lofii🍓

By the time Titus Danforth slid the wedding ring onto your finger, it was already too late to run.

You’d understand that later—hours later, with candlelight shivering over diamond and platinum, with his hand wrapped around yours like the last quiet step in a ritual already underway, with the whole grotesque machine of his family already grinding forward around you too smoothly to stop.

But that night, at the start of it, you still thought there was time.

You still believed, in some stubborn, furious part of yourself, that there had to be a line somewhere. Some point at which even people like them—people with too much money, too much blood behind their names, too much rot hidden under the veneer of polished manners—would finally hear the word no and be forced to reckon with it.

Time to refuse.

Time to humiliate your parents into calling the whole thing off.

Time to make enough of a scene that even the Danforths would decide you were more trouble than you were worth.

That illusion lasted exactly as long as the drive up to Danforth mansion.

The estate rose out of the dark like a stronghold, not a home—severe lines, old stone, and the kind of wealth that had long ago stopped caring whether anyone found it welcoming. Warm light glowed low behind the windows, but nothing about the place felt soft. It was beautiful in the way old money always was: shadowed, expensive, and built to make everyone entering it feel smaller than the family that owned it.

Rain had fallen earlier, and the world still smelled of it. Wet earth. soaked box hedges. iron-rich soil. The cold that slipped in through the cracked car window had bite, but it did nothing to clear the weight pressing behind your ribs. The closer the family car rolled toward the house, the more the estate seemed less like a home and more like a mouth opening, ready to swallow anyone who approached whole.

You sat back against the leather seat and watched it loom larger through the glass.

Beside you, your mother kept both hands folded in her lap so tightly the tendons stood out.

She hadn’t said much on the drive over. Neither had you. There hadn’t been anything worth saying after the call that afternoon. Not after the clipped, bloodless way your father had informed you there would be a dinner at the Danforth estate, that attendance wasn’t optional, and that you were expected to be on your best behavior.

As if that hadn’t been enough to curdle your stomach on instinct.

As if anyone in this city ever got summoned to a Danforth table unless the family meant to take something.

The car rolled to a stop beneath the portico. One of the doors opened before the driver had fully climbed out, a servant already waiting beneath the spill of amber light. Efficient. Silent. Trained to move around wealth the same way one moved around lit matches and open gasoline—carefully, without drawing attention.

You stepped onto the wet stone and tipped your chin up, taking in the house one last time.

The front doors were open.

That, somehow, felt worse than if they’d been shut.

Inside, warmth hit you first. Not comfort—just heat gathered in old walls, thick with beeswax, smoke, old perfume, and polished wood. The house didn’t open up so much as close around you. Low golden light burned from wall sconces, catching on dark paneling, antique tables, and the carved edges of chairs that looked more ceremonial than comfortable. Portraits watched from the walls in heavy frames, generations of Danforth faces rendered in oil and shadow. Every room felt arranged rather than lived in, as if comfort had never ranked very high among Danforth priorities.

Dead Danforths, all of them.

Or soon-to-be, if there was any justice in the world.

A servant took your coat. Another offered a tray of drinks. Somewhere deeper in the house, a string quartet was playing low enough to be mistaken at first for the hum of the building itself.

You didn’t take a drink.

Your mother did. Fast.

You glanced at her. “Comforting.”

“Don’t start.”

“I haven’t started anything.”

Her mouth tightened. “Please.”

You almost laughed at that. Please. As though this were one of those evenings that could still be guided into civility if only everyone used the right cutlery and kept their voices down.

As though you hadn’t spent the entire drive here feeling like livestock on the way to a very expensive slaughterhouse.

A third servant appeared, older than the others, spine straight as a blade.

“They’re waiting in the council room.”

Of course they were.

Not the dining room. Not the conservatory. Not any space with warmth or softness in its name. The council room.

You followed the servant through corridors that seemed designed to remind guests exactly whose house they were in—dark wood, arched thresholds, muted rugs softening every footstep, and pools of amber light that never quite reached the ceiling. The place had the hush of a church and the intimidation of a courtroom. Nothing garish. Nothing modern. Just old money and older control pressing in from every side.

By the time you reached the double doors at the end of the hall, your pulse was a hard, steady thing.

The servant opened them.

Conversation died.

The room beyond was formal without being grand, the sort of space built for family decisions no one else was meant to question. Dark walls drank the light. Amber sconces and shaded lamps threw a low glow across polished wood, heavy chairs, and a patterned rug worn soft beneath generations of expensive shoes. Nothing in it looked accidental. Every object seemed placed to frame authority. Several faces turned toward you and your family with the flat attentiveness of people already halfway through deciding what your life was worth.

You knew most of them by sight. You’d grown up in orbit around these people, at galas and funerals and charity auctions and whispered afterparties your parents thought you were too young to understand.

Danforths at the far end. A few representatives from other old families arranged like chess pieces around them. Lawyers. Advisors. Men who’d spent their whole lives confusing cruelty for refinement.

And there—

He sat to the left of the head chair, one elbow hooked over the armrest, looking as if the room had been designed around him rather than the other way around.

Titus Danforth.

You’d seen him before, of course. At distance. Across rooms. Once, years ago, on the courthouse steps with blood drying in a neat crescent along one cuff while reporters shouted questions no one had the spine to repeat once he’d looked their way.

But proximity was different.

Proximity made it clear why people lost their nerve around him.

He wasn’t the loudest person in the room. Wasn’t even pretending to be. He sat in dark formalwear cut so sharply it made everyone else look rumpled, one hand curved around the stem of a glass, the fire gilding the planes of his face. There was no impatience in him. No restless movement. Just a kind of waiting stillness that was somehow more threatening than temper ever could’ve been. The kind a predator had when it already knew the outcome and was merely letting the moment arrive in its own time.

His gaze touched your face and stayed there.

Not appreciative. Not exactly.

Assessing.

As if he’d been expecting you.

Your father cleared his throat beside you. The sound landed weak.

“Thank you for receiving us.”

One of the older Danforths smiled without showing teeth. “Please. Sit.”

You didn’t move.

“Before I do,” you said, “I’d like to know why I’m here.”

Your mother made a tiny, horrified sound under her breath.

No one else seemed especially surprised.

At the head of the table sat Chester Danforth, old and dry and ghastly elegant in black. He folded his hands and regarded you the way some men regarded racehorses before purchase.

“Direct,” he said.

“I come by it honestly.”

That earned the faintest flicker at the corner of Titus’s mouth. Not quite a smile. More like the thought of one.

You hated that you noticed.

Chester gestured to the empty chair opposite Titus. “Sit, and we’ll spare ourselves theatrics.”

“I’m not the one staging an ambush in a room called the council chamber.”

Your father hissed your name. You ignored him.

For three long seconds no one moved.

Then Titus set his glass down with a soft click.

The sound was quiet. It still cut through the room like piano wire.

“Let her stand,” he said.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Every other voice in the room simply vanished around it.

You looked at him.

He was still watching you with that unnerving steadiness, one hand resting loose on the arm of his chair, expression impossible to read in full. Calm, yes. Mild, even. But there was something underneath the mildness that felt sharpened and deliberate, like velvet laid over a blade.

Chester inclined his head as though the matter had been settled by a higher authority.

Of course it had.

“Very well,” he said. “You’re here because the Danforth family requires an alliance. Your family requires protection. In light of recent events, both interests are best served by unity.”

You stared at him. “That could mean anything.”

“It means,” said your father, not looking at you, “an engagement has been arranged.”

The room went perfectly still.

For a split second, all you heard was the fire.

Then you laughed.

It came out once, sharp and unbelieving, and then stopped dead when you realized no one else was joining you.

Your eyes went to your father. Then your mother. Then back to Chester.

Then finally, unwillingly, to Titus.

He hadn’t moved.

He looked exactly the same as he had a moment ago. Same posture. Same terrifying calm. Same gaze on your face, unreadable and fixed. As if he were watching the first inevitable crack spread through glass.

“No,” you said.

No one answered.

Your pulse kicked harder. “No.”

Chester folded his hands tighter. “This benefits everyone at the table.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Mind your tongue,” your father snapped.

You turned on him. “You don’t get to sell me to these people and then talk to me about my tongue.”

“Enough.”

That came from your mother, but it landed with none of the force she probably meant it to. Fear had already thinned her voice.

You looked back at the table. “You can’t be serious.”

“We’re entirely serious,” Chester said.

“You think I’m going to agree to this?”

At that, Titus finally rose.

It was almost nothing, just the smooth shift of a man unfolding from a chair, but every eye in the room tracked it. He set one hand lightly on the table and regarded you across the candlelight.

He moved like someone who’d never been hurried in his life.

“You misunderstand,” he said.

His voice was low, polished, almost gentle. It should’ve sounded civilized. Instead it slid over your nerves like something expensive and lethal.

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

Silence.

Your throat went hot with fury.

He came around the table without urgency, passing the candelabra, the gleam of silver, the motionless figures seated on either side. Everyone made room for him instinctively, their bodies yielding before he even reached them.

He stopped a few feet away.

Closer now, he was worse.

There was nothing overt in his expression. No vulgar leer. No obvious satisfaction. If anything, he looked maddeningly composed, his dark tie immaculate, his cufflinks catching firelight, his face set in the kind of attentiveness most men only pretended to possess. The menace was in the precision of him. In the way he looked at you as though the rest of the room had ceased to matter.

You lifted your chin. “Then you can marry someone else.”

“I could,” he said.

The words were smooth as poured whiskey.

“I won’t.”

A silence opened between you, dense and ugly and charged.

You felt everyone in the room listening.

You also felt, with a sudden and vicious clarity, that Titus knew exactly what he was doing to you by answering this way. Not pushing. Not raising his voice. Not giving you anything easy to fight. He was refusing the argument by acting as if it had already ended.

You hated how effective it was.

“I’d rather die,” you said.

At that, finally, his mouth curved.

Not kindly.

Not much.

But enough.

“I know,” he said softly.

The words settled in your chest like a verdict.

Chester cleared his throat, too loudly this time, as if even he felt the room tipping out of his control and disliked it.

“The engagement will be announced within the week,” he said. “Preparations are already underway.”

You rounded on him. “You can go to hell.”

“Likely,” he said. “But you’ll still be married before we get there.”

Your father stood. “That’s enough.”

“No,” you sneered, not taking your eyes off the Danforths. “I think we’re all done pretending there’s a respectable version of this.”

Your hand was shaking. You curled it into your palm before anyone could see.

Titus noticed anyway. Of course he did.

He stepped aside at last, giving you a clear path to the door with the kind of grace that was more insulting than restraint.

“You’ve had a long evening,” he said. “You should rest.”

The dismissal in it lit something white-hot behind your ribs.

“Don’t speak to me like I belong here.”

He tilted his head just slightly. “Not yet.”

You left before you did something reckless enough to get your family buried in the gardens.

The door shut hard behind you. The corridor outside seemed colder than before, though the house was warm. You stood there for one sharp breath, then another, fighting the humiliating urge to pace like an ensnared animal.

Footsteps sounded behind you.

You turned, already furious.

Titus had come out alone, closing the council room doors with one hand. The sound of voices inside dimmed to a muffled murmur. He was nearer now than he’d been across the table, and the effect of that closeness was immediate and deeply inconvenient. His cologne was faint, expensive, something dark and resinous threaded with smoke. Beneath it clung the cleaner scent of starched cotton and cold night air, as if he’d come in not long before you had.

You hated that you could pick any of it out.

“You shouldn’t have followed me.”

“No?”

“No.”

He regarded you for a beat. “You seem upset.”

That nearly did it.

A laugh broke out of you, sharp as cut glass. “Upset?”

“I’m trying to be charitable.”

“Try harder.”

For the first time, he looked almost entertained.

It made him worse.

He leaned one shoulder against the wall opposite you, casual in a way that felt studied enough to be its own kind of violence. The corridor light turned the edge of his face gold and left the rest in shadow.

“You’re angry,” he said.

“I’m furious.”

“Good.”

You blinked. “What?”

“I’d be disappointed if you weren’t.”

His gaze dropped, briefly, to your hand at your side—as if he could still see the tremor you’d hidden in the room—then rose again.

“I have no use for timid women,” he said.

The words should’ve sounded like flattery. Somehow they didn’t. Somehow they sounded like he was selecting a weapon.

“You don’t have any use for women at all,” you snapped. “You have uses.”

Another tiny curve at his mouth.

“Sharp,” he murmured. “That’s one of the reasons.”

You stared at him. “Reasons for what?”

Now he pushed away from the wall and closed the distance between you in two measured steps.

Not enough to touch.

Enough to make the corridor feel suddenly, suffocatingly smaller.

“For choosing you.”

Your breath caught despite yourself, more from disgust than anything else, and he saw that too. Saw everything. His attention was surgical. There was nowhere to put your face that didn’t feel noticed.

“You’re insane.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You think that makes this sound romantic?”

At that, something shifted in his expression—subtle, but real. Amusement thinning into something cooler.

“Romance,” he said, “is for people with the luxury of illusion.”

You opened your mouth. He kept going.

“This is better.”

His voice had gone quieter. Not softer. Quieter. A difference you felt in your blood.

“This is honest.”

You wanted to slap him.

You wanted, with equal intensity, to force him to lose that impossible composure just once, just long enough to prove he was made of the same ugly nerves and blood and temper as everyone else.

Instead you said, “I’m not some jewel you can buy and put in a case because the room looks empty without it.”

“No,” he said.

Then, before you could decide whether he meant to mock you, his hand lifted.

He touched the inside of your wrist.

Just that.

Two fingers over the pulse point, light enough that he could’ve pretended it was accidental if he’d been anyone else. It wasn’t. The contact was deliberate down to the last fraction of pressure. Warm. Gloveless. Intimate in a way a grope never could’ve been.

Your whole body went rigid.

He looked down at where he was touching you, not hungrily, not greedily, but with the awful, proprietary interest of a man appraising workmanship.

Then he lifted his gaze back to your face.

“You’re something much rarer,” he said.

You jerked your hand away so hard your bracelet bit your skin.

His expression didn’t change.

“Don’t touch me.”

A beat.

“As you wish.”

He stepped back.

That should’ve made you feel victorious. Somehow it didn’t. Somehow it felt as though he’d only let go because he’d wanted you to feel what he could do with almost nothing.

“I'm not gonna marry you,” you said.

He studied you in the silence that followed, eyes dark and steady, the corners of his mouth gone neutral again.

Then he said, “Get some sleep.”

You stared at him.

“You’ll look better rested in the ring.”

You might have hit him if a servant hadn’t turned the corner just then, carrying folded linens and immediately freezing at the sight of the two of you in the corridor.

Titus stepped away from you at once, immaculate again, every trace of intimacy wiped clean so thoroughly it made you feel briefly insane for sensing it in the first place.

He nodded once to the servant, then to you.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll have the heirlooms brought out.”

And just like that he was gone, walking back toward the council room as though he hadn’t just upended the axis of your life with all the emotional investment of a man confirming dinner plans.

The heirlooms came out the next afternoon.

Of course they did.

No miracle intervened overnight. No late-breaking scandal. No sudden attack of conscience among your parents. By morning the engagement had already taken on the slick, polished inevitability of something handled by people with too much money to imagine failure. Your mother wept in private and avoided your eyes in public. Your father busied himself with logistics. Flowers appeared. Fabric swatches. Guest lists. Security arrangements.

By noon you wanted to burn down half the city.

Instead you were brought to another formal room at Danforth mansion, quieter than the rest and no less oppressive for it. Low light slid across burnished wood, old upholstery, and display cabinets crowded with the sort of antiques families like this mistook for legacy. The air carried old linen, polished wood, and the dry velvet hush of jewelry kept shut away more often than worn.

At the center of the room waited three attendants and an open lacquered case lined in dark blue silk.

Jewels lay inside.

Diamonds. Emeralds. Pearls yellowed faintly with age. Rings in settings so old they looked less designed than inherited by force.

You stopped in the doorway. “No.”

One of the attendants offered a brittle smile. “Just the fitting, miss.”

“I said no.”

“Titus said yes.”

You turned.

He was already in the room.

You hadn’t heard him enter.

He stood by the windows in shirtsleeves and dark trousers, suit jacket draped over the back of a chair, hands loose in his pockets. The stripped-back look should’ve made him seem more human. It didn’t. It just made him look less ceremonial and somehow more dangerous for it, as if this was what he was underneath the polish and the cufflinks and the family theater—something patient, expensive, and impossible to shame.

“You dismissed my answer yesterday,” you said. “Don’t expect a different one today.”

“No,” he said. “I expect consistency. It’s one of your better qualities.”

The attendants looked studiously at the floor.

You hated this room. Hated the sun in it. Hated the flowers on the sideboard. Hated the neat arrangement of rings waiting to be tried on your hand like shackles dressed as heritage.

Most of all, you hated that Titus looked entirely at ease in your fury.

He crossed the room and stopped before the open case.

“Leave us.”

The attendants vanished with near comic speed.

The door clicked shut.

For a few seconds, all you heard was the tick of the mantel clock.

“You enjoy this,” you said.

“I enjoy certainty.”

“You enjoy watching people realize they’re trapped.”

He glanced over the jewels, then chose a ring without hesitation. Platinum, old-cut diamond, severe and devastatingly beautiful.

“No,” you said again.

He turned, ring held between two fingers.

“Come here.”

You laughed once, flat and incredulous. “Have you mistaken me for someone obedient?”

“No.” His gaze swept over you, unhurried. “That would bore me.”

The heat that rose in you then was almost worse for being useless. Anger, yes, but threaded through with something rawer—the fury of being seen too clearly by someone you wanted to despise in simple terms.

You didn’t move.

Titus did.

He closed the distance without any visible tension, as if walking toward you in a locked room was the least dramatic thing in the world. When he reached you, he took your hand before you could snatch it away, not rough, not hesitant, fingers closing around yours with a confidence so complete it felt like the roughness had been moved somewhere subtler and more humiliating.

Your breath caught.

“Let go.”

“In a moment.”

His thumb pressed once against your knuckles, angling your hand toward the light. Then he slid the ring down your finger.

It fit.

Perfectly.

Too perfectly.

For one hideous second neither of you spoke.

The diamond flashed cold fire.

You looked at it and felt something cavernous open beneath your ribs.

Titus didn’t release your hand right away. He turned it slightly, studying the ring where it sat on your finger, his expression unreadable except for the terrible concentration of it.

“There,” he said at last, voice low. “That’s better.”

You yanked your hand back.

The ring stayed where it was.

Panic flared mean and hot and stupidly physical.

“It’s too tight.”

“It isn’t.”

“I want it off.”

He lifted his eyes to your face.

“No,” he said.

A silence stretched. The clock ticked on. Somewhere outside the window, crows were making ugly sounds in the bare trees.

You curled your fingers into your palm, as if hiding the ring might somehow lessen it.

Titus watched the movement.

Then his gaze went to your mouth.

When he spoke again, it was quieter than before.

“You wear my name beautifully.”

The words hit like a slap.

You stared at him, pulse suddenly loud in your ears.

“Go fuck yourself.”

He smiled then—really smiled, though only with his mouth, and the sight of it was so unexpectedly handsome and so deeply wrong on his face that your stomach dropped.

“There she is,” he murmured.

He reached past you, only to lift the veil draped over the nearby chair—ivory lace, antique and absurdly delicate. For one surreal second he held it between his hands as though testing weight, texture, history.

Then, without asking, he raised it and let the fabric fall over your hair.

The world turned cream and shadow.

You froze.

Through the sheer lace, his face blurred and sharpened with your breathing.

He stepped in just close enough that if you leaned even a fraction you’d hit him.

“This,” he said, almost conversationally, “is what they’ll remember.”

Your mouth had gone dry. “Take it off.”

“One day,” he said, “you’ll stop mistaking resistance for power.”

Then he lifted the veil again, careful as a priest with a relic, and laid it back over the chair.

He walked past you toward the door, collected his jacket from the chair, and shrugged it on with neat, effortless movements.

At the entryway, he paused.

You hadn’t moved.

You weren’t sure you could.

Without turning fully back, he said, “Dinner at eight. Wear the ring.”

Then he left you standing in the middle of the dim room, hand curled around a diamond that felt like a brand, staring at the closed door and listening to the old house settle around you.

That night, when the servants finally left you alone in the dressing room and the last pin came out of your hair, you stood in front of the mirror and looked at yourself for a very long time.

The ring caught the candlelight.

The silk of your evening gown whispered when you breathed.

Somewhere downstairs, laughter floated up through the vents—soft, cultured, inhuman.

You touched the diamond once with your thumb.

Then you lifted your eyes to your own reflection and understood, with a sickening clarity that settled all the way into your bones, that this was happening.

Not as threat. Not as theory. Not as one more grotesque performance among powerful people.

As fact.

And worse than that—worse than the ring, worse than the veil, worse even than the way Titus looked at you like the ending had already been written—was the unbearable knowledge that he’d barely touched you at all.

A wrist.

A hand.

A veil lowered over your hair.

And still he was everywhere.

In the room. In your pulse. In the hard little silence that followed you even when no one was speaking.

You should’ve felt only rage.

You did feel rage.

But beneath it, humiliating and hot and impossible to deny, was the raw edge of anticipation.

As if some part of you had looked into the mouth of the trap and, for one terrible heartbeat, admired the craftsmanship.

You shut your eyes.

When you opened them again, your reflection was still there—dressed in silk, ringed in candlelight, already half transformed into something you didn’t recognize.

A bride in all but vows.

And somewhere in the house, calm as ever, Titus Danforth was waiting for the moment it became irreversible.

By the time they came for you, the house had already dressed itself for the ceremony.

That was the first thing you noticed when the door to your room opened and the morning’s hush gave way to movement—servants carrying white boxes and tissue paper, polished shoes whispering over the rugs, the faint drift of incense winding in from somewhere deeper in the estate. Danforth mansion had worn darkness well the night before. In daylight, it looked no less sinister. If anything, the low gold burn of lamplight against old wood and stone felt stranger with morning pressing at the windows, as though the house had refused the sun on principle and built its own atmosphere in defiance of it.

No one spoke above a murmur.

No one asked how you’d slept.

No one asked whether you still intended to go through with it.

By now, apparently, even the illusion of choice had been set aside.

The dress waited on a stand near the hearth.

White silk. Old lace. Long sleeves that narrowed at the wrist. A high collar fastened with tiny pearl buttons. Not soft. Not romantic. It was too severe for that, too deliberate in every line. It looked less like something chosen for a bride and more like something selected for an offering.

You stared at it until one of the women gently asked you to raise your arms.

You did.

Not because you’d surrendered. Not because you’d accepted a single goddamn thing about this day.

Because refusal had become useless in increments so precise you’d barely felt them happening.

First the dinner. Then the announcement. Then the ring. Then the veil lowered over your hair by the same hand that would, by nightfall, claim you before a room full of witnesses and call it sanctified because rich families had always known how to dress violence in ceremony and get away with it.

Layer by layer, the dress closed around you.

Silk sliding over skin. Lace hugging your throat. The snug draw of the fitted bodice. Fingers at the back fastening button after button until you could feel the weight of yourself altered by craft alone. Someone arranged your hair. Someone else fitted earrings at your ears—diamonds old enough to have belonged to women who’d probably smiled through their own ruin with better posture than yours.

You stood still through all of it, hands loose at your sides, face turned slightly toward the mirror without truly looking into it.

Only when one of the women reached for your left hand did your attention sharpen.

She paused when she saw the ring already there.

Of course she did.

A servant behind you lowered her voice. “Mr. Danforth said it wasn’t to be removed.”

A strange silence followed that.

No one looked directly at you after that.

When they were finished, the room emptied in stages until only one woman remained to settle the veil over your hair. The lace spilled cool and weightless down your back, brushing your shoulders, your spine, the backs of your arms.

She stepped away.

The door shut behind her.

At last, you were alone.

You lifted your eyes to the mirror.

For a long moment, you didn’t breathe.

The woman staring back at you looked composed. Expensive. Untouchable in the way statues were untouchable—seen, admired, paraded, and entirely at the mercy of the hands that placed them where they stood. The silk gave you an elegance you hadn’t asked for. The veil softened nothing. The ring flashed like a hard little fact.

You looked like you belonged to the house already.

Your mouth tightened.

A knock sounded once at the door. Not tentative. Not loud. Just enough.

Before you could answer, it opened.

Titus entered alone.

He shut the door behind him without taking his eyes off you.

For a second neither of you spoke.

He was dressed in black.

The sight of him in it did something ugly to your pulse.

Not because black was novel. Men wore black every day in houses like this and called it timeless. But on Titus it looked less like formality and more like a decision. The cut of the suit was ruthless. The white at his throat only made the rest of him darker by contrast. Every line of him was composed down to the smallest detail—cufflinks, watch, the fall of the jacket, the gleam of his dress shoes. Not a hair out of place. Not a flicker of nerves visible anywhere.

As if weddings were nothing.

As if forcing a woman to the altar were only monstrous when poorer men did it badly.

His gaze moved over you once, slowly.

Not leering.

Worse.

Appraising.

And, beneath that, unmistakably pleased.

“You look right in it,” he said.

Your fingers curled at your sides. “That’s a disgusting thing to say to someone on their wedding day.”

“If you were interested in pretty lies, I’d have chosen someone else.”

“You keep saying things like that as if I’m supposed to be flattered.”

“No,” he said.

He crossed the room at the same maddening, measured pace he brought to everything, then stopped behind you rather than in front of you. In the mirror, you saw him lift one hand toward the veil where it fell from your hair.

He didn’t touch it yet.

“Flattery is cheap,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth.”

Your throat went dry with anger.

“And the truth is what, exactly?”

His eyes met yours in the glass.

“That you were made for this room better than most of the people born into it.”

Silence rang between you.

The words should’ve sounded manipulative. They were manipulative. That didn’t stop them from landing with a sharpness that made your stomach knot.

You hated him for knowing how to speak to pride instead of fear.

You hated yourself a little for listening.

His fingers finally closed over a fold of lace, adjusting the fall of the veil with careful precision.

“I’m not walking willingly into this,” you said.

“No,” he answered. “Willingness was never the part I required from you.”

You turned then, fast enough that the veil stirred around your shoulders.

His hand fell away.

“Do you hear yourself?” you demanded. “Do you ever once hear the things that come out of your mouth and think 'maybe I sound like a fucking monster?'”

His expression didn’t change.

“No.”

The bluntness of it nearly made you laugh.

Instead you said, “You should.”

“Would it help?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would make you less unbearable.”

He considered that as if you’d offered him a practical question rather than an insult.

Then, with the faintest ghost of amusement: “I doubt it.”

A noise escaped you—somewhere between a scoff and a disbelieving breath.

He studied you for another second, then reached up and rested two fingers beneath your chin.

The contact was light.

Still, your body went taut at once.

He tilted your face slightly, not enough to be rough, just enough to make the gesture impossible to mistake for anything other than control.

“You can glare at me all the way to the altar if it eases you,” he said. “I won’t object.”

Your gaze locked on his.

“And after?”

His eyes were very dark at this distance. Steady. Inhumanly patient.

“After,” he said, “you’ll have the courtesy to stop acting surprised.”

He let go.

A knock sounded again—this time from outside, followed by a servant’s careful voice letting Titus know the family was assembled.

He didn’t answer right away. He just looked at you one last time, gaze dropping briefly to the ring, then returning to your face.

“Come along, then,” he said softly. “You’ve kept them waiting long enough.”

The room they’d chosen for the ceremony wasn’t a church.

That would’ve been almost comforting in its hypocrisy.

No, this was worse.

It was one of the larger formal chambers at the heart of the estate, transformed not into something holy but into something that wanted to be mistaken for holiness by people who’d spent generations believing money, blood, and repetition could manufacture sacred things where none existed naturally. Rows of chairs had been arranged in exact lines beneath amber sconces and shaded lamps. Candles burned in clusters on tables and ledges, their light wavering against dark wood and old stone. White flowers had been brought in, but even they couldn’t soften the room. They only sharpened the hush of it, their perfume drifting too sweet through air that still carried incense and polished furniture and the cold mineral smell of old walls.

At the front of the room stood a narrow dais.

On it, beneath the low gold burn of the lights, waited Titus.

For one traitorous moment, you forgot how to breathe.

He looked as though the whole room had been built for the sole purpose of framing him here—black suit, white shirt, hands loosely clasped in front of him, face composed into something calm enough to pass for reverence if a person were stupid enough to want to believe in it. He didn’t shift when you entered. Didn’t smile. Didn’t do anything theatrical to mark the moment. He simply watched you begin the walk toward him with the same certainty he’d brought to every other stage of this from the start.

The aisle felt longer than it should have.

The veil softened the edges of the room but sharpened everything that mattered. The drum of your own pulse. The whisper of silk around your ankles. The flicker of candlelight on brass and crystal. Faces turning to look. Families gathered in ordered silence, all of them dressed in mourning colors and jewels as if they’d come not to bless a union but to witness a sealing.

Your father escorted you only halfway.

That had been decided without your input too.

At the midpoint he stopped, his fingers pressing once at your arm before withdrawing. He didn’t look at you when he let go. He looked at Titus.

Like a man delivering something expensive and breakable into the hands of its new owner.

You wanted to scream.

Instead you kept walking.

Titus stepped down from the dais to meet you before the final few feet had been crossed.

Again, not showy. Just controlled. Precise in his timing. He offered his hand.

You looked at it.

The last time he’d taken your hand, a ring had gone onto your finger and stayed there.

Every instinct in you recoiled.

Every eye in the room waited.

At last, you placed your hand in his.

His fingers closed around yours at once, steady and cool, not squeezing, not stroking—just holding, as if the contact itself were enough to announce the rest.

Then he led you up to stand beside him beneath the candles.

The officiant—one of the council men, grey-haired and grave in a dark suit—began to speak.

You barely heard the first part.

Something about alliance. About continuity. About two houses joined in mutual strength and common purpose. About the preservation of legacy and the solemn duty of those called to steward it. The usual poison dressed as tradition.

Your attention kept snagging on smaller things instead. The warmth of Titus at your side. The line of his shoulder just inside your vision. The weight of the ring on your finger. The scent of wax and flowers and the faint resinous cologne that clung to him whenever he leaned the slightest bit nearer.

Then came the vows.

The officiant prompted Titus first.

Of course he’d go first.

Titus turned toward you fully, and the room seemed to recede in a single slow pulse.

You braced yourself for prettiness.

He gave you none.

“I take you before these witnesses,” he said, voice low and even, carrying cleanly through the chamber without ever needing to rise, “to stand at my side, to bear my name, and to be kept under my protection as long as I draw breath.”

Your heartbeat stuttered.

The officiant should’ve interrupted. No one did.

Titus went on, eyes fixed on yours.

“What is mine, I keep. What I keep, I defend. Before family, law, and God, I bind myself to that duty.”

A murmur, almost too soft to be called one, moved through the guests and died.

You stared at him.

He had not improvised those words in the moment. You knew that instantly. He had chosen them. Considered them. Brought them here intact.

Protection.

Keeping.

Duty.

Not love. Never love. Something older and harder and far more dangerous in a man like him because it asked for nothing tender in return.

When it was your turn, the officiant prompted you too quickly, as if fearful of giving anyone more time than necessary to think about what had just been said aloud.

Your own repeated words tasted strange in your mouth. Ancient. Formal. Sanded smooth by a hundred dead brides before you, none of whom had likely been allowed the comfort of saying what they meant either.

You spoke them anyway.

What else was left?

By the time the ring exchange came, your hand was colder than the diamonds.

Titus took it again.

His thumb brushed once across your knuckles before he adjusted the ring already there, turning the stone minutely until it caught the light. The gesture was so small that no one but you could’ve understood it for what it was.

Not placement.

Possession.

The officiant said the last words. The room held its breath.

Then, with solemn satisfaction: “It is done.”

Done.

Not blessed. Not celebrated. Done.

Titus lifted the veil from your face.

The lace slid back in a whisper.

For one suspended second, with the room silent and the candles throwing gold around both of you, his hand stayed at the edge of your jaw.

Then he leaned in and kissed you.

It was brief.

Formal.

It should’ve been nothing.

Instead it landed with devastating accuracy—mouth firm against yours, measured enough to be publicly appropriate and intimate enough to feel like a warning. No fumbling hunger. No softness. Just the terrible confidence of a man sealing a contract in front of Mr. Le Bail and witnesses.

When he drew back, the room returned all at once.

People rose.

Applause began, muted but insistent.

And you stood there in white silk with Titus Danforth’s hand at the small of your back, feeling the whole world slide one inch further off its axis.

The reception took place in an adjoining room that had been rearranged for dinner.

Long table. Candlelight. Crystal. Flowers in low arrangements pale as bone. More guests than before, though still not enough to pretend this was anything other than a tightly controlled family affair. The house had shifted its posture for the occasion, but it hadn’t softened. Laughter never rose very high. Music from the quartet stayed low and bloodless. Even the servants moved differently now—quicker, quieter, as if aware that some threshold had been crossed and the air itself required more caution.

You were seated beside Titus at the center of the table.

Of course you were.

Your chair had barely been pushed in before the procession of toasts began. Chester first, speaking about continuity and the strength of old alliances. Another council member after him, congratulating both families on their wisdom. Someone from your side talking about endurance in terms so neutral they might as well have been discussing architecture.

Through all of it, Titus remained maddeningly composed.

He didn’t drink much. Didn’t fidget. Didn’t lean into the performance the way lesser men would have. He listened when required, inclined his head when politeness demanded it, and kept one hand resting lightly against the back of your chair as if the gesture cost him no thought at all.

It cost you plenty.

Every time his fingers shifted against the carved wood behind you, you felt it.

Every time someone addressed you both as if this were a union freely entered, your jaw tightened a little further.

At one point Chester lifted his glass and toasted “to the new Mrs. Danforth.”

Your stomach turned.

Without looking at Titus, you reached for your wine and drank.

Next to you, he said very quietly, “You’ll make your teeth ache if you grind them any harder.”

You set the glass down. “I hope that’s what ruins the evening for you.”

“My evening is going extremely well.”

You turned your head a fraction. “I hate you.”

His expression didn’t shift. He lifted his own glass, took one measured sip, and set it back down.

“I know.”

The calm with which he said it made you want to stab him with the dessert fork.

Instead you faced forward again, eyes on the flowers, on the crystal, on the slow moving reflections in your wineglass.

A beat later, you felt his thumb brush once along the back edge of your chair, impossibly close to the bare stretch of skin at your neck where the veil no longer covered you.

Not quite touching.

Worse than touching.

“You’re trembling,” he murmured.

“I’m restraining myself.”

“So am I.”

The words dropped into your lap like lit coals.

You went very still.

To anyone watching, nothing had changed. The new husband and wife sat side by side beneath candlelight and public approval, speaking quietly as refined people did at refined tables. No one would’ve guessed that your pulse had gone ragged or that Titus, without so much as lifting his voice, had just made it brutally clear how thin his own leash was running.

You looked at him then.

He was already watching the room again, not you.

The side of his face gave away nothing.

And somehow that was the worst part. That he could put words like that into your blood and then look away as though the act required nothing of him.

Dinner stretched.

Courses came and went barely tasted. Congratulations arrived in tidy lines, most of them spoken to Titus first and you second. He accepted them with cool ease. You endured them. The ring on your finger felt heavier with every passing minute.

At last, after coffee was poured and the last formal toast had died, Titus rose.

The room quieted.

He offered no speech.

No grand gratitude.

He simply placed one hand over the back of your chair, and the collected company seemed to understand all at once what that meant.

The evening’s public portion had ended.

Your chair scraped softly as you stood.

No one tried to stop you. No one looked shocked. Not one face in the room betrayed even a flicker of discomfort. Why would it? This, after all, was what the entire day had been arranged to culminate in. The silk. The flowers. The vows. The blessing. The dinner. All of it had been a polished corridor leading neatly toward one private room and the man waiting to take you there.

Titus settled his hand at your back.

The gesture was light.

It might as well have been a brand.

“Goodnight,” Chester said, in the tone of a man concluding excellent business.

You looked at him and thought, very clearly, that if there were a hell deep enough for families like this, it ought to have separate wings.

Then Titus guided you out.

The corridor beyond the reception room was quiet enough to hear the house settling around you.

No quartet here. No voices. Just the soft drag of your skirt over the rugs and the measured tread of Titus’s shoes beside your own, the low amber light along the walls, the old wood and stone holding the evening’s warmth close.

He didn’t hurry.

That, more than anything, began to fray your composure.

If he’d dragged you off in triumph, if he’d shown one crude crack of appetite, you could have despised him cleanly for it. But he moved through the corridor with the same composure he’d brought to the altar and the dinner table, as if what waited at the end of this walk were not a wife he’d cornered by increments but merely the next solemn duty in a day of solemn duties.

You hated how much more frightening that made him.

At the first turn in the hall, you stopped walking.

His hand fell from your back.

He turned to look at you.

“No.”

The word came out low, hard, breathless with everything you’d held in all night.

For the first time since leaving the reception, his attention sharpened fully onto you.

“No?” he repeated.

“You don’t get to act like this is just another room.” Your voice shook once and steadied. “You don’t get to walk me through your house like I’m already trained to it.”

He watched you in silence.

The amber sconces lit one side of his face and left the other in shadow. His collar was still neat. His expression still controlled. Only his eyes had changed, going darker somehow, more focused.

“Have I given you the impression I think tonight is unimportant?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Interesting.”

You laughed once, ugly and tired. “You’re unbelievable.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I mean it.” You stepped closer before you could stop yourself, rage making you reckless. “You stand there acting like the most monstrous thing about you is your honesty, when really it’s the calm. It’s the way you do all of this”—you gestured between him, the house, the dress, the ring, the whole suffocating architecture of the night—“like you’ve already forgiven yourself for it.”

His gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, then lifted again.

“I haven’t forgiven myself for anything.”

The quiet certainty in that landed harder than denial would have.

You stared at him.

“Then what exactly do you call this?” you asked.

His answer came without hesitation.

“An inevitability.”

Something about that word, spoken there in the hush of the corridor with the whole house closing around it, made your anger slip briefly into something more dangerous. Not fear exactly. Not surrender. Something sharper. The vertigo of standing too near the edge of a decision already made by someone else.

You should’ve stepped back.

Instead you stayed where you were.

Titus took in the fact of that and said, very softly, “Ask me what you’ve been asking yourself all day.”

You frowned. “What?”

His eyes never left yours.

“Why you.”

The breath left you in a quiet rush.

For a second the only sound was the low hiss of one of the wall sconces.

Then, because the question had been clawing at you in one form or another since the council room, you said it.

“Why me?”

No smile touched his face this time.

No indulgence either.

When he answered, it was with a steadiness so complete it almost felt cruel.

“Because you’re the only person in either family who looked at me and saw the cost before the reward.”

Your throat tightened.

He took one step nearer.

“Because you know what rooms like these are made for, and you walk into them anyway with your head high.”

Another step.

“Because you’re not soft enough to bore me, not foolish enough to flatter, and not weak enough to break usefully.”

The words should have insulted. Somehow they didn’t. Not entirely.

His gaze dipped to the ring on your hand, then returned to your face.

“And because when I thought of the seat beside mine,” he said, “I found I had no interest in seeing anyone else there.”

Silence.

It hit deeper than any prettier answer could have. Not because it was tender. God, it wasn’t tender. But because it sounded horribly true.

You swallowed.

“That isn’t a reason,” you said, though your voice no longer had the strength it had a minute ago.

“It is to me.”

Then he reached for your hand.

You let him.

Maybe because the fight had shifted. Maybe because the entire day had stripped choice down so thin that this no longer felt like the battlefield to spend it on. Maybe because some ruined part of you wanted to see what his face would look like if he touched the ring now, here, with no witnesses left to perform for.

His fingers closed over yours and lifted your hand between you.

He turned the ring once more in the light.

Then, without breaking eye contact, he pressed his mouth to the stone.

Not your knuckles.

Not your skin.

The ring.

The gesture was so restrained it nearly undid you.

When he lowered your hand again, his thumb moved once along the inside of your wrist.

“Come with me,” he said.

Not a command barked out for effect. Not a plea.

Something worse.

Something spoken like fact.

You went.

The room at the end of the corridor was not the sentimental bridal chamber of old stories.

Nothing in Danforth mansion would ever allow itself that kind of softness.

It was large, yes, and beautifully appointed in the cold, curated way every room in the estate seemed to be—dark wood, old stone, low lamps, a bed hung with pale fabric, an antique wardrobe, a fire banked low in the hearth. Candles glowed on the mantel and bedside tables, their light turning the silk coverlet and the lace at your sleeves to shifting gold and cream. Somewhere incense had been burned earlier. The air still held the fading trace of it under the cleaner scents of linen and polished furniture.

The door shut behind you.

The click of the latch ran through your body like a second pulse.

You stood just inside the room, veil trailing behind you, hands at your sides.

Titus remained by the door for one measured second, watching you.

Then he crossed to you and stopped close enough that you could feel the warmth of him through layers of fabric.

Neither of you spoke.

The room had gone intensely quiet.

At last he lifted a hand and touched the edge of the veil where it fell over your shoulder.

“This first,” he said.

He drew it back slowly, letting the lace slide free from your hair and shoulders in a long soft waterfall. When it was clear of you, he laid it aside with a care that felt almost obscene in its contrast to the violence of the day.

Then his hands returned to you.

One at either wrist.

Not pinning. Not rough.

Only holding for a moment, as if acquainting himself with the fact of you in this room, under his name, in the clothes chosen for this exact hour.

Your breathing was no longer steady.

He noticed. Of course he noticed.

“You’re angry,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

It almost made you laugh.

“Is that still your favorite thing about me?”

“No,” he said.

His thumbs shifted once against your pulse points.

“That changed when you walked toward me.”

The room tipped very slightly around the edges.

You looked up at him. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Say things like that now.”

A flicker—not amusement, not quite, but close—moved at the corner of his mouth.

“Now,” he said, “is exactly when I mean them.”

His right hand released your wrist and rose to the pearl buttons at your throat.

He paused there.

Waited.

You could have stepped back.

You didn’t.

One by one, he opened the collar o f the gown.

Each button slipped free with a tiny sound that seemed to echo. Cool air touched your skin where the dress loosened. His knuckles brushed your throat once, then the line beneath it. No haste. No fumbling. Just that same devastating patience he brought to everything, as if he intended to prove that he had all the time in the world to watch every last defense come apart.

When the last button at the collar was undone, he let his hand rest briefly at the base of your throat.

“Still surprised?” he asked.

You hated how breathless your answer sounded. “No.”

“Liar.”

The word was almost gentle.

You stared at him.

Then, because pride was the one thing still reliably yours, you said, “I’m not afraid of you.”

His gaze held yours for a long beat.

“Not in the way you expected,” he said.

And because that was true—because that was the worst truth of the night, that fear had been joined by something hotter and more humiliating and infinitely more complicated—you said nothing at all.

He looked at you for another second.

Then he angled his head toward yours, mouth near your temple, your hair, your ear.

When he spoke, his voice was so low it seemed to belong to the room itself.

“That’s enough pretending.”

And then his mouth was on yours. It’s nothing like the chaste, public kiss at the altar. This was wet and sloppy, his tongue pushing past your lips before you could even think to deny him. You taste the expensive whiskey he drank at the reception, the sharpness of it, and something else—something just him. Your head spun. Your hands came up, flat against the hard wall of his chest in his tailored jacket, but you don’t push. You can’t. The fight has bled out of you, leaving a hollow, accepting ache.

One of his hands leaves your face, slides down your spine, over the intricate beading of the wedding gown. It finds the curve of your ass and grips, hard, fingers digging into the silk and the flesh beneath. He groans into your mouth, the sound vibrating through you. He pulls your hips flush against his, and you feel the thick, hard length of him straining against his dress pants, pressed against your belly. A shudder runs through you, involuntary. Your body betrays you, a flush of heat spreading low in your stomach.

He breaks the kiss, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his. His breathing is ragged. “Look at you,” he says, his voice a rough, velvet baritone. “My wife.”

His fingers find the hidden zipper at the side of your dress. The sound of it parting is the sound of your last defense falling. The heavy silk gown slumps, and he pushes it from your shoulders. It pools at your feet, a puddle of white and silver on the dark patterned rug. You stand before him in only your lace-trimmed stockings, garter belt, and a pair of delicate silk panties. The air in the chamber is cool on your bare skin, raising goosebumps. His gaze is a physical weight, traveling over your breasts, your stomach, the juncture of your thighs.

“Perfect,” he breathes. It’s not a compliment. It’s an assessment.

He shrugs out of his own jacket, lets it fall carelessly. His fingers make quick work of his cufflinks, his shirt buttons. He strips to the waist, revealing defined muscle underneath. You’ve never seen him like this—not a politician, not a strategist. Just a man. A predator in his den. He steps forward, closing the distance, and his bare chest brushes against your nipples. You gasp. They’re already tight, sensitive.

He doesn’t kiss you again. He lowers his head, his mouth finding the slope of your breast. His tongue flicks over one nipple, once, twice, through the lace of your bra. Then his teeth graze it. You cry out, a short, sharp sound. Your hands fly to his hair, the greying strands surprisingly soft between your fingers. You don’t know if you’re pulling him away or holding him there.

He answers by unhooking the front clasp of your bra. It falls open. His mouth is on you instantly, hot and wet, sucking your bare nipple deep. The pull is exquisite, a sharp pleasure that arrows straight to your cunt. You feel yourself getting wet, a slick, embarrassing heat. You’re panting. Your head falls back.

“So responsive,” he murmurs against your skin, switching to the other breast. His hand comes up to knead the one his mouth left, pinching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “This belongs to me now. This body. This sweet gasp.” He sucks harder, and your knees buckle. His arm bands around your waist, holding you up. “Say it.”

You can’t. The words won’t form. You just moan, a broken, needy sound.

He straightens, his lips glistening. His hands go to the fastening of his trousers. “On the bed, darling. On your back. Legs spread for your husband.”

The command brooks no argument. The formality of ‘Eleanor’ in the midst of this filth makes your stomach clench. You move to the massive four-poster bed, the dark velvet coverlet cool under your back. You look up at the canopy, the Danforth crest embroidered there. You spread your legs. The cool air touches your wetness through the silk of your panties. You’re exposed. You’re his.

He pushed his pantsand briefs down, his cock springing free. It’s thick, flushed an angry red, the head slick with pre-cum. He’s fully erect, veins standing out along the length. He strokes himself once, his eyes locked on where you’re laid out for him. “Look at you waiting for it.”

He climbs onto the bed, kneeling between your thighs. He hooks his fingers in the waistband of your panties and pulls them down, slowly, dragging the damp silk over your hips, your thighs. He tosses them aside. Then he just looks. At your bare cunt, glistening and already swollen for him. His jaw tightens. “Beautiful. So fucking wet for me already.”

He doesn’t use his fingers first. He lowers his head. His breath ghosts over you, hot. Then his tongue, flat and broad, licks a slow, firm stripe from your entrance to your clit. You jolt, a full-body spasm, a choked sob escaping your throat. It’s too much. It’s not enough.

He eats you like a man starved. His tongue circles your clit, flicks it, then pushes inside you, fucking you with it. The wet, obscene sounds fill the silent chamber. Your hips lift off the bed, seeking more pressure, more of that devastating friction. One of his hands pins your hip to the mattress. The other slides up your body, his thumb finding your mouth. “Suck,” he orders.

You open your mouth, take his thumb inside. You suck on it, the salt of his skin on your tongue, as his tongue fucks you deeper. The dual sensations unravel you. The coil in your belly tightens, a terrifying, inevitable pull.

“That’s it,” he growls against your cunt, his voice muffled by your flesh. “Come on my tongue, wife. Let me taste it.”

His words are the final trigger. Your orgasm crashes over you, a silent, seizing wave. Your back arches, your cunt clenching around nothing, around his tongue, pulses of pure, mindless pleasure wracking you. You cry out around his thumb, the sound swallowed by the room.

He doesn’t let you come down. As the last tremors shake your thighs, he rises over you. The broad head of his cock presses against your soaked entrance. He’s not asking. He’s positioning. You’re still spasming, oversensitive, when he pushes inside.

The stretch is breathtaking. He’s so thick, filling you in a way that borders on pain. You gasp, your nails digging into the velvet coverlet. He sinks in slowly, relentlessly, until his hips are flush with yours, until he’s buried to the hilt. You feel him throbbing inside you, a deep, insistent pulse. He’s so deep. You’re so full.

“Mine,” he grunts, the word punched out of him. He pulls back almost all the way, then drives back in. The pace he sets is brutal, possessive. Each thrust is a claiming. The wet slap of skin on skin, the creak of the bed, his ragged breaths—it’s the only music. He watches your face, his eyes burning. “Take it. Take your husband’s cock. This cunt was made for this. For me.”

You can’t speak. You can only feel. The drag of him inside you, the delicious friction, the building pressure again, already, so soon after your first peak. Your legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper. You surrender to it. To him. This is your fate. This is your marriage bed.

His thrusts become erratic, harder, deeper. A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Gonna fill you,” he pants. “Gonna put my heir in you. Right now.”

He slams into you one final time, burying himself as deep as he can go. You feel him pulse, then the hot, sudden flood of his release filling you. It’s thick, so much of it, spilling inside you, marking you. A low, guttural groan tears from his chest, and he collapses his weight onto you, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.

You lie there, joined, his cock still lodged inside you, his cum leaking out around where you’re stretched around him. The smell of sex, of sweat, of him, is overwhelming. Your body is humming, spent. The defiance is gone. In its place is a hollow, terrifying acceptance. You are his wife. You are carrying his seed.

He shifts, pulling out of you slowly. A gush of his release follows, warm on your inner thigh. He rolls onto his back beside you, one arm thrown over his eyes. His chest rises and falls steadily. After a moment, his hand finds yours on the bed between you. His fingers lace through yours, holding tight. He doesn’t speak.

Afterward, the room looked altered.

Not destroyed. Titus wouldn’t have allowed destruction in the vulgar sense. But changed. The veil half fallen from where he’d placed it aside. Candlelight guttering lower. Silk drawn into new creases. One earring missing from where it had once sat at your ear, now glinting faintly near the edge of the coverlet. The air warmer than before, touched through with the fading incense, the spent sweetness of candles, the sharper living heat of skin.

You lay against the pillows, breathing slower by degrees.

Titus sat beside you, one forearm braced along the mattress as he looked down at you with that same impossible composure he’d worn all evening—except now there was something else in it too. Not softness. He did not become soft. But satisfaction, yes. A terrible, settled kind of satisfaction, like a lock finally turned all the way home.

His hand closed lightly around your left hand where it rested atop the coverlet.

He turned the ring once beneath his thumb.

The diamond caught the candlelight.

“There,” he said quietly.

Your eyes lifted to his face.

“There what?”

He looked at the ring, then at you.

“Now it looks earned.”

You should have told him to go to hell.

The words didn’t come.

He raised your hand and pressed his mouth, this time, to your knuckles. A brief touch. Almost formal. Worse somehow for that.

Then he lowered your hand again and settled it back against the coverlet, leaving his own over it.

“My wife,” he said.

The title moved through you differently now.

Not easier. Not cleaner. But deeper.

You stared at the canopy above the bed for a long moment, listening to the fire settle in the hearth, to the quiet breath of the old house around you, to Titus’s silence at your side. Somewhere under the ache in your body and the rage still glowing stubbornly in the corners of you, something else had begun to take root. Not peace. Never that.

Recognition, maybe.

Of what he was.

Of what this was.

Of the fact that the cage had shut, yes—but also that he had never lied to you about the bars.

At length, you turned your head to look at him.

He was already watching.

Of course he was.

That dark, unreadable gaze met yours, and for the first time since the council room, you didn’t look away.

Whatever he saw in your face then made something shift, almost imperceptibly, in his expression.

Approval.

Not because you were meek. Not because you were broken.

Because you were still there.

Still proud. Still furious. Still looking back.

His thumb moved once over your ring.

“You understand now,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

You should have denied it.

You should have laughed in his face, turned away, spit the title back at him like poison.

Instead you lay in his bed with his name on your hand and his scent in the sheets and met his eyes long enough for the silence itself to become an answer.

Outside the closed door, the house remained what it had always been—old, watchful, merciless.

Inside, candlelight trembled against the walls, and Titus Danforth looked at you like the long wait had finally ended.

Somewhere in the distance, far below the room you now occupied, the estate settled deeper into its foundations.

And beside him, still wearing white gone warm in the dark, you understood with sudden, terrible clarity that the most frightening thing about the night was no longer that it had become irreversible.

“What?”

“You heard me. If you win, you go. If I win, you’ll marry me,” he repeats, firmer this time. “We’ll have a small ceremony, move into the house I bought for us—before you decided to be an insolent little bitch and broke up with me—and live there as a couple, as we should. And we’ll have children, to inherit my name, my legacy.”

He’s insane. There is no way he means this, is there? You hesitate before saying anything, staring at him, trying to read his face. But all you see there is… that he means it. He’s set on this.

You’ll have to try to find your way out of this somehow.

“Well, that’s hardly fair, is it?” You question, crossing your arms over your chest, hiding the shaking of your hands. “You know the complex better than I do. How would I be able to hide?”

“I’m sure you’ll manage.”

“But what about the rules?”

“Anything goes. Except killing, of course.”

The more he talks, the more you realize there’s no way out of this. You will have to play.

And yet you hesitate. He’s made it clear he can’t let you go, so even if you win, what’s stopping him from keeping you anyway? What’s stopping the Council from having you quietly disposed of the moment you’re no longer under Titus’ control? In the official games, Le Bail’s rules are absolute. Unbreakable. People explode for breaking them. But this? This is unofficial. There’s no contract, no supernatural enforcement, no consequences for going back on his word.

All you have is his word.

You almost ask. You can feel the question sitting right there —his word, and what it’s actually worth—but you swallow it back down. What would be the point? If he says yes, you have no way of knowing if he means it. If he says no…

Well. You’d rather not find out what comes after no.

So instead you just look at him for a moment, and then nod.

“Fine,” you say. “I’ll play.”

He was gracious enough —if that word can even apply to him— to give you some kind of head start. He let you leave the mansion before he did, which is technically the bare minimum, but in these circumstances is practically generous.

Your headstart is seven minutes. Seven.

You force yourself to think fast, clear and precise, which actually takes a lot of effort when you know your crazy ex boyfriend is literally hunting you down.

The thing about his family’s complex—you think as your feet start moving— is that it’s huge. It has a casino resort, the golf course, stylish lobbies, the kitchen, the laundry room and a gazillion other rooms you’re probably unaware of. The downside? Titus is aware of all of them. And he has eyes and ears everywhere. You can’t assume he’ll play fairly, not when it comes to you and the risk of losing you. The property will be crawling with employees that could, and probably would, report back to him on sight.

So, you choose the most even terrain you could think of under duress.

The forest.

You run straight to it, trying not to be unsettled by how unfamiliar it feels.

Sure, in the two years you were with Titus, you’ve been in the forest a few times, but it was never alone, always with him. Once it was to get to know the terrain when you started dating, the second is when he taught you how to shoot; once he’d revealed enough about his family for you to understand that your life was always at risk simply by being with him. And oh, there was a third time too, but that one was to fuck.

You try not to think much about the latter, instead, you try to focus on the first visit, the tour, trying to recall whatever useful information he’d given about the forest that you can possibly remember right now.

And as it turns out, you can’t remember shit. Not under all this pressure, not when you know he’s following you.

So you run deep into the woods, with no sense of direction or idea about the depths of it, you just run and run, trying to find somewhere with enough coverage to stop and think of something. Of a strategy to win.

Coming up with a strategy is difficult though. You could always just hide, and stay alert for any noises or signs that he’s close by, but then what? You run and confirm that you’re there by making a whole lot of fucking noise in a forest that feels like it’s holding its breath on purpose? You’ve seen that man in action before, he’s strong and unnervingly fast. And you know he’s got stamina. So you stand no chance against him. Not to mention, you have no fucking clue what time it is, and he said you’d win at sunrise. Which is… a lot of time.

Fuck.

The forest swallows you whole.

You find a cluster of trees dense enough to crouch behind, pressing your back against the bark and forcing yourself to go still. To stop breathing so loud. Your heart is doing its best to get you caught, hammering so hard you’re half convinced he could hear it from across the property.

But there’s nothing. Just the wind moving through branches somewhere above you, and the sound of your own pulse.

A minute passes. Maybe two. You don’t know for sure, it’s impossible.

You start to think, stupidly, desperately, that maybe you’re better at this than you thought. Maybe he went to the casino first. Maybe he assumed you’d go somewhere familiar, somewhere with walls and doors, with many rooms and the illusion of safety. Maybe for once in your life, you’ve managed to surprise Titus Danforth.

You almost smile.

“You always did like your trees. Especially when I fucked you against them.”

His voice comes from directly behind you. Not approaching, but already there, already close enough that you could reach back and touch him, and your stomach fucking drops. It was like he’d been standing there the whole time, patient and unhurried, just waiting for you to finish thinking.

You scramble to your feet and spin around. He looks completely unbothered. No sweat, no urgency. He looks like a man who went for a leisurely evening walk and happened to find you along the way.

“How-” you start.

“I know you,” he says simply, like that explains everything.

And the worst part is… it does.

You run.

It’s stupid, you know it is. You just mentally calculated your chances and came out in red numbers, you are aware that this is senseless and just prolonging what has always been inevitable. And yet you still try.

You hear him scoff, it echoes with how quiet these woods are, and then his steps begin.

You’ve never felt like this in your life. You had no idea you could even run like this. It’s probably the adrenaline. Your body, ironically, can’t tell the difference between being chased by a wolf and being chased by Titus. Being chased to death or being chased to marriage. There’s probably not a big difference there, to be fair.

Your lungs start to burn before you expect them to.

You push through it. You push through the branches catching on your clothes and the uneven ground trying to twist your ankles and the darkness that’s settling between the trees faster than you’d like.

You can hear him. That’s the worst part. He’s not silent and he’s not trying to be. His footsteps are steady and unhurried, like a metronome, like someone on a morning jog.

Your legs are already protesting, paired with a sharp stitch blooming under your ribs. To be honest… you don’t work out, not really. The only cardio you’ve ever gotten, the only thing that’s ever left you this breathless and aching, is Titus. Nights spent riding him until your thighs shook, mornings bent over whatever surface he wanted, afternoons where he’d fuck you slow and deep just because he could. Your body knows exertion, sure, but it knows it in the shape of him, not this. Not sprinting blind through roots and dirt like prey.

You change direction sharply, cutting left between two trees. Maybe if you’re unpredictable enough, maybe if you zigzag, double back, make it complicated-

His footsteps don’t falter behind you, there is not even a moment of hesitation in his steps, you’re not even making him make an effort or work for it.

The thought makes something cold shoot down your spine. You run faster.

You break into a small clearing and for one stupid, desperate second you think —this is it, this is where you lose him, and then…

…Then your foot catches a fucking root and you stumble, catching yourself on your hands, scrambling back up before you’ve even fully registered falling. Your palms sting. You don’t stop.

Behind you, almost conversationally: “You’re going in circles.”

You don’t answer, because you don’t want to, but also because you don't have the breath for it right now. God, you hate him.

You hate that he’s right. You’ve completely lost all sense of direction out here, the trees all look the same no matter which way you turn, and the sky above has shifted from dark blue to almost black, swallowing any hope of figuring out where the hell you are. You can’t tell north from south anymore, everything blurring together in the growing dark.

You cut right this time, then right again, mind racing toward the perimeter. If you can just find the edge of the forest, hit the fence, spot anything that gives you a landmark, then maybe you’ll have something solid to go by. But he’s closer now, you can hear his breath, steady and way too near. You hadn’t even noticed him gaining ground, but somehow he’s right there behind you.

The impact comes from the left without warning.

He doesn’t just grab you, he takes you down in one clean, decisive motion, and you hit the forest floor hard with him over you. One of his hands braces so he doesn’t crush you completely, which somehow makes the whole thing worse, that little bit of consideration cutting sharper than if he’d just slammed you flat. The breath gets knocked right out of you, and for a second the world narrows to nothing but darkness, his solid weight pressing you into the dirt, and the smell of him, unfairly familiar, wrapping around you like it has every right to be there.

You recover fast though, twisting and fighting with everything you’ve got, managing to get one hand free so you can shove hard against his chest. Titus lets you push, just enough to give you that flicker of thinking you might actually be winning for once. Just enough.

Then he shifts his full weight and you go absolutely nowhere. He’s stronger and heavier than you, pinning you so completely against the forest floor that all your struggling turns useless. He’s looking down at you with that expression you’ve seen a hundred times before, patient, certain, almost warm. and his breathing stays completely even. Not even winded. It’s so fucking unfair. He’s older than you; how the hell is he in this much better shape?

“Get off me,” you manage to gasp out.

He doesn’t. Instead he tilts his head slightly, like he’s actually considering it as a real option before dismissing the idea entirely.

“You did well,” he says instead, voice quiet. “Longer than I expected.”

“Don’t.” You twist again, uselessly, but his hand catches your wrist and pins it gently but completely beside your head. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not.” And the infuriating part is he sounds like he genuinely means it. “I’m actually impressed, baby.”

You go dead still. Not because you’ve given up—you’ve got way too much goddamn pride for that—but because your brain is spinning, scrambling to find the one mistake he’s bound to make eventually. He’s already onto you though. His eyes track every little twitch of your pupils, reading you with that same effortless, irritating fluency he’s always had.

The clearing around you has gone completely silent except for the ragged sound of your own lungs working overtime.

He’s crowding you now, his weight a heavy, solid heat that presses you deeper into the dirt and leaves. You can feel the direct pressure of his fingers locked around your wrist and the way he’s staring at you like you’re the only thing in this godforsaken woods worth paying attention to.

You need to say something sharp. You had a line ready, something bitchy and mean that would actually sting, but the thought gets swallowed whole the second he moves.

He doesn’t hesitate. He just takes what he wants.

His mouth slams into yours with slow, heavy hunger, lips forcing yours apart and eclaiming something that’s always belonged to him. When his tongue slides in it’s a deep, wet drag that sends a hot liquid weight straight down to your crotch. You let out a noise you immediately want to choke back, it’s half moan, half pathetic whimper, as he tilts his head for a better angle, sucking on your tongue before slicking back into your mouth in a way that’s just fucking filthy.

Your free hand scrambles for his jacket, knuckles turning white as you bunch the fabric tight. You can’t even tell if you’re trying to shove him off or drag him closer anymore, but your body isn’t listening to your brain. It arches up into him anyway, chasing the heat of his chest and the rough scrape of his stubble against your chin. When your teeth accidentally snag his bottom lip he lets out this low, vibrating groan that you feel rumble all the way through your own chest.

He pulls back just a fraction, lips wet and swollen, hot breath mingling with yours. His thumb strokes slow over the inside of your wrist, right where your pulse is hammering out the truth he already knows.

“Still want to run?” he asks.

The bastard is smiling. Not pissed, not even serious, he’s having the time of his life. You should’ve known he’d get off on the chase like this.

“Yes,” you snap.

And you mean it. Mostly.

Then you reach up, fist your hand in his hair, and haul him back down.

He goes willingly, of course he does, the man is horny by nature. This time the kiss sinks slower, deeper into the spit and heat. You slide your hands up his chest, fingers hooking into his collar as you feel him shift, settling his weight more comfortably between your legs. He’s getting distracted, his iron grip on your wrist loosens, just a tiny bit.

There it is.

You let your hand drift lower, low enough to make his breathing hitch against your mouth. He makes this thick, needy sound in the back of his throat that tells you his focus is exactly where you want it now. You shift your leg in a slow, deliberate tilt of your hip that looks like you’re just trying to get his cock flush against you.

He falls for it.

Your palm slides over his stomach and presses hard against the thick, rigid line of his cock straining through his pants. He’s already fucking wrecked for you, throbbing and hot under your hand. You rub him slow, giving him a squeeze that makes his hips jerk forward into your touch. The groan he lets out is raw and guttural, vibrating straight into your mouth as he loses himself in the kiss, his tongue licking deep and messy against yours, teeth catching your lip in a sharp tug. You can feel him pulsing against your palm, thickening even more as you stroke him through the cloth like you’re finally giving him the reward he thinks he earned for catching you. His breath stutters against your lips, his tongue moving in ways that are pure filth.

He thinks he’s finally broken you.

That’s when you plant your foot flat against his hip and shove with everything you’ve got.

It’s not a clean move by any means—it’s pure desperate leverage—but it’s enough to break his hold and create one beautiful, stumbling second of space. You’re on your feet before he can even blink, already bolting back into the treeline.

Behind you, you hear him grunt as he hits the dirt.

And then you hear him laugh. A private, delighted sound, like you’ve just done something genuinely charming instead of kicking him while he was down.

You run harder, but you’re still breathless, mind distracted by how fucking good he kisses and the way he groaned and how quick he’d gotten so hard for you. Turns out your little strategy to distract him had backfired and distracted you instead.

You make it maybe forty feet. And that’s being generous, giving yourself way too much credit.

The arm that wraps around you comes from nowhere, thick and absolutely immovable, and suddenly your feet aren’t touching the ground anymore. He hoists you up like you weigh nothing, pulling your back tight against his chest while your legs kick uselessly at open air. He doesn’t squeeze, and he’s careful not to hurt you. He just holds you there, completely secure, one arm locked around your middle as you writhe and swear and accomplish absolutely fucking nothing.

He’s breathing harder now. Finally. But it sounds less like exertion and more like pure satisfaction, like relief.

“There,” he says close to your ear, almost fond. “All done. I won.”

After that ordeal, Titus brought you back to the mansion. Once there, he personally escorted you to your shared room, as if you didn’t know the way already. Though you can’t blame him for keeping you close, not after what happened today.

You shower. The water comes out murky with dirt at first, so you wash your hair and your body as many times as it’s necessary until it’s all clear, until you cease to perceive the scent of dirt and sweat and his cologne all over you.

By the time you exit the shower, the sun has fully gone down, and you find a white gown delicately hung by the door. It’s so beautiful. And it’s a shame; because it truly is. It’s exactly your taste, in a style you adore, a fabric you seek often in formal dresses. It's perfect for you.

He’d gone to those lengths, of having a dress made specifically for you. But then again, he’s known for going to lengths.

You do your hair the way you always do, it’s all muscle memory by now, all with such ease that it requires no effort for you to look good.

Then you slip the gown on. And it’s… bittersweet. In the two years you were with Titus (or have been, are you back together? Who the fuck knows), the thought of marriage did cross your mind. You won’t sit here and pretend to be an innocent bystander. You know what he’s like. You know the things people like him do—and let’s not even go that far— the shit he has done. You know he has many irredeemable qualities. So you won’t sit here and pretend to be a victim. You stayed, longer than you should’ve, sure, but you had stayed.

Marriage had come to mind before, but you’d never allowed yourself to think too much about it. You were scared, still are, about what it would mean to marry into his family, his world. Starting with the fucking initiation. All it takes is pulling the wrong card before everyone is on a game to hunt you to death.

You shiver.

So seeing yourself in this dress is… bittersweet. You had, at some point in time, longed to marry him, even with all his issues and his bullshit. But you knew, deep down, that it’s also something you should fear. Something no one should want.

And yet, here you are.

A knock on the door makes you jump slightly in your place. You take a breath to steady yourself before doing anything.

“Yes?”

“Are you ready?”

“Almost.”

Well, you might as well have said ‘yes’, because he unlatched the door as if you’d said it.

The moment his eyes land on you, he stills completely. His gaze moves over you slowly, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world, though tonight he does; he won. It drags from the hem of the dress upward, taking its sweet time, and when those eyes finally meet yours there’s something in them that makes your stomach do a slow, unwelcome flip you’d really rather it didn’t.

You’ve seen Titus Danforth unmoved by things that would fuck other men up completely. You’ve watched him stay unbothered in rooms full of people trying to intimidate him, composed in situations that had no right to feel calm. And yet here he is, standing in the doorway of your bathroom, looking at you like you’ve just undone something deep inside him that he didn’t expect to feel tonight.

He clears his throat. Looks away for exactly one second, then his eyes are back on you, heavier than before.

“You look beautiful.”

And the worst part is that he means it. You can tell there’s no sick angle, no calculated game in the words. Just Titus being completely sincere, genuinely undone by a dress he picked out himself. It’s exasperating how real he can be sometimes, how he can drop the armor and just say shit like that without any ulterior motive.

“Thank you,” you say, and you mean it too, because what else is there left to say at this point?

There’s a brief stretch of silence where it’s obvious both of you want to say something more but neither of you does. This whole situation is so fucking complicated. You broke up with him this morning, and now here you are, gowned up, about to marry him. Not without a fight, but still. It makes you wonder if you ever had any real backbone at all. If you even wanted to break up with him in the first place, or if some part of you had been waiting for him to refuse to let go.

“This isn’t how I imagined it,” you finally manage to say, the words coming out quieter than you expected. “I imagined something huge, something that would probably annoy me because you know absolutely everyone that matters and I don’t, and you’d keep getting pulled aside for all those meaningful conversations. Then I’d get mad and you’d call me immature because we were already married and you’d never go anywhere without me. I imagined music, pretty scenery, flowers everywhere…the whole thing.”

He looks down at his shoes for a second. It’s brief, very brief, but you catch it. Then he adjusts his cuffs, because yes, he’s all suited up and unfairly handsome, much to your dismay.

“It’s not what I imagined either,” he agrees gruffly. “This isn’t how I had planned things to go.”

You can already feel the ‘but’ coming.

“But you left me no choice.”

Of that, you’re painfully aware. You probably threw a massive wrench into all his carefully laid plans. The breakup had been such a sudden decision, dropped right in the middle of one of the good periods between you two. You really had been in a solid place before you sprang it on him. If anything, you’re still surprised by how calmly he took it. You’d been terrified for those few seconds before the words left your mouth, half expecting him to snap, but he hadn’t. Nothing thrown at the walls, no cruel words thrown back, besides the ones you’d already said to start the conversation, anyway.

But now you understand why he stayed so calm. He wasn’t going to lose you, no matter what you said. He’d already bought the house. He’d had the dress tailored and made perfectly for you. He’d turned the whole thing into a game he knew he could win. He knew you weren’t actually going anywhere.

The attempt at breaking up had really disrupted his plans, though.

“It’s time,” he says, and extends his hand to you.

You look at it for a second. Open and waiting, like this is the most natural thing in the world, like you’re just heading out to some nice dinner instead of signing your life over. You take it anyway.

His fingers close around yours immediately, warm and sure, and he leads you out of the room without another word. The mansion is unnervingly quiet around you. Your heels click against the floor, and you focus on that sound, nothing else. Just that steady rhythm instead of letting your mind spiral about where you’re going and what happens when you get there.

The room he brings you to is small. Candlelit. There’s a man already waiting: the lawyer, or someone who passes for one in this world, standing with papers and a pen, his expression suggesting he’s done far stranger things than this. Titus is probably paying him a fortune for the discretion.

It’s just the three of you. No music. No flowers. The complete opposite of everything you’d imagined.

Titus positions himself in front of you and turns to face you fully. For a moment you just look at each other, the air thick between you.

The lawyer clears his throat and begins.

“Do you,” he says, looking at Titus, “take her to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” Titus says. No hesitation. Not even a fraction of one.

Then the lawyer turns to you.

“And do you take him to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live?”

And there it is.

You think about this morning, standing in front of him with your heart in your throat, saying the words that were supposed to end everything. You think about the forest, those seven minutes, the way he found you like he’d never even needed to look. You think about the dress hanging by the door—perfectly your taste, perfectly your size—bought long before you ever said a word about leaving. You think about the fact that even now, standing here, some traitorous part of you doesn’t entirely feel like a victim.

The lawyer waits. Titus waits. His eyes stay locked on yours, steady and certain, because he already knows what you’ll say. He knows you.

You take a breath.

“I do.”

Your voice comes out steadier than you feel, which surprises you considering your heart feels like it’s trying to leap straight out of your chest.

“The rings,” the lawyer says.

And of course there are rings, because this is Titus and he’s thought of everything, has been thinking of everything for god knows how long. His ring slides onto your finger with an ease that feels almost rehearsed. You slide his onto his finger, your hands only shaking a little.

“The license,” the lawyer says next, producing the papers and setting them on the small table beside him with a pen.

You sign your name. You watch the ink dry for exactly one second. There’s something about seeing it there, your name, your handwriting, now permanent, that makes the whole thing feel more real than anything else tonight. More real than the dress, more real than the vows. This is the part that can’t be undone.

Titus signs beneath you, quick and certain, then straightens up.

“I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The lawyer says it like a closing argument, the matter finalized, binding. “You may kiss the bride.”

Titus closes the gap between you, and suddenly the air in the room feels way too thin. He reaches up, his thumb dragging slow and heavy across your cheekbone, like he’s giving you every second to realize exactly what he’s about to do. His eyes drop to your lips for a quick flicker before locking back onto yours.

Then he’s on you.

It’s nothing like that panicked, adrenaline-soaked mess in the forest. This is different, slower, more deliberate. He’s taking his time, his mouth moving against yours with a focused hunger that makes your knees go embarrassingly weak right there in the candlelit room. His hand cups your jaw, holding you steady like you’re something he actually wants to keep intact, while his other arm hooks around your waist and hauls you that last inch forward until there’s no space left between you.

The kiss doesn’t just happen, it grinds and lingers, thick and heavy, delicious in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the lawyer still standing three feet away. This is just Titus finally getting his hands on something he’s wanted for a long goddamn time, and he’s not rushing any second of it. You hear him catch a sharp, ragged breath through his nose, the sound barely held together as he deepens the kiss, tongue sliding slow and sure against yours.

When he eventually pulls away, his eyes are blown out and dark, heavy with everything he’s not saying. His thumb is still tracing slow patterns across your skin, and he’s staring at you like you’re completely his now.

Which, technically, you are. Legally and irrevocably.

“Hello, Mrs. Danforth,” he says, his voice a low vibration meant only for you, the words sinking straight under your skin.

And despite the total shitshow your life has become, despite how much you should hate him for all of this, something in your chest does something it really, really shouldn’t. It fucking flutters.

The lawyer gathers his papers with quiet efficiency, offers a curt nod that feels more like a final seal on a contract than any kind of congratulations, and slips out of the candlelit room without another word, leaving the two of you alone in the heavy silence.

Titus doesn’t move away. His hand stays cradling your jaw, thumb stroking slow, lazy circles against your flushed cheek as he looks down at you with those dark, unreadable eyes. The title he just gave you—Mrs. Danforth—still hangs in the air between you, heavy and permanent.

“You’re shaking,” he observes quietly, voice low and rough around the edges.

“I’m not,” you lie, even as your fingers twitch where they rest against his chest, betraying you completely.

A small, knowing smile curves his lips. He leans in closer, brushing his mouth against the shell of your ear, breath warm as he murmurs, “Liar.”

Before you can even get a retort out he’s scooping you up again, effortless, carrying you down the quiet hallway toward the master suite. Your heels are dangling stupid off your toes, one slips free and you don’t even care where it lands. The white gown pools and tangles around you, heavy silk whispering against your skin. You don’t fight. There’s no point anymore. The game’s over, you lost bad, and some treacherous, stupid part of you is already humming low and hot with what’s coming next, buzzing under your skin like electricity you can’t shut off.

He kicks the bedroom door shut behind him with his foot, the bang echoing a little, and sets you down on the edge of that massive bed. The room’s dim, just one lamp throwing soft light and moonlight sneaking through the heavy curtains, making everything feel hushed and secret. Titus stands over you, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it aside without looking. His fingers work the cuffs of his shirt open real slow, deliberate, eyes never leaving yours. That stare pins you.

“Take the dress off. Slowly.”

It’s not a request, it’s an order.

You hesitate, just long enough that he notices, the corner of his mouth twitching, and reach behind you for the zipper. The sound of it sliding down feels obscenely loud in the quiet, like it’s giving everything away. The fabric slips from your shoulders and pools at your waist, leaving you in nothing but that delicate white lace lingerie they gave you for tonight. His gaze drags over you shameless, slow, possessive, hungry, lingering on the way your nipples pebble tight against the thin lace, the dip of your waist, the curve of your hips.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, the word rough, scraped raw with want. He steps closer, cups your face in both hands and tilts your head up. “My wife. Finally.”

That word shoots through you, part fear, part something way more dangerous that makes your stomach flip and your thighs press together without thinking. You open your mouth to say something—probably stupid, something to grab back even a sliver of control—but he kisses you before you can. This kiss is different, deeper, slower, filthier than the one in the ceremony room. More like the forest one but hungrier. His tongue slides against yours with lazy confidence, tasting, claiming, sucking on your tongue like he’s trying to devour every last protest, every doubt, every bit of resistance you’ve got left.

He pushes you back onto the bed until you’re lying beneath him, the gown still tangled around your hips like it doesn’t want to let go. His body covers yours, solid, warm, overwhelming in the best worst way. One of his knees nudges your thighs apart as he settles between them, grinding the thick heavy line of his cock against your clothed core with these deliberate rolling presses that make your breath hitch. You gasp into his mouth, hips twitching up involuntarily as heat floods between your legs, fast and embarrassing.

“Already so wet for me,” he teases against your lips, voice dark with amusement. “Even after trying to run from me all night. Your cunt knows who it belongs to, doesn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” you breathe, but there’s no real heat in it anymore. Not really. Your body’s already betraying you completely, aching for more of that friction, that pressure.

He chuckles, low and filthy right by your ear. “That’s the plan, baby. Until you can’t remember why you ever thought you could leave.”

His mouth trails down your neck, sucking and biting just hard enough to leave faint marks that’ll bloom tomorrow like proof. He peels the rest of the dress off you with practiced hands, tossing it aside like it’s nothing more than wrapping paper on a gift he’s been dying to unwrap for years. The lingerie follows; bra unhooked and discarded, lace panties dragged down your legs slowly. You catch the way his pupils blow wide when he notices how the crotch of your panties is stuck to your pussy, soaked through because of how wet you already are.

When you’re completely bare beneath him he sits back on his heels for a second and just looks, drinking in every inch like he can’t get enough. His hands follow, palming your breasts roughly, thumbs circling and pinching your nipples until they tighten into aching sensitive peaks. He leans down and takes one into his mouth, tongue swirling hot and wet, teeth grazing and tugging while his fingers pinch and roll the other. You arch off the bed with a broken moan, fingers threading through his silver curls and pulling hard, harder than you mean to.

“Titus, fuck—”

“Shh.” He releases your nipple with a wet pop and kisses his way down your stomach, spreading your thighs wider with his broad shoulders. “I’ve waited long enough for this, lemme taste you.”

He doesn’t tease for long. His mouth is on you in the next breath, hot and relentless. His tongue drags through your slick folds with one slow savoring lick from entrance to clit, then circles the swollen bud with firm knowing pressure. You cry out, hips jerking against his face, but his strong hands pin you down, broad shoulders holding your thighs open, keeping you exactly where he wants. He eats you as hungrily as he did the very first time, that never changes. Messy, greedy, groaning against your cunt like your taste is the only thing that’s ever satisfied him. Two thick fingers push inside you without warning, curling hard against that spongy spot that makes stars burst behind your eyes while his tongue flicks and sucks your clit with those obscene slick sounds.

You come hard and fast, thighs trembling around him, a sharp broken cry tearing from your throat as pleasure crashes through you in relentless waves. He doesn’t stop to give you some reprieve, of course he doesn’t. Keeps licking and sucking through the aftershocks, fingers pumping steadily, drawing it out until you’re whimpering, oversensitive, pushing weakly at his head.

“Too much-ah, Titus—”

He pulls back just enough to look up at you, lips and chin shiny with your arousal, eyes dark and satisfied. “Not nearly enough.” He crawls back up your body, shedding the rest of his clothes as he goes. His cock springs free finally, heavy, thick, flushed dark and already leaking precum at the tip, as it rests hot and heavy against your thigh.

“Look at me.”

You do. His eyes lock onto yours as he lines himself up and pushes in, he always loved eye contact while he slides in, and fuck, it is pretty hot. The stretch burns in the best way, filling you completely until he bottoms out, balls-deep inside your clenching heat. You both groan, the sound raw and filthy. For a moment he just stays there, forehead pressed to yours, breathing hard, letting you feel every throbbing inch of him. You’re thankful for the pause—you always needed some time adjusting to his cock. It’s huge. That, and because you’re still incredibly sensitive after the previous orgasm.

“Fuck… so tight. You feel like you were made for my cock,” he rasps, and it’s such a delicious tone you have to hold back from clenching around him right then. “My wife’s greedy tight cunt sucking me in like it missed me.”

Then he starts to move.

It’s not gentle. Which is also a contradiction to how you imagined your wedding night with him as his wife, but you’re not complaining, how could you? His hips snap forward in deep punishing strokes that rock the expensive bed beneath you, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the room along with your ragged moans and whimpers, mixed with his groans. Each thrust drags against every sensitive nerve inside you, the thick vein on the underside of his cock feels so good dragging along your walls, the head kissing your cervix with every brutal plunge. He fucks you like he’s trying to fuck the memory of your breakup right out of your body.

It’s working. God, it’s working too well.

His left hand grips your hip hard enough to bruise, the golden ring on his finger digging into your plush skin, a blunt reminder that he’s not your boyfriend anymore—he’s your husband now. He pulls your hips up so he can go even deeper while his other hand braces beside your head, driving into you harder, faster, angling those strong hips to hit that spot that makes you see white. You wrap your legs around his waist, nails digging into his back and shoulders, urging him deeper even as you gasp his name like it’s both a curse and a prayer.

“Say it,” he demands, voice rough against your ear, hips never slowing. “Say you’re my wife. Say you’ll always be mine.”

You shake your head, stubborn even now, biting your lip to hold back the words. But he angles just right and slams in harder, grinding against your clit with every thrust, making your back arch off the bed with a keening whine.

“Say it,” he repeats, punctuating each word with a brutal wet thrust. “Tell me who you belong to, Mrs. Danforth.”

“I’m-fuck- I’m your wife,” you finally choke out, the words breaking on a moan as another orgasm builds fast and vicious under his relentless pace. “I’m yours- oh god—”

“Good girl.” He reaches between you to rub tight rough circles over your swollen ultra-sensitive clit, pushing you over the edge again. You come with a sob, clenching around his thick cock so hard it drags a guttural groan from his throat, your walls fluttering and milking him as the waves rip through you.

He doesn’t slow down. Fucks you through it, hips stuttering only when his own orgasm starts to hit. With a low broken sound—a whimper, for your ears only—he buries himself as deep as he can and comes hard, pulsing inside you, filling you with hot thick spurts of cum that make your toes curl and your mind go blissfully blank. You feel every twitch, every rope as he empties himself, marking you from the inside.

For a long moment the only sound is your shared ragged breathing. Titus collapses half on top of you but careful not to crush you completely, his face buried in the crook of your neck. His lips brush your pulse point in something almost tender while his cock twitches inside you, still half-hard, like he’s not quite done claiming you yet.

But he’s far from finished.

After a few minutes he lifts his head, eyes heavy-lidded and dark with lingering lust. He brushes a strand of sweaty hair from your forehead, then pulls out slowly. A thick trail of his cum leaks from your swollen pussy right away. The sight seems to please him immensely.

“Round two,” he murmurs, voice husky. “On your hands and knees. I want to watch my cum drip out of you while I fuck it back in.”

He flips you over with ease, pulling your hips up so your ass is raised high, chest and face pressed to the sheets. His hands spread your cheeks and he groans at the messy sight of his release coating your folds. Without warning he pushes two fingers inside you, scooping up his cum and pushing it deeper, making you whimper at the overstimulation.

“Look at this sloppy cunt,” he says, voice thick with filthy appreciation. “Already full of me and still greedy for more?”

He replaces his fingers with his cock in one smooth thrust, burying himself to the hilt again. This time he fucks you harder, one hand fisted in your hair to arch your back, the other slapping your ass with sharp stinging smacks that make you clench around him. The angle is deeper, more punishing, his balls slapping wetly against your clit with every snap of his hips.

You come again, screaming into the sheets, and he follows soon after, flooding you with another load until it’s leaking down your thighs.

He doesn’t let you rest for long.

By the time the sky begins to lighten outside the windows, you’re a trembling, cum-soaked mess, your limbs weak, voice hoarse from moaning, every inch of you marked and claimed. Titus pulls you into his arms one last time, spooning behind you with his cock still nestled inside you, softening but refusing to leave your heat.

“Sleep, Mrs. Danforth,” he murmurs against your neck, pressing a surprisingly soft kiss there. “You’re mine now. And I’m nowhere near done with you. We’re going to see our new house later today.”

You should hate the way that promise makes fresh heat coil low in your belly, but you don’t hate it. And yeah, you feel stupid, like you’re betraying the version of you that was set on breaking up with him yesterday, but you can’t hate this. Hate him. The break up had never been out of lack of love, if anything it had been the opposite what drove you away, it had been knowing the lengths he’s willing to go to for you and being afraid of the responsibility of having his heart in your hand.

With a sigh, you press back against him, letting exhaustion and that dangerous, ruined satisfaction pull you under.

His first stop upon arriving back in the city had been to tell the Justice Gang what he had found. Even now, the lie felt sour on his tongue. Nothing, he’d said. There had been nothing out there other than a few houses. No trap, no secret compound, nothing.

Technically it was the truth? There was nothing there than would be of interest to the Justice Gang or concerned citizens. It was difficult to call you nothing, though. You were certainly something.

Clark had been replaying the three minutes of interaction you had had all day and it was well into the evening. You had been nervous – why? That was not the usual emotion he evoked in people. Usually, people were relieved or happy. They certainly weren’t scared of him.

Something bad had probably happened to you, he decided. Concern prickled in his stomach as he thought about all the different things that could have happened to make you so fearful. Clark felt regret at leaving you alone, even though you’d seemingly lived there for a long time and – and it was silly. You were a grown woman.

There was no doubt that you did not know about Ultraman. If your reaction was like that to him, then he could not imagine you having some sort of relationship with Ultraman who was well known for his violence.

So, what had his clone been doing out there? Ultraman went there all the time, always alone, and for at least an hour. Clark had been able to scent him all over the property like some dog marking his territory. It didn’t seem as though he got too close to your home, which was interesting.

The answer danced on Clark’s tongue, threatened to slip down his throat and choke him into acknowledging it. Your face flashed across his eyes as if you were standing in front of him. The way your hands had trembled as you addressed him, the fact that you had told him to ‘fly safely’ despite your obvious trepidation.

Clark had watched you there for almost a full minute, hovering in the air above your yard before you had noticed him. He still didn’t know why he hadn’t announced himself immediately. Watching you dig about in your pristine yard, muttering to yourself and getting progressively dirtier had made his heart stutter in his chest.

You were a sweet thing, he decided, lifting his water to his lips. He could understand Ultraman wanting something sweet in his bitter life.

Unsatisfied, Clark set the glass down with a thud. His clone had been watching you for a while. What did Ultraman know about you that Clark Kent didn’t? A lot, probably.

Even with Ultraman locked up, Clark did not feel settled with you out there by yourself. He knew it was a silly concern and yet – he also knew he would feel a lot better if he got to check up on you. At least once or twice more.

Before you could even finish typing his name, dozens of search suggestions related to Superman popped up. You scanned through them, looking for something that even vaguely sent alarm bells ringing.

“Superman real name,” you read aloud, “Superman visits hospital. Superman saves man from building.”

As expected, there was nothing disturbing. Not from legit sources, anyway. There was, of course, his snark subreddit and a whole bunch of nasty tweets. Most of them went on about the fact he was an illegal alien and that one person shouldn’t have so much power.

You idly ran your fingers over the keyboard, eyes glazing over as you began to think. It was scary that one person had some much power, so much strength, but he had only ever used it for good. If you suddenly developed powers, would you immediately fly out and begin to help people. Probably not.

And no legit dirt had ever turned up on him. Even now, all you could find was articles on his latest heroic feat and pictures of him handing out flowers in grey, sterile hospitals. His blue and red outfit lit up each picture, along with the toothy grin he wore. He genuinely looked like he wanted to be there. The longer you looked at the pictures and skimmed through the articles, the more relaxed you felt.

A man named Clark Kent had some of the most interesting articles. Superman seemed to be pretty open with him, and there was a lot of detail into why he did the things he did. Superman seemed to have a pretty strong sense of right and wrong, to the point where he seemed almost. . .naive?

You zoomed in on a picture of him, mouse hovering over the pearly white of his teeth. He was handsome, of course. There was something boyishly charming in his eyes. It was amusing how open he seemed, given that his true identity was a secret he hadn’t revealed. Probably would never reveal.

You minimized the picture and plucked your laptop from your lap and set it onto the coffee table. Your thighs were toasty from its heat and your cheeks began to warm for a different reason. Superman had been in your front yard only days ago. Truth be told, he had been just as handsome in person. You remembered the way his curls had began to break free from whatever he used to style them, making it look as though he’d been running his fingers through them.

Strangely, he had seemed almost as nervous as you. You had always envisioned him as quietly confident. Though he’d been almost the entire yard’s length away from you, he still seemed to tower over you and your flowers.

Since then, your laptop had been a constant companion. When you weren’t anxiety-googling Superman, you were combing the local news for any sign of what could have drawn him to your home in the first place. At first you started big; escaped criminals, explosions. There had been nothing. Eventually you were looking at robberies, home invasions, things that the local PD usually handled.

You just felt like you would feel better if you knew why he had been here. That way you would know what the chances were of him coming back. Unlikely, you knew, since he had said something about a mistake. But your anxiety would not let the matter lie.

You let out a sign, opening and closing your hands quickly as though you were letting go of your nerves and irrational thoughts. You shut the laptop closed with a ‘click’, tucking it into its place under the coffee table.

Instead of sitting here, progressively putting your mind in more of a twist, you would be productive. From the other room, you heard your washing machine ding, the cycle finished. Perfect. It was a lovely day and you could busy yourself with hanging it out.

You shoved it into a basket and grabbed the bowl of pegs, heading out to the line with a bounce in your step. Fresh laundry always made you feel better, and since you were so isolated, you didn’t have to worry about the neighbors seeing your bra flailing about on the line.

You shook out each item of clothing before attaching it to the wire. There was a slight breeze carrying the scent of fresh laundry through your yard and you inhaled deeply, loosing yourself to the mindless task.

The sun was still high overhead and there was no rain due until next week. You would come out to check the laundry in a couple hours and focus instead on a couple hours of work before you had to get started on dinner.

You paused on the threshold of your home, turning back to observe the garden. It looked picturesque, like the sort of thing you would see in a magazine. Your aunt would be happy, you thought, with the way you had done things.

You became aware of your own satisfaction blooming in your chest, a sense of pride at the home you had created. You were happy too. You pressed your palm to your chest as though forcing the feeling deeper, trying to push it right to your center where it would stay. You were determined to hold on to it.

The sun was hot overhead when Clark decided he couldn’t wait any longer. Some part of him told him to wait, at least until it was darker, but he shoved the thought down. Ultraman was the one who operated under cover of darkness, not Superman.

When his feet touched down in your yard, he let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. Your front door was slightly ajar and he peered through your walls with an ease that would have made you shiver.

You were at your desk, diligently typing away. There was a cold cup of tea next to you, neglected in favor of your work. He got that way too, sometimes. There would be a particular story that would wrap him up and refuse to let him go until he got all his thoughts out, jumbled and nonsensical before editing but proof of his hard work.

He flinched a little when you reached for the cup. He swallowed the shame that threatened to bubble up. There was no real plan for what he would do if you saw him, he hadn’t thought of any way to explain his presence away this time.

It was Ultraman’s fault, Clark absently thought. He couldn’t bring himself to be mad at his clone, even though he should be. If Ultraman hadn’t been sniffing around enough to catch the attention of the Justice Gang, then Clark never would have been drawn out here, to you.

“That would be a shame,” he murmured tilting his head to inspect you further. The words slipped out without thought and he turned an interesting shade of red at the implication of his own words.

You were obviously fine. He should go.

“I should go,” he said sternly to himself, but there was no real will behind it.

Instead, he found himself inspecting your garden, fingers brushing over the carefully planted flowers. His Ma would have appreciated your work, he thought to himself. Eventually his gaze landed on your washing line and he staggered to a stop at the sight of all your clothes carefully pinned up.

He recognized the outfit you had been wearing on the day he first saw you. His fingers curled at his side as the memory replayed. It had only been a few minutes, which made it easier to remember everything. The shock and fear on your face, the way your heart had been pumping as you shot to your feet.

You were just so vulnerable. All humans were. Sometimes Clark hated it, hated how easy it was to extinguish the life of a human, hated how difficult it made his job. Clark was eerily aware of how easy it was to stand there and watch you. He again thought about Ultraman and the way his clone had seemed to attach himself to you, all without your knowledge.

Clark wanted to reach out and cup you in his hands, keep you safe from people like Ultraman. He sucked in a sharp breath at the thought of you tucked against his chest, looking up at him but not in fear, like before, but with trust. With – with affection, even.

His fingers gingerly brushed the shirt you had been wearing beneath your overalls on that day. His heart was thundering in his chest. This was wrong, he knew, but he could not make himself let go of the worn fabric. Despite being washed he could still smell you on it, he could smell the scent of your skin and the flowers you had tended to that day and the perfume you had worn.

Clark turned his head a little, breath catching at the other items of clothing on the line. He wasn’t sure if Kryptonians could have heart-attacks but it sure felt like it. He listened carefully for any sign of movement from inside the house, ready to flee at the turn of your head. If you were to come out now, catch him here with his hands on your clothing, he would have no explanation. His mind had turned into mush and was about to start oozing from his ears.

There was nothing inherently sexy about your under garments but Clark had never felt so lightheaded in his life. Your bras were obviously well loved, the fabric pilling and the wires threatening to poke out. Clark let his finger trace over the hint of metal beneath the fabric, imagined your breasts warming it.

This was bad. This was really, really bad, and the worse part was that he could not bring himself to stop, to think about it and just go. At least, not without something.

Clark snatched a pair of panties from the line without examining them. He would probably die if he did. He thought for a moment and tugged off a shirt as well, the same one from earlier. He tucked the panties into the shirt, as though that would make it any better, and shot off into the sky. 

He could not take his bounty to his home in the city. Tucking the clothes to his chest, he set off in the direction of his fortress, the only place where he was guaranteed privacy.

Once he arrived, he shot past the robots and into his room. It hadn’t seen much use, not in a few years, and it was pristine. He let the ice door fall shut before finally exhaling. Thinking too much about what he had done made him dizzy and so he let his hands do the work, laying out your top on his bed before smoothing out the creases, patting it down.

His hands shook around your panties. Like your other clothing, they were well loved. There was even a slight hole around the waist band. Clark poked it with his finger, imagining all the times you had slid them up your hips. Eyes clenched shut, he brought them to his nose and almost moaned out loud. It was faint but, like the other clothes, there was the barest hint of you.

“Bad,” he mouthed the word into the fabric, “I shouldn’t.”

But he already had. His tongue pressed into the fabric, chasing whatever hint of you he might get. He didn’t stop until they were thoroughly wet and his length was throbbing in time to his heartbeat.

Finally, Clark pulled them from his face and placed them carefully beside the top. The wet spot made him throb anew as he thought about what they would look like if you were the one who had gotten them so soaked.

Clark waited for the shame to hit him, anticipating guilt and disgust at his own actions. Instead, his mind went to Ultraman and the way he had undoubtedly been drawn to you, too. Maybe that was it.

“Maybe she’s in my blood,” Clark whispered.

Clark had never intentionally done anything bad in his life. Yet within a week of meeting you, he had watched you without your knowledge and stole clothes – stole panties – from your washing line. Like some creep. But it didn’t feel wrong. Instead, he felt a purring satisfaction in his chest. He felt the need to add to his collection, even.

It was insane. It felt so good.

“I want more,” he admitted to himself.

Things like this were delicate, though. Clark had had girlfriends before but this was different. Never had he been driven to such obscene actions, never had he been driven purely by desperation and desire. He had to be gentle.

 Normally you didn’t stay in Metropolis after dark but you had been enjoying the company of your friends and been caught up in memories and jokes. It was a blissfully quiet night and you stopped outside your friend’s apartment, searching for her window and raising a hand once you caught sight of her.

She had sent you on your way with a bag full of food and the promise to text her once you got to your car, and then again when you got home. You had parked a couple blocks away (parking could be a bitch in the city) but you felt at ease under the brightly lit streets.

Your friend lived in a quieter part of the city. Before you had found out about your great aunt you had considered moving to this area yourself. The streets were dotted with others like yourself, heading home at the start of an early night. You slid your phone into your pocket and began the walk to your car.

You kept your earphones in your pocket, too. Yes, the city was tranquil, but it was still Metropolis. Things could change on a dime.

As you got further from your friend’s apartment, the lights seemed to get dimmer. Some of them needed to be replaced. It wasn’t enough to make you nervous but you quickened your step, eager to get to your car.

You could smell pizza and something spicy. There was the gentle chatter emanating from restaurants you passed, the weather still warm enough for out door seating. As you walked on, the talking died down until all you could hear was the soft clip of your shoes on the concrete.

There was a light swooshing sound, like wind passing over something. You glanced over your shoulder and saw nothing.

“Ma’am?”

You bit out a yelp, bag dropping to the floor as your hands fisted in front of your chest. Just like before, it was him. Superman, right there in front of you.

You searched his gaze for any sign of recognition and saw nothing, only open concern. You stood still as he stepped forward and bent down to pick your dropped bag. He smelt familiar, like a cologne your high-school boyfriend had worn. The nostalgic scent made you relax a little. You lowered your hands and coughed, offering him a sheepish smile.

When you reached out to take your bag, Superman pulled back his arm. Your lips parted slightly and you blinked up at him, questioning.

“You’re headed somewhere? I’ll walk you.”

“Oh,” you shook your head, “it’s okay, I – “

Superman didn’t let you finish. He stepped in beside you, shoulder nudging your own, and tilted his head. You almost laughed. With a tight smile, you began to walk in the direction of your car.

It was strange to see him walk. Most of the footage you had seen was of him flying. You eyed him from the corner of your vision, searching yourself for any of the anxiety you had felt before. You had been caught off guard before, in your yard, but this was Metropolis. His natural habitat.

There was no need for talk. It should have been awkward but it wasn’t. He ducked his head and caught your eye as you came to a stop beside your car. You patted your pockets for your keys and stared as he held them up, clicking the button and opening your car door for you.

“Oh,” you said, “I – I must have dropped them.”

“You did,” he smiled, “but it’s okay. I got you.”

You mumbled a quick thank you before ducking under his arm and sliding into the driver’s seat. Now it was getting awkward. He watched closely as you buckled yourself in and then held out the keys. There was a slight bit of resistance as you tugged the keys from his fingers. For a moment you were almost certain he wasn’t going to let them go.

“Ah,” he suddenly remembered, holding up the bag of food you had dropped.

Your jaw dropped as he leaned in across you, depositing the bag in the passenger seat. He looked comical in the small interior of your car. You bit your cheek when his arm brushed across your chest as he pulled back, offering you a smile.

“Drive safely,” he said, pausing expectantly.

“I – I will,” you assured him, fastening your hands onto the wheel. You gripped tightly, suddenly nervous. Did he remember you?

He closed the car door softly and then stepped back. You avoided his gaze as you pulled out of the space and got onto the road. When you dared to peek into the rearview mirror, he was already gone.

A/N - please please leave comments/reblogs if you enjoyed!! Also asks give me life so if you have a question/thought, don’t be afraid to send it!!

I’m planning for there to be three parts total so just one more to go :)

dividers by @pixopix

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and there’s nothing he loves more than burying himself inside you every night, sneaking in to your room when your mom’s fast asleep, shoving his long, thick fingers into your mouth to muffle your soft cries as he makes light work of ruining your pretty little cunt over and over again.

and despite his age he can go all night, it’s like you flip a switch in him, give him endless stamina so he can fuck you like a man possessed filling up you up until you truly can’t take anymore, until it has no place to go, dripping out of your swollen cunt like a leaking faucet.

he loves it.

loves to lay with you afterwards, cuddling you from behind, when you’re wearing nothing but one of his stolen flannels, the buttons of which have long been popped off.

his huge hands cradling your soft tummy, revelling in how bloated and swollen you are from how much he’s filled you up, how full of him you are, how you look like one of those tiny kitten’s who’s drank too much milk, his tiny little kitten, his little girl with a belly just like his.

“awww my little girl’s s’full” he coo’s right into your ear, one hand rubbing your bulging tummy, the other stroking your hair.

“filled y’up so much, little tummy so full of cum y’look like your daddy, hmmm, my pretty little twin” he nuzzles his face into your hair, grinding his twitching cock against your puffy, aching cunt, making your fucked out brain go so fuzzy.

he’s getting hard again, for the umpteenth time that night, sliding his heavy cock through your sticky folds, using his own cum as lube as he slips inside of you.

you gasp, you’re still so sore from before but you feel so dizzy and tingly that you couldn’t possibly ask him to stop, you don’t want him to, you want to be good for him, let him take what he wants from you, what he needs.

give him all of you, it’s what he deserves for being such a good dad, he gives you the world and this is how you repay him.

he fucks you slowly this time, so gentle, he doesn’t want to hurt his sweet girl, just rolls his hips softly against you, his thick cock moves so easily inside of you, he’s already stretched you out, made you a perfect fit for his cock and only his.

his hands never leave your tummy, pawing and grabbing at your soft skin and he can’t help but groan as your cunt clenches around him.

‘s’full and round like your dad’

‘gonna make such a pretty momma one day’

‘so good for me, my perfect girl’

‘my sweet lil’twin, always sweet f’your daddy, huh?’

he babbles obscenely into your ear as he spills himself inside of you for what seems like the millionth time that night, and you know he’s nowhere near done.

thank god for birth control

eeee this was so icky and sweet, hope you liked it, imagining reader so fucked out and like milk-drunk on her dad’s cum 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

anyway this was so much fun!! loved working on this with u @rhettsunshine <33

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