Bells🫧 23 | she/her

“It’s just a mug,” your best friend, Lana, had laughed, nudging you. “Don’t be so intense.”

Lana was gone now. Off to a study group for her art history midterm. She’d been anxious all week, picking at her nails, because Aerion had been distant. “He’s just like that,” she’d said, more to herself than to you. “He’s got a lot on his mind.” Before she left, she’d paused at the door, her oversized sweater swallowing her frame. “You’ll keep an eye on him, right? Don’t let him burn the place down. And try not to kill each other.” She’d smiled, a nervous, fluttering thing, and then she was gone, leaving the apartment heavy with the silence she’d filled with chatter.

The silence didn’t last. You heard the sink run, then stop. Footsteps, unhurried, crossed the short hallway from the kitchen to the living room. He appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame, your blue mug in his hand. He wore a worn black t-shirt, grease stained jeans from his diner shift, and the scent of old coffee, and cigarette smoke.

“She thinks I’m a stray cat,” he said, his voice a low, rough scrape. He didn’t smile. He never really smiled. His mouth just did something, a twist that was more threat than expression. “Don’t let him burn the place down. Like I’m some fucking hazard she’s leaving in your care.”

You didn’t look up from your book. “Aren’t you?”

He pushed off the doorframe and walked into the room, dropping onto the opposite end of the secondhand couch. The springs groaned under his weight. He set your mug on the scarred coffee table, right on top of your highlighted notes.

“You tell me. You’re the one with the moral compass. The better student.” He lit a cigarette, the match hissing to life. He didn’t ask. He blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “Nietzsche. Appropriate. Rereading the parts about how morality is a fiction for the weak?”

“I’m reading the parts about how resentment poisons the soul,” you said, finally looking at him. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, the blue of them almost violent in their clarity. “You should try it.”

He took a drag, held it, let the smoke curl from his nostrils. “I don’t have resentment. You rejected me. That was your choice. I accepted it. I just…restructured the playing field.” He gestured loosely with the cigarette, ash falling on the carpet. “Lana wanted to be chosen. You wanted to be wanted without the inconvenience of admitting it. I just gave you both what you wanted. It’s practically altruism.”

Your fingers tightened on the paperback. “You’re dating my best friend to punish me. To get close to me. That’s not a playing field. That’s a pathology.”

“Is it?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. “You knew what I was doing the moment I asked her out. You saw right through it. And you let it happen. You watched me sit on this shitty couch with my arm around her. You watched me kiss her goodnight. You listened through that thin fucking wall when I fucked her in her room. And you never said a word. Not to protect her. You just sat there, in your righteous silence, watching me watch you.” His voice dropped, became intimate, venomous. “So who’s the pathological one? The guy who acts on his desires, or the girl who gets off on being the secret center of the universe?”

Heat flooded your face, a mix of shame and fury so acute it felt like nausea. “You’re disgusting.”

“I’m honest.” He crushed the cigarette in your mug, the hiss of the ember dying in the dregs of coffee. “You hate me because I’m a mirror. And you don’t like what you see.”

“I hate you because you’re using a vulnerable person as a tactical maneuver.”

“She’s using me, too!” he snapped, the first real crack in his controlled, sleazy demeanor. His eyes flashed. “She wants the badge of dating someone dangerous. She wants to feel special because someone like me would choose someone like her. She doesn’t see me. She sees a fucking accessory. So don’t paint her as some innocent victim. She’s a selfish, shallow little bitch who’s happy to have you clean up her messes as long as she gets to feel chosen.” He leaned back, the anger receding into a colder, more deliberate malice. “Just like you’re happy to feel wanted as long as you don’t have to get your hands dirty by saying yes.”

You stood up, the book falling to the floor. “Get out.”

He didn’t move. He just looked up at you, a slow, appraising look that traveled from your face down your body and back up. It wasn’t a leer. It was an assessment. A philosopher considering a proof. “No.”

“Get out of my apartment, Aerion.”

“It’s Lana’s apartment, too. And I’m her guest.” He spread his arms along the back of the couch. “She asked you to keep an eye on me. So do your duty.”

The air was too thick to breathe. The rattling heater, the smell of his smoke, the weight of his gaze. All the arguments, all the needling comments, the stolen mugs, the notes in your books, ‘naive,’ ‘sentimental bullshit,’ ‘try harder’, it had all been winding tighter and tighter, a spring coiling in the pit of your stomach. This was the tension he lived for. This was the game.

“You love this, don’t you?” you whispered, the anger turning into something else, something bleak and recognizing. “You love that I’m stuck here with you. You love that I can’t make you leave without causing a scene she’ll never forgive me for. You engineered this whole pathetic scenario just so you could have me trapped.”

For the first time, something like real pleasure touched his expression. Not happiness. Triumph. “Finally,” he breathed. “There she is. The girl who sees the board. The girl who understands the move.” He stood up, slowly, closing the distance between you. He was taller, and he used it, looking down at you with that intense, grimy beauty. “You think I’m cruel? You’re right. You think I’m using her? You’re right. You think this is all about you?” He brought a hand up, but didn’t touch you. He just hovered it near your cheek, letting you feel the heat of his skin. “You have no idea how right you are.”

His other hand came up, fingers brushing a strand of hair from your forehead. The touch was shockingly gentle, at odds with everything about him. It made your breath catch.

“You rejected me,” he said, his voice now a low, private thing, just for the space between your mouths. “You looked at me and you said no. You humiliated me. So I made a world where your no didn’t matter. I walked right into your life through a door you left open. I sat at your table. I drank from your cup. I fucked your friend in the next room thinking about you. And you let me. Because part of you wanted to see how far I’d go. How badly I wanted it. How badly you wanted it.”

His fingers finally touched your jaw, a firm, claiming pressure. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

You couldn’t. The words were ash in your mouth. All the moral high ground, all the justified anger, it crumbled because he was right. You had watched. You had felt a thrill, dark and shameful, every time his eyes slid from Lana to you. You had treasured his insults because they were a form of attention no one else gave you. You were complicit. You were corrupt.

He saw the admission in your eyes. The victory in his was blinding, and ugly, and hungry.

He kissed you.

It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t an exploration. It was a claim. His mouth was hard and demanding, tasting of nicotine and bitter coffee. His hand on your jaw held you still, his other arm snaking around your waist to yank you flush against him. You made a sound, a muffled gasp of protest, and he swallowed it, h is tongue pushing into your mouth, deep and possessive. It was filthy. It was a violation and a confession all at once. You didn’t kiss him back at first. You stood there, rigid, letting him take. But your body betrayed you. A shiver ran through you. Your hands, which had come up to push at his chest, curled into the fabric of his shirt.

He broke the kiss, breathing harshly against your lips. “Say it,” he growled. “Say you hate me.”

“I hate you,” you choked out.

“Good.” He kissed you again, more brutally, biting your lower lip until you whimpered. “Now show me.”

He turned you, pushing you back toward the couch. You stumbled, your calves hitting the edge, and you fell backward onto the cushions. He was on you before you could right yourself, his knees bracketing your hips, his weight pinning you down. The cold from the window was gone, replaced by the scorching heat of him. He looked down at you, his brown hair falling into his eyes, his sharp features etched with a frantic need.

“You’ve been watching me,” he said, his hands going to the hem of your sweater. “Watching me play her boyfriend. Watching me pretend. It made you wet, didn’t it? Knowing it was all for you. Knowing every time I touched her, I was thinking about my hands on you.”

He yanked the sweater up and over your head, tossing it aside. His eyes dropped to your chest, covered by a simple bra. There was no reverence in his gaze. It was pure, avaricious hunger. “Fuck. Look at you.” He palmed you through the fabric, his thumb rubbing rough circles over your nipple until it peaked painfully. “You’re so fucking tense. All that morality, all that judgment, locked up tight in this perfect little body. I’m gonna ruin it.”

He unsnapped your bra with a quick, practiced twist of his fingers. The air hit your skin, and then his mouth did. He didn’t kiss your breast. He devoured it. His mouth was hot and wet, his tongue laving, then his teeth grazing, then biting down just enough to make you cry out. You arched off the couch, a jolt of pure, electric sensation shooting straight to your core. He moved to the other breast, giving it the same brutal attention, his hand squeezing and kneading the flesh he wasn’t mouthing.

“Aerion—” you gasped.

He lifted his head, his lips swollen, his chin wet. “What? Gonna tell me to stop? Gonna tell me this is wrong?” He rocked his hips down, and you felt the hard, insistent length of him pressed against your thigh through both your jeans. A low groan rattled out of his chest. “You feel that? That’s for you. That’s been for you since the first day you argued with me about Kant in seminar. While I was fucking her, this is what I was thinking about. Pinning you down. Making you admit it. Making you come on my cock while your best friend’s scent is still on my sheets.”

His words were filthy, deliberate, designed to degrade and arouse in equal measure. And they worked. A hot, shameful pulse of desire throbbed between your legs. You were wet. Soaked. He could probably feel it through the denim.

He saw it in your face. His grin was feral. “Yeah. That’s it. No more hiding.” He shifted back, his hands going to the button of your jeans. He popped it open, dragged the zipper down, the sound obscenely loud in the quiet room. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of your jeans and your panties and pulled them down your legs in one rough motion. The cold air hit your bare skin, and you were exposed, sprawled on the couch under his ravenous gaze.

“God,” he breathed, not a prayer but a curse. He ran a hand up your inner thigh, his fingers rough with calluses from the diner work. He didn’t tease. He went straight to your cunt, his fingers sliding through your slickness with a filthy, wet sound. “Fuck. You’re dripping. You’re fucking dripping for me. For this. After all that shit you talked.” He pushed two fingers inside you without warning, deep and curling, and you cried out, your back bowing off the couch. “You’re so tight. Clenching around me like a little bitch who’s been waiting for it.”

He fucked you with his fingers, a ruthless, punishing rhythm, his thumb circling your clit with harsh, unrelenting pressure. Pleasure, sharp and coiling, built in your belly. It was too much. It was crude and nasty and it stripped you of every pretense. You were panting, your hips moving against his hand, chasing the feeling.

“That’s it,” he snarled, watching you fall apart. “Let go. Be the greedy, jealous, hypocritical cunt I know you are. Come on my fingers. Show me how much you wanted this.”

His words, the crude, relentless stimulation, the sheer wrongness of it...it tipped you over. The orgasm crashed through you, violent and shuddering, a silent scream tearing from your throat as you clenched around his fingers. He worked you through it, his fingers pumping, until you were oversensitive and twitching, tears of overwhelm and shame pricking your eyes.

He pulled his fingers out, glistening, and brought them to his mouth. He sucked them clean, his eyes locked on yours, and the sight was so profoundly debauched it made your spent body clench again. “You taste so fucking good,” he said, his voice guttural.

He stood up from the couch, unbuckling his belt, the metal clinking. He shoved his jeans and boxers down just enough to free his cock. It was hard, thick, flushed an angry red, the tip wet. He was big, and he looked it, stroking himself slowly as he looked down at you, a nasty, possessive pride on his face.

“You see this?” he said. “This is what you said no to. This is what you made me work for. Now you’re gonna take it. All of it.”

He didn’t give you time to prepare. He knelt on the couch again, pushed your thighs apart wider, and notched the head of his cock at your entrance. He was still slick from your arousal. He pushed in.

The stretch was intense, burning. You gasped, your nails digging into the couch cushions. He didn’t stop. He pushed deeper, inch by relentless inch, his jaw clenched, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. When he was fully seated, buried inside you to the hilt, he paused, his body trembling with the effort of holding still. He was so deep it felt like he was in your throat.

“Fuck,” he moaned, the arrogance momentarily shattered by raw sensation. “Oh, fuck. You’re so deep. I’m so deep in you.” He dropped his forehead against yours, his breath hot and ragged. “You feel that? That’s me. That’s where I belong. In your tight, traitorous little cunt.”

Then he started to move.

There was no gentle rhythm. It was fucking, pure and simple. A hard, driving, nasty piston of his hips, slamming into you with a force that shook the old couch, the springs screeching in protest. Each thrust punched a choked sound from your lungs. Uh. Uh. Uh. The slap of skin on skin was loud, lewd, echoing in the shabby apartment. He fucked you like he hated you, like he wanted to break you apart and remake you in his image.

“You like that?” he grunted, his hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise. “You like getting fucked by your best friend’s boyfriend? You like being the other woman? The secret? The dirty little secret?”

You couldn’t answer. Pleasure was building again, a tighter, darker coil this time, fed by the sheer physical brutality of it, by the venom in his voice, by the devastating truth of his words.

“Look at me,” he commanded, his pace never faltering. “Look at me when I fuck you.”

You forced your eyes open. His face was a mask of fierce, unhinged concentration. Sweat dripped from his brow onto your chest. His blue eyes were black with pupil, fixed on yours, drinking in every flicker of shame and pleasure.

“I knew it,” he panted. “I knew you were this. Under all the books, all the arguments. A nasty, beautiful bitch who gets off on betrayal.” He shifted his angle, driving deeper, and you saw stars. “Come for me. Come on my cock while I’m inside you. I want to feel you come. I want to feel you give up.”

His hand slid between your bodies, his fingers finding your clit again, rubbing fast, rough circles. The dual assault was too much. The pressure broke. Your second orgasm tore through you, a silent, seizing convulsion that clamped down on his cock like a vise. A raw, guttural cry was ripped from your throat: “Ah! Fuck!” as you shattered, your vision whiting out.

The sensation of you pulsing around him broke his control. With a ragged, broken shout, “Yes! Take it, baby!” he slammed into you one last, brutal time and came. His shout wasn’t a release...it was a detonation. A raw, guttural “Fuck!” that tore from his throat as he buried himself to the hilt inside you, his body locking into a rigid, shuddering arc.

You could feel it, the hot, pulsing rush of his come flooding you in thick, relentless spurts. It was an obscene, intimate violation, a physical claim that went deeper than skin. He kept thrusting through it, shallow, desperate jerks of his hips, milking his own orgasm as he watched your face with a kind of glazed, triumphant horror.

The air reeked of sex, sweat, and cheap tobacco. The only sounds were the ragged symphony of your shared breathing and the wet, sticky sound of him still moving inside you, slowly now, as the last tremors subsided. He didn’t pull out. He stayed there, slumped over you, his weight crushing, his forehead damp against your collarbone. His breath was hot and uneven on your skin.

For a long moment, there was just the aftermath. The brutal clarity of what you’d done.

Then he laughed. It was a low, shaky, nasty sound, devoid of humor. “God,” he breathed into your skin. “Look at us.”

He pushed himself up on his elbows, his cock still lodged inside you, softening but present. He looked down at the mess between your bodies. Your thighs were slick, a mixture of your arousal and his spend already starting to cool. His gaze was fascinated.

“Ruined,” he murmured, dragging a finger through the mess on your lower belly. He brought it to his lips, tasting it, his eyes never leaving yours. “You’re ruined. And you love it.”

You tried to summon the anger, the shame. It was there, a cold knot in your stomach. But it was smothered under a heavier, more terrifying weight...a satiation so profound it felt like dying. You didn’t push him off. You laid there, letting him look, letting him own the devastation.

He finally pulled out. The sensation was a slow, wet drag, followed by a hot trickle down your thigh. The physical evidence of the betrayal. He stood up, his movements loose limbed with satisfaction. He looked down at his own cock, glistening, spent, and gave it a lazy, proprietary stroke before tucking it back into his jeans. He didn’t zip them up. He left them hanging open, the denim dark with cum.

“Get up,” he said, his voice back to that rough, commanding scrape.

You didn’t move. You felt hollowed out, boneless.

“I said get up.” He reached down, his fingers closing around your wrist. His grip was iron. He hauled you off the couch. Your legs buckled, and you stumbled against him. He caught you, his arm banding around your waist, holding you upright against his solid, heated body. “You don’t get to check out now. We’re not done.”

He half walked, half dragged you the short distance down the hallway, past Lana’s closed door with its stupid, cheerful “Live, Laugh, Love” decal, and into the cramped, cold bathroom. He flicked the switch. The harsh fluorescent light buzzed to life, exposing everything...the chipped tile, the mold in the grout, the damp towels on the floor. And the two of you in the mirror above the sink.

You looked wrecked. Your hair was a wild tangle. Your lips were swollen and bitten. Your eyes were wide, dark, shell shocked. There were red marks blooming on your hips, your breasts. You were naked, shivering in the chill. He stood behind you, still mostly dressed, his chin resting on your shoulder, his blue eyes meeting yours in the glass. He looked like a predator who’d cornered its prize. Arrogant. Sated. Malicious.

“Look,” he whispered, his breath hot against your ear. “Look at what we did. Look at what you are now.”

You tried to look away. His hand came up, fingers tangling in your hair, holding your head still. “Look.”

You stared at your reflection. At the stranger who had let this happen. Who had come apart under him.

“You’re mine,” he said, the words a soft, venomous promise. “You said no, but your body said yes. Your cunt said yes. Every time you argued with me, every time you pretended to be disgusted, you were just begging for this.” His other hand slid around your front, palm flattening low on your belly. “You think this is just sex? This is a fucking philosophy. I proved my thesis. You are not better than me. You are not cleaner. You are right here in the mud with me. And you like the mud.”

He turned on the faucet with his elbow. The water ran cold, then grudgingly warm. He wet a hand towel, wrung it out. Then, with a shocking, intimate gentleness, he began to clean you. He started between your legs, wiping away the sticky evidence of him with slow, deliberate strokes. The rough fabric against your oversensitive flesh made you flinch.

“Sensitive?” he mocked softly, continuing his task. “Good. You should feel it. You should remember every fucking second of this every time you sit down.” He moved the cloth up your thighs, over your belly, wiping his spend from your skin. It was a perverse act of caretaking, a way of extending the possession. He was marking you, then cleaning the mark, only to leave the memory of the stain.

He rinsed the cloth, the water turning cloudy. He wiped your chest, your neck. He was thorough. Degrading. When he was done, he dropped the wet towel on the floor. He kept his hand on your belly, his other still fisted in your hair.

“Now,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, filthy whisper. “You’re going to get on your knees.”

Your eyes flew to his in the mirror. You saw the challenge there. The test. This wasn’t about pleasure. This was about submission. About finishing the corruption.

“No,” you whispered, the first word of protest since it began.

His grip in your hair tightened, not enough to truly hurt, but enough to promise he could. “Yes.” He leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “You don’t get to be the victim now, baby. You participated. You came. Twice. You’re a willing accomplice. So get on your fucking knees and taste what you did. Taste your betrayal. Or I walk out that door, and you can explain to Lana why you’re shaking and why my smell is all over you.”

It was the cruelest possible choice. A final, ugly layer to the act. He was forcing you to make it active. To choose the degradation.

A sob caught in your throat. You were breaking, and he was watching it happen in the mirror, his eyes alight with a feverish, intellectual hunger. This was the moment he’d wanted all along. Not just the sex. The shattering.

Your knees gave out. You didn’t have to be forced. You sank down onto the cold, hard tile of the bathroom floor. The position was profoundly exposing, kneeling naked at his feet while he stood over you, his jeans still open.

He looked down at you, a god of grime and spite. He freed his cock again. It was half hard, wet, glistening with your combined fluids. He stroked it slowly, watching your face. “Open your mouth.”

You did. You hated yourself. You hated him. And a deep, sick, undeniable part of you was more aroused in this moment than you had ever been in your life.

He guided himself to your lips. The smell was musky, intimate, brutally sexual. “Lick it clean,” he commanded. “Clean your mess off me.”

You closed your eyes. You couldn’t look at him. You extended your tongue, tentatively touching the slick, salty head. The taste was bitter, primal, unmistakably him. A low groan rumbled in his chest.

“That’s it,” he coaxed, his voice thick. “Taste it. Taste where you’ve been. Taste what you let me do.”

You took him deeper into your mouth, your tongue swirling, cleaning him with a slow, mortifying thoroughness. You could taste yourself on him, the tang of your own arousal mixed with the bitter salt of his release. It was the most debasing thing you had ever done. It was also, perversely, an intimacy more profound than the sex. This was acceptance. This was consumption of the sin.

He let you work, his hand coming to rest on the back of your head, not pushing, just holding. His breathing grew ragged. “Fuck. Your mouth. So fucking good. You’re a natural at this. A natural little cocksucker. All that smart talk…and you were born to kneel.”

His words should have killed the arousal. They fed it. A hot, shameful pulse throbbed between your own legs, and you were horrified to feel fresh wetness there. You were getting off on this. On the humiliation. On being reduced to this by him.

He felt the subtle shift in your posture, the way your shoulders slumped in surrender. He saw everything.

“You’re getting wet again,” he stated, awed and vicious. “Right now. On your knees. You’re dripping for me again.” He pulled himself from your mouth with a wet pop. “Stand up.”

You swayed as you got to your feet, your legs trembling. He turned you roughly to face the sink, bending you over it. The porcelain was icy against your feverish stomach. He kicked your feet apart. In the mirror, you saw him drop to his knees behind you.

You felt his breath, hot, against the back of your thigh. Then his mouth.

He didn’t kiss you. He ate you. Like a man starving. His tongue was a flat, ruthless stroke from your entrance all the way up to your clit, lapping up the new arousal he’d drawn out. You cried out, your fingers scrambling against the slick sink. He hooked his arms under your thighs, pulling you back against his face, holding you open. He fucked you with his tongue, deep, then focused on your clit, sucking it into his mouth, nibbling, lashing it with a relentless, expert precision.

“Aerion—!” His name was a shattered plea.

He didn’t let up. He was punishing you with pleasure. Rewarding you for your depravity. His tongue worked you over, crude and perfect, until you were sobbing, pushing back against his face, your hips moving of their own volition. The orgasm he wrung from you this time was silent, a total systemic collapse that left you shuddering and weak, held upright only by his grip under your thighs.

As the last tremors faded, he stood. You heard the tear of foil, a condom this time, pulled from his wallet. He sheathed himself. He was hard again, fully, impressively. He didn’t ask. He just positioned himself and pushed back inside you from behind.

You were oversensitive and utterly spent. The stretch was a sweet, burning ache. He fucked you like this, bent over the sink, with a slower, deeper, more possessive rhythm. Each thrust was a statement. Mine. Mine. Mine. He watched in the mirror, his eyes glued to where your bodies joined, to the helpless expression on your face.

“This is it,” he panted, his hands gripping your hips, his thrusts gaining speed. “This is the truth. No more books. No more arguments. Just this. You. Me. This filthy, nasty, perfect thing.” He leaned over you, his chest pressed to your back, his mouth at your ear. “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want me to come again.”

You were beyond words. Beyond thought. You nodded, a frantic, desperate movement.

“Say it.”

“I want it,” you gasped, the admission tearing from a place of pure, ruined id. “I want you to come. Please.”

It was the ‘please’ that did it. That final surrender. With a choked off roar, he slammed into you, his body locking as he emptied himself into the condom deep inside you. His hips jerked through the pulses, his forehead pressed between your shoulder blades, his whole body trembling with the force of it.

He stayed there for a long time, slumped over you, both of you breathing in ragged unison, reflected in the cruel fluorescent light of the bathroom mirror: a portrait of mutual destruction.

Slowly, he pulled out. He disposed of the condom. He zipped his jeans. He ran a hand through his sweaty brown hair. He looked at you, still bent over the sink, utterly broken open.

He didn’t help you up. He didn’t offer comfort. He walked to the door and paused, looking back. His expression was unreadable. The arrogance was there, but it was tempered by something darker, more complicated. A recognition.

“She’ll be back in an hour,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Clean up. The couch. The bathroom. Yourself.” He nodded toward the towel on the floor. “Get rid of that.”

He was leaving you with the mess. Literal and metaphorical. It was his final lesson.

“This changes nothing with her,” he added, his blue eyes cold and clear. “I’m still her boyfriend. I’ll still be here tomorrow. On your couch. Drinking from your mug.” A nasty, satisfied smirk touched his lips. “And you’ll still be watching. Knowing.”

He turned and walked out of the bathroom. You heard his footsteps cross the living room. You heard the front door open, then click shut. Silence.

You slid down the cabinet onto the cold tile floor, pulling your knees to your chest. The apartment was freezing. The heater rattled. In the other room, on the couch, the evidence of what you’d done was slowly cooling.

You had never felt more sober, or more completely ruined. He was right. It changed nothing. And it changed everything. He had proven his point, down to the last, nasty detail. And you, the better student, had finally understood the lesson.