You hadn't even heard Caleb come in. But suddenly the entire room filled with his presence. Especially with the words he'd just delivered to his son, speaking in a tone so low that it was more threatening than if he had yelled.

"Now apologize to her immediately and never, ever speak to her like that again. You hear me?"

You want to tell him to stop. That you know your son was going through a rough patch and all teenagers behaved this way but you were too busy trying to hold the tears in to interrupt. Next to you, your son looks visibly pale. Sure, he admired and respected his Dad and almost never suffered any dire consequences for any mistakes he made but to see his father so visibly vibrating with the effort it took to suppress his anger, he was terrified.

When he fails to respond, Caleb's voice claps into the room like a lightning strike "Speak up, did you hear me?"

"Yes, sir" Your son is also on the verge of tears as he turns to you "I'm sorry, Mom"

You're about to respond but Caleb cuts in "Good. You're grounded for two weeks and will hand in your phone every night before bed. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir"

"Go to your room and tidy up. I'll be with you in a minute, we're going to address this little behavior properly" Your son has never faced his father's wrath this way and is desperate to make amends as he grabs your arm so you could shield him away like you always did.

Caleb's eyes drop to his trembling arms and he pulls you back against him, making him let go of you "No. You don't get to speak to her like that and use her as your defense too. She'll forgive you when she wants to"

You almost want to comfort your son when you see the kicked puppy look in his eyes as he sniffles, moving past you both to go upstairs and await further scolding.

For a long moment after he leaves, neither you nor Caleb move. He's still got his arm wrapped around your shoulder and after a tense moment, you lean into him "When did you get home?"

"Just in time to hear enough. We didn't raise him to be ungrateful like that. I almost threw him out of the house"

"Caleb-"

"No, Pips. He needs to learn that just because his Mother pampers him, he can't get away with talking to you like that" Turning you in his arms, Caleb bends to your eyelevel "And you need to stop letting him"

"He's just a little boy. Our little boy. You know he's had trouble adjusting since we moved last year. He's right, maybe we should cut him some slack"

"We can do that without excusing the disrespect" Kissing your shoulder, Caleb straightens "Let me talk to him, alright?"

He's about to walk away when you grab his arm "No matter what conclusion you come to, my son is not sleeping outside as punishment"

Smiling, Caleb presses a quick kiss into your hair "I'll try" When you give him a stern look, he laughs "I promise I'll try to be more...lenient"

You hear his footfalls on the staircase, a quick knock followed by the quiet thump of the door closing. As you start prepping for dinner, you relax more. Caleb pampered his son just as much, if not more. You trusted him enough to know he'd handle the situation with care.

You're putting the lid on the pot and clearing out the space when you feel arms around your waist, hugging you tightly from behind as your son sniffles against your back "I'm really sorry, Mom. I'll do better from here on out"

Smiling, you turn to hug him back "I'm really glad to hear that and-" You pull back till he's looking at you, nose red and eyes slightly puffy that indicated that he really did feel awful "-I forgive you, okay? Don't beat yourself up over it anymore" You squeeze him tightly once again and ruffle his hair before kissing his head "Now go freshen up before dinner"

He's exiting the kitchen, nodding at Caleb who was leaning against the doorway watching the entire exchange. Once he's gone, Caleb takes his place and wraps his arms around you, sighing deeply into your hair and making you laugh.

"How'd it go? I'm guessing good?"

"Hardest thing I've had to do in my life" Caleb admits as you run your fingers through his hair, patting his back while he tightened his arms around you "Thank God we didn't raise a troublemaker though I did promise we'll revisit the discussion for summer camp"

"You handled it well" You praise as Caleb pulls back to look at you, your fingers mussing up his hair into that cute, dorky look you'd first fallen in love with "Really well" At your conspicuous grin, your husband's eyebrows nearly touch his hairline when your fingers start twisting in his shirt "No one gets away with disrespecting your wife, huh?"

Caleb's fingers reach under your shirt, drawing patterns on your skin as he pulls you closer "You're my wife before you're his mother. He needs to learn that" Kissing your jaw, he nips at the skin as he whispers "So yes, nobody talks to my wife like that without facing consequences"

"Nobody?" You grin up at him.

Lowering his mouth against yours, Caleb's also grinning "Some of us have special privileges-" You jump when you hear your son's bedroom door shut again, trying to pull out of your husband's grip but he's insistent "Relax, babe. He knows how he was made and that the stock story isn't true"

Swatting his arm, you chastise "Caleb!" You're trying to escape his hold but it's hard to remember why you want to when he's got his hands on you like this and is kissing that secret spot under your ear like that "He could come downstairs at any time and- and...and dinner- oh"

You and Rafayel shared most, and they weren’t quite vanilla, either. Ropes, wax, blindfolds—these were what you would call a usual round of daily sex with Rafayel. You tried plenty of spaces too, because he was adamant to take you on every piece of furniture he owned.

But he never stopped at those, either. It was his mansion, the beach, his cars. Even when attending events with him, he would find a way to cheekily sweep you away in a restroom or a secluded corner and turn your legs to jelly, make your makeup run down your face, and your mouth hang open in soft moans you tried to keep at bay in fear of being overheard. He was very amused watching you try.

So why would you think of more? You were beyond satisfied with how things were going for you two, so your curiosity was satiated enough.

Or so you thought. Because curiosity is a dangerous feeling to have, and your curiosity about your boyfriend in other aspects of his life was still burning bright. Now it just shifted perspective.

It started, as most dangerous things do, with a question you shouldn’t have asked.

You were currently on Rafayel’s couch, legs draped across his lap while he scrolled through something on his phone with one hand and traced absent circles on your ankle with the other. The evening was warm and salt-laced, the way it always was when the tall windows were cracked open to let the breeze curl through the curtains.

You stopped scrolling some minutes ago.

You’d found the forum by accident, really. A thread about marine biology that had spiraled into Lemurian mythology, then into a university lecture someone had transcribed and posted, something about the reproductive biology of deep-sea humanoid species.

The language was academic and dry, full of clinical terms and speculative footnotes, but the content was… well, quite specific. References to diphallia structures in oceanic bipedal species. Egg-laying triggered by environmental and chemical stimulus. Heat cycles distinct from illness or weakness, tied instead to arousal and a biological imperative to reproduce.

Your curiosity was instantly piqued, eyes glued to every word like they held all the answers in the world. It was quite strange how rapidly and tightly the article held your attention, but you supposed it was something every human that came across it would be. Or at least some.

The subject wasn’t really something you could casually ask him about. Rafayel tended to be hard to crack open about certain subjects. It was true he would never keep something important hidden from you, but there were still quite a few things you didn’t get the chance to know about him. Especially things that had to do with his Lemurian nature. More often than not, he would just redirect the subject lightly to something else, or he would occasionally indulge you and tease you with crumbs of information you greedily stored away in the special part of your brain where every little thing you learned about Rafayel went.

You glance up at your boyfriend.

His face was illuminated by the warm light coming from the lamp beside his head, and you couldn’t help but stare a little bit, your mind already trying to piece together information you don’t have. You must look so stupid right now, with your eyes probably a bit wider than before, looking like a deer caught in the headlights at the new information registering in your brain.

He has two. It should not have come as such a big of a surprise, so why were you ogling at your boyfriend from across the couch as if this was brand new information? It shouldn’t have been, and you mentally scolded yourself from being so oblivious to it.

He is not human, so of course his biology would differ from one of humans. That alone sent a subtle shiver down your spine, mind already conjuring up an image you were unfamiliar with.

You turned your head back to your phone, scrolling through the article some more, trying your best not to tense your leg muscles where Rafayel’s fingers were knitting softly at your calf.

The information rushed in with renowned speed, your mind filing it away for later. You didn’t even notice you were biting your lip until Rafayel’s chuckle echoed softly from your right, and you inevitably turned your head towards the sound.

“What’s got you so entranced over there, cutie?” he cooed, and you knew he was amused and intrigued at what went on your screen. “It must be something good ‘cause you’re giving no mercy to your lip. You always do that when something’s got your full attention.” A slow, almost knowing smirk graced his pink lips. “You might draw blood from it if you don’t stop soon.”

You felt your throat work softly as you swallowed, right before giving him an easy smile, closing your phone and putting it face down on the couch.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just came across an interesting book and got a little too curious.”

If you wanted to know more, you had to play your cards right. So, you pulled your legs from his lap before climbing over the soft cushion, hand traveling up his torso before you settled your body on top of his, nuzzling his neck.

“Mmm, you smell good,” you hummed against his skin, pressing a slow kiss to the spot just beneath his jaw, feeling the vibration of his laugh travel through his chest into yours.

“Flattery’s not gonna distract me from the fact that you just hid your phone like you got caught watching something you shouldn’t,” he drawled, fingers already threading into your hair with a laziness that contradicted the sharpness in his voice, tipping your face up to look at him. “C’mon. Spill.”

“I told you, it was a book,” you murmured, holding his gaze and keeping your expression even despite the warmth creeping up the back of your neck, tracing a finger down the collar of his shirt. “Since when are you so interested in my reading habits?”

“Since you started biting through your own lip over them,” he countered without missing a beat, thumb brushing across your bottom lip as if to prove his point, eyes half-lidded and glittering with amusement. “What kind of book makes my girl look like she just discovered fire for the first time?”

“An academic one, actually,” you offered with a shrug, letting your fingers drift lower, walking them down the center of his chest in a slow trail, watching the way his eyes track the movement before flicking back to your face. “About marine biology… Lemurian mythology... Reproductive habits of deep-sea humanoid species and all that stuff.”

The circles on your back stilled.

It was so brief. A fraction of a second where his fingers froze against your spine before they resumed their lazy pattern, and if you weren’t pressed chest-to-chest with him you might have missed it. But you were, so you didn’t.

“Huh,” he breathed, the syllable light and careless but the corner of his mouth twitched in a way that told you he knew you were onto something. Still, would Rafayel still be Rafayel if he didn’t pivot your little questioning? “Sounds boring.”

“It wasn’t,” you countered, resting your chin on his chest and letting your eyes go wide and innocent, the way you know gets under his skin, tilting your head just enough to sell it. “It was actually really... thorough and specific. It even offered some additional readings.”

“Specific how?” his voice dipped into something lower as his hand slid from your hair to the nape of your neck, fingers curling there with a possessiveness that made your throat work around a swallow. It always did when his touches became more intentional.

“Well,” you started, tracing a slow path over his collarbone, keeping your tone light enough to pass for casual but pointed enough that he’ll feel the edge of it. “For example, did you know that certain deep-sea bipedal species have dual reproductive anatomy? Two of everything, apparently.”

You watched his face carefully, looking for some kind of answer there, gauging if he would actually offer you something or pivot again. To your dismay, only his pupils contracted for a split second before they dilated again, just as the flush started at the tips of his ears, faint and pink, before he smothered it under a grin so smug it bordered on insufferable.

“You’re asking me if I knew that,” he repeated, voice dripping with honeyed theatricality that would have been convincing if his thumb wasn’t pressing a little too firmly into the pulse point at your neck, feeling your fast heartbeat. “About deep-sea species. Academically and definitely not because you wanna know all my secrets, yeah?”

“Academically, I promise.” you confirmed, nodding once with a solemnity you absolutely did not feel, and let your fingers drift to the side of his neck, tracing the tendon there with featherlight motions.

“Cutie,” the word rolled off his tongue like warm honey, slow and sweet and entirely a weapon as he tilted his head back against the cushion, watching you from beneath those thick lashes with an expression that was equal parts fondness and warning. “If you wanna know something about me, you could just ask.”

Your heart kicked behind your ribs, hard and fast and almost suffocating. Still, you had to push through.

“Okay, yeah.” you whisper, pressing up on your elbows so your face hovered above his, noses nearly touching. His breath caught against your lips when you closed the distance to something almost dangerous, your voice a slow, innocent purr. “So how does it work? For you, I mean.”

The silence that followed was warm and thick and charged, felt it hum between your bodies like an ocean’s current.

His hand moved from your neck to your jaw, cradling it and tilting your face so the lamplight caught in your eyes. He studied you with something flickering behind his gaze that you couldn’t quite name, because Rafayel had this specific look in his eyes whenever he was debating something. Then his mouth curled very, very slowly into the kind of smile that had ruined you more times than you cared to count.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Miss Bodyguard,” he purred, dragging the pad of his thumb across your cheekbone, and you swore you could feel the warmth radiating off his ears from here, betraying every ounce of composure that smile was working so hard to sell.

“Yeah,” you breathed firmly, not backing down, holding his gaze even as your stomach flipped. “I really would.”

You saw in real time, the smugness flickering for a moment into something rawer, something surprised and pleased and a little undone, before he caught it and tucked it back behind that insufferable grin.

“Wow,” he exhaled on a laugh, his fingers trailing from your jaw to your throat, resting there like a dare for you to continue your little innocent act. “My bodyguard’s doing species research on me now? Should I be worried or flattered, cutie?”

“Well, that depends,” you turned your head just enough to press your lips to the inside of his wrist, feeling his pulse jump beneath your mouth. “On how honest your answer is, baby.”

He watched you kiss his wrist with an expression that went briefly, beautifully blank, lips parting on a breath he didn’t quite release, before he let out a huff, dropping his head back against the cushion.

“This is what I get for dating a curious little Hunter,” he announced to the ceiling, but his free hand easily found your hip and pulled you tighter against him, fingers pressing into the curve of your waist. “Reading weird academic forums and then crawling into my lap to interrogate me about my anatomy.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” you pointed out, pressing another kiss to his jaw, then the corner of his mouth, punctuating each one like a period at the end of a sentence he can’t escape.

“And I’m not gonna,” he hummed against your lips, catching the last kiss and holding you there, close enough that when he spoke, his mouth brushed yours with every word. “Not tonight, at least. Not because you found some sketchy forum and got all curious and doe-eyed on my couch."

The smile on his face was soft at the corners but sharp in the middle, the kind of smile that held a secret behind its teeth.

“Buuut I’ll tell you this much for free,” he added, voice dropping to something warm and private, fingers tilting your chin up, “Whatever you read in your little article? Doesn’t even come close, baby.”

Then he kissed your forehead, gentle and lingering before he casually reached for his phone again as if he didn’t just set fire to your brain.

You settled back against his chest, heart hammering, and the subject closed. For now. But you could still feel the heat of his skin beneath your cheek, a degree warmer than usual. The way his fingers on your hip were tracing patterns that felt less like absent habit and more like a language you haven’t learned yet.

You were gonna find out what he meant by that.

True to your word, in the next couple weeks since your little chat on his couch, you made it your silent mission to gather as much information about this as you could manage. You went to libraries, bookstores, even deep-dived the internet until you ended up on the most questionable websites.

Each of them pointed you in a specific direction, like a map following a hidden treasure you were sure to find at the end of it.

The mythology was, expectedly, vague. Lemurian texts were rare and fragmented, scattered across old maritime archives and folklore collections that treated the entire civilization like a fairytale rather than the breathing reality you slept next to every night. Most of what you found was speculative at best, contradictory at worst, filtered through centuries of human interpretation that had no business trying to explain a species it barely believed existed.

But there were patterns. Threads that kept weaving through the noise, consistent enough to feel like they meant something.

Heat cycles tied not to seasons or to Ebb Day, but to stimuli. Botanical compounds derived from deep-sea flora that could coax a Lemurian body into a heightened state of arousal, something distinct from regular desire, more primal, more consuming. References to mineral-rich waters activating dormant nerve pathways along the spine and neck, places where scales would bloom first. Specific points of contact that could trigger the shift from human presentation to something closer to what they truly were under the innocent surface.

You sat cross-legged on your bedroom floor one night with your laptop balanced on your knees and three tabs open, cross-referencing a botanist’s field journal from the 1800s with a digitized scroll fragment someone had uploaded to an obscure academic database. Your eyes burned from the screen’s glow and the hour was embarrassingly late, but you couldn’t stop. Every new detail slotted into place with a click you could almost hear, building a picture you had no reference for but wanted desperately to see.

The reality of what you were doing hit you in odd moments. Standing in an apothecary shop downtown, turning a small glass bottle of sea kelp extract over in your fingers, reading the label with such focus that made the shopkeeper eye you with mild concern. Sitting in a university library with a thick, leather-bound volume of oceanic mythology open in your lap, your thumb tracing an illustration of a Lemurian figure half transformed, the artist’s rendering of scales blooming along a throat and chest in patterns that looked like living jewelry.

Your stomach had flipped at that one. Not from discomfort. From want.

You thought about Rafayel’s skin. The way it caught light wrong at times, or right, depending on how you looked at it. A shimmer along his shoulders after a swim that he toweled away too quickly. The faint iridescence at the hollow of his throat on humid nights that you’d attributed to sweat and lamplight but now recognized for what it was.

You’d been sleeping with a Lemurian for months and somehow managed to miss the details that were, quite literally, right beneath your fingertips.

The guilt of that realization was brief but sharp, replaced almost immediately by a curiosity so consuming it bordered on hunger.

Your shopping list grew quietly. Sea mineral bath salts from a brand that sourced high concentrations of magnesium and oceanic elements. A bottle of blue lotus oil that a mythology forum swore was derived from the same deep-water flowers Lemurians used in bonding rituals. Dried saffron and passionflower, referenced in three separate texts as having mild aphrodisiac properties specific to aquatic species. A packet of black volcanic salt that smelled like the ocean floor and cost more than you were comfortable admitting.

You kept everything in a bag tucked in the back of your closet like contraband.

And through all of it, Rafayel acted none the wiser.

He didn’t mention the conversation on the couch again. Didn’t tease you about your late-night reading habits, didn’t raise an eyebrow when you showed up at his studio smelling faintly of essential oils because you’d been testing combinations on your own wrist during your lunch break. He painted, he complained about Thomas, he kissed you hello at his door and pulled you onto his lap with the same ease he always did.

It was almost convincing.

But you knew him. You knew the way he watched you when he thought you were busy with something else and not paying attention to him, the way his gaze lingered for quite a while when you emerged from the bathroom at his place, the way his nose twitched, almost imperceptibly, when you leaned close and the new oils on your skin met the warm air between your bodies.

He knew, you were sure of it. Or at best, he knew intuitively you were up to something. He was one of the few Lemurians you knew, keenly aware of his own biology, and everything you were piecing together from old books and internet rabbit holes, he carried in his blood and bones. Your research was guesswork dressed in academic language. He was the primary source, and he was watching you fumble around the footnotes with such quiet, cat-like satisfaction.

It should have frustrated you. Instead, it lit something competitive in your chest, a stubbornness that tasted sweet at the back of your throat.

Fine. If he wanted to sit back and watch you work for it, you’d give him a show worth watching.

The plan came together on a Thursday evening, while you stood in your bathroom staring at the collection of oils and salts and dried botanicals lined up on your counter like ingredients for a spell. You picked up the blue lotus oil, uncapped it, and the scent hit you in a wave, something sweet and dark and aquatic that made your pulse quicken in a way that felt almost sympathetic, as if your body already understood what this was for even if your mind was still catching up.

You thought about his bathtub. That ridiculous, beautiful, oversized thing in his bathroom, the one he claimed was essential for his creative process but mostly used to soak for hours after painting all day, water lapping at the edges while he hummed old melodies you didn’t recognize but were very curious about. You’d shared it with him before, your back against his chest, his chin resting on the top of your head, his fingers making lazy trails through the warm water and occasionally up your arms just to feel you shiver.

The bathtub was the key. Warm water, enclosed space, the minerals and botanicals dissolved into something he’d absorb through every inch of his skin. And you, close enough to touch, to watch, to press your fingers into the places your research told you would matter most.

You packed the bag carefully that weekend. Rolled the glass bottles in a soft cloth so they wouldn’t clink together, tucked the salts into a pouch, layered everything under a change of clothes and a bottle of wine so it looked like you were just coming over for the night.

Which you were. You were just also coming over with an agenda.

The drive to Whitesand Bay was shorter than usual, or maybe it was your own excitement making you drive faster to finally see him and spend some time together. You were swarmed with Wanderer missions upon missions in the past week, so you barely had time to meet in person. Of course, that didn’t stop Rafayel from whining through text and facetime.

He opened the door before you even knocked.

“Took you long enough, cutieee,” he leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed and his bottom lip jutting out in a pout so practiced it should have lost its effect on you months ago, but it hadn’t, and he knew it. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting? I almost withered from being denied my cutie’s presence.”

“Rafayel, we saw each other on Tuesday,” you reminded him, but you were already smiling yourself, already stepping into his space and pressing up on your toes to kiss the pout off his mouth. He melted into it immediately, arms unfolding to wrap around your waist and pull you inside in one fluid motion, the door swinging shut behind you with a nudge of his foot.

“Tuesday was forever ago!” he whined softly against your lips, punctuating it with another kiss, then another, short and warm and a little bit greedy, his fingers already slipping beneath the hem of your jacket to find the warmth of your lower back. “I counted the hours. Almost called Thomas to complain about you, which I’m sure he wouldn’t have appreciated.”

“About me?” you laughed, pulling back just enough to look at him. The sight of him this close made your chest do something soft and involuntary. His hair was slightly damp, curling at the ends the way it did after a shower, and he was wearing a loose linen shirt that hung open at the collar, exposing the line of his throat and the beauty marks scattered there like a constellation you’d memorized with your mouth plenty of times before and were still greedy to do it a thousand times more.

“About you,” he confirmed, taking your bag from your shoulder and setting it down without looking, his eyes never leaving your face, thumb stroking along the curve of your waist. “For being cruel. For having a job that demanded all of your attention. For not living here permanently so I can look at you whenever I want.”

“You’re ridiculous,” you scoffed at his exaggerated pout, cupping his face in both hands, watching as his eyes fluttered shut when your thumbs traced along his cheekbones, tilting into your touch with a contentedness that made him look younger, softer and pliant for you to do whatever you wished.

“Mm. Ridiculously in love with you, maybe,” the words were casual and airy, but his hands tightened at your waist possessively, pulling you flush against him like he needed to verify you were actually there, solid and warm and his for the entire evening, finally. He thrived on physical touches, so you knew there was no chance for you to not be within his grasp at all times tonight. Not that you wanted to, anyway.

You spent the first hour the way you often did on nights like these, tangled up in each other on the makeshift nest of blankets he’d spread in front of the fireplace; the kind of setup he always pretended was spontaneous but clearly carefully arranged before you arrived. The wine was good, and you shared it between lazy kisses that tasted like dark fruit and warmth.

You sat sideways in his lap with your legs draped over his thigh, one arm looped around his neck while the other held your glass. One of his hands was on your knee, stroking the bare skin there with a thumb that moved in slow, hypnotic circles, and that made the hair at the base of your neck stand up in a pleasant sensation. The fire crackled low and amber beside you, casting everything in shades of gold, and when you turned your head to say something about the wine his mouth was already there, catching yours in a kiss that was deeper than the last one, slower, the kind that made you forget what you’d been about to say.

The second glass made him handsy. The third made him aroused.

His cheeks had gone rosy, the way they always did when he drank, a flush that spread from the bridge of his nose to the tops of his ears and made his eyes look impossibly warm, half-lidded and glittering in the firelight. He abandoned any pretense of subtlety, pressing his face into the curve of your neck and leaving slow, open-mouthed kisses along the line of your throat, each one wetter than the last, his breath hot against your skin and his lashes tickling your jaw.

“You’re so warm,” he mumbled into your pulse point, voice had gone syrupy from the wine, vowels stretching and consonants softening into something almost melodic. “S’not fair. You always feel so good, wanna keep you in my arms forever.”

You giggled, tipping your head to give him better access despite yourself, fingers threading through the damp curls at the back of his head to guide him closer. He made a low, satisfied sound against your skin that vibrated through you, before his hand slid up from your knee to your thigh with confidence, purposely keeping his touch light, knowing it’ll make you crazy, make you meet him halfway.

The heat between you climbed the way it always did, in increments you barely noticed until the air felt heavy and your breathing had gone shallow and his mouth had migrated from your neck to your collarbone, tongue tracing the dip between the bones in a way that made your fingers tighten in his hair as pleasure surged through you, slow and warm.

“Raf,” you breathed, prompting a hum against your skin in response, a sound that loosely translated to I’m listening but mostly meant I’m busy. You laughed softly, tugging his head up so you could see his face. The sight of him, flushed and wine-soft and looking at you like you’d invented color, made your heart stutter. “You’re warm too. We should cool down.”

His brow furrowed in faint protest.

“Why would we do that when this is so much better,” he countered, chasing your mouth with his, and you let him catch it for a moment before pulling back with a grin.

“Let’s take a bath,” you suggested, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, watching the idea land behind his eyes, the slight narrowing of his eyebrows followed by the slow curl of a smirk that he couldn’t quite suppress even through the haze of the wine.

“A bath,” he echoed, voice dropping a register as his gaze dragged down your body and back up again with a hunger that made your toes curl. “Together. To cool down.”

“Mm-hm.

“Sure, cutie,” the smirk plastering his kiss-bitten lips widened into something knowing and warm as he pressed a lingering kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Whatever you say.”

He let you go with visible reluctance, fingers trailing along your arm as you climbed out of his lap. You felt his gaze on your back as you grabbed your bag from the entryway and disappeared into the bathroom.

The room was already warm from the steam of what you assumed was his previous bath, which he must have had hours before your arrival, yet the haze still lingered. You set your bag on the counter before turning the tap, letting hot water pour into the oversized marble tub. The sound of it filled the space like white noise, covering the small clinks of glass as you worked.

You pulled the cloth bundle from your bag first, unrolling it with careful fingers. The blue lotus oil went in while the water was still running, a few drops that dissolved into the stream and released a scent so sweet and dark it made the air feel thicker. The sea mineral salts followed, a generous handful that fizzed and shimmered as they hit the surface, turning the water faintly opalescent. You tucked the passionflower and saffron into the pour from the tap, letting the heat steep them like tea, their fragrance layering beneath the lotus into something heady and oceanic.

The black volcanic salt went last. You poured it from the pouch and it sank through the water in dark ribbons before dissolving, and for a moment the entire bath looked like liquid midnight before the minerals diffused into something softer, an iridescent, pearl-like sheen that caught the bathroom light and scattered it in ways that reminded you, with a sharp pull behind your ribs, of his skin.

You rolled the empty bottles back into the cloth and tucked them into the bottom of your bag beneath your clothes, then added a capful of the unscented bubble bath he kept on the shelf, enough to disguise the color and cover the surface with a thin layer of foam.

Rafayel appeared in the doorway just as you straightened up, shoulder leaning against the frame, shirt already unbuttoned and hanging loose on his frame. The flush from the wine was still painted across his cheeks, and his eyes were heavy-lidded as they tracked you with a warmth that made your breath catch.

“Smells good,” he noted, tipping his head back slightly and breathing in. You watched keenly as something in his expression shifted, subtle and fleeting, his nostrils flaring just barely before the lazy smile returned. He crossed the bathroom in two strides and pressed himself against your back, arms winding around your waist, chin hooking over your shoulder. His lips found the nape of your neck as he left a slow, damp kiss there that made you shiver.

“New bath salts?” he asked against your skin, voice casual and curious, muffled by the fact that he was already trailing another kiss below your ear, then another along the side of your throat, his hands splaying warm and wide across your stomach

“Picked up a few things,” you managed through a shaky breath, tilting your head as his mouth found a spot that made your knees soften. His smile pressed into your skin, smug and fond and a little drunk.

“Mm. Spoiling me,” he murmured, swaying you both gently while the water continued to run behind you, filling the tub.

You turned in his arms and kissed him, slow and intentional, hands sliding beneath the open panels of his shirt to settle against the warm skin of his waist. Your thumbs pressed into the muscle there, kneading in small, firm circles which had his mouth faltering against yours as a low, throaty moan spilled from his chest into your mouth, his hips pressing forward into you on instinct.

“That’s cheating,” he tutted between kisses, but he didn’t stop you, didn’t pull back, just kissed you deeper as his fingers found the hem of your top and dragged it upward with a slowness that felt punishing, knuckles grazing your ribs, your stomach, the underside of your breasts, each inch of exposed skin met with a brush of his fingertips that made you gasp softly against his mouth.

The top came off and his hands were already on your bare waist, pulling you closer, making the kiss turn harder, wetter, his teeth catching your bottom lip in a way that pulled a keen from somewhere low in your throat. He swallowed the sound with a hum of satisfaction, tongue soothing the place he’d bitten while his fingers worked at the clasp behind your back with such ease that would have been annoying if it didn’t make your thighs clench together.

You pushed his shirt off his shoulders in return, palms dragging down the planes of his arms, the fabric pooled at his elbows before he shook it off impatiently, mouth never leaving yours. His skin was hot beneath your hands, hotter than usual, and when you pressed your thumbs into the divots of his hips above his waistband he groaned breathily, the sound vibrating through your joined mouths and settling in the pit of your stomach like something molten.

The rest of your clothes came off in pieces, traded between kisses that grew deeper and more breathless with each layer that fell to the tile. His fingers hooked into your waistband and dragged down with a patience that contradicted the hunger in his mouth, trailing fire down your thighs, your calves, thumbs pressing into your ankles as he knelt to pull the fabric free. You tugged at the drawstring of his pants as he stood to let them fall, and for a moment you both stood there in the warm, fragrant air of the bathroom, bare and flushed, breathing each other in.

His eyes were hazy. The wine sat heavy and pretty in the flush across his cheekbones, and the steam curling up from the bath behind you had dampened his hair at the temples, the purple curls darkening and clinging to his skin. His brows were furrowed faintly, a soft crease between them that you’d learned to read as the space between confused and overwhelmed, but before he could examine it too closely you stepped into him, cupped the back of his neck, and pressed your mouth to the side of his throat.

He melted.

A shudder rolled through his entire body, his head tipping back to give you room. You kissed a slow, wet line from the hinge of his jaw to the hollow beneath his ear, letting your breath fan across the sensitive skin as you marked the pretty skin with your love bites. His hands found your hips and gripped, fingers pressing crescents into the flesh, soft needy moans spilling from his lips that had your clit throbbing in need.

You guided him backward. One step, then another, your mouth still working at his neck until his calves hit the edge of the tub and he took the cue, sinking into the water with a hiss that was half relief and half pain from the difference in temperature. You followed, settling between his legs with your back against his chest. The water was warm and fragrant, the minerals and oils you’d dissolved into it lapping at your skin with every small movement.

His arms wrapped around you immediately, pulling you flush against him, having you feel every line of his body pressed to yours, the rise and fall of his chest against your back, the firm warmth of his cock already half-hard and nestled against the curve of your ass exciting you. You tilted your head back against his shoulder and turned, half-twisting so your hand could travel up the wet plane of his chest, fingers tracing the dip of his sternum and the line of his collarbone, before threading into the damp hair at the nape of his neck and pulling him down into a kiss.

He groaned into your mouth, a sound so low it was nearly subterranean. You took his bottom lip between your teeth, tugging gently before releasing it to press a trail of slow open-mouthed kisses along his jaw. When you reached his ear, you closed your teeth around the lobe and bit down softly. A breathy, broken whimper that cracked in the middle was the delicious response, his hips jerking up against you while his fingers dug into the soft flesh of your thighs beneath the water with a grip that made you moan.

He was getting harder. You could feel him, pressed tight and insistent between your bodies, twitching every time your mouth found a new spot on his neck, every time your fingers dragged through the wet hair curling at his nape. And beneath the haze of the wine and the breathlessness, something else was settling into him, something slower and much different than his usual aroused self, that you could feel in the way his breathing changed, the way his chest expanded and held before releasing in shaking exhales that stirred the hair at your temple.

The oils were working.

You felt the way his body transformed in real time. The way his grip went from firm to bruising, fingers pressing into your skin hard enough to make you gasp, then harder still, pulling you back against him so there was no space left between your bodies. His hips had started to move, subtle at first, then less so, rocking up against you in slow, shameless rolls that dragged the length of him along the cleft of your ass and made your breath hitch on every upstroke.

“Mmh shit, baby,” it came out shakier than you intended, because his mouth had found the junction of your neck and shoulder where you were extra sensitive and he was sucking a mark there that made your vision blur and would probably last for days.

He was panting much harsher now. Different from the lazy, wine-warmed breathing from before. It was more ragged, and when you moved in his lap to turn and look at him, the sight of him stole the little air you had left right from your lungs.

His eyes were dark. Not the warm, half-lidded drowsiness of a few minutes ago but something consuming, pupils blown so wide the pink and blue of his irises were reduced to thin, iridescent rings. The flush had deepened too, spreading from his cheeks down his neck, and his lips were swollen and parted, each breath coming in shallow, uneven pulls that made his chest heave against your back.

“What did you put in this water?” his voice was a rough rasp, way different and a bit unrecognizable, but the smirk that followed was pure Rafayel, slow and dangerous and dripping with a smugness that had no business being there when his hands were trembling against your skin. “Because whatever it is, cutie... it’s doing something to me.”

You turned in his lap fully, facing him now as your knees bracketed his hips, the motion pressed you together in a way that made you both groan in pleasure. His hands slid up your thighs to your hips, gripping with a roughness that sent heat flooding through your pussy, making your clit pulse harder, begging for some attention. You watched his jaw tighten as he fought to keep the composure his voice was pretending to have.

“I might have done some shopping,” you cooed, tracing a finger along the wet line of his jaw, followed by a smile so sweet it was enough to rot teeth.

“Shopping,” he scoffed, eyes narrowing, dark and glittering, as his hands traveled upwards from your hips, dragging slow and heavy over the curve of your waist, the dip of your ribs, until his palms settled over your breasts and squeezed with a pressure that pulled a sharp gasp from your throat. “Wanna be more specific, princess?”

“Aphrodisiacs,” you moaned, arching into his palms and seeking more of him, your fingers curling around the back of his neck to keep yourself steady. “Lemurian ones, specifically. From every mythology text I could get my hands on.”

His thumbs found your nipples and rolled, slow and punishing, and the moan that tore from you made his cock twitch hard against your thigh.

“Sneaky little thing,” he groaned, low and approving while his mouth found the curve of your neck and sealed over a spot that made your vision swim. “Drugging your boyfriend in his own bathtub with shady things you find on the internet. That’s bold, even for you.”

“You would’ve never told me yourself,” you countered breathless, tugging at the wet curls at his nape, and his teeth scraped your throat in response, a warning that made your hips buck.

“Tell you what, exactly?” he cooed against the bruise he was sucking into your skin, one hand sliding from your breast down through the water, fingers trailing fire over your stomach, lower, lower, until they settled between your thighs and pressed against your clit in slow, devastating circles. “What did all that research tell you, hm? I wanna hear it from your pretty mouth.”

Your head fell forward against his shoulder, a whimper catching in your throat as his fingers worked you in lazy, practiced strokes that had your pussy clenching in need of attention, which was why he was silently punishing you by keeping his touch extra light.

“It said,” you started confidently but the words fractured as his thumb pressed harder, your nails biting into his shoulders. “It said that... nghh, t-that you have two cocks? And it made me curious because you’ve never…”

The circles stopped when you trailed off. His hand stilled between your thighs, and you felt him inhale, sharp and deep, his chest expanding against yours. The silence held for one charged, breathless second before his exhale came out shaking, hot against the wet skin of your neck.

“Never what?” he rasped, and when you lifted your head to look at him his expression made your stomach drop. His eyes were blown black, the thin rings of pink and blue around his pupils shimmering like oil on water, and his lips were parted and swollen, each breath coming in shallow pulls that moved his whole chest.

The flush had spread from his cheeks down his throat and across his collarbones, and beneath the waterline you felt him throb against your thigh, hard and insistent and clearly he was imagining bending you over the tub and taking you hard and raw.

“Never shown me,” you whispered, cupping his face as your thumbs traced the sharp line of his jaw tenderly, holding his gaze even though the intensity of it made your pulse roar. “You’ve never let me see all of you. The real you, I mean. It didn’t bother me at first, but I can’t deny I’m not curious now…”

Rafayel’s intense gaze had you faltering for a splitting second, something cracking open behind his hazy stare. A flicker of rawness, surprised and hungry, that he smothered under a grin so filthy it made heat pool low in your belly fast as lightning, had you dripping on his thigh underwater.

“You want both of them, cutie? Real question is, can you handle both?” his voice had dropped into something so sinful it had your eyes roll back at the mere thought of being stuffed so full by not one, but two of his cocks.

On the good days, you took him like a champ, greedily swallowing him inside your warmth, demanding more and more as he gave into your every demand. On other occasions, he had you whining and begging for mercy, pounding you into the surface he laid you on and controled your pleasure like a puppet master.

A low purr vibrated against your sternum as his fingers resumed between your legs, pushing inside you with a slowness that made your mouth fall open and a sinful moan spill from it, obscene and loud in the tiled room. “Wanna see with your own eyes what your boyfriend’s really packing? All you had to do was ask, beautiful.”

“I’m asking now,” you managed breathlessly through a whimper, clenching tightly around his fingers and rolling your hips into his hand. The friction pulled a groan from him that sounded like it was dragged from somewhere deep and involuntary, which made you squeeze your eyes shut and grind harder. “Won’t you show me, baby?”

His forehead dropped against yours, and you felt the breath leave him in a shudder, his jaw working like he was swallowing something too big for his throat. His fingers curled inside you, pressing against his favorite spot, the one he loved to bully, the one that had your spine arching and a cry tearing from your lips, all while he watched your face come apart with an overwhelmed expression.

“I don’t think you have any idea what you do to me when you talk like that,” he groaned, his free hand gripping your jaw rather harshly and tilting your face so his mouth hovered over yours, close enough that you breathed each other’s air. “Sitting in my lap, taking my fingers so good, asking to see my cocks like you’re ordering dessert. Are you that greedy to be fucked senseless over this bathtub, huh?”

“Nghh—fuck, oh fuck,” you whimpered, because his thumb had found your clit again and was circling it in tandem with the fingers inside you. The euphoric sensation was making it hard to think, hard to breathe, hard to do anything except hold on and shake like a leaf.

“What else?” he demanded, pulling his fingers out slowly, dragging them through your soaked folds until you were trembling and empty and whining at the loss. His hands gripped your hips, lifting and repositioning you against him so the hard length of his cock pressed directly between your folds. His hips rolled up, coating himself in your slickness causing a groan to rumble through both your bodies. “Tell me what else those books said. C’mon, I wanna know what my girl’s been studying about me.”

“Eggs,” you gasped, cheeks burning in embarrassment but you held his gaze, fingers fisting in his hair. “The texts said... during the heat, with the right partner, you’d...”

His hips stuttered, bucking the tip of his cock against your clit, his eyes going wide for a fraction of a second before they narrowed into something so dark and possessive it made your breath stop.

“Yeah?” he rasped, the word coming out guttural and raw, his grip on your hips tightening until you could feel each finger like a brand. He pulled you down against him, grinding his cock against you with a deliberateness that made you cry out, your hands scrabbling at his chest. “They told you about that too, huh?”

“Told me enough to be curious,” you whispered, biting your lip and rolling your hips into his, matching his rhythm, and the sound he made was barely human, a choked groan that broke in the middle and left his mouth hanging open.

“Curious,” he echoed, and the laugh that followed was breathless and dark, his forehead dropping to your shoulder as his hips snapped up harder, rougher, chasing friction that made you both moan. “My bodyguard read some old books and now she’s curious about taking my eggs. You’re something else, you know that?”

He lifted his head, and the look in his eyes was ravenous, all teeth and heat and a hunger so consuming it made the air feel thin. His hand came up to wrap around your throat, gentle but present, thumb resting against your pulse, and pulled you close until his lips brushed yours with every word.

“Lemme tell you something those books didn’t cover, princess,” he murmured, his voice silk wrapped around a knife’s edge, low and intimate and dripping with a promise that made your thighs clench. “When it happens, and it’s gonna happen tonight because you went and started something you can’t stop... it’s not gonna be gentle. It’s gonna be a lot, and you’ll cry and beg me in that sweet voice to either stop or give you more. Oh, but you’re gonna take all of it for me, aren’t you?”

Your breath left you in a rush, your pulse hammering against his thumb. You enjoyed rough sex with Rafayel, having him leave bruises on your skin that would last for days after your heated love-making was something you looked forward too, knowing he could break you like that any time he desired. But you suspected this was much more different than your usual dynamic, something more primal and animalistic. Something you went ahead and awaken in him with all this stuff you prepared, and you weren’t gonna back down now.

“Yes,” you moaned against his neck, arching your back to brush your nipples against his chest with every movement, loving the friction.

His smile was slow and devastating and sharp enough to cut.

“Such a good, obedient girl,” he purred, and bit down on your bottom lip hard enough to sting. “Now hold on to me. ‘Cause whatever those books told you doesn’t even come close to what I’ll do to you tonight.”

In a swift move, he hauled you with your back to him, prompting you to grip the edge of the bathtub for some sort of stability, bending your back and arching it until it almost hurt, but giving him a gorgeous view of your ass spread open and a peak of your pussy leaking into the lapping water.

He chuckled behind you, a sound rather mocking but sweet at the same time, a purr that traveled down your spine and settled in your throbbing nub.

“She’s so swollen already… tsk. Are you sure you want this, beautiful? Last chance to back out.” he tutted behind you, fingers parting your folds and rubbing between them with enough pressure to have you chase his hands. His voice was so sweet, so innocent and almost tender, but it was far from that, really. You knew as much when he pushed three fingers inside your clenching hole, making you hiss and moan in pleasure and pain. It only made him chuckle and caress your ass as he fucked the fingers in and out of you slowly.

“Very tight, cutie. Not to brag, buuut… if you struggle to even take my fingers, you’ll be a mess when I stuff you with my cocks.” he curled them inside you as he spoke, a smirk present in his whispery tone, a little smug, “… You’ll cry, cutie. But you’re so desperate to be fucked, so I’ll indulge you if you really want it.”

“O-oh, oh fuck, please I do! I do… Feels good, j-just… give me a sec?”

“We have all night, cutie. Don’t think you’ll leave this bathroom until morning.”

The tone of his voice had gone a lot lower, and you only fully registered it when his fingers curled deeper inside you and you forced your eyes open to look back over your shoulder. The breath you took stuttered in your chest and stayed there.

He was beautiful.

Iridescent blue scales had bloomed across his collarbones and the sides of his neck in patterns that looked like jewelry that grew from the skin instead of being placed upon it. They scattered down his chest in a constellation that thinned out across his ribs and disappeared beneath the waterline, and smaller, finer scales decorated the high points of his cheekbones, just under his eyes, catching the bathroom light and refracting it in pearlescent shimmers every time he moved.

His eyes glowed, the blue of his iris turned luminous, like seafoam catching moonlight. His pupils were still blown wide, his lashes still damp with steam, and the flush across his nose and cheekbones had spread to color the tips of his ears in a deep rose.

He smirked at you with lazy confidence while his free hand stroked himself in slow, languid pulls beneath the water, his cock thick and flushed in his grip, and your mouth went dry watching it.

“Oh, you’re so gorgeous,” you breathed, twisting fully to drink him in, and the words came out hushed and tender almost, your fingers itching to touch him all over. “Raf, you're stunning like this.”

His hand stilled on his cock. His jaw worked, just barely, the smirk slipping into something more vulnerable for a half a second before he wrestled it back into place, stroking slowly down his shaft.

“Yeah?” he managed, voice scraped low, and the casual lilt in it didn’t quite cover the way his throat moved when he swallowed. You knew how your praises touched him, and found him cute trying to cover it up, “Don’t get all sappy on me, cutie. You’ll ruin my reputation.”

“What reputation?” you teased, reaching back to drag your fingertips along the curve of his jaw, tracing where the scales blurred into skin, and he tilted into your touch despite himself. "The one where you pretend you don’t get needy and hard when I tell you how beatiful you are? I’m not buying it, baby.”

“Oh, you're not buying it,” he echoed, and you watched the smirk sharpen into something dangerous as his fingers slipped out of you in one slow drag that made you whimper. His hand came around to grip your throat from behind, thumb pressing against the corner of your jaw, tipping your head back against his shoulder until you were arched and open and entirely at his mercy. “Lemme refresh you on my reputation real quick, then.”

He hauled you up by your hair.

The motion ripped a gasp from you, sharp and surprised, your knees scrambling to bracket the outside of his thighs in the water. His chest was hot against your back, the scales there warm and faintly sharp beneath your shoulder blades, meanwhile his other hand slid between your bodies, lining himself up before he hauled your hips down with a single, uncompromising pull that drove him into you to the hilt.

The sound that tore out of you was obscene. A broken, drawn-out moan that bounced off the tile, your back bowing as your hands flew back to grip his thighs for any kind of purchase. He didn’t give you a second to adjust.

“There we go,” he purred, the smugness back in full force, his hands settling on your hips to lift you and drag you down again, setting a brutal rhythm that made the water slosh in waves against the edges of the tub and had you clench around him desperately. “That’s the face I wanted. Look at you, all dazed and pretty for me. Where’d that smart mouth go, cutie? Hm?”

“R-right here,” you panted, twisting your head against his shoulder, lips brushing the line of scales along the side of his throat. You opened your mouth and licked, slowly dragging your tongue along the iridescent ridge from his collarbone to his ear. You didn’t read all those books for nothing, right? You had to make the best of your newfound knowledge.

His hips lost their rhythm for a fraction of a second, a strangled noise punching out of his chest, and you felt his whole body shudder beneath you. His cock kept twitching inside you, and you moaned at the feeling.

“Fuck,” he hissed, the word ragged and spit into your ear, his grip on your hair tightened. “Cutie, don’t... shit.”

“Don’t what?” you purred against the wet shimmer of his neck, sealing your lips over a cluster of scales and sucking gently, before scraping your teeth across them. “You don't like it?”

The noise he made was not designed for human ears. A low, almost rumbling moan that vibrated against your tongue, his cock twitching hard inside you, and his head dropped forward against your shoulder for a beat too long.

“I hate you and your little naughty schemes,” he breathed, but his hips snapped up into yours with a force that made you cry out, his teeth finding the side of your neck and biting down hard enough to bruise, a direct reminder of who was in charge. “Such a brat. Reading your little books and figurin’ out exactly where to touch me. Think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

“I think I'm right,” you gasped, reaching back to thread your fingers into his hair, tugging hard as you turned your head until your mouth found the corner of his, peppering small kisses. “Tell me I’m right, baby. Tell me you like it.”

“I’m not telling you shit,” he rasped against your lips, but he was kissing you between every word, sloppy and open-mouthed, his tongue dragging along yours with a hunger that wasn’t subtle. His hand released your hair to wrap around your throat from the front, fingers splaying wide, thumb pressing just beneath your jaw. “Stop talkin’ before I shut you up.”

This back-and-forth was familiar between you already, the push-and-pull that made everything exciting when you gripped and pulled and ravished one another while having sex. You knew how to tick him off, and he knew how to handle you just as easily. Which is why the next words left your mouth in a slow, unhurried purr, one that went straight to his cock and had it twitch in pleasure inside your g-spot.

“Make me.”

His laugh broke against your mouth, breathless and taunting. He kissed you harder, deeper, teeth catching your bottom lip and pulling until it stung and almost drew blood. His free hand slid up your stomach to your chest, pinching your nipple between his thumb and forefinger with a sharpness that made you sob and eyes sting with real tears, your hips bucking down into his with a wet, slick sound that made his next groan come out shaking. You wanted him to fuck you faster, but he controled every move of his hips despite you being above him.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he purred against your jaw, dragging his tongue along the spot beneath your ear, knowing it’ll make you shudder and clench around him. “All bark, my cutie. Bratty little thing pretending she can keep up with me while I’m splittin’ her open.”

Your laugh was a broken thing that crumbled into a moan as his fingers rolled your nipple between them without mercy. You twisted in his grip to mouth at the scales along his throat again, sucking harder this time, letting your teeth scrape along the iridescent patterns the way you’d read about.

His whole body locked up. A guttural, choked-off sound spilled from him, his hips stuttering through the rhythm he’d been setting, and you felt his thighs trembling beneath yours. He was so fucking gone, it made you smirk pleased against his scales as you licked again.

“Cutie,” he warned, voice cracked clean through, and his grip on your throat tightened just slightly, the pad of his thumb pressing into your pulse. “I'm gonna lose it comletely if you keep doing that, and I won’t show you any mercy for the rest of the night.”

“But isn’t that the point, my love?” you breathed against the wet shimmering skin, lapping at it with the flat of your tongue, “Won’t you fuck me like you always dreamed of? You always fucked me as your girlfriend, won’t you fuck me as your mate, too?”

You reached one hand back and down between your bodies, finding the place at the base of his spine where the texts said the scales would be most sensitive. You pressed two fingertips there and dragged them up slowly, tracing along the ridge.

He made a sound you’d never heard before.

A low, wrecked whimper that didn’t belong to him, one so unfamiliar that it surprised eve you for a second, a sound so animalistic it had you even more excited to push him more. His forehead crashed forward against the side of your neck as his hips snapped up into yours with a force that knocked the breath out of you.

“You little...” he started, and the rest of it dissolved into a groan that vibrated against your skin, his teeth closing on your shoulder to muffle it. His hands gripped your hips hard enough to bruise, dragging you down onto him with rough, fast, uneven thrusts that betrayed how close he was to losing the act entirely. “You read about that too, huh? Knew exactly where to touch me. Knew exactly how to make your boyfriend want to fuck you senseless in a goddamn bathtub.”

“Mm-hm,” you hummed, pressing a slow kiss to the scales beneath his ear before licking a stripe along them. “Wanted to know all of you. Every inch of you needs to be loved, don’t you agree?”

“F-fuck,” he breathed, and he sounded actually gone, his free hand abandoning your breast to slide down between your thighs and find your throbbing clit. His circles were a lot rougher and faster, no rhythm to them whatsoever, and the coil low in your belly snapped tight in seconds. “Yeah? Wanted to know me like this? Wanted to wreck me, baby? Is that what your little research project was about?”

“I wanted to be wrecked by you,” you sighed, turning to catch his mouth in a sloppy, open kiss. He groaned into it, deep and helpless, slothing his tongue with yours in a sensual dance.

“Fuck, you say things like that and I can’t think straight,” he hissed, his pace turning punishing, his hips grinding up into yours with a relentlessness that had your eyes rolling back and vision whitening. His fingers on your clit didn’t slow for a second. “Gonna cum for me, cutie? Gonna cum on my cock ‘cause I told you to?”

“Y-Yes,” you whimpered, your hand still pressed to the scales at the base of his spine, dragging your fingers along them in a slow stroke that made his hips buck violently, hitting your g-spot. “Oh fuck, yes, ‘m gonna cum s-soon…”

“Then do it,” he rasped against your ear,his thumb pressing harder against your throat, his other hand working you faster, sharper, meaner. “C’mon, baby. Show me what a smart girl you are. Cum on my cock and I’ll give you the other one.”

The orgasm tore through you with the kind of speed that left your ears ringing. You cried out loder than ever before, your nails dragging crescents into his thighs as you clenched around him in pulses that made him groan against your neck, his hips stuttering through your aftershocks. He fucked you through it, slower and deeper now, his hand abandoning your clit to wrap around your waist and hold you steady as you shook.

“Ride it, baby. Just like that,” the softness that bled into his voice was sudden and disarming, his lips finding the side of your neck and pressing a kiss there that was almost gentle. He kissed up to your jaw, your cheek, and his hand cupped your face to turn you toward him, his mouth meeting yours in a kiss that was deeper than it needed to be, slower than the rest of him had any right to be.

You knew that kiss. You knew what it meant.

It was Rafayel’s quiet way of asking, the question he never spoke aloud because saying it would mean dropping the act. You okay? You want to keep going? Should I stop?

You smiled against his lips, and the way his shoulders relaxed at it told you he’d been holding his breath without realizing.

You turned in his lap on shaky legs, water sloshing over the rim of the tub, and settled facing him with your thighs draped over his. His cock slipped from you with the motion and you both groaned at the loss, but your eyes had already dropped, drawn down through the water by something new.

There were two now.

The first you knew. The one you’d been wrecked on a moment ago, thick and flushed and slick with you. The second was unfamiliar in the most beautiful way, pressed alongside it against his stomach, marked with faint iridescent ridges that caught the light when you tilted your head. It was the same shade as his scales, that dark blue that seemed to shimmer when he moved, slightly slimmer than the first but no less substantial, the head of it gleaming wetly above the waterline.

Your breath caught in your throat, stunned and mesmerized at the same time.

You reached down with both hands, shaky as you traced one fingertip along the underside of the second cock from base to tip while the other wrapped lightly around the tip. The ridges were softer than scales, almost velvety, and they pulsed warm beneath your touch.

Rafayel hissed harshly, his head dropping back against the rim of the tub with a thud, his hips jerking up into your hands.

“Fuck, cutie...” he choked, voice stripped down to something raw and shaking.

“It’s very beautiful,” you whispered, leaning down to press a kiss to his sternum, dragging your lips along the line of scales that scattered there before working your way lower. “Raf, you’re so beautiful like this. I could look at you forever.”

“You can’t just say things like that so easily while your hands are wrapped around my cock,” he gritted out, but his hands had come up to fist in your hair, like he needed something to anchor him through your touches of his most sensitive, intimate parts.

You kissed lower. Across his ribs, along the soft trail of scales that led down his stomach, and his muscles twitched and flexed beneath your mouth in a way that made his next breath leave him in a stutter.

“Do you like that?” you licked a scale, glancing up at him through your lashes with a smile so sweet it should have come with a warning label. “When I kiss you here? I read it’s sensitive.”

“I’m gonna kill whoever wrote that book,” he groaned, head falling back against the rim again, glowing eyes squeezed shut, throat bared in a line that made your mouth water and ache to kiss again.

“Mm. Should I stop, then?”

“Never said that.”

A please laugh came out, and you bent to press another kiss to his navel, your fingers still tracing the ridges along his second cock with featherlight intent. He twitched in your grip and a broken whine spilled out of him, his hips lifting off the bottom of the tub to chase more.

His hand shot out and grabbed your jaw.

The grip was sudden and harsh, snapping your face up to his, and the glow in his eyes had brightened, the smile on his lips no longer lazy. It was sharp. Predatory. You should have felt in danger under such a gaze, but it only made you wetter.

“You absolute brat,” he purred, his thumb pressed past your lips, dragging across your tongue. You opened your mouth for him on reflex, your eyes hooded and your breath hot against his skin. “Kissing me all sweet, askin’ if I like it, touching me like you’ve got me figured out. You think you’re in charge here, cutie?”

He pushed two fingers into your mouth, replacing the thumb, and pressed them down on your tongue. Your jaw fell open. Drool gathered at the corners of your lips and his eyes tracked it with a hunger that made your thighs clench around his.

“Suck them,” he commanded, low and almost gentle, and you obeyed without thinking, closing your lips around his fingers and laving your tongue along them, hollowing your cheeks as you sucked slowly. The groan he gave you was unsteady, his hips rolling up beneath you, his free hand coming up to grip your waist with a force that would leave fingerprints. “So compliant. Such a filthy little mouth, now stuffed full.”

He pulled his fingers from your mouth slowly, dragging a string of spit with them, and used the wetness to trace a slow, deliberate line down your chin, your throat, your sternum, until he was cupping your jaw again.

“My pretty, perverted girl,” he murmured, and his voice was velvet wrapped around something that made your stomach drop. “Greedy little cunt couldn’t even let me catch my breath before she was already lookin’ at the second one. You really wanna know what a Lemurian mating ritual feels like, hm? You begged for it. Researched for it. Drugged your boyfriend in his own bathtub just to find out.”

His thumb pressed against your bottom lip, and the smile he gave you was sweet and sharp and absolutely ruinous.

“So I’m gonna give it to you, baby. Both of ‘em. Stretchin’ this little cunt out ‘til you forget what it felt like before me. And you’re gonna look at me the whole time, cutie.”

His tongue came out to lick his own bitten lips, eyes dazed and a mile away, probably already imagining the fucked-out expression of your face when he’ll finally slip inside.

“You don’t get to close your eyes. Wanna see your face when I split you open on both, yeah? Wanna watch the second you realize you’ll die without ‘em the second they’re inside you.”

His fingers tightened on your jaw, his glowing eyes burned into yours.

“Use your words, baby. Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” you breathed, the words coming out rough and a bit desperate, tongue still tingling where his fingers had pressed it down. “Show me, Raf.”

His pupils dilated until they nearly swallowed the glow.

“Yeah?” he purred, the smirk spreading across his lips was slow and cocky, all teeth and trouble. “Lemme hear you ask for it properly, cutie. Pretty mouth like yours, oughta beg for what it wants.”

“Please show me,” you whispered, leaning in to kiss the corner of his smirk, mouth dragging slow along his jaw. “Show me how a Lemurian fucks his girl, baby.”

His breath punched out of him. A real, audible exhale that he tried to mask under a chuckle but couldn’t quite, his fingers tightening on the back of your neck.

“Yeah, that’s more like it,” he rasped, and the smirk turned into something wolfish. “Gotta admit it, cutie. You’re gorgeous when you beg me.”

He moved with a speed that left you dizzy.

His hands hooked under your thighs and lifted your body, water cascading off your skin as he stood and pivoted in one fluid motion, settling himself against the slanted back of the tub where the marble curved into something more like a chaise than a wall. The water lapped at his hips and he positioned you straddling him, knees bracketing his thighs, your hands flying to grip his shoulders for balance.

“Hold on tight, beautiful,” he tutted, smirk flickering with anticipation as he reached down between your bodies. One hand wrapped around both cocks, lining them up, the heads pressing together against your entrance. The sight of it made your stomach drop and your mouth go wet, heart beating so fast from the anticipation.

“Raf,” you whined, eyes flicking up to his. You let your voice go small and breathless on purpose, knowing exactly what it would do. “Be nice to me.”

You saw his jaw flex while his other hand slid up your spine to grip the back of your neck, possessive and firm, followed by a smile so sweet and sharp and completely insincere.

“Nice,” he echoed, savoring the word like a piece of candy. “She wants me to be nice. After everything she pulled tonight. C’mon, cutie. You really think you earned nice?”

“Mm. Maybe not,” you admitted, biting your lip. You rolled your hips down just enough to drag the heads of both cocks against your entrance, slick and ready for him. “But you love me, so.”

“I do love you,” he agreed with a hum, voice dropped to something low and lethal that had your toes curl. “That won’t stop me from fucking you like I don’t. After all, you asked for exactly that, yeah?”

He lowered you onto him.

The first inch ripped a gasp from you. The second made you sob. He went slow, agonizingly slow, his hand on your hip controlling every fraction of the descent, and you watched his composure splinter in real time, his lips parting on a stuttered exhale, his glowing eyes fluttering before he forced them back open. He wanted to see your face. You wanted to see his unraveling. Every inch of him was so delicious, not very painful because even like this, he made sure you weren’t uncomfortable. But it soon turned into agonizing pleasure, making your breath shallow.

“Eyes on me,” he rasped, even as his own threatened to roll back. “Don’t you dare close ‘em, cutie. Wanna watch every second of this, paint it later.”

“Don’t close yours either,” you breathed back, tracing your thumb along his bottom lip, holding his gaze even as your thighs shook. “Wanna see how good I make you feel, baby.”

A choked sound left him, and his hips twitched up beneath you involuntarily, sinking both cocks deeper in one rough jolt that made you cry out. He went so deep you saw stars behind your eyelids, biting the inside of your cheek.

“Fuck, shit,” he hissed, jaw clenching tight. His hand was gripping your hip with bruising force, sure to leave purple blooms across the skin. “Stop talkin’ like that, cutie, I swear to god...”

“Or what?” you taunted, smiling against his mouth and went ahead and clenched around him on purpose, just to watch what happens.

His head dropped forward against your collarbone with a wet thud. A low, broken groan rumbled out of his chest, and then his teeth closed on the skin there, biting so hard it made you shake against him.

“Or I’m gonna fuck this attitude right out of you,” he muttered against the bite. “Keep runnin’ your pretty mouth and find out, cutie.”

You eased the rest of the way down, the stretch unbelievable, the burn of it edged with a fullness that pushed every coherent thought out of your skull. By the time you were fully seated against him, hips flush and both cocks buried so deep inside you that your vision went white at the edges, you were both panting like you’d run a marathon.

You knew it took great force for him to keep still and not fuck ruthelessly into you, that thought made your chest ache sweetly. He knew to fuck you like you wanted but he always made sure you remember he still silently sought out your comfort at all times.

“There’s my good girl, welcoming me so nicely,” he breathed, lifting his head to look at you, with a smile that broke across his face in disbelief, fond and absolutely wrecked. “Sittin’ on me and looking so pretty. How’s it feel, hm? Better than your dusty old books told you?”

“There were no b-books,” you panted, finding the strength to smile against his lips, dazed and sincere. “Nothing in this world could’ve prepared me for how you’ll feel, Raf.”

His eye actually rolled back. A full, slow flutter of his lashes, his head tipping back against the marble behind him, and a wrecked groan rumbled out of his throat. He was so easy to dismantle.

“Princess,” he gritted, hips twitching up and pulling a sharp cry from you. “Sometimes you don’t need to be so honest, y’know…”

“Is it wrong for me to admit how I want my boyfriend to fuck me? I thought you wanted us to be honest with one another,” you breathed and leaned forward, dragging your tongue along the line of scales at his throat, sealing your lips over the them and sucking until he sobbed.

His hips snapped up hard. A strangled noise tore out of him, and his hand fisted in your hair, yanking your head back to bare your throat. It tingled on your scalp, pain and plasure shooting through you, smiling through lidded eyes.

“You really are askin’ for it tonight, huh?” he growled, his mouth finding the curve of your neck and biting down hard enough to make you yelp. “Touchin’ me like that. Lickin’ my scales like you wanna eat me alive. Where’s all that come from, cutie? Hm? Did your little research project teach you how to drive your boyfriend insane too?”

“Mm,” you hummed, smiling against his ear as he sucked another bruise into your throat. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

His laugh broke against your skin. Breathless. Disbelieving.

“So it’s like that, then.” he purred, and his hips finally moved. A slow drag that pulled both cocks halfway out of you before slamming back in, the water sloshing in waves against the tub. Your eyes rolled back so hard it had you see spots behind your eyelids, “I’m gonna make you regret every smart thing that ever came out of that mouth.”

He set a rhythm that was slow at first but so fucking deep, every thrust pulling you apart and putting you back together, the water sloshing against your skin with each grind. His hands never let go of you, one fisted in your hair, one gripping your hip, guiding and lifting and dropping you onto him like you weighed nothing. You could only let him.

“You’re so compliant,” he cooed, voice gone honeyed and mean. “Stretchin’ so pretty around me. All it took to shut your pretty mouth was filling you up, tsk.”

“Mm, baby,” you moaned, fingers digging into the scales along his shoulders, scraping lightly. “You feel so g-good. S’big. Filling me up so much I can barely breathe...h-hahh…”

His glowing eyes squeezed shut for a beat, his breath shuddering out of him in a broken wave as his pace stuttered.

“Stop bein’ sweet to me while I’m tryin’ to wreck you…” he whined weakly, but his hips snapped up harder.

“Why?” you whispered, leaning down to press your mouth to the cluster of scales over his sternum, kissing along them and sucking gently, dragging your tongue across them. “Don’t you like it when I’m sweet? Or you like it when I tell you exactly how good you are at this?”

A helpless whimper left his mouth, hips losing their rhythm entirely for a moment, and you took the opportunity to slide one hand down between your bodies and press your fingertips against the base of his spine where the scales were thickest, dragging them up slowly along the ridge.

A strangled groan ripped out of him, and his teeth sank into your shoulder so hard you saw stars.

“Cutie…” he started, the rest dissolving into a curse, his hips snapping up into yours with a force that knocked the air out of your lungs. “You read about every single sensitive spot I have, didn’t you? Mapped me out like a goddamn treasure hunt.”

“I wanted to learn how to please you,” you breathed against his ear, then closed your teeth around his earlobe and tugged. “Every part of you, Raf. Worship you like you worship me.”

A real, helpless sob escaped him, his head dropping forward against your shoulder while his hips drove into you with a desperate rhythm.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he gritted, even as his hands gripped you tighter, even as his cocks throbbed inside you. “You’re not allowed to say shit like that right now, cutie. I’m tryin’ to be mean to you and you’re makin’ it impossible.”

“So be mean to me,” you challenged, lifting your head to meet his eyes, giving him a seductive smile, “C’mon, Raf. Show me what you got. Tell me what’s gonna happen now, what you’re gonna do to your sweet bride.”

The smile that returned to his lips was slow and sinful.

“Yeah?” he purred, dragging his thumb across your bottom lip. “You wanna know what’s gonna happen, cutie? You wanna know what kinda ritual you started?”

“Teach me,” you whispered, kissing the pad of his thumb.

“Lemme paint you a picture, baby,” he breathed, his hips ground up into yours in slow, filthy circles that made your back arch. “Right now? This is just the warmup. I’m gonna fuck you on both my cocks ‘til you’re crying. ‘Til you forget your own name. And then, when you’re so gone you can barely keep your eyes open...”

He paused, tongue dragging along your jaw and smile widening against your skin, making you tremble.

“... that’s when I’m gonna breed you, cutie.”

You clenched around him so hard he choked.

“O-oh, fuck,” he laughed, breathless. “Oh, you liked that, huh? My pretty little hunter likes the sound of bein’ bred. Tell me, baby, did your books cover that part too? Did they tell you what it’s like when a Lemurian fills his lover up?”

“S-Some of it,” you struttered, rolling your hips down to meet his, riding the slow grind of him until you both groaned. “Not enough… they weren’t d-detailed… Mmm, will you tell me?”

“Tell you, hm?” he mused, his hand sliding up from your hip to wrap around your throat, thumb pressing against your jaw. “You sure, cutie? You scared yet? ‘Cause I’d understand if you were.”

“Not scared,” your eyebrows knitted, holding his gaze. “Tell me.”

His smirk turned vicious.

“Eggs, baby,” he rasped, hips snapping up to punctuate the word, mouth hovering over yours. “I’m gonna fill this tight little cunt with my eggs. One after another... Deep... Where you can feel them. Where you’ll feel them for days.”

You moaned, your eyes rolling back and nails scoring down his chest.

“Do you like that?” he cooed, mean and delighted, his teeth nipping at your bottom lip. “You like the thought of being so full of me you can’t even sit straight? Walkin’ around tomorrow with my eggs inside you, knowin’ I put them there?”

“Y-yes,” you whimpered, and you couldn't help it, you couldn't stop, you ground down on him harder, seeking more friction, seeking what he was telling you he’ll do. “Yes, Raf, please.”

“Such a pervert,” he cooed almost fondly, cupping your face. “My sweet, perverted girl. So curious. So greedy.”

“H-Have you,” you breathed, cupping his face back, holding his glowing eyes with yours, “have you ever thought about it before? Be honest, baby. Ever dreamed about doing this to me?”

Something cracked behind his eyes. Something wild and exposed.

“Cutie,” he warned, voice splintering.

“Don’t avoid it,” you whispered, kissing him softly, dragging your tongue along his bottom lip. “Have you imagined it, Raf? Filling me up? Breeding me? Watching me take all you have to give?”

“Yes,” he hissed, and the word seemed to be torn out of him, his whole body shuddering against yours. “Yeah, more times than I can count. Thought about it every time I came inside you.”

“Then do it,” you whispered against his mouth, kissing him deeper, sloppier, your tongue dragging against his. “Do it. I want it, too.”

His arms wrapped around you and crushed you against him.

His pace turned brutal. Desperate. His hips drove up into you with a ragged, uncontrolled rhythm that made the water slosh over the tub’s edge and onto the floor. His mouth was everywhere, your throat, your jaw, your collarbones, biting and sucking marks into your skin that you would feel for a week, if not more.

“You want it, baby?” he panted against your skin, voice broken open. “You want me to breed you? My greedy lover, asking to be filled up by her boyfriend’s eggs?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” you babbled, clinging to him, mouthing at every cluster of scales you could reach, dragging your nails down his back. “Please, Raf, please, please.”

“Yeah?” he laughed, breathless, “Gonna take all my eggs for me? Gonna let me stuff this cunt full and then fuck you anyway? Gonna let your boyfriend ride you with his eggs inside, baby?”

“Yes, Raf, yes.” you moaned, eyes rolling back with every hard thrust, almost giving you a headache.

“Tell me how full you’re gonna feel,” he commanded, lifting his head to look at you, glowing eyes locked on yours and thumb pressing against your bottom lip. “Lemme hear it.”

“So f-full,” you whimpered, your tongue laving over the thumb pressing into your mouth. “So full of you, baby.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he purred, mean and tender at once. “So full you won’t be able to think. Won’t be able to walk. Gonna keep my cocks inside you the whole time too, cutie. Gonna fuck you until you pass out on them. And when you wake up, baby? I’m gonna do it all over again.”

“Yes,” you sobbed, clenching around him, your forehead falling against his. “Please, w-wanna cum…”

His hand slid down between your bodies and found your clit, working it in tight, brutal circles, and the third orgasm built fast and sharp and impossibly close. You could feel him changing inside you, the second cock swelling slightly against your walls.

“It’s comin’, cutie,” he warned, voice gone guttural, eyes burning into yours. “Stay with me, baby. Look at me. Don’t you dare look away.”

“I won’t, I won’t, I’m here, Raf, I’m here—”

He pulled you down onto him in one final, deep press, both cocks buried to the hilt, his hands clamped to your hips like he was holding the world together. A pulse, then another, the second cock swelling slightly inside you, a fullness that built and built until you gasped.

Something gave.

A pressure released, and you felt the first one. Small, rounded, smooth, sliding deep inside you, settling somewhere that made your mouth hand open and your spine arch. Then another. And another. Each one drawing a broken, helpless sound from him, each one pulling a high, breathy yes from you, mindless and dazed.

“That’s it, that’s it,” he panted against your throat, his arms wrapped around you so tight you couldn’t breathe. “Take them, baby. Take them all for me. Such a good girl, fuck, you’re shaking so hard…”

“Yesyesyes,” you babbled mindlessly, clinging to him while mouthing nonsense against his ear, tears at the corners of your eyes from the overwhelming fullness. “H-hah, ‘m so close… Raf, ‘m so full…”

“I’m gonna fill you up after,” he rasped, his hips still thrusting upwards, his voice cracking around the words. He was as lost as you were. “Gonna come inside you, cutie. Stuff this cunt so full it’ll leak out of you, you hear me? Gonna mark every inch of you mine.”

“Y-yes,” you sobbed, and the third orgasm crested and broke through you in waves that left you crying, your body shaking with it. The fullness inside you a strange and beautiful weight you’d never felt before.

He came with you. A long, broken groan against your neck, his hips pressing up into yours one last time, both cocks pulsing as he spilled into you in waves that felt impossibly warm, impossibly intimate. You felt the slow leak of your shared passion as his cocks twitched through the last aftershocks, his cum spilling out of you around him, joining the water that lapped at your hips.

The only sound was the two of you breathing, foreheads pressed together, hands still clutching skin and scales and hair like neither of you wanted to be the first to let go.

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There are two thick fingers sliding through your sopping, fat folds— dragging up and down, fingers smearing your syrupy juices all over your messy pussy. One finger gently teases your quivering entrance, barely dipping in before dragging your arousal back to your aching clit. . rolling the bud in circles until you gasp in delight.  You tangle your hands in Zayne’s hair, holding and tugging onto the strands in ecstasy. 

“Nghhh—! Haaah, a- stop teasing meee, Zaynie’. . I-i need moree!” You drool out from your stupor, whimpering when he suckles harder onto your nipple. . moaning softly to send vibrations through your body. 

Your body reacts wonderfully to Zayne’s touch, it’s becoming increasingly harder to deny you that sweet pleasure you desire when you beg so unapologetically to your husband. Two slender fingers pressed against your hole, plunging to hilt of your pussy with a welt squealchh— stretching your walls sooo perfectly it has you choking on a moan. You gasp on his name, toes curling up, shivering helplessly from that burning pleasure. 

He groans against your chest, finally releasing your nipples— teasing the bud by gently nibbling until you squeal. Instead, he roughly drags his tongue against your nipple, to the valley between your mounds, then to your other breast— giving it that same sweet treatment. Zayne’s fingers reaches soo deep, curling and slamming into your velvety walls with an obscure sloshh of your wet cunt.

The inside of Zayne’s hand slaps meanly into your puffy clit with every thrust of his fingers back into your greedy warmth, sending delightful shocks of pleasure through your already exhausted body. You can barely keep up, melting into the sheets as he explores your cunt— fingers somehow pressing deeper into your gooey walls, your arousal coating the base of his digits. 

“Mmh. . doing soo perfectly for me, sweetheart” Zayne murmurs against your chest, foggy glasses pressing into your skin as he tilts his head for a better angle to lap and drag his tongue against your nipple. 

You whine in response, gasping loudly when the temperature of his skin seems to drop too quickly. Synchronized, goosebumps erupts all over your body, shivering from his cool touch. One of Zayne’s hands presses hard onto your belly, fingers still positioning deep into your drooling hole.

Through scrunched up eyes, you can barely see Zayne peering up at you with lust and hungry filled eyes. He gazes at your body, drinking up every single once of your reactions to his touch; twitching, jumping, shaky breaths, he’s remembering every single one. He perfectly curls his fingers until he presses against your g-spot, the hand off your plush belly pressing harder as he thrusts his fingers into your spasming hole. 

“Haah—! O-oh fuck! Nngh. . fe- feels toooo good!” You wail out, eyes rolling back as your back arches once again. 

That subtle heat in your lower belly is now bold and loud, you’re sooo close to cumming. It’s just that, this feels more intense and hotter than you expected. Your skin feels more heated and stimulated.

“Mmhp—! Z- Zayne!” You squeal out, hands tugging at his hair as he groans from the tiny pain.

Your velvety walls quiver and tighten around his fingers, sucking him deeper as he miraculously keeps his same pace— a medium pace but he presses deeper into your pussy with every thrust. You can barely string words together, squealing in ecstasy when that boiling, white hot pleasure explodes in your belly. Your juices squirt from your sopping pussy, the liquid spraying onto Zayne’s arm and hands. 

It’s messy, your whimpering and tears are dripping from your eyes, hips jolting and shaking from how intense your orgasm was. Zayne didn’t seem to mind, eyes shut as he enjoys the way your nipples jolt against his tongue— fingers still steady fucking into your sloppy hole. 

By time you ride your orgasm, Zayne is dragging his tongue against your heated skin until he reaches your dripping and glistening pussy. 

“Mmh? N- no! P- please, I can’t handle it —nghh!” You mumble out barely coherent words, intensely trembling when he drags his tongue through your syrupy folds.

“Just let me clean you up, my beloved” he murmurs against your fat pussy lips, tongue dragging from your hole to your twitching clit— suckling onto the nerve until you squirm.

CALEB

Your breathing is completely erotic and ragged, it’s becoming awfully hard to breathe when the pleasure is overwhelming. You’re twitching and shivering in ecstasy; your body is burning hot, slick and glistening from sweat, lower belly stained by your own juices. It’s not just the pleasure that’s making it hard to breathe, it’s from Caleb— pistoning a thick dildo, molded after his cock, to ram deep into your raw cunt with an obscure squealchh.

“Hnng—! I. . fu- fuckk!” You gasp out between breathless moans, back arching off the bed every time the dildo kisses at your g-spot. 

The toy can easily press into your most sensitive spots, just like Caleb can, it’s delicious the way it stretches out your velvety walls. Your thighs tremble violently, walls spasming and quivering around the toy— sobbing out your boyfriend’s name when he engulfs your clit in his hungry mouth, suckling onto the puffy bud. He drags his tongue against the engorged hood, smearing his tongue against your clit in a slow manner. . up and down.

The dildo was fucking deeper into you now, relentless, each push of the toy was aimed directly at that spot inside you that made your toes curl and your vision blur— eliciting breathless sobs from your swollen lips. Caleb’s lips wrap around your poor clit, sucking hard. You let out a broken yelp of his name, Caleb, eyes rolling back so far as his tongue flicks at the hood of the engorged bud. 

The pleasure is becoming too much for your poor, overwhelmed body to handle. Being so thoroughly filled by a thick dildo while your clit was being suckled and lapped at by a rough tongue; your kind counselor focused on anything beside Caleb and how he’s making you feel sooo good.

“Haaah—! F- feels too good, ngh!” You squeal out loudly, hips bucking widely at the pleasure.

“Mmhp—! Ca- Caleb!” You whine out, tears clinging to the corner of your eyes.

Caleb drags his tongue firmly against the swollen flesh of your bud, sneaking his spit all over your messy pussy. He’s loud, groaning, moaning, and whining into your pussy— the vibrations coursing through your body, eliciting a sob from you. 

“Haah. . mmh? Yes?” Caleb hums out in response to you whimpering out his name, his warm breath fanning onto your exposed clit— there’s a pleasurable wave of heat that pools down to your cunt, arousal gushing around the toy.

He suckles back onto your clit, the non-stop attention he gives you is enough to have you squirming and writhing from the pleasure. Your clit, swollen, buzzing, and glistening from arousal, is throbbing in pleasure when Caleb drags his tongue against the bud over and over. It’s like he can’t keep his mouth unoccupied for too long, he needs to keep his mouth against your pussy. 

“Nngh—! O- oh fuckkk. .” You wail out loudly, velvety walls tightening around the didlo— juices pooling at the base of the toy. 

It’s messy. The wet squealch of your sopping pussy, the obscure slurping sound of Caleb lapping at your clit like his life depended on it. That heat in your lower belly is warm, it has you violently shivering in ecstasy.   

And Caleb, he’s just as messy; unapologetically loud when slurping at your puffy clit. That slurping sounds, squelching, and muffled moans, groans, and grunts against your mound is loud. Once again, he 

hums against your pussy, suckling and lapping at your cunt like his life depends on it, shamelessly moaning your poor, buzzing clit. 

“I ne- need more of you. . give me mo-more. .—“ he murmurs against your clit, one of his hands digging greedily into the fat of your thighs to push you open wider— simultaneously forcing your fat folds to part. 

“Haah. . nngh, w- wanna cumm” you drool out, rolling your head back to lay against the pillow. 

Your hips are relentless, bucking and squirming from him. Yet, Caleb pays no mind to it, he’s too big lewdly and erotically lapping at whatever sensitive skin of yours he can. Perhaps he’s gone completely drunk at how sweet you are— sweet, you taste just like how he imagined you would.

That thick toy, pressing deep and roughly into your g-spot, has you choking on air. And with a loud cry of Caleb’s name, your gooey walls clamp down tightly around the dildo, your juices spraying from your stuffy hole. 

“Oooh-! Fuck fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. .” You babble over words, incoherent as white, hot heat was all you could see. 

The bed is completely soaked in your sticky juices, some of your juices managed to land onto your lower stomach. And yet, he still gently presses the toy back into your drooling hole, slowly plunging in  and out.

“Wahh—! O- oh fuck. . Caleb. shit. . can’t—“ is all that you can say, words dying at the tip of your tongue when he suckles roughly onto your clit.

“C’mon, baby. . one more time! Wanna see you squirt like that again. .” Caleb gulps, eyes completely blown out in pleasure.

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Your fingers flew across the keyboard, drafting the official statement you’d already sent to the press an hour ago: “Mr. Gojo was attending a private charity event and the images have been taken out of context. He remains committed to his fans and upcoming film projects.”

You rubbed your temples. Gojo had more scandals than some celebrities had followers. Drunken karaoke brawls, leaked videos of him making out with co-stars, rumors of underground fight clubs where he used his “sorcerer” persona from his most recent series for show, and the endless parade of women. Yet the public loved him. The blue-eyed menace was box office gold, and his supernatural charm made him untouchable.

The car door opened. Gojo slid in beside you, all long limbs and effortless arrogance. His white hair was messy, those striking blue eyes hidden behind his usual black sunglasses. He flashed that infuriating grin.

“Missed me, princess?” he drawled, leaning back against the leather seat.

“You’re late,” you said flatly, not looking up from your tablet. “And you smell like vodka and that strong ass cologne.”

He laughed, low and warm. “That’s my signature scent. Want a closer whiff?”

You ignored the flutter in your stomach. This was the game you two played. He caused fires. You put them out. And somehow, over time, the tension between you had grown thicker than the NDA you made every woman he slept with sign.

“Three models, Satoru? Really? The video is trending. I had to call in every favor with the tabloids to kill the worst angles.”

He shrugged, stretching his long legs until his thigh pressed against yours. “They were just fans. Harmless fun.”

“Harmless doesn’t get you trending for all the wrong reasons.” You finally met his gaze—or what you could see of it. “This is the fourth scandal this month. I’m running out of ways to make you look like a misunderstood genius instead of a chaotic himbo.”

Gojo’s grin widened. He reached over and plucked the tablet from your hands, setting it aside. “You’re so good at your job, though. That’s why I keep you around.”

His voice dropped, playful but edged with something darker. Heat. “And because I like rewarding my best girl.”

Your breath caught. This wasn’t new. After particularly brutal clean-ups, Gojo had a habit of “thanking” you in ways that blurred every professional line. You told yourself it was just stress relief. A transaction. But the way he looked at you—like you were the only thing in his chaotic world that actually mattered—made it dangerous.

The driver raised the partition without being asked.

Gojo’s hand slid onto your knee, long fingers tracing slow circles. “C’mere. Let me show my appreciation.”

“Backseat of a car, Satoru?” you muttered, but your body was already betraying you, thighs pressing together. "Really?"

“Private enough.” He tugged you onto his lap with that effortless strength, your pencil skirt riding up as you straddled him. His hands settled on your hips, thumbs stroking the fabric. “You’ve been working so hard for me. Cleaning up my messes. Dealing with my shit. Don’t you deserve a treat?”

You shivered as he pushed his sunglasses up, revealing those glowing blue eyes.

His mouth found your neck first, hot and teasing, sucking lightly just below your ear while he loosened your blouse. “Let me eat that pretty pussy, baby. Been thinking about it since the club. Nothing tastes better after a long night of damage control.”

You gasped as he lifted you, maneuvering you until your back was against the opposite seat and he was on his knees between your legs. The man who commanded screens and sold out arenas was kneeling for you. Gojo pushed your skirt higher, fingers hooking into your panties and dragging them down your thighs with deliberate slowness.

“Fuck, look at you,” he murmured, voice husky. “Already wet for me. My perfect little manager.”

He spread your thighs wider, exposing you completely in the dim light of the car. His breath ghosted over your core, making you twitch. Then his tongue—hot, wet, and devastating—dragged a slow stripe from your entrance to your clit.

You moaned, hand flying to his white hair. Gojo hummed in satisfaction, the vibration sending sparks up your spine. He licked you like he had all the time in the world, like cleaning up his scandals was worth every second of this reward. His tongue circled your clit with precision, then dipped lower, pushing inside you teasingly before returning to suck gently on that sensitive bundle of nerves.

“Satoru—” you whimpered, hips rolling against his face.

He gripped your thighs tighter, holding you open as he devoured you. The obscene sounds filled the car: wet slurps, your desperate gasps, his low groans of approval.”

“You taste so fucking good,” he mumbled against your folds, lips shiny with your arousal. “Better than any model. Sweeter than revenge. This is what I want after every fuck-up. Your legs around my head while I make you cum.”

Two long fingers slid inside you without warning, curling perfectly against that spot that made stars burst behind your eyes. His mouth latched onto your clit, sucking harder while his fingers pumped in a steady rhythm. The coil in your belly tightened fast.

You came with a cry, thighs trembling around his ears as pleasure crashed through you. Gojo didn’t stop, licking you through it, drawing out every aftershock until you were panting and oversensitive.

When he finally pulled back, his grin was soaked and smug. “That’s one. Think you can handle more before we get to the hotel?”

The pattern repeated over the next few weeks, each scandal bigger than the last.

First came the leaked audio of Gojo trash-talking a rival actor during a press junket. You spent three days negotiating with studios and issuing apologies. That night, in his penthouse overlooking Tokyo, he laid you out on his massive bed and spent nearly an hour between your thighs. He edged you mercilessly—long, slow licks followed by fast flicks of his tongue—until you were begging. When you finally came, he kept going, making you squirt for the first time while laughing softly against your pussy.

“You’re so good at making me look innocent,” he praised, chin glistening. “Let me make you feel good, baby.”

Then there was the nightclub fight video. Gojo had “accidentally” flipped a table on some guy who’d gotten handsy with one of his female co-stars. The internet called it assault. You called it a PR nightmare. After three all-nighters and a carefully crafted statement about “self-defense,” Gojo rewarded you in his private jet on the way to a premiere.

He had you bent over the leather couch, skirt flipped up, face buried between your cheeks from behind. His tongue fucked into you while his thumb rubbed your clit in tight circles. The altitude and the thrill of being so high up made everything more intense. You came twice before landing, legs shaking so badly he had to carry you off the plane.

Each time, the rewards grew more intense. Gojo was insatiable when it came to you. He loved how composed you were in public—cool, professional, the one who tamed his chaos—and how completely you fell apart for him in private.

One particularly bad week culminated in a leaked sex tape rumor (thankfully fake, but the damage was done). You worked miracles to kill the story. That evening, Gojo didn’t even wait for the car to leave the underground garage of his building.

He dropped to his knees right there, pushed you against the hood of his expensive car, and ate you out like a man starved. Cars drove past on the street level above, but down here it was just the two of you. His tongue was merciless, fingers deep inside you, curling and scissoring while he sucked your clit until you saw white. You came so hard you nearly slid off the hood. He caught you, laughing that rich, cocky laugh.

“My perfect girl,” he whispered, kissing your inner thighs. “I make the messes. You clean them. And I make you scream.”

Months passed. The dynamic deepened.

You stopped pretending it was just rewards. Gojo started showing up at your apartment unannounced, glasses off, eyes soft in a way the public never saw. He’d pull you into his lap on the couch, not always for sex. Sometimes just to talk—about the pressure of being watched all of the time, the loneliness of fame, how your steady presence was the only thing keeping him grounded.

But the sex... the sex was still his favorite way to say thank you.

One night after he’d been caught leaving a love hotel with a famous idol (another fabricated story you’d dismantled), he took you to his bedroom and spent the entire night worshipping you. No rushing. He stripped you slowly, kissing every inch of skin until he reached your core. Then he settled in for a long session.

Gojo’s tongue traced every fold, savoring you. He alternated between gentle licks and harsh sucks, fingers pumping deep while he whispered filthy praise.

“Love how you get so wet for me. Love knowing all those scandals are worth it because I get to bury my face in this sweet pussy afterward. You own me, you know that? The world thinks I’m theirs, but this—” he licked a broad stripe up your center, “—this is mine.”

You came three times that night. Once on his tongue, once on his fingers while he sucked your clit, and once riding his face as he lay back and let you use him. By the end, you were a trembling, blissed-out mess, and Gojo looked happier than he did after any movie premiere.

The latest scandal was the worst yet.

A video surfaced of Gojo in a very compromising position at an afterparty—him, two women, and enough evidence to suggest an orgy. The internet was in meltdown. Sponsors were threatening to pull out. Your phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

You worked for 48 hours straight, barely sleeping. When you finally dragged yourself to his penthouse to deliver the good news (crisis mostly averted), Gojo was waiting.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just pulled you inside, locked the door, and dropped to his knees in the foyer.

“No more work tonight,” he said, voice rough. He pushed your legs apart right there against the wall, yanked your panties aside, and dove in.

His mouth was urgent, almost desperate. Tongue fucking into you, nose grinding against your clit, hands gripping your ass to pull you harder against his face. He moaned like he was the one receiving pleasure, the vibrations making your knees buckle.

You clutched his hair, moaning his name as he devoured you. This wasn’t just a reward anymore. This was need. Hunger. Possession.

He made you cum twice standing up, then carried you to the bedroom and did it again with you on his face. By the time he finally let you rest, your voice was hoarse and your thighs were sticky with his saliva and your releases.

Gojo pulled you against his chest afterward, fingers gently stroking your back.

“I know I’m a handful,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “But I’d burn every scandal into existence if it meant you’d keep letting me do this.”

You laughed weakly, exhausted but content. “You’re impossible.”

“Yeah. But I’m yours, baby.”

In the quiet afterglow, with the city lights twinkling outside, you realized something. You didn’t just clean up his messes anymore.

You were part of them. And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

This video is something you had never seen before or even thought was possible. You watch, mesmerized by the way the woman’s stomach subtly shifts a visible bulge as he stretches her out.

Heat pools instantly between your thighs, making your breath hitch and a dizzying sensation of fullness hit your gut. He's always so careful with you, so agonizingly gentle, as if you’re something precious he might break if he breathes too hard. But looking at this... a dark part of your brain wonders what it would feel like if he didn't hold back.

"Holy shit..." you whisper to the empty room.

Your hand moves instinctively, fingers sliding down to find slick heat. The video is playing on a loop. Bulge. Stretch. Deep. Repeat. You watch it while your imagination runs wild, replacing the stranger on the screen with the man who owns your heart. You’re picturing his heavy weight pinning you down, his eyes blown wide, filling you until you can’t even scream.

You’re chasing a peak that feels miles away until, suddenly, it isn't. You hit your first orgasm with a stifled gasp, back arching off the mattress, only to find yourself immediately chasing the second one, body trembling and spent in the wake of the first.

By the time the second wave of pleasure ebbs away, you’re a puddle of limbs and heavy eyelids. You’re half conscious, drifting in that beautiful limbo between wakefulness and dreams. In a daze of post orgasmic euphoria, you squint at the screen, your thumb hovering over the comment section.

"How do I send him this without actually sending it to him 😳"

You tap 'send' with a clumsy thumb. You meant to just post it as a thought, a digital scream into the void. But as your eyes flutter shut, your hand twitches a final, involuntary spasm of exhausted muscle. Your thumb slips. It slides across the 'Share' icon, hovers over the very first contact at the top of your recent list, and taps.

Sent.

You don't hear the subtle whoosh of the outgoing message.  Delivered directly to the man who at this very moment is probably staring at a security feed or sipping red wine.

Sylus.

You just fall into a deep, blissful sleep, completely unaware that you've just lit a fuse.

🐦‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

“Come on, sweetie, don’t give up on me now" Thrust. The impact is heavy, forcing a breathless gasp from your lungs. “You can take it, can’t you?”

He isn't being the gentle, careful man you know. Not today. His hand is hooked firmly behind your head, his fingers tangling in your hair, forcing you to watch the unmistakable, fat bulge stretching the skin of your lower abdomen, proof to just how deep he’s buried himself inside you.

“You wanted this, now you have to take it and you are going to watch.”

And there it is. The reality of it. It’s visceral. It’s exactly what you saw in that video, but it’s a thousand times more intense because it’s him. It’s real.

Your vision swima and just as the shock of it all starts to settle, he shifts. He changes the angle of his hips in a calculated move that hits your G spot dead on. An uninhibited scream tears from your throat, echoing through the room.

“I've been trying to behave,” he says, and the words come out rougher than he probably intended, an edge of frustration bleeding through his usual composure “But you make it so difficult... fuck... by sending me your filthy little thoughts.”

His hand settles against your belly, firm and heavy, and the second he presses down, your body reacts with a sharp inhale. You tense instinctively, muscles coiling around him, but you don't pull away. You can't.

“Can you feel me here?” he asks, breath coming in uneven bursts. He’s buried balls deep and for a split second, you see a flicker of hesitation in his eyes. You make a face, a strange, overwhelmed expression of fullness, and he looks like he might actually pull back to give you a moment to breathe. He thinks he’s pushing too hard.

He’s wrong.

Don't you dare.

Driven by a desperation you didn't know you possessed, you move your hips in a searching rhythm, pressing his hand down harder against your stomach. You want the pressure. You want to feel the exact point where he meets your skin from the inside.

He lets out a loud groan at the sensation. Your narrow walls clamp down on him, tighter than they've ever been. Every millimeter of space between you feels like it’s disappearing, leaving nothing but friction and heat.

You don't have the words to tell him that you never want him to stop, so your body does the talking. You cling to him, legs wrapping around his waist as he holds you there, keeping you exactly where you are until your breathing turns unsteady.

Until your body softens in momentary surrender and tightens again a second later, as if you're fighting a war with yourself, trying to decide whether to let go or to hold on tighter.

In the end, you don't choose. You do both.

The world dissolves into a hot haze of pleasure. It couldn't be called an orgasm because this feels like a total system failure. You’re sobbing his name or maybe you’re just gasping for air, you can’t tell anymore as waves of pleasure crash over you, violent and unrelenting. Your pussy seizes around him in long pulses, milking him, begging for the very thing that’s pushing you past your limit.

He follows you a few seconds later, burying himself soooo deep you feel the hot rush of him filling you.

Slowly, the fog begins to lift, leaving you in a state of blissful, heavy lethargy. The hand that was just pressing so ruthlessly into your belly softens, fingers tracing lazy circles over your skin.

"You really are a menace." he murmurs, pressing a lingering kiss to your temple.

The shame you expected to feel, the embarrassment of that accidental video is nowhere to be found. Instead, there is only a sense of immense satisfaction.

"Next time," he whispers into your hair "don't bother sending a link. Just tell me. I'll give you everything you desire. Every single time."

The problem with being in love with a man like Xavier is that your brain is constantly a minefield of "what ifs."

He’s incredible, truly, but you’ve noticed the way he pulls back sometimes. When he’s brooding or when that possessive jealousy starts to prickle at him, he becomes almost too careful. Like he’s afraid he might actually break you if he lets go of that restraint.

So, naturally, you’ve been doing a little "research" to keep the inspiration alive.

Now, you’re sitting on the edge of your bathtub, scrolling through your feed, a habit that’s becoming a bit of a vice, when a video catches your eye. A girl pinned to a mattress, her head pressed down by her partner as he fucks her from behind. Hard. The sound of her moans echoes in your ears through your headphones and suddenly the bathroom feels about ten degrees too hot.

God, yes.

You quickly save the link to your "later" folder, a digital stash of things you want him to eventually try, and then scribble a quick, thirsty comment on the video "This but with my boyfriend dressed as Lumiere 🤤 " and set your phone down.

Buzz. Buzz.

A notification lights up the screen. It’s him.

[Xavier]: Found a new hot pot place. Apparently, the broth is spicy enough to kill a Wanderer. Want to go tonight? Please say yes so I can stop thinking about food and start thinking about you.

A soft laugh escapes you. He’s so predictable, yet so devastatingly charming when he wants to be. Your answer is an immediate "sure" because you’d say yes to a lukewarm bowl of water if he was the one serving it.

But he always forgets to look at the menu and ends up ordering something way too spicy or something you're not in the mood for, so you look for the restaurant's menu.

You see the link. Tap it. Copy. Paste. Add "Look at the options! The spicy broth looks insane." Send.

Funny thing is, you don't actually copy the menu's URL, you just cut it. You don't even realize you just sent him the very un culinary link to the video you were just watching to fuel your own delusions.

Little typing bubbles appear. They dance for a long time. They disappear. They reappear.

He's so indecisive.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

"Lumiere?" the name sounds like a curse "You wanted Lumiere to pin you down?"

Your face is pressed so firmly into the mattress that the fabric feels like a part of your own skin, the scent of laundry detergent mixing with the heat of the moment. Every time he thrusts into you, the world tilts, your vision blurring into white light and dark shadows. The Xavier who kisses your forehead and cuddles with you is buried somewhere deep inside the man currently fucking you breathless.

"Xavie..." you try to speak, but his name dies in your throat as he shifts his weight.

"Tell me," he demands, losing the battle with his own restraint. He hits you hard, a deep, soul shaking thrust that forces a broken moan from your lips. "Tell me you don't need a costume to feel this."

You try to answer, to tell him he's being ridiculous...

Smack!

The sting of his palm against your ass makes you gasp, your fingers clawing at the mattress for purchase.

"You sent it to me on purpose," he mutters as he leans down, his chest pressing hard against your back. "You wanted to see me like this, didn't you? You wanted to see if I could be as rough as him."

He doesn't want an answer. He doesn't wait for one. He just wants to hear you whimper his name when he hits that perfect spot.

His hand presses your face down even harder into the mattress, muffling your cries. It's everything you were craving when you were scrolling through your phone earlier, but the reality is a thousand times better.

You start to move, trying to meet him halfway, trying to grind back against him to find the friction that will push you over the edge.

"Faster..." you beg, trying to turn your head to tell him that there is no Lumiere, there is only him, but he just presses you back down, his thumb grazing your hip bone with trembling pressure.

"Shhhhhh, just a little bit more," he lets out a long groan, his forehead dropping to rest against the back of your neck for a fleeting second before he surges upward again. "You should see the way your pussy is taking my cock right now, so greedy. Just for me."

His hand shifts. It leaves the back of your head to find the column of your throat. His thumb and middle finger curl around your neck not enough to hurt, but enough to remind you that he is in total control.

He stills for a heartbeat, his middle finger softly tapping the pulsing vein in your neck. "Every beat belongs to me tonight"

You just nod, a jerky movement, because you are standing on the very edge of a precipice, and the fall is coming. The tension in your lower belly is wound so tight it’s almost painful.

"Say it," he breathes, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, his words a warm, humid ghost of a sensation, his control fraying at the edges.

"Yours," you finally whisper, like secret you’ve been holding in your lungs for far too long, finally allowed to breathe.

The moment the word leaves your lips, he loses the last of his mercy.

He pulls back almost entirely, leaving you aching and empty for a fraction of a second only to drive back in, bottomless and bruising. It’s a cycle of withdrawal and overwhelming fullness that leaves you reeling.

"Give me what's mine" the command vibrates through your entire body.

The world dissolves into white light as your head falls forward, muscles spasming in the violent quake of your climax, but he catches your hair, tugging just enough to force your head up, his face inches from yours, his eyes dark and swirling with a hunger that could swallow the stars.

"Good girl," he whispers against your parted, trembling lips.

He thrusts one last time, deep and final, spilling molten heat as your name breaks from his lips, torn in half by bliss before he presses a kiss between your shoulder blades. For now, the jealousy is gone. There is only the quiet, heavy reality of being his.

The video catches your eye instantly. The lighting is a soft purple, casting a surreal glow over the two people on screen. A girl is on top, her movements slow and agonizingly deliberate as she drags her pussy over her partners cock, the rhythm of it making your cunt clench.

Tonight you are in a "no filter" mood. You need to share this. You need to tell Tara.

With a smirk, you tap the share icon, copy the link, and switch over to your messages. You find Tara’s profile pic or so you think and start typing with the kind of unhinged energy only a best friend can appreciate.

You and Tara have long since abandoned the concept of "boundaries" when it comes to your filthy late night chats.

“Omg Tara, look at this. Raf’s cock is so pretty, I swear if he’d just let me do this to him, I’d never leave the bedroom again 🥵💦”

You hit send with a satisfied whoosh and let out a long, dramatic sigh. Silence follows. For a few minutes you go back to scrolling, blissfully unaware that you have just dropped a digital bomb into the inbox of a man who is already struggling to maintain his composure.

Your phone vibrates.

It’s not a "LOL" or a "Damn" from Tara.

It’s a notification from Rafayel.

Rafayel: Is that so?

Your heart skips a beat. You frown, squinting at the name at the top of the chat.

Wait.

Your face goes from pale to a shade of red that would put a sunset to shame. You stare at the screen, wanting to physically crawl inside the phone and disappear forever. You want to delete it. You want to throw the phone out the window. You want to move to a different planet.

But then, the little typing bubbles appear again.

Rafayel: Don't just sit there blushing, cutie. I'm coming to your place and you are going to show me exactly what you want"

🫧 🫧 🫧 🫧 🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧

You’ve lost track of time. Your thighs are starting to ache, every muscle in your legs feels tight, strained from holding yourself upright, yet you keep moving. You have to. The friction is the only thing keeping you grounded.

You’re straddling him, your knees digging into the soft linens, focused on the way your cunt drags over his cock. Slippery. Hot. Wet.

Every time you slide down, the underside of him, that thick ridge presses ruthlessly against your clit. You can feel the vein running along his length pulse in perfect synch with your clit. 

Thump thump. Thump thump. 

"Slow down..." he groans, gripping your hips "You're going to... fuuuuck... you're going to kill me"

The friction is creating a heat of its own, a sliding friction that makes your head spin. You watch slightly delirious, as the light from the moon filters through the window, catching the sheen of sweat on his pale skin and the way his hair is plastered to his forehead. He looks wrecked. He looks beautiful. He looks like he belongs entirely to you.

But his hands are far from weak. They are heavy weights anchored to your hips, and he uses them to sabotage you. Just when you think you’ve found a rhythm that might actually save you, he tightens his grip, forcing your hips to slow, dragging the slide of your pussy out into a long, shallow glide.

It’s cruel. A sadistic kind of torture, making the night feel endless, as if the clock has stopped just to watch you suffer.

He wants to stretch this out. He wants to milk every drop of anticipation from your veins until your entire body begins to tremble, not from pleasure, but from the weight of the climax that refuses to arrive. He wants to push you to that edge where even your silence sounds filthy, where the quiet between your breaths is thick with the unspoken things you want to do to him.

Once he’s satisfied with the slow pace, his hands begin to wander. They trace the curve of your waist, the dip of your spine, the swell of your breasts, learning your body the way a sinner learns to pray. Like hunger learning the art of restraint just long enough to make the eventual feast mean something.

You slide back just a fraction, settling the heat of your pussy directly over his balls and then you reach down.

Your fingers wrap around the base of his cock, just like you saw in that video. You begin to stroke him while simultaneously rotating your hips in a circular grind over the heavy fullness of his balls.

The sound that tears from his throat is something unhuman, a vibration that feels like it's coming from the depths of the ocean.

Your name is caught between his teeth in a soft, sinful exhale. He sounds undone, completely unraveled by the sight of you taking exactly what you claimed you wanted in that accidental text.

He’s right there, on the edge of an unravelling collapse.

And because you are just like him, a creature of beautiful, chaotic impulse, you don't let him have it. Not yet.

You release his cock, hand slipping away just as the tension reaches its peak, and drag your soaked cunt back up the entire length of him in one loooong slide.

It feels like a collision of two fires.

In your desperation to feel everything you let your entire weight drop. The clench of your pussy as you cum wraps around the underside of his cock, squeezing him with a force that leaves him absolutely helpless.

He has no choice but to follow you into the fire.

Spurts of his cum paint the pale skin of his stomach, the liquid warmth spreading in thick, white streaks, pooling in his belly button.

For a few seconds, neither of you moves. There is only the sound of your breathing and the humid scent of your shared exhaustion.

“Was that pretty enough for you, cutie?” he teases, though his hand trembles slightly as he reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear. His thumb lingers on your cheek, like he’s constantly checking to make sure you haven't vanished into the night. "Or do we need to do it again?"

It’s late, way past the time Zayne would usually be nudging you to sleep but he’s still tucked away in his office, probably buried under a mountain of medical charts or surgical reports.

Your eyes are glued to your phone screen, watching a VIDEO of a girl grinding against a man’s thigh, bodies pressed together, his hands steady even as she buries her face in the crook of his neck. The guy in the video is wearing pajamas that look disturbingly similar to the ones Zayne is wearing right now.

Suddenly, the empty space in your bed feels a little too vast, your mind drifting to the office down the hall, aching to be that girl, to climb onto his Zayne's lap while he’s buried in medical charts and just... fuck yourself stupid.

You want to reach down and touch yourself but you’re a loud sleeper and an even louder moaner. If you start now, there’s no way he won't hear you through the walls, and you aren't quite ready for that kind of intimacy yet. So, you settle for a bit of digital venting. With a flushed face, you type out a quick comment on the video: "God, I wish I could do this while he's working..."

You go to save the link to your "Filthy Things" folder for a proper session tomorrow morning, but just as your thumb hovers over the screen, your phone starts vibrating. It’s Simone. She’s calling, probably to gossip about something trivial. In your rush to swipe the call and answer her, your finger taps the wrong folder.

And because Zayne is a man who is always, always connected to his devices for work... he’s going to see the notification the exact second it pops up.

🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺 🩺

It didn't take long. After that little "digital accident," the silence between you two wasn't awkward so much as it was heavy. Charged. He didn't even tease you about the comment. He didn't even blush. He just looked at you with those piercing eyes, a tiny, knowing quirk at the corner of his mouth, and silently commanded you to come to him.

And now, here you are. Perched on his lap, doing the same thing you saw on that video. Your lower half is completely bare, your thighs hugging his muscular one as you press yourself flush against him.

The friction is driving you completely insane.

Zayne, however, is a man of terrifying discipline.

His left hand is braced on your lower back, while his right hand moves across his keyboard. He’s actually working. He’s reviewing files, typing out notes, behaving as if you aren't currently trying to melt into his lap. Every so often, he’ll pause, not to stop you, but to lean in. His breath, cool and smelling faintly of mint, brushes against the shell of your ear, sending a violent shiver down your spine.

"Ah... Zayne..." you whimper against his neck as you press yourself harder against him. The sound is loud, far too loud for his quiet office and you can feel the heat rising in your cheeks.

"Hush now," he doesn't even look away from the monitor, though you notice the slight tightening of his jaw. "I need to focus. These reports won't write themselves."

He’s being difficult. He’s being a tease. And you love him for it.

You try to be "good." You force yourself to still when he has to write something long on his computer. You sit there, trembling slightly, waiting for him to acknowledge the havoc you're wreaking on his concentration.

A moment passes. The only sound is the soft click clack of the keyboard. Then, you feel his hand slide from your hip to the small of your back, pulling you just a fraction of an inch closer, a subtle command for you to keep going.

"Good girl," he whispers, the words a warm caress against your ear.

His expression is completely professional, but the way his fingers linger on your skin tells a completely different story. He’s still working, yes but he’s also letting you feel exactly how much of a distraction you really are.

Every time your thighs tense up, every time you desperately bite your lower lip to stifle a moan that threatens to shatter the silence, the air thickens with indecency.

He’s struggling. You aren't blind. You can feel the insistent twitch of his cock beneath you, reacting to every open mouthed kiss you press against the pulse of his neck, the sharp line of his collarbone, and the smooth expanse of his Adam's apple. He’s trying to maintain that surgeon’s calm, but his body is betraying him with every shuddering breath you take.

You’re right on the edge. Your clit is catching perfectly against the fabric of his pajamas, the material already damp and clinging to you from the amount of arousal you're leaking.

"Look at me."

His voice cuts through the air, forcing your gaze up. He wants to see the exact moment your eyes glaze over, the moment your breath hitches and tells the truth that your lips are trying so hard to hide.

When his hand slides up to cup your jaw, it isn't the gentle, comforting touch you're used to during a quiet movie on the couch. It's different. It's possessive. It’s a disciplined kind of dominance, a reminder that while he is the composed Zayne in the daylight, there is a much darker man caged behind that professional composure and you are the only one who knows how to let him out.

"You are close, aren't you, love?" he whispers, his lips hovering so close to yours that you can feel the heat of his breath.

You can barely manage a nod, your lungs feeling too small for the air you're trying to pull in. You're breathing directly into his slightly parted mouth.

"Cum for me, then," he exhales, a rare flush creeping up his cheeks, betraying just how much this is affecting him too.

He shifts his thigh, bouncing it up and down in a rhythmic motion that catches your clit perfectly.

The world tilts. You feel your eyes lose focus and you can't tell if it's the shaking of your limbs or the pounding of your heart that's making you tremble so violently.

"Zaynie... Zayne..."

His name becomes your entire vocabulary, there are no words left, only the sound of his name on your lips and the crashing sensation of finally, finally letting go.

You are flicking through a never ending stream of mindless clips and memes. It’s supposed to be a quiet afternoon, just a bit of scrolling to kill the time until Caleb comes back, but then there...

A VIDEO pops up. It’s not your usual aesthetic travel vlog or a cooking hack.

You freeze, your heart doing a weird, little skip in your chest. You know you should probably swipe past it, but your eyes are glued to the screen. It’s a girl, her lace panties completely drenched. The guy in the video isn't even taking them off, he’s just sliding the tip of his cock against her through the wet lace.

A sudden warmth blooms deep in your belly, spreading down until it feels like you’re melting into the cushions. God, you’ve been craving that. The teasing, the slow, agonizing buildup. You’ve spent so much money on delicate, expensive little sets, thinking maybe Caleb would appreciate the way they look on you, but hes a fucking dog. He doesn't do "slow." He usually just rips them or tugs them off with impatience, going straight for the heat of you. You just want him to play with you like that. To linger.

Your inhibitions are a little frayed from the visual, and before your brain can catch up to your impulse, your thumbs are flying. You tap the comment section, the screen a mess of unhinged messages from strangers, and you add your own little confession: “I really need him to play with me like this, but he prefers to eat it raw from the start😢”

You hit send, a tiny, embarrassed flush creeping up your neck, and immediately swipe the video away, feeling a bit silly for being so vulnerable to a bunch of internet strangers.

You toss the phone onto the cushion next to you a second later, completely oblivious to one mortifying detail. He’d logged into his account on your phone earlier when his own battery died, and you hadn't bothered to switch back.

In his office, the most dangerous man in Skyhaven is about to watch, in explicit detail, how you want to be ruined.

🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷 🪷

It turns out your assessment of him was spot on. The man is a fucking dog.

He hasn't taken your underwear off. That’s the part that’s driving you absolutely insane. The delicate lace is currently soaked, clinging to your pussy like a second, translucent layer of skin. He’s been working his tongue against the fabric, licks so long and heavy they feel like they’re reaching deep inside you. You’ve already been hit by two earth shattering, toe curling orgasms, your vision blurring every time his mouth finds your clit through the damp cloth. He hasn't even slowed down. If anything, it's getting worse.

“This is the reason I usually take off those pretty panties you wear” he presses his face into you, his broad tongue sweeping up in one stroke against your entire slit. You let out a choked, broken sound, fingers tangling desperately in his dark hair, trying to push him away just to catch your breath.

“Your scent is so fucking addictive,” he groans against your skin, “Especially after wearing them all day... knowing you've been walking around, smelling like this, just waiting for me.”

Then, he says something that makes your heart skip a beat not out of fear, but out of pure shock.

“You have no idea, do you?” he pants, nose brushing against your clit. “Last two years of High School... I spent them stroking my cock raw just to the smell of your panties. Thinking about you. Wishing you were right there."

Your vision blurs. Your hips jerk upward involuntarily as a third wave of pleasure crashes over you. You cum hard, your entire body shaking as you spill yourself directly onto his tongue, voice breaking into a high, desperate sob of his name.

He doesn't pull away. He just drinks you in, a satisfied smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he tastes exactly what he's been craving.

The moment your legs stop trembling he hooks his fingers into the soaked gusset and drags it to the side, baring your swollen folds and your pulsing clit, sensitive from his relentless attention.

He doesn't thrust in. He doesn't go for the full stretch you’ve been silently praying for. Instead, he slides the drooling tip of his cock over your slit. He isn't even entering you yet, he's just... slapping it against your clit, teasing the very edge of your tolerance.

You wanted the lace, the play, the slow burn... but God, you also wanted him to fuck you until you couldn't remember your name. You wanted the stretch.

But Caleb is a man who listens. Or rather, he's a man who has spent a lifetime studying every detail of your desires and right now he is giving you exactly what you asked for.

He leans down, his eyes dark, watching the way your face contorts with pleasure and frustration. He doesn't give you the release of a full thrust, he just feeds you the tip. He slides just the head of his cock into your pussy, a teasing invasion that barely makes a dent.

The reaction is instantaneous. Your walls react to him like a living thing, clenching around him, desperately trying to suck him deeper, to pull the rest of him in. The sensation is so perfectly matched that a synchronized moan breaks from both of you.

He pulls out just a fraction and then he thrusts the tip back in. Over and over again.

“Please,” you whimper, the word sounding pathetic even to your own ears. “Baby, please...”

You’re trying to force him to go deeper. But he’s in total control. His left hand is working the length of his cock, pumping with a desperate rhythm, while his right hand finds your clit.

His eyes are pinned to yours, watching every flicker of emotion on your face as if he’s trying to memorize the way you fall apart.

And then, the teasing ends.

His mushroom tip, still nestled just inside your entrance, begins to pulse. Warm, thick spurts of cum hit your sensitive walls, flooding the tiny space he’s occupied.

Your pussy clenches around the tip of his cock, trying to suck every last drop out of him while his hand squeezes the rest of his length, forcing the remainder of his seed into you, filling you up until his cum starts to leak out.

He finally collapses against you, the weight of his body pressing you deep into the mattress.

"You're so loud when you're happy," he murmurs before pressing a slow, lingering kiss to your temple, then your cheek, before finally settling his lips against yours in a kiss that tastes of salt and everything you are to him.

He pulls back just a bit, his gaze dropping to where the soaked lace of your panties still clings to your thighs, then back up to your eyes. There’s a flicker of that obsessive intensity returning to his expression.

"There isn't a single thing in this world you could ask for that wouldn't make me crawl to you. So don't hold back, Pips."

“One is in a more stable condition than the other, but I’m certain that they will both make it.” She says, but he nearly tunes the rest of her words out. Alive. You and MC were both alive. He’s finally able to swallow the knot that had been forming at the pit of his throat. “The one who brought the unconscious lady in – was that her partner?”

“She was very brave. Didn’t let go of her the entire time, until she knew she was safe.” Relief hits him so fast and so violently that it nearly hurts. Sudden enough for his knees to nearly give in. The chip is no longer flooding him with a blinding, white-hot pain. You were both safe, and that was all that mattered. That was all that was ever supposed to matter. He swears that the colors that make up his field of vision suddenly became a few shades brighter. The gray lifts at the edges, and it becomes a little easier to breathe.

He knew he fucked up. The realization quietly seeps out from him. There were so many things that he needed to fix. Too many things that he needed to say – words that took nearly losing you for him to finally say out loud. He had so much to apologize for, both to you and MC, but especially you.

He just hoped that you’d forgive him with a little bit of time. Or a lot of it. He didn’t care. Caleb would offer you all the time that it takes, as much as you needed in order to grant him forgiveness.

When he saw MC for the first time after the mission, she was pale, exhausted, yet upright. Her body had been wrapped in countless bandages and gauze, but she was alright. You were alright. She saw it in his face before anything. The relief that tore through her was blissfully immediate, and she’d grabbed his sleeve before he could even utter a single word, trembling with reassurance, at last. “She’s comatose, but…”

“She’s okay,” MC had breathed out, and he nodded. Tears had filled her waterline then, and she let out a choked sob, wrapping his arms around him in relief. Oh, you had nearly given your life to save her. She had warned you not to, but you did, anyway. You fit in so beautifully with every other hunter at the Association, just by being so selflessly… you. “They said she’s okay.”

It takes a few weeks, but they wait.

You’re transferred to Akso on the same day, confined to that godforsaken hospital bed until you wake up. The days quickly blur into one another, but feel excruciatingly slow all at once; still, they make the effort to visit every day. MC brings you things first when she’s finally back on her feet – such as a fresh vase of your favorite flowers, a stack of snacks that you love yet are far from being medically cleared to eat, and little trinkets that Caleb insists you’ll complain about once you wake up. She talks to you, too – rambling about everything, from how her day of recovery went to how stupid the great Colonel of the Farspace Fleet was for nearly letting you go.

“Caleb’s a real dummy, isn’t he?” 

“It’s okay. You can tell him all about it when you wake up. That idiot is long overdue for an apology, anyway.”

Caleb is a little quieter about his visits, but he still shows up every day. On most days, he just observes you. The way the machines at Akso hum softly around you, the way your chest perpetually falls and rises again. It calms him, it reminds him that you’re still here. He memorizes the soft cadence of your breathing and the faint twitch of your fingers that nearly makes him believe that you’re about to wake up. You don’t, though, much to his chagrin.

Sometimes, Caleb talks to you. Sometimes, he just sits there, chair pulled up next to you, thumb brushing absentminded circles against the inside of your wrist, eyes lingering over your visage. He’s careful – always so careful, like you’ll shatter into countless fragments if he presses too hard. Sometimes, he gives you gifts. At one point, he brings you a book from your wishlist every day until he eventually buys out the whole list. He intended to get them for you for your birthday, but he supposes that he can spoil you a little. Eventually, the entire table in your room is filled with gifts from him, MC, and all your friends. The staff at Akso, particularly Zayne, are a little amused.

All his gifts are waiting. Just like he is. This time, though, he refuses to be too late. He’ll never be too late again. He’ll make sure of that.

“I’m here,” he tells you quietly, on more days than he can count. “I always will be.”

You never answer him, until one day, you do.

Caleb is next to you and nearly dozed off. MC had gone home a few hours ago, and visiting hours were nearly over, but he always stays until the last second, because he was so afraid of missing a moment such as this one. Your lashes flutter, and you begin to stir, and it’s almost like he was never even asleep in the first place. Your eyes finally open, slowly and deliberately, trying not to let the fluorescent hospital lights blind you. And your voice – rough and ridden with sleep, but still unmistakably yours – breathes out the one thing that he has been starving to hear for what feels like a lifetime.

“Caleb…”

His chair scrapes sharply against the floor as he surges forward, one hand hovering just shy of your face, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he actually touches you. And then, at that moment, the world finally rights itself again.

But then, your expression twists. You didn’t look relieved. No, you looked… You looked afraid. “...Caleb?”

His heart stutters at how small your voice had gotten, at the realization that something was clearly wrong. The machines are ringing in his ears, and he feels like he’s unwillingly getting dragged back onto shore, when all he wants to do is stay submerged under the water. 

“Caleb!”

Caleb finally jerks awake with a sharp exhale, and the phantom warmth of your hand is still burning against his skin. MC is standing over him, one hand still on his shoulder, where she’d been trying so hard to shake him awake. He wished that she had never done that. “You were dreaming again.”

The room is monotone and grey, so wrongfully dull, and it takes him exactly three seconds to remember why. Right. You had never woken up. Today was the three hundred and sixty-fifth day that has passed since your death. Exactly one year, and they were going to visit your grave, not your hospital room. Because you were dead. You have been for a long while.

Lately, he’s been having these dreams, and they’ve been getting worse. But truthfully, was ‘worse’ the correct word to describe them? Because sometimes, he thinks that they’re the only things keeping him upright. He wonders – a thought that has crossed his head multiple times – if it would just be easier to stay asleep. To live in that perpetual summer afternoon for the rest of his life, where the colors mix so beautifully and finally form something worth looking at. 

Maybe, in a pocket universe out there, there’s a timeline where he had actually saved you. Unfortunately, this was not that timeline. If the poet who was narrating his life had been kinder, Caleb thinks that his life might have been easier to live. But the poets are not kind. They are cruel, and cruelty has been the only thing that they’ve ever known. The only thing he’s ever known.

Unfortunately, the poets are merciless, and that was just the way things were. The way things will continue to be, for as long as he lives. He has no say in the matter, because he’s never had one in the first place.

SOMETIMES I GO TO SLEEP / AND I'M STILL SEVENTEEN / YOU STILL LIVE DOWN MY STREET / YOU'RE NOT MAD AT ME.

the beginning | previous.

He didn’t know about the secret, pre-dawn sessions you’d been logging for weeks. He didn’t see you wince and shake out your right foot when you thought no one was looking, trying to disperse the persistent, hot ache that had taken root in your ankle—a souvenir from over-rotating a triple flip two weeks prior. You’d iced it, taped it, and lied to yourself that it was just stiffness.

He only saw the set of your jaw, the fire in your eyes that seemed aimed at an invisible finish line. He thought it was just the pressure of the qualifiers. He didn’t know the finish line was him.

He had something to tell you. Something that had been sitting in his throat like a stone for days. His bags, he knew, were already half-packed in the sleek, impersonal apartment his new management kept. A one-way ticket to Zurich was locked in a drawer. He was to leave the day after the qualifiers. The “opportunity of a lifetime,” they said. A clean break. A fresh start.

It felt like a sentence.

In the quiet moments, a different fantasy played in his head. It was childish, born of watching older pairs glide as one during a recent exhibition. He’d pictured it. The two of you, not as rivals on the same ice, but as partners on the ice. Your fierce determination channeled into synchrony, his intuitive grace grounding your power. 

He’d even, in a moment of unprecedented boldness, almost mumbled something about it a week prior—“Your double axel entry is strong. It would pair well with a lift.” But you’d just scowled, thinking he was critiquing your solo technique, and skated away. The moment, and his courage, shattered.

So on that final day, as he lounged on the bleachers pretending to rest, he was wrestling with the words. I’m leaving. But maybe, after… we could try something different? 

It sounded stupid even in his head. The future was a vast, intimidating blank, and you were the only constant, the only real thing in it. The thought of carving that future without you in it, even at a distance, felt like stepping onto ice he knew would not hold him.

Then you took the ice for your last run-through. He watched you set up for the combination—not the one you’d been assigned, but a harder, riskier one. The one he had been practicing. A cold trickle of dread went down his spine. You were pushing too hard. He sat up, the words of warning stuck in his suddenly dry mouth.

The first jump was shaky. He saw the landing foot wobble, the ankle buckling inward for a millisecond before you fought to stabilize it. His own muscles tensed in sympathetic panic. 

Stop, he thought, screaming it internally. Abort the second jump. Just glide out.

But you didn’t. You were the underdog. You fought. You launched into the second rotation.

The sound was not a crack to him. It was the sound of the world splitting in two.

One moment you were airborne, a portrait of furious ambition. The next, you were a crumpled, gasping heap on the ice, and the wrongness of the angle of your leg was the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.

His body moved before his mind. The ice beneath his blades felt like glass he was breaking with every stride. When he reached you, the sight of your white, pain-contorted face seared itself into his permanent memory.

“Hey. Look at me.” his voice was someone else’s—low, urgent, terrified. His hands hovered, wanting to fix, to undo, but terrified of causing more damage. The coaches’ yelling sounded miles away.

In your eyes, swimming with pain and shock, he saw the finish line you’d been chasing had just vanished. And he knew, with a sickening certainty, that he was part of the reason you’d been running toward it so blindly.

The ambulance came. The adults took over. He was pushed to the periphery, a ghost in his own life. He visited the hospital the next morning, before his flight. They wouldn’t let him into your room. “Family only,” the nurse said gently. “She’s sedated, dear.”

He stood in the sterile hallway, the bouquet of irises (blue, like the rink’s early-morning light) feeling absurd in his hands. He left them with the nurse. He got into the black car. He looked back once, at the hospital growing smaller, and the part of him that was just a boy, the boy who dreamed of pair skates and shared sighs, stayed behind on that cold linoleum floor.

He thought you knew he was leaving. Everyone at the rink seemed to know. He thought your intense focus, your reckless push, was your way of saying goodbye to the rivalry—or maybe of proving something to him before he went. He never imagined it was because you didn’t know, because he’d failed to tell you, and you were trying to close a gap you thought was purely about skill, not geography and time.

The misunderstanding was complete. You believed he saw your broken body and simply left for greater things, abandoning the wreckage. He believed he had, through his silence and his unspoken future, indirectly caused the wreckage, and had no right to stay and offer comfort he didn’t deserve.

The music didn’t just stop for him that day. The entire composition of his life shifted into a minor key. Every gold medal felt like a counterweight to a debt he could never repay. Every flawless performance was a silent message sent across oceans. 

See? I’m using what I have. I’m not wasting it. I’m sorry.

And the dream of pair skates? He locked it away. It became the most forbidden of thoughts, a treasure too beautiful and too painful to ever examine. Until he saw you again in a stale arena, a ghost from the life he’d lost, and the lock began to rust.

—

The silence in your room after the kiss was a physical presence. You pressed the back of your hand to your lips, as if you could still feel the searing imprint of his, the desperate, aching pressure that had shaken you to your core. Your mind was a cacophony of contradictions. The sharp memory of his abandonment against the soft, vulnerable confession of his loneliness. The image of him as an untouchable star against the feel of his sweat-damp skin under your palms. The child you knew against the man who had just unraveled you with a single touch.

Down the hall, in the dim light of his suite, Rafayel was equally still. The ghost of your mouth on his was a brand. The throbbing in his ankle was a distant pulse compared to the ache in his chest, an ache that had just cracked wide open.

He looked at the empty space where you’d knelt to tend his wound, where you’d listened to him. He had told you about Switzerland. He had given you a piece of the loneliness he’d carried like a secret trophy. And you had given him a truth of your own—the heavy, slow world after the ice. It was the most honest exchange you’d had since you were children sharing a hot chocolate.

And then he had ruined it. Or maybe he had completed it. The want, a constant, humming frequency since your reappearance in the White Dove Arena, had simply overwhelmed the fragile new connection. He had reached for you, and you had met him halfway, and for one blazing moment, the fault line didn’t feel like a rift. It felt like a circuit, finally closed.

Now, the aftermath was a cold void. The memory of your wide, shocked eyes as you pulled away haunted him. Mistake, you’d called it. The word echoed. Was it a mistake because you felt nothing? Or because you felt too much, and it terrified you?

He thought of the boy in the hospital hallway, holding irises. He had run then, from the pain, from the guilt, from the overwhelming feeling of being responsible for a fracture he didn’t know how to fix. A part of him, the trained, self-preserving part, screamed to run again. To let the Liaison do her job, to let the superstar perform his, and to let the painful, complicated girl from his past fade back into memory.

But the other part, the part that remembered pair skates and sighs, was so desperately tired of running.

—

The morning after the kiss dawned with a brutal, clinical clarity. Your ankle gave a sympathetic twinge as you stood, a ghostly echo of the fresh injury down the hall. The memory of his mouth on yours felt like a dream, a feverish hallucination born of stress. But the sharp, metallic taste of panic in the back of your throat was real.

The next week was an exercise in silent, mutual suffering.

Rafayel’s “twisted ankle from a curb” story was accepted with grumbling suspicion by Thomas. The competition in Shanghai was scratched. The official statement cited “a minor training injury requiring precautionary rest.” The truth—the gash, the meltwater, the reckless, poetic futility of it—remained a secret held between the two of you, a third entity in every room.

You performed your duties. You arranged for a physiotherapist. You coordinated the postponement of events. Your interactions were models of sterile efficiency. You’d bring him updated schedules, your eyes fixed on the document, not on his face. He’d take them with a quiet “Thank you, Liaison.” 

The space between you hummed with everything that had been said, and everything that had been done.

You saw his frustration. It wasn’t the explosive kind from before, but a quiet, simmering thing. He was a creature of motion forced into stillness, a bird with a clipped wing pacing a gilded cage. The guilt you felt was new and unwelcome. 

You hated that you cared about his restlessness. You hated the part of you that replayed the moment his blade caught, the surge of protective terror that had nothing to do with logistics.

His ankle healed, as modern medicine and elite athletic physiology ensured it would. But a month without competition for a man like Rafayel was a lifetime. The tour rolled on, his exhibitions now simpler, modified. 

The fire in his performances banked to a quieter, more intense glow. You could see the calculation in his eyes—not of steps, but of risk, of pain thresholds, of how much of his former self he could conjure without the foundation of flawless technique.

One evening, in a cold, mid-tier city, you found yourself drawn to the empty arena long after the team had left for dinner. You told yourself you’d left your tablet. You knew it was a lie.

He was there. Alone. Not on the pristine main ice, but on a smaller, older practice sheet at the back of the complex. The lights were low. He was in simple practice clothes, no music. 

He was… shaking. Not skating. Just standing in the center, shifting his weight gingerly from foot to foot, testing the push-off from his healed ankle. A slight wince tightened his features before he smoothed it away. He looked, not like a superstar, but like any athlete tentatively returning to a betrayed limb. The vulnerability of it stole your breath.

You stood in the shadows of the entrance, your own heart thudding dully. You remembered your own first time back on the ice after the cast came off. The fear had been a living thing, a cold serpent coiling around your spine. The ice hadn’t felt like freedom. It had felt like a predator waiting to remind you of its power. 

You’d lasted ten minutes before the phantom pains and the dizzying fear sent you stumbling off, never to return.

He began to move. Not jumps, not spins. Just edges. Slow, careful, deep outside edges, holding the curve until his ankle trembled with the strain. He was rebuilding the language, letter by painful letter.

“You’ll overwork it,” your voice echoed in the vast, quiet space, surprising you both.

He didn’t startle. He completed the edge, coming to a stop facing you. “Liaison. Doing late-night rounds?”

“Someone has to ensure you don’t undo a month of healing in one night of stubbornness.”

A faint, tired smile touched his lips. “My stubbornness is well-documented.” 

You watched from the shadows, arms crossed against the chill seeping through your blazer. “Documented and disregarded, apparently.”

He looked down at his skates, then back at you. “What does it feel like for you now? Looking at it.”

The faint, tired smile on his lips hung in the air, an acknowledgment of the unchangeable. In the quiet that followed, you felt the shift—the careful probing beneath the surface of his question. The ice wasn’t just a physical space now, it was the ground he was trying to clear between you, and you weren’t ready.

“It feels cold,” you said, your voice deliberately flat, turning your gaze from him to scan the empty bleachers as if checking for something. “Like any other surface that needs maintenance.”

You felt his eyes on you, a patient, pressing weight. “That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s the only answer I have.” you pushed off the boards, intending to walk back towards the equipment room, to find that fictional tablet. “You should stop. Pushing it now will just set you back.”

“You’re an expert on stopping, aren’t you?”

The words, softly delivered, froze you in your tracks. They weren’t cruel, but they were a direct tap on the fault line. You didn’t turn around. “It’s called self-preservation. You should try it sometime.”

You heard the slow, deliberate scrape of his blades as he glided closer to the boards behind you. “What are you preserving, exactly? The perfect record of never trying again?”

A hot coil of anger and hurt tightened in your chest. He was picking at the lock, and you couldn’t let him in. “I’m preserving my sanity. My ability to do my job, which, right now, is to tell you to get off the ice before you turn a healed sprain into a chronic problem. Thomas will have my head.”

“Thomas isn’t here.” his voice was closer now, just over your shoulder. “It’s just you. And me. And a lot of quiet. You used to hate the quiet. You’d hum your program music just to fill it.”

The memory was a tiny, precise invasion. You had done that. A nervous habit he’d teased you for. The fact that he remembered, that he’d wield it now, felt like a violation.

“People change,” you bit out, finally turning to face him. He was leaning on the boards, his expression unreadable. “I’m not that girl anymore. She’s the one who stayed on the ice, remember? You said so yourself.”

“I said a lot of things,” he conceded, his eyes searching your face. “I’m trying to say something different now. Tell me what you’re really afraid of. Is it the ice? Or is it that if you get back on it, you’ll have to stop being angry at me? That you might actually have to feel something else?”

He was too close to the truth. The panic was no longer about ligaments or hard landings. It was about the terrifying prospect of dismantling the story you’d lived by for ten years—the story where he was the villain who left, and you were the victim who bravely moved on. 

If that story cracked, what was left? Just two wounded people on unstable ground.

“I’m not having this conversation,” you said, your voice low and final. “My job is your logistics, not your psychoanalysis. Get off the ice, Rafayel. That’s not a request from your liaison. It’s an order from the person who had to clean up the blood last time you were reckless.”

You saw the flicker in his eyes—not anger, but a pained understanding that you were using the gash, the intimacy of your care, as a weapon to keep him out. It worked. The soft curiosity in his gaze shuttered, replaced by a more familiar, guarded neutrality.

He gave a single, slow nod, pushing himself upright from the boards. “Understood.”

He skated away from you, not toward the exit, but back to the center, resuming his slow, testing edges. He was obeying the letter of your order—he was stopping the conversation—but defiantly staying on the ice. It was a silent rebuke. You could control the dialogue, but you couldn’t control him.

You stood there for a moment longer, the cold of the arena seeping past your jacket, past your skin, right into the old, calcified hurt. You had dodged him. You had held the line. 

The heavy door of the arena shut behind you with a final thud that echoed in the empty corridor. But the silence you’d sought was a lie. The muffled, rhythmic scrape of his blades continued in your head, a phantom track following you back to the sterile sanctuary of your hotel room.

The next day, the routine was armor. You delivered the updated physio schedule with a clipboard as a shield. He accepted it with a neutral “Thank you,” his eyes flicking over you, reading the retreat you’d staged behind your eyes. The air was thick with what hadn’t been said.

He didn’t try to probe again. Instead, he practiced a different kind of pressure—the pressure of presence. During a sponsor lunch, he requested you sit at the table, not with the other staff. 

“The liaison should be on hand for logistical questions,” he’d stated, leaving no room for argument. 

You spent two hours feeling the weight of his occasional, sideways glance while discussing freight timelines with a bored executive.

In the evenings, he’d take his carefully measured walks along the hotel’s perimeter path, always as you were returning from some errand or another, forcing a clipped, professional nod of acknowledgement. It felt deliberate. A quiet, relentless reminder that he was there, a constant in your peripheral vision, just as he’d been a constant in the backdrop of your youth.

Your dreams became treacherous. Not of falling, but of standing at the edge of the rink, your old skates laced tight, while he watched from the center. In the dream, you’d take a step forward, but the ice would always remain just an inch beyond your toe pick, an unbridgeable gap. You’d wake with your heart pounding, not from fear of the ice, but from the frustration of the reach.

A week later, in a new city, you found yourself at the rink again after hours. You told yourself you were auditing the overnight ice maintenance. The crew was efficient, their work a familiar, lulling symphony of Zamboni growls and the hiss of the resurfacer.

He was there too, of course. Not skating. Sitting high in the empty stands, a dark silhouette against the rows of plastic seats. Watching the machine paint its perfect, glacial layers.

You pretended not to see him, focusing on your tablet, checking off imaginary boxes. The crew finished and left, the lights dimming to night mode. Still, he didn’t move.

The silence became a taut wire. You could either break it or be broken by it. You walked to the bottom of the stands, not looking up at him.

“The tour ends in Jakarta,” you said, your voice aimed at the empty concession stand across the way. “Two more exhibitions. Then my contract is fulfilled.”

From above, you heard a soft, humorless sound, almost a sigh. “Efficient as ever. Already counting down the days until your sentence is over.”

“It’s not a sentence. It’s a job.” you finally glanced up. He was resting his forearms on his knees, looking down at you, his face half in shadow. “And jobs end.”

“And then what?” he asked, his voice low. “You go back to your desk? You ferry more dreams in boxes? You lock the ghost back in its closet?”

“That was the agreement.” you crossed your arms, a feeble defense against the chill and his probing. “You got your liaison. I did my job. We’re even.”

“We will never be even,” he said, the words dropping like stones into the quiet between you. He stood and made his way down, the metal steps clinking softly under his weight. He stopped on the last row, still elevated, putting you at eye level. “That’s what you don’t understand. This wasn’t a transaction for me.”

You looked away, focusing on the ‘EXIT’ sign’s steady glow. “Then what was it?”

“A chance.” he took a slow breath. “One I didn’t get ten years ago. And now it’s almost gone, and you’re… you’re already halfway out the door, still looking at me like I’m the one who turned the lock.”

The accuracy of it stung. You were pulling away, preemptively distancing yourself from the crater his departure would leave this time. The old playbook was the only one you had.

“What do you want me to say, Rafayel?” the frustration leaked into your whisper. “That it’s been a delight? You were right. Your presence… it didn’t just remind me of the accident. It reopened the abandonment that came after. Every time you walk into a room, I remember what it felt like to watch you leave the last one.”

You saw him flinch, as if you’d physically struck him. Good, you thought faintly. Let him feel it.

“I’m not even mad anymore,” you continued, the fatigue bone-deep. “I think I’m just… tired. I spent so long wanting to be as good as you. To prove I belonged on the same ice. And then you were gone, and the proving just… lost its point. Why fight to be seen by someone who isn’t there to look?” you shrugged, the gesture hollow. “So I stopped. It was easier.”

The pain on his face was raw, undisguised. He descended the final step, closing the distance so you had to tip your head back to meet his eyes. “You think I didn’t see you?” he asked, his voice thick. “You were the only real thing in that entire, artificial world. Your fight, your grit… it was more compelling than any perfect jump I ever landed. I saw you.”

He reached out, his fingers gently brushing a stray strand of hair from your cheek. The intimacy of the gesture was a shock to your system. You closed your eyes, your breath catching. “Don’t.”

“Why?” his thumb traced the arch of your cheekbone, a touch so tender it threatened to unravel you completely. “Because it’s true? Or because you’re afraid to believe it?”

“Because it doesn’t change anything!” you whispered, your eyes still shut tight, building a wall of darkness against his intensity. “It doesn’t change that you left. It doesn’t change the silence that was between us.”

“Look at me.” his hand stilled, cupping your jaw. “Please.”

You forced your eyes open. They were brimming with unshed tears, blurring his earnest, pained expression. The sight of your distress seemed to fracture something in him. The determined intensity softened into something akin to grief.

“I can’t change the past,” he said, his own eyes suspiciously bright. “But I am here now. And I see you. Not the ghost of who you were. You. The woman who is so afraid of being left in the silence again that she’s trying to leave first.”

A single tear escaped, tracing a hot path down your cheek. He caught it with his thumb.

Then, wordlessly, he pulled you into his arms.

It wasn’t a romantic embrace. It was an anchor. A shelter. His arms wrapped around you, one hand cradling the back of your head, tucking you against his chest. You stood stiffly for a heartbeat, every instinct screaming to push away, to flee the terrifying vulnerability. But the solid beat of his heart under your ear, the familiar, safe scent of him mixed with cold arena air, was a siren’s call your weary soul couldn’t resist.

A shuddering breath wracked your body, and you melted into him. Your hands, trapped between you, slowly unfurled to clutch at the fabric of his sweater. You didn’t sob, but the silent tears came, soaking into the soft wool. He just held you tighter, his chin resting on the top of your head, his own breathing deep and steady.

You stood like that for what felt like an eternity and no time at all, in the dim, cold vastness of the empty arena. The unbroken ice witnessed no spectacular jumps, no tragic falls. Only this. Two former skaters, shattered and remade in different ways, holding onto each other in the quiet, not as a solution, but as a temporary, desperately needed ceasefire. 

For this moment, there was no past, no looming future in another city. Just the shared, imperfect warmth against the chill, and the silent, mutual agreement to simply stop fighting the pull of the fault line, and just let it hold them.

—

The news came an hour before his final exhibition in Jakarta. A flustered stage manager found you. “He’s… in a mood. Won’t talk to anyone but you. Something about the lighting cue being ‘chromatically offensive.’” the man looked pained. “Can you…?”

You nodded, a strange calm settling over you. You felt a dull, persistent pull, like a tide you were too tired to fight.

You found him in the stark white dressing room, pacing a short, tight path. He’d already changed into his costume—a sleek, black ensemble with subtle silver threads that caught the light like fractured ice. He looked every inch the superstar, except for the tension coiled in his shoulders and the restless energy in his steps.

“The lighting director is threatening to quit,” you said, closing the door behind you.

“Good. His taste is an affront to art and basic optics,” Rafayel muttered, not stopping his pacing.

“The cue is the same one you approved in Tokyo. And Osaka. And Shanghai.”

“And it was offensive there, too. I was being polite.” the sarcasm was a brittle shell. You could see it cracking at the edges, revealing the unease beneath.

You leaned against the vanity, watching him. “You’re never polite, Rafayel. What’s really wrong?”

He stopped pacing, finally looking at you. His blue-pink eyes held a stormy, frustrated glint, but beneath that, you caught a flicker of raw, unvarnished vulnerability. It was the same look he’d had as a boy before a big competition, the one he’d always tried to hide behind bravado.

He shrugged, a defensive, tight movement. “Nothing. The world is just full of incompetence tonight.”

“And you’re full of something else,” you said softly, pushing off from the vanity. You walked toward him, not stopping until you were directly in his path. He held his ground, his gaze wary. You didn’t speak. You just slowly knelt down on the plush carpet.

“What are you doing?” his voice had lost its edge, replaced by surprise.

“Checking the source of the problem,” you said, your voice practical. Your hands went to his left ankle, the one he’d injured. You began to gently probe the area over the fine black fabric of his costume, feeling for heat or swelling. Your touch was clinical at first, then, almost unconsciously, it softened into something closer to a caress, your thumb smoothing over the remembered line of the bandage.

He went perfectly still above you. You could feel the tension draining from his leg under your hands, replaced by a different kind of stillness. The sarcasm, the defensive posturing, it all seemed to leak out of him, leaving behind just the man who was nervous before a performance.

“It’s fine,” he said, his voice low and quiet now. “It’s not the ankle.”

“I know,” you whispered, your hands stilling. You were kneeling at his feet, and the intimacy of the position should have felt subservient, strange. Instead, it felt grounding. You were both here, in this fragile, quiet space. 

The Rafayel in front of you was a mystery—a man shaped by fame and loneliness, by a past you shared but didn’t fully understand. Yet, the prospect of unraveling that mystery, of learning him again, didn’t fill you with the old, cold fear. It felt… inevitable.

His hand came down, his fingers gently tilting your chin up so you had to meet his eyes. The touch sent a familiar, electric jolt through you, a direct line to the memory of his kiss in the hotel room—desperate and consuming—and the later, tender solidity of his embrace in the stands. Your heart thudded heavily against your ribs.

Before his thumb could trace the line it had memorized on your cheek, before the space between your gaze and his lips could vanish completely, you pulled back. You stood up, breaking the contact.

“Your hair is perfect. The costume is perfect. The ice is at -5.5,” you said, your voice a little unsteady as you busied yourself with straightening a non-existent wrinkle on his sleeve. “The offensive lighting cue has been adjusted to a less assaultive shade of blue. There’s nothing left to fix out here.”

He watched you, his eyes dark with understanding and a hint of frustration. “We need to talk.”

“Later,” you said firmly, picking up a lint roller from the vanity and making a show of running it over his back, though there was nothing there. “After the show. You need to focus on this. That’s what matters right now.”

He caught your wrist as you moved around him, not tightly, but enough to stop you. The touch burned. “It’s not the only thing that matters.” he turned you to face him, his expression unguarded, serious. “I want you to be there, in the wings. Where I can see you. I… need it.”

The admission, so soft and direct, flustered you. It was a vulnerability he rarely showed, a request, not a command. The air between you grew thick again, charged with all the words unsaid and all the touches withheld. Your eyes flickered to his mouth. His gaze dropped to yours. The pull was magnetic, terrifying.

“I’ll be there,” you whispered, the promise tearing itself from you. Then, before the gravitational pull could win, before either of you could close that agonizing, tempting gap, you slipped your wrist from his light grasp. “Good luck.”

You were out the door before he could respond, leaning against the cool wall of the corridor, your pulse racing. It hurt, the wanting. It was a fresh, acute pain layered over the old, dull ache. It hurt because it was real, and it was now, and it was for the man he had become—a man who was still partly a stranger, yet felt more like home than anything had in a very long time. 

You closed your eyes, listening to the distant roar of the crowd waiting for him, knowing you’d be in the shadows watching, just as he’d asked. Not as his liaison, not as a ghost from his past, but as something new, fragile, and terrifyingly alive.

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Fingers slowly wrapping around your wrists, he gently tugs your hands away from his sensitive nubs. The faint brush of your fingertips letting go makes his hips involuntarily buck up against you again. “Hah…!” 

The pressure makes your eyes teary, cheeks flushing. “Calebbb!” Eyes half-lidded with want you cover his lips with yours and pathetically mouth at him, groaning when he tries to kiss you back. 

“I’m gonna cum,” he pants against your lips, struggling to keep up the pace. Your tongues slide against each other, filled with spit and heavy breaths. 

The frantic frotting makes his whole body shudder as you keep pushing against him, his hips giving one final desperate thrust. "No, no, no!" Caleb moans brokenly into your mouth, chanting your name as he cums hard, head falling back against the pillows. 

His cock twitches, still tucked in his sweats and boxers as his creamy semen seeps through the fabric. Caleb’s head falls down on your shoulder as cries fall out of his mouth, too sensitive as you continue to use his bulge like a toy. 

“I said not to cum without me,” you wail, holding onto his shoulders tight as you overstimulate him. 

His whole body trembles as you keep moving, nerves fraying. “Pips, just give me- hah, a few minutes! Seconds even!” His voice cracks, fingers weakly scrambling to grip your hips but failing as another small wave of pleasure rips through him. 

When you ignore his babbling, his teeth sink gently into your shoulder, muffling his whimpers as his legs spread wider under you, helpless. 

You frot against his clothed, softening length, eager to finally reach your orgasm. Your toes curl when you nudge your clit perfectly against his cock, seeing stars behind your eyelids as you finally cum. 

His eyes roll back as he feels your body tense and release, his own sensitive cock twitching at the sudden pressure against his softening member. A choked whimper escapes him as he feels your warmth soaking into his sweats, your pleasure triggering another small, weak orgasm from him. "F-fuck..." 

“Language,” you scold weakly, ears ringing as you fall limply against his sturdy chest. You’re sweaty and out of breath, scowling at Caleb’s dopey grin. 

"That was hot." He admits, his face flushing pink as he looks up at you. "You cummin’ on me like that..."

“…!” You pinch his thigh with an embarrassed whine and press more of your weight onto him. “Whatever just… h-help me clean up, I can’t feel my legs.”