Articulations of Aspen

You consider abandoning the mission, leaving the damn thing in the trunk overnight and feigning all knowledge in the morning, but you didn’t want to trap sapling so long in stale air and uncontrolled temperature. So, clutching the pot to your chest like a newborn, you brace yourself and walk up to your home.

You make it three steps up the walkway before the front door swings open and your alpha crosses his arms and stares at you. He doesn’t speak, just stands there, managing a sigh that’s both resigned and affectionate.

“Is there some sort of arboretum plan I’m unaware of?” he asks, voice flat but eyes bright.

You walk past him, gently nudging him out of the way with your hip.

“It was going to be composted,” you state, as if that explained everything. “I couldn’t just leave it.”

He trails you, looming, the scent of his aftershave mingling with skepticism and amusement. “We agreed on twelve,” he says, gaze flicking from the lopsided little trunk to the living-room jungle already bulging from every surface. “There are so many more than twelve in this room alone.”

You set the pot down in the corner by the window, the only sliver of space unclaimed by trailing pothos, pepperomias, monsterras, and a zz plant. It’s an ugly duckling—spindly, a little brown at the edges, the kind you adopt out of misplaced mercy—but you have faith.

You kick off your sandals and leave them sprawled beneath the ficus. You make a show of stretching, arms overhead so your shirt rides up and exposes a sliver of your belly, then turn and meet Bucky’s gaze. With deliberate slowness, unbutton your jeans and let them slither to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Bucky drawls, arms still crossed.

You smirk, peeling off your t-shirt so you’re standing in just your bra and underwear. “Distracting you,” you say, “so you forget about the new plant.”

His exhale is half laugh, half groan. He uncrosses his arms. You don’t have time to brace yourself before he’s advancing, the low warning rumble in his throat belying the fondness at the corners of his mouth. His hand curls around your waist just above the hip, thumb pressed into the divot where your skin is always warm, always his.

“You better get to work distracting,” he mutters, but when you reach for his shirt he doesn’t resist, letting you tug the fabric up and over his head in one rough motion. The look he gives you is equal parts exasperation and reverence.

“This is the last one,” you say, which is a lie, and both of you know it. It’s the understood game, the way you get away with your foundling plants, and the way he gets to pretend you might one day stop.

He lifts you easily, sets you on the arm of the sofa where the spider plant arches around your shoulders like a crown. “Liar,” he whispers, and you grin.

His hands find your thighs, fingertips kneading at the soft flesh, prying you open as if you were another of your stubborn orchids, roots tangled and in need of gentle untangling.

He crooks two fingers and tugs your underwear aside, the pads of his fingertips brushing against the slick heat of you, at once clinical and devastating. You clench around nothing, already pulsing, and he huffs out a laugh at your impatience.

“Terrible liar,” he murmurs, catching your mouth with his as he works a rhythm with two fingers, slow and deep. You gasp, legs falling open, toes curling. The spider plant dips a leaf into your hair as you tilt your head back, and he grins, eyes crinkling at the edges, delighted at how easy you make it for him.

You reach for his belt, and he lets you. You unfasten it, then the button of his jeans, then pull down the zipper. He kicks free one leg, never breaking rhythm with his fingers on you, and the heat of his body soaks into your bare inner thighs.

You barely get his cock out before he’s sliding into you, one slow, ruthless thrust. His cutting blue eyes hold yours, the way they always do, as if daring you to squirrel your attention away, but you can’t—never would, not when he’s inside you, coaxing you open, making your world collapse to the moment of his hips fitted to your own.

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

The guards along the wall jumped to attention, but their spears lowered the instant wide a spread of wings cast a shadow in a known shape.

A massive, majestic form followed. Scales harder than diamonds. Head with a crown of horns.

Golden eyes stared right at you as the dragon hovered. No guards came rushing. They knew not to come between a dragon and a person they chose.

Talons scraped along the sandy stones as the dragon curled its feet on the wide wall, resting its weight into a crouch as it brought its head closer to you.

Shaking, you slowly reached your hand forward. There was an instinct calling to run away in terror, but another pull tempted you to come forward. A new, unknown urge that you couldn't resist.

Witnesses saw. The word of it would spread within a day.

No one would stand between a dragon and its chosen rider. And you wouldn't step away.

The dragon's claws wrapped around your body with unexpected gentleness, though it was still scary to the point of nearly fainting as it lifted you and flew away.

In a few weeks you'd return to your people for a visit and proof of your new role, once the other riders taught you how to mount and communicate the dragon. At least, that's how the stories and rumours presented the process of learning the skill.

But when you're brought to the Dragon Mountains and into your dragon's lair, all of your previously formed imagines shatter into pieces.

“You look like a goddess of the old stories,” she says, catching your gaze in the silvered glass. “Vidar agrees.” She gestures at the orange cat, who has perched himself upon the window ledge and watches your reflection with the gravity of a child awaiting a bedtime tale.

He hops down and jumps into your lap, clearly knowing his own name. You smile and stroke his ears, then peer up at Astrid as your scalp tingles with each gentle tug. “Remind me not to sway my head too much. I’m afraid your artistry might come undone.”

“It would take a storm at sea to ruin this braid, my queen.” Astrid ties off the end with a precise knot, then leans back to admire her work, face split by a grin too wide for the room. “Though you should know—Helga says there’s trouble in the kitchens. The foreign ships arrived with more mouths than expected.”

Before you can ask what “trouble” means—spoiled meat, missing wine, or some new spat among the bread-maidens—Helga herself enters with her customary briskness, skirts swishing in determined arcs. She is flushed, but not winded, and you know immediately that she is holding onto information, but holding back from immediately tossing it at your feet.

Helga closes the door behind her, not with a bang but with a soft, purposeful click. Her gaze flicks first to Astrid, then to you, but she doesn’t speak right away. Instead, she dusts her hands on her apron, glances out the window, and then reaches to smooth a stray lock of hair at your temple.

You steel yourself for news of some disaster: a fire, a sour barrel, an insult from the southerners that could spark a feud. What you do not expect is for Helga to say, quietly, “There is a woman among the southern guests. She travels with their lord, but she is not his kin. Nor is she a simple companion.” Helga’s voice is even, but her eyes flick up to meet yours, sharp as a kestrel’s. “They say she once belonged to your husband. In ways that matter.”

It’s not the information itself that unmoors you—of course Steven would have had lovers, many of them, maybe a line of them stretching along the spine of the continent. You’d guessed it not only in the way he took you in the beginning, but in how skilled he was, how voracious his appetites were. But this, the fact of a woman from his past making landfall here, clutching an invitation to your table, is different.

And what matter should it be to you? Both of you had lives before he carried you away from your old one and forged you into his.

You raise your eyebrows just enough to suggest curiosity, not concern. You even manage a small smile. “Thank you, Helga,” you say, and you stroke Vidar’s back to steady your hands. “Has the woman caused any concern?”

Astrid, eager to defend your honor, clenches her fists, and you see her glare in the reflection. “Is she here to undermine our queen? To make a spectacle?”

Helga lifts a hand, stilling the younger woman with a look. “No spectacle, not unless someone makes one. She holds herself apart. Wears no clan colors. But she has not taken her eyes off your husband since they arrived.”

Helga is still watching for a reaction, so you ask, “Did she give her name?”

Helga nods. “Inga of Storn.” She says it cautiously, as if delivering the name will levy more of an impact.

You ask the only question that really matters. “Has the king acknowledged her presence?”

“He has not spoken to her publicly,” Helga replies. “He may choose not to. She has withdrawn now, as have the others, to prepare for tonight’s festivities.”

You nod, and preserve as much of your wits as you can. You try manage the slow, spreading heat that comes from knowing you will soon be obliged to share a room, a table, perhaps even the throne, with the shape of the woman who held your husband's heart—or, at least, his body.

Astrid is still fuming. “If she tries to speak to you, my queen, you need only give the smallest glance—”

“No,” you say, not so sharply as to wound, but enough to plant your feet in this moment before it runs away from you. “She is here as a guest. As long as she is so, there will be no pettiness.”

Astrid huffs, as if she wishes she could personally bar the door against any ghost of Steven’s past, but she relents somewhat in her fire. You marvel at her loyalty, but you’re not a child. If there’s any power dynamic to be threatened here, you intend to stay abreast of it, not be held at its mercy.

“I’m grateful, Helga,” you say, pressing a thumb to Vidar’s chin to make him look at you. “We’ll show our guests the courtesy—and strength—of this hall tonight.” You rise, skirts crackling as you straighten them, and the orange cat leaps gracefully from your lap to pad after you.

The final hour before the feast passes in a cloak of anticipation. The sun falls lower until the halls are rimmed in copper, and servants light the torches, fanning the smoke with sprigs of dried sage. In the antechamber, you stand with the other women of the household, conscious of every movement, every tilt of your chin, as if the very air is a lens through which every soul will judge you tonight.

The horns sound, and you file in. The hall is pulsing with voices and color and music. The main table, set up on its dais, is resplendent with silverwork and dressed in the king’s blue. The guest tables are alive with a cheerful chaos of strangers’ laughter, a thousand tiny dramas swirling in the air. Steven stands at the center of it all, hair bound with a leather cord, his tunic blue to match yours. But he is already deep in conversation with the lord of the southerners, and beside him stands a woman, draped in gray and gold, her hair the kind of pale that seems to catch and hold the last of the sun. She is neither beautiful nor plain—her features are sharp, her gaze even sharper.

You allow yourself a single moment to look—the way she turns her face up to him, the quick curve of her mouth, the deliberate way she does not touch his arm but lets her presence fill the space between them like perfume.

You feel Steven’s gaze slide to you a moment later. The cut of him is remarkable. Your king is nearly a head taller than any man in the hall and so broad at the shoulder that even his finest tunic strains to contain him, but tonight it’s the angle of his eyes, the directness of his claim, that makes you catch your breath. He gestures you forward with an imperceptible tilt of his chin.

You cross the main floor of the hall, the clamor dimming as you approach. The southerners bow their heads, the ring of their movement perfectly choreographed—each body turning just enough to show deference, but not servitude. The pale woman, Inga of Storn, nods to you with a correctness so precise it almost scalds.

You keep your chin up, expression schooled into the perfect image of hospitality—welcoming, but not wishing to betray any nerves.

“Queen,” she says, her voice low, clear. “It is an honor.”

You answer carefully, “You honor our hall with your presence.” You smile, enough to be diplomatic, but not enough to offer welcome to someone you must see as rival, remnant, or both.

Steven’s gaze darts between you and Inga, then back to the lord of the southerners, a shrewd man he introduces as Tomas. He looks to be older than Steven by some twenty years, but by no means born down by age, but instead a strong and vibrant force of a man.

Tomas’s eyes crinkle as he bows to you, the movement fluid, practiced, and just the right side of unthreatening. “Your majesty. It is a fine hall and a finer welcome, especially in the dark of the year.”

“Not so dark tonight,” you observe, glancing at the torches and the banners and the armies of candelabra above. “We strive to make it warm for our guests even when the snow stacks to the eaves by sunrise.”

He smiles wider at that, revealing slightly crooked teeth—a flaw that only makes him more approachable. With everyone now present, you take your seats, you and Steven at the head table, though not seated next to each other this night. Tomas sits at his right hand—as is fitting for the highest ranking guest of honor—and to your unease, Inga is placed at his left, but you square your shoulders and determine to put it out of your mind.

Bowls of wild carrot soup are ladled out to begin the feast, warming those who trekked in through the chill outside. Both Tomas and the southern guests seated on your other side are warm and jovial, and full of many stories. The feast unfurls in courses—cured fish, roasted fowl, the first of last year’s turnips and winter apples. Conversation swirls: trade, adventure, discovery and battle stories. Tomas’ expression and manners are warm, almost fatherly, and it strikes a pang of longing for your own father, left behind in your former life.

You do your best to contribute lightness to the conversation, steering the southern guests to delight in the oddities of northern cuisine. The men at your table are charmed by your wit, and you can feel the subtle undertow of approval in the way even the local men listen when you speak. You pay careful attention to Inga’s end of the table, however. She appears to be quiet but captivating, attentive but reserved. She confers with Steven in sparse, low exchanges, always too brief for you to catch more than a murmur. When their eyes meet, Steven’s gaze is unwavering, but if there is emotion in it, you haven’t the skill to name it.

As the feast progresses, the warm haze of mead and full bellies softens the edges of the hall’s tension, and by the time the musicians strike up their first tune of the night, the mood is jubilant.

Steven eventually stands, towering above the crowd. He raises his drinking horn and with a voice that rolls over every torch and table, calls, “Tonight we honor old friends and new! Raise your cups to the bonds that hold us fast, and to the storms that make us stronger.” The hall erupts in a shout, the echo near deafening. He sweeps his gaze over the assembled, and though the words are for all, the message is for you as much as for Tomas, Inga, or anyone else present: This is a show of unity, of mastery, of tradition. There is no room for ghosts here unless Steven himself invites them to the table.

And there is at least one ghost at this table, which, for your own sanity, you can not blow bellows to the tiny flares of envy or jealousy. You must exist beyond the clutches of it.

So you raise your own cup, letting the warm thrum of solidarity pulse through your hand and into your chest, focusing on the other visitors in the hall.

But as you lower your cup from your lips, for the first time in the night you meet Inga’s eye. You think she is about to smile at you—something sly, almost conspiratorial—but the moment is gone before it can fully form. She turns her attention to Steven, saying something that makes him laugh, his baritone booming over the harmonies from the musicians’ corner. You can’t help but study her in the periphery—every tilt of the head, every calculated calm. Is she a threat? An echo of what Steven once needed, or proof that he has changed appetites—for the better or worse, you can’t say. And as the queen, you do not wish to give any obvious behavior for anyone to speculate over.

You notice Inga does not drink heavily, does not indulge in the flirtatious banter that is a currency among the guests. She listens as much as she speaks, and when she does, the table grows quiet, as if all sense recognize the gravity of her voice. Even then, she never once attempts to draw Steven away from conversation, or even to claim his attention. Her very restraint feels like a challenge, and you find yourself equally determined not to betray any agitation, keeping your laughter easy, your conversation nimble.

You are grateful for the music, for the tartness of apple cider that follows and the way the children of the hall begin darting between the tables, snatching sweet buns and giggling, unburdened by the weight of any history. Their laughter is a buffer, and you use it to steady yourself between exchanges.

At the first coaxing notes of the next song—a lively dance tune from the southern coast—Tomas stands and extends a hand to you. “Will the north’s most gracious queen honor an old man with a dance to beckon spring to hurry its speed back to us?” he asks, grinning widely.

You’ve never danced formally in this hall. For a split second, nerves coil in your belly, but then you consider the alternative: remaining at the table, a passive spectator to the silent communication running like a tide beneath Inga and Steven’s every movement. You’d rather risk a stumble on the slick flagstones than be left to chew over every possibility.

You stand and take Tomas’s hand, a ripple of interest moving through the guests as he leads you out into the open before the hearth. A gap opens in the crowd, and the musicians punctuate the moment with a flourish of strings and drum. Tomas bows with exaggerated solemnity, then sweeps you into a measured turn.

You follow his lead, surprised by your own ease. Tomas is a practiced partner, gentle with your hands but confident, never once jerking or crowding your stride. His feet are silent on the stone, but his voice is not. “You’ve the poise of a born queen.”

You tilt your chin, keeping the smile soft at the corner of your mouth. “I was not born for this, but I endeavor to do my part now that I am here.”

You spin across the stones, and as you do, you scan the tables. Steven’s eyes are on you. For a moment the music and the crowd dissolve, and there is only him: his gaze, steady and measuring, tracking your every motion. You do not falter. You let Tomas spin you and cross-step backwards right up to the hearth, recalling the reels of your childhood, the feel of packed dirt and summer wind and the memory of a future you never lived. The steps come back to you, and you find yourself smiling for real, alive in the exertion and the quickening of your own pulse.

“Grace alone is never enough for a court like this,” Tomas murmurs, leaning close during a tight turn. “You have mettle. Not the kind acquired by accident, either.”

You search his face, but his tone is light, his intentions wrapped in courtly ambiguity. “If that’s meant as counsel, my lord, I am ever eager for the wisdom of those who have weathered more storms than I.”

Tomas’s steps never falter, though his grip on your hand tightens a fraction. “That is good. If you ever need a friend at court, or anywhere else, you would do well to keep my confidence.” The dance brings you in close, and you catch the glint of honest intent in Tomas’s eyes. “There will be many storms, and you must endeavor to discern which storms require bolting the doors, and which are best met with open arms.”

Whether it is a warning, an offer, or simply a kindness, you do not know, but you incline your chin in acknowledgment. “Thank you, Tomas of the south. I will remember the counsel.”

“I believe between you and I, we are cut from the same cloth. Perhaps a finer, softer weave than these old bones, but the same resilience deep in the thread.”

The dance ends, and he bows you out with a flourish. There is a round of applause from the assembled guests, followed by a ripple of laughter from you and the others who joined you in dance, and Tomas gently guides you back toward your seat.

But before you make it, Ursa intercepts you, her eyes wide with the thrill of the moment. “My queen, you were glorious,” she whispers, then slips away as quickly as she arrived, swishing back into the tide of party.

The song ends. Tomas bows you out, guiding you back to the table with a flourish that leaves your head slightly spinning. As you sit, Inga of Storn is watching you, chin propped on the backs of her fingers. She offers you a nod, measured and dignified; you answer with the same, nothing more, nothing less.

The courses roll on. Dishes change rapidly as servants whisk away battered platters and empty bowls and refill goblets at a tempo that keeps the feast in perpetual motion until honeyed cakes and dried fruits are brought around at the end.

You’ve barely savored the last morsel when Steven appears at your side, towering, the heat of his body radiating through the cold of the hall. He takes your hand, enveloping it in his, and tugs you gently but inexorably away from the crowd, ignoring any final etiquette or protocol the occasion may actually have called for. Not a single protest is raised. You can feel the tension radiating off him, and you can only imagine the intensity that must be written on his face. No one will challenge this man in this moment.

You expect him to drag you, as he sometimes does, straight to the bed, or to pin you against the wall and ravish you before the echoes of the feast have even faded. Instead, Steven releases your hand the moment you cross the threshold of your chambers and crosses to the hearth, where the fire is guttering low. His movements are restless, unrooted. He throws a handful of pine boughs onto the embers, and the fresh pitch cracks and blooms with the flames and the sweet, sharp scent that you always associate with midwinter.

He neither speaks nor turns, only begins to unlace the collar of his tunic, then pulls it over his head with a movement so forceful you hear the threads strain. He works at the bindings of his arms and wrists, then his belt, and a tremor in his hands betrays the force of his mood. You watch, uncertain—half expecting him to turn on you with that voracious hunger that rarely seems to be quelled. He continues undressing until he’s stripped down to the waist. He is all muscle and shadow, scarred and beautiful in his brutality, but there is something closed off inside him, a storm clouded rather than spent.

Finally, you move further into the room and commence your own nighttime preparations, beginning with removing bracelets from your arms and slipping out of your shoes, still keeping an eye on him.

He seems to sense your scrutiny, shoulders rising in a slow, controlled breath. “You handled yourself well,” he says. The words are measured and strange. “Better than some would have, in the presence of a woman like her.” He can only mean Inga of Storn.

“She is your past, not mine,” you say, and you mean it—or at least, you want to mean it. “Why should I rise or fall for her presence?”

He turns at last, blue eyes catching the full flare of the firelight, and he studies your face like a puzzle he cannot put together. “You should,” he says. The words are hard, unyielding. “It is the nature of things, little wife. Inga is a woman who inspires envy—and not on accident.”

You bristle, the spark of his challenge igniting something that had lain carefully banked all night. “Is that what you wanted? For me to make a scene? Douse the table in your mead and tear her hair out, so the court thinks I am threatened by a pretty ghost?”

His jaw sets, the muscle in his cheek ticking. “Not a scene. I expected you to care.” He spits the last word like a barb, as if it offends him to say it. “You did not flinch, not a blink, when she looked at me with hunger in her eyes.”

It angers him. Truly angers him—not the cold, analytical anger you’ve seen him summon in anger or as a tool of command, but a real, burning, personal need that you see so rarely in him.

“You did not ask me to care. Nor do you seem to require it.”

He stalks forward, bare from the waist up but for the scars that mark him as both king and conqueror. The fire newly lit gives his skin an uncanny glow, as if he’s built from the gods’ own rage and spit. “So that is what it is for you?” he asks, not waiting for response. “A matter of requirement?”

You don’t answer, not directly. You stand your ground and begin to unfasten the heavy belt at your waist, the traditional blue and white sash Astrid had wound and knotted. The silk slips loosely between your hands before you lay it over the back of the chair at your vanity. You undo the laces of your dress, and slip out of it, leaving you in only the simplest of undergarments. “What am I except your conquest? The treasure you brought here? I am scarely more than a trophy fucked and paraded as your queen. I did not know there was an allowance for feeling.”

Steven closes the distance, the air heavy with the pine smoke and the tension you can nearly taste on your tongue. He stands in front of you, massive and imposing, every inch of him radiating heat and intent. “You think that is all you are to me?” he says, voice low and dangerous. “After so many months, you still believe you are just a prize?” He snatches the discarded silk sash and—too fast for you to resist—loops it around your wrists, pulling tight, binding them before your body as if you are a lamb readied for ritual. There’s nothing gentle in the motion, but you drink in the shock and let your body summon the wariness that once governed everything here.

He drags the length of blue over his fist and yanks you forward. You crash against the wall of his chest, the heat of his body a living fire, but his hands do not grope or clutch at you—he holds you at arm’s length, searching your face for something you cannot name.

“I could have any prize, have had many,” he breathes, but it’s fire and not flattery. “I do not keep what I do not want. I have never yearned or sought for more from a woman the way it was from that very first evening.” He leans in so close you smell the salt of his skin, the iron of his mood, and for a moment all you can do is match the wildness in his eyes.

“And even when I have you, I am not satisfied. You become more.” He lets go, not with violence, but in a way that makes the lack of his touch ache.

He circles, pacing almost, the blue silk still twisted around your wrists. "When I look at you," he says, softer now but fiercer too, "I see every dream I have ever had for this hall, this land, my blood. And still it is not enough." He shakes his head, wild with a need that cuts deeper than desire. "That is what you should know, little wife." The last two words rumble from his chest, not dismissive but desperate, as if it is the only truth worth clinging to.

And with that, he drops to his knees—in front of you, not as a servant or a slave but as a king stripped to his hunger. He presses his forehead to your bound hands, inhaling as if scenting your skin might save him. The heat of his breath is humid against your knuckles. For a moment you see the massive hands that have destroyed and built so much now trembling at your command, your body.

But then his hands close around your hips and jerk you forward, so abruptly your knees buckle and you nearly overbalance. He grips you—hard—and rakes both hands up your thighs. The snowy white of your chemise is no hindrance to him: Steven seizes it in both fists and, eyes burning up at you, and rips it from the hem up to your hips with a force that shocks even you, the fibers surrendering in a gasp of threads. The rush of air is cold against your bare skin, but his hands are instantly on the flesh of your thighs, spreading them, and you stagger, almost lose your footing on the rug, except he holds you firmly enough to pursue you poised there as he wishes you to be.

He does not hesitate. He presses his face into the junction of your thighs, beard scraping your bare skin, his mouth finding your cunt with a hunger absent of delicacy but not of skill. He holds you in place by the blue-silked wrists and licks at you, slow and then quick, the heat of his mouth blazing against your skin, beard rough at the crease of your thighs. You gasp, the sound escaping you as a broken little cry, and he drags his tongue up your slit, thumb grinding the bud of your clit until your head tips back and you are moaning, open-mouthed, at the ceiling.

Steven twists you by the hips, turning you, commanding your body how he wants it. He bites your flank, then lower, sharp teeth grazing the swell of your ass, and you yelp, a sound you try to muffle in your own shoulder but which makes him laugh against your skin. He kneads the flesh in handfuls, then thumbs your cheeks apart, spreading you so bluntly you want to disappear into the floor, but you cannot because Steven is behind you, greedy and intent.

The next sensation shocks you: the wet, hot press of his tongue at your tightest opening, circling and probing, and you buck against the sensation, a strangled gasp tearing from your lips. Though Steven has claimed all your holes, he does not torture or pleasure your tightest hole frequently. The shock of his tongue there is always a violation so intimate you might burn to ash beneath from his ministrations.

He sucks at you, his tongue sliding into places ever dared even imagine you would be touched before him. Even now the crudeness of it alone would have made you weep from shame if not for the fact that your knees are shaking with the need to be filled, to have him utterly claim every part of you. Your body responds to him with the swiftness of a summer storm—one touch and you're drenched in need, lightning coursing through nerves that know only him. Months in his bed have carved these pathways of pleasure to flood at his command.

He pulls you down and you end up kneeling on all fours. You whimper—it is all you can do—and Steven holds you steady, his hands bruising your hips as he works his tongue over both your cunt and the tight ring of muscle, switching between them until you’re trembling, the world reduced to blue silk, candlelight, and the raw, obscene wet slickness of your own arousal. You do not have the wherewithal to care if any hear you cry out. There is only your need, the way Steven’s mouth and hands erase everything but the edge you’re teetering on.

He shoves your knees wider, so wide you sway in the joints and nearly collapse—except there is his arm, corded and firm, braced across your hips like you are some wild animal being tamed. He licks at you, fucking his tongue into your cunt, then back to your ass, alternating with a rhythm that leaves you panting, open-mouthed, on the rug. You feel a fresh rush between your legs with each circle of his tongue, and Steven groans as if the taste of you is his favorite mead, his favorite honey, his only holy thing.

Suddenly he stops, and you have just enough time to register the loss, the ache of missing his touch for even a heartbeat, before he’s looming over you, rising to his knees and fitting the wide, hot head of his cock to your entrance.

He doesn’t push in yet. He slides the tip up and down, teasing, painting the slick of your arousal along your cunt and further back to your ass, pressing just enough that you feel the hint of promise, the threat of it, a stretch you both want and dread.

“Steven,” you gasp, your voice gone hoarse, “please—”

He braces one hand at the base of your neck, thumb pressed to your nape, and with the other, guides himself in, slowly, filling you inch by inch until you’re gasping, blinded by the fullness, the impossibility that this act never grows less shocking. He drags it out, slowly, making you feel every notch and ridge, until he bottoms out inside you, hips flush to your ass.

He holds you like this, utterly open and claimed, and rocks his hips forward. The first thrust is slow, almost reverent, but it is a brief moment of gentleness before the pace sharpens. His cock drives in and out of you, using your cunt as an anchor, but every third thrust, you feel the blunt head of him nudge against your other opening, slicked with your own arousal and the wet residue of his mouth. The pressure is relentless, an inexorable stretching, and then—without further warning—he is pushing inside you there too, just the tip at first, but widening you, forcing the tight ring of muscle to yield.

You cry out, the sound raw and wild, and Steven laughs, low and dark, as he works both holes—one with cock, the other with a ruthless finger slicked in spit and your own juices. You can barely process the sensation, pleasure and pain crashing in waves, every nerve in your body tuned to the twin pulses of pain and satisfaction.

He fucks you like this, both cock and fingers filling you, setting a rhythm that is brutal and perfectly pitched to bring you to shattering. The force of his thrusts pitches your body forward, but Steven follows, his hand bracing at your shoulder, yanking you back to impale yourself on him again, again, until you’re wrung out, body bowed, the blue silk biting into your wrists. Your moans are so loud you think you must be heard down the hall, maybe in the kitchens, maybe in the snow fields beyond the fortress walls, but you are past caring.

He leans over you, chest against your back, the scratch of his beard burning your neck, and you hear him snarl into your ear, “Mine. Only mine.” He bites down, hard but not breaking skin, a mark of claim to your own. The heat of his mouth and the iron grip of his arm send you over the edge, your body convulsing, the orgasm crashing through you like a wave ripping a cliffside to ruins. Your cunt milks his cock desperately, and Steven groans, a sound that vibrates through your whole body. He presses further, thrusting as if he could drive his soul into you through pure force of will, matching each spasm of your core with a savage, punishing pace.

He does not let up. Not when your legs collapse under you, not when your cries go ragged and raw, not when you sob for breath and for mercy and for more in the same voice. He ruts your ass until he feels you tremble again, the pain and pleasure indistinguishable now, and then he yanks out, slides his slick length back into your cunt, and fucks you until you scream his name.

Finally, when you are empty of everything but your voice, Steven shoves in hard and stills, cock pulsing as he finally spills into you, a rush of heat so intense you weep from the fullness of it. He slumps forward, folding you beneath him, pinning you to the rug so you cannot move, cannot even think to move, and for a long moment there is nothing but the roar of your heartbeat in your ears and the heat of his breath at your neck.

He doesn’t speak. He stays, spent and trembling against you, his sweat slick at your back, his cock softening but held inside as if to keep you forever tethered to the earth and to him. The pine boughs in the hearth spit and crackle, the only sound in the chamber aside from your twin gasps for breath.

After what feels like an age, Steven rolls you to the side, still bound, and gathers you up before rising himself and carrying you to the bed. He lays you down, then produces a knife from where exactly you know not, and cuts away the remnants of your chemise. Only then does he descend, moving in behind you, pressing your back to his naked, sweat-slicked chest. He slings one burly arm across your belly, cinching you to him, as if he suspects you might unravel and slip away, vanish into the night unless physically anchored. The other hand, still holding the blue silk binding your wrists, brings them to rest at your breastbone, a possessive knot over your heart. He nestles his nose into the braid of your hair, breathing in the sweat and salt and whatever trace the night has left on you. For a long while, he is silent, letting the wet heat of your bodies leach into the linen, letting both your hearts hammer back toward something like peace.

This is not uncommon, a ferocious fucking, and then a decent into slumber, but then he does speak before you’re too far gone.

He speaks as if you are not there, as if he is confessing to the dark, beard rasping your neck. “If it was merely your body I wanted, I could have stolen and kept you as a concubine, a pet for the king and his men.” He draws your bound hands to his mouth, presses a kiss to the ribbon cinching your wrists. “But I saw in you a queen who would have strength and the wits of survival. You proved it through your actions in ushering your women, children, and elderly to flee into the forest and hide. You were only caught because you were the last to leave, the rear of the pack.

“And I think maybe I knew—” He laughs, the sound gruff and incredulous, “—the moment you stared down a blade and spat in the dirt at my men, you had the bone in you that could survive me, could take all I would give and not break."

You want to tell him that’s not what you feel now—not breaking and survival, but the slow, hot flare of something more dangerous and enveloping. But you cannot move your mouth, cannot move your hands. The warmth, the utter exhaustion, pins you like an insect in amber. It’s the truth, though: you can take all Steven gives and more, and even when he breaks you, you reform, sharper and surer than before.

He pulls your braid loose and combs his fingers through your sweat-damp hair, unbraiding it section by section, as if to erase the ribbons and colors the court braided into you and replace it with only his mark. He works methodically, with the patience of a hunter skinning his prize, so slow you feel every drag of his thumb at your nape, every careful untwining.

When his hands have untangled every ribbon, when your hair spills wild and loose as the night he first took you, Steven says, voice raw and unguarded, "Do you want him?" The question is a blade, unexpected, honed to a perfect, silent edge.

It is not the kind of jealousy you expect from him—Steven, the conqueror, the unmoved, the one who’s consumed, enthralled, and conquered you. But there’s a new, black hunger in the way he says it, a need to know if you can be swayed, if Tomas’ gentler words or softer eyes could tempt your loyalty a finger’s breadth from Steven’s grasp.

You twist to look over your shoulder, wrists still bound, and see the truth of it in his expression. He is not angry, but something deeper: haunted. You know then that he could trust you with his life, but not with his terror of being abandoned. “You like the southern lord Tomas.”

His tone is feral, a warning note you know instinctively not to ignore. You lie propped against the iron of his arm, your heart thrumming against the knot of blue silk, and wonder if he will truly believe any answer you give.

You do not play coy. That would only make it worse. “He reminds me of someone,” you say.

A pause. The heat of him presses in at your back, more tense, and you can sense his mind tearing through every possibility, every motive. “Someone you would have preferred to me?” The words are almost spat, but beneath the venom is a tremor—a thread of vulnerability that stuns you.

“My father,” you say quietly. “He was… kind. He asked questions. He listened.” The ache that trembles there in your voice, you know it will not land gently for him or for you. You go on anyway, the words catching like thorns in your throat. “I miss him. I miss my mother, my sisters.” You swallow, hard. “Tomas is nothing like you. He can see through a room and set those around him at ease. It reminds me of how my father was. I don’t want him. I want…” You pause, the word refusing to come, but you force it out, soft as a bruise. “I want not to be alone.”

There’s a long silence. Steven’s breath rasps in your ear, ragged, and you feel the strong pulse of his heart beating. The words hang between you, heavy as the furs that swathe the bed. For a long time, neither of you moves. You expect Steven to snarl, to snap, to claim you again with hands or teeth or cock, but he only tightens his arm around you, pressing you close enough that your breath stutters in your chest.

“Alone,” he finally echoes, as if this is a thing he has never truly named. His chin presses into your shoulder, and the scrape of beard is almost tender. “You have never been alone since the day I brought you here. Not a single night, not a single dawn.” The words rumble out of him, half accusation, half vow.

But you know what he can’t know, what no one here could possibly understand, and you find yourself trembling as you say, “It’s not the same.” The words are small in the dark, nearly swallowed by the thick cocoon of the bedding and the iron of his arms and the weight of him still half inside you.

He stiffens, but you press on, voice hollow with a truth you have never let touch air, have scarcely allowed yourself to acknowledge since the early days of your new life. “You think I am not alone because you are always here, because I have servants and duties and… an entire kingdom to help care for. But every face is new, every wall echoes with the absence of the home that was mine.” You swallow, steeling yourself. “Every kindness here is suspect. Every affection is one I must earn, or keep, or defend.” The words tumble out before you can stop them, raw and truer than anything you’ve ever let him see.

Steven is very still behind you, considering. You feel his hand, slow and careful, splay over your belly. “And me?” he asks. “Am I only… a conqueror to you, even now?”

What can you say? You have wanted, desperately, to hate him, to let yourself be ice and stone, but every night you share this bed, every morning you wake pressed close to him, his heat and his hunger and the unexpected moments of care. “You are a conqueror,” you admit, “and there are days I loathe you for it.” You turn, finally, within the cage of his arms, and this time the blue silk is support, not restraint. “But you are also the root the grows all I have now,” you admit, the words dry as bone, the last of your pride crumbling with them. “Everything I was is gone, except for how you see me, the life I’m building here only because of you and my position as your queen.” The confession is everything you know how to give. You expect him to seize it, to use it as leverage or to brand you with it in the way only Steven can. Instead, he is silent, haunted by the truth of it, and you sense a shift in the air.

He searches your face, eyes dark and wild and unmoored, and then something in him gives. He closes his eyes, a long, shuddering exhale bleeding out of him, and then, with the patience of a stone altered by centuries of wind, he gently unwinds your bound wrists and brings your hands to his lips. He kisses the inside of each palm, one and then the other, callused hands cupped around yours to hold them steady for the ritual. You think he means to claim you again, to turn every declaration of weakness into a demonstration of strength, but instead Steven just holds your hands to his heart, bared and thrumming fast and fragile against your skin.

He presses his brow to yours, the heat of his body incandescent, a lighthouse in the storm. “I see you,” he says. “I saw you from the first, and I will not let you vanish, not even if you wish it.” The words are a cord binding you, not to the palace or the kingdom, but to the man beneath the scarred skin and steel beneath. The admission is not in words, but in the slow pulse of his heartbeat under your palm, the way he curls his hand around your head to keep you there, to keep your face pressed close, as if proximity can substitute for explanation.

You are swept by a wave of exhaustion, not the clean fatigue of sated pleasure, but a deep, marrow-tracing depletion, the kind that comes from exposure more than exertion. For a time neither of you moves, except for the hot, desperate breaths that collapse in your lungs and then shudder out of you both, braided together and matching pace. You close your eyes, feeling the scrape of his thumb over your cheekbone, and tell yourself you don’t care that you cry a little. How many times have you shed tears in his presence? Of fear, of frustration, of pleasure, of longing.

There is nothing left to say this night. You surrender to the thickness of the moment, to Steven’s hands redrawing every line of your body, as if this is the first and last night he will ever have you. You shudder against him, not from cold, but from the slow-mounting realization that love, even the broken, brutal kind, has taken root where only survival grew before.

viking themed divider by @saradika-graphics

So? Thoughts? Feelings?

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

The guards along the wall jumped to attention, but their spears lowered the instant wide a spread of wings cast a shadow in a known shape.

A massive, majestic form followed. Scales harder than diamonds. Head with a crown of horns.

Golden eyes stared right at you as the dragon hovered. No guards came rushing. They knew not to come between a dragon and a person they chose.

Talons scraped along the sandy stones as the dragon curled its feet on the wide wall, resting its weight into a crouch as it brought its head closer to you.

Shaking, you slowly reached your hand forward. There was an instinct calling to run away in terror, but another pull tempted you to come forward. A new, unknown urge that you couldn't resist.

Witnesses saw. The word of it would spread within a day.

No one would stand between a dragon and its chosen rider. And you wouldn't step away.

The dragon's claws wrapped around your body with unexpected gentleness, though it was still scary to the point of nearly fainting as it lifted you and flew away.

In a few weeks you'd return to your people for a visit and proof of your new role, once the other riders taught you how to mount and communicate the dragon. At least, that's how the stories and rumours presented the process of learning the skill.

But when you're brought to the Dragon Mountains and into your dragon's lair, all of your previously formed imagines shatter into pieces.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe he should give the flowers to you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It doesn’t get any better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You make yourself smile. “Is everything okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is this happening?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You try to breathe. You fail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Andy?” you call softly.

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

“Come shower and stay the night?”

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

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

AND???

WHAT DO WE THINK?

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

WAIT!

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

A little sex pollen never hurt anyone, right? 😌

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

You consider abandoning the mission, leaving the damn thing in the trunk overnight and feigning all knowledge in the morning, but you didn’t want to trap sapling so long in stale air and uncontrolled temperature. So, clutching the pot to your chest like a newborn, you brace yourself and walk up to your home.

You make it three steps up the walkway before the front door swings open and your alpha crosses his arms and stares at you. He doesn’t speak, just stands there, managing a sigh that’s both resigned and affectionate.

“Is there some sort of arboretum plan I’m unaware of?” he asks, voice flat but eyes bright.

You walk past him, gently nudging him out of the way with your hip.

“It was going to be composted,” you state, as if that explained everything. “I couldn’t just leave it.”

He trails you, looming, the scent of his aftershave mingling with skepticism and amusement. “We agreed on twelve,” he says, gaze flicking from the lopsided little trunk to the living-room jungle already bulging from every surface. “There are so many more than twelve in this room alone.”

You set the pot down in the corner by the window, the only sliver of space unclaimed by trailing pothos, pepperomias, monsterras, and a zz plant. It’s an ugly duckling—spindly, a little brown at the edges, the kind you adopt out of misplaced mercy—but you have faith.

You kick off your sandals and leave them sprawled beneath the ficus. You make a show of stretching, arms overhead so your shirt rides up and exposes a sliver of your belly, then turn and meet Bucky’s gaze. With deliberate slowness, unbutton your jeans and let them slither to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Bucky drawls, arms still crossed.

You smirk, peeling off your t-shirt so you’re standing in just your bra and underwear. “Distracting you,” you say, “so you forget about the new plant.”

His exhale is half laugh, half groan. He uncrosses his arms. You don’t have time to brace yourself before he’s advancing, the low warning rumble in his throat belying the fondness at the corners of his mouth. His hand curls around your waist just above the hip, thumb pressed into the divot where your skin is always warm, always his.

“You better get to work distracting,” he mutters, but when you reach for his shirt he doesn’t resist, letting you tug the fabric up and over his head in one rough motion. The look he gives you is equal parts exasperation and reverence.

“This is the last one,” you say, which is a lie, and both of you know it. It’s the understood game, the way you get away with your foundling plants, and the way he gets to pretend you might one day stop.

He lifts you easily, sets you on the arm of the sofa where the spider plant arches around your shoulders like a crown. “Liar,” he whispers, and you grin.

His hands find your thighs, fingertips kneading at the soft flesh, prying you open as if you were another of your stubborn orchids, roots tangled and in need of gentle untangling.

He crooks two fingers and tugs your underwear aside, the pads of his fingertips brushing against the slick heat of you, at once clinical and devastating. You clench around nothing, already pulsing, and he huffs out a laugh at your impatience.

“Terrible liar,” he murmurs, catching your mouth with his as he works a rhythm with two fingers, slow and deep. You gasp, legs falling open, toes curling. The spider plant dips a leaf into your hair as you tilt your head back, and he grins, eyes crinkling at the edges, delighted at how easy you make it for him.

You reach for his belt, and he lets you. You unfasten it, then the button of his jeans, then pull down the zipper. He kicks free one leg, never breaking rhythm with his fingers on you, and the heat of his body soaks into your bare inner thighs.

You barely get his cock out before he’s sliding into you, one slow, ruthless thrust. His cutting blue eyes hold yours, the way they always do, as if daring you to squirrel your attention away, but you can’t—never would, not when he’s inside you, coaxing you open, making your world collapse to the moment of his hips fitted to your own.

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

You never know when he’ll invade your sleep, but it’s always a full-color dream. Sometimes it’s a re-run, complete with the same ruined velvet voice and the same impossible heat in your gut. Sometimes it’s a reroute, Ari appearing in some new location, night-lit, gently predatory, always a little too large for the room or the city or the continent.

Tonight, he’s in your apartment, but it’s not your apartment, not really—this version is neater, with the floor swept clean and the walls hung with art you can’t afford and every lamp casting a warm, forgiving light. He’s in your kitchen, in a tailored dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, corded arms and golden skin on tempting display, holding your cheap kettle by the handle while he fills it with water at the tap.

He senses you watching from the threshold and turns, water still running, a sly tilt of head as if he’s been expecting you. He gestures with the kettle, wants to know if you’d like tea—or, more likely, wants you to come closer, to watch you cross the room and feel you inside a shared space. So, naturally, you draw closer, socked feet silent on the glossy hardwood.

He looks delighted at your obedience, like a cat pleased that you’ve stepped into its trap exactly as planned. You find yourself at the kitchen island, the cool marble pressing the bare skin of your thighs through your sleep shorts, arms crossed to hide the way your T-shirt doesn’t quite contain your shape.

Ari shuts off the faucet. The rush of water gives way to the hush-hum of the refrigerator, and Ari leans a hip against the counter, considering you. He’s not smirking—he’s not that obvious—but the curve of his mouth vibrates with the promise of one.

“Insomniac?” he asks. The word lands a little too loudly in the hush, but his eyes—always too knowing—soften, let the tease round off at the edges.

“You invade my sleep,” you say, because at least in this version you can afford honesty.

He tips his chin in acknowledgment, hair falling across his foreheaf. “I’d like to think I do it with style.”

You don’t answer for a second, thrown by how different he looks in the soft light, how much you want to touch—not just his arm, but the hollow over his collarbone, the side of his throat, the soft place under his jaw. In this dream, you know you could.

You push onto your toes and reach for the cupboard overhead, stretching so your T-shirt rises high enough to earn a flicker of appreciation. Ari’s gaze skims your bare hip and lingers, warm as a hand.

“I always like the blue mug,” you say, because it’s the one you bought for yourself the first week you moved in, and you want him to know these things about you, even if it’s only a dream version of him. He takes the mug from your hand and sets it down on the counter while the water heats in the kettle, as if this is how things have always been, like shirtsleeves and tea and midnight conversations are your natural state.

“Tell me about your day,” he says. And its another tight pull of yearning for this man you’re still stuck on from your vacation almost a year ago.

You tell him how you woke up with a headache and a sense of being behind on absolutely everything, how you lost half your lunch break to a crisis that wasn’t your fault, how your boss called you “kiddo” even though you’re older than him, how you were too tired to do dishes and let your phone die at 6pm because you couldn’t stand another notification about the world ending or an email demanding a response you don’t have.

He leans in, the full focus of him bent toward you, and the height difference feels absurd when he bends his head like that, as if he’s ducking under a too-low doorway just to hear you better. His hum, when it comes, is a vibration that seems to travel through the countertop and up your arms.

You swallow, nerves tightening in your chest, but Ari only gets closer. He noses against your cheek. The warmth of his skin grazes yours, making you jump, and he grins, pleased with himself for derailing your train of thought.

“Keep talking, sweet girl. I’m listening,” he murmurs, the words pitched low and close enough to stir the hairs at the back of your neck. You try, you really do, to recollect what you were saying, but the rhythm of his breath near your cheek batters the memory out of your head.

It’s just sensation now: the ghost-pressure of his nose, the bulk of him shadowing your left side, the near-touch at your elbow where his fingers rest on the countertop, drawing slow circles on the marble the way you know he would against your skin.

You clear your throat. “Right. I—um. I had dinner on the fire escape because I couldn’t deal with the heat in here.” You gesture vaguely at the kitchen. “It was too stuffy. I wanted air.”

“And did it help?” He asks it softly, almost as if he’s running a diagnostic.

He traces a fingertip up your forearm, chasing the line of veins just under your skin. You shiver. “A little,” you admit. “It was just loud. The city’s never off, is it?”

“It sleeps when you need it to,” Ari shrugs, like that’s all the permission you’ll ever require. He’s leaning in so close now that you remember, viscerally, how his lips feel on your cheek.

You tilt your head, offer up the rest of your throat like an invitation, but it’s the act that finally breaks the spell, and the room shifts. You jerk and draw breath, the real burn of oxygen stinging your throat, and the apartment is a different temperature and dimension: too cold, too bright. You blink at the true darkness, the faint LED glow of your alarm clock, the churn of your own heartbeat. The mug is gone, his hand is gone, Ari is gone.

It’s such a fucking cliché, you think, lying there in the dark with the ghost of Ari’s aftershave haunting your memory. You let out a sound that’s half-groan, half-laugh, and roll to your side, fists bunched in the sheets, and press your face into the pillow as if you might suffocate the ache in your chest through sheer force of fabric.

It doesn’t work.

There’s a stubborn ache in your chest, a buzzy little shame at how you keep conjuring him: not even as a hot fantasy boyfriend, but as the guy who makes you tea and asks about your day and listens, or at least pretends to. You don’t know what’s sadder—that the sex dreams are gone, or that now you’re dreaming about someone just being nice to you.

You’re glad you never got his number.

You’re not sure what you’d even say to him now, if you had the means.

In the first weeks back from vacation, you told yourself the high from your unexpected fling would fade. And it did.

Really it did.

None of this is about Ari.

It’s just loneliness, you reason, or some synaptic echo of the way someone else’s presence made you feel over those few days like a different version of yourself—no less true than this version, just different.

You don’t lead an unhappy life. You really don’t. It’s not the two-point-five kids, husband, and white picket fence thing, but it’s filled with so many other elements that you pursued for you.

But some nights like this…

You sigh and ultimately fall back asleep, though you’re not sure how long it takes before you actually drift off.

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“What kind of pickles come on the burger?” Bucky looked up at the waiter.

“Standard? Dill.”

“No pickles, then,” Bucky stated. “I’m allergic to dill.”

“Oh,” Kevin responded, “I’ll be sure to tell the kitchen.”

You fixed Bucky with a look.

“What?” Bucky asked once Kevin left.

“You’re not allergic to anything, super soldier.”

Bucky’s expression didn’t change, but his ears turned pink. “If I say I’m allergic, they actually leave it off.”

You raised one eyebrow.

“I just… I hate them. Unless I’m particular, they throw them on anyway, and then the whole burger’s contaminated with dill pickle flavor.”

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You could not sleep, not truly, not anymore.

At least it felt that way. You could not remember what it was like to have a truly restful night of sleep now that you were so swollen with child.

Curtis shifted behind you, the weight of him a presence you were still not quite acclimated to, even after all these months. His arm groped around your middle, not gentle, but not cruel either—the grasping, possessive way he always had of reminding you that your body was his, that you had been claimed and would never, ever be unclaimed.

“Settle,” he rumbled, voice thick with sleep and something else—something that tinged the word with an implication, a warning, a plea. His hand splayed over your stomach, thumb tracing the tautest curve of your belly. You could feel the talon at the tip of his thumb, filed to more bluntness now for your comfort, but never quite harmless.

“I can’t,” you hissed, heat rushing up your neck. “It’s not comfortable, Curtis. I feel the stiffness in my hips, in my spine. I feel too tight, too—”

He rolled you to your back, so you faced him and the flicker of his phosphorescent blue eyes. He looked at you with rapt attention, like he was examining a rare specimen, one whose suffering was evidence of profound, necessary transformation. You hated him for it, and wanted to weep with relief that he might touch you, change you, ease the ache.

“Your body was made for this.” His hand cupped your jaw, then trailed down your neck, the pressure just shy of discomfort. “Do you remember the first night I claimed you?”

You did.

You remembered every moment: the sting of his teeth, the shocking stretch, the coolness of his skin, the relentless, remorseless fullness of him inside you. You remembered the moment shame and terror lost its edge and pleasure consumed the rest.

His hand moved to your chest, fingers splaying over the heavy curve of your breast. The child was not the only thing that had grown inside you; the rest of you had blossomed too, flesh thick and ripe, veins congesting with new blood. Every sense was heightened; your skin felt alive, every nerve exposed and raw, hungry for relief. The ache in your hips and spine was nothing compared to the ache between your thighs.

His hand squeezed, and you couldn’t help but arch into it, greedy for the pressure.

“You ache,” he said. It was not a question. “Let me help.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but already his hand was sliding, possessive, down your torso, across the vast swell of your belly. His touch was electrifying, not because it was gentle—he was never gentle—but because it was so exact, so insistent, as if he could knead away every complaint inside you, every complaint and every protest, until there was nothing left but the wanting. It seemed your body was always already in anticipation, every cell addicted to the inevitability of what he would do next.

“Curtis,” you tried, but the word came out as a sigh, as permission.

His tail was already curling under your knee, prying your legs apart with the unhurried strength of a tree root. He lowered his face to your neck and breathed in, the exhale chilling, the inhale so deep it felt like he was drawing the breath from your lungs. His hand was at your thigh now, squeezing the flesh, kneading it as if evaluating the meat on a haunch. He’d told you, more than once, that you’d filled out beautifully, that the lake itself approved of what you’d become.

You squirmed away from his cool heat, the pressure, but he only pressed his palm up to your pussy, and you yelped, not out of fear, but at the obscene, greedy pleasure of it. He inhaled again, and you realized that he was savoring the rising, salt-sweet scent of your arousal.

“You’re restless,” he said, tongue flicking in the hollow behind your jaw. “Let’s cure it.”

You thrashed, but the movement only succeeded in pressing you against his cock, which was already hard and waiting, resting like a threat against your thigh. His thumb found your clit, pressing down until you bucked, the pulse so fierce it brought tears to your eyes. He held you there, his mouth at your throat, tongue darting out—licking, flicking, biting. You could not have moved if you’d wanted to; every part of you was locked between the hardness of his body and the suffocating need in your own.

He took his time, always. He was deliberate; he seemed to relish the slow climb, the way every touch made you shudder, made your skin pebble, made your cunt throb with a greedy, insistent rhythm. His mouth found your nipple and sucked, pulling at it until you moaned, the sensation radiating out from your chest in a dizzying spiral. He bit down, and you couldn’t help it—you reached up and tangled your fingers in his hair, yanked him closer so the pain and the pleasure crashed together at the point of his teeth. His hand scrabbled for leverage on your hip, fingers digging deep as he sucked, scraped, and finally groaned into your chest, the sound wet and low, just this side of feral.

He lifted his head, mouth shiny with spit. “You need this,” he said, his voice ruined and ragged. “You need to be fucked. You need to be relentlessly filled with my seed, flushed with it so thoroughly it stitches your bones together around the ache. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,” you choked out, clutching at his shoulders. They were slick with the faintest sheen of lake water, always, always, as if he carried the essence of his world with him, whether he was in or out of the water. Your whole body was trembling, aching, desperate for him.

He pressed the tip of his nose into your cheek, dragging it slowly along until it slid down the side of your neck, his breathing steady, his lips curled against your racing pulse. “You’re changing,” he murmured, and his hand stilled on your belly, spreading his fingers wide as if to encompass the entirety of you. “Do you feel it, little one?”

You whimpered and nodded, because it was impossible to ignore. You felt it wakeful, and you felt it always. Your body was not just growing, it was being remade. The softness of your skin had thickened to something more water-resistant, but only just. At night, you dreamed of gills blossoming open along your ribs, of your hands webbing at the base of each finger. Your eyes now reflected the moonlight with the same shimmer as his.

His hand cradled the base of your skull, claws gentle for the moment, a cage of tenderness you did not want but could not help but need. “It isn’t just the child,” he breathed, as if reciting a benediction. “It’s what happens when one like me mates with one like you. The biology is… transformative.” There was a hint of awe in his voice. “Every time I fill you, your body takes more of me, and less of your old life remains.”

He was fascinated by the heat of you. He had told you, after finally bringing you to his curious lair, that your human body ran so warm inside, and that your cunt felt like a living furnace, a molten trap that threatened to melt and consume him every time he entered you. He said it in the same way he said everything—half-worship, half-mockery, always with the edge of a threat—but you could tell he meant it. The lake was cold and deep, and he was made to thrive in it—the fire of your body was an impossible addiction.

Curtis pressed your legs apart even wider, nestling between your thighs as though he belonged nowhere else. His skin, always cooler than yours, felt almost feverishly good when it touched you. He braced himself on either side of your hips, and then, with unhurried care, pressed the head of his cock to your entrance. He was always so eager for the first breach, he always relished the shock and resistance, that first gasp, that split-second where you didn’t know if you could take him. Now, your body admitted him gladly, almost hungrily, and you felt yourself yield to the pointed insistent pressure, stretch around his girth, suck at him once he passed the initial resistance. The catching pain blended instantly with the pleasure, as familiar now as his voice, as expected as the tides. He groaned when he breached you, grinned so wide it seemed all teeth, and set a brutal, perfect pace at once—the slow, deep strokes that made you claw at the sheets, then faster, the piston rhythm that made it impossible not to buck up and meet him.

“You were born to take this,” he crooned, as he loomed over you, cock pounding out every remnant of sleep and doubt. “To crave it. I could keep you filled for a thousand seasons and you’d still want more.”

His hips never stilled, and his tail snaked behind, curling serpent-like around your ankle, claiming even more of you for himself. Your fingers clawed for purchase on his back, the scales there a cool counterpoint to the fevered pulse of your own skin. You felt yourself coming undone, senses overrun, the pressure building and building, rolling, deep pressure of his cock splitting you open again and again, and, oh, how you wanted more.

You had once thought that his rutting would get less urgent, less insistent over time, but if anything, Curtis fucked you harder every month, every week. He seemed to want to breed you anew every time, as if there was always a possibility you could be more his, more changed, more claimed. He would say things in your ear—“I can feel you opening for me,” “You’re so much tighter for me,” “No one else will ever fuck you this cunt that belongs to me,” “Do you like how I fill you, little one?”—and you did, you did, and you told him so, the words turning to gasps, to high-pitched whines as the pleasure outpaced any language you could give it. The world shrank to the bed, the pounding throb of his cock, the cold pressure of his scales, the way the air itself seemed to hum with the force of his need.

Curtis’s eyes gleamed in the semidark, and he gripped your face in both hands, thumbs pressing to your jaw, holding you steady so he could watch the pleasure breaking across your face with every stroke. “I love how you look when I fuck you,” he growled, hips never slowing. “You try to be strong, but you shatter every time. No one will ever see you like this but me.”

Dawn was hours off, and you had no expectation he would unhand you before then, even if by some miracle you managed to sleep. His stamina was naturally supernatural, and his hunger only that.

You came twice before you even realized it, the first at the seizing stretch, the second at the rolling, unyielding pressure of him grinding your clit with every pass. Curtis liked to feel the way your thighs trembled, the way your cunt clamped around him, the way you lost yourself in it. And you did, again and again, until the world burned white-hot and you were nothing but need and the squelch of your bodies meeting, hypersensitive to every flicker of sensation.

You didn’t notice at first what his tail was doing, too lost in the rhythm, in the hunger, in the collision of your hips. But then the cool, slick tip pressed behind you, teasing at your other entrance, and the shock of it made you jerk and squeal. Curtis laughed, low and wicked, and didn’t pause for a moment.

“Shhh, shhh—” he crooned, voice full of wicked, hungry delight, “just let me in, let me in—” and the pressure increased, cold and smooth and unyielding. He’d done this before, once or twice, always slow, always greedy, and you’d never been able to resistthe insistent, pulsing claim of his tail. The cool pressure breached you, slow and inexorable, until you were trembling, almost sobbing, with the shock of fullness from both ends. He waited only long enough for your body to yield—never gentle, but vigilant to the ways you stiffened, the catch of breath before pain. There was satisfaction in him, an echoing hum that radiated through his hands into your skin: a predator’s pride when prey surrendered to the jaw.

And how you surrendered.

He set a rhythm, fucking you with both cock and tail, every thrust calculated to reach further, fill more, feel more. You could not move, you could only ride out the onslaught, the relentless hammer and thrum and pleasure so staggering it threatened to dissolve you. Your body sang with it, nerves scattering into the ether, your mind reduced to the tidal wave of sensation. Every time you sobbed your pleasure, Curtis redoubled his efforts, drilling into you so hard you thought you could feel your whole womb twisting up to make room for the stretch. The twin fullness overwhelmed your nerves, a bright white so severe you almost begged for mercy. He gave none.

There was a point at which you were certain you could not take more, and yet your body learned to take it, to want it, to clutch him with desperate, greedy spasms, to refuse to let him go. All your muscles burned with the effort, with the need to hold him in, to be filled so absolutely that nothing else existed. Your cunt spasmed and wept and gushed around his cock, and you hardly noticed when your own arms lost the strength to clutch at his scales and simply splayed above your head, limp and pleading.

By the time you felt the first ripples of his climax about to break, you were slick with sweat. Curtis’s whole body tensed, every scale and muscle gone rigid. The groan that erupted from him was guttural, ripped from something ancient and primal inside him. He drove himself as deep as possible, until your breath caught and your pelvis ached with how wildly, impossibly full you were, and then he came. It was an abrupt flood, a torrent, so much and so shockingly intense you could feel it overflow around him, seeping hot and icy down your thighs, leaking from every stretched, desperate inch of you. His tail, still working at your other hole, pulsed too, and you felt another rush fill you there—this flooding from his tail a first, your body trembling, boneless.

You lay pinned beneath him, shuddering and shocked, and when he finally stilled, there was nothing else in the night but breathless, trembling aftermath. For a long time, neither of you moved; the weight of him, the chill and the heat, the press of his tail still inside you, the throbbing ache that was already shifting into a deep, heavy peace.

Then, gradually, you noticed something else—the strange, spreading numbness that radiated from the place where his tail breached you. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it felt like a balm poured over the burning aftermath of climax, a slow, dreamy unraveling of every tension in your body. Your limbs went slack. The ache in your hips dissolved, your spine melted back into the mattress, and every muscle, every fraught, knotted nerve, at last let go. Your body, which had been a battleground of need and pain and pleasure, suddenly belonged to no one and nothing, and you drifted in a haze of perfect, suspended contentment.

“Curtis,” you managed, voice slurred and slow, “what are you—”

He stroked your hair, smoothed your brow, and quietly uttered a, “Shhh,” against your temple.

You didn’t have the strength to reply. The world glowed dimly at the edges but was mostly darkness, punctuated only by the chorus of your own heavy breaths and the lazy, overlapping whisper of the lake at the edge of the cool, cavernous lair of your new home. You lay there, half-buried under his body, feeling as if you might melt into the bed and the earth beneath it.

“I never told you about the venom of my tail. It’s not the kind you think—nothing lethal. But it is… potent.” His tail flexed, and you felt the last dregs of will drain from your limbs, leaving you hollowed out and weightless.

“It’s a sedative,” he explained, rolling you to your side and curling around you, spooning you with the possessive certainty of an apex predator. “It relaxes the bones and nerves, renders any prey motionless.”

He curled himself tighter around you, chest at your back, tail draped over your thigh, anchoring you in the nest of bedding and moss. In your boneless state, you could not escape the possessive drag of his palm over your skin—first up to the arch of your ribcage, then slowly, almost reverently, to the globe of your belly. He pressed his hand there as if you were both a relic and a promise, a rare treasure he’d stolen from another world, and you suppose you were.

In your mind, you felt the distant panic of a body that knew it should not be so helpless, that this creature had seized your survival reflex by the throat and throttled it—but after a few heartbeats, you realized you didn’t care. Curtis was pressed up behind you, his arms a wall of certainty wrapped all the way around your womb, your ribs, your shoulders. The ache was gone. The tightness was gone. You had been wrung out, emptied, and now you were nothing but full of him, inside and out.

He rumbled a sound from deep in his chest, almost a purr. The vibration traveled through your spine and straight to the place where pleasure had left you rawest. He nuzzled your hairline, then traced the shell of your ear with the tip of his rough tongue.

“Sleep,” he murmured, and you did. Or at least, you drifted on the edge of it, not quite inside sleep, not quite awake, suspended in the place where dreams bled into touch. Curtis’s hand moved over your skin the entire time, massaging the rounded slope of your belly, stroking your thigh, sometimes cupping your breast or tracing the curve of your jaw. The cocoon of his arms made you smaller, softer, less yourself and more a thing to be adored and kept.

You vaguely registered the way his cock, not even fully soft, pressed against the seam of your thighs, rutting at the seam like a persistent dream. You couldn’t have moved if you tried, but the feeling of him pushing between your thighs—wanting back in—was, impossibly, not unwelcome.

You wondered, or perhaps only imagined, if he could sense your dream-thoughts; the question seemed to amuse him. He gave you a moment of what passed for tenderness, nuzzling your hairline, rocking you back and forth in his arms, his tail stroking the flesh behind your knee. The sedative in your bloodstream left you blissed and limp, a ragdoll for his pleasure.

He was hard again, or nearly so, and the friction of his cock caught between your thighs was both a comfort and a question, as if your body had become the only vessel for his hunger.

Curtis’s hands never tired. You tried to imagine the monotony of your body, the sameness of your skin beneath his touch, but it seemed he could never get enough. He massaged your belly in long, slow arcs, sometimes lifting the weight of it as if to relieve you, sometimes holding so gentle and so firm that it seemed your flesh was his most prized, fragile artifact. His palm spanned the roundness, mapping every centimeter, sometimes dipping to the underside where your skin felt stretched to near-breaking, sometimes trailing up to the space above your navel. The gentle repetition of it—his touch, the rise and fall of his chest at your back—lulled you deeper into the velvet black of near-sleep. Even your mind became lazy, thoughts smudging at the edges until only sensation remained.

When he was satisfied that you’d gone slack, that your muscles had relinquished every old human defense, he shifted behind you. The cool press of his cock found the seam between your thighs—he never seemed to lose his interest for long, even in the slow moments. He nestled himself between your legs and, with a single, unhesitating thrust, pressed his half-hard length into your cunt. It was not rough, not this time; he moved with the patience of someone tending a sacred fire, easing in until your bodies were flush, and the faint ache became a deep, saturating fullness. Your mind drifted, but your body, trained and conditioned by months of relentless attention, responded in kind: you flexed around him, and a lazy, involuntary moan struggled up your throat. Curtis groaned, his chest pressed flat to your back, and rutted once, twice, before stilling, letting you sheath him while you both floated on the edge of sleep.

He didn’t use his hands now, not for pleasure, not directly. Instead, he gripped your hip for leverage, holding you open and tilted just so, and pulled your ass flush to his pelvis, driving his cock in to the hilt and then simply… staying there. You felt every twitch and pulse of his cock, every shift in the slow, animal rhythm of his breathing. He stayed hard inside you, using your body as a sheath, as a warm, wet cradle; you were perfectly pinned, utterly possessed, and you could do nothing but receive him.

Curtis exhaled into your hair, his voice a thick, slurred mumble. “You’ll keep me, won’t you? Keep me in you all night. That’s what I want, little one. I want to rut in you while you sleep. I want to use your heat, let my cock twitch and throb all night in that perfect cunt.” He rutted once, again, and you felt the faint flutter of his cum oozing out from the last round, slicking your insides. He seemed to relish the sensation, the lazy, languid pleasure of being buried and unmoving, until another aftershock rolled through him and made you gasp.

“I can feel your body holding me,” he said, the words warm and thick as sap with sincerity. “It’s all I want now. Just to be in you. You don’t even need to be awake for it, little one. Let me have you while you sleep. I’ll fuck you in your dreams if I have to, and you’ll wake up full of me.”

You tried to protest, but the sedative still dulled your tongue and every nerve, made your body heavy and dumb with pleasure. He rocked his hips, once, and the sensation rolled through you like a wave, sticky and slow and so deep it made your eyes water. The pressure of him inside you was a kind of lullaby, a constant, anchoring weight, and you found yourself drifting, drifting, until your thoughts were only the animal, helpless response of your body clutching around his cock, milking it with every slow, involuntary contraction.

“I’ll take care of you,” Curtis promised. “You’ll always feel good. I’ll see to every want you have, and every want you can’t even name.” The words were a net, a binding, and you believed him, not for comfort, but because he had never lied to you, he had no reason to.

The night drifted on. Curtis’s hand never left your belly; his cock never left your cunt. There were times, across the long hours, where you felt his fingers knead at your clit with lazy affection, almost absent-minded, and sometimes you came, even in this fugue—little contractions that made you clamp down and wring more pleasure from the fullness. He’d sigh when you did, and sometimes you came, even in this fugue—little contractions that made you clamp down and wring more pleasure from the fullness. He’d sigh when you did, the sound vibrating through your back, and sometimes he’d soothe you with a stroke of his hand, as if petting a restive animal. Occasionally, a tiny aftershock in him would pulse more of his seed into you, and it seemed like he was intent on keeping you topped up, leaking around his cock, overflowing with the certainty of his claim.

Sometimes he’d lick the sweat from the back of your neck, or whisper obscenities in your ear about how perfect you were, how he would keep you filled until it took, until you were more lake than girl, reminding you that you were changing, that every time you let him breed you, you became more his, less the fragile thing you had been. You believed it, because it was true: your body grew more resilient, your hunger more intense, your mind more focused on the simple, ceaseless need to be joined, to be filled.

This is what your life was now, and Curtis kept you like a pearl.

I make no apologies. I need to go shower.

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The ozone on his tongue was sharp and growing sharper by the second.

Something was wrong.

More than the battle chaos amidst the ruins of the Stark Expo grounds.

Bucky turned slowly, surveying his surroundings.

Then he saw them.

Each wore his face but not his history. One in a crisp, white uniform from some alternate century, a stillness to him like a wolf that knew every trick in the book and didn’t need to snarl. The other a grizzled wreck: gray at the temples, sleep deprivation tattooed under his eyes. Both sported the arm—his arm, that ugly, magnificent thing.

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