all her paths are peace

After your first date, Dex committed himself to becoming the perfect partner. Like all things he excelled at, he approached it with an alarming amount of discipline and research. Advice columns, psychology blogs, old nineties rom-coms, classic romantic novels– he consumed every piece of information he could get his hands on to learn how he could make you stay. 

The morning after your first date, he had caught you (as usual) in the elevator. You had shyly given him your number, like  you didn’t give him the most transcendental moment of his life the night before by kissing him outside apartment 416. Like Dex hadn’t been on his way to the jewelry store on 12th Street to buy you a diamond ring and claim you forever. 

“Maybe we can go out again?” you had asked quietly, batting your eyelashes as you finished typing your number into his embarrassingly empty contacts and handed his phone back. Maybe? Dex would’ve thrown himself off the roof if you didn’t go out with him again. 

“Yeah,” he stuttered. “Of course. I mean– definitely." 

He already had your number memorized, of course. Alongside a plethora of other information, including your social security number. But you giving it to him willingly? Dex still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. Then again, he couldn’t comprehend most things about you. How kind you were, how perfect you were, how beautiful you were, how real you were. What remained most incomprehensible, however, was the fact that you seemed to want him, too. 

Dex did whatever he could to keep you wanting him. He read online that women liked good morning texts, so he texted you good morning. He learned that they liked compliments, but didn't want to be overwhelmed by them or for them to be insincere, so he chose carefully. He complimented your hair if you wore it differently, or told you he liked your earrings, or the color of a dress or skirt you wore. Specific compliments were better, he had learned, because they show attentiveness. Dex was nothing but attentive. 

He knew that women liked it when men took initiative, too, so he planned your next dates and told you what time he would pick you up from across the hall. You liked that. You especially seemed to like when he paid for the dates, even though you would pretend to argue with him about it. 

“Dex, seriously,” you had attempted to complain on your third date. Dex had seen you post on your Instagram about wanting to see a new sci-fi movie that had just come out, so he suggested it as nonchalantly as he could possibly manage two days later. 

You both stood at the box office, and Dex was pulling out his wallet while you frowned at him. “You paid for dinner the first time, then coffee on our last date. I seriously can’t let you pay for this. My friends are going to start saying you’re my sugar daddy.”

Dex didn’t know what a “sugar daddy” was. He looked it up afterwards; shouldn’t a man want to pay for everything a woman needed if he loved her? Wasn’t that the point? To make sure she never had to ask anyone else for anything? To make sure she never needed anyone else?

He only shrugged and swiped his card. “It’s no problem. I like taking you out.”

Your only response was to roll your eyes and thread your fingers through his as you walked towards the theater.

There were things about being a good partner that were harder for him, though. The first was trying to appear less eager than he actually was. On the same relationship forum where Dex had read about the good morning texts, he also learned that he shouldn’t respond too quickly. That was easier said than done. Sometimes, after hearing his phone ping with a message from you, he would have to literally set a timer to keep himself from answering. Fifteen minutes, usually. Enough time to seem attentive. Enough time to seem like he was doing something other than waiting pathetically by his phone, pacing until the timer went off. 

The worst was the ring. Dex had bought it the morning after your first date. A perfectly symmetrical two-carat diamond perched delicately atop a thin gold band. Beautiful. Permanent. The black velvet ring box sat in the coffee table drawer next to the old Mercer tapes, both of them untouched. He would’ve proposed that very morning. He wanted to, desperately. And if God had any mercy on his mottled soul and you said yes, he would’ve marched you straight to city hall and made it official right then and there. 

Apparently, though, it was not considered “socially acceptable” to propose after the first date. That was “too soon”. Dex disagreed. Because what was “too soon”, really? Your relationship? To Dex, whatever the two of you had did not start when you asked him to dinner in the lobby that fateful morning. It began when he opened the door to you holding that frog-colored plate of chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe, it began before that. Maybe it began when you moved into apartment 416 and rearranged his mundane, miserable, structured world. Maybe it was before then, too. Maybe you both had always been connected, somehow, someway. 

So, Dex told himself he would wait. But as much discipline as he had, Dex knew that when it came to you, he wouldn’t be able to wait forever. 

Physical intimacy between the two of you was a whole different matter. The two of you had kissed since that first night. Several times, in fact. Sometimes outside your apartment door after a night out, inside the elevator in the morning, on street corners after dinner when you looked at him with your lips stained from whatever bottle of wine you two had shared. Sometimes the kisses were quick and sweet. Sometimes, they were not. 

Sometimes you would lean into Dex until your breasts were pressed against his chest, your fingers curling into the edge of his shirt collar while his hands spanned the small of your back and dipped lower and lower until they met soft flesh, and Dex would have to remind himself of every single discussion thread he had read about patience. About not pressuring a woman, even though every single fiber of his being was made from pulverizing pressure. 

He tried his best to wait for you. 

But tonight, Dex knew it would be different. 

Dinner had gone well, as it usually did these days. You laughed whenever he attempted a joke, complained about lesson plans, asked about the field office even though Dex would have much preferred to talk about you, and, after your second glass of wine, you spent the entirety of the meal staring at his mouth like you thought he wouldn’t notice. Dex noticed everything. 

By the time you both stood outside your apartment door, he could feel the shift. You had been quieter on the walk home, holding his hand tighter than usual, your hand squeezing him again and again like you were trying to work up the nerve to say something.

His pulse had steadied into something strong and restless as he watched you fish your keys out of your purse. You unlocked the door, and then paused with your hand on the knob. 

You looked at him. “Do you…want to come in?”

Dex had been in your apartment before. Many times, though you didn’t know it, of course. As a matter of fact, he had been inside it only nineteen hours ago, sitting in his favorite chair in the corner of your room as he watched you softly snore. 

But beyond your request for him to water the fern in your living room, never had he been invited in. 

Dex felt his mouth go dry. “Yeah. I’d love to.”

You stepped to the side and let him in. 

When the door closed behind Dex, he realized how different it felt to be inside your apartment as a wanted guest. Everything felt warmer, softer this way. From the lamps by your couch to the scent of the vanilla candle you kept by the stove, it was like Dex had all the pieces to the puzzle of your life spread before him, arranged perfectly, but only on your invitation had he been able to connect them and see the whole picture. And the whole picture was even better than he imagined, because he was in it. 

You brushed by him, toeing off your heels as you stepped into the kitchen. “Do you want anything to drink? Water? Wine?”

Dex suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands as he followed you into the kitchen he had paced so many times before. He shoved them in his pockets. “Uh, wine is fine.”

“Would you get the glasses?” you asked, opening your fridge and peering inside. “They’re in the–”

Before you could finish speaking, Dex was already opening the cabinet above your sink. The one with the wine glasses. You blinked at him, bottle of Pinot Grigio in hand. 

“Oh. You found them.”

Dex froze with his hand around the stem of a glass. Fuck. “I…I keep mine there, too.”

You raised an eyebrow. 

Fucking fuck. He tried for an easy side smile and hoped it landed. “FBI intuition, I guess.”

For one horrible second, you only stared at him. Then you giggled. It worked. 

“I guess I should be careful dating an agent,” you teased as you took the glass from him and poured wine into it. “I’m never going to be able to hide anything from you.”

Dex laughed. You were right. 

Wine poured, you nodded towards the soft velvet couch in the living room. “Shall we?”

“We shall.” 

Dex walked behind you and tried not to stare at the bare line of your calves under your dress as you settled onto the couch and tucked a leg under yourself. Stiffly, he sat beside you at what he believed was an appropriate amount of space between your bodies. You looked at the space with what seemed like annoyance, then at him, and shifted closer until your knee brushed his thigh. Dex took a long sip of wine and hoped his face was arranged normally. 

You fidgeted with the stem of your glass, eyes moving from his face to the dark television screen across the room. Dex realized you were nervous.

“Do you, um–” you gestured towards the screen. “Should we put something on?”

“Sure,” Dex said, though he had no idea how he was supposed to watch anything when you were sitting close enough for him to feel the heat radiating off your body. Close enough to smell that intoxicating citrus shampoo. The same kind he had bought for his own shower.

You grabbed the remote from the coffee table and clicked the TV on. 

“...and in Hell’s Kitchen tonight, locals are reporting new sightings of a masked vigilante some are claiming may be Daredevil–”

You frowned as the grainy news broadcast footage showed a blurry, dark shape on a rooftop. “I thought that guy was dead.”

Dex’s eye twitched as he watched the screen. “Even if he is, there’s always going to be some idiot trying to copy him. Half of the shit he does is illegal but because he’s wearing a mask, everyone thinks he’s a hero.” 

You raised an eyebrow and flipped the channel. “I didn’t know you had such strong feelings about him.”

“It’s just…” Dex paused. For some reason, the conversation made his skin feel tight. He didn’t know why. “Guys at the field office complain about it a lot. People like him make our jobs a lot harder.” 

“Hmm.” You changed the channel again until you landed on some mindless standup comedy special. “Hopefully the FBI doesn’t have strong feelings about comedians, too.”

Dex huffed out something close to a laugh because that felt like the right response, and felt you ease yourself into his side. The laugh track filled the room but he didn’t register a single joke. All he could hear was your breathing. Dex watched as you took a sip from your wine glass, the tip of your tongue darting out to catch a stray droplet on your lip. He couldn’t stop staring. 

Surely, the heat of his gaze had bored into the side of your face, and finally you tipped your head up to look at him. The blue light from the screen moved softly over your face, catching on the little crease between your brows.

“I can feel you staring, you know.” 

Dex felt like a hand was around his throat. “I am.”

Your voice had gone hushed when you spoke again. “Why?”

There were hundreds of answers Dex could’ve given you. Because I love you. Because I’ve been watching you sleep every night for the last two months. Because I never stop thinking about you. Because there’s a ring waiting for you just across the hall. Because I wish I could crawl into your skin and live with you forever. Because you belong to me. 

All were the truth, but each answer felt too big. Instead, he gave you a small amount of honesty, though it was the most genuine Dex had ever been with you.

“I just…I can’t believe you’re real.”

The crease between your brows smoothed as your expression changed. Your eyes darted away, and then came back to meet his. “Well, last time I checked… I’m real.”

“I know you are.”

You looked at him for another moment, like you were trying to decide whether he was joking. He wasn’t. Slowly, like you were trying not to startle a skittish animal, you leaned forward and set your wine glass on the coffee table. Then you settled back on the couch, but this time your body was twisted to face him. Your hand came to rest against his chest, right over his thumping heart. 

“I’m…not always good at this stuff, but– I really like you, Dex,” you whispered. 

Something inside him shattered. All at once, the discipline in him– the articles, the forums, all the research into how to be a man you stayed with– left him. Every breath scraped like sandpaper through his ribs. Every organ was twisting in on itself until the only thing that would make the ache stop was touching you. 

This time, though, he didn’t want to wait. He couldn’t wait. 

So, Dex touched you.

His mouth crashed onto yours, all urgency and need and no hesitation. You moaned against him, lips parting so his tongue could slip inside to meet yours. Dex could taste the white wine clearly, like he was drinking it straight from you, licking it off the enamel of your teeth. Your hand had migrated from over his rapidly swelling heart to the side of his neck, fingers sliding into the coarse blond hair on the nape of his neck. He wanted you to pull it, to yank it out of his scalp. But in order to ask you to do that you would have to stop kissing him, and Dex couldn’t risk that. 

Grabbing the soft flesh at your waist, he pulled you until both of your legs framed his hips and you straddled him on the couch. As you settled over his crotch and let your weight sink onto him, Dex suddenly understood with terrifying clarity that tonight would be different from the sweet little kisses you two had shared before. He would finally, finally have you. He would have something no one else had ever taken from him and give it to the only person he had ever wanted to receive it: you. 

And in return, you would give yourself to him. No matter what happened after tonight, you would never be able to rid yourself of the proof that he had been here. 

Dex would give his virginity to you. 

“Dex,” your breathless whine brought him out of his stupor. In his haze, he had moved his mouth from your lips to your collarbone, sucking and biting hard enough he knew with all prideful certainty it would leave marks the next morning. “Can you…please…”

He felt you grind your clothed cunt helplessly against the tent that had formed against his jeans. Dex was already so hard, so aching, he felt like any movement from you would send him over the edge. He stilled your moving hips with his grip. 

“What?” His lips ghosted over where your shoulder met your neck. “What do you need?”

Dex would do anything for you. You should’ve known that.

Your face was flushed. You dipped your head down so your lips skimmed the shell of his ear. “My room. Take me there.”

Dex stood immediately. One arm around your back and the other under your ass, he lifted you like you weighed nothing. Your mouth was already on him again, pressing desperate, open-mouthed kisses to his jaw, his cheek, the crinkle of his eye, any patch of skin you could find. 

You didn’t tell him where to go, because he didn’t need you to. Still holding your writhing form against him, Dex moved down the short hallway, past the framed photos of your life before him, past the bathroom door, straight to your bedroom– the same path he had taken silently in the dark more times than he could count. 

You were too busy acting like a bitch in heat to notice. 

Dex nudged the bedroom door open with his shoulder and stepped inside. Your room was the same as it had been nineteen hours before. But never had he allowed himself to fully, truly imagine it in the light of all that was to happen. With a single invitation, the room had mutated. No longer was it a sanctuary; it was an altar. 

Reverently, Dex lowered you onto your mattress, holding himself up above you on his hands. You stared up under him, hair spread wildly against the pillow, mouth swollen and red from him. You were more beautiful than anything he had ever thought possible. 

Both of your hands came to frame his face and he nuzzled into your touch like a neglected animal. 

“Maybe this is embarrassing to admit, but– I’ve thought about this before,” you murmured, tracing your fingers across his brow bone. “I’ve thought about it so much.”

Dex could feel his breathing go ragged. He wanted to die. He buried his face into the crook of your neck. 

“W-what…what did you think about?” he asked shakily, voice muffled against you. Dex knew what you were going to say and still didn’t know if he could survive hearing it aloud.

Your fingers carded back into his hair. “... What you would feel like. On me. In me.”

He could only groan in response. You tugged on him, ever so slightly but enough it stung so fucking good, guiding his face back to yours. Dex followed helplessly, mouth finding you again, sloppy and uncoordinated before he forced himself to slow down.

Your hands slipped from his hair to your dress, fingers searching blindly for the zipper at your side. Instinctively, Dex caught your wrist before you could find it. 

You pulled back from his mouth, confusion flickering through your wild eyes. 

Dex stared at your smaller hand in his, then at your dress clinging to your body like a second skin. His voice was thin when he finally managed to speak. 

“...can I?”

Your expression softened for just a second before a flash of something he hadn’t seen before passed. “Can you…what?”

He wanted to light himself on fire. “T-take it off. Of you.”

You waited patiently. He wanted to light himself on fire and then stab himself. 

“Your dress,” Dex clarified, voice breaking. “... please.”

Your lips curved. “Yeah, Dex. You can.”

His fingers scrambled for the zipper, fumbling with it because he couldn’t stop shaking. Finally, he caught it, and moved it down the track, each tooth giving way, inch by inch by tortuous inch. 

Dex watched the fabric loosen around you, watched as the dress began to fall open beneath his hands. Finally, it was loose enough he could pull the straps down off your shoulder, then down, down, down until it bunched at your hips. You lifted them, and Dex slid the dress the rest of the way off and tossed it somewhere behind him, forgotten before it hit the floor. Only then did he allow himself to sit back on his heels and look at you fully.

Like a figure from a painting, you lay back on the pillow, arms twitching at your sides like you couldn’t decide if you wanted to cover yourself or let him see you. Your bare breasts rose and fell with each breath, full and soft with peaked nipples beginning to stiffen in the cool air. Dex forced his eyes down, over the dip of your sternum, the softness of your stomach, and lower still. There was still one barrier between you– a pair of lace panties the color of the morning sky. He knew them. He had seen them folded neatly in your drawers before, had skimmed his hand over the fabric. He always wondered what it would be like to feel them warm and damp from your arousal, or to smell your scent on them, or to taste you through them. To be honest, he had thought about taking them with him many times. But now, Dex was glad he didn’t. Because no stolen relic would be able to come anywhere close to the honor of doing what he was about to do. 

A sound more animal than human left him, and instinct forced him to lean down, hands opening your thighs. Before you could even register what was happening, he placed a kiss on your clothed cunt. 

“Ooh, shit–” you gasped, hips bucking against him. 

Dex did it again, sloppier this time, needier. Like he was thanking you. Each kiss wetting the fabric, each kiss a gesture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

You were close to trembling as you put your hands on each side of his face, practically having to pull him back. 

“Dex, please…” your eyes met his, nearly black with want. “No more teasing. Take them off, now.”

A command. He was familiar with them. Words barked across a firing range, across a battlefield, across a rooftop with his scope trained on a life he was about to end with one clean pull of the trigger. But never had Dex wanted to obey an order as badly as this one. 

His hands moved from holding your thighs open to slipping under the band of lace. Once he slid that final piece of fabric off you, there was no more script. Technically, he knew what happened next. Dex was a man and had seen what men like to see; he wasn’t a prude and he certainly wasn’t stupid. He had been in the Army, for fuck’s sake. He had been there when men opened their phones in the barracks and played videos of women pretending to find pleasure beneath men with comedically long penises. He had watched them pass around half-naked pictures of girls back home and brag about what they could do with their mouths.

Dex knew where to put his hands, his fingers, his tongue, his cock. But knowing how to do something isn’t the same as wanting to do it. Dex had never had the desire. What was the point of doing any of that to someone he didn’t care about? What was the point of pushing himself inside a body that meant nothing to him? A body that wasn’t yours? A body that didn’t belong to his North Star? Maybe that’s why he waited all this time– because in his whole thirty-three years on this planet, you were the only person who had ever made desire feel like it was worth obeying.

Dex hooked his fingers beneath the lace and pulled. He tried to be slow, but the starving, caged animal in him was screaming at him to just rip them off, bury his face in your cunt, and finally learn if you tasted the way you smelled: sweet and oh-so human. But his hands shook too badly for that, so he watched in agony as the lace made its slow descent down the curve of your hips. Dex eased the panties down your thighs, over your knees, past your calves, until they slipped free around your ankles and landed in his hand. 

You whispered his name.

He looked up, and you were bare. Completely. Your flushed thighs had fallen back open, exposing your wet, swollen pussy to him, the soft curls between your legs damp and glistening with arousal.

Dex wanted to cry. Instead, he dipped his head back to you and brushed his nose against the soft crease where your thigh met your pelvis. He inhaled deeply, letting the heady musk of you infiltrate his senses, and groaned aloud. 

Maybe he should’ve felt humiliated, scenting you like a dog. But this was the holiest experience he had ever had. His lips pressed a gentle kiss to your inner thigh. Then again, higher. Then another. Until finally, his lips hovered over the swollen nub at the top of your cunt. 

The tip of his tongue darted out, placing a careful lick directly to your clit. 

“Fuck!” you cried out, hand flying over to cover your eyes like you couldn’t bear it. 

Dex did it again, and then again. And then again, and again, and again, until your hand had moved from over your eyes to clutch at his hair. Dex lifted his gaze to see your eyes rolling into the back of your head, the whites of them showing like you had become possessed. 

He didn’t know if he was doing it right. Dex knew how to study, though, and how to become accurate. He had built his life around noticing and correcting until he found that exact target. He could execute. Dex could, would do the same for you. 

He moved from those small, careful licks to longer ones, slowly dragging his tongue from your dripping entrance to the sensitive bundle of nerves above it. Softer, then faster. Slower, then with more pressure. Adjusting, correcting, narrowing in. He learned what you liked. Your moans became louder when he circled your clit with the edge of his tongue, so he did that. Your thighs trembled when he sealed his mouth over you and hummed, so he did that. Your body spoke, and Dex listened. 

“Oh my– Jesus fucking Christ, Dex,” you gasped. Your moans had become garbled and near incoherent at this point. 

He lifted his gaze again and met your eyes as he continued drawing tight, slow circles over your swollen clit. Your face was twisted in what could only be described as pleasure and agony, mouth open, brows pinched, tits heaving with every labored breath. Dex couldn’t look away. 

“Mmm… I’m gonna–” your thighs tightened around his face, trembling against his ears. “Fuck, how are you doing that?”

He only hummed in response, and your back arched off the mattress. 

“Dex,” you cried, hand fisting at his hair, pulling so hard it sent a shock through him. “Please, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna– oooh, fuck–”

Dex felt your cunt pulse underneath his tongue, your whole body spasming as you came with a broken sob. He held you still through it, mouth never stopping as much as you seized. He tried to watch you as much as he could to memorize this very moment, the trembling in your muscles, your eyes fluttering, the shape your mouth made as his name left it over and over. 

Dex, Dex, Dex. 

He could have stayed, face buried into your pussy, for days. Weeks. Months, even. Hell, Dex would have happily died of suffocation if it meant never having to take his mouth off of your still-convulsing cunt. 

You, though, did not seem ready to kill him yet. Oversensitive and still twitching with aftershocks, you pried his pussy-drunk face away from you with trembling hands until he reluctantly released your cunt from the suction of his mouth. He kissed a trail back up your body, stopping to press his mouth in a grateful kiss to each peak of your breasts before finally reaching your mouth again. The second your lips met, you let out a quiet gasp at the taste of yourself on his tongue. 

“Dex,” you mewled against his lips. Your breath was still shallow, though the fact that he kept sucking softly at your lower lip probably did very little to help you recover. “I think that was…shit. That was definitely the best orgasm I’ve had. Like, in my entire life. Where the fuck did you learn that?”

Dex paused only briefly, his hand stopping on its way from your waist to paw at the soft flesh of your tit. “I, uh– practice. And I pay attention. I guess.” 

Apparently, you found that answer sufficient, because you gave only a girlish giggle and pulled him back down into another kiss. Your hand moved from his jaw to the cords of his neck, then lower still, over his chest, his stomach, until your fingers paused at his belt.

“Hmm,” you looped one finger through the leather. “I think we’re a little unbalanced here.”

You were right. You were bare, as naked as the day you entered this world and were bound to him. Dex, hovering above you, was still fully clothed from head to toe. 

You tugged once at the belt. “Off.”

Another command he was more than happy to oblige. He sat back on his heels, first wiping the mess of your arousal off his chin before grabbing the bottom of his shirt and pulling it over his head before tossing it to join your dress on the floor. You sucked in a quiet intake of breath at that, though Dex wasn’t sure exactly why. 

His hands moved to his buckle, and Dex could feel your eyes on him as he worked the leather free. They were everywhere, the dusting of dirty blond hair on his pectorals, the trail of darker hair that extended from his stomach to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans. It felt like you were cataloging every single piece of him. 

Dex shoved his jeans down his hips, kicking them off once they pooled around his ankles. 

It should have made him nervous. Dex had spent his whole life finding ways to hide, behind roles, structures, masks, anything to avoid truly being seen. But this didn’t feel like exposure. It felt like…recognition. Like his body was already yours. A part of you. You two were equal, but opposite. The same soul in  different skins. 

His North Star. 

The thought alone made his cock throb. 

As if you sensed it, your eyes dropped to the bulge beneath his black briefs, and your lips parted into a small “o”. He was so hard it hurt, the fabric stretched tight. Dex had been hard because of you before. Alone in his apartment, the blue light of his laptop illuminating the screen that showed a smiling picture of you stolen from one of your social media accounts. In the shower, sniffing the exact citrus shampoo he had bought after finding the bottle in your bathroom. Sitting in this very bedroom, watching you toss and turn under the covers. 

But never had he touched himself to you. 

Dex wasn’t a saint, obviously. He would lay there, every fiber of his being aching for some sort, any sort of relief to the coil building low in his gut. He could never do it, though. Every time his hand would hover lower, even graze his pulsing member, a wave of disgust would come over him so strongly it forced his hand back. It would have been…false. Blasphemous. Like kicking dirt over an act of salvation. 

He saved himself for this exact moment. Once he took off his briefs there was absolutely no going back. There would be before, and then there would be after. Nothing in between.

You pushed yourself up, folding your knees underneath you, rising until you were level with him again. You put your hand on his chest, delicate fingers trailing across his chest, brushing his nipples, and then lower. His abdomen braced as you skimmed your fingertips past the hard ridges, until finally, you placed your palm over his cock. 

He gasped your name, head dropping to your shoulder. He hadn’t touched himself in months. No one, no one had touched him like that. Ever. 

Your hand moved again, fingers closing around him through the fabric, and his hips jerked forward before he could stop them. Dex was so far gone from the taste of you and the sight of you and the knowledge that you wanted him like he wanted you that the light pressure shot through him like a bullet.

Your face turned into his, lips slotting into each other again before Dex could collapse against you. It was slower than before, your tongue exploring his mouth like you had all the time in the world. Like he wasn’t seconds away from spurting ropes of cum into his briefs when you hadn’t even actually touched him yet. 

Dex kissed you back desperately, one hand fisting your hair to hold you close, the other grabbing at your waist. He could feel your hardened nipples brushing against his chest, your hand stroking him softly. He was going to cum. Just from that. 

“Wait.”

With what seemed like great effort, you pulled back from Dex’s mouth. A thin, translucent string of your mingled saliva followed you until it snapped, landing against your chin. Dex resisted the urge to lick it up. Your palm still cupped the twitching length of him through the fabric of his briefs. 

“Do you…” Your eyes flicked briefly away from his. “Do you have…protection?”

Dex stared at you in silence. You huffed, though your cheeks were already beginning to burn. Were you…embarrassed? Even after all he just did to you? For you?

“What?” Dex asked. He knew what you meant. 

“A condom. Do you…have one?”

Technically speaking, no. Not on him, at least. There was, however, a small box of unopened condoms under his bathroom sink. He bought it exactly four weeks ago, on the afternoon before your first date. Not the thought something was going to happen that night, obviously. But Dex was always, always prepared. He had thought maybe, eventually, something like this could happen. But now…it was happening. And the idea of something stopping this, something coming in between the two of you, it was unbearable. Disgusting, even. 

After everything that had already kept him from you, after all the doors and walls and locks and rules that had made him stand on the other side, waiting and waiting and fucking waiting, did he really want another barrier?

Absolutely not. 

Dex leaned in and placed a quick kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Uh, n-no. No, I don’t.”

You chewed on your lip, eyes darting down to where you still held him. You were considering something. 

“I…I don’t think we have to use one, if you don’t want to,” you began slowly. “I’m on birth control.”

He knew that. Dex had found the little foil packet of pink pills in your bedside drawer weeks ago. He stared at it, and it stared back at him like it had a personal vendetta. That would be dealt with another time. 

“And…I’m not seeing anyone else.”

Of course you weren’t. If you had been, Dex would’ve taken care of that, too. You wouldn’t need to worry yourself with the details. 

You looked back up at him, eyes wide and cautious. “Unless…you’re seeing someone else?”

Dex felt genuinely offended. He would have rather disemboweled himself and let vultures pick at his organs than even think of someone other than you. He genuinely didn’t think he was physically capable of wanting anyone else. 

“What? I– no, no, of course not,” he sputtered, his grip on your waist tightening before he could stop it. Did you think so low of him? “Do you think I am?”

You shook your head quickly. “Dex, no. I didn’t think you were. I just meant…obviously, it would be okay if you were, I just–”

“I’m not seeing anyone else. I won’t be seeing anyone else.” Just like you won’t be seeing anyone else, he wanted to add. 

Something in his tone made you go quiet. After a few seconds, you blushed and nodded your head. “Okay. I believe you.”

You placed one tender kiss on his lips, as if that was the final confirmation you needed, and then slipped your hand into the band of his briefs. 

This was it. The final wall between the two of you. 

Your fingers paused, brushing the coarse hair on his pubic bone. “...can I?”

Dex didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded. 

You pulled the briefs down slowly, and Dex had to steady himself with against you. His cock sprang free, veined and girthy, and slapped against his stomach, head red and drooling with precum just below his navel. 

Your eyes bulged. “I don’t…I don’t think that’s going to fit.”

His whole body pulsed at your words. He knew he was…big. Solders had made jokes of it in locker rooms. He felt it. But he had never cared before. Now, he did. And he was going to make himself fit, one way or another. 

Dex kicked the briefs the rest of the way down, and your hand wrapped back around him before he had a chance to prepare himself. Your fist moved up, thumb tracing the vein underneath the head, before it moved back down the silky shaft, all the way to the base, and then back up–

Quickly, he put his hand over yours. “I–you should probably stop.”

You raised an eyebrow. 

“I don’t…I don’t think I’ll last,” he admitted sheepishly. “If you keep doing that.”

Your expression softened, which only made the humiliation worse. 

“Oh,” you whispered, pressing your lips to his jaw. “That’s okay. We can go slow.”

Dex nodded weakly, and guided you back down onto the mattress with blood rushing in his ears. Your thighs opened once more, this time wrapping around his hips, heels pressing into the dimples of his back. 

Slowly, shakily, he lowered himself down. The heat from your cunt was radiating. Only a few centimeters of air lay between your sexes. Only a few centimeters of air before he would be forever changed. A part of him would be inside you, and even after he left, even after you washed him from your skin, Dex would know the truth. 

It had to be perfect.

Dex wrapped a trembling hand around himself and guided the sensitive head of his cock slowly to your entrance. The first touch made his whole body seize. You were so hot, so wet. He wasn’t going to last. He had to control himself.

Dex's eyes squeezed shut, face twisting. He needed to breathe. In…and out. 

“...Dex?” you asked, breath hitching. You looked genuinely concerned. “Are you–”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, I just–” What was he supposed to say? I’m about to lose my virginity? My life is going to be forever changed? For the first time in my life, I’m scared?

Dex roughly exhaled through his nose, then regrouped himself. It would be perfect. He brought his leaking head back to your pussy lips, dragging himself through your slick. The tip bumped your clit, and you moaned. 

“I know, baby, I know,” he mumbled, though he didn’t know anything anymore. 

Finally, Dex lined himself up with your entrance, jaw clenched so hard he thought it might shatter. The head of his cock pressed against you, and stars swam in his vision. 

Dex could have researched, read, and studied all he wanted, but absolutely nothing could have prepared him for this. 

He pushed forward, and the world ceased around him. 

“Oh my God,” you whined as the head of his cock slipped inside you. 

He barely had an inch of his cock in you, and already it was too much. Your cunt was tighter than he could have ever imagined, so much so that he started to think maybe you hadn’t been lying when you said he wasn’t going to fit. 

Dex’s forehead, beaded with sweat, dropped to yours. He couldn’t think. Nothing existed anymore. 

“You’re so…tight,” he panted. “I… I don’t think I can–”

“Please, Dex,” Your voice was shaking, your hips bucking like you could draw him deeper by sheer force. “Want you to fuck me. Want it so bad, Dex. Keep…keep going. Please.”

He obeyed. Dex pushed forward a little further, easing another inch of his cock into you. Your mouth fell open, brows pinching together as your nails dug into the muscles of his back. 

It took every ounce of self-control he had to not give in to every primal instinct ingrained within him slam himself forward. He didn’t want to hurt you. Every inch, every shift, you would whimper, head tossing against the pillow while you adjusted. And Dex wanted to last. Patience, he reminded himself, teeth gritted. He would be patient with you. 

Finally, after minutes of feeding you one inch after another while you whined and whimpered and begged for more, while Dex nearly bit his tongue off to keep from losing control, it was done. 

One small thrust forward, and Dex bottomed out with a groan. He was buried deep inside you, the pulsing head of his cock brushing your cervix. 

It didn’t feel real. 

“I’m…I’m inside you.”

“OhmyfuckingGod,” you slurred, raising your head off the pillow to peer down at the obscene sight of him fully sheathed inside you, slick smeared across both your thighs, your bodies joined completely. With one trembling hand, you pressed below your navel. “I can feel you.”

Jesus fucking Christ. 

In disbelief, Dex raised his hand and placed it over yours. There it was-- the long shape of him evident even under your skin. Him. Where he would live forever. 

“P-please, Dex,” you dug your nails again into his back, dragging him back to reality. “Fuck me.”

He obeyed. 

Dex drew his hips back an inch, terrified of leaving you completely, then pushed back in. Your head fell back onto the pillow, eyes closing in total ecstasy. 

He eased himself out, a little further this time, then slowly back in. Again, then again. Again. Again. Again. 

On one of his thrusts, Dex felt something spongy drag against the sensitive ridge near the head of his cock, and your eyes rolled back.

“Oooh, shit, Dex,” you whimpered, hands moving to claw at his shoulders. “Dex, right there, again, again, please…”

Dex braced his forearm beside your head and angled his hips slightly until he felt that spongy muscle once more. Your moans were getting louder, more high-pitched, with every perfect thrust.  Even like this, even with his body threatening to come apart too soon, Dex could still learn you. 

You were close, he could tell. Dex slipped a hand between your bodies, the pad of his thumb finding the swollen pearl he already knew was key to your pleasure. At the same time, he dipped his head and captured one of your nipples in his mouth, sucking it between his lips and rolling his tongue over the tight bud. He rubbed tight circles over your clit, trying to match the rhythm of his hips, the rhythm of how you liked his tongue only minutes earlier. 

“That’s– oh, God. It's so good. You’re gonna make me come again,” you gasped. “You’re gonna make me come–”   

“Yeah? You’re gonna come on my cock?” He raised his eyes, releasing your breast from his mouth with a soft pop. His voice was strangled, panicked and relieved at the same time. For the first time in his life, it was Dex’s turn to command. “Come for me.”

Your body began to convulse, back arching off the mattress, muscles of your perfect cunt clamping down around him so tightly his vision went white at the edges. It was like all language had left you, and the only thing you still knew was his name. 

“Fuck,” he groaned, thrusts becoming uneven as the erratic spasms of your pussy pulled him deeper, dragging him closer to the edge. His body was winding up, the coil in his gut bracing for what he now knew was inevitable. Dex wasn’t going to last. It was too perfect. You were too perfect. “I’m close, I’m–”

Your hand shot from his shoulder to the back of his neck, dragging his face down closer to yours. Even with tears brimming at your lower lids, your eyes were clear. Focused. 

“Come in me, Dex,” you whispered, world narrowing to only the slap of flesh against flesh and your hushed voice. “Do it.”

Your final wish, your final command. It was over. Every practiced act of self-restraint, of control, of trying to restrain himself, had vanished. 

His hips stuttered as he tried to bury himself deeper into your organs, deep enough to leave an imprint. His mind had gone blank, feral. Dex grabbed at your chin, squishing your face between his fingers because he needed you. Needed to see you. Needed you to know. 

“I love you.”

With his final utterance, the only truth he could ever fully tell you, Dex came. 

His hips pushed forward, shuddering as he spilled his seed into you. He couldn’t stop the words. 

“I love you,” Dex gasped again, grip tightening on your face. He couldn’t stop coming, couldn’t stop saying it, couldn’t stop the truth from pouring out of him and into you. “I love you, I love you, I– fuck–”

He collapsed onto you. 

In…and out. 

Dex smelled your shampoo, your sweat. 

In…and out. 

He felt the cool cotton of your twisted sheets, your sweat-slick breasts against his chest. His cock still twitching inside you, the warmth of his release beginning to leak out around him in a pearly track.

In…and out. 

In…and… 

With sudden clarity, he remembered all that he said. 

Fuck. 

Dex’s eyes shot open. He scrambled backwards on the bed, his softening cock slipping out of you as panic tore through him.

“I’m– I don’t know why I said that, I–” His heart rate was beginning to climb frantically, splotches of red blooming on his chest. He dragged a shaking hand down his face. “Fuck, I’m…I’m so sorry, I just–”

You followed after him, pushing yourself up on the bed from where you lay, limbs heavy and still shivering. 

“Hey, hey. Dex,” You took his face in your hands, thumbs smoothing across his cheekbones. Soothing him. “Dex, it’s okay. Look at me.”

Eyes bleary with tears, he met your gaze. He fucked it up. He hadn’t done what he practiced. He was too eager. Too quick. Too honest. Too himself. It would be over now. You would send him out of your room, laugh at him, do what everyone else had done to him his whole life and abandon him. 

There was no point in continuing if you did that. No purpose for Dex. No point in living if you weren’t his North Star. 

He would end it all. 

“Dex,” you said his name again. Dex managed to blink the hot tears from his eyes, and he saw you clearly. You were…smiling. 

“It’s okay,” you whispered, voice soft and sweet. “I feel the same.”

He stilled. 

Did you– no. No, surely he hadn’t heard you correctly. Surely the blood was still rushing throughout his body so loudly that he misunderstood. 

“I…I don’t…” He stumbled over his words, throat tight. “What?”

Your smile grew wider. The same smile you gave him when he first opened his apartment door and found you standing there. The same smile that made him feel like his eyes had finally opened for the first time in his life.

“I love you, too, Dex.”

His breath, which he hadn’t realized he had been holding, left him in a shaky exhale. You loved him. You wanted him. You needed him. You felt what he had been feeling this entire time. 

Your thumbs moved on his cheeks again, this time wiping away tears Dex hadn’t realized had fallen. 

“I know it’s early,” You paused, and then laughed softly, like you couldn’t believe what you were saying. “It’s probably insane. And maybe it’s partially the life-changing orgasm still talking, but…”

You bit your lip bashfully, but looked deep into his eyes. “I mean it. Seriously. I care about you, and I just… I like what we have.”

Dex opened his mouth, but no sound came out. You seemed to understand anyway. 

You pressed one tired, affectionate kiss to his cheek, then two to his lips, before patting his chest. “So…stop freaking out and get back into the bed so we can sleep, okay? And hopefully I can still walk in the morning.”

Dex tried to laugh. The two of you moved clumsily back beneath the sheets, bodies sticky with sex. You turned onto your side, snuggling into him and guiding his arm around your waist. You placed one last kiss to his chest, just above his heart, and closed your eyes with a sigh. 

The room fell into silence. 

You loved him. 

Dex had been in this room so many times before, had seen the moonlight move slowly over your sleeping face with every hour that he watched over you. He had often wondered what it would feel like to finally cross the distance between you, to climb under the covers. To hold you.

Now, he was finally here. 

Dex’s hand crawled from your waist to splay over your ribcage, feeling your breath begin to even out. 

In…and out. 

The rhythm that had once belonged to him had transferred to you. 

He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this. Dex had lied, he had murdered, he had felt nothing but emptiness in spaces he should feel empathy. He had spent years convincing himself there was nothing in him but flesh and bones. No soul. Nothing worthy of mercy.

And yet, here you were. Holding onto him, sleeping like you trusted him…because you did. More than that, even. You loved him. 

Dex would do whatever he could to keep you. Nothing would take you from him. Even if the world separated you, he would remain in your life. You would never be rid of him. Ever. 

He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to your shoulder. His hand drifted from your chest to rest over your belly. 

For the first time in his life, he prayed. 

Please, God, he thought. 

Please let it stick. 

After your first date, Dex committed himself to becoming the perfect partner. Like all things he excelled at, he approached it with an alarming amount of discipline and research. Advice columns, psychology blogs, old nineties rom-coms, classic romantic novels– he consumed every piece of information he could get his hands on to learn how he could make you stay. 

The morning after your first date, he had caught you (as usual) in the elevator. You had shyly given him your number, like  you didn’t give him the most transcendental moment of his life the night before by kissing him outside apartment 416. Like Dex hadn’t been on his way to the jewelry store on 12th Street to buy you a diamond ring and claim you forever. 

“Maybe we can go out again?” you had asked quietly, batting your eyelashes as you finished typing your number into his embarrassingly empty contacts and handed his phone back. Maybe? Dex would’ve thrown himself off the roof if you didn’t go out with him again. 

“Yeah,” he stuttered. “Of course. I mean– definitely." 

He already had your number memorized, of course. Alongside a plethora of other information, including your social security number. But you giving it to him willingly? Dex still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. Then again, he couldn’t comprehend most things about you. How kind you were, how perfect you were, how beautiful you were, how real you were. What remained most incomprehensible, however, was the fact that you seemed to want him, too. 

Dex did whatever he could to keep you wanting him. He read online that women liked good morning texts, so he texted you good morning. He learned that they liked compliments, but didn't want to be overwhelmed by them or for them to be insincere, so he chose carefully. He complimented your hair if you wore it differently, or told you he liked your earrings, or the color of a dress or skirt you wore. Specific compliments were better, he had learned, because they show attentiveness. Dex was nothing but attentive. 

He knew that women liked it when men took initiative, too, so he planned your next dates and told you what time he would pick you up from across the hall. You liked that. You especially seemed to like when he paid for the dates, even though you would pretend to argue with him about it. 

“Dex, seriously,” you had attempted to complain on your third date. Dex had seen you post on your Instagram about wanting to see a new sci-fi movie that had just come out, so he suggested it as nonchalantly as he could possibly manage two days later. 

You both stood at the box office, and Dex was pulling out his wallet while you frowned at him. “You paid for dinner the first time, then coffee on our last date. I seriously can’t let you pay for this. My friends are going to start saying you’re my sugar daddy.”

Dex didn’t know what a “sugar daddy” was. He looked it up afterwards; shouldn’t a man want to pay for everything a woman needed if he loved her? Wasn’t that the point? To make sure she never had to ask anyone else for anything? To make sure she never needed anyone else?

He only shrugged and swiped his card. “It’s no problem. I like taking you out.”

Your only response was to roll your eyes and thread your fingers through his as you walked towards the theater.

There were things about being a good partner that were harder for him, though. The first was trying to appear less eager than he actually was. On the same relationship forum where Dex had read about the good morning texts, he also learned that he shouldn’t respond too quickly. That was easier said than done. Sometimes, after hearing his phone ping with a message from you, he would have to literally set a timer to keep himself from answering. Fifteen minutes, usually. Enough time to seem attentive. Enough time to seem like he was doing something other than waiting pathetically by his phone, pacing until the timer went off. 

The worst was the ring. Dex had bought it the morning after your first date. A perfectly symmetrical two-carat diamond perched delicately atop a thin gold band. Beautiful. Permanent. The black velvet ring box sat in the coffee table drawer next to the old Mercer tapes, both of them untouched. He would’ve proposed that very morning. He wanted to, desperately. And if God had any mercy on his mottled soul and you said yes, he would’ve marched you straight to city hall and made it official right then and there. 

Apparently, though, it was not considered “socially acceptable” to propose after the first date. That was “too soon”. Dex disagreed. Because what was “too soon”, really? Your relationship? To Dex, whatever the two of you had did not start when you asked him to dinner in the lobby that fateful morning. It began when he opened the door to you holding that frog-colored plate of chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe, it began before that. Maybe it began when you moved into apartment 416 and rearranged his mundane, miserable, structured world. Maybe it was before then, too. Maybe you both had always been connected, somehow, someway. 

So, Dex told himself he would wait. But as much discipline as he had, Dex knew that when it came to you, he wouldn’t be able to wait forever. 

Physical intimacy between the two of you was a whole different matter. The two of you had kissed since that first night. Several times, in fact. Sometimes outside your apartment door after a night out, inside the elevator in the morning, on street corners after dinner when you looked at him with your lips stained from whatever bottle of wine you two had shared. Sometimes the kisses were quick and sweet. Sometimes, they were not. 

Sometimes you would lean into Dex until your breasts were pressed against his chest, your fingers curling into the edge of his shirt collar while his hands spanned the small of your back and dipped lower and lower until they met soft flesh, and Dex would have to remind himself of every single discussion thread he had read about patience. About not pressuring a woman, even though every single fiber of his being was made from pulverizing pressure. 

He tried his best to wait for you. 

But tonight, Dex knew it would be different. 

Dinner had gone well, as it usually did these days. You laughed whenever he attempted a joke, complained about lesson plans, asked about the field office even though Dex would have much preferred to talk about you, and, after your second glass of wine, you spent the entirety of the meal staring at his mouth like you thought he wouldn’t notice. Dex noticed everything. 

By the time you both stood outside your apartment door, he could feel the shift. You had been quieter on the walk home, holding his hand tighter than usual, your hand squeezing him again and again like you were trying to work up the nerve to say something.

His pulse had steadied into something strong and restless as he watched you fish your keys out of your purse. You unlocked the door, and then paused with your hand on the knob. 

You looked at him. “Do you…want to come in?”

Dex had been in your apartment before. Many times, though you didn’t know it, of course. As a matter of fact, he had been inside it only nineteen hours ago, sitting in his favorite chair in the corner of your room as he watched you softly snore. 

But beyond your request for him to water the fern in your living room, never had he been invited in. 

Dex felt his mouth go dry. “Yeah. I’d love to.”

You stepped to the side and let him in. 

When the door closed behind Dex, he realized how different it felt to be inside your apartment as a wanted guest. Everything felt warmer, softer this way. From the lamps by your couch to the scent of the vanilla candle you kept by the stove, it was like Dex had all the pieces to the puzzle of your life spread before him, arranged perfectly, but only on your invitation had he been able to connect them and see the whole picture. And the whole picture was even better than he imagined, because he was in it. 

You brushed by him, toeing off your heels as you stepped into the kitchen. “Do you want anything to drink? Water? Wine?”

Dex suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands as he followed you into the kitchen he had paced so many times before. He shoved them in his pockets. “Uh, wine is fine.”

“Would you get the glasses?” you asked, opening your fridge and peering inside. “They’re in the–”

Before you could finish speaking, Dex was already opening the cabinet above your sink. The one with the wine glasses. You blinked at him, bottle of Pinot Grigio in hand. 

“Oh. You found them.”

Dex froze with his hand around the stem of a glass. Fuck. “I…I keep mine there, too.”

You raised an eyebrow. 

Fucking fuck. He tried for an easy side smile and hoped it landed. “FBI intuition, I guess.”

For one horrible second, you only stared at him. Then you giggled. It worked. 

“I guess I should be careful dating an agent,” you teased as you took the glass from him and poured wine into it. “I’m never going to be able to hide anything from you.”

Dex laughed. You were right. 

Wine poured, you nodded towards the soft velvet couch in the living room. “Shall we?”

“We shall.” 

Dex walked behind you and tried not to stare at the bare line of your calves under your dress as you settled onto the couch and tucked a leg under yourself. Stiffly, he sat beside you at what he believed was an appropriate amount of space between your bodies. You looked at the space with what seemed like annoyance, then at him, and shifted closer until your knee brushed his thigh. Dex took a long sip of wine and hoped his face was arranged normally. 

You fidgeted with the stem of your glass, eyes moving from his face to the dark television screen across the room. Dex realized you were nervous.

“Do you, um–” you gestured towards the screen. “Should we put something on?”

“Sure,” Dex said, though he had no idea how he was supposed to watch anything when you were sitting close enough for him to feel the heat radiating off your body. Close enough to smell that intoxicating citrus shampoo. The same kind he had bought for his own shower.

You grabbed the remote from the coffee table and clicked the TV on. 

“...and in Hell’s Kitchen tonight, locals are reporting new sightings of a masked vigilante some are claiming may be Daredevil–”

You frowned as the grainy news broadcast footage showed a blurry, dark shape on a rooftop. “I thought that guy was dead.”

Dex’s eye twitched as he watched the screen. “Even if he is, there’s always going to be some idiot trying to copy him. Half of the shit he does is illegal but because he’s wearing a mask, everyone thinks he’s a hero.” 

You raised an eyebrow and flipped the channel. “I didn’t know you had such strong feelings about him.”

“It’s just…” Dex paused. For some reason, the conversation made his skin feel tight. He didn’t know why. “Guys at the field office complain about it a lot. People like him make our jobs a lot harder.” 

“Hmm.” You changed the channel again until you landed on some mindless standup comedy special. “Hopefully the FBI doesn’t have strong feelings about comedians, too.”

Dex huffed out something close to a laugh because that felt like the right response, and felt you ease yourself into his side. The laugh track filled the room but he didn’t register a single joke. All he could hear was your breathing. Dex watched as you took a sip from your wine glass, the tip of your tongue darting out to catch a stray droplet on your lip. He couldn’t stop staring. 

Surely, the heat of his gaze had bored into the side of your face, and finally you tipped your head up to look at him. The blue light from the screen moved softly over your face, catching on the little crease between your brows.

“I can feel you staring, you know.” 

Dex felt like a hand was around his throat. “I am.”

Your voice had gone hushed when you spoke again. “Why?”

There were hundreds of answers Dex could’ve given you. Because I love you. Because I’ve been watching you sleep every night for the last two months. Because I never stop thinking about you. Because there’s a ring waiting for you just across the hall. Because I wish I could crawl into your skin and live with you forever. Because you belong to me. 

All were the truth, but each answer felt too big. Instead, he gave you a small amount of honesty, though it was the most genuine Dex had ever been with you.

“I just…I can’t believe you’re real.”

The crease between your brows smoothed as your expression changed. Your eyes darted away, and then came back to meet his. “Well, last time I checked… I’m real.”

“I know you are.”

You looked at him for another moment, like you were trying to decide whether he was joking. He wasn’t. Slowly, like you were trying not to startle a skittish animal, you leaned forward and set your wine glass on the coffee table. Then you settled back on the couch, but this time your body was twisted to face him. Your hand came to rest against his chest, right over his thumping heart. 

“I’m…not always good at this stuff, but– I really like you, Dex,” you whispered. 

Something inside him shattered. All at once, the discipline in him– the articles, the forums, all the research into how to be a man you stayed with– left him. Every breath scraped like sandpaper through his ribs. Every organ was twisting in on itself until the only thing that would make the ache stop was touching you. 

This time, though, he didn’t want to wait. He couldn’t wait. 

So, Dex touched you.

His mouth crashed onto yours, all urgency and need and no hesitation. You moaned against him, lips parting so his tongue could slip inside to meet yours. Dex could taste the white wine clearly, like he was drinking it straight from you, licking it off the enamel of your teeth. Your hand had migrated from over his rapidly swelling heart to the side of his neck, fingers sliding into the coarse blond hair on the nape of his neck. He wanted you to pull it, to yank it out of his scalp. But in order to ask you to do that you would have to stop kissing him, and Dex couldn’t risk that. 

Grabbing the soft flesh at your waist, he pulled you until both of your legs framed his hips and you straddled him on the couch. As you settled over his crotch and let your weight sink onto him, Dex suddenly understood with terrifying clarity that tonight would be different from the sweet little kisses you two had shared before. He would finally, finally have you. He would have something no one else had ever taken from him and give it to the only person he had ever wanted to receive it: you. 

And in return, you would give yourself to him. No matter what happened after tonight, you would never be able to rid yourself of the proof that he had been here. 

Dex would give his virginity to you. 

“Dex,” your breathless whine brought him out of his stupor. In his haze, he had moved his mouth from your lips to your collarbone, sucking and biting hard enough he knew with all prideful certainty it would leave marks the next morning. “Can you…please…”

He felt you grind your clothed cunt helplessly against the tent that had formed against his jeans. Dex was already so hard, so aching, he felt like any movement from you would send him over the edge. He stilled your moving hips with his grip. 

“What?” His lips ghosted over where your shoulder met your neck. “What do you need?”

Dex would do anything for you. You should’ve known that.

Your face was flushed. You dipped your head down so your lips skimmed the shell of his ear. “My room. Take me there.”

Dex stood immediately. One arm around your back and the other under your ass, he lifted you like you weighed nothing. Your mouth was already on him again, pressing desperate, open-mouthed kisses to his jaw, his cheek, the crinkle of his eye, any patch of skin you could find. 

You didn’t tell him where to go, because he didn’t need you to. Still holding your writhing form against him, Dex moved down the short hallway, past the framed photos of your life before him, past the bathroom door, straight to your bedroom– the same path he had taken silently in the dark more times than he could count. 

You were too busy acting like a bitch in heat to notice. 

Dex nudged the bedroom door open with his shoulder and stepped inside. Your room was the same as it had been nineteen hours before. But never had he allowed himself to fully, truly imagine it in the light of all that was to happen. With a single invitation, the room had mutated. No longer was it a sanctuary; it was an altar. 

Reverently, Dex lowered you onto your mattress, holding himself up above you on his hands. You stared up under him, hair spread wildly against the pillow, mouth swollen and red from him. You were more beautiful than anything he had ever thought possible. 

Both of your hands came to frame his face and he nuzzled into your touch like a neglected animal. 

“Maybe this is embarrassing to admit, but– I’ve thought about this before,” you murmured, tracing your fingers across his brow bone. “I’ve thought about it so much.”

Dex could feel his breathing go ragged. He wanted to die. He buried his face into the crook of your neck. 

“W-what…what did you think about?” he asked shakily, voice muffled against you. Dex knew what you were going to say and still didn’t know if he could survive hearing it aloud.

Your fingers carded back into his hair. “... What you would feel like. On me. In me.”

He could only groan in response. You tugged on him, ever so slightly but enough it stung so fucking good, guiding his face back to yours. Dex followed helplessly, mouth finding you again, sloppy and uncoordinated before he forced himself to slow down.

Your hands slipped from his hair to your dress, fingers searching blindly for the zipper at your side. Instinctively, Dex caught your wrist before you could find it. 

You pulled back from his mouth, confusion flickering through your wild eyes. 

Dex stared at your smaller hand in his, then at your dress clinging to your body like a second skin. His voice was thin when he finally managed to speak. 

“...can I?”

Your expression softened for just a second before a flash of something he hadn’t seen before passed. “Can you…what?”

He wanted to light himself on fire. “T-take it off. Of you.”

You waited patiently. He wanted to light himself on fire and then stab himself. 

“Your dress,” Dex clarified, voice breaking. “... please.”

Your lips curved. “Yeah, Dex. You can.”

His fingers scrambled for the zipper, fumbling with it because he couldn’t stop shaking. Finally, he caught it, and moved it down the track, each tooth giving way, inch by inch by tortuous inch. 

Dex watched the fabric loosen around you, watched as the dress began to fall open beneath his hands. Finally, it was loose enough he could pull the straps down off your shoulder, then down, down, down until it bunched at your hips. You lifted them, and Dex slid the dress the rest of the way off and tossed it somewhere behind him, forgotten before it hit the floor. Only then did he allow himself to sit back on his heels and look at you fully.

Like a figure from a painting, you lay back on the pillow, arms twitching at your sides like you couldn’t decide if you wanted to cover yourself or let him see you. Your bare breasts rose and fell with each breath, full and soft with peaked nipples beginning to stiffen in the cool air. Dex forced his eyes down, over the dip of your sternum, the softness of your stomach, and lower still. There was still one barrier between you– a pair of lace panties the color of the morning sky. He knew them. He had seen them folded neatly in your drawers before, had skimmed his hand over the fabric. He always wondered what it would be like to feel them warm and damp from your arousal, or to smell your scent on them, or to taste you through them. To be honest, he had thought about taking them with him many times. But now, Dex was glad he didn’t. Because no stolen relic would be able to come anywhere close to the honor of doing what he was about to do. 

A sound more animal than human left him, and instinct forced him to lean down, hands opening your thighs. Before you could even register what was happening, he placed a kiss on your clothed cunt. 

“Ooh, shit–” you gasped, hips bucking against him. 

Dex did it again, sloppier this time, needier. Like he was thanking you. Each kiss wetting the fabric, each kiss a gesture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

You were close to trembling as you put your hands on each side of his face, practically having to pull him back. 

“Dex, please…” your eyes met his, nearly black with want. “No more teasing. Take them off, now.”

A command. He was familiar with them. Words barked across a firing range, across a battlefield, across a rooftop with his scope trained on a life he was about to end with one clean pull of the trigger. But never had Dex wanted to obey an order as badly as this one. 

His hands moved from holding your thighs open to slipping under the band of lace. Once he slid that final piece of fabric off you, there was no more script. Technically, he knew what happened next. Dex was a man and had seen what men like to see; he wasn’t a prude and he certainly wasn’t stupid. He had been in the Army, for fuck’s sake. He had been there when men opened their phones in the barracks and played videos of women pretending to find pleasure beneath men with comedically long penises. He had watched them pass around half-naked pictures of girls back home and brag about what they could do with their mouths.

Dex knew where to put his hands, his fingers, his tongue, his cock. But knowing how to do something isn’t the same as wanting to do it. Dex had never had the desire. What was the point of doing any of that to someone he didn’t care about? What was the point of pushing himself inside a body that meant nothing to him? A body that wasn’t yours? A body that didn’t belong to his North Star? Maybe that’s why he waited all this time– because in his whole thirty-three years on this planet, you were the only person who had ever made desire feel like it was worth obeying.

Dex hooked his fingers beneath the lace and pulled. He tried to be slow, but the starving, caged animal in him was screaming at him to just rip them off, bury his face in your cunt, and finally learn if you tasted the way you smelled: sweet and oh-so human. But his hands shook too badly for that, so he watched in agony as the lace made its slow descent down the curve of your hips. Dex eased the panties down your thighs, over your knees, past your calves, until they slipped free around your ankles and landed in his hand. 

You whispered his name.

He looked up, and you were bare. Completely. Your flushed thighs had fallen back open, exposing your wet, swollen pussy to him, the soft curls between your legs damp and glistening with arousal.

Dex wanted to cry. Instead, he dipped his head back to you and brushed his nose against the soft crease where your thigh met your pelvis. He inhaled deeply, letting the heady musk of you infiltrate his senses, and groaned aloud. 

Maybe he should’ve felt humiliated, scenting you like a dog. But this was the holiest experience he had ever had. His lips pressed a gentle kiss to your inner thigh. Then again, higher. Then another. Until finally, his lips hovered over the swollen nub at the top of your cunt. 

The tip of his tongue darted out, placing a careful lick directly to your clit. 

“Fuck!” you cried out, hand flying over to cover your eyes like you couldn’t bear it. 

Dex did it again, and then again. And then again, and again, and again, until your hand had moved from over your eyes to clutch at his hair. Dex lifted his gaze to see your eyes rolling into the back of your head, the whites of them showing like you had become possessed. 

He didn’t know if he was doing it right. Dex knew how to study, though, and how to become accurate. He had built his life around noticing and correcting until he found that exact target. He could execute. Dex could, would do the same for you. 

He moved from those small, careful licks to longer ones, slowly dragging his tongue from your dripping entrance to the sensitive bundle of nerves above it. Softer, then faster. Slower, then with more pressure. Adjusting, correcting, narrowing in. He learned what you liked. Your moans became louder when he circled your clit with the edge of his tongue, so he did that. Your thighs trembled when he sealed his mouth over you and hummed, so he did that. Your body spoke, and Dex listened. 

“Oh my– Jesus fucking Christ, Dex,” you gasped. Your moans had become garbled and near incoherent at this point. 

He lifted his gaze again and met your eyes as he continued drawing tight, slow circles over your swollen clit. Your face was twisted in what could only be described as pleasure and agony, mouth open, brows pinched, tits heaving with every labored breath. Dex couldn’t look away. 

“Mmm… I’m gonna–” your thighs tightened around his face, trembling against his ears. “Fuck, how are you doing that?”

He only hummed in response, and your back arched off the mattress. 

“Dex,” you cried, hand fisting at his hair, pulling so hard it sent a shock through him. “Please, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna– oooh, fuck–”

Dex felt your cunt pulse underneath his tongue, your whole body spasming as you came with a broken sob. He held you still through it, mouth never stopping as much as you seized. He tried to watch you as much as he could to memorize this very moment, the trembling in your muscles, your eyes fluttering, the shape your mouth made as his name left it over and over. 

Dex, Dex, Dex. 

He could have stayed, face buried into your pussy, for days. Weeks. Months, even. Hell, Dex would have happily died of suffocation if it meant never having to take his mouth off of your still-convulsing cunt. 

You, though, did not seem ready to kill him yet. Oversensitive and still twitching with aftershocks, you pried his pussy-drunk face away from you with trembling hands until he reluctantly released your cunt from the suction of his mouth. He kissed a trail back up your body, stopping to press his mouth in a grateful kiss to each peak of your breasts before finally reaching your mouth again. The second your lips met, you let out a quiet gasp at the taste of yourself on his tongue. 

“Dex,” you mewled against his lips. Your breath was still shallow, though the fact that he kept sucking softly at your lower lip probably did very little to help you recover. “I think that was…shit. That was definitely the best orgasm I’ve had. Like, in my entire life. Where the fuck did you learn that?”

Dex paused only briefly, his hand stopping on its way from your waist to paw at the soft flesh of your tit. “I, uh– practice. And I pay attention. I guess.” 

Apparently, you found that answer sufficient, because you gave only a girlish giggle and pulled him back down into another kiss. Your hand moved from his jaw to the cords of his neck, then lower still, over his chest, his stomach, until your fingers paused at his belt.

“Hmm,” you looped one finger through the leather. “I think we’re a little unbalanced here.”

You were right. You were bare, as naked as the day you entered this world and were bound to him. Dex, hovering above you, was still fully clothed from head to toe. 

You tugged once at the belt. “Off.”

Another command he was more than happy to oblige. He sat back on his heels, first wiping the mess of your arousal off his chin before grabbing the bottom of his shirt and pulling it over his head before tossing it to join your dress on the floor. You sucked in a quiet intake of breath at that, though Dex wasn’t sure exactly why. 

His hands moved to his buckle, and Dex could feel your eyes on him as he worked the leather free. They were everywhere, the dusting of dirty blond hair on his pectorals, the trail of darker hair that extended from his stomach to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans. It felt like you were cataloging every single piece of him. 

Dex shoved his jeans down his hips, kicking them off once they pooled around his ankles. 

It should have made him nervous. Dex had spent his whole life finding ways to hide, behind roles, structures, masks, anything to avoid truly being seen. But this didn’t feel like exposure. It felt like…recognition. Like his body was already yours. A part of you. You two were equal, but opposite. The same soul in  different skins. 

His North Star. 

The thought alone made his cock throb. 

As if you sensed it, your eyes dropped to the bulge beneath his black briefs, and your lips parted into a small “o”. He was so hard it hurt, the fabric stretched tight. Dex had been hard because of you before. Alone in his apartment, the blue light of his laptop illuminating the screen that showed a smiling picture of you stolen from one of your social media accounts. In the shower, sniffing the exact citrus shampoo he had bought after finding the bottle in your bathroom. Sitting in this very bedroom, watching you toss and turn under the covers. 

But never had he touched himself to you. 

Dex wasn’t a saint, obviously. He would lay there, every fiber of his being aching for some sort, any sort of relief to the coil building low in his gut. He could never do it, though. Every time his hand would hover lower, even graze his pulsing member, a wave of disgust would come over him so strongly it forced his hand back. It would have been…false. Blasphemous. Like kicking dirt over an act of salvation. 

He saved himself for this exact moment. Once he took off his briefs there was absolutely no going back. There would be before, and then there would be after. Nothing in between.

You pushed yourself up, folding your knees underneath you, rising until you were level with him again. You put your hand on his chest, delicate fingers trailing across his chest, brushing his nipples, and then lower. His abdomen braced as you skimmed your fingertips past the hard ridges, until finally, you placed your palm over his cock. 

He gasped your name, head dropping to your shoulder. He hadn’t touched himself in months. No one, no one had touched him like that. Ever. 

Your hand moved again, fingers closing around him through the fabric, and his hips jerked forward before he could stop them. Dex was so far gone from the taste of you and the sight of you and the knowledge that you wanted him like he wanted you that the light pressure shot through him like a bullet.

Your face turned into his, lips slotting into each other again before Dex could collapse against you. It was slower than before, your tongue exploring his mouth like you had all the time in the world. Like he wasn’t seconds away from spurting ropes of cum into his briefs when you hadn’t even actually touched him yet. 

Dex kissed you back desperately, one hand fisting your hair to hold you close, the other grabbing at your waist. He could feel your hardened nipples brushing against his chest, your hand stroking him softly. He was going to cum. Just from that. 

“Wait.”

With what seemed like great effort, you pulled back from Dex’s mouth. A thin, translucent string of your mingled saliva followed you until it snapped, landing against your chin. Dex resisted the urge to lick it up. Your palm still cupped the twitching length of him through the fabric of his briefs. 

“Do you…” Your eyes flicked briefly away from his. “Do you have…protection?”

Dex stared at you in silence. You huffed, though your cheeks were already beginning to burn. Were you…embarrassed? Even after all he just did to you? For you?

“What?” Dex asked. He knew what you meant. 

“A condom. Do you…have one?”

Technically speaking, no. Not on him, at least. There was, however, a small box of unopened condoms under his bathroom sink. He bought it exactly four weeks ago, on the afternoon before your first date. Not the thought something was going to happen that night, obviously. But Dex was always, always prepared. He had thought maybe, eventually, something like this could happen. But now…it was happening. And the idea of something stopping this, something coming in between the two of you, it was unbearable. Disgusting, even. 

After everything that had already kept him from you, after all the doors and walls and locks and rules that had made him stand on the other side, waiting and waiting and fucking waiting, did he really want another barrier?

Absolutely not. 

Dex leaned in and placed a quick kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Uh, n-no. No, I don’t.”

You chewed on your lip, eyes darting down to where you still held him. You were considering something. 

“I…I don’t think we have to use one, if you don’t want to,” you began slowly. “I’m on birth control.”

He knew that. Dex had found the little foil packet of pink pills in your bedside drawer weeks ago. He stared at it, and it stared back at him like it had a personal vendetta. That would be dealt with another time. 

“And…I’m not seeing anyone else.”

Of course you weren’t. If you had been, Dex would’ve taken care of that, too. You wouldn’t need to worry yourself with the details. 

You looked back up at him, eyes wide and cautious. “Unless…you’re seeing someone else?”

Dex felt genuinely offended. He would have rather disemboweled himself and let vultures pick at his organs than even think of someone other than you. He genuinely didn’t think he was physically capable of wanting anyone else. 

“What? I– no, no, of course not,” he sputtered, his grip on your waist tightening before he could stop it. Did you think so low of him? “Do you think I am?”

You shook your head quickly. “Dex, no. I didn’t think you were. I just meant…obviously, it would be okay if you were, I just–”

“I’m not seeing anyone else. I won’t be seeing anyone else.” Just like you won’t be seeing anyone else, he wanted to add. 

Something in his tone made you go quiet. After a few seconds, you blushed and nodded your head. “Okay. I believe you.”

You placed one tender kiss on his lips, as if that was the final confirmation you needed, and then slipped your hand into the band of his briefs. 

This was it. The final wall between the two of you. 

Your fingers paused, brushing the coarse hair on his pubic bone. “...can I?”

Dex didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded. 

You pulled the briefs down slowly, and Dex had to steady himself with against you. His cock sprang free, veined and girthy, and slapped against his stomach, head red and drooling with precum just below his navel. 

Your eyes bulged. “I don’t…I don’t think that’s going to fit.”

His whole body pulsed at your words. He knew he was…big. Solders had made jokes of it in locker rooms. He felt it. But he had never cared before. Now, he did. And he was going to make himself fit, one way or another. 

Dex kicked the briefs the rest of the way down, and your hand wrapped back around him before he had a chance to prepare himself. Your fist moved up, thumb tracing the vein underneath the head, before it moved back down the silky shaft, all the way to the base, and then back up–

Quickly, he put his hand over yours. “I–you should probably stop.”

You raised an eyebrow. 

“I don’t…I don’t think I’ll last,” he admitted sheepishly. “If you keep doing that.”

Your expression softened, which only made the humiliation worse. 

“Oh,” you whispered, pressing your lips to his jaw. “That’s okay. We can go slow.”

Dex nodded weakly, and guided you back down onto the mattress with blood rushing in his ears. Your thighs opened once more, this time wrapping around his hips, heels pressing into the dimples of his back. 

Slowly, shakily, he lowered himself down. The heat from your cunt was radiating. Only a few centimeters of air lay between your sexes. Only a few centimeters of air before he would be forever changed. A part of him would be inside you, and even after he left, even after you washed him from your skin, Dex would know the truth. 

It had to be perfect.

Dex wrapped a trembling hand around himself and guided the sensitive head of his cock slowly to your entrance. The first touch made his whole body seize. You were so hot, so wet. He wasn’t going to last. He had to control himself.

Dex's eyes squeezed shut, face twisting. He needed to breathe. In…and out. 

“...Dex?” you asked, breath hitching. You looked genuinely concerned. “Are you–”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, I just–” What was he supposed to say? I’m about to lose my virginity? My life is going to be forever changed? For the first time in my life, I’m scared?

Dex roughly exhaled through his nose, then regrouped himself. It would be perfect. He brought his leaking head back to your pussy lips, dragging himself through your slick. The tip bumped your clit, and you moaned. 

“I know, baby, I know,” he mumbled, though he didn’t know anything anymore. 

Finally, Dex lined himself up with your entrance, jaw clenched so hard he thought it might shatter. The head of his cock pressed against you, and stars swam in his vision. 

Dex could have researched, read, and studied all he wanted, but absolutely nothing could have prepared him for this. 

He pushed forward, and the world ceased around him. 

“Oh my God,” you whined as the head of his cock slipped inside you. 

He barely had an inch of his cock in you, and already it was too much. Your cunt was tighter than he could have ever imagined, so much so that he started to think maybe you hadn’t been lying when you said he wasn’t going to fit. 

Dex’s forehead, beaded with sweat, dropped to yours. He couldn’t think. Nothing existed anymore. 

“You’re so…tight,” he panted. “I… I don’t think I can–”

“Please, Dex,” Your voice was shaking, your hips bucking like you could draw him deeper by sheer force. “Want you to fuck me. Want it so bad, Dex. Keep…keep going. Please.”

He obeyed. Dex pushed forward a little further, easing another inch of his cock into you. Your mouth fell open, brows pinching together as your nails dug into the muscles of his back. 

It took every ounce of self-control he had to not give in to every primal instinct ingrained within him slam himself forward. He didn’t want to hurt you. Every inch, every shift, you would whimper, head tossing against the pillow while you adjusted. And Dex wanted to last. Patience, he reminded himself, teeth gritted. He would be patient with you. 

Finally, after minutes of feeding you one inch after another while you whined and whimpered and begged for more, while Dex nearly bit his tongue off to keep from losing control, it was done. 

One small thrust forward, and Dex bottomed out with a groan. He was buried deep inside you, the pulsing head of his cock brushing your cervix. 

It didn’t feel real. 

“I’m…I’m inside you.”

“OhmyfuckingGod,” you slurred, raising your head off the pillow to peer down at the obscene sight of him fully sheathed inside you, slick smeared across both your thighs, your bodies joined completely. With one trembling hand, you pressed below your navel. “I can feel you.”

Jesus fucking Christ. 

In disbelief, Dex raised his hand and placed it over yours. There it was-- the long shape of him evident even under your skin. Him. Where he would live forever. 

“P-please, Dex,” you dug your nails again into his back, dragging him back to reality. “Fuck me.”

He obeyed. 

Dex drew his hips back an inch, terrified of leaving you completely, then pushed back in. Your head fell back onto the pillow, eyes closing in total ecstasy. 

He eased himself out, a little further this time, then slowly back in. Again, then again. Again. Again. Again. 

On one of his thrusts, Dex felt something spongy drag against the sensitive ridge near the head of his cock, and your eyes rolled back.

“Oooh, shit, Dex,” you whimpered, hands moving to claw at his shoulders. “Dex, right there, again, again, please…”

Dex braced his forearm beside your head and angled his hips slightly until he felt that spongy muscle once more. Your moans were getting louder, more high-pitched, with every perfect thrust.  Even like this, even with his body threatening to come apart too soon, Dex could still learn you. 

You were close, he could tell. Dex slipped a hand between your bodies, the pad of his thumb finding the swollen pearl he already knew was key to your pleasure. At the same time, he dipped his head and captured one of your nipples in his mouth, sucking it between his lips and rolling his tongue over the tight bud. He rubbed tight circles over your clit, trying to match the rhythm of his hips, the rhythm of how you liked his tongue only minutes earlier. 

“That’s– oh, God. It's so good. You’re gonna make me come again,” you gasped. “You’re gonna make me come–”   

“Yeah? You’re gonna come on my cock?” He raised his eyes, releasing your breast from his mouth with a soft pop. His voice was strangled, panicked and relieved at the same time. For the first time in his life, it was Dex’s turn to command. “Come for me.”

Your body began to convulse, back arching off the mattress, muscles of your perfect cunt clamping down around him so tightly his vision went white at the edges. It was like all language had left you, and the only thing you still knew was his name. 

“Fuck,” he groaned, thrusts becoming uneven as the erratic spasms of your pussy pulled him deeper, dragging him closer to the edge. His body was winding up, the coil in his gut bracing for what he now knew was inevitable. Dex wasn’t going to last. It was too perfect. You were too perfect. “I’m close, I’m–”

Your hand shot from his shoulder to the back of his neck, dragging his face down closer to yours. Even with tears brimming at your lower lids, your eyes were clear. Focused. 

“Come in me, Dex,” you whispered, world narrowing to only the slap of flesh against flesh and your hushed voice. “Do it.”

Your final wish, your final command. It was over. Every practiced act of self-restraint, of control, of trying to restrain himself, had vanished. 

His hips stuttered as he tried to bury himself deeper into your organs, deep enough to leave an imprint. His mind had gone blank, feral. Dex grabbed at your chin, squishing your face between his fingers because he needed you. Needed to see you. Needed you to know. 

“I love you.”

With his final utterance, the only truth he could ever fully tell you, Dex came. 

His hips pushed forward, shuddering as he spilled his seed into you. He couldn’t stop the words. 

“I love you,” Dex gasped again, grip tightening on your face. He couldn’t stop coming, couldn’t stop saying it, couldn’t stop the truth from pouring out of him and into you. “I love you, I love you, I– fuck–”

He collapsed onto you. 

In…and out. 

Dex smelled your shampoo, your sweat. 

In…and out. 

He felt the cool cotton of your twisted sheets, your sweat-slick breasts against his chest. His cock still twitching inside you, the warmth of his release beginning to leak out around him in a pearly track.

In…and out. 

In…and… 

With sudden clarity, he remembered all that he said. 

Fuck. 

Dex’s eyes shot open. He scrambled backwards on the bed, his softening cock slipping out of you as panic tore through him.

“I’m– I don’t know why I said that, I–” His heart rate was beginning to climb frantically, splotches of red blooming on his chest. He dragged a shaking hand down his face. “Fuck, I’m…I’m so sorry, I just–”

You followed after him, pushing yourself up on the bed from where you lay, limbs heavy and still shivering. 

“Hey, hey. Dex,” You took his face in your hands, thumbs smoothing across his cheekbones. Soothing him. “Dex, it’s okay. Look at me.”

Eyes bleary with tears, he met your gaze. He fucked it up. He hadn’t done what he practiced. He was too eager. Too quick. Too honest. Too himself. It would be over now. You would send him out of your room, laugh at him, do what everyone else had done to him his whole life and abandon him. 

There was no point in continuing if you did that. No purpose for Dex. No point in living if you weren’t his North Star. 

He would end it all. 

“Dex,” you said his name again. Dex managed to blink the hot tears from his eyes, and he saw you clearly. You were…smiling. 

“It’s okay,” you whispered, voice soft and sweet. “I feel the same.”

He stilled. 

Did you– no. No, surely he hadn’t heard you correctly. Surely the blood was still rushing throughout his body so loudly that he misunderstood. 

“I…I don’t…” He stumbled over his words, throat tight. “What?”

Your smile grew wider. The same smile you gave him when he first opened his apartment door and found you standing there. The same smile that made him feel like his eyes had finally opened for the first time in his life.

“I love you, too, Dex.”

His breath, which he hadn’t realized he had been holding, left him in a shaky exhale. You loved him. You wanted him. You needed him. You felt what he had been feeling this entire time. 

Your thumbs moved on his cheeks again, this time wiping away tears Dex hadn’t realized had fallen. 

“I know it’s early,” You paused, and then laughed softly, like you couldn’t believe what you were saying. “It’s probably insane. And maybe it’s partially the life-changing orgasm still talking, but…”

You bit your lip bashfully, but looked deep into his eyes. “I mean it. Seriously. I care about you, and I just… I like what we have.”

Dex opened his mouth, but no sound came out. You seemed to understand anyway. 

You pressed one tired, affectionate kiss to his cheek, then two to his lips, before patting his chest. “So…stop freaking out and get back into the bed so we can sleep, okay? And hopefully I can still walk in the morning.”

Dex tried to laugh. The two of you moved clumsily back beneath the sheets, bodies sticky with sex. You turned onto your side, snuggling into him and guiding his arm around your waist. You placed one last kiss to his chest, just above his heart, and closed your eyes with a sigh. 

The room fell into silence. 

You loved him. 

Dex had been in this room so many times before, had seen the moonlight move slowly over your sleeping face with every hour that he watched over you. He had often wondered what it would feel like to finally cross the distance between you, to climb under the covers. To hold you.

Now, he was finally here. 

Dex’s hand crawled from your waist to splay over your ribcage, feeling your breath begin to even out. 

In…and out. 

The rhythm that had once belonged to him had transferred to you. 

He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this. Dex had lied, he had murdered, he had felt nothing but emptiness in spaces he should feel empathy. He had spent years convincing himself there was nothing in him but flesh and bones. No soul. Nothing worthy of mercy.

And yet, here you were. Holding onto him, sleeping like you trusted him…because you did. More than that, even. You loved him. 

Dex would do whatever he could to keep you. Nothing would take you from him. Even if the world separated you, he would remain in your life. You would never be rid of him. Ever. 

He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth to your shoulder. His hand drifted from your chest to rest over your belly. 

For the first time in his life, he prayed. 

Please, God, he thought. 

Please let it stick. 

Dex flinched.

Because yes! Yes, he was. He was a good guy now, and as selfish he might be, he would rather have you alone without him then dead with him. He could stalk you, watch you, keep you safe from a distance, even if you broke up. He couldn’t do it if you were fucking deceased now, could he?

“They took you last night to get to me,” he said, fidgeting with nothing in his fingers. “You’re in danger because of me.”

He was right, of course. Some rogue task force agents had figured out Bullseye had a girlfriend and decided you would make good bait. They bound, gagged, bruised, shoved you into the back of a van and drove you to an empty warehouse. 

They didn’t tell their superiors, of course. They said get Bullseye first, kill him, bring the dead body to Powell, and get a promotion. That way, nobody else got to take the credit for their work right? 

Dex had gone supernova and found you an hour later.

And you had been so sweetly delighted to see him, even like that. He was your beautiful, blood-soaked rescue dog with murder in his eyes and hands that killed your captors. 

He had held, cradled, and unbound you, asked you if you were okay, and all you did was smile at him with blood trailing up your mouth and asked “what do you want for dinner baby?”

Fuck.

He had carried you back and watched you sleep. He was awake all night with a pistol in his grip, watching the door, the windows, the hallway, the rise and fall of your chest. Every breath you took felt like a reprieve he hadn’t  earned.

By morning, he had convinced himself that leaving you was the only good guy option he had left.

Your smile dropped.

Because that, unfortunately, was the thing about Dex. He could be cruel by accident. He could stand there with those sad eyes and talk like loving you was a crime, talking down on you as if any man could tell you what to do for your own good. Please.

You frowned, stepping closer. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“I already did,” he sighed. 

There it was. He felt like he had slit himself in the wrist saying that.  

For a second, you looked genuinely wounded.

Dex saw it, he wanted to move toward you. His hands wanted your face, your waist, your bruised wrists, wanted to hold every hurt place and swear he would drown every task force officer in the city before anyone touched you again.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Dex loved you like a weapon. He loved you so much it made enemies out of strangers. It turned you into a target. 

The spiralling thought crawled through him, sick and relentless: if he stayed, they would come back. If he stayed, someone would use you to get to him again. If he stayed, one day he wood be mate and you would be dead and you death was the one thing he cannot be responsible for, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, he fucking can’t! 

But then your frown disappeared. 

It turned… glossy. Your mouth was pressed into a right pretty line, and you tilted your head as if you had just remembered you were supposed to be the fun one in the relationship. 

“Okay,” you said sweetly.

What?

Dex’s eyes narrowed. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” You patted his cheek once, almost condescending. “Go be noble, handsome.”

He looked confused then, even when he was heartbroken beneath it. He had expected some emotion. A fight maybe.

Your anger would have made sense. Your grief would have made sense. Some sick part of him had pictured you crying so hard you couldn’t breathe, hands fisted in his shirt, nails scraping his skin as you begged him not to leave you. He had imagined you shoving him, cursing him, maybe even dragging a chair across the kitchen and threatening to tie him to it just to keep him there.

But you only smiled.

And fuck, the rotten, possessive monster in him was insulted.

Like how dare you let him do exactly what he said he’d do? How dare you stand there calm and pretty while he was ripping himself out of your life with his bare hands? How dare you not make him bleed for it? Dex wanted punishment. He wanted proof. He wanted you to lose control so he could feel your undying love.

Instead, you gave him permission.

You even grabbed his wrist and walked him to the door.

Dex followed because he had started this and because stopping now would mean admitting the truth: that every step away from you felt wrong. 

His eyes dragged on everything as he moved: The mug he always used. The little smear of red polish he hated on the counter from when you had painted your nails there. The chair where he had sat last night cleaning blood from under his fingernails while listening to you rant about your kidnapper’s bad manners.

He had spent so long trying to root himself in your life.

Now you were opening the door like he was nothing but a guest.

“If you want to leave,” you said, still smiling, “then leave.”

Dex stopped in front of you.

He wanted you to make it impossible. He hated himself for that. He wanted the door slammed shut, he wanted any proof that this wasn’t as simple as walking out. But you only stood there, beautiful as even m in his shirt, looking at him like you had already decided what came next for the both of you. 

His chest felt too tight, his throat felt raw. He told himself this was good. This was better. You were letting him go, so that should’ve been mercy.

So why did it feel like punishment?

He looked down at your mouth, at your split lip. He had kissed you so carefully there just hours before. You caught the front of his shirt and pulled him down into a kiss soft enough to make him sigh.

It was a goodbye kiss, he realised. At least you wanted him to think that.

For one breath, Dex tried not to kiss you back. Then he failed, because he was Dex, and you were you, and there had never been anything normal about the way you loved each other. His hand came up to cup your face, careful around the bruise on your cheek, careful around the split in your lip, careful even now while he was leaving you.

When you pulled away, he followed for half an inch before catching himself.

You smiled against his mouth.

“There,” you whispered. “Now go be noble.”

Dex stepped into the hallway like every inch of distance cost him his sanity.

You didn’t stop him.

You only stood there in the doorway, bright-eyed and terrible, watching him leave like this was not killing you, too.

At the elevator, he looked back.

You smiled and waved at him.

The doors closed between you.

Dex stood there with empty hands and a heart that would not stop clawing at his ribs, telling himself this was right. This was love. This was what a good man would do.

At least you were making it easy… Right?

—

Three days later, he found a package of all of his stuff on his doorstep, though he didn’t know how you found his new address so quickly.

He was sure he’d been subtle, and yet, you continued to surprise him. 

It had been left exactly in the blind spot between the hallway camera and the stairwell mirror, where no one would have seen you drop it off. Smart girl, he thought, then immediately hated himself for thinking it. 

He opened the box to see that you had wrapped his knives individually, blades oiled, handles cleaned, each one placed parallel to the next. His spare ammunition case was taped shut with some strawberry washi tape. His toothbrush was sealed in a little plastic bag. His socks were folded the way he folded them, which felt more intimate than if you had thrown them loose into the box.

Dex crouched in the doorway for a moment, staring down at the package like it might bite. Like you might be hiding inside it somehow, waiting to laugh at him for flinching.

There was no note, though you had never needed a note to make a point.

He carried the box inside and unpacked it thoroughly,  every item coming out like evidence. These were all proof that he had lived in your apartment. Proof that you had let him. Proof that, for a while, he had been stupid enough to believe he could have nice things. A world's best boyfriend mug, a box of tea you bought him, a book he had read just because you had written little comments in the margins and he liked hearing your voice in his head.

Then he found the shirt. The one you had been wearing when he broke up with you.

It was his shirt, technically. It was grey and soft from too many washes, still creased in the shape of your body. You had folded it carefully and placed it there like a final insult.

Dex picked it up.

He should have put it away. He should have washed it. He should have thrown it out if he was really as noble as he had tried so hard to be.

Instead, he pressed it to his face before he could stop himself.

It still smelled like you.

Like cinnamon, sugar, the faint trace of your shampoo. He missed you so much and so stupidly that for a second he forgot he was standing alone in a studio apartment he hated, holding a box of proof that you had accepted his leaving better than he had.

At the bottom of the package, beneath his things, was a burner phone, fully charged, with one number saved.

Dex stared at it.

Fuck. 

He should crush it and throw it away. Instead, he puts it on his bedside table. 

—

That night, he tried to sleep with the lights off and failed. The apartment was too empty. There was no sound of you moving around in the kitchen, no music playing low from your phone, no drawer half-open because you had taken out a bread knife and forgotten to close it. You weren’t there to cuddle up to him. No evidence of anyone alive but him.

He told himself this was good. This was the whole point of leaving, right?

You were away from him, and therefore away from the target on his back.You were alive. You were safe. Maybe you were angry, maybe you were already plotting something awful but you were breathing somewhere he couldn’t ruin you.

Still, Dex laid on his side with your unwashed shirt gathered in his hands. He hated himself for it. Hated the way he pressed his face into the fabric and inhaled desperate lyrics like an addict. Hated that his body relaxed when he did. Hated that even after walking away, some animal part of him still believed your scent meant home.

He must have slept eventually, because the burner phone lighting up felt like a gunshot in the dark.

Dex opened his eyes and reached for it before he could talk himself out of it. 

The first thing you sent was a photo of yourself in that red dress.

Oh.

The dress was obscene. He had always loved it, but he pretended to disapprove of it. He said it was too tight.  It showed too much of your cleavage, your shoulders. This time, your lips were painted to match. 

He remembered standing behind you once, hands on your waist, looking at you in the mirror and saying, very calmly, that you were not wearing that outside.

You had laughed then and called him possessive.

He hadn’t denied it.

Now you were wearing it for someone else.

Underneath, your message read:

date night!!! don’t worry he’s probably only committed tax fraud and like, three white collar crimes. character growth for me xoxo

Dex stared at the photo until the edges of his vision sharpened.

The room seemed to narrow around the screen and  your bare collarbone and the curve of your smile. 

He fucking hated the the idea of some man sitting across from you, looking at you in that dress, thinking he had earned the right.

Then the phone buzzed again.

You had sent a location, followed by a screenshot of a Tinder profile.

Dex clicked it before he could stop himself.

The man was too old for you, and definitely too smug. He had an expensive suit in the first photo, dead eyes, a bio full of words like entrepreneur and traditional values and looking for someone feminine. 

Dex could see exactly what you had picked him for. Obviously, this man was designed in a lab to make Dex want to put his fist through a wall.

Twenty years older than you, at least.

His thumb hovered over the screen when the message came through.

trying soooo hard to date normal men now that my scary ex boyfriend dumped me for my own good :(

Dex sat up, your shirt was still in his lap.

The stupid, rational, noble part of him tried to tell him not to answer. It told him this was bait. It told him you had always been clever enough to turn his own jealousy into a leash. 

Then Dex stared at the phone until it buzzed one more time.

he keeps looking at my chest btw. very empowering for me as a single woman

Ugh.

Dex got out of bed.

—

He didn’t go to seek you out.

Pfft.

That was what Dex told himself.

He didn’t grab his coat because of you. He didn't take the burner phone with him because of you. He didn't go across the city with his teeth clenched so tight it hurt because you were sitting pretty, smiling at a man old enough to know better and stupid enough not to.

He was just passing by.

That was all.

He just happened to end up outside the restaurant while going on a walk. He just happened to cross the street with his hands in his pockets with head down.

He didn’t go inside.

That was progress.

That was him being so fucking noble it made his him wanna vomit. 

Dex stopped by the window.

Inside, the restaurant was dim and expensive in that hollow, tasteless way. You sat near the back, of course you did, angled just enough that he could see you.

And there you were, beautiful as the day he left you, which was like, last Tuesday. 

Your date leaned toward you, talking at your mouth instead of your face.

Dex’s hand twitched.

You looked bored, actually. You had your chin in your hand, eyes dull, smile fixed in that polite little shape Dex knew meant you had mentally killed someone six different ways and found all of them uninspiring.

Then your eyes flicked toward the window, and you saw him.

You smiled, knowing there was an audience now. 

And suddenly, magically, you were interested in your date.

You sat up straighter and twirled a piece of hair around your finger. You tilted your head at the man like whatever he had just said was fascinating instead of probably criminally stupid. You even laughed the kind of laugh Dex had once heard against his own throat in bed.

The man smiled wider, encouraged. He leaned closer.

Too fucking close.

Dex’s hand furled into fists, nails digging into his palms. He didn’t even realise he had bled until he heard a little drip on the pavement. He wanted to fucking out his head through a mirror, but he didn’t.

Because killing him would give you exactly what you wanted.

And Dex might have been a psychopath, but he wasn’t stupid.

You wanted him to make a scene. You wanted him to  walk in and ruin your date and prove, in front of everyone, that he had never really let you go. You wanted blood on the white tablecloth and his hand around your wrist and that furious voice telling you that you were done.

He knew you.

He knew the trap because he wanted to step into it so badly.

So before he did something stupid, he left.

He walked back down the street, breathing evenly.

Then he saw the man’s car. He recognised it from his dating profile.

Dex stopped.

It was parked near the curb, glossy and obnoxious, exactly the kind of car a man like that would own. He looked at it for one long second.

No.

He was not going to kill him.

That would be unreasonable.

Instead, Dex took out his knife and slashed his tyres. 

There.

Now the man couldn’t take you home.

Dex wiped the blade, folded it away, and walked back to his car feeling almost sane.

—

Two days later, the burner phone lit up in the dark while he was sitting on the edge of his bed, still awake, still pretending he was not waiting for it. 

He picked up the phone pathetically quickly, and a photo loaded.

Dex went very still.

It was a rooftop bar, with city lights behind you, gold light on your skin. You were perched beside a man in a suit too expensive to be tasteful, eyes glittering toward the camera like you knew exactly what you were doing to him.

Worse, you were kissing the man on the cheek.

You weren’t really kissing him. Dex could tell. Your mouth barely touched his skin. It was theatrical, a pose, a cute little murder weapon aimed straight at Dex’s ribs.

It worked.

The man was handsome in that dead-eyed finance way. He had an empty smile and hair. He had an expensive Cartier watch on his wrist. He looked like the sort of man who looked like he laughed too loudly at his own jokes and gave waiters weird nicknames even after reading their name tags.

Dex hated him immediately.

Then he read the message underneath.

this one said vigilantes are bad for the economy :( thought you’d hate him

For a moment, all Dex could hear was his own breathing. It was controlled, but not controlled enough.

He texted back before his pride could stop him.

Go home.

Your reply came almost instantly.

you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Dex. you broke up with me, remember?

Fuck, he remembered.

He remembered your kitchen. Your pretty face, the pretty smile you had when you had decided not to beg. He remembered your mouth on his. He remembered walking out while every devoted part of him screamed to turn back.

He remembered thinking you were making it easy. He had been an idiot.

Then another message came through.

unless you wanna come get me?

Dex turned the phone face down. He stared at the back for five seconds.

Then ten.

Then he picked it back up.

He wasn’t going to give you what you wanted, he thought as he pulled on his jacket, and checked the address you had very helpfully attached to the next message. He wasn’t going to storm in. He wasn’t going to put his hand around your wrist and tell you the date was over. He wasn’t going to break the man’s nose against the bar just because his cheek had your lipstick on it.

He was better than that, even if he fantasised about it all the way there.

When he arrived, he didn’t go inside. He stayed near the service entrance, where the light was dimmer and the staff moved too quickly to look at him for long.

Through the glass, he saw you.

You were laughing, but not your real laugh. Dex knew the difference, and somehow that was worse. You were performing now, all sweet tilt of your head, slow fingers tracing the rim of your glass.

Your date said something, and you smiled like it amused you. Then your gaze slid past him, toward the service door, toward the shadow where Dex stood.

He knew you saw him when your smile changed.

Then, because you were evil, you turned back to your date and touched his arm.

Dex’s hand flexed once at his side.

Dex really didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of killing him so Dex only looked harder.

The man had a badge clipped carelessly to his belt, half-visible beneath his jacket when he stood to order another drink. Corporate, he saw, at a finance firm. He was too proud of it and too stupid to hide it. His watch flashed under the bar lights every time he moved his hand, begging to be noticed.

Men like that always had something to ruin.

Dex only had to find it.

It didn’t take long for him to find his name on the reservation. The name on the reservation led to a company profile. The company profile led to a Facebook profile. The Facebook profile led to a wife not nearly half as beautiful as you, Dex thought, so that was understandable. Then came the corporate card attached to the table, and the Hinge profile that shouldn't have existed.

Dex stared at all of it, and sent the proof where it needed to go.

Less than a minute later, the man’s phone started buzzing.

Dex watched him check the screen. He smiled when the colour drained out of his face.

You leaned forward, all pretty concern, chin in your hand, lashes fluttering like you hadn’t built the entire night to end exactly here: proof that Dex cared. 

The man stood too quickly. His chair scraped against the floor. His hand went to his hair, then his watch, then his phone again as if touching enough expensive things might keep his life from falling apart in public.

Dex watched you bite your lip before realising that you were trying not to laugh.

Then, because he was still Dex, because restraint had limits and his limit was apparently a smug man wearing a watch that ugly near you, he made one more small adjustment to the evening.

He took a cocktail stick from a service cart and aimed.

A second later, the clasp of the man’s watch snapped, slipped from his wrist and dropped neatly into his glass of red wine.

The splash was small, but the humiliation was not.

The man stared at it as if he was going to lose it.

You looked toward the service door again. Your smile widened because you knew Dex was proud of himself.

—

He finally snapped three days later, when you sent him a photo from a date with an anti-vigilante task force agent.

Not a finance guy. Not some smug older man with a LinkedIn bio full of lies. Not someone Dex could ruin with an email or a slashed tyre.

A task force agent.

Fuckin’ one of them. 

One of the very same people who had taken you.

Dex stared at the photo for a long time, so still he barely looked alive. You were smiling at the camera from the passenger seat of a sleek black car, wearing a little black dress and vicious amusement. Beside you was a man Dex didn’t know by name yet, but he knew the type immediately. He had dark hair, a leather jacket, a thin mouth, the kind of face made for press conferences and bad decisions.

You had your cheek pressed near his shoulder, his task force badge clearly visible.

The agent had one hand on the wheel.

Dex’s stomach twisted, and not just from jealousy.

No, this was worse.

This was you going on a date with danger on purpose. This was you putting your pretty little hand back in a bear trap and smiling when it closed. This was you looking at the same tribe of man who had violently gagged you, bound you, bruised your wrists, and deciding, with horrifying cheer, that they would make excellent bait.

Dex knew you were a freak before, obviously. He had known from the way you treated murder like flirting when it came from him. But this was insane, even for you. 

And the worst part was that it worked.

It fucking got to him.

The burner phone buzzed again.

look baby!!!! i’m dating someone age appropriate and employed by the government. healthy choices :)

Dex bit the inside of his cheek until it bled but did not answer.

Then, you send another message.

he says vigilantes are unstable men with hero complexes. thoughts?

Dex’s teeth clenched.

The room around him seemed to tunnel until there was nothing but the phone in his hand and your stupid, delighted little face glowing up at him from the screen.

Then, he felt another buzz.

he keeps asking if i have any exes. should i tell him you’re shy?

Dex stood even before the next message came through.

he says he’s gonna take me home! do you think i should let him come inside me too?

Dex’s fist closed around the phone so hard the screen cracked. No. No no no no no! How dare you fucking say that? How fucking dare you even suggest such a vile thing? 

The final message buzzed in. 

i mean, you were the only one who ever got to. but you wanted to be noble, right? gotta learn to share if you wanna be a good guy.

And that was the moment the monster in him shifted from jealous to possessive. Not because he thought you were helpless. Not because he thought you were stupid. You were on the pill; he knew that, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that until now, he had been trying to tell himself he had no claim over you anymore. That leaving meant letting go completely. That loving you from a distance was still love.

Then he read those words, and every decent, self-sacrificing thought in him went out the window.

Because no.

He did not want to share.

He did not want to be good.

He wanted you to be his.

So he read it again.

Then again, until fire burned through him

By the third time, his hand was already around the keys.

He found you twenty-three minutes later in the parking garage beneath a hotel too expensive for an agent’s salary. It was the kind of place with cameras in all the wrong corners and concrete floors that reflected the fluorescent lights in pale, ugly strips.

He found the car on level four.

The engine was still running.

Music played low through the speakers, bass muffled under the soft mechanical hum of the car. The windows had fogged at the edges, turning the back seat into a blurred confession booth. Dex saw you through the glass first, perched over the agent’s lap, still fully clothed, thank fuck. 

Still, your dress had ridden up just enough to be suggestive. His jacket was still on. Your hands were planted on the leather seat on either side of him instead of touching his chest, like you were holding yourself there because you didn’t touch him anymore than you had to.

The agent didn’t notice.

He had one hand at your waist, fingers too sure, too familiar, his face tilted up toward yours as he tried to kiss you, hungry in a way that made Dex’s jaw lock. The man kept chasing your mouth, and you kept giving him just enough to keep the act alive. 

You looked bored, thank god. 

Dex could see the little glaze behind your eyes, glossy and false. He knew you were uncomfortable by the stiffness in your shoulders and the way your knees pressed into the seat instead of settling against him. He knew from the way your fingers dug hard into the leather, not his hair, not his coat, not anything that would make this real.

The agent thought you were teasing him.

Dex knew you were enduring him.

Your body stayed half an inch away every time the man tried to pull you closer. Your mouth turned at the last second when he went for a real kiss. Your lashes fluttered like flirtation, but your eyes flicked once toward the window because you were waiting.

You were just trying to sell every ugly second because you knew Dex would come.

And because some terrible, freaky little part of you wanted him to see exactly what happened when he tried to leave you unclaimed.

And it worked, because now his blood was boiling like a volcano before an explosion.

Dex harshly pulled the car door open like he wanted to rip it off its hinges.

The agent turned, irritated first, then confused. “What the—”

Dex dragged him out by the collar and slammed him against the side of the car hard enough to make the frame jolt. The agent’s head snapped back. His mouth opened, ready with some badge-brave threat or official little command.

That was when he saw Dex properly. The colour drained from his face.

You watched it happen from the back seat, lips parted, eyes glittering.

Imagine his face, really. Imagine being this anti-vigilante task force golden boy, handsome and government-funded, thinking you were taking some gorgeous girl home for the night. Imagine realising, way too late, that her ex was none other than Bullseye.

“Fuck,” the agent breathed.

Dex smiled, but it was most definitely not a nice smile.

“You asked about me?”

The agent’s hand twitched toward his weapon, but Dex reacted.

He slashed his throat as the agent made a choked sound, more shocked than loud, and then Dex let him drop beside the car, limp like he deserved to be. 

For a second, there was only the engine humming.

Then you gasped. It sounded so fucking fake.

Dex looked at you.

You were still in the back seat, dress riding high, lipstick smudged, one hand pressed to your mouth like you were horrified. But your eyes betrayed you, because they were bright and thrilled. 

“You killed him,” you whispered.

Dex stared at you, breathing hard through his nose.

Your mouth trembled, but not from fear. You were trying not to smile.

Dex stepped closer to the open door. The garage lights cut his face into harsh lines, made him look even more ruined than he already was. He looked furious, heartbroken, and possessive all the same. 

“Why the fuck,” he barked, “did you go out with a task force agent?”

You blinked up at him, feigning innocence. “I’m broadening my horizons.”

“He was one of them.” And what he meant by that was that one of them hurt you, one of them kidnapped you, one of them had harmed you.

“You left me single,” you pouted. “What was I supposed to do?”

His eyes went dark, and that was when you knew he had snapped. 

All that faux-noble restraint and self-punishing distance, All those nights alone with the shirt that still smelled like you, all of that pretending he could walk out of your life and call it love? Gone.

Dex leaned into the car, one hand gripping the doorframe, the other reaching for your chin. He held you still, firm enough to make your breath hitch.

“You could have gotten hurt.” This time, though, he sounded genuinely worried.

You only batted your pretty lashes, though. “I knew you’d come.”

That was almost worse than the date. Worse than the photo. Worse than the agent dead on the concrete, because you were right.

You had known.

You had known exactly how to pull him back. You had known jealousy would get him halfway there, but fear would finish the job. You had known Dex could barely survive seeing you with a bad man, but he could not survive seeing you in danger with one.

“You’re sick,” he said.

You smiled then, soft and awful. “Yeah.”

Dex’s thumb brushed your cheek, gentle and comforting. Because you should know better. In fact, you did, but chose not to care.

That scared you more than the rage. You knew he was genuinely upset with you. He was disappointed.

“We’re going home,” he said.

You gave him a little pout, your stomach filling at the mention of your shared home. “Are we?”

“Yes.”

You didn’t move.

Dex sighed. “Get out of the car.”

“No.”

Oh?

Suddenly, this stopped being about the task force, the breakup, the game you had both been losing on purpose. It became much more honest.

Dex looked at you like he wanted to shake you. Kiss you. Lock you in a cabin forever to keep you safe. 

“You don’t get to do this,” he said.

“You broke up with me.”

“You don’t get to make yourself bait.”

“But you left!” Your voice was softer now, the bratty edge thinning out. “According to you, I’m not bait anymore, am I?”

Dex went still, because fuck did you have a point. That was the whole reason he left you, right?

You looked up at him, still glittering, but there was a crack now, a wounded thing peeking through the performance.

Dex’s mouth tightened as your smile flickered.

His shoulders dropped, as he frowned, ruching his thumb over your cheek. “I don’t wanna see you get hurt, baby.”

Aw. How cute. 

You stared back, mouth trembling, the whole act finally splitting open enough for him to see the hurt underneath. 

Not fear or guilt. Hurt, that you had refused to show him at the door. Hurt, the whole reason you were acting out and apparently, borderline suicidal for. 

Then, very softly, almost small, you said, “Then don’t leave me.” You shook your head. “Please.”

Dex closed his eyes for half a second. When he opened them, the noble man he tried to be was fucking gone, never to return again.

Then he climbed into the back seat with you and slammed the door shut.

He kissed you like he had finally stopped lying to himself.

Oh, how you’ve missed his lips.

The windows fogged quickly at the edges, blurring the parking garage into streaks of white light and concrete shadow. Outside, the agent’s body was still slumped against the side of the car, a problem for later. Every faint shift of the vehicle knocked the corpse, every soft rock making a dull little sound. 

Dex felt it too. He had a sudden awareness of where you were, what he had done, what you had made romantic because neither of you had ever known how to love in a way that did not look a little like a crime scene.

For one second, you thought he might stop.

Then your fingers slid into his hair and you whispered his name.

Whatever. He’ll just kill anyone that walked in. 

He kissed you again, gentler this time, like your mouth was the only place in the world that had ever known what to do with him.

“There you are,” he whispered against your lips. “There’s my girl.”

All the glittering cruelty drained out of you. All the bratty little texts, the bad dates, the cute dresses, the performance. It fell away under his hands until there was only the aching truth: you had missed him so much it had made you mean.

Of course Dex knew from the start. It didn’t mean he was unaffected.

His hand slid to your waist, the dress bunched high. Your leg was hooked to the side, your back pressed into the leather, your hands trailing against his shoulders. Dex shifted his weight so he wouldn’t crush you. He even tucked one hand beneath your head so you would not hit the door. He kissed the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then the sensitive beneath your ear, lingering there like he had spent eight days starving and had finally been allowed to taste home again.

“Missed you,” he breathed.

You closed your eyes.

Dex’s mouth brushed your skin. “Missed you so much. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t breathe right without you.”

Your fingers tightened in his hair, and the sound you made was small, broken, and you would have been embarrassed if it had been anyone else. But it was Dex. Your Dex, who could kill a man for touching you and then sigh like he was the one being saved when you pulled him closer.

He had lasted almost a full eight days before he completely lost the plot, and in some ways, you were proud of him. That man missed you after two hours of you in the gym. 

But this time, he had lasted a whole week and one day of him pretending he could be good without you. A week and one day of him sleeping badly, eating worse, telling himself you were safer while his body mourned you. A week and one day of you smiling at other men because if Dex was going to leave you, then you were going to make it hurt.

And now he was back, kissing you like an apology, holding you like a vow.

“Don’t leave me,” you whispered as you felt Dex hook your black lace panties aside and undo his own belt just enough to do the job. 

His forehead rested against yours, all the anger stripped out of him until only the love was left. “I won’t.”

“You promise?”

His free hand came up to your face again. His thumb brushed your cheek so gently it made your heart ache.

“I promise,” he said. “Never again.”

You believed him.

Maybe that was stupid. Maybe you were both stupid. Maybe that was the whole point.

And then he pushed in and stretched you out, and suddenly you were too drunk on him to even think.

You kissed him, needy, and Dex made the most helpless little sigh, almost a whimper, into your mouth. His hand gripped your waist. Yours slid down his back to trace his scar over his shirt, pulling him closer until there was no space left for either of you to pretend you had survived time apart.

The car rocked faintly under you, the windows going completely white now. 

“Mine,” he whispered, but it didn’t sound like ownership this time. It sounded like relief.

Dex kissed the words out of your mouth before you could say anything cruel. He kissed your little mewls quiet. He kissed your wrist, too, the place where the bruises had been days ago, when they took you. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against your skin.

You shook your head.

He kissed the inside of your wrist again.

“I’m sorry,” he said anyway, more of an apology to himself than to you, “For making you feel like I wanted to leave.”

You hated being seen that clearly, so you just pulled him down and kissed him until his apology turned into another broken sigh.

Finally. Finally.

When Dex reached his high with you, he did it quietly, almost sweetly, his face hidden against your neck, arms locked around you like he was afraid the world might still try to take you if he loosened his grip. He breathed your name once, and then held you through the shivering aftermath like I got you, baby. 

You stroked his hair as the car settled beneath you and your heartbeat calmed with his. Dex’s breath warmed your throat, his body still curled protectively over yours.

Then, very carefully, he lifted his head.

His hair was a mess, mouth swollen. His eyes were still dark and a little wild, as kissed your cheek once.

Then your nose.

Then your mouth, so tenderly it made a terrible night feel almost normal.

“Do you wanna get dinner?” You asked dreamily.

He blinked at you, then scowled when he realised. “The dickhead didn’t feed you, did he?”

You huffed, breathless and offended now that he just knew. “He took me to some stupid fancy small plates restaurant. I’m still hungry.”

Dex’s eyes gentled so much it made you want to cry.

There he was.

Your psychopath boyfriend. Your man, sitting with you in a fogged-up dead agent’s car, still bloodied, still ruined, and yet still thinking about whether you had eaten enough.

He brushed your hair back from your face.

“Anything for you, baby,” he said.

So he got you your favourite takeout, kissed the sauce from your lips with a fond laugh, and by morning, his toothbrush was back in your apartment as if he had never been stupid enough to leave at all. 

—end.

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