dreams unwind, love’s a state of mind

And… you remember how that same man did something that silenced the gaggle of frat guys who’d whistled in your direction. How he’d caught you by the elbow before you tripped on an upturned sewer grate. How he led you to your porch without you having to tell him the house number.

At your door, it was impossible to miss the look of devastating and unabashed want that passed over his handsome face, the shiver it sent across your skin. Part of you wondered just what kind of want it was. (The other shouted RUN.)

You could've invited him in. (You didn’t.) He could’ve killed you. (He didn’t.)

All good stories have to start somewhere.

-

It began, as everything does, with blood.

A night out with a few girls from your program. One too many cosmos. Your half-drunken insistence of it’s fine, really, I’m just around the corner. Heels low enough to be walkable but high enough to make the busier sidewalks a challenge. That little voice in your head whispering that drunk cigarettes never count.

So you’d stopped, feet aching, and lingered a moment in the back alley behind some dive bar.

There’s - thank God - that loose cig at the bottom of your bag, the novelty four-leaf clover lighter you got as a gag gift last Christmas. You exhaled, slowly, pushing the smoke out in a tight ring, idly thumbing at the blistered ink of a new tattoo.

The dark city hummed with life.

Just a few feet away, you watched as students lumbered up and down the street, some red in the face and some too wasted to get one foot in front of the other. Someone blaring dance music from a car window. Honking and sirens. A drunken shouting match.

And behind you, a faint cry followed by the crash of a metal trash can.

You turned.

You shouldn’t have.

The ground was wet, though it hadn’t rained in days. The light from the road - the streetlamps, the passing headlights - couldn’t quite penetrate the shadows beyond, nothing at all past the milk crates and overflowing dumpsters.

The glowing red eyes were, however, quite visible.

Your stomach dropped.

The man stepped forward. You couldn’t see all of him, not yet, but the crimson of blood and the ivory of too-large teeth were unmistakable.

“Shit,” he drawled. Everything about him rang false. “You weren’t meant to see that.”

But you were too drunk and confused to manage a coherent reply. He took that as some kind of permission and inched closer, reeking of iron and wet earth. Still, you stood your ground.

“S’pose that puts us at an impasse.”

“Why’d you sound like that?” is all you could think to say, your gaze flitting between pointed teeth and burning irises.

“Like what?”

“Like a… like John Wayne. I don’t know.”

He cocked his head. “Ain’t that somethin’.”

“You some kinda vampire?”

“Shit, what gave it away?”

You nodded over to the limp pair of legs still twitching behind him.

“That was rhetorical, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” Your cheeks flushed.

“You gon’ run?”

“No.”

“Shame. I like to chase.”

“I wouldn’t get far in these shoes.”

And the vampire actually laughed - full-throated, good-natured.

“Oh, you liked that…” you mumbled, straightening, leaning against the bricks for more support. By some miracle, you hadn't dropped the cigarette and so you permitted yourself another drag. You blew it at him. His eyes flitted shut.

The thing about academia is that once you’ve devoted your life to eating, sleeping, and breathing your chosen discipline, it’s just about impossible to ever really stop. Those questions are always working in the background, a hum so quiet you can sometimes forget it’s even there.

But it is. It always is.

And your chosen discipline just so happens to be folklore.

Now, there was no way to outrun this guy, nor were you even getting a punch in before he drained you dry. Not many options on the table, not unless you could summon a silver dagger out of thin air. So fuck it: if all you could do was talk, maybe you’d survive the night.

And… well, some research for your monograph couldn't hurt either, could it?

“Let me ask you something.”

“Why should I?”

“You’re enjoying yourself.”

“That right?” he laughed, eyes crinkling with something almost fond in them.

“Sure seems it. Be a shame to kill me just yet.”

“Alright,” he grinned, and the teeth were wrong. “I’ll bite. What’d you wanna know?”

06/09/95 : #001

The vampire lounges across from you on a dark velour couch that probably cost more than a year’s rent. His thighs are splayed wide, one ankle resting easily over the opposite knee.

He’s dressed better than he was the other night: a pricey leather jacket that seems softened from years of wear. Faded white t-shirt. Jeans. Loafers. (No more bloodstains, in any case.)

All the light in his home is artificial. No overheads - nothing so tacky - just a few candles and low-hanging lamps that cast a golden hue over the room. A dozen false suns to make up for the one he can’t have. The windows are tightly sealed with blackout blinds. There’s a scent like incense in the air, an old one… something that recalls prayer and antiquity. (That, and Drakkar Noir.)

“Can I start?”

“By all means.”

“Alright.” You hit the button on the tape deck and it starts to whir. “9 June 1995, session one. Please state your name.”

“Remmick.”

“Your full name.”

“Only name that matters.”

You roll your eyes, only briefly and not even a full rotation - but he catches it. Cocks his head.

“Somethin’ funny?”

“Nothing. One name, you’re like Madonna.”

He laughs, teeth flashing white.

You clear your throat. “Where were you born?”

“North of Ireland. Town ain’t there no more.”

“Alright. So how old are you?”

“Very.”

This, really, is the question you’ve been dying to have answered.

The idea of living long enough to see empires rise and fall, to see wars started and ended, to see the world move through its infinite many stages… For a historian like you, there’s no greater fantasy nor sharper jealousy.

But when he finally mutters “Must be comin’ up on a thousand,” you nearly drop your pen.

“One thousand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he smiles, slowly, like the sudden shock on your face is feeding him. “Don’t believe me?”

“No, I do, I - but, that’s just a very big number.”

“As I said.”

“Can I ask…”

“Ain’t nothin’ out of bounds, sweetheart.”

“Do you remember it all?”

“Broad strokes, big things - y’know, Easter Rising, Napoleon, Al Capone. The rest, it's just bits n’ pieces.”

“And ho-”

“My turn. Question for a question.”

You swallow your retort. “Alright. Sure.”

“What is it you're lookin’ for?”

“What do you mean?”

Remmick leans forward, both feet planted on the soft Persian rug underfoot, leans in so close that you catch the glints of red buried in the soft blue of his human eyes.

From a distance, he’s handsome. Up close, he’s a vision. There’s a dusting of reddish stubble across the expanse of his sharp jaw. A tiny gold ring in his ear. Eyelashes nearly as long as yours.

“I mean, what is it that possessed you t’come after me, honey, askin’ all these questions?”

“Curiosity.”

“What, you gon’ take what I give you and pen a bestseller? You fixin’ to be the next Anne Rice?”

“No.”

“No? Really? Just… curiosity.”

“I write about folklore.”

“Yeah?” His voice hangs, soft. It envelops you. “What kind?”

“Vampirism as metaphor.”

He barks a laugh.

“Metaphor? Baby, I’m sittin’ here plain as day.”

“And… as a moralizing tool, a holdover from pre-Christian society. Make girls behave, make ‘em too scared to leave the house, fraternize with strange men.”

“That what I am? A strange man?”

“Well. I wouldn’t exactly call you normal.”

He lets that sit for a moment, potent and hungry.

“Nah, y’ain’t wrong,” he speaks suddenly, leaning back. His arms stretch lazily across the seat of the couch. “But I don’t know who’d be stupid enough to fraternize w’the likes of me, anyway.”

“Is that a threat, Remmick?”

“No threat,” he says, and it’s so casual you nearly believe him. “Just fact.”

“Alright. Fine.” You decide to shift gears. “That accent doesn't seem very Irish.”

“Been here a while. Comin’ up on, oh, I don't know, ‘bout a hundred years?”

“Here as in New Orleans?”

“All over. Came through Ellis Island n’just… followed the wind ‘ever it took me.”

“But why here? Why Louisiana?”

He taps a finger against the velour. “I like it.”

“That’s all?”

“Couldn't say. Just feels right. Feels old.”

“And -”

“Ah. My turn.”

You sigh. “Go on.”

“No boyfriend?”

“What?”

He lifts his palms to you. “Or girlfriend. I don't judge.”

“No. Neither. And how would you know that, anyway?”

“Well, I been watching you since that night and I ain't seen no one comin’ or goin’ - no one you been fixin’ to fuck, anyhow, if you'll pardon my French.”

You eye him.

It’s obvious the man's looking for a rise: he wants you flustered, blushing, or else angry, off-kilter. But you know men, even ancient ones, and this is the oldest trick in their book.

“Maybe I fuck with the curtains closed,” you offer, voice neutral.

“Maybe.” He smiles like he doesn't believe a word of it.

“Why does it matter?”

He shrugs, unaffected. “S'pose it don't.”

The standoff is interrupted by the beeping of your watch. You hit STOP on the tape deck.

“Y’got somewhere t’be, sugar?”

“Seminar. I’m giving a lecture.”

He sniffs. Nods slowly. “You’ll be back?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah. You will.”

06/12/95 : #002

“How do you hunt?”

Remmick’s eyes go wide.

Today is grey. Overcast skies. Intermittent roiling thunder. It’s so gloomy that he’s actually left the curtains open a fraction of the way, cracked the window onto the stormy street below.

You sit across from him in the plush chair you’ve come to think of as yours. A half-empty bottle of vintage cabernet sits between the two of you.

“Ah, darlin’, now that’s some nasty work, what I do in the dark. You really wanna know?”

“Yes. Do you pick your targets beforehand or is it opportunistic? How do you lure them in? What is it that excites you, exactly: the hunt, the kill, the blood…?”

“Christ, Dr. Scully,” he laughs, incredulous. “Make it sound like yer huntin’ down the damn Son of Sam.”

“Well, you are a serial killer. No?”

“Alright,” he says, tight. “Sure. I kill.”

“So-”

“Nah, one question at a time. Makes you seem bloodthirsty, otherwise.”

“Fine.” You bite the inside of your cheek. “How do you choose them?”

“Stragglers. Tourists. Assholes. Anyone not liable to trigger a manhunt.”

“Alright. And then how do you get them alone?”

“Well,” Remmick says, “I can be very persuasive.”

He leans forward.

The room tilts.

There’s something all-encompassing in the way he watches you, the way he traces the veins in your neck with his eyes, drags that same gaze up and across your collarbone. It’s as though he’s seeing through your skin, right down to the bones and marrow.

He eyes you like a meal.

The cast of his skin is warmer in this light, not quite as pallid as last time. There's a gold to it, bouncing through the red and brown of his stubble, of his brows, of his disheveled hair. His teeth, when human, are a bit crooked, a bit sharp. Something low and awful hums in your belly.

You can’t find it in yourself to panic.

The rational half of your mind is sounding the alarm, pumping adrenaline through your system in an attempt to force an escape. But… it isn’t enough, not against this. And as he sits there eyeing you, enjoying you, you think back to the manuscript you found in the university archives last fall, some supposed firsthand encounter back in 1931:

It was the strange magic of what he was, that’s what called to me. He was a creature designed for seduction, for the gentle erosion of boundaries. That’s how he lives. That’s how he hunts.

Thank God for the tattoo on your hip.

That little patch of ink stands like a dam between you and the vampire making your blood sing. It’d been the product of another one of your drunken escapades last month, a little five-pointed star that kept coming up in the literature as a sigil of protection. Better safe than sorry, you’d thought, sitting in that tattoo parlour three martinis deep while some girl from your methodology class rubbed soothing circles into the palm of your hand.

You’ve never placed much faith in it - it’s not like you’d actually believed in any of this stuff - but right now, it grounds you like a cold glass of water in the middle of a bender.

Remmick’s breath fans across your cheek - sweet, minty. His gaze is fixed on your mouth, the way you nibble at your lip like a nervous tic, how you hitch a little breath when his pupils blow.

“Seduction.”

You mumble it like an accusation, but there's no real weight to it.

“Could call it that. Yeah.”

“What is it, then, pheromones? Mind control? Black magic?”

He laughs a little. Pulls back, like the show's over. “Why does it matter how I do it? Call it whatever you like. All I know’s that it works and it works pretty damn well, don’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“No?” His brows go wide. “Sugar, if I hadn’t stopped when I did, you’d be slidin’ clean off that damn chair.”

Your cheeks burn with the shame of the truth. “Well. I guess we’ll never know.”

“Shame.”

“Okay.” You straighten your spine - shake it off, settle back into your body. “What is it about the hunt that excites you? You told me the first night that you enjoy the chase. Is that what it is?”

“Sure. I like that part. Little too much, maybe,” he begins, cat eyeing mouse. “But it ain’t only about the excitement, darlin’, not really. It’s more about… the satiation. Yeah.”

You nod up at him, a silent plea to continue.

He takes a swig of wine. Gestures to it.

“You know I cain’t eat? Not food. Lil’ liquor here n’there, but no meals. And sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don’t. Some days, all I wanna do is lay out in the sun like one of them cats you used to find hiding way up in the parapets.” He pauses, as though he hadn’t meant to reveal quite that much. “So, see, I ain’t got much to keep me satisfied.”

“And it’s the blood that does it?”

“That and the performance, baby. Followin’ folk down them alleyways, choosin’ the right things to say, readin’ their bodies, what makes ‘em tick. Gets electric when I turn it on - but then, you already knew that.”

You ignore the taunt. “It’s sexual, then?”

Remmick whistles low, rubs at his jaw. “Shit, darlin’, you call ‘em like you see ‘em.”

“Nothing’s out of bounds. That’s what you said.”

“Oh, sure. But I’m an old-fashioned man, see, and I’m wonderin’ whether it’d be decent of me to share those particulars with an impressionable young lady like yerself.”

“It’s just research.”

“Oh, it’s a lot more n’that.”

“I’m not a virgin, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Don’t bother me none.”

“So tell me.”

“Alright. D’you know that I’m about as hard as a fuckin’ rock by the time I’m done drinkin’?”

Your stomach drops. He doesn't stop.

“Wanna hear how sometimes I gotta toss ‘em aside, limp as a doll, and take care a myself right there in whatever fuckin’ hovel I’ve found myself in? See, it’s an excess of blood darlin’, hot blood, and I am but a man.”

“A-alright. That makes sense.”

He sits forward on the divan, quick and bold. Leans across the table and in towards you.

“No. It don’t. None of it does. ‘Cause I cain’t enjoy life in half-measures, baby, not like you with yer two cosmos - three if you’re feelin’ naughty - or whatever toy I’m sure you got hidden under your pillow. An abomination like me’s got two options: suffering or ecstasy. And, as you can imagine, I do tend to lean towards the latter.”

“It’s an addiction, then.”

“It’s a mode de vie, baby. I am what I am.”

As if on cue, your watch beeps.

“Thank you for all that detail.”

“Anytime.”

“I’ll see you next week, Remmick.”

The vampire is still as a statue as you rise, as you collect the writing materials scattered across the dark oak coffee table. You drop them all into your satchel without ceremony, without rush but without delay. You’ve revealed too much of yourself today. Shown too many weaknesses where propriety is concerned. He got to you.

And worst of all, he knows it, too.

“Bet you’ll be thinkin’ about this one all night,” he taunts.

“Probably,” you admit, tone flat. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“You’re welcome.”

“But it’s…”

“It’s…?”

“It’s in my nightstand. Not under my pillow.”

“Alright.” He rubs at his jaw. “Yeah.”

07/08/95 : #006

“Do you mind if I…?”

“Please.”

You take a heaping bite from the apple and set it down in your lap. He watches as you chew, the grinding of your jaw, the way you lick up the sweet juice collecting at the corners of your mouth.

“Couldn’t stop for lunch. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“What would happen if you took a bite?”

“Of you?”

“Ha ha.”

“Ah, nothing. Just tastes bad.”

“Huh.” You grab another bite, scanning quickly over your notes. “Okay. So…”

“Why don’t you let me ask a few, just for now? Finish yer lil’ snack.”

You nod your consent, eyes narrowing in curiosity. He runs with it.

“You ain’t been afraid of me since the first night. Why’s that?”

“Who says I haven’t?”

He points to your heart. “Her. Too steady. Always has been.”

You shrug as you chew.

“And since I’ve spent the last two weeks detailin’ all the nasty shit I’m liable to do,” he continues, “I know you know I ain’t exactly safe t’be around. So… what? You think you ain’t in danger? Think you’re special?”

“I think,” you say, wiping away the last of the juice and setting the core onto a spare notepad, “that you find me interesting. Or entertaining, anyway.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I think you’re lonely. By your own admission, you’ve got no coven. You’re alone in the world. So… I imagine it feels good to share these things with someone, to think you’re impressing a pretty girl who can’t do anything but sit here and play nice. That’s what I think. Am I close?”

“Ain’t you bold.”

“I am.”

“Silly me. Here I was, thinkin’ maybe it was somethin’ to do with the pentagram on your ass. Am I close?”

You freeze.

“What, you thought I didn’t know?”

“I didn’t care if you knew.”

And he can hear your heart, hear the way it stutters, so he knows it’s a lie but all he says is: “Hm.”

“Can’t blame a girl for using protection.”

“No. I cain’t.”

“You’re wrong, though. It's my hip, not my ass.”

“My apologies, angel. Why don't you bend over, show me just how wrong I am?”

You roll your eyes.

“Tell me, though, what exactly you think that lil’ ink is doin’ for ya.”

“I…”

“’Cause sure,” he starts, “I can feel it in the room w’me and, sure, maybe my charm ain't hittin’ quite as strong as it's meant to, but I could rip your throat out before you even open that pretty mouth to scream. Ain’t no ink could stop me. You get that?”

You swallow. “I’m aware.”

“So… why the hell d’you keep coming?”

“Because I want to know things. And… well, everyone dies eventually. If I die here, then that’s just how it is.”

“Everyone, huh?”

You sit in the silence a moment. No one blinks.

Your gaze flits down to his mouth, to the pink of his lips and the crooked smile just barely visible. He isn’t even doing his witchy thing and yet all you can think about is crawling into his lap.

“In the end,” you manage. “Yes. Everyone.”

He nods.

“Come with me next time.”

“Where?”

“Hunting.”

He says it like that, like it’s a totally reasonable thing to offer.

“You’d let me?”

“Yeah. I want you to.”

“Alright.”

“Good.”

07/15/95 : #009

“ - and you gotta bite down hard, ‘cause if you don’t, if you mess around in there, well, then, now you’ve got yerself a stain too big to write off when the cops spot ya. You gotta move in the shadows. Y’ain’t meant to be noticed, y’understand? Visibility, that’s what gets you killed. Ain’t garlic. Ain’t silver. Visibility. Now, you see this, sugar?”

Remmick holds the thrashing out-of-towner by the collar, digging a knuckle into the exact part of the neck that protects the carotid. He brings his free hand up to cradle the base of your skull, directing your gaze. You peer down at the man’s shoulder, pointedly ignoring the tears in his wet eyes.

“Yeah. So it’s gotta be right there or else you’ll make a big mess of it?”

“Exactly,” he coos, rubbing a soft thumb over the nape of your neck. “Smart girl. Right here.”

And then he bites.

The man tries to scream but it’s too late, too wet, too gargled. You avert your eyes. The guilt in your stomach roils. Are you an accomplice now?

You tell yourself that your presence changes nothing. You tell yourself that Remmick would be out to kill tonight regardless of whether or not you joined him. That this poor tourist would still be dead.

The only difference between action and inaction is a clear conscience.

The vampire sucks at the man’s neck with a bacchic, frenzied hunger. The blood dribbles from the corners of his mouth, victim of his own animalistic greed. He takes it all at once: no hesitation, no moderation. It’s awfully gory. The wet tear of flesh, the squirt of red…

You’re too horrified to really process anything except the strange rush of want bubbling low in your stomach. It’s the only emotion that manages to cut through the fear, through the shame and guilt of participating in what you’ve witnessed here.

The body is drained. It hits the concrete with a thump. Remmick wipes his mouth.

“Just like that,” he breathes. “Ain’t nothin’ to it.”

And then you notice he’s hard.

You don’t mean to look down. It’s just - well, it's not exactly inconspicuous.

He follows your gaze. It’s visible even in the shadows, the tenting under his leather belt. He grins slowly, fangs gleaming in the low lamplight.

“Ah. Well, I told you, didn’t I?”

“You gonna take care of that?” you ask, voice just a little too high. “Or are we done here?”

“What, baby, you don’t wanna?”

“No.”

“Alright, sweet girl,” he laughs. “G’on, then. I’ll see you in a bit.”

You nod, turning on a heel, careful not to step in any of the pools of blood.

From behind, there’s the unmistakable sound of a belt buckle hitting the ground.

-

Remmick reemerges in a collared shirt you’ve never seen before, the ends of his hair dripping with water. When you crook a brow in confusion, he nods over to the little pond by the edge of the woods.

“Ew. Really?”

“Well, I ain't about to walk around all painted like a Jackson Pollock. Visibility, remember?”

And then he wraps an arm around your waist, drawing you into him. His body is cold - though from the water or the vampirism, you aren’t quite sure.

“Please tell me you washed those hands.”

He tosses you the little bottle of sanitizer gel from his jeans pocket. Before you can stifle it, you’re laughing. That draws a smile from him - not a teasing one, not a smirk, but something much warmer. More honest. He looks down at you like he’s pleased.

“You're ridiculous.”

“Good hygiene’s my utmost priority, angel.”

He pulls you in closer, pressing a long kiss to the top of your head.

“You’re so touchy. I thought you took care of your little problem.”

“Little? You wound me.”

You roll your eyes.

“Nah, alright, it’s just that it’s always the lone men that catch people’s attention. Makes ‘em jumpy. Better t’have a pretty girl at my side after the cops get here. No one’ll suspect a thing.”

“What does it feel like?”

“What?”

“The blood. Does it make you stronger? Give you superpowers?”

“Nah,” he chuckles. “Only, I’m feelin’ real good, like I wanna do something stupid.”

“Like what?”

“Like taste you.” You stiffen. He sighs. “Relax, darlin’, I didn’t say kill.”

“Sorry Nosferatu, I can’t justify a turtleneck in July.”

“Why should you? F’anyone comes at you sideways, just tell ‘em your boyfriend’s a real freak.”

That elicits another laugh from you, real and loud and clear. It’s got him preening.

“How long did it take you to get used to it?”

“Drinkin’ blood?”

“Killing.”

He slows a little. You wonder if you’ve toed the line too far.

“My life ain’t like yours,” he says, finally. “Never was. Didn’t take me turnin’ into… this to kill a man.”

“No?”

Remmick clicks his teeth. “Baby. I was born in the Dark Ages. Death’s always been nippin’ at my heels, just waitin’ for me to trip up.”

“Oh. I… Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“Ain’t all bad.”

“Good.” You hesitate a moment. “So, what now? We just stand around, waiting for the police?”

“Nah. Now, we go find ourselves a real drink.” He beams as your brows furrow. “Lucky for you, I got the best joint in town.”

It’s field work. Participant observation. Ethnography, even.

You run through the list of anthropological buzzwords like you’re trying them on for size, contorting them until they fit the situation you now find yourself in.

The music in here is very loud, so loud it rings in your ears, so loud it catches in the hollows of your throat.

And Remmick’s got you by the waist from behind, rubbing heavy thumbs into your hips, gripping tightly at them like he thinks you’re about to bolt. Bodies are everywhere. You’re pressed into him, drink in hand, trying very hard not to spill it.

His hand crawls up your forearm, completely covers your own, and brings the glass of gin to your lips.

“Drink up, baby,” he says into your ear. “Need ya to feel how I feel.”

“Blood gets you drunk?” you shout back.

“Somethin’ like that.”

So you down the drink and swear it’s your last of the night.

He wasn’t lying - this really is the best joint in town.

It’s not one of those yuppie gastropubs that the New York Times writes about where the drinks cost more than the minimum wage. It’s also not like the dive bars you and your peers frequent, those little holes in the wall where the booze is cheap and the floor is sticky with unidentifiable liquid.

No, this place is a living, breathing thing.

Remmick moves you like water. Guides you right and left, nudges you where your feet need to go. You like it like this, like not overthinking it. No thinking at all, really.

He spins you like it’s second nature to him. That’s a thousand years, you suppose, one thousand years of finessing every possible social skill. How many girls has he spun like this? How many has he fucked? And how many has he drained dry?

Then he digs his hands into the flesh of your hips, just over the hidden tattoo.

“I like this lil’ thing. I’ve decided.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that?”

“’Cause I feel you drippin’ all over me and I know it ain’t ‘cause you been compelled.”

You stumble on the beat, trip a little into him. He steadies you.

“Remmick.”

“I mean that. Ain’t gotta run circles in my head, ain’t gotta wonder if it’s me or the magic: I know you want it.” His hand comes to rest on your lower stomach. “I’m a very bad man and you want me anyway. Bet you’d let me do it right here, huh?”

And maybe it’s idiotic but you arch into him anyway, letting the curve of your spine melt into the broad expanse of his chest. He brings his arms over yours, hugging you from behind, holding you where he needs you to stay.

“You would. I know it. And if you weren’t so drunk - fuck, I’d do it. Let all these freaks watch.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Nah, we ain’t talkin’ about fair. Not like this, not when your body’s singin’ like she needs me to shut her up.”

“Fuck you.”

“Eventually. But… shit, I think I like this better, knowin’ you’ll be up all night with an ache so deep you cain’t even name the place it’s hidin’.”

“Bring me home, then. I’ll find that toy.”

He laughs against your neck, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses down the length of it. “Oh, now that, I’d like to see.”

“Too bad. You can’t come in, can you?”

“Not yet.”

“Boo hoo.”

He nips at your ear and you squeal. “Don’t tempt me, baby.”

“Hm. You really won’t fuck me tonight?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then go get me another drink, would you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

07/19/95 : #010

The air is heavy today.

A sudden chill hangs over the city. It might rain, it might not, but the humidity’s so high it hardly matters. This day wasn’t made for hard work or expending energy.

And yet…

One step through his door and you’re already struck by the supercharged air between you, something like voltage - sizzling and humming just below the visible. He sits across from you, nearly unblinking.

You drink the wine, slow, like the heat in your cheeks could possibly be attributed to the alcohol. To warm you up, he’d said, eyeing the way you shivered in your sundress.

The interview is a short one.

Neither one of you can concentrate. No one addresses what happened at the club.

“Man on the news said there’s a storm on the way.” You offer it like an olive branch, some boring factoid to distract from the way his eyes wander. “Said it's a big one.”

“Hm.”

“Can't believe I walked here.”

“Shit.”

“You aren’t worried?”

“Not in the least.”

Silence.

You flick off the recorder.

“I can’t use of any this.”

He shrugs. “Just makin’ some small talk.”

“I probably should’ve stayed home.”

“How’s that?” He seems almost offended.

“If there’s a… storm.”

“I got candles.”

“You got food?”

“Not unless you don’t mind joinin’ me for eternity.”

“So no.”

You nod. Outside, a crack of thunder rings out.

“Alright. I’ll drive you home, angel.”

“What about the sun?”

He casts a glance up at the slate-grey sky as if to say, what sun?

“Right. Okay. Thank you.”

Remmick watches you.

You know that look, know what it means. You’ve been on the receiving end of it a hundred times in your life, both wanted and not.

It’s not the way a vampire eyes a meal, but… more like the way a man eyes someone he wants to taste, something he wants to devour.

You know he can hear the erratic beat in your chest. You know he can tell from all the way over there how wired you are. You know he’s picking up and cataloguing every hitch in breath, every tiny shift in your thighs, every time your eyes dart to his mouth.

You can’t take it anymore.

-

The rain comes down as a sheet just as you reach the top step of your porch. Fumbling around for your keys, you momentarily forget there’s an apex predator just over your shoulder with his hands dug into his pockets like there’s nothing strange about any of it.

The lock gives with a click and you swing open the door. “Thanks again for the ride,” you call over one shoulder, dumping your work bag by the welcome mat.

“No sweat, sugar.”

“D’you wanna…?”

Remmick stills. “Wanna what?”

“You know.” It just slipped out - but you realize, quite immediately, that you really do mean it.

“That’s so sweet of you, angel,” he says. “But...”

“What?”

“Your name ain’t on the deed. Is it?”

Something cold shoots down your spine.

And then he walks in.

You step back.

“That’s my bad, sugar. I didn’t even think to check. Who owns it, then?” He shuts the door behind him - slow, easy, like nothing’s gone terribly wrong.

“The university.”

He crooks a brow.

Nods.

“So. What d’you want me to do, then? Want me to go?”

“No.”

“You’re shakin’.”

“No - yes, I don’t know, I… But I don’t want you to leave.”

“Alright. Won’t budge.”

“Just… You can follow me.”

It’s like a twisted reimagining of that first night, how you led him through the streets of the dark city praying he wouldn’t snap and rip your throat out. You hear his steps behind you, measured and even, the creak of him on the stairs. The lamps flicker as the rain hits the roof.

But you wonder something.

It’s true you don't own the place. Technically, you’re just renting. And technically… the only place in this house that could kind of be considered yours is the bedroom, the bright one with the bay window overlooking the tree-lined street below.

Now here's a research opportunity.

With a few feet to go, you dash through the door to your room and stumble over the threshold.

Remmick growls, not far behind and -

Nothing.

You wait a beat. Two.

He hasn’t followed because he’s still in the doorway, his figure backlit by the lamps downstairs and casting a long, black shadow onto your carpet.

“Sorry, Rem. Just wanted to test something.”

“I see that.”

“You really can’t…?”

“I cain’t.”

“You’d need me to say it, then.”

“I would.”

You nod.

And reach over to your nightstand.

A flick of the switch and the toy buzzes to life. Remmick bangs his forehead into the doorframe. “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

“Nope. Just wanna see you sweat a little.”

You settle just in front of the doorway, shift your legs apart, letting them fall open from the knee. Slowly, you move the toy up and down your thigh. You’re soaked. He can see it.

He snarls, nails biting into the wood of the frame.

“What? Think you could do better?”

“I get it,” he grits out. “I teased you - I'm sorry, alright? You want me to fuckin’ beg?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Please, alright? Please, I’m - sugar, I need you. I need you t’let me make it up to you. Cain’t do that from all the way out here, can I?” He presses forward, as far as he can get, straining the barrier between you.

Your hand hovers over your core, just inches from where you need it most. “How long’s it been since you had to beg for something? Since you couldn’t just take it?”

“Sweetheart, I - please, I can smell it on ya, it’s all over you n’I - I need it.”

“You’re so pretty when you whine, baby.”

“That’s sick.”

“So are you.” You can’t hide the crack in your voice when the toy makes contact. “Shit, Rem - I wish it were you. Bet it’s big. Bet it’d fit just right.”

“Please.” He falls to his knees, holds up his hands in a mockery of holy prayer. “Anything you want, angel, anything. Just put that fuckin’ thing down and lemme in.”

All he can do is watch as you writhe, still clothed, chasing the feeling as you teeter on the edge.

“Feels so good,” you whine.

“I cain’t fuckin’ watch this. Please.”

One flick of the wrist - you know it - and you’ll come. Just one. It’s now or never.

“You gonna eat it, Rem?”

“Yes. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, I’m gonna eat it.”

“And then you’ll fuck me good?”

“So good you won’t walk for days.”

“Come in, then.”

And the space between you closes.

The toy is on the other side of the room before you can even switch it off. His mouth is on yours, licking into you like the flavour is what he craves. One hand comes to squeeze at your tit, sharp and possessive. You gasp into him.

“Don’t you ever do that again, baby,” he spits against your teeth. “Y’understand?”

“Won’t,” you manage. “Just get to work.”

It’s another minute before his mouth finally leaves yours, before he’s ripping the dress clean in two and letting the pieces fall unceremoniously to the floor. He kisses down the length of your cheek, your jaw, your collarbone, the valley of your breasts, all the way down to your core.

You half-expect him to tease you right back, to draw the whole thing out - bt he doesn’t.

He eats it in a fury, like he’s exacting a punishment. Your fingers weave into his soft, ruddy hair, start tugging at the roots like you could possibly control his motions. Remmick hasn’t even bothered to drag you to the bed, to find you a pillow, to even angle you over the plush carpet just over to the right - no.

You’re doing this right here… and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

The dig of his hands into the flesh of your thighs, the way he's got one arm locked across your stomach so tight you can't even buck your hips, the wet sounds barely audible over the crackling thunder and howling wind -

Between all of that and the half-abandoned orgasm you nearly achieved, it takes no time at all for him to shove you over the edge into ecstasy.

You scream. He laughs.

“Ain’t no fuckin’ toy could do that,” he mutters into your thigh, pressing wet kisses into the soft skin of it.

“I need more, Rem, I need - holy shit.”

“I got you, sugar. Lie back, now, lemme do what needs doin’.”

Remmick crawls up over you. There’s a surprising tenderness in how he moves, a distinct attention to keeping his weight even, to giving you enough space to breathe.

“What’d you think, baby, think it’s big?” he mutters between kisses, between the wet stripes he licks across the flushed skin of your neck. “Think y’can take it?”

“Y-yes, I - shit - I can.”

“That’s good, sweet thing, ‘cause I’m gonna make it fit, n’you’re gonna lay right there and you’re gonna thank me for it. Ain’t that right?”

You nod furiously, whining at the feel of canines scraping at your skin. He nips at your breast - not enough to break the skin, but enough to make you keen into him. All the while, his hands roam the length of your bare body.

“Speak up.”

“Yes.”

“Smart girl.” He nuzzles into the slope of your neck, inhaling deep. You claw at his shirt, some faded old band thing that smells of expensive aftershave and iron-rich rot. He understands, pauses his attack, peels it off and over his head.

And then he’s right back where he was, colder than the night and far more beautiful. His skin burns with a strange ice, overwhelms the sticky humidity of the room and the flushed heat emanating from your every pore. The world is made perfect in his expert, ancient hands.

“You let me in.” He mumbles it into the flesh of your stomach - an accusation, yes, but laced with adoration. “You didn’t have to. I didn’t make you. Nah, you did it ‘cause you wanted it. Wanted me.”

“Obviously,” you gasp. “Fucking obviously I wanted this.”

He laughs, soft and airy.

“I know, baby. She -” he runs a finger against your core and you keen - “has made that very clear.”

“Please, Remmick, would you just - I can take it, I’m ready, just - fuck, please…”

“Yeah?” He chuckles, even now, even as he’s rocking back and forth over your bare body, grinding his clothed self into you. “What, y’ain’t so bold now that y’need some cock, huh?”

His blunt words leave you clenching around nothing.

You swallow. “Fuck you.”

“You can, if you ask real nice.”

“I got mine already, Rem.” Your voice cracks as the head of him catches against you. “You gave it to me, remember? And if you want yours, you’d better get on it.”

“Aw, there she is,” he coos, grinning against your mouth. “Dirty girl. Silly girl, playin’ with fire, survival instinct of a fuckin’ pebble.”

“Shut up.”

Remmick reaches down to undo his zip. Tosses his belt aside, the leather sliding through the loops and the buckle meeting the hardwood with a heavy clank. You lower a hand to feel him and he slaps it away.

And then he’s moving against you again, feeling his way through the combined wetness between your bodies without ever breaching it.

“Tell me, sweetheart,” he starts. “Is this what you been hopin’ for? Whole time, sittin’ there across from me all pretty n’breakable, pokin’ and proddin’ at a thing so old it cain’t hardly remember what it means to say please… What, you kept comin’ back just hopin’ I’d get you under me? Get you squirmin’, just like this?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you,” he says simply, and then buries himself to the hilt. You scream. He makes a sound like choking.

“Rem, you’re so - fuck, just slow down -”

“Nah, baby,” he counters, pulling himself out just to push in again. “I can take it, Rem, I’m ready - ain’t that what you said? Ain’t that how you begged? See, I’m just givin’ my girl what she wants.”

My girl.

You whine at that, clench down around him, and he groans.

“Oh,” he spits. “Y’like that? Like bein’ mine?”

“Yes,” you sob. “Yes, I-”

“Good, ‘cause that’s what you are.” He hisses it, his hands coming to land on either side of your face, digging into your cheeks, forcing your gaze. “You been mine, sugar, since the first night, since them college boys looked at you like a meal n’got their throats ripped out for their trouble.”

Your eyes go wide.

“Aw, you don’t even remember, huh?” He laughs in your face. “Poor baby’s just lucky was me that found her in that alley and not one of them.”

“Rem-”

“Mine.” He hits you with a cant of his hips that shoves you forward. “Say it.”

You drag your hand from its resting place on his bicep, from the five little indents in his pallid skin, and bring it to rest in his hair. You tug. He snarls.

“Yours,” you whisper, drawing his lips down to meet your own.

“Goddamn right.”

“Because you’re mine.”

“Fuck.” It’s almost a whine. “Oh, angel - fuck, that’s right, just like that - so fuckin’ perfect, so fuckin’ - “

He reaches down to the nub between your legs, chases that same pattern with his thumb as he had with his tongue. You cry out, grip on his shoulders so tight that the tips of your fingers start to tingle.

“Just like that, baby, go on - one more. Know y’can, know y’wanna.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Shit, angel, could be fuckin’ armageddon outside and I wouldn’t stop. Not when I got you like this. Not when you’re cryin’ all over me like a fuckin’ whore.”

All you can babble is his name, rising and falling, swelling and bursting.

“I’m gonna - “

“Oh, you goddamn better.”

So you do.

Remmick doesn’t let up, doesn’t give you the briefest second to acclimate, to ride it out, to come down from the peak. He’s still bucking and moving, still chasing his own high.

What can you do but lie there and take it? What can you do but grab at his mussed hair, coo soft words of praise in his ear, tell him how good he is to you?

“Sweet girl,” he pants, pressing wet kisses across your face, down your neck, in your hair - anywhere his animal body takes him. “You let me in. Let me… let me in again. Ins - lemme come inside, yeah?”

“Inside,” you whine, eyes screwed shut. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Please.”

So he does.

“You’re mine, baby,” he groans, kissing softly at the corners of your mouth. “Fuck. All mine.”

“I’m yours.” You brush a loose lock of hair from his eye. Drag him down again for a deep kiss - slow, filthy, indulgent. “You know that.”

“And I ain’t talkin’ about a fling, angel, ain’t talkin’ about you’re mine up ‘til you get your degree n’get the hell on outta Louisiana. Nah, this here’s forever, sugar, for life. Get that?”

“Your life or mine?”

“Why not both?”

You both look at each other, then, properly. The red’s almost dissolved from his iris. If you squint, he might just be a handsome man like any other, all hungry hands and slick words. You wonder what he sees in you - something fragile to cradle, some sweetness to indulge in.

There's something very human in the way he watches you, how he hangs on whatever words might next leave your lips. Like he knows what he wants to hear. Like he's terrified he won't. Like any of it matters to a creature older than God.

“Bring me to bed, please.”

With a kiss to your forehead, he’s pulling himself from your body, shushing you as you wince. Wordlessly, he lifts your sore frame from the floor as if you weigh nothing, carrying you up and over to the king-size mattress laying unused only feet away.

“I mean it,” he says, drawing your body up against him. His fingers play in your hair, scratch at your scalp. “I could give you forever.”

“I know.”

“You don’t want it?”

“I don’t know. Did you choose this?”

“No. But you could.”

“You think I’d be happy?”

“Think I could make you. Yeah?”

“You’re probably right.”

“Yeah.”

“D’you think I’d also get horny after drinking blood?”

“Goddamn, I hope so.”

“Pervert.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Y’know, I’d like to turn thirty first, I think.”

“What’s so great about thirty?”

You laugh. “I don’t know. I just want to.”

“Alright,” he mumbles into your hair. “When’s your birthday?”

“Fuck off.”

“Nah.”

The screen door claps against the frame, rattling the loose hook in its eye, and the house takes the sound into itself with a long wooden shiver.

Outside, the pasture has gone dark at the edges, the mares moving in pale, restless shapes beyond the fence line, and the butchered hen lies wrapped in paper against your hip, still warm enough to leave its damp weight through the cloth.

The kitchen smells of iron, cornmeal, lamp oil, and hot wood, all of it made heavier by the wet breath of summer pressing against the windows. Blood has soaked through your apron in stiff patches. It darkens your knuckles, clings under your nails, and slicks the inside of your fingers where the washbasin has not yet had its turn at you.

Remmick sits at the kitchen table with supper cooling in front of him, fork laid across the plate like a prop in some poor play. Cornbread, beans, and a slice of onion sit untouched on the plate, though he had taken care to move his fork once or twice as if the habit of eating could make him seem less unnatural.

He's been better at pretending lately.

Better at wearing a man’s shape around your house.

That pretense slips the moment he sees your hands.

His eyes lift first, then hold. His mouth goes wet. The change comes over him with shameful quickness, a stillness so complete the whole kitchen seems to lean toward it. His fingers curl against the table, nails scraping once, soft and desperate, and he swallows as if something in his throat has gone dry despite the shine already gathering on his lower lip.

“Bring me the basin,” you say, setting the wrapped hen near the stove, “and stop staring like you’ve never seen blood in this house before.”

A sound catches in his throat, too low to be a laugh and too eager to be shame, but he rises quickly enough, chair legs dragging hard across the boards.

Months ago, when he first came to your land, you would have taken that quickness for threat and reached for the shotgun you kept by the pantry.

The first night he came to you, pale as a corpse in the moonlight and smiling like something raised wrong from the marsh, you had been in the stable with your sick mare, her flank hot beneath your palm and her breath sour with fever.

He had stood beyond the open doors with rainwater silvering his hair, asking after the road to the nearest town, then begging for a cup of water in a voice too soft for a man who looked as though he might open his jaw and show you a wolf’s hunger.

You had given him directions and your flask because you were not cruel, then told him to leave because you were not a fool.

Night after night afterward, he returned to the porch with some new misery tucked under his tongue; a stone in his boot, dogs in the distance, fever in his head, a weakness in his knees, any excuse that might win him a chair by your fire.

You let him speak to the locked door until dawn thinned the trees and drove him away.

Then he came bleeding.

You think of it now when he brings the basin from the sideboard and sets it down too near you, close enough that his sleeve brushes your elbow.

That night he had sagged against your porch post with one hand pressed to his ribs, shirt torn, mouth trembling with a pain you later understood he had chosen for himself.

Mercy had gotten him across your threshold. Mercy, and your own hands, and the foolish human pity he had learned to pull from you like a thread from cloth. And after mercy came habit, then want, then the strange arrangement of a dead thing living in your house as if marriage vows had been exchanged under the kitchen rafters instead of hunger.

He mended fences after dusk, hauled feed in the bruised light before sunrise, kept his hat low and his hands busy, and in return he crawled into your bed each night because he begged so sweetly for it, and because his body never held heat unless he stole yours.

By the time you found him in the yard one night with one of your hens torn open between his hands, his mouth red and his fangs hooked deep into the limp, feathered body, you had already let him kiss you. You had already let him climb into your bed. You had already slapped him once for nearly putting those teeth in your throat while his cock was inside you, and watched him go rigid with hurt, hunger, shame, and pleasure all tangled together until he looked as ruined as any sinner caught at the altar.

His hand hovers over yours, not touching, but every part of him strains toward the blood.

“Remmick,” you warn.

“I know,” he says, though his voice has gone thin and ragged. “I know, I know, I only—”

“You only what?”

He looks from your hands to your face, and the lamplight makes something red move behind his eyes before he blinks it back.

His tongue touches the corner of his mouth. He looks wretched with wanting, dressed in the same shirt he wore to mend the smokehouse latch, the sleeves rolled past his forearms, his suspenders loose, his hair damp at the temples from the heat. There's dirt beneath his nails, a smear of dust along one cheekbone, and for all his sweetness around the house, for all the way he carries himself when he wants to seem harmless, the sight of blood has peeled him down to the thing you know he is.

“Please,” he whispers.

“You’ve had supper put in front of you.” You tilt your head, searching for any changes in his expression.

His eyes flick toward the plate with no interest at all. “That is supper for a livin' man.”

“And what are you?”

The question strikes him low. In the tremor that moves through his mouth, and in the way his gaze drops from your face to your fingers again. “Whatever you tell me to be.”

The answer is pretty, pathetic, and practiced only because every true thing in him has begun to sound like begging.

You lift your hand and let your bloodied fingers hover near his mouth, and his lips part.

The sight of it sends a slow warmth through you, power sinking into flesh.

He has torn through men, animals, God knows what else, and yet in your kitchen he waits for permission with his cock already swelling in his trousers because you might let him lick chicken blood from your hand.

“Open,” you tell him.

Remmick obeys with such speed that his shame seems to arrive after the hunger, following it across his face in a red wash. His mouth closes around two of your fingers, hot and wet, his tongue moving with careful greed over the dried blood.

He sucks gently at first, trying to make a show of restraint, but the effort fails as soon as the taste reaches him.

His lashes lower. His breath shudders. Drool gathers where your fingers press his lower lip, and the sound he makes around you is obscene, a low, grateful hum that vibrates through the bones of your hand.

You watch him take what you allow, watch the stain disappear from your knuckles, watch his hands grip the table because he knows better than to seize your wrist.

That lesson had taken several nights to settle into him, several bruises, several warnings, and the pleasure of it still lives in the way he trembles when you call him greedy.

“You’re filthy,” you murmur, easing your fingers deeper until his throat works around the pressure. “Sitting here drooling over chicken blood like I starve you.”

His eyes lift, red flickering deep behind the brown, and the word filthy nearly finishes whatever restraint he has left.

His hips press once toward nothing. A thick shape pushes against the front of his trousers, plain beneath the lamplight, and when you glance down at it, he gives a muffled whine that turns wetter around your fingers.

You pull back slowly, but his mouth follows before he catches himself, lips chasing the taste, and then he does it: the smallest tilt of his head, the slightest flash of ragged fangs, an attempt to catch your thumb and nick the living blood beneath the skin.

Your palm cracks across his face before his teeth can close.

The blow rings through the kitchen and leaves him turned with one hand braced against the table, mouth open, cheek already flushing beneath the mark.

He breathes hard, almost panting. Shame folds through his expression, but pleasure rises with it, sick and immediate, his body betraying him so plainly that his eyes squeeze shut. His fingers flex against the wood as though he needs something to hold or he might sink to the floor.

“I told you not to bite me,” you say, quiet enough to make him listen.

Remmick nods quickly, his voice rough when he answers, “Yes.”

“You tried anyway.”

“I was only—” He stops himself because the lie would insult you more than the disobedience. His throat works, and the red print on his cheek deepens. “I wanted more.”

A slow look down his body makes him shift like he can hide what the slap has done to him. “And now look at you.”

His gaze drops, and you follow it without mercy. His cock strains against his trousers, obscene and thick beneath worn fabric, the front of him tented as plainly as if he had meant to show you. He looks down at himself and makes a sound that is almost pain.

“One little slap and you’re fit to spend in your pants.”

Humiliation bends his head, but it does not soften the hunger in him. If anything, it makes him worse.

His lashes flutter, his lips part, and a shine of spit gathers again at the corner of his mouth as though the slap has loosened something in him that hunger alone could not.

You take the clean side of your thumb and press it to the reddening mark on his cheek. He leans into the touch like a whipped dog seeking the same hand that struck him.

“You’ll fetch water so I can wash,” you say, letting your thumb drag once along his cheekbone. “Then you’ll go sit in the bedroom and wait for me. You will not touch yourself.”

His face twists with need. “I can’t—”

“You can.”

He nods slowly, too eager and too miserable and, when he turns for the pump, his gait is wrong with arousal, stiff through the hips, one hand hovering near the front of his trousers before he snatches it back like he remembers your command by pain alone.

By the time the basin is filled and your hands are clean, the water has turned a cloudy brown-red that seems to grieve him when you pour it out.

He watches the blood vanish into the yard through the back door, his jaw tight, his gaze hollowed by want, but he goes where you send him.

The boards in the hall complain under his steps, and you take your time with the kitchen because you know every ordinary sound will torment him. The knife is washed and dried. The wrapped chicken is set aside. The apron comes off stiff with blood and hangs from the nail by the door.

In the bathroom, you clean yourself with warmed water by lamplight, dragging the cloth over your arms, your throat, the sweat-slick hollow between your breasts, the places where blood had soaked through the cotton and touched skin.

The house is quieter there, close and damp, yet you know his hearing catches the water wrung from the cloth, the shift of your dress loosening, the soft fall of your stockings.

Letting him imagine is its own punishment, and you enjoy it more than you care to name.

The bedroom is dark except for the low lamp on the dresser and the moonless weight at the window when you finally step inside.

Remmick's sitting on the edge of the bed with his suspenders hanging loose, shirt open down the chest, hair damp at the temples from a sweat his body has no honest reason to make. One hand grips his thigh. The other is pressed over the bulge in his trousers, just holding himself through the fabric as if pressure alone might keep him from splitting apart.

His gaze lifts to you, then drops to the thin shift clinging to your freshly washed skin, and the sound that leaves him is half-starved.

“You touched yourself,” you say, crossing the room slowly.

“I held it,” he answers, breathless with the need to explain. “Only held it. It hurt.”

“Poor Remmick,” you say, and the false softness of it makes his hips twitch beneath his hand.

He stands before you reach him, crowding close but not quite touching until your eyes give him leave.

His hands settle at your waist with a tremor. His mouth lowers to your shoulder, kissing through the shift first, then nudging the loosened neckline aside to taste skin.

The kisses come wet and scattered, down your throat, along your jaw, over your cheek, each one leaving a shine behind. He is always too messy when want has burned through his manners, too open-mouthed, too eager, too grateful for anything your body allows him.

When you catch his chin and make him look at you, his pupils are wide, his lips swollen from biting back whines.

“I said not to touch yourself,” you remind him.

“I only held it,” he says, pleading already. “I swear, I only—Christ, I needed something.”

"Poor you," you repeat.

His hips push forward before he can stop them, the hard length of him grinding against your thigh. He chokes on the sound that follows and tries to pull back, but you keep him there with your hand on his jaw.

“You like being pitied?” you ask, letting your thumb rest at the corner of his mouth where spit has gathered. “You like being made small?”

The shame in him answers before he does, running down his throat in a swallow. “I like when you say anything to me.”

The answer is so bare that it would soften you on another night. It does soften you, somewhere deep and unwise, but you do not let it reach your hands.

You stroke your thumb over the red mark on his cheek, and he turns into the touch with such helpless hunger that your own body answers, heat blooming between your thighs.

“Get on your knees, then.”

Remmick sinks down so fast the floorboards creak beneath him, hands sliding to your calves, face tipped up with a hunger that looks nearly devotional.

Your back settles against the wardrobe as you gather your shift in one fist and lift it, the old wood cool and solid behind your shoulders.

When he leans forward, you raise one thigh over his shoulder, making room for him between your legs while his hands come up to steady you at the hips. He stops with his mouth hovering inches from you, breathing against your inner thighs while he waits, and the restraint costs him badly enough that his fingers dig into your skin before he catches himself and loosens his grip.

His eyes flick up for permission, and when you give it, he falls on you with a groan that nearly buckles the leg still planted beneath you. His mouth is hot, wet, and shameless, licking into you with the desperation of something denied too long.

He drags the muscle through your slickness, circles your clit, then sucks with enough care that his fangs never touch, though the danger of them stays present in every breath. Drool slips down his chin and cools against your thighs while his hands clutch under your shift, holding you open as he eats you like praise might be found there if he works hard enough for it.

Your fingers push into his hair and pull him closer, and he makes a grateful, muffled sound, tongue circling your clit before flattening, then dipping lower to taste where you are opening for him.

His nose presses against you. His fingers dig bruises into your hips. He breathes harshly through it, rutting once against nothing before he catches himself and stops, shaking with the effort.

“No,” you say, tightening your hand in his hair. “You don’t get to rub yourself on my floor like a dog.”

The words break a rough sound out of him, humiliation moving through him like fever, and he moans into your cunt as his tongue flattens against your clit again, then slips lower while two fingers stroke up the inside of your thigh.

Your free hand braces against the wardrobe, and he feels the shift of your weight, feels the way your raised thigh tightens over his shoulder. He always knows when he has done well, and he turns ravenous with the knowledge, licking you with long, desperate strokes until pleasure gathers low and heavy in your stomach.

“That’s better,” you say, breath thinning. “Good boy.”

The praise wrecks him worse than the insult. He pulls back just enough to gasp, “Again.”

You look down at him, at the wet shine all over his mouth and chin, at the way his eyes have gone glassy with need.

“Earn it.”

Remmick earns it with his tongue, with his mouth, with his fingers sliding up the inside of your thigh only after you nod.

When he presses two of them into you, they go slow at first, crooked carefully, finding the place that makes your breath catch. He watches your face as he does it, his mouth still working your clit, eyes almost fever-bright with the pleasure of being used.

The room thickens around you, close and hot, the lamp smoking faintly on the dresser, the quilt twisted on the bed behind him, the open window letting in all the wet green rot of summer.

You can hear his fingers moving in you, and you can hear him swallowing your pleasure as if he is starving for that too.

Your orgasm gathers, and he seems to sense it before you tell him, pressing deeper, sucking softer, giving you his mouth as steadily as he can while his own body shakes.

Pleasure rolls through you hard, making your hand fist in his hair, your thigh tightening over his shoulder as you bow against the wardrobe and come on his tongue.

He groans as if your pleasure hurts him sweetly. His fingers keep moving until you shove at his shoulder, oversensitive and breathless, and even then he kisses your inner thigh once, twice, wet open-mouthed kisses that beg forgiveness for stopping and permission to start again.

By the time you pull him up, Remmick’s mouth and chin are shining. His cock strains so heavily against his trousers that the fabric is damp at the front, and the sight of your pleasure on his face has made him glassy-eyed rather than proud.

He looks debased, beautiful, and miserable with restraint.

You rub your thumb over his slick lower lip, and he opens for it without instruction, tongue touching your skin with a shiver.

“You did that well,” you murmur.

Praise hits him harder than the slap. His eyes flutter, and his hands curl uselessly near your waist, not daring to grab. “Again,” he whispers, though it is unclear whether he means the praise, your mouth, or the chance to get between your thighs until he stops shaking.

“Bed,” you tell him, and he nearly stumbles in his hurry to obey.

The mattress gives under you with a familiar rope-and-frame complaint as you lie back, shift bunched around your hips.

He kisses you on the way down to it, or tries to. His mouth finds yours in broken, greedy attempts, too eager to be smooth.

You taste yourself on him, salt and heat beneath the faint copper memory of the chicken blood he had cleaned from your fingers.

He whimpers when your tongue touches his. He whimpers again when you bite his lower lip hard enough to warn him but not hard enough to bleed.

Remmick’s hands make poor work of his buttons. He is too aroused to be graceful, too eager to be quick, and by the time he gets his trousers open, his cock springs heavy and flushed into his palm.

He grips himself once by instinct, then snatches his hand away at the look you give him. The remorse on his face is immediate, but he doesn't cry; his eyes only shine, wet at the edges, his mouth tightening as he fights the ache.

When you finally part your thighs, the expression on his face changes so sharply it borders on pain as he climbs over you with care, one hand bracing near your head, the other gripping the base of his cock because even now, with permission, he's trying not to spend too soon.

The head of his cock drags through your wetness, and his face tightens as if the pleasure has teeth. He pushes in slowly because you told him once that you liked to feel him try not to lose himself, and he remembers the things that torment him.

When his hips finally settle flush against yours, his forehead drops near your collarbone with a low, broken moan.

“No teeth,” you remind him, turning his face away from your throat with two fingers at his jaw.

“No teeth,” he repeats, voice rough. “I know.”

“And no coming until I say.”

Remmick’s whole body tenses above you, then obeys by force of will alone.

He begins with slow strokes, dragging out of you almost to the tip before sinking back in, the rhythm careful and reverent until care becomes impossible.

His mouth moves everywhere it can safely go: your shoulder, your jaw, the curve of your breast through the shift, the place beneath your ear where he trembles from keeping his fangs away.

Each time his hunger gets too close, he turns his face aside and curses softly into the pillow.

The restraint makes him rougher through the hips, less polished, more desperate, and the bed starts to knock against the wall in a steady wooden pulse.

“You’re trying so hard,” you say, nails dragging down his back.

The praise makes him shudder, and one thin tear slips free despite his effort to hold it back. It cuts down the slapped cheek, catching the lamplight before disappearing near his jaw.

That's all he gives you at first, that single sign of being split too wide by pleasure, shame, and obedience. He doesn't fall apart the way he has before—he keeps moving, breathing hard through his nose, mouth open and wet, eyes fixed on your face because looking away would feel like failing.

“You like being kept like this,” you say, wrapping your legs higher around his waist. “Being made to wait. Being told no. Being put in your place.”

His hips stutter, eyes squeezing shut, and the next thrust goes deeper. “Yes.”

“Say it proper.”

“Yes,” he says again, hoarser, his hand fisting in the sheet beside your head. “I like it.”

“You like being treated like something that needs training.”

A sob catches in his throat. He thrusts harder, then whines when you tug his hair in warning.

“Careful,” you say. “Don’t get stupid now.”

“I am stupid,” he says, the words falling out in a rush, all dignity gone. “I’m stupid for it, I can’t think when you smell like this, when you open for me, when you look at me like that."

The answer pulls a sound from you before you can swallow it.

Remmick hears it and gives you that angle again, his body learning yours in the filthy, faithful way it always does.

The room fills with him: the slap of his hips, the damp heat of his mouth against your skin, the faint copper ghost of blood still hidden somewhere in his breath from your fingers.

Your hand slides between your bodies when the second climb starts, and the first touch of your fingers to your clit makes you tighten around him so suddenly that he chokes.

“Christ,” he gasps, eyes dropping to where your hand moves, hips rolling into you while your fingers rub tight circles over your clit.

His mouth hangs open, drool shining on his lower lip, and his cock jerks inside you each time your body clenches around him.

You touch yourself harder, matching the rhythm of his thrusts, using him and your own hand together until pleasure spreads hot and heavy through your belly.

Remmick's breathing turns ragged.

“That’s it,” you breathe, gripping his shoulder with your free hand. “Right there. Don’t change it.”

His jaw locks with the effort of keeping the pace.

The bedframe hits the wall harder, rain beginning at the window in a sudden silver rush, and the scent of wet earth rolls through the room with the smell of sweat and sex.

He drives into you exactly as ordered while your fingers work your clit, and the second orgasm breaks through you in a deep, pulsing wave.

Your back arches from the mattress, your thighs tightening around his hips, your cunt clenching hard around every inch of him.

Remmick makes a strangled sound and nearly follows, his rhythm collapsing into short, frantic thrusts before he catches himself.

“Not yet,” you say, still shaking from it, your hand leaving your clit to grip his face.

Agony flashes across him. His eyes go wet again, and this time the tears gather because he's too close, because your body is still gripping him, because obedience has become almost unbearable. “Please,” he says, the word cracked and low. “Please, please—I can’t hold it—”

“You can hold it until I tell you.”

His mouth trembles, but he nods, fucking you in broken strokes that keep him buried deep without letting him finish. Every muscle in him strains. His fangs show, not from threat but from the force of clenching his jaw, and he turns his face away from your neck as if the very sight of your pulse might break him.

You stroke his cheek, softer than before, and that gentleness ruins him more cleanly than cruelty.

“You did well,” you tell him.

The first true sob comes then, quiet and torn up, his face crumpling with relief before pleasure swallows it. “I tried.”

“I know.”

Remmick comes with a hoarse cry, hips driving in deep as his body bows over yours.

His cock pulses hard, filling you with heat while his breath breaks against your mouth. A few tears spill down his face at the force of it, not the endless weeping of earlier nights but something sharper, dragged out of him by release and the awful sweetness of permission.

He keeps whispering your name into the damp space between your mouths, each repetition less like speech and more like surrender.

You hold him through it, fingers in his hair, nails resting against the marks you left on his back, and his weight lowers carefully once the last tremor leaves him.

After the storm opens fully over the fields, the bedroom settles into a humid dark sweetened by rain through the window and the low smoke of the lamp.

Remmick stays buried in your warmth, softening by degrees, his face tucked near your collarbone without touching his teeth to your skin. The monster in him has not gone anywhere. It lies quiet under his skin, fed and chastened, listening to the blood in your throat with the same devotion he gives your voice.

You know what he is, what he had planned when he first crossed your threshold bleeding on purpose, what he could still make of you now that the house has accepted him.

He could turn you whenever he chose if you grew careless enough to let him.

He knows it too, and maybe that's why he clings to obedience so fiercely, why his mouth trembles when you stroke his hair, why the palm-mark on his cheek seems to comfort him as much as it shames him.

“You hit me hard,” he murmurs, voice rough against your skin.

“You earned it.”

A faint shiver moves through him, and even spent, he presses closer, seeking your heat like an animal crawling toward a hearth. “I know.”

“If you try to bite me again, I’ll do worse.”

Remmick’s lips touch your shoulder in one careful, toothless kiss, and his answer comes low, reverent, and still a little hungry. “Yes, ma’am.”

Rain batters the sill, the pasture disappears beyond the dark glass, and the blood has long since been washed from your hands, though its memory remains in the damp shine of his mouth.

You let him lie there, half corpse and half supplicant, the devil you allowed inside because mercy had once looked too much like need.

When his arm tightens around your waist and his breath slows against your throat, you do not tell him to move.

© 2026 all rights reserved — flixpii.

The porch sits right on the edge of it, a little island of yellow lantern light with you cross-legged in your chair, enamel bowl in your lap, fingers slick with bean juice. Crickets grind away in the ditch, frogs answer from somewhere near the pond, and the heat that pressed on your skin all day finally lets go a little, turning soft and damp and heavy instead of mean.

Your daddy, Joe, stands out by the road with a cigarette, just that small orange coal drifting up and down whenever he draws on it.

He’s mostly shadow, hat brim pulled low, shoulders a dark cutout against the pale strip of dirt lane. The smoke hangs around him in thin gray strands, catching the lantern glow before the breeze worries it apart.

The wagon makes itself known before you see it.  A tired rattle carrying over the fields long and low, iron and wood complaining in a way that could belong to any old rig on any old night. 

The mule steps out of the dark first, ears flicking, hooves whispering in the dust, harness creaking, then the wagon-bed, then the man riding it, the whole shape of him hunched against the evening like the road’s been sitting on his back.

He climbs down slow, not careless, one boot testing the ground, then the other. He isn’t tall; not one of those long, scarecrow boys you see come through town sometimes. He’s put together closer to the earth than that, thick through the shoulders and arms, weight settled in the meat of him instead of stretched out. 

Shirt pulls across his chest where the fabric has been asked to hold too much too often, sleeves rolled to his forearms, muscle and old work written in the dust and veins there. Suspenders run straight over his torso, holding everything decent, but there’s something loose under the neatness, a restless set to the way he carries himself, like he’s got more energy than his frame knows what to do with.

His hat sits low enough to shade most of his face until he steps up nearer and the porch light reaches for him.

“Evenin’, Sir,” he says, voice a slow scrape, low and worn, like it’s been dragged over gravel and cigarettes for years. 

The vowels don’t belong to your county, not exactly, but he leans into them like he’s been practicing, trying to make them fit the dirt under his boots.

“Evenin’,” Joe, flicks ash toward the ditch without turning. “You Remmick?”

“Yes, sir.”

He takes off his hat then, presses it to his chest in a gesture that seems to be humble, and in that little bow you see the line of him clear. 

Hair dark and close-cropped, stubborn where it’s tried to wave up and been tamed with water and a hand. Jaw rough with stubble that looks more forgotten than stylish. 

There’s a hardness around his mouth, something that could tilt into a grin or a snarl with not much provocation either way.

When he straightens and lifts his eyes, they cut toward the porch, and you feel it right away when they land on you, as sure as if somebody laid a hand on your bare ankle.

A limp green bean hangs between your fingers, ends torn and wet.

His gaze drifts, following your calves where your skirt’s ridden up, running along the slope of your shins and the span of your knees pressed together, sliding up the line of your apron and the thin open V between your collar buttons where the night air pushes in against your skin. 

He looks like he’s reading you, not just seeing you, taking his time over every line.

You go still, sharp-aware of every place your dress touches your body and every place it doesn’t.

The bean pieces drop into the bowl as you lower your eyes to the boards. The porch wood is dark and warped from years of feet, knot-holes winking like little eyes in the dim.

You fix on those, on the small wet snaps and soft taps of beans piling against enamel. Anything that is not the feeling of a stranger’s stare walking up and down you like a man checking fence.

“Baby,” your father says, voice flat, cigarette smoke curling out on the word. “Say evenin’.”

You wipe your hands on your apron and stand, bare feet quiet on the boards. “Evenin’,” you say, polite as sunday, letting the rest of what you feel sink down where it won’t show on your face.

Remmick smiles like he hears it anyway. It isn’t wide or warm. Just a slow tug at one corner of his mouth, a small, crooked tilt that never quite reaches his eyes.

“Evenin’, miss,” he answers, and there’s a drag in that word miss, the s held just long enough to make it catch.

Miss, when he could have asked for your name, when any decent man might have. Your father hasn’t offered it yet, so you keep it closed up in your mouth.

“Girl oughta be in bed this hour,” Joe mutters, eyes on the yard, not on you. “Ain’t no call for her to be sittin’ out like some boy on watch. Night’s for men workin’, not for women gawkin’.”

The words land on your shoulders like an old coat, familiar weight, old smell.  You bite down on what you want to say and feel it burn on the way down.

“I’m finishin’ the beans,” you tell him instead, hands tightening on the bowl till the rim bites into your palms. You don’t bother trying to explain that the dark sits easier on your skin than the hard white noon does, that the night gives you a little space to stretch.

You can feel Remmick watching you still, not with that sloppy hunger you’ve seen from boys in town, all elbows and gawking.

This is like he’s comparing what he sees to something he’s held in his head a long time. 

“Don’t reckon there’s any harm in her gettin’ some air, Sir,” he says after a moment, pitched low, as if he’s offering reason and not meddling. “So long as she stays where you can see her.” He tips his head, and his eyes make another lazy path over you, unashamed. “World’s rough for a girl on her own.”

Your daddy snorts, jaw tightening just enough for you to notice. “You just worry ‘bout them fields, son. I didn’t hire you to advise on my girl.”

The almost-smile on Remmick’s mouth doesn’t quite leave. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I’ll give all my attention to what you’re payin’ me for.”

He keeps his words aimed at your father, but his gaze is not that obedient. It flicks back to you when he says attention, and there’s weight in it, promise, something that makes your skin prickle fine all over. Something in you bristles right back, lifts its head like a barn cat whose tail’s been stepped on.

You draw a breath and set the bowl against your hip. “Where you want him sleepin’?” you ask your father, eyes fixed out over the yard so you don’t have to meet either man’s stare straight on.

“In the old place.” Joe jerks his chin toward the smaller farmhouse slumped beyond the well—a squat little shape where the lamplight doesn’t reach, half-eaten by shadow. “Closer to the barn. Got a bed and a stove. Man don’t need more than that.”

Remmick turns to look at it, and the lantern light catches his eyes in a strange way, making them flash for an instant like there’s something slick behind them.

The little house sits there like it’s been waiting, windows dark, door shut up tight, roofline sagged just enough to look suspicious.

“That’ll do,” he says. “I’m a night sort myself. Easier workin’ when the sun’s gone and the air ain’t tryin’ to boil you clear through. Less trouble all around.”

He says it easy, like it’s about sweat and shade and nothing else, but you hear the way he shapes night in his mouth, the soft way he lets it roll off his tongue, and something in your belly curls up smaller and sharper.

“Heard you don’t care much for daylight,” Joe says, watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Remmick’s jaw shifts, a muscle ticking like it wants to answer on its own. He glances at you, quick and bright, before he looks down at his boots. “Sun don’t care much for me,” he finally drawls. “Burns me to char if I let it. Always been that way. Doctor said I got delicate skin.”

The word sits wrong in your ear as soon as it’s out, delicate, dangling over this stocky man with forearms roped up in tendon and dirt ground into his knuckles, hands that look like they were made to break things, not handle them gentle. 

It slips out of you before you can catch it, quiet and skeptical. “Delicate,” you repeat, eyes finding his without meaning to.

He catches that and settles into it like a cat into a warm spot. “You don’t think so, miss?” he asks, voice a touch softer now, gaze steady and unblinking.

You ought to let it pass. Ought to dip your head and let the men talk over you, let delicate lie between them like some joke you weren’t meant to get. 

Instead you hold his stare in the lantern glow, take your time looking back the same way he did to you, tracing the faint hollows under his eyes, the line of his nose, the mouth that looks used to biting down on words and maybe on other things too.

“No, sir,” you say finally, after a beat that stretches long. “You don’t look delicate at all.”

Something shifts behind his eyes at that, something pleased and sharp that makes your heart knock once, hard, against your ribs. The corner of his mouth tugs just a shade higher.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to live up to what you see,” he murmurs. “Would be a shame to disappoint you.”

Your daddy grinds his cigarette out under his heel, done with this line of talk. “You can unload what you got, then I’ll show you the place,” he says. “Got work waiting for nobody. You ain’t too tired from sittin’ on a wagon all day, are you?”

Remmick rolls one shoulder, hand rubbing the back of his neck. The stretch shifts his shirt over his back, pulls the fabric across solid muscle there.

You feel your breath snag for half a second and hate that it does.

“Wagon ain’t heavy,” he says. “I’ll get settled quick, then you can put me to whatever needs doin’.”

Joe nods and starts toward the dim outline of that little house, his boots crunching through the loose gravel near the well. The lantern light falls behind him with each step until he’s just another moving patch of dark.

Remmick lingers at the foot of the porch. He settles his hat back on his head, brim bringing his eyes into shadow again, but you can still feel them.

“You finish them beans,” he tells you, voice gone softer, aimed up at you like a secret. “Man works better with a full belly.”

There’s nothing in the words you could point to and call wrong, nothing on the surface you could carry to your father and hold up like proof.

Still, the way his gaze drifts down and back up as he says them leaves something slick and uneasy under your ribs. Heat crawls up your neck, hot in a way that has nothing to do with the air.

“I’ll see to what’s mine,” you say, gripping the bowl till your fingers ache. “Same as you should see to yours.”

His laugh is low, a rough little sound that lives in his chest and doesn’t quite make it to his teeth. He dips his head a fraction, like you’ve handed him a dare instead of brushing him off. “Oh, I intend to,” he replies. “You can count on it.”

Then he turns and walks after your father, stride easy, body moving with a loose sort of purpose. His shadow stretches out along the yard behind him, tossed strange and long by the lantern, then swallowed up as he and Joe move past the well. 

The small farmhouse waits ahead, black windows staring, door a darker cut in the wall. It looks, for one breath, like it’s swallowing the two men whole.

You stand there with the lantern hissing softly at your elbow and watch the dark take them. 

When the yard settles again, when their footsteps fade and the crickets creep back up to full volume, the space between the barn and the house does not feel the same. It’s as if something else has stepped into it and sat down, something you cannot see but can sense just the same, like a pressure change before a storm.

You sit again, bowl back in your lap, fingers finding another handful of beans by habit alone. The wet snap of them breaking sounds too loud in the hush, echoing in the hollow boards under your feet. 

Every few seconds, your eyes drag toward that low silhouette out past the well, toward the little house that is not empty anymore.

You tell yourself you’re only minding where your father put a stranger. 

The first night after he arrives, he walks the fence line while you wash dishes.

You hear his boots dragging through the loose gravel near the yard, then the softer sound of steps in the grass. 

The screen door hangs open to let the air move, lantern burning low over the sink. Your arms are wet to the elbow, suds creeping up your forearms as you scrub at a pan that’s older than you are. 

Out past your own reflection in the dark window, you catch a small shape of motion—the swing of a lantern out near the barn, then the shorter, solid outline of him moving along the fence, checking posts, rattling wire. 

He doesn’t look up at the house that you can tell, doesn’t lift the light toward you, just keeps on with that steady pace, head bent. 

Still, your shoulders hunch like you’ve been caught at something you haven’t done. The glass fogs a little with the breath you don’t remember letting out.

You tell yourself it’s good your father found a man willing to walk the property at night. That’s what you tell yourself as you rinse plates and stack them, as the little yellow circle of his lantern slides back and forth along the edge of your sight.

The second night you have to bring him his supper, because your father ‘forgets.’

It’s late by the time the last of the pots are scraped and put away, your back aching from standing, hair pasted to your neck. Joe leans back in his chair, radio humming low on the table, and says without looking up, “That boy eat?”

You still your hands on the dishrag. “Ain’t seen him at the table.”

“Damn it,” He grumbles, more at himself than you. “Told him come in if he heard me holler and I ain’t never thought to holler. Fix him a plate and take it down. Man don’t work right hungry.”

You swallow whatever you were about to say about whose job it is to feed farmhands, scrape together a plate from what’s left—two biscuits gone hard at the edges, a ladle of beans, a piece of ham with more bone than meat—and cover it with a clean cloth. 

The air outside hits your damp skin and feels cooler than it ought to. The night smells like dirt and hay and whatever’s blooming along the ditch. 

The smaller farmhouse sits out near the barn with a faint thread of light leaking around the edges of its curtain, not bright enough to spill onto the yard. You walk out there, skirt brushing your ankles, plate balanced careful in both hands.

You knock, knuckles soft on the wood. For a second there’s nothing, then the faint scrape of a chair, the hush of someone crossing a small room. 

The door opens only halfway. He fills the gap, shoulder and chest just there, heat and sweat.

“Evenin’,” he says, voice a little rough, like he hasn’t used it since sundown. “You lost?”

You hold the plate out, not stepping any closer than you have to. “Daddy forgot to call you in. Told me to bring your supper.”

His eyes go to your hands first, to the way your fingers wrap the rim of the plate, then to the food, then back up. 

He doesn’t reach right away; he lets the moment stretch, his gaze traveling from your wrists up your arms, lingering on the damp on your skin, on the few stray strands that have worked loose at your temple and stuck there. 

“That’s mighty kind,” he says at last, taking the plate so slow his fingers brush yours. 

They’re not as rough as you expected, just warm and solid, the pads of them catching against your knuckles. “Hope he didn’t drag you out here from your bed on account of me.”

“I wasn’t in bed,” you answer, because lying feels worse than telling him anything true. “Kitchen don’t clean itself.”

He makes a small noise at that, somewhere between agreement and amusement. “No, ma’am. World’d fall apart if it weren’t for everything women do men don’t think about. Least he can do is call me in for a plate now and then instead of sending you.”

You don’t like that it sounds almost gentle, that there’s no clear edge you can grab onto and call wrong.

You nod once and start to turn away, wanting the room behind that door to stay his business and not have to wonder what’s in it.

“Miss?” he says, and you stop even though you don’t want to. “You tell your daddy I’m obliged. To him and to you.”

You keep your eyes on the yard. “He’ll hear you tomorrow.”

“Maybe I like the thought of you carryin’ my thanks,” he says, voice dipping lower.

You don’t answer to that. You walk back toward the big house with your empty hands and you feel his eyes between your shoulder blades all the way to the porch steps.

Another night you pass him by accident at the pump.

You come around the corner of the house with a pail in each hand, too focused on not sloshing well water onto your skirt to notice him right off. 

He’s just there suddenly in the lantern’s edge, sleeves rolled high, suspenders hanging loose at his hips, hair damp with sweat or water; you can’t tell which. 

The pump squeaks once as he lets go of the handle. Moonlight catches the wet on his forearms, the curve of muscle there, the scar that runs pale along his left wrist like a rope burn that never faded.

You stop short, pails swinging. “Didn’t know you were usin’ it,” you say. “I’ll wait.”

He tips his head, that same little crooked half-smile thinking about showing up. “You scared I’m gonna dirty the water, standin’ too near?” His accent is thicker tonight, as if he’s tired of smoothing them for everybody’s sake.

“I ain’t scared,” you say. Your voice comes out flatter than you mean it to, which only makes him watch you harder. “Just got taught not to crowd folk when they’re at work.”

“And here I thought you were just bein’ polite,” he murmurs. He steps back from the pump, gives you room to pass. “Go on, then. Wouldn’t do to have Mr. Joe’s girl haulin’ from the ditch ‘cause I hogged the handle.”

You move past him, the damp of his skin ghosting near your elbow, the smell of iron and sweat and something like tobacco clinging to him. You set a pail under the spout and work the handle, arm moving in a practiced rhythm.

The pump groans, then warm water shudders up from below, splashing cold over your fingers when you misjudge the first rush.

His gaze sits on your hands again, on the bare forearms you didn’t bother covering because it’s night and there’s no sun to scold you. “You do all that yourself?” he asks. “Water, cookin’, everything inside?”

“Me and Mama,” you say, though your mother’s cough has been bad enough lately you both know it’s more you than her. “Daddy’s got the fields.”

“And now he’s got me,” Remmick says, watching your arm work. “Guess I’m supposed to make life easier ‘round here.”

“Then do it,” you answer, a little sharper than you meant. The second pail fills and you swing it away, careful not to splash your toes. “Don’t stand around talkin’ about it.”

For a heartbeat there’s quiet. Then he laughs, low and delighted. “There she is,” he says under his breath, as if he’s been waiting on that bite. 

When you glance over, he isn’t offended. He looks satisfied, eyes bright, lean mouth curled up. “You keep snappin’ at me like that, miss, I might start thinkin’ you’re sweet on me.”

“Or you might start thinkin’ wrong,” you shoot back, lifting both buckets. The weight drags at your shoulders, but you’d sooner drop in the yard than ask him to carry them.

He doesn't offer, just watches you walk away, and you can feel that as keenly as the pull of the water on your arms.

There are other little moments like that, small as splinters. Like, when you cross paths in the barn one evening when you go to check on a cow that lowed funny through your window. 

He’s already there when you reach the threshold, one hand on the animal’s neck, murmuring something soft and nonsense in her ear. 

She calms under his touch, sides heaving slow, eyes rolling less. The lantern hangs from a nail overhead, throwing golden light over the dust in the air, over his shoulders, over the cow’s hide. 

He glances up when he senses you, and for a blink his irises flash almost too light, as if the lantern’s in them and not above him. Then they’re ordinary again, a color you could name if you got close enough, and he’s saying, “She just didn’t like the thunder,” even though the sky’s been clear all day.

You lean on the stall rail, arms folded, watching his hand move in slow strokes along the cow’s neck. 

The steadiness of him with animals makes something twist in you, something like reluctant respect and something like fear, because if he can soothe two thousand pounds of nervous flesh with a voice and a touch, what could he do to yours if he ever decided to try.

On another night you fix a tear in one of his work shirts at the kitchen table because your father plops it there and says, “Stupid fool’s gonna walk around with his arm hangin’ out if someone don’t thread a needle.” 

You mutter that Remmick has two hands and surely they can manage a seam, but you fetch your sewing basket anyway. 

The fabric smells faintly of him, sweat and field and that odd metallic thread that’s been nagging at the back of your senses since he arrived. 

You push the needle through worn cotton and wonder how a man gets a rip that clean across the bicep, by snagging it on barbed wire or nail head, without a single bloodstain around the torn edge.

He shows up to collect it before you take it down yourself. Don’t know how he knows it’s ready, but he’s at the door not long after you knot the last stitch, hat in hand like he’s paying a call.

Your father’s gone out back to piss or smoke or both, your mother’s dozing in her chair, so it’s just you in the quiet kitchen with your fingers still sore from the work.

“You didn’t have to,” he says when you hand the folded shirt over. “Could’ve walked around indecent a day or two, see if anyone complained.”

“My father would,” you say. “Don’t like loose things on his land.”

He takes the shirt with his good arm, the other rolling his shoulder like it aches. The lantern throws his eyes into little warm coins. 

Some nights you only see him from a distance.

Through your bedroom window when you should be sleeping, you catch the sway of his lantern again and again, marking his rounds. In the moonlight, his stride is compact, efficient, not showy. 

He moves like someone who’s spent a long time walking alone, someone who knows better than to waste steps. He never seems to stumble, never misjudges a rut or loose stone.

You watch him slip between the barn and the smaller house, in and out of shadow, and you tell yourself you’re just making sure he’s where he should be, that you are only doing what your father would want.

You notice, too, the nights when the light in his window stays on longer than makes sense. Long after your father’s snores have settled and your mama’s breath has evened into sleep, after you’ve lain there staring at the ceiling until your eyes burn, that far-off square of yellow will still be sitting out there at the edge of your sight. 

Sometimes you think you see the shadow of him cross it, head bowed, shoulders hunched, moving back and forth in a tight little path, but when you squint it’s gone.

Once, you step out onto the porch for air and catch him already looking.

You don’t see him at first; you just feel that prickling awareness that has become his signature in your body. 

Then your eyes find him where he’s paused near the barn, one hand on the fence post, the other hanging loose at his side. No lantern this time, just moonlight on his face, flattening all the hard parts, making his eyes look too bright and his mouth too soft. 

He doesn’t look away when you notice him. He doesn’t call out or tip his hat in greeting. He just stands there in the dark, steady as another post, and lets you decide whether to step back inside or stay where the night can see both of you.

You stay a breath longer than you should, chest tight, heartbeat stepping up loud between your ears. Then you reach for the door, fingers curling around splintered wood, and it feels, for a strange second, like you’re the one retreating and he’s the one who lives here.

By the time a week has worked itself around, his presence has braided into the place.

The horse knows him, ears twitching toward his voice before dawn. The dogs have quit barking when his boots scrape the yard at dusk. Your father has stopped watching him like he might bolt and started calling for him when something heavy needs lifting. 

The small farmhouse doesn’t look so empty now; you’ve grown used to the idea of a man’s breath in there, a man’s boots by the door, a man’s shadow on the curtain.

You’re the one still wary, nerves still stretched thin every time you feel his eyes, even if nobody else in the house seems to notice how often that is. 

You catch him in little reflections—a sliver of him in the pump’s metal, in the window glass, in any surface that throws back light—and he’s always looking your way. 

Not always outright, not always rude, but always aware of you. Always clocking where you are in the yard, whether your sleeves are rolled, whether your hem rides high on your calf or hangs proper at your ankle.

You tell yourself it’s just because there’s not much else worth watching out here.

You don’t quite believe it.

Clouds bruise up toward the horizon, swallowing the moon a few bites at a time. You’re at the kitchen table with mending in your lap when you hear it—one sharp, panicked bawl from the barn that cuts straight through the hum of crickets and the low murmur of your father’s radio.

You’re on your feet before you think about it, thimble still shoved on your finger, needle stuck tight in a loop of thread. 

Your father says something about “damned horses spookin’ at their own shadows” but doesn’t move from his chair.

His back’s been bad all day; he’s been walking like every step hurts. Mama’s dozing, her breath a thin whistle. 

So you grab the lantern from its hook, light blooming up in a hot bloom that stings your eyes, and head out barefoot into the yard.

The grass is cool against your soles, damp from the thick air. The little farmhouse where Remmick sleeps has a strip of light at the curtain-bottom, but you don’t see him outside. The barn looms ahead, big and dark, door standing half-open like a mouth. Another low, fretful sound comes from inside, not as sharp as the first but enough to hurry you along.

“Easy now,” you call as you slip in, lantern held high. “Hush yourself, girl, I’m comin’.”

The barn swallows the outside sounds. In here it’s hay and dust and the soft shuffling of hooves, the rustle of wings up in the rafters. 

Your mare stamps once, snorting, eyes rolling white when the lantern light hits her. You cross the packed dirt quick, set the lantern on a hook so you’ve got both hands, and reach for her halter, stroking her long face.

“It’s just the weather actin’ strange,” you murmur, words more for yourself than her. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you.”

She settles a little under your voice, but her muscles are still tight, skin twitching under your palm.

You’re so focused on her that you don’t hear him until he’s already in the doorway.

“Somethin’ wrong?”

His voice slides through the gloom, low and rough. 

You jerk a little, head snapping toward the barn entrance. He’s just inside the threshold, lantern in his hand turned down low, throwing more shadow than light. Sleeves rolled, suspenders hooked proper tonight, hair damp at the temples like he’s just come in from a hard walk. 

“Lord,” you mutter, heart kicking hard. “You move too quiet. Thought you were a ghost.”

He lets out a short huff of a laugh. “Not yet.” The lantern swings by his knee as he steps inside, setting the hay shadows dancing. “Heard her fussin’. Figured I’d check before she took it into her head to kick through a stall.”

“She just spooked,” you say. “Storm brewin’ somewhere.”

He comes up nearer, close enough that you can see the sheen of sweat along his throat, the bead of something darker at the cuff of his shirt where it brushes his wrist. 

His gaze does a quick, automatic sweep of the stall—manger, bucket, the mare’s flanks, your hand on her halter—and then it hooks on you, like it always does, like there’s a string between his eyes and your skin.

“You shouldn’t come out here by yourself at night,” he says, quiet, not rebuking exactly but not gentle either. “Barn full of spooked stock, any one of ’em could knock you right off your feet. Ain’t proper for a girl to be runnin’ around after dark alone.”

“That girl’s got ears,” you answer, voice tight, stroking the mare’s neck to hide your own nerves. “She can hear you fussin’ without talkin’ over her head.”

His mouth does that little tilt again, amused. “Reckon she can,” he says. “Reckon she don’t listen half as good as she ought, neither.”

You’re just shaping a sharp reply when it happens.

Something cracks outside, a dry, sharp sound—maybe a limb breaking, maybe a board settling wrong, maybe thunder grumbling way off where the clouds are thickest. 

It doesn’t matter what it is. The mare flinches hard, shoulder slamming sideways. The stall rail shudders under the hit, and you’re standing too close, lantern throwing crazy shadows as the world jolts.

Your first instinct is to get out of the way. You jump back, skirts swishing, hand flying off the halter. You pivot toward the stall opening and catch—not air, not clear space, but the edge of an old nail head that’s been working itself loose from the post for years.

The sound of fabric tearing is loud as a gunshot in the barn.

It rips from just below your hip down the side of your thigh, a long, rude run that opens your dress like a mouth. 

Cool air hits bare skin where cotton should be.

You gasp, more from the exposure than pain, and slap your hand down, fingers clutching at the split to keep it from gaping wider.

For a heartbeat you stand frozen, lantern light swinging, breath shallow, your leg half-bared through the torn seam.

You don’t have a slip on under this dress, not a proper one. It’s too hot. You’ve got plain cotton drawers and a whole lot of skin, and you know without looking that the tear has gone high, high enough that if you weren’t grabbing it shut he’d be seeing places no man has any business looking at on you.

“You all right?” Remmick’s closer before you register him moving, his boots whispering over packed dirt. His lantern clanks against a beam as he hangs it up. He reaches for you by pure reflex, hands coming to your arms, steadying you where you’ve stumbled.

“I’m fine,” you snap, too quick, humiliation burning your face, neck, chest. “Let go.”

You twist away from his grip, turning your hip, trying to angle the torn side away from him. 

The dress shifts anyway, hem dragging through straw, and there’s a flash of thigh where your fingers don’t quite cover everything. You feel the rush of blood under your skin like you’ve been slapped.

His eyes drop before you can stop them.

It’s an instinct with him just like yours, hungry and automatic. His gaze hits the split, the glimpse of your leg, and sticks. Time slows down around that look. You see it happen, see the way his pupils widen, see the quick, sharp inhale he tries to hide.

“Jesus,” he breathes, almost soundless.

You yank the torn fabric tighter, the motion making the rip strain up higher, edge brushing the curve where your thigh meets your hip. Your whole body feels like a lantern flame, exposed and flickering. “Don’t you look,” you hiss, low and furious. “Turn around.”

One of his hands lifts, like he might actually offer to cover the tear for you, fingers curling as if they want to fit over the place you’re guarding. He stops himself, hand hovering for an awful second near your hip, close enough that you feel the heat of him even through the thin cotton. 

“Ain’t my fault you went tearin’ yourself open on every nail in the county,” he says, tone trying for light and landing somewhere rougher. 

His eyes drag up slow, from your knuckles clenched in the fabric, up the bare strip of thigh he already saw, up the shape of your waist and the heave of your chest. “Maybe you should let me look and make sure you didn’t cut that pretty skin to ribbons.”

The way he says pretty makes your stomach flip and your teeth set.

“I ain’t cut,” you spit. “And I sure as hell don’t need you inspectin’ me.”

He should look ashamed. Though, he doesn’t. There’s color high in his cheeks now, not from heat, not from work. His mouth’s gone a little slack, like he’s holding back words. His gaze keeps sneaking back to the place your hand guards, greedy, any time you aren’t staring right at him.

“If you say so,” he murmurs finally. “Wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

You hear the echo of his earlier lie in that word, delicate, and decide if you stay here another minute you might do something you can’t take back, like slap him or cry or both.

You shift your grip to catch more fabric, bunching the torn side up in your fist so nothing shows. It makes walking harder; you’re hobbling, half-skipping, desperate not to let the skirt fall. “You see to the mare,” you manage, chin up, eyes burning. “I’ll fix my dress.”

He steps back enough to let you pass. As you squeeze by him in the narrow space, your shoulder brushes his chest, your bare calf bumps the hard line of his boot. 

“Careful,” he says, voice quiet, right by your ear. “Would be a shame if the rest of that dress gave up and left you standin’ in nothin’ at all.”

You don’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. You duck your head and hurry out, every step measured so the torn seam doesn’t pull, one hand clamped between your thighs, lantern bumping at your knee. 

The night air on your exposed skin feels wrong, every stray breeze finding its way up under the rip.

You keep your eyes fixed on the glow of the house, on the square of the kitchen window, on anything that is not the barn behind you.

You slam the kitchen door with more force than you mean to, startling your mama awake, mumble something about a nail catching you and make straight for your room. You don’t light your own lamp; you don’t want to see what he saw. You stand there in the dark with your back to the door and your dress torn open under your hand, heart hammering, ears roaring, shame and something hotter and uglier twisting up together in your belly.

Down by the south fence, in the smaller farmhouse, Remmick sits on the edge of his narrow bed with the easy, humming satisfaction of a man who’s been saving something up.

He lit the lamp as soon as he stepped in, not out of any real need for light but because he likes the way it throws shadows, likes the way it paints dim gold over bare wood and gives him something soft to look at while his mind runs back over the evening. 

The room is small and warm from his own body heat, close enough that every breath feels shared with the walls. Old wood, dust, a curl of tobacco from the roll-up he finished outside, and under it all the ghost of you clinging to his clothes—soap and starch and sweat—make a thick little stew in the air.

He shrugged out of his shirt as soon as the door shut, tossing it over the chair without bothering to check if the seam you mended had held. 

The rip in the fabric is nothing next to the rip in your dress that he can’t stop savoring. He works the buttons of his trousers loose without hurry, fingers moving with the contented patience of a man about to sit down to a meal he’s been smelling all day.

He doesn’t try not to think of you. That would be a waste of a perfectly good night.

He leans back against the wall, boots kicked off, pants open at the fly, and lets the picture come as easy as breath. 

You in the barn with your hand clapped between your thighs, dress split wide, that slick little strip of thigh flashing when the cloth slipped. The way your eyes flared when you realized he’d seen, outrage and mortification and something bright under both. The sound of your voice when you told him not to look, like you already knew he was going to anyway.

“Hell,” he mutters, half laughing under his breath as his cock swells heavy against the thin barrier of his briefs. “Ain’t nothin’ on this earth I’d rather think on.”

His palm drifts down over his belly, fingers tracing a slow path to the bulge at his groin. Even that light touch makes him suck in air through his teeth. 

He presses his hand over the outline of himself, feeling the hot, solid weight of his cock straining upward, and a low, pleased sound curls up out of his chest. He palms it once, a lazy roll, enjoying the way it kicks against his fingers like it’s eager too, then he slides his hand inside.

Warm cotton gives way to hot skin. He wraps his fist around the thick base of himself and exhales like he’s been holding that breath since the barn, relief and hunger tangled up in it. His cock sits heavy in his grip, veins standing up, the head already wet where precum has gathered from how long he’s been walking around hard on the memory of you.

“Look at that,” he murmurs, voice low and rough, thumb smearing that slickness over the swollen tip. “Worked up over one little tear. You’d laugh yourself sick if you saw me now, wouldn’t you?”

The thought of you seeing him like this, spread out on his narrow bed with his trousers open and his cock standing full in his hand, only makes him harder. 

He drags his fist down slow, savoring the drag from head to base, then back up again, the friction sharp and sweet all at once. The first few strokes are measured, a man settling into a rhythm he plans to enjoy, not something hurried and guilty he has to choke down.

He lets his head tip back against the wall, eyes slipping shut so he can see you better behind his lids. 

Not the church version, not the good girl with the hem tugged just so and the buttons done up high. 

The barn version. Lantern light sliding over your bare thigh, the tremble in your fingers when you clutched at the rip, that split second when your hand wasn’t fast enough and he got the clean, unearned look he’s been replaying ever since.

“Shit,” he breathes, hand tightening, the slide of skin on skin picking up a little speed. 

He drags his fist down again, slower, getting a feel for every inch, for the way his cock swells harder in his grip with each pass. Arousal slicks his thumb, gathers at the crest of the head, and he spreads it with an easy, greedy little twist, working it around until the slide turns wet and smooth. 

His hips lift into his own hand without much prompting, body eager after nights of walking around with you on his tongue and in his teeth and under his nails.

“Bare leg,” he mutters, watching his hand move now, eyes half-lidded, lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks. “Goin’ about your business like you ain’t got that tucked up under your skirt. Like I ain’t seen it now.”

He remembers exactly how the tear opened, how the cotton gave and the seam surrendered, how your thigh flashed in the jumpy lantern light. 

That first raw glimpse lives in his chest like a hot coal. Skin smooth and soft-looking, the curve of muscle under it, the sweet thickness where it met your hip. 

He remembers your drawers too, plain white cotton clinging to you, riding that line between demure and lewd when the fabric shifted wrong.

His hand moves faster at that, instincts catching up with memory. He curls his fingers a little tighter, pulling from the heavy base up to the slick crown, milking a fresh bead of precum up with each stroke. 

“Bet you went home and stitched that dress up neat as a Sunday virtue,” he says, voice roughened by breath. “Head bowed, lips bit, pretendin’ that leg ain’t still there underneath, smooth as cream and just as soft. Bet you can’t stop thinkin’ about me seein’ it neither.”

He can picture you at your little table, lamp burning, needle in hand, fingers trembling just enough to make the thread snag. Your face hot, your mouth set, your thighs pressed together under the cloth as you sew shame into every stitch. He imagines you tugging that seam tight, that same hand that clutched the torn fabric now working the needle, every pull a memory of his eyes on you.

His free hand slides down his belly, fingers pressing over the flexing muscles there, holding them tight as he fucks up into his own fist. The bed creaks under him, wood complaining, but he doesn’t slow. He spreads his legs wider on the mattress, giving himself more room to move, and the extra slack lets his strokes lengthen, his hips roll, everything turning into a slow rhythm.

“You know what I see when I close my eyes?” he asks the ceiling quietly, dragging his thumb across the slit. “Not that pretty little mouth tellin’ me not to look. I see that hand of yours slip. I see that dress fall open just a little more.”

The picture in his mind sharpens: you, back against a stall post, hand too busy clutching at rough wood to hold your skirts closed, light catching on the full line of your thigh as the rip edges skid higher. 

He imagines the flap of cloth falling aside, full view of your leg from knee to hip, drawers pulled tight over the mound between your thighs, a faint darker patch where heat and sweat have gathered.

His cock throbs in his grip at that. He grits his teeth, pushes his palm down hard, and his hips jerk, chasing the pressure.

“Yeah,” he growls softly. “That’s it. Dress up around your waist, showin’ all that sweet flesh. You holdin’ on to that wood like it’s gonna save you, eyes full of righteous fury while your body’s tellin’ on you.”

His fingers slip lower on the stroke, pausing to cup his balls, rolling them in his palm, feeling the tight, heavy pull there. The sensation punches another sound out of him. He goes back to his cock with renewed urgency, arm working harder now, hand pumping.

He lets himself wander further than any real moment has gone. Lets the memory of that tear turn into something else, something he can taste.

He imagines stepping in close before you can bolt, one hand catching your wrist, the other gathering your torn skirt up and out of his way. Imagines your gasp, that little sharp intake he already knows, your bare thigh hitting his hip as he pins you to the stall. Your panties stretched tight over the soft swell of your cunt, his fingers pushing up against the dampening cloth, feeling how hot you are through the barrier.

“Pretend you don’t want it,” he murmurs, throat rasping. “Try to act like you ain’t gettin’ wet for me while you fuss.”

The words sound vulgar and right in his mouth. His cock swells at it, the head aching now, sensitive with every pass. He squeezes at the top, thumb pressing just under the crown, and his whole body shudders, pleasure rushing up his spine.

“Be a good girl,” he hears himself whispering to the woman in his head, the one pressed to barn wood with her dress in tatters. “Spread ’em for me, let me see what you’re hidin’.”

His hand flies now, finding a quick, dirty rhythm. His breath comes rough, each inhale catching, each exhale spilling out in curses and half-formed praises.

“You’d flush right up to your hairline,” he pants, head rolling against the wall. “Act all offended while your thighs tremble and that pretty thing between ’em throbs. Might even cry a little, wouldn’t you? All sweet and scared and soaked.”

The image of you crying—eyes bright, lashes wet, lips bitten—while your body betrays you sends him right to the edge. His balls draw up tight, cock jumping in his fist, veins standing out under his skin. Heat coils at the base of his spine, that familiar pull gathering everything in, ready to snap.

He spits into his hand for more slick, doesn’t even bother wiping his mouth. The added wetness turns his strokes into something obscene, the sound echoing in the small room. His forearm snaps, muscles burning, chasing the crest bearing down on him.

“Come on then,” he grits. “Show me.”

He imagines hooking a finger under the edge of your drawers and pulling the cotton aside. Imagines the first sight of you bare between your thighs, folds swollen, maybe already glistening, all that heat finally out in the lantern light instead of tucked away in shadows and good manners.

“That’s it,” he rasps, voice breaking, hips jerking harder into his fist. “Knew you’d be pretty there. Knew you’d be soft.”

The wave hits with no ceremony; it slams through him like a mule kick. His whole body locks, stomach clenching, heels digging into the thin mattress, head thumping dully against the wall. 

A groan tears out of him, rough and strangled, half-swallowed behind clenched teeth. His cock jerks in his hand, once, twice, then again, spilling hot over his fingers and across his stomach in thick, pulsing ropes.

He rides it out, hand still working, strokes shortening but not stopping, milking every last drop. Cum coats his knuckles, drips over his fist, slicking his grip until his palm slips on the softening length. 

“Fuck,” he breathes when he can breathe again, voice low and wrecked.

His strokes slow, then ease off altogether, fingers loosening their grip. 

For a moment he just sits there, chest rising and falling, wrist slick and heavy, cock giving a few last, half-hearted twitches in his hand. Sweat cools on his forehead, a bead sliding down along his temple.

He looks down at the mess on his belly, streaks shining in the lamplight, dripping off the side of his hand. There’s no disgust in the way he examines it; if anything, there’s pride. A crooked smile tugs at his mouth, lazy and satisfied.

“Look what you pulled out of me, and you weren’t even here,” he murmurs, more pleased than ashamed. 

He wipes his hand across his stomach, smearing instead of cleaning, fingers drawing idle patterns through the stickiness before he drags them off onto a wadded-up shirt at his side. 

The cotton takes the worst of it, darkening where it soaks, but he doesn’t fuss about the rest. Let it dry on his skin. Let it sit there as a reminder.

He tucks himself back into his briefs, though he doesn’t bother fastening his trousers all the way, leaving the fly gaping a little for air. 

His body feels loose and heavy now, bones sunk deep into the thin mattress. The edge is blunted, that sharp hunger dulled to a warm, low thrum, but it’s not gone.

He leans his head back and lets his eyes drift half-closed, the lamp still burning low. 

In the quiet, he can almost hear you tossing under your own quilt up the rise, feel the echo of your indignation, imagine the way your fingers might trace absent circles over the mended seam of your dress while you tell yourself you hate him.

He runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, savoring that thought as much as any touch.

“Gonna see it torn again,” he says softly, not quite a promise, not quite a threat. 

The lamp flickers, a tiny flame fighting sleep. Outside, crickets scream and something small scurries through the grass. 

The little house settles around him with soft creaks and sighs. He closes his eyes fully at last, the picture of your bare thigh and your furious face smoothing together into one sweet, ripe ache he’s already wondering how soon he can taste again.

Most nights Remmick does his rounds like he’s supposed to, lantern swinging at his knee, gate latches checked, fence wire plucked and listened to like strings. 

But once he knows the map of the place in his bones, once he has counted every post and measured every path, his feet start wandering off the straight lines your daddy would like him to walk. 

He learns where the shadows fall thickest under the pecan tree by the side yard, where the dark under the eaves hides a man from anyone glancing out through lamplight. 

He learns just how far back he can stand and still see into the kitchen window when you’re up late, sleeves rolled, forearms wet to the elbow, talking to your mama while you scrub a pan. 

He learns that when you think everybody’s settled, you lean your hip against the counter and tilt your head a little while you dry your hands, and that little shift of weight does things to your dress you’d never let it do in town.

He finds out you like the back porch at night even more than you like it at dusk. That when the work is done and your parents are loud in their sleep, you slip out with a glass or a cup and sit with your legs stretched, ankles crossed, toes tracing idle circles on the board beneath them. 

From the fence line he can see the shine of lamplight on your bare shins when your hem rides up, can see the loose, tired way you soften back into the chair. 

He watches you tilt your face toward the dark yard like you’re asking it questions it hasn’t answered yet, listens to the little sounds you make—half-sighs, half-hums—that never show up when anyone else is awake. 

He leans on a post with a cigarette hanging from his fingers and looks until he’s had his fill, no hurry in him, nothing but a lazy, steady satisfaction in knowing you have no idea.

He learns your bedroom window, too. Where it sits in relation to the oak, how far up the slope he has to stand to see its square of light. 

The first time he notices the curtain isn’t quite shut, it’s by accident; he’s walking back late, boots slow on the path, when a slice of movement catches his eye. 

Curtain gapping, lamp turned low, you moving around your room in that soft circle people make before bed. 

He stops in the shadow of the tree without even thinking, shoulder to rough bark, the leaves above him murmuring in a wind that doesn’t get down into the yard. 

From there he can see you in fragments—an arm as you reach up to unbutton, a brief glimpse of the side of your neck, the line of your shoulder as fabric slips. 

He tells himself he’ll move when you’re done, that he’s only making sure you got in safe. He stays until the lamp goes out.

The night he sees you in the bath, there’s not even that thin excuse.

It’s late enough the frogs have worn down to a sleepy chorus and the crickets sound drunk. A low, warm fog sits over the fields, pressing scents in close: damp earth, animals settled in their pens, soap drifting thin from the open kitchen window where somebody forgot to latch it right. 

He’s finished his rounds early, all the work of the night sitting behind him instead of ahead, and he feels that restless itch under his skin again, that soft, prowling urge that has nothing to do with fences and everything to do with you.

The house is a square of softer dark against the sky, only a couple of windows holding light. 

He knows which is which now without having to think about it. Kitchen, front room, your parents’ room. The little back room off the side where the big galvanized tub sits when somebody’s been lucky enough to haul enough water. 

Tonight it’s that one glowing gentle behind its thin cotton curtain, lantern hanging somewhere just out of sight, making the fabric look like a pale, breathing thing.

He circles wide, slipping along the edge of the yard where the grass meets the packed dirt of the lane, where the shadows from the trees throw him one more thin cloak. 

The bath window is low, glass fogged a little from steam. The curtain is drawn but not all the way, left a thumb’s width open on one side—enough for light to leak out in a narrow spill. Enough, if a man stepped in close and angled himself just right, to see inside.

He comes up under the sill, breath slow, boots quiet, and lays his palm flat against the siding to steady himself. The boards are cool and rough under his fingers. He leans his shoulder into them and tilts his head, lining his eye up with that careless little gap.

Heat hits him first, a wet, sweet breath rolling out into the night. The lantern inside throws shadows high on the wall, flickering over the curve of the tub, over the length of you in it.

You’re sunk down in the water with your knees bent, one leg drawn up just enough for him to see the shape of it under the surface, the other stretched straighter, foot braced on the far side. 

The water glows around you, gone cloudy with soap, clinging in beads to your skin where it’s out of the tub. 

Your shoulders show above the rim, bare and slick, drops running down in slow trails. 

Steam curls off your chest, off the slopes of your breasts where they rise from the water, soft and heavy, nipples pebbled tight from the heat or the air or both. The lamplight loves them, catching on every curve, laying little gold crowns on each peak.

Your head is tipped back against the rolled towel you’ve wedged between neck and tin, eyes closed, lips parted just enough for breath. One arm drifts along the tub’s edge, fingers dragging lazy patterns through the thin scum of soap there, the other resting across your stomach.

He watches your ribs move with each inhale, the slight swell and fall of your belly under your palm.

You're so unaware of him that it feels almost holy.

He drinks it in like it’s what he came here for all along, no flinch in him, no apology. His gaze roams where it will. 

From the line of your throat down to the hollow between your collarbones, where a small puddle has gathered and overflowed in slow rivulets; down over the slick, shining hills of your breasts, the way they shift just a little with every breath, the way the waterline cuts across them. Lower, to where the curve of your stomach disappears under the opaque water, hinting at more, promising everything.

You shift, lifting one arm to drag the washcloth over your shoulder. The washcloth trails over the round of your shoulder, down the outside of your arm, across the swell of your breast, nipple tightening even more when the rough cloth skims past.

You don’t seem to notice the way your own body responds; you’re too busy chasing day-dirt away, lifting your arm to scrub your neck, tilting your head to give yourself better reach.

From his vantage, he sees everything. His hand tightens on the siding, knuckles going white, that buzzing hunger flaring up bright and hot behind his eyes.

He stares, not making a sound.

You work the cloth down your arm and set it aside, then slide both hands into the water, scooping and pouring over yourself. 

You lift your leg a little, knee rising higher, water spilling off in sheets, showing him the smooth length of your thigh all the way to the place where it vanishes back under the cloudy surface. The muscles there flex as you shift, your toes stretching, calf defined a moment before settling again. 

For a brief second, the water thins enough he can see the shadowed shape where your thighs meet, softened by the haze but there, real and mouth-watering.

His eyes go dark on it, pupils swallowing light. He leans in a fraction more, cheek almost touching the glass, breath fogging the edge of the pane where it meets the frame. 

Every small move you make sends little waves across your body, playing light over the parts he can see, hinting at the parts he can’t.

You sigh, the sound faint through the wall but clear. Your head tips a little to the side, cheek turning toward the window without quite facing it. 

One hand skims over your sternum, following the center line of your body until it disappears under the water. 

Your fingers paddle lazily there for a moment, moving along your own stomach, over the soft give of your lower belly. 

He imagines exactly where they’re drifting, what warm, slick places they’re brushing, even if you’re not thinking of it like that. Your face gives nothing away but relief, a tired little slackness, the expression of someone finally easing aches out of their bones.

“You ain’t got a clue,” he breathes, lips ghosting the words against the flaking clapboard. There’s satisfaction in it, not cruelty. “Bathin’ like Eve in a picture book with the curtain open and the devil on the outside lookin’ in.”

His hand, the one not braced on the wall, shifts restlessly by his side, brushing the front of his trousers. 

He doesn’t touch himself proper, not yet; this is looking time. He wants to be empty enough of the last time to fill up on this one entire. 

His fingers flex anyway, his palm pressing for a moment against the growing bulge, acknowledging it. His cock swells quick and eager, remembering the barn, welcoming the new fodder.

You lean forward to reach the soap, and the angle changes. 

For a breathless few seconds he gets the long line of your back, the way it curves from nape to waist, the hollow above your hips, the dimples that show when you move just so. Water slides off you in glittering trails, trickling down along your spine, pooling in the small of your back before spilling lower. 

As you sit back again, that same water slips over the round of your ass where it breaks the surface, catching the light along the curve, then vanishes under the cloudy bath.

He closes his eyes briefly, just to fix it, then opens them again. He doesn’t want to miss a thing.

You lather your hands, work the soap into your skin, fingers massaging into your shoulders, down along your collarbones. 

The more you scrub, the slipperier you become, water beading and running, foam clinging in thin streaks before melting away. 

When you finally slide your hands under the water, scrubbing lower, your elbows move in a rhythm that makes something low and obscene curl in his gut. 

He knows you’re only washing, just doing what needs doing, but to him it looks like a preview, looks like a rehearsal of things you haven’t yet learned to want.

He watches until the waterline creeps lower on the lantern as the bath cools and you sink down, chasing warmth. Watches as you finally let yourself relax fully, shoulders sliding under, just your face above the surface, eyes closed, breaths slow and even.

Only when you sit forward and reach for the towel hanging on the peg beside the tub does he ease back from the window. 

He knows if he lingers another second, if he sees you stand, water sheeting off every inch as you step out, he’ll plant roots under this sill and never leave. 

There will be other nights, he tells himself.

He peels himself off the wall, body humming, and slips back into the darker yard, breath still measured, strides easy. 

By the time he’s at the edge of the light, he has his lantern in hand again, held low, the picture of a man just passing through on his way to some small piece of work.

He doesn’t feel a lick of shame. What would be the use of it, when the memory of you in that tub is already lodged in his body like a polished stone, something he can roll under his tongue whenever he chooses. 

You’ll go to bed clean and soft, thinking maybe about chores and storms and the seam you mended this morning. 

He’ll go back to his little house with your wet skin behind his eyes and no confusion about what he plans to do with it.

The day’s been long, the kind that starts with a rooster and ends with your back feeling twice your age. 

By the time supper’s put away and the kitchen wiped down, your father’s in his chair with his boots off, socks so full of holes you don’t know why he bothers wearing them, radio mumbling low out of the corner. Your mother’s gone to bed early with a headache, door cracked just enough that you can hear her cough now and again.

You’re halfway through folding the dish towels when you remember.

Mama’s good jar of salve.

You can see it plain in your mind’s eye: small tin with the blue lid, the one she guards like treasure. 

She sent you looking for it just after dinner, when she noticed the raw place on your father’s wrist from rope burn and the darkening bruise on your own hip from where the stall rail caught you days ago. 

You’d gone to fetch more wood for the stove first, meaning to get the salve on your way back, and somehow it slipped right out of your head, chased off by smoke and scolding and the rush to get biscuits off the fire before they burned.

Your father’s already grumbled twice about the barn nail and told you if you’d been paying mind you wouldn’t have torn your dress, wouldn’t have bruises, wouldn’t have needed fussing. 

You can hear him in the morning if he finds that wrist still angry and your hip still tender. Can hear that disappointed click of his tongue.

You’d seen him hand the tin to Remmick earlier in the week, mumbling something about “keep this on hand, boy, in case you tear yourself up,” and watched the new hand tuck it into the pocket of his coat before heading down to the little farmhouse.

“That’s where it is,” you murmur, more to the quiet kitchen than to anyone. A little knot between your brows loosens when you place it. “Down there.”

You glance at the clock. It’s late enough the newsman’s gone off the air, early enough the world hasn’t quite tipped into the dead hours where the dark feels thickest. 

Outside the window, the yard is quiet, the barn a heavy shadow, the smaller house beyond it just a darker square against the field.

“Where’s that boy?” Your father mutters around his cigarette, not really expecting an answer. “Ain’t heard him come in for coffee. He out checkin’ fence or sleepin’ on my dime?”

“Out, I reckon,” you say, folding the last towel with a sharp little snap.

Truth is, you haven’t heard his boots either. You haven’t seen his lantern bob by the window. It’s been a soft, blank stretch of night, no sign of him.

You tell yourself that means he’s at the far end of the pasture or walking the ditch line. Exactly where he’s supposed to be.

“I’ll fetch Mama’s salve,” you add, already untying your apron, tucking it over the back of a chair. “She’ll want it first thing in the mornin’.”

Joe nods, smoke curling out of his nose. “Don’t you linger,” he says, not looking up. “Get what you need and bring your tail back in this house. I don’t want you down there visitin’ like it’s social hour.”

You bite back the urge to say you’d sooner visit the pig pen. “Yes, sir,” is what comes out instead.

The night air catches you on the porch, damp and soft, smelling of cooling dirt and a hint of something sweet blooming out by the fence. 

You step down barefoot, skirts whispering around your calves, the boards’ splinters familiar against your soles. The big house’s light spills just to the bottom of the steps, then gives up, letting the yard roll out into dark.

The little farmhouse sits a ways off, past the well, past the worn track where the wagon turns. All its windows are black. No orange seam under the curtain, no silhouette rising and falling against the glass. The barn is quiet too, doors thrown shut, only a thin line of moon-silver along the roof.

You latch onto the sight of that dark little house like proof. He’s not there. He’s out somewhere with a lantern and a bad attitude. 

You’ll be in and out before he knows you’ve even left your room.

You wrap that thought around yourself like a shawl and start across the yard.

The grass is cool and a little slick with dew under your feet, clinging between your toes. Crickets saw at the edges of things, frogs mutter down in the low spots. The well’s stone lip rises out of the ground like something old and patient; you ghost past it, keeping your eyes on the squat shadow of the farmhouse.

Up close, it looks smaller, somehow meaner. The door is shut, the porch bare save for his boots lined up neat off to one side. You take in that detail with a little flick of relief—boots off means man in bed, not loose in the yard—before another thought slides in behind it: or just inside.

You hesitate only a heartbeat.

The want to not get scolded in the morning, the want to have Mama’s salve where she can lay hands on it, outweighs the whisper of sense telling you this is foolish.

You lay your palm on the door and push.

It gives with a small, tired creak, the smell of the place rolling over you in a warm wave: wood, straw, tobacco, sweat, and that faint metallic thread you’ve started to think of as his alone. There’s a lamp turned low on the table just inside, wick pinched till the flame is barely more than a coal in a glass throat, enough to lay out the shapes of things and nothing more.

“Remmick?” you call, voice barely above a whisper, more habit than hope. When nothing answers—not a word, not a shift of boards—you let your breath out slow and step over the threshold.

The door eases halfway shut behind you, not latched. You don’t bother with it; you don’t plan to be here long enough to worry about what’s open and what isn’t. 

The room is small and spare, just like your daddy said it was. Bed against one wall, blanket rumpled from someone sitting, if not lying. Chair with a coat thrown over the back, shirt draped careless on top. Table with the lamp, a chipped cup, a folded knife. A shelf holding a few tin plates, a jar of coffee, the heel of a loaf.

You move quick but careful, eyes trying not to linger on the smaller things that say a man’s been living here—his belt coiled on the chair seat, his hat hanging from the peg, the empty space on the floor where his boots were. 

You head straight for the coat, remembering your father’s hand dropping the salve tin into its pocket.

You pinch the fabric between your fingers, easing it aside, but the weight you expect to tug at the hem isn’t there. The coat hangs light. You pat the pockets; they’re empty, save for a wadded rag and a stray button.

“Damn,” you breathe, annoyed, under your breath.

Maybe he moved it. Maybe he took it out so the tin wouldn’t fall and get lost when he shrugged the coat on.

You cast your eyes around the room, searching high shelves, low boxes, any place someone might set a small, important thing.

The table catches your attention next. You circle it, gaze skimming over the knife, the cup, the lamp. 

There, near the edge, half in shadow—a squat little tin no bigger than your palm, blue lid dulled with age.

You smile in spite of yourself and reach for it. “Got you,” you murmur, closing your fingers around the cool metal.

You pop the lid just enough to see the salve inside, pale and thick, smelling faintly of herbs and camphor, then press it back down with a soft click. The job’s done. Simple as that.

You turn, already thinking about the path back to the house, about slipping this into Mama’s hand and letting yourself be proud she won’t have to wonder where it is in the morning.

You don’t make it two steps.

There he is.

Standing in the doorway that leads to the small back room, shoulder braced against the frame like he’s been leaning there a while, like he grew right up out of the wood.

He’s shirtless, skin slicked faint with sweat, the rise and fall of his chest slow and easy. Suspenders hang loose against his hips, clipped to his trousers but fallen off his shoulders, framing the cut of his torso in dark lines. 

The lamp’s low light paints him in gold and shadow both, dipping into the hollow between his collarbones, skating over the plane of his stomach, catching on the trail of hair that runs down from his navel into the waistband of his pants. 

His arms cross over his chest, veins standing faint along the backs of his hands where they rest against his biceps.

His feet are bare. His eyes are not gentle.

“Find what you was lookin’ for?” he asks, voice soft, too soft, the scrape of it wrapping around the words like a touch.

Your heart gives one wild jump, slamming up against your ribs hard enough to hurt, then starts to run. 

You hadn’t heard him come in. Hadn’t heard the back door, hadn’t heard the floor protest, hadn’t heard anything but your own little fussing search and the tiny pop of the salve lid.

For a foolish second you think about hiding the tin, tucking it behind your back like a child caught in a pantry. You don’t. There’s nowhere to put it he wouldn’t see, and you refuse to give him the pleasure of watching you scramble.

Instead you hold it up just enough that he can see the blue lid glint in the lamplight. “My mama’s salve,” you say, surprised at how even your voice comes out. “Daddy gave it to you. He forgot where he put it. I came to fetch it.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t look at the tin for more than a passing glance. His attention stays on you, heavy as a hand between your shoulder blades. He rakes his gaze from your face down to the salve, then lower, slow as a man looking over a field he’s about to plow.

You suddenly know exactly how your dress is sitting—where the fabric pulls across your chest from turning too quick, where the skirt clings to your thighs from the damp in the grass, where your collar gapes just a breath more than it should because you didn’t bother with the top button in the heat. Your skin prickles under each place you picture his eyes touching.

“You always just walk yourself into a man’s house without knockin’?” he asks after a beat, one brow ticking up.

“This ain’t a house,” you reply, chin lifting a shade. “It’s a shack my father stuck you in so you’d be closer to the barn.”

Something like amusement flickers across his mouth. “Still mine for now,” he says. “Door was shut, wasn’t it?”

“You left the lamp on,” you shoot back. “Anybody with decent sense would take that as invitation in case of emergency.”

He uncrosses his arms then, letting them drop to his sides. The motion makes muscles jump in his chest, the lines of his shoulders shifting under skin. “And what’s the emergency, miss?” he asks. “That your mama’s medicine was sittin’ ten yards farther than you like it?”

His tone isn’t mocking. It isn’t kind either. It’s something in between, something testing. Like he’s poking at you with words just to feel where you’re soft.

You swallow, the salve tin suddenly heavy in your hand. “I said why I came,” you answer. “I’ll be goin’ now.”

You move to head toward the front door, the one you came in, but the room is small, and he doesn’t move. One pace brings you close enough to smell him. Another pace would put you near enough to brush him if you misjudged your route.

He shifts his weight to fill the doorway more fully, one hand lifting to rest on the frame to the side of him. It leaves his ribs bare, that patch of hair under his arm catching the lamplight. There’s a faint scar along his flank, pale against the warmth of his skin, old and ugly, like something tore him open once and he lived anyway.

“Seems a shame,” he says, looking at you. “You comin’ all this way just to snatch up a tin and run.”

Your pulse hammers harder. “It ain’t far.”

“For you,” he agrees. “For me it’s a long, lonely walk most nights. I might be grateful for a little company.”

“You got company,” you say, words a little sharper than you intend. “You got every cow, every dog, every fence post on this land. You don’t need me.”

He lets that roll over him like water off a duck’s back. “Maybe I’m tired of talkin’ to things that can’t talk back,” he murmurs. His eyes flick down to the salve again, then to your hand, to your wrist where your pulse beats visible in the hollow. “You tore yourself up any today, or you just borrowin’ this for show?”

“Bruise on my hip,” you admit before you can remind yourself you owe him nothing. The words come out stiff. “Ain’t your concern.”

“Everythin’ that happens on this farm’s my concern when it means workers showin’ up busted in the mornin’,” he says. “You do work, don’t you? Or are you just here to keep the place pretty.”

Heat flashes through you, quick and mean. “You've seen me work,” you say. “You've seen me at that pump, at that stove, out in the yard. Don’t you stand there half-dressed and ask if I do my share.”

His mouth twitches at half-dressed. He doesn’t bother to hide the way his gaze drops, quick, down the front of himself and back up, as if to say he knows exactly how much he’s wearing and how much you’re seeing. It’s deliberate, that small, shameless acknowledgement of his own body.

“Believe me,” he says, voice dropping lower, “I’ve seen you.”

The words land between you, heavy and thick. They mean more than they say. Every peek he’s stolen presses into the space they open up: your bare leg in the barn, your shoulders shining in the bath, your tired posture on the back porch, one strap slipping careless down your arm before you hitched it back up.

You don’t know about most of that. What you do know is enough to make your throat go dry.

“I ain’t supposed to be down here visitin’,” you say, trying to wrestle the conversation back onto some ground that feels steadier. “My father told you that when you got here. Told me too.”

His eyes gleam at the mention of your father, some dark amusement sparking there. “He told me to show you respect,” he says. “And I have. Haven’t laid a hand on you that you didn’t walk too close to yourself.”

Your mind trips over the memory of his fingers catching your arm in the barn, steadying you when your mare spooked. The way his hand hovered near your torn dress, heat just shy of your hip. The way he stood in the yard with his eyes on your mouth and called you miss like it was something he wanted to lick.

You draw yourself up as tall as you can manage in the little room, salve tin tight in your grip, refusing to yield the step he’s trying to take without moving his feet. “Then you’ll move,” you say, voice low but steady. “So I can go on home and keep livin’ my life with all that respect you’re so proud of.”

For a moment, you think he might laugh in your face. His lips part, teeth catching on his bottom lip, eyes glinting.

Instead he just looks at you.

It’s worse than if he’d laughed. He looks like a man deciding how honest he feels like being tonight. Like he’s weighing whether to keep playing at politeness or lay something sharper on the table between you.

The lamplight flickers, shadow jumping along his jaw as he tilts his head. “You walk out that door,” he says finally, nodding toward the porch, “and I’ll let you. I ain’t gonna drag you nowhere you don’t step first.”

Relief and something colder flick through you at the same time. “Good,” you start to say, but he isn’t done.

“But,” he adds, and that one little word lands heavy, “you come walkin’ into my place after dark again, all alone, dressed like that, lookin’ at me like you don’t know whether you wanna slap me or cry on me—well.” His gaze drops to your mouth and back. “That’s you steppin’. And I’ll take it as such.”

Your heart stutters, one hard misstep in its rhythm. “You overestimate yourself,” you snap, even as your fingers twitch on the tin.

He smiles then, slow and wolfish, the expression finally reaching his eyes in a way you haven’t seen yet. 

“We’ll see,” he says.

For a long, tight second, nobody moves. The walls feel closer, the air thicker, the lamplight too intimate. You hear the frogs outside, the creak of the house settling, the little wet sound of your own swallow. His bare chest rises and falls, steady, like he’s got all the time in the world.

Then he steps to the side.

The doorway opens up behind him, a narrow slice of night visible over his bare shoulder. It’s more space than you expected him to yield, less than you’d like.

You duck past, your shoulder nearly brushing his chest, the heat pouring off him making your skin prickle. You feel his eyes on the side of your face, on the line of your throat, on the way you have to hitch your skirt just a little to keep from tripping as you step over the threshold.

“Goodnight, miss,” he says softly, right by your ear, breath warm as it ghosts over your neck. “You be careful now. Dark’s full of things you don’t know about.”

You don’t trust your voice not to shake, so you don’t give him the satisfaction of hearing it. You just walk, bare feet hitting the packed earth hard, fingers biting into the salve tin so tight the metal cuts a little crescent into your palm.

Rough wood presses into your hips, edge digging a little where your nightgown’s ridden up, breath catching in short, shallow pulls because he’s got one big hand flat between your shoulder blades, holding you there, and the other is on your ass, fingers clawed into the thin cotton, bunching it up and away from your thighs. 

The lamp in the corner throws a low, mean light over the kitchen, just enough to show you the knot in the tabletop and the chipped plate someone left on the shelf, just enough to catch the shadow of his arm when it moves.

You came down here hot with it. Anger, mostly. 

At him for looking at you how he does, for crowding doorways and talking low in your ear. At yourself for feeling anything besides disgust when he does it. 

For weeks that feeling has sat under your skin like a burr under a saddle, rubbing everything raw—every brush of his eyes, every sly comment, every late-night glimpse of his lantern out in the yard when you should’ve been sleeping. 

Tonight it tipped over. Tonight you lay in your bed and stared at the ceiling and saw his bare chest in that little house instead, heard his voice saying we’ll see, felt your own body answer in a way that wouldn’t quit.

So you got up after the house went quiet, barefoot on the boards, heart in your throat. 

You didn’t bring a lamp. You told yourself you were just going to tell him off, to say plain that you didn’t want him looking, didn’t want him speaking to you sideways, didn’t want the innuendo and the smirks and the way he made you feel peeled without ever laying a proper hand on you. 

That was the story you wrapped yourself in as you crossed the yard, nightgown clinging to your knees.

He opened the door before you could knock, like he’d been standing right on the other side with his palm on the handle, listening.

You remember the way his eyes moved over you, slow, no shirt, just those loose trousers hanging low on his hips, lamp behind him making his shoulders look broad and his face unreadable. 

You remember his mouth forming your name, quiet and satisfied, like he’d been waiting to say it like this. 

You remember the way all that anger and want surged up together in your chest, wild and tangled, and how you said something too sharp, voice shaking, about him needing to keep his eyes to himself if he wanted to stay on your daddy’s land.

Now here you are with his hand on your back, pressing, holding you down exactly where you came—over his small scarred table in his small farmhouse kitchen—your own fingers gripping the edge in a white-knuckled clutch.

“Thought you weren’t supposed to be down here visitin’,” he drawls above you, breath warm near your ear, words rolling over your spine. “That what you told me?”

You glare at the knot in the wood like it did you personal harm. 

Your face is hot, your body even hotter, a slow, heavy throb deep between your thighs that started halfway across the yard and hasn’t done a thing but grow. 

“I ain’t visitin’,” you say, the words a little muffled by the way he’s got you folded. “I came to talk sense into you.”

His laugh is low and pleased, hand on your back sliding a little, fingers spreading, thumb settling along your spine. He presses down just enough to remind you who’s holding you where you are. 

“Is that what you call it,” he says, “showin’ up in your bed things after dark, sneakin’ through my door with your hands empty and your eyes wide? Talkin’ sense?”

His other hand cups your ass through the thin fabric, palm wide over you, squeezing like he’s testing a piece of fruit at the market. 

The nightgown has twisted up, hem caught high over your hips, leaving the bottom curve of you bare to his touch, only the cotton of your drawers between his fingers and your skin. 

Heat floods that spot, a sharp, shameful pulse that makes your breath catch.

“You been walkin’ around twitchy as a cat for days,” he goes on, hand kneading, thumb digging into the give of your flesh there. “Snappin’ at me, snappin’ at your daddy, gettin’ that look on your face every time you see me like you don’t know whether to spit or spit somethin’ else.”

“Shut up,” you hiss, mortified at how true it feels in your bones. 

You shift your hips, trying to wriggle away from that hand, and all it does is grind you back against his palm, soft cotton dragging over the swell of you, catching on the seam that runs right over the place you’re trying not to think about.

He makes a sound at that, low in his throat, rough and appreciative. “Yeah. There she is,” he says, words coming a little thicker now. “All that fire. You walked your own self down here, girl. Nobody dragged you.”

“I came to tell you to stop,” you manage, though the way your voice climbs at the end takes the bite out of it. His fingers curl, grab a little handful of your ass cheek through the cloth, and you feel the ache spike hotter. “Stop lookin’. Stop talkin’ like that. Stop—stop–”

“Stop makin’ you feel all twisted up?” he supplies, not unkind, just plain. 

His hand on your back softens, spreads, rubbing along your spine like he’s soothing a spooked animal even as the other keeps kneading at you. 

“Stop remindin’ you there’s more to be had in this world than hymns and beans and mendin’?”

You suck a breath in through your teeth. “You ain’t the only man alive,” you snap. “You ain’t special.”

His grip tightens, a hard squeeze that makes you gasp. “No,” he agrees easily. “But I’m the only one you marched down here to cuss out in your bare feet and nightclothes, so I’d say I’m doin’ something right.”

You hate how your body answers that, how something low in you liquefies at the thought of it, at the truth you don’t want to name. You hate the way your thighs press together of their own accord, seeking pressure, seeking relief, even as you hold yourself rigid under his hand.

He feels it. His palm slides down, fingers curling under the heavy curve of you, thumb dragging along the crease where your ass meets the top of your thigh. 

You’re hyper-aware of every inch, every callus on his skin, every place the old wood digs into your hips. When his hand moves inward, fingers bumping close to the center of you, you flinch.

“Don’t—” you start, panic and want knitting together, but the word thins out when his touch presses just a little firmer over the damp cotton there.

“You’re soaked,” he says softly, no mockery in it, just raw, hungry wonder. “Walked through my door mad as sin, all full of pretty speeches, and your cunt’s already cryin’ for somethin’ to hold on to.”

Shame scorches up your neck. “Don’t call it that,” you choke, mortified, the word hitting you deep and low and making everything worse.

He hums, thumb tracing a slow circle over that swell, pressing right where the cloth is clinging. The pressure is perfect, unbearable. 

“What you want me to call it, then?” he asks, voice brushing the shell of your ear now. 

“Your virtue? Your purity? That sweet spot between your legs that ain’t nobody touched?” His thumb moves again, firmer, and your hips jolt against your will. “’Cause I see it all over you, darlin’. You came here wantin’ me to stop, but your body came here wantin’ somethin’ else entirely.”

You shake your head, even as your toes curl, even as your lungs drag in another sharp breath that tastes like him and the lamp smoke and the hot, close air of this little house. 

“You’re—you’re foul,” you say, but it comes out thin, breathy. “You been lookin’ at me, watchin’ me, talkin’ to me like—”

“Like I know what to do with you,” he cuts in, a hint of impatience threading through his heat. “And I do. You think I don’t see what’s eatin’ at you every time you glance down at my hands, or my mouth, or lower?”

His fingers slide along the seam of your drawers, finding the little ridge where cloth meets cloth and pressing right there. 

It sends a jolt through you big enough you can’t muffle the small sound that drops out of your throat. 

His hand on your back pushes down, keeping you bent, letting you grind into that touch without rising off the table.

“Listen here,” he says, voice roughening, patience fraying. “You came. You’re here. You can tell me to stop and I will. I ain’t gonna take what you don’t hand me. But don’t stand there in my house, drippin’ on my floor, and try to lie about what you’re feelin’.”

The room seems to shrink around those words. 

You know he’s right. You also know how far you are from where you were supposed to be, from the girl who said she’d never let a man like him get close, from the girl who swore she’d keep herself intact till some tidy, respectable husband came along with a ring and a house and his hat in his hands.

You think about those men. Faces you’ve seen in church, in town, men who look at you when they think you’re not noticing with a hunger they don’t know what to do with. Men who’d apologize if their fingers brushed your wrist too long.

Then you think about this man, bare-chested behind you, hard and unashamed, his hand pressed between your shoulder blades, the other on you like you’re his to handle. 

You think about his eyes in the barn, on your torn dress. About the words he said in this very room, about stepping. About how you’ve been walking around with your jaw clenched and your thighs pressed together ever since.

“Tell me the truth,” he says, thumb pressing a little harder, his other fingers spread wide over the swell of you. “You want me to let go of you and send you back up that hill with your temper, you say it. I’ll move. You can go pray extra loud come Sunday.”

The lamp crackles softly, a tiny sound in the heavy dark.

“And if I don’t?” you hear yourself ask, voice small but steady. “If I say I don’t want you to move?”

His hand stills on your back for one beat, then both of them tighten—one pressing you down, one grabbing a handful of your ass like he’s staking a claim. A breath leaves him in a long, shuddery exhale that ghosts hot over your neck.

“Then I’m gonna take real good care of what you brought me,” he says, tone gone hoarse and thick, the restraint in it the only thing keeping you from shaking. “Gonna give you somethin’ to think about next time you lay awake in that bed of yours. Gonna fuck you on this table till you don’t remember what you came down here mad about.”

The word fuck lands hard in you, a punch and a promise all at once. 

You grip the edge of the wood like it’s all that’s keeping you upright, though you’re already bent, already braced.

“Say it,” he murmurs, leaning in until his chest brushes your back, bare skin hot where it touches the thin cotton. 

The admission sits in your throat like a hot stone. It feels enormous. It feels like stepping off a ledge.

“I want—” The word catches, but his thumb flicks over you again, sharp and sure, and your hips roll without permission, a little helpless grind that betrays every fight you’ve been waging with yourself. “I want you,” you gasp, shame and relief crashing together. “I want you to—to do somethin’ about it.”

He lets out a sound that’s almost a groan, almost a laugh, almost a curse, his body crowding you tighter, his weight a solid wall of heat at your back. “That’s my girl,” he says, and the possession in it makes your knees wobble, makes that core of you clench hard around nothing.

His hand leaves your back long enough to grab a fistful of your nightgown at the hem, yanking it up in one rough motion that leaves it bunched around your waist. 

Cool air hits your drawers, the bare backs of your thighs, the soft part just under your cheeks, and then his palm is there, skin to skin at last, cupping you hard. 

His fingers dig in, thumbs pressing outward, spreading you slightly, mapping the give.

“You’re shakin’,” he says, sounding pleased. “Ain’t even touched you proper yet.”

“You’re takin’ your time,” you manage, though the words shake too.

He chuckles, low. “First time’s never good when a man rushes,” he answers, matter-of-fact. “And I know you ain’t had nobody in you yet, feelin’ the way you do under my hand.”

Before you can answer, his fingers hook into the waistband of your drawers and tug. The fabric resists for a second, elastic biting into soft flesh, then slides down, dragging over your hips, over the swell of your ass, down the backs of your thighs until they tangle around your knees. 

He leaves them there, trapping your legs just enough you can’t kick or close up, just enough that you’re open and vulnerable and aware of it.

Cool air kisses you everywhere the cloth just left. 

You feel filthy, bare from waist to mid-thigh, bent over his table with your nightgown rucked up, your cunt exposed to the room, to him. It makes your head swim.

Then his hand is back, and there is no room for anything else.

He cups you from behind, fingers sliding through the slick heat of your folds, and you hear a sharp breath hitch out of him. “Oh, hell,” he says, reverent.

You make a broken, helpless sound that doesn’t sound like it belongs to you. 

No one’s ever been there before, not like this, not with fingers spreading you, rubbing through you, middle finger catching on that aching bud you’ve only ever touched in the dark with guilty hands. 

The sensation is lightning-bright, stabbing up your spine.

“Easy,” he murmurs, palm flattening across your low back again, his body curving over yours, caging you. “I got you. Gonna make it good for you before I stretch you around me. Don’t want you too scared to enjoy your first fuck.”

The way he says first fuck, like he’s staking a flag there, like he’s carving his name into it, makes something fierce flicker through you, a strange pride knotting up with the fear. 

You push back against his hand without meaning to, chasing more.

He feels it. “That’s it,” he encourages, fingers pressing deeper between your lips now. “Ask for what you want with that pretty body. Tell me where it hurts.”

“Everywhere,” you pant, honesty ripped out of you on a wave. “It hurts everywhere.”

He laughs, breath hot against your neck, mouth close enough you feel the shape of it. “That ain’t hurt, girl,” he says. “That’s need.” 

His fingers finally find your entrance, slick and hot and clutching, and he presses the pad of one inside, just the tip, testing. Your whole body clenches around that intrusion.

“You relax for me,” he tells you, tone sliding into something commanding. “Breathe.”

You suck in air, lungs burning. 

He slides the finger in a little further, thick and probing, opening you. 

The stretch is sharp, uncomfortable, but there’s an undercurrent of relief in it. He works it in and out slowly, letting you get used to the feel, letting your body learn the shape of him.

“That’s good,” he murmurs when he feels you soften around him, the praise lighting up something small and hungry in your chest. “See? You take my finger just fine. Gonna take my cock too when I’m done with you.”

He adds a second finger before you can brace, and this time the stretch makes you gasp loud, muscles clamping down. It burns, a deep, insistent ache, like you’re being pried open.

“Shh,” he soothes, his index finding that little bundle of nerves again, circling steady, sending sparks to chase the hurt. “I know. I know. We gotta loosen you up some or you’ll split yourself on me.”

The blunt truth of it makes you squeeze your eyes shut, face hot against your forearm. 

You can feel him behind you, solid, his chest glued to your back, his arm moving between your legs. When you manage to breathe past the initial shock, the burn eases, replaced by a full, pressurized feeling that fills your head with nothing but sensation.

He moves his fingers, slow at first, pumping them in and out of you in short strokes, stretching, coaxing. 

Your body starts to answer despite itself, hips rocking back in tiny motions, seeking that deep, sweet drag. 

Every thrust brushes against something inside you that makes your legs tremble, makes your breath hitch. 

“Listen to that,” he says, voice thick, and it takes you a second to realize he means the wet sound loud in the little kitchen as his fingers work in and out of you. “You hear yourself takin’ me in? That’s you wantin’ it.”

It’s filthy and true and you can’t deny it. 

There's a coil tightening low in your belly, every nerve in your body funneling to where his hand is. Your grip on the table edge goes slippery with sweat.

“Remmick,” you gasp, not even sure what you’re asking for, only that you’re strung too tight.

“There you go,” he groans, fingers driving a little deeper, curling just right.

It hits without much warning. One second you’re climbing, the next you’re over the edge, everything snapping. 

Your body seizes around his fingers, clenching so hard it almost hurts, that coil unspooling in a rush of pleasure so intense it blanks your mind.

A breathless moan tears up your throat. Your thighs shake, knees nearly buckling, if it weren’t for his hand on your back and the table under your palms you’d be on the floor.

“That’s it,” he groans, riding you through it, fingers still working, still moving until you’re whimpering, too sensitive, twitching with each little aftershock. 

You sag against the table when it finally lets you go, chest heaving, sweat cooling on your neck. He eases his fingers out of you slow, gentle for the first time since you walked in, his hand sliding up to rest on your hip. You can feel his other hand at your back again, rubbing small circles, keeping you grounded.

“First one’s always a little wild,” he says, sounding almost fond. “You doin’ all right?”

You nod, or try to. Your head feels full of cotton, floaty and heavy all at once. “I—” Your voice comes out hoarse. You clear your throat. “I’m fine.”

“You’re more than fine,” he says, and there’s a smile in it. “You’re perfect.” He shifts behind you, and that’s when you feel it, really feel it—his cock pressed up against the back of your thigh through the fabric of his trousers. 

He’s been hard this whole time, you realize dimly, all that while he was working you open. The blunt head drags over your skin when he adjusts, the thickness of him obvious even through cloth.

Your stomach flips, fear and anticipation knotting together. “You’re really—”

“Oh, I’m really.” He sounds almost amused. “You wanted me to take you on this table, remember?” 

His hand leaves your back and you hear the soft, familiar sound of a belt coming loose, a buckle clinking, the rasp of leather through belt loops. Then buttons, quick and practiced, fabric shifting.

You suck in a breath, every sense straining.

A moment later, something hot and slick—not his fingers this time—nudges against your entrance. He slides the head of his cock through your slick folds slowly, up and down, coating himself in you, bumping your clit on the downstroke, making you twitch.

“Jesus,” he mutters, more to himself than you. “You feel that? How you’re grabbin’ at me already and I ain’t even in?”

You do feel it, and it’s terrifying. Your body recognizes him as something it’s meant to hold, meant to take, even as your mind stumbles over the size of him, over what this means.

“I—wait,” you say, panic flaring for a second, the reality of it looming. “Remmick, I’m—”

“I know,” he says, and for once there’s no teasing in it. “You listen to me. It’s gonna burn at first, then it’s gonna feel like you never should’ve gone without it this long. You trust me?”

You hesitate. He feels it in the way your muscles tense around the head of him. His hand comes up, fingers wrapping loosely around your throat from behind, thumb tipping your chin just a little. The touch sends a different kind of shiver through you, sharp and grounding.

“I ain’t gonna break you,” he says quietly, close to your ear. “I want you comin’ back to this just as bad as I want you right now.” His hips roll just enough that the blunt tip presses hard against your opening. 

The hand at your throat, the tone in his voice, the memory of his fingers and the way your body just came apart on them thirty seconds ago—they all crash together, and you find yourself nodding before you know you’re doing it.

“Go,” you whisper, the word trembling, but there.

He makes a sound then that’s half-growl, half-groan, all man. His grip on your throat tightens just a hair, his other hand clamping down on your hip.

“That’s my girl,” he says again, rough with need. “Hold on.”

The head of him breaches you with more resistance than his fingers ever met. 

Your body tries to clamp down, to keep him out, muscles fighting the stretch. He doesn’t slam in, but he doesn’t baby you either. He works himself in slow, steady pressure, teeth gritted, hips driving forward inch by thick inch.

The burn is real. It’s sharp, like you’re being split open from the inside. You gasp, nails scraping at the wood, whole body bowing. For a second it’s too much.

“Breathe,” he grunts through his own strain, hand at your throat sliding up to your jaw, thumb pressing at your cheek. “Breathe through it. You’re takin’ me. Look at you. You’re takin’ me.”

He isn’t wrong. Beneath the pain, there’s this breathless awe—at the size of him, at the way your own body yields, at the feel of being filled in a way you never have before. 

You force yourself to inhale, exhale, again, again. Your muscles flutter around him, protesting, then slowly easing.

When the broadest part of his head passes the tight ring of your entrance, the rest slides in easier, still stretching, still burning, but less violently. 

He sinks deeper, stopping only when his hips are flush with your ass, his pelvis pressed to your backside, balls snugged up against your cunt. You can feel him everywhere, heavy and solid in your core, pulsing faintly.

“Christ,” he rasps, the words hot against your neck. “I can barely think straight. Sweet girl, you just swallowed every inch of me.”

You exhale shakily, overwhelmed. Full doesn’t begin to cover it. You feel stuffed, stretched to the point of coming apart, and yet under the ache, something else is already starting—a low, thick pleasure that moves like honey, spreading outward from where you’re joined.

He holds still for a long moment, breathing hard into your hair, chest rising and falling against your back. His hand at your hip rubs little circles, the one at your jaw softening its grip.

“You tell me when it stops hurtin’ so sharp,” he says. “I ain’t in no rush, even if my cock’s yellin’ otherwise.”

You try to focus. The worst of the burn ebbs, leaving a throbbing soreness, but the sense of him—deep, impossible, yours—is starting to bloom into something almost good.

“Move,” you whisper, surprising yourself. “Just a little.”

He laughs, breath short. “Greedy already,” he says. “Alright.”

He pulls back, just an inch, maybe two, dragging that thick length along your walls. The friction is intense, raw and tender and electric all at once. Then he pushes in again, slower, watching for any flinch. 

Your fingers dig into the table, but you don’t cry out, don’t tell him to stop. Your body clutches at him on the way out, sucks at him on the way back in.

He does it again. And again. Each shallow thrust smooths the hurt a little more, replaces it with deeper sensation. The initial sting fades into a deep, stretching fullness that makes your knees weak, that makes heat lick up your spine in waves.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, hand sliding from your jaw back down to your throat, wrapping around it more firmly this time, not cutting your air, just pinning you, reminding you where you are and who’s holding you. “Now we’re gettin’ somewhere.”

He lengthens his strokes, pulling back farther, pushing in harder. The wet slap of his hips meeting your ass starts up, quiet at first, then louder, the sound of skin on skin obscene in the still night. 

Every push drives him deeper, nudging at something inside you that makes your breath jump, that sends little shocks through your belly, like he’s bumping the edge of something tender and secret and his.

Your body has learned the shape of him, stretching you from the inside. 

You can feel every ridge, every vein, the way the fat head spears through the tight clutch of you and then disappears into that deep, hot place that was empty your whole life and now is nothing but him.

His hand at your throat tightens, just a little. Not enough to cut your air, but enough to make each breath a thing you have to pull for, chest heaving against the table edge. His palm is broad and warm, thumb resting under your jaw, fingers curved along the side of your neck. 

Every time his hips snap forward, that grip reminds you he’s there; it pins you in your own skin so you can’t float away from what’s happening, can’t pretend it’s anything but what it is: you getting fucked open on a man’s cock in his kitchen like you were meant for it.

Then his hand drops. It slides down the column of your throat, over the dip of your collarbone, fingers spreading wide as they drag lower, rough palm grazing the top swell of your breast through the thin cotton. 

He cups you from behind, big hand wrapping around the weight of it, lifting, squeezing. The nightgown bunches under his fingers as he kneads, thumb rolling over your nipple until it stiffens hard, the fabric rasping just enough to make you whine.

“There,” he mutters, voice gone thick, like he has to taste every part of you. “Knew these’d feel good in my hand.”

He squeezes once more, harder, the pressure sending a sharp line of sensation straight down to where he’s buried in you, your nipple trapped between his thumb and the heat of his palm. 

Your back arches, pushing more of your tit into his grip even as his cock grinds deeper. 

For a second you’re caught between the drag inside and the rough, greedy hold on your breast, pleasure ricocheting between the two.

Then his hand is moving again, leaving your aching nipple peaked under the cotton, skimming back up over your breastbone, returning to your throat like it owns the place. His fingers curl back into their collar around your neck, thumb settling under your jaw, holding you where he wants you while his hips keep driving.

“Listen to you,” he groans, and you realize he doesn’t just mean your voice—wrecked and breaking on every inhale—but the wet, filthy noise your body’s making, the slick drag of his cock pulling out of you, the obscene squelch when he pushes back in, the slap of his balls hitting the curve of your cunt. “You hear that? That’s this pussy lovin’ every inch I’m givin’ her.”

The word makes your stomach flutter and your cunt clench down around him so tight he curses, hips stuttering. 

There’s no room for modesty now; everything between your legs is wide awake and telling on you. 

Every time he pulls back, your inner muscles chase after him, hugging, clinging, like you’re frightened of losing that fullness, like your body’s praying he’ll push right back in—and he does, like he’s answering a call.

He adjusts his stance, feet shifting on the rough floor, and angle changes. The next thrust lands different, deeper, the thick head of him driving up and forward to grind against a spot inside you that makes your vision white out around the edges for a beat. 

You jolt, a strangled noise ripping out of you, fingers scraping along the tabletop as your whole body goes tense.

“There it is,” he pants, catching that reaction, chasing it. 

He does it again on purpose, hips rolling instead of just snapping, driving that same path, making sure he hits that spot with the crown every time. 

“You feel that? Right there? That’s what you been needin’, girl. That ache way up high you ain’t never had a name for.”

He's right on it now, relentless. 

Each stroke is a steady assault, steady enough your body starts to learn the pattern, tension building with every collision. The soreness from taking him the first time smooths into a deep, hot throb that wraps around the pleasure, one feeding the other. 

Your toes curl, your thighs tremble, your stomach ripples around the intrusion like you’re trying to swallow him even deeper.

He slides the hand from your hip back around your front, into the slick heat between your thighs, and finds your clit like he’s been doing it all his life. 

His fingers are slick with your own mess, rough pads moving in tight, ruthless circles over that swollen bud. It sends lightning directly up your spine, straight to the base of your skull. 

You choke on a sound that isn’t quite a word and jerk against his hand; his arm around your throat holds you in place.

“Goddamn, you’re twitchy,” he groans, grinding his hips down so the bone of him presses your ass, so his cock bruises into that soft spot inside while his fingers roll your clit. “You gonna fall apart on me again? You gonna let me feel you squeeze all over my cock proper this time?”

Your answer is a breathless, broken, “Please,” your voice ragged, half sob, half prayer. 

The table shudders under the force of his thrusts now, the legs complaining in small creaks that match the rhythm of his hips. The lamp flame jumps in its glass, throwing wild shadows against the wall—a tangle of your bent body and his frame hunched over you, shoulders rolling as he works inside you like he’s plowing up hard ground.

Spit slicks your lips; you realize at some point your mouth fell open and just forgot how to close, breath dragging in ragged, wet pulls. 

You couldn’t be bothered to care if you tried; everything is narrowed to the hot place his cock is sawing through and the bright, brutal pulses from his fingers on your clit.

He can feel you climbing, feel your body drawing in tight around him, feel your channel starting to flutter. He growls, low and guttural, the sound pressed against the back of your neck. “That’s it. That’s it, squeeze me.”

His hand at your throat tightens a hair more, narrowing the world to his breathing and yours, the rush of blood in your ears, the drag of wood under your palms. 

The smallest bit of pressure makes every sensation hit harder; your body goes light and heavy at the same time, limbs tingling, cock-deep pull inside you the only thing that feels solid.

He pistons into you now with a steadier, punishing rhythm, cock dragging from the fat base at your entrance all the way to that deep end that makes your belly flip, then back again. 

Your ass jiggles from each impact, flesh rippling under his grip. His fingers at your clit don’t falter.

You can hear yourself now, high and ruined, begging without even knowing what for. “Don’t stop—don’t—Remmick, don’t—oh—oh God—”

“Mhm, use my name,” he hisses, hips crashing into yours, the wet slap echoing off the close walls. “You say it when you can’t hold yourself together no more.”

He leans forward, the sweat on his skin slick against the thin cotton of your nightgown bunched at your waist. 

His mouth finds the side of your neck, teeth scraping over the delicate skin there, then biting down just hard enough to make you gasp. He sucks, draws blood closer to the surface in a hot sting that only makes your cunt flutter harder around him.

Between the choke of his hand, the sharp pinch of his teeth, the relentless grind of his cock, and the ruthless attention on your clit, you don’t stand a chance.

The orgasm slams into you hard enough your knees buckle, your body trying to curl in on itself while he holds you stretched over the table. 

Everything constricts at once—your throat around his hand, your belly around the deep ache, your cunt around his cock. You clamp down on him with startling force, walls seizing, milking, clutching like you’re trying to suck him straight out of his skin.

You cry out. There’s no pretty word for it. Sound rips out of you high and raw, your voice cracking on his name. 

Your vision goes fuzzy with white at the edges, the kitchen shrinking to the rough wood under your hands and the thick, unyielding length splitting you and the brutal roll of pleasure ripping through you in waves.

“Fuck—fuck,” he grunts at your ear, the feeling of you spasming around him cutting through every ounce of control he has left. “That’s it, that’s it, girl, grip me—Jesus—”

He doesn’t stop moving, not really; he grinds through it, forcing his cock to keep sliding, short, deep thrusts, using the vice of your orgasm to wring everything he can from you. 

You’re shaking all over, thighs trembling so hard your feet skid a little on the floor, toes digging uselessly for purchase. 

Another rush of slick gushes around him, soaking his cock, dripping down over his balls, sliding warm along the inside of your thighs.

Your body keeps clenching in pulses, the pleasure cresting and breaking over and over until it tips toward something sharp, too much. You whimper, the sound small and shredded. His hand leaves your clit finally, stroking shaking skin instead, but his hips don’t stop.

The rhythm goes ragged, less measured, more frantic. His thrusts turn into short, hard ruts, like his body’s the one begging now. His fingers flex around your throat, then loosen just a little, thumb stroking your jaw instead as his breathing unravels.

“Gonna fill you up,” he groans, voice pitched low and rough. “You want that? You want me shootin’ deep in you, huh? Want to feel me leakin’ out you all the way back up to that house?”

The words, filthy as they are, punch right through your oversensitivity and light up something molten in your gut. 

Your sore, flooded cunt tightens around him involuntarily at the thought of carrying him inside you, his spend rolling down your thighs later when you climb into your own bed. 

You can’t shape the answer into full words; what comes out is some strangled mess that sounds like y-yes and a choke.

“Yeah, you do,” he snarls like he heard it. “You greedy little thing, comin’ down here pretendin’ you just wanna talk when your cunt’s hungry as hell.”

He drives in hard, once, twice, three more times, each thrust bottoming him out, pelvis grinding against the round of your ass. 

The slap of his hips is loud now, sloppy, wetter, your combined mess making the impact slick.

Then his whole body locks.

His stomach clenches tight against your back, jaw clamped against the side of your neck. A sound tears out of him, not quite human, something between a growl and a groan. His cock jerks inside you, swelling even thicker for a heart-stopping second, and then you feel it—hot, heavy spurts of him spilling deep, pounding against your cervix, flooding that space that’s been empty your entire life with a hot, liquid fullness.

He curses low and hoarse on each pulse, hips rocking in tiny, helpless movements as he empties himself, his own climax dragged out by the way your slick, oversensitive walls keep squeezing and fluttering around him. Every time your cunt milks him, another rope of cum kicks out of him, painting you inside.

“God—damn—” he grits, shuddering, one hand sliding from your throat to slap down next to your own on the table, fingers splayed wide, knuckles white on the wood. “You feel that? Feel me givin’ it to you?”

You do. You feel all of it. Every pulse, every twitch, every deep throb of him lodged inside, filling you, staking a claim. Your whole body feels stuffed, weighty, like he’s poured something molten into your bones.

The shakes take him then. You feel them where his chest is plastered to your back, quivers running through him in waves as his orgasm tapers off. 

His cock softens a little inside you but doesn’t slip free; your swollen entrance and the spent thickness of him keep you plugged together. Each small movement sends a slow, slick ache radiating outward.

For a long moment neither of you says anything.

He slumps more of his weight onto you without meaning to, and you sag under it, cheek pressed to the tabletop, breaths coming in harsh, uneven pulls. 

Sweat has glued your nightgown to your ribs where it’s still covering your upper body; where it’s bunched around your waist, the fabric clings damp to your skin with a mixture of your own wetness and his.

Eventually, he finds his voice, though it’s wrecked, scraped raw at the edges. “Jesus,” he mutters, words ghosting hot over the shell of your ear. 

For the first time since he pushed into you, he eases his hips back.

You gasp, a little shocked moan slipping out as his softening cock drags along your raw walls. 

When his head slips past your entrance, your muscles clench on instinct, reluctant to let him go, but gravity wins. He slides free, leaving you empty in a way that feels sharp, unfinished, even with his cum already starting to seep down, warm, from inside you.

Something thick and wet trickles out immediately, a slow, viscous roll that slides over your swollen folds and down the curve of your inner thigh. You feel it clearly, a hot trail in the cooler air of the kitchen. The knowledge of what it is, whose it is, makes your face burn and your belly tighten all over again.

He sees it too.

“Look at that,” he says softly, voice full of rough, satisfied awe. 

His hand leaves yours and slides down, palm cupping the underside of your ass, thumb catching one of those white streaks, spreading it lazily over your sensitive skin. You flinch, a little gasp escaping before you can stop it.

“Too much?” he asks.

“A little,” you admit, breath still stuttering. 

He makes a pleased sound at that, thumb dragging one last lazy stripe through the mess before he rubs his hand off on his own thigh. 

He straightens slowly, the absence of his weight making you sway for a second. His hands, empty now, come to your waist, smoothing down the bunched nightgown. He tugs it back into place over your hips, hiding what he’s done as best cloth can hide it.

Then he crouches a little, fingers catching the waistband of your drawers. They’re still tangled around your knees, sticky with your slick. 

He coaxes them up, guiding the cotton over your tender flesh, covering your cunt, trapping his spend where it is. 

The pull of the fabric against your oversensitive skin makes you hiss and bite your lip, but it also feels lewd and intimate in a different way—his cum pressed up against you, soaked into the cloth that sits right over your entrance.

He knows exactly what he’s doing, sealing you up like that. It shows in the way his thumb lingers a second too long at the gusset, pressing lightly, as if to make sure the material is snug, as if to feel one more time that he’s right there even with clothes between you.

“Gonna be walkin’ home with your panties stickin’ to you and a piece of me tryin’ to leak right back out,” he murmurs, voice a dark purr. “You’ll be thinkin’ of me every step.”

You make a weak noise, somewhere between a protest and something softer. Your legs feel unsteady when he finally helps you pull them fully into place, when he urges you upright with hands at your waist. 

When you stand, it’s like your bones have gone wrong—heavy at the hips, light at the knees, a deep, interior throb that makes you aware of your own body in a way you’ve never been.

He turns you gently, so your hip leans back into the edge of the table instead of your chest, so you’re facing him. His hair is damp and rumpled, a curl fallen low over his forehead, chest and stomach slick with sweat. 

His gaze sweeps over you, taking in the mussed nightgown, the bite marks blossoming at your throat and shoulder where his teeth worried your skin, the slackness of your mouth, the glassy shine to your eyes. 

Confidence sits easy on him; he looks like a man who’s put in a long night’s work and is proud of the job he’s done.

“You’re gonna cuss me tomorrow,” he says, voice low and a little smug. “When you sit down. When you walk. But you ain’t gonna regret it.”

You swallow, throat thick, his words settling warm and heavy between your ribs.

“No,” you admit, even quieter than before, and there’s no sense lying now. “I don’t… regret it.”

His mouth curves. “Good.”

You look away, suddenly aware of the time, of the silence of the big house up the hill, of how your mama and daddy are sleeping through something that’s gone and rearranged their daughter from the inside out.

“I need to go,” you say, voice small but steadying. “Before my father wakes up for water, or Mama starts callin’ and finds my bed empty.”

His hands fall from your waist, though not without one last, slow sweep along the curve of you, like he’s committing it to memory. 

“Go on,” he says. “Before I talk you into layin’ down on that bed in there and not leavin’ till the rooster screams.”

Your body responds to the image with an exhausted throb, a clench around nothing. 

You push off the table and take a careful step. Your thighs rub, slick, the damp cotton of your drawers pulling against you; you feel a fresh little leak of him inside you, a warm ooze that soaks into the fabric and clings. It makes you stutter a little, the soreness set deep in your core.

Remmick watches the way you move, jaw flexing, something like pride and hunger both tightening his face. 

He reaches for his trousers, tucking himself away, but he doesn’t bother with a shirt yet, doesn’t bother pretending he’s anything but what he is: the man who just fucked you on his kitchen table and filled you til you’re walking crooked.

You make it to the door on legs that still shake. Your fingers land on the frame as you pull it open, the cool breath of the night spilling in. 

Before you step out, you glance back. His eyes are on you, unreadable now, dark and steady in the lamplight.

“You come down here again,” he says, voice quiet, sure, “don’t pretend you’re just here for salve or scoldin’. You knock on my door after dark, I know what you’re askin’ for.”

You hold his gaze, the soreness between your thighs, the fullness inside you, the ache in your muscles all speaking louder than any denial you could muster. 

His eyes follow you out into the dark, low and pleased, and as you cross the yard barefoot, nightgown brushing your knees, his cum warm and sticky between your legs, you know he’s standing there in that doorway shirtless, watching you go with no shame at all, already planning just how he’ll take you the next time you come scratching at his door.

There was a monster in your village.

It’d been countless nights now of going to sleep and waking up to one more empty bed. One more father lost to the predatory tendrils that crept around the dusk, that populated what should have been a safe space. Nobody had the same story, but everybody had the same result. Another funeral for someone’s husband, someone’s father, someone’s son. 

It was clockwork. Always on time and always messy. 

Some patron, or preacher, or diligent civilian would find a horrid, crimson congregation of what could only be the last trace of a losing man. They’d find fear incarnate smudged across the tattered face of the dark’s latest victim. A body torn to shreds. A neck gaped wide for the world to look down upon. 

The town was collectively holding a breath, getting children home and tucked in before the sun even dared kiss the horizon. Nobody was patrolling. Nobody was looking for whatever was doing this. Everyone was focused on only one thing. 

Survival.

What was once a near given, something almost insured, was now constantly in jeopardy. The men lived in consistent contradiction, being scared for their lives while simultaneously being the protectors. Any one of them could be on the chopping block, could be the next family to lose it’s heart. And none of them knew how to deal with it. 

Your father chose to hoard your mother and you inside. The windows remained covered even in the day. The doors stayed locked. Every venture out of your four walls was necessity-driven and carried out begrudgingly. The risk was too grand, the loss too irreparable. It made sense. It was by far the most rational thing to be done. 

But it was hard to sleep once the outside grew cloaked. 

With nowhere to go during the day, the small room that had been designated to you became just about the only sight you saw. It blurred the different times into one barely comprehensible mush of dampening light. You laid down to surrender yourself to sleep, and the static tingles of restlessness would envelop you like a wave. Like it would kill you if it wasn’t listened to. 

You grew more concerned by the day that you’d simply die waiting for life to let you back into it. Or that, in the nonsensical approach of cowering over combating, the assailant would get to everyone. Only men were targeted now, but this nightmareish force would surely return to it’s hunger after the last one had been consumed. Would surely start taking the women. The children. 

The church was spouting warnings of the devil, of a rapture, of Hell itself making it’s way to the land of the living. It would have explained it, if you let it. Who but the devil could do something so inhumane, so ghastly? 

They didn’t know.

But you did.

Not the face, nor the body. You’d seen his eyes. Bright as a candle after lights-out, red as the blood he spilled. 

He walked the perimeter of your house like a sentient premonition, like a preceding calm before the catastrophe. He never got close enough to be deciphered, only to be perceived. He was like a ghost. Like something only there if you didn’t stare head-on. 

Tonight was no different. 

Your body was covered by a too-long nightgown and the unshakeable perspiration that came with Mississippi summers. You could see the scarlet glare way out in the tallgrass away from your home, scorching and unabashed, like the sun itself had split in two and crashed down at your doorstep. 

You felt marked by his presence whenever he visited you, engaging in odd staring contests and wondering if this was what the end felt like. If it was drawn out and premeditated. If he was only waiting for you to slip up, to give him an in. 

You wondered if you were simply wearing the shoes of all the people he’d killed. If he’d hunted them like he does you. If this was part of it. 

Normally, he’d stand so still that your mind began convincing you there was nothing there at all. He would just watch you, and you him. The most conniving bit of voyeurism in exchange for your labored breathing. In exchange for whatever he got out of this. 

Normally he would. Now he was moving.

It was so devoid of anything luminary that he stayed almost invisible even as his strides brought him closer to your window. The only indication you had were those two pin-pricks of illuminated evil growing larger, growing brighter. The impending doom was not impending any longer, it was here. He’d gotten tired of waiting, of stalking. The danger approaching was so Earth-shattering that it seemed to bend time. One moment a demon was shuffling through your front yard, the next brought a man just beyond the glass.

The dull light from your porch emphasized the shadows on his face. Even in the pitch black of a star-less sky, even with nothing but poor lamp light, he was beautiful. Unlike anything you had ever seen. His eyes weren’t even red when you could see him properly, they were more mirror-like. The glossy depth reflected that dim shine right back at you, like it was coming from inside. Like it was hiding just behind his irises. 

It felt like the oxygen solidified in your lungs, like all you’d ever cared for was a rug that he’d just yanked from beneath your feet.

He was smiling at you. As though he were a neighbor. As though this was commonplace. 

You watched his hand raise like you were watching yourself be sentenced to death. His fingers found the perch of the window, pushing it up. Your father had been promising to put a lock on it for months, never making it far down enough on his to-do list to actually manage it. 

So, it opened. The thing slid up without hesitation, like it belonged to him first and foremost. It offered your house to his venomous reputation, to his malevolence. 

You expected him to step inside. Your place was quaint. A chipped one-story that had enough scars and bruises to display the tale of your family. You and him were practically level. It would have been easy to enter, easy to kill you. He could get to your parents without breaking a sweat. 

But he didn’t move. He just stared, small grin draped across his lips at the frightened look you were wearing. 

“Bit irresponsible not havin’ a lock on this.” He patted the middle of the pane, emphasizing the item he was speaking of. “Anyone could just walk up n’ open it.” 

His accent was without a trace, something you couldn’t identify. He spoke like it was made to suit his words, his voice. It sounded old, an ancient and unprecedented sweetness completely saturating the cadence. He didn’t look old. It made you question how a creature of reckoning could have the face of a boy barely past his blooming. It made you question how he was a creature at all. 

“I don’t mean to scare ya’, miss. I’m just -” 

“You the thing killing our men?”

You didn’t have the slightest clue where the nerve to interrupt came from. Even so, you’d barely managed it. Your voice was hoarse as you forced it out, gritty and crisped at the edges. You hadn’t exchanged many words with the opposite sex when they were regular, just as your father requested. This was something different entirely. Having a guy at your window would be punishable enough without you entertaining the devil. You should have screamed, should have run out of the room.

You just couldn’t. 

There was something impossibly captivating about him, down to the most minute detail. His clothes were baggy and slightly mussed, like he wasn’t coming from somewhere defined. Like he didn’t have a home to go back to. Hell, maybe he didn’t. He’d probably be tucked away in it instead of terrorizing your town if he did.

He gawked for a moment, a quiet laugh of undiluted amusement following the expression. 

“Mighty big accusation to be throwin’ around.” 

You could feel the petrification seeping out to your stiff limbs, the sweat forming on your palms.

“I’ve seen you. Your eyes out in the bushes.” 

His face didn’t morph into one of agitation, or the retreat of somebody who just got caught. It stayed exactly as it was, full of some sort of omnipotent enjoyment. Like this was cute. Like this was part of it. 

“My daddy says the devil’s come for us.”

His head cocks to the side almost unknowingly, a scoff riding the coattails of his breath and dispersing once it hit the air. 

“Well, he says a lot. Don’t mean it’s true.” 

The sound of recognition momentarily drew your attention away from your fright, from the tremoured beats of your heart just below your pulsepoint. He spoke like the two were acquainted, like he knew the habits of your scuffed and weathered father. 

“He tell you the history of your village? The real one?” 

There was a tale passed around often about the early days of your tucked-away, little place. It spilled like wine tinted with poison, like something forged in agony too grand to speak of. Too wretched, too ungodly. 

Your father was mayor, way back when. Your home was barely older than he was, and he’d been king of it for a time. Under his rule, raiders and poorly-veiled conquistadors paid many visits, killed the animals, decimated the crops. Decimated the women worst of all. 

It’d been hell, clawing up and out of that muck. But your father had managed it. 

It was a story of nobility, of perseverance. It was usually dipped in sugar and shared with the young ones as a reason to remain hopeful, as a reason to remain strong. It was odd this stranger would know of your traditions, let alone know something you didn’t. 

He took your silence as an invitation to continue, to muddy the waters further. 

“Big man, your daddy. Likes to take credit where it ain’t due.” 

The easiness of his expression didn’t falter, but his eyes grew sharp. It wasn’t obvious, but the minor light made the rising sincerity all the more prominent. 

“He didn’t fix anythin’ back then, I did. I saw what those people were doin’ to the land, to the women, and I made ‘em go away. For a price.” 

His words were potent with impossibility. All of that happened over 40 years ago. He looked like he’d hardly scratched the surface of 29. He read the disbelief you clearly wore, and he continued despite it. 

“Your father was a rotten man. I won’t spoil your image of him, but he ain’t who he seems. I told him, before I did anythin’, no kids. No passin’ on the lineage. I wanted that blood o’ his to die with him.” 

This recounting of events was ludicrous, complete insanity. That truth didn’t stop it from frightening you. Evidently, he was a product of something otherworldly, something beyond the gripes of humanity. If he had made such a deal, you were the only thing out of place. 

You were the disobedience. 

“I warned him, told him I’d come back. ‘n he can blame whatever devil he wants. He knows it’s me, knows why it’s happenin’.”  

It made you wonder why he wasn’t trailing your father, why he seemed so determined to get to you instead of the man who’d yet to reap what he’d sown. It brought you to a nauseating conclusion, one you posed as a question in hopes of getting denial. 

“Are you gonna’ kill me, then? Is that why you’ve been out there?” 

The tremor in your voice made him laugh. When his lips split into a smile, you saw the pin-like tips of his canines. They were closer to a dog’s, or a blade. It was striking, and so startling that you felt the muscles in your abdomen tighten like he was already attacking you. 

“I was plannin’ on it, at first. Knew he’d hate to see his little girl become one o’ me.”

The notion of being changed - in whatever way he was talking about - was strangely dizzying. The thought of letting him turn you into something else, something ghastly. Something wicked. 

It pulsed with a warmth you’d never beared before. An accumulating wet feeling between your legs, a need for pressure. He stared like he knew, like he could sense it. 

“Then, I saw you. ‘n I figured there’s one thing he’d hate more.”

You weren’t really attuned to what he was referring to, just that the way he said it put you through the ringer. There was a slight rasp to his voice, something heady and burnt at the edges. Something lived, something manly. Your breath came in shorter bursts, the tips of your fingers tingling at the feel of the breeze that blew in. 

“What’s that?” 

You caught a peak of his tongue as it wet his lips, a short preface to whatever sin-soaked proposal was sure to spill out. 

“Why don’t you let me in, and I’ll show ya’?” 

The sentiment was odd. He’d opened your window, he was practically already inside with how scarcely it was lifted off the ground. It wouldn’t be hard to step in at all. If he’d done the things he’d claimed to, breaking into your home would be nothing. There was no reason he should be seeking permission, yet here he was. 

You were going to ask why, felt the inquiry sting the tip of your tongue with how eager it was to come out, but he beat you to it. 

“I wanna’ hear you say it.” 

It felt like you’d swallowed one of the big rocks that lined the poorly dug roads. You were betraying your dad. Betraying anyone who’d ever taught you anything, really. This was against every moral that’d been instilled in you, every speck of common sense swept right under the rug.

But it was mind-numbing. It silenced those rabid elder voices that cried for purity, for love. 

This was need. Something so innate it was nearly animalistic. It felt so mortal that you wondered if he could feel it too from so far above you, so far from anything earthly. 

“Um-” The acceptance got caught in your throat, paralyzed by the way he was gazing at you. Ravenous and morbid. Determined like a victor would be, like someone who’d already won. “Yeah, ok. You can come in.” 

It was meek, like your voice was atrophied. Whispered in spite of the buzzes of lighting jolting up your spine. You’d invited the devil in. You’d practically spit in the face of God. In the face of your father. 

You said a prayer to him in the racing crevices of your mind, regardless of your denouncement. It could very well be your final chance to do so.

His boots were caked in the remnants of mother nature, small twigs protruding from the mud crammed into the soles. It was staining the floor from where he now stood, fully in your space. Your hands shook at the sight of his full stature. He wasn’t all that tall, wasn’t all that big. He was just eerie, foreboding. What he didn’t have physically he made up for in energy, the sense of some lovecraftian foreclosure sitting on him more naturally than his clothes did. Like it was just a part of him. Like it was all of him. 

“In all my years, there’s one thing that never changes. You know what that is?” 

As he inched closer, the muscles inside your stagnant legs spasmed with the urge to flee, to get you away from here. Away from him. But you didn’t move.

“I’ve watched death roll off the backs o’ men like him, invincible as they are. But they ain’t fond of losing pretty things. Innocent things.” 

You didn’t clock it immediately, not with the waltz he was leading you through. He didn’t speak directly, didn’t say what he was thinking. It didn’t seem like an attempt to leave you unstartled, to keep you calm. It seemed like he simply knew he didn’t have to, like he knew you were already in. 

It scared you, how unshakable he was. How he spoke like he had your fate pooling in the creases of his palms. The town’s preacher often told the masses to look out for the devil in the little things, the simple pleasures. Surely, this being in your bedroom was far too complex to be pure evil. Surely there were layers to these things. 

“You said you weren’t gonna’ kill me.” You winced at the wobbling of your voice, the fragility of it. If you’d talked any quieter, the wind would have dissolved the words before he could hear them. 

“‘n I meant it.”

He was so close now. You could properly see the freckled spots of his face, places where the sun had bitten down or his skin sunk in. He looked human, for all that was worth. He’d had to have been something close to it at one point. 

The width of his hand lifted to cradle the side of your head. His fingertips were significantly cloud-like. Soft in a way you’d never felt before, even on yourself. He was dressed like a working man, like someone who earned his keep. His touch was ill-fitting, like the barely-sewn flesh of a newborn. Like something that’d been bleached and scrubbed over. Reborn. 

“There are other ways to go about takin’ innocence.” 

The intention behind the statement slammed into you mercilessly. It was enough to knock you clean off your feet had the sentiment been a tangible force. 

It was one thing to extend an invitation. It was endearing, almost. Like a tea party you’d have in your youth, something to be executed and consequently cleaned up.

Letting him in, into your home, into yourself. That wasn’t ladylike. That was something they’d take your head for. 

“Well, I’ve…” It was some hopeless last-ditch effort of warding him off. The brothels a town or so over housed women who knew what they were doing. Who’d discarded the need for marital binding, who’d be a better fit for whatever he was after. “I’ve never been with a man.”

His head shook as you finished, sure but short. A barely-there gesture that carried all his certainty in it. 

His eyes draped below your jaw, smoothing his thumb over your neck from where his hand sat. The prickly edge of something razor-sharp dragged along it. Something quick enough to end you where you stood if he so chose. 

“I’m no man, darlin’. Not for a long time.” 

You felt your lips part at the admission of guilt. You’d known, and he knew that you’d known, but something still shifted at the lack of care. At the lack of coverup. 

Something fizzed in the still pools of his irises, that same radioactive red making the slightest of appearances. It was like his entire form embodied, mostly human with a lick of evil tainting the color. 

“What are you, then?”

It almost hurt to speak with how piercingly tranquil the room was. It felt like you were interrupting something, like you were wiping away the salt circle that’d been poured to protect you. 

“Ain’t important right now. Technicalities and such.” You wanted to disagree, to shake your head, to voice your disapproval; but he was so gentle. His voice was like silk dragged across the tiniest fibers within your ears, reaching the depths of your brain. Reaching places no one ever had. “‘m just someone who can make you feel good.” 

Then, the final choice between Heaven and Hell, 

“You gonna’ let me?” 

You wanted to fool yourself into thinking it was a hard decision, but it wasn’t. Your destiny was predetermined. Had been since the first time you saw him lurking beyond the treeline. 

You gave a petulant nod, feeling that point dig just a little deeper, practically begging to break your most vulnerable skin. It made something deep within you churn rapidly, like a trapdoor swung open underneath your soul. If you focused on it hard enough, you could almost feel the blood that would drip, the life that would drain. 

And when he leaned in, you swore you could taste it, too. An herbal freshness coated the tastebuds on your tongue, as though he’d been chewing mint leaves to mask something metallic. It was strangely pleasant. It was soft, even. Warm in a way you hadn’t been expecting. 

That flavor pallet expanded tenfold when his tongue breached the seam of your joined lips. It was torturously slow, like he wanted you to feel it. Like he was savouring it. 

He moved the two of you as one unit, first sideways, then backwards, aiding your back in the feather-soft descent onto your bed. The house wasn’t empty. The risk you were taking was grand, the punishment of getting caught even grander. But he’d stirred something impulsive, something undeniable. You couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop him. Not even if you wanted to. 

His weight on top of you was like a gut punch, like a jigsaw piece locking into it’s place in the puzzle. There was a slight sound when his mouth left yours, the slick thrill of eager bodies not quite there yet. It added to the novelty, and you felt it ricochet down the rest of you. 

He left a sizzling trail down, stopping where that magnetic pressure had been earlier. Where you expected another slack-jawed kiss to be placed, you instead felt his head straighten slightly. His lips were a ghostly sensation now, hardly touching you but still making their presence known. You felt the tip of his nose, too. He’d aligned his face to fit in the crook of your neck, breathing in until his lungs hit capacity. 

It made you stiffen, partly with confusion, partly with a gross sense of submission. 

“God, darlin’.” The noise he made sounded like a wound, like it was tearing him open. “Can smell the blood pumpin’ through those pretty veins. Bet you taste just as fuckin’ sweet.” 

A rather pathetic sound of your own obedience slipped from your panting chest before you could stop it. You found yourself nodding a little, mind blank and hands grasping his shirt. 

He chuckled a bit seeing you answer something that had not been a question in any sense of the word. 

“Yeah?” He addressed you in the same cadence as the townsfolk addressed the communal dogs. The ones that were friendly enough if you had something to offer. “Yeah, sweetheart. I know ya’ do.” 

The tone of his voice was so low that it seemed to bypass any remaining defences you had, simply walking in and ripping all the warning signs off the wall. His hand was simultaneously pushing the hem of your nightgown up the expanse of your body. He let it rest on the pudge of your lower tummy, stopping right where the top of your underwear began. 

They were plain, old cotton - stretched thin by harsh washboards and years of wear - and utterly soaked. The gusset was stained multiple hues darker, a testimony to the alien effect he was having on your body. On you. 

You half-expected his voice to fill up with that superior tone again, to pin you down straight as the subservient mess he’d made you into, but it didn’t come. He just stared, eyebrows curving inward with a look that was pure famine. 

There was something else, too. Like pity, or remorse. Like he felt bad for all the people who never got to see such a marvelous thing. 

“Little sinner, you are. Imagine your daddy seein’ what you let a monster make of ya’.” 

The thought makes you whimper, both in pain and in some kind of degrading eroticism. You could practically feel the scalding judgement of all those who raised you, of God himself. But it was hard to think about them when you had him in front of you. You’d never understood temptation before, how people could be led so far astray.  

You saw it crystal clear now. 

His finger traced the sopping material from the outside, pushing that cooling stickiness back onto where it’d leaked out of. It would have been unbearably uncomfortable if not for the principle of it, if not for what it represented. 

Finally, after agonizing moments of snail-like movement, he hooked his finger under it and pulled down. Your underwear slid off bear legs without objection, revealing the part of you that was meant to be sacred to the humid night air. 

His index finger swiped through the puddle of your arousal that was reaching the point of overflow, a tiny gasp clawing it’s way out of your throat at the contact. You’d never even touched yourself there. Too thoroughly tangled in the words of God and the mess of men’s standards for wives that you’d never allowed yourself the chance. 

The first purposefully tentative circle he left on your clit brought your hands back to him, had your knuckles clenched so tight that they began to ache. 

“Mm-”

Your instinct had told you to say something - his name, most logically - but you didn’t have it; and your breath was stuttering each time it attempted to shake itself from your chest. So much so that it couldn’t come out coherently, just quiet starts of different pleas that never found their end. 

He slotted his face back in that crook, huffing the scent of your thrumming blood like you were a drug. At the same time, he slid his finger down, pressing into you so slowly it felt cruel. 

“Theeere ya’ go. Open up for me, darlin’.” 

Then, he was pumping. In and out, over and over. The rhythm raised every hair you had, frying away the ends of all your neurons one by one like there was no limit to this, like the two of you could exist here forever. 

His thumb kept the previously abandoned pace on your clit, the muscles in your abdomen feeling tight enough to burst. Something unfamiliar and unfathomably strong was coming quickly to what felt like a peak. 

He could feel you clenching on his fingers, constricting further in a way that must have defied what was physically possible somehow. He could see the slightly baffled tilt of your blissed-out face. But he didn’t want to encourage you. He wanted to force it, to see what it took to get you over. 

“Think I’m gonna’ have to kill him.” He’d said it so remarkably silent, walking the eggshells of the threat like speaking it too loud would wake you right up. “Wanna’ keep you. Can’t do that if he’s around, can I?” 

The edge you were on rattled like marbles beneath your feet, painting a film over the rational parts of your head that were screaming at you to fling yourself away from the demented arms of this stranger. 

You didn’t, though. Didn’t want to, in all honesty. Not when it felt this good. Not when it was so much easier to just nod, to just let him keep touching you. 

“How do you think he’d feel, hm?” You were so close. Enough to taste it, enough that it hurt. “Last thing he sees is his little angel choosin’ the thing he hates. Lettin’ him steal her away.” 

You’d never heard this level of debauchery, of shamelessness. 

“Lettin’ him fuck her knowin’ damn well he killed half her town.” 

That did you in. It was the most euphoric guilt you’d ever felt, such a horrific inquiry into what kind of person you were. 

He’d killed half of your town, and you’d gotten off to it. 

The arch of your back wasn’t high enough to hide all his past victims from your gaze, so you opted to squeeze your eyes shut, to ignore what was so blatantly in front of you. He was a monster, a murderer, and probably the devil himself come to wreak havoc on the Delta. He could have lied to you about your father, about the past, about all of it. In fact, he probably did. You were truly no different than those dogs wandering the grassy fields and scrounging for scraps. 

He had something to offer, so you were as friendly as could be. 

He’d killed half of your town, and you’re fairly certain you’d follow him anywhere. 

Refined women, the women who belonged in dimly lit rooms, were bored, you decided. Nothing tonight would surprise or frighten you. Your eighteenth birthday was celebrated recently, you took it upon yourself to make sure you’d have nights like these and stories to tell, to whom you weren’t sure. A smile spread on your face as you looked at yourself in the mirror, and you knew your parents would turn ghastly pale if they saw you.

Peeking out of your doorway, you listened for any signs of suspicion. Your father’s house hummed quietly beyond the door, grandfather clock ticking in the hall, as if counting down the seconds before ultimate misbehavior. There was the faint clink of china as the maid cleared away supper, humming to herself a bit mindlessly.

You moved carefully, lifting the lid of your vanity as if it might have cried out. Red lipstick, borrowed from a schoolmate, was wrapped in tissue and hidden beneath your fur-lined gloves. You’d drawn the line slowly, steadying your wrist. Once, then again blotted.

Then, your eye makeup, it wasn’t meant to look natural, it was meant to shape. Smoky eyes weren’t meant for girls your age, they were mature, subtle. 

The woman in the mirror stared back at you, with your large eyes and someone else’s mouth.

The dress was new as well, beautiful on your skin even if it was going to be covered by a mink coat. Your father would have called the neckline “smart.” Navy silk, bias-cut, backless. It fell in a line too fluid to be modest when you moved, and it clung when you breathed in. You bit your lip as it made you more aware of your body than Sunday dresses ever had.

Turning sideways, you looked at how the lamplight traced the curve of your hip. You swallowed, you looked older, old enough. With that knowledge, you began stepping out into the hallway, your heels held by your fingers as you tip-toed.

The large door to your father’s study was closed. A green banker’s lamp cast a hard circle of light across his ledger; columns of numbers marched in obedient lines beneath his pen. The scratch of nib on paper carried down the hall like a metronome.

You paused outside the doorway, shoes in hand, silk hem lifted clear of the rug.

He didn’t look up. Your father liked things that could be totaled. Contracts. Inventories. Losses. Reputation most of all. Reputation could be measured in handshakes and church pews and who nodded first on Coppersmith Lane. He did not account for daughters.

Another clock somewhere on the mantel chimed the quarter hour. Somewhere else in the house, you heard a page turn. You moved steadily

The gravel traitorously crunched under your heels as you crossed the garden. You paused by the hedge, heart hammering, waiting for a shout from an upstairs window that never came. The house remained pristine and respectable behind you. You turned your back on it anyway.

Iron Row stretched unfamiliarly ahead in long, uneven lines of brick and soot. Your mother always warned you to stay out of trouble, to not even think of traveling to the market. Factories exhaled all day; thick smoke and smog hung low, refusing to disperse. It had rained earlier that day, cobblestone, shining like fish scales beneath the lamps. 

Your almond-toed heels sounded too sharp against them. Keeping your stride lengthened, you forced your shoulder back the way you practiced in the mirror. Keep your chin lifted, you thought. Eyes ahead, don’t glance. Women who belonged out at this hour didn’t dart their gaze over their shoulders for passerbys.

Men stood in open-lit doorways smoking. Feeling their gazes find you, a small part of you wanted to remind yourself this was for your better persona. One muttered something you pretended not to hear, something that made you pull your coat a bit tighter around yourself. The silk at your thighs whispered when you walked. Coppersmith Lane came into view. So did the Garrison.

It wasn’t like other buildings, it didn’t simply stand at the corner; it seemed planted there, stubborn as a taproot. Red brick dulled to brown by years of soot, windows bleeding light yet clouded with grime and nicotine. The glass was so dark it could have reflected the street instead of revealing the interior. 

You slowed without meaning to. It wasn’t hesitation, you were assessing. From inside came the low thud of boots on boards, the dull percussion of laughter, the clink of glass. Smoke seeped from the seams around the doorframe, carrying the smell of beer and something metallic beneath it.

This moment was imagined by you with a certain elegance. In your mind, you would glide in confidently. A glance or two would follow. You would order something daring and sip it slowly, unimpressed. Instead, your stomach tightened so sharply you pressed your hand there, as if to hold yourself together. 

You could’ve still turned back. Your father wouldn’t have known. The house would’ve swallowed you whole again. But you reached for the handle. The wood was worn smooth where countless palms had gripped it. It yielded under your hand with a reluctant groan. Heat hit you first. Heat and smoke.

The door shut behind you with a solid thud, and the sound of the street cut off like a curtain falling. Inside, the air was thick enough to chew. Sour ale soaked into the beams overhead. Greasy men and workers clung to the walls. Old wood, scarred and dark, held the memory of spills and fights and years of men leaning hard into it.

The floorboards dipped slightly toward the center of the room. The ceiling felt low. Lamps cast yellow halos that left the corners in shadow. The bar stretched along one wall, heavy oak polished by elbows rather than cloth. Behind it, shelves of bottles glinted through the haze. A narrow staircase rose toward the back, its railing worn smooth. 

A dartboard hung crooked near the fireplace, where embers glowed beneath a mantle blackened by smoke. The hearth smelled faintly of peat and spilled porter. Conversation faltered at the scent of perfume, not stopped entirely, but changed.

You felt the shift ripple outward like a stone dropped into water. So extraordinarily foreign in a place you expected to not welcome, but to blend in. A man at a table near the door paused mid-sentence. Another leaned back in his chair, boot hooked over the rung, gaze traveling slowly upward from your shoes to your mouth. 

Someone snorted softly. Someone else nudged a companion with an elbow. You kept walking. Drunken chatter resumed its course, though you could feel eyes staring into your back. Each step sank slightly into boards softened by decades of damp. Your heels made a different sound here, muted, swallowed. The silk at your hips brushed your stockings with a quiet hiss. The bar loomed closer. 

Up close, the wood wasn’t glossy but layered, thick varnish over stains, over scratches. The edge bore shallow cuts where knives had once bitten. A dark stain near the corner had been scrubbed but not erased; the grain there ran darker. You placed your hands on the counter. It was sticky as the mug outside.

The varnish clung faintly to your palms, resisting when you shifted. The bar came just beneath your ribs. You adjusted your stance so you would not appear to be bracing yourself. The bartender approached without hurry as you slid your coat further down your bare back.

Broad shoulders. Sleeves rolled past his forearms. A towel draped over one shoulder like afterthought. His eyes slid over you once, shoes, hem, waist, mouth. They paused at your lipstick.

“What’ll it be?” he asked. His voice was flat, Birmingham through and through.

You swallowed carefully, as though swallowing steadied your voice. “Gin.”

One brow lifted a fraction. “Gin.”

You held his gaze. “Yes.” You were aware of every breath you took.

He reached for a glass from beneath the counter. It had been wiped, not washed; a faint ring lingered at the bottom. He filled it from a tap behind the bar, the water running cloudy before clearing. You wrapped your fingers around the glass. The condensation dampened your gloves.

Your father would never step foot in a place like this. He would speak of it in numbers; losses, risks, associations. He would shake his head at the recklessness of men who conducted business where fists flew.

Your first sip was harsh, burning your throat bittersweetly. At the illicit taste, you managed to cough a small amount back into your glass before clearing your throat. You were thankful that no one was paying attention to you for the first time since you walked in. Minutes passed slowly, you felt as though the night wouldn’t end.

Then the door opened.

A man beside you, who’d been laughing with his mouth wide and gums showing, stopped mid-note. The sound died in his throat as if he choked it down. You refused to turn, believing it to be, hopefully, another young lady.

A chair leg screeched and then settled. Someone cleared his throat. Glass met wood at the bar. Curiosity, piqued. You looked back, your eyes young and wide at the sight of two Peaky Blinders.

Thomas Shelby stepped over the threshold as if the air parted for him alone. Dark overcoat falling clean from his shoulders, the wool uncreased despite the grime of the street. Flat cap angled low, brim cutting a deliberate shadow over his eyes. His brother, you assumed, followed closely.

A cigarette burned between his fingers, smoke curling upward in a pale ribbon. You hadn’t seen him strike a match, he must prefer carrying them between his teeth. The ember glowed steadily, already halfway through. 

The door closed behind them, unhurried. The men nearest the entrance shifted their weight back to clear a path. They knew something you didn’t, or maybe something you were afraid of. 

You heard his name spoken in drawing rooms where heavy curtains rippled against walls and the decanters, crystal. Your father had once said it over supper, fork suspended midair. “Shelby.” Now he was here in the flesh, in your line of sight.

He didn’t look at you right away. He spoke to the barman first. 

The barman straightened, wiping his hands on a rag already damp. “Evenin’, Mr. Shelby.” 

Thomas removed one glove, finger by finger. “Evenin’.” His voice was low. Not loud enough to command the room. It didn’t need to be. 

You should have looked away, you knew that. Instead, you stared. Not because he was handsome, though he was, in a severe, cut-glass way, but because there was something wrong about how still he seemed. As if the world moved around him and not the other way round.

Gin sat barely-started in your hand. The condensation of it dampening your glove. You came there alone, no chaperone, no driver outside, you and your feminine hubris. The Garrison had felt theatrical when you stepped in earlier, upon Thomas's arrival, it shrunk to a meek pub.

He spoke to someone at the back table without raising his voice. The man stood halfway from his chair, deferential without quite bowing. Shelby’s expression didn’t change, a murmur and a nod sufficed.

By then, conversation found another way to spark. Thomas took a slow drag from his cigarette, ember flaring. That may have been when you realized what unsettled you; his stillness. Not motionless, of course. He breathed and blinked, but no motion went wasted. He wasn’t young at all, no restless shifting or scanning.

Your father filled rooms, too, but he did it with volume. A booming voice and presence forced outward. This was much different, this was gravity.

Too late you became aware that you were staring. Too poorly did you attempt to correct it and lower your gaze with the excuse of idle observance. 

Too slow. His eyes found you.

Blue. The color of winter river water beneath a thin sheen of ice. You felt it strike like a fingertip pressed against your throat. Your breath caught before you could prevent it. Heat crawled up the column of your neck, beneath the silk of your dress, pooling beneath the borrowed red on your lips. 

Stop looking at him. Intimidation at its finest caused you to drop your gaze, eyes no longer half-lidded but shy, embarrassed at such a situation. But it was too late.

Unknown to you, that brief exchange was an assessment recorded. He didn’t blink away as other lecherous men had, he didn’t smirk or leer. He measured you. From beneath your lowered, dark lashes, you felt him take you in again.

The dress first, perhaps. Navy silk clinging to your waist and revealing where it shouldn’t cling to a girl who still had to ask permission to dine out alone. The fabric traced the lines of you too honestly. Your waist. The gentle rise of your hips. Not fullness. Not yet. Youth sharpened into something almost dangerous by intention alone. 

Your hands, gloveless around a glass of amber gin, hands perched nervously as you trace the rim out of distraction. As if you didn’t want to seem innocent in your serving choice.

Your heels, good leather, wealthy leather. Polished, not purchased from a market’s stall. Your hair, cut a bit fashionably, but still extremely soft at the edges. As if changing times didn’t phase you just yet. Your skin unlined, unweathered. Roundness lingering in your cheeks, both pairs, that no amount of lipstick or dresswear could disguise.

He knew. You did not at all look like a child, but he’d seen too many women to mistake the difference between one who had chosen the night and one who had slipped out to taste it. His gaze returned to your face. 

You felt the scrutiny linger on your mouth, the precision of a deep red. Not sloppily drawn. Careful, a girl’s attempt at a woman’s armor. Knowing his gaze lingered, you lifted your chin a fraction higher, as if daring him to contradict your mystique.

The corner of his mouth moved, barely. He took a drag of his cigarette without breaking his stare, smoke leaving his lips as he made out the lines of your back.

The room resumed its murmur around you, but the space between his eyes and yours held steady, taut as wire. You became acutely aware of your pulse, of the slight tremor in your fingers where they touched the glass. You set it down carefully to still them. The base clicked faintly against the wood. 

Your throat felt tight. You swallowed against it and found your voice lodged somewhere below your ribs. Look away, you ordered yourself again. Instead, you met his gaze properly. Just for a heartbeat. 

The world didn’t collapse. But something in your stomach dropped as if you had stepped off a curb you had not seen. His eyes sharpened with interest. He tilted his head slightly, studying you as though you were a ledger he meant to balance. The silence stretched long enough for you to feel the weight of it pressing against your skin. 

You rose from the stool. The movement felt exaggerated, though you kept it smooth. Your knees threatened to betray you, but you locked them into cooperation. You smoothed your skirt down your hips, more to give your hands purpose than from necessity. 

He watched every inch of it, every inch of you. You could feel the path of his gaze as you turned toward the door. Not possessive. Not yet. The handle felt cooler beneath your palm when you reached it. The noise of the room seemed muffled now, distant behind the pounding in your ears. 

You stepped back out into the comfortable evening. Dusk clung to the street in bruised shades of purple and smoke. Gas lamps flickered to life along Iron Row, their glow catching the edges of still-wet cobblestone. The air tasted cleaner than the pub but no less heavy. 

You drew in a breath that trembled despite your effort. 

Your gloves were in your clutch. You fumbled them, fingers clumsy, silk snagging on your nails. You forced them on, tugging each one tight over your wrists as if they could restore order to your skin. Behind you, through the half-open door, the murmur resumed its normal rhythm. 

Inside, he had not moved from his place at the bar. He didn’t turn his head to follow you or the full-glass of gin you left. He didn’t need to. 

He took another drag from his cigarette, eyes still fixed on the doorway where you had disappeared, and spoke to Arthur in a tone so even it barely disturbed the air. 

“Who’s that?” 

Now, a month into marriage, you wake before him.

The room is dim, washed in the pale grey that creeps through Birmingham before the sun even commits to rising. Heavy curtains soften the cool morning light but don't keep it out entirely. It pools along the ceiling in thin ribbons, tracing plasterwork you have yet to memorize. The air smells faintly of starch and tobacco, even here, even in silk sheets that’re changed twice a week.

Thomas'ss arm rests across your waist. Not draped carelessly out of fatigue. It lies heavy and deliberate, palm flattened against your stomach as if testing him that you remain where he left you. Even in sleep, his fingers curl slightly, the tips brushing the soft silk of your nightgown. His body is warm at your back, solid. He breathes a steady rhythm in your neck, measured and slow.

You stare at the ceiling instead of turning to look at him. Your thumb traces over his scarred one, perhaps the only pattern you’ve recognized are the ones he’s acquired.

A month. 

The ring, a navette-shaped marquise, presses cool against your finger where your hand rests on his. It catches on the sheet when you flex your fingers. You roll your wrist slightly and feel its weight, a small, polished diamond that seems denser in the mornings than it did at the altar. Thomas shifts, his face coming into your neck to breathe your hair.

Outside, a car rattles over cobblestone, more likely than not, one of his brother’s stopping by as they often did without protocol. The sound travels through the window glass, muted but distinct. Somewhere further in the courtyard, a man calls out, his voice carrying the flat vowels of early trade. The house is quiet, but not peaceful.

Even now, in the grey hush, there’s always a faint tension beneath the silence, like a wire pulled too tight. The pattering footsteps of old maids can be heard, but the younger ones are the ones who like to talk the most about you amongst themselves. A faint crunch of gravel as someone shifts their stance outside. There are always men at the gate, one near the door. They’ll tip their caps to you when you pass, step aside too. They too call you Mrs. Shelby with careful respect.

Turning your head slightly, you look down to see Thomas's eyelashes resting against his aged undereyes, from this perspective, you can count his gentle freckles. Your hip shifts a fraction beneath his arm, testing the small space between his hand and your waist. You feel his fingers tighten. 

“Don’t.” The word is low, roughened by sleep, but it carries an intact edge. You pause, breath stilling halfway in your chest as his eyes slowly open. He doesn’t blink against the warm light seeping in. He simply looks at you, as though he’d been aware of you long before waking.

For a moment, Thomas says nothing. His hand remains on your stomach as he takes in your appearance graciously. His gaze moves slowly over your face in the quiet, hair loose and let-down around your shoulders, the crease at your brow you’d always seem to make when he raised his voice a decibel, and the faint shadow beneath your eyes from a sleep that’s not without overthinking.

Then, he leans in, pressing a kiss to your shoulder, his lips lingering much longer than necessary. Though, his fondness is something you find hard to deny your pleasure to. Leaning in, your hand slides up to the side of his cheek, holding him against you as you sigh tiredly.

“You’re up early,” he says. His voice settles in now, pausing with gentle kisses that trail towards your jaw. 

“So are you.” Your tone comes out steady, much steadier than you feel.

A faint curve touches his mouth as he hears the softness of your tone. “I wasn’t.”

He pushes himself onto one elbow, letting your arm fall slowly back down your stomach. The sheet slides down his chest, revealing pale, muscular skin scored with faint lines that catch the light, scars you’ve traced only once, carefully. Your eyes slowly make out his Forrard tattoo against his muscle. His hand remains at your waist.

He studies your expression, the way you’re leaned back against the soft linen, how your brows still curve as if you disobey. You hold his gaze, despite how easy it would be not to. It’d be simpler to look toward the window, out into the foggy morn, to play the role expected of you in this house with its high ceilings and low voices.

“You didn’t sleep,” he says, not a question. Thomas watches the way your hand holds onto the sheet as you bring it over your chest.

You turn on your back, looking up at him, cheek pressing against his bicep. He smells good, like his cologne. “I did.”

“You moved.” He corrects gently, a hand coming up to hold your cheek as you instinctively press against his palm. You swallow as he rubs your bottom lip. “Everyone moves.”

His thumb shifts slightly against your lips, the smallest deliberate motion. His gaze flick to your mouth, then back up to your eyes. “Not that much.”

The curtains stir faintly with the draft that seeps beneath the window. The light glows marginally stronger, outlining the sharp line of his jaw, the hollow beneath his cheekbone. Mornings like this, Thomas looks less like a man just risen and more like one who’s resumed watch. He’s been like this since the wedding; attentive in affectionate ways.

He notices when your voice tightens at the sound of raised chatter downstairs, holding onto his sleeve as if you’re being the one scolded. When you pause too long at the window overlooking the garden, wondering what other views you can take in without being so domicile. When you linger near the door to the yard as if measuring the distance to the gate. 

You once asked him, standing in his office with a subtle wall of paperwork between you. 

“If you plan on leaving, at least take the carriage,” he’d replied without looking up from the whiskey he was pouring. You’d stood uncertain at the time, your hands fisted in your skirt under the assumed scrutiny.

Your hair was let down, just coming back from visiting the horses. “When may I?” 

The amber liquid had caught the lamplight as he tilted the bottle. Thomas set it down with care, lifted the glass, and only then glanced in your direction. He looked as though he already knew where you’d end up. “Whenever you’d like.”  

He took a sip, gaze already elsewhere. That had been the end of it.  

You know now how quickly he moved after that first night at the Garrison. Arthur had been sent with instructions murmured too low for you to catch. Your family name gathered. Your school records and photos. Parish books, even. The value of your father’s contracts calculated as precisely as any bet placed on a horserace.  

You remember the evening your parents called you into the sitting room. Both of them sitting across from one of the plush booths, maids peering in from behind open doorways. Your mother’s hands were clammy and damp where they clasped her skirt. She smoothed the fabric once, twice, then again, as if it refused to lie flat. 

A letter had been opened, resting in your father’s clenching hand. He cleared his throat and refused to meet your eyes immediately. More concerned with how you met Thomas Shelby in the first place.

“He’s… an ambitious man,” your father had said, choosing the word like it might bruise if handled roughly. Ambitious. As though that accounted for the way neighbors lowered their voices when the name Shelby was spoken. As though ambition alone could empty a bookmaker’s till without argument.  

You said no. First softly, the word barely rising above the ticking clock on the mantel. Then again with enough force that your father’s brows drew together, not in anger, but in something more complicated. The refusal felt unfamiliar on your tongue, as though it belonged to someone braver than you. It left a dryness behind, a faint tremor in your hands that you hid by folding them in your lap. 

Your mother had crossed the room before the silence could settle properly. She took both your hands in hers and squeezed until your knuckles pressed together, her rings biting into your skin. 

“He can offer security.” Her voice carried urgency beneath its gentleness. You could smell lavender water on her cuffs. You could see the faint sheen of worry along her upper lip. 

Your mind had betrayed you then, conjuring the image of the Garrison door swinging inward. The way conversation thinned at the edges when he entered. The men outside who did not laugh, who did not fidget, who stood as if carved into place. You had heard, quietly and more than once, that he did not strike his wife. That he kept a clean house. That he provided. 

A week later Thomas Shelby stood in your parents’ sitting room. Hat in hand, yes, but there was no bend in his spine. His overcoat was impeccably cut, dark wool falling in straight lines. The light from the window struck his profile and sharpened it further, cheekbones like something etched rather than formed. 

His eyes moved across the room once, taking in the furniture, the framed certificates on the wall, the polished clock, and then settled on you. He declined the cigar your father offered with a small incline of his head. “Not just now,” he said, voice low and even. 

He asked about your schooling. About the languages you’d studied. Whether you rode. Whether you enjoyed the theatre. Each question delivered as though he were assessing a ledger entry rather than conducting courtship. His tone remained polite, almost warm. He smiled at your mother at appropriate intervals, reassuring in a way that might have convinced anyone who did not know how to look beneath it. He didn’t once ask whether you wanted him. He didn’t need to. 

When he rose to leave, your father walked him to the door. Their handshake lingered a fraction too long. Your father’s shoulders seemed narrower afterward, his hand remaining at his side as though it had been weighed down. Your mother’s smile trembled at the corners until she pressed it back into place. 

The wedding followed before you could find another no. 

The church smelled of polished wood and cold stone. White lilies lined the aisle, their sweetness heavy in the air, almost cloying. You remember the weight of your veil more than anything else. It brushed against your cheeks when you turned your head, soft but suffocating, muting the world at the edges. 

He stood at the altar already, dark suit cut perfectly to his frame. The congregation parted around him without being told, a quiet radius of respect. When you stepped into view, his gaze lifted. It did not flicker. It did not widen in admiration or soften in tenderness. It held steady, blue and exacting, traveling from the crown of your head down the line of your veil, over the silk of your gown. 

You felt it pause at your throat, where the pulse fluttered visibly beneath pale skin. Then lower, to the shape of you beneath lace and satin. He measured, then. You walked toward him on legs that felt both uneasy. Each step of your satin heels echoed against the stone floor. The organ hummed above you. 

Eyes could be sensed from every direction, but his were the only ones that mattered. When you reached him, he took your hand gently. His grip was firm, not crushing, but decisive. His thumb settled against your knuckles as though fitting into a place already marked. 

The vows moved past you in fragments. Obedience. Cherish. Honor. His voice didn’t waver, nor rush. Each word placed carefully, as if it were an agreement being signed rather than a promise offered. 

When the time came, he lifted your veil himself. The lace caught briefly on your hair before falling back. His fingers brushed your cheek in the process, cool and controlled. For a moment, you were close enough to see the faint lines of his crows feet, the small scar near his temple. 

He looked at you as though the room had emptied. The kiss was gentle, deep, tongue reminding itself to remain where it had been before.. His hand came to your waist, steadying you. His mouth pressed to yours with deliberate pressure, not searching but sealing. The contact lingered just long enough to establish something undeniable. 

You felt the faint scrape of his teeth against your lower lip, the firm line of his jaw as he angled his head. Applause rose somewhere beyond you. He didn’t look away when he drew back. 

That night, in a bedroom prepared for you by other hands, he closed the door with quiet finality. The house had hummed with voices and celebration downstairs, but up there it was contained, insulated from the world. He removed his jacket first, folding it over the back of a chair with methodical care. 

His movements were unhurried, controlled, as though there were no audience left to impress. When he approached you, he didn’t seize. You were frightened, of the thought of being in private with him more dangerous. Thomas touched your face with his fingertips, tracing the curve of your cheek as if reacquainting himself with something already chosen. 

His gaze searched yours for a fraction longer than usual, not asking, not apologizing, simply confirming. When he kissed you then, it was slower. Less for display. His hand slid from your jaw to your shoulder, easing you back onto the mattress without force. He moved with restraint, as though aware of the difference in years, in experience, in certainty. 

There was weight to him, yes, but also precision. He didn’t want to overwhelm you, he wanted to guide you. Even if tears burned down your cheeks, he was careful. Not gentle in the way of novels whispered about by girls at school, but deliberate. 

He watched your face closely, adjusting himself when your breath hitched too sharply, when your fingers tightened against his sleeve. His voice, when it came, was low and brief. “I’ve got you.” 

Your gaze flicks back towards Thomas now. 

He’s shifted closer without you noticing the exact moment it happened, not that you would’ve sunken back, you don’t do that anymore. His breath reaches you now, warm, faintly laced with tobacco and sleep, brushing the curve of your cheek each time he exhales. 

“You’re thinkin’,” he says, fingers resting against your forehead as he plays with your hair. His voice is quiet, but there is no laziness in it. Even in this half-light, even with the imprint of the pillow still faint along his temple, he sounds alert. 

“I usually am,” you murmur. The words come softer than you intend. Your throat feels tight from holding too much inside. 

His eyes never leave your face. His thumb shifts where it rests against your waist. Slowly. The pad of it traces a line just beneath your ribs, not quite a caress, not quite idle movement either. He follows the rise and fall of your breathing as if he’s decided belongs to him. 

“About what?” Nothing in his question is impatient, and that’s what makes your pulse stutter under his hand. 

You tell yourself it’s because he’s watching you so closely. Because he’s always watched you this way, as though waiting for the smallest fraction in your composure. “Nothing worth losing sleep over,” you say softly. 

Thomas's gaze sharpens at that. You feel it like a shift in pressure. As if you’ve said something worth causing aggravation. “Sleep isn’t what you’re losing, love,” he replies. 

His thumb drifts again, lower this time, mapping the narrow line where silk meets skin. The touch is unhurried, testing. You feel heat gathering beneath it, blooming outwards in quiet betrayal. Your hand meets his, holding it gently as he leans in, kissing your collarbone.

“You think too much in the mornings,” he says. His hand, holding yours, slides from your waist to your hip, fingers spreading slightly as if to anchor you there. He leans in further, his forehead nearly brushing yours. The air between your mouths thins. “You wake up, already halfway gone,” he murmurs. 

“Gone where?” His gaze drops to your lips. He doesn’t answer immediately. The pause stretches just long enough for your stomach to tighten. 

“Somewhere I can’t see.” 

You search his face for mockery finding none, just steady blue, but threaded now with something else. Not softness. Something more guarded than that. Something he doesn’t name. 

“You see enough,” you say as your gaze lowers, though the admission comes out less certain than you mean it to. 

He hums faintly in his throat, unconvinced. His hand leaves your hip only to cup your jaw instead. His fingers are cool at first against your skin. His thumb presses lightly just beneath your ear, tilting your face upward. 

“I see what’s mine,” he says. The words settle low in your stomach, heavy and warm. 

“And what’s that?” you ask, a playful lilt in your tone. You do not know why you push him. Perhaps to hear how far he’ll go. 

“This,” he says simply. His mouth closes the space between you. 

The kiss begins as pressure. His lips brush yours once, testing, before returning with more intent. His hand remains firm at your jaw, guiding the angle. You feel the slow exhale he releases through his nose as your mouth parts beneath his, how his tongue lathes over yours salaciously. There’s no rush in him. He takes his time, as though proving something neither of you has said aloud. 

His other hand slides back to your waist, fingers curling into the silk of your nightgown, drawing you closer until your body aligns with his. Your hand finds his shoulder without thinking. The muscle beneath your palm is solid, warm. He deepens the kiss gradually, not demanding, but coaxing. The slow drag of his lower lip against yours sends a shiver down your spine. 

When he pulls back, it’s only enough to look at you. To take in your flushed cheeks and swollen lips. Your breathing is uneven now. You hate that he notices. You hate more that you know he does. 

“There,” he says softly. The word almost to himself. His thumb brushes your lower lip, wiping away the faint smear of color left from last night’s lipstick. “Still here.”  

His gaze holds yours a moment longer, searching for something you can’t name. Then his mouth curves faintly, and he leans down again, this time without hesitation, without pause, kissing you with a depth that leaves no room for distance, only the slow, deliberate surrender of breath and thought and the fragile illusion of escape. 

The morning light strengthens, cascading in pale bands across the sheets. It outlines the planes of his cheekbones and catches in his eyes, sharpening the blue to something almost metallic. His thumb lingers at your jaw before he releases you, pushing himself upright. The day begins around him quickly. 

But by evening, the estate has settled into a different kind of quiet. One that’s domestic, far away from the world of business.

You’re brushing through your hair at the vanity as the fireplace snaps softly from behind the grate, sending up small bursts of amber that flicker against the walls. The curtains are drawn tight against darkened cobblestone, thick velvet muting the nighttime of the outside world to a distant hum. The air carries the faint tang of his cigarettes, woven into the starch of freshly pressed linen and the polish of old wood. 

Gentle fingers rest lightly against the edge of the mahogany wood, surface gleaming beneath the lamplight, smooth enough to mirror gold and shadow in molten streaks. Your reflection hovers in the glass, bare shoulders above the neckline of your evening dress, the delicate band of your wedding ring catching the light as your hand shifts. 

Your breathing is visible in the slight rise and fall at your collarbone. You tell yourself your expression is composed, that you’re more developed than the mirror shows. 

Behind you, the door clicks shut. You don’t turn. You always know when Thomas enters a room. The air adjusts, tightening a fraction. The fireplace seems to steady its crackle. 

Even the quiet rearranges itself. His shoes make almost no sound against the persian rug, yet you feel him cross the space between the door and your back. It is not noise that announces him. “Stay there,” Thomas says. Low, even. Not a request.

Your fingers tighten slightly on your brush, feeling the warmth of your hold against the handle. On the polished surface before you lies no velvet box tonight. No hinged lid waiting to be lifted. You swallow as he approaches, looking up at him in the reflection before he whispers under his breath. “Beautiful girl.” 

Thomas's eyes linger on yours through the looking glass. He steps in close behind you, hands finding your waist without hesitation, palms settling with unerring familiarity. Heat seeps through the thin fabric of your dress. He doesn’t grip. His thumbs press lightly into the curve of your sides before sliding upwards. 

Shivering as he traces up your gown, over the sides of your breasts before pulling something from his sleeve. A necklace. The soft gold catches in the lamplight deliberately. A heart-shaped locket, heavy enough that you can sense its weight even from his palm.

“Thought you’d like something a little less mature, love,” he murmurs. The words brush the shell of your reddening ear, the faint rasp of his voice vibrating through you. Less mature.

Your gaze flickers towards your own reflection. The locket gleaming as he dangles it between his thick index and middle finger. You almost smile at the phrasing; as if you’re not already his wife, as if the ring on your finger doesn’t already gleam with olden finality.

His breath drifts into your hair. Thomas inhales slowly, the scent of Lady York lingering as his chest expands against your back. He likes to do that sometimes before he leaves in the morning, too. As though carrying something of yours with him into smoke-filled rooms and threatening deals.

Thomas's right hand, the one not holding the locket slips onto your side unhurried. He rubs your hip, tracing the laced edge of your chemise slip beneath your evening gown. Slowly, Thomas traces higher until reaching your ribs, rubbing the expanse of fabric below your ample breast. 

You feel your pulse quicken before you can stop it, his hand has already found your pulse at your neck. A faint breath of amusement warms your hair. “Still fast,” he says quietly. 

You lift your chin, eyes focusing on his through the mirror. “You startle me.” 

“I don’t.” He says it calmly, almost conversationally, and the certainty in it sends a different kind of shiver through you. The acknowledgement makes you smile.

“Let me, love,” he adds. You lower your hands without argument. 

The necklace is cooler than you expect when he picks it up. The chain whispers faintly as it slips between his fingers, metal sliding against skin. He brings it around your neck, his knuckles brushing the sensitive hollow at your nape. 

You instinctively tilt your chin further upward, exposing your throat. 

The clasp clicks shut with a quiet, decisive sound. He doesn’t withdraw. Instead, his hands linger at the base of your neck. One thumb drifts forward, guiding the locket until it rests precisely at your collarbone. The gold warms quickly against your skin, the weight settling into place as though it has always belonged there. You look at it in the mirror. 

Ornate without excess. The engraved lines catch the light in sharp, deliberate patterns; your initial and his in cursive script. Behind you, his eyes lift to meet yours in the reflection. 

The bedroom holds its breath. His gaze doesn’t wander the way other men’s might. It fixes onto the way your lips curve in a gentle smile. At the knowing of his subtle claim, charming you with delicacies. There’s something almost reverent in it, and beneath that, something far more possessive. 

“Perfect girl,” he murmurs, the words escaping like a thought not meant to be heard. 

Your throat tightens. His hands slide from your shoulders down to your waist again, fingers spreading wide as if reacquainting themselves with territory already claimed. Thomas draws you back against him until the line of your spine aligns with his chest. The steady beat of his heart can be felt through his shirt. 

You search your reflection. The locket gleams against your throat, a bright, deliberate heart resting where your pulse beats strongest. Lamplight slides across its engraved edges, catching in the hollow at the base of your neck. Your cheeks hold a faint flush that deepens when you tilt your chin. Your lips are parted slightly, softened by his earlier kiss, though you don’t remember parting them.  

You don’t see the girl who stood at the Garrison bar with borrowed lipstick and a practiced stare.  You see someone composed. Chosen.  

His mouth brushes your cheek, then the angle of your jaw. The kisses are unhurried, measured. Each one placed with quiet precision, as though he is charting territory only he understands. His breath warms the sensitive skin beneath your ear before his lips follow, slow and deliberate.  

“I’ll give you the world if you ask for it, princess,” he murmurs. The endearment lands softly, almost tender.

His hands tighten fractionally at your waist, drawing you back until your spine presses fully against him. You feel the steady beat of his heart through the layers of fabric. His thumb drifts along the curve of your hip, then stills.  

“I’ll give you anything,” he continues. The words settle between you, heavy and sincere in their own way. 

The fire shifts in the grate with a sharp snap, sending a scatter of sparks upward. You watch them in the mirror for a moment, their brief flare and fade. His mouth lingers at your neck, then pauses. You feel his breath change.  

“And what would you ask for?” he asks quietly, his lips gently pressing against your pulse.

You consider the gold at your throat. The silk at your waist. The warmth of him behind you. You think of the house with its tall windows and guarded gates. Of shopkeepers who bow their heads and neighbors who lower their voices.  

Your fingers lift slightly, brushing the locket as if to test its weight. Thomas moves up from behind you, his arms encircling your waist.

“I don’t know,” you admit.  

He exhales softly, almost through his nose, and the sound brushes your hair. “That’s because you’re tryin’ to think of the right answer.”  

Your gaze flicks to his in the mirror. He watches your reflection, not the jewelry. “Is there one?”  

“There usually is.” His hand leaves your waist and slides upward, not possessive now but guiding. His fingertips skim your shoulder, then your collarbone, tracing the line just above the locket. 

“You don’t have to stand so straight all the time,” he says after a moment, before chuckling against your scalp. “It’s like you’re imitating me.”

The remark catches you off guard. “I’m not-”  

“You are.” There’s no accusation in it. Only certainty. 

“You walk into a room like you’re negotiating terms.” His mouth curves faintly. “Chin up. Eyes level. Measuring.”

Thomas slowly begins massaging your shoulders as you huff, a small pout threatening to reveal itself to him as your cheeks flush with embarrassment. You feel heat rise along your throat, though his tone is mild.

“I don’t want to look foolish.”  

“You don’t.”

The response is immediate. His hand slides down your arm, taking your wrist gently. He turns you toward him, not sharply, just enough that you have to meet his eyes without the mirror between you.

“You don’t have to be so grown all the time,” he says. The words are quiet. 

You search his face for mockery and find none. Only that steady focus. “You think I’m pretending,” you say carefully, “like I’m some unmannered... temptress.”

He smiles with his teeth and shakes his head, lowering his stroking fingers until reaching your smaller hand. “I think,” he replies, brushing his thumb across the inside of your wrist where your pulse flutters, “that you’re trying to be someone you aren’t.”  

The room feels warmer, the he fire humming behind you. You’re aware of how young your skin looks in his, the flesh smooth, the veins faint beneath it. You look down at both of your silver bands barely touching each other, the sacred covenant they entail.

“I’m your wife,” you remind him softly.

His gaze warms a fraction, not in weakness, but in consideration.

“You are,” he agrees. “That doesn’t mean you have to carry the whole world on your shoulders yet.” 

Yet. The word lingers. He lifts your hand slightly, studying the ring there. His thumb circles the band once, thoughtfully. 

“You’re allowed to laugh too loud,” he says. “To want things that aren’t sensible. To ask for sweets instead of diamonds.”  

A faint crease appears between your brows. “You bought me a diamond bracelet last week.” 

 “I did.”  

“And now you’re telling me to ask for sweets?”  

He huffs a quiet breath that might be amusement. “I’m telling you,” he says, stepping closer, “that I don’t need you to be anything but what you are.”  

Your gaze drops briefly to the space between you, to the line of his tie, the rise of his chest. “And what is that?” you ask.  

He tips your chin up with two fingers, not commanding, steady. The fire has settled into a patient glow by now, embers sending up tiny sparks that die against the chimney. You can feel the locket’s weight against your throat with each shallow breath you take, a small, hot presence at the base of your neck where silk meets skin.

“You’re young,” he says simply. “Be young.”  

The tone surprises you, carrying none of the ledger’s economy you’d come to expect from him. It isn’t the blunt currency of bargain; it sounds, oddly, protective. You search his face for the usual hard geometry, the absence of irony leading you to his intimate stare.

“I don’t want to seem like…” You drift, quieter now. You feel ridiculous voicing them, as if confessing a private practice of disguise.

Sometimes, you’d been careful on purpose; a lifted chin, slow smiles, and practiced indifference you’d learned from Thomas at parties. For him, it’s armor, for you, a costume.

“You won’t,” he assures you with a swift and gentle turn of your bodice to face him. His hand moves to your waist, gentler this time. His thumb brushes the edge of the locket, letting it sway slightly against your skin. 

“Stop trying to look older than you are,” he murmurs. “It doesn’t suit you.” 

Your breath catches.

“What does?” you ask, wanting to see whether he’ll answer with more contract talk or with something that belongs only to you. He laughs then, a sound that surprises you as it softens the line at his mouth. It’s low, private, like a thing meant for safes.

“This,” he says, and when the single word falls it comes with the light movement of his hands: not letting go, but opening enough that you can read the shape of his meaning. 

He tips your chin up with the pad of his thumb, exposing the pale line of your throat, the place where the locket nestles warm. “Not all the time,” he adds quickly, as if he fears being mistaken for a fool with sentiment. 

“Not that you should throw things away. But laugh louder, love.” His hands come to hold your shoulders, squeezing them together.

“Wear the color you like without counting the years. Dance in the kitchen at two in the damn morning if it pleases you. Let someone else be sure for a while, let me take care of it all.”  

You feel heat, embarrassment, maybe, and something stranger like relief, rising behind your ribs. The offer of small rebellions sounds almost dangerous when it comes from Thomas; from the man whose name shapes the town and whose presence can make a room full of men hush. 

How can you accept the liberty he proposes without conceding that you had, up to now, been playing a part he or anyone else could interpret at will?  

“So, not always grown?” you say, testing the way the words fit in your mouth. You let your voice wobble on the last syllable deliberately, watching his reaction. 

“Not always,” he agrees.

He slides his hand up through the hair at the nape of your neck and presses his forehead against yours. The motion closes the distance between thought and action; a small, private collusion. 

His breath warms the hollow of your ear. “Be reckless in ways that don’t ruin you,” he whispers. “I’ll cover the rest.” 

There it is again, that promise that feels like a shelter. 

Your laugh comes out before you can stop it, brittle and honest, and he matches it with a smile that softens his whole face. You let your hands leave your lap and splay against his chest, feeling the steady beat there, a counterpoint to the panic you’d learned to keep at bay. 

“There’s my spoiled girl.” Thomas smiles, kissing you quickly.

The words brush over you in a tone that might be teasing, but the way his hand tightens at your waist makes it something else, something indulgent, edged with ownership. 

You feel the laugh fade from your mouth, though the warmth the kiss sparked still lingers in your chest.

“I don’t recall being spoiled,” you reply warmly, though your voice carries less bite than intended. 

Your palms are still spread against his chest, fingers grazing the line of his waistcoat. The fabric warm beneath your hands, faintly scented with tobacco and starch. You can feel the steady thud of his heart under the layers, unhurried, certain. His eyes drop to your mouth before lifting again. 

“No?” he murmurs, as though considering it. “You laugh at me. You question me. You look at me like I owe you something.” His thumb traces the seam of your bodice, slow and deliberate.

“That’s not how most people stand in front of me.” The reminder slides between you like a blade wrapped in velvet. 

You tip your chin slightly higher, meeting his gaze without flinching. “Perhaps you should stop standing so close.” He huffs a quiet breath through his nose, not quite a laugh. 

Instead of stepping back, he leans in, pressing the line of his body more firmly to yours. The contact steals the air from your lungs in small, controlled sips. His hand moves from your waist to the laces at your back, fingers testing the knot there without undoing it. 

“Stay,” he says softly. 

The request settles in your stomach. Not an order barked across a room. Just that low, even tone meant for you alone. You become acutely aware of every inch of yourself, the way your shoulders draw in, the rise and fall of your breathing, the faint tremor in your hands as they hover uncertainly at your sides. 

His fingers work the laces loose with practiced patience. Each tug loosens the bodice a fraction, the fabric easing its grip on your ribs. You feel the heat of him close behind you, feel his breath ghost across the exposed skin at the nape of your neck. 

“You hold yourself too tight,” he murmurs, more to the stubborn laces than you. “Even now.” 

“Maybe I have reason,” you whisper, though the protest lacks force.

The gown slackens further, and you draw a deeper breath than you had all evening. It feels almost indecent, the way relief mingles with anticipation. 

The dress slips from your shoulders under his guidance, careful hands catching the fabric before it can pool at your feet. He sets it aside with an attention that surprises you, smoothing it over the back of a chair as though it were something precious rather than an obstacle. 

When his hands return to you, they don’t rush, they skim along your arms, down to your wrists, then back up, mapping the shape of you as if reacquainting himself with a claim he had already made.

You turn back to face him, suddenly unwilling to remain half-hidden. You can see it in the way his jaw tightens, in the measured way his gaze moves from your face downward and back again, lingering without apology.

“You don’t look spoiled now,” he says quietly. 

“What do I look like, then?” you ask, though your voice comes softer than before.

He steps closer, closing the last inches of space between you. His hand comes up to cradle your jaw, thumb pressing lightly beneath your lower lip. 

“My wife,” he answers, not as a boast, not as a threat, but as a simple fact he expects the world to accommodate.

The word sends a slow warmth down your spine, pooling low and insistent. You reach for him, fingers moving to the buttons of his waistcoat. If he notices the slight tremor in your touch, he doesn’t comment. He only watches, eyes hooded, as you work each button free. 

The fabric parts under your hands, revealing the crisp linen of his shirt beneath. “You’re staring,” you murmur. 

“Mm.” His hands slide to your hips, drawing you closer until the layers between you feel negligible. “I’m allowed.” 

You roll your eyes, but the gesture lacks conviction. The final button comes undone, and you push the waistcoat from his shoulders. He shrugs out of it easily, letting it fall wherever it lands.

Your fingers move to his collar next, loosening it, tugging it open just enough to expose the line of his throat. His breath changes. It deepens, roughened slightly, though his hands remain steady. 

“Careful,” Thomas warns, but the word carries no real restraint.

“Be foolish sometimes,” you echo softly, meeting his gaze with a challenge that makes his mouth curve. 

He doesn’t answer with words. Instead he bends and captures your mouth in a kiss that carries underlying desperation. His hands slide up your back, fingers splaying wide. 

You feel the shift in him, the protective promise giving way to something more immediate, more urgent. Not careless, never that, but eager in a way that makes your pulse stutter, yet again. When he pulls back, it’s only far enough to look at you, to take in the flush rising along your cheeks, the quickened rhythm of your breath. 

“Bed,” he says quietly, the single word thickened by want.

You don’t argue. Instead, you wrap your arms around his neck, letting him carry you, the fire casting long shadows against the walls as the night folds in around you.

Thomas’s breath steadies against your neck, not yet ragged with desire, but measured with control. The kind of control that makes you anticipate this moment more than any demand or threat. 

His fingers trace the line of your stocking where silk meets skin, following the seam with the same precision he uses when he studies ledgers. The touch is unhurried. As though confirming something he already owns. 

“Relax.”  It’s not a request. Your spine stiffens its arch anyway. 

The mattress dips beneath his knee as he shifts closer, and his other hand slides to your lower back, broad palm spreading, anchoring you where you sit. He doesn’t force you down. He hardly needs to. The pressure is firm enough to remind you of the size of him, the certainty of him. 

You become acutely aware of the difference in years, in experience. The ring on your finger feels heavier in this light. You’ve been married scarcely long enough for the housemaids to stop staring at you with curiosity. 

He’s been a husband before. He knows how this goes.

His mouth brushes your neck. Not quite a kiss. The warmth lingers without claiming. He inhales, and for the first time, you catch the faint shift in him, the restraint drawing tight beneath his skin.

“Steady yourself, love.” 

You swallow. “I am steady.”

His thumb slides a fraction higher along your thigh, testing the truth of that. Your breath betrays you before your pride can intervene.

“Look at me.” The command from him is soft. You turn your head, and his eyes meet yours in the dim glow of the fire. They’re not wild. As if he’s gauging not just your reaction, but his own. There’s whiskey and smoke on his breath, but there’s also hesitation, faint but real, flickering beneath the surface like something he does not allow many to see. 

“You understand what this is,” he says, quieter now. Not a question. Not quite a statement. Your heart beats hard enough that you feel it in your throat.

“Marriage,” you answer carefully. 

Thomas’s jaw tightens. “More than paper.” 

His hand moves higher, not invasive, not abrupt, but with a certainty that leaves no room for pretending innocence. He watches your face as he does it. Every shift of your mouth. Every hitch in your breath. He doesn’t look away. 

“Don’t make this something it isn’t,” he says. His forehead lowers until it rests briefly against yours. The contact is startling in its softness. “I won’t hurt you, sweetheart.” The promise is simple. 

Your hands rise slowly, almost cautiously, until your fingers brush his jaw. The stubble there scratches your palm. He stills at the touch. It is the smallest pause, but you feel it.

“I know,” you whisper. Something in his expression flickers. Relief, perhaps. Or something closer to fear. 

He kisses you, not with hunger, not yet. It’s slower than before. His mouth moves against yours with restraint, as if he is reminding himself that you aren’t a conquest to be taken, but a wife to be kept. 

“You belong here,” he murmurs, the words almost inaudible. “With me. To me.” 

His lips finally touch your neck again, this time with more intent. The kiss is soft but insistent, a brand. A promise. His grip tightens briefly in your hair, then loosens, fingers smoothing the strands back into place as though correcting himself. 

“You’re my girl,” he says against your lips, the words roughened by something deeper than desire.

You hesitate only a heartbeat before answering. “I’m your girl.” 

Your mouth parts beneath his, from the simple fact that you forget to guard yourself in time. He feels it. The shift is immediate, though subtle. His inhale falters as his tongue weighs onto yours. His hand tightens in your hair, not enough to hurt, but enough that you feel the decision in it. His composure does not shatter outwardly. It draws inward, condenses, like heat forced into a smaller space. 

“Greedy,” he murmurs against your mouth.

There’s no mockery in it. If anything, the word lands closer to approval. He kisses you deeper, and the restraint he has been wearing all evening thins to something transparent. His tongue traces the seam of your lips, slow, testing. 

When you respond, tentative at first, then with more certainty, his breath roughens. He lowers you back against the mattress without breaking the kiss, one hand braced beside your head, the other still threaded in your hair as though he needs the anchor. The weight of his body hovers, controlled. He doesn’t collapse his hips onto yours. 

The firelight flickers across his face, catching the hard angles of his cheekbones, the scar at his temple. His eyes search yours with a look you have seen across boardroom tables and over betting slips.

There’s hesitation. 

“You want more, love?” he asks. His voice low, stripped of the sharpness he uses with other people. Your throat feels dry. You nod anyway. 

For a moment he just watches you, as if testing whether you understand the weight of that answer. Then he exhales through his nose, almost a laugh, but not amused.

“Christ,” he mutters, more to himself than to you. 

He shifts, settling between your thighs with care. The pressure is deliberate, his body aligning with yours in a way that makes your breath hitch. He pauses there, giving you space to push him away if you choose to. You don’t. 

Your hands hover uncertainly at his shoulders before gripping the fabric of his shirt. His palm slides along your hip, thumb pressing into the curve as though steadying both of you. He moves with patience that feels heavier than urgency ever could.

When his fingers slip beneath the hem of your chemise skirt, the contact is warm, unhurried. He traces the edge of your stocking again, following it upward inch by inch, giving you time to feel every second of it. 

“You’re trembling,” he says quietly.

You are. The tremor runs through your thighs and into his hand.

“Not afraid,” you manage softly. His mouth tilts slightly. It’s not the sharp, public smile. This one is smaller. Private. 

“Good,” he says. “Because I won’t rush.”

There’s something in that tone that makes your chest tighten. He leans down and kisses you again, slower now. His lips move with a kind of concentration, as if memorizing the shape of your mouth. 

When his hand slides higher, skimming the delicate edge of your undergarments, both of you go still. The air shifts. His breath catches audibly. His eyes lift to yours, and for the first time tonight, you see something unguarded there. Not lust alone. Something closer to uncertainty.

“Tell me you want me,” he says.

The words aren’t possessive. They’re raw. 

“I do,” you whisper.

His eyes search yours one last time, as if he expects the answer to change. When it doesn’t, something inside him settles. Not completely. Thomas Shelby doesn’t surrender completely to anything. But enough. 

The words settle into him like a benediction. His shoulders relax incrementally, the tension that's been coiled in them for hours finally easing. He doesn’t rush. That’s not in his nature when it comes to you, but he doesn’t hold back either. 

His fingers slip beneath the delicate edge of your lacy undergarments, and the touch is as if he's afraid of breaking something precious. You’re wet, not sopping, but damp.

“Fuck,” he mutters, the curse soft against your skin.

His other hand slides down your back, fingers curling into the fabric of your chemise. He pulls you closer, aligning your bodies with a precision that speaks to years of careful planning, even this.

Even intimacy with him feels calculated in some fundamental way, as if he's mapped out every possible reaction. As his fingers trace the soft outline of your slit through the chemise, he breathes out slowly through his nose, jaw clenched as though fighting some internal war.

“Tell me again,” he says, his lips brushing your ear.

“Tell me you want me. Not the idea... Not what I could be for you.”

His other hand’s thumb presses against your throat, and you feel him take hold of your neck, pressure emitting a breathy moan from your lips. “You. All of you,” you whimper, and mean it.

His breathing hitches. For a moment, his control slips; you see it in the way his hand trembles against your cunt, the way he presses his forehead to yours.

“Sweet girl,” he breathes, the word strangled. 

His fingers sink deep into your cunt, making you whine as his thick knuckles curl into your sweet depths. Thomas feels you lean into his neck, your small hands clutching at his shirt like a stretching cat. The sound you make, soft and helpless as your nails gently claw his back, it does something to him. Something he doesn't have a name for.  

Thomas’s digits are fully inside you now, knuckles pressing into your tight walls, the feeling of your wetness almost overwhelming to him. 

He’s seen bodies before. Used them for his own pleasure when the loneliness consumed him.

But this is different. It’s you.

He holds you tighter, the arm wrapped around you pulling you flush against his chest. You can feel his heartbeat, steady and strong against your ribs. The scent of him fills your senses.  

“Shhh,” he murmurs against your hair, though you’re not sure what’s troubling you more. The unfamiliar fullness or the way he’s looking at you in a way you’ve never been before.

He shifts his fingers inside you, watching your face in the flickering firelight. The shadows play across his sharp cheekbones, his jaw, that scar at his temple. You look up at him, whimpering soft noises.

He looks like a man who's seen hell and survived it. You wonder if this, you, are part of his salvation or another layer of damnation.  

“You're squeezing tight,” he breathes, the admission small and rare. His thumb finds your clit, stroking with a gentleness that's almost contradictory to the rough man he is in every other moment.  

“Thomas,” you gasp.

He kisses the top of your head, holding you like you might break if he moves too fast. His arm slides down from your throat to encircle your waist, holding your elbows behind your back as he grips you.

“I know, sweetheart.”

He feels you tighten around his fingers, your body trying to accommodate him with small, fluttering movements that make his breath catch. He adds another finger, pushing in slowly, deliberately, giving you time to adjust.

“Christ, you’re so fucking beautiful like this,” he murmurs, his lips against your ear. His words are rough, sincere in a way he rarely allows himself to be. 

You write gently as his wrist rotates gently, the obscenity of his actions blurring into his gentle cradling of your back. It’s as if there’s a knot of fire within your core, something unfamiliar, something you didn’t allow yourself to feel the night of your wedding.

“So perfect. Taking me like you were made for it.”

His hand tangles deeper in your hair, holding your head steady as if he’s afraid you might disappear if he lets go. Not that he’d ever say it aloud, but his grip tightens, possessive and desperate in a way that has nothing to do with domination and everything to do with need. He slides his fingers in and out of you slowly, testing, preparing. 

You can feel him watching your face in the firelight, studying every expression that crosses your features. There’s something raw in his eyes, a vulnerability he rarely shows, like he's checking in with you, making sure you’re still with him.  

“Tell me if you need me to stop, yeah?,” he says, though his voice suggests he’s terrified of the answer being yes.  

Nodding, a small whimper escapes from your throat. His thumb brushes over your clit again, and your hips buck off the mattress involuntarily. He groans at the sight, low and guttural.  

“Fuck,” he breathes, and then he’s kissing you again, deep and hungry, as if he can't get enough of you. His fingers move faster now, scissoring inside you, stretching you open for what's coming next.

“You're going to take all of me, aren’t you?”

Your breath is a sweet hum in his mouth as your voice tinges with soft whining. You nod, his lips still attached to yours with a connection that borders manic.

“Mmm… Yes, Tommy,” you manage breathlessly. 

Thomas hears you say his name like that, Tommy, and something in him cracks completely. “Fuck,” he breathes against your mouth, his fingers sinking deeper, faster.

He watches your face, the way your eyes go hazy and unfocused, the way your lips part around his name. It's a sight he’ll burn into his memory.  

His thumb presses harder against your clit now, rubbing in slow circles that make your thighs tremble. He feels you clenching around his fingers, your body getting ready to come for him. The thought makes his breath hitch.  “Come for me,” he commands softly, his lips trailing down your neck.

His voice cracks on the words. “Come 'round my fingers like a good girl.”

Knowing you’re both so vastly different in age makes him feel a wave of guilt so sharp it almost hurts. You’re so young. So perfect. So good for him in a way that feels almost obscene. But looking at you, watching you trust him with this, with your body, with your pleasure, he can't find it in himself to regret it.  

“You're mine,” he whispers, his free hand sliding from the grip he has on your elbow into the dip of your waist, cupping your breast through your chemise. His thumb brushes over your nipple, feeling it harden under his touch. 

You arch as he roughly gropes your chest, looking away with a hot flush on your cheeks before feeling him press open-mouthed kisses to your neck, up to your soft cheek.

“My sweet girl.”

His fingers move with increasing urgency now, and you can feel him hard against your thigh, can feel the tension building in his shoulders, the way his jaw is clenched tight. He's fighting himself, trying to hold back, but you're too perfect, too willing, too his.  

“Tell me you're mine,” he demands, nipping at your earlobe. “Say it while I fuck your little cunt with my fingers.”

Your cheeks flush with heat as you whimper quickly, “y-yours…”

Your orgasm is at the brink, and when Thomas slowly arches his fingers, you cum on his hand. He watches you unravel, your body shuddering and clenching around his fingers in waves that make his breath catch. The sight of you, so lost in pleasure, so utterly his, does something to him that he’ll never be able to part from.  

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he breathes, watching your glistening cunt gush out onto his wrist. Your knees are shaking at the edge of the bed as you huff, your stockings hanging from your ankles like soft chains.

“Tommy,” you huff, eyes brimming with overstimulated tears as he cradles you in his muscular arm, rubbing your back as you whine. 

“Look at you. So perfect. So mine.” 

He pulls his coarse fingers out slowly, one by one, and you feel the emptiness like a physical ache. But then he holds his hand up, showing you what you’ve done to him, his fingers sopping with your wetness, slick and shining in the firelight.  

“You see this, love?” His voice is rough, filthy, as he brings his fingers to his mouth, tasting you. His eyes are dark, possessive.

“This is you, sweet girl. My gorgeous wife.” The sucking noises he makes on his own digits are obscene and embarrassing, his cheeks hollowing as he watches your expression. 

When he’s finished lapping up your remnants of arousal, his rough hands gently begin at the edge of your chemise. You close your eyes before feeling him pinch the edge of your shirt, lifting it over your head before watching your chest rise and fall, nipples perked from arousal.

Thomas looks down at you, watching your chest rise and fall beneath his palms. Your nipples are pinkened and swollen, your skin flushed in the firelight, and he can't help but admire you.

As an aging man, even after mere weeks of knowing your body, he can’t get enough of you.  He cups your breasts with reverence, thumbs brushing over the sensitive peaks and watching you shiver.

“Perfect,” he murmurs, the word like a prayer.

His touch is gentle now, almost worshipful, a stark contrast to the rough fingering before. You look up at him as his gaze remains focused on your bare chest, the movement slight beneath him as he rubs the softened, plump flesh.

“You’re small,” he says, his voice rough with emotion he won't name. A mad blush flusters your face at his comment, you look away and towards the fireplace. Thomas breathes an amused sigh.

“Still so fucking perfect... I’ve always loved these.”

His thumbs circle your nipples, and he watches your face, the way your eyes go soft and hazy again. His hands slide up to your shoulders, gripping gently, holding you like you might disappear if he let go. 

Legs still suspended by air, you huff in embarrassment. “You’re lewd, Thomas.” Something in his jaw clenches imperceptibly at the breathless note. His hands remain where they are, curved possessively on your breasts whilst he presses your hips flush against his. 

“Am I?” His voice is low as he leans in, hovering close above your face. He watches you from beneath his lashes, assessing the way you slightly tremble before looking away. 

Precious, he thinks.

He doesn’t move his hand to touch your face or lift your chin. Instead, he lets silence stretch, just to see you become uncomfortable when he’s letting you lead, or at least offering. The kind that makes ordinary people squirm and confess.

But you remain quiet; his shying, young wife.

“You know what I think?” He leans down slowly, deliberately, until his breath ghosts across your ear. “I think you’re the one who’s been lewd. The way you waltz into my rooms. Lookin’ at me like that.”

You look up at him hazily, feeling him lean down to suck at your skin.

His thumbs trace over your nipples as they harden. “Tell me, love,” the nickname rolls off his tongue with dark familiarity. “What did you expect when you wandered into The Garrison, eh?”

“I wasn’t wandering,” you whine softly, feeling your sensitive peaks being brushed by his tongue.

“No? Who were you looking for then?”

He hums against your sensitivity as he smiles, because he knows you’ve been caught in another meandering facade. His teeth gently clench onto your chest as he suckles, squeezing the opposite breast before lifting himself off.

Thomas’s hand begins moving to his own belt, unfastening it with steady fingers, keeping his eyes locked on you before tilting your cheek to look at him. 

“Eyes on me.”

He’s breathing hard now, his control fraying at the edges. You can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong as his hand slides down to fish out his heavy cock. 

Thomas watches you as you part your legs for him, the gesture sending a jolt straight to his groin. He’s already half-hard, throbbing in his hand as he strokes himself, but the sight of you, spread and wet and wanting him, erects him fully in seconds.  

He grips his shaft, stroking down slowly as he looks at what's on offer, your soaked cunt glistening in the firelight, your thighs trembling and spread for him, and your sweet locket glimmering with every faint breath you take. He swallows hard, his hand tightening on his cock as he leans in close.

“You remember our wedding night?” he murmurs, his mouth hovering over yours. “All the filthy noises you made when you tried to hide them?” He bites your lower lip gently.

Your chest rises and falls in anticipation, voice meek.

“What about them?”

“I heard them. Every fuckin’ sound. And I want to make you scream even louder. Make you wake the whole estate with how much you need me.” His hands slowly open your legs wider as you bite your plump lip. “I’m going to make you feel so good, love,” he promises, his voice low and guttural. 

His eyes never leave your face as he positions himself at your entrance, pressing his cock against your slick folds. The sensation is almost overwhelming, the heat of you, the soft give of your folds, the way you clench around his musk even without him being fully inside. 

Your eyes squeeze shut at the hot pressure, your lips have barely parted, only beginning to take his heaving tip. He watches as your mouth parts, thanking him silently for making you cum beforehand, knowing the mistake it was to attempt to fit all of him the first time you fucked on your wedding night.

Thomas breathes out in increments, trying to steady himself. He knows he should be gentle, knows he’s already too rough with you, but God, you’re so perfect. He presses in slowly, watching your face, listening to the wet slide of his cock into your cunt. You’re tight, so impossibly tight, and it makes his breath hitch.  

“Thomas…” you whine, head leaning back as you murmur erotically again, “please…” 

He’s always had the ability to melt the words in your mouth whenever he fucks into you, it’s never savage, but he savors the unspoken words that remain inescapably in your mouth.

“I know, love,” he nods, gently holding his hands underneath your knees as he sinks deeper, “I’ll go slow.”

He smiles as you let out another wanton sigh. You aren’t begging obscenely, yet, and that’s what makes him think you’re the sweetest thing. Your eyes squeeze shut as he buries himself inches at a time, his hands gripping your soft legs, holding you steady as you open up for his cock with every flutter of your aching pussy.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

When he’s finally seated to the hilt, he pauses, letting you feel all of him. Breathing slows as you try to relax around him; he’s always had to wait a few moments before moving, not wanting you to tear or cry from pain.

“How’s that feel?” He murmurs, seeing the utter bliss etched on your face.

“Legs up s’more, sweetheart.”

You nod weakly as his hands retreat from your knees, shakily wrapping them around his muscular back, stockings dangling on one ankle, soft cotton tickling the back of his thigh.

Thomas lowers himself now, his elbows meeting the sheets as his fingers begin toying with your hair, gently moving strands out of your face so his palms can cup your cheeks without obstacles. His cock is twitching, aching deep inside of you, but he doesn’t move just yet until you’re ready.

“No burning?” He asks softly.

The first time he fucked you, he stuttered his hips inside too quickly, deeply. When he pulled out, there was a distinct tear that bled onto his thick pubes. You had to lie in bed with a cold bottle of bourbon between your thighs for three whole nights.

You slowly blink, half-lidded eyes looking up at him as you manage a tiny breath. “No.”

He’s still getting used to having you, and only you, this way. Usually, he’d be finished by now, patting a whore’s thigh and telling her the money’s on the nightstand. Even if he treated them well, even if he used to make time for that bargain, he always knew it was a mere transaction. 

But with you, he’s relearned how to take his time, how to fuck without scaring you into burying your face in his neck. His presence lingers still, even if you’re his wife. After all, he’s Thomas Shelby, you can tell when it’s him entering through any doorway. 

You nod, eyes squeezed shut as you wince. “It’s…” you moan, feeling his hips arch slightly until his cock tents from inside your stomach. 

“Use your words, Mrs. Shelby,” He doesn’t often call you that, especially not in bed. His hips roll slightly, just a small movement, testing. When you whimper and roll your head back against the sheets, he starts to move slowly. 

Parting your lips and slowly looking up at him, you finish. “It’s big…”

Thomas grins as he holds onto the hair at your scalp, gently pressing you deeper onto his cock. The wet sounds of his hips beginning to slowly roll into you fill the room, slick and obscene.

“You knew that, didn’t you?” He roughly mutters.

The gentle rocking becomes a harder, more insistent rhythm. Thomas feels you clench around him, your cunt gripping his cock like it's the only thing keeping you together, and it makes his breath come in harsh, uneven gasps. 

“Ah, ah..” you huff, it’s wanton, hot to him.

Your nails gently claw onto his shoulders as he fucks into you. Thomas watches your exasperated face, the way your eyes roll back as you try to move your head to look down.

The clasp of his hand in your hair falters before he leans into a deep kiss, his other hand sliding down to grip your hips, using you to pull himself harder inside. The wet schlop of his cock sinking into you fills the room, slick and obscene as he pistons into you.  

Thomas releases your lips, the wet string falling onto your lips as he grins darkly, watching your hair sway with every thrust.

“Tom-” You wince, your back softly arching before his lips catch a hold of your dampening skin. He keeps his teeth clenched onto your neck, biting hard enough for you to wince before licking the bruising wound.

“Christ, you're so good for me,” he mutters, his breath harsh against your neck.

You wince, feeling the scars forming from the mere cuts of his sharp teeth. “That hurts…”

“You’ll take it.” He mutters, knowing how well bruises will pair with your new gold. “You’re a good girl…”

Thomas likes the way the term of endearment rolls off his tongue, his lips sucking your youthful throat, feeling each vibration your moans become the culprit of.

His movement transitions into a slow, deep rocking that grinds his thick tip against your cervix, dick curving into your sweet spot as your escaping moans lift their pitch.

His hands clench your hips before lowering his hips quickly, hands grabbing hold of your waist as he lifts your back. He feels you clench around him, your cunt pulsing and trying to milk him already, and it makes his control slip further. 

“I can’t,” you pant, tears falling down your cheeks. Not from pain, far from pain. “It’s too much, I can’t!” Your whimpers are quiet, hiccuping with overstimulation, chest undulating with every deep thrust. 

“You can.” He assures, hands sliding to cup your chest as he lowers his face between the valley of your breasts. “You’re being so fuckin’ good,” Thomas mutters, his voice vibrating against the side of your breast he’s kissing as he fucks you deeper.

“No, please, I c-” You cry out at the feeling of him biting your nipple, the sting making you clench around him, gushing around his cock.

“Fuck, you’re soaking,” he groans, his head buried in your breasts.

His movements are getting more desperate now, losing the careful control he's maintained since the moment he entered you. The sound of skin slapping against skin, the slick glide of his cock fucking into your tight cunt, the rough huffs of his breath, it all combines into a symphony that makes his head spin. 

Your eyes have rolled back by now in lustful haze, your previous protest blending in with utter pleasure as his hips dominate against yours. His hands slide up from the sides of your soft chest, tracing your nipples before reaching to cup your face, thumbs brushing your flushed cheeks.

“Tell me who you belong to,” he commands, his thrusts growing longer, a bit deeper. 

He delves his hot tongue straight onto yours, mouth sucking at yours deliciously, swallowing every petite moan you can handle, the escape of. His breath is hot in yours, lips hovering barely to mutter filthily onto your lips.

“Tell me who this sweet little cunt belongs to.”

“You… Tommy,” you whimper, he smiles against your mouth. His movements speed up slightly, still barely controlled but losing some of that careful precision. You cry out as he shifts his angle, hitting a spot inside you that makes your legs squeeze his lower back.  

“Yeah, sweetheart. Mine.”

He can feel your inner walls fluttering around him, clenching and relaxing in waves that threaten to send him over the edge. The thought of you coming again so soon after he just brought you to your first orgasm makes something primal in him wake up. 

“Don’t stop,” you beg weakly against his lips. Thomas cradles the back of your head now, rocking his hips into yours slowly.

“That’s it, love. My good girl,” he rumbles, dark eyes drinking in the picture of sweet submission you paint. His other hand traces the elegant column of your neck, pausing at the racing pulse he finds there.

“I've barely had to raise my voice. Not a flicker of defiance in those pretty eyes.”

You sniffle, panting against his lips as he holds you still. “I’m there…”

He slowly begins pulling out, making you whine before he shushes you with a kiss. His cock drags out of you until his tip is lodged near where your hymen used to be torn apart. 

“Look up at me.” He orders, squeezing the back of your neck as you tense. You obey, tears wetting his palm as you try to move your hips against his.

“I’m not gonna pull out tonight,” he whispers. Your eyes widen, yet you aren’t entirely afraid of the idea of carrying his firstborn. A part of you wants to shake your head, but you’re frozen, all but for your hips attempting to suck him back into you.

He takes in your silence before murmuring. “You’ll be a good mother, I know you will,” he nods. 

“But I’m not…” He lets you pause, slowly sinking back inside. “Not even…” You can’t finish moaning gently as his cock buries itself back inside. A method of madness he’s used on only you. 

Thomas stirs his cock deep inside, brushing your hair out of your face once more. “You want me to finish inside, love?” He asks roughly, though he knows your question will be subdued by his ministrations. 

His finger takes hold of your hand, trailing down until holding it against the tent in your stomach as more tears fall from your blushing cheeks.

“Right here, sweetheart.” He murmurs in your ear, feeling your hands tremble on his back. “I’ll fill you up here.”

You imagine him plotting with other members of the gang with the same precision, but never the same amount of lewdness as in this moment. Thomas pulls you flush against him as he grinds deeper into your soft pussy, feeling its walls and ridges arouse him further.

“Fuck... This is what it means to be my wife, fuckin’ adoring all of you.”

You wince as his other hand fists in your silky hair, forcing your tearful gaze up to meet his heady stare.

“Tell me, love. Tell your husband how bad you need his cum to fill up your greedy cunt.”

It's not until now that you’ve noticed the way his balls feel as they twitch against your taint, heavier than you'd wanted to acknowledge. He begins quickening his pace, not wanting to lose your orgasm. Except now, his pounding begins outside of your pussy, and it rams deep into you until your throat emits broken sobs.

His large hand comes up to pet your hair as he groans above you. “Shhh, don't cry, sweetheart...” he murmurs. “I'm going to fill you up... fill you up so fuckin’ full.” His voice rumbles lowly as he laps up the salty tears of your cheeks. Your breath hitches as you sob sweetly.

“Breathe for me,” he coaxes breathlessly, his thumb swiping across your trembling lower lip. “Let me hear you, loud as you can now.” His hips snap forward, burying his thick shaft to the hilt.

You convulse around him, a silent scream tearing from your raw throat. Thomas leans in, biting your pulse point again, snarling as he feels your tight heat beginning to throb.

“I'm gonna cum,” you sniffle, crying as he nods his head.

Chest heaving, he grips onto your wrists and dives his chest onto yours, pinning your limp form beneath his sweat-slicked muscles. He captures your mouth in a searing kiss, plundering the warm cavern with his tongue. You whimper into the invasion, tasting traces of your arousal mingled with his triumphant male musk.

Your body stiffens beneath him, spine arching as your sweet climax crashes through you with devastating intensity. You wail in his mouth, voice ragged and desperate. Tears stream down your flushed cheeks as your velvet walls clench and spasm wildly around his pistoning cock, milking him for every last drop.

Thomas deepens the kiss with a guttural groan, driving into you one final time as his cock erupts. Ropes of hot semen paint your insides a pearly white, flooding your fertile womb with his potent seed.

“Fuck, that's it, sweetheart.”

He rocks into you, grinding his pelvis against yours as spurt after heavy spurt pumps into your convulsing sex. 

“Take this fuckin’ load,” he groans against your tongue as his hips roll again and again, not stopping until your stomach begins to swell subtly from the sheer volume, stuffed to capacity with his virile essence.

You keep crying, knees wobbling as he holds them against his sides, your own strength faltering as you feel yourself dripping onto the bedsheets.

“My beautiful girl,” he pants against your bruised lips. “You took your husband’s cum so well. Such a good girl.” His large hands stroke along your curves almost reverently as you both bask in the aftermath, bodies entwined and sated. 

You feel his hands slowly begin turning you, and your breath becomes a forced, tiresome murmur. “Tommy, wait-“ You huff as he rolls you onto your belly, tear-stained cheek pressing into the rumpled sheets. His calloused hands roam possessively over the lush curves of your ass, kneading the plush flesh.

“Shh...” He parts your thighs wider, exposing your dripping, well-fucked cunt to his hungry gaze. Watching intently, he sees rivulets of his thick cum oozing out of your swollen, stretched hole, painting obscene streaks down your inner thighs.

“Fuckin’ hell, look at you... leakin’ everywhere.” He reaches out and catches some of the pearlescent fluid with his fingertips before bringing them to his mouth. Licking them clean, he hums in satisfaction. “Mmm, your pussy tastes sweeter.”

Turning his attention back to your glistening slit, he parts your folds with two fingers and pushes the rest of his escaping release back inside your fluttering passage.

You bite onto the bedsheets, trying to halt the twitching of your holes before whining. “Stop it...”

Thomas chuckles from behind as he plunges his digits deep into your core, curling them upwards to rub insistently against that sensitive bundle of nerves nestled within your depths.

“Don't be embarrassed,” he whispers, giving your bottom cheek a sharp spank. The sound echoes loudly in the quiet bedroom, followed swiftly by your yelp of surprise, followed by the heaving of your back as you cry. He massages the reddened skin before gripping your rear hard enough to leave imprints in your supple flesh.

Coming back up, he presses his lips against the shell of your ear. Hot breath washing over your neck sends tingles racing down your spine.

“Sweetheart...” He cooes softly, rubbing your bottom as he hardens once more without your knowledge. “You took me so beautifully,” he praises huskily as he continues pumping his fingers slowly, working his load deeper into your spasming walls.

Each thrust forces another burst of cream to ooze out and trickle down his invading knuckles.

“This sweet little quim, all fuckin’ mine,” he declares with arrogance, circling his thumb firmly against your swollen clit as his free hand drifts to squeeze the underside of your breast possessively, rolling and plucking at your nipple until it pebbles tightly against his palm.

“Don't say that,” you huff, sniffling.

Thomas pauses before shaking his head.

“Let me worship you a little longer, love.”

His lips kiss your cheek before he tilts your face with one hand, tongue lathing over your lips as he sucks some of the blood off your cut. He releases you as you huff, watching your leg slowly come up. 

“And this perfect body too,” he emphasizes, giving your curved hipbone a light pinch as he nips sharply at the juncture of your shoulder blades. The sting quickly fades into pleasant pulses of pleasure radiating outward. His teeth scrape teasingly over your nape before he suckles a dark mark into the tender skin.

“You'll carry my children soon.”

He predicts smugly, knowing instinctively that his seed has found purchase in your fertility. You whimper at the plurality. His ego inflates with each inch his cum travels higher, burrowing deep into your vulnerable cervix. Soon, in the coming months, you'd swell round with his offspring. 

“Stay right there,” he murmurs, pressing your hiked-up knee against the mattress. He withdraws his soaked fingers only to replace them with the broad head of his rehardened cock, nudging demandingly against your entrance. 

You try to turn your head, “I thought you-”

You’re cut off by a swift flex of his hips as he sheathes himself fully inside your dripping channel once more. Bottoming out, he grinds his pelvis against your ass as he hilt his thick cock deep within your clasping cunt. Reaching new depths previously untouched by missionary. 

“There we go...” He groans, squeezing your bottom as you arch.

He’s filling you impossibly fuller than before. Stretching you wide around his girth as he sets a steady rhythm, pumping languidly into your molten heat.

Thomas grips your hips tighter, lifting them higher off the mattress to force you into a lewd display. Your cries of pleasure escalate, tears flow freely down your burning cheeks as he exposes your dripping, thoroughly used sex. He’s so deep you can feel a foreign twitch in your throat. Rivulets of his thick cum dribble down your thighs as he spreads your legs wider, pushing your knees apart.

“Please, Thomas, not so hard!” you beg, voice choked with emotion.

He lines himself up once more, the bulbous head of his member nudging insistently at your puffy, sore entrance. You're incredibly sensitive, nerve endings screaming from the intense fucking you just received.

“I know, I know, I’ll be gentle,” he murmurs as he drives forward with a soft grunt, diving into your wet pussy with one deep thrust. He hilts himself completely now, balls slapping lewdly against your clit. Your pussy, slick with your combined juices, offers no resistance to his renewed virility.

“Thomas!” you whine desperately as he starts pumping into you, setting a restrained pace.

Each drive of his hips forces fresh gouts of semen to bubble out around his pistoning shaft, splattering onto the bed below. The vulgar squelches and schlicks of your coupling fill the air.

“There, sweetheart. Take your husband's cock like a good girl,” he growls, gripping your hips hard enough to leave livid marks.

One hand snakes around to find your sensitive clit, rubbing firm circles around it as he pounds mercilessly into you. He's determined to fill you, to have a legacy begin tonight.

Tears blur your vision as you arch helplessly into his dominance, impaled on his rigid, heavy flesh. Broken sobs escape your lips with each brutal impact of his pelvis against your upturned bottom. Pleasure and stinging pain intertwine, overwhelming your senses.

Your pussy, battered and abused, flutters weakly around the invading intruder. Thomas leans over your arched back, covering you with his larger frame.

He bites your earlobe before whispering hotly, “Gonna pump you so full of my seed, sweetheart... Fill this greedy cunny 'til it’s drippin' outta ya...”

You blush, feeling him grin before kissing your cheek, his hands removing themselves from your hips and moving to intertwine with your fingers from behind. Sighing into him, you unclench your heat and allow even more of him inside.

He smiles against your lips before huffing. “Deeper now, love?”

Sniffling beneath him, you manage a breath. “Yes… Please...”

Thomas nods, staring into your eyes before allowing your face to press against soft sheets. He lifts himself, looking down at your bodice beneath him, the chain of your necklace being weighed by gravity. His hand sweeps over your neck and moves thick hair to weigh past one shoulder instead of your damp back. 

He groans, letting his head fall back as he lets his hips find a proper rut inside you. The bed creaks ominously beneath the force of his thrusts. His grip on your fingers tightens as he increases the tempo of his relentless thrusts. 

“Ah, fuck!” He grits his teeth, his own whines gravelly and drawn-out, fighting the urge to explode prematurely.

Sweat beads on his brow and trickles down the cords of his neck as he loses himself in you. He watches the ridges of your back beneath him and curses to himself. Leaning back down, he latches onto your shoulder, sucking a vivid hickey into the delicate skin, marking you as irrevocably his.

“That’s it, take it! Fuck, your sweet cunt...” He gasps, hammering harder, chasing his rapidly approaching climax. The obscene slap of flesh against flesh fills the room, accompanied by the debauched squishing sounds of your overflowing pussy being stirred yet again. 

Thomas hasn’t fucked you like this, ever, spurred on by the debased sight of you sprawled beneath him, drowning in ecstasy and desperation.

You knew he was holding back, but you shudder at the thought of him still restraining his base needs even now. His free hand finds your neglected breasts, pawing and kneading the generous mounds. He pinches and rolls the stiff peaks cruelly between his fingers until they ache deliciously. 

You wince as his fingers pinch your nipples, knowing the sight of them isn't what turns him on most, although his cock is practically ripping through your back.

Humming beneath him, you feel another wave come crashing down onto your hips, and your knees buckle as he continues pounding into you. Overstimulated and needy, you cry beneath him. Thomas moans as you cum onto his cock so soon already, he quickly increases his pace.

“Gonna... pump you so fuckin’ full.” He snarls savagely against your neck, sinking his teeth into the tender junction of your collarbone and throat.

Biting down hard enough to draw a bead of crimson, marking you, claiming you utterly and completely. His rhythm turns erratic, hips jerking spastically as he nears the precipice of release.

“Fuuck!”

With one last violent surge forward, he hilt himself to the root inside your clutching pussy. His cock pulsing and throbbing uncontrollably as he unleashes a torrent of scalding seed straight into your vulnerable cunt.

Thomas collapses heavily upon you, crushing you into the mattress with his superior weight as spurt after copious spurt of potent semen pumps into your spasming core. 

“Unggh… Fuck. Yes,” he groans gutturally, shuddering and twitching as the last vestiges of his release drain into you.

Finally spent, he drapes over your nubile form, heaving and panting hotly. His cock remains inside you as you breathlessly exhale, feeling him turn you around, cum seeping from the sliver of an opening your stuffed cunt allows.

His pupils relax their dilation as he stares down at you, the fireplace's embers gradually burning out as he cups your face.

“Oh, sweetheart...” He lowers himself onto you again, kissing you as you hold onto him, hands searching immediately for his support.

Pride and possession suffuse his expression as he gazes down at your ravaged beauty, drinking in the sight of you defiled and debauched, dripping with his essence.

Tenderly, he strokes the sweat-damp tendrils of hair plastered to your brow and cups your tear-streaked cheek in his broad palm. 

His hands are rough but warm and deliberate as he works the lather over you, one palm flat against your lower belly to keep you pinned. He tilts his head, surveying you like a problem he is solving. 

He clucks his tongue, “Not takin’ it all off.” 

And you blink owlishly, “Why not?” 

“Because I like it.” He drags his thumb through the dark curls at the apex of your cunt, appraising. “Leavin’ a clean strip. You'll thank me later.” 

The razor comes up before you can argue. First stroke—slow, precise, the blade gliding through lather and coarse hair with a control that makes your stomach flip. His jaw is set, focused, and there is something unbearable about how steady his hands are when yours are gripping the counter edge so hard your knuckles ache. 

He rinses the blade. Goes again. His knuckles brush bare skin this time and your thigh jerks involuntarily. 

“What’d I say?” His voice is low, flat; his eyes almost bored as they flick up to meet yours. 

“Sorry—” 

“Don’t apologise. Stop squirmin’.” He resettles his grip on your thigh, firm enough to bruise. “Almost done.” 

But you’re not making it easy on him and he knows it. He can see it—the flush creeping down your chest, the way your breathing has gone shallow, the slick gathering where his hands keep almost-but-not-quite touching. 

“You’re wet,” he remarks, the same way he’d say It’s raining. 

“Can you blame me?” you squeak. 

“No.” Simon finishes the last stroke, rinses the blade, sets it aside. Then he runs his thumb along the neat strip of hair he’s left, then lower, over smooth sensitive skin, checking his work. “Did a bloody good job, if I say so myself.” 

His thumb drags lower. Slides through the slick with zero hesitation, and you gasp loud enough to echo off the tiles. 

“Responsive,” he murmurs, smug. He does it again—slower, more deliberate, watching your face like he’s taking briefing notes. “All this from a shave, love?” 

You nod, voice thick, “From you.” 

Something shifts in his expression; shifts to something darker, hungrier. His free hand grips the inside of your thigh and pushes it wider, and he drops to his knees on the bathroom floor like a man settling into a foxhole. 

“Si—” 

“Shut up,” he growls against your skin. “Let me admire my work.” 

His mouth finds you—hot and wet, and completely unhurried. He licks a long, flat stripe over the freshly shaved skin and groans low in his throat like he’s tasting honey on a warm, buttered toast. Your hand flies to his head, fingers digging into the short hair, and he lets you. 

Then he pulls back, and you almost whine, but he’s not going anywhere. He brings both hands up instead, spreads you open with his thumbs, rough callused pads pressing into soft skin, holding you apart so he can see everything. 

“Look at that,” he murmurs, low and self-satisfied. “All swollen already.”

Your hips buck, but his sheer strength keep you pinned to the counter. “Simon, please—” 

“I heard ya.” 

But then Simin leans back in and his tongue finds your clit—not a broad stroke this time but a quick, focused flicker, right over the swollen nerve. Your hips buck harder and his grip tightens, thumbs digging into the soft flesh of your pussy lips, keeping you spread wide and pinned open. 

“Stay. Still.” Spoken directly against you, the vibration making your thighs shake. 

He does it again—that precise, maddening flicker—and you make a sound that’s closer to a sob than anything dignified. He rewards it with a low hum, adjusting the angle, working the tip of his tongue in tight little circles that make your vision blur. 

“Knew you’d be like this,” he groans, pulling back just enough to watch your clit twitch under his breath. His thumbs spread you wider, obscenely so. “All wound up from a fuckin’ razor and a steady hand.” 

Your cheeks are burning while your hole clenches around nothing. “You’re so full of—oh—” 

“Myself? Yeah.” His tongue flattens against you, then flickers again, fast and relentless. “And you love it.” 

You can’t argue. You can’t do anything except grip his hair and hold on. 

He doesn’t let up. That maddening flicker becomes a rhythm—tight, relentless circles over your clit with the tip of his tongue while his thumbs keep you spread open and pinned like a butterfly under glass. You’e shaking, thighs trembling against his hands, and every sound you make earns you another low hum of approval that vibrates straight through your whole body. 

“Simon—Si—I’m going to—” 

“Then fuckin’ do it.” His tone is flat as ever, impatient, like you’re wasting his time by holding back. 

His tongue presses harder, faster, and you come with a choked cry that bounces off the bathroom tiles. He works you through it—slower now, lapping at you in long, lazy strokes while your legs twitch and your fingers go slack in his hair. 

And then you hear it before you see it—the sound of his joggers being shoved down, the slick rhythm of his fist. You lift your head, still dazed, and look down to find him on his knees with his fat cock in his hand, jerking himself in hard, fast strokes while his mouth stays pressed against your inner thigh. 

“Simon—?” 

“Shut up.” His voice is wrecked now. Rough. Nothing clinical about it anymore. “Needed this since I fuckin’ started.” 

He’s close already. You can tell from the way his breathing fractures, the way his free hand grips your thigh hard enough to leave fingerptints. Simon pulls back, angles himself forward, fist working fast and tight, and his eyes are fixed on the mess he’s made of you, all puffy and slick. The neat landing strip dark and matted with your wetness against flushed skin. 

“Fuck,” he grits out, low and broken. “Look at you.” 

He comes across your cunt in hot, thick stripes—groaning through his teeth, forehead dropping against your thigh as his hips jerk into his own fist, massive shoulders shaking against the onslaught of pleasure. You feel it land on smooth skin, on the strip of hair he insisted on keeping, dripping down between your folds, and the sound he makes is almost pained. 

He stays there for a moment. Breathing hard. Forehead pressed to your leg. 

Then he straightens up, tucks himself away methodically, and surveys the damage with the composure of a man reviewing a mission report. 

“There,” he says, dragging his thumb through the mess on your skin. His and yours, mixed so prettily. “Payment for services rendered.” 

Your eyes roll with fond exasperation as your head tips back to rest on the counter.  

“You’re disgusting.” 

“And you’re welcome, love.” He leans in, presses a single kiss to the landing strip, and stands. “Clean yerself up. Dinner’s in twenty.” 

— K. GARRICK

Kyle notices things. It’s what makes him terrific at his job—reading a room in mere seconds, clocking the miniscule details everyone else always misses. So, when you come home looking like the week has chewed you up and spat you out, he’s already running the bath before you’ve kicked off your shoes and put down your bag. 

“Self-care day!” he announces. “You. Me. Bathroom. Now.” 

“Kyle, I’m fine—” 

“Didn’t ask.” He’s already steering you by the shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “I’ve got you, yeah? Let me do this for you, baby.” 

And that’s the thing about Kyle. He doesn’t ask permission to take care of you—he just does it, like breathing, like it’s the most natural and obvious thing in the world. 

He starts with your arms. 

You’re sitting on the edge of the ceramic tub, warm water lapping at your calves, while Kyle kneels beside you with a fresh razor and a bottle of fancy shaving oil he warmed between his palms. He lifts your arm above your head, long and gentle fingers circling your wrist, and works the oil into the hollow of your underarm with slow, thorough strokes. 

“When’s the last time someone took care of you properly?” he asks casually, like small talk. 

“You did. Last week,” you deadpan, brows furrowed. 

He grins brilliantly. “Doesn’t count. That was just sex.” 

You snort softly, “Just sex, he says—” 

“Hush now.” He draws the razor up in a smooth, careful line. Rinses. Again. His touch is absurdly gentle for hands that can strip a rifle in seconds. “This is different. This is maintenance.”

“You make me sound like a bloody car.” 

“Nah.” Kyle kisses his teeth, then switches to the other arm, lifting it with the same easy confidence. “More like a classic bike. High-performance. Needs the right hands.” 

You snort again, but your skin is already tingling where he’s touched—warm oil sinking in, the faint sting of freshly shaved skin, his thumb rubbing slow circles into your wrist while he works. 

Your legs take longer. He’s thorough about it—kneeling on the tile floor, one of your calves propped on his shoulder, dragging the razor from ankle to knee in long, unhurried strokes. He takes his time with the oil after, working it into your skin with both hands, thumbs pressing into the muscle of your calf until you groan. 

“Good?” he asks, gauging your reaction, and there is something darker in his voice now. Something paying attention. 

“So good,” you breathe, eyes closed in bliss. 

He slides higher—past your knee, along your inner thigh. Still massaging, still working the oil in, but his fingers are brushing territory that has nothing to do with shaving. He watches your face the whole time, reading every micro-expression, cataloguing what makes your breath hitch, what makes your muscles relax. 

“One more spot,” he murmurs, hands settling on your inner thighs. “Yeah?” 

You nod. Your mouth has gone dry. 

“Need words, love.” 

And you nod more enthusiastically, “Yes. Please.”

His smile is warm, but his gaze is filthy. 

Kyle repositions you gently, guiding you back against the fluffy towels he’s already laid out on the bathroom floor like he planned this from the start. Probably did. Kyle Garrick is always three steps ahead. 

He settles between your thighs and takes his time with the oil, working it into the soft skin of your mound with his fingertips. Not rushing. Letting you feel every slow circle, every press of his thumb, until you’re breathing hard and your hips are shifting restlessly. 

“Easy, my love," he says softly, one hand flat on your belly. “I’ve got you. Not going anywhere.” 

The razor is careful. Feather-light strokes, angled perfectly, his free hand stretching the skin taut with a confidence that makes heat pool low in your stomach. He shaves you bare, all of it, pausing to rinse the blade and check his work with the pad of his thumb. 

“Beautiful,” he murmurs thickly, and means it. 

Then the oil comes back. Warm from his hands, drizzled over freshly shaved skin, and he starts working it in with both thumbs in long, slow strokes down either side of your slit. 

Your thighs twitch. He notices. Of course he does. 

“Sensitive?” he asks teasingly, voice low. Eyes crinkling with mirth. 

“Kyle—” 

“That’s not an answer.” But he’s smiling, thumbs pressing a little firmer, gliding through the oil and spreading you open slowly. “Tell me how it feels.” 

You swallow hard, but your voice still comes out raspy, “Like you’re  trying to kill me, baby.” 

He laughs; warm, genuine, the sound rumbling through his chest. “Not yet.” His thumbs drag inward, slicking through the oil and your own syrupy wetness now, framing your clit without touching it. “We’re getting there, though.” 

Kyle starts massaging in earnest then, and it’s devastatingly precise. Both thumbs working slow circles over your outer lips, pressing and releasing, coaxing blood to the surface until everything is swollen and throbbing and so slick you can hear it. He watches your face the whole time, dark eyes tracking every flutter of your lashes, every bitten-back sound. 

“There she is,” he praises when your hips start rolling into his hands. “There you go. Just let it happen, baby.” 

And he slides one thumb between your folds—just one, dragging through the mess—and your whole body arches. 

“Fuck, Kyle—” you mewl, and Kyle mutters a curse under his breath, pupils blown.  

“Yeah, I know.” He does it again, slow and firm, circling your clit with the pad of his thumb while his other hand keeps you spread open. “You’re soaking my hand, love. That all from the shave, or you just like being taken care of by me?” 

“Both—God—both!” 

“Greedy.” He says it fondly, pressing a kiss to your inner thigh. Then he sinks a finger into you—one, then two—curling them forward, and your back comes off the floor. 

“Oh—oh—fuck!” 

“Right there?” He crooks his fingers experimentally, finds the spot that makes your vision white out, and presses more firmly. “Yeah. Right there.” 

He starts working you open with slow, deliberate thrusts—two fingers buried deep, curling against that front wall, while his thumb keeps circling your clit in a rhythm that’s going to end you. His other hand is on your hip, holding you steady when you start to writhe. 

“Don't fight it,” he reminds you, and then his mouth replaces his thumb—hot and wet, tongue lapping at your clit in broad, flat strokes that make your thighs clamp around his head. 

He groans against you and his fingers pick up the pace, curling and pressing in a rhythm that builds something white-hot at the base of your spine. You can feel it coiling, tighter and tighter, different from a normal orgasm, deeper, more urgent. 

“Kyle—Kyle, I’m gonna—” 

“I know.” He pulls back just enough to speak, lips brushing your clit while your inner muscles clench and flutter around his pumping fingers, urging him deeper. “I can feel it. Let go.” 

“I can’t—” 

“Yes, you can.” His fingers press harder, faster, rubbing firmly against that swollen spot inside you. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. Let go for me.” 

His mouth seals over your clit and he sucks, gentle and persistent, while his fingers thrust up hard until something inside you breaks. And you come with a sound you don’t recognise; your whole body locking up and then releasing in a hot, pulsing rush that soaks his hand, his chin, the towels underneath you. 

“That’s it. Fuck, baby, that’s it—” Kyle’s voice is wrecked, awed, his fingers still working you through it as you gush and squirt over his knuckles, soaking the towels. “Christ, look at you. So fucking beautiful.”

You’re shaking. Trembling all over, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes from the intensity of it, and Kyle is already there to catch you; easing his fingers out gently, pressing soft kisses to your inner thighs, your hip, the curve of your quivering belly. 

“I’ve got you,” he says again, gathering you up against his lean chest. “I’ve got you, love. You did so well.” 

You bury your face in his neck and he holds you. Always solid, warm, and steady. His hand strokes your back in slow, soothing circles while your breathing comes down. 

“Self-care day,” you mumble against his throat, chuckling softly.  

He laughs, quiet and fond. “Told you I’d take care of you.” 

— J. PRICE

John finds you standing in front of the bedroom mirror, fresh from the shower, towel discarded on the floor like an afterthought. You’re turning sideways, then forward again, fingers tugging at the dark curls between your thighs with a frown he recognises immediately. 

He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. Watches you for a moment. 

“Don’t even think about it woman,” he says gruffly.

You jump, because of course you didn’t hear him coming. The man moves like smoke when he wants to. “Jesus, John—” 

“I know that look.” He nods toward your hand. “You’re thinking about shaving.” 

You tut. Caught again. “It’s gotten—” 

“No.” 

He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the room, calm and unhurried, the way he does everything. Like the world operates on his schedule and it knows better than to argue. 

“You nicked yourself last time,” he reminds you, stopping behind your back. You can feel the warmth of him through his shirt, his breath against the top of your head. “Bled all over the damn bathroom. Looked like a crime scene.” 

You frown. “It wasn’t that bad—” 

“It was exactly that bad.” His steely eyes meet yours in the mirror. Steady and final. “You want to be smooth, I’ll do it. End of discussion.” 

That tone from your husband. The one that ends briefings and closes arguments. It mean Captain Price isn’t asking. 

He takes his time setting up, because John Price has never rushed anything important in his life and he’s not about to start with a blade near your precious skin. Warm water in a bowl. A fresh razor—not the one you butchered yourself with last time, but his, the good one he keeps in the leather case. A flannel. Shaving soap that smells like sandalwood and menthol. 

“On the bed,” he orders. “Edge. Legs apart.” 

“John,” you try to reason again.  

“Did I stutter?” And he gives you that look. The head tilt forward to look down at you. 

And you sit obediently. He pulls the ottoman over, settles onto it between your knees like he’s sitting down to a job that requires patience and precision. Which, in his mind, it does. He drapes the warm flannel over you first—pressing it gently against the curls, softening the hair—and the heat makes you exhale slowly through your nose. 

“Good girl,” he murmurs, absent and fond. “Just relax.” 

He works the soap into a lather between his palms, and his hands are broad and rough and unhurried as he spreads it over you. Fingers moving through the hair with a kind of proprietary ease, like this is his to manage. His to maintain. You watch him from above—the focused set of his jaw, the silver threading through his full beard, the absolute steadiness of his hands. 

You exhale slowly, willing yourself to relax while heat starts pooling low in your belly. “You don’t have to—” 

“I know I don’t have to,” he interrupts calmly, picking up the razor. “I want to. Difference.” 

The first stroke silences you. Slow, precise, the blade drawing a clean line through lather and hair. His free hand pulls the skin taut, and his eyes never leave his work with the same concentration you’ve seen him give to maps and mission briefs in his office. 

He rinses the blade in warm water. Goes again. 

“You’re quiet,” he remarks eventually, a hint of amusement buried under the gravel. 

“Hard to be mouthy when your husband’s got a razor on your—” 

“Careful.” But he’s smiling, just barely, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “Good time to practice some of that restraint I’m always bloody on about.” 

Stroke by stroke, he clears the hair away. Thorough. Methodical. He tilts your hips when he needs a better angle, adjusts your thigh with a tap of two fingers like he’s positioning you on instinct. There’s nothing rushed about it, nothing performative—just a man doing a job properly because it needs doing and he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it right. 

When he’s finished, he sets the razor aside and wipes you clean with the warm flannel—slow and careful passes that make your freshly shaved skin prickle and sing. Then he sits back, hands on your knees, and surveys his work. 

“There,” he murmurs, thoroughly satisfied. “That’s how it’s done, woman.” 

“Thank you.” And when you try to close your legs to get up, his hands stop you. 

“I’m not finished.” 

Your breath catches. He hasn’t moved—still sitting on the ottoman, still between your thighs, still looking at you with that calm, unhurried authority. But something’s shifted in his expression. His gaze has darkened, and you very well know what that means. 

Your stomach swoops. “John?” 

“Lie back.” 

And you do obediently. Again. Not because he has ordered you to—though he has—but because when John Price uses that voice, your body just listens. Your back hits the duvet and you stare at the ceiling, heart hammering, while he pushes your thighs wider with both hands. 

“Smooth,” he murmurs absentmindedly, running his palm over you, feeling his own handiwork. His thumb traces the edge of your slit; barely there, maddeningly light. “Soft.” His eyes flit up to look at you, almost smugly. “See what happens when you let me handle things?” 

But you’re still staring at the ceiling, refusing to give him the satisfaction. “You’re insufferable.” 

“And you’re wet.” John mentions it plainly, like a field observation. “Have been since I started. Thought I wouldn’t notice?” He snorts. 

Your eyes close slowly, praying for patience. “Was hoping you wouldn’t.”

“I notice everything. Especially about my wife. You know that.” He leans forward, presses a kiss just above your mound. Utterly deliberate and proprietary. His beard scratches against the smooth skin and your hips jerk. His eyebrow raises. “Sensitive?” 

You exhale a breath. “Your beard—” 

“Mm.” He does it again—drags his jaw across the freshly shaved skin, rough against smooth, and the noise you make is mortifying. “That’s bloody new. Like that, do you?” 

He doesn’t wait for an answer, just settles in, hands hooking under your thighs, pulling you to the edge of the bed and into his mouth like he’s sitting down to a meal he intends to take his time with. 

The first broad stroke of his tongue makes you arch clean off the mattress. He grunts, low and satisfied, and pins your hips down with one forearm. 

“Stay put,” he mutters against you. “I mean it.” 

And then he takes you apart. 

It’s not frantic. It’s not teasing. It’s thorough. The way John does everything. Long, slow drags of his tongue from entrance to clit, tasting every inch of smooth skin, learning the new terrain with the same patient focus he gave the razor. His beard scrapes against your inner thighs, your lips, the crease of your legs, and the contrast—soft warm tongue, rough stubble—has you writhing within minutes. 

“John—John—” 

He hums against your clit and the vibration shoots straight up your spine. His hands tighten on your thighs, pulling you closer, burying himself deeper. He sucks your clit between his lips firmly and flicks his tongue over it in a tight rhythm that makes your hands fist in the duvet. 

“Oh God—oh fuck—” 

He pulls back. Just enough. Lips still brushing you when he speaks. 

“Language, darling.” 

“You’re eating me out!” you whine helplessly. 

“And you’ll still mind your mouth in my house.” But there is a rumble underneath the words—amusement and bone-deep arousal, barely restrained—and his tongue is back on you before you can fire back, licking into you with a hunger that contradicts every ounce of composure in his voice. 

John brings a hand up and slides two thick fingers inside you without preamble, curling them forward, and the sound you make is broken and loud and not remotely dignified. He groans at the feel of you clenching around him, and you feel it everywhere. 

“That’s it,” he groans, low and rough. “That’s my gorgeous girl.” 

He fucks you with his fingers—steady and deep, curling against the spot that makes your thighs shake—while his mouth works your clit in slow, sucking pulls. He’s not rushing but savouring. Taking you apart piece by piece with the same relentless patience he applies to everything, and you couldn’t stop the orgasm building in you if you tried. 

“John—I’m close—” 

“I know you are.” He doesn’t change pace. Just keeps that maddening, steady rhythm. “Come when you’re ready. I’ll be here.” 

It hits you like a wave. Slow and devastating, rolling through you from the inside out. Your back arches, your legs lock around his wide shoulders, and you come on his tongue with his name in your mouth. John works you through every second of it, fingers still moving, tongue still pressing, until you’re shaking and pushing weakly at his head. 

When he finally pulls back, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Looks up at you with dark, satisfied eyes and a beard that’s matted and glistening with your come. 

“See? That’s why you let me handle things.” 

You can’t even argue with that. Not right now at least. You’re boneless, spent, staring at the ceiling while he presses a kiss to your inner thigh and stands—unhurried as ever, straightening his shirt like he didn’t just ruin you for the rest of the day. 

“I’ll make us a tea,” he calls from the doorway, completely composed. “You’ll want a biscuit after that, because I’m going to fuck my wife later.” 

— J. MACTAVISH

“Nae, hen.” 

Like every time before, Johnny straight up refuses when you ask him to help you shave your bush. 

He takes one glance at it and his pupils blow up like an IED, swallowing the baby blue of his irises within milliseconds. 

“Why?” you whine, stomping your foot like a petulant bunny. “Johnny, pleeease! I can’t do it on my own! I cut myself last time!” 

And you cross your arms, frowning at him, and hoping it’s enough to make him cave. But, alas, it is not. 

“Good,” he retorts, turning back to the telly where some Premier League match is playing that he’s barely watching anymore. “Maybe tha’ll teach ye to leave her alone.” 

Her. 

“Johnny, it’s hair.” 

“Aye, it’s hair. Her hair. And I fuckin’ like it.” He slings his arm over the back of the couch, manspreading like he owns the entire living room, eyes fixed on the screen with a kind of stubbornness that makes you want to scream. “End of.” 

“You don’t get to decide what I do with my own—” 

“Never said I did,” he interrupts flatly, then glances at you sideways, grinning. “I said am no’ helpin’. Big fuckin’ difference, lass. Ye want to hack away at yerself in the bathroom again, be my guest. I’ll be here Mournin’.” 

You cross your arms, scoffing, “You’re mourning my pubic hair.” 

“Aye. She’s a right bonnie. Deserves better than some dull razor and yer shaky hands.” 

You gape at him. He takes a slow sip of his beer, utterly unbothered, eyes back on the match. The audacity of this man. The sheer, Scottish audacity. 

“Fine,” you snap, and yank your leggings down right there in the living room. “Look at it then. Look. It’s a mess, Johnny!” 

That gets his attention. 

He turns his head slowly, beer bottle halfway to his mouth, and his eyes drop between your thighs. The grin slides off his face and something else replaces it—something hotter, sharper. His jaw works. He shifts in his seat. 

“Come here,” he demands suddenly. 

“No. You said no.” 

“I said come here.” He pats his thick right thigh. “Need a closer look, don’t I? Cannae make a proper assessment from across the room.” 

You know it’s a trap. You know it is. But he’s looking at you with those baby blue eyes and that crooked, shit-eating smile, and your feet are already moving. 

He pulls you onto his lap the second you’re within reach—hands on your hips, spinning you so your back is against his chest, your bare arse settled right over the growing bulge in his joggers. He spreads your thighs with his knees, hooking your legs over the outside of his, opening you up. 

Your eyes widen. “Johnny!” 

“Shh, hen. ‘M assessin’.” 

Johnny looks down over your shoulder, chin resting against your temple, and his hands slide down from your hips to your inner thighs. He spreads you open with both thumbs and makes a low, appreciative sound that vibrates through his chest and into your spine. 

“Aye, see?” he says, voice dropping rougher. “Look at her. She’s fuckin’ gorgeous. All soft an’ warm." He drags his fingers through the curls, tugging gently, and your hips twitch. “Why would ye want to get rid of this?” 

“Johnny, I just—” 

“Nah, hold on, ‘m talkin’ to her, no' you.” He dips his head lower, mouth against your ear, but he’s addressing your exposed cunt like it’s a separate entity. “Don’t listen to her, sweetheart. She doesnae know what she’s got. Ye’re perfect.” 

You sigh deeply, lips pursing. “You’re literally insane.” 

“Aye, she says thank ye,” he continues, ignoring you completely. His fingers stroke through the hair again, lower this time, brushing your outer lips. “She’s happy. See? Nice and warm in her wee fur coat. Ye want to take that away from her? In this economy? In this weather?” 

“It’s literally June, Johnny.” 

“Could get cold! Ye don’t know!” His thumb grazes your clit—barely, just enough—and you gasp. He grins against your ear. “Oh, an’ she’s  awake now. See that? She heard ye talkin’ aboot razors an’ she got scared. I’m just comfortin’ her.”

“You’re the worst person I’ve ever—hah—” 

His thumb presses down, firm, and circles slowly. “What was tha’?” 

“—ever met in my entire—fuck—” 

Johnny chuckles with dark satisfaction. “That’s more like it.” He circles again, lazy, like he’s got all the time in the world, like the match is still the most important thing in the room. His other hand holds your thigh open, fingers digging into the soft flesh. “Look at ye. All wet already and I’ve barely touched her. She likes the bush, babe. She’s tellin’ ye.” 

Your eyes squeeze shut, trying not to make another sound. “That’s not—that’s not how that works—” 

“No?” He sinks a finger into you—just one for now, thick and rough—and you clench around him so hard your vision blurs. “Feels like it’s  workin’ to me.” 

He starts a rhythm—slow, dragging thrusts with his finger while his thumb circles your clit—and you’re melting into his chest, head falling back against his shoulder. The telly is still on, some commentator yelling about a foul, and Johnny’s watching the match over your shoulder like he’s not knuckle-deep inside your hairy cunt. 

“Johnny—fuck—pay attention to me—” 

“I am payin’ attention. Multitaskin’, lass. Top o’ ma fuckin’ class.” He crooks his thick finger, and you nearly come off his lap. “Ooh, there she is. Found the spot, aye?” 

“Please—” 

“Please what? Please shave ye?” He tsks, adding a second finger, stretching you. “Still nae. But I’ll make ye forget why ye wanted to in the first place. Deal?” 

You whimper. He takes that as a yes. 

Then he pulls his fingers out, and you do whine, loud and needy, and before you can protest, he’s lifting you off his lap and onto your feet. You sway, legs shaking, and he grins up at you as he slides down the couch, lying back with his head on the armrest. 

“Come here,” he demands again, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it. He folds his muscular arms behind his head, looking up at you like he’s ordered room service. “Sit on my face.” 

“You—what?” 

Johnny snickers at the dumbstruck expression on your face. “Ye heard me.” He licks his lips. Obscenely slow and deliberate. Like a wolf licking its chaps. The bastard. “Bring her up here. I want to have a proper conversation.” 

“A conversation,” you repeat, not amused. 

“Aye. With my tongue. Now get up here before I drag ye.” 

Your thighs are still trembling as you relent with a groan and climb over him, knees sinking into the couch cushions on either side of his head. You hover, suddenly self-conscious, and he rolls his eyes. 

“Oh, fer fuck’s sake—” His brawny hands grip your hips and yank you down onto his mouth. 

The first thing you feel is his groan—deep, guttural, vibrating against your cunt like he has just taken a bite of the best thing he’s ever tasted. His tongue drags through your furry pussy lips, broad and flat and filthy, and his fingers dig into the meat of your arse hard enough to leave bruises. 

“Johnny—oh my God!” 

He can’t answer with his mouth full of you, but he slaps your thigh once—hard—and you jolt. And the message is clear. 

You roll your hips against his face, tentative at first, then harder when his tongue licks your clit and flicks over it in rapid, relentless strokes He’s making sounds beneath you, groaning into your cunt like he’s getting off on it as much as you are. Perhaps more. His nose presses into the curls he refused to shave and he inhales deeply, moaning like he’s dying. 

“Taste so fuckin’ good,” he mumbles against you, pulling back just long enough to breathe. His chin is soaked, his eyes are five shades darker, and he’s grinning like a maniac. “Ride my face, sweetheart. Fuckin’ use me.” 

His mouth seals over your clit again and he sucks hard, and your hand flies to the armrest for balance because your legs have stopped working entirely. He’s licking into you with his whole mouth now, tongue fucking you, slurping, then dragging back up to your clit, alternating between sucking and flicking in a rhythm designed to make you lose your mind. 

“I’m—Johnny, I’m going to—fuck—!” 

He pulls you tighter against his mouth, both hands gripping your arse and leaving finger-shaped marks, and his tongue works your clit in fast, tight circles while his nose presses against your mound and you come so hard your thighs clamp around his head and your whole body convulses. 

He doesn’t stop. He licks you through it—slower now, gentler, long lazy strokes through your slit while you twitch and shake above him. When you finally collapse sideways onto the couch, boneless and gasping, he wipes his face with the back of his hand and sits up looking thoroughly pleased with himself; face shiny and mohawk wild. 

“So,” he says, reaching for his beer on the side table like nothing happened. Like his grey joggers don’t have a large, damp patch on the front where his hard cock presses against it and reeks of his cum. “Still want to shave?” 

You throw a cushion at his head. 

He catches it, laughing—that big, stupid, full-body laugh that crinkles his whole face—and pulls you into his buff, hairy chest. 

Perhaps it would hurt less to desire if you could fill that hole every once in a while. If you could wet your tongue with the taste of satisfaction, of a want fulfilled, of the opportunity to say to someone, “Oh, look what I got” or “Look at what all my work has amounted to.”

That’s never been the case though, has it? Never been lucky enough for a wish to come true. You work like a dog for the barest scraps of what you know you’re worth (what you know and what every day seems less and less true).

Vacations that you never had enough money to take, jobs that never came to fruition, mistakes that couldn’t be undone, memories that you could never remake, friendships that grew apart or that never materialized altogether. 

It’s not all doom and gloom. You have a good job and a decent network of friends and acquaintances, parties you attend on occasion and warm nights at home curled up in bed. You have a roof over your head. There's more than enough in your life to be grateful for.

But the wanting never goes away. That, you have in spades. That, you have in heaps and bounds. That multiplies itself tenfold. 

And it happens that way with your heart too.

There’s a coffee shop down the street from your office with a decent amount of seating and an app to order your drink ahead of time, and every day at around two, you order your coffee ahead of time and walk over to pick it up, rain or shine. 

It’s always busy to some degree when you walk in, a handful of people waiting by the counter and a short line at the register snaking around the merchandise display. The whirr of the coffee grinder hums in the background, just a touch louder than the music, always filling the café with the rich, pleasing scent of freshly ground coffee.

The same chairs are always filled by the same people. Plenty of them you’ve even grown to recognize over time—students bent over thick textbooks, elderly men creasing newspapers in ink-stained hands, and laptop screens glowing with blank Word documents, scarcely a sentence added in the time it took to order and finish their coffee.

You recognize most of the takeaway regulars as well.

They’re harder to remember at first. Quick to come and quick to go. Hard to commit their faces to memory. But some give you no choice—some boisterously loud or ostentatious in dress, eye-catching enough to hook you like a fish, drag your attention down river with them. 

Then, to him. 

He, like you, comes in every day around two for his afternoon coffee. He, unlike you, comes striding in full-chested, confidence nipping at his heels, no world-weariness weighing him down. 

Hard not to notice him. Of course you notice him. He takes up space like a living sun, all bright smiles and radiant energy, handsome in the way that, when men are, they draw people in like moths. You feel no better than a moth sometimes, particularly in his presence. 

Tea-coloured eyes. What you notice at first is that there’s a beautiful man waiting for his coffee next to you, a tall man with the sculpted physique of an athlete, all long limbs and broad shoulders tapering into a lean frame, and what you notice next are those tea-coloured eyes, honeying under the sun. 

You stare so long that you only realize how dry your eyes have gone when the door swings shut behind him. 

It’s no wonder then, that you latch onto his presence like so, a little flutter in your chest on your way to the coffee shop every time after that first time, hoping that you’ll cross paths again. 

And you do. Cross paths again, that is. Only a few times those first couple of weeks, and then seemingly all the time, the two of you always in at the same time. 

That isn’t unusual. There are plenty of other familiar faces picking up their afternoon coffees at the same time as you, people that you recognize at the mobile ordering station and laptop stickers that you’ve come to memorize, the same people sitting at the same seats. People like routine; you’re no different. Neither is he. 

It comes over you like an ague, a desperate, eager thing, quiet enough at first when you’ve only seen him in bits and pieces, not studied him at length yet, but it—

It grows.

It grows like a vine in your chest, weaving around your heart and squeezing until you can feel it with every beat. 

You don’t entirely blame yourself. How could you? You swear you’ve never seen anyone even half as good-looking as him—broad-shouldered and lean, perfect smile, perfect teeth. Haircut always fresh, his edges neat. He squints with the force of his smile, always effusive with his gratitude and praise, so earnest in his kindness that it makes your teeth ache. 

He’s objectively a handsome man. Perhaps the handsomest man you’ve ever seen. What else could you do but go a bit crazy? 

Want may not be a strong enough word for what you’re experiencing. It’s more of a torsion of the soul. A desperate, yearning ache that both releases and constricts when he walks into the café to order his coffee. 

You don’t know what to do with yourself when he doesn’t show up at the same time as you. Your schedules are so in sync that you’ve grown to expect him, fattened and spoiled by the timeliness of his presence. But he doesn’t owe it to you to show up, and there are days when he doesn’t, held up for some reason, or maybe simply not in the mood for a coffee.

You practically drag your feet on the walk back to the office, a sorry sight. Pathetically despondent. You hardly know what to do with yourself the rest of the afternoon, oscillating between dejection and self-reproach. It’s pathetic that the mere absence of your crush would reduce you to such a state, hardly able to concentrate on your work because the stranger that you’ve become infatuated with wasn’t at the coffee shop where you see him for a total of twenty seconds every other day. 

Forgive yourself though. Nothing you’ve ever wanted has come without pain.

What you don’t expect is for him to finally notice you. 

It happens on a day when you cross paths rather than arriving at the same time, him leaving the coffee shop as you’re about to enter. Your heart skips a beat when you look up and see him staring down at you, both of you taken by surprise when you go to pull the door open and he’s already pushing on the other side. 

“Traffic jam,” he laughs when you both lean left and then right at the same time, trying to let the other go around. “Here, I’ve got you.”

He extends an arm to hold the door wide open and angles his body to let you pass through. You thank him as you pass, your heart pounding against your ribs. His gaze follows you as you step inside, and you nearly jump when his voice calls a farewell after you, leaving through the same door.

You stand near the doorway for far too long, other customers coming in and going around you, cutting you annoyed looks on their way to the cash. Your drink must already be waiting for you on the counter and still you can’t move. It takes someone actually stumbling into you to jolt you back into the present. 

That wasn’t part of the plan. It’s thrilling, initially, a rush so overwhelming, so kaleidoscopic, that you ride it all the way back to the office and all the way home, replaying the memory again and again in your head until even you start to tire of belabouring it. 

And still you roll around in bed that night thinking about it, heart racing even hours after your short little conversation, picturing it over again in your mind—the crinkle of the corners of his eyes, the smile nearly pulling across his face, all white teeth and soft, supple lips. 

The only problem is—

Now he knows who you are.

You don’t expect him to remember you after such a quick encounter. He’s not the one that’s been pining these past few weeks. He’s not the one that’s been beating himself up for crushing on a stranger. 

But he does remember you. And not only does he remember you, but he looks for you the next time he’s in. 

It’s one of those days when you get there first, coffee already ordered and paid for by the time he walks in, in dark trousers and a quarter-zip today, and filling them both out nicely, the sweater clinging to the muscles of his arms. You expect him to head straight for the cash like he normally does, blessedly and lamentably unaware of your presence.

Instead, your breath hitches when his eyes drift across the café and settle on you, a spark of recognition glinting in them.

His gaze immobilizes you, stronger than any paralytic. It’s what holds you in place as he approaches, the distance between you halved in an instant, and then fully collapsed, the gorgeous man in front of you doing what Zeno’s Achilles never could. 

“Hey stranger, no dance today, huh?” he asks, clearly addressing you.  

You don’t know what to say. This is your worst case scenario, your category five emergency. In the weeks you’ve spent crushing on him from afar, you hadn’t considered the possibility of him ever noticing you in return. 

“Sorry?” you croak.

He gestures with his thumb towards the door. “From the other day, remember?”

You don’t know how you’ll make it through this interaction without making a fool of yourself. “Right. Haha. I guess the dance floor’s closed today.”

You could throw up on the spot. Of all the abysmal conversation rejoinders there have ever been in the history of humanity, the one you just offered must rank comfortably near the top.

For whatever reason though, whether divine intervention or something more dastardly, he chuckles, amused. He seems to like talking to you. Seems to like you even. That only becomes clearer when he approaches you the next day, and then the day after that, and then every day when you stop by at two p.m. for your afternoon coffee, your coffees now handed out together by the barista, as if you had ordered them that way. 

The small talk alone almost makes you consider switching to a different coffee shop. It’s too much pressure. You feel sick with anxiety at the thought of him figuring you out. 

And he will figure you out. You haven’t exactly played it subtle. 

Then he gets your number. Somehow. And your name too, pried so easily from you that you don’t even notice, like freeing a pearl from a clam; barely a flick of his wrist and you offer it up without a second thought, embarrassingly malleable. 

You get his too. Kyle Garrick. He spells it for you as he watches you save his number into your phone from over your shoulder, so close to you that your fingers fumble with the keypad, mistyping it almost four times before getting it right.  

Kyle doesn’t seem to care that you can barely seem to string together a sentence in front of him. If anything, it seems to endear him to you.  

His attraction makes itself apparent in tender words and a new penchant for touch, a hand always reaching out for you. 

At first, it’s nothing more than the casual brush of his fingers against yours as he picks up your coffee from the bar and passes it to you, no different than a handshake or a high five. Ostensibly perfunctory. But that too changes over time. A fleeting touch becomes a hand at the small of your back as he guides you to a table for a quick chat before heading back to work, fingers squeezing your shoulder when he laughs at a joke you didn’t realize you made, and quick hugs that grow a little longer each time.

Maybe. Or maybe you’re imagining it. 

“So when are you gonna let me take you out for real?” 

That snaps you out of the daydream, reality crashing down with such force that it leaves your ears ringing. His words leave you dumbfounded, gaping up at him in that stupid way that you can’t seem to suppress. 

“For real?” you repeat.

“On a date,” Kyle clarifies, as if the word alone weren’t enough to wreck you. 

“Oh.” 

You tell him yes because the word no evaporates from your vocabulary. By the time it returns, he’s already gone, disappearing into the world (likely an office building around the corner from yours, but it might as well be Timbuktu). 

This isn’t what was supposed to happen. You were supposed to pine in agony until you died. 

It’s everything you ever wanted, and yet, you couldn’t want it less in the moment, terrified for some reason that you can’t quite articulate. You count down the days with growing apprehension, jitters giving way to a full-body sweat. 

You’ll break it off at a later date. That thought comforts you to a point. At some point, there will be a moment for you to bail entirely. 

The problem is the longer you say nothing, the harder it is to say anything at all. Already guilt stays your tongue when all you want to do is tell him that you can’t do this anymore. You need to leave—go anywhere else, run home and lock the door behind you, never go back to the coffee shop again.

But there’s a text in your phone telling you the time and place, and every time you look at it, it leaves you feeling off-kilter. Sea legs without leaving dry land. 

What is it about you that you feel the need to run as soon as you get too close? What about this isn’t what you want? Do you even know what you want?

Of course you know what you want. You want love and affection. 

But having is not wanting. Wanting is safe. It’s the having that’s dangerous. 

You contemplate cancelling on him about a dozen times until suddenly it’s too late, the man in question standing in the lobby of your building to pick you up. He must know someone in the building because he’s deep in conversation when you spot him, his head turning to meet yours at the same time, as if even in conversation, he wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted enough to miss you. Your heart squeezes when he wraps it up in the same breath, crossing the lobby to meet you. 

Dinner is a restaurant in a different part of town, one you’ve seldom spent time in before, trendy in the way that would unnerve you were it not for the abrupt realization that to everyone else, this is simply a familiar part of town. 

To some, the restaurant must be familiar as well. There might even be regulars. To you however, the small, dimly lit room with the booths on one side and the chairs lining the bar at the other, an eclectic assortment of framed photos and decorative porcelain plates on the wall beside you, is lovely, uncharted territory. 

Over dinner, Kyle peppers you with question after question until your head spins, each answer that leaves your lips betraying some nervous tendency towards clandestinity. You have to keep some things to yourself. You have to keep some things private.

You have to shut your mouth before you—

“A long time,” you reply without thinking, the whole world blowing open when you admit it. You hadn't even consciously registered the question before answering. When was your last date? 

Kyle doesn’t seem phased by it though, warm smile somehow warmer than the blood boiling under your skin. “I must be one lucky man then.”

He sweet talks you into agreeing to a drink after dinner, probably sensing the nervous animal in you, the fear about to take flight. 

You assume he means a drink at a bar until you’re standing in the kitchen of your apartment, Kyle standing behind the island with a bottle of wine in one hand, uncorking it with practiced ease. When it pops out, you flinch. 

What a strange thing, to lose time like that. You lose it again after he pours you both a glass, coming to on the couch with his arm around your shoulders, pinned between him and the side of the couch. 

He turned the television on, you notice distantly, staring at it through your glass, red wine sloshing from side to side. It’s not a program either of you would care to pay much attention to, possibly by design. 

“Do you have, um…any plans tomorrow?” you ask, swallowing when he drags his fingers over the bare skin of your upper arm. 

“Nope,” he answers, playing with the sleeve of your shirt now. 

You can hear it coming from a mile away. He makes it too obvious with his fingers trailing over your skin and the heat of his gaze searing into the side of your face.

The sky outside your window is black, the moon only a sliver of its usual brilliance, but your living room is bright, turning the window into a mirror reflecting the two of you, the picture of a couple in repose. 

You watch his reflection lean over yours in the window, his lips grazing your double’s ears, your breath catching when his touch yours as well. “If I give you an inch, you’re going to run a mile, aren’t you?” he murmurs. 

There’s a lump in your throat when you swallow. “No,” you lie.

He must see right through you though. Must see the creature inside you about to succumb to its instincts. 

He must be good at chess, you think to yourself, staring down at him with a stupid look on your face as he lowers himself to lie flat on the bed between your legs, spreading your thighs wide enough to wedge his shoulders between them. Any game of strategy. 

If you never give your opponent a moment to breathe, they can’t gather themselves enough to retreat. 

That thought crumbles to dust when he makes you watch him lick the first stripe up the seam of your pussy, crudely spreading your lips with his tongue. Nothing more substantial materializes after that. 

He eats pussy like he hasn’t had enough to eat. Lips and tongue and hollowed cheeks when he sucks your clit into his mouth and your back nearly arches right off the bed, twisted into such a complex shape that you almost don’t know how to unravel yourself. Fingers grasping at his head, his ears; rasping over the coils of his hair, fingers committing the texture to memory. 

Your thighs tremble and squeeze, pried open again and again every time you try to shut him out. The muscles in his arms barely even bulge with the effort it takes to keep your thighs spread. 

You are wound up in ways that would be a challenge to anyone, but Kyle doesn’t seem to care. He just holds you down and forces you to come on his tongue, rolling it over your clit until you actually start crying. Big, belting caterwauls. His poor baby, he croons. 

When have you been someone’s ‘poor baby’? Someone’s darling, sweetheart, honey, that’s it, I’ve got you, that felt good, didn’t it? God, you’re so pretty, I can’t believe you let me—

He flicks his tongue over your sensitive clit and you yelp, reaching down to slide your hand between his mouth and your swollen sex only for him to lace your fingers together and pull your hand to the side and lick it again. 

“It’s still sensitive,” you complain, and he lifts a brow, unmoved by your bellyaching. 

“So what, you got twitchy little orgasm legs, that means I’m not allowed to lick your pussy anymore?”

“No,” you hiss, embarrassment warming the blood already pooled under your cheeks. 

Warm hands rest on either side of your face as he eases his cock in for the first time, holding your gaze in place as sinks in to the root. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut. 

They don’t stay shut for long. He pries them open without words, without touch, every ounce of his ardor poured into you and lifting your own to the surface. 

Sweat drips from his forehead onto yours. The sweat makes his hands slip up and down your face with the force of his thrusts, fingers tugging on your lips and pulling them apart, sliding over your gums and teeth.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Kyle pants, sweat dripping off his forehead and onto yours, eyes darker than you’ve ever seen them, glassy and feverish.

“Don’t—don’t say that,” you gasp.

He dips his head down to press his forehead against yours. “You can’t tell me that. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Whatever this is, it’s nothing like anything you’ve experienced before. Proper lovemaking. Real kisses with passion, with fervor, with delight; the messiness contained between you, in the sweat rolling down your back and soaking into the sheets, the saliva dripping from his mouth into yours, the squelch of his shaft splitting you over and over, never giving you a second to catch your breath. 

Coming a second, no, third time is painful, like a thing wrested unwillingly from you, and you fall back on the bed windburned. Kyle follows you down, hips bucking into yours faster and faster, his own end nearly on his heels. 

He comes with a grunt, without warning; a sudden surge of heat and warmth, his fingers biting into your cheeks where he holds your face in his hands, his lip curling up into a snarl that you swear you can almost hear, and—

You expect it to be over after that. For him to roll out of bed and pull on his pants, maybe give you a courtesy kiss for a job well done before leaving you to stew in the mire of another rejection, the small win eclipsed by the enormity of losing him. 

What you don’t expect is for him to lay down beside you and pull you into him. Kyle laughs softly when he notices your stiffness, jostling you slightly in an attempt to coax you into relaxing.

“That’s right, baby,” he chuckles a touch breathlessly, pressing a kiss to the bridge of your nose before relaxing back down. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Coffee the next day is different than usual. Early for one, the sun still a syrupy morning gold, not yet the starchy afternoon white, and in a different location than usual, the coffee machine on your kitchen counter hissing through its second cup of the day. 

Kyle maneuvers around your apartment too naturally, a stark contrast to the way you scurry from the bedroom to the bathroom like a stowaway. He’s entirely at home in your space though, helping himself to coffee and breakfast, only glancing at you for permission, the slightest cock of his head and arch of his brow, and you fold under the pressure instantly. 

When you try to skirt around him, he wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you into his side, the touch of his lips against your chest shocking you still, electrical impulses still skittering under your skin. 

“I can feel your heart racing,” Kyle teases, caramel-smooth voice sending a low vibration through your chest.

And why shouldn’t he? Your heart is racing after all. “I’m nervous.”

“I know you are, baby,” he murmurs. “This is hard for you, isn’t it?”

It is. A few too many years on your own have turned you to stone, the slightest touch almost too much to handle. You’ve long learned to expect anything you touch to shock you. 

“Want me to make this easier on you?” he asks gently. You’re not sure what he means by that, but you have an inkling. 

And wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry? To not have to second guess what you really want or what you should do? 

You nod. 

“Okay, honey. Then you don’t have to do it. No telling me to go away. I’ve got it from here.” 

When Kyle takes your phone from your hand, you don’t stop him, even typing in your password for him when he turns it towards you, watching over his shoulder as he shares your location with his phone. 

You exhale shakily, the tightness in your shoulders easing. There he goes with that oyster shucker again, opening you up. 

So be it. What use is there in protecting something that’s already his? 

By the time you reach the second floor, the cold has settled into your bones.

The landing on your floor sits directly outside your neighbor’s flat, the brass 2A tacked there a stark contrast against the black door. The hallway runs narrow and straight to your own door, the dim fluorescents overhead cast a flickering pale glow that never quite reaches the corners. An earth-toned floral runner threads throughout the entire length of the building, its pattern long faded, fibers worn thin and frayed down the center where tenants have passed in and out for years. The white walls that contain it all are scuffed dirty and nicked, marked up by furniture and careless feet.

Your neighbor’s flat is always giving the impression that it might be back on the market.

Most front doors offer some indication of life – a welcome mat, a potted plant, a pair of muddy trainers set to the side.

Not his door, though. Right now, his door offers post.

It began modestly enough, a single envelope resting against the door. Then more joined it as the days passed – thick envelopes, junk, rolled up circulars and magazines that curl at the edges after a few days of being stepped over. The stack grows and grows, leaning against the wood as though it expects, at any moment, to be scooped up by the man whose name is printed on the address line.

You notice his absence before the absurd amount of post clues you in, though. Once you’ve learned his rhythms, his comings and goings are impossible to miss. When he leaves it’s the hurried weight of heavy boots stomping, doors and drawers slamming shut in the early hours. It’s always followed by a melancholy sort of silence, not the daily hush of an empty home, but a stretched quiet that haunts behind your shared wall for weeks on end.

Then when he returns, you’re greeted with the rush of water through the pipes, the pungent curl of cigar smoke creeping through the vents, and the sounds of his TV carrying through the wall until nearly four in the morning.

He’s never introduced himself, never offered you more than a polite passing nod. You don’t know what he does, not really, and until now, you never really gave him much thought. 

And only now because you nearly break your wrist because of him.

Your fingers are aching from grocery bags, your thoughts are already drifting toward dinner, and just as you hit the landing your shoe catches the slick edge of a magazine on the floor. The loss of balance is immediate, and unfortunately, graceless. The hallway tilts, the floor rushes up, and oranges spill across the hall and down the stairs. The carton of eggs bursts open against the carpet with a tragic crack. One of the bags split entirely, spilling its contents in every direction. 

For a long moment you just kneel there, the traitorous copy of ‘Guns & Ammo’ that caused your fall lies beside you, addressed to one: Jonathan Price. An incredulous breath of a laugh escapes you before you bat the cover out of sight. 

You flex your wrist carefully — achey, but it moves. So, you get yourself to your feet and collect your groceries piece by annoying piece, salvaging what you can, muttering to yourself about why you should stick to takeaway as you coral oranges back into the torn plastic bag.

Before heading inside, you bend to straighten the stack of mail beside his door, patting it neatly into the frame so it no longer sprawls across the carpet.

However, the post continues to arrive.

And Jonathan Price continues not to.

As the days pass, the stack inevitably builds thicker. Something about weeks of untouched post just feels wrong. So, when pass his door on your way back from work, on an unconscious whim, you gather his post up and take it inside with you. And you continue to do so, piling it on the table in your entryway, every single day.

Except Sundays. There’s no post on Sundays. 

Six weeks pass in total before, one evening, the pipes in your shared wall suddenly gurgle to life.

You’re standing at your sink, hands submerged in sudsy dishwater when the rush of plumbing vibrates through the plaster with the unmistakable sound of his shower warming up.

You wait until the pipes quiet again before gathering the stack of envelopes and ads. It’s heavier than you expect when you lift it. Thick enough now that it takes both arms to hold it all securely against your chest.

Down the short corridor, you make your way to his door and knock once. The rap lands quieter than you meant it to, swallowed by the heavy wood almost instantly. You hesitate, second-guessing yourself until you lift your hand to try again when there’s a metallic click and the door opens just enough to shroud your neighbor in shadow. For a second, he’s only an imposing shape, but then the light catches him properly as he leans forward a bit.

He fills the frame without even trying. You have to tip your chin just to meet his eyes, this close he’s far broader than any glimpses you’ve caught in passing allowed you to register. He’s thick through the shoulders, forearms corded beneath the long sleeves of a worn grey tee that looks softened from years of washing. It clings where it stretches across his chest, molded to him in dampened patches like he pulled it on too soon after stepping out of the shower.

His jeans are loose everywhere except around his thighs, slung low enough that a strip of black elastic and milky skin catches your attention. Your gaze unintentionally trips over the trail of dark hair that whispers up and beneath his shirt.

You can feel your ears starting to warm before you flick back up to his face, meeting a set of ocean-deep irises ornamented by crinkling lines at the corners, tired purple crescents stamped underneath. His beard is grown out past neat — thick and slightly unruly along his jaw, salt and peppered throughout. 

Steam drifts out lazily from behind him, carrying the clean scent of soap into the corridor — it's mild, fresh, a little spice beneath it all.

His eyes settle on you with a subtle recognition, view slightly narrowed before, almost immediately, dropping to the stack of paper you’re gripping.

“Evenin’,” he says almost cautiously, voice roughened, like it hasn’t been used in a while. Or used too much, maybe.

You clear your throat.

“Hi,” you manage, “I’m next door.” You tilt your head toward your flat, never under the assumption that anyone remembers who you are.

His gaze lifts again, meeting yours. There’s a vague hint of amusement glinting in his eyes, it reaches the corner of his mouth, pulling up.

“I know,” he nods gently, almost encouragingly, like he’s urging you to continue with your spiel. 

You shift the weight of the envelopes and extend them toward him before you can overthink it.

“Right, erm… your post,” you swallow thickly, then proceed to ramble, “It kept piling up. For, like, a long time. And, anyway, I ended up slipping on a magazine a few weeks ago, and then I thought it might be better if someone kept it from takin’ over the hall until you were back.” You inhale through your nose, catching a breath before continuing despite yourself. “And now you’re back, so…”

His eyes widen before he reaches his arms out to takes the heap from you, the simple transfer of weight draws you a half-step closer to him. His fingers brush yours in the exchange — callouses scratching softly, warm. The contact is brief, but it’s also entirely impossible to unfeel.

“You slipped,” he repeats lowly, not accusatory, more like confirming he heard you properly.

“I’m fine,” you assure him quickly. “I just meant… like, it was a lot of post, is all,” your voice tapers off as your mouth starts to feel dry.  

“You’re not hurt?”

You shake your head, “No.”

“You’ve been takin’ it in,” his eyes scan the envelopes before lifting back to you, like he’s quietly calculating something. “All of it?”

“Yeah.” You hesitate, then add quickly, “I knocked once. But no one answered.”

“Yeah, I, uh, had t’work.”

“I didn’t open anything,” you continue, suddenly aware of how that all might’ve sounded. “Obviously.”

He smirks at that, his voice becoming something far smoother than it was when the door first opened. “I didn’t think you had.”

There’s a subtle warmth in his tone now. It does something curious to your pulse. You can feel it tap-tap-tapping just below your jaw.

He balances the pile in one large hand and steps back, widening the door.

Your gaze drifts past him inadvertently and into his flat. It’s uncluttered and tidy – not unlived-in exactly, but lacking the charm that makes a place feel claimed. The furniture is purely functional and dated, the walls bare, the floor impossibly clean, the hardwood shines like it was just buffed. 

“M’grateful for that,” he adds after a beat, head bowing enough to move into your line of vision and catch your eye, smirk still prevalent. 

“It was startin’ to look abandoned,” you babble before you can stop yourself.

“Abandoned,” he echoes, gaze sharpened.

“I just meant— it didn’t look like anyone was coming back.”

Something in his expression settles, one of his shoulders roll. 

“Oh, I always come back, love,” he croons just over a whisper and unhurried, like he knows something you don’t. 

Your cheeks warm and your head can’t decide between shaking and nodding, fingers twirling into the soft threads of your jumper.

“No, yeah, of course. I didn’t mean—”

“I’m John, by the way.”

He adjusts his weight again, shifting back under the shadow behind him. This interaction feels like it should be over already, you’re almost wishing it was, but you give him your name in return. He repeats it back slowly, like he’s testing the shape of it on his tongue. There’s something deliberate in the way he says it, like it’s being filed away somewhere permanent.

“Would y’like to come in?” he nods his head. “Least I can do is make you a cup’a tea.”

You hesitate, a pause small enough to miss if he wasn’t watching for it. He notices your hesitation without pushing it. There’s no persuasion from him, no charm turned up for effect. Just patience, like he already figures you will. 

Your eyes flick from his, past him, and back again. You step inside before you even understand why, just, caution to the wind. Survival instincts at an all time low. But there’s something about him that draws you there. 

His flat smells clean – shower steam still clinging to the air, layered over something warmer. Smoke, maybe. Something musky and grounded that feels likely distinctly his. The door clicks shut behind you.

The place is spare. A brown leather sofa floats in the center of the room, the cushions perfectly aligned as though they’re reset after every use. A low coffee table in front of it holds nothing but a neatly stacked set of coasters and a remote placed dead center.

To the side of the TV, a tall wooden bookcase stands in the corner, books neatly arranged, spines perfectly even, each shelf organized by size. There are no pictures on the walls, no decorative clutter on the tables or mantel. It’s as if you’ve stepped into a hotel, but even they put artwork up. 

John moves toward the kitchen with an ease that wasn’t there in the hallway, shoulders a little looser. You follow, watching him push the rescued post neatly into the corner of the counter — probably the messiest part of his flat now. 

The kitchen is very similar to yours, appliances a little more dated, but just as compact. A short galley space with a small honey oak table at the end beneath the window.

“I meant to put a hold on it,” he says, glancing down at the envelopes. “But I left on such short notice...”

“You travel a lot?” you ask, leaning against the doorway, hands coming together in front of you, fingernails scratching at your palm anxiously. 

He’s already filling the kettle at the sink, water rushing loud for a moment before he shuts it off.

“More than I’d like,” he admits. 

“For work?”

“Yeah.”

The burner on the stove blooms blue beneath the kettle with a soft tick-tick.

“You don’t exactly look like someone who works from a laptop.”

That earns you the faintest chuckle before he fully turns around, resting his hip against the pristine white countertop. 

“No?”

“No.” You shake your head. “You’re gone for long stretches.”

His eyes travel your form, a single brow perking with an interest.

“You keepin’ tabs on me, then?” he asks curiously.

You shrug at that, allowing a small smile to spread.

“Hard not to when you’re the only other person on this floor.”

He offers a short hum then reaches into the cupboard, his shirt riding up with him, you get a peek of his toned tummy as he pulls two mugs down. The ceramic clinks.

“And what d’you do when you’re not monitorin’ me?” He looks at you again just as the kettle begins a low, building thrum. 

Your head tilts involuntarily. “I work normal hours and take it home with me. Watch shit TV and order too much takeaway.”

He tsks before he asks, “Don’t cook?” An edge to his tone that’s not quite judgmental and not quite disappointment, but somewhere in the middle.

“I can,” you defend. “I just don’t always see the point.”

The kettle clicks off and he pours the water slowly over the tea bags, steam rising in soft spirals. “There’s always a point,” he says.

“Do you cook?” you ask after a beat. 

“When I’m home.”

“Which isn’t often,” you add. 

He sets the kettle aside and finally meets your eyes again. “Not often enough,” he agrees, his features softening.

“And when you are?” 

He leans back against the counter again. “When I get home? First few nights are rough. Might get pizza,” he admits casually. 

“Jet lag?” 

The corner of his mouth twitches faintly. “Somethin’ like that.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Not well,” he shrugs. “Cup’a strong tea helps.”

“Tea?” you quirk a brow. 

“Yeah, it’s almost the only thing that settles me.”

You step further into the kitchen without thinking, drawn in more by his incredibly vague answers. “Settles you from what?”

He bites the corner of his cheek, like he’s assessing how much you’re actually asking for, or maybe how much he’s willing to divulge — which doesn’t seem like much at the moment.

“Lack of noise,” he answers at last, nudging one of his chairs out with his foot, wood stuttering over tile. He gestures to it and you move to sit without question.

He brings your mug, leaning over your shoulder with a large hand placing it right in front of you, you notice a few partially healed scrapes across his knuckles.

“Sorry, don’t have any milk yet. Just got back.” 

“S’alright,” you reply quietly, wrapping your fingers around the ceramic. It’s nearly too hot to hold, but you welcome the burn; the tingle that blooms its way into the soft of your palm.

John doesn’t sit. Instead, he stays leant against the counter across from you, mug resting in hand, watching you take your first cautious sip.

There’s something steady in the way he looks at you. You only came over to deliver his post. You’re still not sure how it turned into this.

“You live alone?” he asks suddenly. 

You pause mid-sip and peer at him over the rim of your mug, lips pursing. “And what exactly do you plan on doin’ with that information, John?”

His eyes widen just slightly before the tips of his ears grow pink 

He exhales through his nose amusedly. “Poor choice’a words,” he concedes, scratching at his beard. “Mind’s still in work-mode.”

“You interrogate people for a living?” you tease, unknowingly.

That has him choking around his tea, forcing down a cough that has him hiding behind the mug as he gathers himself. 

An unbridled laugh slips free before you can stop it, and something in his posture relaxes at the sound.

“Sorry, you okay?”

“Mm,” he nods far more than he needs to. 

“Well,” you turn back to your tea, “I do live alone. But I know how to use a knife, so don't be weird about it.”

He absorbs that quietly, tongue pressing briefly to his cheek, a thoughtful hum low in his throat.

“Right.”

You narrow your eyes and huff. “That’s all I get? Just ‘right’?”

He sets his mug down, gaze lingering on you longer than necessary. “Place next door’s quiet,” he says slowly. “Jus’ wasn’t sure if you had someone in there I hadn’t clocked.”

“But you’ve clocked my noise levels?” you press, unable to help it.

“Shared wall,” he reminds you.

“And?”

“And,” he says, eyes steady on yours now, “it’s good to know who’s on the other side.”

And after that, the conversation slips into something easier. You learn small, unremarkable things about each other, the kind that don’t really feel important at the time. Like how he prefers mornings to nights. That you can’t even make toast without burning it. That neither of you necessarily trust the boiler in the winter time. It’s nothing intimate, not really. But the way he listens makes it feel like everything you tell him is a secret he’s learning, like each answer matters.

Time warps in his kitchen without either of you noticing. The tea cools in both of your mugs before it’s finished, warmth from the kettle fizzles out, and the distance between question and answer shortens. The conversation stretches easily until you glance toward the door and you’re reminded that this isn’t your flat. 

“Well,” you say softly, “I should really let you finish settling in.”

He doesn’t answer immediately. Just watches you stand and carry your mug to his sink.

“I’ve interrupted long enough,” you add with a polite smile.

“Hardly,” he breathes, pushing off the edge, leaving his own mug on the counter in his wake.

He moves to the door with you, pulling it open and leaning against the frame, hand resting loosely on the knob.

You stop halfway into the corridor and turn back toward him. 

“Try to get some sleep,” you tell him gently. 

Something shifts behind his eyes, like he wasn’t expecting you to remember anything he’d said to you. But his silence after that makes you feel like you’ve misremembered things.

“You said it’s harder when you first get back, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he admits, before averting his gaze to the floor. 

“Well, good night.”

“G’night.”

You don’t look back as you step into your flat, but you don’t hear his door close until yours opens. And even then, it takes a second longer than it should.

—————

John can’t sleep.

He didn’t sleep the night before either, despite how heavy his lids were. He laid there on his back, staring up at the slow rotation of his ceiling fan, listening to the quiet eerily settle around him. He thought of you more than he likely should have — the way your skin seemed to glow under his gaze, how your smile pulled the apple of your cheeks up and round, how soft your fingers felt when they brushed his.

Your perfume, too. Fruity, light. How traces of it lingered in his kitchen for so long after you left he couldn’t tell if he was imagining it, if it was something his brain cooked up to fill the silence in your wake.

John really wants to sleep tonight.

But on the other side of that godforsaken wall comes a sharp clatter followed by muffled swearing. Then something else hits the floor with enough force that he sits up before he’s even aware he’s moving. If he closed his eyes he might even believe he’s back on base at this point – and that certainly does nothing to calm his mind.

Another thud. Louder this time.

It’s enough to make him swing his legs over and push himself out of bed. Hurriedly, he steps into the jeans he left folded neatly on an armchair in his bedroom. Boots on but untied, he heads out and down the hall. The sounds grow louder the closer he gets to your door, and though two decades of training have taught him to assess chaos with haste, he can’t quite decipher what he’s hearing.

He knocks once, and the door creeps open a fraction on its own. He frowns instantly, jaw tightening – you’ve left it, not only unlocked, but completely unlatched.

You appear seconds later, rushing forward to pull it open the rest of the way. Your hair is wet, plastered to your temples, chest rising and falling too fast. There’s panic humming under your skin, but John barely registers your appearance at all. His eyes are still on the door a moment longer before they meet yours, and even then, he’s really just thinking about how it was unlocked. 

“You’ve a habit of leavin’ that unsecured?” he asks, voice edged in a tone that’s harsher than he really means.

You blink at him, dazed. “Huh?”

“That latch isn’t decorative, duck.” He nods toward the deadbolt. “I could’ve walked straight in.”

A beat passes where you just stare at him, wheels turning and trying to catch up.

Then, he blinks a few times himself, and he finally sees you. Taking in your appearance, remembering why he’s here in the first place, his spine stiffens.

“What happened?” he asks, sharper now.

“I—uh, the— the sink—” you stammer, eyes squeezing shut briefly before you step back and sweep an arm vaguely toward the disaster behind you.

He shifts his gaze past you and to the kitchen faucet spraying in erratic bursts. Water ricochets off the basin and across the counter, a pot teeters on the sink’s edge, your cabinets are streaked dark where it’s soaked into the wood. The floor has its own shallow tide.

John steps forward without a word, you move aside instinctively. The space narrows as he passes, his arm brushing your chest.

He reaches the counter in, what seems like, two strides, boots squelching across the tile. One large hand clamps around the base of the faucet while the other tests the handle. It jerks violently in response, spraying harder, drenching the front of his white tee shirt.

“Christ,” he mutters.

He bends, reaching beneath the sink cabinet, keeping one hand steady on the fixture to redirect the spray. Water splashes down his forearm, soaks into his denim and leaks into his boots. His cheek presses briefly against the counter edge as he feels blindly for the valve underneath.

Behind him, you start to hover — unsure, a little guilty. He can feel you there. Aware of the way you shift your weight, the tension in your breath. Of the way you’re watching him. Of the fact that your door was unlocked when you were alone. How anyone could have walked in. That thought lodges somewhere unpleasant in his chest.

But there are more immediate and pressing matters at hand, so he files it away for later.

“Did this just start?” he asks, voice echoing faintly in the cupboard.

“Yes. It just— it wouldn’t turn off properly and then it—”

His fingers find the valve and he twists harder, effectively closing off the flow. The spray sputters, the pipes groan and then it all just… stops.

The silence that follows is almost disorienting, going from overstimulation to nothing but a slow drip of water and some breathing.

“Oh my god,” you huff, letting out a shaky exhale. “Thank you— seriously— I… I don't know what I would've done.”

John straightens slowly, bracing his hands against the edge of the sink to center himself. He looks down at his saturated clothes, the faint ripple in the water around his boot as he shifts.

“Drown,” he replies evenly, “by the looks of it.”

You grin, a soft laugh slipping out despite yourself. If you weren’t so exhausted, you probably would’ve snorted. “I was handling it just fine before you showed up, actually.”

His shoulders rise as he slowly inhales. “I’m sure you were,” he answers mildly.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

He glances down at the shallow tide circling his boot, then at the cabinet door hanging slightly crooked from where you must’ve wrenched it open in a panic.

“I’m reservin’ judgement.”

“On account of what?”

He tips his chin toward the floor, shifts his boot as if to prove his point. “On account’ve the evidence.”

You follow his line of vision and heat creeps into your cheeks.

“Okay, so it escalated,” you concede.

A short laugh slips from him before he reins it in.

“So I see,” he replies, this time there’s no hiding the amusement.

You move behind him, water splashing underfoot. “You didn’t have to come over, you know,” you say – saccharine sweetly, John thinks.

“I don’t know. The noise suggested otherwise.”

You cringe. “Was it that loud?”

“I only knocked because it sounded urgent,” tone less teasing now.

“You could’ve ignored it,” you nearly sing-song, the corner of your mouth twitching with the threat of a grin. He could have stayed in his flat, but he didn’t. 

He looks half over his shoulder again.

“Is that what you would’ve preferred?”

“No.”

“Right then,” he murmurs, nodding once. 

You go to take a step forward at the same time he pushes off the counter, reaching for a towel just as he turns toward you, and there isn’t enough space in the kitchen for both of you to correct in time. Your palms land flat against his chest with a wet slap before you can stop yourself.

His shirt is soaked through, the cotton warm and heavy beneath your hands, bonded to the breadth of him in a way that makes it impossible not to feel the shape of what’s underneath; muscle that doesn’t need to flex to be felt. Your palms flatten, pressing, fingers splaying unabashedly as if to test the reality of him. You can feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing under your touch, the heat of him, his solidness, close enough that if either of you leaned even slightly forward there would be no space left between you at all. The thought is tempting.

And John doesn’t mean to look at you the way he is. It isn’t deliberate. But your black tee is no better off than his, soaked through, cotton clinging to the soft curves of your body, outlining you in a way that requires very little of his imagination. The lights catch the damp fabric and he’s tracing swells and valleys he has no business tracing. 

He has to force his eyes upward only for it to snag on a single droplet of water slowly rolling down the column of your neck, it travels over your clavicle and disappears beneath the stretched edge of your collar.

You pull your hands away from his chest once you notice the moment tipping. 

“Sorry,” you exhale, and it breaks the spell.

He steps to the side a full step, creating space deliberately, dragging his gaze upward successfully this time.

“You, erm… you keep a mop?” he asks, voice cracking and a little rough, heel of his hand rubbing his bearded jaw. “Towels, maybe?”

You blink at him once, twice, like your brain needs a second to rejoin your body.

“Yeah,” you manage. “I do.”

You step around him this time with more caution than before, suddenly aware of how narrow your kitchen truly is, how little room there is for any more miscalculations.

“In the hall closet,” you mutter, disappearing around the corner, leaving him alone in the quiet of the kitchen.

The room somehow feels smaller than it did before – not because of the water or the mess, but because something in the air has shifted and neither of you have decided what to do with it yet. John exhales slowly, dragging a hand down over his face as if he can physically wipe the moment away. 

From the hallway comes the muted thud of a closet door, followed by something scraping against drywall and the soft rustle of movement.

“You alright back there?” he calls, voice steadier now, back in control of itself.

“Fine,” you answer, slightly breathless. “Found it.”

When you reappear, you’re clutching a mop in one hand with an armful of towels gathered haphazardly against your chest. You look determined in an endearing sort of way that makes something in his chest yawn. He clears his throat quickly before the feeling can settle into something more dangerous.

“Alright,” he says, stepping toward you and relieving you of the mop before you can protest. “Let’s get this sorted before your floor decides to buckle.”

You look up at him, face scrunching, reaching back out for the handle. “Oh, you don’t have–”

He pulls it out of your reach and sighs. “Humor me.”

He works methodically, soaking up what he can while you kneel beside him and press towels into the worst of the puddles, the fibers darkening beneath your hands. The air smells faintly metallic now, musty from dirty water.

The only sounds for a while are the soft scrape of the mop, the quiet rustle of fabric, the steady rhythm of shared movement in a space that feels too small.

John wrings the mop out over the sink, forearms flexing as he twists the handle and squeezes out the excess water. You have to remind yourself not to gawk at the way his shirt pulls tight across his back, shoulder blades rolling as he moves.

When most of the water has been cleaned up, he crouches to inspect the pipes beneath the sink again. One knee rests against the tile, sleeves pushed higher now, brow drawn together in concentration as he checks the valve with deft hands.

“Cartridge in the tap’s gone,” he mutters, tightening the valve again. “Handle can’t shut the water properly anymore. Maintenance’ll replace it in five minutes.”

“I wouldn’t even know what to tell them,” you sigh, wiping your temple with the back of your wrist and leaving a faint streak of wet there.

He turns to you, blue eyes softening almost imperceptibly. “Just tell ‘em it won’t shut off fully. They’ll know what that means.”

You nod, committing the issue to memory as if it’s more complicated than it is.

He rises and reaches past you to push the window open a few inches, letting a swirl of cool night air slip into the room. It curls around your ankles and lifts the damp edges of your shirt, carrying the scent of wet pavement and the distant hum of traffic.

“Keep it open till it’s dry in here,” he says, brushing his hands together lightly as if to rid them of the last of the mess.

He heads toward the door, and you follow. On the other side of the threshold, he pauses. He peers over your shoulder – to the sink, the cabinet, the open window, the floor – checking each detail like he’s committing it to some internal list. Only after that does he land on you, but he quickly skips to your door, to the deadbolt you hadn’t turned earlier.

He tips his chin toward it. “Lock it properly behind me.”

You follow his gaze, fingers already reaching for the lock. “I will,” you say, trying and failing to keep the smile from pulling at the edges of your lips. “Thanks again. I don’t even know what to say,” you breathe a nervous laugh. 

“Don’t have to say anything,” he shakes his head. “Just… don’t touch it until maintenance comes, yeah?”

“I promise you that I won’t,” you giggle quietly. 

“Good,” he takes a small step backward, eyes lingering for a beat. 

“Night, John,” you murmur. 

“Night.”

You close the door, sliding your latch into place as promised. And on the other side, he waits just long enough to hear it catch.

————————

Two days after the flood, you’re stepping out of your flat, tote bag sliding off your shoulder, phone unlocked in your hand, half-reading an email you should have responded to last night, when your hear the creek of John’s door opening at the same time, stealing your attention.

He’s standing there with his keys still in the lock, coat on but open. There’s a faint flush in his cheeks likely from being outside, a takeaway coffee balanced loosely in his free hand.

There’s a split second where you both recalibrate. He blinks a few times as you walk in his direction, taking his keys out and slipping them into his coat pocket, foot planted to hold his door from shutting. 

“You alright?” he asks, tone casual, like nothing unusual has ever happened between you.

“Yeah,” you reply, equally steady. “Are you?”

He nods once. “You get your sink sorted?” he asks as you drift toward the staircase. 

“Oh, yeah. Landlord sent someone ‘round yesterday.”

“Any good?”

You huff a faint laugh. “Very enthusiastic about pipes. Less enthusiastic about fixing them.”

He scowls slightly. “They fix it?”

“Yes,” you say. “Apparently I ‘over-rotated the cartridge.’ Which sounds a lot like something you say to avoid admitting it was old.”

“It means you forced it.”

“I did not force it,” your jaw falls open slightly in offence. 

“You forced it,” he repeats dryly. 

“It was an old tap!” you insist.

He studies you for a second, eyes glinting with an admiration for the way you stand your ground over something so inconsequential. 

You reach the the stairwell landing, passing by him closely as you take the first step down, hand on the banister, turning sideways to keep him in your sights. 

“You call straight away?” he asks casually enough that it should feel that way, but there’s something in his tone that’s almost challenging. “Or did you try fixin’ it again yourself?”

“I called straight away.”

“Good girl,” he replies absently, the words folded so naturally into the rhythm of the conversation that they almost disappear. Almost.

Your breath hitches quietly, every nerve inside of your body coming alight with a current that zips up your spine, tingling the base of your neck before spreading through your jaw until every bit of flesh above your neck begins to glow. Your belly tightens with a molten fever that begins to reach places far lower than it should.

He’s not even looking at you, he just adjusts the lid on his coffee like he hasn’t altered the chemical composition of the air between you.

“Off to work?” he continues mildly, eyes flicking to yours.

You clear your throat, steadying your voice before you answer.

“Y-yeah.”

“Right,” he says, as if concluding the world’s most ordinary exchange. “Have a good one.”

You nod once, adjusting the strap of your bag higher on your shoulder, mouth running dry.

“Yeah, you too,” you manage as he pushes his door open and steps inside. 

He glances once more from the doorway, offering a tight line of a smile before the door closes and separates you.

——————

The sun’s an orange yolk dropped into the cradle of a purpling sky. You’re halfway home from the office when you notice the liquor store’s neon sign buzzing red against the early dark.  You slow on the sidewalk, hands tucked into your coat pockets, breath fogging in front of you.

There’s no obligation, of course. He saved you from your untamed sink because that’s just the kinda guy he is. But the memory of it, of him, has lingered with you for days now, slipping in uninvitedly while on calls with clients, during meetings with your boss, fingers flexing unconsciously against your thighs as you remember the solidness of his chest beneath them that night.

The distraction was at its worst today, with John’s ‘good girl’ chanting like a feverish prayer that only the devil themself could’ve conjured and stitched into the back of your skull – his voice, the bass of it, reverberated between your ears for so long you found yourself wishing the vibration would travel lower.

He looks like a whiskey man, you decide.

Inside the store, the air smells like cut cardboard and oak, a little dusty. You wander longer than you should, reading labels you can’t pronounce, lifting one bottle after another, circling the aisle with the indecision of someone pretending to know what she’s doing. Your shoes stick faintly against the hardwood as you pace.

The clerk notices your hesitation eventually.

“Need a hand?” he asks.

“I’m just looking for something… smooth,” you decide, though it comes out more like a question than an answer.

He nods as if he’s heard that a thousand times before and points you toward three options just in front of you. You choose the one priced in the middle, not too expensive, but enough to be considered a gift, you think. You carry it to the counter with an anxious flutter beneath your ribs.

The building’s stairs feel longer tonight. Each step echoes louder than the last, paper bag crinkling in your grip with every movement. By the time you reach your floor, your pulse has climbed into your throat. You pass his, going to your own door first, stepping inside just long enough to set your purse down on the table and search deep into the pit of your gut to find some bravery. 

You could leave it at his door with a note, you consider.

But you won’t, because that’s not really what you want to do, is it?

The hallway between your flats feels like it begins to narrow with you in it, the overhead light flickering ominously as it always does. His door is only a few steps away, and yet the walk toward it feels more like a trek.

John hears your door before he hears the knock.

The old building carries sound in that way old buildings do. Your door opening and closing is a sound he’s come to recognize now. The soft chime of your keys too, because everyone’s keyring sounds different, the jingle is unique, yours are no exception.

So when the knocks come a few seconds later, he already knows it’s you. 

He stands at his kitchen counter, rag still in hand, his heartbeat behaving in a way it hasn’t outside of work in a number of years. He doesn’t know how, in less than a week, he’s gone from not knowing your name to timing his morning coffee run with when you leave for work just to get a glimpse of you, to catch the scent of your perfume in the stairwell.

By the time he reaches the door, he’s aware of the way his shoulders square on their own, the way his hand smooths over his beard, the way his fingers rake through his hair before he turns the handle.

And when he finally opens the door, you’re right there. It takes him half a second too long to draw in a full breath. 

Your work coat is still on and hanging open at the collar, the fleece folding over just enough to reveal that hollow at the base of your throat that he just can’t keep himself from finding every time you’re in front of him. Your cheeks are glowing from the stairwell, clothes still carrying the cold, hair slightly mussed from the wind, perhaps.

“Hey,” he breathes, voice getting caught in the folds of his chords enough to crack on its way up. 

You lift the brown bag in response, that crooked little smile he’s starting to recognize appears like you can’t quite decide whether to commit to it or not.

“A thank you,” you present it to him, the base of it resting in your hand precariously.

His eyes land on the bag and then return to your face.

“Should I be concerned?” he asks with a teasing lilt.

You step closer to the door, holding it out for him to take.

“It’s just whiskey, John,” you giggle and instantly wish you could take back the hyenic sound that leaves you.

He takes it from you and peers into its depths, letting out a low appreciative whistle.

“That’s… very generous.”

“I didn’t know what you liked,” you admit, aware of how exposed this feels, almost embarrassing now with how slick your neck is beginning to feel. “The man at the store said this one was smooth. I figured that was safe.”

He studies you for a moment in a way that warms your skin even more beneath your coat. Like he’s weighing your intention behind the gesture.

“Be a shame,” he starts, moving to the side of the doorway, “to let it sit unopened.”

“You invitin’ me in?” you ask, aiming for lightness and landing somewhere breathless instead. 

This was the idea, wasn’t it? That he would invite you in? So why do you want to run back down the hall now?

“I am,” he nods. “If you’d like.”

He opens the door wider, and when you step past him the air changes in that way it always does when you cross into someone else’s space. Not just in temperature, but in atmosphere and energy – the smells change, the lights change, the sounds change.

He puts the whiskey down on his entry table, holding his hand out while he asks for your coat. You shrug out of it so he can hang it on the hook beside the door. 

You quickly notice, however, it doesn’t smell like soap tonight.

It smells like food.

Butter and garlic and something a little smoky, like an iron pan that got a little too hot on the burner. There’s rosemary in there somewhere, you think. It makes your stomach rumble a little, suddenly aware that you left work on a granola bar and a few cups of lukewarm coffee.

“Oh…” you murmur before you can stop yourself, gaze drifting into the kitchen. “Were you eating?”

“Was about to. Just finished cookin’.”

You look closer this time, there’s a plate on the counter with a steak resting in its own juices, some mash beside it still holding the groove of the spoon, green beans piled neatly on the side.

It looks good, but you instantly feel guilty.

“I’m sorry,” you apologize, taking a small step backward toward the door. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can come back.”

He exhales a faint huff of amusement from behind as he slips around you, his hand brushing along the small of your back as he passes toward the kitchen. “You didn’t interrupt anything.”

“I did,” you insist, following behind him now like you're being pulled. “You were literally about to eat.”

“And you were ‘literally’ about to go home and order takeaway,” he counters mockingly without even looking.

You stop short in the threshold, a hand finding rest on your hip. “Excuse me?” you scoff.

At the counter, he looks over his shoulder, one brow lifting. “Let’s not pretend.”

He’s still faintly smiling as he reaches for a knife.

“I wasn’t,” you lie, though even to your own ears it sounds a bit defensive. You were definitely planning on ordering palak paneer for the third night in a row.

“S’that why I see Indian outside your door every night? I thought it might be becomin’ part of the decor…”

Your mouth falls open despite the grin yanking at your edges. “First of all, that’s, like, borderline stalking.”

“Shared hallway,” he replies entirely unapologetic.

“Second of all,” you continue, undeterred, “sometimes it’s Italian.”

He hums thoughtfully. “Right. A woman of culture then.”

He slices into the steak with an adept sort of ease, cutting it into even strips before he reaches into the cupboard to bring down a second plate. It takes a moment before what he’s doing dawns on you.

“John,” you step further into the kitchen, hand reaching out before pulling it back. “You don’t have to feed me.”

“I know,” he says, back still turned. “But I reckon you’re hungry…. So, have a seat.”

He transfers a few pieces of steak to the second plate, adds another spoonful of mash without asking whether you want it, then nudges a few green beans alongside it.

“I didn’t come to eat your dinner,” you continue your weak protest. 

He doesn’t wait for you to say anything else, he just slides the plate along the laminate countertop towards you and then tips his head to the small table by the window.

“Sit,” he says, not too firmly, just with an expectation that you will.

And you do, which is something you’ll have to dissect later.

You hesitate half a second before taking the plate and floating toward the chair. You lower yourself into it, perched on edge stiffly, feeling a little unsure of yourself despite having sat here before. 

You can feel John notice your tentativeness, a quick sideglance from him as he finishes up pricks at the hairs on your arms.

“Sit comfortably,” he corrects pointedly, as though amending the first instruction. His voice is low and even, commanding even when he isn’t trying to be.

Heat creeps up your spine, but you reposition anyway, scooting back until your shoulders touch the wooden stiles, tucking one leg beneath the other. Only then does he set a fork and knife beside your plate, fingers brushing yours in the exchange. He places a glass of water in front of you too, condensation pooling around the base of it almost instantly, leaving a ring that distorts the grains in the honeyed wood. 

He grabs his own plate and sits across from you.

The table isn’t very large, you become acutely aware of that very quickly. Beneath it, his knees hover close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from them. If you extended your leg any further, it would press against his without any effort.

“There,” he murmurs, voice quieter now, eyes lifting to yours across the small space. “Eat somethin’ proper for the first time this week, will ya.”

You take a bite mostly to busy your hands. The mash is still warm, butter melted into salty pockets. The steak all but melts between your teeth, tender in a way you’ve never managed to get it yourself, seasoned simply and perfectly and with the confidence of someone who has never once second-guessed himself over a pan.

“This is so good, John,” you say, before you’ve even fully swallowed. “Like — really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You nod, watching one brow lift. “And not ‘I’m being polite’ good. Actually good.”

“Mm. High praise from such a cultured young duck,” he replies, dry as anything.

“I don’t just hand it out willy-nilly,” you say primly, the tips of your ears tingling.

That draws a soft breath of laughter from him. “No, of course not,” he agrees. “You don’t strike me as the type.”

“And what type is that?” you ask before you can stop yourself. 

“Stubborn,” he answers, a little too easily, eyes steady on yours.

You tilt your head. “Think you’ve got me all figured out then?”

“It’s kind of my specialty,” he says. “Believe it or not.”

“Is it?” you press. The fork turns between your fingers in thought, like you might actually learn something deeper about him right now. “And what else have you figured out?”

He considers you for a moment. “That you ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m curious,” you say. “There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes.” You lean forward slightly, elbows finding the table. “Asking questions means I’m interested. Asking a lot of questions means I’m very interested.”

Something shifts in his expression at that, a subtle recalibration, like he hadn’t expected you to say it so plainly. His eyes hold yours for a beat before he glances down at his plate, the corner of his mouth doing something restrained and infuriating.

“Careful,” he says, low and easy.

“Maybe I don’t see what there is to be careful about.”

He looks at you again then, and there’s something in his eyes that is slightly too warm to be neutral.

“No,” he says, almost to himself. “I don’t suppose you do.”

You hold his gaze, refusing to be the first one to look away, even as the back of your neck starts to prickle pleasantly. Eventually, he picks up his fork again, and you take it as a small victory.

“So,” you say, after a moment, tilting your head like the thought has only just occurred to you. “How long have you been holding out on me like this?”

He glances up. “Holdin’ out? On you?”

“Yeah.” You gesture lightly at your plate. “I’ve been living next door to this for how long, exactly?”

“Fourteen months,” he answers, immediately and without blinking, like the number was already sitting on the tip of his tongue.

Taken aback, your hand goes slightly clammy around your cutlery. Less than a week ago you were fairly certain he barely registered your existence.

A faint exhale of amusement leaves him at your silence, eyes dropping briefly to his plate. “Didn’t realize I was under an obligation to feed you.”

“I think, legally, you are now,” you counter, recovering.

He studies you over the rim of his glass as he takes a sip of water, eyes narrowing slowly. “Are you always this demanding?”

“When properly motivated.”

He nods once, like he’s filing that away somewhere. 

“You like to cook?” you ask then, watching him.

“I do.”

Frustrated, you drop your fork and knife down with a little more force than intended, the sound of it clattering, ringing out in the small kitchen. His head snaps up at you.

“That’s so vague,” you whine almost indignantly. “Why are you always so vague?”

John sits back slowly now, arms crossing over his chest, fingers tucking beneath his beefy biceps, pushing them out to strain against the sleeves of his shirt. His head tilts, forehead creasing with many lines. “I’ve answered every question you’ve asked me,” he says, tongue licking over his canine behind closed lips. 

“You’ve responded to every question,” you correct. “It’s not the same thing.”

Something twitches at the corner of his mouth.

“Men and their refusal to elaborate,” you mutter, rolling your eyes before landing back on your dinner.

“I’d argue it’s more like ‘women and their refusal to be satisfied’,” he returns mildly.

“How can I possibly be satisfied, you give me nothing to work with!” You can feel yourself getting animated now, leaning forward again, and beneath the table your knee presses into his without you even noticing.

He notices, though. And he makes no move to change it. 

“Every time I ask you something real you just— you do this thing where you answer juuust enough to qualify and then you stop. And I can see you stopping, John, I can physically see it!”

That gets you a real laugh, fuller than you’ve heard from hin before, it’s gravel-deep and a little raspy, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening as his teeth show just long enough to catch. It dissolves the tension so suddenly you almost feel cheated out of it.

“Alright, alright,” he placates, reining himself back in, still smiling faintly. “What d’you want to know?”

You blink at him, recalibrating your attitude. “Oh, now you want to cooperate.”

“Ask your question before I change my mind.”

You study him for a second, aware that this is a small window of opportunity that may not open again given his track record.

“Okay,” you say carefully. “What do you actually do? Not ‘I work,’ not ‘I travel’.  What do you do?”

He exhales slowly through his nose, his smile fading into something more straight lined. His thumb traces an idle line across the back of his knuckle, back and forth across those healing scrapes.

“Special forces,” he admits. “That’s— that’s about as much as I can give you.”

The answer gives your pause. You’re not particularly surprised by it, somewhere in your gut you already knew. So you absorb the information quietly. It reframes him in a way, things you’ve already half-noticed about him like his posture and his stillness, the way he speaks, the way he gives these subtle orders that you never know how to read.

“Okay,” you settle on simply, his answer still swimming around in your head like disconnected puzzle pieces slowly attaching to one another. 

He looks at you like he expected more. “Okay?”

“Okay,” you repeat, shoulders shrugging smally. “Thank you for telling me.”

Something in him settles before he picks up his fork again, and for a moment you eat in a comfortable quiet, only the soft scrape of cutlery filling the room.

“Does that bother you?” he asks eventually, without looking up.

“No,” you answer honestly. “Should it?”

“Some people find it… complicated.”

“I imagine the right people don’t.”

He looks at you then, eyes shifting from his plate cautiously, something unreadable flickering across his face before he glances away again.

Outside the window beside you, the sky has gone fully dark, the glass reflecting an image of the kitchen, the two of you small and warm inside of it.

“How old are you?” he asks suddenly, like he’s been holding the question back for a while. Your eyes snap over to him again.

“Twenty-six,” you tell him. “How old are you?”

A puff of air exhales slowly from between his lips. “Old enough to know better,” he murmurs to himself, which, again, is not an answer.

“Know better than what?”

He doesn’t reply to that either, just looks at you with that steady expression he has, the one that makes the back of your throat go dry and the tops of your thighs squeeze.

And it’s now, in the quiet of his kitchen, under the gaze of blue eyes, that you realize he is perfectly aware of  what he’s doing to you. And probably has been for longer than he’d even admit.

“You’re insufferable,” you inform him pleasantly.

“You’re not the first to think so,” he agrees, unbothered.

Afterwards, you insist on helping with the dishes despite his objections.

“You’re stubborn,” he says.

“You like it,” you push. 

John sighs like it pains him as he hands you a dish towel. 

There’s something about the domesticity of it that feels intimate. Standing hip to hip in the narrow galley, light above the sink draping you both in a golden curtain, him washing and you drying, neither of you talking very much but not minding the quiet either.

He passes you a glass and his shoulder brushes yours as he reaches past you to set a fork in the drying rack, neither of you move away afterward. The inch that used to be between your arms stays closed now, pressed to each other.

“D’you do this often?” he asks.

“Dry dishes in strange men’s kitchens?”

His mouth twitches. “Yes.”

“No,” you hum through a smile. “You’re the first.”

“First strange man or first time drying his dishes?” He reaches past you again.

“First time drying his dishes,” you chuckle. “Jury’s still out on the other one.”

He makes a sound that might be a laugh, low, suppressed, eyes crinkling as he keeps his gaze on the sink. 

When the last dish is done and the towel is damp in your fingers and the tap has gone off, the kitchen settles into a silence that buzzes with something unspent. John dries his hands and leans back against the counter, looking at you in an unhurried sort of way.

“C’mon,” he says, tilting his head toward the living room.

——————

He moves to the sideboard where the whiskey is waiting and you drift naturally toward his bookcase, drawn there by the same restless energy that’s been humming under your skin all evening. It’s something to do with your racing thoughts while he’s occupied with the bottle.

“Am I allowed to snoop,” you ask, fingers already trailing over the spines of his books, “or are there rules?” squinting at a title, tipping the text out of line to have a brief look at the cover. You look back at him. 

“There are always rules,” he replies, glancing up from the glasses in front of him.

“Naturally,” you murmur, and return to it.

It’s mostly as you remember from that first night in his flat — books arranged by size, spines perfectly even — but you look more carefully this time, now that you know more about the hands that arranged them. History, mostly. A few novels with cracked spines that suggest they’ve actually been read rather than kept for show. A dog-eared paperback in a language you don’t recognize, the cover worn soft at the corners.

There’s a small brass compass that sits at the end of one shelf. A scattering of foreign coins too, silver and copper that don’t match anything in your wallet, currencies from places you probably couldn’t even find on a map.

You lift one, turning it over in your palm. It’s smooth from handling, warm from the ambient heat of the room.

“You’ve got coins from everywhere,” you observe.

“Habit,” he says from behind you. You can hear the quiet glug of whiskey meeting glass.

“Of picking them up?”

“Of keeping them.”

You set it back carefully, exactly where it was. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, and then he pauses, thinks about it. “Reminds you where you’ve been,” he says. “When everywhere starts to look the same.”

You turn that over for a moment, looking at the small scattered collection with different eyes now.

“That’s either very philosophical or very sad,” you decide.

“I think it’s a bit of both, no?”

You glance over your shoulder at him. He’s watching you with an almost smile. He holds out a glass toward you and you cross the room to take it, your fingers closing around the cool curve of it, pressing over his fingers in the exchange.

“The books,” you say, nodding back toward the shelf. “Have you read all of them?”

“Most of them.”

“Which ones haven’t you?”

“The ones that were gifts,” he says, after a thoughtful pause.

You don’t push that one. Just let it sit between you as you both settle onto the sofa — you first, then him, and the distance he leaves is careful and deliberate and already smaller than it probably should be, honestly. 

“You’re very minimal,” you say, cradling the glass in both hands.

“You’ve mentioned,” he says before taking a tight-lipped sip. 

“I’m saying it again.” You tilt your head. “Does it ever feel lonely?”

Something moves across his face — not offense. More like the question landed somewhere real and he wasn’t quite expecting it to. “Sometimes,” he says, which is more than you expected him to give you.

“But you keep it this way anyway.”

“Easier when you’re never sure how long you’ll be back for.”

You look at him for a moment, this big, careful, frustratingly guarded man, and you feel the particular ache of understanding someone just enough to know how much you don’t.

“That’s a very lonely way to live, John,” you say not unkindly, just honestly.

His jaw shifts. “Maybe,” he concedes, and the word is low and a little rough at the edges.

You take your first cautious sip of whiskey. The burn blooms along your tongue and spreads slow and deep into your chest, and your eyes sting just slightly at the corners. A small cough escapes despite your best efforts to hold it back. 

He watches you over the edge of his own glass, amusement soft in the lines around his eyes. “It’ll settle,” he assures you gently. 

“That’s what everyone says right before it doesn’t,” you answer, though you take another sip anyway, slower this time, letting the heat spread rather than fighting it.

A low chuckle leaves him at that, and something about the sound in the dim room makes the space feel smaller, the careful distance between you on the sofa somehow already less than it was a moment ago. You’re not entirely sure which of you is responsible for that. 

Outside the window the city carries on in its distant, indifferent way — the low hum of traffic, the occasional sweep of headlights across the ceiling — and in here the lamp burns warm and the whiskey is settling into your chest exactly like he said it would and the space between your knee and his thigh has quietly, incrementally ceased to exist without either of you making a conscious decision about it.

You look at him to find he’s already looking at you. His eyes are very blue even in the dim light of the room. Ocean deep and sparkling with amber flecks from the lamp, carrying something unguarded for the first time, simmering on the surface. 

“You’re staring,” you say softly.

“Am I.”

It isn’t a question though, not the way he says it. His glass rests loose in his hand, and he makes no effort whatsoever to look away.

“You are,” you nod, the edge of your mouth quirking as you look back into your glass.

His thigh is solid and warm against your knee. And you can smell him this close. Dish soap and whiskey, something musky and spicey, something you’ve decided must belong distinctly to him.

Your pulse is conducting itself with an embarrassing lack of composure that you hope, without much conviction, isn’t visible.

He reaches up toward your face and, regrettably, you flinch gently. Certainly not because you want him to stop, you just weren’t expecting it. And John seems to register that, he pauses instantly when you do. His hand flexes slowly in the air beside you, palm opening unhurried and safe, like an apology before he continues his gingerly movement forward and tucks a strand of hair back from your face. His knuckles just barely graze the line of your jaw as his hand drops.

It was such a small thing, barely anything at all, and yet your whole body responds to it like a held breath finally releasing, like something that has been wound tight behind your ribs all evening just gave way.

“Still think I’ve got nothin’ to say for myself?” he murmurs.

All you can manage in a small shake of your head, your fingers twisting into the wrinkled fabric of your skirt. 

The corner of his mouth lifts. And then his eyes drop to your mouth and stay there. He doesn’t pretend otherwise, and you feel the intention of it like a change in pressure, like what the air does in those calm minutes before a storm. 

John moves slow enough that you see it coming and still aren’t ready. He leans inward just a fraction, almost imperceptible. It’s the kind of movement that could mean nothing, that could be dismissed totally if you were inclined to do so.

But there is nothing incidental about the way he’s looking at you, and nothing accidental about the way the distance between you continues to melt. He stops short, just close enough that all either of you would need is the smallest shift and there would be nothing left between you at all.

There he waits, close enough you can feel his breath, close enough to admire the freckle on his nose. He’s infuriatingly patient and unbearably still, like a man who has made his intentions very clear and is now perfectly content to let you decide what happens next. In the span of a single held breath, you learn he isn’t going to close the gap.

So you do.

Your mouth meets his and he kisses you carefully. Like he’s learning the shape of you. One large hand comes up to cradle the side of your face, his thumb resting at the curve of your jaw, and the touch is so steady that something in your chest just — gives. It comes loose like a knot that’s been tied tight all evening finally being pulled free, its tension unraveling all at once, its ribbon fluttering to floor with an exhale that he swallows. 

The whiskey is warm on his lips, a faint sweetness beneath the heat of him, and it mingles with the warmth already blossoming in your chest. 

You feel him reach, it’s followed by a soft clunk of his glass setting on the table. Then you feel his hand on yours, prying your cemented fingers from your own cup so that he can place it beside his. All the while his lips continue to capture yours, his beard scratching at your chin when he tilts to deepen it.

Your newly freed hand finds the front of his shirt. Fingers curling into the soft of it like you need something solid to hold onto while the world around you tilts ever so slightly off its axis.

He pulls back, and for one terrifying second you think it’s over, your eyes open, but he’s only paused, his thumb tracing a slow arc along your jaw. His eyes open to find yours and they are blown dark, grey and navy, pupils fighting for space with his irises.

“Alright?” he murmurs lowly, the word barely more than a vibration between you.

“Yes,” you breathe embarrassingly quick, which makes the corner of his mouth curve, and then he comes back to you and this time he’s a little less careful.

His hand slides from your jaw into your hair, fingers curling at the nape of your heated neck, the kiss deepens by degrees, his tongue pushing through to sweep along yours like a tide coming in high.

Your fingers tighten more in his shirt, closing into a fist that twists the cotton tight across him. You can feel the heat of him through it, and it’s so much better than the memory from that night in your kitchen, so much realer, and something akin to lava in your belly responds to the realness of it in a way you feel all the way down to your thighs.

When his other hand finds your neck, the pad of his thumb traces the line of your jaw until he finds your pulse just below it, pressing into it until a soft squeak escapes your throat and he’s grinning against you. 

You push into him without thinking about it, closing whatever distance is left between your bodies, your free hand finding his jaw, scratching through the short coarse hair of his beard. He makes a low sound against your mouth that you feel at the back of your teeth, in the base of your throat, in places further south than either of those.

The hand at your neck slides slowly, tracing down over your collarbone, your shoulder, coming to rest at your waist, fingers pressing in through the fabric of your blouse with a firmness that makes your thighs press together. He pulls at you just enough to 

communicate something without saying it, and you follow.

Swinging one leg over him, your pencil skirt rides up over your thighs as you stretch across his wide lap, it bunches just under your hips, leaving a salacious bit of fabric between his zipper and the thin lace covering your center. 

You pull back just far enough to look at him, to catch your breath, lips swollen, chin chapped. His hair is slightly displaced, your doing. His mouth is bitten-red, also your doing. 

His hands are warm and heavy on your hips, fingers pressing into the fat of them.

“Hi,” you say softly, which is an absurd thing to say and you know it the moment it leaves your mouth.

Something like amusement crosses his features and he reaches up to tuck a strand of hair back from your face for the second time tonight.

“Hi,” he says back, voice rough with restraint.

But not too much because then his hands are sliding from your hips to the backs of your thighs, calloused palms grazing across your skin.

“Okay?” he asks, thumb tracing that slow arc against the inside of your knee.

“Very,” you manage.

The corner of his mouth pulls up and his hands begin, with absolutely no hurry whatsoever, to move.

He kisses you again, slower this time, deeper, no longer learning. His hands move from your thighs to your waist, sliding under your blouse, palms meeting hot skin.

You press into him greedily, hips shifting forward, chasing something instinctive, a feeling so insistent it makes you rock again, and then again, and you feel him — solid and unmistakable — beneath you, the heat of him coming through the denim. The breath that attempts to leave you hitches in your chest and sticks there. 

His hands tighten at your waist and you roll into it again, his jaw tightens and he exhales a groan into your mouth. 

The kissing gets away from both of you quicker than you can even keep up with it. His hand climbs your back, fingers spreading wide between your shoulder blades, pressing, pulling you closer until your chest is firmly to his and your back is arched like a bow.

Your fingers fist his hair and then his beard and the warm column of his neck, touching everything you can reach.

You pull back from his mouth, breathing unsteadily, your forehead tipping toward his.

“John,” you breathe, and it comes out lower than you intend.

“Mm,” he answers, his lips finding the hinge of your jaw, the soft patch just beneath your ear, and your eyes close.

“I want—” you start.

“I know what you want,” he whispers against your neck, and you can feel the curve of his mouth against your flesh as he says it.

Your fingers tighten in his hair. Your hips shift again, more pointed this time, and his breath comes out slow and controlled through his nose in a way that tells you it’s costing him his currency of composure.

“John.” More insistent now, your hand fitting between your bodies, fingers crawling to his belt, making yourself clear.

He pulls back to look at you, eyes steady, his hand catching your wrist gently before you get any further.

“Easy,” he says, low. His thumb strokes across your pulse point once before he pulls your hand aside.

“I want—”

“I know what you want,” he says again. “But, not tonight,” he finishes, tone on the edge of pleading.

You make a sound of frustration that dissolves as his hands slip to the backs of your thighs and up, kneading the flesh of your exposed backside.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” he starts, very quietly, like he’s telling you a secret, his eyes holding yours with a steadiness that makes your stomach drop toward the floor. “You’re gonna stay right where you are.” His fingers trace the hemline of your underwear, just enough to make you very aware of where they are and where they are not. “And I’m gonna take care of you.” He takes a pause, eyes searching around your face. “Properly.”

Your bottom lip catches between your teeth and you nod. 

“Yeah,” you breathe. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he echoes softly. “Lean back, duck.”

He helps shift you back to give himself enough space to get a look at you, to soon fit his hand between your already spread thighs.

He doesn’t look anywhere else, only your face, as he gingerly slides his big hands the length of your thighs, his thumbs pressing into the meat inside on their way up until they hit the hot crease that meets your core. 

You look down at his hands, your own finding purchase on his wrists — he doesn’t seem to mind. He moves one to your hip, the other descends, the heel of his palm pressing against your lace. He takes his time, moving in excruciating circles, like he’s learning the shape of you through fabric first. You try very hard not to come apart immediately but it's a losing battle from the start given how long it’s been since anyone has touched you like this.

Your head falls back with a soft, helpless sound and your hips push into the pressure, chasing it, making your own friction. 

“There she is,” he murmurs, and you can hear the smile in it.

“John,” you whimper, hips rocking, asking for more without words.

He answers by hooking a finger into the hem of your underwear and pulling them aside. He traces through your folds at a pace that makes your thighs tremble. You can hear your slick separating around his digits, you try not to think about how embarrassing it is to be this wet.

“Look at me.”

And it’s hard. It’s hard to lift your head back up, to meet his wrecked gaze, but you do. You can feel the blood rushing around your cheeks, the whiskey bubbling under your skin. 

When he finally — finally — plunges one thick finger into the well of you, your whole body folds, your forehead dropping to his. Your hands move to his shoulders, finger nails digging half-moons through his shirt and into his skin. 

“Good?” he asks, low.

“Yes,” you manage, “yes, please—”

He works you open slowly, one finger and then, after he’s made you wait, two. And the stretch of it, the fullness of it slipping in beside his index, pulls a moan from you that bounces off every surface in the room.

He finds a rhythm that unravels you. He pushes deep, until each knuckle is nestled into your heat. He moves them, curls them, pumps them achingly slow until you are completely and utterly lost, rocking into his hand, face buried in his neck, panting. 

The tension builds inside of you like a spring, coiling tight and hot. Your breathing goes ragged and your grip tightens.

And then, when you’re already spinning, when there’s nothing left in you capable of forming a coherent thought about anything, he turns his head, his lips at your temple. 

“This is why you came ’round, yeah?” The words drop like molten silver into the shell of your ear. “This is what you wanted?”

You can’t answer him, and he knows that, so you just press closer, and let the last of it break over you in a long, consuming wave that starts somewhere deep and radiates outward until you feel it in your fingertips, your jaw, the backs of your knees, and up the length of your spine. Your walls pulse around him, and you can feel how damp it’s all left you in his hand. 

You stay where you are, forehead against his shoulder, your breathing coming back to you. His free hand moves in a slow idle path up and down your back.

You lift your head eventually and look at him.

There’s a warmth in his expression that’s more unguarded than anything you’ve seen from him all night, his careful composure worn down, and it does something to your chest that has nothing to do with what just happened and everything to do with who he is.

“That was—” you start.

“Yeah,” he agrees, before you’ve finished.

You laugh softly at that, and he almost does too, that almost-smile making an appearance.

Outside a car passes, headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling before disappearing.

“I should go,” you say, which is true, but it’s also a little bit of a shame.

He doesn’t argue with you. He nods once, and the arm around your back loosens.

You clamber off of his lap with less grace than you’d like, your skirt fighting with you before it sits correctly again. You feel him watching you fix yourself with a composure that you find deeply unfair given that he’s largely responsible for the state you’re in.

“Not a word,” you warn, without looking at him

“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” he croons in a tone that suggests he absolutely was. He reaches for his long forgotten whiskey and takes the last of it down in one gulp. 

You smooth yourself out, retrieve your shoes from where they’ve ended up beside the coffee table, and carry them with you to the door. He stands, straightening his shirt, and you notice with some indignation that he looks entirely unruffled. Like the last hour happened to you very specifically and left him more or less untouched.

“Ready?” he asks.

You huff a small laugh, and find you’re unable to look him in the eye, your face turning to your bare feet on his rug.

“You don’t have to walk me,” you say. “It’s literally a hallway.”

“But I’m going to,” he says, and moves to the door anyway.

The corridor is dim, the floral runner threadbare underfoot. You count the paces between your doors. It’s nine. 

At your door you turn back to face him.

He’s standing just behind you, hands tucked into his front pockets. 

“Thanks for dinner,” you say.

“Thanks for the whiskey,” he returns.

“Yeah, that— It was good.”

“It was,” he agrees, and you both know neither of you are talking solely about the whiskey.

“Night, John,” you say softly.

“Night, duck.”

You turn and let yourself in, the door swings shut behind you, and you stand in the dim of your own flat for a moment just… breathing. Just letting this electric air calm around you.

Your coat is still on his hook. You’ll get it tomorrow.

On the other side of your door, John doesn’t move immediately. He stands where he is and waits. Waiting for the click of your deadbolt to slide home.

But it doesn’t come.

He even waits another moment, just in case, gives you the benefit of the doubt, which he notes is more than past events warrant.

He exhales slowly through his nose, tips his head back briefly toward the ceiling, and turns back around.

Three steps, his hand finds your door handle, turns it, and the door swings open without resistance, which is exactly what he was afraid of.

You’re in the entryway still, back against the wall in thought. You turn your head to the side when the door opens, eyes going wide, lips parting with confusion.

He leans against the door frame, arms crossing slowly over his chest, looking at you with the hard expression of a man who is being very patient. His chin is tucked and his forehead creased three times over. 

“I—”

“Second time,” he says over you. “Second time I’ve found that door unlocked.”

“I was literally ten seconds behind you—”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Nothing was going to—”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says again, the same way.

You look at him for a moment, shoes still in your hand, and he looks back, and you let out a breath through your nose that is not quite a sigh and not quite a laugh and is mostly a concession.

“Fine,” you say.

“Lock it,” he says. “Tonight and every night. Are we clear?”

“We’re clear,” you mutter.

He holds your gaze a beat longer like he’s making sure the message has actually taken root this time, and then he nods once and pushes off the door frame.

“Good night,” he says, pulling your door closed from the outside.

You stand there in your entryway listening. You can hear him waiting, the impatient shift of his weight against old floorboards.

You reach out and turn the deadbolt.

Then all that’s left to hear are his retreating footfalls heading back down the hall to his own door.

You stand there, fingers still on the lock, a smile pulling at the corners of your mouth.

-------

John Price

John is across the room, talking with your father.

They’re deep in conversation, your father speaking while John stares, silent and focused. Your father didn’t want you to marry military, thought the idea of John leaving you alone for long periods of time disrespectful. Whether their conversation is civil or not, it’s the perfect opportunity to mess with John.

Retrieving your phone, you open your messages. Glancing up at the two men, you smile, knowing that what you’re about to send will set John off.

I’m wet and horny. Can’t stop thinking about you fucking me on my childhood bed with everyone downstairs.

The messages become bubbles on the right-hand side of the screen. Locking your phone, you count the seconds, observing John as the messages come through. Your father turns away to say something to your cousin. In that moment, John pulls out his phone and glances at the screen.

You’re already up, already moving through the living room and toward the hall. Looking back to see if he’s following will ruin it. Either he’ll follow you or he won’t, but you’re betting on the former.

You take your time ascending the stairs. Everything about your movements is casual and unhurried. Rushing will only draw suspicion and questions. With the whole family in the house, you won’t be missed for a while. There are plenty of people here to bother each other.

At the top of the stairs, you head down the hall, stopping at the far door on the left. Without glancing back, you enter the room, shutting the door behind you, only to meet firm resistance. This is when you turn, finding your husband, his hand gripping the edge of the door. You release the handle, taking a step back as John forces himself inside, closing the door softly behind him.

“What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” you answer, shrugging.

John places his beer bottle on top of the dresser. Reaching for his belt, he undoes the front, never taking his eyes off you.

“That’s the bed,” says John, but it’s almost teasing, more of a “why are you not bent over already?” statement.

“It is,” you reply, hands behind your back, swaying.

John is on you seconds later. The man is so much stronger than you, and he uses it to his advantage. Spinning you around, he brings you flush against him, one arm braced over your front to hinder escape.

“Telling the truth? Or teasing?” he breathes into your ear.

“Can it not be both?” you counter, pressing your hand against the bulge in his pants, squeezing.

You bite back a yelp as you’re bent forward. Hands rising to brace yourself, they land on the bed, forehead pressed against the glittery duvet. Holding your hips, John shoves your dress up. It pools around your breasts, leaving most of you exposed.

“Be quiet, cabbage,” coos John, hooking a finger in your underwear, dragging it down to expose your pussy. “Don’t want daddy to hear.”

It’s the air, cool and biting against your arousal, and then you’re choking, fingers curling as John bottoms out. With one hand on the small of your back and the other supporting your pelvis, John’s hips move like a well-oiled piston. The stretch of him requires adjustment, but the lack of preparedness forces the ache higher.

The metal frame of the bed squeaks softly with his thrusts. John works fast, rough, his dick hitting deep.

You whimper and John fists your hair. “Said quiet,” he growls, and you promptly bite down on your knuckles.

Erratic and raw, you cling to the bed, taking John’s heavy hand, moaning around your fist as he explodes inside you.

“Don’t let your family see my cum sliding down your leg.”

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

You’re drooling, unable to peel your gaze away from your husband.

Kyle is crouched low, talking to his niece. She waves her hands excitedly as she talks, and Kyle hangs on every word. His parental nature is downright sexy, and though you’re resistant on having a kid, your ovaries are screaming at you, and when your ovaries are in control, you never make anything but horny decisions.