this, don’t you? How he touches you, how he looks at you?” His teeth grazed just below your pulse, almost biting, his metal hand now flat and heavy on your soft stomach.

Steve’s mouth found your clit then, hot and wet, and you bit your lip, trying not to break apart too quickly, but Bucky’s other hand snapped up to your chin, forcing your jaw open. He slid two thick fingers into your mouth, muffling your gasps as Steve reached for that place inside you again, a blunt presence that made your hips twitch uncontrollably, mouth kissing and lapping at your clit.

“Be our good girl,” Bucky murmured, voice a velvet drag along your nerves. “Let me hear you, sweetheart.” He pressed your lips open wider, thumb tight on your cheek. Everything about him said claim, but you felt less like territory and more like treasure—something precious they’d both agreed to share.

You moaned and sucked on Bucky’s fingers, desperate for something to hold onto. Steve’s tongue drew slow, wide circles, alternating with little flicks that made you see stars, and every time his fingers curled inside you, you wanted to shake apart. Bucky’s hand pressed at the base of your throat, a leash without pressure, just a reminder of where you belonged.

Steve’s tongue moved with a rough, hungry precision that made your lashes flutter, the strangeness of his mouth—different than Bucky’s, somehow broader and needier—forcing you up against the edge of your own appetite. He groaned into you, animal, and the vibration made your toes curl as your hips bucked, seeking more, seeking everything.

The sound of you—wet and needy—filled the room, obscene, and Steve was impossibly focused. You could feel the shift as Steve’s mouth grew unabashed, each lap and suckle more confident. He lapped greedily, not just at your clit but at the desperate, shuddering noises you made, feeding on them, letting them escalate him past any feigned self-control.

Bucky murmured filth in your ear. “Such a pretty thing, all open for Steve. He’s a fast learner, isn’t he?” His fingers slipped from your mouth, gliding down to squeeze your breast with proprietary delight. “Sensitive here, too, Steve. She likes it just a little mean when you bite.”

Steve’s lips left your cunt, replaced by the blunt, perfect drag of his teeth—just a graze, but amplified by the velvet heat radiating between your thighs. The wild sound you made told him everything he needed. He grinned, eyes bright, and gave you another drag with his tongue and the barest scrape of teeth. Your legs shook, clamped for a second around his broad shoulders as he tormented you, licking through the slick he’d made.

“She’s right there,” Bucky insists, “but don’t let up.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, chest heaving, as Bucky’s words poured through you, making it impossible not to want to give him everything, even the parts you thought you’d never let anyone else but him see. He tugged his hand from your mouth, and you gasped, “I’m close, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Bucky coaxed, hand splayed again over your breast, pinching and then soothing. “Let him taste it. Let him taste everything.” He nuzzled the space behind your ear, catching the lobe between his teeth, a punctuation to his demand.

Steve’s hand, meanwhile, never stopped mapping you. His thick fingers curling again against that spot inside, a squirming, irresistible pressure, while his mouth closed around your clit and sucked, hard, and the world melted into a soundless scream in your throat. You bucked up, hands grasping at Bucky’s biceps, and came again, hard enough you thought you might black out.

This time Steve didn’t bother with awe, only a growl of triumph and gratitude as he licked you through every convulsion, not stopping until your thighs trembled against his head and Bucky had to murmur, “Enough, big guy, you’ll melt her.”

You didn’t remember the transition—somewhere in the haze of pleasure, Steve had shifted you onto his lap, his cock thick and leaking, pressed impossibly hard against your hip. Bucky sat facing you both on the foot of the bed, blue eyes greedy and soft at the same time, mouth slack with want. Steve held you to his chest, the thrum of his pulse wild and loud beneath your palm.

“Fuck, honey, you alright?” Bucky asked, thumb brushing along your jaw. You only nodded, eyes glassy, limbs a little insubstantial.

“She gets real soft after she comes,” Bucky explained. His metal hand stroked your cheek, thumb scraping your parted lip. “Steve, you ever eat a girl out til she can’t think straight, and then fuck her so good she gets slick again just from the memory?”

Steve’s gaze flicked down to your face, as if he needed to check in, as if the rules of this odd, shared gravity could change at your whim. But you only leaned harder into his chest, the memory of Bucky’s words blooming low in your gut. “Not like this,” Steve said quietly, the confession tumbling out like an apology. “Never had someone so slick and eager and pliant. She’s so fucking sweet.”

“She likes making a mess, especially when she knows someone’s gonna clean it up nice for her.”

It was obscene and beautiful in the same breath, the way your body pulsed and ached for these two men. You knew Bucky intimately, but Steve was still a new entity, it should be unbelievable what you were letting him do to you, and yet you were willing because Bucky said you could be.

“You wear her out, and she lets you do anything you want.” Steve pressed his lips to your temple, the gesture as tender as a prayer, but you could feel the tension in his body—like he was holding himself back as much as he was holding you up.

“Do you want him to fuck you?” It was as blunt as a knife’s edge; Bucky never did like to leave things to implication.

You meant to say yes, steeled and confident, but the only sound you could make was a whimper. Bucky grinned. “Use your words, honey. Steve’s been waiting a long time.”

Steve’s hands tightened on your hips. “Since your wedding,” he confessed, and you gasped.

Bucky nodded, proud, calm, even though this revelation was ricocheting through your mind. Steve had been overseas for years until just recently, and of course he hadn’t missed his best friend’s wedding—had been the best man—but it had also been the first time you’d met him.

You remembered the speech, the toast. Steve smiling at you across a room of strangers, nothing but friendship and pride in his voice, but now you wondered how long he’d been drinking you in, how long he’d been simmering in this kind of want.

You also remembered—vivid as if it bloomed on the backs of your eyelids—the way Steve’s eyes had lingered at the reception, how his hand seemed to swallow yours when he shook it, holding on a beat too long. You’d caught him watching you and Bucky slow dancing, his smile softer than it ought to have been, heavy with yearning. At the time you’d wondered if maybe he was just that kind of romantic, or maybe a little lonely after so much time away.

But now that memory rewrote itself, charged and electric, searing through you as Steve took your chin in his hand and kissed you—soft at first, learning the taste of you. His mouth tasted like you, and you shivered, deep in your bones, at being desired by these two men.

Bucky reached for you, steady hands bracketing your thighs, and you sank back against Steve’s chest. Your husband ducked lower, pressing a line of kisses from your hip bone to the soft, over-sensitive spot at the seam of your thigh.

You shivered as Bucky trailed his tongue through the wetness Steve had left behind, mouth hungry and reverent. He licked slowly, then nosed at your clit, already swollen and sore from Steve’s attention, and the jolt of sensation made you gasp into Steve’s mouth. He devoured your sounds greedily, tongue parting your lips as if he needed to taste how undone you were.

Bucky’s tongue was firmer than Steve’s, more insistent, and when he flattened it against you and sucked, you felt every vibration in your teeth. You whimpered into Steve’s kiss, and he swallowed the noise, hands squeezing your hips as you rolled against the heat of Bucky’s mouth, your body burning, melting, until there was nothing left but sensation.

You weren’t sure Bucky’s mouth could ever be called gentle, but right now it was a new kind of slow, each lap deliberate, stroking the sharp edge of oversensitivity and coaxing pleasure out of it until your eyes watered. Steve’s hand wound into your hair, guiding your head back against his shoulder, and you let him, lost in the heat radiating from both their bodies.

“She’s shaking,” Steve whispered, awe thick in his voice.

“She knows what she likes,” Bucky replied, voice muffled between your legs. His metal hand dug into your thigh, cool and greedy, while the other traced lazy patterns over your ribs, drawing your skin tight with anticipation for what would come next.

Bucky pulled his mouth away with a slick, obscene sound, smirking up at you. “You ready for cock?” he asked, and this wasn’t an idle question. Bucky wanted you to say it, wanted you to beg for it. Steve’s cock pressed up under you, thick and hot, and you could feel how desperate he was for it. You were too.

“Yes,” you said, or maybe just moaned it, letting your knees fall as wide as Steve and Bucky wanted them. “Yes, please.”

“Fuck, she’s polite,” Steve mumbled, hands already guiding you up, shifting you onto your knees, palms bracing the mattress as Bucky moved to the side of you, one hand fisting his own stiff cock, the other smoothing down your back and skimming over your ass. You could feel Steve’s cock, hot and insistent, nudging between your thighs.

“She likes a full feeling,” Bucky told Steve, the statement an offer and a warning both, and you blinked up at him, swallowing. “When you fuck her, you gotta go deep.”

Steve’s hands caught your hips, palms broad enough to span almost from waist to thigh. There was a reverence in his movements, but also the first hints of impatience—the way his fingers flexed, the way his cock jumped when it brushed against you, smearing precum along the seam of your body. He lined himself up and held, not yet pushing in, and the wait felt like another kind of pleasure, anticipation sharp as a blade.

Your chest seized—with anticipation or hesitation, you weren’t sure—as you realized Bucky was going to let Steve fuck you bare.

“He’s a big one, sweetheart,” Bucky warned, and you could hear the grin on his face. He planted a hand at the small of your back, keeping your spine bowed. “Nice and slow. She likes to feel every inch.”

You pressed your face into the pillow, bracing for a stretch that came slow and monumental—Steve’s cock parting you, nudging inside until you couldn’t breathe for the fullness, the hot-dull burn that quickly blurred into something sweeter.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Bucky murmured. “Let him all the way in.”

You were so wet he didn’t even need to force it; the broad head split you open easily. You heard Bucky’s purr, almost proud, as if he had made you this way, greedy for the kind of ache only they could give. Bucky loved to torment you with this kind of fuck when he slid inside you, so his direction for Steve to as well was to be expected.

Steve held, fully sheathing himself, body trembling with restraint. “You okay?” The sound of your name was different in his voice, kinder, stripped of any artifice.

You nodded, eagerly pressing your hips back, and the slide hit something deep, a place that made your toes flex and your mouth fall open. Steve’s hands stroked your hips, grounding you, his breath rough as he held as still as he could manage. Bucky’s voice was syrup-sweet at your ear, “Go on, Steve. She wants it.”

The first thrust was a slow, rolling motion that stole your breath. Steve drew out nearly all the way, then slid back in, the burn giving way to a greedy, clutching pleasure. You held perfectly still, squeezing your eyes shut, learning the new shape of yourself with Steve inside you. You keened, knuckles whitening in the bedsheets. Bucky stayed close, palm at the nape of your neck, his own cock hard and leaking, pressed to your shoulder as he watched Steve fuck you.

“She takes cock so well, doesn’t she?” Bucky crooned, his tone barely above a purr. “Bet you never seen anyone so hungry before.” His metal hand traced your spine, ratcheting the tension higher as he pet you and praised you, the words a molten thread tangled through every harder, deeper thrust. Steve’s hips pistoned slow, but with such force you swore you could feel it in your throat, each time catching a spot Bucky had mapped just for him.

Steve’s rhythm was a miracle of endurance, slow and deep, every thrust measured, watched, almost academic in its hunger. His hands never stopped moving, stroking your waist, your belly, your ribs, learning every inch of you as if he needed to memorize the route. His hips stuttered occasionally, evidence of his own struggle not to lose himself too quickly to the wet heat you offered him.

And he whispered your name between every other breath, like a vow, like he was kneeling in church.

Bucky’s hands grew rougher on you, easing your thighs farther apart, planting dirty encouragements in your head that made you slicker, filthier than before. “You should see her face, Steve. She’s so beautiful right now.”

Bucky coaxed your head up and to the side so Steve could see the exact, filthy pleasure contorting your features. And you felt it, the slide of your own tears, half-joy and half-overwhelm, as Steve picked up the pace, his thrusts deeper, harder.

Bucky wiped a tear from your jaw with his thumb, then sucked it into his mouth. “So beautiful when you’re ruined like this.”

Steve’s fingers dug into your flesh, and you could feel how close he was to letting go of decorum, of caution, of the last rags of self-control. You wanted it. You moaned for it. Your head swam with the ache of being so fucking full, of being seen and used and loved all at once.

“Not gonna last,” Steve groaned, the confession breaking at the seam. “Feels—fuck, Bucky, how do you keep your head—”

“I don’t, punk. That’s why I always make her come first.” Bucky’s laugh was sharp and breathless, the sound of a man profoundly in love with his own wife. He trailed a hand down your front, fingers gliding over the slick mess Steve had made of you. “And always make it up to her after, too. She loves that part too.”

Bucky’s hand found your clit, thumb and forefinger pinching, rolling it just this side of cruel, and you yelped, the sudden spike of pain-pleasure a match to the fullness Steve was feeding you, and your whole body shuddered. Bucky laughed—warm and wicked—and reached down, fingers sliding through the mess of slick and sweat and precum at the seam where Steve’s body split yours, then smeared it over his own cock.

He pumped himself once, twice, eyes locked on where Steve’s body met yours, and you watched, unabashedly.

Bucky leaned forward, mouth hot at your jaw. “You want me to fuck your mouth while Steve fucks you?”

The question, blunt and bright, sliced through your haze. You nodded, desperate, and Bucky grinned, wolfish. He pressed his thumb to your lips, smearing the taste of yourself across them, and then shifted around in front of you, kneeling up so his cock bobbed level with your mouth. It was already slick, the head flushed dark, and you opened for him automatically, tongue out, dutiful and greedy all at once.

“That’s my girl,” Bucky breathed, sliding in slow, letting you feel the heft of him as Steve’s cock ground into your cunt from behind. You could barely spare the coordination to suck and moan at the same time, the boundary between pleasure and humiliation dissolved.

Your throat worked, helpless, as Bucky fucked your mouth in shallow, reverent thrusts, and your jaw burned with the effort of taking him as deep as he wanted. He pulled back every time you gagged, not to spare you, but to watch the string of spit connect your lips to the tip of his cock. You blinked up at your husband, tears streaming freely now, and saw how it undid him—made him thrust a little deeper, fuck your mouth a little harder, hands cradling your jaw, both anchoring and guiding you.

“Pretty thing,” he muttered, almost gentle, “look at you. That’s it. Just like that. God, Steve, you’re going to love fucking her throat.”

“Buck, you can’t just—” Steve had to groan before he could finish his thought. “You can’t just say shit like that and expect me to last.”

You moaned, mouth full of Bucky and body full of Steve, your whole self strung taut between their appetites. The rhythm between Steve’s hips behind you and Bucky’s in front of you a terrifying, perfect sync.

Bucky smirked, thumb wiping spit from your chin, then dragged it down to your throat, pressing lightly so you felt the stretch of yourself inside. “Bet you want him in your mouth right after he fills you up, don’t you?” Bucky’s voice was honey-thick, tugging need like a thread from your cunt all the way up to your brain.

You nodded, desperate, and that was all it took—Steve’s grip on your hips locked down, his pulse a wild thrum against your skin, and he buried himself in you with one last, shuddering thrust. You could feel it, the way he pulsed and spilled hot inside, and the sound he made—it was raw, almost animal. He held inside, grinding so deep you felt it all the way up your spine, filling you so perfectly a whimper broke loose from your lips even with Bucky’s cock still in your mouth.

Bucky eased out of your mouth, palm still warm against your jaw, thumb stroking where his cock had just been. He grinned at you, all sweet-and-mean, then leaned in to press a kiss over your spit-slick lips. “That’s it,” he whispered, reverent, like he was kissing holy ground. “That’s my good girl.” The words landed low in your belly, twisting up with the mess Steve had left in you.

But his cock was still inside you, too, and he collapsed forward, chest to your back, his arms caging you in. You expected him to pull out, to give you a moment to recover, but instead he rocked his hips, slow and greedy, as if he couldn’t bear to lose the feeling of you squeezing around him.

And then, without warning, his hand slid under your belly, fingers finding your clit, already swollen and overstimulated. He drew tight, precise circles with the pads of first two fingers, not letting up, even when you whined and squirmed beneath him. Bucky’s hands held you steady, anchoring you so Steve could play your body like an instrument.

The friction was so good, so dirty, that your cunt clamped around him involuntarily, milked every last drop as Steve’s fingers worked you up again, your body already betraying just how ready it was to be used a second, third, hundredth time.

“Fuck, she’s insatiable, isn’t she?” Steve said, voice almost fond, the sound of it a pressure at the base of your skull.

“She’s always been that way,” Bucky answered, a frayed thread of pride winding through his voice. “After the serum, I never met a partner who could keep up with me until her. Like you were made for a super soldier, sweetheart.”

You laughed, or tried to, but it came out a shaky, desperate gasp as Steve’s fingers wrung another whimper from you. Your knuckles dug into the sheets, the only tether as your overstimulated clit set off sparks behind your eyes. “Bucky,” you croaked, barely audible, “I can’t—”

“You can, honey. You’ll show Steve just how much you can take.” His gaze was intent, and for a moment you remembered every night the two of you had built trust on, every whispered dare and secret need he’d coaxed from you, every time he’d made you shatter and put you back together.

You barely had time to brace—Steve’s closed closed hard and firm around your clit, pinching, sending a lightning bolt through you, and as your body seized, his mouth found the meat of your shoulder and bit down. Not a warning, not a tease—a real goddamn bite. It ricocheted up your spine and detonated any coherence you had left. Your vision went blinding white, then red, and you screamed, nails gouging at the mattress, his hardening cock still buried so deep inside you it felt like you were cleaved in half.

The orgasm hit different—shocking, jagged, beyond pleasure and into a place that was just sensation, raw and total. You were crying, you realized, drool and tears tracking down your chin, but you couldn’t stop, couldn’t get enough, not even when the world blurred and your whole midsection pulsed around Steve’s cock, milking him for everything he had.

Bucky held your gaze the whole time, watching you unravel, watching every second of you coming apart for his best friend.

“Never gets old,” Bucky said, voice ragged with want, “seeing you come apart.” He stroked your hair, gentling you even as Steve’s cock kept you pinned and shuddering.

Steve pulled out, finally, leaving a slick trail down your thigh, and you expected collapse—rest, maybe, or at least a breath of air.

You got part of what you wanted as you were manhandled with a gentle efficiency—Steve lowering you to the mattress and Bucky rolling you over onto your back. The two men bracketed themselves around you. Bucky’s thumb smoothed tears from your cheeks, his lips hovering at your brow. Steve’s palm swept your hair from your face, tucking the wild strands behind your ears, and he smiled at you, dazed and open and deeply, deeply gone himself.

“You okay?” he asked, voice so hoarse you wanted to laugh, if only you didn’t feel so utterly wrung dry.

Bucky’s hands mapped your body, stroking down your arms, your waist, as if to collect every piece of you that had scattered. “She’s perfect. She’s got a thing for being ruined,” Bucky said, rubbing his thumb hard across your jaw, “but it’s more than just the mess. It’s being wanted, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

You trembled, the answer right there but too big for your mouth. All you could manage was a soft, but firm, “It’s both.”

It was. The ache between your legs, the aftershocks twitching in your thighs, crescendoed in the knowledge that you belonged—here, between them—because you were wanted. Not just by Bucky, whose love for you was a still wildfire after the first few years of the life you were building together, but by Steve, the last person you ever expected to want anything at all.

They held you in the perfect kind of silence for a while. Bucky stroked your sternum with two fingers, tracing the rapid pounding of your heart, while Steve drew lazy patterns on your ribs, the gentle touch making your bones melt.

Steve was the one who broke the silence, voice still thick and slow. “I’m sure Bucky’s told you how everything feels amplified for us, after the serum?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice, but Steve caught your chin and made certain you were listening, blue eyes intent on the fall and rise of your chest. He thumbed the corner of your mouth, gentle in a way that didn’t match the bite mark blooming on your shoulder. “It’s true. Everything’s hotter, sharper. Smells, tastes, touch.” His hand wandered down your neck, tracing the chain of your pulse. “It’s like all the dials turned up past what they’re supposed to do.”

Bucky grinned, mouth curving against your temple, proud and a little feral. “It’s why we’re so good at this,” he said, and the “we” wasn’t just the two of them, but you too, looped into their satisfaction by being the one they found satiation with.

You remembered, dimly, what Bucky had once told you—something about how pain and pleasure were just colors in a spectrum for men like them, how sometimes the best you could do was grab hold of the brightest one and hang on until it faded.

You barely noticed when Bucky’s hand slid lower, two fingers sliding along the seam of you, dipping just inside. You’d thought you were emptied out, rung dry, but the dull ache at your entrance proved otherwise—the evidence of Steve inside you, the slow ooze of it, making your lashes flutter in a way that felt almost innocent.

“You want to keep going, honey?” He asked because this—the consent, the agency—was one of the roots of his pleasure. You nodded again, too spent for speech. “Yeah, you do,” he murmured, pressing his own cock flush against your thigh, hot iron against soft flesh. “And you want Steve to watch, don’t you?”

The way Bucky framed it, you didn’t just want to perform, to be seen—you wanted to be worshipped, to be watched while your body proved itself again and again. There was no performance anxiety; there was only the heat of two impossible men zeroed in on every twitch of your muscles. You felt your own slick between your thighs, the slow, filthy trickle of Steve’s cum pooling out of you, the ache where you’d been so thoroughly stretched.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky chuckled. “Words.”

You tried to say, “Yes, please,” but it came out as a sigh, and Bucky’s grin only widened.

Steve cradled your head like a priceless artifact, thumb pressing a sleepy circle against your jaw while his gaze moved between your eyes and the place where Bucky’s fingers cupped your cunt. You felt your hips roll up, wanton, trying to keep contact with Bucky’s hand even as he toyed with your entrance but never quite let you have the friction you needed.

“You want to show Steve how we fuck when it’s just you and me in the dark, how well you take me.” A statement, not a question.

“Mmmhmm,” you groaned, and Bucky pressed a kiss to your shoulder, then knelt up, hands guiding your unresisting legs apart. He knelt back on his haunches and pulled your hips close. You heard Steve’s breath stutter at the sight, and it filled you with a greedy, wild pride. Bucky teased the seam of you with the head of his cock, up and down, up and down, making you whine.

At the last moment, Bucky relented and pushed inside, filling you with a swift, brutal thrust that bottomed out in one motion. There was no slow stretch, no easing in—just the violent, relentless press of his cock, and you arched off the mattress with a helpless, desperate moan. Your body was made to take him, every inch of you was slick and trembling, so the pain blurred seamlessly into pleasure and back again until you weren’t sure which you preferred.

He moved slow at first, kneeling above you like a god, letting you feel the thickness of him as he rocked in and out, but it wasn’t long before he found the rhythm he liked—a rough, demanding piston that left you scrambling for breath, for touch, for anything to keep you from coming apart entirely. You felt every ridge and vein, every rutting pound as he chased his own need, each thrust fusing the two of you back together.

All you could do—wanted to do—was take it. The raw, pounding pleasure, the relentless stretch, the feeling of Bucky’s cock rutting into you deeply. You heard yourself sob—and it was not a neat or pretty thing, but a wrecked, raw sound that only made Bucky groan above you. He caught your thighs in his hands, spreading you wider, and you felt the obscene heat of the stretch, the way your cunt seized around him with each battering drive. The slick noise of it—your body, his cock, the fucking mess Steve had left in you—filled the room, a rhythm and a punctuation to Bucky’s breathing as he drove deeper, harder, faster.

Steve’s hand found yours in the sheets. He laced his thick fingers between yours and squeezed, grounding you, letting you feel the reverent awe rolling off him in slow, steady waves. But there was an unmet hunger still lingering there under the surface. You could feel it in the tense of his body next to yours, and when you turned your face, eyes seeking his, he met your gaze without hesitation.

Steve bent to kiss you, and there was no veiling tenderness or shy request for permission. His tongue pushed into your mouth, greedy and wild, tasting the ghost of Bucky on your lips, tasting the salt of your tears. You kissed back with everything you had, drawing another moan from your throat as Bucky pistoned into you, the force rocking your whole body up into Steve’s chest.

Bucky’s thrusts didn’t slacken—they were still relentless, still merciless—but as you and Steve kissed, the tempo oscillated into something deeper, a series of slower,seismic detonations. Each time Bucky bottomed out inside you, he held there, grinding, spine arched, as if the sight of you kissing Steve was as much a pleasure to him as the feel of your cunt squeezing him.

Steve groaned into your mouth, his hand coming up to cradle your jaw, and Bucky’s grip on your thighs tightened, like he needed to stake a claim even as he offered you up. With every new roll of Bucky’s hips, a different noise tore its way out of your throat—some for the pain, some for the pleasure, some for the blissful humiliation of being made a spectacle for their eyes.

“Fuck her mouth, Steve,” Bucky said, a low, hungry rumble.

Steve didn’t hesitate, and it was only for a fraction of a second before he was shifting up, the broad line of his thigh braced alongside your head. His cock was still half-hard, glazed with your slick and his own release. The sight of it, flushed angry-red and wet, made your cunt clench around Bucky. Steve cupped your chin, thumb curling along the hinge of your jaw, and you sucked him into your mouth, the taste salty and obscene.

You groaned around him, lips stretching, tongue flattening under the thick, salty weight. He barely thrust, just eased forward, but the size of him still made your throat protest. Bucky continued his slow, tortruous pace below, watching intently as Steve’s cock parted your lips, and the sight of it—his best friend fucking your mouth while he still pounded into your cunt—nearly undid him, you could feel it in the grip of his hands on your hips.

“Deeper,” Bucky ordered, and Steve obeyed. He slid in, careful but insistent, filling your mouth until you gagged, until your eyes watered anew. Steve slid in, your throat stretched, and the assault of it made you gasp around him, desperate for air, for mercy, for more. Steve petted your jaw, his other hand cupping the back of your head, and for all the brutality of the act there was infinite patience in how he held you there, letting you adjust, letting you learn the unique shape of his need. Somewhere above, Bucky laughed—a single breath of filthy awe, a marvel at the spectacle of you taking both their cocks at once like this.

The taste of Steve’s cum was thick in your mouth, the smell of sex and sweat and ozone burning in your nostrils. You wanted them both to know how much you liked this, how much you needed every inch of what they gave. So you hollowed your cheeks and sucked, rolling your tongue with just enough pressure to see the effect in Steve’s eyes—head thrown back, spine bowed glorious, hand clenching your jaw with a desperation that made you burn with pride.

Bucky’s cock pounded up into you from below, and Steve’s pushed into your mouth from above, and you—pinned, stretched, used—were nothing but bliss. The sensation was a hinge, your body swinging wild between the two of them. You felt the echo of your own heartbeat in your cunt, in your mouth, in every thrum of the mattress and grind of their hips.

Steve’s thrusts grew bolder, and at each push he eased a little deeper, patience thinning as your mouth softened to his shape. His voice, when it came, was raw and rough, “Fuck, fuck, you feel so good—” your name murmured as its own curse when it fell from his lips in this moment.

He spilled his seed down your throat, but not all of it. He pulled out and shot the rest over your breasts, warm rope after rope of it across your heaving chest as Bucky pistoned in even harder, the thudding slap of his hips the only sound in the world.

Bucky slammed harder, harder, until you felt the actual bruise of him inside you, some deep purple echo of the violence. He reached for your clit, pinched, and your body shuddered into another orgasm, spasms wracking you so hard you thought you’d bite your tongue. You moaned so sweet and so ruined as he flew over the edge.

Bucky’s cock throbbed inside you, a shuddering full-body tremor, and then he was coming, hips jammed flush as he spilled molten and messy into the deepest part of you. His moan was raw, unguarded, and he didn’t let up, kept grinding through every spurt, making sure you took every last drop. The pressure of it set off a chain reaction—your body seized, aftershocks tearing up your thighs and into your belly, squeezing around him in greedy, involuntary pulses.

Bucky’s head dropped back, his jaw flexing as he held your hips pinned. You watched him, glassy-eyed and adoring, as every muscle in his chest locked. “Christ,” he panted, eyes flickering to Steve, “This is unreal.” He pulled halfway out—slow, slow—then pushed in again, a wet, obscene sound marking every inch. “She’s still squeezing me, even after you ruined her.” Bucky’s grin was all teeth, all pride and filth. “Can feel your mess inside her, Steve. So fucking wet she’s dripping down my balls.”

You moaned in the hinge between them, wrung out and wild, as Bucky fucked you through the last quakes and Steve’s hand fanned gently against your throat, thumb pressing the pulse there like he wanted to count your heartbeats—maybe hold them for ransom.

Bucky let out a ragged exhalation and pulled out, the head of his cock dragging on hypersensitive nerves, leaving you gaping and gasping and dripping. Bucky didn’t bother to hide his satisfaction. Instead, he watched the spill with a sick, loving sort of pride, then reached down, scooped his own cum with his fingers and smeared it over your breasts, painting you in it, mixing it with his best friend’s seed until your whole chest was slick with it. He held you there for a moment, painted and panting and caught in the liminal pleasure, before tilting your face up and licking a stripe from your collarbone to your jaw, tongue lazy and flat. Bucky’s mouth found yours, and you tasted the salt of Steve and yourself on his lips. You kissed him like you were dying, and Bucky kissed you back harder, swallowing you whole.

Steve’s voice burrowed into your ear with shocking gravity, arms closing around your limp torso as if to protect you from the world outside this narrow, unrepeatable moment. “You are so fucking beautiful ruined like this,” he said, voice half-reverent.

Bucky’s thumb pressed under your chin, tilting your face: “You want more, don’t you?” You did. That was the devastating truth of it. Even as your body ached and stung from orgasm, you wanted all the ways they touched you, every version of this night.

“Are you sure, Buck?” Steve asked, incredulous.

Bucky’s laugh was a bright, sharp crack in the haze, so full of delight it rang in your bones. “Oh, sweetheart. Steve has no idea what you’re capable of after a few more rounds.”

He bent over you, hands braced by your head, and pressed a kiss to the center of your brow—a benediction at odds with the lazy trail of his hand down your body, cupping your breast, then skimming the mess he and Steve had left there. He rubbed their slick together with an idle curiosity, like a child finger-painting, until Steve’s hand joined his, pinching a nipple between two careful fingers and rolling it until you arched up, spent muscles clenching with electric aftershock.

“We could let her rest,” Bucky said, tongue laving your earlobe as he spoke, “but why waste a perfectly good afterglow when you haven’t even fucked my wife in the shower yet?”

WE ALL KNOW I'M RARELY CAPABLE OF CUTTING SOMETHING DOWN

SO

I HOPE YOU'RE ALL HAPPY/RUINED RIGHT ALONGSIDE ME.

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

And cuz life is lifing, I do not have the spoons to do one of my usual quote reviews cuz headache from Hell. But since this b is bookmarked and I KNOW I will be returning multiple tiiiiiiiiiimes, some day.

In the meantime...

Aspen wrote some absolute exquisite filth complete with consent, concern, and continuous sex to the point I thought reader also had to have received serum because WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WAS THAT MANY ROUNDS?!?!?

So PLEASE heed my call to all my fellow third weekers in their Luteal phase or just fans of masterfully written content...lay back, relax, and

Ari is outside a majority of the day, basking in the sun, soaking in the pool, meanwhile you and Ransom hide inside with the a/c cranked up as high as it can go.

Any time Ari slips indoors, and lets precious cold air out and horrid hot, humid air in, he gets the ultimate stink eye from Ransom.

“You’re lucky you rock those short shorts so well, alpha, otherwise I’d murder you.”

You though? You do try to enjoy the summertime and encourage Ari’s love for it. But the heat 😩 Oh god, the heat.

He would never tell you this, because it would make you self-conscious and shy, but Ari’s absolute favorite thing about all this? It’s not when you muster up the courage and fake enjoyment of the scorching outdoors to spend time with him (although he does love that). It’s when he catches you standing inside at the sliding glass doors leading out back, the saddest 🥺 look on your face as you press a hand to the glass and gaze longingly at him 🤣 You’re literally just a few yards away and could come outside at any moment, but your aversion to the heat and humidity is adorable.

Also, you’re not as waspish about it as Ransom, so you get extra cute points lollll.

Any time Ari catches your forlorn stare, he’ll come right inside and scoop you into his lap for some kisses and alpha purr therapy so that 🥺 look turns ☺️

Ransom usually wanders in at some point, very put out that you two are canoodling and no one invited him.

“But you said not to touch you when it’s this hot out,” you remind your beta, sharing an amused look with Ari.

“Well obviously you can still play with my hair,” Ransom huffs as he plops down beside Ari and aims his head your way.

—

Imagine you're on your knees in the grass, checking on something, or talking to your flowers and suddenly he comes up behind you.

"Don't mind me, angel."

And he pulls your shorts and underwear down and pushes inside, and you have to keep quiet to not disturb the neighbors.

"You look so pretty with your ass in the air. I couldn't resist."

It turned out the company provided a free bar at the event, and it hadn’t taken long for everyone to get plastered, including Susan. You had taken it slow, only on your second glass of wine when one of your bosses had asked to see you in private.

Wanting to make a good impression, you followed him, and it wasn’t until you were alone and his grabby hands had reached for your clothes that you realized your mistake. "No, stop!" you had yelled. He had been bigger and stronger, but he was drunk, and that had been to your advantage as you had shoved him as hard as you could and ran. Down an empty hallway, you had found a supply closet and locked the door behind you. Shaking, you take a few deep breaths, trying to calm your racing heart and think about what to do next. Going home with Susan is out of the question and you're in no condition to drive yourself.

Fishing up your phone from your pocket, you scroll through your contacts, stopping at your parents, but it's late and snowing. You don’t want them driving to get you.

When you get to S you stop. Steve Rogers' name seems to jump out at you.

He started working for your father about five years ago and your dad isn’t the kind of guy who just sprinkles praise freely, so when he mentioned him over the phone and said, “That Steve fellow is a good guy,” you knew he would be something else. When you traveled home for the holidays that year he was invited to Sunday dinner. You'd thought he'd be around your dad's age and were shocked when he was much closer to you.

Later he purchased a house not far from your parents, and since he is single and lives alone your mom feels bad for him, which means that he's invited to every Sunday dinner, just like you.

And it's fine.

Except Steve is hot, charming, and nice to everyone. He and your dad get along great. Your mom adores him. But because of that, you keep your distance. No need to complicate things with your dad’s employee.

One day when you had been helping on the ranch, checking the fences with your dad he had out of the blue told you that if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need help and you can't get a hold of him or your mom, you call Steve.

So you do.

Because you usually don't call Steve he knows something is up.

“Hey, sugar, is everything okay?”

"Yeah. I mean no, my ride home is drunk. Well, everybody is plastered, and one of my bosses…" you don’t finish that sentence. "I didn't want to call my parents.”

"Send me the address, I'll be there as fast as I can."

He hangs up without a goodbye and you send him the address. After what feels like ages you get a text that he’s outside. You check the hallway before making your way towards the entrance.

As you near it, you overhear someone whispering about the hot cowboy, wondering who he is. There is a flare of jealousy in your chest at the thought of Steve being with any of them, but as soon as you see him, the feeling in you shifts to something else.

Steve stands just inside the doors, hands in the pockets of his wrangler jeans, with boots, cowboy hat, and his fur-lined jacket that looks so good on him. Hurryingly you collect your coat and go to him.

"Thank you," you whisper as you stop in front of him, shrugging the jacket on. His face is serious, scanning you for injuries, and then he looks up over your head at the crowd behind you. In one smooth motion, he takes off his cowboy hat, runs his fingers through his hair, and places it on top of your head before looking down at you again.

His blue eyes which usually hold softness and mirth are hard, but you know it's not directed at you.

"Ready to go, sugar?" he asks with that perfect voice that makes you hot on a good day. Now, with his hat on your head, and all the implications that come with that, you're ready to melt.

“Yes, Steve,” you nod, hoping you sound normal. He opens the door for you and you don't turn around to say goodbye to any of your co-workers.

His big white truck is parked just outside and you quickly jump in. The cab carries Steve’s scent, wrapping you in a sense of safety. It's like home, but different.

The engine rumbles to life, and the building disappears behind you. He’s driven you home from Sunday dinners a few times when your mom insisted you share a bottle of wine with her. He graciously offered his help then, so there’s no need to give him directions now.

“Are you okay?” he asks and shoots you a look, brow creased in concern. You hum a yes in response and then sigh, "I just didn't want to worry mom and dad." He nods, “I understand.” “Sorry if I ruined your Friday night plans.” “Don’t worry, sugar, there was nothing exciting happening at my end.”

You’ve never been inside Steve’s house but you imagine it’s cozy. He seems like a man who enjoys comfort, despite the way of life he’s chosen, and even if you wouldn’t describe him as a softie, he’s always nice and that’s more than can be said about other cowboys that your dad employs. Maybe that’s why your dad appreciates Steve. He’s hard-working, but never an asshole.

During the rest of the drive you talk aimlessly about the weather and the ranch while the radio plays in the background. Outside your apartment complex, he effortlessly maneuvers his big truck on the small streets and parks it.

You turn to him, "I can’t thank you enough for this.” "Anytime, sugar.”

As you get out, he does the same, rounding the truck. "I'm fine from here," you tell him, not wanting to bother him further. "Absolutely, but my mom raised me right, so I'm following you to the door." "Oh, okay," you smile and when you turn around you feel the light weight of a hand at the low of your back guiding you forward.

At your door, you turn to thank him once again, but Steve asks instead, "Are you sure you're okay? You sounded upset on the phone." "Yeah," you answer. Honestly, you haven’t thought one second of your boss since Steve showed up. His calm, caring presence erases every unease, making you feel safe. The two of you stand in the corridor and look at each other, and in a moment of courage, you kiss his stubbled cheek. "But thank you again for coming to get me," you tell him.

Steve releases a breath and looks at you with lidded eyes. His hand comes up to touch where your lips just were and then he slowly reaches for you. Your eyes widen as Steve’s rough hands caress your cheek. “I’ll always come, if you need me, I’ll be there,” he promises, voice low and sincere.

You swallow hard before catching Steve’s hand with your own and pressing it against your cheek with a sigh, letting your eyes flutter close for a second. You can’t have him, but if this is all the touch you’re ever going to experience from Steve, you’re taking advantage of it. You can blame it on the wine.

“Sugar,” he rasps and you open your eyes again, letting go and ready to let this be a cherished memory. You’re stopped short by Steve’s hand sliding back to cup your neck. His fingers against your bare skin send tingles down your spine that make heat pool in your belly. "Steve," you answer.

He leans a little closer but hesitates. "You had a rough evening," he says. “But you fixed it,” you point out. “I don’t want to take advantage of you,” he leans even closer. "You won’t," you tell him, confident in your answer, gripping his jacket.

His other arm slides around your waist, pulling you close and pressing you against him. The firm strength of him feels so perfect that a soft moan escapes you. In response he lets out a groan, softly brushing his lips against yours, making more tingling sensations shoot throughout your body.

Not wanting to wait any longer you close the small distance and finally kiss him. It’s soft and chaste at first but with an edge of desperation that becomes prominent as Steve deepens the kiss, holding you even harder. Likewise, you wrap your arms around his waist, wordlessly telling him how much you want him.

The two of you jerk apart when a loud noise sounds somewhere else in the building. Without a word, you let go of Steve to reach behind you and open the door to your apartment. For a second his eyes leave yours to look at the invitation. He doesn’t give you a vocal answer, he just goes back to your lips and starts moving you backward.

Inside, he removes his cowboy hat from your head, placing it on the side table before starting to pull at your clothes and as you guide him to your bedroom, you make his clothes come off too.

Together you fall onto the bed in just your underwear. Steve's body is a testament to his demanding job, soft and hard in all the right places and warm against you. His hands never still, they caress and explore you as if he might never get the chance again. When he pulls back, his hair is wild from you running your fingers through it.

“Never thought I would be here.” He kisses your jaw and down the column of your throat. The touch of his hands makes goosebumps burst out over your body. “Never thought you’d have me in your bed,” he continues as he kisses the top of your breasts. “Someone like you, beautiful and sophisticated.” He hooks a finger in your bra and pulls down. “Being with someone rough and dirty like me.”

“You’re not dirty,” you answer breathlessly as his mouth closes over your nipple.

Steve moans, just as you do, arching up against him. He spends ample time on both your breasts, sucking and licking, making you feel crazy with how much you need him. "I’ve dreamt of tasting you, sugar, but I want more than your tits," he admits. “Yes!” you tell him and he shimmies down your body, pressing kisses to your skin and pulling off your panties before settling in between your legs, parting your folds reverently with his thumbs.

“Look at that pretty fucking pussy,” he murmurs before descending on you.

Steve eats you as if you're the last meal on earth, savoring every taste but at the same time wanting to devour you as quickly as possible. His beard scratches the inside of your thighs and your mound, his face buried deep as he pierces you with his tongue, lapping at your channel before going back to your clit, sucking it into his mouth. Quickly, you're a quivering mess, trying your best not to buck up against Steve's mouth, to be present and savor the experience.

The pleasure envelopes you, making you ache in the best way before the heat rushes to your core at Steve's steady ministrations.

"I'm gonna come!" you tell him, hands fisting the sheets. His only response is a deep hum. Your legs close around his head as you howl his name.

As you come down, and release him from the prison of your thighs he chuckles, before giving your clit one last kiss. Then his lips travel up your body again, stopping to play with your nipples one more time before finding your mouth. Despite your near comatose state, you respond to his kiss, not caring that he tastes of you.

"Please tell me you have a condom," he says against your lips. You feel the hard cock brush your stomach, still in his boxers. As he sits back you admire how it tents the fabric and the wet spot at the front.

But when you shake your head, there is such a pain in his face you're scared he's having a heart attack or something. Quickly you say, "I'm on birth control!" That lights a different fire in Steve's eyes.

"Oh, sugar," he smiles wickedly. Your body is still thrumming from the orgasm but you in no way feel sated. The look of him on your bed brings back all the fantasies you've hidden deeply inside the recesses of your mind, telling yourself that it's no use to fantasize about something that will never happen.

“I got tested right before I moved and I haven't been with anyone since,” you continue. Before you can ask Steve says, “Well, it's not like there's a flock of buckle bunnies up at the ranch to choose from, so it's been a while. Hopefully, I still know how to.”

You raise yourself on your elbows, tilting your head to the side. “If the previous performance is anything to go by I think we'll be good.”

Steve moves to chuck off his underwear, then he's back on top of you again, and you give him your mouth. Hungry is the only way to describe the way he kisses, and when he breaks away you whine, but then you realize it's because he's guiding his dick into you.

“I need to see it,” he rumbles. “I need to see your cunt swallow my cock.”

You part your legs more to give his hips room. You want to watch too but as his tip pushes inside it becomes too much to keep your eyes open. Your arms slide out and you hit the bed, consumed by the feel of him, neverending pleasure. He's thick and long and fills you perfectly. Your insides spasm, wanting more.

"Steve," you whine and wrap your legs around his hips, keeping him close as you move to try and take him deeper. "That's right. Let me hear that sweet voice of yours," he says, stilling all movements.

"Please, Steve, I need it! I need you to fill me up with your cum!" "Oh, sugar, I'm not gonna keep you waiting," he answers and moves. Slowly at first, to let the both of you get used to it. It's impossible to keep in any noise when he thrusts into you. For a second you feel silly, moaning as if you're in some kind of porno, but at the same time, you want Steve to know how fucking good his dick is.

And Steve isn't any better, every time his hips hit your skin he punctuates it with a moan of his own, a deep rumble that only excites you more.

On those forbidden nights, when you allowed yourself to dream of Steve, one thing always came to the front of your mind. “Steve, can I ride you?" you ask breathlessly. “Fuck, yeah,” he answers and in one smooth motion he wraps his arms around your body and rolls you over. It's a wonder you don't fall off the bed.

You lean forward, capturing his face between your hands, kissing him as you move against him. "Take what you need, sugar. Ride your cowboy,” Steve growls into your mouth.

He grabs your ass and fucks up into you while you grind down on him. He's so deep it's driving you insane. Panting you grab the headboard, finding leverage to push your body hard into his thrusts.

“You're fucking divine,” Steve drawls, his grip hardens, lifting you up and slamming you down. “I want you on top of me every day. Ride my dick, or my face, whatever you want, just let me have you!”

At the same time, your clit is rubbing deliciously against him, making the second orgasm build. “Fuck, you're holding my dick so tight, like your pussy doesn't want to let me go.” All you answer with is a strangled mewl, too busy chasing your high.

“Are you gonna be a good girl and come on my dick? And then let me fill you up with my cum, sugar? Is that what gets you off, riding your cowboy until he bursts inside of you?

Steve's words spur you on, doubling your efforts, angling your hips until his dick presses into your g-spot and your clit grinds against his pelvis. You feel him pulsing, knowing he's about to come in you is so hot.

“I'm gonna come!” you gasp. “Yeah, me too, sugar!”

With a cry of ecstasy, the climax washes over your skin, sending convulsions through your muscles. You feel every pulse of Steve's own orgasm and hear him call your name.

You collapse on his chest, both of you panting. Steve hugs you close, his hands rubbing along your back as his dick softens and the cum starts to leak out, but you could care less. Being in Steve's arms feels right. Hearing his beating heart, the scent of sex and sweat in the air, knowing it's from the both of you.

After a while, he speaks, but it's not the words you'd expect. “Fuck, sugar, I promised myself this would never happen. I know your dad likes me and all but I don't think he'd take too kindly to me fucking his daughter.”

The happy high in you bursts into sour bubbles, and the pink, golden afterglow is replaced by the harsh reality.

“What do you mean?” you frown as you sit up. Suddenly everything feels sticky, cold, and gross. “You're my boss’, my friend's, daughter. I can't have you even if I wanted to.”

A lump forms in your throat and you try to clear it before asking, “What are you saying?” “It can't happen again.” “Are you saying this was a mistake?” “Yes, sugar, but it was the best mistake of my life.” “Yeah, okay, well…” you get off him and take the cover to wrap around you. The cum leaks down your legs as you say, “You saw me to the door, and I'm fine, thank you for coming to get me.” “Sugar, please, you understand don't you?” Steve stands up, reaching for you but you shrug his hands away. “You know the way out, I need to shower.”

Without looking back you hurry to the bathroom, listening to Steve gather his things and the sound of the door shutting behind him. You stand even longer looking at the shower running, not wanting to wash away the evidence of Steve's visit, but finally, you do.

You manage to avoid Sunday dinner by claiming you're not feeling well. Your mom offers to drop off some food, but you assure her she doesn't need to. If she shows up and asks how you're feeling you're scared everything is just gonna come blurting out. Before hanging up, she adds, "Dad and Steve hope you feel better soon!"

With effort, you respond, "Yeah, tell them I said thanks."

The following week, you feel like you can't excuse yourself and you just hope Steve won’t be there for some reason.

As you park your car at the house you don't see his truck anywhere, easing the anxiety that sits in your stomach.

At the beginning of December, your mom has decked out the house and yard with holiday decorations. It lightens up the otherwise dark ranch that's far away from any streetlights.

“Oh honey, great to see you!” Your mom greets you at the door with a hug, your dad right behind her. After saying hello and getting out of your clothes, your mom is quick to put you to work. “Can you do me a favor? I left the dessert to cool in the sunroom, can you please get it for me?”

Growing up, the sunroom was one of your favorite places. You have great memories of sitting in the plush reading chair after the sun has set during the summer months, the windows open, and listening to the sound of the animals out in the field. Then, after your dad installed a fireplace, you loved to curl up with your hot cocoa and listen to the crackling of the flames while it slowly heated the space. Just like the rest of the house and yard, it's decorated to perfection, soft lights illuminating the space and making it a magical place.

What catches you off guard are the flower petals scattered over the floor, and in the middle of the floor is Steve on both his knees.

No dessert in sight, if you don't count the cowboy on the ground.

For a short moment, you wonder if your parents knew about this, but then you hear the door shut behind you and that answers it. The room is chilly, but your blood is rushing hot in your veins. You're embarrassed and mad and to your utter disappointment, hopeful for what he has to say.

“Steve?” you ask, crossing your arms, feigning annoyance. “Sugar, I'm here, on my knees to ask for your forgiveness and to please hear me out.” His blue eyes are a weakness of yours but you steal yourself to not fall for the softness in them.

“I assume you told them what happened?” you nod in the direction you came from. Steve looks uncomfortable, even blushing. “Well, I didn't give them any details, but I told them we kissed and that I messed up. Thought your dad was gonna murder me first. He thought I got you pregnant, so I think they figured it out anyway.” “Pregnant?!” you exclaim. It all feels overwhelming, and you bury your face in your hands, wishing you could disappear through the floor.

Then warm rough hands clasp yours, pulling them away carefully. “I also told them that I'm in love with their daughter and if she gives me another chance, I'll prove to her every day how much she means to me.” Steve's voice is soft and earnest; it makes tears burn at the back of your eyes.

You want to be mad, but you haven't been able to stop thinking about his stupid face since he left. The fucker also left his cowboy hat behind, and every time you looked at it you remembered how he placed it on your head the night he came to your rescue. You could have brought it with you tonight and left it on the porch for your parents to find. But you didn't. Secretly you hoped that Steve would have to come by your place to collect it.

But even after acting like an asshole, you're still very much in love with Steve Rogers.

“Yeah, fine,” you say nonchalantly and look away, trying to hide how happy you feel. A finger on your chin turns your head back towards him. “Fine, sugar? Just fine?”

Forcing your stone-faced expression to stay in place you say, “For now, it's fine. Don't think some flower petals, kneeling, and sweet words are gonna make me forgive you just like that.” “Every day, sugar, I'll work my ass off until you do.” You glance at him, taking in the rugged handsomeness of the man before you, and you just can't resist. Leaning in, you kiss his cheek, reminiscent of what caused this whole thing in the first place. But Steve isn't satisfied. He gathers you up and presses his lips to yours. If you said you hadn't missed the feel of his kiss, you'd be lying. So you return it, weaving your arms around his neck and then your legs around his waist as he lifts you from the ground into his strong arms.

“I don't think mom would take too kindly to us fucking in here,” you tell him when you pull away. “No, but after dinner you're coming to my place and staying the night.” “Bossy…” you joke. “I didn't mean it like that, sugar, I'm not gonna force you to do anything you don't-” You interrupt him with a kiss. “Steve, calm down, I was joking, it's fine.” “Fine? “Fine!”

"I'm going to the bathroom, be back in five." Mel unclipped her seatbelt and was halfway out of the car when Bucky spoke up, his hand covering hers on the dashboard.

"Be careful, okay, in and out, we're laying low, remember?"

"Yes, yes I know, very secret spy stuff. Sure. You want snacks?"

"Mel, we're laying low, no buying snacks. We have food."

Bucky pointed to the cool box he'd packed and stowed in the footwell of the backseats and Mel rolled her eyes.

"Fine."

It was not fine, she was getting a slushie whether Bucky said she could or not. He wasn't the boss of her.

They'd been on the road for hours and hours, she needed the sugar to keep her awake and, more than that, she needed to remember that there were fun treats in the world and not just Valentina breathing down her neck or superheroes telling her she had to be quick.

She returned to find Bucky sat in the open trunk of the SUV, the door providing some shade from the afternoon sun.

And Bucky found her drinking from an enormous cup of what looked like anti-freeze.

"Melissa."

"James."

"We agreed no snacks."

"It's not a snack, it's a drink."

"Is that wiper fluid? Do I need to call poison control, we don't have time for the emergency room so you'll have to just die quietly in the back."

"Noted." She took another slurp, closing her eyes and she sucked around the wide straw, and Bucky pointedly looked away.

He was struggling to look at her as it was. The way her long lean legs stretched out in the car, the narrow curve of her waist when he'd helped her after the attack, the lacey little cami she revealed when she took off the serious black sweater she always wore. And now, this oversized shirt hanging from her shoulders and her lips tight around the straw.

It was entirely too much.

"Do I need to sort something out in there? Did they have CCTV?"

Mel shivered, playing it off as brain freeze, but god did she love his tough-guy Thunderbolts voice.

"Nah, it's some mom and pop outfit, guy was in the back watching football anyway."

"Good."

Bucky opened the cooler and pulled out two neatly wrapped foil packages, one with an 'M' on in Sharpie.

Mel opened it suspiciously to find her favourite club sandwich inside, just how she liked it.

“You cut the crusts off," she said, slightly confused.

“You hate them," Bucky mumbled around a bite of his own, large, sandwich. As if that explained anything.

"I do…but how do you know that." She took her own bite, it was delicious, her eyes closing as she moaned at the taste of real food. She'd never admit it, but Bucky was right, she was sick of mediocre fries and cheap gas station burgers, this was heaven.

Bucky watched her, pupils wide, and hoped she hadn't sensed his fascination with the way she made that happy noise while she ate.

"We had that interview a few months back, they brought catering and you only ate the middle of the finger sandwiches, so I made a guess."

"Wow…you remembered that?"

"Considering I had my mind wiped and that I'm an old man, as you like to tell me, I have a fairly good memory."

He did, didn't he. Mel had noticed he was very thoughtful when it came to her and it gave her butterflies as if she was a teenager with a crush.

"What's this blue thing you were so desperate for anyway?" He asked, eyeing the now melting drink out of the corner of his eye.

"Slushie! Have you never had one?"

This was why Bucky liked Mel, she always seemed excited about sharing something new with him. The gentle mocking that followed was acceptable, mostly because she had such interesting and varied tastes.

"It's like crushed ice and syrup, do you want to try some?" She offered him the cup and wiggled it around, "it won't bite."

"Not sure I need anymore anti-freeze in me." He joked and Mel stuck her tongue out, now blue from the food colouring.

"Your tongue is blue."

She kept her tongue out and tried to look down at the same time, Bucky held back a laugh.

Mel glared back, "and I was going to share my slushie with you as well," she pouted.

"Yes, very scary, eat up we need to get going."

"I'm terrifying, actually." Mel took another bite of her sandwich, watching Bucky tidy up around her. He looked up and gave her that soft smile that had been appearing more and more lately.

"Terrifying." He agreed, "you ready to get go?"

"Sure." Mel balled up her sandwich wrapper and tossed it into the trash like a basketball. "Score!"

Bucky was still looking at her, soft eyes and gentle smile — the butterflies were back.

They both settled back into the comfortable seats of the Thunderbolt's SUV.

"Do you have any slushie left, I wanna try it." Bucky asked, checking the paper road map he'd insisted on bringing.

"Nope, it was too delicious."

"Hmm," he looked at her again, and his eyes flicked down to her blue tongue, the tip sticking out from between her lips as she concentrated on tidying up her.

"What?"

"Just —" he lent across the centre console, cupping the back of her head and pulling her closer. His lips met hers and she gasped, his tongue sliding along hers. It felt hot compared to the ice she'd just chugged and she shivered, leaning into his touch.

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

Steven's age: mid 30s, so that would put Tomas early to mid 50s. In my mind, there's actually ZERO chemistry between you and Tomas. And that's perceived equally. What I intend to write there if and when he comes back into the narrative is like a much older brother or an uncle type of care.

Now Steven's feelings? His read on the situation? Because he's expecting to provoke you into being territorial or jealous, he just assumes that you and Tomas were striking up something that isn't platonic, and it's not unreasonable for him to think of that as the default.

And holding you after sex? The first weeks it was this need, and more rooted in this drive to conquer you, to have you acclimate to him. But then it became this way for him to feel the nearness of you as these big feelings are developing within him as the weeks and months continued. I've said this a lot in some of my responses, but I don't think this Steven will ever say "I love you", because it's too simple in his mind as you noted/picked up on. But the feelings he has for you are developing and they're strong and deep and irrevocable.

Is our reader engaging in any activity to prevent a pregnancy: no. As tumultuous as everything began, was she eager to immediately pop out an heir? No. But she knows that's going to be part of her future, and in the beginning she doesn't want to do something stupid enough to get her killed. But as this place becomes her home and they grow closer and she can't deny that the sex is good, he's not a monstrous man, he's not actually cruel (outside of that bit of duuuuubious consent and kinap/briding her up), and so the idea of bearing him children isn't something she's dreading.

Fuck, now I’m wondering how Steven would change if the Reader did get pregnant. I’m curious as to how her pregnancy would change their relationship, if at all.

We learn a little of his relationship with Inga who he still regards as a fierce woman. …and yet… he didn’t keep her. So clearly, in the way of being able to survive him, the Reader is superior. Which is interesting!!!!!!! Because again… he speaks so highly of Inga…

OR

Is our reader's perception of how she think Steven feels about Inga as distorted as Steven thinks we might feel about Tomas?

He respects Inga, and he did share a bed with her here and there, but it's definitely an "if he wanted to, he would" situation - and a situation that he did play up to see if he could get you to care, to be jealous. Like you also noted, reader has been SO GUARDED with her feelings. Sooooo guarded. And so he was trying to bring something to the surface.

But you're also right. We're special. He's told us before. But we're seeing it become true. Feeling like less of a novelty/prize, and seeing that his choice to make us his wife wasn't a whim, it was intentional once we came across his path.

But another question just popped into my mind that I don’t think occurred to me the first time I read: what if she said yes????? What would he have done??

I really thought about this when I wrote it! Because 90% of the time I want my stories to feel believable even though we've dropped into some AU, right? And I did think would he ask that because what would happen if she'd said yes? I knew her answer would be no, as I explained their vibe better above (ugh, my regret at rushing through that scene because I knew it was going to be a long chapter), BUT ALSO, even if there had been a pull of attraction, reader would never outright say yes. She's too smart. Now if Steven doubted her, if she hesitated, etc, then I think it would depend on how much he questioned. Immediate: I think a brutal fucking. If it needed to go beyond that? Maybe casting her off, banishing her, sending her back home/away. Back in his home kingdom then maybe saying she'd committed treason, tried to kill him, was barren? He wouldn't keep you around. And, probably rather unfairly, he might feel a little bruised in regard to his alliance with Tomas, but he'd put that aside and maintain his strong alliance, possibly even more because he'd be so upset to have lost you that he'd be stubborn to make sure the alliance he lost you over didn't fail. Really unfair, but... I do think that's what would happen.

SO GOOD THING IT NEVER WOULD.

Oh, this man is over the moon to have his wife finally seek him out.

Oh, he is ZERO PERCENT COOL inside. Zero.

I just set down my phone, turned to the imaginary camera in my room, and out loud, said, “I’m going to pass out.”

This has me over the moon while absolutely cackling in glee!!!!

But then you give the most robust critical analysis of their emotional circumstances/perspectives SO WELL that I almost cried.

HES SO SOFT FOR HER

YES, HE IS. Yes. He. Is. Devotion. Utter devotion to you.

I’m so sorry that dumbass Tumblr marked your account as explicit. I do hope you continue sharing your writing...

It did feel discouraging for a fair amount of the spring, but this is still what I want to do. I've never been one of the ones getting wild amounts of attention for what I post, and that's just fine. I'm still showered with enough attention and engagement to make sharing and posting worth it.

And then there's the once-in-a-blue-moon comments like THIS ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE OF A GIFT that I just - leave me gobsmaked and humbled and giddy and like every discouragement is worth it anyway because wow. Woooow. Thank you, Salome. Thank you for all the compliments. Thank you for loving this series. Thank you, though, for taking so much time to put these thoughts together! I know it wasn't just a hot five minutes. This was an incredible gift.

You’d expected a lot of things when you agreed your husband’s oldest friend should come spend the holidays with you, but not this: you naked and splayed open, your back against Bucky’s chest, and Steve knelt between your legs, focus absolute as they took you apart.

Bucky’s lips moved against your neck, not quite kissing, hand sliding to cup one aching breast. “You want to feel for the ridge, the soft roof inside. Feel it?”

Steve nodded, learning by the tremors that rippled through you.

And you? You could only moan as his fingers sought a place only Bucky had touched before tonight.

Steve’s breath ghosted along your thigh, cool in comparison to the heat pooling where his fingertips pressed. “Like this?” he asked, looking up, seeking confirmation from Bucky.

Bucky squeezed you, barely-there pressure, his thumb circling your nipple. “Yeah, there—you’ll feel it through the front wall. Little bump.”

Steve slid his fingers deeper, slow and careful, and you arched back against Bucky’s chest. The pressure inside shifted, molten but sudden, and you gasped at the feel of it when he found it—that ridge, the soft roof, as Bucky had described it. Steve’s big hand trembled just a little as he kept it inside you, gentle but greedy, desperate to get it right. The man was as worshipping as he was determined, brow furrowed, lashes dark against his cheek as he mapped each element of your reactions.

And Bucky watched, grinning against your ear, voice thick. “That’s it, Steve. Watch her face, see how her mouth falls open? Touch her there, a tiny bit harder, that’s it, yeah.”

He kept the pressure steady, calloused thumb skating circles over your clit while his fingers pressed up, learning you, working with the careful tenacity he applied to every complex operation.

Bucky’s own hand drifted lower, his touch rough at your hip, a grounding force. You couldn’t move if you’d wanted to, pinned between them, the air thick with sweat and something like ozone.

You bucked, pulse thumping in your throat, teeth gritty against a whimper. Steve’s eyes flicked up again, shining, hungry, and your swore you might come just on the taste of his focus. With every press against that spot, your vision stuttered out, blinking in firework-bright bursts.

Bucky’s voice pressed into the shell of your ear, low and lazy, but with that hint of command that still managed to thrill you, even after all these years. “She’s real sensitive right there, Steve. Just steady. Keep the rhythm—yeah, just like that.”

“Fuck, Buck—she’s gonna—” Steve’s fingers jittered, the tip of his thumb ghosting over your wet clit.

“Let her,” Bucky hummed, open-mouthed over her shoulder. His other hand covered her thigh, holding her so wide the ache felt like a dare. “Make her feel it.”

Steve’s hand was huge, careful, coaxing, until it wasn’t, until the motion grew greedy, needy. You’d never been shy with Bucky, but with the attention of two lovers you felt nearly too open and exposed, nerves sparking along every limb. Bucky’s thumb toyed with your nipple, drawing it taut, while Steve’s fingers pursued your impending orgasm relentlessly.

And the orgasm came with no warning, just an unbearable pressure and then a bright, skittering release, your vision white-out as you shrieked and clamped around Steve’s hand. He nearly lost his balance but Bucky steadied him—steadied you—bracing your shaking limbs as you rode the aftershocks. Even after the pleasure crested, Steve’s fingers didn’t stop. He worked you through every shudder, sucking a breath through his teeth, awed. His voice was a fervent whisper, “Jesus. You—fuck, you look good like this.”

“She always does,” Bucky replied, mouth slick on your jaw, catching the sweat there. “You wanna see her come again?”

Steve’s hand stilled, then slowly slid free, leaving you embarrassingly empty and sticky. He watched you with dazed awe, pink flush climbing from his collar to cheekbones, as if he couldn’t believe the thing he’d just made happen, for you.

“Yeah, I do. Will you let me?” he asked, eyes meeting yours again.

You nodded, voice gone to wool and cotton, incapable of anything but a whispered, “Please.” The word left your lips desperate, high-pitched, a note of wildness that made Bucky’s hand tighten against your thigh, a subtle anchor to keep you from dissolving completely.

Steve’s smile broke open on his face, that cocky little tilt that always got him his way. He ducked down and pressed his mouth to your thigh, some kind of benediction, before giving Bucky a look, a question you weren’t included in: permission, or maybe the next step in instructions. Bucky’s hand still gripped your thigh, and the pressure from his fingertips went from comfort to proprietary.

“Take your time,” Bucky told him, slow as syrup. “She’s got plenty more in her if you work it up right.”

You whimpered, and Steve’s hand found your knee, thumb brushing circles that didn’t seem to know whether they were meant to calm or tease. He spread you even wider, fingers delving again, but now the touch was softer, coaxing in a new way. He watched your face the whole time, never letting you look away, and the sheer heat of his attention made it impossible to catch your breath, impossible to be anywhere but here, between them, for them.

You let your head loll back on Bucky’s chest, and he inhaled you like a secret. Steve’s mouth ghosted over the inside of your knee, the lightest of touches, as his hand slid slick with you, coaxing you open again. There was awe in his expression, like he couldn’t believe the things your body was capable of. That he couldn’t believe you let him see it.

Bucky’s voice was right in your ear, velvet and wicked. “You love this, don’t you? How he touches you, how he looks at you?” His teeth grazed just below your pulse, almost biting, his metal hand now flat and heavy on your soft stomach.

Steve’s mouth found your clit then, hot and wet, and you bit your lip, trying not to break apart too quickly, but Bucky’s other hand snapped up to your chin, forcing your jaw open. He slid two thick fingers into your mouth, muffling your gasps as Steve reached for that place inside you again, a blunt presence that made your hips twitch uncontrollably, mouth kissing and lapping at your clit.

“Be our good girl,” Bucky murmured, voice a velvet drag along your nerves. “Let me hear you, sweetheart.” He pressed your lips open wider, thumb tight on your cheek. Everything about him said claim, but you felt less like territory and more like treasure—something precious they’d both agreed to share.

You moaned and sucked on Bucky’s fingers, desperate for something to hold onto. Steve’s tongue drew slow, wide circles, alternating with little flicks that made you see stars, and every time his fingers curled inside you, you wanted to shake apart. Bucky’s hand pressed at the base of your throat, a leash without pressure, just a reminder of where you belonged.

Steve’s tongue moved with a rough, hungry precision that made your lashes flutter, the strangeness of his mouth—different than Bucky’s, somehow broader and needier—forcing you up against the edge of your own appetite. He groaned into you, animal, and the vibration made your toes curl as your hips bucked, seeking more, seeking everything.

The sound of you—wet and needy—filled the room, obscene, and Steve was impossibly focused. You could feel the shift as Steve’s mouth grew unabashed, each lap and suckle more confident. He lapped greedily, not just at your clit but at the desperate, shuddering noises you made, feeding on them, letting them escalate him past any feigned self-control.

Bucky murmured filth in your ear. “Such a pretty thing, all open for Steve. He’s a fast learner, isn’t he?” His fingers slipped from your mouth, gliding down to squeeze your breast with proprietary delight. “Sensitive here, too, Steve. She likes it just a little mean when you bite.”

Steve’s lips left your cunt, replaced by the blunt, perfect drag of his teeth—just a graze, but amplified by the velvet heat radiating between your thighs. The wild sound you made told him everything he needed. He grinned, eyes bright, and gave you another drag with his tongue and the barest scrape of teeth. Your legs shook, clamped for a second around his broad shoulders as he tormented you, licking through the slick he’d made.

“She’s right there,” Bucky insists, “but don’t let up.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, chest heaving, as Bucky’s words poured through you, making it impossible not to want to give him everything, even the parts you thought you’d never let anyone else but him see. He tugged his hand from your mouth, and you gasped, “I’m close, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Bucky coaxed, hand splayed again over your breast, pinching and then soothing. “Let him taste it. Let him taste everything.” He nuzzled the space behind your ear, catching the lobe between his teeth, a punctuation to his demand.

Steve’s hand, meanwhile, never stopped mapping you. His thick fingers curling again against that spot inside, a squirming, irresistible pressure, while his mouth closed around your clit and sucked, hard, and the world melted into a soundless scream in your throat. You bucked up, hands grasping at Bucky’s biceps, and came again, hard enough you thought you might black out.

This time Steve didn’t bother with awe, only a growl of triumph and gratitude as he licked you through every convulsion, not stopping until your thighs trembled against his head and Bucky had to murmur, “Enough, big guy, you’ll melt her.”

You didn’t remember the transition—somewhere in the haze of pleasure, Steve had shifted you onto his lap, his cock thick and leaking, pressed impossibly hard against your hip. Bucky sat facing you both on the foot of the bed, blue eyes greedy and soft at the same time, mouth slack with want. Steve held you to his chest, the thrum of his pulse wild and loud beneath your palm.

“Fuck, honey, you alright?” Bucky asked, thumb brushing along your jaw. You only nodded, eyes glassy, limbs a little insubstantial.

“She gets real soft after she comes,” Bucky explained. His metal hand stroked your cheek, thumb scraping your parted lip. “Steve, you ever eat a girl out til she can’t think straight, and then fuck her so good she gets slick again just from the memory?”

Steve’s gaze flicked down to your face, as if he needed to check in, as if the rules of this odd, shared gravity could change at your whim. But you only leaned harder into his chest, the memory of Bucky’s words blooming low in your gut. “Not like this,” Steve said quietly, the confession tumbling out like an apology. “Never had someone so slick and eager and pliant. She’s so fucking sweet.”

“She likes making a mess, especially when she knows someone’s gonna clean it up nice for her.”

It was obscene and beautiful in the same breath, the way your body pulsed and ached for these two men. You knew Bucky intimately, but Steve was still a new entity, it should be unbelievable what you were letting him do to you, and yet you were willing because Bucky said you could be.

“You wear her out, and she lets you do anything you want.” Steve pressed his lips to your temple, the gesture as tender as a prayer, but you could feel the tension in his body—like he was holding himself back as much as he was holding you up.

“Do you want him to fuck you?” It was as blunt as a knife’s edge; Bucky never did like to leave things to implication.

You meant to say yes, steeled and confident, but the only sound you could make was a whimper. Bucky grinned. “Use your words, honey. Steve’s been waiting a long time.”

Steve’s hands tightened on your hips. “Since your wedding,” he confessed, and you gasped.

Bucky nodded, proud, calm, even though this revelation was ricocheting through your mind. Steve had been overseas for years until just recently, and of course he hadn’t missed his best friend’s wedding—had been the best man—but it had also been the first time you’d met him.

You remembered the speech, the toast. Steve smiling at you across a room of strangers, nothing but friendship and pride in his voice, but now you wondered how long he’d been drinking you in, how long he’d been simmering in this kind of want.

You also remembered—vivid as if it bloomed on the backs of your eyelids—the way Steve’s eyes had lingered at the reception, how his hand seemed to swallow yours when he shook it, holding on a beat too long. You’d caught him watching you and Bucky slow dancing, his smile softer than it ought to have been, heavy with yearning. At the time you’d wondered if maybe he was just that kind of romantic, or maybe a little lonely after so much time away.

But now that memory rewrote itself, charged and electric, searing through you as Steve took your chin in his hand and kissed you—soft at first, learning the taste of you. His mouth tasted like you, and you shivered, deep in your bones, at being desired by these two men.

Bucky reached for you, steady hands bracketing your thighs, and you sank back against Steve’s chest. Your husband ducked lower, pressing a line of kisses from your hip bone to the soft, over-sensitive spot at the seam of your thigh.

You shivered as Bucky trailed his tongue through the wetness Steve had left behind, mouth hungry and reverent. He licked slowly, then nosed at your clit, already swollen and sore from Steve’s attention, and the jolt of sensation made you gasp into Steve’s mouth. He devoured your sounds greedily, tongue parting your lips as if he needed to taste how undone you were.

Bucky’s tongue was firmer than Steve’s, more insistent, and when he flattened it against you and sucked, you felt every vibration in your teeth. You whimpered into Steve’s kiss, and he swallowed the noise, hands squeezing your hips as you rolled against the heat of Bucky’s mouth, your body burning, melting, until there was nothing left but sensation.

You weren’t sure Bucky’s mouth could ever be called gentle, but right now it was a new kind of slow, each lap deliberate, stroking the sharp edge of oversensitivity and coaxing pleasure out of it until your eyes watered. Steve’s hand wound into your hair, guiding your head back against his shoulder, and you let him, lost in the heat radiating from both their bodies.

“She’s shaking,” Steve whispered, awe thick in his voice.

“She knows what she likes,” Bucky replied, voice muffled between your legs. His metal hand dug into your thigh, cool and greedy, while the other traced lazy patterns over your ribs, drawing your skin tight with anticipation for what would come next.

Bucky pulled his mouth away with a slick, obscene sound, smirking up at you. “You ready for cock?” he asked, and this wasn’t an idle question. Bucky wanted you to say it, wanted you to beg for it. Steve’s cock pressed up under you, thick and hot, and you could feel how desperate he was for it. You were too.

“Yes,” you said, or maybe just moaned it, letting your knees fall as wide as Steve and Bucky wanted them. “Yes, please.”

“Fuck, she’s polite,” Steve mumbled, hands already guiding you up, shifting you onto your knees, palms bracing the mattress as Bucky moved to the side of you, one hand fisting his own stiff cock, the other smoothing down your back and skimming over your ass. You could feel Steve’s cock, hot and insistent, nudging between your thighs.

“She likes a full feeling,” Bucky told Steve, the statement an offer and a warning both, and you blinked up at him, swallowing. “When you fuck her, you gotta go deep.”

Steve’s hands caught your hips, palms broad enough to span almost from waist to thigh. There was a reverence in his movements, but also the first hints of impatience—the way his fingers flexed, the way his cock jumped when it brushed against you, smearing precum along the seam of your body. He lined himself up and held, not yet pushing in, and the wait felt like another kind of pleasure, anticipation sharp as a blade.

Your chest seized—with anticipation or hesitation, you weren’t sure—as you realized Bucky was going to let Steve fuck you bare.

“He’s a big one, sweetheart,” Bucky warned, and you could hear the grin on his face. He planted a hand at the small of your back, keeping your spine bowed. “Nice and slow. She likes to feel every inch.”

You pressed your face into the pillow, bracing for a stretch that came slow and monumental—Steve’s cock parting you, nudging inside until you couldn’t breathe for the fullness, the hot-dull burn that quickly blurred into something sweeter.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Bucky murmured. “Let him all the way in.”

You were so wet he didn’t even need to force it; the broad head split you open easily. You heard Bucky’s purr, almost proud, as if he had made you this way, greedy for the kind of ache only they could give. Bucky loved to torment you with this kind of fuck when he slid inside you, so his direction for Steve to as well was to be expected.

Steve held, fully sheathing himself, body trembling with restraint. “You okay?” The sound of your name was different in his voice, kinder, stripped of any artifice.

You nodded, eagerly pressing your hips back, and the slide hit something deep, a place that made your toes flex and your mouth fall open. Steve’s hands stroked your hips, grounding you, his breath rough as he held as still as he could manage. Bucky’s voice was syrup-sweet at your ear, “Go on, Steve. She wants it.”

The first thrust was a slow, rolling motion that stole your breath. Steve drew out nearly all the way, then slid back in, the burn giving way to a greedy, clutching pleasure. You held perfectly still, squeezing your eyes shut, learning the new shape of yourself with Steve inside you. You keened, knuckles whitening in the bedsheets. Bucky stayed close, palm at the nape of your neck, his own cock hard and leaking, pressed to your shoulder as he watched Steve fuck you.

“She takes cock so well, doesn’t she?” Bucky crooned, his tone barely above a purr. “Bet you never seen anyone so hungry before.” His metal hand traced your spine, ratcheting the tension higher as he pet you and praised you, the words a molten thread tangled through every harder, deeper thrust. Steve’s hips pistoned slow, but with such force you swore you could feel it in your throat, each time catching a spot Bucky had mapped just for him.

Steve’s rhythm was a miracle of endurance, slow and deep, every thrust measured, watched, almost academic in its hunger. His hands never stopped moving, stroking your waist, your belly, your ribs, learning every inch of you as if he needed to memorize the route. His hips stuttered occasionally, evidence of his own struggle not to lose himself too quickly to the wet heat you offered him.

And he whispered your name between every other breath, like a vow, like he was kneeling in church.

Bucky’s hands grew rougher on you, easing your thighs farther apart, planting dirty encouragements in your head that made you slicker, filthier than before. “You should see her face, Steve. She’s so beautiful right now.”

Bucky coaxed your head up and to the side so Steve could see the exact, filthy pleasure contorting your features. And you felt it, the slide of your own tears, half-joy and half-overwhelm, as Steve picked up the pace, his thrusts deeper, harder.

Bucky wiped a tear from your jaw with his thumb, then sucked it into his mouth. “So beautiful when you’re ruined like this.”

Steve’s fingers dug into your flesh, and you could feel how close he was to letting go of decorum, of caution, of the last rags of self-control. You wanted it. You moaned for it. Your head swam with the ache of being so fucking full, of being seen and used and loved all at once.

“Not gonna last,” Steve groaned, the confession breaking at the seam. “Feels—fuck, Bucky, how do you keep your head—”

“I don’t, punk. That’s why I always make her come first.” Bucky’s laugh was sharp and breathless, the sound of a man profoundly in love with his own wife. He trailed a hand down your front, fingers gliding over the slick mess Steve had made of you. “And always make it up to her after, too. She loves that part too.”

Bucky’s hand found your clit, thumb and forefinger pinching, rolling it just this side of cruel, and you yelped, the sudden spike of pain-pleasure a match to the fullness Steve was feeding you, and your whole body shuddered. Bucky laughed—warm and wicked—and reached down, fingers sliding through the mess of slick and sweat and precum at the seam where Steve’s body split yours, then smeared it over his own cock.

He pumped himself once, twice, eyes locked on where Steve’s body met yours, and you watched, unabashedly.

Bucky leaned forward, mouth hot at your jaw. “You want me to fuck your mouth while Steve fucks you?”

The question, blunt and bright, sliced through your haze. You nodded, desperate, and Bucky grinned, wolfish. He pressed his thumb to your lips, smearing the taste of yourself across them, and then shifted around in front of you, kneeling up so his cock bobbed level with your mouth. It was already slick, the head flushed dark, and you opened for him automatically, tongue out, dutiful and greedy all at once.

“That’s my girl,” Bucky breathed, sliding in slow, letting you feel the heft of him as Steve’s cock ground into your cunt from behind. You could barely spare the coordination to suck and moan at the same time, the boundary between pleasure and humiliation dissolved.

Your throat worked, helpless, as Bucky fucked your mouth in shallow, reverent thrusts, and your jaw burned with the effort of taking him as deep as he wanted. He pulled back every time you gagged, not to spare you, but to watch the string of spit connect your lips to the tip of his cock. You blinked up at your husband, tears streaming freely now, and saw how it undid him—made him thrust a little deeper, fuck your mouth a little harder, hands cradling your jaw, both anchoring and guiding you.

“Pretty thing,” he muttered, almost gentle, “look at you. That’s it. Just like that. God, Steve, you’re going to love fucking her throat.”

“Buck, you can’t just—” Steve had to groan before he could finish his thought. “You can’t just say shit like that and expect me to last.”

You moaned, mouth full of Bucky and body full of Steve, your whole self strung taut between their appetites. The rhythm between Steve’s hips behind you and Bucky’s in front of you a terrifying, perfect sync.

Bucky smirked, thumb wiping spit from your chin, then dragged it down to your throat, pressing lightly so you felt the stretch of yourself inside. “Bet you want him in your mouth right after he fills you up, don’t you?” Bucky’s voice was honey-thick, tugging need like a thread from your cunt all the way up to your brain.

You nodded, desperate, and that was all it took—Steve’s grip on your hips locked down, his pulse a wild thrum against your skin, and he buried himself in you with one last, shuddering thrust. You could feel it, the way he pulsed and spilled hot inside, and the sound he made—it was raw, almost animal. He held inside, grinding so deep you felt it all the way up your spine, filling you so perfectly a whimper broke loose from your lips even with Bucky’s cock still in your mouth.

Bucky eased out of your mouth, palm still warm against your jaw, thumb stroking where his cock had just been. He grinned at you, all sweet-and-mean, then leaned in to press a kiss over your spit-slick lips. “That’s it,” he whispered, reverent, like he was kissing holy ground. “That’s my good girl.” The words landed low in your belly, twisting up with the mess Steve had left in you.

But his cock was still inside you, too, and he collapsed forward, chest to your back, his arms caging you in. You expected him to pull out, to give you a moment to recover, but instead he rocked his hips, slow and greedy, as if he couldn’t bear to lose the feeling of you squeezing around him.

And then, without warning, his hand slid under your belly, fingers finding your clit, already swollen and overstimulated. He drew tight, precise circles with the pads of first two fingers, not letting up, even when you whined and squirmed beneath him. Bucky’s hands held you steady, anchoring you so Steve could play your body like an instrument.

The friction was so good, so dirty, that your cunt clamped around him involuntarily, milked every last drop as Steve’s fingers worked you up again, your body already betraying just how ready it was to be used a second, third, hundredth time.

“Fuck, she’s insatiable, isn’t she?” Steve said, voice almost fond, the sound of it a pressure at the base of your skull.

“She’s always been that way,” Bucky answered, a frayed thread of pride winding through his voice. “After the serum, I never met a partner who could keep up with me until her. Like you were made for a super soldier, sweetheart.”

You laughed, or tried to, but it came out a shaky, desperate gasp as Steve’s fingers wrung another whimper from you. Your knuckles dug into the sheets, the only tether as your overstimulated clit set off sparks behind your eyes. “Bucky,” you croaked, barely audible, “I can’t—”

“You can, honey. You’ll show Steve just how much you can take.” His gaze was intent, and for a moment you remembered every night the two of you had built trust on, every whispered dare and secret need he’d coaxed from you, every time he’d made you shatter and put you back together.

You barely had time to brace—Steve’s closed closed hard and firm around your clit, pinching, sending a lightning bolt through you, and as your body seized, his mouth found the meat of your shoulder and bit down. Not a warning, not a tease—a real goddamn bite. It ricocheted up your spine and detonated any coherence you had left. Your vision went blinding white, then red, and you screamed, nails gouging at the mattress, his hardening cock still buried so deep inside you it felt like you were cleaved in half.

The orgasm hit different—shocking, jagged, beyond pleasure and into a place that was just sensation, raw and total. You were crying, you realized, drool and tears tracking down your chin, but you couldn’t stop, couldn’t get enough, not even when the world blurred and your whole midsection pulsed around Steve’s cock, milking him for everything he had.

Bucky held your gaze the whole time, watching you unravel, watching every second of you coming apart for his best friend.

“Never gets old,” Bucky said, voice ragged with want, “seeing you come apart.” He stroked your hair, gentling you even as Steve’s cock kept you pinned and shuddering.

Steve pulled out, finally, leaving a slick trail down your thigh, and you expected collapse—rest, maybe, or at least a breath of air.

You got part of what you wanted as you were manhandled with a gentle efficiency—Steve lowering you to the mattress and Bucky rolling you over onto your back. The two men bracketed themselves around you. Bucky’s thumb smoothed tears from your cheeks, his lips hovering at your brow. Steve’s palm swept your hair from your face, tucking the wild strands behind your ears, and he smiled at you, dazed and open and deeply, deeply gone himself.

“You okay?” he asked, voice so hoarse you wanted to laugh, if only you didn’t feel so utterly wrung dry.

Bucky’s hands mapped your body, stroking down your arms, your waist, as if to collect every piece of you that had scattered. “She’s perfect. She’s got a thing for being ruined,” Bucky said, rubbing his thumb hard across your jaw, “but it’s more than just the mess. It’s being wanted, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

You trembled, the answer right there but too big for your mouth. All you could manage was a soft, but firm, “It’s both.”

It was. The ache between your legs, the aftershocks twitching in your thighs, crescendoed in the knowledge that you belonged—here, between them—because you were wanted. Not just by Bucky, whose love for you was a still wildfire after the first few years of the life you were building together, but by Steve, the last person you ever expected to want anything at all.

They held you in the perfect kind of silence for a while. Bucky stroked your sternum with two fingers, tracing the rapid pounding of your heart, while Steve drew lazy patterns on your ribs, the gentle touch making your bones melt.

Steve was the one who broke the silence, voice still thick and slow. “I’m sure Bucky’s told you how everything feels amplified for us, after the serum?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice, but Steve caught your chin and made certain you were listening, blue eyes intent on the fall and rise of your chest. He thumbed the corner of your mouth, gentle in a way that didn’t match the bite mark blooming on your shoulder. “It’s true. Everything’s hotter, sharper. Smells, tastes, touch.” His hand wandered down your neck, tracing the chain of your pulse. “It’s like all the dials turned up past what they’re supposed to do.”

Bucky grinned, mouth curving against your temple, proud and a little feral. “It’s why we’re so good at this,” he said, and the “we” wasn’t just the two of them, but you too, looped into their satisfaction by being the one they found satiation with.

You remembered, dimly, what Bucky had once told you—something about how pain and pleasure were just colors in a spectrum for men like them, how sometimes the best you could do was grab hold of the brightest one and hang on until it faded.

You barely noticed when Bucky’s hand slid lower, two fingers sliding along the seam of you, dipping just inside. You’d thought you were emptied out, rung dry, but the dull ache at your entrance proved otherwise—the evidence of Steve inside you, the slow ooze of it, making your lashes flutter in a way that felt almost innocent.

“You want to keep going, honey?” He asked because this—the consent, the agency—was one of the roots of his pleasure. You nodded again, too spent for speech. “Yeah, you do,” he murmured, pressing his own cock flush against your thigh, hot iron against soft flesh. “And you want Steve to watch, don’t you?”

The way Bucky framed it, you didn’t just want to perform, to be seen—you wanted to be worshipped, to be watched while your body proved itself again and again. There was no performance anxiety; there was only the heat of two impossible men zeroed in on every twitch of your muscles. You felt your own slick between your thighs, the slow, filthy trickle of Steve’s cum pooling out of you, the ache where you’d been so thoroughly stretched.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky chuckled. “Words.”

You tried to say, “Yes, please,” but it came out as a sigh, and Bucky’s grin only widened.

Steve cradled your head like a priceless artifact, thumb pressing a sleepy circle against your jaw while his gaze moved between your eyes and the place where Bucky’s fingers cupped your cunt. You felt your hips roll up, wanton, trying to keep contact with Bucky’s hand even as he toyed with your entrance but never quite let you have the friction you needed.

“You want to show Steve how we fuck when it’s just you and me in the dark, how well you take me.” A statement, not a question.

“Mmmhmm,” you groaned, and Bucky pressed a kiss to your shoulder, then knelt up, hands guiding your unresisting legs apart. He knelt back on his haunches and pulled your hips close. You heard Steve’s breath stutter at the sight, and it filled you with a greedy, wild pride. Bucky teased the seam of you with the head of his cock, up and down, up and down, making you whine.

At the last moment, Bucky relented and pushed inside, filling you with a swift, brutal thrust that bottomed out in one motion. There was no slow stretch, no easing in—just the violent, relentless press of his cock, and you arched off the mattress with a helpless, desperate moan. Your body was made to take him, every inch of you was slick and trembling, so the pain blurred seamlessly into pleasure and back again until you weren’t sure which you preferred.

He moved slow at first, kneeling above you like a god, letting you feel the thickness of him as he rocked in and out, but it wasn’t long before he found the rhythm he liked—a rough, demanding piston that left you scrambling for breath, for touch, for anything to keep you from coming apart entirely. You felt every ridge and vein, every rutting pound as he chased his own need, each thrust fusing the two of you back together.

All you could do—wanted to do—was take it. The raw, pounding pleasure, the relentless stretch, the feeling of Bucky’s cock rutting into you deeply. You heard yourself sob—and it was not a neat or pretty thing, but a wrecked, raw sound that only made Bucky groan above you. He caught your thighs in his hands, spreading you wider, and you felt the obscene heat of the stretch, the way your cunt seized around him with each battering drive. The slick noise of it—your body, his cock, the fucking mess Steve had left in you—filled the room, a rhythm and a punctuation to Bucky’s breathing as he drove deeper, harder, faster.

Steve’s hand found yours in the sheets. He laced his thick fingers between yours and squeezed, grounding you, letting you feel the reverent awe rolling off him in slow, steady waves. But there was an unmet hunger still lingering there under the surface. You could feel it in the tense of his body next to yours, and when you turned your face, eyes seeking his, he met your gaze without hesitation.

Steve bent to kiss you, and there was no veiling tenderness or shy request for permission. His tongue pushed into your mouth, greedy and wild, tasting the ghost of Bucky on your lips, tasting the salt of your tears. You kissed back with everything you had, drawing another moan from your throat as Bucky pistoned into you, the force rocking your whole body up into Steve’s chest.

Bucky’s thrusts didn’t slacken—they were still relentless, still merciless—but as you and Steve kissed, the tempo oscillated into something deeper, a series of slower,seismic detonations. Each time Bucky bottomed out inside you, he held there, grinding, spine arched, as if the sight of you kissing Steve was as much a pleasure to him as the feel of your cunt squeezing him.

Steve groaned into your mouth, his hand coming up to cradle your jaw, and Bucky’s grip on your thighs tightened, like he needed to stake a claim even as he offered you up. With every new roll of Bucky’s hips, a different noise tore its way out of your throat—some for the pain, some for the pleasure, some for the blissful humiliation of being made a spectacle for their eyes.

“Fuck her mouth, Steve,” Bucky said, a low, hungry rumble.

Steve didn’t hesitate, and it was only for a fraction of a second before he was shifting up, the broad line of his thigh braced alongside your head. His cock was still half-hard, glazed with your slick and his own release. The sight of it, flushed angry-red and wet, made your cunt clench around Bucky. Steve cupped your chin, thumb curling along the hinge of your jaw, and you sucked him into your mouth, the taste salty and obscene.

You groaned around him, lips stretching, tongue flattening under the thick, salty weight. He barely thrust, just eased forward, but the size of him still made your throat protest. Bucky continued his slow, tortruous pace below, watching intently as Steve’s cock parted your lips, and the sight of it—his best friend fucking your mouth while he still pounded into your cunt—nearly undid him, you could feel it in the grip of his hands on your hips.

“Deeper,” Bucky ordered, and Steve obeyed. He slid in, careful but insistent, filling your mouth until you gagged, until your eyes watered anew. Steve slid in, your throat stretched, and the assault of it made you gasp around him, desperate for air, for mercy, for more. Steve petted your jaw, his other hand cupping the back of your head, and for all the brutality of the act there was infinite patience in how he held you there, letting you adjust, letting you learn the unique shape of his need. Somewhere above, Bucky laughed—a single breath of filthy awe, a marvel at the spectacle of you taking both their cocks at once like this.

The taste of Steve’s cum was thick in your mouth, the smell of sex and sweat and ozone burning in your nostrils. You wanted them both to know how much you liked this, how much you needed every inch of what they gave. So you hollowed your cheeks and sucked, rolling your tongue with just enough pressure to see the effect in Steve’s eyes—head thrown back, spine bowed glorious, hand clenching your jaw with a desperation that made you burn with pride.

Bucky’s cock pounded up into you from below, and Steve’s pushed into your mouth from above, and you—pinned, stretched, used—were nothing but bliss. The sensation was a hinge, your body swinging wild between the two of them. You felt the echo of your own heartbeat in your cunt, in your mouth, in every thrum of the mattress and grind of their hips.

Steve’s thrusts grew bolder, and at each push he eased a little deeper, patience thinning as your mouth softened to his shape. His voice, when it came, was raw and rough, “Fuck, fuck, you feel so good—” your name murmured as its own curse when it fell from his lips in this moment.

He spilled his seed down your throat, but not all of it. He pulled out and shot the rest over your breasts, warm rope after rope of it across your heaving chest as Bucky pistoned in even harder, the thudding slap of his hips the only sound in the world.

Bucky slammed harder, harder, until you felt the actual bruise of him inside you, some deep purple echo of the violence. He reached for your clit, pinched, and your body shuddered into another orgasm, spasms wracking you so hard you thought you’d bite your tongue. You moaned so sweet and so ruined as he flew over the edge.

Bucky’s cock throbbed inside you, a shuddering full-body tremor, and then he was coming, hips jammed flush as he spilled molten and messy into the deepest part of you. His moan was raw, unguarded, and he didn’t let up, kept grinding through every spurt, making sure you took every last drop. The pressure of it set off a chain reaction—your body seized, aftershocks tearing up your thighs and into your belly, squeezing around him in greedy, involuntary pulses.

Bucky’s head dropped back, his jaw flexing as he held your hips pinned. You watched him, glassy-eyed and adoring, as every muscle in his chest locked. “Christ,” he panted, eyes flickering to Steve, “This is unreal.” He pulled halfway out—slow, slow—then pushed in again, a wet, obscene sound marking every inch. “She’s still squeezing me, even after you ruined her.” Bucky’s grin was all teeth, all pride and filth. “Can feel your mess inside her, Steve. So fucking wet she’s dripping down my balls.”

You moaned in the hinge between them, wrung out and wild, as Bucky fucked you through the last quakes and Steve’s hand fanned gently against your throat, thumb pressing the pulse there like he wanted to count your heartbeats—maybe hold them for ransom.

Bucky let out a ragged exhalation and pulled out, the head of his cock dragging on hypersensitive nerves, leaving you gaping and gasping and dripping. Bucky didn’t bother to hide his satisfaction. Instead, he watched the spill with a sick, loving sort of pride, then reached down, scooped his own cum with his fingers and smeared it over your breasts, painting you in it, mixing it with his best friend’s seed until your whole chest was slick with it. He held you there for a moment, painted and panting and caught in the liminal pleasure, before tilting your face up and licking a stripe from your collarbone to your jaw, tongue lazy and flat. Bucky’s mouth found yours, and you tasted the salt of Steve and yourself on his lips. You kissed him like you were dying, and Bucky kissed you back harder, swallowing you whole.

Steve’s voice burrowed into your ear with shocking gravity, arms closing around your limp torso as if to protect you from the world outside this narrow, unrepeatable moment. “You are so fucking beautiful ruined like this,” he said, voice half-reverent.

Bucky’s thumb pressed under your chin, tilting your face: “You want more, don’t you?” You did. That was the devastating truth of it. Even as your body ached and stung from orgasm, you wanted all the ways they touched you, every version of this night.

“Are you sure, Buck?” Steve asked, incredulous.

Bucky’s laugh was a bright, sharp crack in the haze, so full of delight it rang in your bones. “Oh, sweetheart. Steve has no idea what you’re capable of after a few more rounds.”

He bent over you, hands braced by your head, and pressed a kiss to the center of your brow—a benediction at odds with the lazy trail of his hand down your body, cupping your breast, then skimming the mess he and Steve had left there. He rubbed their slick together with an idle curiosity, like a child finger-painting, until Steve’s hand joined his, pinching a nipple between two careful fingers and rolling it until you arched up, spent muscles clenching with electric aftershock.

“We could let her rest,” Bucky said, tongue laving your earlobe as he spoke, “but why waste a perfectly good afterglow when you haven’t even fucked my wife in the shower yet?”

WE ALL KNOW I'M RARELY CAPABLE OF CUTTING SOMETHING DOWN

SO

I HOPE YOU'RE ALL HAPPY/RUINED RIGHT ALONGSIDE ME.

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