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The sun is brutal today. Molten and punishing in the way it beats itself flush against the concrete, the pool water, the bright lacquered edges of the pool chairs until everything looks bleached out and overexposed.

Pope can feel it working at him, needling into the back of his neck, gathering sweat under the collar of his shirt, making the dark arms of his sunglasses burn where they hook over his ears. 

He’s not particularly fond of heat like this — bodies gone sluggish, thoughts slow-cooked to mush — yet he refused to budge from his corner.

Stubbornness is a religion, and today’s sole article of faith is you: sweet and oblivious and in need of a sentry. So he sits, muscles held in a punishing lock, letting the sun roast him alive if that’s the tax of keeping you in his sights. 

You hover in the sunlight wrapped in a frosting-white ruffled bikini, bows resting over the triangle top covering your breasts like little ownership tags he hasn’t signed yet. Fabric scoops and skims, herding his attention along curves he’s memorised only through clothing until now. 

A dull ache starts low in his belly, half-chub straining, but he holds himself rigid. Steel spine, locked jaw. Want is allowed; acting on it is not. 

You do that little lost-kitten swivel, glancing around as your pretty features twist with frustration when the lack of seating dawns on you.

The yard is a disaster from Craig’s get-together last night. Mud-slick loungers flopped belly-up, broken or littered with party debris fermenting in the sun. 

One dented chair left, and he’s welded to it. Deran sprawls on the other, drooling through a hangover coma.

“There’s nowhere else to sit…” That faint tremor in your voice shreds what little discipline the sun hasn’t already scorched. You shift, ankle to arch, looking unsure. “Can I sit with you, Pope? Just for a bit. ‘M feet hurt.”

It’s absurd how fast he armors up. Tendons braced, breath cinched, eyes slitting as if your question carried a knife. Fight, flight, freeze. The third floods his limbs with concrete.

He clears his throat and forces his fingers to unkink from the chair arm before they leave imprints.

“Here,” he mutters, half risen, knees popping like bad fireworks. “Sit —”

But your hand flattens against the broad plate of his shoulder, forcing him back down before he can peel himself from the wicker.

“No, it’s okay,” you insist, shrugging as you slip backward into the cradle of his spread thighs, cotton-candy ruffles kissing his lap. “There’s plenty of room. You don’t have to get up.”

His eyes widen to saucers.

Plenty of room, you say. Not from where he’s sitting. Every inch of space is suddenly packed with scent, sun-oil, and the knowledge he can’t shift an inch without grinding up into you like a savage.

You’ve practically asked the lion to hold still while the lamb curls up against its teeth, and the lion is trying — Christ, he’s trying.

You melt back against him with a contented mmph.

He clamps down molars down on the inside of his cheek. Penance, placeholder, something to do that isn’t rut forward. Blood tastes copper-sharp. 

His fingers skim the satin slope of your waist, panic-brake, hover. Move you? Move himself? He can’t decide. 

He ends up abandoning the controls altogether, drops hands to his thighs and squeezes them into prison knots.

You wriggle again, your bikini bottom skating over the swell inside his shorts. Heat knifes through him, the reaction instantaneous, biochemical, a syringe of adrenaline straight to his cock.

A rifle ready to shoot before the target appears. 

“Knock it off,” he says under his breath, the words clipped, strangled almost. 

You tip your head a little, like you’re about to ask what he means, and he feels a fresh wave of panic go through him at the thought of you turning around, of those wide doe-eyes on him while he’s like this.

“Quit squirming,” he adds quickly, trying to weld the sound into irritation rather than plea. “Just… sit still, yeah?”

Your shoulders hitch a light shrug against his ribs. “M’trying to get comfy. You’re all stiff.”

Of course he fucking is.

Stiff everywhere, especially where you’ve parked.

You can’t feel the full shame of it, must think it’s the chair ridge or a clump in the cushion or maybe the twitch in his thigh. Something harmless. Something simple enough to match the sweet, bubble-wrapped world you keep your thoughts in. 

“Stiff’s the least of it,” he grunts, staring dead head. “Keep moving and I’ll end up launching you into the deep end for your own good.”

Biggest lie he’s told all week. One glimpse of you climbing out of the pool, bikini plastered, water sliding down your skin, and he’d be the one going under, drowned in his own boxers.

Your palm flattens over his knee. “That’s not very gentlemanly.”

“Never claimed I was a gentleman.” His hand covers yours, calloused thump sweeping once over your knuckles before retreating.

You give a breezy little hmm then shift once more, extending your legs until your toes point past the chair’s end.

He’s forced to tip back with you. Your head now resting near the firm plane of his lower stomach while your shoulder blades pillow against his lap.

You glance up, upside-down smile curving. “You always act like one with me.”

He does. Unintentionally, maybe.

You’re forever finding chilled water bottles materializing beside your lounge chair, phone charged because he jacked his own cord to keep yours alive, car warmed and idling on nights the temperature dips. The universe rearranged in small ways so your path stays smooth.

It’s disorienting. He’s spent most of his life running rough, letting silence and the hard set of his jaw do the talking. People read him as cold, and he’s been fine with that; cold keeps questions away. 

You still get that too — he can’t thaw completely — but around the frost are these bewildering warm fronts.

He keeps waiting for you to notice the contradiction, call him on it, shove him back into the fortress he knows. You never do.

You squint up at him, lips parting as if to ask what gears he’s grinding now. 

This angle gifts him a perfect panorama of soft cleavage rising and falling, generous curves swaddled in white. The bows ride the upper swell like little white flags, fluttering each time you exhale. A faint sheen of perspiration beads at the valley in between them, catching the light, sliding downward. His gaze follows, pulse kicking so hard it bruises.

One thought, just one, of how they’d feel in his palms and his cock knocks again: attention.

You frown a little. “Did I lay on your phone or something? Feels kinda… hard.” 

You wiggle experimentally as if testing the theory.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

He needs to lie. Fast.

“Keys,” he mutters, voice rough as gravel. “Forgot to take ‘em outta my pocket.”

He nudges your hip a fraction forward, as if adjustment might erase the evidence throbbing beneath you.

“Oh — big set of keys,” you giggle. “Must be heavy. Sorry, I’ll try not to lean on them.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, trying to sound casual. He’s not sure it works. “Keys can take a little pressure.” 

He’s not sure that would work either.

“Seriously, Pope, that thing’s huge. Bet it knocks against your leg when you walk.” 

You don’t know what you’re saying. He has to remind himself of that over and over and over because it’s becoming increasingly hard (no pun intended) for him to not picture those words under different circumstances.

One where you look up at him where you’re planted on your knees, face smushed against his thigh as trails of drool dribble from your mouth.

He counts backward from ten.

At six he’s pulsing. At four he’s harder than when he started.

“Gotta grab somethin’ from the house,” he mutters, palming your waist to slide you forward so gently you sigh inside of question. 

Two strides later he’s inside, door thunking shut. Cold water, cupped and splashed, hisses off his cheeks. Doesn’t put out the fire. 

He braces both palms on the sink, zipper already down.

Quick, brutal strokes on his dick while the image of white bows sticks to the backs of his eyelids. His orgasm shudders through him in thirty silent seconds. 

When he reappears outside with an orange soda, he looks every inch the silent guardian again. Except for the bloom of color on his cheekbones that won’t quite fade.

MARIA NOTE shoutout to @romantic-insomniac for this simply brilliant idea 🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷 kissing ur brain so hard rn