DARIA!

The road home runs bright beneath the moon, softened by the day’s rain until every step draws a quiet, sucking sound from the clay, and the man behind you keeps close enough that his breathing seems to belong to the dark itself.

He has been following since the bend past the bar, since the last of the music loosened into the night and the lamps were put out one by one, leaving only moths battering themselves stupid against the glass and a few drunken voices fading toward the fields.

He had laughed too loudly when you let him walk beside you at first, his hat pushed back from his damp forehead, one hand working at his suspenders as though he meant to remind you he was a man with money in his pocket and heat in his blood.

By the time you turned down the narrow lane toward your house, he had stopped trying to hold a proper conversation, and all that remained of him was whiskey, want, and the foolish confidence that made men so easy to lead where they ought not go.

You don't look back often enough to frighten him away. You let him hear the brush of your skirt over wet weeds and see the shape of your hand when you lift it to steady yourself along the fence.

Men like him enjoy believing a woman is almost afraid, just uncertain enough to be coaxed, just lonely enough to be convinced.

He had leaned close to you in the smoke-heavy warmth of the bar and told you your eyes could make a man forget his good sense, and you had smiled into your glass, listening while Remmick’s marks, hidden beneath the high collar of your dress, pulsed under the memory of his mouth.

The man had never noticed the bruises. He had never thought to wonder why you kept your throat covered in June, why you drank so little, why you watched the door whenever the wind shifted from the trees.

The house appears at the end of the lane with one lamp burning low behind the front curtains, yellow light pressed thin against the dark. The porch is painted haint blue along the ceiling, though no old charm has ever kept evil from crossing it, not since you opened the door months ago to a wounded stranger with mud on his boots and murder held tight behind his teeth.

Even now, you can see him in pieces when the house comes into view… Remmick braced against the jamb, one hand clamped to his side, rainwater running from his hair; Remmick watching your hands as you prepared to tend to him, hungry even while half-dead, as though he had found something more interesting than survival.

The memory is mixed with others: with his mouth at your wrist because he had taken it, not because you had offered; with his fingers locked tight around your arm while he drank just shy of too much; with his voice lowered at your ear after he recovered and stayed, still threatening, still amused, though the threats began to sound less like promises of death and more like excuses to keep you close. The first time you understood he had stopped speaking of killing you outright because he had begun thinking of keeping you.

Behind you, the man stumbles and catches himself on a fencepost, laughing under his breath as if the earth has flirted with him. “You live tucked away, don’t you?” he slurs, trying for charm and finding only hunger. “A woman ought not be out here by herself.”

You pause at the foot of the porch steps and turn enough for him to see your face in the moonlight.

The magnolia by the yard has dropped white petals into the mud, bruised brown along the edges, and the sweetness of them hangs heavy with the smell of wet grass and distant river rot. “I’m not by myself,” you say, soft as the night will allow.

He takes it as an invitation because he wants it to be one.

His smile spreads, loose and pleased, and he climbs the first step with his hand dragging along the rail, but the liquor has made his body less certain than his mind.

His boot slips on the damp board, and he goes down hard, shoulder striking the porch with a hollow thud that travels through the house.

He curses, then groans, his hat rolling toward the edge where rainwater still drips from the roof in slow, silver threads.

Then, His hand skids in the mud tracked across the boards, and you watch him from above with your key held between two fingers, letting the small brass teeth bite into your skin.

He's been waiting.

You know it as surely as you know the shape of your own bedroom in the dark, as surely as you know the places on your body his mouth will seek first when he comes in fed and shining.

He doesn't need to hunt the way he used to, not with you wandering into town in your good dress, not with your lashes lowered and your voice sweetened into something men mistake for permission.

At first, you had done it because he frightened you less when full. Then you had done it because he looked at you afterward with a devotion too ruinous to resist. Now you do it because the town is full of men who believe the world has been made for their appetite, and Remmick’s appetite, at least, loves you.

You step inside and close the door before the man can gather enough sense to call after you, and the bolt slides into place with a familiar scrape.

You remove your gloves one finger at a time and set them on the small table beneath the crucifix your mother left you, the one Remmick refuses to touch but enjoys mocking when his mood is bright.

Outside, the man’s voice rises in a confused complaint, thickened by drink and injured pride, and then the porch boards creak beneath another weight.

The first scream breaks open quick and ugly.

It tears across the yard, startling the cicadas into silence, and you stand in the hall with your hand resting against the wall while the sound climbs and twists.

The second scream comes muffled, as though a palm or a mouth has covered it, and then there's only the rough drag of boots against wood, the wet impact of a body pulled closer, the low animal sound Remmick makes when hunger takes him past manners.

A woman with any sense left would pray. A woman with less sin in her blood might shut her eyes and tremble.

You walk to your bedroom instead, loosening the pins from your hair as the house settles around the violence on the porch.

Your room is close and warm, holding the day’s heat in its plaster walls.

The lamp flame leans whenever the wind finds a crack, gilding the washstand, the iron bed, the quilt folded at the foot where Remmick had slept through noon with one arm hooked possessively over your waist.

His presence lingers even when he's outside. In the faint mineral chill along the sheets; in the dark coat thrown over the chair; in the little nick beneath your collarbone where he lost control two nights ago and spent an hour afterward kissing the wound as though apology could be given with a bloody mouth.

You remove your dress slowly, careful with the buttons though your fingers shake, and leave it over the back of the chair before drawing on your nightgown.

The cotton is thin from washing, white enough to make a sacrifice of itself, with lace at the throat that never stays innocent long.

By the time the porch falls quiet, your hair is loose.

You sit at the edge of the bed and listen to the slow dripping outside. Some of it is rainwater. Some of it is not.

Your heart beats in your throat, not with fear alone, though fear is still there, old and faithful, tucked beneath the ribs where he first planted it.

It was fear that that kept you still when he caught your wrist in that cold, merciless grip and drank until the room tilted soft at the edges. It was fear that made you listen when he laughed against your skin, blood-wet and cruel, telling you not to faint because he had not decided whether you were useful enough to spare.

Somewhere along the way, with his fingers bruising your arm and his breath shuddering like a dying man’s against your pulse, fear became something more shameful than fear alone.

The shame of that should have cured you. It never did.

The knock comes soft enough to be mistaken for courtesy, and you rise and cross the hall, bare feet whispering over the boards.

Remmick doesn't need the invitation anymore, not in any clean sense, since you gave it too many nights ago with trembling lips and never found the courage to take it back, but he knocks when he has fed because he likes the ritual of your hand opening the door. He likes being received. He likes the moment your eyes find his mouth and your body betrays you before your conscience can dress itself.

When you pull the door open, he stands beneath the porch roof with blood slicking his lips, his chin, the pale line of his throat where his shirt hangs open. It's soaked into his collar and speckled one cheek, and a dark strand of hair clings to his forehead.

Behind him, the man lies half in shadow near the steps, ruined into silence, one hand still curled as though grasping after the life that has already left him.

Remmick’s eyes are brighter than the lamp behind you, red-black and drowning deep, and the smile he gives you is not gentle even though his voice is.

“There’s my girl,” he murmurs, stepping through before the door has opened fully, and his arms come around you with such sudden hunger that your back strikes the wall behind you and the breath leaves your chest.

Cold blood smears across the front of your nightgown as he presses himself to you.

His face goes to your neck at once, breathing you in with a broken sound that would be pitiful if it came from anything less dangerous. His mouth drags along your skin, wet and copper-sweet, leaving red across your throat and jaw.

You lift your hands into his hair because there is nowhere else for them to go, and because you want him close enough to stain you past saving.

He kisses you as though he means to crawl inside your mouth and sleep there until dawn.

The taste of him floods you, blood and whiskey stolen from the dead man, grave-cold tongue sliding over yours, fangs catching with enough care to make the danger worse.

He's never so affectionate as he is after feeding, when the stolen life moves through him and leaves him dazed with it, drunk on pulse and heat and the knowledge that you brought it to him.

His hands close around your waist, then slide lower, gripping through the cotton, hauling you against the hard line of him until your thighs part around one of his.

“You made him follow sweet as a lamb,” he says against your mouth, the words damp and rough, broken by another kiss before they can become a sermon. “Had him lookin' at you like he’d found supper, and all the while you were bringin' him home to me.”

You make a sound that might have been his name if his mouth had not taken it from you.

He licks over your lower lip, where his fang has grazed, and the smallest sting blooms there.

The first bead of your blood draws him still. His fingers flex hard into your hips, and his face changes with a hunger that is no longer for the body outside.

He bends to your lip with a reverence that's almost worse than violence, sucking the tiny wound until your knees loosen and your hands tighten in his hair.

The first time he tasted you, he had been shaking with fever on your kitchen floor, too weak to rise and too viscious to beg.

You had reached toward him with the basin, thinking to wash the blood from his side, and he had moved faster than any wounded thing ought to move, catching your wrist and dragging it to his mouth before you could do more than gasp. He latched onto you with a groan so intimate and hateful it haunted your sleep for weeks, drinking while his eyes stayed fixed on yours, daring you to cry out when no one was near enough to save you.

He had threatened you afterward with your blood still on his teeth, promising he would kill you once his strength returned if you bored him, if you ran, if you looked at him too long with pity in your face.

Yet he had not let you fall when your knees weakened. He had pulled you down beside him with a rough hand at your waist, mouth hovering near the bite he had made, and for one strange, awful second he had pressed his lips there as though admiring his own cruelty.

Even then, monstrous and half-mad, he had kissed what he hurt, not in apology, but because it belonged to him for the moment.

Now he pulls back from your lip with a shudder and looks at you as if the whole ruined night has been an offering laid at his feet. “Pretty wicked thing,” he whispers, his thumb moving over your blood-slick mouth. “The town would put you in the ground beside me if they knew how well you feed me.”

“They won’t know,” you answer, and the certainty in your voice pleases him enough that his eyes narrow with it.

“No,” he agrees, kissing your cheek, then the corner of your mouth, then the pulse fluttering under the blood he left at your throat. “They’ll look at you tomorrow and see lace, sweetness, maybe a tired smile if you’re careless. They won’t see me between your legs.”

The words go through you hot and low.

He feels the way you soften against him, the way your breath catches, and his smile presses into your skin.

His hand gathers the hem of your nightgown and drags it up over your thigh. The air touches you first, then his fingers, cold and sure as they slide between your legs and find the damp heat there.

He groans before you do. His forehead drops against yours, and for a moment both of you are caught in the narrow space between the blood outside and the bed waiting down the hall.

“All this before I’ve even laid you down,” he says, voice roughened by possession. “You waited for me wet.”

You should deny him the satisfaction, but your body has no loyalty to pride. You rock against his fingers, breath breaking when he strokes through the slickness and circles the aching place above your entrance with a slow cruelty that makes your hips chase him.

He kisses you through it, messy and open, drool slicking your chin as the pressure builds. Blood spreads from his mouth to yours until the kiss turns red.

When his fingers push inside you, two at once and deep enough to make your shoulders press back against the wall, he swallows the sound you make and gives it back with a groan of his own.

The hallway is too narrow for what he wants. He lifts you before you can fully find your balance, one arm under your thigh, the other at your back, carrying you toward the bedroom while his mouth stays fixed to your neck.

Your nightgown rides high around your hips, and your bare legs hook around him by instinct. The candle in the bedroom throws your shadows long across the wall when he pushes through the door, his and yours joined into one dark, shifting shape.

He lays you on the bed with more care than his hunger promises, his hand cradles the back of your head as you meet the pillow.

His thumb brushes your cheek, smearing blood there like rouge, and then he climbs over you half-dressed, shirt open, trousers still fastened, suspenders hanging loose from his shoulders.

You reach for him immediately, pulling at cloth and buttons, needing the cold press of his body beneath your hands. The blood on his shirt darkens your nightgown where his chest meets yours, and the lace at your throat turns red under his chin.

He mouths down your neck, lingering over old marks and making new ones beside them. He doesn't break your skin at first. He kisses, sucks, bites just shy of blood, mapping his claim in bruises that will deepen by morning.

His obsession has always worn itself prettiest on your body. He likes proof. He likes the places where you cannot wash him away.

When he reaches your breasts, he pulls the neckline of your gown down with both hands and bares you to the lamplight, his gaze turning heavy before his mouth follows.

The wet heat of his tongue closes over one nipple, and your back arches from the bed. He sucks hard, teeth grazing the tender skin, while his hand kneads the other breast with possessive impatience. Blood from his lips streaks across you in dark half-moons.

He changes sides, then changes again, unable to settle, drunk on every inch he can reach. His spit wets your skin and the cotton bunched below your breasts, and when you whimper, he lifts his eyes to you from beneath his lashes with such open hunger that you feel your cunt clench around nothing.

“You like me filthy,” he says against your breast, and there is no question in it. “You like me cominm in with blood on my face, crawlinm over you before the body’s gone cold.”

Your fingers twist in his hair. “I like you full,” you whisper, and the confession makes his mouth open wider against your skin.

He bites then, not deep enough to endanger, only enough to bring a small red bloom to the surface above your breast. The pain flashes bright, then melts into pleasure when he laps at it with a low, shaking moan. He drinks from that shallow mark as if it is more precious than the slaughter on the porch, as if your smallest wound matters more than another man’s death.

His hand slips beneath your nightgown again, fingers spreading you open, rubbing slow circles that make your thighs tremble against his sides.

By the time you get his trousers open, his composure is nearly gone.

He hisses when your hand wraps around him, thick and hard and slick at the head, and his hips press forward helplessly into your palm.

You stroke him once, twice, spreading the wetness with your thumb, and his mouth falls open against your chest.

For a creature who has lived longer than any man ought, he can still look undone by the simple fact of your hand on him.

His patience breaks when you tighten your grip and lift your hips beneath him.

He catches your wrist, pins it briefly beside your head, then kisses your palm as though apologizing for the force of it while his other hand drags your drawers down your thighs.

One seam catches, and the fabric tears with a soft, final sound that makes your breath hitch.

He smiles into your mouth when you scold him under your breath, but the smile is gone as soon as he settles between your legs and feels how slick you are against him.

“There now,” he murmurs, sliding the head of his cock through your wetness with slow, obscene pressure. “My sweet accomplice. My little saint with blood under her nails.”

You look up at him through the candlelight, at the streaks of red drying along his throat, at the softness hidden beneath the fever of his eyes, at the monster you once feared would be your death and now welcome into your bed with a dead man cooling outside the door.

“Remmick,” you say, his name leaving you as a plea and a command together.

He pushes inside you with a measured restraint that makes both of you suffer.

The stretch is deep, hot, familiar, and still it steals the air from your lungs as he fills you inch by inch.

His forehead lowers to yours; his breath, unnecessary and shaken, fans across your mouth. When he is fully seated, hips pressed tight to yours, he holds there and trembles, his fingers curling into the quilt beside your head while your body pulses around him.

Blood cools between your breasts. His cock throbs inside you. The house creaks in the damp heat. Somewhere beyond the open bedroom door, water or blood taps the porch in patient drops.

You lift your hands to his face and draw him down, kissing him with your own blood still on his tongue, and that is what unfastens the last of him.

His first thrust is slow enough to feel deliberate, dragging out until your body tries to hold him, then pressing back in with a wet, heavy roll that makes your fingers clutch at his shoulders. And by the third, he drives you into the mattress, his hips snapping into yours while the bed begins to knock against the wall.

His mouth slides from yours to your jaw and back again, smearing blood and spit over your skin, his fangs grazing whenever his control thins.

Your nightgown stays twisted around your waist, your breasts bare, your thighs spread wide around his half-clothed body.

His open shirt brushes your nipples with every thrust, the damp fabric dragging until the sensation turns sharp enough to make you cry out.

He hears it and shifts his weight, catching one nipple in his mouth while he fucks you harder, tongue circling, teeth teasing, the cold heat of him everywhere at once. His hand grips your thigh and pushes it higher against your ribs, opening you deeper for him, and the change makes you sob into the crook of his neck.

“C'mon,” he whispers, though the words shake with his own pleasure. “Let me have you. Let me feel what you saved for me.”

You're too full of him to answer properly. You give him his name again, broken softer this time, and he rewards it by grinding deep, his pelvis pressing hard against your clit until pleasure sparks through you in a bright, spreading ache. He does it again, learning the angle, cruel with how well he knows you.

Every thrust comes wet and filthy, his cock dragging through your slick cunt, his mouth working bruises into your throat, his fingers leaving marks along your thigh. The blood on him has become blood on you, red across white cotton, red in the dip of your collarbone, red at the corner of your mouth where he keeps kissing you open.

He lifts his head enough to watch you. He looks at you as though he can see the first night, the trembling basin in your hands. He looks at you as though he knows every road that led you here and loves the ruin of each one. “You were meant for this,” he says, voice low and fevered, his hips never slowing. “Meant to bring them home and lie beneath me after, sweet with guilt and wanting.”

The shame of it burns, but not enough to cool you.

Your body tightens around him, drawing a ragged groan from his throat.

He laughs once, breathless and dark, then kisses you hard before reaching between you to rub your clit with two slick fingers.

The pressure is exact, the rhythm merciless, and your pleasure gathers too quickly for dignity.

You cling to him while the room blurs at the edges, while his cock fills you and his hand works you open to the breaking point.

Your orgasm rolls through you in a long, shaking wave that leaves you gasping against his mouth

He thrusts through it, groaning when your cunt clenches around him, his forehead pressed to yours, his lips brushing yours between broken words that fall into you one by one, damp and reverent, until you cannot tell whether he is praising you for coming or for sinning so beautifully with him.

You feel the way his rhythm falters in the sudden desperation of his kisses, his hand slipping beneath your back and holding you so tightly there will be bruises shaped like his fingers by morning.

He buries his face against your neck, right over the pulse he could take if he wanted, and his fangs press there without breaking skin.

“Tell me,” he says, the demand ragged enough to sound almost wounded.

The answer is already in the way your legs lock around his hips.

He makes a sound that's closer to a growl than a moan, and his body drives into yours with a final, shuddering force.

His hips press flush as he spills deep, cock pulsing inside you while his mouth opens over your throat. He holds there with his fangs against your skin, trembling violently, restraint and hunger braided so tightly that his whole body seems to suffer for it.

The heat of him fills you in slow, messy throbs, and when he rocks shallowly through the last of it, his spend begins to leak around him, slicking your thighs, making the place where you are joined obscene beneath the lamplight.

He stays inside you after, breathing though he has no need, his body heavy and cold over yours while the blood on your skin dries tacky between you.

Your nightgown is ruined beyond saving, bunched and stained, lace torn where his fingers pulled too hard. His shirt hangs open, marked with the dead and with you. The bed smells of sex, iron, candle smoke, and the damp rot of a southern night pressing itself against the windows.

After a long while, Remmick lifts his head. His eyes have cleared some. He looks down at your mouth, your throat, your bare chest streaked with his feeding, and his expression softens into something that would make you weep if you had not already given him so much of yourself.

He kisses your lips, then the bitten place above your breast, then lower, as if blessing every mark he made.

“You’ll have to help me with the porch,” you whisper, your voice hoarse from pleasure and the weight of the night.

His mouth curves against your skin. “I always do.”

There's affection in it, terrible and domestic.

By dawn, the boards will be scrubbed with lye until no stain remains for the neighbors to puzzle over. The man’s hat will vanish into the creek. His name, whatever it was, will become a question asked in town for a week and then less often after, swallowed by heat, gossip, debt, and the ordinary cruelties of living.

You will wash your hair. Remmick will draw the curtains and hide from the sun. The two of you will lie tangled beneath clean sheets while flies gather somewhere far from the house.

For now, he slips a hand between your thighs and presses his fingers where his cum is leaking out of you, watching the mess with a devotion that makes your stomach tighten all over again.

He gathers some of it and pushes it back inside with slow, possessive care, his eyes lifting to yours as your lips part.

“My girl,” he says, almost softly.

The words should feel like a chain, and, perhaps, they are one. Yet when he kisses you again, you hold him there by the back of the neck and let the night close over the house, let the magnolia rot in the yard, let the porch wait a little longer for its washing.

Morning will come with its white heat and its lies soon enough, and when it does, you will wear a clean dress buttoned high at the throat, with Remmick’s bruises hidden beneath the collar and his sin still warm inside you.

© 2026 all rights reserved — flixpii.

6 June, 1944

On the day they went out to France the world did not shake with the might of men moving at arms, as your dreams had once convinced you. The countryside that day stirred and meandered into the light of the day like any other.  ‘Lady’ cat was sleeping in the morning sun, strewn across the wooden deckboards and smiling in her own way. You took heed of the bold red colours of the sky; still yet in its own way a quiet but fervent warning from the world as to what would be waged across her surface.

The day moved slowly into itself as you made your way packing your belongings for a brief trip to London, though only after finishing a book Paddy had suggested before they had gone as you sat on the stairs of the farmhouse with your feet touching the damp grass of the field below.  

This trip was the start of a long series of stays.  It was to start at a new print agency, and to, when tasked, provide assistance in collecting the newest correspondence on the front, nothing further advised. No more spying, no more shifting and seduction you had thought, pulling a discarded blouse from across the wickered-backed chair which sat by the window in the farmhouse’s bedroom.  Paddy had sat on the chair on occasion, pipe and poetry in hand as the late afternoons had slipped by till evenings and he was called gently to bed by a calm lilt and the promise of whiskey after sex.  

Your travel case soon stood ready for action by the door downstairs soon enough, yet your attaché case still sat open on the small window-side table as you prepared final clippings and notes to carry. Only one pocket in it remained untouched, this by your own ruling.  Within lay two small notes each from Eoin and Paddy, mundane in nature – just short ‘thank yous’ or ‘don’t forgets’ written in their own scribe. 

These, of course, spoke to their character without speech itself.  You adored each one, one with ink refined, neat and charming in its loops and twists across the page, the other bold from a strong hand forged by an even stronger personality.  You were to leave in the morning, one brief last night shared between just yourself and the dear Tabby which the men both adored (although Paddy denied it).  Of course, she was fine by her own for a brief time, no doubt nothing but elated at the prospect of catching field mice to her heart's content and causing mischief at the neighbours cottage.  

A walk to finish the day was common at the farmhouse when it had been the three of you, stretching your legs for once un-entwined of each other out into the countryside.  As a trio you’d pass brooks and into the small forested hollows not yet claimed by farms.  This time your legs journeyed by their lonesome, and had taken you down the beaten dirt road the farm sat alongside.  Your gaze followed the land to its very end where the churchyard stood surveying idly across the fading light of the country below.

Strolling past the wooded graves, you took note of moss and lichen lurching over their inscriptions, eager to take those buried to further anonymity.  It wouldn’t be such a shame all this you wondered. A quiet, soft death.  

If it were to come to your two men though…, would they rest in a sunny clearing? With daisies rising above their faces, ankles?  As their last thoughts had shared in pleasantry the three of your faces?  It was for certain it would be another, stark kind of death.  One rather filled with fire, smoke, and the screaming twisted faces of men dying around them, sinking into mud and rot of the trenches or township battlefields. 

One of a blood-battle fought not for ‘peace, liberty and all’, but the veracious appetites of men holding the power of the world in small uptight fists lacklustre in both love and kindness.  Your own hand, now clenched into a fist, however, held a small quiet power, one indeed of love, one of closeness, and the neverending dance between two men’s devotion for another and each other, despite your own entanglement between them and forged from within them.

London came and went, and no letters were to come either; not for several months that was.  

Between your newest print houses pigeon-hole or the farmhouses’ lonely letterbox the near constant stream of mail in the past dried right up.  You danced between the farmhouse’s quiet homeliness and the weakened yet still bustling city in England.  You didn’t mind the city really, yet you still kept the farmhouse key in your breast-pocket and reminisced of its creaking floorboards and crackling hearth whilst at the small bed-sit in Pimlico which you had been provided with.  It was above a quaint flowershop, and you could picture Eoin procuring you bouquets with a small smile on his face and Paddy arguing prices in a loud bark at his side.

Keeping any mention of what the SAS were up to, their casualties, losses and positioning was a thorough aim of yours despite the overflow of work reporting on the state of London.  The new V-1 bombs were a terror from the sky, the flying bomb they called it, and they came from dust till dawn.  London suffered, and London worked, and London fought.  Whilst back in Newtownards the time passed like any other, and you found yourself picturing what Lady the cat could be up to in the cold mornings or late evenings where she would creep her way into the farmhouse through a cracked window to rest on the empty bed. 

You thought of where on the front might Paddy and Eoin be now, perhaps huddling for warmth in some blown-out village with snow falling down their coats and aching bodies fighting to push forwards. At nights where your thighs fell open lazily across the arm of the armchair in your bed-sit, and you stared into the softly glowing fire, the thoughts wandered alongside your hands to how your two  would be coping with it all in another manner.

Thoughts arose of the two men sneaking off to a place rarely quiet during war, to revel in each other for a break from it all.  Perhaps they would start a fire in the remains of a house, and Paddy would sink to his knees with a firm hand in his hair, willing him forward onto the eager man before him.   Maybe they’d forget about their days in each other and pose the question of ‘what if she was here to see you like this?’ quietly over and over to tease and test one another.

A particularly enamoured fellow home affairs reporter had slipped in conversation one evening at the French House in Soho.  He had become somewhat of a companion to you, Sid was his name.   Sid was a rather strangely handsome fellow you thought, the type of person who gets more alluring the more you look at them. 

Although he’d made it clear to you that people had found him quite the opposite in passing.  He was elegantly long in the face despite having a cockney prose stronger than a fishmonger to make up for it, like a pretty flower hiding a sharp barb at the centre.  You’d met in the busy halls of Reuters and been quite close ever since, he reminded you of Eoin in a way at times the way he kept you enraptured in conversations.  

Though his hair was lighter, less curly and completely unruly unlike Eoin’s, his height and leanness reminded you of Eoin despite the fact he was without a doubt taller and held a physique of someone seemingly distinctly underfed, running on wine, coffee and cigarettes rather than hardened in the desert.  Despite this, sometimes you brushed away the thought that you could quietly see yourself falling for him in another life. 

He was an odd fellow though, found often walking his shaggy lurcher dog aptly named ‘Baron’ along the Thames or through the heavily-hit streets of Whitechapel in the late hours of the night.  He’d stop wherever to scribble hurriedly in his correspondence journal at passing which he’d pull out of his roughly spun coat with its upturned collar facing the wind.  Sid had a near constant resting expression that he was about to respond to anything wryly, he kept out of trouble in the print houses by mainly writing rather than speaking, and a distinct scar on his lip always caught your eye as his mouth rested in a near permanent smirk when he held his tongue. 

You didn’t quite know how old he was, he still refused to tell you.  Most tended to think he was quite older than he must’ve been.  One time, he’d come into the tea room protesting that he had ‘gotten 40 the other day!’ from a young girl on the street.  Your guesses fluctuated depending on how well-kept or gaunt-looking he was each week you supposed.

Between arguing over the latest dispatches to Normandy the stormy-eyed man pulled his reading glasses off in a hurry, leaning forward away from his open document and almost toppling wine glass to pull you in, pupils adjusting rapidly to the change in vision as he met your surprised eyes.  ‘You’ve heard of the latest SAS moves, have you then?’ He asked, voice hushed as he pulled your own empty glass from your hand, topping it up with the red wine he had somehow smuggled from the barman earlier. The liquid poured smoothly into the glass, almost reaching the top as you tried to gather what you had heard,   ‘That’s certainly enough Sid, quite– yes thank you– I, I must say that no, no I have not,’ you admitted.

‘Well, steamin’ idiots–were, or have parachuted into the Vosges Mountains. If you’d ask me, I’d say that those areas are crawling with Jerry’s.’ He had gotten so close you could almost count the light freckles that sat in number across the pale skin of his strong nose and across his cheeks. Sid always invaded peoples space quite without himself or them realising, though it was always in a gentle manner to emphasise his own devout attentiveness. 

‘’Ave got a whisper that most of the bloody squads gone down, captured y’know.  Most likely off with their ‘eads if you’d ask me. No one’s surviving that.’

Sid tended to become more unintelligible as your nights together went on, Cockney rhyming slang thrown about as he waved his arms and threw various papers from reports at you, he’d often end up falling asleep in your armchair at your bed-sit, cigarette still hanging out of his mouth just as Paddy would do back at the farmhouse.  As you made your way out of the pub, Sid stumbling over himself beside you, the revelation that there was knowledge flowing about the SAS had rightly caught up to you. 

You had left it as wilful ignorance, ‘no news was good news’.  Sid’s briefcase went tumbling from his hand in an almighty thunk, landing at your feet as his cigarette almost slipped from his mouth and fell alongside it.  You took that moment to retest him, picking it up and pushing it against his blue collar shirt, pulling him in.  He looked down at you through widened eyes, face an eerie calm all of a sudden.

‘Sid, please tell me more about the SAS division, anything, please. Are you sure they’re in dire circumstances?’ you asked.

‘I had a butcher’s at the gen, I swear I did–’, he mumbled between a few hiccups and slurred complaints half muffled through the cigarette.

‘–but it’s all rabbit and pork he told me, this diamond geezer. Oh, ‘you can’t trust a word of it down Fleet way I say’ he said.’

He appeared to be forcing himself to keep blinking as he looked at you, he must’ve had nearly two bottles in him.  You pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and finished the drag for him.

In an attempt to smarten himself up, he knocked his hat to a ridiculous angle.  ‘That’s a Hampton Wick I told him, I did Miss, I know what them SAS boys are up-to.’ He tipped to one side, ‘Fuck it, I’m right Brahms aren’t I? Nearly fell off my plate of meat didn’t I.’  He laughed hysterically as he spun back towards you, eyebrows raised and the creases of his smile and eyes painting an absurd shadow across his face. 

You were interrupted when another man brushed you, no doubt a colleague as he shouted upon entering the pub; ‘Sid! What the bloody hell are you doing here?’, the other man stumbled pointing to the ground next to him before stepping over, ‘Well, you see I was over here, like this, but that didn't really work for me,’ he moved back to where he had been leaning against the brick wall, ‘so I thought I'd try over here, but I don’t think there's much future in this one either.’ He said plainly.

The man let out a noise of confused agreement before pushing through the door, the drunk man was now laughing quietly to himself, proud of his own absurdity. 

‘Sid, Sid, please, English.’ you begged, continuing your protest from earlier. 

‘I–er– am English!’ he slurred, ‘Yes, sadly!’ you nodded laughing before gathering yourself, pulling his rough hands into your own.  

‘Name, Sid, my dear, dear friend… what is the name?’ you pressed, lifting his clasped hands up and down with each word. Sid also took a moment before mustering himself, the drunken man perked up, ‘My name?! Well you’d know by now my name is Sidney Turner, at your very service.’ He put on a posh accent and attempted to bow, pulling his hands from yours and lurching over to one side against the brick wall of the pub.

‘No– Sid, no.’ you cried out, laughing at the unintended comic. ‘The codename, Sid, of the mission.’ He shook his head, letting out a series of ‘ooooh’s’ as he huffed searching his clouded mind.  Sid didn’t know about your ‘connection’ to the SAS, though you’d wanted to tell him as such, and maybe you would soon.  

A shoulder to cry on when the seemingly inevitable came wouldn’t be too harsh.

‘Loyton.’ Sid said suddenly, and quite soberly, cutting you from your thoughts.

‘Operation Loyton, Miss.’ 

October 30th, 1944

Loyton was disastrous.  Over 30 men captured, unheard from since.

Paddy was not one of the men to go, it was mostly new men he hadn’t even seen, a new division.  But, he had been sent home nonetheless earlier, injured in a skirmish in Operation Houndstooth, relegated to command from Fairford like a ‘proper “senior officer” must do’ before he would be returned to the fighting in the Low Countries. The news of Loyton crushed him like no other, and unlike the refusal of leave for his poor Da’s funeral he felt not rage but instead immense impenetrable sorrow.

Drowning these sorrows was the only way to quieten the screaming voice in his head that told him it was undoubtedly his fault.  He knew who was on the list of men to send to the Vosges, he had penned it himself.  So many unknown names headed by one name which he treasured like no other.  In that moment he had thought Eoin would of course handle it, as he led men so well in the past, he did not consider quite how anything could go so wrong. He was sure he had signed Eoin’s death sentence.  

Stirling had reprimanded him after assaulting several corporals in his usual manner. A few forced words to ‘clean up his act’ merely touched the sides of Paddy’s misery. The drink called and he had found himself thinking of Newtownards and the lonely farmhouse. He hadn’t known where you were, only that you would be making your own way of course, the smart head-forward thing you were. 

The key was left to you for safe-keeping, and Lady was to be looked after. He knew you were safe somewhere on the shores of England, that was the only solace. Soon enough he had seemingly drunk every pub in Essex dry, and a new placement to London called for further glasses to sink and streets to wander at night wondering what went wrong to lose Eoin.

You had been posted to Paris after it had been Liberated, only a month long affair but enough to miss London and the quiet evenings with your new found friends in Sid and Baron the dog.  Sometimes you cursed speaking French with all your might, though it obviously made you ‘useful’ to GHQ when called.  The boat ride over the channel and home was hellish, squalls stirred swells which lashed the side of the boat and you pulled your scarf closer to you in the cramped dimness of the hull, murmurs of other returning soldiers and personnel creating the only human respite in the vast metal containment.  

Taking the time you swept through the letters from Sid and your family, none still from Paddy and Eoin of recent note.  The most recent from your friend noted in his ridiculous use of rhyming slang once more, ‘moved Uncle Ned, dog and bone me once you get hammer and tack, i’ll give you the rat and mouse. Au revoir.’ he’d not wanted the address to be intercepted clearly, and you weren’t surprised considering his recent delvings into possible war crimes in Oradour-sur-Glane in June.

You smiled at the penned words, despite his unique prose you had to admit the rhymes worked quite well in deception.  Stepping off the boat during the last light of the day wasn’t the relief you had hoped, the chill sinking deep into you as the frozen wind whipped around you.  It took longer than usual for the train to meander into London from Dover.  Soon enough you had made your way down the streets of Charing Cross to a phonebox, willing for Sid to answer the other end even this late at night to provide his address and a nodding head to your stream of consciousness once you arrived, maybe a glass or two of that wine he had as well.  

Your own bed-sit could wait.

The lights and merriment of The Two Chairmen could be seen and heard not far from your perch in the phonebox, no doubt it was filled with returning soldiers willing for a night to forget what they had seen on the front.  Perhaps brimming with information of new efforts and scandals.  Sid soon answered the phone, his voice deep and gravelly with sleep despite its comfort to your ears.  ‘Don’t even think ‘ave to ask who this is now, do I?’ he quipped. You could hear the half-smile in his voice.  You traded a few friendly insults back and forth between yourselves as you attempted to get his address out of him.  He complained of your lateness and tried to push you towards visiting tomorrow when he could hold his head upright only to crumble at a few carefully placed ‘pleases’ from yourself.

‘55 Sans Walk, Clerkenwell–Yes! Yes, near where that bloody prison used to be, though that says nothing about my upstanding character, you here?’ he joked.  You laughed whole-heartedly down the phone as he corrected himself, ‘Near the market, let's just say that instead.’ you agreed.  Taking a few moments, just listening to your shallow breathing down the line before you blurted out. 

‘I missed you.’, hand gripping the handle of the black phone tightly in anticipation of his response. He let out a slow breath behind the phone, ‘Missed ya’ too.’ he followed, a certain frustration to his voice you hadn’t heard before.   

‘Right then, now get going, Baron’s woken up and she’s not happy to see me nabbing to you on the phone than in person.’ You agreed and gave your farewell,  ‘See you soon, love.’ he resigned.  You’d never gotten used to the average Tom, Dick and Harry on the street calling you that despite most of your life spent in the UK, and your heart panged slightly at the thought of your real and truthful ‘loves’, wherever they were.

A great clatter suddenly brought your attention from hanging up the phone on its hook towards the pub's lights.  Four men were tossing another out into the street, a pint glass still swinging from the man's hands.  Despite the danger, perhaps this was an opportunity to collect his frustrations of the war on your way, some fresh information to share once you got to Clerkenwell.  You swung the phonebox door open in a hurry, pace quickening to catch up with the lurching man, clack of your Oxfords echoing around the empty street and bag swinging haphazardly beside you.  The man was not much taller than yourself and his back faced away from you as he moved down the street, though his figure became increasingly familiar as you drew closer.  

‘Excuse me, Sir–’ you began, the man spun around in a burst of coordinated vigour, his fist raised in a sudden lunge. 

‘Get tae fuck–!’ he began before stopping dead in his tracks.  

Despite the dark blonde hair tousled over his face you could see that snarl on his face you had come to know and love. 

Paddy Mayne stared back at you, eyes afire in the dim streetlight.

You had flung yourself into his chest immediately, draping your arms around his neck as he outstretched his own in an attempt to avoid getting the remains of his pint and cigarette ash on you.

‘Easy now, you’re going to knock us both over.’ He huffed. You pulled back, reaching for the glass in his hand and tipping back the contents to his surprise.

 ‘What did you do this time to get sent home, Paddy?’ You questioned, voice full of smug joy knowing that despite his rank he’d prefer to be without fail in the midst of it all in war than on the streets of London. He took a heavy drag of his cigarette not answering before you jabbed him in the rib with your index finger, ‘Didn’t write to me either Paddy,’ You reprimanded him.

‘and where’s Eoin? I haven’t gotten any letters from him either.’ You continued, placing the pint glass on the gutter ledge for the pub to collect later on.  Looking up at him from your stoop you could see the sudden emotion in his eyes, with Paddy it was always rage primarily with an undertone of sadness or other such negative feeling. 

‘I don’t know,’ He admitted.  

Your heart sank as you recalled what you had been told over that table of empty wine bottles before you left for France.

‘Something— it didn’t go quite as we had planned.’ Paddy admitted. Your eyes widened as your hand came to grab Paddy’s own.  He reached into his coat pocket with the other, ‘His ma–she gave me this letter.’  The letter was worn, as if it had been opened over and over again, no doubt in disbelief. 

Dear Mrs. McGonigal:

This letter is to confirm my recent telegram in which you were regretfully informed that your son, Staff-Sargeant  Eoin McGonigal, attached to the airborne troops, has been reported missing in action in Vosges, France since 14 August 1944.

I know that added distress is caused by failure to receive more information or details regarding the matter.

Therefore, I wish to assure you that at any time additional information is received it will be transmitted to you without delay, and, if in the meantime no additional information is received, I will again communicate with you at the expiration of three months.

The term ‘missing in action’ is used only to indicate that the whereabouts or status of an individual is not immediately known, It is not intended to convey the impression that the case is closed. I wish to emphasise that every effort is exerted continuously to clear up the statue of our personnel.

Under war conditions this is a difficult task as you must readily realise. Experience has shown that many persons reported missing in action are subsequently reported as prisoners of war, but as this information is furnished by countries with which we are at war, the War Department is helpless to expedite such reports.

The personal effects of an individual missing overseas may be held by his unit for a period of time but are unfortunately likely buried with the soldier in the case of a death or confiscated by the enemy.

Permit me to extend to you my heartfelt sympathy during this period of uncertainty.

Sincerely yours,

Lt. Col. W. Stirling  

The letter had that manufactured signatory to it that made you grit your teeth, Stirling likely barely even glanced at it as he signed himself away, or better yet, one of his assistants in London forged it away.

The name ‘Loyton’ brushed your lips again.  He was lost, as Sid had told without even knowing it.  

‘I already knew.’ he said aghast, ‘signed them myself…, his orders to lead those men.’ Paddy confessed, he had lit another cigarette whilst you had read, puffing the smoke to the side in a deep exhale, looking up to the scattered clouds in the dark sky.  You reeled backwards, pausing as an overwhelming desire to react physically against the man in front of you arose.  You struck him clear across the face, surprising your own self as much as him before gripping his coat collar as he hissed in pain, the cigarette fell from his lips to the damp ground.  As you moved closer you came to realise just how much he stunk of whiskey and who-knows-what other concoctions. 

Drowning his sorrows no doubt.

‘Are you daft Paddy Mayne?!’ you cried out in his face.  Despite your outrage he almost immediately began to frog march you backwards towards whence you came, a firm hand on your shoulder. ‘How could you– could you not have foreseen the mission was– I don’t know! Impossible? Dangerous beyond even your suicidal mind?’ You blurted out as you stumbled over yourself as the immovable force behind you pushed, voice echoing off the brick walls of the street as he moved you back past the doorstep of the pub. 

‘Aye, we’ll have none of that.’ Paddy said coldly and soon enough you were being pushed through the flown open door of the phonebox, arms only catching yourself last minute against the glass. His demeanour had shifted, from a drunk, clearly emotional one to one of a stone-cold commander.

‘Don’t speak.’ Paddy told you. 

‘Don’t fuckin’ say a word now, just do what I want.’

You turned, eyes widening at his clear intention.  He nodded slightly towards the ground and it didn’t take long for you to sink to your knees, the rough concrete of the phonebox catching on your stockings as you lent your head against Paddy’s thick thighs.

‘I missed you.’ you whispered.

‘I know.’ he replied as the sound of his belt unbuckling filled the cramped space.  It never took much for him to be aroused, he had an astounding virility despite his clear qualms with his own indiscretions.

You helped him to pull himself out of his trousers, taking the heavy weight in your hands as a marvelled look took your eyes as his darkened eyes met your own.  Even after the time passed, the veins and weight of him had imprinted their way into your mind, lips, tongue, and no doubt throat as you brushed your mouth along the thick, familiar length of him.

You took your time in teasing the already dripping thick head of him, popping it lightly from your mouth and swirling your tongue across the sensitive surface, dipping your tongue into the slit of it and watching the way tension seemingly drained from the man above you.   Soon, you relented to his growing huffs of frustration and your nose brushed the patch of hair at the base of him as you took him in your mouth.  

It took some muscle memory to kick in to relax your throat further to allow for his hand to push and pull your head back and forwards on his unforgettably thick length. With a jaw already aching as you shifted on your knees, you moved your fingers to glide gently across the remaining soft skin of what you couldn’t take down.  His head rested against the glass of the phonebox door, eyes closed as he fumbled with his cigarette case from memory and lit one in the small space, smoke flowed from his mouth to cloud the phonebox further as its already fogged glass of the heat from your bodies obscured what was inside.

Paddy relished in your skilled mouth for some time before he interfered, pushing you roughly backwards still buried to the hilt down your throat, hands clasped together at the back of your head stopping from cracking it against the thick glass of the phonebox.  Your knee scraped painfully against the floor and the no-doubt hole ripping in your stocking reminded you quite of the ridiculousness of the situation. 

What might a passerby have to endure?  Your head was bracketed between the glass and his thick thighs still holding the back of your head now with one hand he pulled out, tapping the thick weight of himself against your puffed lips and outstretched tongue before pressing back in. He began to lazily thrust into your mouth, your jaw protested as you stretched it as wide as you could.  You closed your eyes in concentration, trying to control your breathing.  He clicked his tongue, ‘Need those pretty eyes on me girl. Don’t you dare fuckin’ stop looking.’ he rumbled from above as he snapped his hips forward roughly into your mouth. 

You missed the way his breaths would get rough and ragged in these moments, almost like some animal huffing in beastly exertion.  It felt like an eternity before he was holding your jaw open further and pushing deep into your throat as he came.  In your concentration your eyes had slipped closed again as you savoured the heat of him and the salty taste filling your mouth.  You hadn’t paid attention to his face,  now it was obvious that his face was stained with tears as your vision focussed.  The great fearless dog that was Paddy Mayne was a broken man.

‘I’ve got nothing now,’ He spat out, chest heaving as he came down from his high and rubbed his forehead with his hand, mouth twisted in anguish.

‘Hey!, I’m still here!’ You replied, mouth hardly able to form the words as he slipped from it.  Your head was quickly yanked back as he pulled your hair roughly, almost lifting you off your knees from where you knelt. 

‘You know my feelings towards you are still for nothing but to get my cock wet, despite whatever I might say.’ He said harshly.

‘I doubt that, do not act like you neither want nor need me in your life Paddy when you’ve admitted the opposite.’ Came as a brave warning from your slightly trembling lips still wet with spit and the salty taste of him.  You had never seen him in such a state.

You stood calmly and  brought your hand up to gently guide his face to look at your own,  ‘Now. Now, of all times do we need each other most, for us. For him.’ You nodded at the letter now clutched back in his hand, his eyes flared with fury, yet he leant into the touch, like some wounded animal wanting to fight its saviour, and he closed them.  

‘There is no real war left for me to go out in…, no point to it all.’ He slowly began bizarrely as he opened his eyes again. You shook your head, amazed at his clear drunkenness which had seemingly returned, you reached for your briefcase and stood, holding it out to him. 

‘There is most certainly still a war Paddy, this is why I am still here…, though I can see you’re not in the state to read any of my recent reports.’ you replied, frankly embarrassed by his mighty fall from his usual temper.

‘Oh I’ll read, read nought but poetry till the day I die, nothing more,’ he slurred out, hand unintentionally clasping over your own against the briefcase pushed to his chest.

‘But the day I die may be quite soon, aye…,’ He swayed, resting himself leant against the door of the phonebox as he continued, ‘ no point without him fighting by my side.’

‘Paddy now is not the time for half-arsed poetry, you simply cannot be serious, you are needed in Europe. Eoin- he’ you tried to refrain from choking up yourself, ‘He’ll be alright somewhere,’ you said hopefully.

He had fixed his trousers and pushed open the phonebox door, letting a rush of cold air in which refreshed your hazy mind.  You followed him, leaning against the door of the phone box opposite him. 

‘Come on,’ You said, guiding him to the crisp outside air to sober him up.

‘I suspect the troops are greatly disheartened by your discharge?’ You asked, scuffing your heel against the cobbled street knowing reasoning with any man, let alone Paddy in this state would likely amount to nothing.

‘Bill Stirling can command as he wants, the bastard. I was never much of a leader anyway.  I’ve taken up more success in commanding the pints in my own hand than any men lately.’ he waved behind him in the vague direction of the pub.

‘I’ve nowhere to stay.’ he confessed, ‘Only came here to drink expecting I’d make the train back to Gloucestershire, but knowing I wouldn’t.’ he admitted. You squeezed his hand ‘I’ve got a friend we can stay with tonight, he’s closer than my place, I was headed there anyway.’ you adjusted your own coat with the other.

‘“He’s?”’ Paddy asked, eyebrows raised. 

‘Don’t be daft Paddy.’ you replied, a vibrant red flush of embarrassment warming your cheeks.

‘Oh, I’ll be whatever you’d have me tonight just this once, so I will.’ he replied sarcastically. 

The walk to Clerkenwell went by quickly as you attempted to fill each other in on life since D-Day and Paddy thoroughly sobered up, rain began to fall as you neared the darkening bricks of the address you had gotten over the phone.  The black wood door of the building required a shove from Paddy to open and the wrought iron railings of the stairs left a mark on your hand as you made your way to the fourth floor. 

Sid’s hair had gotten even longer since the time you saw him last, reaching almost to his collar in such an inopportune fashion, a ridiculous ensemble of  facial hair messily covered his jaw and above his mouth. 

He smiled so widely as you opened the door, enough to show the gold crown on one of his teeth that he usually tried everything to hide.

Seeing your eyes widen at the sight of him he immediately began to explain, ‘Apologies…, bout’ the state of me that is,’ he muttered. ‘Just been cooped up here working for months, hadn’t even looked at myself– who’s this then?’ He cut himself off and pointed towards Paddy behind you, the torn threads of his black jumper hanging down from his hand.

‘I believe this is a dead man walking Sid.’ you mused, ‘This is Paddy.  He is in the SAS.’ you stated, lacking any sense of covertness.

‘Paddy…’ the man mused, scratching at his head, he jumped slightly soon after with a quick inhale, ‘Mayne?! He’s a sure terror he is, he is? Isn’t that right?’ he asked hurriedly into the space between the two of you.

‘Only when wee’ boys like yourself get in my way.’ Paddy responded for you.  The man on the other side of the door stooped despite his height, bowing his head slightly in nervous acknowledgement contrasting a wolfish grin on his face.  He looked at you, a ‘boy!?’ he mouthed, a mischievous sparkle in his eye shining as if he was rejoicing in the fact he had been referred to as younger for once.

‘Welcome in then,’ he cocked his head. ‘Welcome, welcome make yourselves at home, don’t mind Baron she’s had his forty winks now and a pig's ear to keep her company.’ he grinned.

‘Hate dogs.’ Paddy huffed, brushing past the other man as they filled the doorway in front of you.  You all moved into the space in silence, you were grateful to be anywhere after your marathon of a day, even in the somewhat messy bed-sit with a dog snoring by the coal grate.  The dwelling was practical, homely in Sid’s rag-tag way, with old paintings he’d collected from flea markets stacked in all corners of the room, books and bric-a-brac filling any spare surface. 

It was larger than your own with a set of strangely ornate glass doors with mis-matched stained glass separating the main room from a small sleeping alcove to the left.  The wallpaper was peeling in some parts and stained with coal smoke in others.  A coat rack stood by the door, most of its arms broken leaving one holding the owner's unmistakable wool coat.  The wooden floor had several mismatched extremely worn rugs covering it, perhaps Persian in origin, though Eoin would likely tell you otherwise; no doubt procured from a flea market in Sid's travels in Morocco or some other place he claims to have visited.  Between these were fine scratches in places, of furniture shuffling in the past and fresh ones from the clear sign of a dog's claws.

By the door in the corner was a small kitchenette, a kettle still steaming sat on a small gas ring, above, a couple of cast irons hung from hooks haphazardly plunged into the brick behind. 

You placed your briefcase on a low-table seemingly acting as his work desk.  It was filled with books and papers and a half disassembled well-used Kodak Brownie.  Notably, your friend had always kept his typewriter on the kitchen bench, he’d always said he found the most inspiring words coming to him when cooking or brewing coffee.  

Snapping you from your observations of the room Sid spoke,‘Ain’t you a dog yourself? That’s what they’re sayin’’ He said in his dangerously curious tone, he clearly  couldn't help but continue the conversation from across the room as he still lingered by the now closed door, pointing from his hip at the soldier as he stood by the window at the other end.  

‘Aye, and she’ll have me playing fetch with your mop-head in a minute if you don’t shut your gob.’ Paddy warned, cocking his head in your direction.  Sid turned to you with a faux surprised look on his face as if to say ‘he’s only gone and said that in my own house, has he?’ You waved him off and made your way over to gently pat the fast-asleep dog.

The messy-haired man raised his hands above his head in an exasperated stretch before clasping them together, with eyes closed for a moment in an attempt to compose himself.  ‘Well, it’s just the one room, but I can put a couple of blankets down for you or whichever you’d like.’ the journalist said, smiling kindly. 

‘Or we could take your bed and you can sleep on the floor.’ Paddy said roughly.

‘Or…,’ Sid grinned, ‘I could set the dog on you, and we’d see if you’re really a dog yourself.’ he scoffed, ‘She’d rip the balls of you, son.’ He said darkly.

‘Fuckin’ sayin’ that to me in me own house,’ Sid mumbled, barely audibly, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and placing it in his mouth, ‘ridiculous.’  he muttered.  Your head was already in your hands at the immediate posturing between the two.  The air settled between the two soon enough, and they even bonded over a shared love of some of the romantic poets and Greek epics into the early morning. 

Paddy gradually sobered up once and for all and Sid became increasingly drunk in his harmless manner on gin despite the time, you were dozing off cramped and contorted to fit in one of the mismatched chairs by the window, Paddy sat beside you in the other, eyes falling to the way your long skirt had bunched up to reveal your thighs and worn winter stockings.

Eventually the Englishman, tired of trying to pull any dramatic stories from the soldier, disappeared to the small bedroom to the side of the main room and returned with an armful of roughly spun woollen blankets. He spread them out by the dying fire as the dog had stirred awake and was now roaming nervously between the armchairs, brushing her thick wiry hair against Paddy’s trousers and your hand hanging off of the chair.

‘Right, I’m off then. C’mon ol’ girl, get to sleep in the bed tonight you lucky’un.’ he clicked his tongue in a practiced tone and the dog and she strode across the room to follow the man.

Paddy watched as you slept for a while before corking the bottle of rum he had been provided with firmly. Placing it on the table beside your briefcase he quietly lifted you from your chair.  You stirred awake just enough to be helped from your skirt and stockings, leaving just your long blouse for modesty, Paddy stripped swiftly, uncaring about his nakedness in another man's home as you curled up between the two blankets.  He soon came to realise that lying beside you was the only comfort he had experienced in mouths, and he felt grounded away from the mindset of ‘kill or be killed’ which had overtaken him ever since he had been separated from Eoin, and especially since the news that he was missing had come through.

After a few hours, birds chirping outside and a distant ‘all clear’ siren had stirred you both awake as dim light flooded through the still-open blinds of the room.  Paddy’s arm lay heavy across your side and chest, keeping you flush against his warm body under the blankets, your hips already ached from the hard surface below but you were grateful for somewhere to at least rest your head.

You roused against him, pressing your clothed behind to his crotch in an absentminded test.  Without fail the Paddy you knew was there as after a few moments he roughly grasped your hip.  A hand was brought to your mouth, ‘Spit.’ his gravelly voice commanded quietly.  Your eyes shook awake at that, turning your head over your shoulder to look into his blank face.  There wasn’t much of a debate when it came to doing what Paddy wanted usually, it would happen one way or another.  You moved your head forwards as you still reluctantly gave in, letting a small puddle of spit stream from you mouth onto his hand as your eyes searched his own and face for any emotion.

‘On your front,’ he continued, a gentle hand lightly pushing on your shoulder despite his domineering tone and initial harsh grab of your hip.

‘I’m not going to fuck that needy cunt of yours,’ he said casually still quiet in the small space.  His weight shifted from beside you as he sat up to straddle your thighs, holding the hand with your spit up to his own mouth to spit harshly against your own.

‘Though…, I don’t doubt that she's been begging and dripping for me since you saw my swift exit from that pub.’ he accosted.

You gasped as he smothered your thighs in your shared spit. He began slowly moving against you, hands moving to press on your lower back as he set the pace. 

He pulled out from your used thighs with a slow, drawn out breath.  With a single moment he flipped you over onto your back, taking a moment to reach down and rub your clit with two rough fingers before dipping into your wetness and pulling it across his spit covered length.  With the three liquids gathered on his finger he brought his fingers to his mouth savouring the taste.  Your eyes widened, but he wasn’t finished,  pulling the finger out to reach down, pulling at your own mouth to open he leaned down and let a string of spit fall from his own mouth to yours.  It hit your lip and rolled into your mouth with a taste of a mix of salty skin and heated pleasure. He continued to move downwards, pulling you into a rough kiss to finish the fourth taste he was craving, tasting everything you could give him.

‘Come on Paddy, before he wakes up.’ you whispered against his mouth which had formed a wolfish grin barely touching your own.  He let out a rough noise deep in his chest as he flipped you back over, cock slotting roughly between your thighs once more.

‘Has he had his way with you then yet?’ Paddy said suddenly through gritted teeth against your ear as his full weight pressed you through the blankets and against the hard wooden floor below.  The slick drag of his cock soaked in your combined spit and the wetness now accumulating on your thighs made you impossibly needy.  

Your eyes widened from their blissed out half-closed state, ‘No, no we– not really, I–.’ you whimpered out quietly, ‘Not really?’ Paddy growled, voice raising to a fierce question.  His hand moved against your head to push your face against the rough woollen blanket as he sped up.

Maneuvering his head to your other ear he dragged his tongue across your neck in a rough claim of the sweat-dewed skin there. ‘Is he good? Tell me?’ he began questioning, scoffing at you as you grimaced beneath him.  Your face filled red with embarrassment as you unintentionally squeezed your legs tighter against him.  This to no doubt spurred him on as you felt his sheathed cock heave in a mighty twitch as he paused pressed flush against you.  He waited a moment further for a response, to which there was none you could muster. 

‘Seem’s we’ve an eye for the same sort,’ he cooed mockingly as he started to move at a vicious pace, the sound of his thighs slapping against your own was sure to wake the man next door you thought.  Let alone was the floorboards beginning to complain in a low creak and groan under your combined weight.  

You shook your head, hair failing over your face, ‘Oh…, aye, I think we do.’ Paddy chuckled mockingly.

‘Should I have a ride of him too?...’ he questioned into the air beside you, anger and jealousy flooding into his voice, before gritting his teeth ‘since we’re all fuckin’ havin’ a go, aye?...’ Tears had begun welling in your eyes at the desperation building in you, he was so close to giving you what you wanted, to pounding you into the floor and making you forget about everything that was coming down around the both of you. 

The blankets under your chest had bunched up, the harsh fabric brushing against your sensitive chest as the weight of Paddy rocked against you.  ‘...Since we’re all fuckin’ goin’ about the town whilst your men are away, fighting–, fuckin’ dying in Hell right here on Earth?’ He continued his tirade.  ‘Please, Paddy!’ you begged quietly.

‘Oh, I think I’ve gathered quite well a sense of your true character.’ he mocked.

‘Fuck it,’ he grumbled, sitting up to roughly spit between his own thighs and onto yours with precision.  You stuttered as you felt the liquid hit you, part of your mind relishing in the filthy treatment, the other 

just wondering if this was another quiet outcry for anything to distract Paddy from Eoin. 

‘Would putting my cock in you set you right then? Remind you of the only thing that can satisfy you?’ he asked.

You nodded your head at an attempt of a response to his question as his hand gripped the back of your neck firmly to steady your movements, holding your head face down as your hips and back began to ache at holding your thighs together and arching your back slightly.

The muscles of his back shifted as he completely crowded over you as he returned to his pace.  ‘Just a desperate fuckin’ whore.’ he grunted, ‘No, no, I’m not, I swear–’ you whimpered.  You could tell how much his words were working himself up if anything as he began to ramble against your neck.  Growls and grunts of ‘Aye, oh, you love it don’t you.’ and ‘There’s a girl.’ came tumbling from his parted lips as he reached between the blanket and your body to pinch at your hard nipples in the cold air.  You were in bliss even without him being inside you, just the rhythmic movements of the strong man above blanketing your body and watching him work himself at the thought of you desperate for him was enough to make you squeeze your eyes shut in pleasure.

Paddy soon lost his composure entirely as he sat up on his haunches over you.  He scooped an arm under your knees, shunting you upwards as he and pulled your hips up to access your knickers which had ridden up as he used your thighs. The shine of your skin glistened from the dull blue light filtering through the windows as he marvelled in the sight.  He quickly pulled the thin silk fabric to the side, twisting it inside out as you squirmed at the fabric pulling even more taut around your hips. 

His spare hand had moved along his cock in long pulls in a steady practised rhythm all the while as you tried to squirm against his grip.  You reached your hand backwards to try to grip at his thigh, nails scratching the skin as you moved against the rough blanket below you, trying to get any sense of friction and release of your own.  Paddy, in seeing your desperation let out a low rasp of curses, moving forwards against you to coat the material of your knickers still twisted in his fingers in thick ropes. He released the material with his mess added to your own and it fell back into place between your thighs.

He hunched over you further, trying to control his ragged breaths, ‘You’re going to keep those on just like that…,’ he patted your still aching cunt now with a flat hand.  You jumped as his movement pushed his own hot release against your now cooling wetness.  

‘and you’re going to stand in front of that eejit and not say a word about it.’ he told you. His head fell back as he moved to stand, spent cock still thick hanging between his thighs as he pulled both his hands through his hair darkened lightly by sweat.  You watched as he crossed the room to the kitchen, admiring his strong body in the gloomy light.  He brought a tea towel over which had hung from a low cupboard, kneeling to wipe at your thighs yet leaving the mess beyond the thin fabric above. Returning you watched in disgust as he wiped his hand and still wet cock uncaringly on the towel before returning it to the spot from which it came.

‘It’s still early,’ you breathed as Paddy gathered himself to lie again at your side. ‘Aye, a few more hours of sleep maybe for you.’ You hummed in agreement, uncaring of the cooling mess against your still heated body.

Still coming down from the sight of the man you had missed in his full nakedness despite the depraved act he had just worked out on you, exhaustion eventually took over you again as you tried to slow your mind. The sweat now dewing coldly against your body was quickly wicking into the blanket Paddy draped across you, and your eyes fell shut in satisfaction as sleep took you. 

Paddy began slowly to track his lips against your shoulder once he recognised your breathing pattern allowing him to admit into vulnerability, taking his time to muster the words from deep within he whispering against your skin;

the grass was damp and cooling around your feet, it was quiet out here, serene with the low hum of music echoing through. you had done your business, and wanted nothing more than a slow meaningful stroll back to Club Juke, that was until you were interrupted by three- what looked to be, musicians.

"Well hi there miss" some lanky man said, a woman nodding in approval and another man who made your spine tingle.

"You alright?" he said with an accent you hadn't heard around here.

"Do you three usually skulk around in bushes?" you scoffed shaking your head, about to head back when the lanky man grabbed your arm.

"No rush, you wanna hear some music?" he said, spit spluttering out his mouth like a starved dog, the woman bearing fangs so grotesque you could barely comprehend.

the other man- white shirt unbuttoned at the top just enough for you to peer at his collarbone stepped closer, sniffing you like some animal. lanky man went in closer fangs bared ready to bite until-

"Wait!"

he was suddenly pushed away from you, and here you stood infront of what seemed like the devil, oozing with sultry seduction. he laughs, clawed hand coming up to grab your face, you see him clearer now in the moonlight, blood covering his face, he leans in dangerously close to your neck, smelling deeply.

he leans back facing you, a moan escaping him.

the couple with him leaves, almost like they read his mind.

"I don't wanna turn ya' not just yet, you got somethin' I wan't"

"A-and th-that is?" words shaken, barely a whisper as they leave your lips.

he smirks, circling to the back of you grabbing your waist and pulling you close to him, his breath hitching on your neck once more.

"Why darlin', its you of course"

your parents always said that the devil would come for you if you continued to defile yourself, you may be a virgin but that had never stopped you from exploring your sexuality, your wants or needs, however it never went past flirting with the local men.

you imagined the devil to be some ungodly sight, now yes the teeth, blood and sharp nails were unseemly, but my goodness did this man send a shiver straight to your core, the strongest desire for a man you've ever felt.

"I am a weak woman..." you say to yourself amidst the heat of his mouth close to your vitals. something about the words or the tone makes him feel a sense of fulfilment.

you turn slowly to face him, hand coming up to his face, he almost flinches at your unpredictable behaviour, his brows furrowing. you grip his face, bringing your mouth to his, licking his blood-stained lips and fangs.

he revels in your behaviour, gripping tighter onto you for a moment before swiftly pushing you onto the cold grass, he wastes no hesitation in planting his head between your legs, giving soft bites to your thighs before ripping your underwear apart, he looks at you for a moment before indulging himself.

you moan loudly trying to grip onto the wet shards of grass.

"Oh~ sweet, sweet thing"

you could sense some predatory driven lust ooze off him, as if you're something he shouldn't be indulging in.

he laps, kisses and sucks, vigorously devouring you in the most obscenest way possible, you dont stop him, dont protest, in fact- you enjoy it.

if this is the devils punishment then its a mighty fine one.

a groan escapes your mouth at him pulling away from you.

"Not gonna leave me high 'n dry are you?" you huff.

"Me? Oh darlin' i aint even started"

his body seemed to change above you, his eyes more red, fangs more bared and his fingers more slender, as if given you a glimpse at the real him.

he comes up close to your ear, saliva dripping from his mouth.

"After this, you'll be mine- only, mine"

he leans back up above you.

"I'm your saviour darlin'"

your eyes widen at that, those words, how vulnerable you began to feel. his hand caressed your face gently, claws scratching delicately at your skin working their way down to your buttoned front smock dress, once white- now stained with dirt and blood. he rips the fabric off your skin violently, marvelling at your naked form, nipples perking at the intense cold breeze before he begins ravaging at your breasts trying his best to suck gently, fangs nipping your skin. the blood spreading across your body made you feel violated.

he groans pulling himself away from you.

"You're so intoxicating" he sounded somewhat angry at the fact that your innocence cradled him so- hands coming up to grip onto his scalp, you felt as if maybe- was he regretting this? no, it was taking every ounce of self control he had to not turn you, but you didn't understand this, his body language screamed that of someone who didn't want to hurt you.

"Hey- its, its okay" you leaned up on your elbows, one hand coming over to his chest then you noticed it- his cock was insanely hard from this contact, a normal person would've probably taken the chance to run away here but you had other ideas simply gracing it with your fingers caused him to waft your arm away, falling back onto the grass. he unbuckled his belt faster than light throwing it into the darkness, you noticed screams echoing in the background of all of this, the sound of death right next to the pair of you.

his cock jumped right out, sore and begging for something to latch around it, you notice his jaw unlatch slightly to accommodate the rest of his fangs.

"I'm sorry princess..."

he rubs himself against your folds before bullying his way to your cervix, you wince and cry at the sting, he marvels at your body once more before coming down to your level, head buried in the crook of your neck the smell of you further intoxicating him.

"I-its too f'big" you whine.

he laughs but something about it isn't human anymore, its dark and filled with neediness, his restraint on his desires were wearing thin. other vampires running around beside you both, dancing and chanting, your innocence completely ruined and your privacy stripped. he leans back up, ploughing into you at a slow pace, looking around at the scene before back at you, pleasure and pain mixing on your face, he kisses your lips one final time.

hands gripping onto your ass pulling you up closer to him, his head falls next to you again, moaning at his vicious pace, cock swelling and plunging deeper, your juices squirt onto the base of him as you orgasm at the delicious friction.

his grip gets tighter digging into your skin, hot breath still on your neck, cock hardening further.

"F-fuck i'm sorry darlin'"

your eyes widen as he bites down, your blood like sweet honey liquor to him, he cums deep inside you refusing to let go, you feel yourself grow weaker trying to push him away but its no use. once he's had his fill he pulls himself away from you, kneeling still beneath your legs watching the rest of his 'family' chant and cheer, covering your wound you look up at him.

"I love you" he declares.

"You're mine, forever"

your eyes slowly shut as you struggle to say anything before your vision turns to black.

waking up you found yourself still on the ground, but underneath a heavily shaded tree, you were fine- felt fine. you looked next to you, seeing the demon sat at the bottom of the tree practising with his banjo, realising your innocence has been stripped and all that remains is a seductive darkness, one you will now have to share eternity with.

His father had given him a wooden sword before he had given Remmick a blessing. His mother, God rest her, had taught him prayers with her hands still smelling of lye and wool, and when Remmick was old enough to be sent away, he was sent to men who believed tenderness was a sickness best beaten out before it spread.

By the time he came into the service of King Alaric, Remmick was already something carved rather than born. A knight made useful by obedience.

And King Alaric had great use for obedient men.

Alaric was not merely feared. Fear was too simple a word for him. He was the sort of king mothers prayed their sons would never resemble and their daughters would never attract the eye of. A ruinous man. Cold in the marrow. The kind that burned villages to make examples and slaughtered bloodlines down to the cradle because dead children could not grow into rebellion.

Men bowed to him because they wished to keep breathing.

And God, looked away.

Then the king was given a daughter.

And the kingdom changed around her the way frost changes beneath the first sunlight.

Not entirely. Never entirely. Alaric still carried death at his back like a royal cloak. Men still vanished into his dungeons. Rivers still ran red after his wars.

But there was now one small soft thing in the world his hands would not crush.

His daughter.

His princess of sweetness and cherry pie.

Remmick heard the servants call her that long before he ever stood in her presence. A teasing little title born from the fact that the child was forever sneaking into the kitchens, forever stealing sugared cherries and tarts from cooling trays and returning to court with stained lips and innocent eyes. The cooks adored her. The old women who scrubbed floors adored her. Even soldiers, hard-faced men who had hacked other men apart at king Alaric’s orders, softened when she ran laughing through the halls. She touched the one untouched thing in her father’s heart and somehow made it live. As the years passed, the little princess became the sort of woman kingdoms sharpen themselves over.

Lovely not merely in face but lovely in spirit. Lovely in voice. Lovely in the dangerous way spring is lovely after a brutal winter, making starving men believe in warmth again.

Princes crossed seas for her.

Lords emptied treasuries for the chance to kneel before her.

Poets ruined themselves trying to describe her eyes.

When he entered her service, she was already grown. Already the kingdom’s jewel. Already the princess men spoke of with longing in their throats. And already entirely capable of ruining him.

Remmick had always believed a wound should show itself.

A split lip. A sword-cut. A torn side. Honest injuries. Things a man could bind with linen and vinegar. Things he could press his hand against until the bleeding slowed.

Love was not honest.

Love entered him like an arrow without a shaft, leaving no place to grip and pull. He had served the princess for five years before he understood he had been dying for four of them.

Not all at once but slowly.

Kneeling in the chapel while candlelight gilded the edge of her veil. Riding at her left side through villages where children scattered flowers beneath her mare. Standing behind her chair while suitors praised her beauty, her bloodline, her usefulness.

The court called her sweet enough to make men foolish.

They did not know half of it.

They did not know how she smiled at servants and remembered their names. How she laughed with her whole body, head tilted back as though joy were something holy enough to surrender to completely. How she chased away suitors with gentle cruelty wrapped in honeyed manners, smiling all the while as proud men stumbled willingly toward humiliation simply because she had looked at them too kindly first.

And worst of all, they did not know what she did to him.

Because Remmick had survived battlefields without trembling. He had ridden through smoke and screaming flesh, had watched boys scarcely old enough to shave drown in their own blood beneath his boots, had buried steel in men’s throats and slept soundly after. Fear was an old companion to him. Death was even older. But sometimes the princess, this darling princess of sweetness and cherry pie, would look at him after saying something soft and impossible, and then blink once.

Slowly.

Those saintly lashes lowering over her eyes as though Heaven itself had grown shy of being witnessed. And Christ, he would spend entire nights awake afterward. Lying in the dark like a man fevered. Turning that single moment over and over in his mind until it became something holy and diseased all at once.

Had she lingered beside him too long as they departed the chapel? Had her hand brushed his deliberately, just for that one terrible little moment beneath God’s own roof, or had it meant nothing at all? He could still feel it sometimes, phantom-warmth against his glove, enough to make his chest ache like an old wound reopening.

Had her voice changed when she spoke his name?

Remmick.

Sweet Virgin, the way she said it. Not ”Ser Remmick”. Not ”knight”. Not ”Guard”.

Just, Remmick.

Softly. Quietly like she was tasting the syllables before giving them to him. He would think of it for days after, disgusted with himself, tormented by himself, wondering if her mouth formed other names so tenderly. Wondering what madness had seized him that he had begun staring at her cherry coloured lips whenever she spoke, thinking of tracing them with his thumb, his fingers, his mouth.

God forgive him. God forgive the filth in him that looked at something so good and wanted it. To caress it, to possess it. 

Had her smile softened because she pitied him? Because she trusted him? Because she loved him?

Could she ever love him?

The thought itself was enough to make him sick.

Because perhaps she felt it too. Perhaps she searched for him in crowded halls without meaning to. Perhaps her breath caught the same way his did whenever their hands touched accidentally. Perhaps she laid awake as he did, replaying moments that should have meant nothing. Or perhaps he was only another starving fool standing outside the gates of Heaven convincing himself the warmth spilling through the cracks belonged to him.

Because that was the misery of loving her. Not merely wanting what could never be his, but beginning to believe, in weak and dreadful moments, that perhaps she reached for him too. Perhaps when she said his name there was prayer in it. And that thought, more than any battlefield or blade, brought him to his knees.

Because Remmick knew what he was.

A man shaped by blood and violence. A creature carved into usefulness by crueler men. He killed in her fathers name. He had ridden beneath banners soaked in innocent blood. There was no purity left in him. No softness untouched by war. Men like him were built to guard heaven, not enter it.

And yet there she stood before him so often that he could almost believe God was cruel enough to let him see paradise with the gates thrown open, only to remind him it was never meant for the likes of him.

So he watched her.

Hungrily. Reverently. Hopelessly.

Like a dying man standing outside a chapel in winter, staring through stained glass at the candlelight within, knowing he would never be worthy enough to cross the threshold and touch its purity without staining it with the ruin of his own hands.

That was the true cruelty of it.

Not loving her.

Not even the certainty that it would destroy him.

But never knowing whether, in some secret untouched place inside her heart, she had already opened the gates for him anyway.

It was not knowing.

The way hope crept into him despite himself, thin and poisonous as a snake. The way one soft glance from her could feed his very soul for weeks. The way he had begun to live like a dying man surviving on crumbs from a royal table, convincing himself they were a feast because the kneeling before the Savior in the palace chapel while candlelight gilded the edge of her veil like a halo too beautiful for mortal hands. Little saintly princess of the southern tower, with flour on her cuffs from bribing the kitchen women into letting her help with pastries. Yes indeed her strength is her sweetness. It was a weapon she pretended not to sharpen. Lord Auberon came boasting of his hounds, his fields, his sons yet unborn. Yet his princess smiled, all honey and lowered lashes.

“How fortunate, my lord. I have always wanted to be spoken of as breeding stock.”  She would say and the hall would fall into silence.Then she turned to Remmick, eyes bright with restrained laughter, and said, 

“Ser Remmick, would you fetch me my cherry tart? I feel faint from admiration.”

He bowed.

“As you wish.”

That was all he ever gave her. Three words. 

Three miserable, faithful words he wielded like a shield against his own undoing.

Because the truth beneath them was far too dangerous to survive spoken aloud.

She learned that quickly.

Learned, with the wicked cleverness only she possessed, that every time she tugged lightly at the thread between them, Remmick answered the same way. Never more. Never less. No matter how she smiled at him afterward, as though trying to tempt the rest from his mouth.

“Carry this basket.”

“As you wish.”

“Walk with me.”

“As you wish.”

“Tell that dreadful prince I have taken ill.”

“As you wish.”

She would glance back over her shoulder after issuing impossible little commands, lips twitching as though she knew perfectly well that the great grim knight trailing faithfully behind her would follow her straight into damnation if she asked sweetly enough.

Sometimes she tested him only to hear him say it.

“Ser Remmick,” she would murmur, all false innocence and candlelight eyes, “if I told you to steal the moon for me, would you?”

“As you wish, my lady.”

That laugh of hers would follow after him then. Bright. Warm. Ruinous.

And every time she smiled at him like that, some starving thing inside Remmick leaned closer to the edge.

“Stand beneath my window tonight. For I cannot sleep without knowing that you are near.”

Silence. He should have said no. Instead, with his heart already kneeling, he said,

 “As you wish.”

He stood beneath her window until dawn, rain gathering in the seams of his armor and running cold beneath the steel, soaking slowly through leather and linen until even his bones seemed to ache with it. Still, he did not move. Above him, framed by candlelight and old stone, the princess leaned her cheek against the windowsill and spoke softly of nothing. Of the moon hanging pale above the towers like something lonely enough to understand them. Of her father the king’s temper. Of how lonely a castle could become when every room knew your name but not your soul.

Remmick listened.

He always listened.

A man could starve on less than the sound of her voice and still call himself blessed. She looked less like a princess that way. More like a lonely girl speaking into the dark because she trusted the man beneath her window more than anyone inside the castle walls.

And God help him for it, that trust hurt worse than longing ever had.

Because Remmick understood then that she was not merely speaking to fill the silence between them.

She was giving him pieces of herself.

Small sacred things.

“I shall never care for a husband as I care for you, Ser Remmick,” she whispered.

He looked up.

Her face was pale in the candlelight, softened by shadow. One loose curl moved against her throat, stirred by the night air.

The words entered him quietly. For that was the cruelty of them.

No trumpet. No thunder. No merciful violence to make the wound honest. Just a soft sentence dropped from a window, and his whole life divided itself into before and after. 

He did not answer.

For he could not.

Because if he answered, the world would change.

If he answered, she might understand him.

She might understand that every as you wish he had ever given her had not been obedience at all, but confession.That every time he had bowed his head and surrendered to her smallest command, he had been laying another piece of himself quietly at her feet.

So Remmick stood below her in the rain, silent as stone, while the sentence she had given him moved through his body like a blade too deep to pull free.

Yet all he could think was: 

Is it better to speak or die?

It was not a poet’s question. It was not beautiful. It was not noble. Poets lied about love. They dressed it in roses and moonlight and called suffering beautiful because none of them had ever stood where Remmick stood now, with Heaven looking back at him through a sweet princess’s eyes. It was a knife laid flat beneath his tongue.

If he spoke, she might recoil, and the sight of her stepping back from him would kill whatever war had failed to finish.

If he spoke, worse still, she might answer him with the same unbearable truth. The true terror was that those soft, saintly eyes might fill with the same ruin that lived inside him. That she might look at him as starving men look upon salvation and whisper the one thing he had spent years praying never to hear.

Because if she loved him, truly loved him, then the world would not turn merciful.

No choir of angels would descend.

No tale would gather them gently into its happy ending.

Her father would still be king.

He would still be the king’s sworn sword.

And she would still be a princess trapped in a world that forgave men their hunger and punished women for being loved.

So Remmick stood there through the rain, cold water slipping beneath his armor like searching fingers, and listened as her voice drifted softly down from the window above, while all around them the castle slept and the wound in him remained.

And for one terrible, selfish moment, Remmick allowed himself to imagine that this could be enough.

Just this.

Her voice in the dark.

Her face above him.

His name, safe in her mouth.

His soul. already ruined beyond saving and yet somehow still grateful for the destruction.

Who could have guessed that something as small and delicate as a rose would become the slow and sorrowful turning of the wheel, the quiet beginning of their undoing?

How could one flower set into motion the fate of hearts already balancing at the edge of ruin?

One foolish, soft-petaled thing, with thorns hidden so neatly beneath beauty. How strange it is, the way calamity so rarely announces itself as calamity.

And that blasted rose was the worst calamity of all.

Perhaps disaster had already been growing between them for years, quiet as ivy through stone. Perhaps every stolen glance in the chapel had planted its root. Every as you wish laid too reverently at her feet. Every foolish little thing she did to keep him near. Every blink that lingered too long. Every smile that softened only for him.

Perhaps they had been doomed from the moment he learned the sound of her laughter and found himself listening for it.But the rose was when doom finally found shape. Because at court, a rose was never merely a rose. It was favor. It was beauty chosen.

It was devotion disguised prettily enough to survive public scrutiny.

And in the hand of a victorious knight, it was confession made visible, a thing spoken where words dared not tread. The sort of gesture poets ruined with terrible verse and queens remembered for decades after kingdoms had fallen. 

The rose had been red. Deeply, darkly red.

The very shade of her mouth after stolen cherries. The shade of his temptation. The shade of his wanting. The herald had placed it into Remmick’s gauntleted palm after victory, still trembled in his bones, after splintered lances and churned mud and the roar of the crowd.

And at once, he had known.

The rose belonged to her.

Of course it did.

Who else had he ever ridden for?

Whose gaze had he searched for beneath the royal awning whilst men battered themselves bloody for honor? Whose breath had stalled when Lord Vaun’s lance struck his shield hard enough to bruise bone beneath steel? Whose smile had he sought before all others, though God knew he pretended otherwise?

His sweet princess of cherry pie.

His ruin in silk. And yet he gave it to another.

It was foolish. He knew as much even as he turned his horse from the dais. Foolish, and cruel, and cowardly in the way only frightened love can be cruel. But perhaps, he told himself, perhaps it might ease this living death. Perhaps if he placed the rose in safer hands, if he bent his head to a woman whose beauty did not make him feel unclean with longing, then the hunger would learn obedience.

Lady Drusella of Morcant stood among the princess’s ladies, gentle-eyed and harmless, pretty in a way that did not trouble his soul.

Safe.

That was the word.

Not beloved.

Not desired.

Safe.

So Remmick rode to her, the red rose burning in his hand like a wound, and offered it before the whole court. The crowd sighed and stirred, delighted by the little scandal.

Lady Drusella blushed.

And upon the royal dais, his princess went perfectly still.

Not weeping. Not raging. Not yet.

Still.

Like a storm deciding where to strike. 

Rain struck the armory windows like fingertips upon a coffin lid.

The squires were still loosening the last of Remmick’s armor when she entered.

He felt her before he saw her. That had become his private sickness. A shift in the air, a warmth at his back, the faint scent of cherries and rainwater, and already his body knew her. Already his heart, that wretched traitor, had risen to its knees.

The princess stood just beyond the pool of candlelight, her hands folded before her, her face too still.

The boys bowed clumsily.

“My lady.”

She did not look at them.

“Leave us.”

One of them hesitated, his fingers still caught in the buckle at Remmick’s shoulder.

“My lady?”

“I said leave us.”

There was nothing loud in her voice, but there was enough crown in it that both boys obeyed at once. Armor clattered softly in their arms as they gathered what they could and fled, leaving Remmick half-unfastened, stripped of plate and helm, still bound in the dark underlayers of war.

The door shut.

Silence came down.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

The armory breathed around him like some great iron beast bearing witness. Candlelight trembled weakly against stone walls. Swords gleamed in their racks like rows of waiting teeth. Cold shields stared down with the stillness of saints upon tombs.

Every blade in that room knew.

Every polished edge threw the truth back at him until he thought he might go mad from the sight of it.

She moved first.

One step.

Then another.

This princess, a small, vicious, pretty little thing, stood before him like wrath dressed in silk.

“So,” she said at last, her voice far too light for the violence simmering beneath it, “Lady Drusella.”

Remmick closed his eyes.

God. Not this. Not her standing before him with wounded pride disguised as mockery, not when he had spent the entire evening pretending he had not seen the way she had gone still upon the dais. The way her fingers had curled once, only once, against the arm of her chair when he turned away from her. He had told himself he imagined it. Told himself it had meant nothing. Men in love grow desperate enough to mistake breathing for devotion.

“My lady.”

“No.” She stepped deeper into the candlelight, chin lifted in that infuriating, lovely way she possessed whenever she intended to be impossible. Her cheeks were flushed, though whether from fury or humiliation he could not tell. Likely both. “I have been my-ladied enough for one evening.”

Her gaze moved over him, over the half-unfastened armor and dark linen beneath, and something sharper flickered there.

“Was it a sudden affection, then?” she continued sweetly. Too sweetly. “Very romantic. I nearly applauded.”

His jaw tightened.

“She is a worthy lady.”

“She is a very dull lady.”

“Princess.” he said warningly. 

“She embroiders lilies upon napkins,” she said, counting upon her fingers now with terrible seriousness, “and says ‘how lovely’ to things that are plainly not lovely. I once watched her admire boiled turnips.”

Despite himself, despite the misery of the evening, despite the ruin standing six feet before him wrapped in silk and indignation, something dangerous flickered at the edge of him.

Amusement.

Her eyes narrowed instantly.

“Do not laugh.”

“I am not laughing.”

“You are.” She pointed accusingly toward his face. “I can see it in your dreadful solemn expression. You cannot fool me, Remmick.”

Only Remmick.

The syllables left her lips softly despite her temper, and God help him, he wanted to trace them there with trembling fingers. Wanted to know whether his name tasted as holy upon her mouth as it sounded in the ruin of his own mind. He did not move. Could not. Movement felt dangerous around her. Breathing felt dangerous around her. Then, as quickly as the temper had flared, something shifted. The sharpness softened at the edges, only enough for hurt to show through. Real hurt. Young and bright and terribly unguarded.

“Why,” she asked quietly, “did you give her my rose?”

The words entered the room like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath.

Remmick looked away at once.

A coward.

Steel had always been kinder than her eyes.

“Your rose?”

“Yes.” Her answer came swift as flint. “Mine.”

The certainty of it struck him somewhere unguarded. Mine.

God. What would she do if she knew how wholly that word had already conquered him?

His loyalty. His prayers. His peace.

Mine.

He turned his face toward the rack of swords because iron was easier than honesty.

“I thought it better.”

“For whom?”

“For you.”

She laughed then.

Not prettily. Not sweetly. Like something sharp had broken inside her throat before it could become grief.

“For me?” she asked.

“My lady…” 

The words came out of him broken. Not spoken, not truly. But rather torn loose. The sound a man makes at the edge of his own ruin, fingers splintering from the effort of holding shut a door his soul has long since fallen against weeping.

“No.” Her voice cracked suddenly, fury slipping enough for the hurt beneath to show itself. 

He swallowed hard.

“I did not mean to humiliate you.”

“And yet,” she said softly, devastatingly, “you did so beautifully.”

The words landed clean.

A knight’s wound.

Straight between the ribs. Her gaze searched his face then, far too perceptive for his peace, and when she spoke again there was something trembling beneath the question.

“Do you care for her?”

“No.”

Too quick.

Too honest.

Her breath caught.

“Do you want her?” 

Silence followed.

Every polished edge of the room threw the truth back at him until he thought he might go mad from the sight of it and the voice of reason inside of his mind echoed of the walls: 

Speak.

Or die.

“No,” Remmick said at last. 

The word broke from him as though some great dam inside his chest had finally split under pressure, and now all the dark water was rushing through. His hand curled at his side, uselessly, as if he might still catch himself before the truth spilled out and drowned them both.

Her mouth trembled.

“Then why?”

Because wanting Drusella would not feel like kneeling, starving, before Heaven and knowing full well the gates would never open. Because she was not you. Because Drusella had never ruined sleep for him. Never made him stand half-mad in chapel, wondering whether one blink had lingered too long, whether one brush of her hand had meant mercy or madness. Because Drusella had never stained her mouth with stolen cherries and smiled at him as though sweetness itself had chosen a favorite. Because Drusella could survive being loved by him.

And she could not Or perhaps worse.

Perhaps she could.

Perhaps she already did.

“I am no good,” he said.

The words were quiet. Almost plain. Somehow that made them crueler.

Her brows drew together. The armory seemed to draw in around them. Iron on every wall. Candlelight trembling over the edges of swords. Rain worrying the high windows with cold fingers. There had been battles in this room before, in the oiling of blades and the planning of slaughter, but never one so quiet as this. Never one fought with eyes and breath and the trembling restraint of a man who had mistaken silence for virtue until silence became the very thing killing him.

“ I do not understand” She stepped closer.

He stepped back.

Like a man retreating from holy fire before it consumed him completely.

“Please.” His voice went hoarse, almost pleading now, and the sound of it seemed to shame him. “If I speak, I will not survive it.”

The words hung between them.

Bare. Ugly. True.

She looked at him then with something so wounded and tender that it nearly undid him where he stood. Not pity. Never pity. That would have been easier. No, she looked at him as though she could see the grave he had made inside himself and wanted to climb down into it with a candle.

“Remmick—”

“No.” His voice cracked violently. “I implore you, my sweet princess, do not ask this of me.”

The endearment slipped from him like blood from an opened vein.

My sweet princess.

And there was no going back.

Her breath caught, and Remmick dragged a hand across his face roughly, as though he could wipe the confession away before it fully formed. As though the room had not already heard it. As though every sword, every shield, every guttering flame had not turned witness against him.

“You think these are merely words,” he whispered. “You think if I say them aloud, the world remains what it was before?”

His laugh came low and terrible. She had never seen him like this. Not controlled. Not carved cleanly into silence and duty. No, this was the man beneath the armor. Starved. Cornered. Half-mad with wanting.

“If I speak,” he said, “I shall want your hand. Your time. Your smile when you wake. I shall want every piece of you God allows me to look upon, and when the court denies me the rest, I shall curse the heavens for it.”

The tears in her eyes spilled over. Remmick saw them and looked almost stricken by the sight, as though he would rather have taken a blade between the ribs than be the cause of that shining hurt.

“You do not understand what loving you has made of me.”

There it was.

The word.

Not whole, not clean, not safely wrapped in vow or courtly song, but there.

Loving. It entered the space between them and altered the air. His voice dropped until it was barely more than breath. He pressed a trembling hand hard against his chest as though trying to hold himself together by force.

“Every day I stand beside you and feel as though I am starving to death in the presence of a feast I cannot touch.”

Silence.

Only rain against the windows. Only the ache of two people standing at the edge of ruin, both looking down, both knowing the fall would not be survived unchanged. Not with those tear-bright eyes. Not with that soft voice that always sounded as though it had been made only for prayers and his name. Not when he was already so near the end of himself that one more kindness might finish what war never could.

“Please,” she whispered, and this time it broke.

God have mercy.

The sound that left him after that did not belong to any living thing. It was grief. It was longing. It was four years of silence splitting straight down the middle.

“Do not,” he whispered desperately. “I will do anything you ask but do not ask me that.”

Her fingers touched his jaw then.

Softly.

Reverently. Like she was already mourning him. And Remmick nearly shattered beneath the kindness of it. Her fingers lingered there, light as breath, warm as mercy. He stood beneath her touch breathing like a wounded thing, eyes shut tight as though darkness might save him from the sight of her.

It did not.

Nothing ever had.

When he finally opened his eyes again, she was still there before him in the trembling candlelight, flushed and tear-bright and impossibly brave. Looking at him not as a knight. Not as her father’s sword.

But as a man.

A man she loved enough to ruin herself for.

“And if I asked you to kiss me, Sir Remmick?”

Remmick stared at her for one terrible heartbeat.

Two.

His whole life balanced there between them, hanging by the thin thread of his restraint.

Then it snapped.

“As you wish,” he whispered.

The words sounded like surrender.

His hands found her face at once, almost desperately, his thumbs brushing the tears still damp upon her skin before he kissed her as though he had been dying of thirst for years and had only just been permitted water. It was worse than he had imagined.

Or better.

God, he no longer knew.

Because now he knew she wanted him too, and that knowledge ruined him entirely.

The kiss deepened, and the soft, broken sound that left her throat woke something in him that was both feral and grieving. His hands slipped from her face to her waist, drawing her against him with a hunger restrained so carefully and for so long that restraint itself had become another form of agony. She yielded to him at once. No hesitation. No fear. Only desperate relief, as though she too had spent years imagining this in the privacy of sleepless nights and hated herself for every dawn that came after. Her fingers tangled in his hair as he kissed her harder, then slower, savoring her like a starving man terrified the feast would vanish if he tasted too greedily.

Sweet.

Christ, she was sweet. She tasted of cherries and wine and the salt of tears.

Remmick groaned softly against her mouth, the sound low and wrecked from somewhere deep inside him, and the princess answered with a trembling breath that nearly brought him to his knees.

“Remmick,” she whispered when he finally dragged his mouth away from hers.

Not to stop him. Just to say his name.

Like prayer. Like surrender.

His lips found her jaw.

The delicate line of her throat.

Slowly now. Reverently.

But there was nothing truly holy left in him anymore.

Only devotion sharpened into hunger.

Every kiss he pressed beneath her ear felt like confession. Years of restraint unraveling against her skin one trembling touch at a time. His hands held her like something precious and breakable even as his mouth moved lower, unable to stop tasting the softness he had denied himself for so long.

The princess shivered beneath him. And God help him, Remmick felt the sound she made travel straight into his bones.

He kissed the hollow of her throat as though he might die there willingly.

Her collarbone.

The bare skin revealed where her gown had slipped slightly from one shoulder in the struggle of holding each other too tightly.

Not greedy.

Never cruel.

Just starving.

Starving in the most devastatingly tender way. As though every inch of her was something sacred he had no right to touch and could not stop worshipping anyway.

“Tell me to stop,” he whispered hoarsely against her skin, though the words sounded more like begging than command.

Her hands tightened in his hair immediately.

“Don’t.”

The answer broke him further. Remmick lowered himself before her then with something almost like reverence, his forehead briefly pressing against her waist as though in prayer before his kisses wandered lower still, trembling hands gathering silk carefully, mouth ghosting over the soft warmth of her through the fabric until she gasped his name again like she could scarcely bear the feeling of being wanted this much.

And perhaps that was the tragedy of it.

That after four years spent starving beside one another, neither of them knew how to touch gently anymore. Only desperately. Like people trying to make up for lost time before the world came crashing back in around them again. And now she lay before him across the armorer’s table, candlelight trembling gold across flushed skin and loosened silk, her breath still uneven beneath the weight of what they had done to one another. Or perhaps what they had finally allowed themselves to become.

Remmick stood between her knees like a man at the altar of his own undoing.

God help him, he had tasted the forbidden fruit willingly.

Had kissed the sweetness from the inside of her thighs like a man finally permitted to drink from a holy spring after years dying of thirst beside it. He had touched her with reverent desperation, hands shaking not from uncertainty but from the unbearable reality of finally being allowed to. Allowed to worship. Allowed to hunger openly. Allowed to hear his name fall from her lips in broken little prayers.

And he had loved her there not cleanly. Not nobly. But devotedly 

Like a starving beggar loves bread. Like a sinner loves Heaven knowing full well he shall never enter it. He had all but stolen her innocence upon the armory table beneath the watch of cold steel and guttering candles, licking devotion into her skin until she trembled apart beneath his mouth.

And still it was not enough.

Because love, Remmick understood now, was a crueler hunger once fed.

The wanting only grew teeth.

She reached for him then.

Sweet, trembling thing.

Still looking at him as though he were not ruined already.

“Remmick,” she whispered softly. The sound of his name nearly brought him to his knees a second time. He caught her wrist before she could touch his face.

Not roughly.

Never roughly.

Like a man stopping himself from stepping over the edge of something bottomless. Cruel was the thought that rept upon him then the though that beckoned him back to reality.

Could he ask it of her?

Could he stand before this princess of sweetness and cherry pie, this soft and impossible thing that had somehow bloomed untouched in the blood-soaked house of Alaric, and ask her to abandon everything for the ugliness of his love?

Could he take the girl who still smuggled sugared cherries from the kitchens and laughed like sunlight through chapel glass, and condemn her to cold roads, whispered scandal, her father’s fury, and a life forever looking over her shoulder?

No.

Because if she loved him, truly loved him, then his confession would not free them.

It would bury her beside him.

He would no longer be one man dying quietly of longing, but the hand that dragged her down into ruin with him: a princess and a knight, a daughter and her father’s sworn sword, a woman raised to bind kingdoms and a man raised only to bleed for them.

The king could kill Remmick, and that was nothing.

Death had walked beside him long before love ever had. But the king would cage her. He would dim her. And that, more than any grave waiting for him, was the horror that kept Remmick silent. Because he knew now that if he stayed, if he gave in fully to this, if he let himself have her in all the ways his body and soul were screaming for, then there would be no returning from it. No silence left to hide behind.

No honor.

No survival.

Remmick closed his eyes.

Slowly.

“I cannot,” he whispered and by God, those words sounded like death Like a coffin lid lowering. Like the last breathing thing inside him settling down at last beside all the words he would never allow himself to say. Remmick opened his eyes, she was looking back at him. Still flushed from him. Still trembling faintly from the ruin they had made together. But the softness in her face was already changing, retreating, shuttering itself away somewhere he could no longer reach.

The tears were gone.

That was worse.

Her expression had become royal.

Not cold. Never cold. He thought coldness would have spared him.

No, she looked crowned with hurt.

“What do you mean, you cannot?”

His hand flexed at his side, still remembering the shape of her.

“I cannot stay.”

For a moment, she did not move.

Then something in her face broke so quietly he almost wished she had struck him instead.

“You cannot stay,” she repeated.

“I will ask the king to send me north. To the border. To the front. Anywhere he has need of a sword.”

Her lips parted.

“You would leave?”

“I must.”

“No.” Her voice sharpened, but beneath it was disbelief, raw and young and terrible. “No, you do not get to touch me like a vow and then speak to me like a duty you mean to abandon.”

He flinched.

Good.

Let it wound him.

He deserved at least that.

“My lady—”

The word cracked through the armory.

After all his mouth had dared against her skin, the title was an insult.

A coward’s shield lifted too late. Her tears were gone. Her expression had become royal.

Not cold. Never cold. But crowned with hurt.

“Then I release you from my service, Sir Remmick.”

His lungs forgot their purpose. A drawing of his soul and those words that followed sealed his earthly tomb.  

“As you wish.”

“No,” she said. “It is your wish not mine.Your honor, not mine. Your silence. Your living death and I wash my hands of it.”

She moved to the door.

For one impossible second, he thought she might turn back. That she might ask again. That he might fail again. That he might fall to his knees and confess himself the coward she already knew him to be.

Her hand closed around the latch.

She left.

And Remmick, who had stood unbroken through war, sank to one knee in the empty armory.

Not from injury. Not from prayer.

But from the unbearable weight of having been loved and refusing the mercy of it. The room seemed altered by her absence. Still full of her somehow. The candles burned low in their iron cradles, trembling whenever the wind found weakness in the old stone. Rain struck the high windows without pause, soft and relentless as mourning. Her warmth lingered in the air. Cherry and rainwater and something sweeter he would spend years trying not to remember.

The same hands that had touched her as though she were holy now wrapped themselves around cold steel instead.

Fitting. Cruel.

He could still feel the ghost of her beneath his palms. The trembling in her breath. The trust of her. God help him, the way she had looked at him in those final moments, not as knight, not as servant, not as her father’s sworn sword, but as a man she had loved enough to ruin herself for.

Years passed after that, as years have the indecency to do.

She did not marry. She chased away more suitors with honeyed smiles and sharpened wit. One she convinced that her dowry included the haunted tower. Another she asked whether his mother would be joining them in the bridal bed, as he seemed unable to form an opinion without her. A third she defeated by serving him cherry pie baked with salt instead of sugar, then apologizing with such angelic sweetness that he thanked her for it.

He heard these stories from other men.

Never from her.

That was the cruelty time took particular care to preserve.

Remmick heard of her always from other mouths. From squires grown loose-tongued over ale. From ladies whispering behind fans. From soldiers passing through border camps with court gossip wrapped in their saddlebags like contraband. He heard she refused the northern prince. He heard she had sent a widowed count away with a smile sharp enough to leave him bleeding dignity all the way to his carriage. He heard she had made some lordling blush scarlet by asking whether he meant to marry her or her dowry, since he seemed far more tender with the latter.

He heard she laughed still. Sometimes.

He heard all of it from mouths that were not hers, mouths that did not stain his memory cherry-red, mouths that could speak his name without undoing him. And still, in the black, lonely hours before dawn, he dreamed of those lips: soft as sin, sweet as stolen fruit, and forever barred to him.

The king did not restore Remmick to her guard. Of course he did not. King Alaric was not a fool. Cruel men often mistake themselves for wise, but the dangerous ones are both. He had seen enough. Perhaps not the whole of it, not the fever that had lived beneath every silence, but enough to know that Remmick was no longer safe near his daughter. So he sent him where kings always send men they find useful but inconvenient.

To the borders.

Then to war. To winter roads where men died namelessly in ditches and called it service because kingdoms have always known how to dress slaughter in noble clothes.

It is there where Remmick became useful again.

Steel at the hip.

Scar at the brow.

Spine like a church door.

A knight made neat by distance. A weapon returned to its proper wall.

Only now there was something inside him that would not close.

No priest could bless it shut. No battlefield could bury it. No wound, however deep, could distract his body from the older hurt. He bled often enough in those years, from shoulder, thigh, ribs, once from a sword cut so near his throat that the surgeon crossed himself before stitching him. Each time, men praised his endurance. His silence. His strength.

Fools.

They thought pain was the place where blood came out.

They knew nothing.

In the sixth year of his self-imposed exile, after a campaign in the east had left him leaner, harder, and more ghost than man, Remmick returned to court.

The years had not been kind to him.

A beard now darkened his jaw. New scars crossed the old, pale script upon his body, each one proof that he could still be opened, still be marked, still bleed like the living. There was a stiffness in his shoulder where Lord Vaun’s spear had once struck him, and silver had begun, insolently early, at his temples. War had not made him cold, as men liked to say. It had only given his grief more rooms to walk through.

He entered the chapel near dusk.

He did not know she would be there.

That was what he told himself, standing half-hidden beneath the shadow of the stone archway.

A lie, perhaps.

The heart is often a better hound than the mind.

He saw her kneeling alone before the Virgin.

Her head was bowed. A blue veil lay over her hair, soft as twilight, and candlelight gathered around her as though it had mistaken her for an altar.

God forgive him for his blasphemy, an altar he had never stopped worshipping at.

Not cleanly. Not as saints are worshipped. No, Remmick had never been made for clean devotion. He worshipped her shamefully, hungrily, in the low animal chapel of memory. In the dark before battle. In the instant before sleep. In every red rose he refused to look at too long. In every cherry placed upon a noble table. In every mouth that was not hers and therefore meaningless.

He still remembered the cherry color of her lips.

That, too, was a wound. He should have left.

Any decent man would have left. A better man would have turned on his heel and spared her the burden of being seen by the ghost who had once called abandonment mercy.

But Remmick had never been good.

Only restrained.

And restraint, he had learned too late, was not the same as goodness.

So he stood at the back of the chapel, hidden in shadow, and watched her pray.

She had changed.

Of course she had.

Six years had moved across her too, though more gently than they had moved across him. There was more stillness in her now. Not less sweetness, never that, but sweetness tempered by sorrow, like honey darkened over flame. Her shoulders were straighter. Her hands, folded before her, no longer seemed girlish. She had become what hurt had always threatened to make of her.

A woman.

A wound with a crown.

Remmick watched the candles tremble around her and thought, with a kind of agony too old to cry out, that she was more beautiful than he had any right to remember.

Then she turned.

Not fully.

Only enough that he saw the side of her face.

The line of her cheek.

The soft shadow of her lashes.

Her mouth.

Her lashes lowered in the same way they had all those years ago.

That same slow fall. That same small, devastating movement that had once kept him awake for nights, dissecting the mercy of a blink like a monk gone mad over scripture.

She blinked.

And for a moment, six years collapsed.

The armory returned.

The rose.

The rain.

Her hand against his jaw.

Her voice saying his name as though it belonged to her.

Remmick stopped breathing.

Then she smiled

Not for the court.

Not for God, though perhaps even He stole some small part of it for Himself.

For him. A small smile. A wounded one.

The sort of smile carried too long in the dark, folded carefully between heartbreak and hope until both begin to resemble one another.

Then she turned back toward the altar.

As though she had not just undone him all over again with a single glance. A secret carried too long. Then she faced forward again. 

That night, a covered dish was left outside his chamber. Cherry pie.

Still warm.

Remmick stared at it for a long while before touching it, as though he already understood that whatever waited beneath the crust would hurt him more than any battlefield ever had. He ate it with his hands like a starving man, no dignity. No restraint. Every bite tasted of sweetness and punishment in equal measure. Cherries stained his fingers red. He thought absurdly of blood. Of mouths.

Of her.

Halfway through, his fingertips brushed parchment hidden beneath the crust where no servant would ever think to place it. Remmick went still. Slowly, he unfolded it.

Only three words.

As you wish.

For a moment he could do nothing except stare. Then, with shaking hands better suited to swords than tenderness, Remmick pressed the parchment to his mouth. That is the tragedy of men like him bound by honour. they become brave only in empty rooms. The next morning, he was ordered north again.

But before dawn he passed beneath her window. A single candle burned there, small and trembling in the dark like the last stubborn star before morning swallowed the sky whole.

Remmick looked up.

Stood behind the glass was his princess of sweetness and cherry pie, pale and still in her nightdress, hair in loose curls over her shoulders cascading down her back. Remmick looked at her still and it was as though he could carve the sight of her into the inside of his skull deeply enough to survive another lifetime without her. The pale gold of candlelight against her skin. The sorrow in her eyes. That cherry coloured mouth he had kissed like a dying man tasting absolution. The window did not open. No farewell was spoken.

They only looked.

Remmick wondered then, as he had wondered a thousand times, whether silence was noble or merely fear wearing armor. She lifted her hand. He lifted his own. Then her fingers curled against the glass. his curled at his side. The horse shifted beneath him. The road waited. But duty, that old butcher, sharpened its knife. 

God, how he loved her.

Loved her so long and so hopelessly that even his silence had learned the shape of her name. Loved her past honor, past reason, past every last mercy Heaven ever intended to grant wicked men such as him. Loved her with the desperation of a starving man pressing his face to the gates of paradise knowing he would never be permitted entry and worshipping anyway.

But Remmick had always known love was not measured by what a man was willing to take.

Only by what he was willing to lose.

So instead he bowed his head toward the candlelit window where his princess of sweetness and cherry pie stood watching him disappear from her life for the second and perhaps final time.

“As you wish.”

The old words.

His shield. His confession. His cowardice.

What he meant was this:

I love you most ardently. Most wretchedly. I will love you long after they drag me from your father’s battlefield in pieces. I will love you until the stones beneath me are washed clean of blood and my heart, ruined thing that it is, will continue to bear your name carved into it so deeply no blade forged by man could ever cut it free.

One year, 365 days, an entire trip around the sun; that's how long you'd been sleeping with a married man. You couldn't have made it any easier on yourself by picking your run of the mill, hates his wife and hits on you at the bar while waving a 20 in his hand kind of married man. Why would you do that when instead you could have your very own Lieutenant Robert Blair Mayne wrapped around your manicured finger? A man who was your fathers best friend, who you'd see so frequently at family barbecues that there was always a seat saved for him, a man who your father sent in on more than one occasion to check for monsters behind the sparkly pink closet door of your childhood bedroom, the man who you were the flower girl at his own wedding under the excuse of "he didn't know any other kids".

Now you're taller, older, more glitz and glitter on a random Wednesday than more people would put on for prom. Your skin soft with the scent of vanilla and whatever designer fragrance you batted your lashes at Paddy for this month. All you needed to do was pout your glossed lips and anything you wanted was in your hands in a neatly wrapped box in a matter of moments.

Paddy had a very loose definition of marriage and surely sleeping with his former Captains daughter for the better half of a year wasn't included in those vows filled with half truths he performed with faux passion at the altar. War made men mad and Paddy had been the maddest one of all. That was the explanation everyone would give themselves to explain away why a man such as himself tends to spoil the glossy-lipped brat of his old Captain, who was half his age while he has a perfectly age appropriate wife waiting in a cold bed at home.

She had done nothing for him, even when he met her at that bar his former men had dragged him to all those nights ago. Paddy Mayne wasn't a man to be anchored down by anything, he knew what everyone expected. Come home a war hero, settle down with a pretty woman on his arm, have one son to carry on his name, one daughter to give away as she walks down the aisle, and die with them at his bedside. It's what was traditional, encouraged even, but the he was never one for tradition in the first place.

A year later and you're back home on spring break and coincidentally, your mother and father had left the house to you while they're on vacation. Your father always tended to treat you as if you were still a child, telling you not to have anyone over while they were gone, not even your friends from school, and you could go have the neighbors cook you dinner if you need help working the stove. The same neighbor whose sons been trying to get a peek at you changing through your window since primary school. A fact that had you rolling your eyes and stomp over to the windows to tug the curtains shut, cutting off the boys unfruitful attempt at the peep show he so desperately desired.

In all his feeble attempts of discipline, he had failed to forbid the one thing you were dead set on doing, the actual thing that would get you in trouble if caught. Inviting his friend over.

That was part of the reason you liked fucking a man twice your age. It made you feel like a woman, not some girl who still needed babysitting that your father is convinced you still are. Crouching down, you fish out the box that stored your dirtiest secrets, concealed by the frilly bed skirt that had yet to be changed into something that was"more suited" to the young adult you actually were. Tracing your fingers across the boxes edges, your heart involuntarily skips a beat as you open it, lifting out the latest letter Paddy had written you with the delicacy of something worth far more than just a sheet of paper.

Sitting on the bed, you find yourself smiling as you reread the words,the handwriting surprisingly soft and flowy for a man who knows the brutality of war so intimately, and no one knew that intimacy more than Paddy. It was far more suited for a man of words, a poet. You studied the words of this letter far harder than you had any of your textbooks this semester, almost as if you were trying to commit them to memory. Involuntary, you couldn't help but rub your thumb over the ending, your favorite part.

Love, Paddy

Love, you were sure that's what this was. The need to have him buried deep inside of you, how frequently you've caught yourself daydreaming about those rough hands, the hands that have taken lives, gripped around your jaw as he forced his fingers in your mouth. All while you were supposed to be doing your algebra homework.

You tuck the letter back into the box for safe keeping, placing a chaste kiss over his name before folding the paper back up neatly. Your lips were only meant for him, no matter the form he took whether that was in the flesh or through written word.

You wanted to do something sweet for him, it was your anniversary after all. He took care of you like a well kept secret, holding you close to his heart as he fueled your infatuation with hushed whispers and wistful promises. Swearing to take you away from everything, this town, your father, anything you wanted would be yours as his strokes hit deep in your core. Even the mere thought of that now had you crossing your legs to ease the gentle ache.

Striding into the kitchen, you can't help but wonder how your secret lover would treat you if you really were his wife, his lovely little bride getting to play house for a man more than double his age. Would he come up behind you, pressing your stomach into the counter as he growled that you really shouldn't be swinging your hips like that in those sweet little peignoir sets he'd frequently swipe his credit card to buy without even looking. All he ever needed was a shy pout and batted eyelashes, and he'd get to rip them off of you anyway. It really was a win win situation for the Paddy in your daydreams.

You find the house phone in its lone spot in the corner of the kitchen, beckoning you closer with your own mischievous thoughts, something you should've known better than to listen to. Hopping up on the chilled laminate, the receiver gets comfortable in between its nestled spot in between your ear and shoulder, punching in the number you shouldn't have known by heart with one neatly manicured finger.

The sharp ringing that greeted you caused your heart to swell, a mix of anxiousness and excitement had you feeling like a school girl, giddy with the newfound infatuation of her first schoolyard crush. Except this was something different, something darker that settled deeper into your core that was impossible to rid yourself of, no matter how many boys at your college you pretended to engage in their lust. It wasn't their fault really, no one could drill his hips into you like a man with so much to loose. Your heart pounded in your throat as the receiver picked up on the other end.

"Mayne Residence" That thick, accented voice shouldn't have worked you up as much as it did.

The same voice that barked orders at terrified men could also promise you anything you wanted. But here, it sounded bored, annoyed, tied down to the domestic dream that wasn't his.

You cradled the phone in your palm as you smile, trying not to let your smile show through your voice.

"Hello, is this Mr.Paddy Mayne?" stifling a giggle, you try your hardest to seem serious.

He knew immediately who was on the other end, hearing a sigh come through the phone, the one he'd let out before rolling his eyes at you and your antics.

"This is he, an' who is this?" That smirk is playing on his lips, a coy smile lined with mischief, a mischief that should've been long abandoned for a man his age.

"Oh you know~" you toyed with your answer, swinging your legs as you absentmindedly played with the hem of your dress, picking at loose threads that weren't there.

Your father would scold you if he were here for not only sitting on the counter, but wearing a dress so short. It was clearly improper for you to be wearing as a young, polite woman like yourself. Too bad he didn't know one of his closest friends picked it out himself, then proceeded to go down on you in his car to show just how much he liked how it rode up your thighs.

"…is your wife around Mr.Mayne? I'd hate to keep you preoccupied with little ol' me" your tone suddenly hushed in mock secrecy.

"No ma'am, she's off a' her sisters this week" its clear that he can hear the excitement brimming at the cusp of your voice as the cord twirls in your pointer finger like it's the only thing keeping you on this earth.

"so.. do you think she'd mind if her husband kept a pretty young thing company while shes alone in a big empty house right? maybe just for a night.. " theres a pause, feigning contemplation.

"maybe just for a night, what if something happens and I don't have a strong man to defend me?"

There's a chuckle echoing through the receiver, an amused laugh of a man entertaining something that should be beneath him.

"Do you really think I wouldn't remember what today is lamb?" There's an eyebrow raise clear in his tone. You're embarrassed to admit the gruffness in his voice makes you wetter than you'd like. The nickname..his faux mocking question, it makes you fiddle with the necklace sat between your breasts that he gave you for your first communion all those years ago, trying to think of anything else but his hand in your panties.

How could he forget? Not when you squealed so sweetly while you bled a creamy ring on his cock, blubbering and sniffling about how he was far too big to fit all the way, that it hurts, way more than you ever thought loosing your virginity would. Not when that was the beginning of what was now a years long relationship consisting of chalked up purchases and fake nights out at the bar rehashing the same old war stories, all to spend the night easing orgasm after orgasm out of your sweet cunt.

You took too long to answer, too caught up in the cloud of what those war torn fingers felt curled inside of you and you knew it. The only thing snapping you out of the hazy daydream the man was solely responsible for was a gruff chuckle, one that curled in your ears and chills down your spine. He sensed the effect he had on you, even through the phone.

"So then.. what time would you like me over love?" He questions in a new voice, one that edged on mischievously playful. A lilt in his tone what wasn't usually there.

You're finally snapped out of it, realizing that there was a question, an important question that had to be answered. Stammering yourself back to the present, a giggle forces itself out of your chest, running your hands down your skirt as you smooth imaginary wrinkles.

"A..ah um" An airy giggle rings into the receiver, a mix of fear hits you when he asks a question you honestly should have been expecting, why wouldn't he be asking what time to come over?

"Is uh.. is 6 okay?" your voice lightens at the end of your sentence, trying not to convey that on the other end of his telephone you've managed to knot the cord into a rats nest with all of the twirling in your panicked daydreams.

"Ah ah, you're stammering an' you know I don' like a stammer" He says in a way far too stern for what should have reasonably made you this wet. It gave you that glimpse you craved, that you yearned for, what all that military discipline taught him and what that meant for you.

"An' if I recall… I asked you correct? So tell me, when should the lady o' the house be expectin' me 'round?" There's a grin, you're sure of it. Your poet of a soldier carefully dictating his words and according actions as if he were playing chess.

There's a wobbly breath in, a feeble attempt to compose yourself while your clit throbbed to the rhythm of your heart.

"6 it is then." You say with false bravado and you could practically see his self satisfied crooked smile.

"Good girl, tha' wasn't so hard." He teases, thinking of all the things that will wait for you upon his arrival.

"See you soon lamb "

"I'll see you then sir~" the teasing coo hums from your lips as you hear the call disconnect on the other end. Your breath you weren't even aware that you had been holding escapes in an almost pleasant burn through your lungs. There was so much to do before 6.

You rocked on your heels as you gazed into the warm glow of the bakery's display case, seemingly filled with endless sugary goodness. If you had all the money in the world, you probably would spend it all here. Your eyes go over each treat, scanning as you try to think about what Paddy would like, what he'd praise you for choosing because you knew him so well.

You thanked god every step you that took that lead you to the bakery that your father wasn't here with you. He would've had a fit if he saw you walk into town unaccompanied without a man present and without a coat or shawl. You could practically hear his scolding, demanding to know where your shame was, how a woman shouldn't go anywhere alone, much less in just a dress. Too bad you were your own woman now, if only just for a week or two before their return.

"What're ye lookin' for love? Anythin' in particular I can help ya' with?" A woman asks in a pleasant tone, seeming to pop into existence out of thin air and snapping you out of your sugar induced trance.

"O…oh!" You smile politely, the words falling out of your mouth in a surprised stumble

"Well um..well.." contemplating for a moment, you try to recall if you've ever seen this woman before. If she had a mouth, and if that mouth would tell your business to the town and in return, your family.

"I'm celebrating an anniversary and I was wondering what was popular..nothing too sweet, I don't think hes much for sweet" Your face can't help but flush at the thought of him, giggling a bit to cover the awkwardness in the conversation

"Oh honey an anniversary!!" she says excitedly. The woman, who you soon learn is named Eleanore, reaches over grabs your hands that were idly resting on the curved glass, squeezing and filling them with warmth.

"And such a pretty little thing like you! Let me look at ya'!" She is far too excited than she should be for a strangers anniversary, but you guess that's why she got into the business of creating things to be enjoyed on special occasions, because she gets to enjoy them with you.

You somewhat reluctantly obliged when she gestures for you to back up from the counter, even doing a small twirl so she can fully see you, soft features and all. That seems to delight her as she claps her hands in overwhelming joy.

She eagerly waves you back, all grins as she pats your cheek in the way a tender mother would.

"Oh hes a lucky man love! Lucky lucky man to have a sweet little thing like you. An' he must treat you right! He treats you right yes?" It's easy to tell that shes rambler, talking even when she isn't fully sure anyone was still listening. Even now, shes walking around behind the counter, looking in the lit cases almost like she's scoping out the exact perfect dessert with every little description of Paddy you provide.

Little does she know that the man you're describing, shouldn't be yours to have in the slightest. Every little daydream she's having on your behalf of baking your future wedding cake is so morally wrong that she'd probably kick you out of her shop and make you a town pariah, an outcast gossiped about during ladies bridge games.

You zone back into the conversation when she finally starts listing desserts she thinks would suit your mystery man with whatever strange divination she utilized to make decisions about people's taste she's never once met, or at least you hope never met. You begin twisting and twirling your necklace in a fidgety, overthinking nervousness.

"Well then, if your mans serious, stubborn to the point of pure stupidity, which trust me lovey when I say you're hard pressed to find a man who isn't, but hes got a deep sense of art an' poetry to him like you say he is, then I think he's fit for our strawberry shortcake. Not too sweet but delightful all the same!" She gestures a hand to a cake, simple and classic, decorated with whipped cream and full strawberries. There's no doubt he'd like it, all you're left to wonder is how in the hell she's right.

"An' we do offer two sizes! Do ye' have any little ones running 'bout? Or just the two of ye for now?" Her smile indents into her rosy cheeks, but the flush of them is nothing to the warmth that blooms across your face and down your neck only to settle deep in your belly at the mention of children. You're unsure whether to feel horror at the possibility or just the littlest amount of joy at the mistaken domesticity of your relationship. There's a bit of shame that creeps in and settles where it should be when you admit that you wouldn't be upset if there were.

"It's uh.. it's just us!! The small one'll do us just fine" A coy smile plays on your lips as you toy with the only thing that tied you to him.

"Oh that's alright! The little ones will surely come soon enough for you two!" Eleanore teases playfully, grabbing the smaller cake out with a delicate hand.

"Now let me pack this up nice for ya' "

And she does, she wraps the cake up with a box and bow, far prettier than you ever could have done. She even throws in a couple of cookies for you, free of charge.

"Those are for you now ye' hear me, don't let him have any of those. Plus, men like a woman with a little meat on her bones! You make sure you eat up!" She scolds with a pat to your arm, bundling up all your goods in a neat little bag that makes you look like the sweetest little house wife.

With a shy smile and repetitive, sincere, thanks, the bell above the door cues your exit as the woman waves you bye through the window. You'd surely have to stop in again, hopefully with a ring on your hand and a bump firmly seated in your belly.

You tried desperately not to spiral about every little detail displayed in front of your kitchen counter. On your way home you'd decided on picking up Paddy's favorite poitín, even batting your eyes extra hard when the clerk at the counter raised an eyebrow on why such a pretty little thing was buying such harsh liquor, better fit for a man of his age or even older and not the nice wine he was expecting when you walked through the door.

It was ten to six, the clock feeling far too quick and far too slow in the same beat. You tried to make everything nice, that you weren't some ungrateful little brat that everyone else thought you were, that instead you were a woman, grown and mature, capable of a nice evening. You even put on his favorite dress, one that he bought you himself, short and playful that ended just shy of your knees. He told you that night after in his bed he liked the easy access, not too much fabric to bunch up and get in the way of his ravenous mouth. Just at the top of your breasts laid the necklace Paddy had given you for your first communion. When you were just a girl, a lamb unknowing of the worlds cruelty or the deep, interwoven love that it was capable of.

The sudden knock on the door sent a sharp shiver down your spine, heart rate climbing to the point of hearing it thrum in your ears. With a deep breath and light giggle of giddy excitement, you smooth your hands over your skirt and grab the handle to open the awaiting threshold to the man waiting on the other side.

There he stood, broad shoulders, scruff on his face and gray ever so slightly creeping onto his temples, perfect. You're unable to keep back your smile as you feel like a kid on Christmas. He offers you a crooked one back.

"Well..are ye' lettin' me in lamb? Or do ye' jus' wanna keep me out here waitin'?" He cocks an teasing eyebrow at you, nodding to your hand still firmly planted on your side of the doorknob, blocking him off from entering.

It takes you a moment to realize what he means, and when it sinks in you feel face flush in a brief flash of embarrassment, smiling a half apologetic grin at him as you replace your grip on the handle with his wrist, coaxing him inside by moving every so slightly to the side.

"I wouldn't want to keep you waiting, that'd just be impolite of me" Your tone is ever so lightly teasing as he allows you to pull him in with a gentle hand, shutting the door behind him.

His hands immediately find your waist, holding you loosely at first before his hold becomes firmer, pressing you against him with a little squeak of surprise escaping you, hands pressing against his shirt clad chest.

"I see yer wearin' my favorite.." making a show of looking you up and down, you feel his fingers drift down to cup the fat of your ass, his palms heavy on your flesh as his lips move to capture yours in a hungry kiss. All masculine and greed like a man starved in a desert wasteland.

"Now.. why don't we work on takin' it off" His kisses pause only to lean into your ear to whisper, so close you could practically feel the words flowing from his mouth.

You can't help but let out a soft moan at his ministrations, feeling those heavy hands knead at the flesh, the chill of his wedding band offering a welcome contrast to the burning desire.

Reluctantly, you separate from him, lips glossy and swollen even from that brief, heated kiss. You give him a coy little smile as you pat the center of his chest, giving a sweet little laugh along with it.

"Later.." You whisper mischievously, a little more out of breath than you'd care to admit.

"I didn't plan a surprise for you for it to go to waste." Satiating him with a brief peck on the lips, you relish in the smell of his cologne and the welcomed pain the scrape of his freshly shave stubble provides.

You're immediately met with a raised eyebrow from the man in front of you, his hands not moving from their precarious position, still offering the occasional pinch and squeeze as you speak.

"A surprise ya' say?" He pretends to ponder your words, a glint in his eye with a motivation you couldn't quite place.

"Now, what would make my little lamb wanna do somethin' like that?" He mock ponders, looking you square in the eyes with a wry smile. He gently starts swaying you both side to side, making you giggle.

"You know.. its been one year since we.." You let your statement trail off, letting your gaze shift from his face, down to his hips, then back up again do all the talking that was needed.

"Just wanted to make it special," A playful pout marks your lips as you lay your head down on his shoulder, placing a few chaste kisses on his neck.

"Ah.. an anniversary?" he teases, one hand moving up to the small of your back, rubbing smooth little circles.

"I guess that's reason enough for a surprise isn't it?" You're half convinced he just likes hearing himself talk before he captures your lips in a brief, but passionate kiss.

"Well then, show me." A smile grazes his lips, now both calloused hands circling and massaging your hips.

"Let's see what my girls been workin' so hard to plan" You can't quite tell if hes teasing for your efforts, but you're not really sure you mind.

Rocking on your heels, you carefully remove Paddy's hands from their purchase on your ass, instead grabbing his hands to lead him into the kitchen. You pause for a moment to cover his eyes with your free hand.

"Make sure your eyes are closed. No peeking and I mean it!" You scold, playfully scowling as you feel the man's eyes roll beneath your palm.

As you lead him, you can't help but feel giddy as you draw him closer to his prize, what in your mind hes worked so hard to deserve .

"'m old dolly, much longer in the dark 'n I'll probably end up snorin' in your lap," He chuckles, feeling you stop just shy of the counter. Your fingers brush against the bridge of his nose daintily, tickling as your nails leave his flesh. Oh how you longed for that nose to be buried deep in your cunt. Soon.

You gasp playfully as when you remove your hands, you see that his eyes were actually closed.

"You actually listened!" Giggling, you press a quick kiss against his cheek .

"Good boy," teasing, you tuck the bottle behind your back, moving Paddy right in front of the cake, which read in dainty, twirly writing.

'Happy Anniversary'

"Ready…open!!" His vision takes a moment to focus, adjusting to the sudden onslaught of light.

First he sees you, the pretty thing he'd had his eye on, angelic and heavenly as you stand there all sweetness, flushed and soft. You've known nothing of hardship, of struggles or pain. Honestly, sleeping with him is the most rebellious thing you could have possibly done, and he doesn't think either of you would change any of it.

Then, his eyes drift onto the counter, finding immediately what you had surprised him with. A light cake decorated with whipped cream and tart strawberries. He goes back and forth between looking at the dessert and looking at you, your smile, your nervously flushed face and how your fingers always seem to find his necklace. In all honesty it just reminded him of how young you were. No adult, bored to tears from the relentless beat down of life is buying any man in their life, a boyfriend or a husband, a cake, especially one this delicate looking.

In some weird way, it reminded him of you, sweet, playful, light and loving all wrapped up in a delightful presentation. He sees a slight flash of worry cross your eyes as you gaze into him, still concealing something not so subtly behind your back.

"Oh.. aren't ye just the sweetest little lamb," he coos, you can tell theres sincerity behind the playfulness, drawing you closer into his warm grip.

"Did ya' pick this out yourself?" There's a distinct want to his words, it relaxes you as you allow him to brush your cheek with his thumb.

You nod sweetly, unable to bite back a proud grin any longer.

"Mhm.. Thought you'd like it."

"I do.. an' what's this behind your back?" He looks you up and down, surveying you as if he were taking inventory. His hands find their way back around your hips, creeping around to your back. Your heart thumps in your ears, beats sounding like gunfire rather than an organ in your chest as he closes in around you, looping his arms around until they meet hands, your hands gripping the neck of a bottle.

You allow him to encase your hands in his, bringing forward the bottle of Poitín, his favorite brand, strong and not the cheapest. He shifts his gaze to look down at it in your shared grip, a satisfied hum leaving his lips as he looks back up to be met with a sheepish little smile.

"It's uh..its your favorite right?" You asked, head now swirling that somehow you had gotten it wrong and fucked this all up.

"Aye, an' how'd you know that?" There's a grin on his face even as his words feel more teasing than anything, taking the bottle from your hands to set it gently on the table. His hands return to their place on your hips, walking you slowly backwards until your back is flush with the countertop. In what reality was a few feet felt like miles, eons even.

"I.." It takes a considerable amount of focus to try to conjure the words needed in your brain, no thanks to Paddy, who’s now placing slow, light kisses right at your jaw, no doubt leading to what you'd hoped for all day.

"I've seen you drink it.. y'know when you're in the study, with dad," the air is impossibly thick with tension, charged. It feels as if you're deep underwater with the only possible way to get oxygen back is through Paddy.

His hand that’s not firmly planted around your waist, keeping the edge of the counter digging into your back into a delicious sting, began to trail up. It settles snugly with his thumb notched under your jaw, the other fingers wrapping loosely around the back of your neck. The position has you straighten your stance in his grip, your hands braced on the counter as his warm kisses go closer towards your ear.

"Such a sweet girl, doin' all this for an old man like me," He whispers, his hips subtly beginning to grind into your core, now realizing he has you pinned in a way you couldn't possibly get out of. Not that you'd want to anyway.

It's only then you realize just how firm his cock was, stirring in his pants the entire time you showed just how much you liked playing house.

"Why don't I show ye' just how appreciative I really am, consider it yer own anniversary present?" A hear stirs in your belly, sparking into a low, steady burn. He feels you slowly nod your head, only to tsk in your ear. Drawing his head back, the hand on your waist journeys down to your ass, giving you a sweet little rub before a firm smack comes down causing you to squeal and whine at the sting.

"Now I know I've taught ye better than that, use yer words like a big girl." There's something in his eyes you can't quite place, something between hunger and ferocity. His voice is steady, matter of fact. It causes the heat to pool lower into your cunt.

You give him a little pout, causing him to give you a look, half surprised, amused even in response.

"Y'dont have to be so mean about it Paddy," A playful little glare going his way, causing him to pinch the flushed, hot skin in response. You wince with a further whine.

"'m not bein' mean, jus' know ye know better is all." He pats your cheek with his palm almost condescendingly, only to then grab your chin with this thumb and middle finger, causing your glossy lips to pout further

"Try again." The words are simpler than you'd want, allowing no wiggle room to even try to twist this.

With a deep, somewhat shaky inhale that he takes as defeat, you look at him with the wettest eyes you could possibly muster, leaning the weight of your head into his palm.

"I would like you to show me..how much you appreciate me sir." The words stumbled off your tongue, feeling clunky as they fell out of your mouth. He should know that's what you meant, and it's stupid that he makes you say it.

You hear his warm hum of approval, rewarding your less than stellar performance with a soothing rub of the stinging flesh of your ass and a deep kiss, keeping you firmly planted between him and the hard laminate.

A small whimpers escapes your lips as his teeth bite, dominating the scenario in every sense of the word. He kisses like he has nothing to loose, like a man starved, a man who has everything most people could ever want but he still wants more. His tongue delves into your mouth with such precision you'd have thought he had a map.

Now both his hands wander down to your thighs as you shift, trying not to give away how soaked with slick they were. He squeezes, kneading as they travel farther down to the ditch of your knees. Your head swirled with the dual sensations, as he proceeded to lift, just for a moment as his mouth stayed firmly planted on yours.

With eyes shooting open in surprise, you feel the cold counter against your skin. A string of spit still connects your lips as he finally allows you to separate, chuckling at just how flushed in the face you are from one kiss, only to then leave you on the counter. A moment felt like years, only ceasing when he turned his back to reveal the cake in one hand and the bottle in another, setting it next to you before returning in between your thighs.

His hands pinch the hem of your dress, toying with it for a moment before lifting it clean off in one fluid motion, leaving you in soaked panties and a lacy bra he had bought weeks ago. He clicks his tongue, taking a moment to realize just how sweet you had looked, on display for him like a toy to play with.

"How sweet.." he teased, a doting coo evident in his voice, his thick fingers finding their way to the elastic of your panties, not quite touching where you wanted. So close but still so far. It was maddening.

You watched as his eyes glanced down to the cake, its soft cream pristine and unmoving, he looks back up at you.

"Have ye tried some yet lamb?" You shake your head, he let's that one slide, following the movement of his fingers as one dips into the cream.

"Open," and you obey, probably too quickly as your jaw falls open, only to be met with two fingers on your tongue.

Wrapping your lips around him, you suck on the digits, being sure to look up at him through wet lashes. You make a show of finishing everything he gives you, coming off with an audible, wet, pop when he draws back.

"'s good?"

You nod, humming in confirmation. In the midst of being about to speak, he reaches behind you and unhooks your bra swiftly, leaving your nipples to stiffen at the cool air. You shudder, feeling newly exposed while Paddy's stays fully dressed.

"Guess tha' means I should try some huh?" The words feel matter of fact, almost bland to the point of not matching his actions.

You whimper at the sudden chilled sensation of whipped cream on your breasts and down your sternum. You almost say something, a whine of feeling too cold, too sticky, until you feel two fingers prod at your entrance, curling with known precision.

A moan swirls out of your mouth, all shuddering and wobbly with pleasure. The sort of feeling that has your nails digging into his bicep and your back arching. Then you feel his mouth, warm and wet as he trails licks and sloppy kisses from your pantyline to your sternum, tracing the dessert with his tongue.

You practically see stars as the dual stimulation, his fingers curling into that gummy spot that he knows so well. Writhing in his grip, your breath quickens as the man's thumb rubs agonizingly slow circles on your clit. If you knew one thing, it was that Paddy loves to tease.

"Si..sir! 'm gonna-" You're met with a sharp sting directly on your cunt, thighs clamping so hard around his hand they're trembling. His rough, flat hand making contact directly with your clit, the metal ring adding a distinct throb that has you clenching around his fingers greedily.

"No stammerin'. Tell me yer gonna cum like a good slut or 'm stoppin'."

A sob rips through you as your shoulders shake. One arm dedicated to holding tightly onto him, as if it was the only thing keeping you on the ground, while the other trembled in attempts to keep you at least somewhat upright. He could be so cruel.

There's a shake to your voice, a sweet moan drawn from you as the wave crescendoing in your belly begins to peak, its crash imminent and approaching rapidly. Your grip tightens.

"Fuck..Paddy pluh.. please~" the tears cascading down your cheeks wasn't intentional, bubbling over your lashline brimming with need. Your chest goes in rapid successions of rising and falling, there was somehow not enough breath you could take but also far too much. The quick circles on your nerve felt sharp, pointed pricks stabbing deep into your core while the walls of your cunt fluttered in a desperate attempt to keep Paddy's fingers curled inside.

"I've mn..I've been really good." Your weeps were pathetic, soft and pleading.

"Aye, ya have, really good. Jus' need some remindin' don' you?" His mouth is over your breast, making sure theres not a part of your body he hasn't left untouched. He yearned to make your father question why his daughter was wearing a turtleneck in the heat of summer, why you were now walking with a limp and squirmed while seated at the dinner table.

He took your pitiful nod as good enough, he thinks that you've been strung along enough, pinching your peaked nipples between his fingers while he takes the other in his mouth.

"Go 'head, cum for me." With his mouth full, he gets to listen to you squeal and writhe, that much awaited fluid suddenly gushing over his fingers. His chuckles vibrate against your chest as he keeps up the steady rhythm of his fingers while while you come down, head leaned on his arm.

Your head was still foggy and swimming with post orgasmic bliss while he withdrew his fingers. and soaked in a combination of cum and slick. Eyeing your glazed over vision, he makes sure you're watching as he licks every trace of your release off his fingers pulling you closer to him as you grimace, a grin plastered on his face.

He kisses your head, moving sweat stuck hair out of your face.

"I think m'girl tastes a bit sweeter" He teases, rubbing the side of your arm

"Taste, then y'can tell me" Your head leans against his arm, shifting to look into those glinting eyes once again. Obediently, your mouth opens, even sticking your tongue out, only to be met with a half chuckle at your enthusiasm.

You feel his fingers enter your mouth again, but this time its different, tastes different. With his fingers he had also grabbed a half cut strawberry, originally left for decoration now swirling with the taste of your own pleasure, sweet and tart all at the same time. He shushes your initial whine, watching intently as your lips wrap around him. The berry softens to a pulp before swallowing, drawing his fingers out, leaving the saliva that connects your tongue to him as you attempting to catch your breath.

He leans in close, whispering

"Good isn't it? Nothin' sweeter than my doll's cunt."

Nodding in agreement, you hum, still trying to get back everything in your brain that leaked out of your pussy and onto Paddy's fingers. He rubs your thighs, deep, soothing circles leaving delicious aches as you watch him think. You feel your heat pulse, trying to draw something when there's nothing there, squirming on your spot on the counter.

"Y'need more don' you?" There's a knowing smirk attached to that statement, he knew you wouldn't be satiated with just fingers, especially when his cock is at your disposal.

"Go on, ask for it. Can' read yer mind now can I?"

A pout flashes on your lips, soft and glossy. He very well knows what you want as you sit nude and desperate for what is rightfully yours, you shouldn't have to ask. But you know what he had in store if you pinched a fit, the ache in your clit evident, a years worth of punishment at the front of your mind. You keep the pout, resting your head on his arm, fingers shakily toying with the buttons on his shirt, undoing the first couple.

"You.. You know what I want sir.." Your eyes shift up to his, mischievous shine in the dark irises as he listens for the magic words.

"I need your cock.. I've been really good.." In your attempt to sweeten the deal for what you know you'll already get, you begin to kiss at his collar, moving up to his neck and jaw with his stubble scraping you just right.

With a content sigh, he slides you off the counter, setting you down in wobbly legs. He watches you stand, shaking like a newborn fawn trying to take its first steps. He leans into your ear as you're trying to put all your focus into not falling.

"Go up to yer room an' wait. Do not touch." He emphasizes his words with a playful spank, not enough impact to cause any real pain. You yelp and jolt forward at the sudden force, sending a glare at him over your shoulder.

Cautiously, you take steps. One after another leading you to your old bedroom, sitting on the edge of the mattress as you take in your surroundings. With your brain finally coming back to you, there is absolutely no way two fully grown people could do anything on this bed, only really being able fitting you comfortably whenever you stay in here. You have no clue why he told you to go in here, you would've let him take you against the counter, or in the study, or the living room, not this too small bed you're afraid won't be able to support the weight of both you and the grown man plowing into you.

You don't get to continue thinking for very long, hearing the door begin to creak open, heavy steps on the other side finally coming in. Your back involuntarily straightens, gazing up at him as he walks in, bottle in hand as he sets it down on the dainty night table. He takes in the surroundings with a brief exhale out of his nose, chuckling .

"See ye' didn't change much." You flush, rolling your eyes embarrassed.

"Shut up.. I'm not here that of-" You don't even get the opportunity to finish your snide comment, his warm mouth over yours once again. Moaning into it, you feel his hands push you back, far back until your spine connects with the mattress. He gives you another brief smack on the ass, acknowledging that he heard that little attitude that would be gone soon enough.

The mattress creaks under the added weight of his knee on the bed, slotting in between your thighs. Even with that brief contact, your slick soaking his pant leg. Your own hands go from his face, holding him into the kiss down to his shoulders until they finally reach the buttons of his shirt, making quick work of them. Hes still surprisingly fit for a man of his age, you guessed the military had something to do with that, his stomach soft with the pudge of domesticity, but muscles firm from work.

You slide the shirt off his shoulders, hastily throwing it to the floor. He laughs at your eagerness, breaking the kiss only to bite and suck at base of your jaw, earning your soft, breathy moans.

Your fingers make their way to the waistband of his pants, trying and failing to pop the button to get them off, you need him inside of you, now. A small whine comes from you, frustrated. His warm breath is by your, whisper and full of teasing.

"You needy little slut, y'need help?" His tone is almost mocking, condescending and filled with faux concern.

Nodding, your hand runs up his neck to the side of his face.

"Off.. need them off. Need you inside sir please." you plead, eyed watering in horny desperation as you grind and wiggle your hips into his notched knee, anything for a fraction of friction

He shushes you, rubbing your waist down to your hips before taking your thighs into his grasp.

"Shh shh no cryin'. Yer a big girl right? Big girls don' cry jus' because they don' get what they want." There's a grin on his face, one that says just how much he loves toying with you and that little pout on your lips.

Suddenly, you're yanked closer to the edge of the bed. What in reality was probably a few inches felt like miles, dragged closer to the edge, closer to him and what you yearned for. You watch as he calmly unbuttons his trousers, pulling them and his boxers down and one smooth motion, his cock bobbing up onto his stomach. His tip angry and leaking beads of precum. You can't help but stare, your walls fluttering around nothing as they anxiously wait for him.

Both of his knees hit the bed, the mattress audibly protesting. Finally, hes in between your thighs, cock lined up in against your cunt, tip nudging your clit as he coats his length in your slick, much to your mix of whining protests and syrupy moans while he teases.

You're given practically no warning when he enters, bullying the thick length into your cunt. You squeal, writhing under him as you dig your nails into his shoulder, pleading for him to give you a moment, even just a second to to this new, much needed intrusion.

His hips still, if only just for a bit while he hikes your legs up, his body weight folding you in a way you didn't know was possible before slowly easing out of you. With only the tip, left in his hips collide with yours, squirming with a gasp and a whine.

The sound of skin slapping against skin echoes against the soft painted wall as Paddy gets into a rhythm, hips moving in and out as your moans staccato in time with his thrusts. You're sure you've never felt him this deep before, feeling impossibly full, overwhelming filled to the brim with his cock.

You writhe, moans punched out of you from his brutal thrusts. With your legs by your ears, you feel open, vulnerable, the mixture of slick and precum in between your legs offering a sticky slapping noise with his thrusts. With one of his hands at the base of your neck and the other holding your legs, he makes you look at him with you're teary eyes and gaping lips, pace unrelenting.

"D'ya like bein' fucked stupid by a man twice yer age? Ye like him fuckin' your cunt in yer childhood bed with his necklace hangin' off your tits?" He groans, breath ragged as his hips meet your ass again and again. He slams into that spongy spot deep in your core that has your toes curling and eyes rolling back.

"Ye just like bein' some old man's slut? A toy for me to use?" He holds your face, giving your cheek a couple light slaps.

"Focus lamb, I asked ya' a question," God he was so fuckin mean, bullying his cock so deep you're worried he'll hit your womb.

"I..ha I.." You're struggling to get the words out, so many sensations combining into one out of body experience. You feel as if you're looking down at him take you from above.

"I think youre jus' a mn ..dirty old man wh..who likes to be balls deep i..in his best friends daughter~" You snide, back mouthing him while you feel as if he's in your throat.

You gasp as he pinches your nipple hard, whining as tears brim your eyes from the cruel pain as he grins above you, somehow moving his hips quicker than they were before.

"Yer gonna sass the man deep in your cunt? 'n I thought I taught ye better." He slaps your clit once again as you whimper, tears finally falling from your face, he licks them off your cheek. He leans close to whisper, breath heated and tone a false calm.

"Maybe I jus' need to put a fuckin' baby in ya', maybe that'll finally teach ya' how to fuckin' behave." There's a firm slap on your ass that has you mewling, the pain from his hit and the pleasure from his brutal thrusts mixing into one.

You can't help but giggle, cockdrunk and dazed as your eyes glean with the hope of him fulfilling that promise. You hold onto his arms as you arch your back, his flesh feeling like an anchor. Your walls clench, contracting at his words.

It doesn't go without notice, of course it doesn't. His next thrusts are especially harsh.

"Ye want that? You wan' a baby with a married man? Is that right?" He's grinning as you can't help but squirm on his cock.

"Wan' me to send ye' back to tha' college with a growin' belly? Want everyone to whisper about how much of a slut ye are havin' a babe outta wedlock?"

His fingers reach down to spin circles on your clit, your walls clamp down as you mewl out sweet, syrupy moans, nodding your head enthusiastically. The word yes slurred out of your mouth so much it could probably just be considered one long sentence.

Your hands run through his hair as his pace picks up. You've never felt so lucky that you had the house to yourself as the bed slammed into the wall, creaking every time he moved his hips. You feel a mess, drool and tears on your face as your head begins to blank, you don't think you could remember the day if anyone asked.

"Oh an' your da.. he'd jus' have a fit." Paddy sneered, biting down on your neck so hard you'll have to find makeup to conceal the mark that'll be left in its wake.

"He'd probably throw ya' out in the street after findin' out what a whore he raised." You can't feel your legs, you can't feel anything other than the pleasure rushing to your core, your eyes roll back as your limbs feel useless, like jelly even as the heat in your belly grows hotter.

" mn.. paddy 'm.. 'm gonna -" You whimpered, high and breathy as you hear a crack, sharp and splintering as your body begins to slide, the only thing keeping you still is the weight behind the mans thrusts. The small bed giving into the weight of you both.

"Go on, ye' can do it lamb, soak my cock." And you do, soaking both of you as you cry out, holding onto his hands as you sob. Your release splashing up to your lower belly in a way that hadn't happened before.

His thrusts kept their pace as he grins, continuing cruel circles on your clit as you soak his hand, clamping down on his cock. He stills, letting out a low groan as he presses his chest to yours, feeling his warm cum flood your womb while his shallow thrusts ease you down from your high.

He presses a kiss to yours sweaty forehead, wiping makeup and tears off your face.

"You're good.. so so good.." You sniffle, holding onto him as if he were your only lifeline.

Reluctantly, he pulls out, watching as his cum begins to slowly leak from your entrance, only for him to scoop it back in with his fingers, being met with your whines and shudders of being too sensitive. He chuckles, giving you a quick kiss on the lips before setting you on his lap on the last stable part of the bed.

"I told him to get ya' a new bed.. yer a woman now after all.. need somethin' stronger." He chuckles and you dazedily nod, finally regaining a bit of feeling in your lower body.

Rubbing your back, he opens the bottle he set so carefully on the table beside you pouring some of the clear liquid in a glass you hadn't seen him grab.

"Bought me the nice one too didn't you love, how sweet." He teases before taking a swig, the liquor burning nicely as it goes down.

The room feels charged, alive but still so warm somehow as the both of you sit on a cracked bed. You feels docile now, soothing in his energy. You feel him lean over to kiss the side of your rested head, nothing could compare to how soft you feel in this moment, full and cared for by the man you loved. You hoped every anniversary would feel like this, leaning into him as you feel him rub your back soothingly.

You’ve been home from uni for a little over three weeks, long enough for the house to fall into a familiar rhythm again, though nothing about Remmick’s presence in it feels familiar in any harmless way. 

Your mother moves around the kitchen with the radio playing low, humming while she rinses vegetables and talks about grilling later, and Remmick keeps himself out on the covered porch where the sun cannot quite get to him.

There’s always been something wrong with the way bright light bothers him, something about the glare that makes him squint and retreat into shade with his sunglasses low on his nose and a beer sweating in his hand. 

From where he sits, he has a perfect view of the yard, the pool, the lounge chair, and you.

His beer runs empty sometime after your mother disappears back inside to check on the food, and you notice it before he says a word.

The can hangs loose between his fingers, condensation dripping down to the porch boards, his gaze still fixed somewhere near the pool even though you know he is watching you from the corner of his eye.

You push yourself up from the lounge chair and cross the patio barefoot, letting the heat of the stone bite at your soles as you pass him without asking what he wants.

When you come back out, you don’t hand it to him right away.

You hook your nail beneath the tab and crack it open yourself, the sharp hiss cutting through the air. Foam gathers at the lip, and before it can spill over, you lift the can to your mouth and take a small sip.

It’s bitter and cold on your tongue, not really what you want, but Remmick’s eyes drop to your mouth so quickly that it is worth it.

You swallow, wipe a bead of beer from your lower lip with your thumb, and only then hold it out to him.

“Thought you might need another,” you say, sweet as anything.

Remmick takes the can from you slowly. “You always this helpful?”

You smile and turn away before he can see too much of it. “Only when I feel like it.”

You had chosen the red bikini because you knew exactly what it did to him. 

Therems no innocence in it, not with how little the top covers and how the bottoms keep riding up whenever you move, the thin fabric slipping between your cheeks.

The first time you stepped outside, towel tucked under one arm and sunglasses pushed into your hair, Remmick’s conversation with your mother had gone quiet for half a second too long. 

Your mother had not noticed, too busy fussing with a pitcher of sweet tea through the open sliding door, but you had.

You caught the pause, the slight lift of his chin, the slow drag of his eyes down your body before he forced them away and took a long pull from his beer.

And that was all the encouragement you needed. 

You spread your towel across the lounge chair with unnecessary care, bending at the waist instead of crouching, letting the bikini top gape just enough that you felt the warm brush of air against your tits. You stretched out beneath the sun with one knee bent, then rolled onto your stomach after a few minutes, propping yourself on your elbows while the bottoms rode higher. 

Every motion became performance because his attention made you bold.

You fixed your towel; you adjusted the tie at your hip; you reached behind yourself to tug at the fabric, only to let it snap back into place a little worse than before. 

Each time, Remmick stayed silent…

By the time you rise to go run back inside for a drink, your skin is glossy with sun and sweat, and you know without looking that he’s watching the swing of your hips. 

You pass close enough to his chair that your thigh nearly brushes his knee, and the scent of him reaches you through the summer air… beer, smoke, soap.

His fingers drift toward your hip as you pass, slow enough that you could let him catch you, but you slip away at the last second and glance back over your shoulder with a smile that’s too sweet to be believed.

“Need something?” you ask, voice light.

Remmick’s jaw tightens, and his gaze flicks once toward the kitchen before settling back on you. “You know what you’re doing.”

You only smile wider and slide through the door, leaving him with the view of your ass as the red fabric disappears inside.

When you come back a minute later, you have a cherry popsicle in your hand. 

You settle on the porch step beside his chair as though you have simply chosen the nearest bit of shade, knees drawn loosely together. 

The popsicle’s already beginning to melt in the heat, red syrup gathering along the edge of your fingers, and you bring it to your mouth with all the patience in the world. 

You lick up the side first, slow and flat-tongued, tasting sugar and artificial cherry while your eyes drift toward the yard as if Remmick is not sitting so close that you can feel the tension coming off him. Then you wrap your lips around the tip and suck, letting your mouth hollow around it, letting the wet little sound linger between you.

His hand flexes around the beer can.

You do it again, slower.

“Careful,” he mutters, so low that your mother wouldn’t hear him even if she stepped out onto the porch.

You turn your head slightly, popsicle still between your lips, and blink at him with open, false innocence. “Careful with what?”

Remmick’s eyes drop to your mouth, sunglasses gone now, pushed up into his hair, and without them there’s nowhere for his hunger to hide. 

He looks tired from fighting it, annoyed with you for knowing that, and unbearably handsome with the porch shade cutting sharp along his cheekbones. He lowers the beer can, his thumb rubbing slowly through the condensation as his stare drags over your lips, your chin, the thin red line of syrup that’s escaped and started down your skin.

“You’re gonna get yourself in trouble,” he says.

You swallow around nothing, then take the popsicle from your mouth and lick the drip before it can reach your chin. “Maybe I’m bored.”

His laugh doest sound amused. “That what this is? You bored?”

“Maybe.” You lean your shoulder more firmly against him, close enough to feel the heat of him through his shorts. “Maybe you’re just easy.”

The look he gives you makes your pulse kick, though he does nothing, and somehow that’s worse than if he grabbed you outright.

His eyes move over your face with a slow, punishing focus, as if he is deciding which part of your attitude he wants to break first.

Then the corner of his mouth lifts just slightly.

“You been acting like a spoiled thing since breakfast,” he says, voice quiet enough to stay private. “Bending over in that suit, looking back every time you know I’m watching. Now you’re sittin’ here with that in your mouth, makin’ a mess on purpose.”

Your thighs press together, but you keep your expression sweet. “It’s hot outside.”

“It’s about to be hotter inside if you keep it up.”

You glance down and see the thick shape of him straining against his shorts, half-hidden beneath the loose fall of fabric, though not nearly well enough.

The sight makes your stomach dip. 

Yesterday, you let him corner you in the laundry room while your mother was out getting groceries, let his hands skim your waist and dip under the hem of your shirt before you slipped away laughing at the last second. 

Two nights before that, you knelt for him on the rug beside your bed, taking his cock into your mouth with your fingers twisted in his shirt while he kept one hand braced against the mattress, hips thrusting up into the warmth, and tried not to make too much noise. 

Later, alone under your covers, you touched yourself until your wrist ached, replaying the sound of him losing control, the rough praise he tried to swallow, the way he looked at you afterward.

You drag the popsicle over your tongue again, slower this time, and Remmick’s hand moves.

His fingers find the back of your neck beneath your hair, resting there with enough pressure to make a warning out of the touch.

“You got something real nasty coming the second I get you inside,” he murmurs.

Heat pulses between your legs, slick and immediate. You tip your head back just enough to look at him through your lashes. “What, Daddy’s mad?”

It’s not the first time you’ve called him that, but it still does something to him every time, especially here, with your mother moving somewhere behind the kitchen wall and his beer sweating onto the porch boards and you sitting at his knee in a bikini that barely covers anything. 

His hand slides lower, thumb brushing the side of your throat in a touch that feels almost tender until his mouth moves closer to your ear.

“You keep saying it like that,” he says, “and I’m gonna make you say it with tears in your eyes.”

Your breath catches, and the sound gives you away.

He reaches for your ass, palm sliding over the curve of it, but you slap his hand away with a sharp little laugh and rise before he can catch you. “Pervert.”

For a second, he looks almost still enough to be calm. Then his tongue presses against the inside of his cheek, his gaze dropping to where your bikini bottoms have ridden up again. “Yeah,” he says softly, “keep laughing.”

You should stop there, but stopping would mean admitting he’s gotten to you, and you have spent too many days enjoying the game to fold just because he finally sounds dangerous. 

So you make him wait. 

You stretch out beneath the sun again, roll onto your stomach, let your legs part just enough to make him shift in his chair, then rise to dip your feet in the pool and glance back at him each time you feel his eyes burn across your skin. You tease from a distance because distance makes you brave. You bend over to look for sunscreen in your bag. You let syrup from the last of the popsicle stain your lips and smile when he stares. 

The afternoon stretches long and gold, the heat softening at the edges only when the sun begins to sink behind the trees, but Remmick’s patience does not soften with it. If anything, he grows quieter as the day goes on, and the quiet has your pulse fluttering with a nervousness you refuse to show.

Inside, the house smells like chlorine, warm skin, cut tomatoes, and something salty your mother has started on the stove. She’s put out a tray of hamburgers and salads for later, moving between the counter and the fridge while she talks about a coworker who called in sick and a neighbor who borrowed a serving bowl and never returned it. 

You sit at the kitchen table across from Remmick, damp hair sticking slightly to the back of your neck, one of his old shirts thrown over your bikini because your mother told you not to drip on the floor. The thin cotton clings to the wet fabric beneath, and every time Remmick looks at you, you remember exactly how little separates his gaze from your skin.

Your mother pours herself a glass of wine and leans against the counter, still talking. “I’m gonna shower before I eat. Don’t let the buns sit out too long, alright? And don’t pick at everything before I get back.”

You nod quickly, too quickly, and Remmick leans back in his chair with his beer to his lips, watching you over the rim of it.

Your mother pauses in the doorway. “You two want anything before I go?” She glances to you first before turning to Remmick. “Baby?”

“No, I’m alright. Go take your shower, we’ll be here when you’re done,” Remmick answers, polite as anything, and the smoothness of it makes your toes curl under the table.

The second her footsteps fade down the hall, the whole kitchen seems to hold its breath.

Water pipes groan somewhere behind the walls. A door shuts. 

You look at Remmick, and he looks back with all the patience gone from his face.

The chair scrapes the tile from how fast you stand.

You only make it halfway to the guest bathroom before his hand catches the back of the shirt and pulls you in against him. 

A breathless laugh escapes you, more panic than humor, but he crowds you forward with his body, his mouth close to your ear while his hand slips around your waist and presses low on your stomach.

“Runnin’ now?” he murmurs. “You weren’t shy outside.”

“Remmick,” you whisper, glancing toward the hallway.

“That ain’t what you called me on the porch.”

He pushes you into the bathroom and kicks the door shut behind him. 

Before you can turn fully around, Remmick has you backed against the sink, one hand at your jaw and the other bunching the damp shirt up over your ribs.

“You had a lot to say when you were out there showing off,” he says, thumb pressing lightly at the corner of your mouth. “Where’d all that mouth go?”

You try to answer, but his grip makes the words come out soft and useless. “I was just teasing.”

“Just teasin’,” he repeats, dragging the phrase out as if it offends him. 

His eyes lower to your chest as he hooks two fingers under the bikini top and tugs until the cups shift, baring one breast, then the other.

The air hits your nipples and makes them tighten into stiff peaks, and Remmick’s expression changes with open satisfaction. “That what you call it when you spend all afternoon trying to make me hard while your mama’s ten feet away?”

You swallow, cheeks burning. “You could’ve looked somewhere else.”

His mouth curves enough to make you wet. “I did. Then you bent over again.”

The laugh that leaves you is thin, unsteady, and it breaks when he leans in to bite gently at the underside of your jaw.

His stubble scrapes your skin. His teeth press without quite hurting, and his hand slides down to your hip, fingers spreading over the damp red fabric that has tormented him all afternoon. 

When he touches you there, he feels how soaked you already are, the bikini bottoms clinging slick and hot to your swollen cunt. His fingers still for a second, then press harder, rubbing the wet fabric right against your dripping slit until your knees nearly dip.

“Look at that,” he murmurs against your neck. “All this attitude, and you’re already messy for me.”

You try to turn your face away, embarrassed by how wet you are, but he keeps your jaw in his hand and forces you to look at him.

“I’m sorry.” Your breath trembles, though your hips move into his hand.

Remmick gives a soft, breathless laugh and lifts his head to look at you. “Too late for sorry now, girl.”

He reaches behind you and turns the sink on just enough for the faucet to run, giving the room another layer of noise. Then he turns you around with a firm hand at your waist, bending you over the counter until your palms land on either side of the basin and your tits press against the cool porcelain.

The mirror catches your face, flushed and wide-eyed, lips parted around shallow breaths. Remmick stands behind you, broad and sun-warmed, hair slightly damp at his temples, his expression sharpened by everything you’ve done to him. 

He looks at your reflection, not your body first, but your face, watching embarrassment spread across it as he drags the shirt up your back and shoves the bikini bottoms down just far enough to expose you. They catch around your thighs, tight and indecent, while he nudges your feet wider with his.

“There she is,” he says, voice dropping. “There’s my spoiled girl that wants me to fuck the attitude outta her,” he breathes.

You grip the sink. “Remmick…”

“Huh?” His hand comes down on your ass hard enough to leave a sting and sharp enough that your breath breaks. “You worried now?”

“Remmick—”

Another smack lands lower this time, followed by his palm smoothing over the heat he has left behind. “Try again.”

The correction makes your eyes flutter.

You look at him in the mirror, pride and need tangling so tightly in your chest that you can barely breathe through either one. “Daddy,” you whisper.

His expression changes, hunger pulling tight across his face. “Better.”

He unzips his shorts behind you, the sound small under the running faucet and distant shower, but it still makes your whole body tense in anticipation. 

When he frees himself, heavy and hard in his hand, he doesn’t push in right away.

He makes you watch his face in the mirror while he rubs the thick, flushed head of his cock through your wet folds, dragging it slowly from your swollen clit up to your entrance, gathering slick until both of you are glistening. 

The first touch makes you whimper, the second makes you push back on instinct, needy enough to forget yourself, and he clicks his tongue.

“Now you wanna be eager,” he mutters. “Out there, you kept moving away every time I touched you.”

“You were on the porch.”

“And you were in my face,” he says, pressing against you just enough to make your body clench around nothing. “Lickin’ that damn thing, looking at me like you wanted me to drag you inside by your hair.”

Your face burns hotter because some part of you has wanted exactly that. 

Remmick must see the truth of it in your reflection, because his mouth brushes your shoulder in a kiss that feels almost affectionate before his teeth graze the same spot.

“You get so embarrassed when I say it plain,” he murmurs.

“Please,” you breathe, the word slipping out before you can dress it up as anything else.

He stills. “Please what?”

You press your forehead closer to the mirror, eyes half-lidded, voice trembling under the weight of his stare. “Please fuck me.”

His reflection in the mirrors shows you that it pleases him; in the way his mouth curves and his eyes darken. 

He drags the head of his cock through your slick again, then higher, pressing right against your tight little asshole and circling until your whole body tenses, the flutter of panicked want moving through you before you can hide it. 

Remmick laughs low, gives one more firm nudge, then pulls back.

“Maybe next time,” he promises, voice dripping with filthy intent.

Your stomach flips at the words, cunt throbbing harder, and he sees that—sees everything when he has you like this, bent over and bare for him, all your teasing turned into wet need and shaky knees. 

He lines up again, this time at your soaked entrance, and pushes in slow, stretching your pussy lips wide around the blunt head, feeding you inch after thick inch until your walls grip every veiny ridge and you’re white-knuckling the sink edge.

“There you go,” he mutters, watching your face in the mirror. “That’s what you spent all day asking for.”

The stretch is thick and immediate, your body slick enough to take him but still overwhelmed by the size of him, every inch forcing you open while your fingers curl against the porcelain and a low, broken moan slips from your throat.

Remmick watches your face the entire time, jaw slackening slightly as your mouth falls open and your eyes water.

“Mm,” he breathes, hips pressing forward another inch. “That’s what all that teasing was for, huh? You fuckin’ tease. Wanted me so bad you couldn’t act right.”

You try to answer, but he sinks deeper, and the words dissolve into a broken sound.

He feeds himself into you with patience, letting you feel everything, the heat of him, the drag, the fullness that makes your thighs shake. When he finally bottoms out, balls flush against your clit, he stays there and bends over you, one forearm braced beside your hand on the counter.

“You feel that?” he whispers, mouth at your ear. “All the way in, baby. That’s what you were asking for.”

Your eyes slip shut, tears gathering from the stretch and the pressure. “Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

His groan is soft, almost unwilling, and then he pulls back and snaps his hips forward hard enough to jolt you against the sink.

You choke on a gasp, but his hand comes up quickly, palm covering your mouth while his other arm wraps around your waist to hold you in place.

“Quiet,” he says against your temple. “Unless you want your mama asking why you’re moaning with her boyfriend in here.”

The threat makes your cunt clench around him. 

His eyes meet yours in the mirror, dark with triumph. He starts fucking you then, not slow anymore, not gentle enough to let you pretend this is only another stolen touch. His hips drive into you in deep, rushed strokes, each one rocking you into the counter while the faucet runs and the shower hisses upstairs. 

The room fills with the wet, filthy smack of his hips against your ass, the loud, sloppy squelch of your cunt taking every thick inch of his cock, his breathing rough at your ear and your muffled cries trapped beneath his hand.

He knows exactly how to angle himself, how to hit the place inside you that makes your legs threaten to give out, how to keep you pinned open.

“You spent all day acting like a brat. Now look at you,” he mutters, voice fraying as he thrusts into you, bending over you so his chest presses hot to your back, lips brushing your tear-streaked cheeks in mocking little kisses. “Gonna cry for me, baby?”

You whimper against his palm, tears spilling over now, hot tracks down your cheeks that embarrass you as much as they thrill you. 

Remmick’s gaze flicks to them in the mirror, and something pleased and possessive moves across his face. He uncovers your mouth only to grip your jaw instead, forcing your chin up so you have to look at yourself.

“Look at you,” he says, softer now, mean threaded through praise. “We both know you’re just gonna do it all over again tomorrow, aren’t you? So you gotta learn the lesson now.”

“I can’t,” you whisper, though your hips push back into him in helpless little movements.

“You can.” His mouth brushes your cheek. “You’re gonna take it. You made me wait all afternoon, didn’t you? You can take a little more.”

The words loosen your pride, melt the last of your performance, and leave you trembling beneath him with your cheek near the mirror and your body taking every thrust he gives. 

When his hand slips between your thighs and finds your clit, your whole spine arches. He rubs you in tight, firm circles, still driving into you from behind, and the combination makes your breath scatter.

“Please,” you gasp, too loud.

His hand returns to your mouth at once, and his hips never slow. “You wanna get caught that bad?”

You shake your head quickly, but your body betrays you again, clenching hard around him while your eyes roll half-shut.

“No?” he murmurs. “Then keep that mouth quiet for me.”

You nod against his palm, crying harder now from the pressure building too fast, too deep, too much after an entire afternoon of teasing yourself with the thought of him.

“Please, I’m gonna—” Your words break off on a mewl.

“I know,” he says, stubble scraping against your cheek as he nods. “I can feel it. Poor baby’s not so mouthy now, is she?”

He rubs your clit faster, his cock dragging heavy through your cunt, and when your orgasm hits, it takes you with a helpless, silent sob. 

Your body locks around him, thighs shaking, nails scraping uselessly against the sink while Remmick holds you up and fucks you through it, the wet sounds of your pulsing pussy growing even louder around his thrusting cock.

“There you go,” he whispers.

You’re still pulsing around him when the shower shuts off, and both of you freeze for half a second. 

Then Remmick’s hand tightens on your hip, and he buries a groan against your shoulder, his restraint snapping under the risk. He fucks you harder, shorter strokes now, chasing his release while you tremble oversensitive around him. 

You bite down on your own wrist to stay quiet, tears still wet on your cheeks, and he watches the motion in the mirror as if it might finish him all on its own.

“Fuck,” he breathes, low and ragged. “That’s it. Hold still. Let me have it.”

His hips drive deep once, twice, then press flush as he comes inside you with a thick, shuddering groan that he barely manages to swallow. 

You feel every pulse of him, hot and deep, your body milking him while footsteps sound faintly upstairs.

He stays there for one dangerous second too long, forehead dropping to your shoulder, breath shaking against your skin. Then he pulls out slowly, and the sudden emptiness makes you wince. 

Warmth spills down your inner thigh almost at once, and Remmick watches it with a dazed, hungry look before tugging your bikini bottoms back into place, trapping the mess against you.

Your reflection looks wrecked—lips swollen, eyes wet, chest still heaving.

Remmick turns off the faucet, then catches your chin and kisses you, stealing the little sound you make before it can become anything louder. When he steps back, he tucks himself back into his briefs, zipping himself up.

From the upstairs hallway, your mother calls, “You two still in the kitchen?”

Remmick’s eyes stay on you. “Yeah,” he answers, voice almost normal. “She was looking for a towel.”

Your mouth falls open slightly at how easy the lie comes, and he gives you a warning look that makes your thighs squeeze together.

“Found one,” you call, voice thin but steady enough to pass.

Your mother says something about the burgers getting cold, her footsteps moving away, and only then does Remmick turn the sink on and wet his thumb, wiping under your eyes just enough to make you presentable without erasing all the evidence. “Fix your face, baby,” he murmurs, mouth nearly touching yours. “And don’t walk too fast.”

The rest of the evening stretches around the secret in a haze.

You sit at the table with your mother and Remmick, eating too little, nodding when spoken to, hyper aware of the damp heat between your thighs and the places where his hands have gripped you. 

Remmick plays polite beautifully; he passes your mother the mustard, asks about her morning shift, laughs at one of her stories with that easy, low charm that makes her smile without knowing he has just had you bent over the bathroom sink while her shower ran. 

Every so often, his knee brushes yours under the table, or his eyes find you over the rim of his glass, and your body answers with a pulse so strong you have to shift in your chair.

Then your mother’s called in not long after dinner.

The hospital has some emergency, the sort that makes her sigh while tying her shoes and mutter about being too old to keep running out at night. 

Remmick walks her to the door, kisses her cheek, tells her to drive safe, and stands on the porch until her car disappears down the road. 

You watch from the hallway, clean from a shower that hasn’t managed to rinse him out of your head. 

When he comes back inside, the house seems larger around the two of you, every room gone quiet except for the ceiling fan and the faint buzz of insects against the screens.

He doesn’t come to you, because maybe he thinks one stolen, rushed, filthy mistake is enough for the day, or maybe he likes making you wait as punishment. 

He goes to your mother’s room, changes into boxers, and leaves the door partly open like a dare. 

You stay in your room for almost an hour, pretending to scroll on your phone while the memory of him keeps sliding through you: his hand over your mouth, his voice at your ear, the way he said baby—the term of endearment your mother called him—when you were shaking around him. Your thighs still ache. Your skin feels too sensitive under your nightshirt. 

You try to ignore it until your own restlessness turns unbearable, until your fingers slip beneath the hem and find yourself wet again.

That’s what finally makes you get up.

The hallway is dark except for the warm bar of light from the bathroom nightlight. 

Remmick’s asleep when you reach the bedroom, or close enough to it, sprawled on his back with one arm tucked behind his head and the sheet low over his hips. Moonlight and porch light cut soft lines across his chest, showing the rise and fall of his breathing, the dark hair trailing beneath the waistband of his boxers, the relaxed heaviness of him in sleep. 

He looks less mean like this, younger almost, though there is nothing harmless in the memory of his hands.

You crawl onto the mattress carefully, and it dips under your weight. 

Remmick stirs but doesn’t wake fully until your mouth touches the line of his jaw. His lashes lift, eyes unfocused for a moment, then sharpen as you kiss along his stubble, soft and open-mouthed, tasting soap and salt on his skin.

“What’re you doing?” he rasps, voice rough with sleep.

You kiss the corner of his mouth. “Couldn’t sleep.”

His hand finds your waist beneath the nightshirt. “That so?”

You nod, though your hand has already slid down his stomach, fingers tracing the waistband of his boxers. 

He lets out a quiet breath, watching through half-lidded eyes as you move lower. 

The sheet shifts around you when you slip beneath it, the space under the covers warm and close, filled with the scent of him.

You tug his boxers down just enough to free him, already half-hard, heavy against his lower stomach. He twitches when your fingers wrap around the thick base, and the low, pleased sound he makes goes straight to your cunt.

“Still needy?” he murmurs from above the sheet.

You press a kiss to the swollen head of his cock instead of answering, lips brushing the sensitive skin before your tongue follows, licking slow and filthy over the slit to taste the first salt-warm bead of him.

He hardens fast in your grip, thickening until the veiny shaft fills your palm completely, the flushed tip already leaking more for you.

A soft groan leaves him, his fingers sliding behind your neck under the covers.

“Girl,” he breathes. “... been trouble all day.”

You smile against him, then take him between your lips. Slowly at first, just the head, letting your tongue swirl the way it did around the popsicle on the porch, letting him feel the echo of what started all this. 

Remmick’s hips shift, his hand holding onto the nape of your neck, and he lets you make a mess of him.

You suck him deeper, your lips stretching wide around his girth, spit gathering quick and slick as you work him with eager, wet pulls of your mouth.

The slurping sounds fill the dark room under the sheet—loud, messy—and it makes your face burn as if anyone else could hear.

You love him like this—breathing harder because of your tongue, his thighs tensing when you take him too deep and swallow around him.

Your eyes water from the stretch, but you keep going, moaning softly around his cock when his fingers tighten on you. The vibration makes him groan again, louder this time, and he quickly presses his mouth shut as if remembering the empty house still has neighbors close enough for sound to carry through thin summer walls.

“Baby,” he warns, though his voice has no real warning left in it. “You keep doing that, I’m not gonna last.”

You pull back just enough to kiss down the slick length of him, then lick back up with slow devotion, taking the head into your mouth again and sucking until his hips jerk. 

His hand guides you then, setting a rhythm that makes your jaw ache and your thighs press together beneath the covers. His fingers tighten on your nape, holding you right where he wants you, and then he starts fucking up into your mouth in short, greedy thrusts. 

You gag around the thick length when he pushes too deep, throat tightening hard around the swollen tip, the sudden squeeze pulling a ragged groan from his chest.

He pants above you, breath coming faster, hips rolling again so the head nudges against the back of your throat and your eyes water instantly.

Remmick watches the shape of your head bobbing beneath the sheet like it’s the only thing in the world worth staying awake for, his groans turning into low, broken pants that he tries to swallow down.

“That’s my girl,” he whispers, voice rough and full of sleep-warmed hunger. “Knew you were done being a little brat.”

You hum around him, and his breath catches hard. He fucks into your mouth a little faster, hand firm on your nape, using you just enough to make your throat spasm and squeeze around him again and again.

The wet, choking sounds growing louder as your spit coats every thick inch until his cock is glistening and your chin is soaked. His thighs tense under your palms, muscles jumping each time your throat tightens and milks the head.

He comes with his grip tight on your neck, hips lifting once, twice, burying himself deep as he spills hot and thick across your tongue and straight down your throat.

You swallow him eagerly, throat working around every heavy pulse while his body goes tense beneath you, then softens all at once, a final shaky groan rattling out of him.

Even after he’s done, you keep your mouth on him, gentle now, licking him clean with slow strokes of your tongue that make his hand tremble against the back of your head.

You suckle softly at the sensitive tip until he twitches one last time, then finally pull off with a wet pop, lips shiny and swollen.

When you finally crawl back up beside him, he catches you by the jaw and kisses you. 

He tastes himself on your tongue and groans softly into your mouth, pulling you close until your bare legs tangle with his under the sheet.

Outside, the night presses hot against the windows, cicadas still screaming from the trees as the fan turns lazy circles overhead.

Remmick’s thumb moves over your cheek in a slow, absent stroke, and when you tuck yourself against his side, he lets you, his arm heavy around your waist.

“You’re gonna start up again tomorrow, aren’t you?” he murmurs.

You smile against his chest, too pleased with yourself to lie well. “Maybe.”

His hand slides lower, resting over your hip. “Then I guess I’ll have to teach you again.” 

Then he leans in closer to your ear. You assume he’s going to say what he’d plan to do, how’d he plan to get get you alone again. Instead, his voice drops to that low, gravel-rough drawl and his lips part on words that make your eyes widen.

“Dirty slut, fuckin’ your mama’s boyfriend and then crawlin’ in here ‘cause you couldn’t settle without a taste of daddy’s cock. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Shame rushes hot through your chest at the words, burning up your neck and flooding your face until you feel stripped bare in a whole new way, but anger twists right alongside it—sharp and sudden, at him for saying it out loud, at yourself for how badly your body still aches for him even now. 

You shift like you might pull away, ready to slide out of the bed and disappear back down the hall. But Remmick’s fingers close tight around your wrist, stopping you cold. 

He tugs you right back down against his chest, voice low. “C’mere,” he murmurs, urging your mouth to his.

You resist at first, turning your face just enough that his lips catch the corner of yours instead, a small, stubborn sound of protest slipping out even as heat coils tighter in your belly. 

He doesn’t let you go, thumb stroking slow over your pulse until you finally give in, mouth softening, parting under the insistent press of his.

The second your lips meet—soft and hesitant at first, then melting open—his free hand lowers, sliding down your side and slipping just beneath the waistband of your shorts, brushing warm skin and the damp edge of your panties with a stroke that makes your breath hitch against his mouth.

And from the way those fingers linger, tracing lazy circles right where you’re already wet, his lesson for tomorrow might not even wait that long.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

The grating, repetitive screech of the alarm clock ripped you out of an unsteady slumber. It was easily the worst sound you'd ever heard.

Your stomach lurched, queasy from the noise, threatening to reject its contents as you reached for the button to silence the alarm. The heavy pounding in your head, filling your ears with the obnoxious whoosh of your rapid heartbeat, was just as horrible as it’d been when you'd gone to bed 10 hours ago. Maybe worse.

Sleep was meant to fix these things, but neither the rest nor the medicine you'd taken had helped in the slightest. There was no chance you were making it to class today.

The thought only seemed to intensify the pressure in your skull. Just two weeks into Year 13 and this would be your second absence. It'd probably be excused if you’d put you with ringing your mum to call the college and let them know, but you'd rather be in trouble with them than her. You had enough of an headache without dealing with her. There was a reason you lived in the dormitories and not at home.

A sudden return of piercing pain in your temple forced your head back to the matter at hand. It needed to be dealt with immediately.

But you couldn't medicate on a nearly empty stomach. And you didn't dare brave the communal kitchen during the morning rush in your current state.

So you made do with what you had, starting by scarfing down the rest of a pack of chocolate digestives. Something salty sounded nice, too, but opening the small bag of roast chicken-flavoured crisps, you realised your mistake. You wouldn't be able to handle their strong, nauseous smell at the moment, and prawn cocktail or cheese and onion would be no better. The last thing you wanted was to deal with being sick in the shared toilets.

The digestives would have to be enough to line your belly from the migraine tablets’ potent blend of aspirin, paracetamol, and caffeine.

You downed two of them with a few gulps of bottled water, closed your eyes for a few minutes to recover some strength, and then opened your laptop. More pain quickly followed.

Even aggressively clicking the key to dim the screen couldn't do it fast enough to avoid searing your retinas, and the lowest setting was still too bright for your sensitive eyes and brain and tummy. Practically typing with your eyes closed, you sent off a quick e-mail to your form tutor, hoping it'd be enough to get you off the hook.

Once you slammed the laptop shut, you shoved it under the bed, so you wouldn't be tempted to get back on it out of boredom and make yourself even worse.

Now, the best you could do was sit in the dark with the curtains drawn, and a pillow over your head, and wait for the drugs to kick in. If only the other students heading off to the first lesson of the day wouldn't make so much awful noise.

Finally, the commotion in the hallway quieted. Peace at last. Maybe you'd even manage to get some more sleep.

But just as you thought you were drifting off, there was a horrible pounding at your door.

You were wide awake, now, and so was your angry, thumping headache.

Now, who the hell could that be?

“Go away!” you grumbled, hardly recognising the strain of your own voice.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Who is it?” you shouted, louder this time.

“It's Cook,” came a voice through the door.

James Cook lived just downstairs, but you didn't want to waste any precious brainpower imagining what he might want with you right this minute.

“Fuck’s sake!” you muttered as you opened the door, squinting away from the sickly glow of the fluorescent lights in the hall. “I said go away!”

Cook looked you up and down. You were dressed in your pyjamas—just a flimsy vest and shorts. Because he was so irritating, it was easy to forget just how irritatingly gorgeous he could be, too. And a confoundingly good shag. But you were not in the mood to deal with him at the moment.

“What's wrong?” he asked, pouting. The deep creases in his forehead had you nearly convinced he actually gave a shit.

“I've got a pounding migraine,” you admitted. You felt your tone soften, against your best judgement.

Cook nodded, looking uncharacteristically serious.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered. “Can I help?”

“No…” you began, but before you could say anything else, his palm was pressed across your forehead, his skin warm and soft, yet firm, against you.

Oh no. It really helped.

You couldn't help but allow your eyelids to droop, succumbing to the comfort of his touch. By the time real thoughts were filtering into your brain again, he'd let himself in and closed the door behind him.

“Where's it hurt?” he asked next.

His words were barely audible, and their gentle sound tingled in your grey matter at the source of the pain, easing it away like magic.

You pointed to your right temple—the one that always gave you trouble when you were stressed—and Cook pushed the strong pad of his thumb to it, applying pressure, soothing away even more of the ache.

“Your pulse is going like mad,” he murmured. “C’mon.”

He walked you back to the bed, gently sitting you down, before grabbing a folded quilt off the foot of it, kicking off his trainers, and standing up on the mattress to fling the quilt across the curtain rod. Now, with the window effectively blacked out, you realised just how much light the curtains were letting in.

Next, he turned your alarm clock toward the wall, obscuring the glowing red numbers. As your eyes adjusted to the darkness, you could hardly see him as he handed you what remained of your water bottle.

“You gotta keep hydrated,” he said next, close enough to your ear to feel his breath, and eliciting even more of those crackling, healing tingles.

Normally it would have pissed you right off for him to tell you to do anything, but maybe the medicine was working, because you felt perfectly happy to comply.

It helped that he didn't ask if you'd taken anything for it, like you'd sit there in agony on purpose. That was always the accusation back home. He'd probably seen the blister pack next to your water and seen most of the tablets missing.

You felt the mattress sag beside you more than you could actually see Cook sitting there. Then his weight shifted further, and he was kissing you on the side of your forehead where the pain was the strongest. His soft lips were so gentle on you, his contact delicate and deliberate, and it was mad, but you swore kissing it better was working.

Then he applied the touch of his thumb again, massaging, the rest of his gentle fingers splayed across your forehead.

“That all right?” he wondered, his voice soft as ever.

“Yeah,” you said. “Cook… thank you.”

“It's n…”

He didn't finish the thought when you flinched, your senses attacked by the sudden loud running and laughing in the hallway.

“Pardon me,” Cook whispered.

He rose to quickly squeeze out the door, letting as little light in as possible behind him.

You couldn't be sure he did—you didn't hear a peep from him—but the hall noise ceased immediately, and then Cook was back.

“We should have a lie down,” he suggested next.

That was a great idea. You were happy to obey.

And then you were laying together with one of Cook’s arms wrapped under you, and the other holding his hand to your head again, his pressure seemingly soaking away the tension there.

When his hand started to wander, you didn't mind a bit. He ran his fingers through your hair along your scalp, lightening the burden within with every caress.

It all felt so lovely. You didn't know Cook had this side to him.

And the moan that escaped from your throat when he caressed the base of your neck was a complete accident.

Slightly mortified, you stiffened, but Cook said nothing. He just maintained his light, thorough touch.

And this time, you allowed the sound of the blissful hum forming between your lips. Why not? You were glad he was here. Maybe he should even know it.

“You're really good at that,” you murmured.

“Thanks.”

You could hear the smile in his voice.

“Why are you so good at that?”

“Well, I've nursed many a nasty hangover and comedown in my time,” he explained. “What good for the goose, etc.”

His hand moved even further down to your neck, to your shoulders, and you melted against his touch.

“You know,” Cook said next, his voice all breath, “the one surefire migraine cure is an orgasm.”

“Fuck off,” you whispered, but there was no force behind it. You were too curious for the words to be anything but half-hearted.

“I'm serious,” he went on, and he was. “It releases endorphins and that.”

He couldn't mean now, could he?

“If you really think I'm gonna sleep with you in the state I'm in…”

“What?” he said, like the notion was ridiculous. “Nah, don't get it twisted. Neither of us even needs to take our clothes off.”

“You think you can manage?” you teased him.

It didn't seem Cook’s style. You'd been with him twice, and both times you'd just made out until you were both worked up, and then you'd had sex. You were impressed he'd made sure you'd come before he did, but neither foreplay nor sticking around appeared to be his forte.

“Oh, I can manage,” he said, a little cocky. “You don't think I know how to use these hands?”

This phrase worked its way into your ear to create an entirely different kind of tingle in a very different part of your body.

“I'd like to see you try,” you said.

“Oh yeah?”

At that, he planted kisses down your neck. You were already moaning as he reached over you, trailing his fingers between your bare thighs. His hand found your waistband next, sliding under your shorts, and then your knickers, to meet your clit.

You were surprised to find yourself a little wet already as his middle finger touched you.

You groaned his name while he rubbed you, just the tiniest movements of his digit enough to have your breath and hips hitching together.

“How's that feel for you, love?” he cooed.

“God, that feels good. Oh, Cook…”

“You gonna come for me already, are you?”

Your breath must have given you away. He kissed and nibbled at your ear as he caressed you, and then you were there.

“I'm coming,” you hissed, over and over, as he made you climax in record time, all your blood flow redirected from the pain in your head to the pleasure between your legs, lapping over your whole being. His finger refused to rest until your cries slowed. Even once you were done, he kept himself held close by, not leaving your pants.

“How's the head?” he asked gently.

“Still achey,” you answered. “But better.”

“We may need to go deeper.”

“What?”

“I'd love to finger you better.”

“I… I'd love that, too,” you answered.

“You ready for me?”

You nodded, but even then you weren't prepared for the sensation of him plunging his thick fingers inside you.

Your blissful curses were nonsense as he stroked you from within, pressing against your clit with his palm to create a frenetic cycle of pleasure.

“I just wanna make you feel all better, baby,” he hummed as his hand rattled the ecstasy into you. “Getting to play with this perfect pussy and hear you moan is just a bonus…”

You felt something hard dig into your back. His cock. Why was that so hot?

“Fuck,” he grunted as it made contact, before muttering an apology, angling his body away.

You couldn't have that.

“I wanna feel you, Cook,” you cried, desperate. “Come back to me.”

And he did, rutting into your lower back through his trousers as you squeezed around his strong fingers. His low moans and thick whines were music to your ears, and the better you matched his sounds, the closer you got, until you were right at the edge again.

“Oh that's it, that's it,” Cook said as he coaxed the second orgasm out of you, feeling you spasm against his hand as you screamed out. “God, I love making you come.”

This time, the bliss seemed to go on and on and on, and Cook was so patient with you, staying with it until he'd milked it all out of you.

After, he held you tight to him, his erection still evident.

“Better now?” he asked, placing another careful kiss upon your shoulder.

“Yeah,” you said. “Nearly gone.”

“Good. Now, I should go take care of this.”

He meant his cock. He meant leaving. Now, that was the last thing you wanted.

“You can take care of it here,” you suggested.

“Yeah?”

“I think I'd like to hear you,” you said.

You'd like to watch, too, if that didn't mean being extremely obvious and letting in the evil, evil light.

You moved a box of facial tissue his way, and he grabbed one. You had to imagine the visuals in the dark—Cook dropping his trousers, and grabbing the head of his big prick in one tensed hand. You could hear the sweet slap of skin on skin, and his pretty breathing and crying moans—and best of all the euphoric gasp of his climax.

It was a shame you could only listen in. As if you needed more rain to hate your migraines.

Cook sat beside you again when he was finished.

“I’m very glad I came up,” he admitted, laughing.

“Why did you?”

“You didn't show up to the lesson,” he explained. “Thought if you were skiving off we might enjoy each other's company. I'm sorry you're not well but… well, I liked this better.”

“I'm better now, thanks to you,” you shared. “And I liked it too.”

One last kiss to the temple seemed to melt away the rest of the ache.

“You need anything?” Cook asked. “Just say the word.”

After all that, you were still hungry for something salty.

“Chips,” you answered.

“Just chips?”

“Greasy ones. With tomato sauce.”

“Consider it done,” Cook said, finally kissing you on the lips. He made your head buzz with a different sensation entirely.