irene’s blog

Ghost hates his job, hates the mundane feeling of writing out paperwork, or filling reports with his actions that will later be questioned to no end by higher ups. But he hates the feeling of blood on his hands more, even if it’s all he’s good for, all he’s ever excelled at. Taking lives, killing husbands and brothers and sons, wives and mothers and daughters, never seeing faces because they’re not paying Ghost to care. His job is brutal and violent, and that all leads to Simon kneeling at the boots of his subordinate, letting all those feelings fall away as his jaw aches and his cheek turns red from the harsh palm of his sergeant.

“Look at you, sitting all pretty on your knees for me, like the proper whore you are, and you’re still not listening.” Another hit to his cheek for missing an order, it sends a shock through his system, has him gagging and sputtering around Kyle’s cock like an inexperienced boy. But the man doesn’t let up, laughing at his sputtering and only pulling out a fraction, allowing Simon just enough room to breathe, as if oxygen is a luxury that he has to earn. And in Simon’s mind, fresh from a mission that had a higher body count than usual, he hasn’t earned that right. He barely takes a breath before sliding down again, feeling Kyle in his fucking throat, trying to swallow around him, trying to be good.

Kyle’s words come out in a stern voice, the one he uses when Soap’s comms suddenly cut out, or when Price has been quiet for too long, or in moments like this, when Simon’s head is too loud and his actions aren’t rational. A steady hand curls into Simon’s hair, pulling at the brown-blonde strands until he’s panting a few inches away from Kyle’s weeping tip.

“Colour. Now.”

He should answer, should tell the truth. But it’s like all the work they’ve done to get Simon into a safe space for this kind of treatment has gone out the window because of one mission. All Simon can hear is a mother pleading for her son’s life as he kills them both, not knowing if they were innocent, or perhaps part of some terrorist cell, or if they just pissed off the wrong people. But that voice echoes in his head, her voice cursing him, pleading with him, screaming at him all in the span of a few seconds before he had silenced her.

“Green, I’m green…”

Simon’s job is violent and bloody and he fucking hates it. He tries to pull against Kyle, tries to do at least one thing right and pleasure his lover— if he can’t even do that, than what kind of person is he? Unable to be useful as anything other than a weapon, than a knife in the hands of his superiors. A dog waiting for the order to attack.

He’s pulled back, eyes watering at the vice grip in his hair, sure that a few strands have been tugged from his scalp as he’s forced up onto the bed. Simon opens his legs, practically begging for Kyle to just fuck him already, to make him useful— let him be useful, let him be good, let him repent, please God above, let him make up for his sins.

Kyle is his devotion, his saviour wrapped in dark skin and sweet touches, brushing gentle thumbs across tear stained cheeks as Simon weeps for forgiveness he doesn’t deserve. He takes all he can from his God, from his angel sent to punish him, and yet, Simon knows that no amount of sorrowful apologies muttered into Kyle’s shoulder will save him. He is a devil wearing the face of man, a snake-bitten evil that roams this Earth, wielded by those stronger than him and forged into a weapon.

And yet, and yet, Kyle’s lips brush his neck, his clavicle, his chest, worshipping his body as if he’s a work of art. Whispers sweet nothings into his skin as he goes down and down and down, his thigh, his knee, his ankle, working his way back up and then down the other leg. Simon’s skin is heated with the fires of Hell, a place he is so sure he belongs in, tinted pink and burning against the cold of Kyle’s hands as he feels those holy lips press against his weeping sin. Pleasure, white hot and undeserved, shreds the last bits of Simon’s mind, whispered words going unheard as Kyle gives him a taste of Heaven. And yet, one word stands out in the haze and fog of his mind.

“Liar,” The word is spat out like something vile, landing on Simon’s stomach, dripping down the curve of his hip, like molten iron as it burns his skin. Kyle’s voice is muffled by the pathetic cock he’s licking, because Simon can’t even be good enough to have something that could fill his lover’s mouth. But the molten word feels like salvation, feels like it’s burning a hole into Simon’s very soul, letting the evil within him spill into the world, leaving him empty in the mind and plaint for his God to mould him in the image of Heaven.

Simon remembers the first time he saw you.

How could he not? You were a stranger in a strange land.

A flower from the south, grown up in warm soil and rich sun. Looking like you lived on fruit and honey, and Simon bet you smelled like it, too. Blackberry jam, and sweet cream, and nectar, he'd reckon. It was the first thought that passed through his head—that he'd like to smell you. Wanted to shove his ruined nose into that soft part in the hollow of your neck, where you were warm and delicate and he could feel your pulse thrumming just beneath, and inhale. He had to get close to anything to get a scent—his nose was mostly scar tissue, burned and singed from coke smoke over and over throughout the years—but he had wanted it.

You stepped out of your vulgar carriage, a little bird, bright and smiling in the bitter, sodden morning, and he had wanted it.

He doesn't know why. Hours in the forge leave him plenty of time to mull thoughts like warmed, spiced wine, but he hasn't yet figured out his taste for sweet things. Finespun things. Things he could crush in his hands like eggshells. He only knew that the sweet things never liked him much. Sweet things were frightened of the large, scowling thing making iron sing among the flames.

Until you.

You looked him in the eye. Smiled at him that day when he stood in the receiving line in the courtyard. You had a flash of teeth for everyone, it was true, but often even those generous with their smiles could never quite find one for Simon. They got lost somewhere, swallowed by his imposing frame. And maybe you didn't know to be afraid, maybe you'd never learned to be wary of mutts in your fair, tempered home, but Simon thought it was something else:

Curiosity. Interest in the beasts bred in the north—because your lord husband certainly wasn't an example of one.

The first son of a first son with a great old name and a castle. His family had lived within its walls for four hundred years, building and defending it in the name of some faraway king Simon couldn't give two shits about, and your mooncalf lord was going to run it all into the mud. He was a dull axe, meek and mollycoddled. Played at war to take the spines of other, greater men. A bare branch, too, Simon figured.

You'd learn all that when he returned from his latest campaign.

Married in absentia for your father's wealth of fighting men, you'd meet your new husband for the first time a month after your arrival. For now, you're alone, a warmblood getting used to the frost. It's no wonder you wander into Simon's forge.

Three days into your residence at the keep, your maids have you dressed for the winter. All wrapped up in a dull-coloured cloak. Hiding you beneath thick fur and delicate embroidery—as if anything could dull what you hold within you. The waifs are too flighty to follow you into Simon's workshop. The smell, the heat, the man within—all of them offend their delicate sensibilities in one way or another. Not you, though. You run to the bellows with no mind paid to the bull hammering metal beside them.

Simon only stops his work when you clear your pretty throat.

"What is your name, ser?" you ask. You're a daisy blooming in the winter muck. Or a weed, sprouting stubbornly where it doesn't belong. Wilting petals sucking sunlight in a smithy.

The only light here is from the fireglow; all else is choked. Coal smoulders in the hearth, belching sulphur and tar into the dense, stifling air. Breezes are throttled the moment they pass the threshold, so there's nothing to kick up the ash and soot—they lie in a blanket over the vices and punches, chisels and swages. Anything in Simon's forge doesn't stay clean for long. Even you, satin eve. Linger, and you'll melt into the walls with all the rest.

"Not a ser, little bird. Just a blacksmith," he says.

He had been mending a mail hauberk ruined in your lord's last battle. Some bannerman had a terrible day, and it was Simon's job to set the chain back right so another soldier could have one more. He sets the armour aside, and the loops of steel shimmer like stars in the firelight. You demand his full attention, and Simon wants to see what you'll do with it.

"My lady," you say, tone polite and proper. You run him a cunning once-over, top to toe, and Simon wonders what you see.

"Not no lady, neither."

"No, blacksmith, I'm a lady—the lady of your liege lord," you remind him with a smirk. As if he needed it. You look the part enough—clean and soft, highborn, grown up never scraping a knee, no doubt. But there's mischief twinkling in your eyes, like a child looking at a stream they want to ruin their boots in.

Simon doesn't know if he wants to stamp out that mischief or if there's something else he'd like to do with it.

He'll have to get closer to find out.

"And what does the lady of my liege lord want?"

"Your name." You're puckish and enjoying it, a smiling imp playing in the tick of your mouth. Even as your neck cranes to look up at him.

He rounds the heavy anvil to stand in front of you. Simon knows he's a big man. Can't forget when he's looking at the tops of people's heads all the time. And he's reminded, often and loudly, by highborns who think their sigils and names make them large. If I were your size, I'd rule the fucking kingdom, they say, and they're right. Simon probably could be a knight if he wanted. A ser. Fight hard enough for a lord who would give him a holdfast and a wife of his own. But he prefers the forge, prefers bending iron to his will to being bent to a lord's.

And if he were some perfumed knight, you wouldn't be here, looking up at him with intrigue.

Mud-madness, maybe. Maybe you want to know what it's like in the dirt.

"Riley," Simon says. He gives you his last, a secret joke just for him.

He's stepped into your space, something that would get him flogged if there were anyone around to see. But it's dark, and warm, and lonely in his poor hovel, and he likes how a little bit of your bravery is sapped away with him so close. Likes to see the uncertainty bleed into the curve of your brow with every notch your fine spine bends.

"Riley the blacksmith." You run a delicate finger on the flat side of a blade Simon was working on earlier, pressing prints into the cooled iron where it rests on the table beside you both. You're pretending now, pretending you're not afraid. But you can't look at him, and Simon can see your chest rise and fall.

"You'll forge a new sword for my husband," you continue. "I've brought good steel from my home for you to use."

"Not some jewelry?" he asks.

You hum. "I have enough jewelry."

"Didn't mean for you."

That gets your eyes back on him. You're affronted at the insult to your perfect lord. You draw yourself to your full height, taking back the measures you shrank. It's still lengths below Simon, and you know it. Simon sees the exact moment you realize just how tall you'd have to grow to match him, so you put another kind of distance between you and him. You glide to the other side of his work table, and when you speak, it's harsh and proud. "No jewelry. A sword, a longsword."

"Why?"

Chin tipped high, shoulders squared; a bead of sweat rolls down your temple. "Because I want for it."

"Used to getting what you want, little bird?" Simon follows your path, but when he steps, you step, and it's a dance. Not the measured steps you were surely taught as a girl, not the proper trips of light to plucked strings. It's a different sort of dance, and it doesn't help you. The only thing it does is get his blood hot.

If it's a chase you're after, you'll get it.

"Yes," you say.

Simon likes how your throat looks when you swallow.

"You don't know what you want," he tells you.

He could show you. In his mind's eye, Simon sees the woods outside the keep. He hears your soft footsteps thumping on the forest floor and the sounds you'd make when he catches you. Can almost smell the frozen leaves tangling in your hair, and the prey-sweat on your skin, and his jaw tingles.

"I do." You circle the table, never letting Simon get within arm's reach. Smart bird, but you sound as petulant as a child.

"And what's that?" he asks.

A table between you and him, and you think it is enough. That's the problem with highborns—they never think the lowbreds are half as bloodthirsty as they are. They think they are the teeth. Think their rank is armour. But what's a title in the mud, and even a worm will turn. That table could be across the room in a second, if Simon had the mind. You stir some creature in him, your furtive steps like the beating of wings. It rises from his chest like bile, that urge to hold you down, stop your movings and twitchings with his weight, feel your muscles flex below him.

Like a hound on a coursing—only what runs is hunted.

"A happy husband," you tell him, and Simon can't remember what the conversation was. He's busy keeping his feet planted, even as you step into the doorway and his every instinct begs him to act. He hadn't even realized you'd circled all the way back to the entrance to his forge, where the cold and daylight await.

"And a sword. By the end of the month, Riley, for his return."

Your scent sits in the air like poppy oil long after you've left.

You come back the next week, a winter rose tucked behind your ear and flakes of snow dusting your crown.

You're a bright thing, too full of life for this unwelcoming keep. Simon keeps thinking you'll wither, that one of these days he'll see you round a corner and you'll be sallow and wet like the rest of the north, but you keep surprising him. He eats his fill of you in glimpses, flutters of your cloak through the keyhole of his doorway, traipsing through the snow with your litter of gamines at your heels. You haunt his nights, his dreams, walking the scorched halls of his mind like a shade of witness, and in them, too, you run.

Simon wakes every dawn before you're caught. Always just around the next bend, soft soles padding on the stone.

Seeing you, then, measures from his wingspan and unaware of the danger dripping drool at your feet, Simon feels of consequence. Feels like a whispered name of a fable, too treacherous to say too loudly, or something may hear. Infamy, that's where Simon's thoughts lead him. Or into the loop of a noose.

Where you got that rose, though, he'd like to know. Crystal ropes of ice line the petal edges. A precious beauty frozen in time, black as liver blood. When he asks, you pluck it from your ear and hide your smirk behind it. "I met a handsome fairy in the wood, and he said he would give me a secret if I gave him a kiss. All I received was this rose," you tell him. Grinning like this is the start of a fun game, like you're the Good Neighbour between the iron oaks.

In your southern home, perhaps, The Folk are just stories. Here, in the unyielding North, people don't have the luxury to laugh at tales. If you're born in the snow, you don't take bargains with a light heart.

"Trading kisses, eh?" Simon grunts. Coke smoke and steam billow around him as he quenches a blade in a pail of water. Metal screams and hisses as it chokes for breath. "What do you want, then? A pair of earrings? I could give you a necklace you'd like."

You come to his side, straining around his torso to watch the steel drown. You're nothing, just nothing beside his great frame. He could bend you as easily as red iron, but your teeth flash with alloyed courage.

"Is that your usual payment, Riley?"

"Give me a kiss, little bird, and you'll get more than a necklace."

Sheltered, highborn lady, whistling in the dark. You don't even know what he's saying. You may have a shade of an idea, words sipped from distant whispers not meant for your ears, but it's like the light that slips through coloured glass. Insubstantial, just a facsimile of the real thing. You're here to catch rays to see what they feel like. To know.

Because you came back—like a moth to a flame, you came back alone to singe your wings—and you don't call for the guards when he drifts into your space. Simon wonders how far he can push you, and how quickly. Cool a blade too fast, and the core bows. Warps. Its edge turns to brittle glass, itching to chip and crack. Heat it too fast, and the steel tempers and softens. Becomes just another useless lump of metal.

He wants you boiling when you come to him, and you will come to him.

You've caught his scent just as much as he's caught yours. Like a doe snuck into his territory, you tease his edges—not wise enough to realize just how threadbare his control is.

For now, he'll let you feel the warmth sitting, perpetually, just underneath his skin. Let you feel your own size as he looms over you. Some birds like their men grizzly, like towering beasts with hard fists and mean jaws—you love it. Simon can see it in the twitch of your chin, the draw of your pupils, the hard spots of heat on your cheeks. Bad luck that you're married to your dim, fallow reed. Frightfully bad luck.

"There you go again," Simon whispers. The tips of his boots touch your fine shoes. Your delicate hands wring together in front of your belly.

"Pardon?"

So mannered, so decent, even as Simon can see your thoughts swimming around your empty head like water wraiths. Just the promise of a kiss below the murk, or a wet grave. He could pluck the pictures from your mind, roll them around his mouth like spit-stones, and he knows what he would taste. Interest, and imaginations, and lilac honey. Sweat and dew. Clotted cream. So virtuous, even as your lips hang slack, and he can see the pink, wet muscle of your twitching tongue.

"You blush when you look up at me," Simon tells you. Lets some scorn, some mockery, flavour the words as they burrow into your ear. "You even know what you're blushin' over?"

Your hand flies to your cheek, cooling away the flush with dancing fingers. An indignant huff puffs from your mouth, and Simon is sure you'd stomp your foot if you had less of a hold on yourself. It almost makes him smile. Do it, he thinks. Give him a reason to take you over his knee. Welts on your ass and three fingers in your cunt would wipe that whiny look off your face, he's sure.

He doubts anyone's ever taught you that lesson—doubts you even know just how hard lessons can be learned—but he wouldn't mind being the first.

"I do know," you puff.

"Know what, little bird?" There's a sparrow, just there, embroidered on your heavy wool cloak. The hours it must have taken to thread it carefully between the weave, the years of practise to accomplish a stitch with such beauty, precision. And Simon could ruin it. Ruin it in a moment. The urge bites at him as he reaches forward to pet the fine fabric between his fingers.

A risk if he's ever taken one. Simon likes his hands. They're rather important to him.

"Why ladies blush." Your voice is just a promise.

"Do you, now?" You're looking at your hem balled in Simon's heavy fist, at the scrapes on his knuckles so close to your belly where you're warm and heaving with breath. "Good little ladies like yourself blush at pretty highborns with flowers in their hair. Why're you blushin' at me?"

You're looking at him like a traveller near a bluff, aware of the drop, feeling the call. One tug, and you would fall into him.

He doesn't get the chance, though. At least, not yet.

The spell breaks, your lady's maid calling your name from the snow, and you take flight—spinning when he, for just a moment, doesn't let your cloak slip from his grasp. Simon knows it's no matter. Your winter rose rests on the cobblestone at his feet, already withering in the heat and choking air. You'll visit him in his dreams again, and maybe he'll see what will happen when you're snared.

Some rabbits chew their foot off. What will you do?

Your milklivered lord comes home clean as spring, and brings disappointment with him.

You try to hide it, but Simon knows. Plucked and preened, you greet him in the courtyard as you were greeted a month before, and present to him the sword Simon forged. The sword with the bloodgutter shaped to the exact curve of your lips, Simon's sickness hammered into the folded iron. The sword your lord can hardly hold upright as his thin arm trembles. Chagrin dusts your tepid smile when his frail hand cups your chin. When he wraps you in his hold, and so much of you is left exposed to the chill.

He's weak, another thing Simon can crush in his palm, but that one, he hates.

And the disappointments only grow, only follow you—dragging behind you like a limp mule slowing down the retinue. Better to cull the lame thing, put everyone out of their misery, but you, the dutiful wife, do try. The servants say you read to him by the hearth in the evenings, and tug him on gentle walks through the wood, and they whisper about the noises he makes as he sweats over you every night. And you glow and simper in the mornings, but he can't keep you happy.

Simplest thing in the world to breed a bird, and your lord is failing.

He's letting you wilt. When more months go by without an heir in your belly, the folk start to whisper. They think there must be something wrong with you. The women make you eat comfrey and daisy, and carve words into the butter you lathe on your bread. They stir hare's egg powder into the tea you choke down. You plant parsley alone in the dawn light, nails cracking in the hard, cold soil, and if you aren't growing soon, you'll be sent away. Back to your father, who may not receive you, or to a lone and quiet convent to dwindle into old age.

Or worse. Much worse can befall a woman who doesn't give her husband a child. You're in a different sort of trap, now.

Simon knows it's not your fault, but he seems to be the only one who does. So he waits—lingers in your periphery for you to work it out for yourself—and it's the dead of night when you come back to him at last. Your lord has just left on another campaign for his king, and you're shivering and washed with the snowfall, standing in Simon's forge. Winter-dimmed, strained in the face and hard around the mouth, but the blustering bellows dance warm, orange light over your skin.

It's what you've needed. Some heat. Should've come to Simon weeks ago. He can press some warmth back into you.

You open your mouth to speak, but Simon hasn't forgotten your last conversation, and it's time you listened to him. "It's because you like blushin' at me, isn't it?" he asks, coming to you where you stand by his work table. "Like lookin' at me. Wonderin' how it would be to have me in your bed and not that tallow-faced lord of yours."

"He's not—"

"He is. Can't even put a baby in your belly." The keep is dark and quiet in the distance. Only the mice are awake. Even though you don't scream when Simon bullies one paw beneath your cloak, planting his palm on your soft stomach, he doubts anyone would hear if you did. "I can do it, little bird. I can give you a pup, and it won't take me no season either."

You grip his forearm like you're going to push him off, but when your nails sink into the scars and mottled flesh there, you hesitate. Something mercenary sits in your gaze, something hard-won and hewn in ice. No more mischief, just purpose.

Simon's a venal man. What's another ware to be sold?

"I need a son," you say at last. Jaw set, shoulders tight.

Simon was never one who needed to be told twice, and he's held long enough. You squeak when he lifts you, hefting you with hands around your ribcage to be set on his worktable, but don't protest when he undoes the clasp of your cloak. Shoves it off your shoulders to find the thin shift beneath. Diaphanous, flimsy—your nipples pebble through the linen. You were probably tossing in bed thinking about this, of coming to him in your night things, wondering what he'll do with you.

Brave thing. You're a conscript yet. Simon can't blame you for your means to an end, and this is as sweet a bargain as he's ever struck.

You run trembling hands over his shoulders, as if picturing a child with his build. "A son, blacksmith," you repeat, as if you can speak it into being.

But that's Simon's job—you only need to lie there and let him.

"I'll give you one. I'll give you three."

Propped in front of him like a dinner plate, eyes round as the moon, gone is your stiff upper lip. Maybe you thought you'd take it like a soldier—get the job done like farm animals and be back to your soft bed within minutes. You don't know, though, what you owe him. What you've done to him in his thoughts. Simon has a score to settle in your flesh, and a hunger in his belly he intends to sate in your sweat. Made him wait, you did. He's going to savour it.

He slips between your legs, bending down and down to bump your chin with his own. You know your pact. He wants his payment.

The kiss you give him is hesitant, cold lips on a warm, scarred mouth. His melted flesh pulls his lips into a permanent sneer, but you don't seem to mind. It's your tongue, first, which presses into his teeth. Your jaw, first, to pop open, expecting. You taste like the first spring day—snow-melt and sunshine, new grass and dripping, shining, icicles—and you hold him like you're going to blow away in the wind. Tugging at him, his clothes, like you're skinning a deer. Folding stripped flesh over itself to get to the warm, wet muscles beneath, still filled with the blood that made them run.

Your shift is insubstantial, so delicate that Simon could shred it like wet paper—so he does. Rips it down the front in one, great sheer to lay bare the body below that he had been thinking of for months. Months. Wondering what you hid beneath your many layers of wool, how your breath would catch when Simon grabbed heavy handfuls of your curves, picturing sooty handprints marring your pretty dress.

You break the kiss to complain, some indignant protest that falls on deaf ears because Simon isn't listening.

He's looking, swallowing the sight of you so he can never forget the way it felt slipping down his throat. The swell of your breasts, the soft roll of your stomach, the plush give of your thighs, knees knocked wide around his hips. Simon's longed for this painting. His muscles cramped with it.

How dare that lord of yours let you walk the halls of the keep. If you were Simon's, really his, you wouldn't be allowed. He would take you to the woods, the vast, unending forests of the North, where no one could ever find you, and he'd tie you to the bed. Make sure the only thing on your mind is the next time his cock will be seated inside you. Drip honey in your mouth and fill your womb with his seed again, and again, and again.

He has half a mind to do it. Take you. Bring you to a place where you could run for lengths and never come close to another heart beating between the trees.

You're halfway to letting him, he thinks. Dropped back into some primal part of your mind as he lays you back, tools clattering to the floor, and latches his mouth to the soft velvet of your breasts. Everything he does, you react as if it is the first time, and Simon wonders. Wonders if he could mark the warm curves of you, sink his teeth in, take a bite and swallow, and if your lord would ever notice.

Limp, pidgeonhearted lord. Wasting you.

He wouldn't waste you. Thoughts catch like fingers on cliff edges, cock swelling, achingly hard, at you so sweet and fictal looking up at him. He'd crack his ribs open, tuck you there, if he could. Make you sip the air from his lungs, breathe when he breathed. Your years of careful comportment, of being hidden in high towers, crumbling in his palm like white ash.

Simon's never wanted anything like this. His stomach aches. He feels washed away, uprooted, by the want—vicious and cruel, rearing now after months of suffocation.

The want to raze and build anew.

Simon has a bed, somewhere—a threadbare nest tucked in some corner—but he likes you where you are, laid out on his table like another thing to be forged, moulded into whatever he sees fit. You move how he wants, pliable as liquid metal, as sweat blossoms in the dips and wells of your body. He could make you, but you let him. You only falter when he parts your legs and dips his head between them, looking like a filly. New to the world on weak knees. Eyes wide, confused, as he kisses your thighs. You rest your hands protectively in a knot below your navel.

It's a near thing, holding back the sleeping creature within himself. The one that howls to devour, claim, own. But things can be owned in other ways—forever changed, tied to him. Something, finally, for himself. Made to keep.

The first brush of lips against your cunt has you squirming, and he has to hold you down. "Is this … necessary?" you ask.

Simon hooks your legs over his shoulders, opening you up more to him, and his mouth waters. He can feel his cheeks tingling as saliva collects, and he can smell you. Finally close enough to really know. Loam, and lye soap, and the tang of dandelion milk. Gooseflesh blooms in the wake of his searching nose.

"Yes," he tells you.

"No wonder I'm not withchild yet, my husband has never—oh." A needless sentence, aborted with a bleat as his mouth descends.

Simon was right.

Blackberry jam—the sweetest thing he's ever tasted.

Even though you run from him. You're prim and proper about it, hiding sighs behind a furrowed brow and the flit of your fingers. Simon doesn't want the Lady; he wants what he knows is beneath, but he knows he's going to enjoy teasing it out of you. You're jumpy, writhing and twitching, swallowing soft hums and hiccups as Simon parts you with his tongue. Sipping nectar from the source, kitten-licks around your pulsing entrance until he finds the sensitive bud at the apex of you and wraps his lips around it.

Soon, other wetness joins his spit, and your hands leave their knot to scratch against Simon's scalp. Gripping his hair at the root, pushing his face into your bucking hips, and it tastes like victory. Your lord is off conquering a strip of land no one cares about, and Simon is here conquering his wife. Simon can feel the rumble in his own chest as he groans into you.

He pulls back, chin wet, to watch his finger disappear inside you, practically sucking him in as you whine. He'd give up breath to keep tasting you, to keep your velvet heat under his tongue and feel you pulsing as you're wrung out, but he has to see. Has to witness the crescent of dirt under his nail, the dark lines in his knuckle sinking in. Watch your stomach as it jumps, and your pretty face twisting up. Your walls flutter around him, giving in to his prodding, his petting, until he can slide another inside. And because he's greedy, Simon's tongue follows too. Muscle against muscle, he could drown in you.

Live forever on only this. On your trembling thighs and plaintive cries, nuzzling his ruined nose against your clit until you shout.

Supine, you thrash, limp limbs tensing and releasing like the crash of waves. Like you're scrabbing for purchase in the dark, and only Simon is there to lead you. "Wait—stop," you mewl, voice high and reedy, and Simon halts—barely. He doesn't ask why, doesn't trust his voice to be anything but a growl, and he doesn't want to frighten you. Not yet. Not when you're teetering on the edge of where he's taking you.

Tears rim your glossed eyes when you catch his gaze down the line of your body. "I don't know what's—I feel—"

Rage and male pride swirl in his chest, a potion he could get drunk on. Ire-honeyed mead his fists could siphon out. Sweet, sweet bird. Poor, mistreated highborn. Simon'll give you a dozen, a score, until you're spent and dazed. Until your eyes can't focus, and the only thing you can say is his name.

"Told you this was necessary, didn't I?" he asks.

You nod, a pout Simon wants to chew off tugging at your lips.

"Then stop whinin'."

You hold his hand through your release, lacing your fingers in his and holding them, locked, to your chest. Your eyes are closed as if in concentration, and Simon can feel your heartbeat against his wrist, thumping in time with your pitiful laments. They pour from your throat as if hooked out, spiralling upward in rungs like a silver-keen melody. It's winsome, how you curl against him, shoulders bowing inward, fingers scrabbling at the singed hair of his forearm. How you clench down on his fingers, still petting inside you, gummy walls pulsing as your muscles tense. Tight as a bowstring, horse tendons dried and twisted, until you're loosed, limp and panting.

Simon's decision is made. It drives into place like a rosehead in his nape, clouted in with your lips on his knuckles. Wrought-iron against bone, muscles making room for rusted metal. Can't pull nails without a fight, not once they've been clenched.

You scrunch your face up when he kisses you afterward, pressing your own taste back into you. He expects you to shy away again. To fawn, coltish and faltering. But you're on him the moment he pulls away, chasing him, sitting up from the table to follow the heat of his torso like you're an early-spring lamb. His tunic, you shove halfway up his chest without a care for the ties, and your nails follow. Clean, shaped things that leave lines in their wake, coaxing Simon's blood to the surface—a red bloom on pale flesh and stark, pink scars. Old burns still holding flame inside him.

Perfect, kept teeth sink into the plush of his chest as you tug at his trousers, paw at him, hard and leaking, straining against the fabric, like you can't wait another moment

—and you're his. Another man's wife, traded to him for swords and arms to wield them, but you belong to Simon. From the moment you smiled at him in the courtyard, you did. And not you nor any man could stop him. You mark bites into his skin like you could chew him living, and Simon thinks about making off with you like a monster in the night. Not Beowulf, but Grendel. But no one is nailing his arm to any wall, not when it can slip around the curve of your back and bring you close to him.

You come readily into his hold, trembling legs locking around his hips, fingers letting blood at the back of his neck, as you're carried. Anywhere. Any flat surface Simon can find so he can sit, can hold you fast in his lap and feel you tense atop his thighs. Let you work yourself full of him as the fire spits.

He doesn't know where he lands. Somewhere hay-filled and dusty. He can't stop relishing the feel of you, better than he could've ever conjured in his rotten mutt mind. So fragile, so soft—your ribs give when he presses his palms into them. A thing to protect, or shatter like overheated glass. Because blood-heavy, aching in anticipation, Simon wants to be cruel. Wants to let free the leash, the vice clamped somewhere in his stomach, and see what crawls out the back of his throat. Pour it into you, let your wrangle or succumb. Plant an ugly seed and watch it sprout.

Simon likes the thought of your lord finding out. Of him stitching it together like piecemeal and coming in the night. Likes the thought of grinding his jaw into the anvil. Making his skull into a fine cup.

You buck clumsily in his lap, hunting for friction. Grinding a wet spot into his trousers because he hasn't even freed himself yet. You cease at a growled command and wait so nicely for Simon to pull himself free and line up, even if your brows furrow at the sight of him.

"It will fit?" you ask. It's vulgar, the sight of him—mean and thick and dripping white globs of seed as his fist tightens around the base of himself—next to you. Shaking thighs and supple flesh, spit and slick dripping down your legs as you hover above. "Riley?"

"Yes, little bird."

"It's only … You're much larger than—"

"M'not him, am I?" He wraps his other paw around your nape, bending your neck to make you stare down between your bodies. The two of you watch together as you slowly sink down on him, the angry, red flesh and veins like bruises pushing inside, just past the lip of his crown. You're too tense to allow anything more, strangling him already; he can hardly breathe. "Look."

Your hands grasp at his shoulders, fingers clawing at the flesh and meat there. Can't do that to your lord, Simon thinks. Your husband is made of bones and twine. He can't take the bruises you want to mould into muscle, can't fill you so full you can't even swallow. Simon can just picture him wheezing over you in your marriage bed, you silent and smiling. Nowhere near the creature Simon's made—the lap dog panting in his hold.

You need him.

Need him to protect you, someone to cover your whole body with his own until you're not even there. Until nothing can find you. Your lord can't make you safe like that. Simon can.

You suck in gulping breaths like a gaping fish as you lower yourself, squeezing him in steadily. It's velvet heat and mouthwatering pressure all around him that make his thoughts dart like wide-eyed hares. Your forehead slides against his, slick with sweat and the mixed putty of settling ash, and he can taste your lungs on his lips. You grind back and forth as you work him in—too fast. Too fervid and impatient, you constrict around him, forcing him in with hurt twisting your pout into a grimace.

"Careful," Simon warns. He moves his grip to your hips to guide you, sliding you up and down his length in slow, shallow dips as you hiccup. "Like this. That's it."

Teaching you how to take him, making you ease him inside because you're too eager to check yourself, choking down pain just to get him in, in—it cracks open something wretched in Simon. It spills like spoiled egg yolk through his chest, dripping through the rungs of his ribcage to dry and split. He wants to pop out every one of your teeth like willow buds and hold them in his cheek. Wants to bite your knuckles into his mouth and feel the bones grind together. He wants. He wants.

You, eyes fastened to the joining of your bodies and none the wiser, spill a warm whine over his mouth. Protesting the pace, you scratch your grievances into his skin.

"Slow at first," he tells you, nipping at the curve of your jaw to quell the ache in his own. "Just this time, little bird."

"No," you complain, pettish and sullen. Sour in your urgency, piqued in your restlessness. "I want—"

"Patience," he murmurs, but he can hear the strain in his own voice. Simon's been patient for months. You can weather a palmful of minutes. It's only a blink of time to get you used to his size. Simon's ox-built in all countenance, so it's steady, patient work, but your muscles give to him eventually. Suddenly, he's seated inside you, fully sheathed and struggling for control.

You're a vice around him, battened down like a garrote. He feels smothered, having to clamp down his insides so he doesn't do something awful.

"Can I move?" you plead, ignorant of the maelstrom happening inside his head, his stomach. You plant sweet kisses on his cheeks, the corner of his mouth, supplicating for movement. Supplicating to be eaten.

Simon rolls your flesh under his palms, hobbling his desire with thin-spun thread. "You think of this when he's inside you? Think about if it were me?" he demands, unable to keep the cruelty behind the ladder of his teeth. "I'll show you."

He starts off blunted, keeping his clip deliriously slow, letting you languish in the feel of him dragging inside you—but that can only go on so long. You cry for him to speed up, to fill you harder, and deeper, more savage, more bruising, and Simon obliges.

And Simon tells himself that this—snapping his hips into you, the head of him grinding against the plug of your womb, bullying himself inside again and again as your eyes roll, hands spasm—is for you. That he's freeing the snare, not tying a new one round your twitching ankle. But it's for him. Because maybe Simon likes sweet things because of the opportunity they promise, the chance of ruin. Nothing sweet lives in the world for long, not without interference, and you have so many lights Simon could snuff out

—or fuel. He could make you burn only for him.

A selfish sort of preservation, like a lover's hands kept in milky jars of vinegar.

His back aches with the strain, that old injury born of being bent over anvils for all his life flaring now as he pistons upward, but he's chasing. His own release and yours, hunting oaths and promises and the feel of you coming apart around him. He tucks you against himself, forearms squeezing your torso into his to lock you in place, but also because he cannot fight the instinct that's telling him to hide you away somewhere warm and dark and that might as well be somewhere beside his liver.

Your skin slides against his, your arms, so much smaller than his own, crushed between your chests so all you can do is huff and squeak as he drives out and in and out again. Rude, crudish squelching sounds dance in tandem with your high cries. Simon shoves your head into the crook of his neck, wanting you close to his pulse hammering there, and tilts the angle of his hips so that your sensitive bud grazes his abdomen with every thrust.

His name is a stunted cry whimpered out between heaving breaths as you clench, but it's not the pulse of your walls constricting around him, or the tender way your muscles run taut as you come, that sets his own release spinning. It's the thought of spilling inside you, filling you full and some part of himself taking root there. Of you, raised on silver and grace and careful comportment, letting yourself be bred by a lowborn smith with only the dirt to call his own. Because only he can—and you want only him to.

A lifetime of prudent rearing, unravelled in seconds. You've left the door open

—and a wolf wandered in.

Simon's body draws tight as his hips stutter, settling finally for just badgering the head of himself against your womb as he floods it with his seed. You thrash in his hold, bucking like an ill-tempered mare, at once running and grinding back on him in your own throes. You shake in his hold like a needle clinging to a pine, simpering out your afterglow into the humid heat of his neck. You're both left panting and sticky, the air in the forge suddenly suffocating.

You try to pry yourself from his arms, to sip cool air instead of the steam between you, but Simon grips you fast. "Can't spill a drop, little bird. You're going to sit here until it takes."

You whine, but settle, nuzzling at the strong cut of his jaw in a sated, satisfied way that makes his chest puff up.

You're very good, listening at last. Sitting there with Simon licking the soot and sweat off your skin until, eventually, he grows hard again, still inside you. So Simon flips you over so you're tucked beneath him and he can finally know what your muscles feel like straining below his, and know how you sound begging him to go slow, please. And he does—take his time, this go. Drives into you slow and hard until drool and tears slip down the side of your face, and you're begging him instead to fill you again.

You pay with a froth-spit kiss, and take your own price with eight red scratches up the curve of his back.

Simon wraps your cloak around your shoulders for you, fastening the cotton tight together up to your chin, and tells you to move quickly and silently when you return to your rooms. He tells you he will burn your shift, but you leave without ensuring it. Instead, Simon folds the tatters carefully and holds the linen to his nose as he closes his eyes—inhaling steady mouthfuls, looking forward to a dreamless sleep. Ragweed pollen, and sunwarmed skin, and the chimney tar he knows he crushed into you like powdered marigold.

He'll keep the shift.

Rage brews in his stomach at the thought of your lord returning, of him putting his spider hands on you, rubbing smooth palms over your growing belly and demanding the world proclaim what a splendid job he did. Simon tamps down the violence clawing at his throat—saves it for later, storing it in the cold cellar of his fists.

Yes, he'll keep the shift.

you let out a giddy little laugh that makes him glance down, at that. it’s quick and brief, the way his eyes flick over you, like he’s checking to make sure you haven’t stripped mid-hallway. it’s just the bickering that gets you. makes you warm inside.

“m’not that drunk,” you lie through your teeth with all the drunken confidence you possess. “i mean—i am, but not like…memory loss drunk. i’m still gonna remember how wide your shoulders are tomorrow.”

it’s only seconds after that and your fingers are moving again, crawling down his arm to where leather edge meets skin.

“..and how insanely big your hands are,” you sigh in continuation, unable to help yourself. “like—biblically destructive. ruin-her-life-in-a-single-night kind of hands. anyone ever tell y’that?”

and that might just be precisely when it starts - the feeling in his gut. brought to life through the filth you’re beginning to feed.

“don’t.” he says, and it’s torn. “not now.”

he’s all but begging you - and however miraculously, his pace doesn’t break. still steady as ever even as you switch from squeezing to tracing his tattoos with your finger. the only response he gives is a devastating clench of his jaw as he keeps you moving - steering past flickering lights and sterile walls.

“y’ever choke a girl out with them?” you press, unfettered. “not like, unconscious, but like. in bed?”

he exhales. slow. almost a growl.

“jesus. stop talkin’.”

“why?” you blink up at him, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks, far too innocent for someone who’s very much not being innocent. “am i makin’ you nervouuus?”

his head tilts just slightly, just enough to peer down at you again.

“no,” he says, and even drunk you hear the grit in it. “you’re makin’ me hard.”

he says it like he hates himself for it. like it slipped out - cut from the meat of some deep place the inebriation in his veins simply won’t let him keep inside.

and you?

you blink slow, lips parting in surprise.

“fuckin’ finally.” you exhale with a smile. slow and crooked and dangerous. “thought i’d have to be on my knees and naked for you to admit that—“

he doesn’t let you finish that thought.

“fuck’s sake, y’little minx.” he’s dragging you now, as if he’s realizing the dangers that are surfacing the more this conversation continues. by this point he’s half-carrying, half-hauling your giggling form down the hall like you weigh nothing. “y’need to stop talkin.”

“you like it,” you slur between unsteady steps. “y’like me like this cause you’re a freakkk—“

his grip tightens. morals in tatters. control evaporating.

“i’d like you more if y’were unconscious.” he huffs, hard. “or duct-taped.”

that makes you giggle more. worse, it eggs you on.

“was that supposed t’be a threat?” you ask, lips glistening. “cause if so, it’s workingggg.”

he grunts - some deep, violent sound in his throat like that one hit a nerve. “bloody hell.”

by the time you make it to your door, he’s breathing heavy. less from exertion and more from sheer fucking restraint. it takes two seconds before he throws the hinges wide, kicks it shut with his boot, and all but drags you onto your bed.

and you hardly even realize you’ve reached it until the cotton caresses the side of your cheek. but that feeling is quickly forgotten when simon, the gentleman that he is, leans over you - one knee braced on the mattress as his hands go to work on the laces of your boots.

your thighs tense. he notices.

“fuck, simon.” you can’t stop yourself. not even god himself could, at this point. “i’ve been into you for ages, y’know.”

he pauses. boot in hand.

“…what?”

he says it low. like a warning - like a don’t you fuckin start. but you’re too drunk to care - especially when all you smell is him and all you see are those shoulders, leaning over you while you’re flat on your back beneath him.

your lashes flutter.

“jus sayin- since, like. you’re in my room, on my bed above me like one of my codeine fever dreams.” you slur, brain sloshing. the room spins with it. “thought y’should know.”

he looks at you like you’ve hit him with a brick.

your head lolls. glassy eyes dragging up over the length of him. “used to think about it—you—when i couldn’t sleep.”

he swallows, and you watch his throat work with it. the grip he’s got on your ankle could shatter bone.

“….you tellin me y’think bout me when y’touch yourself?” he asks.

“god yes.” you don’t even realize you’ve said it. “you. your hands. bending me over the sinks. in the showers while muttering filth in my ear, tellin me to behave—“

“—fuck.” it punches out of him like it hurts.

the silence falls heavy. he doesn’t blink, breathe, or move for what feels like forty minutes, when in reality, it’s like forty seconds - just long enough for him clamp the leash back on whatever beast is tearing through him.

not fully, but enough.

you stretch like a cat, oblivious to it. arch your back. sigh. “d’you think about it?”

he doesn’t answer. not at first. then—

“only when i breathe.”

your stomach lurches. your thighs twitch. “you mean that?”

he looks at you, finally - eyes darker than the devils deal, filled with filth and heat from the fire you started without even trying.

he shakes his head, his jaw clenches with the effort of keeping the beast at bay. “i mean, if you don’t stop talkin, m’gonna fuckin’ fold.”

the alcohol in your blood just roars, at that. fuel to the flaming fire inside you.

“tell me.” you murmur. “you think about fucking me? what i’d sound like moaning your—“

before you can finish that thought, his hand is over your mouth. it swallows your face, makes you twitch in all the wrong places — and he sees it.

“enough.” it’s barely a whisper. “christ. fuck. you’re gonna make me do somethin’ stupid.”

you moan against his hand - it spills out of you, vibrates against his fingers. he curses.

“y’wanna know what stupid looks like?” he mutters, head dropping down until his lips near your jaw. “you, wakin up with my fuckin dog tags round your neck and nothin else.”

his palm silences everything but your pulse, which is roaring, at this point.

your fingers come up, shift a few of his digits until your voice finds room to leak out. “please.”

his eyes snap shut.

“y’dont know what you’re askin for, sweet’eart,” he mutters, grabbing the edge of the blanket with his free hand and yanking it over your hips. “ain’t gonna wake up with you hatin me.”

even drunk you realize he’s a man of morals.

“you think i’d regret it?” you whisper. stars in your eyes. he doesn’t respond. “simon. i just told you i’ve fantasized about fucking you. i wonder how big you are, if it’d hurt—“

his palm tightens over your lips again.

“one more fuckin’ word and i’ll forget every goddamn reason why i shouldn’t touch you right now.” he spits. “if y’even remember this tomorrow, y’come say it to me sober. promise on every grave i’ve ever stood over i’ll bend y’over on the spot and fuck the idea of regret right outta you.”

then he pulls back, moving slow like it hurts, and you smile.

“guess i’ll see you tomorrow.”