"He's just...Carter."

Maybe everything would have been better if she’d disappeared. If she’d followed her instinct and packed the car up to move overnight. No goodbye, no explanation. He wouldn’t have to confront the idea of ghosts.

Except he was too good. And she liked him just a little too much. And she’d gotten just a taste of something normal for the first time in ages, and she’d hated the thought of letting it go. She’d started feeling invisible up until he’d touched her.

“I dunno. You’re a fixer, John. I’m worried you’re here just because you can’t leave something broken.” Teeth worry at her lower lip, and her gaze drifts from him to the floor, staring hard as she tries to force back more tears. It was too early to get into this kind of thing. They’d just been having fun.

It wasn’t like they’d talked about it being serious, she was just desperately prone to attaching herself to things too quickly. Ideas, fantasies, people…

“You don’t have to stay. Promise me you don’t feel like you have to stay.” She wanted to crumple. And she nearly does, folding just a little as she pulls herself closer. Her head finds his lap as she finally concedes to her panic.

“You don’t understand — I want to leave. I can’t because he might need help, but I’d rather we just left and went somewhere across the country. Somewhere as far away as possible. Anywhere else.” She felt panicked just at the thought of staying in the city. But that wasn’t a thing you could say to someone either; ‘I know we haven’t agreed we’re serious yet, want to flee the state with me for a week?’

You’re a fixer, John…

Liv’s words bled between them, stark, but damning there within the quiet of her apartment. Lips rolling inward, he gave a guilted jerk and bobbed his head from side-to-side, contemplating. “I want to help,” he cautiously admitted, “but that’s not what’s keeping me here, Liv. I’ve…been unkind to people before, and I’ve had no problem leaving behind what isn’t my business. But you’ve become my business, because I care what happens to you — I care about you.”

Liv was unrelenting. Her pleading only bolstered him all the more. “I want to stay,” he asserted. “What do I have to do to prove that, huh?”

Gingerly, he curled his hand over her wrist, gently squeezing, and then she confessed to wanting out — of wanting to leave.

It was certainly a pretty picture. More and more, Carter was feeling as if he didn’t belong, even amongst his own friends, so the fantasy of running, of hiding away from it all, certainly had its appeal.

“I thought you said you can’t hide,” he softly pointed out. “Even if we leave — which is very tempting — what good would that do? Could you really live happily, knowing you abandoned your friend?” With a feeble smile, Carter added, “You have a good heart. I don’t think you’d be able to stand it. Or at least…not for long.” He squeezed her wrist. “Whatever you need, just…direct me, and I’ll do it.”

Already she has him desperate for more. Jing mentally pats herself on the back with the newly earned moniker of ‘tease’ at the forefront of her mind.

He’s said her name twice now. Once with warning and a second time with a pleading that could only be fueled by sensual agony as he continues to leak against her teasing tongue.

“I don’t think you understand how mutual stimulation works…”

“I understand perfectly, John,” she giggles. “Which is why I’m teaching you a lesson. A lesson in patience.”

With another lewd lick along the curve of his cock, she adds, “It’s called delayed gratification.”

Does she want to make him beg harder? Oh, yes. She believes she does.

Turning it up a notch, Jing Mei takes him into her mouth, testing the length of him along her palette. He slides through until his tip touches the back of her throat and she instinctively swallows, the act massaging him.

So far so good.

Mercilessly she draws him from between her lips, humming against his sodden erection with a devious little grin.

“You taste so good…”

Should she try further bedroom talk? What is it couples say in this scenario? Jing Mei has seen movies but those lines always sound so dreadfully cheesy. They might very well torpedo the mood faster than she could finish uttering them. Ultimately, she decides she should let any and all verbal affirmation come naturally.

Returning her focus to the task at hand, she wraps her fingers around him, a slow and steady pump once, twice, three times. Then she retracts, her tongue swirling around the underside and stopping at his tip with another subtle suck.

𝐍𝐨𝐚𝐡 𝐖𝐲𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 | 1.03 "𝐆𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞" 𝐄𝐑 (𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟒)

No, I told you, I am on painkillers for my back, but I'm functioning.

🎥 @foxtel IG

Oh God, oh God, why did he do that?

Carter trembled, but now it was no longer from the adrenaline rush of his panic attack. He'd told women he loved them in the past, absolutely, but there had always been a goal in mind...an almost manipulative hope of gaining whatever it was he wanted. And yet in this moment, he didn't want anything -- nothing but her, Lucy, and that realization alone was terrifying.

Slowly, she withdrew from his embrace, and the panic seized him anew. Lucy had told him she loved him when he'd first visited her in the hospital -- he knew she loved him -- and yet, a nagging, malicious part of his heart was blackening the moment, and insisting that she might not love him quite enough. That maybe she'd changed her mind...

Because why wouldn't she? Nobody ever stayed. They always left.

"Lucy," he choked out, desperate to alleviate the rejection he'd inevitably brought upon himself. "I-I need you to know-"

"I love you, too.”

Whatever protective smokescreen he'd been attempting to erect instantly evaporated, and the tears in his eyes stung anew. "You do?" he asked, his voice hushed, weak, pitiful. "You love me?"

Still? After everything? were the unspoken words, and just as wordless, Lucy lifted her hands and cradled his face between her open palms, almost as if she were holding his mangled heart within her grasp.

Carter was accustomed to fast and hard, indifference, with nary a thought for his well-being, which was why he so often met true affection with thorns of distrust. Yet the moment Lucy pulled him down for a proper kiss, the ice inside of him thawed, melted, threatened to drown him as he surged forward with equal enthusiasm.

When something wonderful or saddening happens, he’s the first person she wants to tell. When she’s uncertain or scared and in need of comfort, he’s the first person who comes to mind. He’s irritating, stubborn, wildly immature, selfish and inconsiderate. But God, despite his worst qualities, she can’t live without him — faults and all.

“Of course I do, you big dummy,” she smiles softly, constantly reminded of how close they came to infinitely parting ways just by merely looking in his dark, sad eyes — the very same eyes in which she finds reasons to carry on in her most challenging of pursuits.

“We’re okay?”

Lucy lightly nods, making no move to put distance between them as she gingerly brushes her thumb over his lower lip.

“We’re okay.”

We’re okay.

We’re alive.

I love you.

He smiles into their kiss, prompting her to giggle despite her determination to prove herself capable of more advanced technique. Even if they’re playing competitively, she feels completely and utterly safe with him, knowing her pleasure is just as important to him as his own, if not more. Never would she have thought someone could get off by pleasing another. It’s engenius really. And as she grinds down on his clothed erection, the fabric scraping against where she’s softest — prompting him to whine — she knows it’s absolutely true.

“Okay, fine. If you think you know so much, I want you to go for it,” he agrees, accepting her challenge with a playfully arrogant confidence that she’ll fall short of expectations. This fuels her need to show him up, make him eat his own words like they’re his last meal.

He grips at her waist and grinds her down harder atop him, thinking he can distract her, and admittedly for a moment it does. Then he makes the grave mistake of verbally teasing her.

“It still doesn’t look like you know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, I’ll show you,” she promises, tone rather devious as she nips his bottom lip.

How, though? If she recalls correctly, the position performed traditionally might become uncomfortable at some point for whomever is hovering over the other, not to mention both parties would no doubt suffer from a sore neck. Not worth the hassle. But if they were to shift onto their sides, then perhaps that might make for a more satisfying arrangement.

With a fervent spark in her eyes, Jing Mei tugs Carter forward by the hem of his waistband, urging him onto his side. Then, after affectionately nuzzling his nose with hers, she turns and slides onto her flank, facing the opposite direction but without lifting and curling her leg. For running his mouth, he’s gonna be made to wait, and then some.

A brief pause as she reminds herself she’s already seen his endowment, and felt it penetrate her folds when they so pathetically rutted in the pool. This is nothing she can’t handle. What’s more, she wants it.

Pressing loving, tender kisses to the curve of his hip bone, Jing Mei trails her lips down his Adonis belt as she pulls his pants and boxers down painfully slow, intending to torture him as much as possible. She’ll consider it a personal win if she can get him to helplessly moan her name more than once. All things considered, she has been curious to know what he tastes like.

You’ve got this. Show him you’re serious.

Gently, slowly, she skims her lips along the tip of him, his member hot and already leaking precum from their shameless grinding. The graze becomes a soft kiss with a little suck just ardent enough to bring him pleasure but maddeningly light, bent on making him want more. She wants to hear him beg to some capacity. Her slender fingers dance over the length of him feigning intent to curl around for a much needed pump, only to retract as her tongue traces the underside of his shaft. He tastes robust, but with a piquant quality that reminds of her of paprika. Satisfied with this, she takes the tip of him into her mouth with a torturously faint suck.

𝐍𝐨𝐚𝐡 𝐖𝐲𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫 | 1.03 "𝐆𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞" 𝐄𝐑 (𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟒)

ofc, I had to include a still image of this scene 🥰